Death by Devil's Breath (28 page)

“Marianne wrote a book?” The instant I looked her way, Luella was contrite. “Oh, it’s not like I’m doubting how smart she is or anything. She’s a good librarian. But Marianne doesn’t exactly strike me as the type who’d have enough imagination to write a book.”

“It’s history. Island history. I didn’t get more than a couple pages into it, but I know it’s about some old-timer, Charles Harlow.”

“Sleepy!” Luella laughed. “Well, that explains it. Word is that Marianne’s family is distantly related. I’d bet a dime to a donut she devotes at least one chapter to trying to disprove that. Sleepy has quite a reputation around here, and it’s not exactly politically correct for the wife of the town magistrate to be related to an old-time gangster and bootlegger.”

“I dunno.” My shoulders rose and fell. “I mean about the gangster part. I never got that far. I’d just started reading and then the phone rang and then—”

“Jerry.” Luella shook her head. “Chandra really needs to do something about that cat.”

“I’ve been saying that for nearly a year.”

“We’ll talk to Chandra,” Luella promised. “Next Monday at book discussion group. And as far as Marianne, maybe if you just explain what Jerry did—”

I dreaded the thought. “She’s so proud of her book. You should have seen her when she brought the manuscript over here. She was just about bursting at the seams.” My stomach swooped. “She asked for one little favor and I messed up.”

“Not the end of the world. She’ll reprint, you’ll reread—”

“Inside the house.”

“Inside the house. And then—”

And then three black SUVs slowed in front of the house and, one by one, turned into my driveway.

“You’ve got guests coming in today?” Luella asked.

I did, a full house, and what with the manuscript disaster and fantasizing about the ingenious (and completely untraceable) demise of a certain feline neighbor, I’d forgotten all about them.

“Go!” Luella shooed me into the house. “You go change. And a quick shower wouldn’t hurt, either. I’ll let your guests in and get them settled and tell them you’ll be with them pronto.”

Okay, so it wasn’t exactly pronto, but I did manage what I hoped was a less smelly transformation in record time. When I was done, curly, dark hair damp and in a clean pair of jeans and a yellow long-sleeved top (dang, I didn’t even make the Jerry Garcia and yellow connection until it was too late!), I lifted my chin, pasted a smile on my face, and strode into my parlor.

Straight into what looked like the staging for D-Day.

Two women, two guys. Another . . . I glanced out the window and counted the men on my front porch. Another four out there. Each one of them carried at least two duffel bags or a suitcase or a camera of some sort, and each one of those was plastered with bumper sticker–variety labels. Black, emblazoned with icy blue letters:
EGG
.

“Welcome!” I tried for my best innkeeper smile and thanked whatever lucky stars had made it possible for Luella to take a few moments and swab down the front porch; through the window, I saw that the floral cushions were missing from the couch and the water she’d splashed on the porch floor gleamed in the autumn afternoon sunshine. “I’m Bea, your hostess. You must be—”

“EGG.” The woman closest to where I stood in the doorway was at least a half dozen years older than my thirty-four, and taller than me by six inches. She was square-jawed, dark-haired, pear-shaped, and more than equipped for whatever situation might present itself. The pockets of her camouflage pants bulged and the vest she wore over a black EGG
T-shirt was one of those that fishermen sometimes sport. It had a dozen little pockets and I saw batteries, flashdrives, and other assorted gear peeking out of each one.

“Noreen Turner. I’m lead investigator for EGG, the Elkhart Ghost Getters.” When Noreen pumped my hand, it felt as if my fingers had been gripped by a vise. Her dark gaze stayed steady on mine in a firm—and sort of disquieting—way. “I’m the leader of this jolly little band and—” She must have had first-class peripheral vision because though I hadn’t even noticed the activity going on over in the direction of the fireplace, Noreen didn’t miss a thing.

She whirled toward a young, redheaded woman and a muscle jumped at the base of Noreen’s jaw.

“Thermal camera, full-spectrum camera, Mel meter, IR light.” Noreen’s laser gaze flashed from the redhead to the cases of equipment she was busy stacking. “Really, Fiona? Really?”

Fiona’s cheeks shot through with color. She chewed her lower lip. “I thought . . .”

