A Whisker In The Dark

I suspected her gift of the sculpture wasn’t totally unselfish—she’d conveniently presented it to me under the tent and suggested I put it on my table with some of her business cards, just in case someone wanted to order a cheese sculpture of their own. I was happy to drum up business for her after everything she’d been through.

“Seems a shame to cut it, don’t you think?” I said. Doris had nicely provided crackers, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut into the sculpture. Besides, it was attracting people, and that was good for business—both mine and the Biddefords’.

“Yeah, but I’m hungry. Maybe I’ll just pinch off one of the shrubberies here,” Mom said, bending down and presumably looking for an inconspicuous spot to pinch some cheese.

A splash followed by a round of laughter caught our attention and we looked over to the Mayor’s head surfacing from the dunk tank. I’d heard dunking the mayor had been a very popular attraction and since the money people paid for a go went to the Chamber of Commerce festivals fund, he was being a good sport about it.

“Looking for Jed’s ghost in there?” Myron nodded at the sculpture. Apparently, he’d wandered over when my attention was on the dunk tank. As much as I would have liked to tell him to get lost, I couldn’t. He had approached me with the terms of a loan that I didn’t have to start paying on for twelve months. That meant I could step up renovations and get the guesthouse fully functional a lot sooner. Unfortunately, it also meant I’d have to be nice to Myron.

“Hardly.” Mom pinched off a corner and plopped it onto a cracker. “You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”

Myron shook his head. “Nope. And I don’t believe there’s treasure either. At least not from what my grandfather told me.”

“We never thought there was any treasure,” Millie said. “I think I would have known if there was something valuable right under my very nose.”

“Naturally. My relatives would have known if Jed had buried any treasure. I just hope this whole business with finding Jed’s skeleton and the rumor of his ghost doesn’t dissuade people from staying at the guesthouse.” Myron winked at me and I tried not to make a face. “I have a vested interest in it now.”

“Don’t worry, Myron. People haven’t been put off by the skeleton. Quite the opposite, in fact. Several of the people who made reservations specifically asked if it was the place where Jedediah Biddeford’s skeleton was found so, apparently, that helps business not hurts it.”

“That’s good.” Myron picked up an apple-pecan loaf. “Say, did they ever send the skeleton to that forensic anthropologist your daughter mentioned?”

“No. The Biddefords are having him cremated.”

“Statute of limitation ran out on that case, anyway.” Seth Chamberlain had come up, along with Mike Sullivan. The two of them paused to let a small gang of children grasping pink and blue clouds of cotton candy on sticks run in front of them.

“So you won’t be running around, trying to investigate that murder, then?” Myron said.

Myron had taken an interest in the guesthouse because of his ancestral ties to it. He said he wanted to embrace his humble beginnings and that was why he’d give me the loan, though Mom and Millie thought it was because he was sweet on me. I guess that’s why he was so interested in the investigation in the first place. I felt a little sad that Jed’s murder would never be solved, but if the police weren’t going to look into it, who would?

“Nope. We’ll be investigating the murder of Bob Biddeford, although that one is pretty cut and dry,” Seth said. “We found the evidence we needed on that shovel and since the three of you heard him confess, it’s a slam dunk.”

“And you won’t need to disrupt the guests in the guesthouse, right?” Millie asked.

Seth looked at her with twinkling eyes. “Nope. Josie is free to run it unencumbered by a police investigation.”

“And since she’ll be having so much construction done with the new loan, I’ll be spending a lot of time over there inspecting it,” Mike said.

I wasn’t sure I liked the non-businesslike look he gave me when he said that. Or the way my mother’s eyebrows waggled up and down. Or the smug look on Millie’s face. Before I could say anything, Ed O’Hara came up and broke a piece of porch railing off the cheese sculpture.

“And I’ll have work for a long time.” Ed looked at me fondly… maybe a little too fondly. “Congratulations on catching the killer by the way.”

“It wasn’t just me. I had a lot of help.” I gestured to my mother and Millie. Even though I really was the one who had figured out who killed Bob, I could be modest when I wanted to be.

“Yeah, and you were on the wrong track, Seth,” Millie said.

“Right. See, we can investigate and not get ourselves in trouble.” My mother shot a pointed look at Mike.

“Yeah. See?” I added, also giving Mike a look just to drive the point home.

Mike held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, I admit you guys did manage to capture him. But he had a gun, you could have been shot.”