Crime and Nourishment_A Cozy Mystery Novel

by Miranda Sweet

  The pages accused Walter’s father of having driven several of his competitors out of business by controlling property tax assessments in Nantucket, establishing a monopoly on the ferry lines (Angie had had no idea that he owned them in the first place), and other underhanded tricks.

  Alexander Snuock might not be a murderer or cannibal on the level of Captain John F. Prouty, the authors noted, but if the rumors were correct, then he might be considered as part of the long tradition of pirates on Nantucket.

  Ugh.

  What had Phyllis even been trying to tell her? What was “the truth” that Angie was supposed to discover inside it.

  And who was this David Dane? Angie had never heard of him.

  She longed to call up her great-aunt and ask—of course Aunt Margery would have been on the island when the book was published and had to know all about it—but she couldn’t. Not when there wasn’t a single returned call or text on Angie’s phone.

  And not while Aunt Margery refused to talk about whether she had been involved in a murder.

  #

  Jo showed up for lunch at one o’clock; a few customers were still in the store. Angie handed her The Little Grey Lady of the Sea and told her about the confrontation with Phyllis.

  “Honestly, it was one of the strangest things that I’ve ever had happen to me,” Angie said.

  Jo frowned. “Imagine being Walter and growing up with that. I have to wonder why someone like Alexander Snuock would have married her in the first place, let alone paid her upkeep and maintenance after they divorced and Walter was on his own. It had to be the sex.”

  “Josephine!”

  “Well? It’s the most logical reason.”

  Angie stared off into the bookracks, thinking about Snuock and the books he liked. “It makes sense to me,” she said. “Snuock was a collector.”

  “He collected her?”

  “No…or maybe? Kind of? He could have had any woman he wanted, well, any woman who could be swayed by a lot of money. And there are plenty of them. He could have picked a blonde bombshell. But that would have been too straightforward and easy. See, he liked to read about, oh, eccentric people. Like the inventor Tesla; he went through a Tesla phase a few years ago. And the Russians, who spent whole centuries impaling their enemies and enslaving peasants.”

  Jo laughed. “He would have done that, too, if he could have gotten away with it.”

  “I don’t know. He was more about the psychological torture. I see him more in the CIA during the Cold War.”

  “Was he in the CIA during the Cold War?”

  “Sure, why not,” Angie said. “I’m surprised that the author of The Little Grey Lady of the Sea didn’t include it. Did you see what he said about my great-grandfather?”

  “No!”

  “Anyway, he probably honed in on Phyllis because he sensed an opportunity to exploit and torture.” She thought about it some more, and a wry smile crossed her lips. “Or maybe it’s like you said: mind blowing sex!”

  “Miss Agatha Prouty, you didn’t!” Jo mocked, slapping her hand against a shocked expression on her face.

  The last of the customers checked out; Angie closed up the shop and the two of them drove over to Sheldon’s for lunch.

  The host showed them to a table in a back corner where they could have a private discussion, their backs to the wall and a clear “moat” of empty tables surrounding them. Most of the customers had been moved to the patio outside. It was a beautiful day.

  “So,” Jo said.

  “So,” Angie replied. It was time for the hard part of the conversation to come out. She told Jo about finding Aunt Margery on the children’s beach with Quinn, their discussion, and Angie’s flight to the lighthouse when it seemed like Quinn was walking straight toward her…then her return to the children’s beach, the idea about the cupcakes, and finding the dress inside the fire.

  “That’s a good idea about the cupcakes,” Jo said. “I’ll talk to Mickey about it.”

  “Thank you,” Angie said. “I tried to tell you about it earlier—”

  “But you weren’t making sense. At all.” Jo leaned back. “And finding the dress in the fire…not too shabby Detective Prouty.” Jo winked.

  Angie continued her story. “…and then I wrapped the dress up in the blanket and took it home.” She told her about the freezer bag, then transferring the dress to the bubble-wrap mailer at the bookstore and leaving it without an address.

