Prize and Prejudice

by Miranda Sweet

  “That’s true.”

  “If he did, then at least you’d have the time he registered.”

  “That’ll be my next stop.”

  The detective walked her back to the funeral home parking lot before taking her to her car. As he dropped her off, he said, “Go home and get some sleep, Angie. We’ll try not to disturb you too much tomorrow, but I’m sure it’s going to be a tiring day. You remember the questions that I had to ask you when Mr. Snuock passed in July. We’ll have to go over everything all over again, in even more detail.”

  “I remember,” she said.

  “And I know you’re going to be curious, but please don’t follow me to the Chamber building. Those folks have had a rough time this last week or so, trying to keep up with the tourists coming in.”

  “Their coffee maker and their registration computer went down,” she said.

  “At their wit’s end,” Detective Bailey said. “And that was before one of the tourists died. I guess they’re past their wit’s end by now.”

  Chapter 7

  On the Hunt

  When Angie walked through the back door, Aunt Margery was waiting for her with a hug and some cocoa. That brought tears to her eyes all over again. It was stupid. She didn’t even know who Reed’s nearest family member was. Would they travel to the island for the body, or just have it shipped to the mainland? Would anyone contact her about the funeral? Would she even be invited?

  She wasn’t going to be able to say goodbye. Or thank you. Or anything else she needed to say.

  “Was it an accident?” Aunt Margery asked.

  Angie had somehow been transported from the kitchen door to the living room, where she was now wrapped up in an old quilt.

  “They don’t know yet. But he had a terrible bruise on his forehead. He could have slipped and fallen.”

  “Do you think that’s what happened?”

  “I just don’t know, Aunt Margery. Part of me wants to think, ‘oh, this was clearly a murder case,’ so I have an excuse to track down someone and pin the blame on them. But I think what I really want are answers. You hear people say that, you know? ‘I just want to know what happened.’ But it’s true. That’s really all I want right now.”

  Aunt Margery said, “I know what you mean.”

  “We’re nosy, that’s what you mean.”

  “That, too.” She leaned back in her calico-covered armchair and sipped some tea. “I know this is the last thing on your mind right now, but what do you think Reed was going to tell you? Maybe he had a clue about the painting?”

  “I really don’t know. He mentioned something about imposters, but I’m not sure what that means. I just can’t believe he’s really gone.”

  “You said he was an art history professor. If there’s one thing a historian hates, it’s not knowing what really happened. I wonder if he found some historical inaccuracies in the Chamber of Commerce’s information about the painting.”

  “Historians are nosy,” Angie said, a small smile stealing across her face as she remembered her many conversations with Reed, “and a factual inaccuracy would be too much for him to bear. It’s possible.”

  “That’s why the two of you got along so well together,” Aunt Margery said, “both nosy, and both focused on the facts.”

  “You’ve never met him.”

  “And yet I’ve heard all your stories,” she pointed out. “I feel like I know him, at least a little.”

  Opening the bookstore the next morning was harder than she had expected. Not only was she sleep-deprived, but her grief exhausted her. She had trouble keeping her eyes open.

  Of course the gossip had already made the rounds by the time she unlocked the front door and let her early-morning gentlemen in. She could feel their eyes on her, as if probing for answers that she didn’t have. They did ask her if she was indeed Reed’s friend. She oversimplified and said “yes.”

  And drank a lot of coffee.

  Jo stopped by and watched the front of the store for half an hour while Angie took a 20-minute power nap to refresh herself. On waking she looked around the stock area. The shelves in the back were heavy-gauge wire soldered onto sturdy frames, and they were crowded with cardboard boxes and mail bins full of books. The books were all new—she didn’t take used books yet. If she had, this room would be twice as packed and she’d have to hire another assistant just to handle buying books. She did hope to expand into buying and selling used books someday, though. It would be a way to help recycle the books around the island. Her heart skipped a beat every time she saw anything even remotely resembling a book in the trash. It was like seeing an abandoned corpse.

  She got up and splashed water on her face.

  As she looked in the mirror, she saw black circles under her eyes. She’d promised herself that she’d never get involved in another murder mystery again. No more murders. She’d told herself she didn’t have time to deal with anything like that.

  But if she didn’t, who would?

  The police, obviously. But she just couldn’t help but feel like Detective Baily, who was only five years older than she was, would have the experience to solve the case. Generally deaths on the island involved tourists doing something stupid. Say the coroner did decide that Reed’s death had been a murder. What then? They would comb the area for witnesses who had been watching Children’s Beach at eleven p.m. or so on a cold, wet night.

  So, nobody.

  And the body…and Reed might not have been dropped into the water anywhere near Children’s Beach. It could have been anywhere up-current along the harbor. He could have been out along the wharves talking to someone, or on a boat even.

  Detective Bailey would be thorough. He would ask everyone. He would make sure that everyone had an alibi, and that their stories all matched up.

  He would do the boring work that was always taken for granted.

  Angie was gripping the sides of the sink as tightly as she could. Good grief, what was she thinking? That Detective Bailey, who seemed to have the investigation well in hand, was too stupid to figure out who the murderer was? Or that it even was a murder?

