A Twist in the Tail: An absolutely purrfect cozy mystery (The Oyster Cove Guesthouse Book 1)

by Leighann Dobbs

  Millie dropped to all fours and started combing through the grass.

  Nero and Marlowe flopped down in the mulch, where they jumped, stretched, meowed and rolled around. As I watched their antics, I noticed something in the mulch that looked odd. It was a depression of some sort.

  ‘Wait a minute. Is that a footprint?’ I pointed to the indentation and Millie crawled over.

  ‘It is! It’s a footprint!’

  ‘Yeah but it’s probably from Mike doing the windows,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Millie peered closer at the footprint. I half expected her to whip out a giant magnifying glass. ‘Mike wears work boots and this is not in the shape of a work boot. Work boots are more rounded and they don’t have a high arch. But I know what does have a high arch. Chef’s clogs.’

  Everyone looked at my feet. I was wearing chef’s clogs.

  ‘Come over here Josie, let’s see.’ Mom pulled me toward the mulch and I tentatively put a foot down a few feet away from the print.

  ‘Press down hard to make the print,’ Millie instructed.

  I did as told then lifted my foot. Sure enough, the print was very similar.

  ‘Aha! It was a clue,’ Millie said as she reached down to reward Marlowe and Nero by petting their heads.

  ‘Yeah but too bad it points to Josie,’ Mom pointed out. ‘When did you step in the mulch?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s from Josie,’ Millie said as she studied the print. ‘There’s a bit of a difference. You can see here on the original print the edge is more rounded as if the clog is worn down, perhaps from someone who walks on the side of their foot. But if you look at Josie’s print, the edge is sharp.’

  ‘So it’s not Josie’s print?’ Mom asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Millie said.

  ‘I haven’t been over here since the mulch was put down,’ I said.

  Meow!

  Marlowe scampered off to the other side of the house with Nero following at his heels. Apparently their job was done and they were off to greener pastures. Or at least I thought that was why they’d run off until I heard the booming voice behind us.

  ‘Tampering with evidence?’

  We all turned to see Seth Chamberlain standing there, his eyes flicking from Millie to my foot, which was hovering over the print I’d just made in the mulch.

  ‘No. We found a clue. That’s more than I can say for the police,’ Millie huffed.

  Seth frowned, but his eyes regarded Millie softly. He came closer, then looked up at the window. ‘This is the window that goes to the room the victim was in, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Millie gestured toward the footprint. ‘And we found a footprint right here underneath the window. Now it seems to me the killer could’ve opened the window, climbed out and then shut it again. No one can see back here and he could have made the perfect escape into the woods.’

  Seth inspected the print.

  ‘Uh-huh… Hmmm… Oh...’ He looked up at us. ‘This looks like a print from a chef’s clog. Are you sure you were discovering this clue and not hiding it?’

  Mom fisted her hands on her hips. ‘Now Seth Chamberlain, are you accusing us of obstructing justice?’

  ‘Why on earth would we do that?’ Millie asked.

  Seth’s eyes were glued to my shoes. ‘Well this here is a chef’s clog print and Josie there is wearing chef’s clogs.’

  It figured that the only good thing I’d gotten from my ex-husband besides our daughter was chef’s clogs. He’d always worn them and had talked me into trying a pair years ago. They were comfortable and I had taken to wearing them. It was only fitting that now, when I’d just started to get over our divorce and get my life on track, the clogs would be the thing that got me arrested for murder.

  ‘Not exactly.’ I pointed to the impression I’d made in the mulch. ‘See my footprint from my clogs is shaped differently than that footprint there.’

  Seth squinted at the print and made a face. ‘Yeah I see, yours is fresher. The other one has been there a few days. The edges are not as sharp.’

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ Millie said. ‘Why would Josie climb out the window? She lives inside the guesthouse, so if she killed Charles Prescott, she would simply go back to her room inside the house.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I nodded. ‘I mean, if I did kill him in that room. Which I didn’t.’

  Seth looked dubious.

  Millie put her arm through Seth’s. ‘Now I know you do a thorough job, and don’t jump to conclusions. Surely there are several other chefs who wear clogs and had a much better reason than Josie to kill Prescott.’

