by Jessa Archer
Arsenic and Olé
Coastal Playhouse Mystery #2
Jessa Archer
Archer Mysteries
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Sneak Peek: Offed Off-Broadway (Coastal Playhouse #3)
More Cozies from Jessa Archer
About the Author
ARSENIC AND OLÉ
A QUESO MISTAKEN IDENTITY?
Tig Alden's neighbor is a royal pain. Rebecca Whitley has managed to annoy pretty much everyone she's met since she followed her youngest son to Southern Coastal University two years ago. Whitley's little dog, Leo, doesn't respect boundaries. She delights in leaving scathing reviews online trashing local restaurants, the latest play at the university, and even the town's veterinarian.
When Mrs. Whitley turns up dead in her backyard pool, there's no question that it was murder. Evidence points toward the owners of the local taco shop--the same people she accused of trying to kill her precious little Leo. Tig thinks the couple is innocent, but with so many people who hated Mrs. Whitley, finding her real killer won't be easy.
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Chapter One
“Did you know there’s a police car at your neighbor’s house?” Delaney Foster tilted her blonde head to the side and peered out the bay window in the dining room as I measured out the last scoop of coffee and started the pot.
“I did not,” I told her. “But it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.”
“Ohhh,” Delaney said with dawning comprehension. “Is that where Mrs. Whitley lives?” She’d heard plenty of stories about Mrs. Whitley from my daughter, Paige, who was currently upstairs showering.
“Yep. And since she hasn’t actually complained to me about anything this week, I guess someone else is on the hotseat. I’m beginning to think it’s her life’s ambition to alienate everyone in the neighborhood.”
Seaside Estates, the neighborhood in which I lived, was a double misnomer. The vast majority of houses weren’t anything close to estates, and all of them were at least half a mile from the seaside. My mother bought this house about three decades back, when Caratoke was still under development and Southern Coastal University had just opened. Rebecca Whitley is a much more recent arrival. She moved in a few years ago when her youngest son, Andrew, began classes at SCU, and had been a major thorn in my mother’s backside from the moment the moving van pulled in.
Paige and I had inherited my mother’s obnoxious neighbor along with the house, after my mom died in an accident the previous year. That was really the only thing I disliked about the neighborhood. Whitley’s little dog, which she kept shaved to look like a miniature lion, tormented Attila, our large gray cat, on a daily basis by casually strolling over to our lawn to do his business. Leo also had the odd habit of chewing on the plants in my front yard. I’d thought it was rabbits until I spotted the little mutt out there, casually munching the plants that line the driveway as if they were his own personal salad bar.
“Travis says they’re considering hiring an extra deputy whose only assignment will be to field calls from Mrs. Whitley,” I told Delaney, who was still peering out the window.
“You’re kidding?”
“Well, Travis did actually say that, but as a taxpayer, I really hope he was kidding. Mrs. Whitley does call them an awful lot, though. I think she has both the police and the head of our homeowners’ association on speed dial. Dean Prendergast, too. Whitley seems determined to micromanage her son’s college career.”
“Paige says he’s cute. The son, I mean.”
“Cute, yes. In a preppy sort of way. But Andrew has to be at least twenty-one. Probably older. And he’s therefore much, much too old for either of you.”
“Not that much too old, if you follow the rule of half his age plus seven. And historically speaking, even larger age gaps have been socially—”
“Much, much too old for you,” I repeated, cutting off what would almost certainly have been an accurate, but in this case, totally irrelevant history lesson. “And your parents would agree with me.”
I laughed when she gave me an eye roll almost identical to the ones I routinely got from Paige. It was a bit odd actually seeing Delaney’s facial expressions, although I was very much accustomed to chatting with her as I puttered about the kitchen, while Paige and I ate breakfast, and pretty much any other time of the day. Most of the time, Delaney was a chipper, disembodied voice on my daughter’s cell phone. The two of them were best friends when they both lived in California, and despite Delaney’s move to New York City last summer and our own move to the Outer Banks of North Carolina a few months ago, the friendship had continued without the slightest hitch.
Paige’s sixteenth birthday was in three days, and she’d begged for an airline ticket for Delaney to visit as her birthday present. The time synced up nicely with their spring breaks, so I agreed. We had traveled up to Norfolk, the closest major airport, to pick her up the night before. I was amazed that either of the girls were up and moving this early, since I’d heard them laughing about something as I finally dozed off a little after midnight.
“Is the guy standing next to Mrs. Whitley the cowboy?” Delaney asked.
“The…what?”
“The cowboy. Paige said that’s what Andrew calls his mom’s boyfriend behind his back. Or maybe he’s his stepdad by now. Although the ranch he worked on had sheep, not cows. Does he look more like a cowboy or a shepherd? The tree is blocking my view.”
“I’ve only seen him at a distance,” I said. “But the word shepherd brings to mind Little Bo Peep for me, and he seems more like the Marlboro Man.”
