‘No, the tape fell off and I was just reattaching it,’ I said, just in case my assessment of her attitude was wrong.
She surveyed us with narrowed eyes. ‘Uh huh…’
Millie didn’t miss a chance to question another suspect. ‘Didn’t you mention that Charles was working on a cookbook?’
Ava shrugged. ‘That was the rumor in newspaper circles. Why?’
‘Well do you see it in there?’ Millie pointed to the bookcase.
Ava leaned over the tape for a closer look. ‘No, those are all already published. His wasn’t published yet. He usually makes notes in one of those binders, you know the refillable kind that you used to use in school?’
‘A three-ring binder?’
‘Yeah, that’s the one.’
I glanced back at the bookcase. No three-ring binder. Maybe the police had taken it.
‘We didn’t find any binder in there,’ Mom said.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he just started that rumor to make himself look important and wasn’t even working on anything. He was washed up old has-been.’ Ava leaned toward us and lowered her voice. ‘It’s a mystery to me how the women still found him so attractive.’
‘They did?’ I couldn’t imagine anyone finding Charles Prescott attractive, and judging by the sour looks on Mom and Millie’s faces neither could they.
‘Yes, can you believe it? Of course he used to be a looker back in the day, but now… well you saw him. Nothing to write home about. But I heard he still had a string of women.’ Ava glanced down the hallway, then turned back to them and lowered her voice again, this time to a whisper. ‘He even had one here.’
‘Here?’ Millie looked aghast.
‘Yep, I saw Tina coming out of his room late the other night.’
‘The other night? You mean the night he was killed? Are you sure?’ Mom asked.
‘I’m as sure as a monkey’s uncle. But it wasn’t last night. It was the night before. See, I’d fallen asleep in front of the TV in the sitting room and I was coming up the back stairs over there.’ Ava pointed to the stairway at the end of the hall. ‘When I saw Charles’ door open, I must confess, I ducked into the bathroom and hid behind the door because I didn’t want to talk to him. But it wasn’t Charles who came out. It was Tina.’
‘Did she say anything about why she was in there?’ I still couldn’t picture pretty Tina cavorting with Charles, but stranger things have happened.
‘I didn’t talk to her. I ducked back behind the door and I guess she just slunk off to her own room because I heard a door close, and when I peeked out the hall was empty. She never saw me.’
Millie turned to me. ‘Did you get any indication that they were that chummy?’
‘Not at all. It seemed like they didn’t even know each other.’ I thought back to the interactions I’d seen between Tina and Charles. Charles had arrived four days ago, Tina had arrived the next day. Had they acted a little strangely around each other? It did seem like they’d made a point to avoid each other. Was I reading things into it because of what I now knew?
‘Well that is his modus operandi,’ Ava said. ‘He has a wife back home, so when he has these affairs, he just pretends like he doesn’t know the girls. Oh, there were plenty of young girls at the papers we worked at years ago who were quite smitten with him. Though even then, I couldn’t figure out what they saw in him.’
‘Tina did seem overly upset at his death, didn’t she?’ Mom asked.
Millie chewed her bottom lip and glanced back at the door to Tina’s room. ‘Yes, she did. Was that because her lover had been killed or perhaps because she had killed him and was afraid of getting caught?’
‘I wouldn’t be so quick to pin the murder on her. She seems like a nice person and if you ask me, there are plenty of people who would’ve wanted Charles Prescott dead,’ Ava said.
Mom’s eyes widened. ‘Really? You mean like old lovers?’
‘Or his wife?’ Millie asked.
‘Not just them. Charles was a jerk. He wasn’t above stepping on someone to get ahead, throwing a co-worker under the bus or even blackmailing someone if he had something on them. I say good riddance to him.’ Ava shot a sour look into Charles’ room, then turned and strode down the hall.
We watched her go into her room before Millie turned toward the stairs. ‘Come on, we’ve got our work cut out for us. If what Ava says is true, we need to prove that there was a connection between Tina and Charles.’
