Ava had left two days earlier for a cruise to the Caribbean. The Weatherbys had gone off on a top-secret mission to Antarctica the day after Barbara was arrested and Tina had broken off her affair with Tony and gone back home on Tuesday. I was glad their affair was over, I liked the chicken parmesan at the Marinara Mariner and didn’t want the restaurant to close down if Tony and the Mrs. got divorced.
‘I think things went very well for your first round of guests.’ Millie pressed her index finger to the plate to pick up the last sweet crumbs from the coffee cake, licked them off and then pushed up from the table and headed to the cabinets where she started to assemble bowls, whisks and measuring utensils. Apparently she was going to do some baking. I knew the kitchens were small over at the retirement village, but honestly, if she was going to just keep coming here to bake she might as well make the breakfasts all the time.
At my skeptical look, my mother added. ‘Well, there was that little hiccup of a murder, but you handled it very well, dear.’ Mom patted my arm.
‘And caught the killer!’ Millie added.
Meow!
Meroo?
‘Yes, we know you guys helped too,’ Millie said to Nero and Marlowe who appeared offended at the lack of credit. They twitched their whiskers and sauntered off toward the hallway, apparently appeased by Millie’s praise.
‘Who would have figured it was Barbara?’ Mom said. ‘I mean, I knew she was went overboard tending to the lousewort but I never thought she’d planted it herself. I would have suspected Ava before Barbara, but I was hoping it was Stella.’
‘Me too,’ I said.
Millie turned around to look at us. ‘Ava? Why would you suspect her?’
‘She knew Charles from before, she was the one who told us about Tina, she was here at the guesthouse… it sort of seemed like she turned up everywhere,’ I said. ‘I just hope she isn’t going to do some big column in the paper about it. It sounded like she needed something exciting to bring in readers.’
‘Don’t worry, she isn’t writing a column.’ Millie glanced out into the hallway to make sure we couldn’t be overheard. By whom I had no idea. We were the only ones in the guesthouse. ‘She’s writing a book about it.’
‘Oh.’ Was that better than a column? Probably. Maybe they’d make it into a movie and people would flock here to see where it happened.
‘I’m just glad all’s well that ends well,’ Mom said. ‘Barbara would have done anything to protect herself, so it’s a good thing you guys were able to outwit her.’
‘I can’t believe she would have burned down the guesthouse,’ Millie shuddered as she cracked eggs into a bowl.
‘Yeah that could have been a problem, especially with the town’s 250th celebration and all the descendants of Jedediah Biddeford coming to stay here in two weeks.’ Though the guesthouse had been added to over the years, it had started out as a smaller mansion way before Millie’s people even owned it. The main part of the mansion that was now the West wing had been originally built by Jedediah Biddeford, and seeing as he’d lived here 250 years ago, apparently his descendants felt the town celebration was a great time to have a family reunion right in the house that started it all.
A family reunion was nice and all, but I was really thrilled because all five of the rooms which had been renovated to this point had been booked by Biddefords. If only I’d kept Mike on, I might have been able to squeak out a few more rooms, but it was just as well that he wouldn’t be around. I was getting too comfortable with him. And while Ed O’Hara was a bit slow, he did good work and I was happy to supplement his Social Security income.
‘That’s probably only because of the curse,’ Millie said as she whisked something together in a stainless-steel bowl.
‘Curse?’ The familiar baritone came from the doorway. I hoped I was hearing things. I scrunched my eyes shut and turned in that direction, opening one eye slowly. Mike Sullivan lounged against the doorframe. Who had invited him? To be even more annoying, he winked at me. ‘Hey Sunshine, how’s our little detective?’
‘I thought you were done with your work here.’ I said.
‘I am.’ Mike pushed off the frame and strode over to Millie, kissing her on the cheek. ‘Aunt Millie invited me over for cookies.’
‘I’m just getting ready to put them in the oven now.’ She scooped big dollops of batter out of the bowl with a tablespoon and plunked them on a cookie sheet.
‘Forget about the cookies, what’s this about a curse?’ Mom asked.
Millie waved her hand in the air dismissively, keeping her back to us as she continued dropping cookie dough onto the sheets. ‘Oh, just some old curse where Jedediah claimed he was coming back at the town’s 250th to deal with anyone who dared plunder his treasure.’
‘Treasure?’ Moms eyes lit up like a slot machine on tilt. ‘I never heard anything about a treasure.’
Millie opened the oven and shoved the cookie sheets in. ‘My grandmother told me about it when I was a little girl. Apparently, it was told to her grandfather when they bought the place. But there’s no treasure. Jedediah was sailing to the West Indies and figured he’d come back with treasure, but he never made it back to the country.’
‘Why not?’ Mike asked.
Millie shrugged. ‘How should I know? Died over there. Plague or something.’
‘So why have a curse then?’ I asked.
‘Sounds like he was overly dramatic. Probably setting the stage, getting everyone scared for when he did bring back the treasure so no one dared mess with it. You know how superstitious people were back then.’ Millie put the dirty dishes in the sink and started running the water.
Merooo!
