Millie scowled. “That’s just a stupid rumor. There was no hole or signs of digging near Bob and, besides, the odds of treasure being here are pretty much nil.”
“Then why were you guys out here digging last night?” I asked.
Mom and Millie laughed. “What else are we going to do? Besides, half the town was here, and it was fun seeing them all. People get up to shenanigans at night and we wanted to spy and eavesdrop.” She looked at my mom, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Did you see Myron and Stella Dumont?”
“Yeah, they looked pretty chummy over by that gazebo.” Mom glanced at me. “That should put your mind at ease, Josie.”
I frowned. “Why is that?”
Mom rolled her eyes. “A blind monkey could see that you have a thing for Mike. I know you’re still smarting about how he dumped you for Stella in high school, but it’s time to get over that now. You’re a grown woman with a daughter of your own and if Stella’s chummy with Myron that means Mike is free pickings.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. I wished my mom wouldn’t try to fix me up. It was embarrassing at my age.
“I don’t have a thing for Mike.” Okay, maybe a little thing. I had to admit, even though his constant use of my childhood nickname bugged the crap out of me, he was kind of cute and the way he seemed concerned about me did make my heart flip-flop sometimes, but the last thing on my mind was striking up a relationship, Stella Dumont or not. “I think we need to focus on finding out who killed Bob, don’t you?”
“Yeah. That’s more fun than your love life,” Millie said.
“I agree.” Mom dug a cookie out of the box. “Now, who do you think did it?”
“It’s got to be one of the family members. Did you see how Doris was the only one who seemed upset when we found him?” Millie asked.
“They don’t get along very well,” I said.
“And it’s no wonder, what with them working with cheese all those years. That would make anyone not get along,” Millie said.
“Bind you right up, too.” Mom patted her stomach and made a face.
“You ask me, I think it was that drunk one, Paula.” Millie leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I heard Bob threatening her the other day.”
“You did? About what?” I asked.
“Something about her being a detriment to the company. Turns out her cheese sculptures are getting messed up because of her drinking. I overheard them arguing when we were outside digging last night. He said she should be fired from the company.”
“And she’s the one who put the finger on Flora. She might be trying to frame Flora to throw the police off track,” Mom said.
“That would make sense, but I heard Bob arguing with someone, too,” I said. “Carla.”
“About what?” Millie asked.
“I’m not exactly sure. Bob said he wasn’t going to stand for ‘it’ and she needed to make it right… or else.”
“That sounds threatening,” Millie said.
“Even worse, Henry overheard them and when he questioned Carla about it, she said for him not to worry about Bob because she was going to do something about him.”
Mom munched on another cookie. “I wonder if doing something entailed killing him.”
“Yeah, what if it did?” I said. “Thing is, it seems like the cheese company isn’t doing very well and they’re all blaming each other. It could’ve been any of them.”
“Yeah, but now we have two suspects who we heard arguing with the victim. And we can do something that Seth can’t do.” Millie snapped off a bite of the cookie. “We can interview them one-on-one and try to trip them up so they confess.”
Mom smiled and nodded. “Yeah, that sounds like fun. I say we start right away.”
Nero sat under the kitchen table and aimed his gaze at Josie, willing her to understand his attempts at communication. Unfortunately, she was more interested in the conversation she was having with her mother and Millie about the suspect list.
“Doesn’t matter how hard you stare at her, she’s never going to be able to read your mind. Humans are just not that advanced,” Marlowe said.
Nero sighed and trotted over to his favorite spot near the pantry where Millie had put two plush cat beds. He hopped into the blue one and curled up. “I know, but I wish we could tell them that we overheard Earl and Bob arguing.”
“Then they could add Earl to their suspect list.” Marlowe hopped up onto the counter. The humans weren’t paying any attention, so she trotted over to the sink and tilted her head under the faucet to catch a drip of water. Fresh water out of the tap always tasted so delicious it was worth the risk of getting swatted at. “We’ll just have to figure out a way to clue them in so that they get the idea into their heads on their own.”
