Dead and Berried

by Karen MacInerney

  By the time I made it back upstairs, the water level in Candy’s room had receded considerably. I stood in the bathroom doorway and watched as Gwen attempted to wring the rug out in the bathtub. She looked up.

  “Is the room downstairs okay?”

  “It’s great if you want the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea look.” I sighed. “I cleaned up as much as I could, but there’s a lot of damage.”

  Gwen winced. “I hope these floors will be okay.”

  “Me too.” I felt a stab of worry. Antique wood floors were difficult—and expensive—to replace. I grabbed a towel and got back to work.

  “I heard about Polly,” Gwen said quietly as I attacked a puddle. “What a shock.”

  “I know.” I thought of Polly’s sightless brown eyes and shivered. “I can’t get over it. What did you hear?”

  “That she shot herself in the bog near her house.”

  I snorted. “Well, that’s what the police think, anyway.”

  Gwen paused as she squeezed the rug. “You don’t think so?”

  “Did she seem depressed to you?”

  “Depressed? No, not depressed. Distracted, though.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “She was helping me clean the rooms last week. Usually we talk, but this time she kept losing track of the conversation. When I asked her if something was wrong, she said something about a decision that she had to make.”

  “A decision?”

  “She didn’t say anything else about it,” Gwen said. “She left a few minutes after that, and then yesterday...” Gwen trailed off. By yesterday, Polly had most likely been dead.

  “Do you think she was considering selling her house to Murray?” I asked.

  Gwen shook her mass of dark curls. “I wish I knew.” She sighed. “I wish I’d asked.”

  “Well, there’s no way to find out now,” I said. “But don’t blame yourself. You had no way of knowing what was going to happen.”

  Gwen pushed a stray curl behind her ear. “What does Charlene think? She knows everything about everyone.”

  I grimaced. “Charlene’s mad at me because I gave her a hard time about her boyfriend.”

  Gwen laughed. “That explains it. She was awfully chilly today when I dropped those cookies off. She didn’t even get off the phone to say hi.”

  “I guess I’d better get down there and apologize,” I said.

  “What was in that package, anyway?”

  “I didn’t tell you?” Gwen’s brown eyes widened as I told her about Benjamin—and about John.

  “Have you talked to John yet?”

  “No, he’s never home. I’m supposed to have dinner with him tomorrow night, but I don’t even know if that’s still on.”

  Gwen shook her head slowly. “Man, you have had a day. Why don’t you let me finish this up and you go get some sleep?”

  “Thanks, but I won’t be able to sleep until I know this is taken care of.” I glanced at Gwen. “By the way, have you been hearing any noises at night?”

  “Noises?” Gwen looked perplexed. “No. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing,” I said. “I heard a couple of bumps last night. It was probably just the wind.”

  It was almost midnight when Gwen and I finished cleaning both rooms and the hallway the best we could. Despite the chill in the air, I opened the windows to help dry the place out. Candy hadn’t gotten home yet, so I left her a note telling her to switch to another room down the hall. As I passed Benjamin’s room, I couldn’t help but notice that the gap beneath his door was dark as well. When we were together, Benjamin never turned out the lights before one. Maybe he was becoming an early bird in his old age.

  Biscuit was still nowhere to be seen as I eased myself under the down comforter. I considered going downstairs to get Pepper, but decided against it. Life with Biscuit—particularly after a week with two dachshunds in the house—was going to be hard enough. No need to make it worse by inviting Pepper into my bed.

  A quiver of apprehension passed through me as I glanced at the ceiling, but I reached over and turned the light off anyway. Soon I drifted off to sleep.

  ___

  Either whatever was in the attic took the night off or I slept so hard it hadn’t woken me up. By 8:30 the next morning I was feeling a little more in control of things; breakfast was laid out on the buffet, I had put in a call to the insurance company, and Candy was nowhere to be seen. To my relief, the insurance agent had promised to send out someone to assess and potentially start repairing the damage that afternoon. I walked out to greet my guests with a sense of having accomplished at least one thing that morning.

