A Fatal Feast Read online

  “Can’t argue with that. How many are you having?”

  “Looks like twelve at this point, a few last-minute additions.”

  “Always fun to have strays at Thanksgiving. Livens things up.”

  I thought of the reluctant Victor Carson, and the overbearing Archer Franklin, and wondered whether “livening things up” accurately described how dinner would turn out.

  “Well,” I said, “let me know how you like the turducken.”

  “I’ll send you a picture,” he said with a chuckle.

  Richard walked away. I turned before entering Mara’s and saw that Hubert Billups had moved to a vantage point from which he could see the luncheonette. I stifled another urge to approach him and quickly slipped through the door.

  I’d beaten the usual lunch crush and had my pick of tables. I was about to choose one by the window when I heard, “Hi.”

  Linda Carson stood at the counter.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “I’m taking something out. Victor likes to eat lunch at home.”

  Her large brown eyes said many things to me at that moment, although I couldn’t decide which of my reactions was valid. Sad? Dreamy? Looking for understanding?

  “Home is always best,” I said. “I’m so pleased you and your husband will be joining us for Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” she said, and I was aware that she referred only to herself.

  Mara came from the kitchen and handed Linda her takeout.

  “Thanks,” Linda said. To me: “Well, I’d better get home before this gets cold.”

  “Enjoy,” I said, and watched her leave.

  “Nice lady,” Mara said, plopping down on a stool and blowing away a wisp of hair that had fallen over her brow.

  “Yes, she is. She and her husband are coming to the house for Thanksgiving.”

  “Oh? That’s good of you to share it with newcomers.”

  “Have you met her husband, Victor?” I asked.

  “He was in here, but we were never formally introduced,” she said, then cocked her head at me. “I understand another new face will be at your table this Thanksgiving.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Mr. Moneybags.”

  She can’t mean George.

  Mara must have seen my confusion. “The other new arrival?” she coached. “Mr. Franklin?”

  “Oh, right. Willie Copeland is bringing him.”

  “You’d think he owns Cabot Cove from the way he talks,” Mara said in a voice just above a whisper.

  “He does seem a little—well, a little sure of himself.”

  “He was in here this morning bragging that you and he were going to get together for some writer talk.”

  “Did he?”

  “Bet you’ll enjoy that, huh?”

  I glanced at my watch. “Oh, my! It’s getting late. I’d better grab something to eat and go.”

  Mara laughed. “And I’d better get back in the kitchen. The lunch crowd will be descending on me any minute.”

  When I left, there was no sign of Billups. I returned to police headquarters, where Mort had just arrived. “Had an attempted robbery,” he said as he tossed his tan Stetson on the desk and loosened his tie.

  “How did it end up?” I asked.

  “Damn fool put on a ski mask, walked into the auto parts place out east, and poked his hand in his pocket like he had a gun there. The two guys behind the counter didn’t fall for it and jumped him, held him until we could get there. He’s not from around here.”

  “That’s always good to hear,” I said.

  “Let me see what you got.”

  I handed Mort the four letters.

  He flipped through them. “I’ll send them over to the lab right away.”

  “Thanks, Mort. By the way, do you know anything about a recent arrival in town, a Mr. Hubert Billups?”

  Mort rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Everyone’s asking the same question. I know who he is, but haven’t found out much about him yet. When the weather’s bad, we’ve had to roust him a few times from inside buildings. People in offices complained that he’d wander in, sit in the lobby dressed the way he is, and say nothing. And Wally Winstead went after him one day not long ago.”

  “Why?”

  “You know Wally, always thinking somebody’s flirting with his wife, Fran. Anyway, Wally sees Billups staring at his wife the way he does and accuses him of trying to seduce her.” Mort shook his head. “As though a scruffy character like Billups would appeal to her. Wally grabs Billups and throws him to the ground and screams like a banshee that he’ll kill him if he ever sees him eyeing his wife again.”

  “Was Wally arrested?”

  “No. One of my deputies saw it happen and warned Wally to get his temper under control.”

  “Was Mr. Billups hurt?”