“Exactly your problem.” Noreen marched over, unstacked the equipment, and, fists on hips, gave it all a careful look. “Thermal camera on the bottom,” she said, setting that case down on the floor first. “Then the Mel meter on top of that.” The case with the thermal camera in it was larger than the one that contained the Mel meter, and she set the second case on top of the first, adjusting and readjusting so that the second case was exactly in the center. “Then full spectrum, then IR light.” She positioned those cases until they were just right, too, and, finished, turned her full attention on Fiona who held her breath and looked as if she was about to burst into tears. “You see what I’m getting at here, don’t you?”

Fiona didn’t answer fast enough, and Noreen lifted her chin and took a step toward her. “Don’t you? Top to bottom, kid. Top to bottom. IR on top, then full spectrum, then Mel, then—”

The oldest of the men in the room (I’d learn later that his name was Rick) was maybe fifty, a reed-thin guy with a receding hairline and a gold stud in his right earlobe. He stood closest to Fiona and he leaned in like he wanted to share a confidence, but since he didn’t lower his voice, whatever he had to say wasn’t much of a secret. “She wants it alphabetical,” he rasped. “She always has to have equipment stacked alphabetically.”

“So it’s easy to find what we need,” Noreen snapped.

“Whatever.” The man waved a hand and turned his back on us to look out the window.

“Well, it makes sense. And it’s the right way to do things. You can see that, can’t you?” She swiveled her gaze to me. “You’re a businesswoman. You can see the sense of it.”

Fortunately, I didn’t have a chance to answer. One of the men who’d been on the front porch came into the house pushing a two-wheeler with a big rectangular box on it. He parked the two-wheeler in the hallway before he joined us in the parlor. The man was about my age, with black wavy hair and the kind of a face generally reserved for statues of Greek gods. Dimpled chin, straight nose, high cheekbones. A picture flashed through my mind: Mediterranean island, whitewashed cottage, aquamarine water. A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and—

“I didn’t ask you to bring that in.”

Noreen’s growl yanked me back to reality and I found her glaring at Mr. Greek God. “We’re not ready for it,” she said and pointed toward the box that was maybe three feet high and another couple feet wide. Like the rest of the gear, it was plastered with EGG stickers. “I told you to leave it in the truck, Dimitri. That means . . . well, duh, I dunno. I guess it means you should have left it in the truck.”

“You said you wanted it in your room with you,” the man sucked in a breath and shot back. “And that means—”

“What it means is that you’re not listening. When I’m ready for it, that’s when I’ll tell you to bring it in.”

“In like what, ten minutes?” Dimitri ran a hand through his mane of glorious hair. “I’ll tell you what, Noreen, you want it back in the truck, you take it back to the truck. I’m not moving it another inch. Not now, not ten minutes from now. I’m not stacking anything alphabetically, either, or measuring stuff to make sure it’s precisely two inches apart. You want to waste your time with your crazy organizing—”

“It’s not a waste of time, it’s a system.” Noreen held her arms close to her sides, her fingers curled into fists. “And so far, it’s worked pretty well, hasn’t it? If it wasn’t for me—”

Was that a collective groan I heard?

From everyone but Fiona, who was so ashen I had no doubt she wanted to fade into the woodwork.

And Noreen, of course. With a look, Noreen dared them all to say another word.

We’d been introduced like three minutes earlier and already, I knew Noreen wasn’t the type of person who backed down from anyone. Or anything.

Fine by me. I wasn’t, either.

And it was about time I proved it.

“I’ve got all your rooms set and your room keys ready,” I said, deftly sidestepping their bickering. I darted into the hallway and grabbed the keys I’d left on a table at the bottom of the stairs. “Each one’s marked,” I said, handing them around. “All the rooms are on the second floor.”

I’d received room instructions along with the group’s reservations and I knew that the only two guys bunking together were Ben and Jerry (honest!). Since I had six guest rooms, that meant Noreen and Dimitri each had their own room as well as the other three men who, according to their reservation forms, were Liam McCarthy, David Ashton, and Rick Hopkins.

“I know. That leaves me with no room.” Fiona watched as the others stacked their equipment cases (alphabetically, I presumed) and headed upstairs. She scraped her palms against her jeans. “Noreen . . .” Her gaze darted across the room to where Noreen was doing another once-over of the equipment and checking off a list on a clipboard. “Noreen told me I wouldn’t be staying here. That there aren’t enough rooms. You don’t have to apologize.”

“I wasn’t going to.” I softened the statement with a smile and would have gotten one back if Fiona’s gaze didn’t shoot Noreen’s way again.