  Benjamin sat alone in the dining room when I walked in with a fresh pot of coffee. He rose quickly as I walked to his table, and my personal percussion section started up a new number in my ribcage. His clothes, though casual—jeans and a green plaid shirt—were clearly expensive and had been pressed to within an inch of their lives. His familiar smile and the faint scent of his cologne sent tremors through me. I struggled to keep my hand steady as I filled his cup. Although I had sworn Benjamin off for life, I was glad I had put on a touch of lipstick that morning.

  “I missed you last night,” he said. “Did you get my note?”

  “Yes, I did.” I set down the coffeepot and Benjamin’s hand closed on my wrist.

  “Well, how about tonight?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry. I already have other plans.”

  I glanced up at him, and his blue eyes bored into mine. “Lunch, then?”

  I shook my head. Despite a shameful desire to say yes, I was pleased that my resolve was holding up at least as well as the Aqua Net I had spritzed on before coming downstairs. “Can’t do it,” I said firmly. “One of the rooms flooded last night. I have to wait for the insurance adjuster, and then I have some errands to do.”

  My errands, which included a visit to Matilda Jenkins and the museum, could wait. But Benjamin didn’t need to know that. “So, where did you end up going last night?” I asked.

  “Down to the lobster place,” he said. “I ran into another one of your guests there.”

  “Oh?”

  “Candy Perkins. We ended up having dinner together, since we were the only ones in the place.”

  “Oh.” The percussion section slowed.

  Benjamin ran his hand up and down my arm, then lowered his voice. “When can we talk?”

  “I don’t know, Benjamin. It’s just...” At that moment, Candy walked in, dressed in a short pink skirt and a clinging spandex top. Benjamin released my arm and turned to her with a smile, which she returned with full wattage.

  Her smile dimmed as she turned to me. “What happened to my room?”

  “The sink overflowed.”

  “Overflowed?” Her blue eyes widened. “Oh,” she laughed. “I must have forgotten to turn the water off. Silly me. I was giving myself a mini-facial—you know, with lots of hot water and steam?—and I must have gotten distracted.”

  I gritted my teeth.

  “Well, on the plus side, my new room is even nicer than my old one,” she said. Her eyes fell on the coffee pot. “Ooh, coffee.” She giggled at Benjamin. “We got in so late last night, I’ll need some caffeine to get going this morning. Your friend Ben here is quite a guy.” She slid into the chair next to his and held up her mug. I pulled my lips into a strained smile and filled her mug with coffee.

  “I’m glad you like your new room,” I said. “I’m afraid both your old room and the one beneath it are pretty much a loss until next spring.”

  “Thank goodness for insurance, huh?” She took a big sip of coffee and closed her eyes. “Just what I needed.” She opened them and studied the buffet. “Is there anything over there that I can eat this morning?” She ran a hand over her
flat, spandexed tummy. “Got to watch my figure, you know. I think Natalie has done surprisingly well, considering. If I were eating all those starchy, fatty foods all the time I’m sure I’d be at least as heavy as she is.”

  I fixed a smile on my face, but I was beginning to understand how crimes of passion happened.

  “I think Natalie looks great,” Benjamin said heartily, but I couldn’t help but notice that his eyes still lingered on Candy’s concave stomach.

  I retreated to the kitchen as they headed for the buffet. Benjamin’s urgency to see me had evaporated awfully quickly. Candy whispered something to him, and his deep laugh followed me as I crossed the room. I gave the swinging door a hard push, and discovered a different kind of drama on the other side.

  Biscuit had finally made an appearance. The big orange tabby stood in the middle of the kitchen hissing at Pepper, who was huddled in the corner, mewling pathetically. I scooped up the older cat, murmured a few soothing words, then filled up her food dish. She was mildly appeased, but when I took a second bowl from the cupboard and filled it for Pepper, Biscuit growled and looked at me as if I were something the dog had dragged in. Only after Biscuit had eaten and stalked off up the stairs did Pepper dare to emerge from her corner and approach her bowl. Candy and Benjamin were getting along famously, but Biscuit and Pepper could still use some work.

