by Bobbi Holmes
“Yeah, in all MacDonald’s free time,” Chris said with a snort. “None of the murders were even in his jurisdiction.”
Danielle shrugged and then said, “I guess you were wrong about Antoine.”
“I suppose I was. He wasn’t the sinister spirit I initially imagined.”
“You know, Chris, the next time I have spirits coming at me from all directions, you could at least lend a hand.”
“Coming from all directions?” Chris laughed.
“There was Steve, Hillary, Antoine…and if I had hung around Pilgrim’s Point long enough I might have run into Darlene, not to mention Baron.”
“Hey, you had Heather with you,” he teased.
In retaliation, Danielle grabbed Chris’s fork, now filled with the last bite of cake, and shoved it into her mouth.
Forty
Roxane looked out the passenger window and waved to her mother. Beverly, who stood on the front porch, waved back, waiting for Steven to look her way so she could see him one final time before they drove off. Just as Roxane’s boyfriend pulled the car out into the street, Steven, who sat in the backseat of his sister’s car, turned toward Beverly and smiled sadly, raising his hand in a somber salute.
Beverly stood on her porch, watching the car disappear down the street. The three were heading back to Portland. Roxane and her boyfriend would be dropping Steven off at the airport for his flight back to Texas.
Wiping tears from her face, Beverly turned toward her front door. It stood ajar. Pushing it all the way open, she stepped inside. After she closed the door, she made her way to the kitchen.
She wasn’t hungry. But if she wanted to eat, there was plenty of food in the house. Her refrigerator was still stuffed with half-eaten casseroles and Bundt cakes, and there was an ice chest filled with beer and soda in the dining room.
Sitting on the counter was a framed photograph of Steve. It was one of the photographs they’d had on display at his memorial. Picking up the framed picture, she carried it to the dining room table and set it down. She walked back into the kitchen.
Grabbing a bottle of opened chardonnay off the counter, she reached up to the overhead cabinet and took out a wineglass. After filling the glass, she took it and the bottle to the dining room table and sat down.
Staring at the photograph of her husband, she thought of his funeral. It was a good turnout; it seemed everyone in town had showed up. The last week had been a hectic whirlwind with family arriving and friends dropping by. She hadn’t taken Danielle Boatman up on her offer to put up some of the visiting family at Marlow House—instead those who she hadn’t managed to fit in her house got rooms at the Seahorse Motel.
Steven’s sisters, their spouses and mother had stayed with her, as had her son, daughter, and daughter’s boyfriend. It had been a full house. Most of them had left the day before—each fretting about Beverly being alone after they all returned to their homes.
“Someone needs to stay with you,” her mother-in-law had told her. “You shouldn’t be alone.” Beverly had assured her she would be fine, and considering all the people she had been surrounded by this past week, a little solitude sounded good.
Picking up the wineglass, Beverly took a sip and closed her eyes. She took another drink—this time not a sip—this time she downed half the glass. Opening her eyes, she smiled and set the wineglass on the table. Picking up Steven’s photograph, she studied it a moment.
“I thought we were going to grow old together. I really did.”
Setting the photograph back on the table, she carefully arranged it so that it stood up, leaning back against its little pullout flap stand. After positioning it so that Steve’s smiling face looked at her, she picked up her glass again and took another drink.
“Who would have thought you’d do something so stupid like fall off the pier?”
She drank the rest of her wine. Picking up the wine bottle, she refilled the glass.
“Why did you have to take up with that little skank Carla?”
Still holding the glass, she took a swig and then set it down.
“When we first moved to Frederickport, I thought it would be different. At least, I thought you’d keep your extracurricular activities out of town. But no, you couldn’t do that, could you?”
Beverly wondered for a moment if she should get something to eat, but dismissed the idea.
“You honestly didn’t think I knew about that ridiculous woman in the historical society? Who do you think sent her that anonymous letter threatening to tell her husband? I got her to move out of town—but it didn’t stop you, did it? There was always another one.”
