A Fatal Feast (3 page)

“Pull yourself together, Jessica,” I told myself. “Stop making mountains out of molehills.”

Good advice, I knew.

But as with all good advice, the difficult part would be in following it.

 

 

 

 

I
awoke the next morning feeling surprisingly rested and refreshed. I thought I might have trouble sleeping with so many thoughts rattling around in my brain, but that hadn’t happened.

The first thing I did upon getting out of bed was to e-mail George Sutherland in London to let him know that he’d be staying with Seth. I wasn’t certain how George would react. While he and Seth got along, people don’t always feel comfortable being a houseguest, particularly when the house belongs to someone you barely know.

After a breakfast of fruit, one of Charlene Sassi’s divine raspberry scones, and tea, I showered, dressed, and pledged to spend the morning working on my novel. Having so-called writer’s block at this stage of my career was unacceptable. It’s always been my contention that such “blocks” in the writing process occur only when the writer doesn’t know where to go next in the story. Some ideas came to me over breakfast, and I was confident that I’d be productive that morning.

I’d just settled at my computer and was about to input my first sentence of the day when the doorbell rang.

“Mornin’, Mrs. Fletcher,” Newt said as he held out a fairly large package for me. “Too big for the box,” he said, “and I didn’t want to leave it just standin’ there. Looks like it’s fixin’ to rain.”

I looked up into a pewter sky. He was right. Rain wasn’t far off. You could smell it in the air.

“Thank you,” I said.

“And here’s the rest of your mail,” he said, piling it on top of the package. “Have a good one.” He touched the peak of his hat with his index finger.

I looked up and down the street in search of Hubert Billups. No sign of him. The day was off to a good start.

I carried the mail and the package into the kitchen and set them on the table. I knew what the package contained: a pretty rose-colored sweater I’d bought while on a trip to New York City to meet with my publisher, Vaughan Buckley. I set it aside and attacked the rest of the mail. One piece jumped out at me. It was a bright yellow envelope with no return address, but the writing looked familiar. With a start, I realized it was addressed in the same block printing as the previous day’s mysterious mailing containing the letter
G
. I turned the envelope over and stared at the flap. A shiver went through me. It’s not as if I’ve never been threatened before. Anyone who inserts herself into murder investigations, as I have a few times in my life—well, perhaps more than a
few
times—anyone who’s rattled a cage or two—or so—in her day can hardly expect to escape unscathed. There had been the occasional warnings of retribution, although they had never come to anything.

I racked my brain. Had I heard of anyone being released from prison who might harbor a grudge against me? The police often notify victims when the offender has been paroled. I was not a victim, however. My involvement in crimes was limited to helping the authorities. If a murderer I’d helped to put away was paroled or released after serving his or her sentence, I doubted it would occur to the warden or parole board to drop me a note.

I opened the envelope with trepidation and withdrew the single sheet of white letter-sized paper. This time, the letter
G
was shiny yellow, cut from a glossy magazine page, and had been pasted so that it was upended, its curved side down. What did
that
mean? Following it was a much larger orange
L
. That was it. Nothing else.

I did what I’d done the previous day, examined the page with a magnifying glass, to no avail. Again the postmark was from Ohio.

I returned to my study and flipped through my address book in search of people I knew from Ohio. There were quite a few, but none who I thought would engage in such behavior. Could it be a skewed reader who’d gotten hold of my address and decided to play tricks on me? I’d dealt with a few such people over the course of my writing career. Most proved inoffensive enough, except for one gentleman who attended a book signing I’d done at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop while on my way to an Alaskan cruise. This fellow claimed I’d stolen his plot for my novel, and punctuated his accusation with a wicked-looking knife. It all ended peaceably when he was taken into custody, but the incident provided for some tense moments.

I decided it would be prudent to show the letters to our sheriff, Mort Metzger, to elicit what advice he might have, and put them in my purse in anticipation of heading downtown later that morning for a rehearsal of the pageant. In the meantime, I reminded myself, it was time to do what I’d intended, sit down and get some serious writing done.

An hour later, the words on the screen had changed, but not by much. I’d managed to add one additional page, hardly a productive hour. Worse, I read what I’d written and was dissatisfied. The page represented, as Vaughan Buckley is fond of putting it, “pushing words around on paper” rather than writing something substantial that moves the story along.

“Give it up, Jess,” I told myself aloud. “You’re forcing it.”

Which was true, although I was painfully aware why I was forcing things. Time was running out.

I went back to my e-mails and saw that George had answered my message.

All right, so I overstated Seth’s reaction to having George in his home a little. Just a little.

After responding to some other e-mails, I packed up and headed downtown, deciding for this trip to ride my bicycle. Some energetic pedaling might get the blood flowing and clear my blocked brain. Hopefully, the rain would hold off.

The rehearsal for our Thanksgiving pageant was in the gymnasium of the regional high school. We’d decided to focus on the role played by various presidents of the United States in establishing Thanksgiving as an official American holiday, with members of the Cabot Cove amateur theater group playing the roles of our nation’s leaders.

There was some controversy over including President Franklin Roosevelt. Until his presidency, Thanksgiving had been held each year on the last Thursday in November, the date established by President Abraham Lincoln in his 1863 proclamation. But FDR moved it up a week in order to prolong the Christmas shopping season. The public uproar caused him to reconsider and to shift Thanksgiving back to its original date. In 1941, Congress finally sanctioned Thanksgiving as a legal holiday to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November.

“I still say that we shouldn’t even mention what FDR did,” one of the thespians proclaimed loudly, and often. “It was disgraceful that he put commerce first.”

