A Whisker in the Dark: A purrfectly unputdownable cozy mystery (The Oyster Cove Guesthouse Book 2)

Twelve

Seth made everyone go back to the house. The Biddefords settled into the parlor and I brought them some tea and cookies. The Biddeford siblings didn’t appear overly upset seeing as they’d just lost their brother. Doris, on the other hand, was appropriately distraught. She kept wringing her hands and wailing about her baby. Paula did her best to comfort her mother.

Mom and Millie hung out in the kitchen with Mike. Millie was irate that Seth would even consider suspecting Flora. Speaking of which, where was Flora? I hadn’t seen her all morning.

The cats had followed us into the house and were settled in Millie and Mike’s laps.

“Sunshine, are you okay?” Mike placed Marlowe down on the floor much to the chagrin of the cat and came over to stand next to me.

“Of course I’m okay. I’m not some delicate flower like Stella Dumont who needs a man to coddle me.” Maybe my words came out a little sharper than I meant them, but I was a grown woman who had already proven that she was self-sufficient. And truth was I was still upset over how Mike had insisted I shouldn’t investigate the last time we found a body. It was as if he thought I wasn’t competent. Well, the joke was on him because I’d figured out who the killer was last time and I could do it again.

“Now I know what you girls are thinking.” He looked over at Mom and Millie then glanced back at me. “There’s no sense for you to go investigating this on your own. Murderers are dangerous.”

See? I knew he was going to say that! Mom and I exchanged an eye-roll.

“Dangerous schmangerous.” Millie jumped up from her seat. “Someone has accused Flora and I won’t stand for it. She’s practically family and has been here as long as I can remember. And she’s a good, hard-working woman with dozens of grandchildren!”

Mike glanced at me as if looking for help. I shook my head. “If I feel like investigating, I’m going to.”

“I’m a trained investigator, guys,” Mike said. “If you want to investigate something you can ask me to do it for you. But we really should all leave the investigating to the police.”

“I don’t think we need you to do our dirty work for us.” I glanced at Mom and Millie, who nodded.

“We’ve investigated plenty,” Mom said.

“Yeah, what do you think we were doing while you were still in the navy?” Millie asked. “Got a pretty good track record, too, don’t we, Rose?”

“Yeah, we know what we’re doing. Josie here is the amateur,” Mom said.

“Hey!” I bristled at her comment. Had she forgotten that I’d figured out who killed the last guest who had turned up dead? Sometimes nothing I did was good enough for my mother.

Seth appeared in the doorway and Millie scowled at him, taking the tray of cookies she had brought over from the counter and putting them away for emphasis.

“Have you seen Flora?” Seth asked.

“She’s probably cleaning, as is her duty.” Millie’s posture was stiff and she avoided eye contact. “Now you know that nice little old lady couldn’t have killed anyone.”

Seth appeared visibly upset that Millie was cross with him. His sad gaze flicked to the cookies. His voice softened. “Now, Millie, you know I need to follow all the rules. I just want to question her.”

“Question who?” Flora appeared in the doorway that led up the back stairs with a mop in her hand.

“I was just looking for you, Flora,” Seth said.

“Oh really? What for Sheriff?” She looked around, noticing the grim looks on our faces. “What’s going on?”

“Someone was killed on the grounds last night,” Millie said.

Flora’s brows shot up, her eyes getting even bigger behind her round glasses. She looked genuinely surprised, not that I had suspected her for a minute. “Really? Again?”

“I’m afraid so. Whacked over the head.” Mom’s comment earned a look of reproach from both Millie and Seth.

“I didn’t see nothing.” Flora opened the closet to put the mop away.

“Where were you last night?” Seth asked.

Flora turned and scowled at him. “What do you mean? I was at home.”

“Are you sure you weren’t here… Maybe digging for treasure?”

Flora’s eyes flicked from Seth to Mom to Millie.

“Digging? I already told you I didn’t see anything, what does it matter where I was?” She thrust her scrawny left arm, bent it at the elbow to make a muscle, and pointed to it with her right hand. “Does this look like an arm that could hit someone over the head hard enough to kill them?”

Seth looked at Flora uneasily. “Well, it’s hard to say.”

Flora rolled her eyes. “I don’t have time for this.” She looked at Mike. “Surely you don’t think I killed someone, do you Mr. Mike?”

