A Whisker in the Dark

by Leighann Dobbs

  She gestured toward a table at the back of the tent with a gigantic stamp on it. “I have to set up our table. Don’t know why the post office needs to advertise on a table at the town celebration. It’s not like you people could go anywhere else for your mail.” Jen laughed.

  “The post office is very expensive so I get a lot of stuff from UP—” My mom’s words were cut off by Millie poking her in the ribs.

  Jen pretended like she didn’t hear. “Hey, I heard about the skeleton. What’s up with that?”

  “Ed was working on that old ballroom and found it inside the wall. Kinda creepy, if you ask me,” Mom said.

  “Well, at least there’s no ghost,” Jen said. “Is there?”

  Her voice held a hopeful tone, but luckily I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of any ghost. That was the last thing I needed with all those crazy Biddefords running around. “Nope. No ghost, just a skeleton.”

  “Some say it’s Jedediah Biddeford come back to get his treasure,” Jen said.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that.” I glanced around the tent. More people with shovels had shown up. Mom still leaned on hers as if she was protecting it from being stolen right out from under her.

  “In fact, it seems like a lot of people are going to be looking to dig it up.” Jen looked at Mom’s shovel. “I heard the hardware store was sold out of shovels.”

  “I got one of the last ones,” Mom chimed in.

  “Lovely. So my yard will be a minefield of holes tomorrow?”

  “Is it legal for people to just come on the guesthouse property and dig?” Millie asked. “I mean, it is still private property even if it is a public guesthouse.”

  “Well what can you do?” Mom asked. “You can’t hire guards to patrol it.”

  Millie pressed her lips together. “And you want to keep up good relations with the townspeople. Don’t want anyone bad mouthing the guesthouse.”

  She had a point. If I kicked people off the property they might get angry and take revenge with bad reviews on Yelp. Was there a way I could control the digging and still keep people happy? I wasn’t too worried about the yard since the estate had acres, but most of it was rundown. “I’m going to have to lay out some ground rules. Hopefully the whole town won’t come out. And hopefully they will get tired of digging when nothing is found the first day.”

  “What about the Biddefords? They tend to act like they own the place because they used to,” Millie said.

  “Yeah they’re going to be a tough crowd to control.” I said wondering how, exactly, I would control them.

  Jen’s eyes widened at something over my shoulder and I turned to see Mike making his way toward us. Was the guy everywhere? He swooped over to Millie’s side and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

  “Does your job entail inspecting tents too?” I gestured toward the area around us.

  Mike smiled, all boyish charm and dimples. “Nice to see you, too, Sunshine.”

  Jen snorted. Mom and Millie looked pointedly from Mike to me. I pretended to ignore all of them.

  “I just came by because I knew Aunt Millie would be here and she said she had something for me.”

  Millie produced a bag of cookies from her canvas tote bag. “Just baked them this morning.”

  Odd, usually she came to the kitchen at the guesthouse to bake. Maybe she was getting used to her own kitchen at the independent living resort where she now resided. She’d claimed the kitchen was too small to do any serious baking, but maybe cookies weren’t that serious in Millie’s book. Truth be told, the thought of Millie not stopping by the guesthouse anymore to bake made me sad. She could be a handful, but I enjoyed her company. Plus, I needed her to keep bailing me out with breakfast dishes so the guests would have appetizing food to eat.

  “Did you come from the town offices?” Millie’s words dripped with faux innocence. I knew she had an ulterior motive.

  Apparently Mike did too because his gaze narrowed and his hand hesitated as he pulled a chocolate-chip cookie out of the bag. “Yes, why?”

  Millie played with the tablecloth avoiding Mike’s eyes. “I was just wondering… you know, because you’re right next to the police station there, if you’ve heard anything further about the skeleton they found earlier this morning?”

  Mike tortured her by biting into the cookie and making a show of chewing slowly before answering. “Well, as a matter of fact I did.”

  “And…?” my mother and Millie both said, leaning in toward Mike with eager looks.

