Лейганн Доббс - A Twist In The Tail

We all jerked our heads toward the window, where we could see the corner of the Smugglers Bay Inn, circling seagulls and all, in the distance.

‘Stella Dumont? She does serve meals at her inn and it’s possible Charles ate there.’ Millie said.

‘I heard she was entering that cooking contest that the paper is running, you know, the one that has the $5000 cash prize?’ Mom said.

‘She was? Well that would be quite a coup for her business. If she won, she could use that to draw in customers, and of course, the money never hurts.’ Millie stared out the window at the inn. ‘She does have that seagull problem though, I wonder if her business is hurting.’

‘Maybe she’s afraid the renovations Josie is doing will hurt it even further,’ Mike said.

‘And maybe she’s afraid a bad review from Charles Prescott would put her under,’ Mom said.

‘She does a lot of the cooking over there, she might wear chef’s clogs just like the ones that left that print under the window,’ Millie said

‘That might explain why she’s been hanging around here,’ Flora said.

‘She has? When?’ I asked.

Flora shrugged. ‘I didn’t write down the dates, that’s not in my job description.’ Flora took another cookie and settled back in her chair. ‘But I saw her at the door by the kitchen a few times.’

‘The kitchen? What was she doing there?’ I’d never seen Stella anywhere near the guesthouse and, given that we aren’t exactly best friends, I doubted Stella would be popping over to pay a social visit.

Flora crunched on her cookie and looked up at us innocently. ‘I assumed she came here to flirt with Mike.’

All heads swiveled in Mike’s direction. Oh, that’s right, he’d taken Stella to the prom instead of me. Sure, we’d just been kids and that was all water under the bridge now, but it spoke volumes as to his character.

Mike held his hands up in a placating gesture. ‘She doesn’t come here to see me. But I have seen her in the kitchen a few times. I thought she was coming to see Josie.’

I shook my head. ‘She’s not coming here to see me. In fact, I had no idea she was anywhere near here. Did you talk to her Flora?’

Flora shook her head. ‘None of my business what you people get up to. I see someone in the kitchen, I figure they have a reason to be there. I don’t ask questions.’

‘That’s odd, what do you think she was doing here?’ Mom asked.

Millie’s eyes sparkled with excitement. She leaned forward. ‘Maybe she was casing the joint. Maybe she figured she could kill two birds with one stone. Get rid of the food critic that was going to give her a bad review and make it look like the guesthouse was unsafe, potentially getting it closed down, or Josie arrested for murder, and thus driving more business to her inn.’

Eight

I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for the police to accuse me again, so at five o’clock I headed across the field and down the hill to the Smugglers Bay Inn, hoping to catch Stella in the kitchen. I knew she served dinner at 5:30 so I figured she’d be in. It wasn’t a social call. I wanted to see why she’d been hanging around the guesthouse and, most importantly, I wanted to see if she wore clogs.

I found her outside setting up the tables for dinner and waving her arms to shoo away the seagulls who circled around the deck. The deck overlooked the cove, and the subtle sound of the waves and scent of the ocean would have made for great dining ambiance if it weren’t for the screeching.

‘Shoo, shoo. Get out of here!’ Stella flapped a white cleaning rag at the gulls. Two of them flew away, but one stood its ground on the post of the railing until Stella lurched toward it. She turned to glare at me as I approached.

I glanced at her feet. Darn it! She wasn’t wearing clogs, she was wearing white tennis shoes. But that didn’t mean anything. She could still be the killer. Maybe she had a pair tucked away in her closet, complete with telltale scraps of mulch stuck in the treads and splatters of blood on the top.

‘Well if it isn’t Josie Waters. I heard there was an incident at your guesthouse. Hope that hasn’t put off the tourists.’ Stella’s tone indicated that she did indeed hope that very thing.

A gull swooped overhead. Splat!

A white and orange plop of seagull poop landed on the railing between us.

Stella raised her fists to the gull. ‘You get out of here!’ She raced over to the post and wiped it clean with a napkin.

Good to know that she was just as subtle and lady-like as ever. And out here in the afternoon sunlight I could see that she wore just as much makeup too. A suffocating cloud of flowery perfume wafted over and I tried not to gag. She’d put the perfume on heavy in high school too. There was one difference though – her hair hadn’t been that bleachy shade of blonde back then. What in the world did Mike see in her?

I glanced back at my guesthouse. Maybe it was a good thing that I hadn’t put in outdoor dining yet. Then again, I didn’t have a problem with seagulls like Stella did. Her place was directly over the water, while mine was set back a bit, up on a hill with a panoramic view. Not only did the gulls circle her deck, I’d heard talk downtown that a few dead ones had been found on it as well. Nothing more unappetizing than a dead gull on an outdoor dining deck. Unfortunately, dead gulls weren’t that unusual around here these days. The gulls seemed to be dying off at an alarming rate and their sad bodies had been found washed up on the beaches and even in the park downtown.

‘Did you want something?’ Stella came deck’s edge to look down at me. ‘I would think you’d be trying to figure out who killed your guest.’

‘I am. Which brings up the question. Why do you keep coming over?’

She frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Don’t play dumb with me.’ Actually, she didn’t have to play, she was dumb, but I was less likely to get the truth if I let that slip out. ‘Flora said she saw you over at the kitchen door.’

Her eyes flicked in the direction of the guesthouse. ‘Well I might have gone over a few times to see a certain person.’

‘So you’ve been lurking around the guesthouse to see Mike?’

‘Mike and I are good friends.’ She leaned over the railing, a knowing look in her face. ‘ Very good friends.’

That figured. I wasn’t surprised in the least. Except… if she really had been coming over to see Mike, why had he lied about it? He would have no reason to say he thought she’d been coming over to see me, unless he didn’t want me to know that he was still carrying on with her. But why would he care if I knew? Someone was lying, that was for sure.

I crossed my arms over my chest. ‘So you really were coming over to see Mike?’

‘So what if I was? It’s none of your business.’

‘It’s not. Well, other than the fact that a guest was murdered and you were seen lurking around.’

‘I haven’t been lurking!’ She waved the white cleaning cloth at the seagulls who had resumed their circling. ‘I’m very busy, if you must know. I have guests, gulls and other stuff going on. I don’t have time to listen to your false accusations.’

That’s right, she did have ‘other stuff’ going on. Like that cooking contest that would win her bragging rights and five grand. The contest that she might need an innovative and unusual recipe for. ‘You weren’t interested in getting your hands on a certain cookbook, were you?’

‘What? No?’ Stella flapped the towel even though the gulls were gone. ‘Why would I want a cookbook? That’s just silly.’

Now that she seemed a little rattled, I figured I’d toss out another question. She might be flustered enough to give an incriminating answer. Though honestly, I seriously doubted that Stella could pull off that kind of murder. Someone would have to know how to mess with the stairs to make it look like an accident, not to mention the sneaking in and out, and the planning. ‘Did you know the victim was a food critic? Maybe he ate at your place?’