Whale of a Crime (The Gray Whale Inn Mysteries Book 7) Read online

  Alex was still sitting in the parlor, which surprised me; I’d expected him to go and see Charlene. After arranging the cookie bars on the cake plate, I walked into the parlor and sat down on the wingback chair across from him. Everyone else had gone to their rooms, and he was leafing through a book on the history of Cranberry Island I’d left on the coffee table.

  “This is an interesting book,” he said. “I had no idea the island has been inhabited for so long.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “If you haven’t had family here for at least 200 years, you’re still kind of an outsider. How’s everyone doing after this morning, do you think?”

  “It was a shock for them,” he admitted. “Heck, it was a shock for me.”

  “I’ll bet. How long had you known Captain Bainbridge?” I asked.

  “We go back about three years,” he said. “I started to crew for him when he started the tour company. I work part time as a nature photographer, part time as an on-board naturalist.”

  “Nice work,” I said.

  “It is,” he said, “But it’s not very centered. I feel like I live out of a suitcase all the time. Sometimes I think it would be nice to have a real home base.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said. “Was the captain as into conservation as you are?”

  He laughed. “Not exactly. Although I’m guessing you knew that, based on how close he got to that pod of whales yesterday.”

  “Profit over protection?” I asked with a grin.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” he answered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” he said, waving his hand as if he were erasing his words. “We just had some different opinions on some things.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Like what the point of whales is,” he said. “I view them as having intrinsic value. He viewed them as a source of income.”

  “Which is why he got so close to them yesterday,”

  “Exactly,” he said. “It’s illegal; it was risky, not just for the whales, but for his business.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t do things like that with a journalist on board,” he said.

  “I thought she was just doing a travel piece?”

  “Why do a travel piece when you can do an exposé?” he asked with a crooked grin.

  “You think?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I’m just speculating. I’ve known enough journalists to know it’s better to be careful.”

  “What made him choose Cranberry Island, anyway?” I asked.

  “I got the impression he’d been here once before,” he said. “But he never said anything about it.”

  I made a mental note to ask Charlene what she could find out. “Did he often have disagreements with people?” I asked.

  He gave me a shrewd look. “In other words, do I think he made enemies who might want him dead?”

  “I guess you could put it that way.”

  “He is... I mean, was... a rather strong personality,” he admitted, then gave me a curious look. “You seem awfully interested in what happened to the captain.”

  “Well, it’s a bit upsetting to find a guest tied to an anchor,” I said. “I’d like to know if one of my guests is a murderer.” Including you, I added silently.

  He was about to respond when there was a thunk in the hall. “What’s that?”

  “The resident ghost?” I joked, but got up and walked to the front hall.

  Footsteps scurried down the hall. I didn’t get there in time to see who it was, but I did get there in time to see a door close.

  It belonged to Stacy Cox—the journalist.

  Maybe Alex was right, I thought as I stared down the hall, and she wasn’t just doing a fluffy travel piece after all. If that was the case, I had to be extra careful to make sure everything at the inn was in order.

  “See a ghost?” Alex asked.

  “Nope,” I said, and was about to tell him who I suspected was listening—but at the last moment, decided against it. “No Charlene tonight?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “I told her I probably needed to be available to smooth things over with the tour group,” he said.

  “Smart call,” I said. “Looks like everyone’s turned in early.”

  “I hope the kids are okay. It bothers me that they had to see that.”

  “They do keep talking about it,” I said.

  He sighed. “I guess it’s part of life. Still...” He got up and stretched. “I think I’m going to turn in, too,” he said.

  “You did have a late night last night,” I agreed.

  He met my eye for a moment, and I felt a twinge of... something. I broke off eye contact. “I’d better go check on the kitten,” I said.

  “Is she doing okay?”

  “So far, so good,” I said. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do with her.”

  “Maybe you can talk Charlene into taking her,” he said.

  “Maybe,” I said, then wished him a good night and headed back to the kitchen, secretly glad my friend wasn’t out with a possible murderer.

  Unfortunately, when I walked into the kitchen, both Biscuit and Bridget were waiting for me in the kitchen. My orange tabby was hissing at the laundry room door, her tail fluffed up like a bottlebrush. My sister, at the kitchen table, didn’t look much more inviting.

  “How was dinner?” I asked.

  “Fine,” she said shortly.

  I sighed and changed topics. “Did you make it out to the gallery?”

  “I did.”

  “What did you think?” I asked.

  “I don’t know how she sells anything there. It seems to me that a store on Mount Desert Island would get a lot more traffic.”

  I grimaced as I opened the pantry and reached for a can of cat food. There was no pleasing Bridget, and I didn’t feel like trying. In fact, I didn’t feel like doing anything other than going to sleep.

  “Did you get moved into the carriage house?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation on neutral topics.

  “Yes. Catherine got me set up with a cot,” she said.

