Crime and Nourishment_A Cozy Mystery Novel

by Miranda Sweet

  Why was one enmity more important to him than hundreds of other amicable relationships? Was there more to it than Aunt Margery and her friends had implied? Quinn seemed to think so—that Snuock had been trying to steal everything from him for decades.

  But what had been the driving force on Snuock’s part?

  What made him treat the sacrifice of so much goodwill in the community as worthwhile? What had made it a reasonably good bargain?

  Eventually, she closed up her accounting program and wandered aimlessly through the bookshelves, waking Captain Parfait and making him follow her all around the store. He probably didn’t think much of her hunting ability. If she were tracking a mouse, he wanted to be in on the kill.

  And the change in the timeline from the fourth of July to the third…what effect did that have? She didn’t know where Quinn had been either night. She suspected him. Who didn’t? The only reason that he hadn’t been arrested was that they were currently laying the blame on Walter.

  If Quinn had done it, and she could prove it…that would solve all her problems in one neat bow. Because if it hadn’t been Quinn, and she was sure that it wasn’t Walter, who else could it have been?

  Cui bono? Who benefits?

  She, Angie, would have benefited from Snuock’s death. So would the rest of the business owners. Would anyone else? Anyone could have made it onto the island in the last few days; the streets were crawling with tourists. Pay cash, take a ferry, and carry out the revenge that you’ve always dreamed of…

  A business deal gone sour, a former romantic entanglement with a grudge, a former employee who had gone postal. There had to be a thousand people with a motive to harm Snuock, people for whom he trusted enough to open the gate.

  But whom did he trust enough to let onto his property while everyone else was out?

  Conversely…whom did he hate enough to let onto his property while everyone else was out?

  The three main people she could think of whose businesses were at risk were Quinn…and of course the twins.

  Snuock hated Quinn enough. But the twins? He only knew them as tenants. He’d mentioned wanting to manipulate them, sure, but that wasn’t hate. That was just Snuock’s standard business operating procedures.

  Jo hadn’t been at her mother’s house that night, but the story about the tourist with the mohawk (if completely believable to Angie) wasn’t something that the cops could check out, probably. No, wait. She’d said that she had the guy’s phone number. If she really had the guy’s phone number, then she could give that to the police and they could call the guy and confirm the story.

  So Jo should be safe.

  Mickey? He’d said something about what he’d been doing that night. Working on that weird Halloween cake? Unless someone had seen the lights on at the bakery and looked in the window, he wouldn’t have an alibi. The fact that his car would have been parked behind the bakery wasn’t enough to prove that he was at the bakery. But wouldn’t the police have to have some kind of evidence putting him at the scene of the crime? They couldn’t just arrest him for renting from Snuock, could they? And if they could, wouldn’t they just arrest Quinn first?

  The suspects as they stood: Walter, Quinn, and Mickey. Quinn being the most likely of the three.

  And wasn’t it true that the most obvious solution was usually the true one?

  Chapter 9

  The Pirate

  The little house was quiet when Angie finally returned, the kind of quiet that made her think that her great-aunt had gone out to the beach to wait for her pirate lover and watch the waves roll in. She felt tired, but knew that she wasn’t going to be able to sleep, so she made a small pot of tea that she poured into two insulated travel mugs, wrapped herself up in an ancient picnic blanket, and walked down the quiet street.

  The last few days had been stressful, to say the least. The night was quiet. A few horns echoed in the distance, the flashing light from the lighthouse kept time with her footsteps. Most of the dogs had been taken inside for the night and most of the seagulls had found a roost, although she could hear a few dogs and birds in the distance.

  She smelled the scent of a fire and wondered whether anyone had started one. The police tended to look the other way unless a rowdy party was involved. A quiet fire, far away from anything that could burn, was one of the necessary pleasures of living on an island like this. If you had to give up some of the conveniences of living on the mainland, at least you should be able to sit by the waterside, your eyes shifting between the rushing waves and the flickering flames, and reclaim some of your soul.

