Murder Most Maine (4 page)

Based on the extra thirty pounds she was carrying, I suspected she wasn’t being entirely honest about following Dirk’s instructions to the letter, but I didn’t volunteer the thought. “Thanks for the lobsters, Tom,” I said, turning to the rangy lobsterman. “I’ve got to get back to the kitchen and get dessert ready. You’re welcome to a chocolate meringue if you’re interested.”

“Oooh, chocolate meringues? How divine,” Bethany said, evidently oblivious to the tension between Dirk, Vanessa—and Tom, who looked like he couldn’t wait for all of us to clear out. “Sounds like they’re to die for.” Bethany gave Dirk a predatory look. “I’d kill for something sweet about now.”

“I’ll go get them ready then,” I said, heading for the kitchen as Bethany led Dirk to her table.

As I moved away from Vanessa and Tom, I heard his low voice say something about the lighthouse, but I didn’t catch the rest. I doubted the conversation involved the skeleton they’d found in the hidden chamber, though. How many men
had
Vanessa seduced out on Cranberry Point? I wondered.

And what would Tom’s wife say if she knew what was going on in my living room?

I passed Dirk and his admirer on my way to the kitchen, where Gwen stood with one hand on her slim hip, counting plates of my “Sweet Nothing” meringues. She looked glamorous as always in a cashmere sweater and designer jeans, and I reflected once more that her boyfriend, a local named Adam Thrackton, was one lucky lobsterman. Gwen had come up the previous summer to study art with Fernand LaChaise, Cranberry Island’s artist-in-residence—and to help me out with some of the housekeeping.

Fortunately for me, she’d fallen in love, not just with the island, but with a local lobsterman, and had managed to convince her mother to let her take a sabbatical from UCLA and stay on with me. My sister had agreed grudgingly, perhaps in part because she was under the impression that her daughter was dating a shipping magnate on the island. Neither Gwen nor I had informed her that the magnate’s fleet consisted of one small lobster boat named
Carpe Diem
, but it was only a matter of time before my sister descended on us for a visit and the truth came out. (I was hoping Adam’s Princeton degree would help—even if he
had
tossed it into the drink when he bought the
Diem
.) For now, though, Gwen and I were both happy that her mother lived two thousand miles away—and that she wasn’t a fan of cold weather.

“Who was at the door?”

“Tom Lockhart,” I said. “He left a pot full of lobsters down by the dock. For free.”

“I didn’t know it was on the menu.”

“It wasn’t,” I said. “Until now. He just dropped a bunch of them by.”

Gwen cocked an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound like Tom,” she said. “Why did he do that?”

“Who knows?” I said, shrugging. I didn’t want to think about it right now, to be honest. “I’ll save them for the last night—it will make the last meal special.” I glanced at the Tupperware container of meringues. “I’ll go clear the dinner plates. Do you have dessert under control?”

“We need ten plates, right?” Gwen asked.

“Yup.”

My niece pushed a lock of her dark, curly hair behind one ear and looked up at me. “You know, this retreat is turning out to be a lot of work. Are you sure you’ll be okay if I go up to Fernand’s in the morning?”

“It’ll be fine. Marge is coming to help me out, remember?”

Gwen cocked a dark eyebrow at me.

“She’s doing a great job,” I said. “Honest.” Gwen’s reticence was understandable, if unwarranted. For years, Marge O’Leary had had a reputation as one of the island’s nastiest—and least fastidious—residents. She’d worked as a part-time cleaner for the island’s summer population, but based on the feedback from her clients, I had once sworn I would never let her wield a feather duster in my inn.

Since last fall, though, when I’d helped Marge escape the hellish life she was secretly living—trapped with an abusive, homicidal husband who had almost murdered both of us—she had been working hard to turn her life around. As much as I supported her efforts to change, when she’d asked me for a job in December, I’d had serious misgivings. Marge had surprised me, though; with a little bit of training, she had transformed into a reliable, conscientious—and even pleasant—employee.

I was about to head out and clear plates when Gwen asked, “What’s up with John and the retreat leader woman? Vanessa-
what’s-her-name?”

“Tagliacozzi,” I supplied. “What do you mean?”

“I was doing a sketch of the mountains from my window earlier this afternoon, while you were prepping for dinner, and I saw her go down to the carriage house,” she said. “John answered the door, and she must have been in there for like twenty minutes.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling my stomach sink.