  “I’m sorry we don’t have any rooms available; if you’d told me you were coming, I would have blocked one out.” I thought about Captain Bainbridge’s room. The investigators still had it closed off; I didn’t know when it would be free, and I didn’t know how my sister would feel about moving into a dead man’s room.

  Fortunately, at that moment, John came down the stairs. “Hey, Natalie. Hi, Bridget,” he said, and walked over to give my sister a polite hug. “Sorry we didn’t get a chance to chat earlier today; it’s been a hectic day.”

  “It sounds like it,” she said as she released him.

  “Are you enjoying the island?” he asked.

  “It’s certainly a change from California,” she said.

  “How’s the law practice going?” John asked, sitting down across from her and leaning his elbows on the table, giving her the benefit of his green eyes. “You do corporate law, right?”

  “I do!” She was smiling for the first time since she’d arrived. John winked at me, and I mouthed a “thank you” to him as she launched into an animated description of her latest case. I put a dish of cat food down for Biscuit and then slipped into the laundry room, which was kept nice and toasty by the dryers, to check on my new feline charge. The little gray kitten was all curled up in the fleece blanket I’d nestled into the corner of the room, and started purring like an outboard motor when I reached to touch her soft head. The mobile vet was scheduled to visit the island in the next few days; Jan had told me she seemed healthy, but that I should have her checked out anyway. I felt bad that she’d spent the day alone, but she looked like she’d spent most of it napping—and besides, I didn’t trust Biscuit.

  I put down the food next to her water bowl. She stood up and stretched, then walked over and started eating. I could hear my sister’s voice from the next room, and said a small prayer
of thanks for John. Next time I talked with Charlene, I’d ask her to find out if anyone was missing a kitten, I thought. Biscuit would be very pleased to see this little one disappear.

  Which was kind of how I felt about Bridget.

  We were five years apart, and we’d never been close. Bridget had always been driven to be the best of everything: she accepted nothing less than the highest possible grades, and her heart had been set on law school from the moment she out-argued the neighborhood bully over who was next on the swings in the school playground. She was smart, savvy, deeply driven, and loved corporate America... unlike me. The thought of working in an office building gave me hives.

  And now, I thought as I stroked the kitten’s head, I was enjoying the kind of life I’d dreamed about during the years in my cubicle at the Texas Parks and Wildlife department. A life that my sister obviously considered a failure. Although I was living my dream and had built a successful business on my own terms, the judgment stung a little bit—a throwback to those years in high school when my teachers seemed so puzzled that I wasn’t making the grades my sister had.

  How come it was so hard to leave childhood behind? I wondered as the kitten finished eating and crawled into my lap, still purring. She looked up at me with those beautiful blue eyes and curled up in a ball, her breathing slowing as I stroked her head. As the kitten dozed, I leaned back against the dryer, listening to the murmur of Bridget’s voice and feeling thankful I wasn’t in the kitchen with her. It had been a hectic day; this was the first quiet moment I’d had since waking up.

  I had leaned my head back and closed my own eyes when I heard a dripping sound. I sat up and scanned the laundry room—the faucet was off, and there didn’t appear to be any water coming out from under the washing machine. I set the kitten down and stood up; as I walked across the laundry room, a drop of water hit my arm.

  I looked up just as a piece of the ceiling caved in right over my head.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I burst out of the laundry room into the kitchen, the kitten in my arms. “There’s a leak,” I told John.

  “In the laundry room?”

  “Above it,” I said. “The ceiling is starting to cave in.”

  “Let’s go,” he said. Leaving Bridget in the kitchen, we raced to the stairs.

  It wasn’t too hard to figure out the source of the problem. When we got to the second floor, water was leaking out from under the door at the end of the hall.

  “This doesn’t look good,” I said as John rapped on the door. Nobody answered He knocked again, and when there was no response, he unlocked the door with the skeleton key and opened it.

  My heart sank as water gushed out into the hallway.

  Gayla and Herb were nowhere in evidence, even though the king-sized bed was mussed. John splashed over the floor to the bathroom, with me—literally—in his wake.

  Water cascaded over the side of the claw foot tub; someone had wrapped a washcloth around the overflow drain and let the tub run.

  “What do we do now?” I asked as John turned off the water and opened the drain.

  “Start mopping up,” he said with a sigh.

  “It might be easier if we had something to bail with,” I pointed out.

  “Actually, you’re right. Why don’t you go down and get towels and a bucket? I’ll dam up the bedroom door with these towels.”

  “So glad we have such a dream job,” I said as I headed toward the door.

  “Very relaxing,” he agreed as he followed me with an armload of towels.

  “What’s wrong?” Bridget asked as I hurried through the kitchen.

  “Can you hold her for me?” I asked, plopping the kitten into her lap without waiting for an answer. “One of the guests let a bathtub overflow,” I said as I slipped into the laundry room and grabbed a bucket and a plastic dustpan—good for scooping, I figured.

