“Haunted?”
“I don’t believe a word of it. But lots of folks say they’ve seen lights out there, late at night, and people say they’ve heard strange noises. Bumping, and footsteps. Especially near the kitchen. That’s supposed to be where she died, you know. She was stabbed to death in the servants’ quarters, above the kitchen.”
The hair prickled on the back of my neck. My bedroom was right above the kitchen.
She riffled through the pages. “I know I have the newspaper article about the murder here somewhere, but I don’t think it’s in this file.” She walked across the room and rifled through a few more boxes before withdrawing another manila folder. “Here’s the file on the ownership. Maybe it’s in here somewhere.” She flipped through the pages. “No, nothing but copies of old deeds. If you give me a few days, though, I know I can find it. They never found the murderer, you know.”
I looked at the shadowy face in the photo again. “What was her name?”
“Oakes, I think. Anne, or Amy, or something. I can’t recall. The name isn’t an island name; she must have come over from the mainland.”
I leafed through the rest of the file. It consisted largely of lists of boats and cargos. Based on the number of vessels listed, it appeared the Selfridges had once done very well for themselves, indeed.
“It looks like you’ve got a treasure trove of information here.” I glanced at my watch: it was almost five. If I was going to have dinner with John at six, I needed to get back. “Maybe this winter, when business slows down, I can come down and help you go through the stuff on the inn. If you find anything else on it, would you mind putting it aside for me? I’d like to put together the building’s history.”
Matilda smiled. “That would be very nice. It’s always good to have a bit of company.”
As I pedaled away from the small brick museum, I felt a chill pass through me. Maybe the noises above my head had been made by the murdered cook. If so, I hoped she wouldn’t be visiting me again soon.
I knocked at John’s door at exactly six o’clock, and stood picking pieces of lint off of my green sweater as I waited. Apparently it had been washed along with a wad of Kleenex. Although I had found most of the big chunks before I left the inn, there were still a few stragglers. I would have preferred to change into something that looked less like a flocked Christmas tree, but my wardrobe choices were limited; the laundry room was so bogged down in dirty towels, I hadn’t had a chance to wash my own clothes.
Although John usually answered immediately—his apartment wasn’t very large—nobody came to the door. I was pretty sure he was home; I had checked the dock first, and Mooncatcher was moored next to my own skiff, the Little Marian. Unless John had gone for a walk, he was here. I adjusted my blouse, rubbed my freshly lipsticked lips together, and knocked again. After a few moments, he opened the door slowly.
John’s ready smile was nowhere in evidence, and when I saw the stillness in his normally mischievous eyes, I felt as if I had been punched. All thoughts of Benjamin dissolved instantly—except a desire to march back to the inn and send him packing.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey yourself.” He stood leaning against the doorframe. He didn’t invite me in.
“We need to talk.”
“Do we?” He pushed himself back from the doorframe and walked into the small, dim living room, leaving the door ajar behind him. I stood on the front step for a moment, then followed him. My stomach rumbled as I closed the door behind me. I should have grabbed a snack; it looked like a pretty safe bet that dinner was off.
He sat down on the couch as I closed the distance between us, feeling as if I had a scarlet “A” on my chest and wishing I’d given a tad more thought to how I would handle this.
I leaned down and kissed him lightly on the head, inhaling the smell of his shampoo and the scent of freshly cut wood he always carried with him. Then I took a deep breath and dove in. “I’m sorry if what you saw yesterday upset you,” I said. “It wasn’t what it looked like.”
“Oh, no?” I could feel the tension radiating from him.
I sighed. “I’ll be right back.” I walked past him to the kitchen. The sink, which was usually scrubbed clean, was filled with dirty dishes. Dinner was definitely off; it looked as if John had been subsisting on TV dinners and peanut butter sandwiches the last day or so. I opened the fridge and pulled out two Heinekens. Then I returned to the living room, set one down on the table next to the seal sculpture, and began twisting the lid off of the one in my hand. John watched as I struggled. After observing me strain and grunt for about thirty seconds, the corner of his mouth twitched upward.
I stopped twisting. “What?”
“They’re not screw-top.”
“Oh.” So much for the take-charge, I’ve-got-everything-under-control approach.
He got up and disappeared into the kitchen. When he returned, he was armed with a church key.
“This might help,” he said, and reached for my beer. I felt the heat from his fingertips as he took the cold bottle from my hand.
He handed it back to me and popped the top of his own beer. Then he sat back down on the couch, took a long swig, and proceeded to study the bottle’s green and white label. I took a seat on the chair across from him and took a sip of my Heineken, feeling as if I were about to begin a chess tournament. I was never very good at chess.
“I know what you saw yesterday,” I said slowly. I leaned forward and tried to catch his eye, but it was fixed on the bottle in his hand. “It’s not what it looked like.”
John turned the Heineken around in his hands and pulled at the corner of the label.
I plowed ahead. “I was once engaged to Benjamin.” John’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “But I was the one who broke it off.”
After a heavy silence, John finally spoke. “You looked pretty connected yesterday afternoon.”