  “Didn’t seem to be. He’s a troublemaker, no doubt about that. We’ve had a couple of calls from the rooming house where he lives. Some guy who also lives there keeps accusing Billups of stealing stuff from him.” Mort laughed. “I don’t imagine he’s got a lot to steal anyway.” He twirled an index finger at his temple. “Billups has got a screw loose, Mrs. F. Used to see a lot of his type in Manhattan. You know, they emptied out the mental wards and these people got nowhere to go, nothing to do. Other than that, I suppose he’s all right. I just wish he’d find someplace else to hang out when it rains. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, just that he seems to be spending a lot of time on the road across from my house.”

  “You think he’s stalking you?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “Want me to warn him to stay away?”

  “No, that’s not necessary. I just thought I’d like to know more about him.”

  “He bothers you, just call and I’ll have one of my men talk sense to him.”

  I got up to leave and thanked Mort for taking care of the letters.

  “No problem.” He looked as if he wanted to say more.

  “Was there something else, Mort?”

  “Say, Mrs. F, just thought you’d want to know, Maureen has come up with a couple of new recipes for sweet potato casserole she’s been testing out on me. I’ve eaten sweet potatoes for dinner for two nights running while she experiments with ingredients. The kitchen looks like a bomb hit it. I’m not complaining—I like sweet potatoes as much as the next guy—but maybe if you two settled on what exactly it is she’s going to make—”

  “I’ll give her a call.”

  “Would appreciate it. You know how excited she gets when it comes to cooking.”

  I sighed. I knew only too well what he meant.

  Hubert Billups was not standing in front of my house when I returned home, thank goodness, but my relief was short-lived. When I tried to insert the house key in the lock, my front door slowly swung inward. I was certain I’d locked the door when I left. Hadn’t I?

  Slowly, I pressed the door open and peered into the hall and up the stairs before I entered the house.

  “Hello!” I called out, thinking perhaps a neighbor with the key had come in for some reason. “Anyone here?” There was no answer.

  With a shiver, I closed the door behind me and listened carefully to hear anything out of the ordinary. The house was silent. Shaking my head, I went straight to the kitchen. Perhaps Seth, who considered my carving knife a useless relic, had stopped by to drop off his special carving knife that he’d insisted I use for the holiday. Or maybe Maureen put one of her sweet potato dishes in the refrigerator, or possibly my neighbor Tina Treyz came in to borrow a Bundt pan for her poppy-seed lemon cake. But the kitchen appeared undisturbed.

  You’re being foolish, Jessica, I told myself. Hubert Billups has you spooked and now you’re imagining things. You’ve been so distracted, you must have forgotten to lock the door.

  Even though I was convinced I was alone, I tiptoed to the study and stood in the doorway observing the layout of the room. The face of th
e monitor was black. I walked to the computer and nudged the mouse. The screen sprang to life and the page I’d been working on before I left lit up. There was no new copy. The sentence I’d been struggling with was still there in all its stilted glory. Why had I thought there might have been something else on the page? Had I imagined that someone—Hubert Billups—had broken into the house to leave me a message?

  Everything seemed to be as I’d left it. I stared at the pile of mail, then gasped. Where were those anonymous messages with the cutout letters? They weren’t on top of the other correspondence. I rushed across the room, my heart pounding, and flung open the drawers on my desk, frantically riffling through the papers in search of them. Not in the drawers, not under the manuscript box, not in the wastebasket, not at the bottom of the pile of mail. Then I sank into my chair. Of course they weren’t here. I’d left them with Mort. I’d completely forgotten a visit I’d just returned from not ten minutes ago. I ran a hand through my hair, my fingers trembling.

  This whole business is playing havoc with your brain, I told myself. The next time Hubert Billups stations himself across the street from my house, I will find out exactly why he’s there and what he wants.

  With the mystery of the missing letters solved, I should have been able to pick up my day where I’d left off and get back to work. But when I sat down at the computer, my hands were still shaky. Tea, I told myself, a cup of red bush tea will settle me down.

