Murder on Cape Cod Read online

  Books by Maddie Day

  FLIPPED FOR MURDER

  GRILLED FOR MURDER

  WHEN THE GRITS HIT THE FAN

  BISCUITS AND SLASHED BROWNS

  DEATH OVER EASY

  And writing as Edith Maxwell

  A TINE TO LIVE, A TINE TO DIE

  ’TIL DIRT DO US PART

  FARMED AND DANGEROUS

  MURDER MOST FOWL

  MULCH ADO ABOUT MURDER

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  Murder on Cape Cod

  A Cozy Capers Book Group Mystery

  MADDIE DAY

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  RECIPES

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2019 by Edith Maxwell

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-2288-1

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-1507-4

  eISBN-10: -4967-1507-1

  For the multitudes of readers devoted to the cozy mystery. You know who you are.

  Acknowledgments

  I’m delighted to be starting a new series with a meta-premise: a cozy mystery series about a book group that only reads cozy mysteries. The concept and setting were a collaborative effort among my fabulous agent, John Talbot, my equally fabulous Kensington editor, John Scognamiglio, and me. Note: the town of Westham is fictional, but you might deduce from the name the general area of Cape Cod I imagined when I created it.

  Thanks again to Sherry Harris, independent editor extraordinaire, for setting me straight on myriad details of my manuscript before I turned it in. Gratitude, too, to author Leslie Budewitz, who inadvertently reminded me with her own writing that Mac should love her job more than I had originally written.

  While writing this book, I spent time at two beach retreat houses to turn out some word count and get in the Cape Cod mood. My dear friend Deb Hamilton loaned me her Plum Island beach house—decorated entirely with a lighthouse theme—twice during the winter of 2016-17, and even rescued me when I got iced-in after a storm. Love you, Deb. Thanks, too, to the West Falmouth Quaker House, where I’ve worked on several books. The cottage, where I polished this one and honed a few Cape Cod details shortly before the book was due, is a perfect retreat space: an affordable quiet house to myself with no Wi-Fi.

  In preparation to write my fictional half-Wampanoag detective, Lincoln Haskins, I toured the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Museum on Cape Cod and read Paula Peters’s book The Mashpee Nine. I hope to honor that part of Cape Cod heritage with my portrayal of Detective Haskins.

  My protagonist Mackenzie Almeida’s mother is an astrologer. I’ve learned a lot over the years about the practice from my college roommate Nani Vohryzek and my dear partner Hugh Lockhart, but any errors in attributing traits to the stars are clearly mine.

  Amesbury police Detective Kevin Donovan again helped with a few bits of police procedure, and the state police on Cape Cod also supplied me with important local information. Thanks to author Annette Rig-gle Dashofy for a few critical assists with the scenes including EMTs.

  Gratitude to my wonderful adult sons, Allan and JD Hutchison-Maxwell for helping with bicycle details (between them they know a lot), and to Allan for his astute comments on a near-final draft. I rented a tourist bike from Corner Cycle, Falmouth, and pumped several employees there for facts and practices. Thanks to the store, and to Tim and mechanic Rex, for real-life shop and rental color, policies (one that I lifted verbatim), humor, and murderous suggestions.

  In the book, Mac buys the book My Daddy for her niece. This lovely work of art and storytelling is by my friend Susan Paradis. You should find one for the small person in your life.

  Always, thanks to my backup crew, the Wicked Cozy Authors, for support, friendship, and both personal and professional inspiration. I love these women: Jessie Crockett/Jessica Estevao/Jessica Ellicott, Sherry Harris, JA Hennrikus/Julianne Holmes/Julia Henry, Liz Mugavero/Cate Conte, and Barbara Ross. Read their books.

  My gratitude to Sisters in Crime, my Quaker congregation, Jennifer Yanco, and my sisters, sons, and main man, Hugh. I couldn’t do it without you all. And to readers everywhere, I hope you like this new world and family of characters I’ve invented.

  Chapter One

  It’s the little signs that end up meaning something. The fog. One man’s odd restlessness. Another person’s new confidence. The signs we ignore at our peril.

  The weekly meeting of the Cozy Capers book group was winding down in my brother’s lighthouse perched on a promontory in Cape Cod’s hamlet of Westham. Gin Malloy, owner of Salty Taffy’s candy store, lifted her wine glass. “Here’s to a super-charged summer season.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” I, Mackenzie Almeida, matched my friend’s gesture. I hoped the summer wouldn’t be too rainy. I was lucky enough to own Mac’s Bikes, a bike rental and repair shop, and we did a booming tourist business as long as the weather stayed fair. We shopkeepers depended on the three-month surge of vacationers for a large chunk of our income.

