A Twist in the Tail: An absolutely purrfect cozy mystery (The Oyster Cove Guesthouse Book 1) Read online

  I didn’t know what Jedediah Biddeford had been thinking when he built this place. It could have easily housed four families. Maybe he’d planned to raise several generations here. The place was enormous, with several staircases and two kitchens. Over the years, parts of it had fallen into disrepair.

  Millie had told me her family had closed off the West wing a generation ago and she’d had a hard time keeping up with the rest of it. That’s why she’d sold it at such a discount. Well, that and the fact that she wanted more time to go gallivanting around town causing trouble with my 78-year-old mother. Keeping an eye on her was the second reason I’d been compelled to move back to my home town of Oyster Cove, the first being getting away from my ex.

  At least the cats had quieted down. They were now sniffing around the room as if they were furry CSIs looking for clues. Nero was paying quite a bit of attention to the globe-shaped newel post that had rolled over in to the corner. Marlowe was sitting beside him and watching.

  ‘Well, I’ll be a monkey’s hiney. Is that Prescott?’ Ava Grantham appeared in the doorway, her eyes riveted on the body. Darn it! I was hoping to keep this from the guests, lest they flee the guesthouse demanding a refund.

  ‘Just a little accident,’ I trilled. ‘Go on back to the dining room. I’ll put out more muffins.’

  But it was too late. The Weatherbys emerged beside Ava.

  Iona gasped as she fumbled with her binoculars. ‘My word! What happened?’

  Ron slid his arm around her and held her tight. ‘Don’t look, dear.’

  I summoned my nothings-wrong-go-on-your-way voice. ‘Just an accident folks. Nothing to see here, really.’

  ‘Not a surprise either,’ Barbara said, pointing out the broken stairs. ‘Safety hazard. You people should be careful here.’

  Great. That was just what I needed, Barbara telling people that the guesthouse wasn’t safe.

  ‘Someone should call the police,’ Ron Weatherby said, then in a lower voice. ‘Though in a small town like this, I wonder how effective they’ll be at investigating the condition of those stairs.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Barbara said a bit too gleefully as she whipped out her phone.

  ‘What’s going on I… Eek!’ Tina had come to join the crowd. Her eyes were even bigger than usual. Her hand flew up to her mouth as she stared at Charles. The high-pitched squeak she’d emitted had the cats riveting their heads in her direction, their whiskers twitching. ‘Is that a dead body?’

  Ron Weatherby transferred his attentions to Tina. He put a fatherly arm around her and patted her shoulder. ‘Now, now young lady this is nothing for you to see. Let the missus and I take you into the dining room and get you some tea.’

  ‘Great idea,’ I said. ‘We’ll only be a minute here and then everyone can forget all about this.’

  Finally, the area cleared out. I closed my eyes, willing the police to hurry before anyone else happened by. No such luck.

  ‘What’s going on? I was up fixing the sink in the sand dollar room and I—’ Mike Sullivan skidded to a stop in front of the door, his eyes widening as they flicked from the body to my face. ‘Sunshine, what happened?’

  The last person I wanted to deal with right now was Mike Sullivan. Mike and I went way back. I mean, way back. He’d been my brother Tommy’s best friend growing up. I’d known him practically since I was in diapers, and the nickname ‘Sunshine’ wasn’t a term of endearment. It had come about because I wasn’t exactly a morning person as a teenager. Mike and Tommy had teased me about my morning grumpiness by calling me Sunshine.

  Not for the first time, I wished he would hurry up with the work Millie had paid him to do. I didn’t like the dimple-inducing smirk on his face when he called me Sunshine, or the way it made his whiskey-brown eyes twinkle with mischief.

  ‘One of the guests had an accident,’ I said.

  Mike came to my side. ‘Are you okay?’

  My heart almost melted at the tone of genuine concern in his voice until I remembered what a pain in the neck he’d been when I was younger. Especially that time when I’d heard he was going to ask me to the junior prom. Then he changed his mind and asked slutty Stella Dumont instead. Not that I really cared that much, now. That was decades ago and I’d been married and divorced since then, but the adolescent sting of rejection never goes away. Mike never married, but who knew how many ‘Sunshines’ he’d gone through in all those years. Since he’d spent most of his time touring the world in the Navy, I assumed it was plenty.

