Crime and Nourishment_A Cozy Mystery Novel Read online

  “Come on, we can be awkward over a couple of lobster rolls as well as we can in the middle of the street, and I’m hungry.”

  His stomach growled loudly. “I haven’t eaten since lunch,” he admitted. “I saw you in the bookstore and decided to wait.”

  #

  Sheldon owned his own property, thank goodness, so there wasn’t too much residual resentment when Walter Snuock appeared and asked for his reservation. Sheldon recognized him right away, embarrassing Angie even further, and welcomed him back to town.

  Sheldon’s Shuckery was one of those places that looked like tourist traps but, when you scratched the surface, just got better and better. For one thing, the food was good—excellent actually, better than most of the more expensive places on the island.

  For another, the paraphernalia on the walls wasn’t even remotely normal: instead of rope fishing nets, flags, glass fishing floats, stuffed swordfish, and other touristy decorations, the walls were lined with locked glass cases filled with old patent medicine bottles, autopsy kits, boat logs, scrimshaw, lobster traps, miniature sailboats in bottles, even an old whale skeleton wired together and hanging from the ceiling. Customers could even eat oysters sitting on benches in a ship’s boat from the 1890s.

  Mingled with all the whaling antiques were painted wooden signs shaped like oyster halves with horrible puns:

  We Don’t Shuck Around.

  The Shuck Stops Here!

  Sunday: Monster Shuck Rally!

  Just Shuckle Down and Get ’Er Done!

  Sheldon Table (that was his real last name; his family had been on the island for generations) was just as unique as his restaurant. He was short, bald, and had a grin like a frog’s. His skin was sunburnt and leathery; his eyes were deep-set under a Cro-Magnon forehead. He was married to a tall, stunning French woman with deep black, silky eyes—Jeanette Table. She seemed elegant, at least until she opened her mouth. Her sense of humor was just as bad as Sheldon’s—she usually called him “Sir la Tah-bluh,” or sur la table, French for “on the table.”

  Angie gladly gave him a hug when she saw him.

  “Angie!” Sheldon exclaimed. “You’ve brought Walter back to the fold, I see. Are you here permanently?”

  “Just visiting,” Walter said.

  Sheldon winked broadly at him and grabbed the menus out of his maître d’s hands. “I’ve got these two,” he said. He winked again. Angie’s face was starting to turn red again.

  Sheldon led them to a table outside on the deck overlooking the water. As usual, once the sun set, none of the families with children were seated outside, and all of the couples and singles were. If a party looked big and noisy, they got a back room with the other noisy parties; they could all yell over each other for all Sheldon cared.

  Angie ordered the lobster bisque, a half-dozen Wellfleets, and an order of hushpuppies. Walter ordered a lobster roll with fries. They both ended up with Cisco Brewers’ saisons in fat tulip glasses. Sheldon brought them a dish of shrimp dip and house-made, thick potato chips.

  Walter said, “So, what’s happened to you since seventh grade? I’m not surprised that you’re a bookseller, the way you were always reading even back then.”

  “When my parents moved to Florida—”

  “What? Florida? But the weather is so terrible there!”

  She laughed. “I know! But they’ve always been a little bit crazy. Let me back up. They stayed in one place—here, on Nantucket—until I graduated from high school, then announced that they had never had any patience for staying in one place for long, and the only reason they had was so I could grow up without having to switch schools a dozen times. Then they sold their house, bought a food truck, and started following a circus around.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Not at all. But finally, a couple of years ago, they announced that they were going to settle down in Florida. Mom said, ‘There’s enough crazy in one place to keep us busy for a while.’”

  Walter shook his head. “Your mom always seemed so normal.”

  “I thought so, too. You know how some people’s parents…uh…”

  “Suddenly get divorced out of the blue?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.

  “Yes. My parents suddenly got divorced from being normal. Just like that.”

  “I’ve never heard of that before.”

  “Aunt Margery said that it was pretty normal for our family. The Prouty’s either wander early and come back, or stay and raise a family until they have kids of their own and then leave to travel the world. One or the other.”

  “And you?”

  “I wandered early. I spent half my college in L.A., and the other half at Oxford.”

  “No!”

  She dropped into R.P., the accent of kings: “We most assuredly did. We can be quite posh when we feel like it.”

  He laughed.

  “Anyway, when I came back with a double B.A. in literature and statistics—”

  “You always were a math whiz. How many times did I copy your homework?”

  “That would be zero. You constantly begged me for it, but I would never let you because—“

  “Because how was I ever going to learn anything and you didn’t do all that work for me not to do any.”

  Now she had a sheepish smile. “You remember.”

  “How could I forget? I almost flunked out of Mr. Hall’s class.” He shook his head, clearly amused, and shoved a chip full of smoked shrimp dip into his mouth.

  “Oh, I didn’t know that. I would have tutored you had you asked. Why am I feeling guilty?”

  “You shouldn’t. I like a woman with standards.”

  Her faced must have pinged red because he started laughing. In a second she was going to break a sweat.

  “So go on,” he said. “What did you do after college?”

