Лейганн Доббс - A Whisker In The Dark

Millie’s scowl turned into a smile. She straightened and patted her puffy white hair. “Oh, did you really? Isn’t that lovely, Rose? Looks like we have a fan.”

My mom leaned on her shovel and nodded. She didn’t look impressed with having Myron as a fan.

“Though I suppose no investigation would be necessary if it was natural causes,” Myron said.

“I don’t think it was natural causes, Myron. Who dies of natural causes inside a wall?” Millie asked.

Myron laughed. His laugh wasn’t all that pleasant though. It reminded me of a screeching meerkat. “Right. Good point.”

He glanced around, then apparently spotted his next victim a few tables over.

“Well nice talking to you, ladies. Gotta run.” He turned and walked away.

“That Myron never changes, does he?” I turned to see my best friend from high school, Jen Summers. We’d always managed to stay in touch even after I moved away and we both were busy raising our families. I mean, you kind of have to stay in touch with a friend like Jen who knows all your girlhood secrets. One of the highlights about moving back to town had been rekindling my friendship with her.

Besides knowing all my secrets, she was a kind person and a great friend to have. She was also the postmaster in town and, since the post office was the unofficial gathering spot of the Oyster Cove grapevine, she knew all the gossip before anyone else did.

“Hey, they let you out of the post office.” I gestured toward the blue post-office uniform she wore. It might have looked industrial on anyone else, but Jen had modified it with a little tuck here and a fancy button there, which gave it a bit of designer flair. Then again, Jen was slim and looked good in most anything—even the butt-end of the cow outfit we’d once worn for Halloween—unlike myself who had a more um… curvy … physique.

She gestured toward a table at the back of the tent with a gigantic stamp on it. “I have to set up our table. Don’t know why the post office needs to advertise on a table at the town celebration. It’s not like you people could go anywhere else for your mail.” Jen laughed.

“The post office is very expensive so I get a lot of stuff from UP—” My mom’s words were cut off by Millie poking her in the ribs.

Jen pretended like she didn’t hear. “Hey, I heard about the skeleton. What’s up with that?”

“Ed was working on that old ballroom and found it inside the wall. Kinda creepy, if you ask me,” Mom said.

“Well, at least there’s no ghost,” Jen said. “Is there?”

Her voice held a hopeful tone, but luckily I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of any ghost. That was the last thing I needed with all those crazy Biddefords running around. “Nope. No ghost, just a skeleton.”

“Some say it’s Jedediah Biddeford come back to get his treasure,” Jen said.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that.” I glanced around the tent. More people with shovels had shown up. Mom still leaned on hers as if she was protecting it from being stolen right out from under her.

“In fact, it seems like a lot of people are going to be looking to dig it up.” Jen looked at Mom’s shovel. “I heard the hardware store was sold out of shovels.”

“I got one of the last ones,” Mom chimed in.

“Lovely. So my yard will be a minefield of holes tomorrow?”

“Is it legal for people to just come on the guesthouse property and dig?” Millie asked. “I mean, it is still private property even if it is a public guesthouse.”

“Well what can you do?” Mom asked. “You can’t hire guards to patrol it.”

Millie pressed her lips together. “And you want to keep up good relations with the townspeople. Don’t want anyone bad mouthing the guesthouse.”

She had a point. If I kicked people off the property they might get angry and take revenge with bad reviews on Yelp. Was there a way I could control the digging and still keep people happy? I wasn’t too worried about the yard since the estate had acres, but most of it was rundown. “I’m going to have to lay out some ground rules. Hopefully the whole town won’t come out. And hopefully they will get tired of digging when nothing is found the first day.”

“What about the Biddefords? They tend to act like they own the place because they used to,” Millie said.

“Yeah they’re going to be a tough crowd to control.” I said wondering how, exactly, I would control them.

Jen’s eyes widened at something over my shoulder and I turned to see Mike making his way toward us. Was the guy everywhere? He swooped over to Millie’s side and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

“Does your job entail inspecting tents too?” I gestured toward the area around us.

Mike smiled, all boyish charm and dimples. “Nice to see you, too, Sunshine.”

Jen snorted. Mom and Millie looked pointedly from Mike to me. I pretended to ignore all of them.

“I just came by because I knew Aunt Millie would be here and she said she had something for me.”

Millie produced a bag of cookies from her canvas tote bag. “Just baked them this morning.”

Odd, usually she came to the kitchen at the guesthouse to bake. Maybe she was getting used to her own kitchen at the independent living resort where she now resided. She’d claimed the kitchen was too small to do any serious baking, but maybe cookies weren’t that serious in Millie’s book. Truth be told, the thought of Millie not stopping by the guesthouse anymore to bake made me sad. She could be a handful, but I enjoyed her company. Plus, I needed her to keep bailing me out with breakfast dishes so the guests would have appetizing food to eat.

“Did you come from the town offices?” Millie’s words dripped with faux innocence. I knew she had an ulterior motive.

Apparently Mike did too because his gaze narrowed and his hand hesitated as he pulled a chocolate-chip cookie out of the bag. “Yes, why?”

Millie played with the tablecloth avoiding Mike’s eyes. “I was just wondering… you know, because you’re right next to the police station there, if you’ve heard anything further about the skeleton they found earlier this morning?”

Mike tortured her by biting into the cookie and making a show of chewing slowly before answering. “Well, as a matter of fact I did.”

“And…?” my mother and Millie both said, leaning in toward Mike with eager looks.

“Early assessment is that the skeleton was there for almost three hundred years. I guess it’s pretty hard to date exactly, but the medical examiner used to be a forensic anthropologist so he knows old bones.”

“Did they find any more clues inside the wall?” Millie asked.

Mike shook his head. “Nothing but a bunch of plaster. They did identify the ring and they’re pretty sure the skeleton is Jedediah Biddeford based on the ring and an old fracture on his leg.”

“Aha!” My mother straightened and pulled the head of her shovel out of the ground, showing the most animation I’d seen since I’d arrived. “That settles it then. If Jedediah Biddeford really did come back from Europe, then there’s a good chance he brought the treasure back with him. And that treasure is buried somewhere on the property of the Oyster Cove Guesthouse.”

Seven

Nero scanned the activity under the tent at the town common, his intelligent gaze coming to rest on Josie. She was talking to Myron Remington at the Oyster Cove Guesthouse display table. Nero felt sorry for Myron. He knew that many of the townspeople gossiped about him behind his back but then pandered to him in person because he was in control of the money. Try as he might, Nero would never understand the humans’ obsession with money, nor how acquiring it could make them do unspeakable things.