A Fatal Feast

by Jessica Fletcher

  “ ‘ My work,’ ” I said with an exasperated sigh. “I know I’m behind.” I leaned closer. “Seth, did you happen to notice the fellow on the deck wearing the red-and-black jacket when you arrived?”

  “Ayuh, I did. Why do you ask?”

  “This may sound silly, Seth, but he’s been spending a lot of time lately outside my house.”

  “Is that so? What’s he do there?”

  “Just stands and stares.”

  “No harm in that. Probably hoping for a handout, like a moose bird.”

  “Perhaps, but his constant presence is a little unnerving.”

  “Constant?”

  “Well, often enough.”

  Seth twisted in his chair to see Billups through the window. “Seems peaceful enough,” he said as the waitress topped off his coffee cup.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I said.

  I considered mentioning the strange letter I’d received, but decided I didn’t want to come off more paranoid than I already had. “I’d better get moving,” I said, “if I’m to find George a hotel room.”

  “Soon as I finish my pancakes I’ll drive you home,” he said.

  His attack on his breakfast was interrupted a number of times by people saying hello and stopping to chat with Cabot Cove’s favorite physician. Fran Winstead asked if she could get a renewal on her husband Wally’s blood pressure medicine.

  “Ayuh. Call me at the office in an hour,” Seth told her.

  I recognized one couple who’d waved at him, although I didn’t know their names. They’d moved into a house at the end of the road on which I lived. I asked Seth who they were.

  “Name’s Carson, Mr. and Mrs. Haven’t met him yet, but his wife’s a new patient.”

  I mentioned that they’d bought the old Butterfield house, which had been on the market for some time. “I haven’t had time to stop by to say hello.”

  “Seem like nice folks,” Seth commented, enjoying his last mouthful of pancakes and bacon and wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Should be good neighbors.”

  When we left Mara’s, I noticed that Hubert Billups was no longer on the dock. Good, I thought. As irrational as it might be, his presence generated discomfort for me.

  Back home, I started calling hotels in the area, beginning with what I considered the nicest ones. No luck. Every one was booked solid over the holiday weekend. The better motels were full, too, as were the few bed-and-breakfasts in which I felt George would be comfortable. “Sorry, Jessica,” I was told by innkeeper Craig Thomas, who, with his wife, Jill, owned Blueberry Hill. “We’ve been sold out for months. If we’d known you needed a reservation we would have—”

  “That’s okay, Craig,” I said. “I know how late I am in looking for space. Please keep me in mind if you get a cancellation. Love to Jill.”

  The lack of accommodations should not have come as a surprise, but it did. I hadn’t considered that the Thanksgiving holiday would bring scores of visitors to Cabot Cove. Had George announced months ago that he was coming, finding him suitable lodging would not have been so difficult. But he’d made his decision only a few days ago.

  Initially, I’d considered having him stay at my house, but thought better of it. The Cabot Cove grapevine was spending far too much time speculating on my activities as it was. Furthermore, my friends had been linking George and me romantically ever since we first met in London years ago, and I didn’t want to feed their well-meaning fantasies. Of course, there was some truth to their conjecture. George Sutherland and I had immediately “connected,” and romantic sparks had developed. But we’d been content to express our feelings verbally and to leave it at that. Both widowed, we’d forged busy, independent lives for ourselves, separated by the vast Atlantic Ocean, and had decided to honor that, unless . . . unless we had a change of heart. That hadn’t happened yet, and I didn’t know if it ever would.

  While I was trying to come up with an alternate housing solution for George—and looking longingly at my inactive computer screen—Seth called.

  “Any luck finding a hotel for your friend?” he asked

  “No.” I recounted my attempts.

  “Seems like you’ve got a problem on your hands.”

  “More than one,” I said. “Seth?”

  “Ayuh?”

  “Is anyone visiting you over Thanksgiving?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, you have that wing on your house that your live-in housekeeper used to use. It’s a lovely apartment, with a nice view of the garden, and—”

  “And?”

  “And I was just wondering—I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t in this bind—and I thought that maybe George could, um—”

  “Spit it out, woman!”

  “George would be the perfect houseguest—he’s extremely considerate of others—and it’s only for four days—well, maybe five—and he’d be spending most of his time with me at my house and at events around town—and I know how much he would appreciate it, to say nothing of how much I would appreciate it. Would you mind terribly if he stayed with you?”

  There was silence on the other end.

  “Seth?”

  “I’m here, Jessica. I don’t suppose I have much of a choice.”

  “Of course you do,” I said, “and if it’s too much of an inconvenience, I perfectly understand.”

  I also understood that Seth’s ambivalence was not based solely on a reluctance to have someone share his house for five days.

  While he and George had gotten along on those few times they’d been together, there was little doubt that my friend of many years harbored a certain distrust of George, not personally, but because George’s interest in me was evident. Seth could be extremely paternalistic where I was concerned, like a father protecting his teenage daughter, and I admit that now and then I’d resented his intrusion into my personal life. But those feelings never lasted very long. I have no greater friend than Seth Hazlitt, and his quirks and idiosyncrasies—and they were legion—were easily and quickly excused. I knew he always meant well and had my best interests at heart, at least as he perceived them.

