Лейганн Доббс - A Twist In The Tail

‘That’s probably only because of the curse,’ Millie said as she whisked something together in a stainless-steel bowl.

‘Curse?’ The familiar baritone came from the doorway. I hoped I was hearing things. I scrunched my eyes shut and turned in that direction, opening one eye slowly. Mike Sullivan lounged against the doorframe. Who had invited him ? To be even more annoying, he winked at me. ‘Hey Sunshine, how’s our little detective?’

‘I thought you were done with your work here.’ I said.

‘I am.’ Mike pushed off the frame and strode over to Millie, kissing her on the cheek. ‘Aunt Millie invited me over for cookies.’

‘I’m just getting ready to put them in the oven now.’ She scooped big dollops of batter out of the bowl with a tablespoon and plunked them on a cookie sheet.

‘Forget about the cookies, what’s this about a curse?’ Mom asked.

Millie waved her hand in the air dismissively, keeping her back to us as she continued dropping cookie dough onto the sheets. ‘Oh, just some old curse where Jedediah claimed he was coming back at the town’s 250th to deal with anyone who dared plunder his treasure.’

‘Treasure?’ Moms eyes lit up like a slot machine on tilt. ‘I never heard anything about a treasure.’

Millie opened the oven and shoved the cookie sheets in. ‘My grandmother told me about it when I was a little girl. Apparently, it was told to her grandfather when they bought the place. But there’s no treasure. Jedediah was sailing to the West Indies and figured he’d come back with treasure, but he never made it back to the country.’

‘Why not?’ Mike asked.

Millie shrugged. ‘How should I know? Died over there. Plague or something.’

‘So why have a curse then?’ I asked.

‘Sounds like he was overly dramatic. Probably setting the stage, getting everyone scared for when he did bring back the treasure so no one dared mess with it. You know how superstitious people were back then.’ Millie put the dirty dishes in the sink and started running the water.

Merooo!

The cat’s hollow cry came from deep inside the mansion. It was kind of eerie and reminded me of the way they’d sounded the morning we’d found Charles Prescott’s body. Must be a strange echo coming from that room...

‘But there could still be a treasure,’ Mom said hopefully. I could already tell she was dreaming of treasure maps and x-marks-the-spot. Probably already planning her trip to Ace Hardware to buy a shovel.

Millie turned around, her hands on her hips. ‘Really, Rose. If there were a treasure don’t you think someone would have found it by now?’

Mom looked disappointed. ‘I suppose.’

Mereech!

This time everyone looked in the direction of the cry.

‘Is that Marlowe?’ Millie cocked her head to the side. ‘I hope she’s not hurt.’

‘I’ll go see,’ Mike said.

‘Me too.’ If something was going on in the guesthouse, I certainly didn’t want Mike one-upping me like he’d tried to do with the Prescott investigation.

I followed Mike into the hall to the sounds of another loud cry from the cats.

‘Sounds like it’s coming from the West wing near where we found Charles Prescott,’ Mike said.

‘Lucky thing there can’t be another dead body in there now, no one else is in the guesthouse.’ I didn’t feel as confident about that as I sounded.

Mike scowled as he tried to open the door that separated the main house from the West wing. ‘It’s locked. That’s good. You’re supposed to keep it shut, especially if you have new guests in here.’

Okay, now I remembered why I had hired Ed in his place. Mike was kind of bossy. I didn’t need that. ‘Yeah, I know. You sound like Barbara.’

I ducked into the pantry and retrieved the ring with the spare sets of keys to unlock the various doors that didn’t go to the guests’ rooms. I kept the keys to the guest room in a more secure place.

Meroow!

Mike frowned at the keys jangling in my hand. ‘Are those keys easily accessible to anyone?’

I paused before opening the door, my annoyance with Mike overshadowing my worry about the cats. ‘What’s it to you?’

He smiled, a twinkle in his eye that I did not like. ‘Oh, it’s very important to me.

What was that supposed to mean?

Meoooo!

‘That sounds bad,’ Mike’s face creased with worry. ‘We better get in there.’

I pushed the door open, my stomach tightening as I glanced over at the stairs. No dead body. I felt silly. Of course, there wouldn’t be.

Meroop.

The sound came from the next room.

‘I think they’re over here.’ Mike headed toward the sound. I gave one last glance at the place where Charles had been found. Ed had been starting to work on this part of the guesthouse and the fallen banister and wooden debris had been cleaned up. There was no sign that a man had died there just over a week ago. Good, I was glad to put that whole incident behind me.

Meroeeow!

Never mind that the cats’ cries sounded eerily similar to the tone and insistency they’d had when they’d alerted me to Charles’ body. I was more worried about what Mike had just said. Why would anything at the Guesthouse be important to him? If he thought he was going to make it a habit to pop over all the time I’d have to set him straight.

I followed him to the room. Millie had said that it had once been a small ballroom. Remnants of black and white marble tile dotted the floor, water-stained floral wallpaper peeled from the walls, and the ceiling still had chunks of plaster medallions that once surrounded grand chandeliers. I wasn’t going to restore it to a ballroom, as there was little interest in balls these days. My plan was to make it into a game room. Judging by the clouds of dust in the air, the cobwebs in the corners and the smell of decades’ old dry wood, that was going to take a lot of work.

Mew!

Nero and Marlowe were at the far wall. Thankfully they seemed unharmed and I wondered if all the incessant meowing was simply because they were admiring themselves in the few shards left of the wall-length mirror that still clung to the wall. Right now it reflected the dilapidated room, but I imagined guests in ball gowns and elbow length gloves waltzing around on the dance floor, their images reflected in the gigantic mirror, making the room look twice as large and the crowd twice as big.

‘This place is in bad shape.’ Mike stood in the middle of the room surveying its entirety. I doubted he was picturing ballroom dancers. He might have been picturing a ball, but it was probably more like a wrecking ball.

Meow ! Nero’s cry was insistent, as if we weren’t paying enough attention.

‘It looks like they’re fine,’ I said. Though I didn’t like the way Marlowe was scratching at the wall and then looking back at me. It was almost the same way she’d looked back at me when we’d discovered Charles. But that was crazy, there was clearly no dead body in this room.

‘You’ll need to make sure you shore up these joists before you do any work here. This room is big and that’s a load bearing wall over there. You’ll want to submit plans and get the proper inspections before you mess around with it,’ Mike said.

Now he was really starting to bug me. ‘I think I can handle it and Ed knows what he’s doing. Besides the renovations here aren’t your business anymore and I sincerely doubt you’ll be coming around much anyway, right?’ Maybe I sounded a little too hopeful with that last part because Mike’s eyes darkened with disappointment for a second before returning to their devilish twinkle.

‘Sorry, Sunshine, that’s where you’re wrong.’