The cat’s hollow cry came from deep inside the mansion. It was kind of eerie and reminded me of the way they’d sounded the morning we’d found Charles Prescott’s body. Must be a strange echo coming from that room...
‘But there could still be a treasure,’ Mom said hopefully. I could already tell she was dreaming of treasure maps and x-marks-the-spot. Probably already planning her trip to Ace Hardware to buy a shovel.
Millie turned around, her hands on her hips. ‘Really, Rose. If there were a treasure don’t you think someone would have found it by now?’
Mom looked disappointed. ‘I suppose.’
Mereech!
This time everyone looked in the direction of the cry.
‘Is that Marlowe?’ Millie cocked her head to the side. ‘I hope she’s not hurt.’
‘I’ll go see,’ Mike said.
‘Me too.’ If something was going on in the guesthouse, I certainly didn’t want Mike one-upping me like he’d tried to do with the Prescott investigation.
I followed Mike into the hall to the sounds of another loud cry from the cats.
‘Sounds like it’s coming from the West wing near where we found Charles Prescott,’ Mike said.
‘Lucky thing there can’t be another dead body in there now, no one else is in the guesthouse.’ I didn’t feel as confident about that as I sounded.
Mike scowled as he tried to open the door that separated the main house from the West wing. ‘It’s locked. That’s good. You’re supposed to keep it shut, especially if you have new guests in here.’
Okay, now I remembered why I had hired Ed in his place. Mike was kind of bossy. I didn’t need that. ‘Yeah, I know. You sound like Barbara.’
I ducked into the pantry and retrieved the ring with the spare sets of keys to unlock the various doors that didn’t go to the guests’ rooms. I kept the keys to the guest room in a more secure place.
Meroow!
Mike frowned at the keys jangling in my hand. ‘Are those keys easily accessible to anyone?’
I paused before opening the door, my annoyance with Mike overshadowing my worry about the cats. ‘What’s it to you?’
He smiled, a twinkle in his eye that I did not like. ‘Oh, it’s very important to me.
What was that supposed to mean?
Meoooo!
/> ‘That sounds bad,’ Mike’s face creased with worry. ‘We better get in there.’
I pushed the door open, my stomach tightening as I glanced over at the stairs. No dead body. I felt silly. Of course, there wouldn’t be.
Meroop.
The sound came from the next room.
‘I think they’re over here.’ Mike headed toward the sound. I gave one last glance at the place where Charles had been found. Ed had been starting to work on this part of the guesthouse and the fallen banister and wooden debris had been cleaned up. There was no sign that a man had died there just over a week ago. Good, I was glad to put that whole incident behind me.
Meroeeow!
Never mind that the cats’ cries sounded eerily similar to the tone and insistency they’d had when they’d alerted me to Charles’ body. I was more worried about what Mike had just said. Why would anything at the Guesthouse be important to him? If he thought he was going to make it a habit to pop over all the time I’d have to set him straight.
I followed him to the room. Millie had said that it had once been a small ballroom. Remnants of black and white marble tile dotted the floor, water-stained floral wallpaper peeled from the walls, and the ceiling still had chunks of plaster medallions that once surrounded grand chandeliers. I wasn’t going to restore it to a ballroom, as there was little interest in balls these days. My plan was to make it into a game room. Judging by the clouds of dust in the air, the cobwebs in the corners and the smell of decades’ old dry wood, that was going to take a lot of work.
Mew!
Nero and Marlowe were at the far wall. Thankfully they seemed unharmed and I wondered if all the incessant meowing was simply because they were admiring themselves in the few shards left of the wall-length mirror that still clung to the wall. Right now it reflected the dilapidated room, but I imagined guests in ball gowns and elbow length gloves waltzing around on the dance floor, their images reflected in the gigantic mirror, making the room look twice as large and the crowd twice as big.
‘This place is in bad shape.’ Mike stood in the middle of the room surveying its entirety. I doubted he was picturing ballroom dancers. He might have been picturing a ball, but it was probably more like a wrecking ball.
Meow! Nero’s cry was insistent, as if we weren’t paying enough attention.
‘It looks like they’re fine,’ I said. Though I didn’t like the way Marlowe was scratching at the wall and then looking back at me. It was almost the same way she’d looked back at me when we’d discovered Charles. But that was crazy, there was clearly no dead body in this room.
‘You’ll need to make sure you shore up these joists before you do any work here. This room is big and that’s a load bearing wall over there. You’ll want to submit plans and get the proper inspections before you mess around with it,’ Mike said.
Now he was really starting to bug me. ‘I think I can handle it and Ed knows what he’s doing. Besides the renovations here aren’t your business anymore and I sincerely doubt you’ll be coming around much anyway, right?’ Maybe I sounded a little too hopeful with that last part because Mike’s eyes darkened with disappointment for a second before returning to their devilish twinkle.
‘Sorry, Sunshine, that’s where you’re wrong.’
Somehow those six little words were more disturbing than the prospect of the cats finding another dead body inside the guesthouse.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked cautiously.
Mike’s smile widened. ‘Haven’t you heard? What goes on here is going to be very much my business from here on out. I’m taking over as building inspector, at least until they find someone else to take Barbara’s place. So, you see, I’ll be coming around here a lot more –especially considering all the work you have going on and the decrepit state of this part of the mansion. Why, you might even see me more than you did when I worked here.’
