To my surprise, it was my fate to find murder one more time, less than two weeks ago. Unlike my first foray into the world of crime, no one knew I was even on a murder case except for my mom, who’d been home for a short while. Andy Southerland, the town’s best police officer and one of my oldest friends, caught on too. It’s a good story—spies and national security abound—but that’s a whole other kettle of clues.
This morning, my thoughts drifted to something much lighter: Halloween, which was only six days away. This year, I’d volunteered to assist the Girl Scouts’ Halloween Haunts fund-raiser for the island’s neediest. I’d helped them over the last week build papier-mâché cauldrons, bats, and spider décor. We’d carved pumpkins. We’d planned activities for all ages, ranging from crafts and apple bobbing to a scary, ghostly maze. Today my sales assistant, Cherry, was covering for me at the Wick & Flame, and I planned to use my free time to drop by the girls’ weekend meeting.
I raised one leg in the air and pulled it toward my forehead as a cloud that looked like a gun—I’m not kidding—rolled by. For one moment, I had the witchy feeling that I was too complacent. As its shadow passed, I caught my breath, wondering if the peaceful afternoon, the healthy stock in my store, and the warmth of my relationship with Peter was no more than the calm before another storm. I shook it off. The flip side of having solved two murders is the danger of getting a little paranoid.
Also, I was in close proximity to two boys, all of eight and ten years old. They were the sons of my cousin Chris, with whom I was sharing my patch of lawn. My home is the apartment over Chris’s garage. My bucket list includes owning my own place one day, something with room for a studio and a garden out back, but for now, the company of Chris and his family is wonderful, and the modest rent is ideal for my entrepreneurial ambitions. The boys had inched closer and closer to my personal space over the last half hour, however, so I chalked up my unease to their questionable skill set when it comes to a ball and mitt.
Chris appeared at his kitchen window as their last pitch zoomed over my chair.
“Dudes! Don’t bug Stella,” he said.
“Hi!” I waved to him as the boys retrieved their ball and continued their game.
“Do you want some oatmeal? I’m on breakfast duty,” Chris called out to me.
“That’s very tempting, but I can’t,” I answered. “I’m heading over to the Morton house in about ten minutes.”
The Morton house was home to Halloween Haunts. It was owned by John Pierre Morton, whom I’d met during my last case, when he’d come to our island to check out his inheritance of the musty, forgotten home. Although I’d briefly considered John Pierre a murder suspect, we’d left on good terms when he returned to Canada.
There’s something about the house that has a spell on me. It is inviting in spite of, or perhaps because of, its walls’ crooked lines. The Girl Scouts’ troop leader, Shelly, had the same reaction while shopping at my store one day when she heard me talking to Cherry about the creaky old place. On the spot, Shelly decided it would be the perfect location for her troop’s event. At her request, I gave John Pierre a call, and he graciously agreed to allow the scouts to use his house.
“That place is haunted,” said Chris’s youngest, rubbing his ball into his mitt.
I smiled, knowing the source of his fears. In an effort to drum up business, the troop had circulated a few rumors that the house was actually haunted. Given Nantucket’s foggy nights and seafaring past, filled with shipwrecks and whales’ tales, the town has no shortage of ghost stories. It wasn’t hard for the girls’ propaganda to take off.
“Things aren’t haunted in real life,” I said.
“Yes, they are,” he said, pulling his arm back for a throw.
“Mwah-ha-ha,” I said with my campiest vampire-slash-ghost voice, my arms held high in zombie fashion to play along.
“Boys!” said Chris.
It was then that I realized how sharp a parents’ instincts can be. My arms still raised, I looked up to a new vision of white streaking across the sky. Not a cloud. Nay, it was the white leather of a baseball that flew from the hand of Chris’s youngest with the greatest speed and farthest distance of the day. Right toward the closed kitchen window of my apartment. Unable to interrupt its trajectory, the four of us watched, our jaws hanging, as the ball hurtled toward my window and crashed unapologetically through the glass.
The boys took a step back, and then froze, torn between the primordial instincts of fight or flight.
I managed to stifle an “Oh, no!” in spite of my shock. The boys would have enough to answer for without me. The window’s glass hadn’t even hit the ground before Chris’s back door shot open.
“What the—?” he said, storming across the law. “Get inside!”
“It wasn’t my fault,” each boy said in his own fashion as they both scrambled, defiantly but obediently, toward the main house.
“Sorry, Stella,” said Chris, not pausing to stop.
I grasped at the unbroken chair straps beneath me and hopped up as Chris opened my unlocked door and stormed up the stairs to my apartment. Following him, I saw my cat, Tinker, who was on the top step. His whiskers peeked over his paws in a way that suggested a combination of empathy for and disappointment in his humans. Indeed, there were glass shards on my countertop and in the sink. The window would need to be replaced.
Chris, a contractor, immediately dialed his window-repair guy on the Cape, so I grabbed a broom and got to work. I looked at the window as I heard him complain to his colleague about how long the delivery might take. I knew he was concerned about being a good landlord, but I figured with a trash bag and some heavy tape from under my kitchen sink, I could probably cover the hole well enough until a new window arrived.
“I got this,” Chris said to me, his hand over the receiver. “Really. Scoot.”
Chris went right back to his phone call without waiting for me to answer. Realizing my garbage-bag proposal might only serve to add to his frustration with the boys’ shenanigans, I tactfully traded my broom for my keys and wallet. I silently waved to Chris. He responded with a shooing motion toward my stairs, so I headed down with Tinker behind me. My pet refuses to limit his role to house cat. Sometimes I think he sees himself as another human, or maybe a faithful dog. I didn’t mind. Aside from saving me the worry of having one of his paws land on a shard of glass in my absence, I knew the girls would get a kick out of seeing him.
The two of us jumped in my red Beetle and headed to the Morton house. Having left the chaos of the boys’ game of catch, I was delighted when Tinker and I stepped out of the car to hear a happy chorus of voices coming from inside.
As I was heading up the stairs to the front door, ready to give Shelly a break, I was surprised to hear another sound. It was of a heavy creak from behind the house, followed by a shriek that sang of pure mischief. Fool me once, as they say. My radar for middle-school high jinx was on red alert, thanks to my own family. I headed around the back to investigate.
The backyard was empty, but I wasn’t ready to concede that I was alone. I headed across the half acre of dead grass which was shrouded in fallen leaves, toward a dilapidated stone structure behind the main house that had once been a smokehouse. The girls affectionately called it The Shack. Homes built in the early nineteenth century sometimes had additional buildings behind them that served as workshops. By now, most of these structures have been razed for garages or more yard space, but the Morton house still had one. It was so run-down, however, that no one particularly relished it as history.
The scouts were strictly forbidden to enter The Shack, partly because a chain, which usually secured