Trick or Treachery Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  In the next Murder, She Wrote mystery, Jessica encounters an activity deadlier ...

  Dead and not quite buried

  A loud wail cut through the air, even as the party was dying down.

  “I thought they turned off the sound effects,” Marshall said.

  The wail erupted again, raising the fine hairs on my arms. We jumped up as a group and rushed onto the patio to see where the sound had come from. We heard it again, now more like a scream, coming from the direction of the cemetery.

  “Good lord,” Marshall gasped.

  “I’d better see what’s happening,” Mort said, and took off at a run with the rest of us following. We approached two costumed figures standing in the cemetery, one of whom was sobbing.

  “Stand back!” Mort ordered, bringing us to a halt.

  There, in a pool of moonlight, lay a motionless form. A stain, the same rich hue of a rose, had turned white hair to crimson. A pair of incredibly blue eyes were open and dull—and dead. . . .

  The party was over.

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

  First Printing, October

  Copyright © Universal Studios Publishing Rights, a Division of Universal Studios Licensing, Inc., 2000

  eISBN : 978-1-101-16574-4

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN PUTNAM INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Renée Paley

  Prologue

  October 27

  Dear Matt:

  First, thank you for the kind words about my latest novel. There was a point during early September when I doubted whether I’d meet the deadline. Then things opened up, and the final third of the book seemed to write itself.

  As for starting the next one, I think I need a month or two of decompression, a time to do some serious thinking and to plan my research.

  In the meantime, I’ve been enjoying my leisure this fall. I think I’ve mentioned before how people in Cabot Cove seem to take Halloween more seriously than others I’ve met. It makes for fun actually, lots of parties and pageants and inventive costumes. Strange, though, how the days leading up to this particular Halloween seem different. There’s an aura in the air that’s unsettling at times. Sounds silly, of course, to hear me speaking this way. You know that I tend to believe only in what I can touch and see, although I’ve never been so arrogant as to summarily dismiss any phenomenon beyond my ability to personally interact with it. But this Halloween is . . . I’m sounding silly, and I know it. Ghosts and goblins live only in the wonderful imaginations of children.

  Thanks again, Matt, for the words of praise. I’ll be in touch.

  Fondly,

  Jessica

  As I dropped the letter to my agent, Matt Miller, in the mail slot, I laughed and shook my head. Imagine me actually admitting there might be something to Halloween’s mysterious aspects, the ghosts and goblins, witches and cauldrons, and broomsticks that fly. “Silly,” I said aloud as I stepped outside and got on with my day.

  Chapter One

  “Her name was Hepzibah Cabot. She was the wife of the founder of our town, Winfred Cabot.”

  Tim Purdy, Cabot Cove’s historian and president of our historical society, stood over a small, weather-worn gravestone in the town’s oldest graveyard. Two dozen people, most of them residents, the others tourists, stood in a semicircle across from him as he concluded his annual Halloween tour of Cabot Cove’s more infamous historic sites. Tim showed us where murders had taken place: the scene of a scandalous duel between rival candidates for town mayor, in which one had been killed; our stunning, rugged coast-line that was a favorite safe haven for pirates plying their trade; and now the burial spot of Hepzibah Cabot, whose murder of her husband and subsequent suicide had been embellished over the decades to create what had become known as the “Legend of Cabot Cove.”

  “Hepzibah was a proud, staunch woman,” Tim continued. “Her husband, Winfred, was a sea-going man, as most men from here were in those days. He was away at sea for long stretches of time, although the relationship between them was, according to the town’s rumormongers, such a volatile one that Hepzibah was never especially unhappy during his absences. She was a big woman, tall and raw-boned, who, it’s claimed, could cut wood and lay bricks faster and better than any man in town.”

  A few people snickered.

  “People didn’t divorce in those days, and I suppose they would have lived out their lives together if Winfred hadn’t taken up with another woman during one of his trips. I’m not sure how Hepzibah found out about it—some accounts claim he told his wife to make her jealous—but the result was violent and bloody. I usually leave out the graphic aspects if children are on the tour, but since we don’t have any little ones with us today, I’ll say that Hepzibah took an ax to her husband, severing his head and throwing it into the sea from a large rock along the shore. Then she threw herself into the ocean and drowned.”

  “A regular Lizzie Borden,” someone said.

  “Except that no one has ever denied the facts in this case,” Tim observed. “She killed her husband and killed herself.”

  A man who’d introduced himself and his wife as being from Burlington, Vermont, asked, “Why did the murder and suicide turn into a legend? Women have killed philandering husbands and then killed themselves before, and still do.”

