Chapter 5
I stepped hard on the brakes in the middle of the road, and glimpsed movement in my back seat as someone ducked. I screamed and jumped out of the car. Not thinking about traffic behind me or coming at me, I ran toward the bike lane beside the road. On instinct, I ducked behind the only cover, a wildflower shrub. I crouched low, but my legs betrayed me and I fell flat on the ground. Grabbing the branches of the bush, I pulled myself up and peered back at my car.
No one got out of my Beetle, nor could I see movement inside, but I knew what I knew. I felt my pockets for my phone to call for help, then remembered it was in the car. I wondered if I should try to make a run for it, but my legs were frozen. I prayed someone would appear on the empty road from either direction. I have a small can of mace in my glove compartment that Emily gave me when I went to college in Boston. I’ve always known it was a dumb place to keep it, but since I’d never needed it in Boston, I’d certainly never expected to need it on Nantucket. Out of options, I rounded my hands into a fist, and readied myself for whatever was about to come at me.
Oh, and it came. A small, dark head rose from the back window that was still open a tad.
I screamed again, so loudly that birds flew from the trees. And then I stopped, and I cursed like a sailor, on the road, by myself.
Darn that cat.
Simon Sterling’s cat looked at me with a sort of bored but accommodating stare, and climbed over my cup holder to the passenger seat where he settled down for a nap. I could swear he adjusted the heater with his tail as he swept by. I sighed, wondering if the cat was evidence. Climbing back into my car, I slammed the door to spite his peacefully curled up body, and then felt a little petty.
When I pulled up in front of the Wick & Flame about twenty minutes later, I was happy to see Emily, who was the image of cool, calm, and collected. Wearing a fur-trimmed jacket, she was seated on a bench on the sidewalk in front of my store. After her husband, Neal, had found her rearranging the attic one day last month, he and her obstetrician had staged an intervention. She now had to stay off of her feet as much as possible, which is akin to torture for Emily, so an occasional rest on a bench had become their compromise. She had not, however, given up her heels. At eight and a half months pregnant. On cobblestones.
I looked in my rearview mirror and realized the ride home had done a number on me, and that I was still wearing the clothes I’d thrown on this morning, which was not a good look for work. I pulled my long, dark hair into a ponytail and pinched my cheeks to regain some color. I was glad when I remembered the cute outfit I’d bought during my lunch break last week that was hanging in the back room at the store.
“I thought you hated cats,” Emily said as I threw my car keys into my bag and grabbed the kitty. “I got your message. Six in the morning?”
She handed me a coffee, so I knew she wasn’t really mad about the early call. Emily and I have been friends since we were tots at Wee Whalers when we discovered we both liked to pretend we were business owners during playtime. While others were building with blocks or playing dress-up, we were setting up stands with plastic fruits or stray pieces of Lego and trying to sell them to our classmates. I went through a brief but ultimately banned handcrafted greeting card phase, trading them for extra cookies at snack time. Emily’s favorite job was cleanup monitor. Not that she cleaned up, mind you. The job entailed circling the room to remind people to clean up. She was good at getting people moving, even then.
“Did you pick up that red number from the dry cleaners?” she said to me as she followed me inside my store where I lit the featured candle of the day, a splashy summer scent I hoped would be a best seller in the coming months.
“It’s in my car trunk,” I said, hoping it wasn’t getting wrinkled since I’d forgotten to take it out last night. I turned on the heater to low, because of the wax, and then I pulled out the stool from behind my register for her to sit on. “Listen, we need to talk.”
“First,” said Emily as the cat jumped onto a prime spot by the heater, “I need to hear from you that you’re over the unity candle situation, that Jessica is happy with her candle’s scent, and that you’re going to wear that sexy red dress tomorrow night. There might be some cute guys at the wedding, and I’m not going to have you go through another winter where the Candleers are your best company. You’re too young to live such a spinsterly life, and if you haven’t noticed from my whale of a belly, who knows what kind of wreck I’m going to be.”