“But he did,” the pageant’s director, Robin Stockdale, said. “We want the pageant to be historically accurate.”

“We’re including President Jefferson,” someone else chimed in, “and he didn’t even like having a day of thanksgiving. He said that the hardships of a couple of Pilgrims didn’t deserve a special celebration.”

The actress playing the role of Sarah Josepha Hale, the magazine editor whose forty-year campaign of articles, as well as letters to various presidents, was instrumental in persuading Lincoln to proclaim the day, said, “Frankly, I don’t like this script. I liked last year’s better, when we portrayed the first Thanksgiving back in 1621.”

“Regardless of what you prefer, Margaret, we’re using this new script,” Robin said. “It’s a very good script. Jessica and her committee worked hard on it and—”

Margaret walked away.

“Let’s take a fifteen-minute break,” Robin wisely suggested. I accompanied her outside.

“I hope you weren’t offended, Jessica. Margaret has a tendency to speak her mind without considering others’ feelings.”

“Not at all. I’m used to getting reviews, not all of them glowing. You can’t please everyone, no matter how hard you try.”

“And Margaret is impossible to please. Sometimes I want to throw up my hands and forget there ever was a Thanksgiving,” she said.

I laughed. “But I know you’d never do that, Robin. Just artistic temperament coming to the fore.”

“You should have heard them arguing about the music selections. Elsie Frickert wants to play ‘Turkey in the Straw.’ Audrey Williams nearly had a fit. She wants more somber pieces for the occasion.” Robin rolled her eyes.

“And you’ll find a way to make them both happy. And Margaret, too. Mind if I leave? There’s not much for me to do now that the script has been written, and I have a few stops to make.”

“Of course not, Jessica. You run along. I’ll take a few more deep breaths and go back inside.”

I rode my bike to police headquarters, where I hoped to find Sheriff Metzger. I was in luck. He’d just returned from mediating a dispute between an angry customer and the owner of a hardware store, something to do with a lawn mower that didn’t work but had apparently seen heavy duty over the summer.

“Morning, Mrs. F,” he said brightly as he welcomed me into his office. “What brings you here?”

“These.”

I pulled the two letters and envelopes from my purse and slid them across the desk. He scrutinized them, brow furrowed, chewing his cheek. Finally, he looked at me and asked, “Who sent them?”

I didn’t allow my exasperation to show. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just thought you might have some idea of what they mean.”

He looked at them again. “Haven’t the foggiest, Mrs. F. What do
you
figure they mean?”

“I don’t have an answer to that either, Mort. The question is, should I be concerned?”

He cocked his head. “Probably just some nut having fun, but you never can tell.”

“They were mailed in Ohio.”

“Oh? Were they? Know anybody out there who might be up to something like this?”

I retrieved them from his desk and put them back in my purse. I love Mort Metzger dearly, but there are times when he can be frustrating.

“Why not leave them with me?” he suggested. “I can run them over to the state crime lab and see if they can pick up any prints.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary, Mort, but thanks for the offer. Probably just some nut, as you suggest. How’s Maureen?”

“She’s fine. She’s poring over her recipe books for a different way to cook the turkey.”

“That’s . . . that’s wonderful,” I said, standing and thanking him again for his time. “Can’t wait to hear what she comes up with.”

Once outside, I allowed my true feelings to surface. Maureen, as wonderful a person as she is, and as dedicated a cook as she can be, tends to come up with
unusual
approaches to standard dishes, and they’re not always successful. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be offended if I cooked the bird this year using my time-tested old-fashioned way of doing it.

I was pedaling through the center of town when Tobé Wilson called my name. Tobé’s husband, Jack, is one of Cabot Cove’s most popular veterinarians. I got off the bike and joined her on a bench in a small park with a view of the bay. Tobé had always been a popular sight with tourists when she took her pet pig, Kiwi, for a walk. Many visitors to Cabot Cove had shots of Kiwi and Tobé among their vacation photos. Kiwi had recently succumbed to old age. I offered my condolences.

“It was always fun seeing people’s reactions,” she said. “And Kiwi enjoyed the attention. I miss her.”

“Of course you do,” I said.

“And how are you, Jessica? I hear by the grapevine that you’re having problems with your next book.”

“It’s true, and if I knew what was good for me, I would be home pecking away at the computer right now.”

“You’ll get it done,” she said, smiling. “And it will be wonderful, as always.”

I wished I shared her confidence.

“Have you met the new folks on your road?” she asked.

“No, I haven’t. Have you?”

“Yes. The wife was in this morning with their cat, Emerson. Hair balls. She’s very sweet, very shy. Her owner, I mean. Her name’s Linda.”

“They were at Mara’s yesterday when I was having breakfast with Seth. She’s become his patient. I’ve seen them coming and going from their house, but haven’t met them in person. Where are they from?”

“She didn’t say, but she doesn’t know anyone here. I asked. Mara said Amanda thought they might be from out West, since he’s the strong, silent type.”

The Carson home had been previously owned by Amanda Butterfield, widow of Sgt. Ira Butterfield, who was wounded by a grenade in World War II, and who died decades later. Mrs. Butterfield, in her nineties, had moved into an assisted-living facility some months back. The house was at the far end of my road, beyond a curve that shielded it from the view of other houses, including my own. The Carsons had arrived about two months ago, and though I’d seen them from a distance, we had yet to meet. From what I observed, they stayed pretty much to themselves. Linda was a small, demure brunette woman who seemed to move with purpose wherever she went. Her husband was much larger than his wife in every way.