by Lee Hollis
Hayley turned to Mona. “He’s a really good guy.”
“I know,” Mona finally admitted.
Sheriff Daphne ambled over to them.
“Sheriff Wilkes, I just want to say—” Hayley said.
Daphne held up her hand. “There’s no need to say anything. I acted irresponsibly and unprofessionally, and that’s on me. I just want you ladies to know I’m going to drop the breaking and entering charges.”
“Thank you,” Hayley said, smiling.
“But you still have to pay the parking tickets,” she said, not cracking a smile.
Mona opened her mouth to protest, but Hayley elbowed her in the rib cage and she shut it again.
“So I guess everything’s all wrapped up now,” Hayley said.
“Not quite,” Daphne said. “We know Ellie hoodwinked Boyd into strangling that journalist at the clambake, but there is still the matter of Rufus, or as we now know him, Enos O’Shannon.”
“Wait, you said you believe he died of natural causes,” Hayley said.
“I did. In fact, I was sure of it, but Sue pressured me into shipping the body to the county coroner’s office for an autopsy, and I did just to prove her wrong so she’d stop hassling me. They just called me with the results,” Daphne said, pausing, not for dramatic effect, but because she was ashamed she had been so adamant and yet so wrong. “He was poisoned.”
Hayley gasped. “Poisoned?”
“By a pretty hefty dose of it too. Someone was really determined to knock him off,” Daphne said.
“How did they get it into his system?” Hayley asked.
“I asked myself the same thing, and so I asked the doctor to list all of the stomach contents that were in his report, and he told me that all he found was traces of blueberry pie.”
“Blueberry pie?” Mona asked.
“Polly Roper,” Hayley said in disbelief.
“What about her?” Daphne asked.
“She told me she regularly baked blueberry pies for Rufus because he loved them so much,” Hayley said. “But why? What motive could she possibly have to murder Rufus? Unless . . .”
“Unless what?” Mona and Daphne both said at the same time.
“Polly was somehow aware of Rufus’s true identity, that he was in fact Enos O’Shannon, and you can be sure a violent and murderous mafia crime boss like O’Shannon has a long history of ruining people’s lives along the way, and there has to be more than a few of them who might be willing to do anything to exact revenge.”
Chapter 34
“Something sure smells good,” Hayley said as she entered Polly Roper’s kitchen to find her bent over and taking a baking pan out of the oven while wearing oven mitts with pictures of little lobsters on them.
“I’m making chocolate chip cookies with nuts and raisins for the fifth-grade class at the Salmon Cove Elementary school,” Polly said as she carefully set the pan down on a cooling rack.
She picked up a green ceramic bowl and started vigorously stirring it with a wooden spoon. “This batch is without nuts because little Stevie Harrison is allergic.”
Hayley nodded and smiled.
“Go ahead, help yourself,” Polly said.
“No, thanks,” Hayley said, a bit too abruptly, which caused Polly to look up from her cookie batter.
“Seriously?”
“Yes, I’m good.”
“Hayley, I’ve read enough of your columns to know you have a bigger sweet tooth than I do!”
What was she going to say? No, I’m not going to eat one of your cookies because I’m afraid they’re laced with poison!
Polly reached for a Saran Wrapped–covered plate on the counter, pulled back the plastic, and then walked over to personally offer her one.
Hayley didn’t have much of a choice.
She picked up a small one off the plate, took a tiny bite, and chewed it, hoping Polly didn’t have a nefarious plan to poison the entire fifth-grade class of Salmon Cove Elementary.
“Delicious!” Hayley said, swallowing quickly.
“Is anything wrong?” Polly asked, setting the plate of cookies down on the counter and looking at Hayley sideways as she folded the plastic wrap over it again.
Hayley fought to keep her cool. She was still reeling from the information she had uncovered, and didn’t know how she was going to go about bringing it up with Polly. Her only option at this point was to just plow ahead.
“I’m sure you’ve already heard the police solved that journalist’s murder?” Hayley asked, as casually as she could manage.