As if to show their support, the cats ran over to Flora. She bent down to pet them, her knees popping and creaking. They sniffed her shoes gingerly, then rubbed their faces against her old wrinkled hands.

“Of course not, Flora. They don’t have any concrete evidence against you, do you, Sheriff?” asked Mike.

Seth sighed. “No evidence. Just that someone saw her there.”

“And who might that be?” Flora demanded.

“I can’t really give out my sources,” Seth stammered.

“Oh, come on. We all heard her say it.” Millie turned to Flora. “It was Paula.”

“The lush?” Flora waved her hand in the air. “She’s not reliable. I’ve got things to clean. When you guys have something concrete then maybe you could come and arrest me, Seth. But don’t forget I used to change your diapers and I’ve got stories to tell.” Flora grabbed a roll of paper towels from under the sink and shuffled off upstairs.

I remembered Arlene’s comments about the cleaning, so I called after her, “Could you double back into Earl and Arlene’s room and make sure it’s extra clean?”

She whirled around and scowled at me. I figured she was going to say she doesn’t clean rooms, but instead she said, “What do you mean double back? Isn’t that the green room?”

“Yes.”

“Well, for your information, I haven’t cleaned that one yet. If I had, it would be clean. I can only do one or two rooms a day, so I haven’t gotten to the green room yet. But I will.” She turned and we heard the stairs creaking as she went up.

“There you have it, Seth. Are you satisfied? Flora didn’t do it. Now why don’t you go try to dig up a real suspect,” Millie said.

Seth stared at Millie with his sad eyes for a second, then he turned to Mike. “I’m ready to take your statement.” As he and Mike started out of the room, Seth glanced over his shoulder at us. “Don’t run off. I’ll take all your statements but Mike’s first. I’m sure he has to get back to work.”

“Yes, I’m sure he does have to get back to work. He doesn’t need to hang around here and help us,” I said.

“Nope we can help ourselves,” Millie added, then under her breath. “And find the real killer even if the cops can’t.”

Mike shook his head and followed Seth out of the room.

Millie watched them leave then she opened the box of cookies and put them in front of us. We all took one. Snickerdoodles. “I had just baked these at home when I heard the police call on my scanner app. Lucky thing I thought to bring them. We might need them for sustenance. We need to get on top of this investigation before Flora gets into trouble.” She glanced at the doorway. “Those men think they know everything. We’ll show them.”

I bit into my cookie. “Yeah, we’re good at investigating. Do you think it has something to do with the treasure? Maybe Bob really did find it and someone killed him to take it away.” Had there been a treasure buried in this yard the whole time I’d been struggling to pay bills?

Millie scowled. “That’s just a stupid rumor. There was no hole or signs of digging near Bob and, besides, the odds of treasure being here are pretty much nil.”

“Then why were you guys out here digging last night?” I asked.

Mom and Millie laughed. “What else are we going to do? Besides, half the town was here, and it was fun seeing them all. People get up to shenanigans at night and we wanted to spy and eavesdrop.” She looked at my mom, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Did you see Myron and Stella Dumont?”

“Yeah, they looked pretty chummy over by that gazebo.” Mom glanced at me. “That should put your mind at ease, Josie.”

I frowned. “Why is that?”

Mom rolled her eyes. “A blind monkey could see that you have a thing for Mike. I know you’re still smarting about how he dumped you for Stella in high school, but it’s time to get over that now. You’re a grown woman with a daughter of your own and if Stella’s chummy with Myron that means Mike is free pickings.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. I wished my mom wouldn’t try to fix me up. It was embarrassing at my age.

“I don’t have a thing for Mike.” Okay, maybe a little thing. I had to admit, even though his constant use of my childhood nickname bugged the crap out of me, he was kind of cute and the way he seemed concerned about me did make my heart flip-flop sometimes, but the last thing on my mind was striking up a relationship, Stella Dumont or not. “I think we need to focus on finding out who killed Bob, don’t you?”

“Yeah. That’s more fun than your love life,” Millie said.

“I agree.” Mom dug a cookie out of the box. “Now, who do you think did it?”

“It’s got to be one of the family members. Did you see how Doris was the only one who seemed upset when we found him?” Millie asked.

“They don’t get along very well,” I said.

“And it’s no wonder, what with them working with cheese all those years. That would make anyone not get along,” Millie said.

“Bind you right up, too.” Mom patted her stomach and made a face.

“You ask me, I think it was that drunk one, Paula.” Millie leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I heard Bob threatening her the other day.”

