A Fatal Feast Read online

  “As a matter of fact,” George countered, “Mr. Fawkes had a point. There was anti-Catholic bias. Still is. To this day, under our laws a Catholic cannot be the monarch.”

  “Yes, I knew that,” Franklin said. It was obvious to all that he hadn’t.

  “Actually, we do share Halloween with you chaps here in the States,” George said as a parting comment. “It’s becoming quite a popular day back home, much to the delight of children. They gorge themselves on candy on October thirty-first and rake in money on November fifth. Now you must excuse us, Mr. Franklin. I believe they’re about to start.”

  As we walked away, George said, “Opinionated chap, isn’t he?”

  “I’m afraid we’re in for more of his opinions on Thursday. Wilimena asked if she could bring him to dinner, and I didn’t say no.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” George said. “Might be fun, hearing more about Guy ‘Fukes’ from the gentleman.”

  We both laughed and settled in folding chairs to watch the dress rehearsal.

  That evening, we were dinner guests at Mayor and Susan Shevlin’s home. Seth Hazlitt, Tim and Ellen Purdy (Tim is Cabot Cove’s historian, and Ellen wins every statewide quilting competition), and Deputy Mayor Gus Westerholm and his wife, Birgitta, who was active in virtually every civic and charity organization in the town, were the other guests.

  Gus brought up Archer Franklin during dessert. “Looks like you might have a serious challenge next year, Jim,” he said to our mayor. “This new fellow, Franklin, is going around town claiming he intends to run for your seat.”

  “He’s entitled to do that,” Jim replied.

  “He says he’s got plenty of money to fund a campaign,” Tim Purdy said.

  “And he’s entitled to spend it any way he wishes,” Shevlin said.

  This led to a spirited discussion about money in politics, and eventually to a comparison between the British and American political systems. By the time we’d exhausted that topic, it was almost midnight, a series of yawns around the table testifying to the hour.

  George dropped me at the house.

  “Can you find your way back to Seth’s house?” I asked.

  “I think so. My sense of direction is pretty sound. Come, I’ll see you safely inside.”

  I was about to protest the need to accompany me but thought better of it. Recent events had set me on edge, and I wasn’t especially keen on entering alone at that late hour. I hated to be fearful of walking into my own home at any hour of the day or night, but my pragmatic sense took over. Besides, it meant prolonging my time with George. I became acutely aware during dinner that his visit with me was fleeting.

  All was quiet inside.

  “A nightcap?” I asked

  “Tempting,” he said, “but I think it’s time we both headed for bed.” The double-entendre meaning of the statement wasn’t lost on either of us, but we said nothing.

  “A busy day tomorrow?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid so. The main event is our annual Thanksgiving dinner served to our less fortunate citizens. It starts at four, although I have to be there a few hours early to help with preparations.”

  “Can you use an extra hand? Sounds like something I’d like to be involved with.”

  “Would you? I wouldn’t expect that—”

  He shook his head. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than help provide a fitting Thanksgiving dinner for some poor persons, working side by side with a very special lady.”

  “You’re pretty special yourself,” I said

  “Not only that. I can carve a decent turkey,” he said. “I paid my way through school working at a carvery—that’s a restaurant that specializes in meats.”

  “And you’d be wonderful, no doubt, but that’s my job this year. In fact, Seth has loaned me his special carving knife for the occasion.”

  “Then I’ll be content to do whatever is asked of me.”

  I walked him to the door, where we kissed good night. I watched him get into the car and start the engine. He looked back at me, and for a moment I thought he was about to get out and accept my offer of a nightcap. He didn’t. He blew me a kiss and drove off.

  I closed the door, leaned against it, and smiled. Despite all the recent stresses and strains, I felt truly happy.

  Chapter Nine

  GLOTCOY.

  “What can it possibly mean?” I asked George the next morning.

  “I have no idea, Jessica. I wish I did.”

  We’d spent an exasperating hour coming up with every possible message that the letters contained in that day’s mail might represent. None of them made sense.

  “It has a Boston postmark,” I said.

  “Chances are,” he said, “these letters have been created by someone right here in Cabot Cove. This warped individual sends them to friends in other cities for mailing in order to throw you off the track.”

  “All right,” I said, “but who would go to such elaborate means of hiding their true origins—and why?”

  “Unfortunately, those are questions to which neither of us has an answer.”

  “Sheriff Metzger hasn’t been able to help, either,” I said, folding my arms and hunching forward to relieve the tension in my back.

  Mort had called bright and early to report that the state crime lab had come up a cropper with fingerprints. They’d managed to detect a tiny fragment on two of the envelopes, but not enough from which to lift a traceable print.

  George rose and came around behind my chair. He placed his hands on my shoulders and pressed his thumbs into the tight muscles of my back. Then he leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Do you know what I’d like to do?” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’d like to go motoring.”

  “You would? To where?”

  He straightened but kept kneading my sore shoulders. “Anywhere. Just a pleasant drive, the two of us.”

