A Fatal Feast

by Jessica Fletcher

  Clamshell Cove was a relatively new and expensive gated community overlooking the water on the northern edge of town.

  “He says he has a house in Florida, too, and just sold a villa in Monte Carlo.”

  “Marital status?” I asked.

  Her eyes saddened. “Widowed, poor thing. Cancer. She died more than a dozen years ago. Can you imagine that he’s decided to spend his summer retirement years here in Cabot Cove?”

  “I don’t know what entertainments we have to compare with Monte Carlo,” I said, “but I’ll have to remember to ask when I meet him.”

  As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait long for that to happen. A nattily attired gray-haired man came through the door with a flourish, surveyed the restaurant, spotted us, and made his way to our table. In contrast to the less colorful garb of the other customers, he was dressed in a double-breasted blue blazer, sported a red ascot and matching pocket square, and wore his tasseled loafers sans socks.

  “Hello there,” he said in a deep voice, leaning to kiss Wilimena on the cheek. “How’s my favorite lady?”

  “Your favorite lady is fine,” she said. “You haven’t met my friend Jessica Fletcher.”

  “No, I haven’t, but I’ve been looking forward to the pleasure of meeting this bestselling author for some time now.”

  I took his extended hand, taking note of a large diamond-and-gold pinkie ring and his lacquered nails.

  “Well,” he said through a satisfied smile as he pulled up a chair, “you don’t mind if I join you for a moment, do you?” He tugged on the razor crease of his gray slacks, and sat heavily, his knees grazing mine.

  I moved my chair to give him more room.

  He leaned forward, eyes on mine, and said in a voice that was easily heard several tables away, “Willie has told me how you came to her rescue in Alaska, like the cavalry.”

  “Kathy and I had been searching for Willie. We were fortunate it turned out the way it did,” I said.

  “Ah yes, you were with Willie’s lovely sister, Kathy. Didn’t mean to omit proper credit.”

  “I’m the one who’s fortunate,” Willie said. “I’d be dead now if it wasn’t for Jess and Kathy.”

  “We couldn’t have that, now, could we?” he said, laying his hand on hers.

  He turned his attention back to me. “I’d love to discuss writing with you, Mrs. Fletcher,” he said with a smile. “I’ve done quite a bit of writing myself.”

  “Really? What sort of writing?”

  He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, resting a tasseled loafer on his knee. “A lot of it’s technical—I was involved in the commodities market for many years—but I also write poetry and short stories, and I’m thinking about starting a novel.”

  “That’s terrific,” I said.

  “You’ll enjoy reading some of my works. They’re quite good, if I say so myself, and I’m my severest critic.”

  “I—ah—I would enjoy that at some point when things are a little less hectic.”

  “Jessica is trying to finish her latest novel, Archer, but she’s got writer’s block.”

  “I don’t know if calling it writer’s block is accurate,” I said, irritated at my need to defend myself. “I think it’s more a case of distrac—”

  “I’ve given a considerable amount of thought to writer’s block, now that I’m a writer. Not that it’s been much of a problem for me,” Archer said, “but I have some definite theories about its cause.” He launched into his “theories” for the next five minutes, little of which was comprehensible to me, but I didn’t want to appear rude by challenging him. “You know, you and I should get together,” he said in conclusion. “We can be just two fellow writers talking shop, swapping trade secrets. Yes, I would enjoy that.”

  I assured him that I’d enjoy that, too, but stressed again that it would have to be sometime in the future.

  The conversation shifted to what he called “a nasty encounter” he’d encountered on his way to the restaurant. “There’s this homeless guy out on the street looking for handouts. He didn’t get a handout from me, and never will. But he did get an earful. I told this bum that if he’d do the honorable thing and get a job, we’d all be better off.”

  “What did he look like?” Wilimena asked.

  “Like a bum,” Archer said. “Filthy red beard, dressed like it was the middle of winter.”

