“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. Annabelhad 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.