Murder Most Maine by Karen MacInerney Page A

house. “Do you think I need to be?”
    “If I were you, I wouldn’t miss it,” she said.
    I closed my eyes and massaged my temples. Only six more days, I told myself. She couldn’t win him over in six days.
    Or could she?
    ___
    The combination of my rumbling stomach, my worries about keeping an inn full of dieting guests happy for a week, and my nagging concerns about John and Vanessa kept me tossing and turning for hours. Biscuit abandoned me at midnight, annoyed at having her beauty sleep continuously interrupted, and at 1 a.m. I headed to the kitchen to make another cup of chamomile tea. I was just dunking a tea bag into the mug when I caught a flash of light in the darkness. I glanced out the front window; there, at the top of the hill, shone a pair of headlights. As I watched, they turned and disappeared back down the road. Who would be driving by the inn at one in the morning? I wondered. I waited for the lights to return, but they didn’t. I’d ask at the store tomorrow, I decided; someone there would know.
    My stomach rumbled audibly, and I was about to give in to temptation and grab a handful of gingersnaps when I heard the squeak of the front door. I closed the lid on the jar and pushed through the kitchen door, adrenaline pumping through me.
    Who was coming in—or out—in the middle of the night?
    I crept through the dining room and peered around the corner into the front hall. It was Vanessa, her black hair damp with rain. “Vanessa?”
    She looked up, startled. Her cheeks were flushed, and her dark eyes shone. “Oh my gosh. You scared me!”
    “You scared me, too,” I said. “What were you doing out there? Is everything okay?”
    Her eyes darted to the door, then back to me. “I had a hard time sleeping,” she said, “so I went for a walk.”
    “In this rain?” I asked.
    “It’s kind of a nice change from California,” she said. “I just spent a few weeks there.”
    “Did you see the car outside?”
    Vanessa blinked at me with doe eyes. “Car? No, I didn’t.”
    Yeah, right . “It was up at the top of the hill, just a moment ago.”
    She shook her head slowly, then shrugged. “I must have missed it. Anyway, I’m off to sleep now. See you in the morning. Eight o’clock, right?”
    “Right,” I said as she disappeared up the stairs. Who had she just met with? I wondered. Tom Lockhart again? Or another man she’d seduced and left, years ago?
    I glanced out the window at the falling rain and retreated to the kitchen, where I retrieved my cup of tea and headed back upstairs. Biscuit had returned to the bed in my absence. She snuggled in at my feet as I pulled the covers around me once more, struggling to get to sleep—and hoping it wasn’t John that Vanessa had come in from seeing.
    ___
    Seven o’clock the next morning found me standing in my kitchen, clutching a mug of coffee in one hand and feeding eggs into a pot of cold water with the other. Sleep had not come until well after two the previous night, and even though I was on my second cup of coffee, I wanted nothing more than to crawl back under the covers with Biscuit.
    When the last egg was nestled in the water, I turned on the burner and took another swig of coffee before retrieving the can of pumpkin. The oatmeal wouldn’t take long to cook, so I had a few minutes of peace—and time to get something into my empty stomach—before tackling the next steps. I tossed a piece of wheat bread into the toaster—it wasn’t a cinnamon roll, but at least it would get me through to breakfast—and sat down at the kitchen table, staring through the window at the green world outside.
    The sky had dumped a few more inches of rain onto the already soaked earth, but the plants didn’t seem to mind a bit; I swear the grass had doubled in height overnight. I hoped the group planned to take the road, and not the cliff path, down to the lighthouse this morning. If they didn’t, they were at risk of being mired in the mud.
    The rumble of a