  Wilimena looked at me to see whether I recognized the man’s description.

  My only response was a noncommittal shrug.

  “If I ran this city,” Wilimena’s new beau said, “you wouldn’t see any homeless on the streets of this lovely village. I’d get rid of them, just like that mayor in New York did back some years ago. Now you see ’em, now you don’t.”

  “How did he do that?” Willie asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. That’s what I’d do here, if I were mayor. Maybe it’s time for Cabot Cove to elect a new mayor. I’ve been thinking about that.”

  A waitress came to our table and Archer waved her away.

  “Can’t you stay for lunch?” Willie asked him.

  “Afraid not,” he said, pushing back his chair. He checked his Rolex. “I have a conference call with my financial advisers in a half hour, but I’ll take a rain check.” He kissed Willie’s cheek, grabbed my hand and kissed it. “This has been a rare and unexpected pleasure, Mrs. Fletcher—Jessica.”

  “It’s so nice to meet you,” I said, extracting my hand.

  “We’ll have to have that literary confab soon,” he said. “You two lovely ladies enjoy your girl talk.”

  We watched him saunter through the restaurant, heads turning as he passed by tables on his way to the door.

  “Well, Jessica, what do you think?” Willie asked. “Isn’t he handsome? He can be a little overbearing, but I like confidence in a man.”

  “He’s certainly self-confident,” I said, grateful when the waitress reappeared by my side.

  It wasn’t until the end of the meal that Willie told me why she’d suggested we get together for lunch. “How many people are you having for Thanksgiving?” she asked.

  “Right now, it’s nine, although I’ve invited my new neighbors to join us. If they do, that’ll make eleven.”

  “Just don’t make it thirteen,” Willie said. “That’s an unlucky number.”

  I laughed. “Only if you’re superstitious,” I said, “which I’m not.”

  “But it would be better to have an even number,” she said.

  “If you say so.”

  “I was wondering if I could bring Archer with me to dinner.”

  “Well, I—”

  “He’s done nothing but talk about you since I told him we’re friends. I know how much he’d love being there and meeting everyone. They’ll enjoy meeting him, too.”

  “I suppose it would be all right,” I said.

  “Great! You’re the best, Jessica, the absolute best. I can’t wait to tell him. He’ll be so pleased. He thought you would give my request more weight if you had a chance to meet him in person. And you see? He was right.”

  We parted outside the restaurant. Before we went our separate ways, Wilimena said, “You know, Jessica, Archer isn’t kidding about Cabot Cove maybe needing a new mayor. He’s thinking seriously of running next time around.”

  “Is he? That’s a year off, Willie.”

  “It’ll give him plenty of time to meet everyone in Cabot Cove and impress them.”

  I thanked Willie for lunch and sent my love to Kathy.

  Thanksgiving dinner was shaping up to be more interesting with every passing minute. I wasn’t convinced our current mayor and my friend, Jim Shevlin, would find sharing the holiday with Archer Franklin agreeable. I made a mental note to seat them at opposite ends of the table. Maybe it’s time you learned to say no, Jessica, I told myself as I headed back home for another stab at my novel.

  Chapter Five

  Until this point, I’d been fairly sanguine about the three letters
that had arrived with the letters G, L, and O pasted on them, aside from wondering who’d sent them and whether they had some nefarious meaning. But when the fourth arrived the next morning, I decided that it was time to stop sitting back, and to take some action.

  Number four’s plain sheet of paper had added a new letter, a large purple T, to accompany the original three. As with the others, it had been snipped from the pages of a magazine. Together, they now spelled GLOT.

  The dictionary yielded only three words beginning with those letters, all having to do with the glottis, an opening of the vocal cords. Somehow, I didn’t think that information was relevant to the messages being sent to me. My temptation was, of course, to try again to assign words to the letters, but I’d had enough of that wasteful exercise. I placed the letters in my purse and called Mort Metzger at police headquarters.

