A Corpse at the Cove Page 4

  “I told him we only had one room left, but it was one of the bigger rooms with a private bathroom, so it would cost a little more than our standard rate. He said that was fine, as long as it was okay that he couldn’t pay up front. I told him I didn’t know if I could do that, but he explained that he had come to the island for a business opportunity and he would have money the next day—cash. Of course, I felt a little nervous about it, but he was going to be staying in our most expensive room, and I didn’t want to lose out on the money. Mr. Bergeron had the place reserved for a week, and I didn’t want it to sit empty, so I told him a late payment would be fine and I checked him in.”

  “You mean you checked him out,” I said, raising an eyebrow at her.

  She flushed, her lips set in a stern line. “That’s not fair, Piper. You didn’t even listen to my reasons for—”

  “No, I heard you,” I said. “I just don’t believe you. I’d be less annoyed if you were being honest with me. It’s really not as complicated as you’re making it out to be. You let him stay here because he’s a total babe.”

  “You’re a child,” Page said, twisting her mouth to one side and glancing towards the sitting room where the guests were playing a rousing board game. Mrs. Smith, a woman in her mid-70s, had just landed on a space that announced the birth of her twin girls, and she was gingerly placing the tiny plastic children in the back of her lime green minivan.

  Then, Page’s focus shifted back to me for a second before her face fell completely blank. It looked as though someone had hit the factory reset button on her brain, and she was in the middle of rebooting. Her eyes went glassy, mouth hanging open slightly, and she swayed on the spot as though her muscles had lost the ability to hold her up. Then, all at once, she snapped back into sharp focus, looking normal, if a little flushed.

  I looked around, wondering what had bothered her so much, and found my answer standing in the doorway.

  “Hi, Jude,” I said biting back a laugh despite my embarrassment.

  He was standing up straight, but somewhere in the back of my mind he was leaning against the door frame, shirt unbuttoned and flapping in a sudden gust of wind. And based on Page’s dopey expression when I turned around, the same image had been playing in her head.

  He smiled at us, and then ducked his head and tip toed towards the stairs, gesturing towards the other guests in the sitting room. “I’d stay and chat, but Mrs. Smith has been trying to get me to play strip poker with her all day.”

  Page released a quick howl of laughter and then choked it back, wiping a hand across her mouth. Jude winked at her and went up the stairs to his room.

  “How does he look?” I asked, elbowing Page in the side.

  She shook her head as if she were waking up from a deep sleep. “What?”

  “Well there is no way you’re not picturing him in nothing but his boxers right now, so I just wanted to know how good he looks,” I said, loving how flustered Jude made Page.

  Page turned to me, her face serious and harsh, the crease between her eyebrows deepening. “Could you stop acting like a teenager?”

  “You said I was acting like a child a minute ago, so this is a step up. Give me an hour and maybe I’ll finally be acting like an adult,” I snickered.

  Sensing the productive portion of our conversation had ended, Page rolled her eyes at me and stomped up the stairs to her room.

  “Mrs. Smith,” I said, stepping into the sitting room, “those are some beautiful baby girls you’ve got there.”

  Mrs. Smith picked up her tiny plastic car and pressed it to her cheek. “Who would’ve thought an old gal like me would be a mother again?” she said.

  By the end of the game, she had two more children, a boy and a girl, and she’d retired a millionaire.

  CHAPTER 5

  The guests were slow to wake the next morning, and I was grateful, rushing around the kitchen flipping pancakes, slicing grapefruit, and pouring mug after mug of coffee. Page regularly helped with breakfast, though we both knew I was the better cook, but this morning when I’d knocked on her door, she’d cracked it open, her wet hair twisted into a towel, and asked if I could handle it alone. As much as I didn’t want to, I felt only slightly bad about teasing her over Jude the night before, so I’d agreed. Now, though, as the guests were filtering downstairs and I could hear their voices growing steadily louder from the dining room, I regretted it.

  Blaire walked in, low rise jeans barely slung across her hips, her shirt riding up to just under her belly button.