  Tonight, at a little after eight, the lighthouse’s arched windows stood open to the sea air, which blew in the damp scents of early June. The round rooms looked out onto the Atlantic Ocean, or would have if it weren’t too foggy to see the water. Derrick Searle, my half-brother, hadn’t contributed much to the cozy mystery discussion, instead drumming his fingers with a quick nervous movement, gazing out the window into the
pea soup. Earlier he’d left the door to the lighthouse unlocked and had tacked up a note telling us to come in and start without him. He’d arrived out of breath after everyone else and without explanation, which was unfortunately typical of him.

  Now he puttered around, picking up wine glasses and plates holding remnants of this week’s treat. The members of the group took turns making a dish mentioned in the book under discussion. This week the town clerk had made a couple of killer pizzas for us to share, since Sherry Harris’s I Know What You Bid Last Summer featured an Italian restaurant where Sarah Winston, the garage-sale-maven protagonist, often ate.

  I stood to help Derrick but he waved me away.

  “I’ll do it, sis,” he said in a gruff tone. He was the private lighthouse’s caretaker and I knew he liked to keep the place tidy, a trait we shared.

  The group, ten strong tonight, exchanged farewells and filed down the circular staircase.

  “What are we reading for next week?” I asked.

  “Cracked to Death, remember?” Gin replied.

  “That’s right.” It was the third book in Cheryl Hollon’s Webb’s Glass Shop Mysteries. The group had decided to begin this season with a book set in June—thus starting with last week’s I know What You Bid Last Summer—and then move ahead a month every week, so we’d go through an entire year by the end of August. Cracked was described as taking place during the dog days of summer. Our group, which read exclusively cozy mysteries, had contacted the author to make sure that meant July. She’d assured us it did.

  “See you in the morning, Gin,” I called, and waved to the rest, who headed for their cars. Me, I began my short walk home along the biking-walking trail that paralleled the coast. My shop was successful in part because of these paved trails that ran up and down the Cape from Provincetown to Woods Hole. I tried to hurry, smiling to myself because my boyfriend was meeting me at home. Tonight, though, the trail between the lighthouse and my tiny house behind the bike shop was almost unnavigable. It wasn’t long past sunset but the fog was a wall of mist around me. I could barely see where I was going, and I felt my already curly hair gain a new layer of frizz.

  I hoped all this damp didn’t seep through my roof. I’d called out Jake Lacey, a down-on-his-luck handyman, about his shoddy repair job earlier. I volunteered serving dinner on Tuesdays in the late afternoon at Our Neighbor’s Table, a food pantry and soup kitchen where Jake was a regular customer.

  “Got my check?” he’d asked today as he handed me his plate.

  “I’m sorry, Jake, but you did a terrible job on my roof.” It was true. I’d hired him to replace some of the shingles on my micro-house after they’d blown off in a storm. He’d left gaps, some of the replacement shingles were poorly nailed on, and he hadn’t even cleaned up the scraps and debris when he left. I gave him my sternest look. “I’ll pay you after you’ve fixed the shingles and not before.”

  The woman behind him in line had raised her eyebrows at my criticism but didn’t say anything. Norland Gifford, the volunteer on my right, who was our newly retired Westham police chief, cleared his throat. I guess I should have saved my comment for a more private setting.

  Except Jake hadn’t gotten his back up like he had in the past when anyone criticized him. Instead he’d lifted his pointed chin and waggled his head, wearing a smug expression on his worn face.

  “I ain’t gonna even need your money soon, Mac. You wait and see.”

  I’d peered at him for a second, having no idea what he meant. “Did you get full-time work?” He was known around town for not being able to hold down a job, which was the reason he was here getting free food, of course.

  “Nah. This is better than no stinking job. It’s good, wicked good.” He’d grabbed the plate of pasta and sauce I’d dished up and moved down to the salad section.

  “That’s great,” I’d called after him. There went my chance at a decent repair job from Jake. I guess I’d have to find somebody else since I wasn’t going to do it myself. I could tune up a bicycle like nobody’s business, but when it came to hammers and nails, I was all thumbs–and usually both of them got a good self-delivered whack within minutes of attempting anything in the field of carpentry.

  Now I found the turn from the bike trail to the pathway that cut up to Main Street. Near the end of the path a hedge of scrubby coastal Rosa Rugosa separated the walkway from my postage stamp of a yard. The fragrant scent from the just-blooming native shrub mixed with the salt air and reminded me of my childhood here on the Cape. I slowed as I rounded a bend. I was scanning through the mist for the opening that would let me through the wall of roses when I tripped.

  The obstacle in my path, oddly both soft and solid, was a sizable one. I yelled, arms windmilling like in a vintage cartoon. The air gave me nothing to grab hold of and I landed on my hands and elbows. I glanced down and back to see my knees resting on . . . Jake.

