“Do you want some coffee?” I asked, rinsing my hands at the sink and trying to sound normal.
“Sure,” he said, pulling a chair out at the table and sinking into it with a weary sigh.
I grabbed two mugs from the cabinet and filled them, then sat gingerly beside him at the table. The smell of sawdust, along with John’s clean, masculine scent, was faint, but enough to subtly charge the air in the kitchen—at least for me. Had he stopped to comfort Vanessa before coming to visit me in the kitchen? I wondered.
“What do you think happened?” I asked as he closed his hands around one of my white porcelain mugs.
“It looks like we’re dealing with another murder,” he said, confirming what I already suspected.
“Why do you think that?” I asked.
“The position of the body—and the purple spots on her skin.”
“I noticed them, too,” I said, shivering as I recalled the little livid splotches marring her pale skin. What had caused them? “What are they from?” I asked.
John shook his head grimly. “It’s often a sign of asphyxiation.”
I thought of the pillow that had been tucked neatly under Boots’ head. “Do you mean … she was suffocated?”
“I can’t be sure,” he said. “We’ll have to wait for the coroner’s report. But that’s what it looks like to me.”
“At least it wasn’t poison,” I said. “So Gertrude can’t blame the food. And I guess that exonerates Tom.” As the words left my mouth, I realized the implications of what I’d just said. Tom hadn’t been on the island last night—but John had. And as of yesterday, John had been what the police call “a person of interest.” Which meant he might be rocketing to the position of number one suspect all over again.
Was John involved in Boots’ death? I thought of the crash in my kitchen last night, and the sound of a door closing. Last night, I had assumed it was my midnight marauder. I realized with a chill that it could have been John, leaving through the front door.
But what possible motive would John have had for killing Boots?
“That’s assuming both murders are linked,” John said. “And that Boots was murdered. We don’t know that for sure yet.”
“But it’s looking that way,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
As we sat in silence, brooding over the poor woman upstairs, I thought about what John had said about the two murders not necessarily being linked. Was Boots’ death related to Dirk’s? Or was the reason for her death unrelated? As far as I knew, there was no real connection between the former sorority sister and the hunky trainer.
Unless she had seen something that the murderer considered a threat, I realized. Had Boots seen the murderer leaving Dirk’s room?
I thought about Elizabeth’s surreptitious exit from the trainer’s room.
Had I seen the murderer leaving Dirk’s room?
I took another sip of coffee, thinking of the list of potential suspects I’d made last night. Obviously, with the new information in hand—the death of yet another guest—it could stand some updating. But I still hadn’t called Maine Monthly Magazine to check up on Elizabeth. Since business hours were well underway, I decided there was no time like the present. And I was dying to confirm that someone other than my neighbor had a strong motive for murder.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” I told John, running upstairs to grab my most recent issue of Maine Monthly. I glanced over the masthead; no sign of an Elizabeth Green. The business number was listed at the bottom, and I carried the magazine downstairs and picked up the kitchen phone.
“What are you doing?” John asked.
“Checking on something,” I said, dialing the number and taking another sip of coffee as it rang.
“Good morning, Maine Monthly Magazine.”
“Hello,” I said. “I’m trying to get in touch with one of your reporters—Elizabeth Green.”
“Elizabeth Green?” the woman repeated.
“That’s right,” I said. “She’s doing an article on Cranberry Island right now—about a weight-loss retreat.”
“I don’t recognize the name—but maybe she’s new. Hold on a moment,” she said, and Wings came on, singing “Band on the Run” as I waited. Finally, after what seemed an interminable time—we’d moved on to the Bee Gees—she came back on the line. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You must be mistaken. There’s no Elizabeth Green working here.”
So Elizabeth Green wasn’t a reporter for Maine Monthly Magazine after all. “Thank you,” I said. “I must have been mistaken.” Then I hung up and turned to John.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The reporter—Elizabeth Green?”
“What about her?”
“She claims she’s a reporter for Maine Monthly Magazine,” I said. “Lose-It-All comped the trip so she could do an article. But I just called the magazine’s office, and they’ve never heard of her.”
“Interesting,” John said, sitting up a little straighter in his chair. “Why is she here then?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe she wanted a free ride, so she passed herself off as a reporter. Or maybe she’s got another reason.” I sat back down at the table across from him. “I saw her coming out of Dirk’s room the night before he died.”
His green eyes were still. “Do you think she’s the one who killed him?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I think we need to let Detective Rose know she’s not who she says she is.”
___
By eleven o’clock, the inn was swarming with officers and the guests were being questioned one by one. Nobody had officially confirmed John’s murder diagnosis, but from the grim looks on their faces, I was guessing he hadn’t been far off.
I’d tried to catch Detective Rose’s attention, in part to share what I’d learned about Elizabeth and in part to see if Tom Lockhart had been released, but I hadn’t been able to get her to spare a moment—which gave me some comfort, since I presumed that meant I wasn’t at the top of her list of suspects. And John, I was happy to see, hadn’t been carted off the island in handcuffs, either.
