Prize and Prejudice

by Miranda Sweet

  She wished she had more information about Reed from Harvard. Another source of information that she couldn’t access. Did he have any colleagues on the island? Old college friends? A distant cousin?

  She just wanted to know what had happened. No, scratch that. She wanted justice to be done. She wanted Reed’s killer caught, even if it broke her heart to find out that it was someone she knew.

  Where was Reed’s luggage? Had it ended up in the harbor? Had it sunk to the bottom or floated out to the ocean?

  She hated this. She rubbed her forehead. Reed’s death had better be over something important. A love affair, an old score to settle, a forged painting…something. If it was over the treasure hunt? She didn’t know if she could take it. A painting was just a thing. Money shouldn’t justify a death. It was a terrible thought. No, she decided, she could only take it if Reed’s death was an accident or a crime of passion—something she could comprehend. A broken heart, revenge, wounded pride, the sense that one had been kicked out of a place where one belonged. Fame, even. That she could take. But not money.

  The painting hadn’t even been found.

  The last prize of the night was the door prize. Reed read off a name, but no one claimed the prize. Then he drew another name. He laughed nervously. “Is this how it normally goes?” he asked Beatrice Solly. “I mean, door prizes? They’re supposed to be bribes to get people to stay until the end of the night.”

  More laughter. Walter Snuock made for a pretty decent MC, although clearly he would never be a professional comedian.

  “Just keep picking names. It’s all right.”

  Finally he said a name Angie recognized. “Wyatt Gilmore? Is Wyatt Gilmore here?”

  “I’m here.” Wyatt had been standing at the back of the room. He was dressed in black jeans and his leather jacket—although black tie wasn’t necessary, he did stand out amidst the formal gowns and tuxedos.

  “Congratulations,” Walter said heartily. “You have won…”

  He picked up a basket.

  “A collection of books about Nantucket,” Walter said. “Including a signed copy of The Little Grey Lady of the Sea: The Mysteries of Nantucket Island, by our own David Dane.”

  The locals who were in on the joke chuckled. “David Dane” was Aunt Margery, who had written the gossipy, sensationalist book years and years ago. It had acquired a kind of local infamy.

  “Unfortunately the author isn’t here to greet you tonight. The other titles in the basket include…” He began listing the rest of them off as Wyatt came to the front of the room.

  She had completely forgotten that she’d donated books for the gala. She’d thought they were going for the silent auction. But a lot of the silent auction items were in the three- and four-figure range; they must have decided to use her basket as the door prize so that it wouldn’t stand out so much. She hadn’t included anything collectible, like a signed first edition by someone famous—that would have made it something worth bidding on.

  She felt sorry for herself for a count of ten, then laughed it off. Next year she’d know better what the fundraising stakes were. If they did this again, that was.

  Wyatt reached the front of the room and accepted the basket. He spotted her and swerved to walk past her on the way back.

  “Psst,” he said. “Got a clue!”

  “Good for you!” she said.

  “Tell you about it in the morning,” he said. “You’ll be open?”

  “A little late, maybe,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of champagne. For me that is.”

  “You’ll be there early,” he said. “Just watch. You’ll wake up early worried that you’ve overslept.”

  She protested that she would do no such thing, and he grinned and walked back to his place in the shadows.

  The rest of the evening passed peacefully, winding down slowly but inevitably. Despite her earlier fatigue, Angie found herself reluctant to leave, especially after dancing with Walter again. Midnight came and went, and she didn’t turn into her usual pumpkin self. Maybe it was just that parties on the island were both rare and far more entertaining than the ones in Manhattan. The band packed up and went home, and a white-haired mainlander took over the piano, playing rollicking Hoagie Carmichael tunes with a sly wink. A woman in a slinky baby-blue dress went to the coat check for a fur stole, and leaned against the piano, fluttering her eyelashes. The piano player switched to torch songs, which the woman’s husky voice carried well. Then the pair switched off with Tabitha Crispin and a couple of the NHA members who sang show tunes.