Six
‘I didn’t realize you were being so literal when you said we should go back to the guesthouse and sniff around.’ Marlowe lifted her nose from the flower bed and sneezed. ‘All this sniffing is making me hungry.’
Nero gave an exasperated sigh. Marlowe still had to learn the art of patience. ‘We can eat soon. First, we must cover every inch. You never know where the killer might have dropped a clue.’
‘Right. Every inch.’ Marlowe stuck her nose back into the flower bed, then moved along to the corner of the guesthouse.
Nero continued on his course. So far he’d sniffed up several toads, a grasshopper and a few gull feathers. The feathers gave him pause, but luckily the gulls didn’t come over from Smugglers Bay Inn often, which was just fine with Nero.
He got a whiff of a familiar scent and looked up. He was on the east side of the house, where the wind whipped in from the ocean, causing the paint to peel. Millie had it repainted every two years. The mansion did need a lot of work, especially the old windows, which were no longer tight to the frames. The icy wind easily found its way inside in winter, especially on this side. During a Nor’Easter, the house could be downright frigid, especially if the power went out.
As Nero looked up, he saw that someone had fixed the window frames so that the windows were tight, and, according to what his nose was telling him, that person was Mike Sullivan.
‘Looks like Mike fixed the windows.’ Marlowe sat down in the grass beside him. ‘I heard him tell Millie he was going to do it even though she didn’t pay him to.’
‘He must have overheard Josie worrying about the heating bills come winter.’ Nero’s heart swelled at the human’s kind gesture. Mike must have done the work on his own time to help out Josie. Apparently not all people were selfish and uncaring. Maybe there was hope for humankind after all.
‘Yeah, he’s good people. And he gives good chin rubs.’
Nero glanced at Marlowe sharply. ‘True, but you mustn’t act like you enjoy them too much.’
‘Oh, I know. I give a few purrs of encouragement but jump off his lap just when he thinks I’ve settled in.’
Caw!
A gull swooped overhead, and the cats ducked, crouching low while it flew past on its way to Smugglers Bay. Nero glanced over at the inn. Two gulls were circling above the deck. There used to be at least six. ‘Stella Dumont must be happy at the decrease in gulls.’
‘I’m sure she is.’ Marlowe continued sniffing along the side of the house. ‘I just hope our buddy Mike is smart enough not to fall for her.’
Nero glared at the inn. They could see one corner of the building and the outdoor deck where Stella served meals to her guests. Nero wasn’t above skulking around the edges of the deck looking for scraps, but not when the gulls were around. ‘She certainly does flirt with him, but do you think that’s all she wants when she comes here?’
Marlowe followed Nero’s gaze. ‘I don’t know. She does seem very interested in the kitchen, but I haven’t seen her do anything suspicious.’
‘Hmmm.’ Nero went back to sniffing. He didn’t trust Stella Dumont, and not just because it seemed like she wanted to get her claws into Mike. She had a certain, deceitful scent about her.
As Nero rounded the corner, he caught a foreign smell. Something spicy and uncertain. He closed his eyes and followed his nose, homing in until he was right on top of it.
He opened his eyes and blinked.
He was on the back side of the mansion’s West wing. This side wasn’t visible t
o anyone unless you were in the back, so Josie hadn’t sprung for flowers and shrubs, but the gardener she’d hired had spread a thick layer of fine mulch up close to the building.
In that mulch was the unmistakable print from a shoe.
‘You got something?’ Marlowe trotted up and looked at the print.
‘Yep.’ Nero glanced up. Right above the print was a window.
‘Looks like someone climbed out that window and stepped here in the mulch.’ Marlowe’s whiskers twitched. ‘You know how damp it gets at night. The mulch was probably wet and the weight of the person compressed it. Then it dried into a footprint.’
Nero was encouraged by Marlowe’s deduction, but she’d missed one important point. ‘I believe you’re correct. We need to get the humans out here right away so they can discover it.’
Marlowe made a face. ‘I don’t know. It could be from Mike or the gardener…’
‘Don’t think so,’ Nero said.
‘Why not?’
‘This is the West wing and if I’m not mistaken that window goes to the room Charles Prescott was killed in.’
