Murder On the Rocks (16 page)

“Would you like some coffee?” I asked. He nodded without looking at me. I glanced down at the stack of papers and caught a glimpse of letterhead, “Brown and Watson P.C, before his hand moved over to cover the paper. I poured the coffee and retreated to the kitchen. “I’ll be back shortly with cream and sugar.”

When I came out a few minutes later, Ogden and Stanley stood at the buffet. I glided over to the table with a pitcher of cream and a sugar bowl and glanced over my shoulder; both Ogden and Stanley had their backs turned to me as they filled their plates. I set down the cream and sugar and took a closer look at the top sheet of paper. The lawyers’ address was in New York City, and the letter was dated May 18.

Dear Mr. Katz:

Per our conversation yesterday, attached please find a copy of the new will and testament you requested. As we discussed, we have changed the beneficiary to reflect your wishes. Please review the enclosed documents. If everything is in order, contact my secretary to arrange a date and time to come in and sign the amended will. Please call me if you have any further questions.

Best regards,

James Watson

New beneficiary? I was tempted to flip through and find out who that might be, but decided not to push my luck. I glanced back at the buffet; Stanley and Ogden were at the end of the line and about to return to the table. Stanley seemed to sense my gaze, and turned around suddenly. His eyes widened when he saw me at the table, and he stumbled in my direction, his lank hair falling into his face as he jerked the stack of papers off the table.

I made a show of arranging the cream and sugar as he clutched the stack of papers to his sunken chest. “Let me know if you need anything else,” I said, and walked back into the kitchen. Stanley’s eyes followed me the whole way.

The rest of breakfast was uneventful. The Bittles were the last ones down, but even so, everybody had been served by 9:30, and I cleaned up from breakfast and started on a batch of chocolate chip cookies to take to Charlene’s. As I folded chocolate chips into the buttery golden batter, my thoughts turned to the papers Ogden had clutched to his chest at breakfast. I wondered how and why Bernard Katz had changed his will. I also wondered if he had had a chance to sign it.

The first batch of cookies was ready for the oven when Gwen came downstairs, dressed to kill as usual in white Capri pants and a low-cut blue T-shirt. Her mass of hair had been captured in a loose bun, accentuating her slender neck and long-lashed brown eyes. She looked strangely vulnerable. “How’s your foot?” she asked.

“Much better.” I had woken her up and told her to lock her door after the rock came through the window last night. “Did you sleep okay?”

“Just fine.” She opened the refrigerator. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Cheese eggs, raspberry coffee cake, bacon, and fruit salad. There’s still coffee, too”

“Great” She pulled out Tupperware containers and started loading up a plate. “When are you heading down to Fernand’s?”

“I don’t know. I have to drop cookies off at Charlene’s this afternoon; maybe I’ll swing by then.” I wanted to ask Fernand a few questions, anyway. “Can I count on you to take care of the rooms? You’ve been doing a great job the last week.”

“No problem.” She glanced out the window at the leaden sky. “The light isn’t too good today, anyway.” She beamed at me through a mouthful of coffee cake. “I’m glad you’ll be going down to the studio; I can’t wait for you to see my work.”

“I’ll head over as soon as the cookies are done.”

It was almost 11:30 when I strapped the container of warm cookies onto the back of my Schwinn and headed up the hill. I had decided to drop the cookies off at Charlene’s store first; then, if it didn’t start raining again, I’d head over to Fernand’s.

The normally vibrant landscape was subdued today. The towering evergreens formed a dark corridor, and the weather-stained humps of granite rearing up among the ferns and bayberry bushes mirrored the leaden sky. The rain had let up, but the pavement was still wet. I took the turn up the hill from the inn carefully; my poor body was banged up enough already without adding a spill from my bike.

Despite the foreboding atmosphere, it felt good to be out in the sea air and pumping my legs up the hill. The smell of rain was sweet, and the silvery droplets of water dangling from the blossoms in the clumps of blueberry bushes made them look as if they had been touched with fairy dew. The sound of the waves grew fainter as I puffed to the top of the hill, and I sat back with relief as the Schwinn crested it and started the steep descent through the pine trees.

