A Whisker in the Dark Page 18

  “Hey get off, you mangy fur ball!”

  Meow!

  Millie and Mom had sprinted ahead. They skidded to a stop and I just barely missed bowling them over. My eyes immediately scanned for Marlowe. She was caterwauling loudly and her fur was standing on end, but she seemed fine. It was kind of hard to tell for sure though because she was latched onto a pant leg and the owner of said leg was trying vigorously to kick her off.

  The cats I had seen at the murder scene were all there, too. Their backs were humped and tails fluffed out like bottle brushes. Some were hissing as they stood between the person and the bloody shovel sticking partway out of the ground.

  The murder weapon!

  “Marlowe!” Millie was aghast. “Leave him alone. I’m so sorry, the cats don’t usually act this way.”

  Apparently Millie hadn’t put two and two together yet. The cats weren’t attacking for no reason. They’d captured the killer—Earl Biddeford.

  I felt momentary satisfaction that my suspicions had been correct. I was about to name Earl as the killer when Nero had interrupted with his caterwauling. I hadn’t been a hundred-percent positive then. I was now.

  “I don’t know why she’s acting this way…” Millie wrung her hands, probably picturing a lawsuit.

  “She’s acting that way because he is the killer.” I stepped between Earl and the shovel, standing next to the cats, my arms crossed over my chest to signify that there was no way Earl was going to get to that shovel.

  “He is?” Mom turned to me.

  “Yes, he is. Isn’t that right, Earl?”

  Earl forgot about Marlowe, who was still digging in to his leg, and turned malicious eyes on me. “You three busybodies should have left well enough alone! You should have let everyone think it was Jedediah’s ghost.”

  “Why would we do that? Bob deserved to have his killer caught.” I inched to the left, hoping Mom and Millie got the hint to surround him. It looked like the cats did too because they started to fan out. The black cat with the white paws seemed a bit reluctant but the orange-striped one with the missing tail looked like he was itching to dig his claws into Earl’s other leg.

  “He didn’t deserve anything! He was a slacker. Always weaseling out of work. His sculptures were sub-par. He couldn’t even carve a decent swan.” Earl tried to step toward me but was weighed down by the cat on his leg.

  “But that’s not why you killed him, is it?” I inched my way further to the left.

  “No. His lack of skills wasn’t the reason. Bob was always a tattletale. I’m surprised someone else didn’t do him in before me.” Earl twisted to try to get rid of Marlowe. My blood froze. Tucked in the back of Earl’s pants was a gun. I had to tread very carefully. Hopefully, I could keep him distracted with talking.

  “I never did like a tattletale,” Mom said.

  “No one does,” Earl said. “I did everyone a favor.”

  “But you mostly did yourself a favor, didn’t you? Because Bob had something on you that would pit your entire family against you and probably send you to jail.”

  “You mean the secret book with the treasure map?” Mom asked.

  “No. There was a secret book, but it wasn’t about treasure. Earl was embezzling from the company.” I looked at Earl. “Weren’t you?”

  Millie snapped her fingers. “Of course! I should have known. I thought it was odd that Earl and Arlene always dressed to the nines given that the company was having trouble.”

  I pointed toward Earl’s feet. He was wearing fancy Italian loafers. “It really was your shoes that Paula saw running away from the pond, wasn’t it?”

  “Stupid Paula. Leave it to her to be passed out right in my getaway path,” Earl said. “I chose that pond area because I knew no one was over there. No witnesses.”

  I shifted to the left, still trying to surround him. Millie was over on the right but unfortunately my mother appeared oblivious to the plan. She was shuffling from foot to foot and looking a bit uncomfortable.

  “That wasn’t the only flaw in your plan,” I said. “Oh, you almost had us fooled. I mean, who would suspect you had a reason to kill Bob, especially after you burned the real accounting ledger in your fireplace.”

  I smiled at the look of surprise on Earl’s face. “Yeah, the maid found the evidence and we have it safe and sound at the guesthouse for the police.”