  “Gah!” I shrieked and scrambled forward off of him. I crouched in place, my heart beating like the timpani in the Cape Symphony. Jake lay on his front with his head half-turned toward me, lips pulled back in a grimace, eyes unblinking.

  “Jake!” I called. “Jake, are you all right?”

  He didn’t respond. I inched closer and couldn’t detect any signs of breathing. I touched his temple but I didn’t feel a pulse under his too-cool skin. His skinny legs were splayed at an odd angle, and his back was still, too still. No breaths moved it up and down. He was never going to enjoy another free spaghetti dinner—or anything else. Jake Lacey was dead.

  Chapter Two

  I pushed up to standing and pulled my phone out of the small bag I always wore when I went outside. My skin turned numb as I jabbed at 911, my shaking finger slipping a couple of times until the call connected.

  Jake’s straggly light-brown hair lay in skinny strands wet from the fog. The color of his beat-up old work coat almost matched his hair. I couldn’t see any wounds. No blood stained his coat or marred his skin. I’d never seen a body before, not even an animal except roadkill, and then it was from the window of a car. My mother’s parents had passed away before I was born, my other grandfather had died when I was traveling abroad, and we’d never had pets at home because of my allergies. What happened to Jake? Did he have a heart attack? A drug overdose? Did he even do drugs?

  When the dispatcher asked what my emergency was, I said, “There’s a dead person. It’s Jake Lacey.” I managed to keep myself from shrieking again. I was desperate to get home—my house was only a few yards away. I wanted to lock the door and pretend this never happened. But I couldn’t. I was a responsible adult, and a body on the path was out of order. I didn’t like disorderly things.

  “What is your location, ma’am?” she asked.

  “I’m on the path behind the bike shop.”

  “What town, ma’am, and what’s the name of the shop?” The dispatcher’s voice was infinitely patient.

  Oh, yeah. The local police used a regional dispatch center. “Sorry. Westham. Mac’s Bikes.” I gave her the address.

  “And how do you know this person is dead?”

  One of those awful catastrophe giggles threatened to burble up. I swallowed it down. “He’s not breathing and his skin is cold. It hardly even feels like skin.” I turned away from the sight of his body. I had to.

  “Do you feel safe?” she asked.

  “Yes.” After a beat it occurred to me to add, “Why shouldn’t I?” I gave a quick glance around the fog-shrouded path that looked like a scene in a mystery filmed on the Scottish moors. Shouldn’t I feel safe? Did she mean someone had killed Jake? That was awful. Murder, here?

  I’d never felt myself in danger in Westham, not when I was little, not since I’d been back. I knew some of the bigger towns on the Cape were plagued with higher crime rates than we had. Just because the long curving peninsula was a scenic tourist destination didn’t make Cape Cod immune from robbery, addiction, domestic abuse, and other bad things. On the contrary. But they mostly didn’t happe
n in my town—as far as I knew, anyway. Jake had probably felt safe, too. The thought stabbed me with sadness for him. I shivered, from the shock as well as the cool damp of the night. It had still been warm and sunny when I’d left for the Cozy Capers meeting and I wore only jeans and a Falmouth Road Race t-shirt with my sandals.

  “Is anyone with you?” the dispatcher asked, startling me.

  I’d forgotten she was on the line. “No.” Nobody living, that is.

  “Officers are on their way. Do you feel comfortable staying where you are?”

  “I guess.” I’d feel a lot more comfortable once Jake was someone else’s responsibility.

  “Please keep this call open until the officers arrive,” she instructed.

  “Okay.” I didn’t dare stash the phone for fear I’d press the wrong button, so I stood holding it, like an unfortunate statue. The fog damped all sounds, but a dog barked faintly in the distance, and a big truck downshifted out on the highway a few miles away.

  It seemed selfish to feel sorry for myself, but I wished I’d never found Jake. Since I had, I rued not leaving my back porch light on. If someone had killed Jake, they might still be around. My breath grew shallow. I glanced quickly behind me on the trail, but of course I wasn’t able to see a thing through the pea soup. I couldn’t wait for this nightmare to be—

  “Mac?” a deep voice called. My boyfriend appeared in the gap in the hedge. “Who are you talking . . . ?” Tim Brunelle’s voice trailed off as he spied Jake. “Is that Jake Lacey? He doesn’t look good.” Tim hurried through the opening in the bushes, made one giant step over Jake’s body, and took my face in both hands. “Are you all right?”

  I gazed six inches up into his tanned concerned face. “I’m all right, kind of. But,” I gestured at the ground without really looking, “Jake isn’t.” I could finally hear a siren growing closer. It was about time.