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

by Leighann Dobbs

  Now that he mentioned it, it was a little suspicious. Why would a Navy guy be doing carpentry?

  As if reading my thoughts, Mike continued, ‘I always liked working with my hands and now that I’m retired, it gives me something to do. It’s not about the money. I really just wanted to help out Aunt Millie.’ His gaze drifted and locked on mine. ‘And now you.’

  Footsteps sounded the hallway. ‘Hey look, this door is cracked open, I thought Josie was supposed to keep this wing locked.’

  The door swung in and we looked over our shoulders to see my mother and Millie. Their eyes scanned the room, then widened as they fell on Mike and me kneeling on her hands and knees before the staircase. Millie’s eyes widened. ‘Oh sorry. We didn’t mean to interrupt.’ They backed out and Millie started to pull the door shut behind them.

  I leaped up. ‘You’re not interrupting anything.’

  They stopped and looked at us skeptically.

  ‘We weren’t?’ Mom’s left brow was quirked up as she nodded toward the stairs. ‘Looked like you were doing something to me.’

  ‘Yeah, you young people, one never knows what you’re getting up to. You do things differently than when we were young,’ Millie added.

  Mike stood and brushed the dust of his hands. ‘We weren’t up to anything. We were looking at the staircase. Someone sabotaged it so that it would be unstable.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Millie hurried over and plopped down onto her knees. I was surprised she could do it so easily. ‘Let me see.’

  My mother joined her. Maybe they took yoga or something? The two of them seemed to have no problem getting around on all fours.

  ‘Oh, I see. Right there, Millie.’ Mom pointed to the part of the treads that had been sawn.

  Millie looked back over her shoulder at Mike. ‘What do you make of it?’

  ‘Someone wanted to cover up the murder.’ Mike stated the obvious.

  Millie smiled proudly and glanced at me. ‘My Mike was an investigator in the Navy. He knows about this stuff. You should listen to him.’

  ‘I’ll try to keep that in mind,’ I said. I probably wasn’t going to listen to him though, in fact, I was counting the days until he wouldn’t even be around.

  ‘Well, well, well. I guess your suspicions were right after all, Mike.’ Millie stood. ‘So we have the chef’s clog, the missing cookbook, the torn review, and now the sabotage.’

  ‘And don’t forget the illicit affair,’ Mom added.

  ‘Affair? Cookbook?’ Mike’s eyes darted from Millie to Mom. ‘You ladies wouldn’t happen to be investigating again would you?’

  ‘Who us? No. We’re just little old ladies with too much time on our hands. One has to have a hobby, you know.’

  Mike crossed his arms over his chest, disapproval radiating from his velvety brown eyes. ‘Investigating is not a hobby. It can be dangerous. You ladies should not be meddling in a murder case.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, dear.’ Millie waved her hand. ‘We’re not meddling.’

  Mike looked to me for support. ‘Don’t you agree, Josie?’

  I glanced at Mom and Millie. I actually did agree, they shouldn’t be meddling. But Seth Chamberlain had me at the top of his suspect list so someone other than the police had to investigate. I knew they weren’t going to stop meddling, so I figured it was best if I got in on the ground floor. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll make sure they don’t get into trouble.’

  Mike looked skeptical.

  ‘That’s right. You don’t have anything to worry about,’ Millie said.

  We all stood around and looked at each other for a few beats, then Millie continued. ‘Well, don’t you have some work to be doing. I’m not paying you to stand around.’

  Mike rolled his eyes and sighed. ‘Okay, fine.’ He gave me a pointed look. ‘But I’m counting on you to keep them in line.’

  He kissed Millie on the top of the head as he left.

  ‘He’s a dear boy, but such a killjoy sometimes. Honestly, you young people seem to think we’re doddering old fools who can’t take care of ourselves.’ Millie brushed dust off the front of her shirt.

  ‘Indeed. I think they forget who raised them,’ Mom glanced at me. ‘So, what’s going on, Josie? I can tell by the look on your face that there’s something else. Spill it.’

  I looked out the door to make sure Mike wasn’t lurking around in the hall before speaking. ‘I did find something else out last night. Charles Prescott wrote a bad review last year about the Marinara Mariner.’

