by Krista Davis
“So each of the players has a reason to kill him? How do they figure out which one did it?” asked Zelda.
Val passed each of us a couple of bloodred envelopes. “These contain additional clues. The yellow sticky on each one is the rhyme they will receive to help them find it. Use that as your guide to hiding it. Where would you look if you read that rhyme?”
I started to look at mine, but she continued. “In the packets they’ll receive tonight, each player will get a list of the rhymes. Some will lead to clues and some will lead to weapons. Everyone starts with the same basic information, but obviously, not everyone will find the same clues. Some of the clues will be red herrings that take them in the wrong direction. But there is one thread of clues that fits together to provide the identity of the killer, the motive, and the means.”
Zelda waved the bottle at her. “Where do the weapons come in?”
“Three weapons will be hidden. They’re sort of a bonus. If you’re lucky enough to find one, you can use it to force competitors to share clues with you. Obviously, having a weapon is a big advantage, so they’ll be trying to steal them from each other. The merchants around town know more clues, and that will draw people into stores, restaurants, and businesses to chat.”
“You mean the merchants have more clues to hand out?” asked Shelley.
“No. They know gossip about the victim. Just like real life. Residents of Wagtail are always gossiping. This is no different.”
“That’s so clever,” said Shelley. “A really great way to get people out and about in Wagtail.”
“Each of you will hide one weapon. All the players will have the same opportunity to discover them—so make them a little bit difficult to find, okay? The first victim will be killed by poison, so I’m keeping the bottle.” Val handed me the candlestick.
“It’s so light! This could actually be used as a candlestick.”
Val grinned. “They’re hand-carved. That’s real gold leaf covering the candlestick.”
The waitress delivered our food and set two small dishes on the floor, along with water bowls for Trixie and Leo.
I glanced at Zelda. “I hope Leo is hungry. Trixie might try to eat his food.”
Zelda laughed. “Are you kidding? Look how big Leo is. It’s Trixie’s food that might be in danger.”
I kept an eye on Trixie anyway. She had been homeless and scrabbling for food before she adopted me. I assumed her insatiable hunger was a result of that terrible time.
Val was drinking coffee, staring off toward the door, when she groaned. “Not Norm Wilson, please,” she whispered. “He’s been such a pill.”
I glanced up to see him heading our way. Norm had a round face and a rounder belly. I imagined that he looked much like he had as a young man, except heavier. The buttons on his blue Oxford cloth shirt strained against the fabric, threatening to reveal all. He wore khaki pants, loafers, and no socks despite the cold weather—a Southern male affectation that I had never quite understood. His fair hair was sparse but a bit of it hung over his forehead.
“Look at this, the four prettiest ladies in all of Wagtail.”
I thought Val might spew her coffee.
The rest of us politely murmured greetings.
He spied the pistol. “Who’s packin’? Is it legal to have a gun in a restaurant?”
“That one is perfectly legal,” said Val, a bit testy.
He took in the clue envelopes and the candlestick. “Oh, I get it. You’re meeting about Murder Most Howl. Mind if I pull up a chair? You should have notified everyone if you were going to have a meeting.”
Was Val holding her breath?
I smiled at him. “I think Val has everything under control, Norm. But it’s kind of you to offer.”
“Always happy to pitch in.” He thumped the table. “Y’all just give me a call if you run into trouble.” He ambled away muttering to himself, but I was pretty certain he said, “And you will.”
I leaned toward Val and spoke softly. “What was that about?”
She looked around at us, her brown eyes sincere. “I know I’m new to Wagtail, so don’t think poorly of me. I just detest that man.”
Shelley picked up a piece of toast. “What did he ever do to you?”
The corner of Val’s mouth twitched. “I don’t really want to tell you. You’ll think I’m a petty and horrible person.” She paused. “You know what? I shouldn’t say anything.”
Zelda grinned. “Now we’ll be thinking the worst. Spill, girl!”
