the mystery of the missing letters solved, I should have been able to pick up my day where I’d left off and get back to work. But when I sat down at the computer, my hands were still shaky. Tea , I told myself, a cup of red bush tea will settle me down .
I jumped up and went to the kitchen, filled the kettle, set it on the stove, and returned to the computer, blindly rereading the awkward sentence as I strained to hear the sound of the kettle’s whistle. Instead, I heard the floor above my head creak. My eyes flew to the ceiling, and the feeling of panic washed over me again. Was Billups upstairs? Was he poised behind a door, waiting for me to walk unawares into my bedroom?
Angry now, I strode to the base of the stairs, grabbed an umbrella from the coat tree, and stomped up the stairs, making as much noise as my shoes would allow. I gave the second floor a thorough search, whipping the shower curtain back—shades of a scene from the Hitchcock movie Psycho —kneeling to inspect under the beds, poking the umbrella into the recesses of my closets. What did my search yield? Nothing! Except perhaps a determination to get out the vacuum cleaner at the nearest opportunity.
The keening wail of the teakettle brought me back to my senses, and I returned to the kitchen, grateful no one else had been at home with me to witness my mad hunt for a nonexistent intruder. Thinking about my reaction to a sound I’d heard frequently over the years—old houses often creak—I felt my cheeks color with embarrassment. What could I have been thinking?
I carried the tea into my study, sat in front of the computer, and contemplated the recent events of my life. Why would the presence of a harmless, maybe even pathetic drifter set off alarm bells? Why was I giving credence to some crank getting a kick out of sending me silly, nonsensical letters? So what if Maureen came up with a strange and possibly unpalatable dish for the holiday? So what if my guests were not all compatible? I would still make my book deadline if I had to stay up twenty-four hours a day to do it, I promised myself.
So what was causing all this consternation?
If I looked into my heart, I could see the truth. And the truth was that of all the events conspiring to create pressure in my life, the one I was most apprehensive about was the one I most eagerly looked forward to—George’s visit.
Chapter Six
I was glad that Jed and I wouldn’t be departing to pick up George until eleven the following day. I wanted to see what that morning’s mail brought before leaving, whether there would be another delivery with a new pasted-on letter.
There was.
I opened it carefully and extracted the single sheet of white paper. Sure enough, a fifth letter had been added to the previous four—an orange C . The other letters on the page, G , L , O , and T were tiny compared to the C . Did that have special meaning? Was there a pointed message in highlighting it?
Like the third piece of mail, the one containing the letter O , this one had also been mailed from Cabot Cove.
Try as I might not to, my thoughts went straight to Hubert Billups. I know that wasn’t fair. After all, I had no evidence that he had anything to do with the letters. And despite my paranoia of the previous day, he probably had nothing to do with my unlocked front door either. But the confluence of his strange behavior, and the arrival of the letters, made for a reasonable question as to whether they might be linked. Or so I told myself.
Jed was standing by the Cessna Skyhawk SP when my cabdriver, Nick, dropped me off at Cabot Cove Airport. It wasn’t much of an airport compared to those in larger cities, but it had grown along with the town. There was talk of one of the airlines starting regular service there, but it hadn’t happened yet.
I knew that if a commercial airline did begin offering flights, it would hurt Jed’s business. He’s always been philosophical about that possibility and
I jumped up and went to the kitchen, filled the kettle, set it on the stove, and returned to the computer, blindly rereading the awkward sentence as I strained to hear the sound of the kettle’s whistle. Instead, I heard the floor above my head creak. My eyes flew to the ceiling, and the feeling of panic washed over me again. Was Billups upstairs? Was he poised behind a door, waiting for me to walk unawares into my bedroom?
Angry now, I strode to the base of the stairs, grabbed an umbrella from the coat tree, and stomped up the stairs, making as much noise as my shoes would allow. I gave the second floor a thorough search, whipping the shower curtain back—shades of a scene from the Hitchcock movie Psycho —kneeling to inspect under the beds, poking the umbrella into the recesses of my closets. What did my search yield? Nothing! Except perhaps a determination to get out the vacuum cleaner at the nearest opportunity.
The keening wail of the teakettle brought me back to my senses, and I returned to the kitchen, grateful no one else had been at home with me to witness my mad hunt for a nonexistent intruder. Thinking about my reaction to a sound I’d heard frequently over the years—old houses often creak—I felt my cheeks color with embarrassment. What could I have been thinking?
I carried the tea into my study, sat in front of the computer, and contemplated the recent events of my life. Why would the presence of a harmless, maybe even pathetic drifter set off alarm bells? Why was I giving credence to some crank getting a kick out of sending me silly, nonsensical letters? So what if Maureen came up with a strange and possibly unpalatable dish for the holiday? So what if my guests were not all compatible? I would still make my book deadline if I had to stay up twenty-four hours a day to do it, I promised myself.
So what was causing all this consternation?
If I looked into my heart, I could see the truth. And the truth was that of all the events conspiring to create pressure in my life, the one I was most apprehensive about was the one I most eagerly looked forward to—George’s visit.
Chapter Six
I was glad that Jed and I wouldn’t be departing to pick up George until eleven the following day. I wanted to see what that morning’s mail brought before leaving, whether there would be another delivery with a new pasted-on letter.
There was.
I opened it carefully and extracted the single sheet of white paper. Sure enough, a fifth letter had been added to the previous four—an orange C . The other letters on the page, G , L , O , and T were tiny compared to the C . Did that have special meaning? Was there a pointed message in highlighting it?
Like the third piece of mail, the one containing the letter O , this one had also been mailed from Cabot Cove.
Try as I might not to, my thoughts went straight to Hubert Billups. I know that wasn’t fair. After all, I had no evidence that he had anything to do with the letters. And despite my paranoia of the previous day, he probably had nothing to do with my unlocked front door either. But the confluence of his strange behavior, and the arrival of the letters, made for a reasonable question as to whether they might be linked. Or so I told myself.
Jed was standing by the Cessna Skyhawk SP when my cabdriver, Nick, dropped me off at Cabot Cove Airport. It wasn’t much of an airport compared to those in larger cities, but it had grown along with the town. There was talk of one of the airlines starting regular service there, but it hadn’t happened yet.
I knew that if a commercial airline did begin offering flights, it would hurt Jed’s business. He’s always been philosophical about that possibility and
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