A Twist In The Tail

‘He could’ve whacked any one of us right there in the kitchen!’ Her words echoed through the foyer as she dug out her phone.

‘I hardly think he would’ve done that in front of all the witnesses,’ Mom said.

‘Either way, I’m getting Seth to come right over and we can tell him about our interrogation.’ Millie dialed and put the phone to her ear.

‘I’d hardly call it an interrogation,’ I said. I was nervous about what Seth might say. Would he be mad that we went there? Would he feel threaten that we’d tried to do his job? But it was a little suspicious that Tony wore clogs and walked on the sides of his feet. It would seem to indicate that the print matched, but how reliable was a print in bark mulch? I could already picture Seth pointing out that any number of weather conditions could’ve altered the print. If the bark was too moist maybe his feet sank at a different angle. It was hardly conclusive. Then again, we had the bad review to back us up.

‘I need you to come over right away. I know who the killer is!’ Millie yelled into the phone. Unfortunately, she did this just at the Weatherbys were coming in.

Iona gasped. ‘Did she just say she knows who the killer is?’

Ron fumbled his camera, practically falling down the last three steps. ‘How would you know and not the police?’

‘We’re really not sure.’ I tried to usher them toward the stairs before Millie started talking about cleavers and chopping people up. ‘We think we might have some clues based on something we found here at the guesthouse.’

Iona’s hands flew to her face and she and Ron exchanged a glance. ‘Oh dear, it’s not someone staying here is it?’

‘No, it’s someone else,’ I assured them. Clearly they were very nervous about having a killer in their midst. I felt a little guilty about suspecting them earlier.

Their relief was obvious. Iona took Ron’s arm and propelled him toward the stairs. ‘Well that is a relief. Let’s go change and have a nice afternoon of birdwatching. The sun is out and the birds are twittering and if you’re catching a killer, all the better!’

It took Seth Chamberlain only ten minutes to arrive on the scene.

He looked at Millie skeptically and she explained everything that had happened in Tony’s restaurant.

‘And just how did you come about going to the Marinara Mariner?’ he asked. His arms were crossed over his chest and he wore a disapproving scowl on his face, even though his eyes turned soft as marshmallows whenever he looked at Millie.

‘Because of the review, of course.’ Millie glanced at me.

‘I found a review that Charles had written on the lemon meringue pie at the Mariner last year and it wasn’t very good,’ I explained.

The furrow between Seth’s brows deepened. ‘Last year? Why would Tony kill him now?’

‘Maybe he just found out that Charles was in town?’ Mom suggested.

‘Seems highly unlikely. Why would he carry a grudge all this time? Not to mention that he’d have to come all the way over to the Oyster Cove Guesthouse, sneak inside and then kill Charles.’ Seth shook his head, his eyes cutting over to me. ‘Nope, it seems more likely that the person he was writing that review about found it in his room. They probably ripped it up before they killed him. And it seems more feasible that someone here would be the killer.’

That made me a little mad. Up until now I was cutting Seth some slack. I mean, he was a friend of Mom and Millie’s and he seemed like a nice old guy, but now he was getting me a little angry with his not so subtle looks in my direction. ‘We don’t even know if he was writing a review. All you found is a scrap of paper with some words on it. And by the way, don’t you know me well enough to know I’m not a killer?’

Seth’s face reddened and he looked down at the ground. ‘Well Josie, I knew you when you were a kid. But you been away all these years.’

‘I’m still the same person.’

‘She has a point about the review. Let’s see what it said again.’ Millie said.

‘It’s pretty obvious, look.’ Seth pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and scrolled to a picture of the paper he’d had in that bag.

He held it up and we all craned our necks and squinted to read it. It was just the very edge of a handwritten note with just the endings of a few words.

.... ull

.... ick

.... son

‘Those endings could go with lots of words,’ Millie said. ‘I want a copy of that. Can you text it to me?’

‘Me too,’ I said.

Seth looked uncertain.

‘There’s an apple pie in it for you if you text it to me.’ Millie turned to me. ‘I’ll text it to you after.’

Seth sighed. ‘I suppose it won’t do any harm.’

‘Good,’ Millie said. ‘Now, until we figure out what that note really says, we have a lot of clues that point to Tony Murano. How many clues do you have that point to Josie?’

Seth opened his mouth but I cut in. ‘Never mind, don’t answer that. This is what we have on Tony. His shoe print was under the window, Tony has a bad temper and Charles wrote a bad review about his lemon meringue pie.’