  Millie’s brows inched up. ‘He did? Now that is interesting. And if I’m not mistaken Tony Murano is one to hold a grudge.’

  Mom nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, he is. Remember last year how he almost got into a fight with Vinnie from Vinnie’s Pizza because he thought Vinnie stole his marinara recipe?’

  Millie nodded. ‘Who could forget? And even when it turned out he was wrong, Tony wouldn’t even apologize.’

  Mom pressed her lips together. ‘And I bet Tony wear chef’s clogs.’

  We all glanced at the window.

  Millie whipped out her phone. ‘There’s one way to find out for sure.’

  She thumbed into the phone like a teenager. After a few seconds she squinted at the thing, then nodded and smiled. ‘All set. We have a reservation for 1 p.m. at the Marinara Mariner. Come on Rose, let’s go see if Vera can fit us in at Tremulous Tresses. I think I need my roots touched up before we confront the suspect.’

  Eleven

  I had some time to kill after I cleaned up the breakfast dishes and fed the cats—who did not act at all appreciative of the shrimp I’d given them the night before—so I decided to head downtown. It would be closer for Mom and Millie to meet me there anyway and I wanted to visit my best friend from high school Jen Summers, who worked at the Post Office.

  Another good thing about moving back home was that I’d had a chance to reconnect with Jen. We’d been inseparable when we were younger, but had drifted apart when I’d moved away. It was hard to stay in touch while raising kids and all, but now that the kids were out of the house and I was back in town, we had a lot of time to catch up and I stopped in whenever I could.

  The post office was the epicenter of Oyster Cove’s rumor mill and Jen always knew everything that was going on in town. But I wasn’t going there to pump her for information, I was going for the emotional support.

  The Oyster Cove Post Office was in an old brick building in the center of Main Street. It had been built in the 1920s and no one had thought to do a thing with it since. It still retained the old marble-checked tile floor, oak teller windows with bars, wainscoting on the bottom half of the walls and the pervasive smell of stamp glue. I had to admit, it had a certain charm.

  Jen looked up from her job of stuffing the post boxes as I entered. A smile replaced the bored look on her face and she practically dropped the mail on the floor to greet me.

  ‘Hey, how’s it going? I heard you had a murder at the guesthouse! I hope you’re okay out there?’

  Her expression was a mixture of interest and concern. I was touched that she was concerned about me but figured she also wanted to know all the details. Clearly I was okay, since I was standing right in front of her.

  ‘I’m fine. It’s terrible that someone died but, even worse, I think Seth Chamberlain might suspect me.’

  ‘Pfft…’ Jen waved her hand in the air. ‘I wouldn’t put any stock in what he says. Remember when we were in high school and he kept trying to catch us with our boyfriends at Makeout Point? He was pretty easy to pull one over on.’

  She had a point. It hadn’t been hard to evade Sheriff Chamberlain when we were younger. ‘That makes me even more nervous. If he’s so incompetent, he might arrest me just because he can’t find the real killer.’

  Jen gnawed on her bottom lip. ‘Oh, yeah. True. So, tell me what you know.’

  I told her about the partial note, the affair with Tina, the missing cookbook, the sabotage and the clog print. ‘And Flora said that
Stella Dumont has been hanging around the guesthouse so, naturally, I suspect her.’

  Jen nodded. ‘She’s sketchy and I heard she needs money.’

  ‘You did? I did too. Mom said she entered some cooking contest and when I went over to question her, she acted evasive. You ask me, those gulls that keep pooping on her deck are hurting her business.’

  ‘But why would that make her kill your guest? Do you think she wants to make it so people are afraid to stay there?’

  ‘Maybe. She acted like she had a reason to be there.’

  ‘What reason?’

  ‘She implied she was there to see Mike Sullivan, but then he denied it.’

  Jen made a face. ‘Hunky Mike Sullivan? What would he want with Stella? I’m sure she was making that up. She’s not the most truthful person you know.’

  It was true that Stella was prone to lying. ‘Yeah, but I’m not sure I trust Mike either. Whoever sabotaged that room had carpentry knowledge.’

