Say No Moor

by Maddy Hunter

  I was a bit hesitant to access Heather Holloway’s blog, so I scanned the text one-eyed for most of its length, cringing when Austen Zombie Girl came out swinging. “My regular readers know what a fan I’ve been of Penelope Pemberley’s blog throughout the years. It was because of Penelope’s influence that I became a die-hard Janeite. Imagine my excitement when I learned that Penelope herself was a guest on this tour. My idol! Traveling with me to Jane Austen’s Chawton! You can also imagine my disappointment when the woman hiding behind the name Penelope Pemberley suggested that my membership in the Jane Austen Society be revoked simply because she thinks my blog entries don’t pass her personal literary purity test. Why, you might ask, would she suggest something like that? Because she’s a narrow-minded snob with no appreciation for the beauty of modern literature. Rise up, zombie sisters! Join me in online shaming Penelope Pemberley on worldwide social media!”

  Oh, God. Had Heather just cast the first stone in a literary cyber war?

  “Would you like to use my metal detector?” Caroline Goodfriend trudged toward me, ruffling sand from her hair. “I can’t seem to stay upwind of the digging enthusiasts and I’m paying the price, so I’m hanging it up.”

  “Thanks anyway, but I want to stay alert in case someone decides the No Swimming sign doesn’t apply to them.”

  She laughed as she sat down beside me. “They seem to be enjoying themselves. I guess treasure hunting is like catnip to the masses, playing on people’s fantasies of riches. Good call.”

  “For now. I’m sure I’ll get a few complaints about what a waste of time it was.”

  She peered over my shoulder. “You’re getting cell service down here?”

  “Yup. Unbelievably.” I held up my phone. “I’m catching up on my online reading.”

  She removed her phone from her shoulder bag. “Good idea.”

  I peeked at her screen. “Getting a head start on your genealogical research?”

  “Nope.” She flicked through a couple of screens before angling her phone toward me.

  “Solitaire?” I asked, eyeing the stacks of virtual playing cards.

  “Twenty-One. My favorite guilty pleasure. That and Sudoku. They satisfy my inexplicable love affair with numbers.”

  “The gang’s favorite guilty pleasure is Farmville. I think it reinforces their relationship with seed corn and swine.”

  “Do you play anything?”

  “Candy Crush. It reinforces my relationship with sweets.”

  “I found something!” Dick Teig’s voice echoed off the surrounding cliffs. I shot a look toward the far end of the beach, watching as the gang and a handful of bloggers made a beeline toward the outcropping of rock where he stood, their metal detectors clunking into each other as they swarmed around him. After receiving a minute’s worth of congratulatory backslaps, Dick pelted toward me, his entourage following behind like a gaggle of hyperactive geese.

  “I’ve really hit the jackpot this time!” whooped Dick as the rest of the gang scampered toward him. “Easy street, here we come.”

  “What’d you find?” I asked as he and his band of rubberneckers crowded around me.

  He extended his palm, revealing a baseball-sized sphere whose sand-coated exterior was a conglomeration of mussels, tiny seashells, barnacles, and sea gunk. “Ta-da!”

  “This is your jackpot?” accused Helen, lips pursed with distaste. “How absolutely underwhelming.”

  I stared at the hideous lump, struggling to match Dick’s boyish enthusiasm. “Well, would you look at that. It’s a”—I tilted my head left, then right—“…a…”

  “It’s a hot mess,” droned Bernice.

  “Maybe it just needs to be cleaned,” suggested Margi, squirting a stream of hand sanitizer toward it.

  We watched the sanitizing gel spread over the blob like spilled honey, adding another layer of goop to the mess.

  “Dang,” said Nana. “That didn’t do no good at all. We need somethin’ with more teeth in it.”

  Helen gasped. “Dick is not using his teeth. You hear that, Dick? I forbid you to bite into that thing.” Then, to the crowd, “We just cashed in an IRA to have all his old amalgam fillings replaced with resin composite.”

  Nana gave her a squinty look behind her wirerims. “I was thinkin’ more like one of them ball-peen hammers. They probably sell ’em at the hardware store what rented Emily the metal detectors.”