“But how? We can’t show them an argument. We’ll have to find something that points to Earl.” Nero licked his front paw. “And we need to enlist the aid of the others to skulk around town keeping their eyes open for anything suspicious and listening in on conversations. The killer could be anyone who was here last night.”
“Plenty of suspects on that roster.” Marlowe jumped down from the counter and hopped into the tan cat bed beside Nero. “Do you think this has anything to do with the confession Juliette heard? She said something about a woman who was going to betray her family. Perhaps Millie’s theory about Paula being the killer is correct.”
“Well, it could be. I know one thing though, it’s not Flora. She’s like family and we’ll protect her like we would protect Millie,” Nero said.
“Sure, but her shoes did smell kind of funny just now.”
“But they didn’t smell like murder. More smoke.”
“Maybe she stepped in some cheese? A little slice of smoked Gouda. I think I saw Carla bring some into her room.”
“Flora could have come into contact with it while cleaning, but we’ll inspect their rooms thoroughly later today when they are out. Perhaps there will be some cheese morsels we can appropriate for ourselves. Purely for investigative purposes, of course. We would never steal from the guests,” Nero said.
“Of course.”
“Naturally, we must protect the reputation of the guesthouse and make sure the blame for this does not fall onto Josie or Flora. I wouldn’t put it past that Seth Chamberlain to try to accuse one of them,” Nero said.
“Ah, come on. We know Seth isn’t that bad. He feeds us doughnut holes when no one else is looking.”
“Exactly. That’s what he does when no one is looking but right now everyone will be looking to see that he solves this case and there is an eyewitness pointing the finger at Flora. If he takes the easy way out, he could throw Flora in jail.”
Marlowe nodded. “We need to help Millie, Rose and Josie figure out how to point him in another direction.”
“Preferably not Josie’s though.” Nero winced as Millie scraped her chair back. It made an ungodly noise, at least to his sensitive cat ears. It didn’t seem to bother the humans any though.
Millie went to the recipe box on the counter and started to leaf through the recipes. That meant baking. Well fine. The humans could leisurely sit around baking all day but Nero didn’t have that luxury. A killer was loose and he had to help catch them. He stood and stretched.
“Come on. Let’s go down to the bait wharf and get this investigation rolling.”
Thirteen
“Just how do you propose we interrogate the family?” my mother asked Millie, who was pawing through the recipes looking for the perfect one for the town celebration. Unfortunately, I hadn’t had the presence of mind to hide the remains of my burned peanut-butter-banana loaf, and Millie had seen it in the trash.
Millie had her lips pressed together and was squinting at the cards as she flipped through them. She stopped and then pulled one out. “Yes, this is the one, the apple-pecan bread.” She looked at me and nodded, her eyes sparkling. “That’s the one, Josie. It’s a showstopper. Now let me see if we have the ingredients.”
/> She bustled over to the cabinets, pulling out the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, a bag of pecans and a bottle of vanilla vodka. She had pulled some apples and a pitcher of orange juice out of the fridge, then turned to me. “Do you have any champagne?”
“Champagne and vodka?” my mother asked. “Do you put those in the apple-pecan bread?”
“No. Those are for Paula. I think she’s making up that story about seeing Flora, and what better way to trip her up than to get her drunk?” Millie said. “And we all know she likes her drinks. I was thinking maybe we could cut her from the herd, serve her a complimentary vanilla mimosa and get her to confess.”
It sounded like a good plan to me, and, luckily, I did have some champagne on hand in the butler’s pantry. I knew one little drink wasn’t going to loosen Paula’s tongue much, so I proceeded to make a pitcher of mimosas. I might’ve taken a little sip or two for myself. I needed to steady my nerves. After all, it was a bit disconcerting that another body had shown up on the property.
Seth Chamberlain was taking people’s statements in the reading room. He had the pocket doors shut, and, try as we might, we couldn’t hear much through them.
