“That’s nonsense!” Daisy countered. “No one forced your uncle to sign anything. He signed it willingly.” She swept an arm around her. “Look at this place. It looks like a slum. Your uncle hasn’t done any upkeep on the place in years, because he didn’t have the money. Now he’s got a little money, thanks to the sale of this place. We actually helped out your family, young man. They might even have enough money to send you to college now. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
This news was obviously unexpected, for it struck Scotty like a hammer. He stumbled backward, as if he’d been pushed. Marshall was out of his chair almost instantly, reaching for the gun, but Scotty veered away, brandishing the weapon at them, his finger curling around the trigger. They thought it was going to go off. Daisy screamed, Porter shouted, Marshall flinched, and Candy sat where she was, stunned.
After a few moments Scotty seemed to regain his senses, though he kept the pistol pointed at them. “Don’t try that again,” he said, motioning Marshall back to his seat. “I should just get rid of all of you, right here and now. Because none of you are telling me the truth. You’re just telling the same old lies you’ve told a thousand times before.”
It was clear he was close to his breaking point, so rather than get angry at him, Candy appealed to him with a softer tone. “Scotty,” she asked quietly, “don’t push this any further, until something terrible happens. Why don’t you put the gun down and let’s talk?”
“No!” he shouted. “I can’t. It’s too late.”
“Too late?” Candy repeated, watching his eyes, his manner. He looked distressed, upset about something. He was shaking, she noticed. And then it suddenly struck her, and she knew what must have happened—why Scotty had run, and why he looked so wild and scared now.
“Scotty,” she said quietly, feeling goose pimples running up her arms, “what happened that night after you heard Owen and Plymouth talking in the hall?”
The young waiter visibly swayed at the question, and his eyes closed for a moment. Candy thought he might faint, until his eyes opened again. “Julius called,” he finally said softly.
Candy was surprised to hear this. “Julius Seabury? He called you?”
“He called the inn,” Scotty clarified, “and I just happened to pick up the call, because it rang back in the kitchen, and there was no one else around to answer it.”
“And what did he say?” Candy asked, fascinated by this revelation.
“That he was delayed. That he was over at the museum. That he was doing research. And that he’d be joining the dinner party as soon as he could. He said I was supposed to tell them.”
“So you knew he was at the museum?” Candy confirmed. And a moment later, she realized that at that point, Scotty Whitby was perhaps the only person who knew where Julius was. “So did you do as he asked? Did you deliver his message?”
Again, the young waiter hesitated and swayed a little, until he finally shook his head.
“What happened after that?” Candy pressed in a hushed tone, and everyone else in the room was still and silent, listening to their exchange.
Whatever state he’d been in, Scotty seemed to snap out of it, and his anger returned. “I knew he had those deeds,” the young waiter said, now talking quickly, “and I knew I had to get them from him, before someone else did. So I went into the back room and picked up a bottle of champagne.”
“To do what?” Candy asked.
“I don’t know! I needed a reason to go over there to talk to him, so I took that champagne bottle with me. I figured it would give me a way to explain why I was there. I told him it was from the party, it was a gift for him. But he just waved it off. He said he didn’t want it.”
“And what happened next?”
Scotty’s eyes glazed over a little, as if he was remembering the events of that night. “I . . . I guess I surprised him up there. He hadn’t expected anyone to find out what he was doing.”
“He was researching the deeds, right?” Candy prompted.
Scotty nodded. “He had them laid out on the table in front of him. I knew right away what they were. They were so old and crinkled, like they’d been around for hundreds of years. He tried to hide them from me but . . . I told him I wanted them. I wanted to destroy them.”
“And what did Julius do?” Candy asked, her voice now barely above a whisper.
Scotty barked a laugh at that. “He refused, of course! He tried to stuff them under some books. He told me I didn’t know what I was talking about.”
“So . . . what? You tried to take them from him?”
“I tried,” Scotty admitted, nodding his head slowly. “I tried.”
“And he fought you, right?”
Scotty pointed at his head. “I’m not quite sure what happened. It got crazy. He grabbed the bottle of champagne and hit me in the head with it for some reason. Not hard, but enough to leave a lump. So I took it from him, and hit him back, just like he hit me. . . .”
“And then what?”
Scotty shook his head. “He fell. I don’t know if he was alive or dead at that point. I told him I was sorry.” His eyes were glistening now, and his mouth was moving oddly. “It all happened so fast. I didn’t want to leave him there but I didn’t know what else to do. So I took the deeds and ran back to the inn.”
“And what happened when you got there? How did you wind up in that storage room?”
Scotty raised his hand to his head again. “I heard someone had been looking for me, so I ducked into one of the storerooms to try to figure it out. And my head hurt, because I’d been hit with that bottle. I figured I’d just lie there for a while, until someone found me, and then . . .”
Candy knew the rest. “Then they’d think you were the one who had been attacked by someone—someone at the inn, someone who had taken the bottle of champagne.”
Scotty nodded.
Candy was silent for a moment as she digested all she’d just heard. So were the others. No one spoke.
