Inked Out

  Inked Out

  A Snug Harbor Mystery

  Karen MacInerney

  Copyright © 2021 by Karen MacInerney

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Recipes

  Butter Pecan Turtle Bars

  Lemon Crinkle Cookies

  Don’s Linzer Cookies

  Chocolate Truffle Cookies (Bonus recipe!)

  More Books by Karen MacInerney

  About the Author

  1

  I had no idea being 42 would feel so much like being 16, but life is full of surprises.

  It was a Friday night in Snug Harbor, and after a full day of ordering stock for Seaside Cottage Books, baking a batch of turtle pecan cookies, and womanning the register, I was getting ready for my first date in... well, let's just call it a long time, shall we?

  The gentleman I was scheduled to dine with had been my crush long ago in Snug Harbor, until a nasty rumor quashed our budding romance. Now, less than a month after I'd moved to Snug Harbor to take over the bookstore, we were about to have an official date... and I was looking forward not only to the company, but to finding out more about an intriguing discovery we'd just made behind a loose rock in the store's basement. Nicholas had said he had found some new information, and I was dying to know what it was.

  Now, with a mere nine minutes until Nicholas Waters, my teenage "one who got away," was scheduled to arrive at my doorstep, I had been through three changes of clothes and was trying to pull a clump of mascara out of my eyelashes without smudging it all over my face. My hair was up in a pink scrunchie, and since I hadn't yet decided what to wear, I was tucked into a pink fuzzy bathrobe liberally decorated with teacups.

  As I pulled at my now-stuck-together eyelashes, Winston, my rescue Bichon Frise, whined at my feet, and I realized that in all the anticipation, I'd forgotten to take him out for a potty break.

  "I'll take you," I said. "Hang on." With Winston at my heels, I headed to the door, slipped on my Croc sandals—not the ideal look with my pink bathrobe, but I was only going out for a minute—and pushed open the back door.

  I reached down to attach the leash to Winston's collar, but I was too late; he was already rocketing down the steps and past the line of blooming roses to the beach.

  "Winston!" I yelled, clomping down the stairs as fast as I could in my Crocs as the little dog sprinted toward the beach. "Winston! Come!"

  Of course, he completely ignored me. He got to the beach and hooked a right, out of my sight. Where was he going? We'd only been here for a month; what if he got lost?

  I hoofed it down the walkway to the beach, my bathrobe flapping with every step, eyes scanning for my little white dog. He'd never done anything like this before. Why today? Why now?

  I spotted him as I got to the beach, galloping toward the Snug Harbor Pier, fur rippling in the breeze of the deep blue water as he ran. Normally, I'd stop to admire the deepening peach-pink sky across the water, gilding the tops of the dark evergreens and making the granite cliffs glow, or search for bits of sea glass among the smooth rocks underfoot, but this evening I was focused only on the little white ball of fur that was hurtling down the rocky beach. He was my best friend, and my lapse in judgment had put him in danger.

  "Winston!" I called again. A little girl with an ice cream cone stared at me, eyes wide, as her parents stifled grins. I ignored them and kept going; he might have short legs, but Winston was fast.

  Finally, he stopped, nose glued to the ground.

  "Good dog!" I said, racing to catch the little dog. I had almost reached him when he flung himself down on the ground, rolling with abandon in the remains of a washed-up bait bag.

  I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him away from the bag of rotting herring, but not before he'd managed to liberally coat himself in the slimy contents. He smelled... well, like a washed-up bait bag. I wasn't sure how many baths it would take to get rid of the smell, and Nicholas was due in—I checked my watch—fifteen minutes.

  "Let's go, buddy," I said sternly, picking him up and holding him out in front of me as I clomped back to Seaside Cottage books. I winked at the now-giggling little girl, who'd forgotten her ice cream cone in the excitement of watching my catch my wayward fluff ball, and marched back up the walkway to Seaside Cottage Books... and my daughter, who was pulling a duffle bag out of the trunk of her VW Bug.

  "Caroline?" I asked, almost forgetting about the wriggling Winston for a moment. "What are you doing here?"

  "I've decided not to go to college," she said.

  "What?" Caroline had been admitted to UConn for the upcoming fall semester, and had been planning on studying business... at least until now. "Why?" I asked. Winston strained to get to my daughter, smearing me with more dead herring in the process.

  "College degrees are meaningless these days, and way too expensive. I need to experience life, not sit in a classroom."

  "Okay," I said slowly.

  "I went to Dad's house, but that horrible writer woman is there. How can he do that? I mean, the body of the marriage isn't even cold, and he's shacking up with some literary hussy."

  "You must mean Kirsten," I said. I'd met Ted's—now Theodore's—new girlfriend just a few weeks earlier, when she'd come to do a signing at the bookstore's grand re-opening. Of course, I'd had no idea she was dating my ex until he turned up on her arm.