“They sure don’t make things like they used to. These doors are solid,” Mom said as we pressed our ears to the door.
“Yeah, too bad,” Millie added. “Oh well, let’s find Paula, that will be much more enlightening than eavesdropping on Seth’s investigation.”
We found Paula sitting alone in the back parlor. The back parlor was a cozy room with overstuffed chairs and pillows in blue-and-yellow accents. Mike had painted the walls pale yellow and I’d had the pine floors refinished so they glowed like warm honey. The room wasn’t used much because it didn’t exactly have a nice view right now as it overlooked the gardens, which were an overgrown mess of tangles. Eventually, I would spruce them up, but now it was mostly weeds and dead flowers. Paula didn’t seem to mind, though. She was sitting in the chair, her blank gaze fixed at something outside the window.
Perhaps her somber mood was due to guilt over killing her brother and she’d break down and confess right away. That would be convenient for me, avoiding a long, drawn-out investigation with the police traipsing through my guesthouse.
“That dreadful sheriff has already taken my statement. It was so stressful.” Paula lifted a shaky cup of tea to her lips.
“I know, dear,” Millie clucked and sat down beside her. I set the silver tray with the pitcher and a champagne flute on the table beside Millie, and she poured a mimosa and held it out to Paula. “We’ve prepared a little something for you to settle your nerves.”
Paula’s eyes lit up. She grabbed the glass, settled back into the chair and chugged the whole thing down.
“Would you like another?” Millie asked.
Paula nodded and Millie topped the glass off.
“It must’ve been dreadful for you, dear, seeing your brother like that,” Millie said.
Paula nodded, the glass still to her lips.
“Funny that you were right at the beginning of that trail last night, though. I don’t think a lot of people were down there digging for treasure, so what made you think that would be a good place to dig?” I asked.
“I didn’t. I went there because it was out of the way. I didn’t want to be disturbed, that’s why I chose that particular bench,” Paula said.
“But it seems odd that you would’ve seen Flora down there. I mean, like we said, it was out of the way and I don’t even think she was digging for treasure. Are you sure it was her?” Millie asked. “I mean, she is kind of old to be traipsing around out there at night.”
Paula put the glass down and wrung her hands together. “I know. That’s what the sheriff said. I got the impression he thinks I made that up, but I swear I didn’t kill Bob, and I’m sure it was the maid I saw.”
“But you did have a fight with Bob earlier, didn’t you?” I asked.
Paula’s eyes narrowed. “What makes you say that?”
“Oh, somebody else mentioned it. I think it was something about your cheese sculptures not being up to par.”
Paula sniffed. “Sure, we fought about that, but that was nothing new. Bob was always fighting with us about one thing or another, and that’s no reason to kill him. I really was on that bench asleep, honest.”
“So Flora woke you up when she came by then? Was she carrying a shovel?” I’d looked at the back of Bob’s head and was pretty sure that he’d been hit with a shovel, but I hadn’t seen any blood on the shovel at the crime scene. I glanced out the window in time to see Johnnie collecting the shovels from the shed. Looked like I was right then.
Paula closed her eyes as if trying to remember. “You know, I’m not sure if she had a shovel, but I saw her clear as day coming down that path. She didn’t notice me because I was on the ground out of the line of sight.”
I jumped on the inconsistency in Paula’s description. “Well, if you were lying on the ground asleep like you said you were, then how could you see Flora coming down the path? You must’ve been awake to see her.”
She squinted again and sipped her mimosa. “Right. Something else woke me up because I did see Flora, but after I was jolted awake by something.”
“Something or someone?” Millie asked.
Paula took a deep breath. “I guess it was someone. Someone stepped on my hand. I didn’t see who it was, though. I was fast asleep on the ground, my face pressed to the grass, and then all of a sudden, there was this big shooting pain in my hand.” She made a face and winced, grabbing her hand. “I woke up right away, but the person had already gone by. All I remember seeing is a black Ferragamo tag on the back of their shoes, then when I turned back to try to pull myself up, I saw the maid coming down the path.”