Marlowe’s eyes flicked up to the window, then back to the mulch. ‘Then if that’s true, that print could be the print of the killer!’
‘Might be a good idea to pick something from my recipe file for breakfast,’ Millie said once we were back in the kitchen. She was seated at the long pine table with a laptop open in front of her, googling Tina and Charles. Mom was eating one of the leftover lemon poppy seed muffins.
‘Therms-onsa-drough,’ Mom said.
‘Huh?’ I was a little worried at her unintelligible mumbling. Had Mom had a stroke?
She waved her hand in front of her face and made a big show of swallowing. ‘I said, these are very dry.’
Millie’s attention snapped from the laptop to the muffin. ‘They are?’ She skewered me with a look. ‘The Oyster Cove Guesthouse prides itself on delicious breakfasts. I thought you were married to a famous cook?’
‘Don’t remind me.’ I hadn’t absorbed any of Clay’s extraordinary cooking skills, but so what? I was sure I could learn. Probably do a better job at it than him eventually too. Though, judging by the way my mother was choking and gulping down water, maybe I’d better speed up the learning process.
Meow.
I glanced at the window. It was open, letting in a nice easterly breeze that carried the salty scent of the ocean along with the perfume of honeysuckle bushes that ran between the mansion and the old carriage house. Out on the lawn, Nero and Marlowe were trotting back and forth, looking at the house. I got the impression that they were looking right in the window at me.
Millie went back to her computer work, her eyes on the screen as she addressed me. ‘If the muffins are too dry, you need to add more fat. People think it means the recipe needs more moisture, but that’s not the case. Try adding some extra butter or substituting buttermilk for regular milk.’
Meow. Meow. Meow!
The cat’s cries stole my attention again. They were getting louder, more insistent, much like the day they’d discovered Charles’ body. Hopefully they hadn’t found another one. I looked out again. Now they were pacing back and forth.
‘Have you fed them, dear?’ Millie asked. ‘They like to have kibble left out in the morning and the wet food with gravy in the afternoon, and don’t forget a treat at night.’ Millie glanced at the stainless steel bowls on the black and white checkered floor of the butler’s pantry – where we kept the cat bowls when Barbara Littlefield wasn’t around. The bowls were empty.
‘I fed them first thing. They must have eaten it all.’ I rummaged in the cabinet for the dry cat food and filled their bowls, then opened the screen door to call them in. They ignored me, running back to the corner of the house and then looking back at me.
‘Give them time dear, they rarely come when called. It’s some kind of cat thing,’ Mom said.
Millie looked up from the computer. ‘Yeah, they’ll come when they are ready. So, what are you serving for breakfast tomorrow?’
‘I haven’t decided yet.’ I was more interested in finding out if Tina and Charles knew each other, but Millie was typing so slowly I was beginning to wonder if that would happen in my lifetime.
Millie waved at the counter where the stack of cookbooks and recipes I’d inherited from her sat. ‘Now would be a good time to choose something. Pick something out and I’ll help you prepare it later.’
Good idea. I leafed through the stack of recipes on yellowed index cards and worn scraps of paper, handwritten in blue pen that had faded so much over the years that the letters were barely legible. Combine that with splotches of food stains and I was starting to think I had more problems than my lack of cooking expertise.
Hmm… let’s see. Quiche? Nope, I wasn’t ready to tackle crust. Smoked Salmon Croissants? Too fancy. Eggs Benedict? Sounded complicated.
Millie must have sensed my dilemma. ‘How about my famous sour cream coffee cake?’
I shuffled through the cards. A coffee cake sounded easy. Throw a bunch of ingredients in a bowl and bake. I didn’t see anything with ‘Coffee Cake’ marked on the top, but Millie’s recipes weren’t all labeled. ‘I can’t find—’
‘Eureka!’
Millie spun the laptop around to face Mom and me. ‘Look at this. Charles and Tina both worked for the Daily Crier in Noquitt, Maine at the same time!’
I bent over to see the screen. Sure enough, there were articles from Charles and Tina. ‘Looks like Tina wrote a food column.’
