Murder on Cape Cod

by Maddie Day

  “He’s not here, either. What time did he leave her?”

  “Eight thirty. I assumed he was going to the shop next.”

  “He didn’t. Did you hear what happened last night?” I asked.

  “I certainly did. What a tragedy. And a shock for you, I daresay.”

  I started to tell him about it but he cut me off.

  “I’m sorry, I’m late for a meeting. We’ll talk later. Txau, kretxeu.” Bye, sweetheart.

  I smiled, picturing the words written in Kriolu with its exotic spelling. We might write those words as chao and creh-cheo. But that spelling was the choice of the Cape Verdeans.

  “Txau, Pa.” I stopped smiling as the falcon tugged a long skinny piece of pink flesh up out of the snake and ate it with jerks of its head. I knew this was the way of the natural world, but it still made me shudder.

  I peered out at the sidewalk. A slight young woman, almost a girl, with long smooth hair the shade of Cape sand, walked past with a heavy step. I’d never seen her before. She sniffed and swiped her eyes with the back of her hand, first one then the other, her gaze downcast. She finally grabbed a tissue out of a turquoise bag slung diagonally across her chest. Poor thing was upset about something. She disappeared behind the front of the shop.

  My mouth was full of the last bite of sandwich when Florence Wolanski bustled through the back door, her boy-short white hair even spikier than usual.

  “She said you were out here.” She slid onto the bench facing me. “What’s all this about murder?” Westham’s head librarian’s thin face and faded hazel eyes were focused so directly on my face they almost pulled her over the table. Violent death and my connection to it must be the topic of the day. “Only on Cape Cod.” She shook her head.

  I nodded and swallowed. “It’s true.”

  “I heard you found that killcow Lacey stabbed to death on the path.” She tapped the table for emphasis.

  She was as much a Cape native as I was. It seemed a bit harsh to use a natives-only Cape word to say Jake didn’t amount to much. What happened to Speak no ill of the dead, or whatever the phrase was? On the other hand, Flo wasn’t one to mince words for any reason.

  “I did. On the trail last night, on my way home from book group.” Wait a minute. She said stabbed. Nobody knew that except me, Gin, and the police. And the killer, of course. “How do you know he was stabbed?” I asked, keeping my voice casual.

  “Suzanne told me.” Suzanne was Flo’s adult daughter, who managed the bookstore in town. “So who did it? Too bad there’s already so many tourists around. Did you recognize the knife?”

  “Hang on a sec, Flo. How would I know who did it? And a flood of tourists happens to be good for business.” I wasn’t mentioning the knife to anybody before I talked to Derrick. If I ever found him. But I was curious about how Suzanne heard about the stabbing. “Um, the police asked me not to talk about the method of death, so please don’t spread that around.”

  “Fine. But you’re smart. You must have some ideas about the perpetrator. You found the—” Her mouth dropped open with an intake of air as she clapped age-spotted hands once. “They probably suspect you. Isn’t the person who ‘claims,’” she surrounded the word with finger quotes, “to find the body, the person who calls it in, aren’t they always the first suspect?” Flo was a long-time member of the Cozy Capers.

  “So what if they suspect me? I didn’t kill Jake.”

  Now her tone dropped like we were planning a coup d’état. Her gaze darted right and left before settling on my eyes. “But Norland dropped by and said you’d had a fight with Jake. So maybe that’ll throw the real killer off his game. Make him get careless. And then we can nail him.”

  “I didn’t fight with him. And it’s not ‘we,’ Flo. The police will be doing the investigation and the arresting.”

  She didn’t react but just kept talking. “I think we need to have an emergency meeting of book group tonight. I’m going to let everyone know.”

  “Really? But we only met last night.”

  Orlean stuck her head out the door. “Got customers.”

  “I’ll be in a couple of minutes, okay?” I called.

  She rolled her eyes but headed back inside. She hadn’t signed up for interfacing with the public, although I’d trained her on the basics of renting bikes and selling merchandise, and she didn’t have any problem using the register and card reader to take payments. She wasn’t much of a people person, though, and I hadn’t thought I’d need to her to be anything more than an ace mechanic.