Her reference to “spinsterly” was a little harsh and I could see she knew it because she dutifully sat on the stool. The fact of the matter was that I’d come close to marriage almost two years ago. A man-who-will-remain-nameless, AKA Voldemort to the two of us, had swept me off my feet when he moved to the island to open a real estate company. Once the isolation and cold of February hit, however, he bolted with some parting words that I was missing out on the “real world.” Be that as it may, I thought he was really missing the point about me, so I said goodbye. Then, I ate ice cream for about two weeks. Instead of wagging my finger at Emily, however, I sat down next to the cat and recounted the last couple of hours.
Emily took it pretty well, all things considered.
“Did the bride and groom look like they were going to cancel?” she said.
I realized I was starting my second interrogation of the day.
“They were in shock,” I said, and put a pot of water on a small burner behind my counter. “They looked like they had seen a dead body.”
Emily nodded.
“Did Mrs. Sterling look like she wanted to call off the wedding?”
I thought about it for a second.
“No. Shock, too. Although she seems to have hated Simon Sterling.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Emily. “I gathered from Jessica that the choice was controversial. Brides confess a lot to their wedding planners. The job is half administrative, half therapist.”
“So you’ve told me,” I said. I knew we were both thinking of a wedding she’d organized three years ago where the bride had given Emily a love letter from the groom’s brother to hold for safekeeping before the wedding.
“Jessica had never met her uncle until the wedding,” said Emily, “but she told me that as far as Mrs. Sterling was concerned, this Simon fellow was a bad seed. I’d never have thought he’d be killed though. I just thought he’d be a poser.”
“Why?” I took the opportunity of our gossipy digression to slip into my candle-making room to change as we spoke.
“Jessica told me a couple of stories,” she said. “Her father and his brother came from money that their father made in agriculture. For a while, their father imported olive oil from Italy before shifting everything to the United States. As adults, Mr. Sterling ran the business and his brother, Simon, took his dividends and lived the good life. When Jessica’s dad needed to sell the land in Italy to expand into organic fruits back in the States, he needed Simon’s help, but Simon bailed. Jessica’s mother is convinced the stress made her husband’s already weak heart finally give out, but Jessica was at a loss on who would walk her down the aisle. She’s very traditional. She even got separate rooms for her and Joe this weekend.”
“Why couldn’t Joe’s father walk her down the aisle?” I called out from the workroom. “That would have been sweet.”
“Joe’s parents are deceased.”
“Sad,” I said, returning to the sales room in my new gray wool dress with a cowl neck, gray ribbed tights, and my boots.
“Cute.”
“On sale, too. Mascara?”
Emily fished into her bag of tricks and handed me a pink tube of Great Lash and a mirror.
“You should tell that story to the police,” I said, taking a couple of swipes at each lash and handing the tube and mirror back to her.
“I guess,” said Emily, who was clearly, first and foremost, focused on making her client happy.
“Stella?” said an elderly voice through the f
ront door. I realized the time. My class was about to start and Cherry Waddle, my favorite pupil, had arrived.
“Come in Cherry,” I said, and unlocked the door for her.
“I’ve got to go,” said Emily. She checked her phone. “Still no messages from the Sterlings, but I’m going to head out to the inn and see what’s going on. Meet me at eleven as planned?”
“You got it. Andy’s out there,” I said. “Maybe he can help.”
“Is this about the murder?” said Cherry, bright eyed.
As I had suspected, news had already spread.
“Was he really hit on the head with your candle?” Cherry began to unwrap an endlessly long scarf she’d made in the knitting shop’s class around the corner. “Poor dear.”
“I wouldn’t really say he was a dear,” I said. I knew since I’d been at the crime scene that I’d be expected to share some dirt this morning. I’d decided to limit myself to the fact that Simon was an estranged uncle. Better that than relive the image of Simon’s battered head. And there was no way I would tell anyone that the cat in my store was the dead man’s pet. In fact, I picked up my phone to text Andy that he should come get the animal.