  Angie sang herself hoarse, her sparkly silver shoes abandoned in a corner so she could dance barefoot on the museum floor. The sperm whale skeleton overhead had acquired a Santa hat hanging off its lower jaw, as well as a few pieces of tinsel. She finally called it a night at one in the morning. Some of the NHA members looked like they were digging in. It was pointless to try to keep up with them. This party was going to last until dawn.

  Walter walked her out to her car. Then he followed her home before driving across the island to Snuock Manor (which wasn’t really the name of his house even though everyone on the island called it that anyway).

  They must have spent five minutes kissing on her back porch. Only the fact that Aunt Margery was asleep in her room—or worse, not asleep in her room—kept Angie from inviting him in.

  Chapter 13

  The Other Luggage

  The next morning, Angie opened the bookstore early. She had slept for a few hours, then jerked awake in the dark, panicked that she’d overslept.

  Fat chance. Four-thirty a.m. seemed like nine. And once she was awake, she couldn’t get back to sleep.

  She laughed and got up, made a pot of coffee, and took a shower. She felt good—almost guiltily so. One of her friends had died, she hadn’t solved his murder, and she’d had a good night anyway. It felt like trying to cheat fate. Surely something terrible would happen in order to balance the scales.

  She whistled on the way in to work. Sunday morning. The store would either be dead because everyone was sleeping off the party, or it would be frantically busy as fate punished her for having such a good time.

  It felt as though fate would have to try really hard to catch her. She was flying high as a kite.

  The bookstore was fine. It hadn’t burned down in the middle of the night or anything like that. Captain Parfait was happy to see her and loudly requested his breakfast, in case she had gone deaf. She unlocked the back door. No sign of pastries yet. Suddenly she remembered that Jo would be gone today.

  She dialed the bakery, but hung up before Mickey could answer. He was probably going to try to do everything by himself this morning. She’d go over and pick up her own pastries this morning instead of expecting them to be delivered. Mickey and Jo didn’t really need to wait on her hand and foot.

  When she pulled up along the street behind the bakery, the lights were out. Worried, she walked up to the back door and cupped her hands around her face as she peered through the window.

  Nobody home.

  She called Mickey’s number. No answer.

  She called Jo’s number and left a message, then drove over to Mickey’s place; he was staying at his mom’s house for now.

  The lights were off there, too.

  Where else to look? She tried to remember when she had last seen him at the party. He had been standing with Walter the last time she remembered seeing him. He hadn’t been at the auction, or at least she didn’t think so. Where was his car? She hadn’t seen it at any of the places she’d looked for him. And it was too far to walk home. Maybe his car had died and he hadn’t wanted to bother anyone. He’d walked to Jo’s apartment, found her spare key, and let himself in. She’d check there next.

  Twenty minutes later, she was ready to tear her hair out. She had checked every place that opened early or that might have stayed open overnight. She had checked Sheldon’s. She hadn’t checked was Snuock Manor, but that was a half-hour drive, and why would he be there an
yway? He wasn’t some kind of jealous ex. He was Mickey.

  The bakery stayed dark and his phone went to voice mail.

  Angie’s heart was pounding with fear. Not again.

  Then she remembered that she hadn’t checked the area around the Whaling Museum.

  She wasn’t sure exactly where he had parked. The downtown area was not known for its plentiful parking spaces, and locals tended to walk everywhere, even in the winter.

  She drove slowly through the streets, looking for Mickey’s green Honda Civic. It was past time to open the store, and she was running out of patience. Maybe it was time to call the police.

  She slammed on the brakes.

  She’d glimpsed a green car through a gap in the trees. It looked like it was in a church parking lot, but there was no way to reach the lot from where she was. A row of houses blocked the way. She circled around what seemed like a maze of gray houses and narrow lanes, and finally pulled into the right parking lot.

