Praise for Murder’s No Votive Confidence
“A charming mystery with believable, likeable characters. Check it out.”
—Suspense Magazine
“With this great cast and setting, Murder’s No Votive
Confidence was a very enjoyable take on the country house mystery.”
—Criminal Element
“This is a perfect summer cozy with a lush setting and a fun heroine.”
—Parkersburg News & Sentinel
“Don’t be surprised after reading Brecher’s mystery that you find yourself shopping for candles or perhaps planning a weekend on Nantucket.”
—Woman Around Town
“A cozy with candles, conspiring couples, and a cat—what could be a better combination? Christin Brecher’s debut mystery has all those and more.”
—Kaitlyn Dunnett, author of Clause & Effect
“A scentsational new series! Christin Brecher’s charming debut, Murder’s No Votive Confidence, glows with a seaside location, a candle shop, and a kitty that will melt your heart. Interesting characters and a twisting plot will keep you intrigued to the very end.”
—Krista Davis, author of The Diva Sweetens the Pie
“A charmingly fun whodunnit with plenty of twists and turns and delightfully quirky characters.
Murder’s No Votive Confidence had me hooked from the first pages.”
—Kirsten Weiss, author of Bleeding Tarts
“The first book in the Nantucket Candle Maker Mystery series by Christin Brecher burns bright with a delightful protagonist, realistic characters, and an intriguing plot—a breath of fresh Nantucket air!”
—Barbara Allan, author of Antiques Ravin’
Also by Christin Brecher
Murder’s No Votive Confidence
Murder Makes Scents
15 Minutes of Flame
A Nantucket Caudle Miker Mystery
Christin Brecher
KENSINGTON BOOKS
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Praise
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Acknowledgments
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2020 by Christin Brecher
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2143-3
ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2144-0 (ebook)
ISBN-10: 1-4967-2144-6 (ebook)
To Bandit and his best friend, Steve
Chapter 1
Saturday morning, I was lounging in my backyard and enjoying a little sun. My chaise for such luxury was a fold-out chair, the kind with plastic straps across a metal frame where one or two bands always seem to be missing in crucial places. Even though my rear end sank a little lower to the ground than I’d prefer, I was deeply engaged with the clouds rolling above me on this late October day. Thick, fluffy, bright white, and moving fast along an otherwise clear blue sky. As one remarkably beautiful apparition whisked by me, I remembered a game I used to play as a kid. My friends and I would study a cloud, and then we’d compare the images we saw. Mickey Mouse, a choo-choo train, a duck. It was amazing how often we saw different pictures in the same floating cloud.
You’d think I’d have learned from our game that there are a thousand ways to see the world, but it took me until I was almost thirty years old to really grasp the concept. Less than six months ago, I was grappling with the fact that my small candle business, the Wick & Flame, would not make it through another year on Nantucket Island. My dream of making candles and selling them in a store I owned, in my hometown, with the good fortune of being with family and friends, could have vanished like the flicker of a flame when it’s snuffed out. But then solving a murder, of all things, helped me see the world differently. Puzzling out a crime and restoring justice was as fascinating to me as studying the ways a wick might last longer or a flame might burn brighter. I’d jumped in to help before I’d even thought about it, and never looked back. After I solved the case, my business grew like a wildfire, and, most surprisingly, I fell in love with Peter Bailey, the town’s newest reporter for the local Inquirer & Mirror.
To my surprise, it was my fate to find murder one more time, less than two weeks ago. Unlike my first foray into the world of crime, no one knew I was even on a murder case except for my mom, who’d been home for a short while. Andy Southerland, the town’s best police officer and one of my oldest friends, caught on too. It’s a good story—spies and national security abound—but that’s a whole other kettle of clues.
This morning, my thoughts drifted to something much lighter: Halloween, which was only six days away. This year, I’d volunteered to assist the Girl Scouts’ Halloween Haunts fund-raiser for the island’s neediest. I’d helped them over the last week build papier-mâché cauldrons, bats, and spider décor. We’d carved pumpkins. We’d planned activities for all ages, ranging from crafts and apple bobbing to a scary, ghostly maze. Today my sales assistant, Cherry, was covering for me at the Wick & Flame, and I planned to use my free time to drop by the girls’ weekend meeting.
I raised one leg in the air and pulled it toward my forehead as a cloud that looked like a gun—I’m not kidding—rolled by. For one moment, I had the witchy feeling that I was too complacent. As its shadow passed, I caught my breath, wondering if the peaceful afternoon, the healthy stock in my store, and the warmth of my relationship with Peter was no more than the calm before another storm. I shook it off. The flip side of having solved two murders is the danger of getting a little paranoid.