“Oh, no,” said Cherry. “I meant you, poor dear. Will anyone want to buy a candle from you after such a tragedy? Brides are suspicious, you know.”
She cast a disparaging look at my unity candle display, as if to question my judgment.
I had to hand it to Cherry. She was honest. It had not even occurred to me that Simon Sterling’s death could affect my business. I looked at Emily for reassurance. She looked back at me with a smile, but I knew that smile. It was the kind she gave to customers who wanted a million-dollar wedding on a five-thousand-dollar budget. It said, this is going to be a problem, but we’ll do our best.
“I’ll let you know what I hear,” Emily said. With a kiss to my cheek, she walked out the door as my other three students arrived.
“Smile, Stella,” said Cherry. She flashed her phone at us and snapped a selfie. “I’m going to put this on my Instagram. You look good for someone who just saw a dead body. It will be helpful for your business if people see you haven’t fallen apart. I have five thousand followers, you know. Don’t worry, sweetie, I’ve got you covered.”
I put my own phone away, and decided to drop off the cat at the station rather than have a police officer show up at the store. The first day of the retail season was not the one for any untoward activities. By the time I poured a cup of tea for Cherry, her three comrades in crafts had unwrapped their equally long scarves. Cherry was their ring leader; her friend Flo followed a close second.
At nine o’clock on the dot, we started our class. I usually begin with a short lecture about the history of candles before we jump into our work. When I was in high school, I had a summer job at the Whaling Museum on Broad Street in town, so I know a lot of fun facts about whale oil and its uses. During Nantucket’s heyday, the whalers discovered that the waxy oil from a sperm whale’s head cavity produced candles with a bright, odorless flame. These valuable candles, which accounted for at least a quarter of the island’s wealth, were sold internationally. When I learned about the island’s role in lighting the world, I knew I wanted to fuse the scents my mother had taught me with one of Nantucket’s great traditions. The Whaling Museum itself was originally a candle factory, so I like to think I’m part of a long history on the island.
Today, I found it a little harder to focus on my talk as my mind kept wandering back to the murder scene at the Melville. Winding up my remarks with a bit more speed than usual, I gave a demonstration on mixing colors. Then, we got to work. It’s during our crafting time that the ladies chat about everything in their lives, from grandkids to all the local gossip. I was prepared for the Sterling murder to take the top spot. I expected that I would be the one supplying the details, but these ladies always surprise me.
“Did you hear that Gina Ginelli is on the island?” said Cherry.
“Gina Ginelli?” I said and practically dropped the bottle of green dye I’d been preparing for Flo’s candle.
They all nodded as if I was the last to know.
I’m not a starstruck kind of person. I don’t follow celebrities, or that sort of thing, but Gina Ginelli is one of those old-fashioned, real-life movie stars that everyone loves, right? I even snuck in as a kid to see her in Swan Song, back when the Dreamland theater still had a crescent-shaped tear in the screen. I wondered why she was on island, and I wondered if her equally glamorous and famous husband, Kevin Bunch, was here, too.
“She’s staying near the Melville,” said Flo. “I wonder if she saw the murdered man. So sorry about the bad luck, Stella. I’m not superstitious, by the way.”
“I doubt she saw anything. She’s in one of the cottages by the beach,” said Cherry. The ladies reminded me of seagulls squawking back and forth to each other.
I suddenly remembered the blue Ford and the shock of blond hair. I realized it might have been Gina Ginelli who had cut me off on the road. It was such an exciting thought that the horrific images still branded in my head from this morning faded just a bit.
“I wonder why she’s here?” I said.
There was a knock on the door. I’d hired a high school senior, Lucy, to help me for the weekend, since I was going to be at the Melville a lot. Lucy showed up right on time. Contrary to traditional belief that teens are unreliable, I think this generation is the most dependable, hardworking group of people. Maybe they’re afraid of getting stuck with the loafer reputation of the Millennials before them. Maybe they know that times are going to be tough for a while. Whatever it is, my money’s on them.
