Four Seasons of Mystery Read online

  “I'm guessing the food was sabotaged,” I said.

  “What other explanation is there?” she said. “You cook all the time, and nothing like this has ever happened before.”

  “I wish I knew,” I said. I told Charlene about the bottle I had dropped off with my neighbor John after breakfast. “He’s going to take it over to the police lab on the mainland today. Maybe they’ll be able to turn something up.”

  “You’d better hope there are fingerprints, too— and not just yours. Since you found it in your kitchen and all.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” I said.

  Charlene peeled the wrapper from one of the Double-Berry Lemon Muffins I’d brought down and sank her teeth into it. “You know, I think this is one of my favorite recipes,” she said.

  “Mine too,” I said, unwrapping my own muffin and anticipating the bright flavor of moist, lemon-scented cake studded with blueberries and raspberries. “I had a few leftover berries, so I decided to use them.”

  “They're terrific,” Charlene said through a mouthful of muffin. “I keep thinking about yesterday, though. I wonder who might have done something like that? I mean, unless the clams were tainted, obviously someone tampered with the food— besides, doesn't food poisoning usually take a while to kick in?”

  “More than fifteen minutes, I'd think.”

  “Exactly. I don't think it was the clams. Besides, since the only people who got sick were the ones who ate pie, I’m guessing that’s the source.”

  I sighed and bit into a muffin. The bright lemony flavor wasn’t enough to stave off the sinking feeling that had been haunting me all morning. I had stayed up half the night baking those pies— and as it turned out, they all had to be thrown away. Except for the ones the lab took for testing, of course. A copy of today’s Daily Mail sat on the edge of the counter. I’d gotten publicity all right. Just not the kind I wanted.

  But why?” I asked. “Why on earth would you want to poison half the island at a clambake?”

  “Well, I heard Mabel was a bit sore that she wasn’t in charge this year.”

  “Mabel Penney?”

  Charlene nodded. “She’s run it for the last several years, and got her nose out of joint when they told her you were going to be handling it.”

  “I had no idea,” I said. “Still, is that really a motive for poisoning pies?”

  “You never know,” she said. “On the plus side, at least Andi got the front cover out of it. That means Gertrude might be on the way out.”

  “Andi is going to replace Gertrude Pickens?”

  “They’ve been threatening to demote her to the obituary pages,” Charlene said. “Making room for fresh blood, so to speak.”

  “I thought Gertrude was their crack reporter?”

  Charlene finished off her muffin and dabbed at her lips with a napkin. “Not anymore,” she said. “Apparently Andi's been moving up in the ranks.”

  “At least she hasn't said I was responsible for murder,” I said. Gertrude had written a series of stories insinuating that I had murdered one of my guests recently, and I wasn’t sure she’d gotten over the disappointment of being wrong.

  Charlene glanced at the front page of the paper, which featured a blown-up image of the inn, complete with several policemen. “Only food poisoning. At least so far.”

  “Not comforting,” I said. Not at all.

  A half hour later, I stepped out of the store into a beautiful early summer afternoon. A cool breeze riffled my hair, smelling of the roses that lined the front of the shop and tinged with the briny scent of the sea.

  As climbed onto my Schwinn, I reflected that it was a good thing I rode my bike so darned much. Weight gain is an occupational hazard of innkeeping; with all of those delicious goodies at arm’s reach, how could it not be?

  I debated going back to the inn, but decided instead to point the bike toward Mabel Penney’s house. Not that I was expecting her to admit poisoning my blueberry pies. In fact, I’m not sure what I was planning to do. But it was better than doing nothing— and besides, after eating three muffins, I could use the exercise.

  Mabel’s house was one of the pretty shingle-style houses that dotted the water’s edge on the south side of the island, and my legs were feeling the burn by the time I pulled up to the driveway. I knew she rented it out for a few weeks in the summer and went to stay with her sister, and I could imagine she made a nice bit of extra money doing so. A screened porch wrapped around the little house, and the lupine-studded meadow below it sloped down to a rocky beach.

  I parked my bike and walked down the path to the white-painted front door. Two pots filled with bright red geraniums flanked it, and wind chimes tinkled in the breeze. All in all, the little gray house looked like the on-site location for an L.L. Bean photo shoot.

  I knocked at the door and tried to figure out what I was going to say. I didn’t have long; a moment later the door opened, and Mabel’s wizened face peered around it.

  “Can I help you?” she said, sounding less than friendly.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m sorry to drop in like this, but I was wondering if we could talk for a little bit?”

  She pressed her thin lips together, then opened the door wider to admit me. “I suppose. I’ve only got a few minutes, though.”

  I followed her into the house, which smelled of lavender and the ever-present tang of the sea. The white curtains billowed in the breeze as she led me to her parlor, a cozy room filled with slipcovered couches and a beautiful blue rag rug. A pitcher of lupines, blazing purple and blue, decorated the coffee table, and little dishes of dried lavender dotted the hutch and end tables.

  “Your house is beautiful,” I said. And it was.

  “Thank you,” she said, thawing only slightly as we sat down on the pale blue couches. She retreated to the corner of one and crossed her arms.