  "Yes, Kirsten, or K.T., or whatever her name is," she said. "I couldn't stand having that woman in our house. So I decided to come and stay with you."

  "With me? Honey, I'm thrilled... but I only have one bedroom."

  "That's no problem; I can sleep on the couch. It's a sleeper sofa, right?"

  "Right," I said.

  "That'll work. I want to spend time with someone sane. Someone who's going to be mature, and not start going out on the town with the first person she meets." She reached out to rub Winston behind the ears, then changed her mind; he was still covered in bait. "What's for dinner, by the way?"

  Winston reached to lick my daughter's hand, delighted to see her, and wriggled, still trying to get free. "Well..."

  My daughter slung her duffle bag over her shoulder. "I was thinking we'd watch a movie, maybe start a puzzle together."

  "Actually, honey, I've got plans tonight," I began.

  "Max?"

  I turned, pink bathrobe flapping in the breeze off the water, a smelly Bichon Frise in my hands and a pink scrunchie in my hair. Nicholas was standing by my car, looking heartbreakingly handsome.

  "I'm a few minutes early... sorry about that," he said. He wore khakis and
a blue button-down that showed off his trim form, and was holding a bouquet of peonies—one of my favorite flowers.

  Caroline turned to my dinner date, and her eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"

  "Nicholas is an old friend from when I spent summers in Snug Harbor," I interjected. "Nicholas, this is my daughter Caroline. Caroline, Nicholas."

  "Nice to meet you," Nicholas said, flashing her a careful smile. "Your mom's told me all about you."

  Caroline blinked a few times, then turned and glared at me. "Oh, my God, Mom. You've got to be kidding me. You have a boyfriend?"

  2

  "Boyfriend? Nicholas isn't my boyfriend. We're just going to dinner," I said, feeling my face heat up. Winston yelped and wriggled even more, sending a fresh waft of pungent herring to my nostrils. I glanced over at Nicholas, who looked like he'd rather be just about anywhere but standing in front of my daughter and me right now.

  Not the ideal start to a first date.

  "I guess I'll head to grandma's then, so I don't get in the way," Caroline said in a martyresque tone, unshouldering the duffle bag.

  "No!" I protested. "Please, stay. I want to hear what's going on with you, and what prompted your... decision." I turned to Nicholas, thinking that nothing in the divorce books I'd read had prepared me for this particular situation. "I've got to go get dressed and do something with this dog. Why don't you come upstairs with Caroline and me while I finish getting ready?"

  "Maybe another night would be better," Nicholas said. "It looks like you have your hands full."

  I blushed, suddenly aware of my less-than-date-ready attire all over again.

  "It'll be fine," I said, but I wasn't sure it was.

  "Let's reschedule," he said. "How about tomorrow night?"

  "I've got the mystery book group tomorrow night," I said. "Maybe the night after?"

  "That should work," he said.

  "In the meantime, can you tell me at least what you found out about the book we found in the basement?" Seaside Cottage Books, as it turned out, had been a rum-running hub sometime in the past, and we'd discovered a notebook written in code hidden in the basement, not far from an old radio that had also been concealed. An old rumor suggested the operator of the concealed radio had long ago hidden his ill-gotten gains, creating a buried treasure mystery that I was hoping we might be a little closer to solving.

  "I'm afraid we've hit a bit of a brick wall, unless you've got some ideas," he said. "In the meantime, though... take these." He proffered me the flowers.

  "Nicholas, I'm so sorry..."

  "It's fine, really," he said. "I understand. Family comes first." He winked at me and walked away, leaving me holding the peonies, wondering whether I'd done the right thing, and feeling an ache in my heart; I'd really been looking forward to tonight. Nicholas and I had had our relationship derailed thirty years ago, and I was really looking forward to seeing what happened once we got it back on track. I loved my daughter, and she was a priority for me, but I didn't want whatever was happening between Nicholas and me derailed a second time.

  I looked at my daughter. "Maybe you can find a vase for the flowers."

  "Well... I guess I could," she said. "Although I don't know where anything is. Do you have the whole place, or just the upstairs?"

  "The upstairs," I said. "It's small, but it works. We can give Winston a bath."

  "He certainly could use one. What happened?"

  "He got loose and ran down to the beach, then rolled in an old bait bag."

  "Let's get him cleaned up then," she said, following me up the stairs to my small apartment above the store.

