A Twist In The Tail

Nero sat back and I started putting the papers into a pile. The recipes triggered a memory of the ripped note the police had taken.

‘Oh that’s right. That’s the other clue. The review that Charles was writing. But was it really a review?’

Merooo.

I hadn’t actually looked at the note in any detail, but when Seth Chamberlain had held that bag up I could see it was just a scrap of paper. Not even enough words to tell who the review was about. If it even was a review. Clearly the killer must’ve taken the other half. It seemed odd that the scrap of paper was found in his room, but Charles’ body was in the West wing.

Had he fought with the killer in his room and then somehow gone down to the closed off wing with them? That would indicate it was someone staying at the guesthouse. Of course, it could have been a review about the Oyster Cove Guesthouse. But if it had been, then who had taken the other part of it and why? Seems like I would be the only one interested in keeping that from publication.

The piece of paper might not even be a review, but that didn’t mean that Charles hadn’t written a bad review of someone else recently. What if he had? And what if that chef heard he was in town and wanted to exact their revenge?

I glanced in the direction of the Smugglers Bay Inn again, except I couldn’t see it because I was crouched on the floor. I didn’t need to though, because the thought was already in my head. If he’d previously written a review about Stella, maybe I could find it online.

I grabbed two cans of cat food in one hand and stood with the recipes in the other. The cans went onto the counter and I pulled out a recipe entitled ‘Brunch Egg Dish Casserole’ that looked interesting. Bread, cheese, eggs, milk and ham. I had the ingredients for it. I could assemble it at night and pop it in the oven in the morning. If I wasn’t mistaken, mom had gotten this recipe from Millie and made it many times when I was a kid. It was quite tasty and seemed easy (at least it did when Mom made it). I put the recipe beside the cans and tucked the other recipes back into The Joy of Cooking.

Meow.

Marlowe had jumped onto the little table under the window that I used as a work desk and was prowling around my laptop.

‘I’m one step ahead of you about looking online.’

Mewoow!

I sat down and started typing. Turns out finding Charles’ Laughing Gourmet reviews wasn’t as easy as I thought. A search for the Laughing Gourmet brought up a website all about Charles, but when I searched for ‘Smugglers Bay’ on it, no review came up. Odd, because I saw a few other reviews of restaurants in New York and Connecticut. I searched Yelp. No review was posted by him on there either. Charles probably didn’t use common places where anyone could post a review though. I decided to do a search on the Smugglers Bay Inn.

My phone chirped and I glanced at the display. It was my daughter, Emma. My heart filled with warmth. As I answered, all thoughts of murder and bad reviews fled.

‘Em! How are you doing?’ I chirped.

‘Great, Mom. What about you? Gram said there was some excitement in Oyster Cove today.’ Emma’s voice had an edge of concern, and I wanted to put her at ease right away. As the parent, I was the one who was supposed to be doing the worrying, not her. Speaking of parents, what was my mother thinking, telling Emma about Charles? Hopefully she hadn’t mentioned that the excitement involved a dead body.

‘Oh, a little excitement is always good. It’s nothing to be worried about,’ I lied.

‘A little excitement?’ Emma sounded incredulous. ‘I would say a dead person is more than a little excitement. And I heard it was murder? Are you okay out there?’

Oops… apparently Mom had told Emma the details. The concern in Emma’s voice made my heart swell, but I didn’t want Emma worrying about me. I made a mental note to tell my mother to keep things like this under her hat. Not that I expected ‘things like this’ to happen often.

‘I’m fine. There’s no danger. That poor man was killed over some sort of lover’s quarrel or old feud.’ I laughed to show just how unconcerned I was. ‘It’s not like there’s a serial killer running around town.’

Was there? I had assumed that Charles’ death was perpetrated by someone who had a reason to kill him, but what if there was a homicidal maniac running loose. For the first time I felt a niggle of worry. If the killer wasn’t targeting Charles in particular, were the rest of us in danger? I pushed that thought to the back of my mind, maybe I would be extra-cautious, but no attempts had been made on anyone else and Charles had had a reputing for rubbing people the wrong way. Hopefully his death was just a one-off.

‘Okay Mom, but if you need me to come out there—’