  It was one of the reasons that she had come back. The other was family. Not her parents, strangely. She loved them, but even before she had come back they were up and roaming. It was the solidity of Aunt Margery and her friends that had called to her. Also, the feeling that she had something similar in her friendships with Jo and Mickey: through thick and thin. After her broken romance with her ex, she figured out what was most important to her—friendship and loyalty.

  She had taken the long way to the beach in order to give her more time with her thoughts, but hadn’t thought of what it meant to walk with a blanket over her shoulders and a pair of sealed travel mugs in her hands. In short, the arrangement was too awkward for her to be able to put anything down and open a lid so she could drink tea while she walked. When she spotted the small bonfire on the beach she was glad to see it. She would hand Aunt Margery her mug, spread out the blanket, and drink her tea.

  Then she saw the silhouettes moving next to it and stopped just past the concrete dividers at the end of the parking lot.

  One of the silhouettes was Aunt Margery: short, round in the belly, a particularly rounded kind of walking. The other one was huge. Immense. Broad shoulders and slashing hand gestures.

  Raymond Quinn.

  The two of them argued by the fire, and stood closer together than they might have if they were only casual acquaintances.

  Angie watched them. She couldn’t hear everything they said, but snatches of their words carried up to her, almost preternaturally, as if she were watching a stage play from the back row.

  “Leave her alone,” her great-aunt snapped angrily.

  “I’ll do what I please.”

  “You always have, you great idiot. You’ve hurt more people than I can count doing it. You do what you like, though! That’s…” And then she muttered something that Angie couldn’t catch.

  “I’ll do what I please,” Quinn repeated stubbornly.

  “You’re only doing it to spite Snuock, and he’s dead!”

  Those words echoed clearly. Angie didn’t dare move.

  Quinn muttered something too quietly for Angie to hear.

  Aunt Margery turned toward the flames and poked them angrily with a thick branch of driftwood. “And then what? He’s just a boy, Quinn.”

  “Oh please.”

  “And you’re sleeping with his mother.”

  “Snuock’s taint hasn’t been on her for decades,” Quinn said. “He doesn’t own her. And now what can he do to her, from beyond the grave?”

  “But will you still feel that way when her alimony is cut off?”

  Quinn answered softly with a question that Angie didn’t catch.

  Aunt Margery snapped, “Yes, her alimony! Her big fat allowance! Or do you think that Snuock didn’t write a letter to his lawyers the day he suspected that the two of you were involved, stating that if anything should happen to him, Phyllis would be cut off from all funds?”

  Quinn shook his head angrily.

  Angie was dizzy with these new facts spinning in her mind. Phyllis Snuock had been sleeping with Raymond Quinn. Quinn was the lover? It made perfect sense to Angie now. The rent increase was a direct result of Quinn’s relationship with Phyllis. Walter had complained about trying to go between his parents, lest his father cut off his mother’s and his own funds. If this was the reason why, no wonder he was stressed. Snuock must have been furious.

  Quinn had
killed Snuock and set it up so that Walter would be blamed. And didn’t give a damn that the son of the woman he was seeing would take responsibility for a murder he had committed…

  Angie was horrified. She had wanted, almost wished, to find out that Quinn was the murderer, but—this was too much.

  How long had the affair been going on, anyway? Whose son was Walter? He was taller than his father had been…but so was Phyllis. If he were Quinn’s son then Quinn was just as cold-hearted as Snuock, unless he didn’t know that Walter was his son.

  Suddenly she noticed that Quinn was walking straight at her, storming away from the bonfire. Angie suppressed a yelp and backed away slowly, trying to keep a parked car between him and a clear view of her. Should she duck down?

  One of the streetlights lit up Quinn’s face. The streetlights. As long as she didn’t put one of the lights to her back, he shouldn’t be able to pick her out.