“It’s not like I didn’t know you were coming,” I told the kid. “Ms. Turner told me you’d need a room. I’ve got everything arranged.”

Fiona squinched up her nose in a way that told me that whatever I was going to say, she had heard it all before. “I know, some little no-tell motel on the other side of the island. That’s fine, really. I’m used to it. It’s not always possible for me to stay with the rest of the crew. I get it.” Her gaze landed on Noreen who was so busy restacking the equipment the others had just stacked, she didn’t notice. “I just joined the group and I’m only the intern and I don’t rate the same perks the rest of the crew gets.”

“Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be comfortable.” I waved a hand, directing Fiona to look out the window. “That’s why I was able to arrange a room for you next door, at my friend Chandra’s house.”

“Right next door?” Some of the stiffness went out of Fiona’s shoulders.

“And you’ll be joining us here every morning,” I told Fiona, loud enough to make sure Noreen heard. After all, Noreen had made the original reservations and agreed (begrudgingly, as I remember) to pay an extra small charge for Fiona’s breakfasts. “Breakfast is every morning at nine, and we’ve got coffee and tea available all day, too, and cookies in the afternoon. Anything you want, just stop in.”

Fiona would never be described as pretty, but when she smiled, she was cute. She was taller than me (most people are) and in her early twenties, a gangly kid with wide blue eyes that were set a little too close together and a sprinkling of freckles on her nose that made her look as if she’d been dusted with cinnamon sugar. Her hair was a wonderful dark mahogany color that I suspected wasn’t natural, and she wore it pulled back in a ponytail. Like the rest of the crew, she was dressed casually in jeans and an EGG T-shirt, but she’d added a filmy pea green scarf that gave a pop of color to her outfit and perfectly framed the unusual necklace she wore, a white stone about the size of a walnut that was crisscrossed with black veins. The stone was wrapped in a spiderweb mesh of silver wire and the whole thing dangled from a black leather loop that hung around Fiona’s neck.

“Is that howlite?” I asked her.

Automatically, Fiona’s hand went to the stone. “You recognize it? Most people have never heard of howlite.” Again, she slid a look to Noreen who was now counting the equipment and acting like we didn’t exist. Fiona’s hand fluttered back down to her side. “It’s just something I like to wear.”

“Well, it’s very nice. I’ve seen similar stones used in Native American jewelry. Is it from the Southwest?”

I don’t think I imagined it; Fiona really did look Noreen’s way again.

And I couldn’t help but think that like my ol’ buddy, Jerry Garcia, Noreen really couldn’t care less.

Fiona’s smile withered around the edges. “The necklace is from New Mexico. Can we stop at the truck on our way next door?” she asked, effectively changing the subject. “I’ll get my suitcase.”

Together, we walked out to the front porch. I was quickly finding out—and enjoying every minute of it—that October on South Bass is a feast for the senses. The wineries were in full production and farmers sold cider and pumpkins from roadside stands. Goldenrod danced in the lake breeze and the lake itself, as smooth as glass that afternoon, reflected the kaleidoscope mood swings of the sky: gray one day, sapphire the next, and when the clouds were low and the winds calm, ghostly white.

In wonderful counterpoint to it all, the trees between my house and Chandra’s were a riot of rich color—golden elms, rusty oaks, fiery red maples—all of their glory like an exclamation mark to Chandra’s purple house with its yellow windows, orange doors, and teal garage.

Though I hardly knew her at all, something told me Fiona appreciated all of that as much as I did. Once I ushered her down the steps and she retrieved her suitcase from the truck, we closed in on Chandra’s and she caught sight of the wind chimes and the sun catchers, the gnomes that filled Chandra’s garden and the gigantic pumpkin near the front door carved with wide round eyes and a huge grin. Her smile came back full force.

“Cool!” Pink shot through Fiona’s cheeks. “Not that I don’t like your place. It’s a great house, but . . .” she stammered, looking back at my B and B. Believe me, I did not take offense. I know hulking Victorians aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but this one was my pride and joy, from the teal color accented with rose, terra cotta, and purple to the distinctive chimney that caressed the outside of the house all the way from the first floor to the slate roof. I’d lived there less than a year and my business had been up and running for just one season, but already, the house and the island felt like home. After a hectic life in New York and a past I was anxious to put behind me, a home was exactly what I was looking for.