‘Makes sense the two of them would know each other then, they both write about food.’ Mom eyed the muffins again, but must have thought better of it, because she didn’t take one.
‘So we have our first suspect.’ Millie pointed at the computer screen proudly. ‘Tina had a secret relationship with the victim.’
‘Yeah but why would she kill him?’ Mom asked.
Millie pursed her lips. ‘Maybe he wanted to break things off and she got mad.’
‘I don’t know, Mike said the stairs had been tampered with as if the killer was trying to make it look like an accident, and that seems premeditated to me.’ I glanced out the window and saw the cats staring at me eerily with non-blinking eyes. Was that a signal that they were hungry?
‘Maybe he told her earlier and she asked for a meeting so she could kill him?’ Millie suggested.
Mom made a face. ‘You can’t be serious. Tina is cute. Charles was old, bald and pudgy. She’d probably be happy if he broke things off.’
‘And what about the missing cookbook?’ I asked.
Merow!
Millie and Mom looked out the window to see Nero rolling on his back.
‘I think Nero wants some of those salmon treats,’ Mom said. ‘Maybe Charles wasn’t really even working on a cookbook.’
‘Right.’ Millie turned from the window and rummaged in the cat food cabinet.
‘And let’s not gloss over the fact that Ava Grantham also knew Charles, and she’s the one feeding us this information.’ I watched a lot of detective shows on television and knew the drill when it came to working out suspects.
‘Good point,’ Mom said. ‘Maybe Charles spurned Ava at some point and she saw this as her chance to get even.’
Meroop!
With a loud battle cry, Marlowe launched herself at the window screen, her claws out like razor sharp grappling hooks. She clung on, her large round green eyes looking in at us, her belly heaving.
I jumped back, but it didn’t seem to faze Mom or Millie. They simply stared at the cat as if this was a common occurrence. I certainly hoped it wasn’t. After a few beats, Millie turned to me. ‘I think the cats are trying to get our attention. We’d better go see why.’
Seven
By the time we got outside, Marlowe had unattached herself from the screen and the two cats were pacing around near the corner of the house. Millie tried to pet them but they darted off into the back. We followed.
Out back, the
plantings I’d had the landscaper put in gave way to just plain mulch. Funds were limited, so I’d only sprung for flowers on the sides of the house that were seen by guests. I wistfully thought of the day when I could have lush flowers all around the entire guesthouse. That was if I even had a guesthouse to landscape with all this murder business going on.
Another thing I couldn’t afford was to fix up the old windows that were practically falling out. So imagine my surprise when I noticed the new wood around them. Someone had replaced the rotted frames and sills.
‘Hmmm… I don’t remember that being on my work order.’
‘I think Mike mentioned something about you losing a lot of air conditioning and heat through those windows come winter. My heating bill was through the roof last year,’ Millie muttered as she bent to pet Nero, who skittered out from under her hand and leapt into the bark mulch under the window.
‘That’s nice, but I can’t afford to pay for this kind of work.’ How much did something like this cost? I’d have to have a talk with Mike. I couldn’t have him just doing extra work like this. I was on a tight budget and could only spare minimal funds for repairs since most of my money was needed for day to day operations.
‘I believe he said it was at no charge,’ Millie said.
I jerked my attention from the window to Millie. ‘What? Who does work for free?’
‘Someone who has a crush,’ Mom said, wiggling her eyebrows in a suggestive manner.
I made a face. ‘A crush? I think Mike’s a little too old to have a crush.’ I was sure he wanted something, otherwise why do the work? Very few people did something for nothing. I couldn’t imagine what, exactly, it could be though. Was it possible that Millie was right and Mike had fixed the windows to be nice? My heart melted a bit at the thought.
‘Never mind that,’ Millie waved her hand toward the windows. ‘These are in the West wing and that one there goes to the room Charles Prescott was murdered in. I think the cats have found a clue.’
A Twist in the Tail: An absolutely purrfect cozy mystery (The Oyster Cove Guesthouse Book 1) Page 5
