The Inn at Holiday Bay: Message in the Mantel

by Kathi Daley

  “Maybe, although Lonnie said the necklace looked to be valuable, so it might not have belonged to a common soldier. I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to find out where the necklace came from or who it was intended for, but I plan to do some research. Maybe there is information to be found on the web relating to its origin and owner. I wonder why the necklace was never picked up.”

  Georgia hung her head. “I sense a tragic end to whatever tale we might be able to dig up or imagine.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed. “TJ said the mantel most likely came from a tavern called The Yellow Dog. Seems like Boston could be as good a place as any to look for the owner of the necklace.” I speared a piece of cucumber. “We’ll work on it when we get back to the inn.” I took another bite of the salad. “This dressing is really good. Probably freshly made every day.”

  Georgia held up her fork. “May I?”

  I nodded, and she speared a piece of lettuce. She slipped it into her mouth and chewed slowly. “I have a recipe for a dressing that has a similar taste. I wouldn’t say it is exactly the same, but if you like this, I think you’ll enjoy my recipe. We’ll try it out next week and you can let me know what you think.”

  “Sounds like a plan. How is your soup?”

  “Delicious.” Georgia leaned back in her chair. “Would you like a sip?”

  I picked up a clean spoon. “I would.”

  “We’ll need to start putting together some menus. Not that we have to figure it all out ahead of time, but it would help to try out a few of the meals we plan to serve on Velma and maybe Nikki. Just to get some feedback.”

  “Everything you make is amazing, but I don’t disagree that we’ll want to have our own specialties. We’ll start something like ‘Tasting Tuesdays’ when we can set up the big table in the house. We can invite all our friends to sample the dishes we are considering.”

  Georgia grinned. “Sounds like fun.”

  Our conversation paused as the main courses arrived. So far, all the food we’d eaten on this trip had been amazing, and tonight’s dinner was no exception. When we returned to the inn, we headed to Georgia’s room. She got out her laptop and went to work, starting with a map of historic Boston, while I checked the messages on my phone. The first one was from Velma, letting me know that she would be late and not to wait up.

  I grinned. “The date must be going well.”

  Georgia looked up. “You heard from Velma?”

  I nodded. “She said she’d be late and we shouldn’t wait up.”

  “That’s great. I think. To be honest, ever since we talked about the fact that Royce might be involved in a relationship, I’ve been worried.”

  “We already decided that she’s an adult who can take care of herself. Have you found anything yet?”

  Georgia turned her laptop so that we could both see it. “This is a historical map of what Boston would have looked like at the time of the Revolution. There was a Scarlett’s Wharf in the harbor off Ship Street. It wasn’t all that far from Paul Revere’s house, and it would have been within walking distance from Water Street, where TJ said The Yellow Dog was located. It’s possible whoever left the note and the necklace in the secret compartment might have wanted to meet someone at the wharf.”

  “How do you know where Paul Revere lived?”

  “I’ve done the tour.”

  “I can’t help but picture some young man in love waiting at the wharf for a girl who would never show. The whole thing is so sad.”

  Georgia nodded in agreement. “As we’ve said before, I doubt this is going to be a mystery with an answer—at least not an answer we can ever know—but we can stop by to ask TJ about it on the way out of town if you like. She might know where we can search for information on the necklace.”

  Chapter 9

  Velma was quiet as we set off on the trip home the next day. Georgia and I asked her about her evening and she just told her it was nice. When we asked if she thought she’d see Royce again, she said she most likely wouldn’t. She didn’t seem angry or even particularly upset about it, just introspective.

  We did stop by TJ’s store on our way out of town and told her about the number Lonnie and Bobby had found on the mantel, as well as the necklace and the message they’d found in the secret drawer. She was just as fascinated as we were but didn’t have any information that could help us figure out who the necklace might have belonged to. She recommended that I follow up with the authenticator whose number she had already given me, and I assured her that I would.

  Then we stopped to pick up both the sketch I had purchased the previous evening and the dishes I had decided to add to my ever-growing collection of random yet complementary serving pieces for the inn. I’d texted Colt to ask how his investigation was going and his only response was that things had gotten interesting. I told him I’d call when I got home. If it wasn’t too late, I hoped that he’d want to grab a bite or a drink so he could catch me up that night.

  “We got another request for a booking,” Georgia said as we headed toward Holiday Bay.

  I turned my head and glanced at her as she stared at her phone. “For when?”

  “August. I know we don’t want to take deposits on bookings before September until we get a bit farther along in the remodel process, but I think I’ll ask about a soft booking. This woman is planning an anniversary party for her parents. A fiftieth. She wants to book the six suites for her parents, her grandparents, her three brothers and their wives, and herself and her husband.”

  “That sounds really nice,” Velma said. “If her grandparents will be attending, we’ll need to be sure that the suite on the first story will meet their needs. They have to be close to ninety, even if they married young and had children right away.”

  “If we decide to move forward, I’ll discuss all the specifics with her. Having only one first-floor suite might be an issue. We have the grandparents to consider, and the folks celebrating their fiftieth anniversary must be in their seventies or close to it. Not that seventy is so old these days that they wouldn’t be able to handle the stairs to the second story, but you never know,” Georgia responded.