Nero’s despairing cry echoed my thoughts. I gaped at Mike, remembering how Barbara would just waltz in unannounced all the time. Was he planning to do the same?
But Mike was no longer paying attention to me. He was over near the cats, bent down petting them. They butted their furry heads against his hand and purred. Clearly they wouldn’t mind him coming around all the time. Traitors.
‘What have you got here?’ Mike bent closer to the wall where the cats had been pawing and scratching. He poked at it with his finger, sniffed, then looked up at me. ‘Looks like you might have a problem with rot here, maybe even mold.’
Perfect. ‘I’m sure Ed will address it when he gets to this part. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure we follow proper inspection procedures.’
Meow! Nero clawed at the wall.
Meroo! Marlowe butted his head against it.
‘Yes, I heard him, Marlowe. The wall needs attention. Don’t worry I’ll see to it that everything gets fixed properly.’ I didn’t relish the idea of Mike hanging around inspecting all the renovations, but I was glad that the cats weren’t hurt and all they were crying about was some rotted boards. After all, I’d dealt with a dead body here at the guesthouse, how hard could it be to tackle a little bit of rot and mold?
Nero rolled his eyes and scratched at the wall again. Josie just wasn’t getting it. And here he’d thought she was starting to clue in to their attempts at communication.
‘I don’t think she’s on the same page as us,’ Marlowe purred as Mike scratched the top of her head.
‘No kidding. She’s no Millie, that’s for sure.’ Nero’s whiskers twitched and he held back a sneeze. The moldy smell emitting from the wall was ten times stronger than it was to the humans due to his highly developed senses. And, he was incredibly allergic to mold. But the mold and rot weren’t the only scents coming from the wall, not that Josie was noticing. She was too busy pretending not to act nonchalant around Mike.
‘Ahh Millie. I wish she hadn’t left the guesthouse to us. It’s such a huge responsibility.’ Marlowe licked his paw and pushed it behind her ear. ‘But at least we redeemed ourselves for not preventing Charles Prescott’s murder.’ Marlowe glanced at Nero out of the corner of her eye hopefully.
‘Indeed. I do think we did. We led Josie to many of the clues and if not for our fancy footwork Barbara might not have been safely dispatched into the cellar where she could do no harm.’
‘Not that we got a lot of credit for either of those things.’ Marlowe stretched against the wall, running her front claws down it, creating an annoying sound.
‘Ahh, but that is for the best. Their fragile egos couldn’t take it if they knew most of the detecting was done by us and our feline friends.’ Nero glanced up at Josie. She wasn’t paying the least bit of attention to them or to the wall or the scratches Marlowe had just made in the remnants of wallpaper left on it. She was busy scowling at Mike. Judging by the snatches of conversation, they were arguing about how often Mike, as the building inspector, could come by unannounced. Nero didn’t see what the problem was. Mike gave good belly rubs and always treated the cats kindly. Maybe Josie should let him give her a belly rub and she’d be more accommodating to his visits?
‘I suppose you are right. They are a strange breed, but we need to keep them happy, otherwise who will buy the treats and gravy-laden cat food from the store for us?’ Marlowe said.
‘Exactly. Make them think they are the brains of the operation.’ Nero smiled at the younger cat. She was coming along splendidly and Nero was pleased with the way she’d caught on to some of the clues in the investigation. It would be a long time before she was as good as Nero himself was, but she was showing promise. At least Marlowe was trainable. Josie on the other hand… well, Nero was a little worried about whether or not she would ever come up to speed.
The two humans left the room, still arguing, and Nero waited a few beats so they wouldn’t think he was trotting after them obediently or anything – that type of behavior was for dogs.
‘Well, we’ve done our best to alert Josie,’ Nero said after he heard the lock on the door click
shut. It didn’t bother him that they were locked into the West wing. He knew dozens of secret exits and entrances into many of the rooms in the mansion. ‘Let’s go see if Millie is still in the kitchen and try to finagle some of those bacon-flavored cat treats while we contemplate how to better communicate with our resident human.’
‘Good idea,’ Marlowe trotted along after him. ‘But I hope Josie starts catching on a little quicker, because if she doesn’t, she may be in for a big surprise when Ed really gets going on that room renovation.’
[CT] A Letter from Leighann
Hi! I hope you enjoyed A Twist in the Tail. If you did enjoy it and want to keep up-to-date with all my latest releases, just sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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As an animal lover, I love putting pets in my books, especially cats. And as a cat owner... err should I say cat servant... I find them fascinating and love imbuing the characters in my books with the traits of the many cats that have adopted me.
As a life-long New Englander, I feel like there is no better setting for a book. Especially the coast of Maine where this series is set. I also love writing about small towns, quirky characters and intriguing mysteries.
I’ve combined all these to bring you the Oyster Cove Cozy Mystery Series. I hope you enjoy reading the books as much as I enjoyed writing them.
All best,
Lee
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A Twist in the Tail: An absolutely purrfect cozy mystery (The Oyster Cove Guesthouse Book 1) Page 19