  I jumped up and went to the kitchen, filled the kettle, set it on the stove, and returned to the computer, blindly rereading the awkward sentence as I strained to hear the sound of the kettle’s whistle. Instead, I heard the floor above my head creak. My eyes flew to the ceiling, and the feeling of panic washed over me again. Was Billups upstairs? Was he poised behind a door, waiting for me to walk unawares into my bedroom?

  Angry now, I strode to the base of the stairs, grabbed an umbrella from the coat tree, and stomped up the stairs, making as much noise as my shoes would allow. I gave the second floor a thorough search, whipping the shower curtain back—shades of a scene from the Hitchcock movie Psycho—kneeling to inspect under the beds, poking the umbrella into the recesses of my closets. What did my search yield? Nothing! Except perhaps a determination to get out the vacuum cleaner at the nearest opportunity.

  The keening wail of the teakettle brought me back to my senses, and I returned to the kitchen, grateful no one else had been at home with me to witness my mad hunt for a nonexistent intruder. Thinking about my reaction to a sound I’d heard frequently over the years—old houses often creak—I felt my cheeks color with embarrassment. What could I have been thinking?

  I carried the tea into my study, sat in front of the computer, and contemplated the recent events of my life. Why would the presence of a harmless, maybe even pathetic drifter set off alarm bells? Why was I giving credence to some crank getting a kick out of sending me silly, nonsensical letters? So what if Maureen came up with a strange and possibly unpalatable dish for the holiday? So what if my guests were not all compatible? I would still make my book deadline if I had to stay up twenty-four hours a day to do it, I promised myself.

  So what was causing all this consternation?

  If I looked into my heart, I could see the truth. And the truth was that of all the events conspiring to create pressure in my life, the one I was most apprehensive about was the one I most eagerly looked forward to—George’s visit.

  Chapter Six

  I was glad that Jed and I wouldn’t be departing to pick up George until eleven the following day. I wanted to see what that morning’s mail brought before leaving, whether there would be another delivery with a new pasted-on letter.

  There was.

  I opened it carefully and extracted the single sheet of white paper. Sure enough, a fifth letter had been added to the previous four—an orange C. The other letters on the page, G, L, O, and T were tiny compared to the C. Did that have special meaning? Was there a pointed message in highlighting it?

  Like the third piece of mail, the one containing the letter O, this one had also been mailed from Cabot Cove.

  Try as I might not to, my thoughts went straight to Hubert Billups. I know that wasn’t fair. After all, I had no evidence that he had anything to do with the letters. And despite my paranoia of the previous day, he probably had nothing to do with my unlocked front door either. But the confluence of his strange behavior, and the arrival of the letters, made for a reasonable question as to whether they might be linked. Or so I told myself.

  Jed was standing by the Cessna Skyhawk SP when my cabdriver, Nick, dropped me off at Cabot Cove Airport. It wasn’t much of an airport compared to those in larger cities, but it had grown along with the town. There was talk of one of the airlines starting regular service there, but it hadn’t happened yet.

  I knew that if a commercial airline did begin offering flights, it would hurt Jed’s business. He’s always been philosophical about that possibility and laughs it off, but he had to be concerned about it at some level. He’d recently purchased the plane that we were flying that day, and although he’d bought it used, I knew that it stretched his finances. It’s a lovely four-seat single-engine airplane, and Jed had added state-of-the-art electronic gear and avionics to bring it up-to-date. Of course, what was most important was his piloting skill honed by thousands of hours in large commercial jet aircraft, preceded by five years as a military pilot. He’s a capable, meticulous professional, and I’ve never had a moment’s apprehension flying with him.

  “All gassed up and ready to go?” I asked as Nick drove away.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jed replied.

  If a film director were to contact Central Casting for the quintessential pilot, Jed would fit the bill. His face is square, his jaw strong. He’s stocky and keeps himself fit. The multitude of lines around his eyes and on his forehead testifies to all his hours in a cockpit squinting into the sun. He hadn’t lost a single strand of his salt-and-pepper hair despite being in his midfifties. He wore what he usually did when ferrying people in one of his aircraft: jeans, a blue button-down shirt, and a tan vest of the type worn by photographers, which as he proudly pointed out had twenty-six pockets: “My answer to a woman’s purse. I can live for a week on what I carry in these pockets.”