“Ferragamo shoes?” Millie raised her brows. “Those are very expensive shoes. Not everyone wears those.”
“Yeah, and what kind of a moron would wear them digging in the dirt?” my mother asked.
Paula’s eyes widened as if she had made a sudden realization. “I know one moron who would. My brother, Earl.”
I went to the kitchen to wash out the empty mimosa pitcher while Mom and Millie ran off to find Seth so they could tell him about the Ferragamo shoes.
If Paula was telling the truth and she really was asleep at the time, I was sure she hadn’t been simply napping. She’d been passed out drunk, which made her an incredibly unreliable witness. I still wasn’t convinced that she wasn’t making the whole thing up so she could frame someone because she was the real killer. Maybe she figured she could throw the investigation off track by implicating both Flora and Earl.
On my way back to the parlor I passed the front sitting room and saw poor Doris in there looking as if she’d lost her best friend. My heart squeezed. The woman’s son had just been murdered and it was possible that one of her other kids did it.
I slipped into the sitting room. “Can I bring you something? Maybe some tea? I have some fresh snickerdoodle cookies.”
So what if I didn’t mention that Millie had baked them at her house? Did it really matter where they’d come from? If Doris thought I had nicely baked cookies for her and gave me a good review on Yelp because of it, Millie wouldn’t mind my little lapse.
Doris turned red-rimmed eyes to me, then glanced in the direction of the kitchen, her nose twitching. “Are they burning?”
I straightened my back. See what happened when you were nice? People mocked you.
“No.” I wasn’t baking anything so of course nothing was burning.
She sighed and slumped in the chair. “It’s just so awful, that Sheriff interrogating us. It’s preposterous to think one of us would have murdered Bob.”
“Do you know anyone who would have wanted to murder him?” I wasn’t pumping the grieving mother for information, just trying to take her mind off things. But if she happened to have some information about who might have wanted Bob dead, all the better.
Doris pressed her lips togeth
er. “Hopefully not his own brother or sisters, though there has been a lot of fighting and animosity lately. You see, Bob could be a bit of a troublemaker. Never quite got along with the rest of the family.”
I raised my brows. Maybe Bob had done something to his brother or sisters and they had a long festering animosity toward him. “Really? What kind of trouble?”
Doris shrugged. “You know, the usual things. Not pulling his weight. Wanting to surf and ski instead of working. Marrying that awful woman.”
I frowned. Bob hadn’t brought a wife to the guesthouse. “He was married?”
“Yep. They were getting a divorce. Good riddance to her, I say.”
“Is it an amicable divorce?” My hopes rose. Maybe the person who had killed Bob was his soon-to-be ex-wife.
Doris wiggled her hand back and forth in a seesaw motion. “So-so. I guess it’s fairly friendly, as divorces go.”
I inched forward to the edge of my chair. “You don’t think the ex-wife could have killed him, do you?”
“I wish. It would take the heat off my other children. I can tell that the sheriff suspects them.” Doris looked thoughtful, as if she was coming to terms with the possibility that one of her children had killed Bob. “But she’s out of the country. I told the sheriff all about her. He’s going to double-check, but, honestly, I wouldn’t think she’d have it in her.”
“What about somebody else from his past? If he was a troublemaker, maybe he rubbed someone the wrong way.”
“Bob rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but I have no idea who he would have angered so much that they’d come here to kill him. I don’t think he knows anyone from Oyster Cove and most of the people he associates with are losers who wouldn’t travel so far to do him in.” Doris shook her head. “It’s just such bad timing with the family tensions being high because the business is doing so badly.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“I suppose I’ll have to arrange a funeral. If only the cheese-sculpting business was doing better we could do something more lavish, but I guess now it will have to be something simple,” Doris said.
A Whisker in the Dark Page 9