  I swatted him away. ‘Of course I’m okay. I’m not the one who had the accident.’

  ‘Make way! Make way!’ voices demanded from the hallway. They belonged to my mother and Millie, proving that just when you think things can’t get any worse, they do. I should’ve known they’d be here. They had a police scanner app on their cell phones and showed up at almost every crime scene, usually before the police did.

  ‘Glory be, Josie, is this any way to treat the guests?’ As soon as Millie stepped in the room, Nero and Marlowe swiveled their attention to their previous owner. They trotted over, winding around her ankles and purring as she bent down to pet the cats in a movement that belied her age.

  Her eyes fell on the egg cup. ‘Oh, Grandma Tower’s china egg cup. Why is this on the floor?’ It was a miracle it hadn’t broken. At least I still had some luck left.

  ‘Not to mention the egg.’ My mother picked up the soft-boiled egg and looked from Mike to me. ‘You young people sure get up to strange things.’

  ‘We weren’t up to anything. I dropped the egg when I found Charles.’ I inclined my head toward the body.

  ‘Oh.’ My mother’s gaze moved to Charles’ body, over which Millie was now standing. You’d think my mother and her best friend would be shocked to see a dead body, but apparently all the crime scenes they’d attended had hardened them.

  ‘I don’t think this will be good for business.’ Millie tore her gaze from the body and glanced back at the doorway, where Ava Grantham still stood. ‘You’re not going to put this in the paper, are you Ava?’

  Ava made a face and waved her hand dismissively. ‘Of course not. I write society columns, not obituaries.’

  ‘Good. Now what we need to do is secure the area. Make sure it doesn’t get contaminated,’ Millie said.

  ‘And we need some gloves.’ My mother turned to me. ‘Josie do you have any gloves? Like maybe those yellow dishwashing gloves that Flora uses?’

  ‘I, err…’ I’d never seen Flora wearing yellow gloves, but that might be because she refused to do dishes.

  ‘And paper bags,’ Millie added.

  Before I could say anything, there was a commotion at the front door. The police were here.

  ‘We’re down here!’ Millie yelled.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ve secured the scene,’ Mom added.

  Seth Chamberlain, the Oyster Cove sheriff, appeared in the doorway. I wasn’t sure how he kept getting elected because he was older than my mother and Millie and about as effective in fighting crime. Given the way my mom and Millie had turned into elderly CSIs, maybe that was a compliment. Anyway, rumor had it that Seth was just such a nice guy that people kept voting for him. Besides, there was hardly any crime in Oyster Cove.

  ‘I don’t see any prints in the dust here.’ Millie pointed at the dusty steps.

  ‘And we haven’t determined how the killer got in or out,’ Mom added.

  Killer? Surely my mother was being overly dramatic.

  ‘Killer? It’s obvious the guy just fell down the stairs. They’re unsafe!’ Barbara crowed.

  ‘Now ladies, I’m perfectly capable of determining what happened here,’ Seth’s tone was gruff, but I could tell by the way he looked at Millie that he had the hots for her and she could get away with just about anything.

  Millie blushed and fussed with her curly cotton-white hairdo. ‘Why, we were just trying to help.’

  ‘I know. That was nice of you. Now how about everyone clear the area and give us r
oom to work.’ Seth ushered us out.

  I went willingly, my mind whirling with my mother’s insinuation. I felt bad that Charles had died, but I had to wonder… would it be better for business if someone had killed him as opposed to him falling down unsafe stairs?

  Nero licked his paw and washed behind his ear as he watched the humans leave. Worry and guilt gnawed at him. Death had come to the guesthouse and he hadn’t noticed until it was too late.

  ‘I hope Millie isn’t too disappointed in us, but we sent out the alert as soon as we smelled death. It’s not our fault Josie is slow in understanding our communications.’ Marlowe swished her tail, her eyes on Seth Chamberlain, who was inspecting the body.

  ‘Indeed.’ Nero continued washing. He took pains to keep his fur shiny and silky. Even a cat on his sixth life liked to look good. You never knew when a sultry Siamese or a cute Cornish Rex might be favorable to his attentions. ‘But perhaps we could have prevented this before it happened. Murder is not good for business.’