  Earl looked skeptical. “What? There must only be a few small scraps left. Nothing that would prove anything except that I burned some paper with numbers. By the way, you should look into getting a new maid. That one’s work leaves a bit to be desired.”

  I ignored his comment about Flora. It’s not like it was anything I didn’t already know. “You made another key mistake, too.”

  “What? Picking a guesthouse with you three nosey people at it?”

  “Well that too, but when you brought the Nikes down to prove that it wasn’t your shoes that Paula saw, you made a big error. I worked out that you put that dirt on them not from outside, but from the plants in the conservatory. But you messed up.”

  “How?”

  “You only put dirt on the tops! If you’d really been wearing them, the dirt would have been clumped into the treads and have fallen out on the table, but dirt only came off the sides. The actual spot where the soles had been was clean.” And that explained why the doily had not been dirty. Turned out Flora’s reluctance to clean most things provided a key clue to catching the killer.

  “And now we have the murder weapon,” Millie said, pointing at the shovel. “I would say your cheese-sculpting days are over. You might as well just give up. Play nice and you might get a reduced sentence. I’ll just call the sheriff and tell him—”

  “Not so fast!” Earl pulled the gun out of his pocket and waved it around. “I’m not going to jail.”

  “Now, Earl, be careful with that thing. You don’t want to go to jail for multiple murders.” Millie glanced over at me as if to ask what our plan was now. I didn’t have one other than not getting shot.

  “Why not? If I’m going for one anyway, how much time can it add?” Earl laughed. “But I’m not going for even one. Too bad you’re all so nosey. I had the perfect setup here, especially once that skeleton was discovered. I mean, who gets a chance to frame a ghost? And if that didn’t work, I could always let your maid take the rap.”

  “Well, that’s not going to work. Not once they get this shovel to the CSI lab and find your fingerprints and Bob’s blood on it,” Millie said.

  “Not gonna happen. If only these stupid cats didn’t dig it up. Actually, maybe it’s a good thing they did. I’ll need something to dig the hole to bury your bodies in.”

  Mom raised her hand. “Can I go to the little girls’ room?”

  “No. You won’t need to worry about that soon.”

  My heart stopped as he stepped toward my mother, pointing the gun at her head.

  Meroooo!

  A blur of black-and-white shot toward Earl’s gun arm. Nero!

  “Ouch!” Earl shook his arm, but he didn’t drop the gun.

  My mind whirled with indecision. Should I lunge toward the gun? Go for his knees and knock him down? He was still holding the darn gun!

  There was a rustle in the bushes behind him. A thick branch appeared, crashing down on Earl’s head. He crumpled to the ground.

  Behind him stood Flora. She looked down at Earl’s still body.

  “Guess I lied about another thing,” she said.

  “What?” Millie asked.

  Flora nudged Earl’s arm with her toe. “Looks like this old bird really does have the strength to clonk someone over the head.”

  Millie hugged her. “You saved the day.”

  “Ahh, it was nothing,” Flora said.

  “Thanks, Flora. I gotta make a pit stop.” Mom ducked behind a shrub.

  Nero and Marlowe trotted over to me and rubbed against my ankles. “Thanks, guys.” I picked them up one by one and buried my face in their fur. When I put them ba
ck down, they trotted over to Millie. It didn’t escape me that they’d come to me first.

  “I better call Seth before Earl wakes up. He is alive, isn’t he?” asked Millie.

  “Yep.” I’d already done a visual check to make sure he was still breathing.

  “That’s a relief. Didn’t want Flora to be accused of murder again.”

  Mom reappeared from behind the bush and I noticed that while Nero and Marlowe were sticking close by, the other cats had disappeared. I guess they didn’t want to hang around and take credit for discovering the murder weapon. Just like Millie had always said, there was more to the cats than met the eye—and not just Nero and Marlowe.

  Millie dialed. Then she made a face, her eyes squinting and her nose wrinkling. She turned in the direction of the guesthouse and sniffed the air. “Say, do I smell something burning?”

  Twenty-Six

  “Josie, this is the most delicious apple-pecan bread I’ve ever tasted!” Annabel Drescher stood in front of my table chewing noisily on one of the tiny loaves of bread.