  The next day, thankfully, was busy enough that I didn't have too much time to think about Nicholas... or, for that matter, Caroline. Not that she was around much to think about. I had a new shipment of books in, it was time to pay bills, and I needed to do a clean-up of the desk. I tidied up the area around the register, using a feather duster on the antique inkwell I'd found at an estate sale years ago in Boston and pulling a few dull pencils out of the mason jar of pens I kept for signing credit card slips. When thoughts of the situation did intrude, however, they were tinged with guilt. Was it Theo's and my decision to divorce that had made Caroline decide not to go to school? Had I somehow done incalculable damage by changing the structure of the nuclear family? And was my daughter right that it was too soon for me to start dating? We'd spent last evening together, but she hadn't been inclined to talk about school, her dad, her dad's girlfriend… or my canceled date.

  And speaking of dating, had I already ruined things with Nicholas a second time?

  As I ruminated on these less-than-pleasurable thoughts, the door to the shop opened, and two women I didn't recognize walked in. They were both in their fifties or sixties, thin, and with their long, straight hair pulled back and their cashmere cardigans, both of them looked like they're recently been posing for a Talbot's catalog. Definitely related, I decided; both had the same sharp cheekbones and bright blue eyes.

  "Hi," I said, smiling a welcome as I reshelved a book on Maine gardening. "Let me know if you need any help."

  The taller and slightly darker of the two women gave me a polite smile. "Where is your estate planning section?"

  "It's over in finance," I said, pointing to the far corner.

  "Thank you," she said.

  "Working all alone?" the shorter woman said, her eyes darting around the store with interest. While her taller compatriot had made a beeline toward the finance section, she lingered near the front desk, looking at the bookmarks, lupine- and lobster-decorated notepads, and postcards I kept displayed for tourists.

  "I have an assistant, but she's not here right now," I said. As I spoke, the other woman said, "I can't find the estate section here. Can you help me?"

  "Sure," I said, heading back to the finance section. "We don't have many, but here's what we've got." I squatted down and showed her the small library we had on the subject of wills and estates.

  "Which book do you recommend?" she asked.

  "I'm afraid I couldn't say," I said. "I don't have that much of an estate to contend with, so I haven't spent a lot of time researching the subject."

  "Pickings are kind of slim," the woman said. "Do you have any more books in the back?"

  "I'll go look," I said. "Be right back." I headed back to the storage room and my laptop and did a quick digital search of recent orders. There was one book on wills and trusts that had been delivered in a shipment yesterday. I located the box and dug through it, finding the book near the bottom.

  "Here you go," I said a moment later. "I don't know if it's any better, but it was just released a few months ago."

  She flipped through it, then grabbed one more book with a manicured hand. "I'll give them a try," she said. "What's your return policy in case they don't work?'

  "Just make sure they're undamaged and show no sign of wear," I said, irked at the question; these women clearly had no issues paying for a book. I knew I shouldn't, but I couldn't help but add, "The library is open if you're only interested in borrowing."

  The woman put the books down on the counter and gave me a thin smile. "I'll take these," she said. "The library has very little that's current, I find." She dug in her large, designer-looking purse and retrieved a shiny wallet, then pulled out a credit card. The name said Elizabeth Halsten. I looked at the woman with more interest; I knew Bethany was working on a story involving her family. "My assistant is interested in your family," I said. "I think she's been researching your ancestors."

  "Oh?" the woman said. "Who is your assistant?"

  "Bethany Morrison," I said. The woman's eyes widened a fraction when I said the name. "Do you know her?"

  "No," she said, shaking her head. "Never heard of her."

  "I'm sure she'd love to interview your family if you'd be willing," I suggested.

  "Sorry, but we don't do interviews." As she spoke, she sent a sharp glance at the woman with her, who studiously avoided her eyes. She signed he
r name on the slip with a flourish and slid the books off the counter.

  "Can I offer you a cookie?" I asked, pointing the caramel pecan turtle cookies on the plate beside the register. "I offer a free one with every purchase."

  "No, thank you," the woman said. "We're gluten- and sugar-free."

  "Got it," I said. "Well, have a good day, ladies!" I said as the two women headed for the door, Elizabeth in the lead, trailing a waft of expensive-smelling perfume in their wake. I wondered if they'd be back with the books to return. Probably. Nothing I could do about it, though.

  I was moving the table to the back of the store for Bethany's murder mystery writing group when Caroline poked her head around the stairs.

  "Is there anything for lunch?"

  "There should be rotisserie chicken in the fridge and a loaf of bread in the basket under the window," I told her. "You can make yourself a sandwich."

  "Thanks. Is there coffee?"

  "In the cabinet above the coffeemaker," I advised her, glancing at my watch. It was almost two in the afternoon.

  "Great," she said. "What are we having for dinner?"

  "I don't know yet," I told her as I arranged chairs around the table.

  "Oh—and one more thing—what's the Internet password?"

  "Booksmart1," I said. "Bethany picked it."

  "Got it," she said, and disappeared back up the stairs. I sighed; as delighted as I was to see her, I wasn't sure how long my living arrangements were going to work with Caroline bunking in my living room. And we still had to discuss the prospect of a job...