  “Oh, George, I’d love to, but there’s so much to do before the holiday. And we have—”

  He shifted one hand from my shoulder to my neck, using his fingers to rub away the stiffness. “Show me a bit of the lovely countryside surrounding Cabot Cove, or let’s stop at that lake for which you serve on a—was it a committee?”

  “A commission,” I said, enjoying the massage.

  “It will do wonders for your psyche. And besides, I need a little practice driving on the opposite side of the road.”

  “The wrong side, you mean?”

  “If you say so.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, Inspector.”

  George’s hands stilled. He leaned over and dropped a kiss on the top of my head.

  I looked up at him over my shoulder, already missing the soothing motion of his hands. “As long as we’re back by two,” I said, “so we can get things moving at the Thanksgiving buffet.”

  “I am at your service.”

  The ride was exactly what I’d needed. While I hadn’t truly expressed to George, or to anyone, how upsetting the letters had been, they were never far from my thoughts, and had delivered a blow to my usually upbeat spirits. In my mind’s eye, I saw thick fingers—they were always a man’s fingers—cutting out the letters from a lurid magazine. I imagined my tormentor sniggering as he pasted them on a sheet of paper. It must be someone I had offended, someone who bore a grudge against me, but who? The face that accompanied these disturbing thoughts was always that of Hubert Billups. But I knew that was unreasonable. How could he have mailed those letters from distant cities? And why would he resent me to begin with? I didn’t know the man.

  We drove along the coast—is there any more beautiful place on earth than the Maine coast?—and I felt the tension subside. In town, autumn had stripped the trees of their leaves, but along the rocky shore, stately pines rose into the air like green arrows piercing the gray sky. The salt air was chilly and whipped my hair when we stopped at an unimposing seafood roadside shack for lobster rolls—luscious chunks of lobster on a toast
ed hot dog bun. Our timing was perfect. A sign indicated that they would close for the season the following day.

  Our conversation drifted from one topic to another, nothing very weighty, but provocative discussion at times. George is one of the most balanced men I’ve ever known, someone who has strong beliefs but is always willing to listen to a different viewpoint and to embrace divergent philosophies. Although he’d spent his professional career in law enforcement, he’d never lost what can only be described as his gentle nature. He also had, of course, a steely side, necessary when confronting the criminal element. I’d seen that side the first time we met.

  It was in London, where I’d traveled to attend a convention of mystery writers, and to visit an old friend, Marjorie Ainsworth. At that time, Marjorie, who was the reigning queen of mystery writers, lived in an imposing manor house outside London. She’d invited me to spend a few days there with her, an invitation I readily accepted.

  Unfortunately, while I was there, my aged friend was found stabbed to death in her bed, and I became but one on a list of suspects. Enter Scotland Yard inspector George Sutherland, who was assigned the case because of Marjorie’s notoriety. He questioned me along with the others, unfailingly polite but demonstrating an unwavering determination, and an unwillingness to accept answers he considered self-serving or evasive. As it turned out, we ended up working together to solve the murder. Our collaboration created a strong bond of mutual respect, and a developing personal interest in each other that remained to this day.

  We ended our mini tour of Cabot Cove’s countryside on a bluff overlooking the ocean. The water churned blue and green, with white froth riding waves that crashed against rocks below.

  “It reminds me of Wick,” I said as we stood side by side and soaked up nature’s power and beauty.

  “Aye, that it does,” he said.

  George was born in Wick, and his home in that northernmost tip of Scotland had remained in his family for generations. I’d visited there with a contingent of friends from Cabot Cove and was swept away by its spectacular visual splendor and the warmth of its people. Unfortunately, as with our initial meeting in London, murder would bring us together again, this time in George’s ancestral home. I sighed as I thought back to that situation. Too often, murder seems to follow me when I travel, or even when I stay put in Cabot Cove. Given a choice, I’d much prefer to write about murder than experience it in my personal life, but I haven’t always had the benefit of that choice.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked as spray from a particularly large wave bounced off the rocks below, showering us with tiny droplets of frigid water and causing us to narrow our eyes against the briny mist.

  George put his arm around my shoulders and briefly hugged me to him. “I was thinking about Thanksgiving, your special holiday. How wonderful to have a day set aside each year to give thanks for our blessings.”

  “It is a nice tradition, isn’t it?”

  “When you view the world with open eyes, you realize how much we have to be grateful for,” he said.

  I didn’t respond, although I certainly agreed with him. My mind had wandered elsewhere—to my unfinished novel, Hubert Billups, the Thanksgiving pageant, the afternoon’s event, the upcoming holiday dinner at my house, the dishes I had yet to cook, and, of course, my relationship with the handsome man standing next to me.

  “Where are you, Jessica?” George asked.

  “What? Oh, I’m sorry. I got lost in my thoughts.”

  “It’s good to do that from time to time,” he said. “Nice to escape the here and now.”

  I nodded, then shivered as another thought crossed my mind. During my brief moment of reverie I had forgotten what might be in the next day’s postal delivery. Usually, I look forward to opening my mailbox, even though its contents increasingly seem to consist of what’s commonly called “junk mail,” the noncomputer equivalent of “spam.” But I wasn’t looking forward to opening tomorrow’s envelopes, not with the likelihood of another message formed from letters clipped from magazines.