  The next time I pushed through the door into the dining room, Candy and Benjamin were still chatting happily, and Russell Lidell had taken a seat near the buffet. He was more casually dressed today, in a polo shirt and jeans that were two sizes too small, but he looked quite pleased with himself.

  “How are you this morning?” I asked as cheerfully as I could.

  “Great,” he said, giving me a boyish smile.

  “Good news from the engineer?”

  “It looks like everything is going to work out just fine.”

  It hadn’t worked out too well for Polly, I thought. “I’m glad to hear that,” I lied. I filled his cup and glanced over at Benjamin and Candy. They didn’t even notice me.

  The honeymooners came down a few minutes later, and I was conscious of Candy’s trills of laughter as I filled their coffee cups and retreated once again to my kitchen. Everyone in the dining room was in high spirits, but I was sliding into Prozac territory. At least both Candy and Benjamin were out from underfoot, I told myself. I tried to be relieved when they exited the dining room together.

  “Let me know when you have some time,” Benjamin called to me over his shoulder as I picked up their dirty breakfast dishes. I could hear Candy inviting him to join her on the next mail boat as they climbed the stairs to their rooms.

  As I carried a stack of dishes to the kitchen, an image of Candy and Benjamin snuggled up together on the boat flashed into my mind. I shook my head hard, trying to dislodge it. Benjamin and I were over, I reminded myself. If Candy wanted him, she could have him. I dumped the rest of the dishes into the sink and eyed the now-overflowing laundry room with dismay.

  Then I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

  ___

  It was almost four o’clock by the time I rolled up outside the Cranberry Island Historical Museum. I had left the insurance adjuster and several loads of undone laundry behind at the inn, but I was curious enough about the inn’s ghost that I didn’t want to waste another day finding out about it. I also needed a break from the inn—and the people in it.

  The Cranberry Island Historical Museum was a small brick building—the only brick building on the island, in fact. It squatted about a hundred yards south of the pier, and the smell of exhaust from a lobster boat loading up on bait wafted over me as I rode past it.

  I’d never noticed it before, but a tiny wood-framed house was tucked up into the pine trees behind the museum, just as Emmeline had told me. I parked the bike next to the house’s short white picket fence and made my way down the stone path to the front door. Matilda opened the cheery blue door almost as I knocked.

  “Hi. I’m Natalie Barnes, the owner of the Gray Whale Inn.”

  “Hello, Natalie.” Matilda adjusted the glasses at the end of her long nose. A blue shirtwaist dress hung on her thin form, and her white hair was cropped close to her head. She looked like the prototype for a librarian. “I’m Matilda Jenkins. What can I do for you?”

  “I was talking with Emmeline Hoyle yesterday about doing some research on the inn. She told me that the museum is closed for the season, but that you might be able to help me out.”

  Her thin lips twisted into a smile. “I imagine summertime isn’t the best time to do research for you, is it?”

  I smiled back. “No, it’s not. Too many pancakes to flip.”

  Matilda reached over and took a key from a hook on the wall next to the door. “Let’s go. I know I’ve got some documents on the inn. They transferred a bunch from St. James, and Murray had some documents he copied for me, but I haven’t had a chance to look through all of them. I know I’ve seen references to your building, though. It’s had a colorful history.”

  As we passed through Matilda’s white wooden gate, I remembered that the museum was a relatively new establishment. Murray had renovated the old brick building to fulfill a campaign promise. Once he funded it, however, I imagined he envisioned a blown-up exhibit dedicated to the Selfridge family. Charlene had told me the Selfridges were one of the oldest families on the island, and I was kind of surprised he hadn’t insisted the museum be named after himself, or at least his family.

  As Matilda fumbled with the key, I reflected that at least one good thing had come from Murray’s presence on the island. Too many small towns and cities lost their history; the museum, if it actually contained information on families other than the Selfridges, might help prevent that from happening to Cranberry Island.