Turning my door sign from closed to open, I remembered the cat and texted Andy.
Where are you? I hit send.
About to arrest you, he replied. I told you not to leave the inn
Seriously?
Seriously, I need to take your statement. Am in town and on my way to you.
Meet me at The Bean in five, I texted. I have something for you.
Five minutes later, I left my Candleers to enjoy the rest of their morning gossip with Lucy in charge and rounded the corner with the cat in my arms to my favorite coffee spot. The fur ball was squirming in my arms as if he knew he was about to be arrested. The streets were busy. Cars were filling up the narrow, two-way lanes. Many were filled with luggage since the ferry on the Steamboat Wharf had just dropped off a new group of arrivals. I sped up to beat the line for coffee that usually follows the ferry’s arrival, but my phone pinged. I stopped, propped the cat on my hip, and read.
Wedding’s on! read Emily’s message. Get here when you can.
I couldn’t wait to hear how she’d pulled off that one.
Andy was waiting outside The Bean. He, too, was on his phone. He looked at the cat and his expression shifted from one of deep concern at whatever was being said on the other end of the line to complete interest at the bundle in my arms.
“We’ve been looking for that thing all morning,” he whispered.
Recovering the cat had been an accident, but I gave a cocky smile since he looked so impressed that I’d found it for him.
“OK,” he said into his phone. “I’m as shocked as you are, sir. This is going to be big. Do you trust Bellamy?”
I was dying to know what was going to be big, but I stayed quiet. Also, I liked his last question because I, for one, did not trust Bellamy. He had rubbed me the wrong way with his quick arrest speech.
“Listen, sir,” said Andy. “I’ve located the cat. . . . Thank you, sir. . . . Stella Wright has it.... not sure, but I’ll let you know . . . OK, sir. That’s two creams and a cruller, right?”
He hung up.
“You’re such a cop,” I said.
“How’d you get the cat?” he said.
“He jumped in my car, and scared the living daylights out of me,” I said as we walked inside. Cats weren’t normally allowed in food establishments, but being a cop has some perks. Aside
from a curious look from the barista, no one bothered us.
“Hello, Tinker,” said Andy. He took the cat and patted his head.
“Tinker?” I said. “We can come up with something better.”
“We could, but his name is Tinker,” said Andy, jiggling the cat’s collar. I hadn’t thought to look.
“Hi,” I said across the counter. “Two iced almond lattes, one black coffee with two creams, and a cruller.” I ordered for me and Andy. It was the least I could do for our finest. “Funny that Simon Sterling would have a cat named Tinker. He looked like he’d go for, I don’t know, Tiger or Killer.”
“The guy’s a mystery, that’s for sure,” said Andy as we grabbed a spot by the window overlooking the street.
“Do you really need my statement?” I said.
“Yup,” said Andy. “Did you see anything strange when you walked into Sterling’s room?”
I thought.
“Yeah. A cat,” I said. “The room was tidy though.”
Andy made a note and proceeded with his questions, which I answered. Fortunately, the cat drew more attention than our conversation.
“What about Bellamy and his amazing arrests?” I asked when we were finished. I thought I might leave with some scoop for Emily.
Andy rubbed his hands across his head.
“Bellamy was good to his word,” he said. “There’s already been an arrest.”
“You’ve been keeping this from me over an entire cup of coffee?” I said. “And a cat?”
I didn’t like the look on Andy’s face.
“Who is it?”
“Bill Duffy,” he said.
I felt my very un-Wright-like temper begin to rise.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. A couple of people next to us looked over. Tinker stopped crawling over Andy and sat at attention. “Bill Duffy wouldn’t harm a fly.”
“Maude said that she told him his ways would catch up to him as he was taken away. That didn’t help his case, although I’m sure she didn’t mean anything by it. But then she smashed a vase in the Game Room.”
Murder's No Votive Confidence Page 4