“Yes, I did!” Polly gasped. “I could not believe it! I’ve known Boyd for years and he always struck me as such a gentle boy, granted not too bright, but hardly capable of harming anyone let alone strangling a poor man to death!”
“I guess when you are so hopelessly in love and impressionable like he was, you can see how he could have been easily manipulated,” Hayley said.
“By Ellie, of all people! Honestly, she’s the last person in town I would ever suspect of having such a devious, murderous mind! She came across as so sweet and innocent!” Polly said as she lined a new baking pan with tin foil.
“She played the part perfectly. I suppose she had to because she couldn’t risk anyone finding out about her grandfather Rufus.”
“Now that’s a wild story! A mafia don hiding out right here in Salmon Cove! If that were the plot of a Hollywood movie, I would call it too over the top and utterly ridiculous to be believable!” she said, shaking her head, eyes focused on her baking pan as she poured dollops of cookie batter from the ceramic bowl onto the pan to form a fresh batch of cookies.
“I guess you just never know what kind of secrets people are hiding,” Hayley said, a sharp, pointed tone in her voice.
Polly didn’t flinch. She just flattened the three rows of cookie dough into round shapes, not looking up.
Hayley took a deep breath. “I’m sure a few more will bubble to the surface now that the police have ruled Rufus’s death a homicide.”
Polly finally looked up from her cookie dough. “Excuse me?”
“Someone murdered him.”
“But I heard he died of natural causes, I mean, let’s be frank, the man was well into his eighties and a heavy drinker!”
“That would make sense if they hadn’t found poison in his system.”
“Poison? Really?”
“Yes, not to mention traces of blueberry pie.”
Polly stiffened. “What are you implying, Hayley?”
“The poison had to get into his system somehow.”
“So you believe I put poison in one of the blueberry pies I gave him? That’s preposterous, Hayley! What possible motive would I have to kill him?”
“Because you knew that his true identity was Enos O’Shannon.”
“How could I know about all that? I’m just like you, a small-town wannabe chef with a cooking column in my local paper! Hardly someone with connections to a big-city mob boss! I’m sure that man made plenty of enemies in his line of work! The police should be chasing after them!”
“But none of those enemies tracked him down here four years ago, set up stakes here in town, and plotted their revenge!”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about!” Polly said, shoving the baking pan with the cookie dough into the oven and accidentally burning her finger on the oven rack. She yelped and licked her red finger with her lips. She was rattled, and Hayley knew it.
“Just like Ellie, you played your part well. Your name isn’t Polly Roper, is it? It’s Janice Fields.”
Polly flinched for the first time. She slowly withdrew her burnt finger from her lips and stared at Hayley.
“You are the daughter of Joe Fields, a restaurant owner in South Boston who refused to pay protection money to Enos so he shot him in cold blood. The police knew it, you knew it, but there just wasn’t enough evidence to convict him so he got away with it. And shortly after that, O’Shannon disappeared, never to be heard from
again. The idea of him being out there, free to live his life, ate you up inside, until you somehow found him here.”
Polly’s eyes welled up with tears, her mouth agape, as Hayley nailed her to the wall with the truth.
“How did you do it? How did you find him when all the resources of the FBI couldn’t do it?”
“It was a complete accident—” Polly said, shaking. “I came here on a lark, a summer vacation, I love seafood and hiking and I read about this place in a travel magazine and it just seemed so perfect. And on my first day here, literally hours after I arrived, I passed him on the street. It was like a sign! I was meant to find him!”
“But instead of alerting the authorities, you decided to take matters into your own hands.”
“How could I allow that ruthless, cowardly killer to be put back in the public eye like some celebrity? The press would have turned him into a legend, the crime boss who eluded the feds for so long! I couldn’t stomach the thought of seeing his smug face on TV every day, books being written about him, it was just too much to bear!”
