Crime and Nourishment_A Cozy Mystery Novel

by Miranda Sweet

  “Do you need to lie down? Have you slept?” she asked. She personally had gone so far past her bedtime that it seemed like she would never sleep again.

  “I haven’t,” he admitted. “But I’ve got a room at Jellicoe House now.”

  Jellicoe House was a B&B south of town, off Old South Road, the kind of place with patterned silk wallpaper and a thousand antiques, with a big wraparound porch, close enough to bike to the south beaches, and close to the airport.

  “Can I drive you?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Fine to drive, anyway.”

  She offered him the tiny guest bed anyway, but he refused and took off in his rental car. She watched him until he was gone, and then went upstairs to take a quick shower and change clothes. She’d be fine to keep going until the bookstore closed for the day…at least she should go back and deliver the cream.

  One blink and she found herself underneath her quilt with all her clothes on, including her shoes. Her eyes were already half closed.

  She took off her shoes without sitting up, sliding them off her feet and kicking them out from under the covers. She was too tired to care.

  Too tired to do anything but sleep.

  #

  It was six o’clock in the evening. Angie still felt woozy from waking up at a strange time of day, but at least she’d made it back to the bookstore and delivered the cream—better late than never.

  “Well?” Aunt Margery asked.

  “Well what?”

  “What’s his alibi?”

  Angie shook her head. “I wasn’t under the impression that I was supposed to be questioning the man.”

  “Don’t play the fool with me, girl. You weren’t raised on fairy tales.”

  Actually, she had been, but now was not the time to point that out. “He’s staying at the Jellicoe.”

  Aunt Margery grunted. “At least you found that out. Did you feed him?”

  “Two omelets.”

  “Good girl. He probably doesn’t know up from down at this point. But he was always a good kid. You can tell by his behavior that his parents getting divorced didn’t spoil him out of it. I hope he doesn’t get in trouble.”

  Angie’s shoulders relaxed. “So you don’t think he did it?” They were in the back room, speaking in low voices—it was more private; however, in a moment, Angie would have to check on her customers in the front.

  “No,” Aunt Margery said. “Mind you, I couldn’t produce any evidence to prove it, but I’d wager he didn’t have anything to do with it. I know the Snuocks. Either they’re the Machiavellian type or the feudal lord type—the good kind, if there is such a thing. Very well-intentioned, at any rate. I’d put Walter in the well-intentioned feudal lord camp with no real appetite for murder.

  “Seriously?” Angie asked. “How do you know all of this?”

  Aunt Margery let out an exasperated sigh. “I’ve been on this island forever.

  “And what if he takes after his mother?” Angie asked

  Aunt Margery glared at her. “Do I look like I keep a Nantucket breeding book handy? Like a dog-breeder keeping an eye on his dogs’ tempers?” She grimaced. “Don’t answer that.”

  #

  The Nantucket Bakery was closed for the day, but of course the twins were still inside, working.

  Mickey sat on a stool in the back, decorating a cake.

  “Someone’s wedding?” Angie asked.

  The cake was three tiers, covered with purple frosting and—she squinted—black spiders.

  “No,” he said, a little deflated. “I just got bored. How many Goths do we have in Nantucket?”

  “So you’re decorating a cake for fun?”

  “Not just any cake, a display cake. It’s just Styrofoam in there. And, you know. Sugar. It’ll last until Halloween and get people thinking, hey, you know what sounds good for Halloween? A really expensive, elaborately decorated cake.”

  It was one of those moments where she couldn’t decide whether Mickey was being serious or ironic. He lay the airbrush down and put his chin in his hand, tilting his head to look at the cake.

  He shifted on the stool and glanced at her. “I heard the cops came to talk to you, too,” Mickey said. “They would have to though, you did find the body. Do you know if you’re a suspect?”

  ”They haven’t taken me down to the station and fingerprinted me,” she said.

  “You could have shot him, left, and come back again.”

  “Really, Mickey?” She didn’t hide the irritation in her voice.

  “Sorry,” he said, a little remorsefully, and pressed a large plastic spider into the side of the cake. “I hated the guy, but wouldn’t wish him dead. The whole thing is kind of mind blowing.”

  “Yes, it is. And we’re all suspects. So you better have your story straight.” She still felt wonky, what a tactless things to say.

  He gave her a level look. “I was here by myself. At least Jo was staying over at Mom’s.”

  Of course Mickey would never think of making up a story or twisting the truth to establish an alibi. His good nature overrode his instinct for self-preservation. It’s what she loved about him and what also drove her crazy.

  He framed his hands in front of the cake like a viewfinder. “So I’m thinking the very top of this will be a haunted house, and the next layer will be a graveyard.”

  “What about the bottom layer?”

  “I thought about doing flames, but, you know, I think that’s kind of expected, and honestly, they’re not that challenging to do.”

  “A wrought-iron fence with a cool gate?”

  “That might work.” He paused, studying the cake. “Jo was saying that Walter doesn’t have an alibi for Friday night—he was out all over the island trying to track down his mother.”

  Casually, she asked, “Oh?” And wondered if Mickey knew that she’d been out on what could be construed as a date with Walter recently.

