Dead and Berried

by Karen MacInerney

“He’s at peace now,” I said gently. She burst into tears again, and I wrapped my arms around her as she sobbed. After a few minutes, she straightened.

  “I’ve got to get myself together,” she said, wiping her eyes.

  “Take all the time you need,” I said. “Did you get yourself situated?”

  “We put her in the Lupine suite,” Gwen said, sipping her tea.

  “One of my favorites. By the way, anything I need to deal with?” I asked my niece.

  “Candy was looking for you. And Benjamin.”

  I sighed. “What did they want?”

  “Candy just wanted to ask you more questions, I think. And Benjamin said something about dinner.”

  “In other words, nothing I need to deal with now.” I walked over to the freezer and pulled out a container of clam chowder. “Benjamin will have to figure out dinner on his own,” I said. “I invited John to come over for chowder after he’s finished...” I glanced at Charlene and trailed off, realizing the conversation John and I had postponed earlier would have to wait until Charlene had gone to bed. I pulled a package of rolls from the freezer and opened the fridge to search for salad fixings. The shelves overflowed with fresh fruit and eggs. I turned to Charlene. “You brought the groceries?”

  She smiled weakly. “It was Tania’s idea. She said you tip in chocolate.” For a second, I saw a glimpse of my jovial friend.

  “Thank God. Otherwise I’d have to serve pine mulch and tern eggs for breakfast.”

  “So does that mean you’ve terminated your membership with Save our Terns?” Charlene said with a faint grin.

  “If we didn’t get back on good terms, I was afraid I’d have to,” I said.

  The grin suddenly faltered, and her face crumpled again. I hurried to her side. It was going to be a tough night for all of us.

  The sky had darkened to lead, rain lashed the windows, and the wind was howling through the eaves when John pounded at the kitchen door an hour later. Thunder cracked overhead as I ran to let him in.

  “Did the investigators get everything taken care of before the storm blew in?” I asked as he closed the door behind him and began peeling off his raincoat.

  “I think so,” he said, nodding at Charlene, who huddled next to the radiator wrapped in a blanket, sipping a mug of tea. She’d been staring out the window at the storm for the last half hour, clutching Pepper to her chest, while I tried to make conversation and attempted to make a dent in the mountain of laundry.

  John hung his coat on the hook and pulled off his boots. “I’m glad I checked the weather this morning and grabbed my raincoat,” he said. “Otherwise I’d be a drowned rat.”

  “Now that you’re here, I’ll heat up the chowder,” I said. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”

  His green eyes crinkled in a tired smile that sent tendrils of warmth through me. “That would be great.”

  “Do they know who did it yet?” Charlene croaked from next to the radiator.

  John’s eyes flicked to me. “No,” he said quietly. “Not yet. But they’re working on it.”

  I nodded at him. Charlene didn’t need to know that she—and I—were suspects. Not yet, anyway.

  “Who do you think it was?” she asked, hugging the kitten to her chest.

  “Honestly,” John told her, “I was hoping you might be able to help the police figure that out.”

  “Me?”

  He pulled up a chair across from Charlene and leaned toward her, his hands clasped between his knees. “Do you know anyone who argued with him recently? Or anyone he talked about, even from his past?”

  Charlene shook her head slowly. “Everyone loves... loved... Richard.” Her voice caught, and she stifled a sob.

  “I know it’s hard,” John said. “But if you remember anything—even a sharp word, or an unusual phone call, it would help if you told the police about it.”

  She pulled the blanket closer around her. My heart ached at her tear-streaked face. “There was one unusual thing,” she said slowly, “but I doubt it means anything.”

  John leaned forward in his chair. “What was it?”

  “Richard... Richard said he found something during the renovation. A diary, I think. He hadn’t decided what to do about it yet, though.”

  “You mean whether he was going to take it to the museum?” I asked.

  Charlene sniffled and pushed her hair behind her ears. I was so used to seeing her made up; her raw face looked so vulnerable now. “No,” she said. “I don’t think that’s what it was about. He was going to talk to someone about it.”

  “Whose diary was it?” I asked.

  “I’m not even sure it was a diary. I think it must have belonged to one of the priests.”

  My mind turned back to something Matilda had said. Old grudges last a long, long time. Could someone have killed Richard over an old diary?

  “Do you know where he kept it?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  I turned to John. “Could you find out if the police turned anything up?”

  He nodded. “I’ll call tomorrow.”

  My stomach gurgled, and I remembered the chowder. “Anyone hungry?” I asked.

  Charlene didn’t answer, but John said, “I’m starving.”

  “I’ll get dinner started, then.”

  “Can I help with something?” John asked, standing up and pushing his chair in.

  “How are you with salad?”

  He winked at me. “My specialty.”

  A few minutes later, the smell of browning rolls and clam chowder filled the kitchen. Despite the day’s tragic circumstances, the kitchen felt more comfortable than it had in days, with Charlene by the window and John tearing up romaine lettuce beside me. I’d missed John, I realized.

  I was just giving the chowder a final stir when the door to the inn swung open, and Candy popped in. Her eyes quickly took in Charlene, then focused on John.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, not trying to keep the chill from my voice.

