Four Seasons of Mystery

by Karen MacInerney

  And together, hands clasped, we watched as two of our favorite people joined their lives together in love.

  Natalie’s Emergency Hot Chocolate

  Ingredients

  2 cups whole milk (3 if you like slightly thinner hot choco- late--this is super thick!)

  1/2 cup milk powder

  1 teaspoon cornstarch

  1 cup bittersweet (60%) chocolate chips or chopped chocolate

  1.5 - 2 oz. Bourbon, Kahlúa, peppermint schnapps, or other liqueur

  Directions

  In a medium saucepan, bring milk to a boil over medium-high. Lower the heat to medium and add the chocolate, whisking constantly until the chocolate is completely melted. Then whisk in the milk powder and cornstarch until everything is dissolved and the mixture is smooth and thick. Whisk in liqueur if using.

  Serves four.

  Gray Whale Inn Gingerbread People

  Ingredients

  2-3/4 cups all purpose flour

  2 teaspoons baking soda

  Heaping 1/4 teaspoon salt

  2 teaspoons ground ginger

  1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

  1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

  1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

  1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

  1-1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

  1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar

  1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons packed dark brown sugar

  1 large egg

  6 tablespoons molasses

  Royal icing for decorating

  Directions

  In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and black pepper. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugars on medium speed until light and fluffy (about 2 minutes), then beat in the egg and molasses.

  Add the flour mixture and mix on low speed until combined, then divide the dough in half and shape into two flat rounds. Wrap the rounds in plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator until firm, at least 1 hour.

  While dough is chilling, preheat the oven to 350° and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Place two racks near the center of the oven.

  Remove the dough from the refrigerator (if the dough has been in the fridge for longer than an hour, let it sit at room temperature for 10 to 15 minutes and knead it briefly before rolling.) Place the dough on a lightly floured work surface and dust the dough lightly with flour. Roll, turning and adding more flour under and over the dough as neces- sary, to about 1/8-inch thick for crisper cookies or 1/4-inch thick for softer cookies. Cut out shapes with a cookie cutter and transfer the cookies to the prepared baking sheets, using a spatula if necessary. Gather the dough scraps and knead into a ball, then roll out and cut again, adding more flour as necessary. Repeat until all scraps are used up.

  Bake the cookies, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and front to back midway through, for 8 to 10 minutes or until they feel firm. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheets for several minutes until set, then transfer to a rack. Repeat until all dough is used up.

  When the cookies are completely cool, decorate with icing. Let the icing set completely, a few hours, then store in an airtight container.

  Royal Icing

  Ingredients:

  3 egg whites (pasteurized if you have concerns)

  4 cups confectioners sugar

  Food coloring (optional)

  Directions:

  Put the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment or beaters. Beat on medium speed until frothy.

  Add the confectioners' sugar and beat on low speed until sugar is blended in. Increase the speed to medium-low and beat until the mixture is thick and shiny, 3 to 5 minutes.

  Divide the icing into bowls, use food coloring to tint the icing, and then add water until icing reaches a good consistency. Cover the icing with a damp paper towel to keep a skin from forming on top. For longer storage, cover bowls tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

  Lupine Lies

  Lupine Lies

  Some women collect men like a flower collects bees.

  I'd never been one of them, but my friend Charlene was as in-demand as the first lupine of the Maine spring season.

  As I finished cleaning up after breakfast, she showed up at the kitchen door, laden with grocery bags. Her caramel-colored hair gleamed in the morning light and her mascaraed lashes were long around her blue eyes. I couldn't blame the male residents of the island, really; not only was she a fun person to be with, but she was gorgeous.

  "I brought your groceries. Is he here?" she asked in a low voice, eyes darting around as if she expected someone to have hidden himself behind the curtains, or perhaps in one of the cabinets. She was referring to Alex Van der Berg, the wildlife photographer/naturalist she had broken up with a while back, informing him she couldn't have a relationship with someone she saw a grand total of two weeks a year. He hadn't taken the news well, and although Charlene had moved on—this time to a handsome man I approved of completely, my cousin Robert—Alex, evidently had not.

  "I think I saw him go out with his camera," I told her as I opened the screen door.

  "Whew." She lugged in the bags, plopping them on the counter. I eyed them with interest; I was hoping caramels and a big bag of walnuts might be in them. I had plans to try out a new chocolate salted-caramel walnut cookie bar recipe. "How long is he staying, again?" Charlene asked, distracting me from my thoughts of food.

  "His reservation is through Sunday," I told her.

  "Five more days," she groaned. "That's a long time."

  "Can you go to Bangor and stay with Robert?"

  "Not unless you want the store and the post office closed half the week," she said. "He spent two hours sitting at the bar yesterday, begging me to reconsider. And now I'm getting these weird bouquets on my front porch."

  "You're just irresistible," I said with a smile.

  "Or something. Yesterday it was these weird alien-looking flowers, and today was a huge bunch of carnations. Two years ago I would have been over the moon, but now I just wish he'd stop."

  "I presume you've told him that?"