  “Very nice,” said Jo. “If I ever need someone to hide evidence for me, you’re my first choice.”

  “Thanks.”

  They paused for a moment while the waiter came over and told them the day’s specials. They already knew what they wanted and so ordered right away.

  When he left, Jo leaned across the table and whispered. “And what did you say to Aunt Margery that set her off so badly?”

  Angie whispered back, “I asked her why she’d tried to burn the clothing in the bonfire, and told her that I’d seen that the dress was stained with blood. And that I’d heard her and Quinn and knew that Quinn was sleeping with Phyllis.”

  Jo sank back into her chair. “If I didn’t know you, I’d say that you have no idea how to play poker. You don’t just show all your cards like that.”

  “You do,” Angie insisted, “if you’re trying to find out whether your great-aunt needs help getting off a murder or accessory to murder rap. She’s not my enemy. She’s supposed to be my ally. This was supposed to be more like bridge than poker.”

  “Okay, I can see that. What you did makes more sense. I just normally think in terms of not telling everyone everything.”

  Angie coughed. “Like picking up strangers on the fourth of July…”

  “Ha, ha.” Jo smirked. “Back to business: you haven’t heard from Aunt Margery since your conversation?”

  “Nope.”

  “Hmm. She has to know that you wouldn’t just run straight to the cops to turn her in. Besides she knows people on the police force and that you haven’t said anything. Otherwise, she’d be in the can with Walter Snuock.”

  Angie pictured Walter in his orange scrubs, like a criminal in a TV crime drama, and cringed. Then she imagined her great-aunt in the same get-up. Not a good look, not an option. “Then why hasn’t she called me back?”

  “Indeed, why hasn’t she called you back? I have no idea. Unless she really was involved somehow, and wants to make sure that you’re not implicated if she gets caught.”

  Angie dug her nails into her palms. “She kind of said as much.”

  Jo didn’t answer. A moment later their food arrived. The subtle smell of grilled fish wafted from their plates. Wind chimes on the patio sounded in the breeze.

  They finished their meal more or less in silence, keeping mainly to small talk. Angie was so preoccupied she barely noticed the taste of her food. “I should check on Walter,” she said, “but I think that by the time I close up the shop for the day, visiting hours will be over.”

  “Then don’t open the shop up again. Just close it.”

  “During the middle of summer?” She felt scandalized.

  “Don’t tell me that you’re that broke,” Jo said.

  “No, but…”

  “But you want to sit on your hoard of emergency money forever, just in case an emergency happens. Hello. What constitutes an emergency? Your great-aunt might be involved in a murder, an old friend is in jail for it, even when he’s innocent, and you’re planning to work twelve-hour days while trying to solve the case so that you can prove Walter’s innocence and protect your great-aunt in the process. You see my point, don’t you?”

  Angie had to concede. “Yes, I do. Maybe I’ll close the shop.” She gazed out toward the patio; some clouds had descended on the shore and she couldn’t distinguish between them and the ocean. “Maybe there’s a perfectly innocent explanation for Aunt Margery’s actions.”

  Jo rolled her eyes. “There isn’t, Angie. There is no innocent explanation for her actions. None.
You do not burn bloody clothing while arguing with a guy that you had an affair with decades ago and who had a nearly life-long feud with the murder victim. You just don’t. It might not be murder, but it’s not innocent.”

  As if on cue, Sheldon appeared on the far side of the dining room, looked at the two of them, and began to walk over. If he stopped to talk to a few of the other customers and make sure they had no complaints, he still seemed in Angie’s mind to be pursuing them as directly as a shark.

  “What did the two of you talk about?” Angie asked Jo.

  “I think he’s here to talk about that himself.”

  Sheldon approached the table. The broad grin that he had had on his face as he was speaking to his other customers had vanished once he was out of their sight. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his pants and he was jingling his keys nervously.

  Their table was a four-top; he pulled out a chair and sat on Angie’s other side.