  “Why don’t we just cut to the chase and call up the big guns?” suggested Dick Stolee. His eyes twinkled with resolve. “Low-impact explosives.”

  “No explosives!” I warned.

  “Crack it open with a rock,” urged Kathryn, sweeping her hand to indicate the breadth of the beach. “I’m sure you can find a suitable one, considering all the many different sizes you have to choose from. And when you’re done smashing it open, you can use it to smash Heather’s computer. It might be the only way to prevent her from spreading any more of her libelous vitriol over the internet. Don’t be fooled by the girl’s wide-eyed innocence, my good people. She’s nothing more than a bottle-blond cyber bully.”

  Uh-oh. Sounded as if Kathryn had discovered Heather’s blog post this morning.

  “You started it,” accused Heather.

  “I did not. But I’ll take great pleasure in finishing it.” Kathryn’s mouth slid into a stiff smile that caused alarm bells to go off in my head. Much to my horror, she suddenly looked like the movie franchise Chucky doll before he slashed his first victim, prompting me to wonder if the two women would even be speaking to each other when we reached our first Austen site.

  “Why are you so sure there’s something of value inside that thing?” Spencer Blunt asked Dick. He opened his fist. “All I’ve found so far is a couple of beer bottle caps. Just what I need to take home with me. Limey litter, compliments of some Cornish sot too pie-eyed to find a rubbish barrel.”

  “This metal-detecting crap is embarrassing,” snarled Bernice. “Grown adults digging in the sand like two-year-olds.” She held up her find. “Here’s my reward for wasting fifteen minutes of my life with Emily’s dopey metal detector.”

  “Oh, wow,” enthused Margi. “A nail. Looks really old.”

  Bernice’s lips curled into her signature sneer. “Yeah. Rust can have that effect on stuff. I should charge the prime minister a fee for removing litter from his public beach.”

  “But…what if it was part of a famous ship that wrecked off the coast here?” speculated Helen Teig. “Like a Viking ship or one of the ships in the Spanish Armada.”

  “Or the Good Ship Lollipop,” mocked Bernice.

  Helen fixed her with a piercing look. “What if it’s worth a whole lot of money to someone who collects shipwreck memorabilia?”

  Bernice regarded the nail with slightly less impatience. “Who’d be dumb enough to fork over good money for a rusty nail?”

  “Perhaps someone wise enough to know that a rusty nail could turn out to be the find of the century,” theorized Tilly.

  Spencer skirted the perimeter of the group, eying the gang in the same way he might study artifacts in a museum. “Out of curiosity, what would you folks be doing right now if you weren’t metal detecting? Snoozing? Massaging your joints with arthritis cream? Playing an exciting round of charades? I bet your demographic kills at charades. I mean, before the invention of TV, what else was there for old duffers like you to do at get-togethers?”

  The gang stared at him, deadpan.

  “I don’t understand,” puzzled Margi. “Is he talking about us?”

  My cell phone chimed as an incoming call came through. Wally. “While I take this call, why don’t you go back to your beachcombing? You still have a large area to explore, and don’t forget the caves.”

  Dick Teig set his sphere of sea gunk down on the rock where Caroline was still sitting. “You don’t mind watching this for m
e, do you, Emily? And I don’t need to tell you to guard it with your life.”

  In the next instant a half-dozen of the gang shouted out the same instructions as they dumped their bottle caps, shards of sea glass, and metal pull tabs on the same rock. Bernice lifted the flap of her shoulder bag and dropped her rusty nail inside, seemingly afraid that if I were to guard her treasure, I’d be tempted to auction it off on eBay.

  “I thought you were going to join me in a few minutes,” I said to Wally as the troops dispersed across the beach. I ranged a look toward the cliff. “Where are you?”

  “Near the coach. But I wanted to share the latest with you. Just received a call from Enyon. He’s being escorted to the police station for questioning, so he wanted to tell me where to find the master key so we can let ourselves in.”

  “The police are questioning Enyon?”