Delaney looked a little confused, and I realized the reference almost certainly soared straight over her sixteen-year-old head. The Marlboro Man would have been advertising history years before she and Paige were even born. I was tempted to tell Delaney that her nosy-neighbor act reminded me of Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched, but that was another pop-culture reference that would almost certainly have missed the target, in addition to proclaiming my age in bold neon lights.
She continued looking out the window for a moment, and then said, “Never mind. That’s not him. It’s the police officer. I could only see his hat before, with the tree and Mrs. Whitley in the way. Why do cops wear cowboy hats here, instead of normal police hats like they wear in New York? The type with flat tops. That’s the kind they wear in Burbank, too.”
“I have no idea,” I told her as I pulled a tray of chocolate croissants out of the oven. “Maybe it’s a southern thing.”
The shower upstairs cut off, signaling that Paige would be down shortly.
“Those croissants smell absolutely divine,” Delaney said.
“Well, they probably won’t be as good as the pastries you’re used to in New York,” I told her. “But they’re pretty darn good for frozen.”
Attila nuzzled closer to Delaney in search of scratches. He’s usually not all that friendly with strangers, so maybe he recognized her voice from Paige’s phone. Or maybe it was just that Delaney was sitting in the window seat, the spot whe
re he’d often curled up next to my mother, Caroline.
In fact, Attila could still be found there with my mom most mornings. Caroline couldn’t scratch him, and he was usually curled up more or less inside her rather than next to her these days, but he still seemed to draw comfort from her presence. My mother had been dead for over six months now, but her spirit hadn’t quite figured out how to move on to whatever waits on the other side. Attila seemed pretty okay with that.
Would Delaney be disturbed if I told her she was sitting in the precise spot occupied by Caroline’s ghost this time yesterday? Given Delaney’s personality, I thought it more likely that she’d be intrigued, assuming we could move past her natural skepticism and penchant for amateur psychoanalysis. Aside from Attila, I was still the only one who could see Caroline’s ghost.
Delaney craned her neck to get a better view of the drama unfolding out front. “So, is the cop talking to Mrs. Whitley Nathan’s dad?”
I shook my head. “Must be a deputy. Travis has been in Raleigh all week for some sort of statewide law enforcement conference. He’s not due back until tonight. And it probably wouldn’t be him anyway. When you’re chief of police, you can shove undesirable duties like dealing with Rebecca Whitley onto the backs of your subordinates.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Delaney said. “Because I’d pictured Travis Lamm as much more handsome, based on Paige’s description.” She turned toward me, a mischievous smile spreading across her elfin face. “So…tell me everything. You’ve gone out with him…how many times now? Six? Seven? How’s it going?”
I sighed and returned to the kitchen to move the croissants onto a platter. Delaney was a self-proclaimed relationship expert, and the it to which she was referring in her barrage of questions was my relationship with Travis Lamm, Caratoke chief of police, and also stepfather of Nathan, the guy Paige was seeing.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a simple answer to Delaney’s question. Travis and I had dated back in high school, and even for a few years after, when he was in college in Raleigh and I was in California acting in the television series, Private Eye High. We’d drifted apart by the time he graduated, and the series ended, but fate had managed to bring us back to Caratoke at a time when we were both unattached.
Neither of us was inclined to rush things, however. We both knew it would be really easy to slip back into the old habits that still seemed all too familiar twenty years later. And the Nathan and Paige situation added another wrinkle. The two of them hadn’t known about the history between me and Travis when they started going out last summer. So even if things were to start moving along at light speed between Travis and I, we would definitely be in separate houses until Paige and Nathan are off at college. Anything else would be much too weird.
“Things are going fine,” I told Delaney as I wrapped one of the croissants in a paper towel and pulled a travel mug out of the cabinet to fill it with coffee. “Travis and I have dinner together about once a week. With Paige and Nathan, on occasion, although I don’t know if those count as dates.”
“Oh, those definitely count,” Delaney said. “The fact that you’re pulling other members of the family into your activities is a sign that both of you are considering a serious commitment. Have you progressed to…?” She trailed off as I gave her a stern look of warning and then continued, “To holding hands and long moonlit walks on the beach?”
“She won’t tell you.” Paige was still toweling her long dark hair as she came down the stairs. “But they have. There’s usually sand on her shoes when she comes home. And I think they have lunch together, too, at least a few times a week.”
“You two feel free to keep analyzing my love life over breakfast,” I told them as I put the half and half back into the fridge. “But I’ve got to run, or I’m going to be late for auditions.”
“I’m supposed to remind you to either get avocados at the store or add guac to the taco bar order,” Paige said. “I’m fine with either.”
That wasn’t entirely true. She just knew that I was busy and was trying to keep me from driving to multiple stores in search of avocados that were within that brief, fleeting window between being perfectly ripe and perfectly rotten.