Gwen had appeared downstairs not long after the police arrived, wondering what all the commotion was about.
“Another murder,” I said. “It’s not official, but …”
“Who was it?” she asked, brown eyes wide.
“Boots,” I said. “One of the sorority sisters.”
She sucked in her breath. “Is it related to the trainer’s death?”
“We don’t know yet,” I said.
She poured herself a cup of coffee and reached for a gingersnap, but of course they were all gone. “There are muffins in the freezer still,” I said. “At least I think there are—somebody swiped a bag of cookie dough last night.”
“Mysteries all over the place here,” she said.
“I’m a bit more concerned about the guests dying, though.”
“Any idea who did it?”
I shook my head. “John thinks she was asphyxiated,” I said with a shudder.
“So it wasn’t poison,” she said. “And unless she choked on something, it couldn’t have been your cooking.”
“That’s something, at least. But I have a feeling they’re not about to let me open up shop quite yet.”
Unfortunately, I was right.
___
While the police questioned the guests, I sat in the kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee and dreading a phone call from the Daily Mail—or worse, the Bangor Daily News.
I was on my fourth cup when Marge knocked at the kitchen door, dressed for a day of work in a faded, overlarge T-shirt and cotton pants that appeared to have had several run-ins with a Clorox bottle.
“What’s all the hubbub?” she asked.
“Another guest died.”
“Here? At the inn?”
I nodded.
“Murder?” she asked, jowls wobbling.
“Looks that way,” I said.
&n
bsp; She drew in her breath and tsked. “Bad news comes in threes,” she said ominously. “Let’s hope there’s not a third body to come.”
“Can we count the one in the lighthouse?” I said hopefully. The last thing I needed was another dead body on the premises. Or close to the premises. I shivered again, thinking of Boots’ inert form.
“Gertrude called you yet?” she asked.
“No,” I said gloomily, “but I’m sure she will.”
“She’s no help at all, that woman. All this reporting ain’t good for business,” she said, adjusting her faded cotton shirt around her solid body as she entered the kitchen.
“It’s good for the paper’s business, unfortunately, which is why I’m guessing she’ll be on the horn as soon as she figures it out.” I sighed and changed the subject to something I actually had some control over. “Thanks for coming today, Marge—but I’m afraid you’ll have to talk to the cops to see if you’ll be able to get into the rooms to clean them.”
“I’ll manage somehow,” she said. “The police won’t be here forever. I’ll stay late if I need to.”
“Maybe you could do the living room floor if you can’t get into the rooms. With all the traffic, that floor could probably use it.”
“I’ll get right on it,” she said. She hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Kitchen still closed?”
“Indefinitely,” I said. “If it weren’t for Evie Spurrell, I’d be sunk.”
Marge’s broad face was sympathetic. “Things will turn around, Miss Nat. Just give it time.”
“Let’s hope so,” I said.
Marge had just trundled out of the kitchen when the phone rang. I cringed, but forced myself to answer it. If it was Gertrude Pickens, I could always say “no comment.”
Fortunately, it was Charlene. “What’s going on over there?” she asked before I could even spit out my normal “Good morning, Gray Whale Inn” greeting.
“Another murder, it looks like,” I said.
“Who?”
“One of the sorority sisters. Boots.”
“Poisoned?”
“Suffocated, John thinks.”
“How awful,” she said. “Did it happen at the inn?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Her friend Sarah found her on her bed.”
“Poor thing. Wait till Gertrude gets hold of this one,” she said, echoing Marge’s earlier comment.
“At least it wasn’t poison,” I pointed out.
“I guess there’s a silver lining,” she said. “And I guess that lets Tom Lockhart off the hook.”
“Presuming the murders are related.”
“Why wouldn’t they be?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know anything, it seems like. None of this makes sense.”
“Who do you think did it?” she asked.
“I wish I knew,” I said. “But I did find out a few interesting things.” I told Charlene what I’d learned about Greg’s profession—and the burned diary in Bethany’s room. Then I relayed what I’d learned that morning about Elizabeth’s false credentials.
“Why do you think she’s here, then? Just a free ride?”
“If that were the case, why would she be asking so many questions?”
“Keeping up the façade?”
“I have a feeling there’s another reason,” I said. “I just can’t think what it might be.”
“I can understand that a few people might have wanted Dirk dead,” she said. “But why kill Boots?”
“I don’t know. The only thing I can figure is that she knew something the murderer didn’t want her to.”
“But with Tom Lockhart already in custody, why bother?”
“Good question,” I said. “Maybe the two murders aren’t related.” I leaned against the wall, then froze. “Wait a minute,” I said. “This morning, when I served breakfast, no one knew Tom had been arrested.”
“So maybe the murders are related,” she said. “If the murderer didn’t know that the police had already arrested someone …”
“But who do you think did it?”
“Well, Vanessa’s the obvious choice,” she said. “She had the most to gain for getting rid of Dirk.”