  ‘Oh, come on. Mike wouldn’t do that. He’s a nice guy. Please tell me you aren’t still holding a grudge about what happened back in high school.’

  My spine stiffened. ‘Of course not. That would be so immature. I couldn’t care less about Mike Sullivan. But, like I said, the crime scene was altered by someone in the trade and if the shoe fits…’

  ‘Speaking of shoe, you found a clog print and Mike doesn’t wear clogs. My money is on Stella.’

  ‘Stella wasn’t wearing clogs when I visited. She claimed she doesn’t wear them ever, but she could be lying. There’s another person who might fit that clog print too.’ I told her about the review I’d seen on the lemon meringue pie. ‘I’m meeting Mom and Millie to go there for lunch at one.’

  ‘Lordy, you have your mom and Millie in on this?’

  ‘Not much choice. Those two get into everything.’

  ‘Are you regretting your decision to move back here and keep an eye on your mom?’ Jen wheeled a cart over and started sorting mail.

  ‘She is a handful, but no. I love it here and buying the Oyster Cove Guesthouse was the right move. Even if it did take my life savings.’

  It was only partially true that I had moved back here to keep an eye on my mother. Daddy had passed on five years ago and at the time I’d been terribly worried that my mother would wallow in grief. Luckily, she’d adjusted to widowhood like a trooper. Now I was worried about her barging in on crime scenes and causing trouble with Millie. It was like I’d turned into the mom and she into the teenager.

  But the other reason I’d moved back was that I’d been terribly hurt by Clive. I’d left that marriage feeling like I was worthless. In order to sooth that pain, I’d run back to the one place where I’d always felt safe and secure. Oyster Cove. And buying the Guesthouse gave me a way to rebuild my self-worth. Well, as long as I could be successful at it, and I doubted this murder was going to help with that.

  ‘And then it’s all made worse by Barbara Littlefield running around town telling everyone we should be closed down because it’s unsafe. So if Chamberlain doesn’t arrest me for murder, Barbara Littlefield might close me down. Either way there goes my savings down the drain.’

  Jen clucked in sympathy. She knew how important it was for me to make a go of this on my own. ‘Don’t worry, no one listens to Barbara. She’s always grousing about something.’

  ‘Right, except as the building inspector, she does have a lot of power.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about Barbara,’ Jen assured me. ‘She doesn’t like change but she just wants to make sure the town doesn’t get too built up. She comes off as a hard ass, but she has all our best interests at heart. The tourists come for the quaint ambiance of an old-fashioned Maine fishing town and she wants to make sure that’s what they get. She’d never close down the guesthouse, it’s part of the town history.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘She’s just crotchety.’ Jen tossed some mail into the cart. ‘But you have to give her credit for finding the Furbish Lousewort and working to get the government to declare that a protected area. Otherwise they would have built that big hotel. That would have changed the town forever. And not in a good way. Probably would have put the guesthouse out of business.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess,’ I hated to admit I might owe Barbara one for stopping the construction. I knew she hadn’t done it for me, but Jen was right about the hotel.

  ‘You hang around long enough, you might be able to thank her in person.’ Jen pointed to a pile of packages. ‘She gets a lot of packages. Some of them are dirty.’

  My eyebrows shot up. ‘You mean she gets porn?’

  Jen looked at me and laughed. ‘No. Dirty like with dirt. I don’t know, she might get special fertilizer for that Lousewort, you know how she babies it.’

  ‘Oh, that kind of dirt. For a minute there I thought maybe I could have some sort of blackmail to leverage over her.’

  Jen made a face. ‘Eww… just the thought of Barbara and porn makes me glad I had a light breakfast.’

  ‘Ditto.’

  ‘So what about this Tina person? Do you think she could’ve done it? Lover’s quarrel?’ Jen asked.

  ‘I really have no idea. She was very upset when we discovered the body, but she could’ve been acting,’ I said. ‘I just can’t imagine her being with Charles. I mean she’s kind of pretty.’