  “Hello there, Mrs. F,” Mort said. “Maureen said she talked to you about the Thanksgiving menu. Got everything settled?”

  “That’s right. We did talk,” I said, “but I’m not calling about that.”

  “Oh?”

  “I received another letter this morning, Mort. Like the ones I showed you. That makes four.”

  “Same thing, just letters pasted on a piece of paper?”

  “Exactly. Today’s letter was a T. That makes it G, L, O, and T.”

  “Crazy, huh, Mrs. F? Wait a minute. You say there’ve been four. You only showed me two, sent from someplace in Ohio.”

  “I received the third yesterday. That one was post-marked right here in Cabot Cove. Today’s was also mailed from Maine, but not Cabot Cove. It looks like Kittery.”

  “Where all the discount stores are. Maybe whoever’s sending them is on a shopping spree.” He chuckled.

  I didn’t respond.

  “Sorry, Mrs. F. Didn’t mean to make light of this.”

  “Mort, I’d like to take you up on your offer to have the state crime lab check for prints.”

  “Sure thing. Drop ’em off here anytime.”

  “I’ll be in town later this morning.”

  “See you then.”

  My intention was to settle in to get some serious writing done, but as my dear, deceased husband, Frank, was fond of saying, there’s a road somewhere paved with good intentions—and it isn’t the road to heaven. Actually, it wasn’t entirely my fault that the morning got away from me. The incessantly ringing telephone played a role, too.

  I’d no sooner settled at my computer when Jed Richardson called. Jed had been a pilot for a major airline until deciding he didn’t like the airline’s bureaucracy. He took an early retirement and settled back in Cabot Cove to establish Jed’s Flying Service, ferrying townspeople to larger cities in his “fleet” of three planes, two of them single-engine, and one twin-engine craft. Besides transporting passengers, he gave flying lessons, his students including yours truly a few years ago.

  That I earned my private pilot’s license was the source of much amusement on the part of my friends. I don’t have a driver’s license and have never had any interest in getting one. But there was something alluring about piloting my own plane, and I threw myself into Jed’s lessons and all the book learning that went with it. I don’t fly often, usually just enough to stay current by paying Jed for an hour of dual instruction. But there have been a few instances when my flying knowledge, as minimal as it may be, came in handy when in a tight spot. That trip to Alaska with Kathy Copeland in search of her capricious sister was one such occasion.

  The call from Jed this morning wasn’t to set up a refresher flight for me, although it would end up being that. George Sutherland was flying from London to Boston the next day, and I’d arranged for Jed to meet him there and bring him to Cabot Cove. I’d toyed with the idea of joining them, but the mounting stress of finishing my book kept me from coming to a final decision. Jed wanted to know what that decision was.

  I looked at the computer screen and realized that unless my muse suddenly made an appearance, it was unlikely that I’d get much done over the next few days.

  “I’ll come with you,” I said.

  “Great, Jess. You can get in some logged time on the trip and we’ll bring your buddy back, kill two birds with one stone.”

  “You’ll have to use one of the Cessnas,” I said, referring to one of Jed’s two single-engine planes. I’m not licensed to fly multiengine.

  “That’s okay. Be out here at the airport by eleven?”

  “Count on it,” I said.

  I’d no sooner hung up when my new neighbor, Linda Carson, called.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing anything,” she said.

  “Not at all.”

  “Is that invitation to your Thanksgiving dinner still open?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Then we’d love to come.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “Victor’s not much for social gatherings, but he knows how much I’d like to be there. He can be so, um, stubborn at times. Anyway, I had to do some convincing, but he eventually agreed.”

  She couldn’t see the expression on my face, which mirrored my visceral reaction to what she’d said. It didn’t sound as though Victor, who obviously was coming under duress, would enjoy himself, let alone provide much enjoyment for others at the table. For a moment I weighed whether or not to suggest that they might want to reconsider, but thought better of it. I did give Linda an out, however. “If Victor changes his mind, I’ll understand,” I offered. “Just give me a few days’ notice.”