  “That’s got to be just terrible for the floors,” she said. “You’ll have to worry about mold, too.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement,” I said as I grabbed an armload of towels and headed back toward the stairs.

  John had dammed up the doorway and was scooping up water with towels and a coffee cup by the time I got back upstairs.

  “Here’s a bucket,” I said. “And a dustpan.”

  “Good thinking.” I handed him the bucket and began scooping up water with the dustpan, emptying it into the draining bathtub.

  “Thanks,” he told me as he dumped a bucket full of water into the tub. “What are we going to do with Gayla and Herb for tonight? We’re totally booked up.”

  “Are the police done with the captain’s room?”

  “There’s no crime scene tape, and they seem to have finished with it, but do you think they’ll want to stay there?” he asked.

  “They’re the ones who overflowed the tub,” I said. “Besides... unless you’re willing to give up our bedroom, we really don’t have a choice.”

  He sighed and kept mopping. “I hope the floors will be okay,” he said.

  “I hope the ceiling doesn’t completely collapse,” I said. “Part of this is over the kitchen.”

  He grimaced. “We need to call the insurance company.”

  “On the plus side,” I said, “if they give us a hard time, at least we have a lawyer in the house.”

  Before John could respond, there was a loud exclamation.

  It was Gayla, standing at the doorway. “We had the do not disturb sign up,” she said. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Looks like you forgot you turned the tub on,” John said as he dumped another bucket of water into the bathtub. “Natalie realized it when water started coming through the ceiling in the laundry room.

  Gayla blinked. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I must have started it and forgotten. Well, no harm done, right?”

  “Let’s hope not,” John said diplomatically.

  “There’s no way we can sleep here tonight,” Herb said. “We should probably switch rooms.”

  “I’ll get the Eider room made up for you,” I said.

  “Isn’t that the captain’s room?”

  “I’ll go get everything taken care of,” I said, ignoring the question. There really weren’t any other options; they’d have to take it or leave it. “It’ll be ready in about a half hour.”

  “I really don’t feel comfortable staying in a dead man’s room,” Gayla said, shivering.

  “Well,” John said, “I guess we can make up a couch in the parlor...”

  Gayla and Herb exchanged looks. “It’ll have to do, I suppose,” he said tersely.

  “There are cookies downstairs if you want to snack while you’re waiting,” I told them, wishing Gwen was around—or Catherine. I glanced out the window at the carriage house, but the lights were out; John’s mother must be out with Murray again. I was glad romance was blooming on the island, but I wouldn’t mind if it took a brief break so I could get some help around the inn.

  “Fine,” Gayla said.

  “If you’d like, I can transfer your things,” I said.

  “No,” Gayla barked, looking alarmed. “I mean, I’d hate for you to go to the trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble,” John said. “It’s the least we can do.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “Thirty minutes?”

  I nodded.

  “Let’s go get a snack, Herb,” she said. He hurried to the desk and grabbed a sheaf of papers, then lumbered after her, shooting a nervous glance back at us.

  When they were out of earshot, John looked at me. “What was that all about?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, looking after them. “But now I’m curious about why they don’t want us to move their things.”

  “Natalie.” John gave me a look.

  I sighed and continued bailing, but that didn’t stop me from being curious.

  ***

  By the time we finished getting the room cleaned up and faced the laundry room. The ceiling had fallen in in a few places, and was sagging
. The kitten was curled up in her fleece blanket; she looked up and meowed at us when we walked in.

  “She’s so tiny!” John said.

  “I know. Jan thinks she’s about six weeks old.” She meowed again and stretched, then walked over to rub her side against John’s ankles.

  “We can’t leave her in here tonight,” he said, glancing up at the ceiling.

  “Biscuit doesn’t like her, though.”

  “Well,” he said, bending down to scoop the kitten up, “she’s going to have to adjust.” The kitten started purring as he scratched her head. “What’s your name, little girl?”

  “We haven’t named her yet,” I said. “I vetoed ‘Ratty,’ but ‘Felicia’ is still in the running.”

  “She looks like a ‘Smudge’ to me,” John said, tucking her into the crook of his arm and turning to me. “Ready to call it a night?”

  “I haven’t gotten anything ready for tomorrow,” I said.

  “It’ll keep,” he told me, and kissed me on the forehead. “It’s been a long day; let’s hit the sack. I’ll get up early.”

  “What exactly are you planning to do with that kitten?” I asked, looking down at the furry ball in the crook of his arm.

  “We’re taking it up to bed,” he said.

  “I’d close your closet door if I were you,” I warned him. “Unless you want Biscuit to pee in your shoes.”

  “You think?”

  “I wouldn’t risk it,” I said. I needn’t have worried about John’s shoes, though; the moment Biscuit spotted the kitten, her tail tripled in size and she let out a hiss that sounded like steam erupting from a tea kettle.