  There was also the supposition on the part of some of my friends that Seth’s interest in me was more than paternalistic, and that he considered George a competitor for my affections. It was all silly, of course, but that was the reality of the situation.

  “It won’t be an inconvenience at all, Jessica,” Seth said, sounding very much as though he meant it. “Of course, I’ll be seeing patients in my office wing.”

  “And I can promise that George will go out of his way not to disturb you. Thank you, Seth. You’re a doll.”

  He grunted something in response and we ended the call.

  I spent a few hours trying to get back into the manuscript but wasn’t successful. My eyes kept going to the sheet of paper with the large G on it. What could it possibly mean? I asked myself over and over. Could it have something to do with George?

  At five that afternoon, I dressed for a dinner engagement at a downtown restaurant. As hard as I tried to dismiss the mysterious letter, it was entrenched in my thinking, and by the time the taxi pulled into my driveway, I realized how frazzled I’d become—the letter, the stranger named Hubert Billups, Thanksgiving right around the corner, George’s arrival, the pageant, and my manuscript that seemed to be going nowhere.

  “Pull yourself together, Jessica,” I told myself. “Stop making mountains out of molehills.”

  Good advice, I knew.

  But as with all good advice, the difficult part would be in following it.

  Chapter Three

  I awoke the next morning feeling surprisingly rested and refreshed. I thought I might have trouble sleeping with so many thoughts rattling around in my brain, but that hadn’t happened.

  The first thing I did upon getting out of bed was to e-mail George Sutherland in London to let him know that he’d be staying with Seth. I wasn’t certain how George would react. While he and Seth got along, pe
ople don’t always feel comfortable being a houseguest, particularly when the house belongs to someone you barely know.

  After a breakfast of fruit, one of Charlene Sassi’s divine raspberry scones, and tea, I showered, dressed, and pledged to spend the morning working on my novel. Having so-called writer’s block at this stage of my career was unacceptable. It’s always been my contention that such “blocks” in the writing process occur only when the writer doesn’t know where to go next in the story. Some ideas came to me over breakfast, and I was confident that I’d be productive that morning.

  I’d just settled at my computer and was about to input my first sentence of the day when the doorbell rang.

  “Mornin’, Mrs. Fletcher,” Newt said as he held out a fairly large package for me. “Too big for the box,” he said, “and I didn’t want to leave it just standin’ there. Looks like it’s fixin’ to rain.”

  I looked up into a pewter sky. He was right. Rain wasn’t far off. You could smell it in the air.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “And here’s the rest of your mail,” he said, piling it on top of the package. “Have a good one.” He touched the peak of his hat with his index finger.

  I looked up and down the street in search of Hubert Billups. No sign of him. The day was off to a good start.

  I carried the mail and the package into the kitchen and set them on the table. I knew what the package contained: a pretty rose-colored sweater I’d bought while on a trip to New York City to meet with my publisher, Vaughan Buckley. I set it aside and attacked the rest of the mail. One piece jumped out at me. It was a bright yellow envelope with no return address, but the writing looked familiar. With a start, I realized it was addressed in the same block printing as the previous day’s mysterious mailing containing the letter G. I turned the envelope over and stared at the flap. A shiver went through me. It’s not as if I’ve never been threatened before. Anyone who inserts herself into murder investigations, as I have a few times in my life—well, perhaps more than a few times—anyone who’s rattled a cage or two—or so—in her day can hardly expect to escape unscathed. There had been the occasional warnings of retribution, although they had never come to anything.

  I racked my brain. Had I heard of anyone being released from prison who might harbor a grudge against me? The police often notify victims when the offender has been paroled. I was not a victim, however. My involvement in crimes was limited to helping the authorities. If a murderer I’d helped to put away was paroled or released after serving his or her sentence, I doubted it would occur to the warden or parole board to drop me a note.

  I opened the envelope with trepidation and withdrew the single sheet of white letter-sized paper. This time, the letter G was shiny yellow, cut from a glossy magazine page, and had been pasted so that it was upended, its curved side down. What did that mean? Following it was a much larger orange L. That was it. Nothing else.

  I did what I’d done the previous day, examined the page with a magnifying glass, to no avail. Again the postmark was from Ohio.

  What is going on?

  I returned to my study and flipped through my address book in search of people I knew from Ohio. There were quite a few, but none who I thought would engage in such behavior. Could it be a skewed reader who’d gotten hold of my address and decided to play tricks on me? I’d dealt with a few such people over the course of my writing career. Most proved inoffensive enough, except for one gentleman who attended a book signing I’d done at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop while on my way to an Alaskan cruise. This fellow claimed I’d stolen his plot for my novel, and punctuated his accusation with a wicked-looking knife. It all ended peaceably when he was taken into custody, but the incident provided for some tense moments.

  I decided it would be prudent to show the letters to our sheriff, Mort Metzger, to elicit what advice he might have, and put them in my purse in anticipation of heading downtown later that morning for a rehearsal of the pageant. In the meantime, I reminded myself, it was time to do what I’d intended, sit down and get some serious writing done.