  “I was just wondering if you’d seen Ben,” she said brightly. Despite the weather outside, she looked like she was ready for a beach party in a tiny red Hawaiian-print dress and strappy high-heeled sandals. “We were supposed to go to dinner.”

  I shrugged. “Sorry.”

  She gave John one last lingering glance. “If you see him, tell him I’m looking for him.”

  I nodded sharply as the door swung shut behind her.

  “I can’t believe her,” I said.

  John’s eyebrows rose. “What do you mean? Because she’s wearing a sundress in October?”

  “No,” I said, stomping across the kitchen to the oven. “First she follows me around the inn for days, claiming to do ‘research’ for an inn she’s planning to open over on the mainland. Then she ‘accidentally’ lets the water overflow in her room, causing me thousands of dollars in damage.” I opened the oven door to check on the rolls, then slammed it shut.

  “Easy now, Nat. You don’t need a broken oven, too.”

  “But I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet,” I said. “I just found out she’s putting in a bid on Cliffside. She’s trying to steal my secrets and put me out of business so she can start her own inn right down the street.”

  Even Charlene looked up. “What?”

  “Gwen told me this morning.”

  Charlene blinked. “I knew a real estate agent was showing Cliffside, but I thought it was to someone looking for a vacation home. Are you sure that’s what she has in mind?”

  “Charlene,” I said. “That woman has been dogging my footsteps, taking notes on everything I do—from my suppliers to my cleaning products—for almost a week now.”

  “What are you going to do?” John asked.

  I sighed and sank
into a kitchen chair. “I don’t know. Guard my guest list, for starters. Other than that, though...” I shrugged. “It’s a free country.”

  ___

  Dinner went relatively well, considering the circumstances. Gwen came down and joined us, and between the three of us, we managed to keep Charlene’s mind from dwelling too much on what had happened at the rectory.

  After Gwen, John and I had finished bowls of chocolate ice cream—Charlene barely touched hers—my friend turned to me, her face pale. “I need you to find out who did this to Richard,” she said.

  I pushed my bowl away. “I know,” I said. “And I’ll do whatever I can.”

  “We have to go to the rectory tomorrow.”

  I started, “I don’t know if we’re allowed...”

  “I don’t care. I have the key. If this diary is the reason he died, I need to look at it, see if I can figure out the connection.”

  John nodded. “That makes sense. But I’m sure the police have it by now, and are doing everything they can to piece things together.”

  “You mean Grimes?” She shook her head. “He’s an idiot.”

  I had to agree with her there.

  “No,” she continued. “I need to see the rectory myself.”

  “I know Grimes isn’t the ideal investigator, and that it wouldn’t hurt to do what we can to help. But the rectory may be closed off for a few days. It’s a crime scene,” John said.

  “Then as soon as it isn’t closed off anymore,” she said, shooting me a look that made it eminently clear she wasn’t planning on waiting. I stifled a sigh.

  “What do you know about Richard’s past?” I said, hoping to change the subject. “Maybe his death had something to do with his life before he came to the island.”

  “It’s worth looking into, anyway,” John said.

  “All I know is that he had a post in Boston for a few years before he was called to Cranberry Island.”

  I leaned forward. “Boston to Cranberry Island is a big switch. Did he ever say why he moved?”

  “He never really talked about it much,” Charlene said.

  John’s green eyes flicked to mine, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. Priests don’t get reassigned from major metropolitan areas to backwaters like tiny Maine islands as a reward for good behavior. It might not be a bad idea to get in touch with the Boston diocese and find out a little bit more about McLaughlin’s history—and why he was reassigned.

  “Was he ever married?” John asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Charlene said. “Although I got the impression he had had a relationship that ended badly.” Tears leaked from her eyes again. “That’s why what we had was so... Oh, God...” Her chest started heaving again.

  “It’s okay,” I murmured, reaching out to squeeze Charlene’s arm as Gwen handed her a Kleenex. Rain pounded against the window and thunder rumbled ominously overhead as we waited for Charlene to collect herself.

  She blew her nose and looked up. “I don’t think I can talk about this anymore tonight. It’s too... too...”

  “I know,” I said softly. “Why don’t I go and run you a bath? That always relaxes me. Maybe a candle, and some bubble bath?”

  “Thank you,” she said in a small voice as I headed through the swinging door to the Lupine suite.

  Fifteen minutes later, when Charlene was ensconced in a tub full of warm, scented bubbles, I rejoined John. Gwen had headed upstairs, so it was just the two of us in the yellow kitchen.

  “This is going to be tough on her,” I said.

  John’s green eyes were tired. “And she doesn’t even know she’s a suspect yet.”

  I grimaced. “I know.” I pulled up a chair next to John, thinking of how comfortable it was to have him in my kitchen. With Benjamin, it was like living with a tropical storm—he was hot, unpredictable. John was more of a steady warm front... comforting, stable, with a slow-burning heat. I found myself staring at his brown, weathered face, the crinkles around his green eyes. I forced myself to look away, focusing instead on the rain running down the windowpanes. “I never told you what happened when I went to Polly’s today,” I said.

  “You were at Polly’s?”