Finally, Daisy cleared her throat. “Well, that’s a very interesting story, young man, but why are you here now, harassing us like this? Why aren’t you running for the hills? The police will certainly find out what you did, because we’ll tell them. And then you’ll go to jail for the rest of your life.”
“No, I won’t,” Scotty said, his anger rising again, “because you’re not going to tell anyone what I’ve just told you. None of you. I knew all about Foul Mouth. My uncle told me about it years ago. I used to explore down there when I was a kid, though the passage that led up to the house was closed off long ago. So I had to break it down and sneak up here, because I wanted all of you to know what happened before I kill you.”
“Killing us won’t help,” Candy said. “You won’t get your property back.”
“Maybe not,” Scotty said, and he indicated the black day pack he had on his shoulders, “but he won’t be able to do this to anyone else in town—because I have the deeds now, right here with me.”
The young waiter turned toward Porter then, who still had his hands up, though not very high. “I’ve heard the rumors,” Scotty said in an accusatory tone. “They say you’re behind all the murders that have taken place around here for the past few years, but no one’s ever been able to prove it. You just keep getting away with things. So it was time for someone to take the law into his own hands and put an end to it, once and for all.”
He leveled the pistol at Porter one last time, and from the look on his face, he’d made a decision.
“Mr. Sykes,” he said ominously, “you’ve been found guilty in my court of law. And now, it’s time to carry out the punishment.”
His finger started to squeeze the trigger. Daisy screamed again, and Porter flinched. But all of a sudden there was another movement, behind Scotty. Someone came out of the kitchen fast and violently knocked the youth down. Scotty fell awkwardly and
the gun went flying out of his hands, skidding across the floor. Porter made a sudden scramble for it but a loud voice yelled, “Don’t anyone move!”
Candy’s eyes shifted from the fallen waiter to the newest arrival, and her eyes went wide.
It was Plymouth Palfrey, with a pistol of his own. And it, too, was pointed right at them.
FORTY-THREE
His sudden appearance was so unexpected that Candy audibly gasped. But Porter Sykes didn’t seem surprised to see the newcomer.
“About time you got here,” he said evenly, and finally lowered his hands. “Things were just about to turn ugly.” Again he made a move for the gun Scotty had dropped, but Plymouth spoke up in a calmer tone.
“As I said, no one move. That includes you, Porter. Stay right where you are.”
Porter’s expression changed abruptly to one of anger and confusion. “What are you talking about?”
Candy followed this exchange with growing awareness. “You two have been working together?” she blurted.
“I wouldn’t call it that,” Plymouth said with a grim smile. “But we both had a mutual desire—to get our hands on those deeds.”
“You said you had this all taken care of,” Porter accused the newcomer.
Plymouth sneered at that. “I’m here, aren’t I? I just saved your miserable life. You’re lucky I kept a close eye on this kid. I knew he went over to the lighthouse the night Julius died. I spotted him while I was having a conversation in the hallway with Owen, and got suspicious he’d overheard us. I saw him take that bottle of champagne and head out the inn’s back door. And when he came back without the bottle, and I heard what had happened, I figured out what he’d done. And I also suspected he took the deeds from Julius. But I had to make sure he had them.”
He turned toward Scotty then, still sprawled on the floor, and held out his hand. “The bag, kid.”
Porter protested. “You were supposed to get the deeds for me,” he emphasized. “That’s what we agreed on. It’s what I paid you for.”
Plymouth laughed, and in that moment Candy realized where she’d made her mistake.
She’d read the code wrong—the one Julius had left behind.
Bosworth.
Ethingham.
Whitby.
Rainsford.
Palfrey.
Sykes.
And her mind focused on the first letters of each name:
B.
E.
W.
R.
P.
S.
But she got it wrong. Julius had changed the format on her. She’d taken the first letter of all six names as the code, but he had spelled out the last two for her. It wasn’t “beware of Porter Sykes,” but “beware of Palfrey and Sykes”!
That’s why Julius had left the messages behind. The two had both been watching him. Julius must have suspected they were after the deeds—and in some way he’d felt threatened by them. Rightly so, as it turned out.
But in the end, the attack had not come from either of them, but from a third, unexpected person.
It had been, she now knew, an unplanned act of anger and desperation by Scotty, not a premeditated murder. It had been a misguided effort to restore his family’s property, and perhaps its prestige in town. But his plan had gone horribly wrong, and an innocent man had died.
With great effort, Candy shifted her gaze from Plymouth to the young waiter, now pulled into a tight huddle on the floor. “Scotty, where are the deeds?” she asked.
“They’re in that backpack of his,” Plymouth said, pointing, “or maybe he’s lying, and they’re still stashed down in that cave. Is that where they are, kid?”
Scotty wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and gazed at the newcomer with fury in his eyes. “How do you know about the cave? No one outside the family is supposed to know about it.”
“Because I’ve been there. I checked it out myself a few days ago.”
“But how did you know about it?” Candy asked, her gaze shifting back to Plymouth.
He gave her a sly smile. “Julius wasn’t always as cautious as he should have been with his research. He tended to leave his papers lying around the archives at times.”