  “Not to talk about a book, silly,” Flo continued. “To discuss the Westham murder. We need to pool our resources. You’ll come, right?”

  “I guess.” Pool our resources? What resources? “But Derrick might be busy tonight, so we’ll have to meet somewhere else.” I wasn’t sure I wanted word getting around that Derrick seemed to have gone missing.

  Flo waved off my concern. “My house, then. I have room. Seven o’clock sharp. We’ll order out pizza.” She stood. “See you there.”

  So much for dinner with the family. I shot Derrick a quick text about the meeting. Maybe that would get him to appear.

  “Mac?” Orlean called from the back door. “You got a visitor. You want I should send him out?”

  “Who is it?” I didn’t see anybody behind her.

  “It’s a detective? A Detective Haskins?” Her voice rose as if she expected me to recognize the name.

  I didn’t. And, while I’d been expecting more questioning, the whole situation suddenly seemed almost more real than it had last night. Flo’s interest notwithstanding, this mystery wasn’t a bit cozy.

  Chapter Seven

  “Please walk me through your evening again, Ms. Almeida, if you don’t mind.” Detective Haskins’s voice was low and gentle, and he smiled when he asked questions, but his deep brown eyes never stopped watching me from behind dark-rimmed glasses.

  He was the large man I’d spied taking a tray of coffee into the station early this morning. One tiny mystery solved. We’d been talking for half an hour since he joined me at the picnic table and Flo left. She’d clearly wanted to stick around but Haskins had made it equally clear this was going to be a private conversation.

  Every once in a while Orlean stuck her head out the door with a semi-panicked look on her face, but I shook my head. I once again recounted leaving the lighthouse, making my way through the fog along the trail, looking for the gap in the hedge so I could slip into my yard.

  “And you had no awareness of the body in the path.” The detective cocked his head. “Seems like it would have been hard to miss.”

  “Sounds like you don’t believe me.”

  He folded his hands on the rough table and waited without speaking.

  Up close I could see that his cotton shirt was of a muted floral print fabric. Beach community detectives must have permission to dress more casually than in the city. I’d figured him to be at least six foot six when he’d ducked through the back door of the shop. While he wasn’t fat, he would never be described as thin, either. He had big bones and was bumping up to fifty, with gray shooting through dark hair.

  I pressed my lips together for a minute, trying to figure how to keep my temper and explain how I missed seeing the body at the same time. “Sitting here in the sunshine makes it a little hard to picture. As I said, I was looking for the place in the hedge where there’s a break. Where I take a shortcut into my backyard. It was super foggy at the time.” I had a thought. “Weren’t you out at all last night?”

  “So you didn’t see Mr. Lacey.”

  He wasn’t going to answer me. Fine. “No, I didn’t.”

  He glanced down at his notebook and picked up his pen. Maybe the state police refused to fork over the money for something a little more modern like a tablet. “After you determined he was deceased, you called 911.” He looked at me for confirmation.

  “Yes.”

  “Chief Laitinen seems to think you might have recognized the haf
t of the weapon in Mr. Lacey’s chest. Did you?”

  What? I hadn’t said anything about that to Victoria. But I’d certainly gasped in surprise when I saw it. I must have given myself away. Could I stall until I found my darn brother? I hated to tell on him, but I knew from reading mysteries that it was very bad form to withhold information from the authorities. Especially when asked directly.

  I mustered a little smile I didn’t really feel. “You know, my assistant isn’t used to handling the shop alone. It’s a very busy day today and I really need to be getting back to my business.” I half stood until he waved me down again.

  “Please answer the question, Ms. Almeida.” His tone left no way out.

  I sat again, trying to suppress a sigh. “All right. I thought the knife looked a teensy bit like my brother’s fish knife. But I’m sure it isn’t. He didn’t have any beef with Jake. Derrick wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

  “Your brother’s name, please?”

  “Derrick Searle.”

  Haskins looked up from his scribbling. “You have different last names.”