  “Glotcoy,” I said into the wind.

  George laughed. “Yes, the mysterious Glotcoy.”

  “No such word in the dictionary,” I said.

  “Perhaps we’ll never know what it means, unless of course the sender wishes to expose himself.”

  “Or herself,” I said.

  “Right you are. It could be a woman. In fact, Jessica, it may even be more likely that a woman is behind those letters.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s such—it’s such a passive-aggressive action. Nevertheless, if it is a woman, it doesn’t render this campaign any less threatening.”

  “I can’t imagine that someone would go to so much trouble and not eventually reveal the motivation behind it.”

  “The perpetrator may already have achieved her objective—to unsettle you. In that case, there is no need to reveal herself. She has accomplished her mission. Staying anonymous perpetuates that goal.”

  “I will be very upset if I can’t get to the bottom of this,” I said.

  George glanced at his watch. “Time to head back, Jessica, if you’re going to be on time to serve up turkey with all the trimmings to Cabot Cove’s needy.”

  I had only a few minutes in the house to gather up aprons and utensils before we were to head downtown, where the free turkey dinner was being served at the senior center, recently renovated through the generosity of Wilimena Copeland.

  “Need this?” George asked as he picked up the box containing the carving knife Seth had loaned to me. He slowly drew it from its custom case.

  “I’m reluctant to take it,” I said. “It was a special gift to Seth.”

  “I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” said George, holding up the ten-inch knife to better catch the light from a ceiling fixture.

  “It was a gift to Seth from a wealthy Japanese businessman who’d been touring the United States with his family,” I said. “They were spending a few days at the end of their trip in Cabot Cove—their son had been an exchange student here—and were having dinner at a popular Italian restaurant in town when the father suddenly clutched his chest and collapsed to the floor. Seth and I were at the next table. He immediately started cardiopulmonary resuscitation and saved the Japanese gentleman’s life. The man spent time in the hospital, but thanks to Seth’s quick action he recovered.”

  “He was fortunate to have a physician sitting at the next table.”

  “Yes, he was. Anyway, six months after the patient returned home to Japan, his son, the one who’d been a student here, came back to Cabot Cove bearing a gift for the doctor who’d ‘given his father the gift of life.’” The knife was a handmade, carbon steel, Kounosuke carving knife that had been made in Sakai, which the son pointed out had been the home of samurai swords since the 1300s, I told George. “The case is made of paulownia wood. The son said the knife brings good luck to those who use it.”

  “It’s magnificent.”

  “The handle is ivory. See those tiny pearls inlaid around the edges? That character on each side spells Seth’s name. The son told him they’re made from black diamonds.”

  “Black diamonds,” George repeated. “They were formed in the heavens millions of years ago, as I understand.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “Black diamonds come from meteorites, not like the diamonds we’re more accustomed to that are formed beneath the earth. I did some reading about it after Seth showed me the knife.”

  “It’s obviously worth a lot of money,” George said.

  “I agree, but Seth never bothered to find out how much. I urged him to put it away in some safe place.”

  “Did he?”

  “No. He dismissed my suggestion. Instead, he invited me to dinner and used the knife to slice a ham he’d baked for us that evening. I remember him saying: ‘It might have a fancy handle and all, but a knife is made for cutting things.’ He keeps it in a drawer along with his other kitchen kn
ives.” I laughed as George replaced the knife in its box. It didn’t surprise me that Seth wouldn’t give the gift special treatment. He’s the quintessential function-over-form person. No matter how beautiful an object may be, if it doesn’t perform a useful function, it isn’t worth much to him.

  I’d balked when Seth said that I should use his gift to carve the turkeys at this year’s charity Thanksgiving dinner, but he’d insisted.

  “I’d be devastated if something were to happen to it,” I’d told him.

  “Nothing’ll happen to it, Jessica. Besides, it’ll bring good luck to the folks who show up. They need it.”

  I added the case containing the knife to the basket I was taking to the senior center, and George carried it out to the car. We would see if the knife lived up to its reputation, and, indeed, if it proved to be good luck to its user. I could use some good luck, I thought, as I closed the door and locked it—and checked again that I had.

  Chapter Ten

  The senior center was abuzz with activity when George and I arrived. A long, heated buffet table donated for the occasion by the town’s leading caterer had been delivered earlier in the day, and two of its young employees were busy erecting it. Birgitta Westerholm and her husband, Gus, our deputy mayor, supervised the more than a dozen volunteers who’d already shown up. Although she wasn’t old enough to be considered a “senior,” Birgitta, or Gitta as she was more commonly known, was a familiar face at the center, one of numerous civic undertakings into which she immersed herself.

  “Hello, Jessica,” Richard Koser said, taking a break from hauling folding chairs and tables from a storage room. “Ready to do some fancy carving?”

  “Ready to do my best,” I said, “with George’s help. You haven’t met yet.” I introduced them.

  “Welcome to Cabot Cove,” Richard said. “I’ve heard lots about you.”