  “I worked for a Manhattan investment firm for a while. I was pretty good at it and made our clients a lot of money…and managed to save up a good chunk myself. Then I found out my boyfriend was cheating on me, and claiming my analysis work for his own”

  “He obviously didn’t know you. You must have broken up with him right away.”

  She’d never seen herself so clearly. “I’m not sure which made me angrier him passing off my work as his own or the cheating.”

  “The former, definitely.”

  “Yeah. I think so.” Now they were both laughing. “I got out of the relationship and Manhattan, came back home to Nantucket, moved in with Aunt Margery, and leased the bookstore when it came up.”

  When they finally took a breath, Angie noticed a sudden change in Walter’s expression. He stared down at the chips in front of him. Angie suddenly got the feeling he was hiding something.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I’m trying to decide whether to tell you something.”

  “What is it? Have you been stalking me?” she joked.

  “No, but my father might have been. He likes to keep track of locals who are doing well, in case he can hit them up for a favor…you know how he is by now, I’m sure.”

  “That’s true,” she said ruefully. “Your father definitely likes holding favors over people’s heads.”

  “Well, he might have helped drive the previous bookstore owner out of business so that you could get the store you wanted.”

  She clucked her tongue. “After the conversation I had with him earlier today, I wouldn’t be surprised. He isn’t the most ethical person in the world. And he loves having a hold over people.” Another piece of the puzzle dropped into place: “Is that why you’re here? Because he called in a favor?”

  “Got it in one.” Walter said. “I’m here to get my mother to behave, If I don’t get her to do what he wants, he’s going to cut off my allowance.” Walter sighed. “You’d think that after all these years he wouldn’t care what mom did, but you know how he is, he craves the control.”

  Angie wanted to tell him that he obviously was smart enough not to need it, but she had no
idea what Walter did for a living, so she bit back the comment. She chewed on a potato chip, trying to decide whether to ask him what was up with his mother, but decided not to. If he wanted to tell her about his life, that was one thing, but she didn’t need to pry.

  No doubt Aunt Margery was finding out the scoop from Dory, anyway.

  “I wish you the best of luck sorting out that mess,” she said, sincerely. If Snuock was a jerk to her, she could only imagine what being his son must be like.

  The wait staff brought their food to the table, and they both started to eat. Sheldon appeared, beaming, to ask them how it was: “Egshellent,” Angie said.

  “I still have dreams about your lobster rolls,” Walter added. “When Mom and I used to come out here for lunch when she was getting her hair done.”

  “How is your mother?” Sheldon asked.

  “Oh, she’s been back on the island for a while,” Walter said. “Just keeping to herself. But Dad…”

  Sheldon shook his head and patted Walter’s shoulder as if he were still a boy. “Don’t worry, kid. Trust me on this one: you take after your mother.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  It was true; Walter didn’t take after his father—except when his grin burst out, and that was just a physical resemblance.

  “I’ll let you two kids eat. Enjoy!” Sheldon wandered off, stopping at tables to talk to the late-night guests out on the patio.

  The night was clear and the stars were beautiful, if somewhat hazed over by a layer of mist mingled with gunpowder coming in off the harbor.

  “It’s going to be foggy in the morning,” Walter said, as if he were saying something that surprised him. “I remember that. When it looks like this at night, it’s going to be foggy in the morning.”

  “Enough about your father and my parents,” Angie said. “Tell me what you did, after you left Nantucket.”

  “Well, first we went to Ohio…”

  #

  The evening ended with an escort back to the bookshop and a kiss on the cheek.

  “This was lovely,” Walter said.

  Angie could only agree: it had been a beautiful night. She couldn’t say that they’d caught up on old times, although Angie did tell him what had happened to a few of their classmates, including Jo and Mickey.

  “They’re going to lose the bakery, aren’t they?” he said.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” she said. “But it’s definitely going to be tight. Over seven hundred dollars a month.”

  She grimaced, wondering what fraction of his monthly allowance from his father that might be—but of course she didn’t ask. She had found out that Walter owned some property in New Jersey and was working his way through a law degree, not because he wanted to be a lawyer, but because having a law degree gave him some authority. He was his father’s only heir, and apparently he was taking it seriously. He even had a master’s degree in business that he called “mostly worthless” and was using most of his allowance as venture capital in order to test his ideas; he spent a good deal of the meal picking Angie’s brains about investment strategies and analysis—although she had to beg off, saying that she’d been out of the game for three years, and a lot had changed.

  “But you’re all right,” he said. “Financially speaking, I mean.”

  “I should be.”

  Every time he brought it up, it irritated her. He seemed genuinely concerned about her, but it was like he didn’t care about Jo and Mickey—even though they’d all gone from kindergarten through middle school together.

  “I should let you go,” he said. “I’m sure you need some sleep before you set up in the morning.”

  She did. She let herself yawn conspicuously before unlocking the bookshop door and wheeling her bike out.

  “Are you sure you don’t want a ride?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  Captain Parfait was no longer in the window; fortunately, there were no decapitated bookmarks in front of the door, either.

