Лейганн Доббс - A Whisker In The Dark

What else did the police have to do? There wasn’t much crime in Oyster Cove. But given the way the Biddefords were acting about the treasure and the fact that the whole town had bought shovels, a police presence might be needed in my very own backyard in the not-too-distant future.

I glanced out the window, my brow furrowing as I saw a form in the shrubbery. A form with a shovel. Thankfully it wasn’t dead. Paula lay curled up under the azalea bush like an innocent child—if innocent children passed out from drinking and hugged shovels in their sleep. As I watched, her nose twitched—that’s how I knew she was alive.

“Yeah I guess they’re pretty far removed. So that’s it then? Case closed?” I asked.

Seth put the last of the police equipment into a bag and turned to the door. “Yep. The room is officially cleared and you can start working in here again.”

Good thing I’d given Ed the rest of the day off. He’d resisted going home, puttering around the grounds instead, but I knew he hadn’t started in the conservatory yet. This way I could just have him continue in the ballroom. I’d told him he needn’t stay but I kept seeing him around and whenever I asked him why he hadn’t left he simply said he was tending to “this and that”. I guess he felt guilty about going home since I’d given him the day off with pay. Call me an old softy but I knew he was supplementing his social-security income and I didn’t want him to miss a day’s pay just because someone had shoved a body inside my wall three centuries ago.

My phone chirped, and I pulled it out of my pocket. A bright spot in the day! It was my daughter Emma. I couldn’t help but smile. Emma lived halfway across the country and I didn’t get to see her often, so her phone calls were like balm for my soul. I loved hearing stories about her job. She’d recently started working at the FBI, so I figured she would get a kick out of the skeleton story.

“Gram told me you found another dead body,” Emma said as soon as I answered the phone.

Leave it to my mother to spread distorted news as fast as she could. Emma and my mom were close, and that was a good thing, except sometimes they were a little too close. I didn’t mind so much except my mother tended to be overly dramatic and sometimes she exaggerated when she passed on information to Emma.

“Well it wasn’t exactly a body, at least it hasn’t been for quite some time.” I didn’t want Emma to worry. Or think that I was some kind of weird murderer attractor.

“Gram was a little vague.” The tone of concern in Emma’s voice squeezed my heart. It was sweet that she was worried, but it was my job to worry about her, not the other way around. That would come much later in life if I turned out like my mother, I hasten to add. “Turns out there was a skeleton buried in the wall here. Sheriff Chamberlain says he’s been dead almost three hundred years.”

“No kidding. Gram said something about treasure, too.” Emma’s concern turned to excitement. That’s good, it meant she wouldn’t be worried about me.

“Apparently there was some curse about the treasure and now the whole town is going crazy thinking they are going to find it in the yard here.”

“Oh, that sounds messy. What about the investigation?” Emma asked. She’d always been interested in investigations, so it was no surprise when she’d gone to college to study criminology and then jumped at the FBI’s job offer upon graduation. Who knew her mother would end up with a dead body and an old skeleton in her guesthouse? Maybe the abundance of homicides would make her want to move to town. We could use her help if dead bodies continued to crop up.

“There won’t be one. Sheriff Chamberlain pointed out that there are no suspects still alive and no one to arrest. They aren’t even a hundred-percent sure who the victim is.”

“Hmm… still seems like one should get to the bottom of what happened. Maybe he should send it to a forensic anthropologist or something and have them look into it. I could hook him up, but there’s probably a backlog.”

“I could mention it to him. No one here seems interested in it though. Not even the dead guy’s family.”

“Oh, right. They’re staying at the guesthouse. Were they upset?”

“Hardly. More like excited once they concluded the discovery of the skeleton meant his treasure could still be buried outside.” I peered out the window to see if any digging had started. Thankfully not yet. Paula was still asleep in the shrub.

“So things are going good otherwise?”

“Fabulous.”

“And Uncle Tommy’s friend, Mike? How are things going with him?” Emma’s voice held a hint of mischief and hopefulness.

That must have been my mother exaggerating again. “He hasn’t written me up for any building code violations yet.”

“Gram implied he might be inspecting more than just the guesthouse…”

“Gram implies a lot of things that are not correct. There’s nothing going on.” I put that to rest as soon as possible. The last thing I needed was my daughter digging into my love life. Or lack thereof.

“Well if there was, I think that would be great. I mean, I love Dad and everything, but you deserve to be happy.”

“Thanks, honey, I’m glad you feel that way.” At least if I ever did start dating, Emma wouldn’t be one of those adult children who protested their mother ever being with anyone but their father. It made me wonder how she felt about Clive’s many lady friends. A pang of jealousy surfaced. Did Emma like them? Then again, how could she get to know any of them? His bedroom had a revolving door. I assumed Clive still liked to have several on reserve just like he had when we were married.

I started toward the foyer. The Biddefords had agreed to keep the shovels in the carriage house, but I wanted to make sure the entranceway stayed clear and clean. I didn’t want any prospective guests thinking I ran a dirty show here. The shovels were all gone, but clumps of dirt remained. I’d have to clean those up, Lord knew Flora wouldn’t do it.

“So how are things with you?” I asked to move the conversation away from me and Mike.

“Fabulous…” Emma proceeded to tell me about what was going on in her life while I got the broom and dustpan out of the pantry. I was glad that she was settling in to her adult life. She was healthy, had friends and a good social life and was happy at work. It was all a mother could ask. Now, if I could just get my mother to stop worrying her about dead bodies and getting her hopes up about romantic prospects, things would be great.

As I cleaned up the mess, I mused about how quickly Flora had trained me to do pretty much everything on my own. Honestly, I had wondered more than once if I should keep her on. But she was a great-grandmother on social security. She needed the money. Besides, Millie had said that Flora had provided decades of loyal service to the guesthouse and that counted for something. And she did do some of the cleaning. Besides, the dirt was easy to clean up, just a few swoops into the dustpan and it was gone.

I heard a door open upstairs and glanced through the railing to the hallway out of habit. The front foyer was large and had a grand staircase that opened to a gallery hallway that looked down on the foyer. I saw Flora’s orthopedic shoes coming out of the middle room.

Surprise, surprise, she’d actually been cleaning the rooms!

Not wanting to disturb Flora if she was in a room-cleaning mood, I started back toward the pantry with my dustpan full of dirt.

“Oh, there you are.”

I spun around to see that Arlene had snuck up on me. She had a sour look on her face. I half expected to see a shovel clutched in her hands but they were empty. The smell of Chanel No. 5 wafted around her so strongly it almost gave me an asthma attack.