  Marlowe jerked her head in Nero’s direction. ‘Murder? But this is an accident. Look at the stairs.’

  ‘Things are not always as they seem.’ Even though the situation was not ideal for the Oyster Cove Guesthouse—not to mention it not being ideal for Charles Prescott—Nero wasn’t about to pass up a chance to share some of his wisdom with the younger cat.

  Nero had been watching over the Guesthouse for decades now. He’d wandered past the aged estate one day and knew it should be his home. Millie’s senior memory prevented her from realizing the cat had been there much longer than any normal cat would have lived. In those decades, he’d become very protective of the Guesthouse.

  Marlowe had joined more recently. Nero had to admit he had been a bit put-out when Millie had brought Marlowe home as a young kit she’d found abandoned under a bush at the shopping mall about ten years ago, but over time he’d grown found of his young protege. Besides he had to have someone to pass his wisdom on to. And she could be good company. Sometimes.

  Marlowe’s eyes widened. ‘You mean you’ve seen a clue that someone else was here?’

  Nero simply nodded. Over at the body, Seth was taking care to leave things as undisturbed as possible for the medical examiner. The deputy, Johnnie Sanders, was taking pictures and the part-timer Sheila Watts was taking notes. Nero was glad they hadn’t noticed them and shooed them out. Cats weren’t usually welcome at crime scenes, but he’d learned that he could make himself practically invisible to humans if he was quiet and slowly slunk around, low to the ground. It worked well for sneaking into rooms and buildings too, though getting out could be a challenge if the humans shut the doors on you.

  ‘You think he came through that door up there and the stairs simply gave way?’ Sheila pointed to the tops of the stairs.

  ‘Looks that way.’ Sheriff Chamberlain leaned closer to the broken stairway. ‘These treads are rotted and the banister must have fallen off.’

  ‘That might have even happened before.’ Sheila inspected the edges of some upper treads still intact. ‘There’s dust here in the holes, so I think part of the banister might have fallen off long ago.’

  ‘Even more dangerous.’ Seth looked at the body. ‘What kind of fool would attempt these stairs, especially with no railing?’

  Nero glanced at Marlowe. He wished the young cat would hurry up and find the clue before Seth Chamberlain made a faulty decision about the manner in which Charles Prescott met his maker. Honestly it was too bad that humans only had one life, otherwise Charles would be walking around in no time, and they wouldn’t have this problem on their hands.

  ‘Did you notice anything unusual last night?’ Nero asked. ‘I was chasing mice in the attic and cat-napping in between courses. I didn’t hear a thing.’ He was only into the early part of his sixth life, and certainly not anywhere near the age his hearing should be going.

  Marlowe shot him a sheepish glance. ‘I… err… I may have gone down to the wharf.’

  Nero raised a brow. ‘You don’t say?’ He didn’t want to get into Marlowe’s nightly activities. Girls would be girls. He could already see that the cat felt guilty, and he wasn’t her parent, just her mentor.

  ‘I just hope we haven’t let Millie down,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘Yes, it’s unfortunate this has happened so soon after she entrusted the future of the guesthouse to us,’ Nero said.

  Marlowe hung her head. ‘We have failed our first important task.’

  ‘We may still be able to redeem ourselves. If we can help solve this quickly, it may not hurt things too badly. You know what a short-term memory humans have. The sooner the case is closed, the sooner they will move their attentions to something else. Making sure the guesthouse survives is of utmost importance. Millie entrusted that task to us.’ Nero frowned. ‘I do wish it didn’t come with that human Josie. She isn’t as savvy as Millie.’

  Marlowe continued sniffing the perimeter of the room. ‘Yeah, but she does come in handy for doing the menial work like a laundry, cleaning and cooking. And apparently since she came with the guesthouse, we need to be as loyal to her as we were to Millie.’

  Nero nodded. ‘I agree about the loyalty part. The cooking part needs work. She’s always burning things. Not like our Millie.’

  ‘As long as she fills our dishes.’

  Nero joined Marlowe in sniffing. ‘Have you picked up the scent of a stranger?’