  “So,” he said.

  Angie resisted the urge to say something smart. “I’ve told Josephine everything I know,” she said.

  “And now it’s my turn,” Sheldon said.

  “Okay,” said Angie.

  “What I know is that your great-aunt would never wish to see you hurt,” he said. “ Look, they don’t tell me everything. I’m just little old Sheldon, the kid who grew up two years younger than they were, and who never quite fit in with their circle. I liked to cook, you see. I didn’t read all the books. The five of them, they were obsessed.”

  “The five of them?”

  “Oh, yes,” Sheldon said. “Didn’t you know? It started out when they were all very young, in Kindergarten. They used to all be friends. They were friends for a long time, too, no matter what they say now: Your Aunt Margery, Josephine’s mother Dory, their best friend Ruth, Raymond Quinn, and Alexander Snuock. None of the rest of us could break into that circle—even the ones who were in the same grade, like Phyllis. Oh, yeah, she’s an islander, too, and the one who eventually caught Alexander Snuock, as you know.”

  “Eventually?” Angie said.

  Sheldon tapped the side of his nose. “All of them denied it, but we all knew there was some kind of hanky-panky going on. Who was with whom at any given moment, nobody knew. But you couldn’t miss that there was drama going on. And then suddenly Raymond Quinn and Dory Jerritt got engaged. You couldn’t miss that.”

  “Engaged?” Angie asked. A glance at Jo earned her a puzzled shrug. She’d have to find out the details later. “I saw a picture on Ruth’s back wall of Quinn and Dory together in front of his boat.”

  “Sure,” Sheldon said. “I’ve seen it, too. But not six weeks later the engagement was over, friendships shattered forever, and Alexander Snuock was enemy number one.”

  “The way they tell it, it sounds like they were enemies long before that.”

  “They,” Sheldon said, “can tell the story however they want. But if you were to look at the old high school yearbook photos, it would tell a different story. Their junior year they were all in Miss Mark’s literary club and in the same photo. Have Ruth show you that one. They’re all standing around hugging each other with stupid grins on their faces.”

  Sheldon probably had a bit of a chip on his shoulder for being left out—but at least his childhood jealousies had worked out in the end. He was the one who was happily married, to his gorgeous, tall, and funny French wife. They had been together for almost forty years.

  The rest of them? Not so much with the marital bliss.

  Sheldon gave her a few seconds, then added: “So you see what I’m saying?”

  Angie shook her head. It was hitting her too hard that her Aunt Margery had been withholding so much, and what that might mean for a murder investigation.

  “If Alexander Snuock had to have opened the gate for his murderer to someone who was both close enough to him to get him to open the gate, and yet might have a personal motive to kill him, it was one of them all right.”

  The stunned look on Angie’s face must have satisfied him. He leaned back and glanced over the table. “Don’t worry about paying for this. I’ve got your tab.”

  “Thank you,” Angie said, almost too quietly for her to hear her own voice.

  Then Sheldon spotted the book, The Little Grey Lady of the Sea. “I see you’ve found her book,” he said. “That old thing. We used to keep a rack of them for the tourists.”

  “Her book?” Angie asked. “I thought it was written by a David Dane.”

  “A David Dane who knows this much local gossip? Please,” Sheldon said. “The only people who know this much about the town—and I’m not saying that it’s all true—is that circle of five. They spent a lot of time researching every horrible thing that ever might have happened in the town’s history. Of course by the time it was published, Snuock had been out of the group for a long time, so he got splattered with some of the mud. But the original research? They all did it together in high school, during Miss Mark’s class. They were going to write ghost stories set on the island, a whole book of them, all five of them taking turns.”

  “So who did write the book?” Angie asked.

  “Why, your Aunt Margery,” Sheldon said. “Cover to cover. With Dory and Ruth’s help as editors, probably. But your great-aunt was always the one with the best turn of phrase in the group.”

  “She says that my great-grandfather was a cannibal!”