  “Early assessment is that the skeleton was there for almost three hundred years. I guess it’s pretty hard to date exactly, but the medical examiner used to be a forensic anthropologist so he knows old bones.”

  “Did they find any more clues inside the wall?” Millie asked.

  Mike shook his head. “Nothing but a bunch of plaster. They did identify the ring and they’re pretty sure the skeleton is Jedediah Biddeford based on the ring and an old fracture on his leg.”

  “Aha!” My mother straightened and pulled the head of her shovel out of the ground, showing the most animation I’d seen since I’d arrived. “That settles it then. If Jedediah Biddeford really did come back from Europe, then there’s a good chance he brought the treasure back with him. And that treasure is buried somewhere on the property of the Oyster Cove Guesthouse.”

  Seven

  Nero scanned the activity under the tent at the town common, his intelligent gaze coming to rest on Josie. She was talking to Myron Remington at the Oyster Cove Guesthouse display table. Nero felt sorry for Myron. He knew that many of the townspeople gossiped about him behind his back but then pandered to him in person because he was in control of the money. Try as he might, Nero would never understand the humans’ obsession with money, nor how acquiring it could make them do unspeakable things.

  “Hurry up, the gang’s waiting.” Marlowe had trotted ahead, her black-and-orange tail high in the air. They were heading toward the bait wharf at the town dock where they often met with their other feline friends.

  The others would have heard about the discovery of the skeleton by now and would want all the juicy details. He hated to tell them that their excitement would be in vain; there was nothing left to decipher after all these years. Hopefully they wouldn’t be too disappointed. Lying around all day in the sun could get boring and he was sure the others were as eager as he was to dig into a good investigation. Then again, judging by the behavior of the guests at the guesthouse, the cats might get that chance sooner than they thought.

  Nero followed Marlowe past the colorful boats bobbing in the cove, down the long wharf and up the ramp to the bait dock. It was a mystery why the humans avoided this dock. He’d see them giving it a wide birth, covering their noses and making faces as they walked past.

  The bait wharf had its own unique ambiance. The lapping of waves, the briny scent of ocean and rotting fish were pleasant, the incessant cawing of the gulls not so much. The gulls could be a nuisance, especially if they swooped down at you. Luckily there were plenty of old lobster traps to hide behind if that happened. Still, Nero knew to be careful where he stepped. One panicked misstep could land you in the cold Atlantic.

  “Heard someone got iced up at the guesthouse again,” said Stubbs, an orange-striped tabby with a stub of a tail who was batting at a rope dangling from the side of a lobster trap. Stubbs had a habit of talking in old-time detective speak, which Nero presumed was a result of his human reading too many Raymond Chandler books to him.

  “Not exactly,” Marlowe said. “Well, I guess he got iced at some point but not in our time.”

  “How long do you think he was in there?” Juliette curled her fluffy gray tail around her as she settled on top of one of the lobster pots.

  “Probably about two hundred and fifty years.” Boots licked his paw, the white boot contrasting with the black on the rest of his leg, then smoothed one of his long whiskers.

  “How do you know that?” Harry, a fluffy Maine Coon, asked.

&
nbsp; Boots gave him a look of superiority. Boots could be that way. He fancied himself cleverer than the others, which could be annoying at times. But he had a good heart and mad detective skills, so Nero let it pass. “I used my superior sense to find out who the victim was and did the math.”

  “You mean you overheard Sheriff Chamberlain.” Poe, a gray mix, leveled Boots with a green-eyed stare.

  “Well, am I correct?” Boots ignored Poe and turned to Nero.

  “Indeed. The body has been there for exactly two hundred and fifty years.” Nero used the word “exactly” loosely. His superior senses enabled him to deduct an average or expected amount of time, but he couldn’t be sure. Then again, none of the other cats could either, so he might as well try to sound smart while he could.

  A shadow loomed from above and the cats all ducked. A seagull!

  Splat! A white-and-orange dropping landed on the ground in the middle of the cats who had formed a conversational circle. The gull’s raucous laughter echoed as it swooped up into the sky.