  ‘No. Just the usual people and those who were in here this morning. Josie, Millie, Charles, Mike, Barbara Littlefield. There is something spicy, but I can’t quite place it. Oh, and Stella Dumont.’

  Nero nodded sagely. Stella Dumont owned Smugglers Bay, just over the crest of the hill. They could even see the gulls that circled her deck from the side yard. Darn nuisance those gulls were. Apparently she’d been coming around the guesthouse to see Mike. ‘Yes, but we already know she comes here often.’

  ‘True, but I hope it is Stella that snuck in, because that would help us immensely. She owns a rival inn, and if she was out of the way, that might mean more guests would come here.’

  Nero swished his tail thoughtfully. ‘Indeed. Perhaps Stella was thinking that a dead body marring the reputation of the Oyster Cove Guesthouse would bring more business to her place.’

  Marlowe narrowed her eyes. ‘Yes, she could be the culprit.’

  ‘Are you sure there is a culprit?’ Nero asked.

  ‘Wait, I thought you said there was.’

  ‘Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. You need to investigate.’

  ‘You mean look at the clues. The stairs. The things the police are taking pictures of.’

  Nero nodded. ‘But perhaps they are not looking at something they should be. They are investigating under their assumption that he fell down the stairs.’

  ‘Oh right!’ Marlowe was quick on the uptake. She turned her attention away from the stairs, sniffing along the edge of the wall, where a pile of debris lay – railing for the stairs, wall paper that had fallen off the wall and a metal wall sconce. She stopped when she came to the newel post cap—a large metal ball with a point at the end.

  It had been before his time, but Nero’s fine senses told him that before this wing had gone to ruin, the staircase had been a focal point, with honey oak stairs and a scrolled railing that ended in the carved newel post, the gilt globe sitting atop. He could almost picture the ladies in their gowns descending to the room once filled with velvet sofas and mahogany side tables. He figured the rounded top of the newel post had been an ornamental focal point of the stairway. Last night, someone had found a more sinister use for it.

  Marlowe sniffed the round cap a few times, then shot Nero a triumphant look. ‘There’s blood on here, but the post is not near the body. Charles couldn’t have hit his head on it during the fall.’

  Nero nodded in satisfaction. ‘Very good, little one. Now how do we alert the police to our findings?’

  ‘Easy.’ Marlowe put her paw on the post, pushed and let out a howl.
<
br />   Seth, Sheila and Johnny jerked their heads in Marlowe’s direction as the ball rolled toward them.

  ‘Hey, you cats shoo! We’re investigating!’ Sheila made shooing motions with her hands.

  ‘Yes, you cats shouldn’t be here.’ Seth tried to sound menacing, but Nero knew the sheriff liked cats, because sometimes he fed them donut holes from his police cruiser when no one was looking.

  Nero trotted over to the ball and looked up at Seth. ‘Meow!’

  Seth’s gaze flicked from Nero to the ball. Then he squinted and craned his neck forward. Johnny was about to pick the ball up when Seth shot a hand out to stop him. ‘Hold on.’

  Seth’s knees popped as he squatted. He pulled a pair of reading glasses out of his top pocket and slid them on his nose, squinting at the ball.

  ‘What is it?’ Sheila was still shooing the cats with her hands.

  Seth glanced back at the body, then at the stairs, then pointed at a dark spot on the ball. ‘Guess these cats do come in handy. This here looks like blood. And if I’m not mistaken, this round piece matches the indentation on the back of the victim’s head. I think we’ve got a murder on our hands.’

  Three

  ‘Murder? Why, I can’t believe it!’ Millie said after Seth had given us the bad news. Mom, Millie and I had adjourned to the parlor and were settling into the overstuffed chairs arranged around a low marble-topped table as a private seating area.

  Barbara had rushed off, probably to file a complaint against me. Or maybe she was poring over the town statutes to see what kind of fine one can dole out when a person has a guest murdered in her guesthouse. Tina had taken the news of the murder very hard and the Weatherbys had taken her upstairs with Ava, after stopping in the dining room for a snack.

  ‘It’s awful.’ My mother looked at me. ‘Who do you think would have wanted him dead?

  ‘He’s been staying here a few days. Did you notice him arguing with anyone?’ Millie asked.

  Just me. ‘Not really. He kept to himself mostly.’