“Do they know each other or something?”

“She spent a few summers here on the island. They appear to have been friends.” And perhaps a bit more, I thought but didn’t add.

Gwen raised an eyebrow again and said nothing.

“Do you want to clean the kitchen or do turndown tonight?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

“How about I clean tonight and we switch tomorrow?”

“Sounds good to me,” I said. “I’ll start picking up plates in the next room.”

When I pushed through the swinging door into the dining room, everyone was standing at the windows, peering at something in the distance.

“What is it?”

“The lighthouse,” Vanessa said; evidently she’d managed to send Tom on his way at some point. “I didn’t know it was working!”

“It’s not,” I said. “Maybe it’s someone with a flashlight.”

“It’s awfully big for a flashlight,” Bethany said.

I stepped up to the window and peered over her shoulder. Bethany was right. If it was a flashlight, it was a pretty massive one; the bright white light made a sweeping arc through the dark night.

The hairs stood up on my arms, and I turned away from the window. “I know they’re renovating it,” I said lightly, thinking of the skeleton they’d turned up yesterday—and the story John had told me about the ghost light. “I didn’t realize they’d fixed the light so soon.”

“It’s eerie, isn’t it?” said Cat, in a low voice that sent a cold finger of ice down my spine.

“We were planning to jog out there in the morning,” said Vanessa. “We’ll have to check it out!”

“Is everybody ready for dessert?” I asked, turning away from the light.

“What is it?” asked Sarah, with a hungry look in her pale eyes.

“‘Sweet Nothing’ chocolate meringues with fresh raspberries!” I announced, and the mysterious light was instantly forgotten. Except by me. As the guests smacked their lips over the diminutive cookies, my eyes followed the arc of the light. It flashed three more times. Then it went dark.

It was almost half
an hour before the tables were clear and I had a moment to eat my own dinner. My stomach rumbled loudly as I fixed myself a plate of chicken and veggies; I hadn’t had time to fix the fish that John had caught. The dinner was delicious—the marinade on the chicken was tangy and the sesame-flavored veggies were tender, but still crisp—but the portions were woefully insufficient. As I scraped the last bit of sauce from the plate, my eyes strayed to the cookie jar.

No, Natalie.

I turned my back on it and slid my plate into the dishwasher.

“How was it?” Gwen asked from her station at the sink.

“Good, but kind of small,” I said. “I’m still starving.”

She shook her head as she rinsed the steamer. “I just don’t understand the diet mentality.”

“That’s because you eat whatever you want and don’t gain an ounce,” I said.

“I watch what I eat!” she protested.

“I know you do,” I said. Gwen
did
watch what she ate—that is, if you counted observing the food as it moved from the plate to her fork to her mouth—but there was no use arguing with her. “I’m going to go take care of turn-down service while everybody’s exercising,” I said.

“See you in a few,” she said as I grabbed a basket of sugar-free mints and headed out of the kitchen. I sidled past the guests, who had changed into spandex and baggy T-shirts and were flailing their arms to Dirk’s count in the living room, and grabbed the skeleton key from the front desk. Normally I wouldn’t provide the service—it required either Gwen or me to be around at eight every night—but since I was hoping the Lose-It-All retreat would pick the Gray Whale Inn as its regular location, I’d decided to pull out all the stops. On the other hand, I thought darkly as I let myself into the first room, if that meant having Vanessa on the premises regularly, maybe winning the business permanently wasn’t such a good idea. What
had
she been doing in John’s carriage house for twenty minutes today? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

I was about to let myself into the first room when the phone rang again. I hurried back to the front desk and grabbed the phone just before it went to the answering machine. “Good evening, Gray Whale Inn.”

“So, do you think he’s gay?” It was Charlene, of course.

“No, I don’t,” I said, thinking of his interest in a few of the retreat participants’ feminine charms.

“Thank God,” she said. “I was going to come over tonight, but I couldn’t get away from the store.”

“Dirk’s leading a jog out to the lighthouse in the morning,” I said.

“Really?” she said brightly. “I’ll definitely be there, then. Maybe we’ll even see a bone or something!”

“Did they hear anything back from the lab on that skeleton yet?”

“Not that I heard,” she said. “I’ll keep you posted, though.”