  “True,” Tim said, “but in those cases, once the principals were dead, that was the end of them. Not so with Hepzibah Cabot. Even today, people claim to see her in various places, wandering on the beach with seaweed streaming from her hair, or right here in this cemetery, staring down at her husband’s grave.” Tim pointed to a far corner. “Townsfolk burie
d them on opposite sides of the cemetery because of the bad blood between them.”

  A woman let out an anguished rush of breath. “I hope she doesn’t decide to show up here this morning,” she said.

  Tim laughed. “Frankly, I keep hoping she does every time I give this annual Halloween tour. Would sure add some drama.”

  I observed the others on the tour, especially a man who stood back from the rest. I didn’t recognize him, nor did he look like a typical tourist. I judged him to be in his late thirties, perhaps forty. He wore a blue suit that had the rich look of British tailoring, and a vest and tie. He was clean shaven. If it wasn’t for his hair, which was pulled back into a ponytail and secured by a leather strap—perhaps an attempt to make himself appear younger—he would have looked very much at home on Wall Street. As Tim led us from the cemetery, the man left in the opposite direction, meandering through the graveyard and stopping to read inscriptions.

  I followed the group back to the town dock, where the tour had started.

  “I thank you for your interest and patience,” Tim said. “And a happy, safe Halloween to all.” Halloween was two days away.

  I went directly into Mara’s Luncheonette, where my friend of many years, Dr. Seth Hazlitt, waited for me. I’d stayed away from Mara’s the past few weeks because I was trying to drop a little weight; her blueberry pancakes have been known to add pounds at a single sitting. But Seth convinced me that with winter not far off I’d better start packing in the calories, like a squirrel storing nuts, in order to get through what is often a severe, although for me always enjoyable winter season in Cabot Cove. Seth is generally unhappy when I’m dieting and declining his invitations to join him at Mara’s, where calories are celebrated, not counted. He loves to eat; his waistline is testimony to it.

  I joined him in a booth.

  “Enjoy the tour?” he asked.

  “Yes. I hadn’t taken it in a while. Tim is wonderful, really knows how to keep a group’s interest. But it started to get cold. Why is it always colder in a cemetery than anywhere else? It isn’t, of course. The temperature is the same as a block away. But there’s always an extra chill.”

  Seth laughed. “Time ’a year, Jessica. All those ghosts and goblins blowin’ cold breath on you. Seen this?”

  He slid that day’s copy of the Bangor Times across the table. The headline on page three immediately caught my eye.

  PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR TARGETS CABOT COVE

  “I hate to read things like that,” I said.

  “You haven’t read the story yet,” he said, pouring sugar into his coffee. “Let me see the sports page when you’re finished.”

  I took a break from my pancakes to read the lead story on ghost hunters, and to look at a photo that accompanied it. “I just saw him,” I said.

  “Just saw who?”

  “This man, this so-called paranormal investigator. He was on the tour this morning.”

  “That so?”

  As I read, I became increasingly dismayed.

  “This is so irresponsible,” I said.

  Seth chuckled. “Come on now, Jess, you know the media will do anything for a story. This piece of nonsense probably sold lots of newspapers.”

  “But it isn’t true.”

  “True enough,” he said, sitting back, wiping his mouth with a napkin, then dropping it on the table and folding his hands contentedly over his corpulent stomach. “Can’t argue that we got this nut Tremaine livin’ in our midst now. Nobody likes havin’ him around, but you can’t keep a man from openin’ an office. Wouldn’t be constitutional.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said, “but just because someone is claiming that a ghost called the Legend of Cabot Cove will wreak vengeance on the town unless its unhappy spirit is mollified, that shouldn’t be the basis for a story that a newspaper treats as fact.”

  “Jess, you’ve dealt with the media enough to know that all it takes is a kernel of an idea, one rumor, and they’re off and running. Did you read in the story how Tremaine claims Cabot Cove is the center of the spirit world in New England?”

  “Of course I did,” I said, unable to keep the annoyance from my voice. I slapped the newspaper down on the table and shook my head. “Seth, Lucas Tremaine is already preying on certain individuals in this town. Oh, he’s clever, I’ll give him that. I’ve heard he charges ‘dues’ for his society and then swears its members to secrecy so no one is quite sure what he’s getting away with. On top of the dues, members pay extra, a lot extra as I hear it, to make contact with their departed loved ones. The man has no shame. Richard Koser told me Tremaine has at least a dozen followers at that center of his out on the old quarry road.”

  “If that’s all he’s got, he won’t be in business very long. If you can call ghost hunting a business.”