  "Three times," she said, sitting down at my big pine table as I unloaded the bags. The kitchen glowed in the afternoon light, the walls warm and buttery. My two cats, Biscuit and Smudge, lounged in a spot of sunshine on the wood floors, and the air smelled like lemon soap and vanilla. Charlene plopped her elbows down on the table. "He won't listen. Plus, I'm getting these." She slapped an envelope down on the counter; on it was her name and address, in bold, jagged letters.

  "What's this?"

  "A poisoned pen letter," she said.

  "What?" I asked. "From whom?"

  "That's the thing about poisoned pen letters," she said. "They don't usually sign them."

  "What's it say, if you don't mind my asking?"

  She grimaced. "It says I should stay away from men before another one dies," she said, and although her tone was light, I could tell the letter-writer had hit a nerve. "It called me a Black Widow."

  "Wow," I said as I located the bag of walnuts and stowed them in the pantry next to the pecans. "What a horrible thing to write."

  "But it's true," she said, looking troubled. "The men I've dated... so many have had terrible fates." She hadn't had the best luck in the dating department, it was true. More than one of her beaus had met a nasty end.

  "What about Alex?" I asked. "He's alive and well, to say the least."

  "Unfortunately," Charlene said, groaning.

  "And so's Robert." Charlene started dating my cousin some months ago, and I'd never seen her happier. I was hoping he might pop the question soon, in fact, although I hadn't broached the topic with either of them.

  "But both of those are long-distance relationships," she pointed out. "What if it's the amount of time I spend with them? Maybe they're safe only because they live somewhere else."

  "Charlene," I said, setting down the caram
els I'd pulled from one of the bags and walking over to put my hand on hers. "Whoever wrote this is simply jealous. You are beautiful, and half the men on the island would give their right arm to date you. Everything that happened in the past was just... bad luck." I paused for a moment. "Robert was just down last weekend, wasn't he?"

  "He was," she said.

  "Anyone on the island seem to be sweet on him?"

  "Yes, actually," Charlene said. "Whenever Robert's in town, Fern spends all her time on the couches in the front of the store, waiting to pounce on him."

  "And when did the first missive arrive?"

  "Yesterday," she said. "I found it taped to the front door."

  "May I read it?" I asked.

  She shrugged. "Be my guest."

  I slid the letter out of the envelope.

  "BLACK WIDOW. STAY AWAY FROM MEN BEFORE ANOTHER ONE DIES." The handwriting was jagged, but the 'ws' were oddly curvy, with an unusual flourish.

  "I don't recognize the handwriting," I said, "but that sounds like a threat. I think we should show this to John."

  "Really?" she asked. I just... it's embarrassing."

  "I think whoever wrote this is deeply disturbed," I said. "We need to let him know about this. You didn't see anyone who might have dropped this off?"

  "No," she said, shaking her head. "I hate thinking that someone on the island feels that way about me."

  "We'll get it figured out," I said, trying to sound reassuring. I finished emptying the bags and sat down across from her. Biscuit looked up at me and mewed, then closed her eyes again and put her head back down on the floor. "In the meantime, you need to not worry about this; you aren't cursed, you just had a string of bad luck."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Positive," I said.

  "Got any cookies in the jar?" she asked, her eyes straying to my ever-full cookie jar.

  "Of course," I said. "There are a few lemon shortbread cookies left."

  Her eyes lit up. "I love those." As she helped herself to three and sat down at the table, nibbling the first, she said, "Good thing Robert likes women with a little meat on their bones."

  "You'd be gorgeous at any weight," I assured her.

  "But enough about me... How are things getting on with the botanist?"

  "Georgina Krazinsky? She's lovely!" I said. "I'm learning so much!"

  "I met her down at the store yesterday," Charlene said. "She was buying chocolate milk; she told me the scientific name of beach roses."

  "Rosa rugosa?"

  "How did you know?"

  "She told me yesterday," I said, leaning back and looking out the back window to where several specimens bloomed along the path, scenting the air with their wine-sweet perfume. "Between Georgina and Alex, it's been quite educational around here. I'm kind of surprised she and Alex haven't hit it off; they've got all kinds of naturey, sciencey things in common."

  "I know, right? Have they talked at all?"

  "They chatted over breakfast this morning, but from what I can tell, he only has eyes for you."

  "Only because I'm no longer available." She sighed. "What's she here studying, by the way?"

  "The native lupines," I told her. "Evidently the ones we're so famous for were imported from the West Coast a long time ago. There's a children's book about a woman named Mrs. Rumphius who secretly seeded them on her walks." The inn was blessed with a gorgeous stand of the blue and pink flowers; it was a particularly colorful stand that swept from the gray-shingled inn down to the rocky coast and bloomed every spring. My niece Gwen had captured them in watercolor more than once. I'd tried several times myself before reluctantly deciding that my skills were more suited to baking than painting.

  "I've seen that book in Sherman's Bookstore," Charlene said. "Was there really a Mrs. Rumphius?"

  "There was, but her name was Hilda Edwards, and she may not have been such a hero. Apparently the nonnative lupines have pretty much wiped out the native ones—and the butterflies who relied on them. The original lupines may not have been as showy, but Georgina thinks they're pretty special."

