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

Twenty-Six

“Josie, this is the most delicious apple-pecan bread I’ve ever tasted!” Annabel Drescher stood in front of my table chewing noisily on one of the tiny loaves of bread.

I’d burned another test loaf when we’d been busy capturing Earl. But I’d finally nailed the recipe for the bread, and fifty-four miniature loaves were stacked in a pyramid in the middle of the Oyster Cove Guesthouse display table at Oyster Cove’s 250th town celebration. The tent and streets were crowded and the mood was festive.

From inside the tents, which were nestled on the lush green grass of the town common, shaded by stately oaks and maples, one could see the quaint shops that lined Main Street in one direction, and the sparkling blue ocean in the other.

The Oyster Cove Chamber of Commerce had outdone themselves decorating for the festivities. A large banner with an image of the town two centuries ago hung across the street. Various food vendors and carnival games had been set up on the other side of the town common across from the shops, which all had sparkling clean windows and vibrant awnings. Baskets overflowing with colorful flowers hung from the fancy wrought-iron lamp posts that lined the streets. The air was spiced with the scent of popcorn, the sounds of laughter and the cry of an occasional gull.

“Thank you. Josie is a fine baker.” Millie sat proudly in the chair beside me. It was generous of her to give me credit since she was the reason they were so delicious, but I wasn’t about to argue.

Annabel took another bite and leaned across the table, glancing over at Stella out of the corner of her eye.

“Much better than Stella Dumont’s custard… that tasted sour,” she whispered.

“I knew it would,” Millie muttered under her breath.

“Lucky for Myron he gave me that loan for my travel agency instead of giving one to Stella,” Annabel said.

“Yeah, lucky.” I felt bad for suspecting her. It turned out she really hadn’t lied about Flora. Flora really had gone there with numbers, except they weren’t longitude and latitude, they were accounting numbers which had correlated with a longitude and latitude in the Caribbean Sea. Annabel had no idea what the numbers really were though and had just made an assumption that Flora wanted a vacation. She hadn’t dug up treasure to renovate her travel agency, she’d gotten a loan.

I simply smiled and nodded, then glanced over at the Smugglers Bay Inn table. People were milling about in front of it, but no one was eating the custard. I wondered if she’d gotten any bookings.

There were plenty of tourists in town and some of them might want to make a reservation to come back. Hopefully the curdling custard would drive more tourists toward my place, though I wasn’t particularly worried. I’d gotten quite a number of reservations in the past few days.

“You haven’t cut the cheese yet?” Mom gestured toward the towering sculpture that dominated the right side of the table. It was a likeness of the Oyster Cove Guesthouse as it was 250 years ago, carved out of cheddar.

Doris had secretly whipped it up after I’d given her permission to bury Jed’s skeleton in the old family cemetery on the property. Unfortunately, the burial never happened. With the logistics of getting into the overgrown part of the estate, heavy equipment to dig up the yard and state regulations, the Biddefords decided it was too costly and had opted for cremation. Doris said she’d rather use the money for a good rehab place for Paula.

Doris had handled Earl’s arrest well. I had to admire her, finding out one of your sons murdered another one couldn’t be easy. It turned out she had had her suspicions that one of her children had killed Bob from the beginning, that’s why she’d lied to Seth when she’d told him they’d all stuck together that night. She was hoping to provide an alibi for her kids.

But she was making the best of it, and at least something good had come from it. It seemed to have brought Doris, Paula and Carla closer together. Doris was taking back the reins of the cheese-sculpture business. She was determined to run it the right way and restore it to its former glory.

I suspected her gift of the sculpture wasn’t totally unselfish—she’d conveniently presented it to me under the tent and suggested I put it on my table with some of her business cards, just in case someone wanted to order a cheese sculpture of their own. I was happy to drum up business for her after everything she’d been through.

“Seems a shame to cut it, don’t you think?” I said. Doris had nicely provided crackers, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut into the sculpture. Besides, it was attracting people, and that was good for business—both mine and the Biddefords’.

“Yeah, but I’m hungry. Maybe I’ll just pinch off one of the shrubberies here,” Mom said, bending down and presumably looking for an inconspicuous spot to pinch some cheese.

A splash followed by a round of laughter caught our attention and we looked over to the Mayor’s head surfacing from the dunk tank. I’d heard dunking the mayor had been a very popular attraction and since the money people paid for a go went to the Chamber of Commerce festivals fund, he was being a good sport about it.