  The inside of the small building smelled of dust and old books, and dozens of boxes lay stacked in the corners of the front room. “As you can see,” Matilda said, “it’s very much a work in progress. We’ve got three exhibits up”—she pointed to the Plexiglas cases, filled with old fishing implements and photos of a less-populated Cranberry Island, that stretched along the walls—“but once the season ended, I pulled out everything else that needs to be catalogued.”

  As I looked at the piles of battered boxes, some of which were stacked chest-high, I was grateful that all I had to deal with was dirty laundry. “You’ve got an amazing amount of stuff for such a small island,” I said as I followed her through an arched doorway to the back room.

  “Well, since all of the families are related—and most have been here for hundreds of years—lots of folks held onto everything about their ancestors. It’s not like most places, where people move somewhere new every five years. People know their history here.” She peered at me over her glasses. “And nobody forgets anything. Old grudges last a long, long time.” She bent over and examined a line of boxes. “Ah, here it is,” she said. She dusted off a box and heaved it up onto a table in the middle of the room.

  “This is the box Murray gave me,” she said as she flipped the top open. “I haven’t had a chance to really go through it—I’m hoping to get that done this winter—but I know I saw a file on the house in here somewhere.” She rifled through the papers, stirring up a good bit of dust. A large brown spider scuttled out of the box as she pulled out a yellowing manila folder. “Here it is.”

  She opened the folder to a black-and-white picture of the inn, now brown at the corners. The weathered shingled house looked very much as it did now, only with what looked like a small family grouped stiffly on the front porch. The man in the photo was short, and clad in a formal black suit. The dress of the woman beside him was tight at the bodice, but swelled into a huge, bell-shaped skirt. It was hard to make out their features; the people in the photo were squinting at the sun. I peered at the photograph, looking for differences. Instead of roses, del
phiniums bloomed along the porch’s painted railing, but other than that, the house looked eerily identical.

  “When was this taken?”

  Matilda flipped the photo over. “There’s no date on it, but from the dresses and the people in it, I’m guessing sometime in the mid-1800s.”

  “Do you know who these people are?”

  “That’s Jonah Selfridge, and his wife, Myra. He built the house—I mean the inn—you’re living in. Jonah was a prominent sea captain. Most folks built their houses near the pier, but not Jonah. His wife hated the smell of fish, so she convinced him to build out on the end of the island.”

  “The Selfridges? As in Murray Selfridge?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “They were a very important family on the island for a long time. They fell on hard times, of course, and had to sell the house, but Murray’s done a good job of regaining lost ground.”

  I pointed to two young boys dressed in sailor suits, standing in front of their parents. They looked to be about five and eight years old. “These are their children?”

  She peered at the photo. “Yes, yes. Jonah Jr. and William, I believe. William would be Murray’s great-great-great-grandfather, or something like that.” She gazed at the photo. “Small family, isn’t it? For the times, anyway.”

  My eyes passed over the house, and stopped at one of the windows near the end. I looked closer. What looked like a white face, half in shadow, peered out of the kitchen window.

  “Who’s that?” I pointed at the face.

  Matilda stooped over the photograph. “Well, well. I hadn’t noticed that before. It looks like somebody’s standing at the window, doesn’t it?” She shrugged her bony shoulders. “They only had the two children, and they’re in the photograph, of course. That’s the kitchen, isn’t it? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the cook.”

  The cook who had been murdered, I wondered? I decided to take the plunge. “Emmeline Hoyle told me there was a tragedy in the house.”

  Matilda looked up. “Oh, yes. People say that’s part of the reason Murray didn’t buy it back when it went on the market a few years ago. That the house is cursed for the Selfridges, or some nonsense like that. He told me once he just didn’t like the maintenance of old houses, prefers something new. Quite sensible, if you ask me.” She turned the photo over. “Of course, some folks say the old Selfridge place—your inn, nowadays—is haunted,” she added nonchalantly.