“So you quietly moved here and told everybody you were Polly Roper, an aspiring chef and food writer, got a job at the paper, made friends with all the locals, played to their love of sweets, discovered Rufus was a fan of blueberry pie, and waited for the right moment.”
“I didn’t want to knock him off too soon after I got here because I wanted to become a part of the community to avoid any unnecessary suspicion. I wanted to wait a few years, and I honestly didn’t plan to do it when I did, but when that investigative journalist was killed at the clambake, and suddenly there was all this attention focused on Salmon Cove, I knew I had to act fast before someone else recognized Rufus so I made my usual blueberry pie delivery to his house, this one with my extra little ingredient added in the pie filling, and waited for him to get hungry!”
“And because of his advanced age, you thought people would just assume he died of natural causes, except Sue didn’t, which led her to push for an autopsy.”
“I certainly didn’t choose a fast-acting poison. I wanted him to suffer a slow, painful death, and I am happy to report he did. I hope as he was sprawled out on the floor dying, he thought about every life he took, every life he ruined!”
“But the sad result of all your efforts is you also ruined your own life,” Hayley said.
“What do you mean?”
“Enos O’Shannon was a horrible man whose past was littered with all sorts of heinous crimes, but that doesn’t give you the right to kill him. Now you’re going to have to pay for it!”
Polly noticed a sharp butcher knife lying on the counter, wrapped her fingers around the handle, and slowly raised it. “I don’t see why we can’t keep this little secret between us, right, Hayley? After all, we’re friends! I bailed you and your buddies out of jail!”
“And I appreciate that, but the problem is, the secret isn’t just between us anymore!”
“I don’t understand—”
Hayley pulled up her shirt a bit to show her cell phone stuffed behind her belt. A red button on the screen indicated she was recording the entire conversation.
Polly stepped forward, gripping the knife, and said, “Give me the phone, Hayley.”
“It won’t do you any good, Polly, because I wasn’t foolish enough to come here alone.”
Sheriff Daphne Wilkes suddenly swept into the kitchen, gun drawn, and pointed it at Polly, who dropped the butcher knife. It clattered to the floor. She slowly raised her hands in the air and started to weep softly.
“I’m sorry, Polly, but you are under arrest for murder,” Daphne said as she stepped forward and kicked the knife to the other side of the kitchen, safely out of her reach, and turned her around.
As Daphne passed Hayley, she gave her a little wink, acknowledging she was proud of how she had handled the situation.
Hayley was taken aback. Praise from her former adversary was unexpected. But it made her feel good inside. Maybe, just maybe, these two could wind up as friends.
As Daphne read Polly her rights while patting her down, Hayley surreptitiously moved over to the pan of cookies on the cooling rack. Now that she was certain they were safe for consumption, she plucked one from the plate and popped it in her mouth.
Chapter 35
“I’m sure going to miss this place,” Mona said as she, Hayley, and Liddy did one last look around her uncle’s cabin to make sure they hadn’t forgotten to pack anything.
“Mona, you can’t be serious,” Liddy scoffed.
“I don’t know, being here brings back a lot of childhood memories when it was such a simpler time and I had my whole life ahead me, and I didn’t have an inkling I would end up marrying my deadbeat husband, Dennis, and get stuck with a wild, uncontrollable bunch of brats . . .” she said, eyeing Hayley’s and Liddy’s judgmental faces, before quickly adding, “. . . all of whom I love unconditionally!”
“I think we’re good,” Hayley said. “We’ve certainly left the cabin cleaner than when we found it.”
As they headed out to the car, Mona stopped to lock the front door with a key. A white pickup truck rolled up, and Sadie jumped out of the back, tail wagging, and ran over to Mona, panting. She warmly petted the top of her head.
Corey slid out of the driver’s seat, looking impossibly sexy in a pair of tight jeans and a plaid work shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
“Thought I’d swing by and say good-bye one more time before you left,” he said with a sad smile.
It was obvious he didn’t want Mona to leave.
Mona kept her focus on Sadie, and was now down on her knees scratching underneath the dog’s chin, avoiding eye contact with Corey.