  I’d burned another test loaf when we’d been busy capturing Earl. But I’d finally nailed the recipe for the bread, and fifty-four miniature loaves were stacked in a pyramid in the middle of the Oyster Cove Guesthouse display table at Oyster Cove’s 250th town celebration. The tent and streets were crowded and the mood was festive.

  From inside the tents, which were nestled on the lush green grass of the town common, shaded by stately oaks and maples, one could see the quaint shops that lined Main Street in one direction, and the sparkling blue ocean in the other.

  The Oyster Cove Chamber of Commerce had outdone themselves decorating for the festivities. A large banner with an image of the town two centuries ago hung across the street. Various food vendors and carnival games had been set up on the other side of the town common across from the shops, which all had sparkling clean windows and vibrant awnings. Baskets overflowing with colorful flowers hung from the fancy wrought-iron lamp posts that lined the streets. The air was spiced with the scent of popcorn, the sounds of laughter and the cry of an occasional gull.

  “Thank you. Josie is a fine baker.” Millie sat proudly in the chair beside me. It was generous of her to give me credit since she was the reason they were so delicious, but I wasn’t about to argue.

  Annabel took another bite and leaned across the table, glancing over at Stella out of the corner of her eye.

  “Much better than Stella Dumont’s custard… that tasted sour,” she whispered.

  “I knew it would,” Millie muttered under her breath.

  “Lucky for Myron he gave me that loan for my travel agency instead of giving one to Stella,” Annabel said.

  “Yeah, lucky.” I felt bad for suspecting her. It turned out she really hadn’t lied about Flora. Flora really had gone there with numbers, except they weren’t longitude and latitude, they were accounting numbers which had correlated with a longitude and latitude in the Caribbean Sea. Annabel had no idea what the numbers really were though and had just made an assumption that Flora wanted a vacation. She hadn’t dug up treasure to renovate her travel agency, she’d gotten a loan.

  I simply smiled and nodded, then glanced over at the Smugglers Bay Inn table. People were milling about in front of it, but no one was eating the custard. I wondered if she’d gotten any bookings.

  There were plenty of tourists in town and some of them might want to make a reservation to come back. Hopefully the curdling custard would drive more tourists toward my place, though I wasn’t particularly worried. I’d gotten quite a number of reservations in the past few days.

  “You haven’t cut the cheese yet?” Mom gestured toward the towering sculpture that dominated the right side of the table. It was a likeness of the Oyster Cove Guesthouse as it was 250 years ago, carved out of cheddar.

  Doris had secretly whipped it up after I’d given her permission to bury Jed’s skeleton in the old family cemetery on the property. Unfortunately, the burial never happened. With the logistics of getting into the overgrown part of the estate, heavy equipment to dig up the yard and state regulations, the Biddefords decided it was too costly and had opted for cremation. Doris said she’d rather use the money for a good rehab place for Paula.

  Doris had handled Earl’s arrest well. I had to admire her, finding out one of your sons murdered another one couldn’t be easy. It turned out she had had her suspicions that one of her children had killed Bob from the beginning, that’s why she’d lied to Seth when she’d told him they’d all stuck together that night. She was hoping to provide an alibi for her kids.

  But she was making the best of it, and at least something good had come from it. It seemed to have brought Doris, Paula and Carla closer together. Doris was taking back the reins of the cheese-sculpture business. She was determined to run it the right way and restore it to its former glory.

  I suspected her gift of the sculpture wasn’t totally unselfish—she’d conveniently presented it to me under the tent and suggested I put it on my table with some of her business cards, just in case someone wanted to order a cheese sculpture of their own. I was happy to drum up business for her after everything she’d been through.

  “Seems a shame to cut it, don’t you think?” I said. Doris had nicely provided crackers, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut into the sculpture. Besides, it was attracting people, and that was good for business—both mine and the Biddefords’.

  “Yeah, but I’m hungry. Maybe I’ll just pinch off one of the shrubberies here,” Mom said, bending down and presumably looking for an inconspicuous spot to pinch some cheese.