  “He’s actually my half-brother. My mom was married before. Derrick is her son by her previous husband, who was a Searle. After the divorce she took back her maiden name of MacKenzie, and used it for my first name, too, minus the capital K. It was quite a household growing up, with three last names.”

  “I see. So your mother is still a MacKenzie. First name of both your parents, please?”

  Here we go. “My father is Joseph. He’s the minister of the UU church. Mom goes by Astra.” I saw him starting to ask about “goes by” and hurried to finish. “I mean, that’s her legal name now, but it used to be Edna. She’s an astrologer and always hated her birth name. Sorry, it’s complicated.” And probably way more than he wanted to know. But the guy seemed unflappable.

  “Any other siblings? A husband?”

  “Me? I’m not married. I have another sibling, but she doesn’t live around here.”

  “How about your brother? Your half-brother, I mean.”

  “He’s divorced and has custody of his daughter, who’s four.”

  “Where does Mr. Searle reside?”

  “In the lighthouse.” I twisted and pointed vaguely behind me and to the right. “He’s the caretaker. It’s privately owned and isn’t a working light anymore.” Despite the sunshine, I felt a sudden chill. Why was he asking about Derrick? Someone else at the scene must have recognized the knife.

  “Your brother has not been responding to any contact information we’ve been able to locate. Do you have any idea how we might reach him?”

  I swore silently. He hadn’t been responding to me, either. Where was he? “No, I’m afraid not. He usually works here but didn’t come in this morning. He must be indisposed.” Where did I come up with that? The phrase made me sound like a character in a Miss Marple tale, or something out of one of Dorothy Sayers’s mysteries.

  “I see. Now if you don’t mind, run through your grievance with the victim again for me, please.”

  Yes, I minded. I gazed at my shop, at the tree, at anywhere but him. No. The sooner I got this over with, the sooner I could get back to work.

  He cleared his throat. “Ms. Almeida? You were overheard expressing your displeasure with the victim a few hours before you found his body.”

  “I was unhappy with some work I’d hired him to do on my house.” I told him about hiring Jake and the quality of the job. “It was just basic stuff.”

  He watched me. “Had you had other unhappy encounters with him?”

  “No!” Calm down, Mackenzie. “Excuse me. No, I hadn’t. I knew he was struggling financially—”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Everybody knows it. He lives, I mean lived in a crummy winter rental, and I don’t even know where he moved to at the start of this month.” Rents more than quadrupled once summer season hit, as in most resort towns. It left the low-income population to camp or live in their cars for the season. “He took free meals at the soup kitchen and food at the food bank. So that’s why I hired him. I knew he needed the cash, and I needed the work done.”

  He checked his notes. “But he told you he wasn’t going to need your money soon, correct?”

  “That’s right. I don’t know what that was about.” I sure was curious, though.

  “Can you think of anything else? A fact, a bit of conversation, anything that might lead us to the person who killed Mr. Lacey?”

  “Let’s see.” I frowned, thinking. “A man stopped in here this morning. An out-of-towner. He looked rich, and said he’s looking for property to buy.”

  Haskins drummed the fingers of his left hand on the table. “Yes?”

  “He also asked if I knew where Jacob Lacey was.”

  “Oh?” His fingers stopped tapping.

  Now I had Haskins’s attention. “Yes, said he knew Jake growing up in Providence.” The Rhode Island city was some seventy miles west of here.

  Haskins jotted notes. “Did you tell him about Lacey’s death?”

  “No. Not at all. I merely told the truth, that I didn’t know where he could find Jake.”

  “Wise move. Know where the guy is staying?”

  “No, sorry.” I shook my head slowly. “I’m very sad Jake’s dead. But I had nothing to do with it, Detective, and I have a business to run.”

  The detective lifted his leg over the bench and stood. Yep, six-six at least. I got up, too.

  “I’ll let you get back to work.” He withdrew a card from his shirt pocket and handed it to me. He held out his hand, which bore a heavy signet ring on the next-to-last finger. “Please contact me without hesitation.”

  I’d recognize a Harvard class ring anywhere. Interesting. I shook his hand, astonished at the meaty size of it. “I will.”