“I’ll check Harris Teeter. If their avocados look good, I’ll make it. Otherwise, we’ll have to settle.” Our one and only complaint about La Costera is that they put tomatoes in their guacamole. And that’s just wrong. The pico de gallo goes on the side, not squished in with the avocados. “Oh, I pulled the string lights out of your nana’s box of Christmas decorations. There should be more than enough to go around the deck. Travis said Nathan was bringing over the nail gun, but you guys be careful, okay? I’d hate to have to cancel your birthday party because we had to run one of you to the emergency room to have a nail removed from your foot.”
“We’ll be careful,” Delaney said.
“I’m supposed to remind you to get avocados or guacamole,” Paige said. “And don’t give me that look. We both know that even with me saying it twice, there’s still a darn good chance you’ll forget and have to go back out.”
“So send me a text reminder. Or”—I gasp—“maybe walk the half mile to the store?”
Paige grinned. “What an excellent idea. I’ll send you a text reminder.”
Chapter Two
My car was parked in the driveway, since we’d cleared out the garage to serve as an alternate party venue in case we were hit by one of the unexpected storms that often formed along the Outer Banks. Attila was now on the back of the sofa, which was his usual perch as guard cat. I pushed the front door open and carefully slipped outside in order to keep him from darting into the yard. If Mrs. Whitley was still outside talking to the police, there was an excellent chance that her dog was roaming about as well, and I really didn’t have time to rescue Leo from another encounter with an angry, territorial cat more than twice his size. Although, to be fair, Leo tended to give as good as he got. The last time we had to separate the two, I caught Attila licking his paw. He’d stopped and looked indignant when he realized I was watching, but Leo had gotten in at least one decent blow for dogdom.
The little rat had come barreling out of his house last week, apparently thinking Attila was roaming about in the yard. He grabbed the hem of my jeans in his minuscule teeth and started tugging. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that, but it was the first time I’d realized what he was going on about—he’d smelled Attila. I’d been emptying the vacuum cleaner dust container into the trash and, as usual, the contents were about ten percent dust or debris and ninety percent cat hair. My only question was whether Leo had attacked me out of respect for a fallen enemy, protesting the mounds of fluff that poor Attila had been reduced to, or because he wanted me to drop that tangled mass of fur onto the lawn so that he could finish their feud once and for all. I suspected it was the latter.
He was nowhere to be seen this morning, however. The police cruiser had already left, and Mrs. Whitley had apparently taken Leo inside. Her daughter, who was out at the curb fetching the paper, was the only person in the yard. I waved, and she gave me one of those vague smiles you exchange with neighbors you don’t actually know. The smile suggested that she was at least somewhat nicer than her mother, so I decided to remedy the fact that we hadn’t yet been introduced.
“Hi! I’m Antigone Alden. Most people call me Tig. Are you Andrew’s sister?”
She nodded. “Audra Whitley. Nice to meet you.”
For the first six weeks or so after Paige and I moved in, it had just been Mrs. Whitley and Andrew next door—and Leo, of course. But in late February, a man Andrew apparently called the Cowboy behind his back arrived. Audra was frequently around on the weekends now as well. She had out-of-state tags, so either she was just here temporarily, or she hadn’t lived in the area for long.
“Was there some sort of…problem this morning?” I asked. “We noticed the police car, and I was wondering if there’d been a break-in or anything else I need to be worried about. I
’m heading into work for a bit, and my daughter and her friend will be here alone, so…”
This was true, even though I was almost certain there was no danger. Caratoke was a safe place. But you could never be too careful where your kids were concerned. And I had a bit of an ulterior motive for asking. I’d discovered that it was, generally speaking, a good idea to know which issue had Rebecca Whitley on the warpath this time. A few weeks back, it had been the fact that some residents of the neighborhood hadn’t been rolling their trash and recycling bins in from the curb by five p.m., as dictated by the HOA. That was one of the HOA’s most stupid rules, to be honest, and most residents were in violation on a regular basis. Unlike Rebecca Whitley, they had jobs and didn’t get home until after five, at which point they rolled in their bins. The week before that, I’d gotten an email saying Whitley had reported me for crabgrass. I didn’t even know for sure what crabgrass looked like. When I researched it online, I’d discovered that the stuff doesn’t sprout until late spring. Long story short, the woman is a crank.
“It was just…this thing with a guy in the neighborhood,” Audra said. “We’re pretty sure he’s the one who nearly killed Leo earlier this week, and now he’s threatening my mother.”
I took both of these statements with a rather large grain of salt. Mrs. Whitley had also accused me of plotting to kill her little darling, when all I’d done was note that the dog was likely to get hit—by a car, not by me—if she didn’t keep him under control. I might also have threatened to let my very aggressive, dog-detesting feline out to chase him off the lawn, but Attila had every right to be out in his own yard from time to time.