“Looking for Jed’s ghost in there?” Myron nodded at the sculpture. Apparently, he’d wandered over when my attention was on the dunk tank. As much as I would have liked to tell him to get lost, I couldn’t. He had approached me with the terms of a loan that I didn’t have to start paying on for twelve months. That meant I could step up renovations and get the guesthouse fully functional a lot sooner. Unfortunately, it also meant I’d have to be nice to Myron.

“Hardly.” Mom pinched off a corner and plopped it onto a cracker. “You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”

Myron shook his head. “Nope. And I don’t believe there’s treasure either. At least not from what my grandfather told me.”

“We never thought there was any treasure,” Millie said. “I think I would have known if there was something valuable right under my very nose.”

“Naturally. My relatives would have known if Jed had buried any treasure. I just hope this whole business with finding Jed’s skeleton and the rumor of his ghost doesn’t dissuade people from staying at the guesthouse.” Myron winked at me and I tried not to make a face. “I have a vested interest in it now.”

“Don’t worry, Myron. People haven’t been put off by the skeleton. Quite the opposite, in fact. Several of the people who made reservations specifically asked if it was the place where Jedediah Biddeford’s skeleton was found so, apparently, that helps business not hurts it.”

“That’s good.” Myron picked up an apple-pecan loaf. “Say, did they ever send the skeleton to that forensic anthropologist your daughter mentioned?”

“No. The Biddefords are having him cremated.”

“Statute of limitation ran out on that case, anyway.” Seth Chamberlain had come up, along with Mike Sullivan. The two of them paused to let a small gang of children grasping pink and blue clouds of cotton candy on sticks run in front of them.

“So you won’t be running around, trying to investigate that murder, then?” Myron said.

Myron had taken an interest in the guesthouse because of his ancestral ties to it. He said he wanted to embrace his humble beginnings and that was why he’d give me the loan, though Mom and Millie thought it was because he was sweet on me. I guess that’s why he was so interested in the investigation in the first place. I felt a little sad that Jed’s murder would never be solved, but if the police weren’t going to look into it, who would?

“Nope. We’ll be investigating the murder of Bob Biddeford, although that one is pretty cut and dry,” Seth said. “We found the evidence we needed on that shovel and since the three of you heard him confess, it’s a slam dunk.”

“And you won’t need to disrupt the guests in the guesthouse, right?” Millie asked.

Seth looked at her with twinkling eyes. “Nope. Josie is free to run it unencumbered by a police investigation.”

“And since she’ll be having so much construction done with the new loan, I’ll be spending a lot of time over there inspecting it,” Mike said.

I wasn’t sure I liked the non-businesslike look he gave me when he said that. Or the way my mother’s eyebrows waggled up and down. Or the smug look on Millie’s face. Before I could say anything, Ed O’Hara came up and broke a piece of porch railing off the cheese sculpture.

“And I’ll have work for a long time.” Ed looked at me fondly… maybe a little too fondly. “Congratulations on catching the killer by the way.”

“It wasn’t just me. I had a lot of help.” I gestured to my mother and Millie. Even though I really was the one who had figured out who killed Bob, I could be modest when I wanted to be.

“Yeah, and you were on the wrong track, Seth,” Millie said.

“Right. See, we can investigate and not get ourselves in trouble.” My mother shot a pointed look at Mike.

“Yeah. See?” I added, also giving Mike a look just to drive the point home.

Mike held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, I admit you guys did manage to capture him. But he had a gun, you could have been shot.”

“But we weren’t. Flora was the real hero anyway. She clonked him over the head and saved the day!” Millie turned to Seth. “And to think, you suspected her.”

“Nah… I knew she wasn’t the real killer and that the truth would come out in the end,” Seth said.

Millie scrunched up her face. “You expect us to believe that? You said you were going to bring her in for questioning. Why, I bet you were about to arrest her when we called telling you we’d caught the real killer. Without us you might have arrested the wrong person for the murder.”

“Yeah,” my mother said. “You needed us to put it all together for you. We don’t mind doing it this time, but next time I hope you’ll be able to do some of the work yourself. I mean, you can’t expect us to solve all the murders that happen in this town, can he, Josie?”

“I’m sure Sheriff Chamberlain can do just fine without our help.”

Seth was taking it all in his stride. A movement behind him caught my eye. Nero and Marlowe were skulking around the edges of the tent, heading toward the town docks.