Val heaved a sigh. “I bought the pub at auction, and Norm was such a jerk. He kept bidding it up and up. Honestly, I don’t think he wanted it. I truly think he did it just to jerk me around.”
Shelley’s eyes met mine. “I don’t know, Val. That would have been an expensive mess for him if you had stopped bidding.”
“Tell me this, then. If he wanted a pub so badly, why didn’t he take some of that money and open one across town somewhere?” She shook her head. “Nope. I paid much more than I should have because he was getting a kick out of it.”
“It was nice of him to offer to help with the mystery weekend,” said Shelley.
Val’s hands curled into fists on the table. “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t be surprised if he sabotaged it. Norm was against this mystery weekend as soon as Hollis Hobbs tried to limit Norm’s involvement. Hollis hates him, too. Norm is not the sweet, amiable guy you might think.”
Zelda set her coffee cup down. “Everyone I talked to was excited about the mystery weekend.”
“Everyone else has been so generous and helpful. The grand prize is a week at the Sugar Maple Inn, thanks to a certain Holly Miller and her grandmother.” Val grinned at me. “Plus a host of free meals at restaurants and cafés, and massages, beds, and food for dogs and cats, not to mention gift certificates to spend at some of the stores. Runners-up will win gift certificates for stores and services, like the zip line and pet grooming.”
“So they just run around looking for weapons and clues?” asked Zelda.
Val swallowed her last bite of eggs Benedict. “No. It’s quite interactive. People can play by themselves or in teams. Just you wait. They’ll tell lies to throw one another off the track of the murderer. I hear people get very competitive in these types of games.”
“So who is the killer?” asked Zelda.
“I’m the only one, besides the killer and victim, of course, who knows who they are.”
“Aww, c’mon. Let us in on the secret,” Zelda begged.
“Okay,” said Val, looking altogether too mischievous, “the victim is the Baron von Rottweiler, a resident of Wagtail.”
Shelley, Zelda, and I exchanged glances.
“I’ve never heard of him,” said Shelley. “And I’ve lived here forever.”
Val laughed. “Well, you’d better meet him soon because someone is about to do in the poor fellow.”
Zelda scowled at Val. “That’s not fair. At least tell us who the killer is!” She leaned forward, gleeful.
Val tilted her head at us. “No way. I’m not having you supply additional clues to someone just because you like him or her.”
“You don’t trust us!” said Shelley.
“Isn’t that always the first rule of a murder?” asked Val. “Trust no one.”
Two
“Let me get this straight,” said Zelda. “All the players get the rhyme that’s on the outside of the envelope. That’s the scavenger part? It leads them to the envelope?”
“Right. Each player gets a list of the rhymes in the packet they’ll receive tonight.” Val nodded her head. “Then, whoever is the first to find an envelope gets the clue inside about the murder. And that person is the only one who knows that fact.”
Our waitress had just brought our check when Zelda grabbed my arm. “Don’t look now, but isn’t that Blanche Wimmer, the famous model?”
We all gazed out the window next to our table.
Zelda hissed, “I said, ‘Don’t look now’!”
“Please. Everyone knows that’s the universal directive to look immediately.” Shelley leaned back for a better view. “That is Blanche! Older, definitely heavier, but just as beautiful as ever. I can’t believe she’s here in Wagtail. How old do you think she is?”
“She has to be forty or forty-five,” I said.
Val frowned and dug in her tote. She pulled out an iPad and flicked it on. “Could her name be Tredwell now? I have a bunch of Tredwells registered for the mystery game, and one of them has the first name of Blanche.”
I turned to Val in amazement. “How cool is that? A celebrity is playing.”
Val beamed. “We have to get some pictures. Hey! I could start a wall with signed photos of famous visitors at Hair of the Dog!”
“She does those infomercials now,” Zelda whispered. “The kind they run on TV in the middle of the night. Men cannot resist Blanche. She could sell anything to my good-for-nothing ex-husband. He bought hundreds of dollars worth of makeup from her one night.”