Also, I was in close proximity to two boys, all of eight and ten years old. They were the sons of my cousin Chris, with whom I was sharing my patch of lawn. My home is the apartment over Chris’s garage. My bucket list includes owning my own place one day, something with room for a studio and a garden out back, but for now, the company of Chris and his family is wonderful, and the modest rent is ideal for my entrepreneurial ambitions. The boys had inc
hed closer and closer to my personal space over the last half hour, however, so I chalked up my unease to their questionable skill set when it comes to a ball and mitt.
Chris appeared at his kitchen window as their last pitch zoomed over my chair.
“Dudes! Don’t bug Stella,” he said.
“Hi!” I waved to him as the boys retrieved their ball and continued their game.
“Do you want some oatmeal? I’m on breakfast duty,” Chris called out to me.
“That’s very tempting, but I can’t,” I answered. “I’m heading over to the Morton house in about ten minutes.”
The Morton house was home to Halloween Haunts. It was owned by John Pierre Morton, whom I’d met during my last case, when he’d come to our island to check out his inheritance of the musty, forgotten home. Although I’d briefly considered John Pierre a murder suspect, we’d left on good terms when he returned to Canada.
There’s something about the house that has a spell on me. It is inviting in spite of, or perhaps because of, its walls’ crooked lines. The Girl Scouts’ troop leader, Shelly, had the same reaction while shopping at my store one day when she heard me talking to Cherry about the creaky old place. On the spot, Shelly decided it would be the perfect location for her troop’s event. At her request, I gave John Pierre a call, and he graciously agreed to allow the scouts to use his house.
“That place is haunted,” said Chris’s youngest, rubbing his ball into his mitt.
I smiled, knowing the source of his fears. In an effort to drum up business, the troop had circulated a few rumors that the house was actually haunted. Given Nantucket’s foggy nights and seafaring past, filled with shipwrecks and whales’ tales, the town has no shortage of ghost stories. It wasn’t hard for the girls’ propaganda to take off.
“Things aren’t haunted in real life,” I said.
“Yes, they are,” he said, pulling his arm back for a throw.
“Mwah-ha-ha,” I said with my campiest vampire-slash-ghost voice, my arms held high in zombie fashion to play along.
“Boys!” said Chris.
It was then that I realized how sharp a parents’ instincts can be. My arms still raised, I looked up to a new vision of white streaking across the sky. Not a cloud. Nay, it was the white leather of a baseball that flew from the hand of Chris’s youngest with the greatest speed and farthest distance of the day. Right toward the closed kitchen window of my apartment. Unable to interrupt its trajectory, the four of us watched, our jaws hanging, as the ball hurtled toward my window and crashed unapologetically through the glass.
The boys took a step back, and then froze, torn between the primordial instincts of fight or flight.
I managed to stifle an “Oh, no!” in spite of my shock. The boys would have enough to answer for without me. The window’s glass hadn’t even hit the ground before Chris’s back door shot open.
“What the—?” he said, storming across the law. “Get inside!”
“It wasn’t my fault,” each boy said in his own fashion as they both scrambled, defiantly but obediently, toward the main house.
“Sorry, Stella,” said Chris, not pausing to stop.
I grasped at the unbroken chair straps beneath me and hopped up as Chris opened my unlocked door and stormed up the stairs to my apartment. Following him, I saw my cat, Tinker, who was on the top step. His whiskers peeked over his paws in a way that suggested a combination of empathy for and disappointment in his humans. Indeed, there were glass shards on my countertop and in the sink. The window would need to be replaced.
Chris, a contractor, immediately dialed his window-repair guy on the Cape, so I grabbed a broom and got to work. I looked at the window as I heard him complain to his colleague about how long the delivery might take. I knew he was concerned about being a good landlord, but I figured with a trash bag and some heavy tape from under my kitchen sink, I could probably cover the hole well enough until a new window arrived.
“I got this,” Chris said to me, his hand over the receiver. “Really. Scoot.”
Chris went right back to his phone call without waiting for me to answer. Realizing my garbage-bag proposal might only serve to add to his frustration with the boys’ shenanigans, I tactfully traded my broom for my keys and wallet. I silently waved to Chris. He responded with a shooing motion toward my stairs, so I headed down with Tinker behind me. My pet refuses to limit his role to house cat. Sometimes I think he sees himself as another human, or maybe a faithful dog. I didn’t mind. Aside from saving me the worry of having one of his paws land on a shard of glass in my absence, I knew the girls would get a kick out of seeing him.