  She was lucky. Quinn didn’t see her, either because he was too involved with his own thoughts, or because she managed to stay crouched down in the shadows.

  Once he passed her, she turned tail and fled in the opposite direction, barely noticing where her feet took her.

  The next thing she knew—still wrapped in a blanket and clutching her mugs of tea—she was on the road to the lighthouse on Brandt Point, flashing its light in the darkness, with mansions to the left and right. Fortunately, the tide was out. She walked onto the beach, sat on her blanket, and stared at the waves for an hour, then got up to head back home.

  She took the longer way back so that she could look down at the children’s beach and see whether her aunt was still there. The fire had been put out.

  Angie put the two travel mugs on the concrete dividers, took the old picnic blanket off her shoulders and folded it over the other side of the divider. The night had grown much cooler, and she shivered before stepping onto the sand.

  Where she had seen the bonfire earlier, there was nothing but burnt wood and ashes. Aunt Margery was nowhere to be seen. For a moment, Angie thought about calling out her name. But of course she’d only gone home. She was perfectly safe and sound.

  Nevertheless, Angie looked across the beach for any suspicious shapes in the darkness. The night was a dark one, with clouds covering the sky, and she couldn’t make out much. Every time her eyes fastened on movement, it was a small bird wading in the shallows, or a wave that didn’t crash on the shore quite like the ones around it.

  No bodies.

  She closed her eyes and listened to the waves come in for a few minutes. It normally calmed her, but tonight it was only making her feel more tense. It felt like something was coming up behind her, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

  Quinn had been angry at her great-aunt. It had felt like a threat. She had to make sure that he hadn’t done something to her.

  Had they been friends, once upon a time?

  Someone had kicked sand over the fire to put it out; the ashes were still warm. Angie stood next to it to soak up what little heat was left. Go home and sleep or stay up all night? It had been ages since she’d done that. She needed a break. The days were starting to bleed together; she was that tired.

  Cupcakes.

  Ideas came at the most bizarre moments. That’s what the twins needed to do. Cupcakes.

  Angie had seen dozens of custom cupcake places out in Manhattan, but nobody on the island had caught up with the trend. She should talk to Mickey about them tomorrow. Something simple. He could make her a half-dozen cupcakes with tiny fondant books on top; a miniature teacup; the tiniest of strawberries; a cupcake with a cupcake on top. He wouldn’t have to make the same cupcakes, either. In fact it would be better if he didn’t.

  She picked up a stick from inside the fire and used it to doodle a picture of a cupcake with a tiny book on top. The stick snapped before she had finished. She reached for another one; this one tugged something along with it from the ashes.

  A piece of cloth.

  Strange. She pulled it out of the ashes. It was a piece of flowery fabric that had partially melted—definitely not cotton or silk. A blouse? A dress? She tried to use the stick to spread out the sandy, twisted piece, then knelt on the sand and used her hands. It was a dress, a floral paisley one, with a single ruffle along the neckline, and…spaghetti straps.

  One of Aunt Margery’s much regretted fashion mistakes? One of Phyllis’s old dresses, tossed away by Quinn? Where had Phyllis been, on the night of the third? Something tugged at Angie’s mind. Had she seen this dress before?

  #

  Angie kicked over the remains of the bonfire and scraped through them with a stick. She found a charred piece of cloth, but they were almost completely burnt away. She bit her lip. Either she wasn’t going to do this at all, or she was going to do it right.

  She broke up the burnt branches and tossed them in a garbage can, then kicked the ashes of the fire so that the sand wouldn’t clump together. The tide was rolling in, and the waterline was almost to the edge of the fire. It all would be washed away by morning.

  She lay the picnic blanket out on the sand, sat on it for a few minutes and drank both her tea and Aunt Margery’s. Then she got up, shook out the sand as best she could, and put the dress in the center.

  She could think of a thousand ways that this could go wrong. She was leaving physical evidence behind as well as acting suspiciously. There were a number of houses overlooking the beach.