After downing the rest of the wine in her glass, she picked up the bottle and then noticed it was empty. Letting out a curse, she stood up and walked to the kitchen, looking for more wine. There were several partially full bottles of wine on the kitchen counter. She gathered them up and took them to the dining room table with her.
Sitting back in her chair, she grabbed the closest bottle to her and removed its already loose cork. The bottle was not quite half full. Flinging the cork across the room—it hit the wall and then fell to the floor. She drank directly from the bottle, seeing no reason to bother with the glass.
Looking back at Steve’s photograph, she said, “I didn’t intend to kill you. Honest.”
Cocking her head slightly, the bottle of wine in one hand, she studied her husband’s photograph. “I was just angry. Of all people, Carla? The woman had purple and pink hair! What were you thinking?”
She took a swig from the bottle and belched. By reflex, she covered her mouth with one hand and began to giggle. “That was crude. Is that something Carla would do?”
Still staring at the photograph, she set the bottle on the table and pushed it aside.
“I loved you, Steve. I really did. But I just couldn’t take it anymore. The cheating. Always the cheating.”
Beverly picked up the framed photograph, holding it in both hands.
“It was surprisingly easy. I saw the tamales sitting in the refrigerator on Thursday morning after you went to work. I knew you were going to take them when you went fishing. I carefully unwrapped each one—first from the foil and then the husk.”
She set the frame back on the table, positioning it so that it still stood upright. “All I needed was a can of crabmeat and a jar of taco sauce. First, I mixed the crabmeat with the sauce to hide the flavor of the fish. Then I carefully removed the meat from each tamale, replacing it with the crab mixture. And then I rewrapped them, nice and snug. It was easy.”
Picking up the framed picture again, she ran one fingertip down the side of Steve’s face.
“I removed your EpiPen from your tackle box and put it in your toolbox. You never even noticed.”
Laying the picture flat on the table, she took another gulp straight from the wine bottle. Setting the bottle back on the table, she looked blankly across the room.
In a whisper, she said, “I’m not really sure what I thought was going to happen. I just wanted to hurt you, like you hurt me. I didn’t think it would kill you.”
She sat in silence at the table for almost twenty minutes, considering her life and what she had done. Finally, she took a deep breath, exhaled, and stood up. Glancing down at Steve’s photograph, she said with a shrug, “It’s karma, Steve.”
Smiling, Beverly turned off the light and headed for bed, yet not before taking three aspirin. She had a lot to do in the morning, beginning with cleaning out Steve’s closet and getting rid of his clothes—she didn’t want to have a headache when she did it.
Danielle found herself sitting on the pier with Walt, their legs dangling over the side as they each held a fishing pole. Glancing down, she noticed she was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, as was Walt.
“I haven’t been down here in years,” Walt said as he cast his line out. “Does it still look like this?” He reeled in some of the line, gently tugging on the pole as he positioned his bait.
Daniell
e glanced around. “Yeah, pretty much. In fact, this is where Steve fell from the pier.”
Walt looked to Danielle. “So he’s moved on?”
“I think so. He wasn’t at the funeral. I haven’t seen Hillary either.”
“She said she was going to move on. I guess she was no longer nervous over the prospect of seeing her two husbands.”
Danielle shrugged. “I guess not.”
They sat there a moment watching their lines gently bob in the water. Danielle could hear seagulls nearby, yet there were no other people on the pier…none on the nearby beach.
Danielle looked at Walt. “Do you think he would have died if he hadn’t fallen off the pier?”
Walt considered the question a moment. “I don’t know. Didn’t you say there was medicine in his car that could have saved him?”
“Yeah. The EpiPen he kept in his tackle box was missing, but he still had one in his car. Carla knew where it was. She could have gotten it for him; she wasn’t that far, just inside the diner.”
“If he hadn’t stumbled and fallen off the pier and hit his head, then, yeah, he might have survived.”
Gazing out to the ocean, Danielle frowned. “You know the thing I don’t understand?”
“What’s that?”
“If Baron Huxley really wanted Steve dead, he didn’t do a very good job of plotting his murder.”
“What do you mean? He might have gotten away with it if Antoine Paul’s spirit hadn’t shown up.”