  “I should have asked your employee’s name. We might need to interview her, too.”

  “But she had nothing to do with Jake’s death.”

  “If you don’t mind?” He waited with pen to paper.

  This was getting out of hand, but what else could I do? “Orlean Brown.”

  “Unusual name.”

  “She told me her parents figured with a last name like Brown, they needed to give her a unique first name. And since they lived in Orleans . . .” I flipped open my palms. Unique but not that creative. Orleans was the last town on the high-speed section of Route 6. The gateway to the outer Cape, the community sat in the crook of the Cape’s elbow. The forearm of Cape Cod featured forty miles of sandy beaches, the Cape Cod National Seashore, which ended at Provincetown in the palm of the curled hand.

  He nodded. “I’m off, then. And Ms. Almeida? We always hope to solve crimes with great dispatch, but right now Mr. Lacey’s murderer is at large, possibly even nearby. Please watch your back.” He ambled away toward the sidewalk.

  I held up the card. Sergeant Lincoln Haskins, State Police Detective. I slid the card into my back pocket and headed to the shop. Watch my back? Yikes.

  Chapter Eight

  “Zane.” I smiled at the slender distiller. He stood in the front door of my shop backlit by the afternoon sun. And he held a paper bag that looked suspiciously like it held a six-pack of beer.

  He held his package aloft. “Got time for a cold one?” Zane ran Zane King’s distillery and high-end liquor store, Cape King. He made rums and whiskeys to die for, and also stocked other fine local alcohol like Nor’easter bourbon from Nantucket as well as some eminently drinkable wines with price tags to match. Zane had been at book group last night with his husband, Stephen, Town Clerk for Westham. Both men loved reading mysteries, but I thought Zane was more into cozies than Stephen. The clerk was a brilliant cook, though, and we all loved it when it was the couple’s turn to bring the food.

  “My place is pretty quiet this afternoon, so I put my GONE FISHING sign on the door,” he said.

  “Fishing for information, you mean.” I glanced at the clock. Mac’s Bikes was officially open until six, but it was afte
r five and Orlean had left for the day. I wasn’t expecting any rental returns. Why the heck not share an ale with my friend? Maybe it would take my mind off my increasing anxiety about Derrick. And since Zane loved gossiping about the town almost more than he loved Stephen, maybe I’d pick up some delicious tidbits of news. “Let’s do it. I’ll keep the doors open in case somebody drops in.” If I sat in exactly the right spot at the picnic table, I could see all the way through the shop to the front door.

  Two minutes later we were clinking bottles across the picnic table. An onshore breeze had set in, and I zipped up my hoodie to keep it out.

  “Flo says we’re meeting tonight to solve the mystery.” Zane leaned toward me, eyes sparkling like the afternoon light on Buzzard’s Bay. “So what do you know?”

  “Wait a sec, Zane. We’re going to talk about it, not solve it.” Geez. First Gin, then Flo, now Zane.

  “Of course.” He flapped his hand, dismissing my concern. “Still, if we put our heads together, who knows what we’ll come up with.”

  He might have a point. And if we did figure anything out, I’d simply pass it along to Detective Haskins.

  Zane went on. “For example, I saw a new guy around town today who didn’t look anything like a tourist. Tall hefty dude, dark hair with some silver in it, kind of ambled when he walked. But he was alone, not wearing shorts, no camera. Maybe he’s somebody suspicious.” He sipped his beer with eyes aglow.

  “Flowered shirt, kind of comfortable body?”

  “Yes. You saw him too?”

  “Yeah, but no.” I shook my head. “Sorry. He’s the police detective.”

  His mouth dropped open. “No sir.”

  “His name is Lincoln Haskins. He interviewed me for a while earlier today.”

  “So much for that theory.” He lowered his head as his posture deflated.

  “The good thing is that he’s on the case and he seems smart.” And he told me to watch my back. I’d been so busy I hadn’t even thought about the detective’s words of caution since he’d left. But now? I glanced around. It was the same sunny coastal tourist town it had always been. How could it include murder?