A Twist In The Tail

‘Good question, and if it was Tina, then who left the clog print?’ Millie asked.

Flora, who had remained silent the whole time, her head on a swivel like a referee watching a tennis match, spoke. ‘What about Stella Dumont?’

We all jerked our heads toward the window, where we could see the corner of the Smugglers Bay Inn, circling seagulls and all, in the distance.

‘Stella Dumont? She does serve meals at her inn and it’s possible Charles ate there.’ Millie said.

‘I heard she was entering that cooking contest that the paper is running, you know, the one that has the $5000 cash prize?’ Mom said.

‘She was? Well that would be quite a coup for her business. If she won, she could use that to draw in customers, and of course, the money never hurts.’ Millie stared out the window at the inn. ‘She does have that seagull problem though, I wonder if her business is hurting.’

‘Maybe she’s afraid the renovations Josie is doing will hurt it even further,’ Mike said.

‘And maybe she’s afraid a bad review from Charles Prescott would put her under,’ Mom said.

‘She does a lot of the cooking over there, she might wear chef’s clogs just like the ones that left that print under the window,’ Millie said

‘That might explain why she’s been hanging around here,’ Flora said.

‘She has? When?’ I asked.

Flora shrugged. ‘I didn’t write down the dates, that’s not in my job description.’ Flora took another cookie and settled back in her chair. ‘But I saw her at the door by the kitchen a few times.’

‘The kitchen? What was she doing there?’ I’d never seen Stella anywhere near the guesthouse and, given that we aren’t exactly best friends, I doubted Stella would be popping over to pay a social visit.

Flora crunched on her cookie and looked up at us innocently. ‘I assumed she came here to flirt with Mike.’

All heads swiveled in Mike’s direction. Oh, that’s right, he’d taken Stella to the prom instead of me. Sure, we’d just been kids and that was all water under the bridge now, but it spoke volumes as to his character.

Mike held his hands up in a placating gesture. ‘She doesn’t come here to see me. But I have seen her in the kitchen a few times. I thought she was coming to see Josie.’

I shook my head. ‘She’s not coming here to see me. In fact, I had no idea she was anywhere near here. Did you talk to her Flora?’

Flora shook her head. ‘None of my business what you people get up to. I see someone in the kitchen, I figure they have a reason to be there. I don’t ask questions.’

‘That’s odd, what do you think she was doing here?’ Mom asked.

Millie’s eyes sparkled with excitement. She leaned forward. ‘Maybe she was casing the joint. Maybe she figured she could kill two birds with one stone. Get rid of the food critic that was going to give her a bad review and make it look like the guesthouse was unsafe, potentially getting it closed down, or Josie arrested for murder, and thus driving more business to her inn.’

Eight

I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for the police to accuse me again, so at five o’clock I headed across the field and down the hill to the Smugglers Bay Inn, hoping to catch Stella in the kitchen. I knew she served dinner at 5:30 so I figured she’d be in. It wasn’t a social call. I wanted to see why she’d been hanging around the guesthouse and, most importantly, I wanted to see if she wore clogs.

I found her outside setting up the tables for dinner and waving her arms to shoo away the seagulls who circled around the deck. The deck overlooked the cove, and the subtle sound of the waves and scent of the ocean would have made for great dining ambiance if it weren’t for the screeching.

‘Shoo, shoo. Get out of here!’ Stella flapped a white cleaning rag at the gulls. Two of them flew away, but one stood its ground on the post of the railing until Stella lurched toward it. She turned to glare at me as I approached.

I glanced at her feet. Darn it! She wasn’t wearing clogs, she was wearing white tennis shoes. But that didn’t mean anything. She could still be the killer. Maybe she had a pair tucked away in her closet, complete with telltale scraps of mulch stuck in the treads and splatters of blood on the top.

‘Well if it isn’t Josie Waters. I heard there was an incident at your guesthouse. Hope that hasn’t put off the tourists.’ Stella’s tone indicated that she did indeed hope that very thing.

A gull swooped overhead. Splat!

A white and orange plop of seagull poop landed on the railing between us.

Stella raised her fists to the gull. ‘You get out of here!’ She raced over to the post and wiped it clean with a napkin.

Good to know that she was just as subtle and lady-like as ever. And out here in the afternoon sunlight I could see that she wore just as much makeup too. A suffocating cloud of flowery perfume wafted over and I tried not to gag. She’d put the perfume on heavy in high school too. There was one difference though – her hair hadn’t been that bleachy shade of blonde back then. What in the world did Mike see in her?