Gazing out into the distance, a frown of confusion on her face, Danielle asked, “How did he know for sure when Steve was going to eat those tamales? He could have eaten them at home and then used an EpiPen he kept there. And if that had happened, how would Baron have explained giving him fish tamales? After all, he could have decided to eat just one, not both of them. And once he had a reaction, it would have been easy to check the second tamale. If anything, that would insure Steve testifying against him and sending him to prison.”
Walt shrugged. “It’s possible he only put the crabmeat in just one tamale. I don’t know. I honestly haven’t given it much thought.”
“How did Baron manage to take the EpiPen out of Steve’s tackle box?”
“Maybe he came down to the pier when Steve was fishing that night and somehow got it out of the tackle box,” Walt suggested.
Danielle shook her head. “No. Steve never mentioned anything about seeing anyone on the pier that night. According to Beverly, when Steve wasn’t fishing, he kept his tackle box on the workbench in the garage. Did Baron break into their house?”
“Maybe he stopped by Steve’s house and made some excuse to go into the garage. You said yourself it was Steve’s habit to leave the tackle box on the workbench; maybe Huxley knew that.”
“No…when Beverly stopped by Marlow House to return that dish, we talked a little bit about Huxley. She said he and Steve had been on the outs for a while—that he hadn’t been over to their house in months. In fact, that Wednesday he gave Steve the tamales, it was the first time they had gotten together in weeks.”
“See, you just said it yourself—according to Beverly, they had problems. Taking Steve those tamales was obviously a ruse. It certainly wasn’t a peace offering, it was a murder plot.”
With a snort Danielle said, “An unreliable murder plot. Baron Huxley had no reason to believe those tamales were going to kill Steve. The most he could hope for was that he would get really sick.”
“But he did die, Danielle.”
“I know…because he fell off the pier.”
They sat there a moment in silence. Finally, Danielle asked, “If Baron didn’t give Steve crabmeat tamales, then who did, and why?”
Standing up, Walt reeled in his line. “Steve told you those tamales were left in the refrigerator at the bank all day. Maybe one of his employees switched them with crabmeat tamales in some misguided practical joke.”
Danielle cringed. “Some joke. If that’s true, how could they even live with themselves? And what about the missing EpiPen? Steve told me he put some new hooks in his tackle box the night before, and the EpiPen was there. Which now that I think about it, if Baron took it, he couldn’t have done it before Wednesday.”
Walt shrugged and cast his line out again. “It’s entirely possible Steve removed it when he was organizing the tackle box. Maybe he stuck it somewhere else without realizing it, like when Lily put the milk in the pantry last week.”
Danielle reeled in her line and glanced over at Walt. “I guess there’s no way we’ll ever know for sure what happened.”
Smiling over at Danielle, Walt said, “Life is like that sometimes. It keeps things interesting.”
The Ghost Who Stayed Home
Revisit Marlow House in
The Ghost Who Stayed Home
Haunting Danielle, Book 11
Left alone at Marlow House with Sadie and Max, Walt expects Danielle and Lily to return by the end of the week. When they don’t, he begins to wonder what happened to them.
The ghost of Marlow House doesn’t scare six-year-old Evan MacDonald. When the child sneaks into the house in the middle of the night, seeking Walt’s help, the resident spirit learns something has happened to Danielle and Lily.
Can a ghost confined to Marlow House and a pint-sized medium bring the people they love home?
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Haunting Danielle Series
by Bobbi Holmes
The Ghost of Marlow House, Book 1
The Ghost Who Loved Diamonds, Book 2
The Ghost Who Wasn’t, Book 3
The Ghost Who Wanted Revenge, Book 4
The Ghost of Halloween Past, Book 5
The Ghost Who Came for Christmas, Book 6
The Ghost of Valentine Past, Book 7
The Ghost from the Sea, Book 8
The Ghost and the Mystery Writer, Book 9
The Ghost and the Muse, Book 10
The Ghost Who Stayed Home, Book 11
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Bobbi Holmes
Also known as Anna J. McIntyre
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