I hung up a moment later and returned to my duties. The ladies were still huffing in the living room by the time I finished with the first floor and headed upstairs. Most of the rooms had been relatively neat, with clothes tucked tidily into dresser drawers and toiletries arrayed on the countertops. I did spot a few boxes of illicit treats (either Megan or Carissa had a stash of mini Snickers bars), but for the most part, everything looked neat and orderly. Which was nice to see, as it meant less housekeeping work for Gwen, Marge, and me.

The second floor was a bit more interesting than the first. Although I make it a rule not to pry into my guests’ belongings, it’s hard to miss things when they’re spread out all over the dresser. And in Bethany’s room, it quickly became apparent that weight loss was more than likely a secondary motivation for attending the retreat.

The top of the maple dresser had been turned into a monument to Dirk. It was covered with carefully arranged articles featuring the handsome trainer, and there were a few candid shots—Dirk getting into his car, Dirk through a window, helping someone with a weight machine—that looked like they’d been taken by someone doing surveillance. Bethany? I wondered.

I yanked my eyes away from the disturbing montage and focused on turning down the sheets. After placing a sugar-free mint on Bethany’s pillow, I took a step back, knocking a book from the nightstand. It was a journal, and it landed open—and face-up—on the hardwood floor.

“Dirk said hello to me today,” read the entry on the open page. It was dated the previous November. “I know he loves me. He just doesn’t realize it yet.” I stooped to pick up the journal, and couldn’t help flipping through a couple more pages. As I suspected, the little book was littered with similar entries. “January 12. Saw Dirk this morning. He says he won’t be working with me anymore; I know it’s because he’s afraid of his attraction to me. Soon he’ll figure out that we’re destined to be together.” And later, in February, just before Valentine’s Day: “He says he’s involved with Vanessa, but I know that’s a lie. He likes women with a little bit of padding, not skinny skeletons. I sent him a dozen roses with a note that I’ll do anything in my power to help him overcome his fear of commitment.”

My skin crawled as I put the journal back onto the nightstand and backed away. Bethany might look normal, but she was anything but. A moment later I closed the door on Bethany’s photo montage, feeling very uneasy. And thankful that I wasn’t the object of her obsession.

As I relocked the door, one of the doors farther down the hall opened, and a woman stepped out. It was Elizabeth.

“Hi,” I said.

The slim woman jumped, startled. “Oh. I didn’t know anyone was up here.”

“I’m just doing turn-down service,” I said. “Do you need anything?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” she said, and hurried past me down the hall.

She was starting down the staircase when I realized why she’d looked furtive. The room she’d come from didn’t belong to her.

It had been assigned to Dirk.

My eyebrows rose as Elizabeth hurried down the stairs to the living room, where I could hear Dirk dishing out words of encouragement in a rich, baritone voice. I knew Elizabeth was a reporter, and reporters are nosy by nature, but how much undercover work would you need to do to write a destination article on a Maine weight-loss retreat? At least that’s what Vanessa told me she was writing when I’d asked her earlier.

With a quick glance behind me, I closed the short distance to Dirk’s room and tried the knob. Maybe Dirk had left it unlocked earlier, but it was certainly locked now. Which was disconcerting. Had Elizabeth managed to get a key?

And should I confront her about it—or tell Dirk what I’d seen?

I could hear thumping from downstairs—jumping jacks?—as I unlocked Dirk’s door with the skeleton key and slipped through the door.

Dirk’s suitcase lay open on the bed, its contents spread out on every available surface. In addition to a big can of Aveda hairspray, a box of tooth-bleaching trays, and an expensive-looking vial of pore minimizer, two giant Ziploc bags of capsules lay on the dresser: the supplements Dirk had been handing out at dinner, presumably. The desk was stacked high with paperwork, including several manila folders. Client files, I realized as I got closer. Starting weights, goals, dietary habits, medications, allergies—pretty personal stuff. Had Elizabeth been looking for these?

Tucked under the client files was a folder stuffed with my original meal plans, with a few scribbles here and there where changes had been made. And a shipping notice from Nature’s Path supplement company. The latest order was for 2,000 units of capsules: underneath was a list of ingredients. I ran my eyes down the page, curious what Dirk was handing out to my guests. The list was pretty short, actually:
Rhodiola rosea
, Green Tea Extract, Creatine, and something called EPH. I didn’t remember Dirk listing Creatine or EPH among the ingredients he’d recited earlier. Were they safe? And what were they supposed to do to help weight loss?