  “Oh, he won’t change his mind,” she said. “If he does, I’ll kill him.” She giggled; then her voice grew serious. “It’s my first Thanksgiving away from family and friends back home and I’d hate to spend it alone.”

  “Where is home?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she said, her voice discernibly cracking, “It’s so nice of you to think of us at a time like this. Thanksgiving is so special and—”

  “Looking forward to having you and Victor,” I said, “and I can’t wait for you to meet the other guests. They’re very warm and welcoming. I know you’ll enjoy them.”

  More composed now, she asked if she could contribute to the menu. “I make a good pumpkin pie,” she said.

  “That would be wonderful,” I said. “Are you coming to the pageant?”

  “Victor doesn’t want to, but I’ll work on him.”

  We ended the conversation and I took another stab at the computer before deciding to pack it in and head downtown. I wanted to get my nonwriting errands out of the way. I would stop in at the sheriff ’s office to give Mort the letters, but not until after attending a meeting of a commission that had been formed to oversee the care of a small natural lake not too far from my house. It was a lovely body of freshwater, a popular spot with our local Audubon Club members who could be seen, binoculars raised or bird book in hand, strolling its shores, and there had been many times I’d visited the lake myself, to take in its beauty and tranquillity.

  Mayor Shevlin had recently asked me to join the commission, and I’d readily agreed. Of course, that was before I realized that the crush of activities in November would interfere with finishing my manuscript. Still, I’m hard put to turn down requests to aid a good cause in Cabot Cove. And this was one of them. An unhealthy amount of weeds had begun to dominate portions of the lake, and we were debating how best to attack the problem. I was anxious to ensure that whatever means were employed to curb the invasive growth not upset the ecological balance. It was an important assignment, but yet another commitment that pulled me away from my work.

  I thought about my conversation with Linda Carson. I was pleased that she’d taken me up on my invitation—but also somewhat disconcerted. Her husband sounded like a difficult man, and I hoped his disposition wouldn’t cast a pall on the festivities. Maybe he and Willie Copeland’s new friend, Archer Franklin, would find things in common to talk about. I knew I couldn’t seat Archer next to our current mayor—nothing can r
uin a festive Thanksgiving dinner faster than a political squabble—but I worried that the table was filling up with alpha males, men with strong opinions and few compunctions about expressing them. I hoped the women would be able to keep the Thanksgiving atmosphere as it should be: warm—and civil.

  The meeting of the lake committee, chaired by Mayor Shevlin, went smoothly and quickly and I was free sooner than I’d expected. I went directly to police headquarters but was told that Sheriff Metzger had been called out on an emergency and wouldn’t be back for an hour.

  It was close to lunchtime and I decided to stop in at Mara’s for a quick bite. As I approached the dock, I had the feeling that I was being watched. I looked around and saw Hubert Billups perched on a low brick wall that defined one of the town’s parks, the same one where I’d sat with Tobé Wilson two days ago. He was dressed in his usual cold-weather garb, arms folded across his chest, eyes staring straight ahead. For a moment, I was tempted to cross the street and introduce myself in the hope of gaining some clue as to why he always seemed to be where I was. But I decided not to. I didn’t know how he would react and didn’t want to initiate a confrontation.

  I reached the dock and stopped to chat with Richard Koser, one of Cabot Cove’s top photographers and a superb amateur chef.

  “Got your menu set for next Thursday?” he asked.

  “I think so, nothing exotic, just a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. You?”

  “I’ve been experimenting. I thought I might try making a turducken this year.”

  “You’ve been watching Paula Deen,” I said lightly.

  “Haven’t seen her in ages. Why do you say that?”

  “Maureen Metzger suggested I have turducken this year. She got the idea from Paula Deen’s show on the Food Network.”

  “Go for it.”

  “Not with my friend George coming from London for the holiday. I want a menu as close to traditional as I can muster.”