The wind was whipping through my hair by the time I was halfway down, and my hands squeezed the brakes lightly. The brake levers clacked against the handlebars. I squeezed again; they clacked louder, but the bike didn’t slow; in fact, it kept picking up speed. My stomach filled with ice water as the pine trees receded into a blur of green. Soon I became conscious only of the wet blacktop hurtling toward me. My mind raced, trying to come up with a way to stop the bike. A sharp turn was coming up; if I could make it around that, the rest of the road was relatively straight, and the bike would be able to run its speed down gradually. I braced myself and leaned into the curve as hard as I could, struggling to stay upright.

I hung tightly onto the handlebars, shifting all of my weight to the left, and was just about through the tightest part of the curve when the Schwinn hit a slick spot and began to skid. As the bike careened sideways, I hung suspended in midair over the wet blacktop. I fought to regain control, but the bike slipped farther, slamming me hard against the wet pavement. For a long, searing moment the Schwinn and I skidded across the asphalt; then we crashed to a halt in a tangle of bushes on the side of the road.

I LAY IN THE bushes for a moment with my eyes closed, reflecting on what a great idea it had been to move to Maine to escape the stresses and worries of day-to-day life. As the blood pounding through my veins began to subside, I could feel cold metal pressed against my leg. The rest of my body, however, was numb. For a moment, I wondered if I would be running the inn as a quadriplegic, but a few cautious movements assured me that I still had use of my limbs. The smell of leaf mold and bayberry was mixed with the warm scent of chocolate; I guessed that the cookies hadn’t survived the crash.

When I opened my eyes, I saw that I was sprawled sideways atop a clump of bayberry bushes, with several chunks of cookie and the Schwinn beside me. The cold metal I’d felt against my thigh was a contorted handlebar. My hip flared with pain as I shifted, but everything seemed intact.

I wriggled out from under the handlebar and stood up shakily. My heavy jeans had protected me from the worst of the road. Gravel had penetrated in one or two spots, but aside from what felt like some major bruises, my leg was in working order. My left arm stung as I straightened it; I’d lost a bit of skin on my left forearm, and a few dark pebbles clung to the abraded skin, but it looked as if it would heal quickly. I brushed myself off and glanced back at the massive hunks of granite lining the steep turn. If the bike had gone down a few seconds earlier, I would have smashed headfirst into a boulder.

I had survived the fall without major damage, but the Schwinn had not been so lucky. The powder-blue metal frame was bent in several places, and the handlebars resembled chrome antlers. Broken chocolate chip cookies lay scattered across the damp forest floor next to the smashed plastic container. At least the raccoons would enjoy some home-baked snacks. I bent down and took a close look at the brakes, wondering what had gone wrong with them. What I saw made my heart skip a beat.

The cables had been snipped.

I fingered the blunt ends for a moment and stood up. Had the same person who had thrown a rock through my window cut my brake lines? I looked at the fragments of chocolate chip cookies scattered across the ground with a sick feeling in my stomach; it could easily have been me lying there in pieces instead. As my eyes returned to the severed brake lines, fear gave way to a smoldering anger. Vandalizing my inn to scare me off was one thing, but I could have been killed by this little prank. Suddenly an image of Bernard Katz sprawled across the rocks flashed through my mind, and a chill ran down my spine as I realized that perhaps that had been the point.

I bent down to collect the shards of plastic and then pulled the bike upright. The front wheel was warped, but the bike still rolled, so I strapped what was left of the container to the back and limped up the road toward the inn.

The phone jangled as I opened the kitchen door. I walked over to it, but my hand hesitated over the receiver. I wasn’t up for a call from Gertrude Pickens right now. On the other hand, if it was a guest calling to make a reservation, I needed to book it before they had a chance to call elsewhere.

Survival instincts won out.

“Gray Whale Inn.”

“Natalie? It’s Bridget.” I stifled a groan, and the pain in my hip twanged as I leaned up against the counter. My sister wasn’t Gertrude Pickens, but she still wasn’t high on the list of people I wanted to be talking to right now.

“Hi, Bridget,” I said with as much brightness as I could muster. “How’s California?”

“Wonderful. How are things out on Cranberry Island?”

“Doing fine,” I said in what I viewed as a massive overstatement. I stared out the window at a lobster boat plowing through the leaden water, and wondered if my niece was aboard it. “Gwen seems to be enjoying herself.”