  I glanced out the window to see a seagull perched on the back of one of the benches they had set at intervals on the sidewalk. They were kind of pretty with barrels of flowers beside them. The gull made me think of Stella Dumont. ‘And I still don’t know why Stella’s been lurking around the guesthouse.’

  ‘Does she have a connection to the victim?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I couldn’t find anything. When I looked online the only review I found was the one for the Marinara Mariner. She sure was acting suspicious yesterday, but she was distracted because the gulls were flocking around her deck like she was putting out a buffet for them.’

  Jen glanced out the window. ‘Yeah, what about the gulls? It’s weird what’s happening to them, isn’t it?’

  ‘For sure. But Stella probably isn’t unhappy about it. They congregate around her deck and I don’t imagine her guests appreciate them begging for scraps when they are dining outdoors.’

  ‘I don’t know. I think some tourists like to feed them. That’s how they got in the habit of stealing sandwiches out of their hands on the beach in the first place.’

  ‘Hmm…’ I glanced at the gull who appeared to be watching people as they strolled past. Probably sizing them up for culinary handout. ‘Maybe people have stopped feeding them and that’s why they are dying off.’

  Jen shook her head. ‘I don’t know, Gordon Swift from the Audubon Society was in here the other day saying something about experts looking into some kind of a disease.’

  ‘Oh. Well that’s not good. I hope it doesn’t spread to other animals.’ I thought of Nero and Marlowe. Could cats catch a disease from seagulls? I certainly didn’t want something happening to them.

  ‘Anyway, it can’t be that they’re starving. They eat those flockenberries up on the cliff. That’s why they poop orange, you know? The berries are orange and pass right through,’ Jen said. ‘And there are tons of those berries. Those things are invasive. They practically choke out anything else nearby. Mrs. Landsdowne had them in her garden and they killed all of her tomato plants.’

  ‘You don’t say.’ As I made a mental note to make sure I didn’t have any flockenberries in the gardens that I’d be redoing at the guesthouse, something on the street caught my eye. It was my mother and Millie dressed to the nines and making a beeline for the post office. ‘Looks like I better get going. Millie and my mom are coming and it looks like they’re dressed to kill for our lunch at the Marinara Mariner.’

  Despite its kitschy name, the Marinara Mariner was a pretty decent upscale Italian restaurant. It was located a few doors down from the Post Office and had a definite Tuscan vibe. The hostess led us
through the dimly lit room, across the clay tile flooring, through the arch and into a grotto area with one wall made out of large stones and the others painted a pleasing Tuscany mustard color.

  We were seated at a cozy table in the back. Our water glasses sparkled under the chandelier, our silverware gleamed. The plates were simple white china with a gold rim and the acoustics were such that we could only hear muted snatches of the other diners’ conversations. I could tell Mom and Millie were straining to eavesdrop on Carolyn Wheatly and her boss John Collingsworth, who looked particularly cozy in the corner.

  Even the menu was classy, all done in dark brown quality faux leather with nice printing inside. I scanned the items—antipasto, eggplant, veal—while inhaling the tang of tomato sauce and freshly baked bread.

  ‘What are you going to have Josie?’ Millie looked at me over the top of her menu. ‘It’s my treat.’

  ‘I can’t let you do that, Millie.’ Though it would be nice because I didn’t really have any money for eating out. I scanned the side dishes. Maybe I could make do with a side of broccoli?

  ‘Don’t be silly. I’m rolling in it now that I have all that money from the sale of the guesthouse.’ She leaned across the table and lowered her voice. ‘And besides, if we play our cards right, we won’t have to pay a dime.’

  Worry set in. Mom and Millie were known to play fast and loose. My eyes narrowed. ‘Just what are you two planning?’

  ‘It’s nothing bad.’ Mom put her menu down. ‘I’m having the lasagna.’

  ‘I’m going for the veal scallopini. What about you, Josie?’ Millie asked.

  ‘Salad. Now tell me exactly what you are planning to do.’

  Millie pressed her lips together and looked over my shoulder at the waitress who had appeared with a pitcher of water. Saved by the waitstaff, but it was only a temporary reprieve. The waitress would have to leave sooner or later, though it looked like it would be later given all the questions Mom and Millie were asking about the food.