Candy doubted that’s what had happened. “You spied on him, didn’t you? You knew he had the deeds, because you gave them to him at some point. At the time you didn’t know what they were, but you eventually found out. Porter probably told you about them, right? So you tried to get them for yourself, even though you told Porter otherwise.”
Plymouth just shrugged at her accusations. “I kept an eye on what Julius was doing, yes. I thought those deeds were worthless at first, and never even took a close look at them. When I finally found out what they were, I told him I wanted them back, but he refused. He said he wasn’t finished researching them. After that he got weird. He kept them under wraps. Didn’t show them to anyone, as far as I know. But I saw his notes. I saw his references to Foul Mouth and the Whitby place. So I did a little research of my own.”
“And that’s what Julius was doing out on that beach? Watching you dig around the Whitby place, searching for Foul Mouth?”
Plymouth shook his head. “I don’t know anything about that, but it doesn’t matter now, does it? All that matters are the deeds themselves.”
He shifted the pistol from Porter to the young waiter. “Time’s up, kid. I’m out of patience. Give me the backpack now, and you’d better hope the deeds are inside, or else you’ll suffer the consequences.” Again, he held out his hand.
“And what do you plan to do with them?” Porter demanded to know.
“Same thing you were going to do. Make some money with them.”
“Money?” Candy said in an accusatory tone. “Is that what this is all about?”
Plymouth glanced at her with a hard look. “Times are tough. The publishing business has some pretty thin margins. I need the money, and those deeds could be worth a lot.”
“But they belong to my family,” Porter insisted, “and we can prove that in court.”
“You can try. But possession is nine-tenths of the law. Those deeds belong to me now.” He waggled his hand impatiently as he turned back toward Scotty. “Toss me that backpack. Let’s see what you’ve got in there.”
Reluctantly, his eyes still glistening with anger and emotion, Scotty pulled the day pack down off his shoulder. He hesitated a moment, but finally tossed it to Plymouth. “Here you go. They’re inside, like I said. But you’re wrong about one thing.”
Plymouth grabbed the pack eagerly and started to open it. “And what’s that, kid?”
“Those deeds don’t belong to anyone anymore, because they’re gone.”
Plymouth had unsnapped the day pack’s top flap and looked down into it. For a moment his expression was one of total confusion. Then his brows fell and his gaze shot over to Scotty. “What’s the joke here? What have you done?”
“What someone should have done long ago,” Scotty said proudly.
And Plymouth scowled as he turned the day pack upside down, allowing the contents to spill out.
Ashes. Nothing but gray ash fell out.
Porter looked shocked. “You burned them?”
“Down in the cave,” Scotty confirmed. “They’re gone forever. Now no one can use them to steal property from people.”
“But those were important historical documents!” Porter said, almost screaming, his face turning red.
“You little weasel!” Daisy spat out, equally furious. “How could you do such a thing?”
For a moment, no one spoke. Then suddenly bodies were moving, and there was a scuffle as both Scotty and Porter lunged for the pistol that still lay on the floor between them. Marshall made a move for it as well, Daisy screamed again, and Plymouth shouted something, waving his gun around.
&nbs
p; The house seemed to rattle then, as if it were coming alive. Doors burst open, windows were thrust up, and Finn Woodbury strode into the room, closely followed by Chief Durr and a number of Cape Willington’s finest.
“Freeze, everyone!” the chief called out. “Plymouth Palfrey, drop your weapon! No one move a muscle! We’ve got you surrounded. It’s all over, folks!”
And it was over. Plymouth looked like he was about to make a run for it, until he saw the officers surrounding him. Finally realizing he was beaten, he let the gun slip from his hand. It dropped to the floor, while Scotty let out a cry of despair. One of the officers reached out with a foot and kicked both weapons out of the way. Plymouth and the young waiter were quickly swarmed by officers, who took them into custody.
Her carefully constructed facade completely gone, Daisy Porter-Sykes was crying, and her grandson was at her side, comforting her.
Meanwhile, Marshall L. Bosworth sat in his chair, to which he’d returned after attempting to get the gun. He appeared stunned at what had just happened, and was apparently unable to move again.
Finn rushed over to Candy, slipping a pistol he’d been carrying into a side holster. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m fine. And thanks. But your timing was a little off. For a few moments there, I thought we were all goners.”
“We got here as soon as we could,” Finn said. “It took me a while to round up the troops.”
“Did you hear Scotty’s confession? And Plymouth’s?”
Finn shook his head. “We swarmed the place as soon as we arrived. The situation looked pretty intense. Didn’t have time for a stakeout.”
“Well, at least you made it,” Candy said, sounding relieved, “and for that I’m eternally grateful.”
Finn spread his arms wide. “Hey, that’s what I’m here for. Told you I had you covered. And to be honest, I knew you’d handle the situation like an expert—which you obviously did. And look, it all turned out okay, right? Nobody got hurt, and we caught us a couple of criminals.” He smiled broadly and slapped her energetically on the shoulder. “Pretty exciting! Good times, right?”
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