  ‘Yeah like maybe the one he was writing that bad review about,’ Mom added.

  Seth nodded, but still looked at me suspiciously. ‘Seems to me the bad review might have been about the Oyster Cove Guesthouse. I mean he was staying here.’

  ‘Yes, well you’re much smarter than we are at this sort of thing,’ Millie said, patting his arm. ‘I know you’ll want to check out all the clues and suspects thoroughly before homing in on one particular suspect. You wouldn’t want to arrest the wrong person, that wouldn’t look good on your record.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Seth said, glancing my way again. ‘I also don’t want to let the killer get away.’

  ‘Now Seth, you can’t seriously suspect Josie. And besides, where would she go? Josie owns the guesthouse. She’s tied to the area. It’s not like she’s going to run off somewhere.’

  I nodded vigorously in agreement.

  ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ Millie changed the subject.

  ‘Huh? Oh, I was coming to release the crime scene. We’ve got everything we need and I’m coming to take off the yellow tape. Personal belongings in there can be sent to the next of kin.’

  Millie’s brows shot up. ‘Oh? And have you gotten any clues? Have you a list of suspects?’

  Seth gave me another wary glance. ‘We’re working on some angles, but I can’t specifically say. Police business you know.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Millie nodded. ‘And did you find a clue in Charles Prescott’s cookbook?’

  ‘Cookbook? We don’t have any cookbook.’

  ‘You mean you don’t have his notes for his new book that he was writing?’ I asked.

  ‘New book? We didn’t hear anything about any new cookbook. Besides, what would that have to do with his murder? Seems to me that bad review likely ripped out of his hand is the thing that got him killed.’

  ‘Well now, I wouldn’t be too sure.’ Millie pointed at the footprint. ‘Is it any coincidence that there is a chef’s clog footprint right under the window of the room Charles Prescott was killed in and the man’s notes on his new cookbook are missing?’

  Flora’s cleaning duties were limited, so after we got rid of Seth Chamberlain, I got to work, dusting, vacuuming and toilet cleaning. You’d think that would’ve been the cue for Millie and my mom to leave, but it must have been a dull day down at the senior center because they stayed on.

  For someone who wanted to be free to engage in retirement activities and not have to worry about the guesthouse, Millie sure still spent a lot of time here. But since she’d volunteered to cook breakfast, I didn’t complain, because that meant less work for me in the morning.

  She was probably worried my lack of cooking skills were going to ruin the guesthouse’s reputation for fine breakfasts. If a murder didn’t ruin it though, I hardly thought my cooking would.

  It was late afternoon when I stumbled into the front parlor exhausted. It had been a long day, especially considering I’d discovered the body of one of my guests just that morning.

  Flora was sitting on the overstuffed sofa in the front parlor watching soap operas and eating crackers. She glanced up as I flopped into a chair.

  ‘I get a fifteen-minute break every four hours.’ She said it as if I was about to chastise her for watching TV on the job.

  ‘Lucky you, that’s more than I
get.’ I took off my clogs and massaged my aching feet. Who knew inn-keeping would be such hard work? When I bought the place from Millie she’d made it sound like others did most of the tasks.

  Of the several parlors here, this one was my favorite because it was the sunniest. Golden afternoon light spilled in from the tall windows and turned the pine flooring to honey and brightening the already cheerful room.

  Millie and Mom must have had the same idea. No sooner had I begun to relax when they trotted through the doorway with a tray full of chocolate chip cookies. Millie set the cookies down on the marble-topped mahogany coffee table and both flopped into chairs.

  ‘I think this new wrinkle in the case is going to help narrow down the killer.’ Millie bit into a cookie then pushed the tray toward Flora and indicated for her to take one.

  ‘I certainly hope so. I don’t like the way Seth keeps looking at Josie.’ Mom waited for Flora to choose, then picked her own cookie.

  ‘Me either,’ I said.

  ‘I think we need to find out what other restaurants Charles went to. If he was writing a bad review and the chef got wind of it, that would explain the footprint,’ Millie said.

  ‘But what about the missing cookbook?’ Mom asked.

  ‘He may not have even been writing a cookbook,’ Millie said. ‘Ava said that herself.’