  I clasped my hands and leaned forward. “I was just talking with Charlene a few minutes ago, and I want to apologize.”

  Mabel’s narrow eyebrows shot up. “Apologize?”

  “When they asked me to take over the clambake, I didn’t realize you had done it for so many years.” She bit her lips.

  “Well, you’re the professional, I suppose.”

  “Still. You’ve done it for years, and from everything I’ve heard, it went off splendidly.” I chuckled. “Hand it over to the professional, and half the island gets carted off to the hospital.”

  A smile tugged at the edge of her lips. “Bad luck, I guess.”

  “Do you think so?” I asked.

  “What else would it be?” she said primly.

  I looked at her hard. “Some people think someone tampered with the pies.”

  Her blue eyes didn’t waver, and she shrugged. “I can’t think why they would.”

  “Me neither,” I said, studying her. “But since it turned out so disastrously.... I wonder if you’d be willing to take it back over next year?”

  She shook her head sharply. “I don’t think so. It’s a lot of work, you see, and I’m not as young as I used to be. To be honest, it was a bit of relief.”

  Was it, I wondered? “Are you sure?”

  Mabel nodded. “I think I’m done with the clambake.” She glanced at her watch. “I hate to hurry you off, but I must be going. I have tea with a friend shortly, and I hate to be late.”

  “Can I use your restroom before I go?”

  She sighed. “I suppose so. It’s down the hall.”

  “Thanks.”

  The bathroom was as sweet as the rest of the house, decorated in white and lemon yellow. Once the door was shut behind me, I suppressed a twinge of conscience and opened the medicine cabinet, glancing through the contents.

  Heart medication, wart remover, something that looked like it might be for diabetes. I was about to give up when a brown bottle caught my eye.

  I pulled it down and read the yellowing label: Ipecac. The bottle was full; I unscrewed the lid and took a whiff, wrinkling my nose at the sme
ll.

  It was the same stuff I’d found in my trashcan that morning.

  “Ipecac,” I announced to Charlene at the store that afternoon.

  My friend handed me a mug of coffee, pulled up a stool across the counter from me, and unsnapped the lid of the Tupperware I'd brought with me. “How do you know?”

  “I found it in her medicine cabinet; it's the exact same bottle I found in the trash.”

  “Do you think she did it?” Charlene asked, helping herself to one of the brownies inside. “Just to get the clambake back to herself?”

  “If so, she's changed her mind. I offered to let her host it again, and you'd have thought I wanted to send my overflow guests to her spare bedroom.”

  “So it's not Mabel. Who else might have it in for you?”

  “There's a bakery over on the mainland that wanted the business,” I said.

  “The one that keeps trying to get me to sell their gluten-free muffins?” Charlene made a face. “They taste like baked cardboard.”

  “Still. The owner was here that day.”

  “True,” she said. “Anyone else have it in for you?”

  “Other than Andi Jordan?” I asked.

  “Her photographer was pretty cute.”

  “He took a beautiful photo,” I said, reaching for the Daily Mail at the end of the counter. The inn looked gorgeous, framed against the pine trees and the green grass. If only it weren't for the policemen— and Gerald Whitestone, hunched over and looking sickly, a plate of my half-eaten pie in his hand.

  “Except for the sick guy eating your food,” Charlene said helpfully.

  “Why does this always happen to me?” I asked, pushing the paper away. “I can't look at it anymore.”

  “Bad luck,” she said. Then, “Wait. What's that?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “There's somebody by the trash can. There, in the right-hand corner. Isn't that where you found the ipecac?”

  I squinted at the photo. I couldn't make out who it was, but there was definitely a familiar-looking bottle in the person's hand.

  “Did you get the photographer's number?” I asked Charlene.

  “No,” she said, licking a bit of chocolate off of a polished fingernail, “but I wish I had.”

  “Would you mind calling Gertrude and asking for it?”

  “A bit forward, don't you think?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow.

  “When has that stopped you before?”

  She pursed her lips. “Good point,” she said, and reached for the phone.

  We arrived at Bar Harbor Photography Studio late the next morning, after stopping for apple turnovers at the much maligned Corner Bakery. Charlene had dressed up for the occasion in a chiffon-like blouse with a brilliant green sweater that made her highlighted hair glow.

  “Do you think he's single?” she asked as we stopped outside the small shop. Framed in the window were a number of landscape photographs, along with a few 'arty' shots in black and white. I preferred the landscapes to the images of rusty nails and broken-down doors, but to each her own.

  “I didn't see a ring,” I said. “Then again, I didn't look, either.”

  A bell jingled as we pushed through the door. The front room's white walls were covered in framed photographs, and a computer sat on an old wood desk in the corner. Irving appeared in a doorway that must have led to his studio in the back of the shop.

  “Charlene, right?” he asked, smiling appreciatively at my friend. “And Natalie,” he said, turning to me. “The innkeeper.”

  “Thanks so much for letting us come and see the photos,” I said.

  “I'm real sorry about what happened,” he said. “I was hoping it would be a good publicity piece for you. I did get some nice shots of the inn. If you'd like them, I can let you have them at a discount— considering the circumstances.”

  “That would be great,” I said.