Whatever was in the capsules, Dirk appeared to be an avid user of the stuff himself; as I turned down the sheets and laid a sugar-free mint on his pillow, I noticed a bottle of the capsules on his nightstand. At least he practiced what he preached.

After a brief check of the rest of the room, I closed and relocked the door, unsure what to do about the Elizabeth situation—and uncomfortable with the fact that Dirk was handing out supplements to my guests. Vanessa and Dirk hadn’t mentioned them to me when they were scheduling the retreat. On the other hand, since the company had recently been featured in a national women’s magazine—and evidently had hundreds, if not thousands, of satisfied clients—maybe I was worrying about nothing.

The faint aroma of spicy perfume hit me as I opened the next door. Vanessa’s door.

I closed it behind me and did a quick visual survey. Like most of the other rooms, Vanessa’s was neat. Unlike the others, though, and in distinct contrast to Dirk’s, it was so neat that it looked uninhabited. The dresser and bathroom counters were completely free of the personal care items—hairbrushes, bottles of lotion, shampoo—that usually accumulated there, and her suitcase was tucked neatly in the corner of the closet.

Despite my more-than-cursory glance at Dirk’s room, as an innkeeper I generally try to take a minimalist approach to my guests’ room—kind of a get-in, get-out, notice-as-little-as-possible way of doing things. But I must confess that it’s hard to resist snooping in your boyfriend’s ex’s room.

Particularly when you’re wondering whether she has designs on your beau.

So even though I was probably breaking the innkeeper’s code of ethics (if such a thing exists), I couldn’t help opening one or two drawers.

Within a matter of minutes I learned many things about Vanessa. One, that her Donna Karan Jeans were a size zero. Two, that she didn’t take Dirk’s supplements to maintain her previously mentioned disgustingly skinny status. And three, that she had received a lot of recent correspondence from attorneys. I didn’t open the envelopes—you have to draw the line somewhere—but I found a stack of them in the top drawer of the desk. Why would a weight-loss program need attorneys? Were there problems with the supplements? Or was it a personal issue? I was about to go ahead and peek into one of the envelopes, just to find out, but then a stab of conscience hit me. It wouldn’t be ethical to go through the envelopes. Heck, it might not even be legal. Reluctantly, I stepped away from the desk and picked up my basket of mints. A minute later I let myself out of the retreat leader’s perfume-scented room.

By the time I’d made it back downstairs to the first floor, the group had finished their evening calisthenics, and Dirk’s baritone had been replaced by the murmur of primarily female voices. Before heading into the fray, I stopped at the front desk to return the skeleton key to its hook in a cabinet behind the desk—and to see if the spare key to Dirk’s room was in place. To my relief, the little gold key was hanging on its hook, right where it belonged. Unfortunately, there was no way to know if it had been earlier; when I’d picked up the skeleton key, I didn’t remember seeing any missing keys, but I hadn’t been paying much attention. How had she gotten in, I wondered.

“What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” Caterina was asking Vanessa as I walked into the living room a few minutes later. Dirk was gathering up exercise mats and stowing them under the window, and most of the guests had moved to the dining room, helping themselves to the thermos of hot water and the herbal tea bags I’d laid out on the sideboard. I glanced at Elizabeth; her dark eyes flickered to mine, then away.

“Breakfast at eight,” Vanessa responded with a smile so white it made me wonder if she sprayed her mouth with Clorox every night. “You’ll want to wear your workout clothes, because Dirk has an excursion planned for everyone.”

“Where? A restaurant?” Boots asked, a touch of sarcasm in her voice.

Vanessa smiled. “We’re going to jog out to the historic Cranberry Point Lighthouse,” she said.

“The one that was flashing tonight,” Sarah said.

“Exactly.”

“Let’s hope the weather clears up,” I said, glancing at the window, where fat drops of rain were splattering against the glass.

“I’m sure everyone has rain gear,” Vanessa said cheerfully.

“Can we bring snacks?” asked Carissa meekly. Her mother reached over and squeezed her arm, giving her a stern look.

“We’ll have a little pick-me-up when we get there,” Vanessa said. “Don’t worry. We want you to lose weight, but we don’t want you to starve!”