  ‘Speaking of Ava, I don’t think she wears chef’s clogs but I’m not ruling her out entirely,’ I said.

  Mom leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘Let’s not forget Tina. If she was fooling around with Charles then that makes her a potential suspect. At least, that’s how it always is on TV.’

  Flora remained silent, taking tiny bites of her cookie. Her eyes, gigantic behind the glasses, flicked back and forth from my mom to Millie to me as we talked.

  Movement in the doorway caught our attention and we turned to see Mike, his broad shoulders leaning against the frame. ‘I figured if I followed the smell of cookies I’d find you.’

  He pushed off from the doorway, gave Millie a kiss on the top of her head, grabbed a cookie and sat in a chair.

  ‘Were you looking for us or for cookies?’ I asked.

  ‘You, Sunshine. Thing is, I’m a little worried. There’s a killer running around.’

  ‘Yeah, but the intended victim was Charles. The rest of us are safe.’ Millie leveled a look at Mike. ‘Right? I mean you’re the ex-investigator, so you should know.’

  ‘It does look that way. Still, I think you all should be careful. Someone gave a lot of thought into planning out how to sabotage the stairs hoping the death would be ruled an accident,’ Mike said.

  ‘Premeditated,’ Mom said ominously.

  ‘Makes sense,’ Millie said. ‘If the killer knew he was writing that bad review, they probably planned to kill him before he had a chance to publish it.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I picked up a cookie and broke off a small piece. ‘Seems to me that killing Charles over the bad review would be something spontaneous, done in a fit of anger. The way the review was ripped up seems to indicate such.’

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe they ripped it up and then stewed over it until later that night, when they came back and killed him.’ Millie said. ‘The chef’s clog print outside the window is the clincher. Maybe whoever it was killed Charles first and then got the idea to stage it after. I mean, that part of the house is closed off. They wouldn’t worry about anyone stumbling across them while they were doing all that work.’

  ‘You found a clog print outside the window?’ Mike glanced at my feet.

  ‘It wasn’t mine.’ I broke off another piece of cookie—bigger this time—and shoved it in my mouth.

  ‘It was right under the window of that room,’ Millie said. ‘We think the killer escaped out the window.’

  ‘Which means it was not someone who was staying here,’ Mom added.

  ‘That’s possible, but whoever it was must have been here for a while because it would take them quite some time to stage the stairs to look like an accident,’ Mike said. Nero and Marlowe appeared out of nowhere then, both jumping in his lap and started purring loudly.

  ‘No one would have seen them in there since that wing is closed. They would have had all the time they wanted to stage the stairs. But then there is the question of how they lured Charles into that part of the guesthouse. That would be hard for someone who wasn’t supposed to be at the guest house to do,’ Millie said. ‘Maybe we should put more credence into Tina as a suspect. If they were having an affair, I could certainly see how she might use her feminine wiles to lure him there.’

  ‘They were having an affair?’ Mike asked.

  ‘Yes, please do try to keep up,’ Mom answered. ‘But if it was Tina then she would have just snuck back to her room. Why climb out the window?’

  ‘Good question, and if it was Tina, then who left the clog print?’ Millie asked.

  Flora, who had remained silent the whole time, her head on a swivel like a referee watching a tennis match, spoke. ‘What about Stella Dumont?’

  We all jerked our heads toward the window, where we could see the corner of the Smugglers Bay Inn, circling seagulls and all, in the distance.

  ‘Stella Dumont? She does serve meals at her inn and it’s possible Charles ate there.’ Millie said.

  ‘I heard she was entering that cooking contest that the paper is running, you know, the one that has the $5000 cash prize?’ Mom said.

  ‘She was? Well that would be quite a coup for her business. If she won, she could use that to draw in customers, and of course, the money never hurts.’ Millie stared out the window at the inn. ‘She does have that seagull problem though, I wonder if her business is hurting.’

  ‘Maybe she’s afraid the renovations Josie is doing will hurt it even further,’ Mike said.

  ‘And maybe she’s afraid a bad review from Charles Prescott would put her under,’ Mom said.