“I had just gotten back from finding Polly,” I said. “Benjamin showed up on my doorstep. I was upset. He took advantage of the situation.” I glanced up at John. The expression on his long, tanned face was unreadable. “But everything is over between us. That’s why I pushed him away. You saw that part too, didn’t you?”
“I’m not sure what I saw.” John’s words were measured. He raised his green eyes from the bottle in his hands. “If it’s over between you, then what is he doing up here?”
“I didn’t know he was coming. He reserved a room under a false name. He knew that if he used his own name, I never would have accepted the reservation.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
I sighed and leaned back in my chair. “He wants to get back together with me. I told him no.” John sat motionless. “I told him there was someone else in my life now.”
“Oh?”
“What do you mean, ‘oh’?’”
“If you mean me, we’ve hardly spoken two words to each other the last several weeks.”
“I know, I know,” I said. “The inn sucks up all of my time. But the slow season’s starting. That will change.”
John took a swig of beer, then returned to studying it. “I’m sorry about Polly, by the way. That must have been terrible.”
“Thanks. It was.” We were making progress.
“I hear the funeral’s tomorrow,” he said.
“The autopsy’s been done?”
John looked up sharply. “Yes. Why?”
“Grimes said it was suicide, but I don’t believe him.”
John shook his head. “I know he’s not the best cop on the planet, and I know he was wrong last time. But Polly committed suicide. She wasn’t murdered.”
“Is that what the autopsy says?”
“Yes, that’s what the autopsy says. I got a look at it this morning. She was killed by the gun she held in her hand
. There were traces of gunpowder on her hands and around the wound. Everything is consistent with a suicide.”
“Except for the fact that she was packing to take a trip. And she was about to try out a new recipe.”
John narrowed his eyes at me. “How do you know that?”
“After I called the police, I looked around her house. I was trying to find the kitten she rescued a week or so ago. Pepper. Which is another thing that bothered me, actually. Her cats were hungry.”
He shrugged. “Depressed people do crazy things. Maybe she didn’t have the energy to feed them.”
“But she had the energy to walk out into the bog and shoot herself?”
John let out another one of his long-suffering sighs.
“Any other injuries?” I asked. “Because it almost looked to me like she had a slight black eye.”
“You’re right. She had a few bruises. But they must have happened at least a few days before she died; they had a chance to heal.”
“How many bullets were in the gun?”
“How many bullets were in the gun?” He looked at me incredulously. “What are you, Kinsey Millhone? How should I know how many bullets were in the gun?”
“Well, you are officially a cop. And you did see the autopsy.”
“I don’t know. If you really want to know, I can probably find out, but I can’t see how it’s relevant.”
“Just because there was gunpowder on her hands doesn’t mean she fired the shot that killed her.”
“What are you suggesting? That she shot the gun once, and then someone else got the gun out of her hands and shot her? And nobody heard it?”
“You have to admit, it is a possibility.”
He sighed. “Anything’s a possibility with you.”
“Will you at least look into it?”
He took another swig of his beer. “If you’ll get your ex-fiancé out of your inn, I’ll look into it.”
It was my turn to sigh. “Believe me, I’m trying.”
He ran his eyes over me. “You’re wearing lipstick and you did your hair. Exactly how hard are you trying?”
He had hit closer to the mark than I liked, and I could feel myself flush. “We had a dinner date. Remember?”
“Oh, yeah. You’ll have to forgive me if I assumed you had other plans.”
“Well, I’ll accept a rain check. Extenuating circumstances and all. In fact, why don’t you come to my place for dinner? How about tomorrow night?”
“As soon as you’ve evicted the ex-boyfriend.”
“He’s only supposed to be here a few more days.”
“I hear there’s a nice inn on the mainland. About two hundred miles from here.”
“What am I supposed to do, tell him to clear out of town?”
“I could do it for you.”
“Actually, if you could give Candy Perkins the boot, I’d be almost as happy.”
“Candy Perkins?”
“The bubble-headed woman who wants to open her own bed and breakfast. She’s been following me everywhere. She stopped up her overflow drain last night and flooded her room, the room below her, and the entire upstairs hall.”
John winced. “How much damage?”
“Well, the room below hers is missing about a third of its ceiling, and I’m not sure the wood floors are going to survive. Not to mention the furniture.”
“You’ve got the windows open, I hope?”
“Yes. I’ve been hoping for a warm front, but it hasn’t materialized.”
He grinned. “You’re not in Texas anymore.”
I thought of Benjamin and shivered. “Thank God.”
As I left a few minutes later, John gave me a tentative hug and a chaste, dry kiss on the cheek. I hugged him back as hard as I could. “Are you sure you won’t come to dinner tomorrow?”
“Not until he’s gone,” he said. He released me, and I stepped out into the chilly evening. As I made my way up the path to the inn, he called after me. I turned to see him leaning against the doorframe of the carriage house. “By the way,” he said, “I’ve been meaning to ask. Why do you have half a roll of toilet paper on the back of your sweater?”