  “Why don't you pull up a chair and take a look?” he asked, gesturing toward the computer. “I pulled up the album for you. You can just click through and write down the names of any photos you're interested in.”

  “Thanks,” I said, pulling up a chair in front of the computer.

  “I'll be in the back if you need me,” he said, and Charlene watched longingly as he disappeared again.

  “No ring,” she whispered, but I was already scanning the photos.

  They started out innocently enough, with islanders smiling in front of heaps of clams. I fast-forwarded to the photo of Gerald, hoping we could zero in on the person with the bottle in her hand.

  “This is the photo,” I said, tracking down the shot. We zoomed in, but neither of us could identify the person holding the bottle; his or her face was lost in the shadow of a tree.

  “Check the ones right before and right after,” Charlene suggested. I did, but there was no sign of the mystery person— or the bottle. I leaned back in my chair, defeated.

  “What now?” I asked.

  Charlene peered at the screen. “Look— he did a whole series of the pie table.” I clicked on one of the shots; it showed Charlene in her cow apron, a pie in each hand. “My God,” she said. “I had no idea I looked so enormous in that apron!”

  “It's a bad angle,” I said, flipping through the photos quickly, looking for something— anything— that might shed light on what had happened that day. I was almost to the end of the series when Charlene grabbed my shoulder.

  “Stop,” she said, pointing to the screen. I looked, and did a double-take. There, in the corner of the table, was the person with the bottle. Only in this shot, there was no shadow obscuring the face, and the bottle in plain view— right over one of the pies.

  “I can't believe it,” she said, letting out a long, low whistle.

  “Can I help you?” Andi Jordan eyed me coolly over her wire-rimmed glasses. Her office was on the second floor of the Daily Mail building, an old shingled house right near the center of Bar Harbor with a view of the village green. A sun catcher glinted in the window, and there was a photo of a chunky golden retriever on her desk.

  “I've got some new information you might want to include in your next article about the clambake,” I said.

  “Oh? Did they find out what the problem was?” she asked, leaning back in her chair. “Was it the clams?”

  “Ipecac,” I said.

  She blinked. “You put ipecac in the clams?”

  “No,” she said. “I didn't put ipecac in anything. And it wasn't in the clams. It was in the pie.”

  Andi was quiet for a moment. “Did some sort of toxicology report come back?” she asked.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “But I thought you might be interested in this.” I laid the photo Irving had printed for us on her desk.

  She leaned forward to study the photo, and the color leached from her face. “Where did you get this?”

  “Your photographer took the photo,” I said.

  “You have no right to it. I paid for the shoot. These photos belong to me.”

  “You set me up,” I said. “You put ipecac in the pie so you could get a big story out of it.”

  “No,” she said, grabbing the photo and crumpling it into a ball.

  “That's just a copy,” I said. “I have the original right here.” I held up a CD.

  I thought I saw tears welling behind the glasses. “I can explain,” she said, her voice husky.

  “I'm listening.” I sat down in one of her visitors' chairs; Charlene pulled up the other one.

  “I didn't mean to cause any harm,” she said. “It's just... I need this job. It's the only one I could find, and with the newspaper industry doing what it's doing, there's talk of laying me off already.”

  “I heard the paper was increasing circulation.” Charlene examined a flawless pink fingernail. “You were just hoping to move up the ranks, is my guess.”

  She said nothing.

  “So you've been manufacturing stories,” I said.

  Andi swallowed.

  �
�There weren't really rats in the kitchen at Eagle Lake Cafe, were there?” Charlene said.

  The reporter looked down at her keyboard.

  “Or cockroaches at the Moonshine Inn,” I said.

  “You can't tell my editor,” she said, almost moaning. “I'll lose my job!”

  “Too late,” I said. “I'm sorry. They're printing a retraction tomorrow.”

  “Well, all's well, that ends well,” Charlene said as she popped a chocolate chip cookie into her mouth. She'd brought over the paper as soon as it hit the store; I'd thanked her by baking a batch of her favorite cookies— chocolate chip with dried cranberries and walnuts mixed in. “And don't they say that all press is good press?” she said through a mouthful of crumbs.

  “This last article certainly is,” I said, holding up the latest copy of the Daily Mail. Innkeeper Exonerated: Local Reporter Suspected Of Poisoning Pies.

  “Think Andi will keep her job?” Charlene asked.

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  “She seemed nice enough. Just... desperate.”

  “Nice people don't try to ruin local businesses just to make themselves look good,” I said. “Still, I do feel sorry for her. She's young. I hope she's learned something.”

  “At least Gerald is out of the hospital.”

  “I'm glad to hear it,” I said.

  “And I've got more good news,” Charlene said, looking impish.

  “Uh oh,” I said. “What? You have a date with the photographer?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We're going to dinner Friday night. But that's not what I was talking about.”

  I shook my head, marveling at my friend's ability to attract men. “What is it, then?”

  “I hope you had fun baking all those pies this year.”

  “Oh, no,” I said, sinking down into my chair. “No.”

  “Yes,” she said, her impish look breaking into an evil grin. “You guessed it, Nat. They think you did such a terrific job that they've decided you should host it every year!”