  “Good morning, Christina Aguilera,” I said, eying her warily.

  Blaire rolled her eyes and took the coffee pot from my hand and filled her travel mug.

  “Are you leaving already?” I asked, glancing at the clock and seeing that it was just a few minutes past eight.

  She nodded and slurped her black coffee before it could pour over the rim, wincing at the bitter flavor. “Matthew is working at the Marina today and I’m going to go with him.”

  Matthew was Blaire’s boyfriend of the past few months. They’d met our first week on the island and had been inseparable ever since. Matthew’s parents, Greg and Tillie Pelkey, owned the island’s marina. I’d had the distinct pleasure of meeting them for the first time at Robert Baines’ party. As dead bodies were discovered, and everyone realized there was a murderer amongst us, Greg drank most of the bar cart by himself and Tillie chain smoked until the police finally arrived early the next morning. They both clearly had their vices and I only hoped Matthew didn’t have his own. He seemed nice enough, but if he was dating Blaire, nice enough simply wasn’t enough. He needed to be perfect.

  “It looks like a brunch bomb went off in here. Do you need any help?” she asked.

  I was thinking how sweet it was of her to offer her help, but before I could respond, Blaire grabbed the lid to her travel mug, and said, “Great. Good luck. See you for dinner!”

  “How considerate!” I shouted after her, hoping she felt at least a little guilty for leaving me to handle breakfast by myself.

  Fifteen minutes later, just as I’d finished my fifth trip to the dining room, arms loaded down with the last of the cream, sugar, and butter for the table, I heard a clicking on the tile and turned to see Page enter the kitchen.

  “Whoa,” I said, leaning back, eyes wide, looking Page up and down.

  “What?” she said, shrugging me off a little too casually.

  She’d traded in her usual slacks and flowy button down for a forest green wrap dress that hugged the small of her waist and brought out flecks of yellow in her eyes. Then, as if that wasn’t bizarre enough, her sensible black flats had been upgraded to high heels.

  “I thought high heels were torture devices invented by creepy men to make it harder for women to run away,” I said, repeating something Page had said to me too many times to count.

  “Do you see any creepy men around?” she said, challenging me. When I continued smirking at her, she rolled her eyes. “Shut up, Piper.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” I said, hands raised in the air in surrender. Honestly, it was nice to see Page excited about a guy. She’d expressed a desire, once or twice, to start dating, but I wasn’t sure if she ever would. She hadn’t been on a date in almost twenty years, and that had been with the man she divorced after sixteen years of marriage. So, she was understandably hesitant to trust another man.

  She walked into the dining room and I followed behind her like a spectator at a golf tournament, keeping my distance, silently standing on the sidelines, and eager to see what would happen.

  Jude was sitting at the head of the long dining room table, two slices of plain buttered toast and a grapefruit in front of him. Page approached him, her hips moving more than I’d ever seen them move before, and gestured to the chair next to him, a question in her eyes.

  Jude smiled, looking her up and down once, and nodded. She lowered herself into the chair. “Just toast?”

  “I can’t handle too much sugar so e
arly in the morning,” he said. “It makes me feel sluggish.”

  I gave Jude one mental tally in the pro column. Page was a health nut, and, after spending so many years married to a man who thought the filling in a Pop-Tart counted towards his daily fruit intake, being with someone whose diet more closely resembled hers would be a nice change of pace.

  “I’m the same way,” she said. “But I can’t get Piper to stop making pancakes and waffles.”

  I hadn’t expected to be mentioned in their conversation, so when Page and Jude turned to look at me, I felt like a child being caught listening at the door. I smiled awkwardly back at them, unsure whether I should admit that I had been eavesdropping or pretend I hadn’t heard.

  “You have a sweet tooth, then?” Jude asked, ending my internal debate and officially welcoming me into their conversation.

  “A bit,” I said, smiling and trying to maintain my distance. I wanted Page to talk to Jude on her own without my interference.

  “A bit?” Page asked, her eyes rolling in my direction. “You used to put chocolate milk in your cereal.”