“You did? About what?” I asked.

“Something about her being a detriment to the company. Turns out her cheese sculptures are getting messed up because of her drinking. I overheard them arguing when we were outside digging last night. He said she should be fired from the company.”

“And she’s the one who put the finger on Flora. She might be trying to frame Flora to throw the police off track,” Mom said.

“That would make sense, but I heard Bob arguing with someone, too,” I said. “Carla.”

“About what?” Millie asked.

“I’m not exactly sure. Bob said he wasn’t going to stand for ‘it’ and she needed to make it right… or else.”

“That sounds threatening,” Millie said.

“Even worse, Henry overheard them and when he questioned Carla about it, she said for him not to worry about Bob because she was going to do something about him.”

Mom munched on another cookie. “I wonder if doing something entailed killing him.”

“Yeah, what if it did?” I said. “Thing is, it seems like the cheese company isn’t doing very well and they’re all blaming each other. It could’ve been any of them.”

“Yeah, but now we have two suspects who we heard arguing with the victim. And we can do something that Seth can’t do.” Millie snapped off a bite of the cookie. “We can interview them one-on-one and try to trip them up so they confess.”

Mom smiled and nodded. “Yeah, that sounds like fun. I say we start right away.”

Nero sat under the kitchen table and aimed his gaze at Josie, willing her to understand his attempts at communication. Unfortunately, she was more interested in the conversation she was having with her mother and Millie about the suspect list.

“Doesn’t matter how hard you stare at her, she’s never going to be able to read your mind. Humans are just not that advanced,” Marlowe said.

Nero sighed and trotted over to his favorite spot near the pantry where Millie had put two plush cat beds. He hopped into the blue one and curled up. “I know, but I wish we could tell them that we overheard Earl and Bob arguing.”

“Then they could add Earl to their suspect list.” Marlowe hopped up onto the counter. The humans weren’t paying any attention, so she trotted over to the sink and tilted her head under the faucet to catch a drip of water. Fresh water out of the tap always tasted so delicious it was worth the risk of getting swatted at. “We’ll just have to figure out a way to clue them in so that they get the idea into their heads on their own.”

“But how? We can’t show them an argument. We’ll have to find something that points to Earl.” Nero licked his front paw. “And we need to enlist the aid of the others to skulk around town keeping their eyes open for anything suspicious and listening in on conversations. The killer could be anyone who was here last night.”

“Plenty of suspects on that roster.” Marlowe jumped down from the counter and hopped into the tan cat bed beside Nero. “Do you think this has anything to do with the confession Juliette heard? She said something about a woman who was going to betray her family. Perhaps Millie’s theory about Paula being the killer is correct.”

“Well, it could be. I know one thing though, it’s not Flora. She’s like family and we’ll protect her like we would protect Millie,” Nero said.

“Sure, but her shoes did smell kind of funny just now.”

“But they didn’t smell like murder. More smoke.”

“Maybe she stepped in some cheese? A little slice of smoked Gouda. I think I saw Carla bring some into her room.”

“Flora could have come into contact with it while cleaning, but we’ll inspect their rooms thoroughly later today when they are out. Perhaps there will be some cheese morsels we can appropriate for ourselves. Purely for investigative purposes, of course. We would never steal from the guests,” Nero said.

“Of course.”

“Naturally, we must protect the reputation of the guesthouse and make sure the blame for this does not fall onto Josie or Flora. I wouldn’t put it past that Seth Chamberlain to try to accuse one of them,” Nero said.

“Ah, come on. We know Seth isn’t that bad. He feeds us doughnut holes when no one else is looking.”

“Exactly. That’s what he does when no one is looking but right now everyone will be looking to see that he solves this case and there is an eyewitness pointing the finger at Flora. If he takes the easy way out, he could throw Flora in jail.”

Marlowe nodded. “We need to help Millie, Rose and Josie figure out how to point him in another direction.”

“Preferably not Josie’s though.” Nero winced as Millie scraped her chair back. It made an ungodly noise, at least to his sensitive cat ears. It didn’t seem to bother the humans any though.

Millie went to the recipe box on the counter and started to leaf through the recipes. That meant baking. Well fine. The humans could leisurely sit around baking all day but Nero didn’t have that luxury. A killer was loose and he had to help catch them. He stood and stretched.

“Come on. Let’s go down to the bait wharf and get this investigation rolling.”