“He wore makeup?” asked Val.
“No. That’s my point.”
“Maybe it was for you?” asked Shelley.
“Like I needed ten eyelash curlers and a dozen lipsticks in the same color? I made him to take all that junk with him when I threw him out of the house.”
I gazed at Blanche, trying not to be obvious. “If memory serves, she wasn’t even eighteen when she became the it girl.” She had graced the covers of countless magazines and tried acting in a few abysmal movies.
At the moment, she was turning the heads of people passing by her, and suddenly I felt sorry for her. It couldn’t be easy being recognized everywhere she went.
Blonde hair rippled over the fluffy collar of her faux lynx jacket. Tight leggings clung to her long legs. Her face had filled out but her eyes were as big and stunning as when she was in her heyday. I guessed she was wearing ample makeup, including fake eyelashes to achieve that look, but from where I sat, she still looked like a star.
Blanche glanced around as though she was waiting for someone, then dodged into a store.
As we left Café Chat, snow drifted from the sky. Promising Val we would hide our clues and weapons, we went our separate ways. Trixie and I headed back to the inn.
Snow had begun to lace the pines around Wagtail. The Sugar Maple Inn, which I thought was beautiful at any time of year, would be especially enchanting in the snow. Several owners had constructed additions built of locally mined stone, resulting in a sprawling building. The inn had been in my family since before my birth. And although I hadn’t grown up in Wagtail, my parents had shipped me back every summer to spend time with my grandmother. To me, the Sugar Maple Inn was home.
A long porch full of rocking chairs spanned the front of the main building. In warmer weather, guests lounged there all day long with their dogs and cats. Not a soul was there now. Trixie and I cut around to the side entrance where guests checked in.
We shed our winter jackets in the office, and I read the clue for the candlestick aloud to Trixie.
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend.
Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
—Groucho Marx
Books and reading, eh? The players would surely be looking through Tall Tails, the bookstore, for the candlestick. “C’mon, Trixie. Val said to make it difficult to find the weapon.” Trixie followed me to the inn library, which was loaded with my grandmother’s favorite genre—mysteries!
Located in the newest addition, the library joined the cat wing to the main part of the inn. A cushy window seat begged to be lounged on, but the gas fireplace hadn’t been turned on yet, and I felt a chill in the room. I flicked it on with the remote control.
Kneeling, I slipped the candlestick behind a group of Agatha Christie paperbacks on the lowest shelf. I stood up and examined it. Most people were taller than me. I couldn’t tell that the books had been shoved forward to make room for something behind them. I doubted that anyone who wasn’t looking for the weapon would notice.
“What do you think, Trixie?”
She wagged her tail, which I took as approval.
Back in the office, I nabbed packing tape, bundled Trixie in her plush pink coat, and pulled on my own puffy white jacket again.
When we stepped outside, I was glad I had dressed Trixie. A frigid breeze swept through town. The kind that chills a person to the bone.
My next clue made me laugh.
The friendly cow, all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple-tart.
—Robert Louis Stevenson
I jogged along the increasingly snowy path of the green to warm up. Trixie sped ahead of me, sniffing around trees. I cut to the right and hurried to the big two-dimensional cow outside of Moo La La, the ice cream shop. Not surprisingly, there was no long line of customers at the window today.
“Holly! Holly!” Jim Maybree, the handyman at the Sugar Maple Inn, waved at me and hurried in my direction. “I’m glad I ran into you. I was on my way to the inn. I don’t know how to tell you this, so I guess I’ll just blurt it out. I finally got a job as a ski instructor over on Snowball Mountain!”
“Congratulations!” I said cheerfully, but as I spoke it dawned on me that this might be very bad news for the inn. “That’s great, Jim.”
“It’s my dream come true. I’ve been trying for years and was beginning to think it might never happen. I can hardly believe that I finally landed that job.” His face fell. “But it means I won’t be able to work at the inn anymore.”