Bridget’s tone became guarded. “Oh? How so?”

“She’s been taking an art class on the island,” I said, watching as the white boat moved from buoy to buoy, like a bee collecting nectar from flowers. “Apparently it’s going very well.”

“She’s not … seeing anyone, is she?”

Was my sister psychic? “Well,” I began, “there is someone . .

“Does he at least have a college degree?” she interrupted. “Yes,” I said. “From Princeton, I believe.”

“Princeton?” The relief in her voice was palpable. “Well, that can’t be too bad. What does he do for a living?”

“Oh, he’s involved with boats,” I said. The boat I had been watching picked up steam and moved farther out. How nice it would be to spend the day out on the water, breathing salt air and feeling the swell of the waves. Then again, Charlene had told me the salted herring in the bait bags could get pretty smelly. Maybe I was better off watching from a distance.

Bridget’s voice jerked me back to my kitchen. “Boats? What do you mean? Does he have a yacht?”

Not exactly. “No, not a yacht. Boats are more of, well, a career for him.”

She pounced on my words. “A career. Shipping? That’s a good, solid line of work. Lucrative, too. It sounds like my daughter’s judgment is improving. Is she keeping up with things at the inn?”

I closed and opened my mouth a few times, feeling like a fish caught on dry land, before responding. “It was a bit rough at the start, but she’s been a real help.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Bridget said. “Maybe the break will help her apply herself when she gets back to UCLA in the fall. She can get this art thing out of her system over the summer and be ready to get back to business.” “

I thought she was majoring in economics”

“You know what I mean,” Bridget huffed. “Something practical. Real life. How’s business going, by the way? Surviving your first season?”

“Oh, things are chugging along;” I said, walking over to the sink and wincing as I held my battered arm under the rush of water. I decided to leave out the parts about a guest being killed, the cops being interested in me as a suspect, and vandalism with potentially murderous intent. “I’d put Gwen on to talk to you herself, but I don’t think she’s here right now. Shall I have her call you?”

“Please do. I’m relieved to hear that everything’s going so well.” She chuckled. “Knowing Gwen, I half expected her to take up with a fisherman.”

I choked out a laugh. “Well, I’ll tell her you called.”

“Thanks, Nat. Take care.”

I hung up with the distinct feeling that I had just made things worse, not better. I finished taking care of my arm and had started to wonder how I was going to explain the conversation to Gwen when Eleazer’s gnarled face appeared at the kitchen door.

“Heard you were in the market for a boat,” he said as I opened the door.

“News travels fast.”

“Well, if you’re going to be an islander, you need a boat. When Charlene told me you were looking for a skiff, I knew I had just the boat for you” He motioned for me to follow him, and we walked across the back deck and down the sloping meadow behind the inn to a small weathered dock. Normally, only John’s skiff, Mooncatcher, was moored there, but this afternoon it had been joined by a second small wooden boat, painted bright white. It looked to be about twelve feet long, and bobbed cheerily among the waves.

“Just put a fresh coat of paint on her yesterday,” Eleazer said, patting the bow fondly. “She’s got great lines, this one does.” He looked like a gnome in his dark brown cap and red jacket.

“It’s beautiful I said, “but how much is it? Things are kind of tight right now.”

He waved me away with a gnarled hand. “You can pay me when business gets going. Right now I’m just glad to get this girl into the water where she belongs. Her name’s the Little Marian. I got her off of one of the summer folks-they wanted something fancier, and let her go for a song.” He hopped into the small boat like a mountain goat and looked up at me expectantly. “What are you waiting for? Let’s take her for a spin!”

I eyed the sky warily. “What if it rains?”

Eleazer glanced up at the low gray ceiling. “Nah,” he said. “It won’t rain for a while yet. I can always tell. Now, come on. Hop in.”

I clambered aboard the Little Marian awkwardly, bumping my sore hip against the side. I winced, but Eleazer didn’t notice; he was busy untying the ropes from the cleats and lowering the outboard motor into the water. He pulled the cord and the engine roared to life, and moments later we were moving away from the dock. I looked down through the glassy water, mesmerized by the green sea grasses floating among rocks and pearly mussel shells, and the hundreds of greenish-brown sea urchins that clung to the rocky bottom.