  “There’s evidence suggesting that Lance might not have fallen accidentally. The postmortem revealed both bruising and a fractured vertebrae in his spine, which means someone may have literally drop-kicked him as he was heading down the staircase.”

  “And the police think it was Enyon?”

  “They’re not throwing the book at him, Emily. They’re only holding him for questioning.”

  “But why would Enyon murder Lance on day one of their new venture? Who murders the chef on the same day the overseas guests arrive?”

  “Well, someone apparently killed him. If Enyon didn’t do it, who did?”

  “You’re not suggesting that one of the guests had a hand in it, are you?”

  “They were the only other people in the house at the time, Emily. You do the math.”

  Not what I wanted to hear on the second day of our Cornish adventure.

  In my mind’s eye I could see the gang and the bloggers gathered in the hallway outside Kathryn’s suite, all part of the frenzy. But the bloggers hadn’t hung around for the duration. Was it possible one of them had snuck off to the kitchen to confront Lance?

  My stomach executed a double flip at the implication.

  Oh, God. Not again.

  six

  The town of Port Jacob was situated on a hill so steep, a sign warned travelers to check their brakes before venturing down High Street, which dead-ended directly into the harbor without benefit of a sea wall or guard rails. I wondered how many rental cars had careened into the drink before the town had decided to place a car park at the top of the hill, which is where our bus had let us out.

  Port Jacob exuded quaint coastal charm with its whitewashed buildings tumbling higgledy-piggledy down High Street hill, leaning into each other like drunken soldiers. Flowering shrubs drooped over picket fences, their boughs dangling above cobblestone walkways that looked more menacing than a bed of nails. Pots of flowers cheered every door stoop, while hanging baskets swung from every portico, spilling out blossoms in pink, red, and purple. The hardware store where we’d rented our metal detectors—Kneebone Hardware and Museum—sat at the very top of High Street, so while Wally escorted the rest of the group down to the harbor with its galleries, craft shops, tearooms, pottery shops, restaurants, and pubs, Jackie and I returned the detectors to a man who was only slightly taller than he was wide, the proprietor of the store himself, Treeve Kneebone, who steadied himself on a walker behind the counter.

  “Did you ladies have a spawny outcome?” he asked as we stacked the devices in front of him. He wore a knit cap that was pulled all the way down to his eyebrows, a knitted vest that strained to cover his expansive chest and belly, and a friendly smile that caused the loose flesh in his face to jiggle like a turkey wattle. “You should have been here for the brouhaha a few years back. The deep-sea explorers had a bit of a knees-up. Struck it rich, they did. Two hundred fifty million pounds sterling in gold and silver coins from Mexico, salvaged from the wreck of the Merchant Royal that went down off the coast here in 1641. And there’s jewels that’s still washing ashore.”

  “No jewels for us.” I sighed. “Our discoveries fell more into the rusty nail, bottle cap, and sea gunk category.”

  Treeve grinned, revealing a missing canine tooth. “You found all our duff.”

  I gave him a blank look. “Excuse me?”

  “Our junk. Our rubbish.”

  Jackie rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah. We found plenty of other people’s rubbish.”

  “Bully for you for tidying up.” He slammed his fist on the counter and broke out in a bark of laughter. “Bill the government! Tell them it’s for litter removal. Maybe you’ll provoke an international incident. Always warms me heart to have someone throw a spanner at those bleedin’ tossers in London.”

  “Funny you should say that,” I confided. “One of our more opinionated female guests threatened to charge your prime minister for her waste-disposal services.”

  Treeve flattened his hand over his breast and bowed his head. “A woman after me own heart.” Then back to business. “If you give me a minute, I’ll dig out your paperwork and send you on your way, but since you’re staying at the Stand and Deliver, I’d recommend you visit our highwayman museum before you leave.” He gestured toward the far corner of the store. “It’s me hobby: collecting highwaymen curiosities. You’d be surprised what people sell at flea markets and jumble sales thinking it’s worthless. And to give me little display an air of authenticity, I even have a couple of exhibits on loan from the library in Truro. Me boy Jory’s an accomplished artist, so he’s added his own touch. And we’re planning to expand from one aisle to three once we sort through everything I’ve collected. It’s right over there in aisle five—at the end of four-wheel rollators and forearm crutches. Mornin’, Nigel!” he called out as the bell above the front door jangled.