  It was Mickey’s car, all right, with a dozen stickers in the corners of the rear window. “Give Whirled Peas a Chance.” Goofy stuff like that.

  She looked inside the car, half dreading that she would find a body inside.

  Nothing. Just a bunch of junk food wrappers on the floor in the back.

  She looked around. If you cut through a yard, then the distance from here to the Whaling Museum would be about three blocks. Cutting through yards was exactly the kind of thing Mickey would do, too. The parking lot didn’t have any cameras watching over it, unfortunately, and there was no one else parked there.

  Where was he?

  She drove past the bakery again. It was still closed, with no sign that Mickey had been there this morning. She called and left another message. Called Jo again. Then she drove back to the bookstore and opened up.

  Her stomach was in knots. She decided not to worry about finding replacement pastries.

  She saw a blinking red light on the phone next to the cash register. Voicemail? Angie couldn’t remember the last time someone left a voicemail on the phone at the store—most of the locals just called her cell phone and the tourists just stopped by.

  Angie pulled the phone off it’s cradle and put it between her shoulder and neck, then she punched the red button and listened to the voicemail.

  Angie? Hi, it’s Charles Beauchamp. We weren’t sure who else to call, but uh… Your friend Mickey is in the hospital. He’s okay, but he slipped on some ice last night and fell. What?.... Oh, right honey… Angie, my wife wants me to tell you that we would have called earlier, but the police wanted to question us, given her record… and uh, hang on…. she also wants me to tell you…

  Angie listened to the Beauchamps bicker for a full minute before the voicemail ended. She mentally kicked herself for not checking the hospital, but was happy that he was there, and not somewhere more sinister. She had lost enough friends for the year.

  She dialed the hospital and after a few short minutes, she was connected with Mickey’s room.

  “Angie! Sorry, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to get you pastries today,” said Mickey into the phone.

  “Mickey! I don’t care about that, I’m just glad you’re alright. How are you feeling? I’m coming over to see you right now.”

  “No, don’t come. I’m totally fine, it’s just a bump on the ol’ noggin. I’m a little woozy, but I should be out of here in time for the lunch rush. You need to stay at the bookstore; those treasure hunters won’t caffeinate themselves,” said Mickey with a laugh.

  Wyatt Gilmore came in at about nine. He smiled at her and said, “I was wrong. You slept in.”

  She shook her head. “I did wake up early. Four-thirty. But a friend of mine was missing, or so I thought. I went to look for him.”

  “Who, the man who was playing MC last night?”

  “Walter? No, this is someone else. One of the owners of the bakery. Mickey Jerritt.”

  “Mickey? That’s terrible! Any idea where he went?”

  “Yeah, I just found out he’s in the hospital. He fell on ice and hit his head last night, but I don’t think it’s too serious. He sounds fine.”

  “I’m glad it was nothing worse than that,” Wyatt said. Then after, after an awkward pause, he adds, “Can I tell you what I found out? I’m dying to tell someone.”

  “What?”

  “I did some research over the last few days, and I think I have the name of the mysterious lady—the woman who would have had been given the painting. I’ve narrowed it down to a few different people.”

  “Really? Who?”

  He beckoned to her, leading her away from the main floor to the doorway to the stock room as he lowered his voice. “Here’s what I’m thinking. The mysterious lover of Victor Nouges must have been a woman from a prominent family. Why else would she stay? If she didn’t have strong ties to the island, why wouldn’t she take off to follow her lover?”

  “Okay, sure. I guess I can buy that,” said Angie.

  “I did some data analysis on births and deaths, which got me a list of all wealthy families on the island. Wealthy families paid for birth certificates, but most working class families on the island didn’t back then. Then, I did some genealogy research at the library and cross referenced it with major land purchase transactions and shipping records. Only 3 families were involved in land transactions, shipping transactions and had published birth certificates. I looked at women from those families and I narrowed it down to Eliza Snuock, Madeline Lovill, or Delilah Crispin.”