The two of us jumped in my red Beetle and headed to the Morton house. Having left the chaos of the boys’ game of catch, I was delighted when Tinker and I stepped out of the car to hear a happy chorus of voices coming from inside.
As I was heading up the stairs to the front door, ready to give Shelly a break, I was surprised to hear another sound. It was of a heavy creak from behind the house, followed by a shriek that sang of pure mischief. Fool me once, as they say. My radar for middle-school high jinx was on red alert, thanks to my own family. I headed around the back to investigate.
The backyard was empty, but I wasn’t ready to concede that I was alone. I headed across the half acre of dead grass which was shrouded in fallen leaves, toward a dilapidated stone structure behind the main house that had once been a smokehouse. The girls affectionately called it The Shack. Homes built in the early nineteenth century sometimes had additional buildings behind them that served as workshops. By now, most of these structures have been razed for garages or more yard space, but the Morton house still had one. It was so run-down, however, that no one particularly relished it as history.
The scouts were strictly forbidden to enter The Shack, partly because a chain, which usually secured the front door, screamed tetanus shot. From the squeal I’d heard and the now-opened door, however, I concluded that some of our scouts had decided to break a few rules today. I didn’t blame them. I’d have likely done the same at their age. The question, now, was whether they’d scrambled back into the house or were still exploring. When I reached the front door of The Shack, I heard nothing from within, but I lifted Tinker into my arms.
“Ready?” I said into his soft, pink ear.
With a Cheshire smile, Tinker answered me by jumping from my arms into the small building with one big yowl, which can be deafening when he’s in the mood. His cry, however, was followed by a disappointed sniff. I gathered that his performance had been for nothing. The girls had not waited around to see what was inside.
I, however, decided to finish what they’d started. I was more than a little intrigued as I slipped around the thick, rotting door, standing ajar, and into the one-room building. After I brushed aside some cobwebs, I found myself in a space that smelled of dried dirt and a few autumn leaves. Although the main house was old and musty due to years of neglect by its last owner, it was thoroughly modernized compared to The Shack. Some daylight crept through the door, but the only other source of light was a small window, across which several weeds had taken root. The floor was made of wide wooden planks, which were warped from damp and neglect. The walls were exposed stones, round and about the size of the cobblestones on Main Street. It was a pleasant day outside, but the room was noticeably cold.
As I took a step forward, my phone rang, and my boyfriend’s name scrolled across my screen. My ring tone is an old-fashioned one, but it sounded loud and alien in those hollow surroundings.
“Hello, handsome,” I said.
“Hello, beautiful,” said Peter. “Are you interested in joining me at Crab City later? Low tide is in two hours.”
Peter was working on a story that had lately consumed him about the island’s hermit crabs. He was having the time of his life studying the thousands of crabs that emerge at low tide off the shore of the Nantucket Field Station, which is managed by the University of Massachusetts’s environmental studies department.
I’d been competing with the crabs for his time lately, but I was glad that he had taken such an interest in the ocean life that surrounded us. I was still figuring out how I might share his latest passion. Fortunately, I’d come up with an idea this morning.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ve been wondering if it’s possible to develop a marine-life scent that’s appealing for a summer candle.”
“Sounds like an impossible challenge, but I’m sure you will figure it out if anyone can,” he said.
“I’m at the Morton house,” I said, appreciating the compliment. “I can meet you when I’m done.”
“I’m happy to carve pumpkins or whatever you need until low tide,” he said.
“Your skills with a staple gun and your eye for boyishly creepy things might be of use,” I said.
“You had me at staple gun,” he said. “See you.”
I smiled, and figured I had about twenty minutes before he arrived, so I walked toward the most notable feature of The Shack, a hearth at the back of the dimly lit room. I passed a few odds and ends from the last owner. A rusty bike wheel. A spade. A roll of chicken-coop wire. Tinker sprang to my shoulder as a field mouse scrambled along the base of one of the walls.
“You’re a cat,” I said, in case he’d forgotten. “You’re supposed to chase mice.”
He put a paw on my forehead for balance, however, and did not budge.
Like many old fireplaces, the one I approached was huge, at least seven feet wide and maybe three feet tall, with a cooking hook on the left and space to build a large fire. In their day, these household features had served as heaters, lights, stoves, dryers, and more. The mantel of the hearth was made of the same stones as the walls, and cantilevered over the firepit for protection.
15 Minutes of Flame Page 1