  Come to think of it, why was she so sure that it was a murder? Just a little while ago, she’d been mostly convinced that it was an accident.

  The missing clue, she realized. Reed had wanted to tell her something over dinner. Something about imposters, something about documents...She would never be able to talk to Reed again, but maybe she could find the documents he spoke of in his email. He could have just dropped them into the water—that is, if he’d been walking along one of the wharves with them held in his hand, dangling over the water like a complete idiot.

  Which Reed was not.

  He would have been carrying it in that soft-sided briefcase that he almost always had with him, on a strap over his shoulder.

  The bag might have slipped over his head and into the water. But Detective Baily had said that he had still had his wallet—that’s how they had known his name in the first place. But not the bag. And what about his phone?

  She called the police station from inside the bathroom and left a message for Detective Bailey to call her when he had a chance. She didn’t want to be suspicious of everything and everyone, and yet a chill was spreading through her. She’d slipped into analyst mode: Where were the holes? What could she take advantage of? Who were her competitors?

  She left the back room and thanked Jo, who gave her a sidelong look. She leaned in close and murmured in Angie’s ear. “It was murder, wasn’t it?”

  Angie pressed her lips together and didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Jo read the look on her face.

  “Lips zipped,” she said.

  “Don’t say anything to anyone about the attic,” Angie said.

  Jo’s pressed her mouth into a thin line. She nodded and left.

  Angie put on a mask of good cheer and served her customers, but her mind was racing all the while. Reed’s murder was related to the treasure hunt. She was sure of that much.
If the mystery were easy to solve, Detective Bailey would solve it. At the very least, he would burn through the thousand and one questions to be asked faster than she could. But if the slow-moving machine of police procedure wasn’t enough, she could fill in the gaps with her own investigations. She would leave Detective Bailey alone to handle the methodical, straightforward angle, and she would tackle the mystery from a different direction.

  She would come at it from the treasure-hunting angle. Maybe Reed hadn’t come to the island specifically for the treasure hunt, but his “quest” must have been related to it, at least.

  Find the painting, work backward to Reed’s clue, find out who would be hurt by that clue becoming public, and voila, one murderer, served up on a platter.

  It all seemed so simple.

  Captain Parfait came out of hiding and started inspecting her regulars, who were all surprised but delighted. He ignored their attempts to pet him and stalked the store as though he were pursuing mice. Sometimes he even dropped into a crouch and rocked his hindquarters back and forth as if he were just about to pounce.

  The humans in the building couldn’t sense that anything had changed, but Captain Parfait could tell.

  She was going on the hunt.

  Marlee Ingersoll stopped by with Angie’s coffee pots at about seven. “They’re out again,” she said.

  “No replacement coffee maker?”

  “They’re bringing one over on the twelve o’clock Steamship Express. But they can’t buy it until the stores open, and then they have to drive to the ferry, and then it has to come over on the ferry, and by then everyone will be insane.”

  Angie couldn’t disagree with her.

  “Getting more coffee is not a problem,” she said firmly. “How is everyone this morning?”

  “Jasper still hasn’t fixed the computer this morning. He was up all night working on it.”

  “Poor Jasper.”

  “He was really mad this morning, too. Apparently the police interrupted him, because they…” her voice dropped into a whisper, “…found that body in the harbor last night, did you hear?”

  “Yes,” Angie said. It was a sign of how overburdened the staff was at the Chamber of Commerce that they didn’t know of Angie’s friendship with Reed yet. She probably should have said something, but she just couldn’t.

  “It was terrible,” Marlee said, sounding as if she found it all more exciting than otherwise. “The man probably just fell off one of the boardwalks and drowned. I don’t know why they had to talk to us. They talked to everyone else this morning, as if they were trying to imply that someone killed him. I live on the west side of the island with my parents, so I’m in the clear. Carol was on the phone with her friend from Boston,” Marlee waggled her eyebrows, “and they can check the phone records on that, and Tabitha went to the Shuckery. She said she saw you there, too, so I guess you’re off the hook, too.”

  Angie sent her off with two fresh pots of coffee, thinking hard.

  After Marlee left, more tourists started coming in. It was still slower than it had been on Monday or Tuesday, but busier than Wednesday had been.

  At eight-thirty, the fellowship of retired gentlemen finished their coffee, newspapers, and gossip, and decided to move along to bigger and better things—coffee, cards, dominoes, and more gossip. She told them all to be careful outside. The mist had continued throughout the night without freezing, but the temperature was forecasted to drop throughout the day. After sunset, the wind was supposed to pick up considerably, and if the mist continued, the islanders could be looking at icy roads, downed powerlines, and collapsed branches tomorrow morning.

  Her gentlemen all took daily walks, even in the worst weather. She lived in fear that one of them was going to break a hip or something on their way to or from the bookstore.

  Walter called soon afterward. He was aware of her customers’ habits and knew just when the store was most likely to experience a lull.

  “I heard,” he said without preamble.

  “Oh, Walter. I’m so glad you called.”