  ‘She does a lot of the cooking over there, she might wear chef’s clogs just like the ones that left that print under the window,’ Millie said

  ‘That might explain why she’s been hanging around here,’ Flora said.

  ‘She has? When?’ I asked.

  Flora shrugged. ‘I didn’t write down the dates, that’s not in my job description.’ Flora took another cookie and settled back in her chair. ‘But I saw her at the door by the kitchen a few times.’

  ‘The kitchen? What was she doing there?’ I’d never seen Stella anywhere near the guesthouse and, given that we aren’t exactly best friends, I doubted Stella would be popping over to pay a social visit.

  Flora crunched on her cookie and looked up at us innocently. ‘I assumed she came here to flirt with Mike.’

  All heads swiveled in Mike’s direction. Oh, that’s right, he’d taken Stella to the prom instead of me. Sure, we’d just been kids and that was all water under the bridge now, but it spoke volumes as to his character.

  Mike held his hands up in a placating gesture. ‘She doesn’t come here to see me. But I have seen her in the kitchen a few times. I thought she was coming to see Josie.’

  I shook my head. ‘She’s not coming here to see me. In fact, I had no idea she was anywhere near here. Did you talk to her Flora?’

  Flora shook her head. ‘None of my business what you people get up to. I see someone in the kitchen, I figure they have a reason to be there. I don’t ask questions.’

  ‘That’s odd, what do you think she was doing here?’ Mom asked.

  Millie’s eyes sparkled with excitement. She leaned forward. ‘Maybe she was casing the joint. Maybe she figured she could kill two birds with one stone. Get rid of the food critic that was going to give her a bad review and make it look like the guesthouse was unsafe, potentially getting it closed down, or Josie arrested for murder, and thus driving more business to her inn.’

  Eight

  I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for the police to accuse me again, so at five o’clock I headed across the field and down the hill to the Smugg
lers Bay Inn, hoping to catch Stella in the kitchen. I knew she served dinner at 5:30 so I figured she’d be in. It wasn’t a social call. I wanted to see why she’d been hanging around the guesthouse and, most importantly, I wanted to see if she wore clogs.

  I found her outside setting up the tables for dinner and waving her arms to shoo away the seagulls who circled around the deck. The deck overlooked the cove, and the subtle sound of the waves and scent of the ocean would have made for great dining ambiance if it weren’t for the screeching.

  ‘Shoo, shoo. Get out of here!’ Stella flapped a white cleaning rag at the gulls. Two of them flew away, but one stood its ground on the post of the railing until Stella lurched toward it. She turned to glare at me as I approached.

  I glanced at her feet. Darn it! She wasn’t wearing clogs, she was wearing white tennis shoes. But that didn’t mean anything. She could still be the killer. Maybe she had a pair tucked away in her closet, complete with telltale scraps of mulch stuck in the treads and splatters of blood on the top.

  ‘Well if it isn’t Josie Waters. I heard there was an incident at your guesthouse. Hope that hasn’t put off the tourists.’ Stella’s tone indicated that she did indeed hope that very thing.

  A gull swooped overhead. Splat!

  A white and orange plop of seagull poop landed on the railing between us.

  Stella raised her fists to the gull. ‘You get out of here!’ She raced over to the post and wiped it clean with a napkin.

  Good to know that she was just as subtle and lady-like as ever. And out here in the afternoon sunlight I could see that she wore just as much makeup too. A suffocating cloud of flowery perfume wafted over and I tried not to gag. She’d put the perfume on heavy in high school too. There was one difference though – her hair hadn’t been that bleachy shade of blonde back then. What in the world did Mike see in her?

  I glanced back at my guesthouse. Maybe it was a good thing that I hadn’t put in outdoor dining yet. Then again, I didn’t have a problem with seagulls like Stella did. Her place was directly over the water, while mine was set back a bit, up on a hill with a panoramic view. Not only did the gulls circle her deck, I’d heard talk downtown that a few dead ones had been found on it as well. Nothing more unappetizing than a dead gull on an outdoor dining deck. Unfortunately, dead gulls weren’t that unusual around here these days. The gulls seemed to be dying off at an alarming rate and their sad bodies had been found washed up on the beaches and even in the park downtown.