  “Impressive work Wyatt!”

  “Thanks, I thought so.” Wyatt smiled and almost blushed at the compliment.

  “Eliza Snuock would be related to Walter,” Angie said. “I haven’t heard of any Lovills on the island. And there’s a Tabitha Crispin who lives here—she works at the Chamber of Commerce.”

  “I’ve met her,” Wyatt said. “Madeline Lovill lived here until midway through 1918, when she suddenly disappeared from the island, along with her maiden aunt. I tracked her down to a small town in upstate New York; she died in 1947.”

  “The painting disappeared in 1917,” Angie said, “and if she left only a year later, it can’t be her.”

  “Exactly,” Wyatt said. “One down, two to go.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Eliza Snuock married into the Churchill family in 1922,” Wyatt said.

  Angie clucked her tongue. She had only looked until 1920. “Long convalescence?”

  “She broke off an engagement in 1918, but got engaged again to the same man in 1921.”

  “That makes sense. Especially if there was suspicion about Victor Nouges.”

  “She died in 1953. So it’s possible, but if she married into the Churchills it’s unlikely that she stayed on the island. And we’re looking for someone who would have ties to the island so strong that even true love couldn’t make her leave.”

  “Aren’t you a romantic, Wyatt? But I see your point, we can rule out Eliza Snuock. And the third woman? Miss Crispin?”

  “An interesting story. Her fiancé died just after World War I in an influenza outbreak. Her family was wealthy enough to support her for the rest of her life. She was known to pace along the top of the family home’s widow walk until she was quite old. She passed in—wait for it—1983, aged eighty-seven.”

  “Wow.”

  “It was almost as though she were waiting for someone to return to her from the sea.”

  “But he never did.”

  “Victor Nouges never did, at any rate. Miss Crispin’s family was important enough that she wouldn’t have left, and we know for a fact that she never did leave, hence the articles about her on the widow walk.”

  “From the love letters, she did sound pretty bitter by the end. It’s far from proof, but it’s a great theory,” Angie said, more to herself than to him. “Wait! I have something for you.”

  She booted up the front desk computer and pulled up the typed copy of the letter from the An Old-Fashioned
Romance collection.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  She explained about the book that had been in Reed’s briefcase.

  “You’re right, she does sound bitter,” Wyatt agreed after reading. “Well, the next step is to start digging into what properties the different families owned around the island. If I can build a matrix of the Crispin’s land ownership, I can narrow down the possible locations of the painting.”

  “That is easier said than done,” Angie said. “the land records aren’t perfectly accurate here on the island.”

  “True but…I guess I’m enjoying the challenge” he shifted his weight from foot to foot. “This has turned from a quest to find a painting so I can make enough money to live on, into a kind of working job interview. I met with some of Mickey’s friends—”

  "Mickey mentioned something about that, how’s it going?” asked Angie.

  “Actually, it’s going great. I may have found my second career, but it’s early yet. How’s your investigation going? You know, with Reed?”

  Angie sighed. “I don’t know. I’m hitting dead end after dead end. I’m so tired. I probably just need another cup of coffee.”

  She picked up her cup of coffee and took a sip, the taste of the coffee was wrong, like wood chip soup. Angie spit it out immediately in the trash can under the counter.

  “I think this is your culprit, here,” said Wyatt. He was pointing to Captain Parfait, who stood next to a pencil sharpener that had been overturned and dumped the pencil shavings into Angie’s mug.

  Captain Parfait jumped down and curled up unapologetically around Angie’s leg.

  Angie stopped. Several things had just fallen into place.

  “Wyatt…”

  “What is it?”

  “What if…someone put something in Jasper’s coffee?”

  He frowned at her. He wasn’t following along.

  “In his coffee?”

  “I delivered coffee to the Chamber of Commerce that day, because their coffeemaker had failed.”