  “Are they planning a big party?”

  “I think it will be a pretty low-key event. It doesn’t sound like they are inviting guests beyond the immediate family. Unless I missed something, it appears they are simply after a week by the sea.” Georgia looked up. “It must be wonderful to be part of a big, close family like that.”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling a tug at my own heartstrings.

  “Will the gazebo you are building accommodate a table large enough for twelve people?” Velma asked.

  “I think it should. We’ll have patio dining as well, but the gazebo would be lovely. Especially at sunset. It would be extra work to serve food that far away from the kitchen, though, so we won’t want to offer the option for every meal, but for the actual anniversary dinner, I think we can go to the effort.”

  “So I should let her know we are interested in working with her?” Georgia asked.

  I nodded. “Be sure to explain the situation, but I can’t imagine we won’t be open by August. Lonnie seems to be moving right along. We still need to find furnishings, but we have a start, and we can certainly up the pace now that the lower floors are done. Well, almost done.”

  “You’ll want to talk with the event committee about weekends in October through December,” Velma said. “They will provide free advertising as part of their campaign to get folks to come to town for the holidays.”

  “Georgia has been attending committee meetings,” I said, turning my head slightly.

  “We want to do some sort of a haunted mansion event in October,” Georgia said. “I don’t think the mansion has actual ghosts, at least not that any of us have seen, but it would be fun to put together a story to tell the guests who spend Halloween with us.”

  “I think that sounds like a great idea,” Velma answered. She picked up her phone when we all heard it ding.

 
“Is something wrong?” Georgia asked her.

  “No. Nothing is wrong. I have a text from Colt. He wants to know if I donate unused food to the meal delivery service that Bruce Palmer was a customer of.”

  “Do you?” I asked.

  “Sometimes. I occasionally make a large batch of soup that doesn’t sell well, and I’ve donated items like potato and pasta salad, and baked goods too. Keep in mind, while the food might be a day old, it is by no means spoiled. It is just food I don’t believe I can sell before I am forced to dispose of it. In addition to day-old food, I will occasionally buy too many eggs or too many loaves of bread that are close to their expiration date but still unopened in their containers, and I’ll donate them as well.” Velma looked up from her phone. “Any food I donate comes with a complete list of ingredients as well as the expiration date for them. If I don’t feel the food will be used by then, I don’t donate it. The last thing I want is someone getting sick from food I made.”

  “Why is he asking about what you do with your extra food?” Georgia asked.

  “It seems Dotty, the woman who runs the meal service, is trying to convince him that someone who donated soups, salads, and raw ingredients used in the meals she serves might have tainted it prior to donation.”

  I frowned. “I thought Colt tested the meals the service delivered to Mr. Palmer and determined they weren’t what poisoned him.”

  Velma shrugged. “I don’t know about that. He never said much to me one way or another. But he might have some sort of evidence that has caused him to change his mind.”

  “Do you think that it is possible that Mr. Palmer was poisoned by someone who donated food to the service?” Georgia asked.

  “I guess anything is possible, but I don’t think it is likely. The only other person I know of who donates their excess food is Gilda, and she wouldn’t kill Bruce Palmer any more that I would.” Velma looked up. “If you ask me, trying to push the blame off on the folks who donate to the program is just Dotty’s way of averting the blame from herself.”

  By the time we arrived back in Holiday Bay it was late afternoon. I dropped off Velma at her house, then headed out to the bluff. After unpacking the car and greeting the animals, I called Colt to see if he wanted to grab a drink. He did, and even offered to pick me up. I freshened up a bit and then went out into the drive to wait for him.

  “It sounds like maybe the food delivered by the service was tainted after all,” I said as we drove toward town.

  “Not necessarily. I am just exploring every possible avenue. I’m not sure where the tainted food or drink came from yet. I tested the food that had been left out on the counter and it was clean, but that might have been intentional. If I had to guess, due to the symptoms Palmer exhibited, he was poisoned over the course of a week or two. Leaving untainted food out on the counter to draw attention away from the tainted stuff was a good strategy. The killer might have predicted that I’d do exactly what I did, which was to test the food. It came back clean, which made it seem as if all the food delivered by the service was clean too.”

  “Do you suspect anyone from the service?” I asked.

  “Not specifically. As I said, I spoke to Dotty as well as both of Palmer’s usual delivery guys. All claim not to know anything about food tainted with antifreeze or anything else, but when I spoke to them the second time, one of the men mentioned the donated food. He suggested that I should follow the food back to its source and speak to the restaurants that made the donations.”

  “Thus the text to Velma while we were on our way home.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Surely you don’t think that Velma…?”

  “What? No! But I had to ask. I also wasn’t certain before I heard from her who else might have donated food to the cause. Dotty has been oddly silent on the matter.”

  “That seems suspicious. Why wouldn’t she just give you a list?”

  Colt frowned. “I don’t know. I feel like she knows something that she doesn’t want to tell me, but I have no idea if it is connected to the murder.” Colt pulled up in front of a local tavern that served simple yet surprisingly good food. We got out of the car and headed inside.