  “I can’t believe you opened the store today.”

  “I had to. I have customers and employees who depend on me.

  “Are you doing all right?”

  “For the most part? I guess I am. I’m tired, though.”

  “Of course you’re tired, Angie,” he said. “A friend just died and you barely got any sleep last night. Plus the shock and grief take a toll. I remember when Dad died. I was walking around so exhausted all the time.”

  Angie felt a rush of affection surge through her. It felt good to have Walter’s support.

  “What happened?” Walter asked.

  “He seems to have slipped and fallen,” Angie said.

  “Did the police say that?”

  “They said they were investigating.”

  “So they’re treating it as suspicious.”

  Angie looked around the store. There were only a handful of customers milling around at the moment, and none of them seemed to need assistance. She leaned against the espresso machine counter and said, “I can tell you something and you’ll be discreet about it, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She told him about Reed’s plans to come to the island, meet her for supper, and share some documents with her, and explain his mysterious quest. She described how careful and considerate Reed had been, and how unlike him it would be to willingly stand her up without contacting her. She explained the absence of Reed’s briefcase, despite the presence of his wallet, and noted how strange it would have been for him to lose or leave behind an item he had promised to show her.

  “Hm,” Walter said. “That makes me wonder.”

  “What?”

  “Why he didn’t call you earlier, if he died at eleven p.m.”

  She had no answer for that.

  After a pause, Walter said, “I know this is hard, Angie. I’ll be back soon.”

  “When?”

  “In time for the gala. I hope late tonight or early tomorrow morning. I’ll call when I get on the ferry.”

  She had completely forgotten about the gala, which was to be held at the Whaling Museum on Friday night. The museum was the centerpiece of the Nantucket Historical Association. In addition to its usual array of exhibits, including the full-sized sperm whale skeleton hanging in the main gallery, the building was currently well-decorated with Christmas trees sponsored by local businesses.

  Angie and the twins had discussed sponsoring a joint tree, but hadn’t been able to get the approval they needed for Mickey’s ideas, which involved a lot of frosting on styrofoam shapes as ornaments. The tree that Angie and Aunt Margery had at home was decorated with several sugar egg ornaments that had been in the family for over fifty years, so Angie hadn’t seen a problem with the frosting idea. But the association had made a valid point: the last thing they needed at the museum was mice.

  Angie had taken the opportunity to set up a holiday-themed book tree, with huge coffee table books at the bottom, cookbooks in the center, novels above that, and kids’ board books at the top. She arranged a few strings of white LED lights around the tree, and added an angel on top. The angel’s harp had been removed and replaced with a miniature copy of Pride and Prejudice and a teensy pair of wire eyeglasses had been placed on her nose. The bookworm angel. Back at the store, she’d changed her “bestseller” rack over to a “Found on the Whaling Museum Book Tree!” rack. Done and done.

  She wasn’t involved in preparations for the gala, thank goodness. The bakery would provide sweets, Sheldon would handle the cash bar, and Aunt Margery had written most of the souvenir program, but Angie’s contribution began and ended with the book tree.

  Still, that really wasn’t much of an excuse for completely forgetting it.

  She had already picked out a dress and a backup dress, tried them both on, and decided that she could live with the fact that she wasn’t the pencil-legged waif of her high school years. She had also planned out her hairstyle a
nd makeup for the evening and done a test run of both. In short, she had generally overthought every possible aspect of appearing in public with Walter.

  He’d be back tonight or early tomorrow morning.

  Angie’s thoughts turned back to the conversation they had just had. Like Walter had said, why hadn’t Reed called her earlier if he hadn’t died until eleven p.m.?

  A pair of customers bustled through the door. As she drew closer, she realized they were the Beauchamps. Angie greeted them warmly, still sticking to her policy of pretending that she had somehow missed the disturbing conversation they’d had the previous morning. She prepared their usual orders—coffee with lots of cream and sugar for him, and plain black for her.

  “Any pastries?” she asked.

  Mrs. Beauchamp gave her a broad smile. “No.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Beauchamp. “You need to eat.”

  “I don’t need to eat pastry.” Mrs. Beauchamp turned to Angie, her face a mask of embarrassment. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” she said.

  “You didn’t eat anything at all this morning at the hotel.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “If you pass out from low blood sugar, you have only yourself to blame.”

  Mrs. Beauchamp turned to Angie. “I do not have diabetes. Charles, please stop confusing this young lady and pay the bill.”

  “Even if you’re not having a pastry, I am,” he announced. “That one.”

  He jabbed a finger toward the glass. Angie got the sense that his selection had nothing to do with what he liked or didn’t like. He had chosen the biggest pastry in the case, a large twisted Danish with orange peel and cardamom icing.

  They both watched Angie put the Danish on a plate, then put it in the toaster oven to heat. Mrs. Beauchamp licked her lips. Angie cleaned the countertops behind her as she waited for the pastry, sure that the two retirees were giving each other challenging looks behind her back.

  When the timer went off, Angie pulled the pastry out and put it on the glass countertop of the bakery case.