  Sheldon said, “You might try asking her sometime where she came up with that idea…one of his journals, I think. That is, when all of this has blown over and you are speaking again.”

  Chapter 12

  Lies and Misdirection

  She went back to the bookstore and opened up again, feeling disoriented. Too many of her personal anchors had been cut; she was adrift on a sea that stretched backward for decades. The bookstore stayed quiet, with only a few customers drifting in off the sidewalk. The day was fresh and sunny, yet not that hot, and everyone had gone down to the beach. She couldn’t blame them.

  From what Sheldon had said, and what Angie had found under the bonfire, and what she had heard between her great-aunt and Quinn, she couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that Raymond Quinn and her great-aunt had shot Alexander Snuock, just as she had imagined it. Now it was time to start sorting out how to shift the blame away from her great-aunt.

  If it had been an accident, maybe the best solution was for her to come clean to the police, get charged with manslaughter and go to prison.

  Aunt Margery in prison.

  Angie shook her head. If that had been what Aunt Margery had wanted—if she had come to Angie saying that she wanted to confess—then Angie would have gone along with it. As it was, it was clear that Aunt Margery did not want to confess, and she wouldn’t be turning herself over to the police.

  Which meant that Angie would have to back her up on that, somehow.

  If Aunt Margery couldn’t be guilty, then who could?

  Raymond Quinn could be guilty—except that Aunt Margery hadn’t stepped forward to point the finger at him, either. The two of them might not still be seeing each other, but from their conversation on the beach, Angie could only think that their friendship had endured and Aunt Margery felt loyal to him.

  Angie wasn’t going to let them leave the finger pointed at Walter. That was right out. She wasn’t having it: Walter was part of her set, and Angie had every right to defend him, even if she hadn’t seen him for almost twenty years.

  Who did that leave?

  The finger had to be pointed at someone, but who was left? Dory and Ruth were out of the question. If Angie attempted to point a finger at them, and she wouldn’t, her Aunt Margery would surely never talk to her again. But someone had to take the fall, the police weren’t going to suddenly change their minds and say that Snuock had killed himself with his own antique gun, playing Russian roulette or something.

  Valerie?

  Angie’s stomach clenched. No, she couldn’t do that to Valerie, either. Even if sh
e could figure out a way to do it…she couldn’t. Valerie had had to put up with Snuock for years. She didn’t deserve to get blamed for his death.

  Someone would have to be blamed. Someone would have to be pushed out of the shadows and take their spot as the murderer.

  The only logical person left was her, Angie.

  She sighed and rubbed her hand over her face. She had had a good night’s sleep the previous night, against all her expectations, but she still felt exhausted, like she was walking through a dream.

  Even if she walked up to the police station and confessed to the killing of Alexander Snuock, describing how the two of them had, she didn’t know, fought over the payment for a book or something, wrestling over the gun until it had gone off, killing Snuock…

  …nobody would believe her. Because she was Angie Prouty, owner of Pastries & Page-Turners, one of the “staying” Proutys that came back to the island and never left again, who never did anything wrong.

  She could be a serial killer for all anyone would ever suspect. She shuddered. Not that she ever would. That would be terrible. But if she wanted to…she would never get caught.

  She struck the sinister thought from her mind. This whole murder case was taking a toll on her.

  She closed up an hour early. She wanted to talk to Walter again, but wasn’t ready. There were too many things that he needed to know and that she needed to say, but couldn’t, not at the police station, in front of witnesses.

  And there were other things she needed to do before then, anyway.

  First: a visit to Ruth’s shop.

  Ruth always closed at nine; therefore, Angie closed at eight and slipped out her back door by eight-thirty. She let herself in Ruth’s back door and found her at the front counter, putting price tags on genuine Hawaiian shirts—which were more expensive than Angie would have guessed, by a factor of five to ten. Angie would have understood if they were first editions, but shirts? She just had to take Ruth’s pricing ability on faith.