___
Pepper sidled over to me as soon as I closed the kitchen door behind me, and I chucked her under the chin. At least she wasn’t cowering in the corner. “Biscuit been treating you all right?” I asked. She purred and pushed her little back up against my hand. “Since it looks like you’re going to be a regular around here, I’d better find out if you’ve had your shots.” She rumbled like a miniature lawnmower, and I remembered the scrawled number on Polly’s memo board. Maybe “shelter” was the animal shelter Pepper had come from. Next time I was down at Polly’s, I’d have to remember to write down the number.
As I filled the cats’ bowls, I reflected that the visit with John hadn’t gone as badly as I had expected. His kiss had been brief, but it had been a kiss. I smiled, remembering his warm, woodsy scent. Now if only I could get Benjamin out of the inn...
I tidied up the kitchen a bit and pushed through the door into the dining room. I wasn’t optimistic about how the floors were drying—I was hoping they wouldn’t warp irreparably—but felt the need to check. As the door swung shut behind me, I heard a low voice.
“No, no, everything’s fine. I dealt with it today.” I paused in the darkened dining room, waiting for someone to respond. “I told you, it’s taken care of,” the same voice said, and I realized that someone was talking on the phone at the front desk. I had been meaning to have telephones installed in the rooms, but I didn’t have the budget for it yet.
I tiptoed to the end of the dining room and peered around the corner. Russell Lidell stood at the front desk, cupping the receiver and glancing around nervously. I pulled my head back and stood with my back up against the wall.
There was silence for a moment, and then Russell spoke again. “What, did you think I’d write him a personal check? Of course I did it in cash.” He was quiet for a moment, presumably listening. “All right. I’ll let you know when it’s finalized. Okay, okay. Fine. I’ll talk to you later.”
I shuffled backward toward the kitchen and ran into the sideboard, knocking two forks off of the edge. As they clattered to the wood floor, I winced.
I had turned on the light and was retrieving a fork from under one of the tables when Russell appeared in the door to the parlor. I glanced up at him and pretended to be surprised. “Oh, hi. I didn’t realize you were out and about. Can I help you with something?”
His eyes narrowed as he studied me. “Were you in here the whole time?”
I furrowed my brow. “What do you mean?”
“While I was on the phone.”
“Were you on the phone?”
“Yes,” he said. “Just now.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just got back from my neighbor’s, and was coming to check on the floors. We had a flood last night, you know.” I grimaced. “I’m afraid some of the hardwood floors will be ruined. I’m sorry if it’s a bit chilly, but I need to leave some of the windows open to dry the place out.”
His eyes were slits in his ruddy face as he studied me, trying to decide if I was lying. A shiver ran down my spine as I smiled back at him, suddenly aware that we were probably alone in the inn. And that there was still a murderer unaccounted for. “Well,” I said, standing up, “if there’s nothing you need, I’m just going to check on the floors and grab a bite of dinner in the kitchen.” I smiled and brushed past him into the parlor. I could still feel his eyes on me as I climbed the stairs to Candy’s room.
The next morning was exhausting. The timer on the oven broke, and I burned the first batch of muffins. Then the guests came down for breakfast. Russell spent an entire hour shooting me nasty looks, and Benjamin and Candy fed eac
h other bites of muffin before deciding to go kayaking together. The afternoon was no better; I spent two hours arguing with the insurance adjuster over whether Candy’s little “accident” was covered by my policy. When I got off the phone thirty minutes before Polly’s funeral started, I realized I had forgotten to put the blueberry pie I planned to take with me into the oven.
I ducked into the sanctuary fifteen minutes late and slid into a rear pew, my hands hurting from the heat of the pie. After pulling out a hymnal and turning it into a makeshift trivet, I scanned the backs of the heads in front of me.
Most of the island had showed up for Polly’s service. I recognized Murray Selfridge’s balding head across the aisle, and when I leaned over for a better view of the front row, I wasn’t surprised to see Charlene’s caramel-colored locks right up close to the pulpit—and McLaughlin. Charlene was flanked, I noticed, by a number of other female heads. A few rows back sat John.
As I pulled the Book of Common Prayer out of the pew back, Rev. McLaughlin introduced Gary Sarkes and stepped down. A skinny man with a mustache and a shiny, ill-fitting suit jacket lurched up the center aisle and took his place behind the pulpit. He stood there for at least a minute, clearing his throat and pulling at his lapels.
After evicting what must have been an entire extended family of frogs from his throat, he pulled out a wrinkled sheet of notebook paper. His nasal voice wavered as he launched into perhaps the world’s shortest eulogy.
“My cousin Polly,” he began with a tremor, “was a real nice lady. Real nice. She was a great housecleaner, and took good care of those cats of hers.” He coughed into his hand and wiped it on his pants. His audience recoiled slightly. “Real good care. We’ll really miss old Polly, and hope she’s happy wherever she is.” He beamed at the room for a moment, as if expecting applause, or a request for an encore. Even from the back of the church, I could see the large gap between his front teeth, which were a revolting shade of brown. After a moment, Gary crumpled up the paper and stepped down, ducking his head as he returned to his pew.
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