  “He’s bilking these people out of their hard-earned money.”

  “Can’t tell people what to spend their money on, Jess. Chances are, when they find they aren’t really talkin’ to dead relatives, or come to learn after talkin’ to them why they never liked ’em in the first place, they’ll desert him and that will put an end to his nonsense. That buildin’ he’s in was practically condemned ten years ago, and it’s been sittin’ empty ever since. Drew Muscoot tells me it’s rotten through and through. He wanted to tear it down to keep from havin’ some kids end up in there someday and havin’ the ceiling fall on them, but the town board wouldn’t go along with him. You’d think they’d listen to the best highway superintendent we’ve ever had, but you can’t always figure how elected officials will think. Go on, finish your pancakes before they get cold.”

  I ate in silence, but my mind was working overtime.

  Lucas Tremaine had arrived in Cabot Cove two months before, claiming to be a scientific investigator, although he was never specific about what degree he held or where he had studied. His organization, the Society for Paranormal Investigation, or S.P.I., was housed in a building that had once been a notorious roadhouse. His “headquarters,” if that’s what you could call it, had been in Cabot Cove’s inventory of untaxed property ever since the owner skipped town owing everyone, and our civic leaders were evidently happy to rent it to anyone foolish enough to want it.

  Shortly after his arrival, Tremaine took a series of small ads in our local newspaper, inviting people to join his allegedly scientific society. People laughed when they heard that Tremaine actually believed in the Legend of Cabot Cove and wanted to make contact with the spirit world. They thought that no one in town would respond to the ads. But a dozen people did, perhaps looking for something new in their lives, or seeking the companionship of like thinkers, or maybe even believing in ghosts the way Tremaine claimed to. No matter what the reason for reasonable people to respond to what was clearly a scam, Tremaine’s presence in Cabot Cove had become unsettling. His hints that people in power might be hiding information had caused a few otherwise rational townspeople to begin questioning whether some of our leading citizens were covering up the existence of spirits in Cabot Cove—spirits which, if not appeased, would take their revenge in fearsome ways. That anyone would put even a modicum of credence in Tremaine’s maniacal rantings and ravings boggled my mind.

  Mara came to the table, a coffeepot in each hand. “How’s breakfast, folks? More coffee, Seth, Jessica?”

  “Excellent as usual,” Seth said, pushing his cup in her direction.

  “No more for me, thanks,” I said, taking a deep breath to cool my pique.

  Mara leaned over the table and filled Seth’s cup halfway with decaf, then switched pots and filled it the rest of the way with regular coffee. She looked down the row of booths along the front window overlooking the harbor, and lowered her voice. “She’s been coming in regular since she moved here,” Mara said, nodding at a table in a far corner where a woman sat alone.

  “Who is she?” I asked.

  “That woman who rented a cottage on Paul Marshall’s estate. She’s real strange like. She looks at you with those eyes like s
he’s boring a hole right through you.”

  “Where did she move from?” Seth asked.

  “Somewhere down south.”

  “Down south?” I said. “Florida? Georgia?”

  “Don’t know for sure. Massachusetts, I think. Salem, Massachusetts,” Mara said.

  I laughed. “I’d hardly call that ‘down south.’ ”

  “Well, it’s south of here,” Mara said, chuckling.

  “Ayuh, it certainly is south of here. The whole country almost is south of here,” Seth said.

  “You didn’t like the pancakes this morning, Jess?” Mara asked, pointing to the few scraps I’d left on my plate.

  “They were wonderful, Mara, as always, but I’ve been on a diet and fill up faster than I used to.”

  Mollified, she wandered off with her coffee-pots and stopped two tables away where Mayor Jim Shevlin and his wife were having breakfast with Joe Turco, a young lawyer. Mara’s Luncheonette enjoys the advantage of having the best view in Cabot Cove—it’s right on the Town Dock—as well as being the gathering place of choice for our village officials. If you want to know what’s happening in Cabot Cove, take your meals at Mara’s. The reporters from the local newspaper and radio station do. That’s how they get most of their leads on breaking news.

  I’m willing to bet the reporter from the Bangor paper stops in at Mara’s and hears talk about S.P.I. Or, if not here, he could pick it up, along with a bag of doughnuts, at Sassi’s Bakery. In small towns like Cabot Cove, the news gets around the old-fashioned way—by mouth. Of course, there’s a lot of salting and flouring that gets done to the news when so many cooks are handling the recipe, and sometimes you have to search out the truth, like plucking a bone from the fish chowder. I thought about Lucas Tremaine. What was the truth behind his move to Cabot Cove?