Undeterred, he ambled over to her. “It was sure nice seeing you again, Mona.”
“Yeah, it was,” Mona said as casually as she could, and then she rubbed noses with Sadie. “It was nice meeting you, too! You’re a good girl, yes you are, a good girl!”
“I’m hoping you’ll come see me again sometime,” he said.
“Well, you know I got my lobster business to run, and my kids are quite a handful as I’m sure I’ve told you, and—”
“Come here, Sadie,” Corey called, slapping the side of his leg.
Sadie licked Mona’s face and then obediently returned to her master, leaving Mona no choice but to finally look up at Corey.
Her eyes were brimming with tears, and her face, if not full of regret for what might have been, certainly betrayed a fondness and warmth for the man in front of her, and the strong, deep connection that had been reignited.
Mona hastily wiped away her tears and bit her quivering lip.
Corey stepped forward and gently hugged her.
She clasped her arms around him, holding him tightly, enjoying their last moments together.
When he pulled away, he took her by the shoulders, stared into her eyes, and then moved in for a kiss. She turned her head so his lips would land on her cheek, but he anticipated it, and lifted one hand, using his index finger to turn her head back to face him, in a perfect position for a lip lock.
Mona half struggled, certainly not forcefully, and then, she melted into it, and just let it happen.
Liddy audibly sighed, caught up in the romance of it all, even though it wasn’t happening to her.
And then, Corey Guildford brushed the side of Mona’s cheek with his hand one more time, and turned and strolled back to his truck with Sadie chasing after him.
“I’m married, you know!” Mona yelled.
“I know, you told me! That’s why I did it!” he called back, not turning around.
“What are you talking about?”
“I figured if I had one last chance to kiss you before you went home, I sure as hell was going to make it count!”
He opened the driver’s-side door of his truck, allowing Sadie to jump in first and settle into the passenger’s seat, and then he climbed in and rode away.
Hayley, Mona, and Liddy stood in front of
the cabin, in silence, watching the truck speed down the road, kicking up dust as it disappeared in the distance.
“Well, I know one thing,” Hayley said. “I really need a vacation after this vacation!”
“Please, can we finally go home now?” Liddy begged, pressing a button on her remote to unlock her Mercedes.
Mona foraged through her luggage in the trunk, grabbed a paper bag, and pulled out a banana, which she began to peel before Liddy snatched it out of her hand.
“No eating in the car, Mona!”
Mona grumbled before slamming the trunk shut and crawling in the back.
Hayley relaxed into the plush leather passenger seat.
With Liddy behind the wheel, they backed up, allowing Mona to steal one last look at her childhood camp, and then they zipped down the dirt road to the main highway.
They were only five minutes into the ride home when Liddy glanced up at her rearview mirror.
“You have got to be kidding me!”
They all turned around to see a police car on their tail, blue lights flashing.
“It can’t be!” Mona barked.
“Yes, I think it is,” Hayley said, sighing.
Liddy pulled the Mercedes to the side of the road and the police car pulled up behind them, so close their bumpers nearly touched.
Sheriff Daphne Wilkes got out, those intimidating sunglasses covering her eyes, her whole face tight and serious.
“I swear I wasn’t speeding!” Liddy declared, before turning to Hayley. “Was I?”
Hayley shrugged. “I wasn’t looking at the speedometer.”
Daphne circled around to the driver’s-side window and leaned down to get a good look inside the car as Liddy pressed the button to lower the window.
“Good afternoon, Sheriff,” Liddy said, with as much respect as she could muster.
“Ladies,” Sheriff Daphne said, glancing around for any illegal substances that might be lying around. “You out for a joy ride?”
“No, we’re heading out of town,” Liddy said, her voice cracking just a little. “As much as we’ve enjoyed our stay in Salmon Cove, it is finally time to go home!”
“I see,” she said, nodding. “Tell you what, why don’t I give you a police escort to the edge of town?”