  In the same tone, he said, “Yeah. Apparently she called him and said it was an emergency. I heard that he drove over to Snuock Manor thinking she might be there. The gate was open, so he drove up to the house. When he didn’t see his mom’s car there, he turned around and went back, then spent the rest of the night looking for her.”

  That would have been before she and Valerie had found the body. If he had driven to Snuock Manor Angie likely would have seen him on the road returning to town as she drove out there that very night, not too long after he’d heard from his mother. Jo had either completely embellished the few details Angie gave her or she had another source. And it’s not as if Phyllis or Walter would sit down and have a powwow with Jo, or anyone else for that matter, and give away details that would implicate them. It all sounded like conjecture to her.

  “Who were Jo’s sources?”

  “She never tells me,” Mickey said.

  “That’s because you don’t care,” Jo said, coming into the kitchen from the back, drying her hands on a towel. Her green hair seemed to glow through her hairnet. “Heya, Angie.”

  “Heya, Jo. What’s the story?”

  “I talked to Mom, actually. She says that the only thing keeping Walter out of jail is the fact that there’s no physical evidence tying him to the actual scene of the crime.”

  “Wow,” said Angie. She wasn’t surprised about the lack of physical evidence, but she was surprised Dory Jerritt knew as much as she did. It begged the question, how?

  “So watch your back if you decide to go out with him again.”

  Mickey straightened up. “You’re going out with him? After what his father did to our rent?”

  Angie gritted her teeth and gave Jo an accusatory look. Didn’t she know old flames die hard and that Angie and Mickey’s friendship rested on treading lightly around each other; the fewer details they shared about who they were seeing, the better.

  Jo slapped Mickey on the shoulder. “Be nice to the woman. Who do you think is going to convince his son to change his mind about the rent?”

 
Angie wanted to throw up her hands. Jo really knew how to dig a hole.

  Mickey swallowed his disapproval and turned to Angie. “Want some cake?”

  Chapter 6

  Playing Twenty Questions

  If a criminal has to have a motive in order to commit a crime, then an amateur detective had to have a motive to try to solve it.

  Was it a Prouty thing, being nosy? Did an instinct for this kind of thing run in the family, along with sea captains and wanderlust?

  Was she trying to defend herself from accusations of murder (that nobody would seriously consider; after all, if she had intended to kill Snuock in a rage she had had a perfect opportunity the day before his actual murder)?

  Was she trying to defend Jo from accusations of murder (when she already had an alibi)?

  Or was she trying to prove Walter’s innocence, to herself, if not to the police?

  She made a face. She did like him. And she could rarely help trying to provide comfort and assistance to people she liked. Besides, he couldn’t be a murderer because what would that say about her judgment and instincts?

  Maybe she should leave it to the police. After all, what was she going to be able to do? She didn’t have a forensics team behind her; had no training whatsoever in handling evidence, let alone finding it; didn’t have a clue when it came to legal procedures; and was only able to solve about a third of the Agatha Christie novels on her first pass (and forgot an embarrassing number of plotlines and titles, which led to her throwing down a book more than once with the conviction, “Aha! I know who the killer is now,” only to realize a chapter later that she’d read the book before).

  Nosiness wasn’t about being competent (though she did consider herself competent). It was just about an insatiable need to know—another trait that ran in the Prouty family.

  After leaving the bakery, Angie found herself wandering along the backs of the buildings through the alleyway. A few of the local artists had painted on the bricks of the buildings inside bricked-up windows. The old window arches provided an impromptu kind of frame. The reason for it was practical as much as it was artistic—graffiti artists tended not to disturb buildings that had art on them. A few walls did have tags, layers upon layers of them, as the taggers—who were mostly local high school students anyway—competed to stay on top as long as possible.

  A car made its way slowly down the alley, and Angie backed up against a store’s back doorway to get out of the way. Inside the car was Dory Jerritt, looking cross and worried. A lot on her mind, thought Angie. It couldn’t hurt to see where Dory was going, surely, and see if she had a moment to talk.

  #

  Angie caught up with Dory at the door of Pastries & Page-Turners, of all places. She wasn’t bringing pastries with her in the car, so Angie decided she must be fair game. Why drive from the bakery to the bookstore, though. And why use the back alley?

  She must want to have a private word with Aunt Margery after closing, which would be at eight that evening. Maybe the two of them would go out to supper…

  “Hello, Dory,” Angie said, coming up behind her at the back door of the bookstore.

  Dory jumped.

  “Hello, kiddo,” she said. “I didn’t see you back there. You nearly scared the crap out of me.”

  “I’m sorry! I certainly didn’t mean to. Looking for Aunt Margery?”

  “We’re going out this evening after work. I thought I’d stop by and help her close up, hurry things along a bit. That woman really knows how to drag her feet.”

  Dory Jerritt wasn’t the most tactful person in the world, but then again she wasn’t wrong.

  “I’m sure she’ll be glad for the help,” Angie said. “I was planning to do the same thing.”

  “How are you feeling?” Dory’s eyes narrowed with a genuine look of concern.