  As the wind howled around the old inn, I told him about the box of bullets and the intruder... and my trip to the rectory.

  “If it was a suicide,” he asked, “why would someone bother taking the bullets?”

  “Because there was one less than there should have been. Which means it wasn’t a suicide.”

  “But they never found another casing,” John said.

  “They never looked,” I said. “And it’s a big bog.”

  “True.”

  “What convinces me more than anything is that I told McLaughlin about the bullets, and then someone came to the house less than an hour later and got rid of them.”

  “Do you think it was McLaughlin?”

  “I thought so, at first... but McLaughlin is dead. Which kind of takes him off the hook for Polly’s murder. Assuming it’s the same killer, that is.”

  John sighed. “We need to tell someone about the bullets.” He glanced at me doubtfully. “I don’t know if it will do any good...”

  I smiled ruefully. “Not with Grimes on the case, no.”

  John turned his bowl around slowly. “Do you think someone might have killed McLaughlin because of something Polly told him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It just seems kind of weird. He said something about the ‘sordid details’ of Polly’s life.”

  “But Polly’s dead, so why would someone kill McLaughlin to keep him quiet?”

  “That’s the thing. It doesn’t make sense.” I shivered. “The murderer must have gotten there right after I left.”

  John’s eyes focused on me. “Or was waiting for you to leave.”

  A chill passed through me. “You mean he... or she... knew I was there?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m worried about. If McLaughlin knew something he shouldn’t have, and the murderer knew you had talked with him...”

  “And if McLaughlin told him I was going to count the bullets...”

  John leaned over and gripped my arm. “I think you need to be very, very careful, Natalie.”

  I sighed. “And to think I came to Cranberry Island for a quiet life.”

  He chuckled and sat back. “Unfortunately, Nat, trouble seems to follow you around.”

  I thought of poor Polly, and McLaughlin, and the “ghost” upstairs, and Candy wanting to buy Cliffside, and Benjamin’s proposal... “I think I need a vacation.”

  “Maybe someday, when all this is over, we’ll have to plan one.” He reached out again and squeezed my hand.

  “Maybe,” I said, letting the warmth seep up my arm and settle somewhere in the vicinity of my heart.

  All too soon, he pushed back his chair and stood up. “You should probably check on Charlene,” he said. “And I need to head home.”

  “Thanks for coming over.”

  He pulled on his raincoat. “And thank you for dinner. I’ll let you know what I hear from Grimes. But don’t expect much.”

  “I don’t. Besides, I’ll probably have a chance to talk to him myself, when he comes to inspect my knife collection.”

  “Are they all accounted for?”

  My eyes darted to the knife block. “You know, I never checked.”

  John shrugged with resignation. “To be honest, I doubt it will make a difference.” He paused with his hand on the door, staring at me hard. “Good night, Natalie.”

  “Good night, John.” My voice was husky. I stood at the window and watched him until he disappeared into the carriage house. Then I locked the door and walked over to my knife block. Everything was accounted for, except for the French chef’
s knife; the handle had broken a few months ago, and I hadn’t gotten around to replacing it. Besides, I figured, a French chef’s knife was for chopping vegetables, not meat. I shivered. Or people.

  ___

  It was almost midnight before Charlene finally fell asleep. I had stayed with her for hours, just listening, comforting her, trying to keep her from falling apart. After arranging the quilt over Charlene and Pepper and turning off the light, I headed blearily back to the kitchen to get things ready for the morning. Fortunately, I had a few extra loaves of cranberry walnut bread in the freezer from last week; I pulled them out to thaw, then put some sausage in the pan and grated cheese for the strata I planned to put together the next morning. I had sliced the top off a pineapple for a fruit salad when a click sounded behind me.

  I whirled around in time to see the doorknob jiggle, and a flash of movement through the door’s dark windowpane. I slid a butcher’s knife from the block and sidled over to the light switches. My hand was shaking as it flipped the kitchen light off and the porch light on.

  There was no one there.

  I crept over to the door to the porch and peered outside. In the watery light, the rain looked like falling silver, but the porch was empty. Then my eyes dropped to the boards outside the door. No one was there now.

  But somebody had been.

  Muddy footprints, already half washed away by the rain, marred the white paint.

  I whirled around toward the swinging door and ran to the front of the house. The door was locked. After checking every window on the first floor, I returned to the kitchen and laid the carving knife on the counter beside me. I quickly chopped the pineapple, the knife slipping in my shaking hands, nicking my finger. Despite the warm, cozy kitchen around me—usually my haven from the world—I felt exposed, vulnerable. If someone had a gun, I realized, I was a sitting duck. I couldn’t see anyone outside. But anyone outside could see me.

  I dumped the pineapple into a bowl and turned the burner off under the sausage. A moment later, I thrust the sausage and the chopped pineapple into the refrigerator, then turned off the kitchen light before heading upstairs, knife in hand. I laid the blade on the bedside table and changed into a nightshirt, my ears alert for the slightest sound. Who had been outside the kitchen door, I wondered? Polly’s murderer? It certainly wasn’t a ghost. Ghosts, after all, don’t leave muddy footprints.