“What about Bethany?”
“The burned journal is weird, I’ll admit. And the restraining orders don’t help, either. But if she thought Dirk was hung up on Vanessa, why not kill her instead, and then try to be the shoulder for him to cry on?”
“Unless he really spurned her,” I said.
“But wouldn’t she just haul off and whack him with something? Poison takes planning—I think Bethany would have been more … impulsive, somehow. Honestly, I think Elizabeth is a more likely suspect than Bethany. After all, you did see her coming out of Dirk’s room.”
“And she’s obviously here under false pretences,” I said.
“Maybe she’s working undercover for another publication.”
“Or maybe she’s linked to one of those old cases,” I said. “You know—the ones where people were hurt after taking supplements?”
“Maybe.” I heard a voice in the background, and Charlene responding. “Who’s that?” I asked.
“It’s Ernie—apparently the mail boat is here, and it’s so overloaded with lumber for the lighthouse there was no room for all the groceries.” She sighed. “I’ll be so happy when that renovation is done.”
Lumber. Something in the mention of lumber sparked something in my mind, but I couldn’t place it.
“Nat, I hate to run,” Charlene said, “but I’ve got to go talk with Tania. Can I call you later?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I’ll call later to find out if there’s any news!”
I hung up the phone a moment later, still thinking about what Charlene had said. I had seen Elizabeth coming out of Dirk’s room the night before he died.
Was she the one who had spiked his pills with ephedrine? And then smothered Boots to cover the crime?
What I really needed to do was to slip back up to Elizabeth’s room and do another search. I didn’t know what I might find, if anything—I’d been pretty thorough last time—but I wasn’t sure what else to do.
I was about to grab a skeleton key and head upstairs when something caught my eye. It was two police officers, and they were escorting someone down the path to their launch.
John.
I raced to the back door and hurtled down the stone steps, huffing as I caught up with them. “Where are you taking him?” I asked.
“To the station, ma’am,” the taller of the two told me, looking like he was assessing me for risk potential.
“Why?” I asked.
“Natalie, it’s fine,” John said. But something in his face told me otherwise.
“They’re arresting you?” I breathed, feeling my lungs close up.
“It’s a big mistake,” he said. “One of the guests claimed she saw me in the inn last night, coming out of Boots’ room.”
“But you weren’t,” I said. Then I remembered the door I’d heard closing the night before, after the crash in the kitchen. Had that been John, leaving through the front door of the inn?
“I wasn’t,” he confirmed, as if sensing my doubt.
“Let’s go,” said the shorter of the two officers gruffly. As I stared in disbelief, they led my neighbor down the path, escorted him onto the launch, and untied the ropes. I stood staring as they revved the engine and headed toward the mainland, taking John farther and farther away from me.
My heart pounded as I walked back into the inn, struggling to breathe. They’d just arrested John. What was I supposed to do now? Did he have an attorney?
And why had they arrested him?
Marge wasn’t in the living room—I assumed that meant she had gained access to the guest rooms—but most of the guests were there, attended by a stolid-looking officer in a too-tight polyester uniform. Conversation, as you might imagine, wasn’t particularly bright; in fact, the silence was oppressive.
; “Can I get anybody some coffee?” I asked, trying to act as if everything was normal, when in truth things were about as far from normal as possible. “There’s tea over here, too,” I said, feeling like a robot.
The dieters shook their heads—almost everyone was in the room, reading or staring out the window, including Elizabeth, who, uncharacteristically, was nose-deep in a rather dry-looking paperback, which must have been why she didn’t notice them arresting my neighbor.
Sarah and Cat were sitting beside each other wordlessly, still looking stunned, while Bethany wore the same depressed look she’d had for days. Only Megan and Greg looked content in their seats by the corner, holding hands.
What was I going to do about John? Elizabeth’s busy, I thought. Why don’t you go see what you can find in her room?
“Let me know if I can get you anything,” I sang out, then raced to the front desk and grabbed the second skeleton key.
I was halfway up the stairs before I realized that it might be a good idea to have something with me when I went into Elizabeth’s room—like cleaning supplies. Since the police were gathered right down the hall and all.
I retraced my steps, tossing a couple of spray bottles and a sponge into a bucket, and headed back upstairs, almost running into Marge as I turned the corner at the top.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
“Oh,” I said, glancing at the officer outside Boots’ door, “I thought I’d take care of some of the rooms, to help out.”
“I’ve already done them two,” she said, pointing to Elizabeth’s and Vanessa’s.
“Great,” I lied.
“And you got the wrong stuff,” she said, jabbing at the two bottles of window cleaner in my bucket.
“You’re right,” I said woodenly. “Silly me.”
The officer down the hall was watching us, I realized, so I turned and greeted him. “Can I get you officers anything?” I called down to him, trying to sound relaxed, even though I felt so tense I might shatter at any moment. “Maybe a drink of water, or some tea?”
“I wouldn’t object to a pot of tea, if you’re offering,” the red-haired man said with a smile.
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