  How many people were still awake? How many people had seen her?

  She didn’t dare to check her phone to find out the time. The lit phone screen would just be a tiny beacon saying, “Look at me, look at me!”

  She added the travel mugs to the bundle and wrapped it up in a compact package. She was trembling. Even if someone stopped to talk to her (at dark o’clock in the morning), the clothing was hidden well enough in the blanket that it wouldn’t be seen.

  She crossed her fingers and started walking back.

  The wind had died down and it was quiet. Even the random fireworks explosions that had been going off for the last week had stopped.

  Please let everyone be asleep.

  #

  Angie made a point to kick off her sandy shoes outside the back door. Next to them was a pair of Aunt Margery’s sandals.

  Would she be up or wouldn’t she?

  Angie remembered one of the few times that she’d stayed out later than she’d realized as a teenager. She’d come home to find her parents both sound asleep and had been deeply, deeply shocked. She could have died for all they knew—she could have been dead for hours before they’d found out. Her heart had raced.

  Jo and Mickey would have given their left eyes for a mother that would have hounded them less than Dory did. But then Dory had had her twins later in life and had treated them like her precious diamonds, treasure that had to be protected from the thieves and con artists of the world. The fact that her daughter, especially, could be one of those con artists seemed to be lost on her. In fact, it had been Jo that Angie had been out with that night when she’d come home so late.

  In the morning, Angie’s mother had said, “Everything go all right last night?”

  Angie broke. If she had any intention of lying to her parents, her willpower snapped at the first sleepy pre-coffee yawn.

  “I’m so sorry! I was having fun at a party and I forgot—”

  Her mother pulled her daughter in and kissed her on the head. “Everyone has to have adventures sometime,” she said. “Just remember, don’t drink anything that you didn’t pour yourself. Never take any drugs that you didn’t buy.”

  “Mom!”

  Her mother made an evil chuckle. “We weren’t worried. We knew you were with Mickey and Jo.”

  Angie’s eyes had bulged. “But—”

  They were the ones who had helped her get in trouble.

  Her mother said, “Just imagine if someone tried to take advantage of you when either of them were around.”

  Her father, who had
yet to say a word, snorted into his coffee and walked off with the newspaper.

  Aunt Margery, on the other hand, had words with Angie the next morning. She’d always compensated for Angie’s parents’ carefree discipline by reminding her that the world was not so forgiving.

  Angie took a deep breath, fumbled for her keys, and unlocked the back door. Awkwardly, she let herself in while trying to wipe the last of the sand off the bottoms of her feet.

  The lights were off in the kitchen, but…she knew that Aunt Margery was awake. How Angie knew, she didn’t know. But the whole house felt expectant.

  She yawned so hard that her jaws creaked then she put the blanket carefully in the sink, taking the two travel mugs out and leaving them on the side. She walked through the tiny door to the utility room and put the blanket into the dirty-clothes basket.

  What to do with the burnt dress?

  She took off her sandy pants and socks, dumped them in the wash and started it. With the rush of water to help cover any delays or unexpected sounds, she pulled a heavy freezer bag out of its box on the shelves next to the door and put the burnt clothing scraps inside. She picked out as much as she could, leaving only ash behind. Then she put the blanket in the wash and dropped the lid.

  She checked her hands for soot, opened the lid of their tiny standalone freezer, pulled out a bag of frozen burritos, and dropped the clothing under the bag of burritos. After a moment, she took two of the burritos out of the bag.

  Yawning, she walked back into the dark kitchen. A dark silhouette stood in the doorway.

  Angie startled, slapping her hand to her chest.

  Aunt Margery.

  “What are you doing putting laundry on before sunrise?” said Aunt Margery.

  “You shouldn’t lurk in dark doorways.” Angie could feel her pulse racing. “I tried to find you out on the beach and bring you some tea so we could watch for pirates together…but you were busy. So I doubled back and went out by the lighthouse instead.”