  The man who entered the store wore an aircast boot strapped to his leg and was maneuvering on a set of aluminum crutches that were snugged beneath his armpits.

  “I heard about your spill. Nasty break, eh?”

  “Not the first time, Treeve. Won’t be the last. You know how it goes.”

  “We’ll give the museum a look-see,” I agreed, unsure if Jackie gave a flip about British bandits. “Do you want to wander over to aisle five while I sign off on the paperwork?” I asked her as Treeve riffled through his receipts.

  She rolled one shoulder in a half shrug and sighed with a hint of ongoing malaise. “I’ll wait for you.”

  “Here we are.” Treeve plucked our receipt from the pile and slapped it onto the counter in front of me. He handed me a pen. “Signature and date, if you please.”

  “Would you happen to know of any villagers who’d be willing to cook dinner at the Stand and Deliver for a night or two?” I asked as I signed on the dotted line. No time like the present to get an honest opinion from one of the locals. “For a small party of, say, twenty-one people?”

  Treeve’s eyes lengthened as he pulled his cap lower over his eyebrows. “Your troubles at the inn are all over the Twittersphere. It’s trending number one. Me hat goes off to Gladwish. I don’t know what the bloke will do without his chef, but I can tell you that all the cooks for miles around are employed elsewhere. It’s summer, luv. Demand is high.”

  “Do you think we could lure someone away from their current position by offering them a ridiculously high wage?”

  Jackie snapped to immediate attention, dollar signs registering in her eyes. “How ridiculous?”

  I stared her square in the face. “Can you cook?”

  A pause. “Is that a trick question?”

  “No. It’s the kind of question you ask a person who’s applying for a position as a cook.”

  She fisted her hand on her hip. “I happen to be a fabulous cook. In fact, I could spit when I think of how many precious hours I wasted preparing meals for that two-timing snake I married.”

  Jack had learned his way around the kitchen? I fought off a twinge of jealousy that my transgender ex-husb
and, who couldn’t even operate the electric can opener when we were married, had evolved into a decent cook while I hadn’t. Obviously I needed to spend some serious face time with Betty Crocker. “Do you have any specialties?”

  “Sure.” She ticked the list off on her manicured fingertips. “Toast. Toast n’ serve waffles. Toast n’ serve breakfast tarts. Toast n’ serve—”

  “What about food that doesn’t require a toaster? Anything from scratch?”

  She regarded me, befuddled. “I thought breakfast tarts were from scratch.”

  “So tell me, ladies, what do you think really happened over there at the Stand and Deliver?” Treeve Kneebone leaned toward us, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you know the last time a murder occurred in Port Jacob? Never. Not even during the war when enemy spies were crawling out from under every rock.”

  “See there?” Jackie shot me a smug look as she bobbed her head at Treeve. “I’m not the only one who’s suspicious of the ‘Lance accidentally fell down the stairs’ narrative.”

  “I’ll not be pointing me finger at anyone, mind you,” Treeve confided. “But our local DC must be suspecting a certain inn proprietor of something suspicious. Why else would he give him a personal escort to the nick for questioning this morning? Our DC is planning to retire his badge in a fortnight, so you know he’ll be wanting to wrap up this case before he leaves. Me mates on High Street are taking odds that he’ll be willing to pin Tori’s death on anyone just to be rid of it, and Gladwish is the most likely candidate. Scuttlebutt has it we’re talking murder. Port Jacob’s first. Could be good for business, though. Might even attract a film crew to do the documentary.”

  Jackie fired a look at me, her mouth falling open. “Did you know about this?”

  Busted. “Uh…Wally might have mentioned it in a phone call to me earlier.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “If I told you, I’d have to tell everyone else, and the whole group would have hypered themselves into a frenzy.”