  After a preflight walk around, we climbed into the plane. Jed had me take the left-hand seat because I’d be doing the actual flying, at least until we entered the crowded sky around Boston. That’s when things get busy and complicated with all the necessary communications with air-traffic control. But on a recent flight to Boston, Jed had insisted that I pilot the plane all the way, with him handling the radio chatter: “Might as well get used to it,” he explained. At the time, I’d been as nervous as a cat up a tree when we entered the city’s airspace, but managed to land with only one or two hops, and Jed had flashed me the okay sign when we drew to a stop in the airport’s designated area for small craft. Today, if Jed gave me the same freedom, I hoped to pull off a no-hop landing.

  We took off. I looked down as my beloved Cabot Cove slipped away, becoming smaller and smaller the higher we climbed. Jed dialed in the receiver for the global-positioning satellite; we’d fly on autopilot right up until approaching Boston’s Logan Airport. It was a lovely day to fly, crisp and cool, the sky a cobalt blue with only a rare wispy white cloud far above us. Once we reached our desired cruising altitude, we sat back and allowed the autopilot to guide us to our destination.

  “Understand you’re havin’ a desperate time with that book of yours,” he commented. “Can’t make any headway, the way I hear it.”

  “And where did you pick up that piece of news, Jed?”

  “Somewhere in town.”

  “Well,” I said, “the rumor is true, but I’ll figure out a way to finish it. It’s too important not to.”

  “You’re probably just excited about seeing your Scottish beau.”

  I laughed. “I am excited to see him, but I wouldn’t call George ‘my beau.�
�� We’re close friends, that’s all.”

  He nodded that he agreed, although the wry smile on his rugged face said something else.

  “He staying with you?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No. Seth Hazlitt has agreed to put him up.”

  “How’d you wrangle that?”

  “George coming for Thanksgiving was a last-minute decision. All the hotels and B-and-Bs were booked. I asked Seth, and he said yes.”

  “Doc’s a good man, but you already know that. He give you that package he picked up yet?”

  “What package is that?”

  “Aw, now, mebbe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “But you already have,” I said.

  “Well, I flew Doc up to Portland last week. I was going up there anyway to pick up some parts and he hitched a ride with me. He said flying with me would save on having it shipped.” Jed chuckled. “You know Doc. He’s a frugal sort of man. The way he put it, I thought you asked him to do it.”

  “No, I didn’t ask him to get anything for me.”

  “Well, now I think of it, mebbe he said ‘pick out something for you.’ Hope I didn’t spoil the surprise.”

  “What sort of package are we talking about?”

  “Don’t know really. It was pretty big and wrapped real neat in brown paper. He didn’t hold me up much, just an hour. Of course, he had to grab a taxi, which must have cost more than any shipping charges. He was back to the airport lickety-split and I flew him home to Cabot Cove.”

  “Did he go to a store?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest, Jessica. I’m just the pilot. He didn’t say anything to you?”

  “No. He usually tells me if he’s going to Portland for something, but he never said a word. I wonder why.”

  “It was sort of last-minute. I was in seeing him for a backache—it’s been acting up lately—and mentioned I was heading for Portland that afternoon. Just sort of happened that he came with me. I was happy to do it. Doc’s done me plenty of favors over the years.”

  Jed shook his head and busied himself adjusting our trim tabs to keep the plane in perfect balance. I didn’t bring the subject up again even though it floated in and out of my mind for the duration of the flight. Had Seth bought me a gift? If so, why? It wasn’t near my birthday, and besides, we didn’t exchange birthday gifts. It was a little early for Christmas. I hadn’t even starting thinking about that holiday. Please, let me get Thanksgiving under my belt before hearing jingle bells ring. Of course, that plea falls on deaf ears these days with merchants launching their holiday advertising right after back-to-school sales.