  A splash followed by a round of laughter caught our attention and we looked over to the Mayor’s head surfacing from the dunk tank. I’d heard dunking the mayor had been a very popular attraction and since the money people paid for a go went to the Chamber of Commerce festivals fund, he was being a good sport about it.

  “Looking for Jed’s ghost in there?” Myron nodded at the sculpture. Apparently, he’d wandered over when my attention was on the dunk tank. As much as I would have liked to tell him to get lost, I couldn’t. He had approached me with the terms of a loan that I didn’t have to start paying on for twelve months. That meant I could step up renovations and get the guesthouse fully functional a lot sooner. Unfortunately, it also meant I’d have to be nice to Myron.

  “Hardly.” Mom pinched off a corner and plopped it onto a cracker. “You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”

  Myron shook his head. “Nope. And I don’t believe there’s treasure either. At least not from what my grandfather told me.”

  “We never thought there was any treasure,” Millie said. “I think I would have known if there was something valuable right under my very nose.”

  “Naturally. My relatives would have known if Jed had buried any treasure. I just hope this whole business with finding Jed’s skeleton and the rumor of his ghost doesn’t dissuade people from staying at the guesthouse.” Myron winked at me and I tried not to make a face. “I have a vested interest in it now.”

  “Don’t worry, Myron. People haven’t been put off by the skeleton. Quite the opposite, in fact. Several of the people who made reservations specifically asked if it was the place where Jedediah Biddeford’s skeleton was found so, apparently, that helps business not hurts it.”

  “That’s good.” Myron picked up an apple-pecan loaf. “Say, did they ever send the skeleton to that forensic anthropologist your daughter mentioned?”

  “No. The Biddefords are having him cremated.”

  “Statute of limitation ran out on that case, anyway.” Seth Chamberlain had come up, along with Mike Sullivan. The two of them paused to let a small gang of children grasping pink and blue clouds of cotton candy on sticks run in front of them.

  “So you won’t be running around, trying to investigate that murder, then?” Myron said.

  Myron had taken an interest in the guesthouse because of his ancestral ties to it. He said he wanted to embrace his
humble beginnings and that was why he’d give me the loan, though Mom and Millie thought it was because he was sweet on me. I guess that’s why he was so interested in the investigation in the first place. I felt a little sad that Jed’s murder would never be solved, but if the police weren’t going to look into it, who would?

  “Nope. We’ll be investigating the murder of Bob Biddeford, although that one is pretty cut and dry,” Seth said. “We found the evidence we needed on that shovel and since the three of you heard him confess, it’s a slam dunk.”

  “And you won’t need to disrupt the guests in the guesthouse, right?” Millie asked.

  Seth looked at her with twinkling eyes. “Nope. Josie is free to run it unencumbered by a police investigation.”

  “And since she’ll be having so much construction done with the new loan, I’ll be spending a lot of time over there inspecting it,” Mike said.

  I wasn’t sure I liked the non-businesslike look he gave me when he said that. Or the way my mother’s eyebrows waggled up and down. Or the smug look on Millie’s face. Before I could say anything, Ed O’Hara came up and broke a piece of porch railing off the cheese sculpture.

  “And I’ll have work for a long time.” Ed looked at me fondly… maybe a little too fondly. “Congratulations on catching the killer by the way.”

  “It wasn’t just me. I had a lot of help.” I gestured to my mother and Millie. Even though I really was the one who had figured out who killed Bob, I could be modest when I wanted to be.

  “Yeah, and you were on the wrong track, Seth,” Millie said.

  “Right. See, we can investigate and not get ourselves in trouble.” My mother shot a pointed look at Mike.

  “Yeah. See?” I added, also giving Mike a look just to drive the point home.

  Mike held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, I admit you guys did manage to capture him. But he had a gun, you could have been shot.”

  “But we weren’t. Flora was the real hero anyway. She clonked him over the head and saved the day!” Millie turned to Seth. “And to think, you suspected her.”