  "Are there any native lupines here?"

  "She's found a few stands. She doesn't know if they've hybridized with the nonnatives; she's doing DNA testing and collecting seeds. If she can propagate some and store some of the seeds, she says she can help maintain genetic diversity."

  "I love our lupines, no matter where they come from."

  "Well, apparently the beach roses and purple loosestrife are invasive, too."

  "The beach roses? No!"

  "Yup. That's why I know they're called Rosa rugosa. And that beautiful pink spike flower that grows along I-95 on the way to Portland's bad news, too."

  "I love that stuff!"

  "So did someone else, which is why it got here." I sighed; it was too bad so many beautiful plants were bad for the local flora and fauna. "I've learned a lot since she's been here, though. It's been a long time since I've gotten to talk about wild plants."

  "That's right... you used to work for Texas Parks and Wildlife, didn't you?"

  "Indeed I did." In a former life, I had been a cube jockey in a state agency in Texas. I'd enjoyed parts of my work, but not nearly as much as I enjoyed being an innkeeper in Maine.

  "Speaking of flowers, did you hear what happened to Ingrid's garden?"

  "Claudette's goats on the rampage again?" I asked. Muffin and Pudge, while adorable, were the bane of Ingrid's—and every other gardener on the island's—existence, mowing through gardens like they were bags of potato chips. My window boxes had fallen prey to the dynamic duo more than once.

  "Nope. Matilda Jenkins found a diary belonging to a Margaret Selfridge in a box of things Murray dropped off at the museum last week, and there was an entry in there that for some reason nobody's looked at since she wrote it more than fifty years ago."

  "What about?"

  Charlene leaned forward, eyes sparkling; she loved a good story. "Her husband was one of the Selfridge boys; he was the master of a merchant marine vessel. It was always rumored that he'd brought back a fabulous jewel from one of his trips to the Far East. It was another one of those stories that goes around every once in a while. That there's buried treasure on the island. For some reason, everyone thinks it's somewhere near her house.

  "The legends just never stop, do they? Lost pirate ships, rum runners, a ghost at the lighthouse..."

  "Well, technically, all of those were kind of true," Charlene pointed out. "It's no wonder treasure hunters dug up her hydrangea bed."

  "The beautiful pale blue ones?" I asked. "That's so sad!"

  Charlene nodded. "It is... and she's livid."

  "I'll bet," I said. "So, what's the story?"

  "This time it's some fabulous ruby her husband brought back from the Far East, set in a gold ring. It was supposedly enormous; she wore it for years."

  "So showiness runs in the family?" I asked, thinking of the island's current ostentatious Selfridge, a developer named Murray.

  "It seems so. As she got older, she thought someone was going to steal it, so she hid it away. The courtship was passionate, from the stories, but he was gone to sea for months at a time, sometimes years, and even though they had children together, it took its toll on her."

  "You had that with your photographer boyfriend."

  "Totally," she said. "Except for the marriage and children part, anyway. I'm still mad at him for not making me a priority." She looked out the window, down toward the deep blue water and the gray-green hills of the mainland beyond. "If he'd done things differently... I don't know. I love Robert, but Alex had a zest for life that was really appealing."

  "I can see that," I said. I loved Robert, and wanted things to go well with him and Charlene, but I understood where she was coming from.

  "Anyway," she said, shaking herself as if to rid herself of bad thoughts, "I can't imagine what it would have been like to be alone for months, not knowing if your husband was alive or dead."

  "That's where the w
idow's walks came from, from what I've heard," I said. One of the captain's houses close to the pier had one; the story was that it was so that the women left behind could climb to the tops of their houses and scan the sea for any sign of their husband's return.

  "I've heard that," she said.

  "What happened to the ring?" I asked, bringing her back to the story—and, hopefully, away from thoughts of Alex.

  "Nobody saw it for years; she'd stopped wearing it. When she died, it was nowhere to be found. Her children asked her what had become of it, but she was suffering from dementia by then, and couldn't tell them anything."

  "Helpful."

  "Evidently not. It hasn't been seen since years before she died."

  "Cheerful story," I remarked.

  "Yeah, isn't it? In the past, a lot of these women were lonely if they didn't get involved in island life; their husbands were always gone to sea," Charlene said. "It must have been really stressful."

  "You know what that's like, don't you?"

  She snorted.

  "So, where did she bury it?"

  "Oddly, no one can decide on that; everyone's got a different opinion. She was married to William Selfridge."

  "Jonah Selfridge's son?" I asked.

  "I think so; Matilda told me, but I don't remember exactly which one it was. They lived here, but when she got older, she spent time at her children's houses; they took turns taking care of her. She could have hidden the ring at any number of houses on the island."

  "Including the inn," I said, looking out toward the garden. "Terrific. Maybe I should get a metal detector of my own and beat out whoever's looking for it."

  "Want me to bring mine?" she asked.

  "You have a metal detector?"

  "I've been beachcombing for years," she said. "You never know what you'll find after a storm!"

  "I think that might be fun; I doubt we'll find jewels, but maybe we'll find some interesting artifacts!" I said.

  "I'll bring it over later."