He looked so sad that I hastened to reassure him even though it wasn’t good news for me. “We’re very happy for you. Just give us a little time to find a replacement?”
I thought he might be sick.
“I . . . I kind of told them I’d start tomorrow. That was wrong of me. I don’t want to let you down. I can go back and tell them that—but then they might hire someone else . . .”
It was my turn to feel a little bit ill. No one to take care of pooper scooping, or to fix leaky faucets, or to bring in wood for the older fireplaces?
“I should have given you notice. I’ll turn them down.”
I shook off my queasiness. “Don’t be silly. No one should ever pass up a dream job. It might not come your way again. I’ll find someone else.”
Jim almost crushed me in a bear hug. “Thanks, Holly!”
“Uh, Jim? You wouldn’t know anyone who would like the job, would you?”
“I’ll ask around and let you know. Thanks for being so nice about it. I think your grandmother might have given me a hard time for leaving her in the lurch.”
She might have at that. My Oma, German for grandma, had taken me on as her partner at the Sugar Maple Inn. She was finally off to Hong Kong with her best friend, Rose, on a richly deserved two-week-long cruise.
I had been so pleased that Oma felt confident enough to leave me in charge of the Sugar Maple Inn. I was in my early thirties, so it wasn’t as though it was my first job, but managing an inn was unique and sometimes posed unusual challenges. The inn was Oma’s baby. She had worked long and hard to make it a success. It didn’t surprise me one bit that she was reluctant to leave it in my hands. Anyone’s hands! But I was glad she had.
At least, I’d been happy about it until I overheard her talking to my father, who had pointed out that January was always a sleepy, dead month in Wagtail when nothing happened. “A safe time to leave Holly in charge,” he’d said. Oma agreed, deflating my ego considerably. I knew they meant well and hadn’t intended to insult me, but it made me more determined than ever to prove that Oma could safely leave the inn in my hands. Now that I was her partner, she needed to have confidence in me.
I heaved a big sigh. It was okay, I told myself. Everything would be fine. By the time Oma returned from her trip, I would have a new handyman on staff, thus proving my competence to handle anything that cam
e along.
The snow was coming down heavily now. I shivered in the cold. In a big hurry, I taped the clue on the back of the cow and rushed to leave the other clue taped to a park bench before hurrying home to the inn where chaos reigned.
Zelda was manning the reception desk. Dogs ran around the room, playing with Gingersnap, Oma’s golden retriever, who was the Canine Ambassador and official tail-wagger and nose-kisser of the inn. A tiny black and cream dog raced in circles through Gingersnap’s legs and around a bloodhound puppy, who seemed confused and apprehensive.
A large mixed breed with long yellow and white fur stood out of the way near the love seat. He took in the bedlam with worried eyes, and his tail wagged ever so tentatively.
“Are these the dogs for If the Dog Fits?” I asked. The Wagtail Shelter, a no-kill facility, had come up with an idea to match people to dogs. The idea was that the shelter would drop off a few appropriate dogs, and the participating person could select one to try out for the weekend. They would spend the weekend together, and hopefully fall in love and adopt.
“Now don’t get mad at me,” said Zelda. “I know they’re supposed to be in crates but they all wanted out and promised me they would behave.”
I had my doubts about Zelda’s alleged animal psychic abilities. “Zelda, what dog wouldn’t lie to get out of a crate?”
Zelda gasped. “Dogs never lie. They’re more honest than any human I know.”
“Uh-huh. Even the little black and cream tornado who is racing around getting everyone else riled up?”
“Ella Mae. Isn’t she adorable?”
The automatic glass door slid open. Guests walked in with more dogs, who happily joined the fun. It was too late to corral them all. I shrugged off my bulky jacket, helped Trixie ditch her little coat, and tossed them into the office before I rushed to Zelda’s aid.
One of the women had already snatched Ella Mae into her arms. She cooed at the little dog, who rewarded her with kisses.