  I suddenly remembered what Blaire had told me about Page eating three King-sized candy bars, and had Jude not been sitting right there, I would have mentioned it, thereby earning the right to eat whatever junk I wanted in front of her in peace. Instead, I shrugged and smiled, making a mental note to inform Page later of how much exactly she owed me for being the world’s best wing woman.

  “I like chocolate.” I tried to give her a piercing stare as I spoke, hoping that somehow the telepathy we’d tried so hard to use as kids would finally kick in and she’d realize that I knew her dirty little candy bar secret. But Page remained blissfully ignorant of my knowledge, and I let it go, trying to sink back into the freshly painted navy-blue walls.

  “There’s no shame in that,” Jude said. “My sister drank chocolate milk by the gallon throughout her entire pregnancy.”

  “Oh, you’re an uncle?” Page asked.

  “Several times over.”

  Page hesitated and I could anticipate her next question before she even said it. I’d noticed her eyes darting to his ring finger, as if a ring might appear there between glances. “Do you have any kids of your own?”

  Jude’s mouth quirked up on the side, but he bit it back and shook his head. “No. No children of my own. Maybe one day.”

  Page nodded, a thousand more questions burning in her eyes. But before she could say anything, Jude continued.

  “If I ever find the right woman that is.”

  Page lit up, and I noticed her shoulders relax.

  “You have a daughter, though, right?” Jude asked, his eyes going stormy as the words came out. “Or did I read your relationship entirely wrong and make an idiot of myself?”

  Page laughed. “Blaire is my daughter.”

  “Thank heaven,” Jude said.

  Page reached out and touched his shoulder, still laughing, and my heart lurched. I felt so creepy watching them, but it was like a romance movie playing out before my eyes. Just as it was getting good, though, I noticed someone shuffle into the room.

  Mrs. Harris was wrapped in her ratty gray shawl, and her eyes were unseeing orbs. Mrs. Smith instinctively reached out to grab Mr. Smith’s arm, and they slid their chairs closer together. The bright, cheerful vibe seemed to have been sucked from the room, and suddenly everyone’s eyes were glued to their plates.

  Miraculously, despite Page’s strong aversion to Mrs. Harris living in the attic, she was so wrapped up in Jude that she didn’t notice, and I wanted to keep it that way. Quickly, I walked around the table and wrapped an arm around Mrs. Harris’ shoulder.

  “Good morning,” I said, smiling at her, though she didn’t seem to register I had even spoken to her.

  “I have your breakfast in the kitchen,” I said, leading her gently towards the kitchen door.

  “Darkness,” Mrs. Harris said, her voice harsh and raspy.

  Abigail, the middle-aged woman who had checked into the bed and breakfast to work on the first draft of her romance novel, was watching Mrs. Harris out of the corner of her eye, trying her hardest not to openly stare at the old woman.

  “Okay,” I said, my voice cheery and light.

  “Darkness lurks here,” Mrs. Harris said, moving her hands in the air as though she were gesturing to a crystal ball.

  “I just haven’t opened all the blinds yet,” I said, prodding Mrs. Harris slightly less gently towards the kitchen door. “That must be what you see.”

  “Anger. Violence,” she continued, completely ignoring me.

  Once we made it into the kitchen I kicked the stopper out from under the door and let it swing closed behind us. Mrs. Harris had caused remarkably few issues with the guests, but her presence always unnerved people. Page made me explain Mrs. Harris’ living situation to every guest before handing them the keys so they wouldn’t be alarmed if they encountered her in the hallway.

  “They’ll think she’s the ghost of an ancient witch,” Page said. “We can’t let innocent people wander around this house without knowing what to expect.”

  “She’s an old woman, not a demon,” I said, though Page’s dubious look said that she wasn’t entirely certain.

  I helped Mrs. Harris into a stool at the kitchen island and dropped a plate of pancakes in front of her. Immediately, all talk of evil and darkness stopped, and she tucked into the food, dripping syrup on the granite. I wanted to go back into the dining room and listen to Page and Jude talk while pretending to fawn over pictures of Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s eight grandchildren, but leaving Mrs. Harris alone was a bad idea, particularly so early in the morning. She seemed more energetic in the mornings.