  An hour later, the words on the screen had changed, but not by much. I’d managed to add one additional page, hardly a productive hour. Worse, I read what I’d written and was dissatisfied. The page represented, as Vaughan Buckley is fond of putting it, “pushing words around on paper” rather than writing something substantial that moves the story along.

  “Give it up, Jess,” I told myself aloud. “You’re forcing it.”

  Which was true, although I was painfully aware why I was forcing things. Time was running out.

  I went back to my e-mails and saw that George had answered my message.

  Good morning, Jessica, although it’s late afternoon here in London. Are you convinced I won’t be inconveniencing the good Dr. Hazlitt?

  I realize that there isn’t much choice in where to stay considering the lateness of the situation, but I wouldn’t want to be a burden. You’re aware, of course, that Dr. Hazlitt and I have not had what you might call an easy relationship. Never anything overtly unpleasant, but our encounters have been a bit strained nonetheless. Do I see your fine hand here, eager to smooth away the rough fabric between a pair of your ardent admirers? At any rate, I’m most appreciative and I hope you’ll extend my sincerest gratitude to him for opening his home to me. I can’t wait to see you again and to share your uniquely American holiday. I’m the envy of the chaps in my office. Warmly, George.

  I wrote him back immediately.

  I know we’ll have a wonderful time together. As for Seth, he was delighted, absolutely delighted, to welcome you into his home. I know he’ll be the perfect host when he isn’t seeing patients in his office wing. We’ll get together and make this a truly splendid and memorable Thanksgiving. Fondly, Jessica.

  All right, so I overstated Seth’s reaction to having George in his home a little. Just a little.

  After responding to some other e-mails, I packed up and headed downtown, deciding for this trip to ride my bicycle. Some energetic pedaling might get the blood flowing and clear my blocked brain. Hopefully, the rain would hold off.

  The rehearsal for our Thanksgiving pageant was in the gymnasium of the regional high school. We’d decided to focus on the role played by various presidents of the United States in establishing Thanksgiving as an official American holiday, with members of the Cabot Cove amateur theater group playing the roles of our nation’s leaders.

  There was some controversy over including President Franklin Roosevelt. Until his presidency, Thanksgiving had been held each year on the last Thursday in November, the date established by President Abraham Lincoln in his 1863 proclamation. But FDR moved it up a week in order to prolong the Christmas shopping season. The public uproar caused him to reconsider and to shift Thanksgiving back to its original date. In 1941, Congress finally sanctioned Thanksgiving as a legal holiday to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November.

  “I still say that we shouldn’t even mention what FDR did,” one of the thespians proclaimed loudly, and often. “It was disgraceful that he put commerce first.”

  “But he did,” the pageant’s director, Robin Stockdale, said. “We want the pageant to be historically accurate.”

  “We’re including President Jefferson,” someone else chimed in, “and he didn’t even like having a day of thanksgiving. He said that the hardships of a couple of Pilgrims didn’t deserve a special celebration.”

  The actress playing the role of Sarah Josepha Hale, the magazine editor whose forty-year campaign of articles, as well as letters to various presidents, was instrumental in persuading Lincoln to proclaim the day, said, “Frankly, I don’t like this script. I liked last year’s better, when we portrayed the first Thanksgiving back in 1621.”

  “Regardless of what you prefer, Margaret, we’re using this new script,” Robin said. “It’s a very good script. Jessica and her committee worked hard on it and—”

  Margaret walked away.

  “L
et’s take a fifteen-minute break,” Robin wisely suggested. I accompanied her outside.

  “I hope you weren’t offended, Jessica. Margaret has a tendency to speak her mind without considering others’ feelings.”

  “Not at all. I’m used to getting reviews, not all of them glowing. You can’t please everyone, no matter how hard you try.”

  “And Margaret is impossible to please. Sometimes I want to throw up my hands and forget there ever was a Thanksgiving,” she said.

  I laughed. “But I know you’d never do that, Robin. Just artistic temperament coming to the fore.”

  “You should have heard them arguing about the music selections. Elsie Frickert wants to play ‘Turkey in the Straw.’ Audrey Williams nearly had a fit. She wants more somber pieces for the occasion.” Robin rolled her eyes.

  “And you’ll find a way to make them both happy. And Margaret, too. Mind if I leave? There’s not much for me to do now that the script has been written, and I have a few stops to make.”

  “Of course not, Jessica. You run along. I’ll take a few more deep breaths and go back inside.”

  I rode my bike to police headquarters, where I hoped to find Sheriff Metzger. I was in luck. He’d just returned from mediating a dispute between an angry customer and the owner of a hardware store, something to do with a lawn mower that didn’t work but had apparently seen heavy duty over the summer.

  “Morning, Mrs. F,” he said brightly as he welcomed me into his office. “What brings you here?”

  “These.”

  I pulled the two letters and envelopes from my purse and slid them across the desk. He scrutinized them, brow furrowed, chewing his cheek. Finally, he looked at me and asked, “Who sent them?”

  I didn’t allow my exasperation to show. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just thought you might have some idea of what they mean.”

  He looked at them again. “Haven’t the foggiest, Mrs. F. What do you figure they mean?”