  It was always best to assume that Dory, like Aunt Margery’s other friends, knew everything that Aunt Margery knew: “Better. I slept like a log. I barely even remembered to take my shoes off.”

  Dory gave her a tsk tsk. “You need to take better care of yourself.”

  “I suppose so. How did things go the other night with Jo?”

  Dory took a deep breath. The two of them were still standing outside the back door of the shop; unless Aunt Margery spotted them and came out to interrupt, Dory couldn’t escape without being rude.

  “The other night with Jo?”

  “I know the two of you have had…a few arguments about things.”

  This was a pretty safe statement; the two of them didn’t get along as well as they could. Both women were confrontational and direct, yet had completely different philosophies about how one’s life should be led, from the color of one’s hair to the way one made crepes. Sometimes Angie wanted to shake them and tell them that they were more similar than they realized, but that would have just made both of them turn on her to support each other’s arguments about how different they were. There was no logic. Family, Angie thought.

  “Oh,” Dory said. “Yes, I went over to her apartment on Thursday night and we made spaghetti. She asked Mickey if he wanted to come over and make a family night of it. He said he was too busy designing Halloween decorations and didn’t want to intrude on girl talk.”

  Angie chuckled, that sounded just like him. And Dory’s explanation checked out—Jo had just said that she was at her mother’s house that evening—but she’d paused before giving it. Wait. Did Dory go over to Jo’s or did Jo go over to Dory’s? A minor detail, but telling nonetheless, Angie thought.

  What were the two of them covering up?

  And if she pressed Mickey, what story would come out? Probably the same one as Dory’s now, because she would have asked him to cover up for her and Jo. He was prone to tell the truth without thinking, but he’d lie to protect Jo.

  “That sounds fun,” Angie said. “Too bad that I was out on a date.”

  “I heard about that. Walter Snuock,” Dory said, with obvious pleasure of being up-to-date on the gossip already. “What did you think of him?”

  Angie’s face turned warm. She hoped she wasn’t blushing. “I thought he was interesting and polite.”

  “Uh-huh. And not likely to take credit for your work,” Dory said.

  “Ach,” Angie said, putting her hands over her heart and pretending to take a mortal wound. “Thanks so much for reminding me.”

  Dory laughed. “Don’t worry. You still have time to fall in love. It’s not like there’s only one fish in the sea.”

  “I’d be happy to find my first real fish,” Angie said. “That first one, he was a shark. I don’t think he counts.”

  “I’m glad to hear that you haven’t let a bad romantic experience weigh you down…when you first moved here, we were all worried about you.”

  “Were you?”

  “Of course. You’d always been such a solitary, serious child. Nose in a book, studying or reading. But you have always been a good friend to my children, so I knew that you had a good heart in you.”

  “Thank you,” Angie said, genuinely touched.

  “And now that you’re dating again…well, even if things don’t work out with Walter, at least you know that you’re over what’s-his-name for good.”

  Angie restrained a smile. “Walter was only here to try to patch things up between his mother and father, from what he says, and now…My guess is that he’ll stay here long enough for the funeral, and then make a break for it. I think I would.”

  For a moment, Dory looked stricken. “Oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to bring up a painful subject.”

  “It’s all right.” Dory’s lack of tact was simply part and parcel of talking to her best friends’ mother, and she’d become used to it years and years ago. “It’s just one of those things that’s not meant to be. Bad timing.”

  “Well, I hope he at least cancels the rent increase on your property.”

  “What about everyone else’s?”

  “That’s probably too much to hope for.�
�

  Which was true. The back door opened, and Aunt Margery leaned out. “Why, Dory! Are you here to collect me? It’s too early. I haven’t even closed up shop yet, and I’ll be some time putting things in order for Angie in the morning. You know she’s had a very difficult day, and I wouldn’t want to leave her with a pile of worries first thing in the morning.”

  “Margery, you’ve been hoping and praying that I’d show up early to help you get yourself sorted, and don’t deny it! Every time we go out for supper, you drag your feet for so long that I’m eventually forced to help out if I want to eat before midnight!”

  Aunt Margery winked at Angie. “That simply isn’t true, and you know it. I am merely being thoughtful.”

  Angie said, “You’re as thoughtful as the day is long.”

  “Which day?” Aunt Margery grumbled. “Midwinter over the Arctic Circle?”

  Dory said, “Oh, Margery, love, that reminds me, do you know who I saw marching around downtown today?”

  “An army?”

  “Ray. He’s mad enough to spit nails.”

  “Ray?” For a moment Aunt Margery looked as though she had never heard of the man. Then her eyebrows rose and she gave a low whistle. “And here I would have thought that he would have been pleased, what with Alexander’s death and all.”

  “Yes, you would have thought.”

  The two of them paused awkwardly, and stared at each other.

  “Why do you think he was in such a temper?” Aunt Margery asked.

  “No idea,” Dory said.

  “If you had to guess…?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say that the man couldn’t find the bright side to winning the lottery. He’d complain about taxes for the rest of his life, and how they stole most of ‘his’ money.”

  “You know,” Aunt Margery said, “That feud between him and Alexander goes back to that day when…”