  By the time Mrs. Harris was inching up the stairs to the attic and I made it back to the dining room, the guests had finished eating and Page was beginning to pick up plates to carry into the kitchen. Jude was gone.

  “Well?” I prodded, raising my eyebrows at her.

  “Well what?” Page asked, her mouth twisted into a tight knot, a smile burning in her eyes.

  “Oh, don’t be a tease, Page. You know what.”

  A smile broke across her face. “He wants me to show him around the island tonight.”

  I raised one fist in the air in a gesture of victory. “That’s amazing. Why tonight?”

  “He didn’t come to the island just to date me,” Page said, suddenly defensive. “He has work to do. He was busy. It doesn’t mean anything that he put it off. First dates are typically in the evening anyway, so—”

  “Whoa, whoa,” I said, touching her shoulder. “Easy. I wasn’t suggesting anything. What I meant was: ‘What does he have going on today?’”

  Page took a deep yogic inhale and exhale, and seemed much steadier for it. “All he said is that he had some business to attend to and that he’d be back this evening before dinner.”

  “Business to attend to,” I said, my nose lifted in the air. “He sounds so important and businessy.”

  “And cute, too,” Page whispered, eyes darting around in case another guest was nearby.

  “Very,” I said, nodding enthusiastically.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” she said, winking at me. “You have your own man.”

  “I suppose so, though me and my man haven’t spent any time together in almost a week.”

  Page’s face turned suddenly serious, her eyebrows drawing together. She leaned an elbow on the counter top and turned her body to face mine. “Are you two doing okay? I didn’t realize anything was wrong.”

  I forced a laugh. “Okay. First of all, this is not a therapy session. Second, nothing is wrong. I just said we haven’t hung out lately. That doesn’t mean anything is wrong.”

  Page shook her head. “It’s not a sign that things are right.”

  Now I was the defensive one. “We’ve both been busy with work. Couples can be busy and still love one another.”

  Her entire face lit up the way it used to when she found my hiding spot during
hide and seek. “You love each other?”

  “Hold on,” I said, raising a hand to stop her thought in its tracks, but it was useless. Page was taking my slip up and running with it.

  “You said you love him!” She smooched her lips together, smacking them loudly.

  Despite my annoyance, I couldn’t help but laugh. Page was rarely ever giddy or silly, especially since we’d moved to the island, and though her laughter was at my expense, I didn’t want to be the one to silence it.

  “Now you are the one acting like a child,” I said, shaking my head and scrubbing a syrup-covered plate.

  “And you are the one in love,” she said as she snagged a blueberry muffin from the table and headed for the door.

  “Those are full of sugar,” I shouted after her. “And I used white flour instead of whole wheat.”

  She spun in a circle and took a huge bite out of the muffin, nearly eating the entire top. “My sister is in love! I’m celebrating!”

  CHAPTER 6

  After several weeks of cooking for the guests, I still hadn’t figured out exactly how much food to order for a house full of people. So, my weekly last-minute trips to the General Store had become almost routine. We ordered all of our supplies and ingredients in bulk from a store on the mainland, and had everything shipped over on the ferry, but that morning’s pancakes had wiped out our stores of syrup and butter.

  It was mid-morning on a weekday, so the beaches were full of vacationers and the elderly and retired, but Main Street was a ghost town. The coffee shop down the road had a few people milling around in front of it, sipping on steaming hot cups of coffee, despite the temperature being well over ninety degrees even before noon, but otherwise, my car was the only one parked on the street.

  Katie was running the cash register today. She had three kids at home and her engineer husband made more than enough money for her to stop working, but getting out of the house a few days every week kept her sane. Or, at least, that’s what she’d told me one of the first times I came into the store and asked her how her day was going. Now I knew better than to engage Katie in a conversation if I had anywhere to be within the next hour. With three kids at home under the age of five, I couldn’t blame her for craving a bit of adult conversation, but still, I had things to do.