  “So, what else did you discover while I’ve been away?” I asked after we’d ordered beer and a pizza.

  Colt drank half a glass of his beer before he answered. I could sense that he needed a moment to gather his thoughts, so I waited patiently. If I had to guess, he’d had a hectic few days. He set down his glass, then began to speak. “You remember the will we found?”

  “Yes. There were three items that stood out: the shared bank account, the safety-deposit box, and my personal favorite, the skeleton in the trunk. Did you figure out who our bony friend was in life?”

  “No. Not yet. I’m working on that. What I did find out was that Palmer’s nephew, Willard Tisdale, visited him a month before his death. If you remember, when Willard’s mother died, she left a chunk of money to Willard in a savings account that was set up so that her brother, Bruce Palmer, had to provide a signature every time the nephew wanted to withdraw cash. Initially, I believed the account was handled that way because Willard was a minor at the time of his mother’s death, but as it turned out, the need for the uncle’s signature continued even after he reached adulthood. From my research, it looks as if Willard had a gambling problem even as a teen, and his mother wanted him to use her money to live on, not to gamble away.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. ‘The nephew visited his uncle looking for a chunk of money from the account.”

  Colt nodded. ‘Willard, in fact, wanted his uncle to approve his decision to take the remaining balance out of the account. I checked; that was almost thirty thousand dollars.”

  I whistled. “Do you know what he wanted the money for?”

  “He told Palmer that he met a girl and they were going to marry. He insisted that he wanted the money for a down payment on a house. From what Doug Palmer told me, his father was considering doing what the nephew asked. Then he did some checking and found out there was no girl and no house. As it turned out, he owed the money to his bookie.”

  “So maybe the nephew killed his uncle to get the cash.”

  Colt leaned forward slightly. “That is at least one of my current theories. He needed the money his uncle wouldn’t sign for him to get, so he killed him, knowing that upon the uncle’s death the money would be freed up and he could do with it as he wished.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “That seems like a funky way to get an inheritance.”

  “I feel like Willard’s mother was asking for trouble between her brother and her son, but I suppose at this late date it is neither here nor there. What’s important is that the money and Willard’s desire to get his hands on it makes him a good suspect in my book.”

  “I totally agree. What else do you have?”

  “In addition to the nephew with money troubles, there is the safety-deposit box. If you remember, the box was left to someone named Natalie Norris. I have looked and looked, but I cannot find a Natalie Norris. Her name is not mentioned in any of Palmer’s correspondence and her contact information was not included in the instructions Palmer left the attorney in association with the will.”

  “Do you know where the box is?”

  Colt nodded. “In the Bank of Holiday Bay. I asked the attorney if any provisions had been made for the box if this Natalie never showed up, and he said no.”

  “Okay. So is there any other way to get to the box? Can you ask the bank to open it?”

  “Not without a warrant. At this point I don’t have enough to get one. All I can do is wait for Natalie.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. This was turning out to be a screwy case. “So at this point,” I summarized, “your suspects include whoever is associated with the skeleton in the trunk, a nephew with a bookie to pay off, the owner of an oddly secret safety-deposit box, and a woman who makes it her mission to feed the areas shut-ins. Anyone else?”

  “Not really. T
he method used to kill Palmer suggests that the person who did the poisoning was a frequent visitor. So far, other than the food service volunteers who came by every day, I haven’t found any frequent visitors, so there’s that to keep in mind.”

  I paused to consider the situation. “It does seem like the food service personnel make the best suspects, but they also make the most obvious ones, which normally is not the answer. The autopsy turned up ethylene glycol in Palmer’s system. My question is whether it can be found in a solution other than antifreeze.”

  “I’m sure it must be, although I don’t know what that might lead to offhand. I’ll look into it.”

  I took a sip of my own beer. “In the meantime, tell me about the neighbors.”

  “A young family lives to Palmer’s immediate right if you are standing in the street looking at the house. I spoke to the lady of the house, Virginia Danbury. She moved to town with her husband, Timothy, and two sons, Adam and Andrew, just four months ago. Timothy works for a local electrician and Virginia is a stay-at-home mom. Her sons are close in age to my niece and nephew, so I’m hoping they all get along if I really do wind up buying the house.”

  “And did this woman say anything to cast suspicion on her or her husband?”

  Colt shook his head. “Quite the contrary. In fact, I mentioned that I was thinking of buying Palmer’s house and, if I did, I’d be having my niece and nephew visiting, and she was excited about it and offered to watch the kids if I was called out on an emergency while they were in town. I didn’t speak to her husband, but she was very nice and didn’t seem to be hiding anything.”

  “Did she say whether she’d noticed Mr. Palmer having any visitors?”

  “Just the food service guys, which is also what the neighbor to the left of Palmer said, as well as the three neighbors directly across the street.”

  “Did any of these neighbors know Palmer well? I remember you saying he had lived in that house for quite some time.”

  “The neighbor directly across the street, Arnie Hollister, is a retired mechanic and has lived in his house for almost thirty years. He did say that before Palmer got sick, the two of them would get together to share a meal from time to time.”