It had been kind of fun figuring out who had killed Bob, but I hoped we wouldn’t have another murder in town anytime soon. We hadn’t totally figured it all out on our own, either. I was starting to realize that we’d had a little non-human help. As if sensing my thoughts, Nero turned and looked right at me.

Yep, I was sure we’d gotten more than a little help from the cats. But I couldn’t very well tell anyone that, now could I?

“Too bad the humans will never realize the key role we played in helping them find the killer,” Nero said as they trotted past the tents on their way to the bait wharf.

“I don’t know, I think Josie has an idea. I mean, she must have figured out that I was hanging on to Earl’s leg for a reason,” Marlowe said. “But I suppose she can’t very well go around telling people that her cats helped her solve a murder.”

They rounded the side of the harbormaster’s station and proceeded straight to the bait wharf. All the other cats were lounging around by the lobster traps. No fish scraps this time, Nero noted with disappointment. Maybe they could persuade Josie and Millie to give them some morsels from the cheese sculpture later.

“Louie Two Paws tells me the case against Earl is pretty much tied up,” Harry said. His police informant—a double-pawed Siamese—always had interesting and invaluable information from the station.

“Yep. I think we did well,” Nero said as he hopped onto a lobster trap.

“And finally Josie is starting to realize that it pays to listen to us,” Marlowe noted, flopping down in the sun.

“And the confession I overheard?” Juliette asked.

“That was Carla. She wanted to cleanse her soul in regards to her sneaky plan to take over the company,” Nero said.

“But it’s all worked out because now Doris, Carla and Paula will run the company. Since Earl was embezzling most of the money, the company’s financial situation isn’t as dire as they thought,” Marlowe said.

“They can get the company back on track and it’s all thanks to us,” Boots preened.

“Right,” Stubbs said. “By catching Earl, we exposed his embezzling and saved the company.”

“And we cleared Flora,” Nero said. “You know, I knew her shoes smelled like something burnt. At first I suspected it had something to do with all the breads Josie was burning. Turns out she was rooting around in Earl’s fireplace for what she thought was a treasure map.”

“Who knew she was actually listening to the argument we overheard between Bob and Earl that day in the hallway? I thought she was dusting,” Marlowe said.

“Sometimes things are not always as you think,” Nero said wisely. The truth was that he also had thought Flora was just dusting but he wanted to make it seem like he knew more.

“And that also explains why the dirt on the table in the foyer smelled so familiar,” Marlowe said.

Juliette frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Earl claimed he wasn’t wearing the Ferragamo shoes that Paula saw the night of the murder. He produced a pair of mud-caked Nikes to prove it.”

“But it turned out the dirt on the Nikes was from the pot of the ficus tree in the conservatory,” Nero added. “When Earl was accused, he snuck down to the conservatory and dirtied his sneakers. The dirt was still on the table in the foyer where he’d presented them to Sheriff Chamberlain. I just wish we’d sniffed that one out sooner. Could have cracked the case earlier.”

“Well, the important thing is that we did crack the case,” Poe said.

“Yep. And Josie even has a full house of guests next week and more money for renovations.” Nero watched a lobster boat motoring out of the narrow mouth of the cove on its way to the open ocean. “There is something odd about the new guests.”

Juliette sat up, her interest piqued. “Odd? How?”

“They seemed unusually interested in assuring themselves that the Oyster Cove Guesthouse was the guesthouse where Jedediah’s skeleton was found,” Nero said.

“Why would they want to do that?” Stubbs asked.

“One reason,” Harry said. “They’re interested in ghosts.”

“But there is no ghost,” Marlowe pointed out.

Nero shrugged. “I guess they will discover that in due time. For now, Josie has a full roster of bookings and that’s what counts.”

Poe plopped down on the warm ground. “And now we can rest.”

“I will miss having guests with cheese,” Marlowe said. “But hopefully the next guests will be able to keep from killing each other.”

Boots looked down his long whiskers at Marlowe with an expression that indicated she had a lot to learn. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Josie doesn’t have a very good track record in the murder department. And if recent history is any indication, we may need to keep a close eye on the next batch of guests.”

If you raced through A Whisker in the Dark, you will love A Purrfect Alibi - book three in the Oyster Cove Guesthouse series. Immersed in a world of psychics and mediums, tarot cards and tea leaves, Nero and Marlowe take on their most mysterious case yet… but will they help Josie decipher the clues before it is too late?

Order A Purrfect Alibi now!