  “Darn things are getting aggressive again.” Juliette checked her fluffy tail for bird droppings.

  “Maybe it wasn’t so bad when they were dying off.” Stubbs eyed the splatter as they all shifted over to a non-soiled part of the wharf.

  “If the crime is that old it doesn’t sound like anything we could dig our claws into,” Harry said, once they were settled. “Murder most likely. I mean, how else would a skeleton get inside a wall? My informant down at the police station, Louie Two Paws, has told me the victim was all bones, and not even delicious ones either. Not that we would eat human bones. And the police think it was Jedediah Biddeford, the guy who built your very own Oyster Cove Guesthouse.”

  “Indeed.” Again Nero acted like he already knew all this, but in fact he’d only suspected. He’d have found out from Millie or Josie eventually, but it was good to have confirmation straight from the police source.

  “But how can we investigate?” Boots preened his long whiskers, curling them up at the end. “There are no clues left to stimulate our superior brain power or suspects alive to spy on.”

  Another shadow loomed and the cats ducked again.

  “Darn gulls.” Marlowe looked up at the sky.

  “They seem healthy now,” Nero said. Earlier that summer the gull population had been mysteriously dying off. That was resolved now and, while Nero was glad the creatures were not dying, he still wished they would stop tormenting the cats.

  “From my bird’s-eye view from the belfry, it seems as if there are more and more of them swooping around the cliffs every day. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. I wouldn’t mind if they left us alone.” Juliette lived at the rectory and had full range of the entire place, including the belfry. She’d invited Nero up there once and the view was astounding. No wonder she spent so much time up there.

  All the other cats nodded. The gulls took pleasure in tormenting the cats. Nero had tried to catch one once, and it was not an easy endeavor. Besides, it could be very dangerous as their beaks were sharp.

  “Too bad your bird’s-eye view couldn’t show us who killed Jedediah Biddeford,” Poe said. “Then we’d be able to solve a case even the police probably can’t.”

  Juliette sighed, the white star on her forehead scrunching together. “No, it can’t, but it can show me that the town has gone crazy for shovels.”

  “Yeah, at first I hoped maybe they were all trying to bury bodies. But then I realized there was no way all those people bumped someone off,” Stubbs said. “Turns out it’s because of the treasure curse.”

  “You mean the humans believe in that?” Boots looked incredulous. “I would think they’d be smarter.”

  “When it comes to treasure, you never can tell what people will do. They go crazy,” Stubbs said.

  Juliette nodded. “Sometimes even so far as to commit murder.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past the Biddefords to try to bump off the competition,” Marlowe said. “We heard two of them arguing about a secret book earlier.”

  “You don’t say.” Poe turned his gaze to Marlowe. “Tell me more.”

  Marlowe shuffled uneasily. “Well, we’re not sure what kind of book. But it sounded important.”

  “A treasure map?” Stubbs asked.

  Marlowe scrunched up her nose. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well what did your human, Josie, make of the argument?” Harry asked.

  “She didn’t hear it,” Marlowe said.

  “So she knows nothing of this supposed secret book?” Poe asked.

  Marlowe washed behind her ears. “No. Hopefully it won’t become important if someone is bumped off because I have no idea how we would let her in on it.”

  “We’d have to look for evidence in their rooms, I suppose,” Nero said. Then added, “But let’s not get too eager for nefarious activity.”

  “Right,” Stubbs said. “We have a skeleton mystery to look into.”

  “But maybe that’s how Jedediah ended up inside the wall. Someone killed him over money,” Poe suggested.

  “If that’s true that means the treasure is long gone.” Nero hopped up onto one of the lobster crates, looking up anxiously to make sure another gull was not about to launch a sneak attack.

  “Judging by the number of people I saw running around with shovels, the humans don’t think the treasure is long gone,” Juliette said.

  “Sometimes they lack common sense,” Boots said.

  “Your spot on the belfry sure is good for getting an overview of what is going on in town,” Stubbs said. “Easy to get the dime on someone that way.”