  Walter stood by the door with his hands in his pockets; when she didn’t invite him home—or whatever it was that he was expecting—he straightened up, said “Goodnight,” and turned around and walked the opposite way down the street, turning off at the end of the next block, toward a public parking area. One thing she’d learned from her last relationship: take it slow. It takes time for a person to show their true colors. So even though her desire urged her to see where the night would take them, her wisdom told her to pack it up and go home.

  She got on the bike and began pedaling back to her house. Soon she reached the tiny home that she shared with Aunt Margery; it had been in the family for generations, which was lucky—even as small as it was, Angie wouldn’t have been able to afford it on her own. It was a tiny shake-sided cottage that had been built all the way back in 1835, but was well kept up. It had had a major renovation in 1927, and then again in 1974, and finally Angie’s parents had redone the kitchen and bathrooms for her in 2005, also painting the front door bright blue. The doorways were narrow and low, the stairs to the upper floor more like a ladder than normal stairs, and the floors creaked constantly, even when nobody was walking on them. The wood inside the house glowed golden from almost two centuries of polish. All the furniture was antiques, even the light fixtures, floor grates, and window treatments. Of course everything was decorated in books, from a second edition OED (all twenty volumes) to the Agatha Christie Mystery Collection from Bantam (eighty-two volumes in black vinyl cloth over padded boards). Aunt Margery had a fascination with old clocks, too, even if she never bothered to set them to the same time. A soft purr of tick tocks filled the house. Everything smelled slightly of old books—granted, not as strongly as the actual bookstore, but still close.

  Aunt Margery had beat Angie home; she was sitting in the front room in an overstuffed armchair that was decorated with a fabric print of cats lying on books. She was flipping through a photograph album, and barely looked up when Angie came in and kicked off her shoes by the door.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  “How did what go?”

  “Your date with Walter Snuock, of course,” Aunt Margery said. She looked up and fluttered her eyelashes. “You don’t think I didn’t hear about that from Sheldon almost right away, did you?”

  Angie laughed. “You don’t miss a trick, do you?”

  “I might, but my friends won’t.”

  Angie shook a finger at her great-aunt. “Spies, I tell you. Spies.”

  “‘From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not in this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and so few.’ Updike.”

  Angie snorted. “Are you trying to say that I should have done more than get a peck on the cheek? We are getting a nasty rent increase from his father.”

  “Maybe he’ll put in a good word for the store.”

  “I doubt his father would listen to it. When I went up to the mansion to deliver his books, he mentioned that he was spending the rest of the night alone, which means that he wasn’t spending time with his son.”

  “Or his ex-wife.”

  “I didn’t know Phyllis had been back on the island.”

  “You don’t know Phyllis, period. They left when you were in what…sixth or seventh grade? At twelve or thirteen how much time did you ever spend talking to Phyllis Snuock?”

  “All right, all right, but it’s gossip related to the Snuocks. I would have thought that you’d have told me all about it.”

  “I don’t tell you half of what’s going on in this town. But how was the date?”

  Angie sighed and sat in the overstuffed chair opposite her great-aunt. She’d been hoping to go up to bed without having to give her aunt the blow-by-blow. But of course Aunt Margery was one of the nosiest people she knew, and Angie wouldn’t hear the end of it if she didn’t come clean now.

  Aunt Margery nodded thoughtfully through Angie’s description of the afternoon and evening—then abruptly stood up, made a very showy yawn, and sai
d that she was going to bed.

  “But you haven’t told me about your evening,” Angie said.

  “We have an early morning of it,” Aunt Margery said, completely unfairly. “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”

  And then she yawned and retreated to the former ground-floor study that had been turned into her bedroom, “to save her knees,” as she said, firmly closing the door behind her.

  Angie blinked twice, totally disappointed by her aunt’s unwillingness to share the gossip, then locked up and went upstairs to bed.

  #

  Late that night, she woke up out of a sound sleep. Had she heard a noise from downstairs? It was just after one a.m. The house itself was silent and still, but a breeze had picked up overnight, and she could hear the rush of it blowing in from the harbor. She tried to close her eyes and go back to sleep, but her subconscious took advantage of the fact that she was awake and started making to-do lists for the morning.

  She promised her subconscious that she was ready, that everything would be fine, that she didn’t need to get up and check on the trailer she’d rented to make sure that thieves hadn’t broken into it and—because book thieves were the absolute worst—stolen all her books.

  Her subconscious was having none of it. Thieves were breaking into her trailer, she’d forgotten to pack cash and receipts in her bag, and Captain Parfait was facing off against a giant rabid monster rat in the bookstore…

  She threw back the covers and swung herself out of her antique bedstead. She could ignore the threat to Captain Parfait, but not to her book business. She would quickly check that the trailer or the house hadn’t been broken into, and she would look to see if she had cash, card swiper, and paper receipts in the bag she always packed for sales days.

  She padded down the stairs and felt her skin prickle.

  What was the sound that had woken her, anyway?

  The lights in the kitchen were on, and the back door was unlocked. Aunt Margery’s shoes were missing from beside the door.

  Angie took a quick look into her bedroom: the bed was empty. The covers had been laid upon but not pulled back; a paperback was lying face down on the other side of the bed. Angie tucked the bookmark on the bedside table between the pages: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré, one of Aunt Margery’s favorite novels.