  “My home at the rectory is good for more than that. I get to hear and see all sorts of things. Like the odd confession I overheard when I was napping in the confessional box this morning.”

  “You nap in the confessional box?” Poe asked. “That sounds sacrilegious.”

  Juliette’s fur ruffled in offense. “Well, I don’t do it to overhear confessions unless we are investigating a murder where confessions might come in handy. But it’s a lovely place to nap. All dark and cozy and silent. It’s rarely used. I didn’t realize Father Timothy would be hearing a confession and I was fast asleep. By the time I realized what was going on, it was too late to leave.”

  Nero’s whiskers twitched. He moved closer to Juliette. “What did you hear?”

  Juliette’s eyes took on a faraway look as her mind worked to conjure up the conversation. “It was a woman, and she was confessing how regretful it was that she was forced to betray those close to her.”

  Eight

  I let myself in through the back door in the kitchen of the guesthouse shortly before supper, loaded with bags of ingredients for the peanut-butter-banana bread I was planning to make that night. Millie had said that loaf cakes were the easiest thing to bake, so I was going to trust her on that. I needed something easy. And even though my first few attempts at baking had turned out as hard as hockey pucks, I was still hopeful.

  I’d barely gotten the ingredients on the counter when I heard a ruckus in the parlor. The Biddefords were at it again. I figured now would be a good time to talk to them about digging up the yard. I headed toward the parlor, passing a pile of shovels in the foyer on the way. Flora was going to have a fit. Shovels brought in dirt and she barely vacuumed as it was.

  “It’s not my fault the Shmithsh canceled the order for twenty miniature cheesh cashtles,” Paula slurred.

  “Well it certainly isn’t mine,” Carla said.

  “Children!” Doris yelled. “It’s not anybody’s fault. Things happen in business. All this infighting is making things worse.”

  “You can say that again,” Earl said.

  Just as I suspected, the entire family was dressed for digging—old jeans, T-shirts. Earl and Arlene’s were of the designer variety, of course. Doris even had mud on her feet. I glanced out the window. Had she already started digging?

  “Ahem.” They hadn’t noticed me lurking in the doorway,
so I cleared my throat to capture their attention. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t bring dirty shovels into the house. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t dig up the yard, either.”

  Doris hurried over to me. “Don’t you worry, dear. We’ll fill the holes back in. We’re just looking for the treasure buried by our ancestor.” Doris glanced behind her for confirmation and the others nodded.

  “Yeah. We won’t disrupt your property or anything,” Bob said.

  I gazed at them skeptically then back at the shovels. Earl saw me looking and hastily added, “We’ll keep the shovels in that old carriage house so the guesthouse doesn’t get dirty.”

  He pointed toward the dilapidated building that had been a carriage house when the mansion was in service. Even though it was overgrown with vines and needed a paint job badly, Mike had assured me it was still safe when I’d bought the place. At least if they kept their shovels there that would keep most of the dirt out.

  But there was something else bothering me. It was the way Doris had said our ancestor in reference to the treasure. It made me wonder, if there really was any treasure, then who actually owned it? Wouldn’t it belong to me since I now owned the property?

  I didn’t think now was a good time to bring that up; I could practically see dollar signs in the Biddefords’ eyes. Odds were against a treasure being buried out there anyway and even more odds against them finding it. I’d cross that bridge when and if we came to it.

  Earl went to the foyer and started gathering up the shovels and I returned to the kitchen. I laid out the ingredients on the counter. Peanut butter, bananas, flour, milk, sugar, baking soda and baking powder.

  I pulled the old jadeite green batter bowls from the cupboard, preheated the oven and started mixing things together. Millie would’ve been proud. Of course, when she baked, she didn’t spew flour in a ten-foot radius all around her like I did. Guess I still had plenty of room for improvement.

  I kept one eye on the ingredients and the other on the yard. A movement coming from the front of the house caught my eye. It was Bob. He rushed past the window, a shovel clutched in his hand. Getting an early jump on his siblings?