Pieces of Hate (A Wendover House Mystery Book 4) by Melanie Jackson

dark and not just because it
might storm. I had a creepy-crawly feeling at the back of my neck.
    Catnip, check. Coffee, check. No tennis balls, but a Kong—check. And cognac, big, big check. I also decided to try one of Blu Barry’s Truffles, though technically they shouldn’t be
called truffles because of the conglomeration of nuts and candied “ blu barrys ” coagulated in a
rather dubious nougat.
    The canned goods I ignored. Though I know that they are not actually
old enough to have reached a state of decay, they still manage to give that
impression. It must be the light that makes everything on the shelves appear
dusty and faded, but I have no interest in eating anything that looks old
enough and dented enough to have traveled in Paul Revere’s saddlebags.
    The younger Mrs. Mickle filled me in on the local
gossip as she rang me up. Slowly. Though showing the
early signs of senility, she was still the self-appointed record keeper of
illegitimate births and marital infidelities. Not that she was inclined to
ignore any other kind of misdeed, mayhem, or strangeness that happened in her
realm. Mrs. Tudor’s piratical death vision got a full and probably greatly
embellished telling, and I couldn’t escape until she had gnawed the story to
the bone though I very much wanted to avoid hearing about it again.
    “There aren’t any whys without becauses ,”
she finished and tapped the counter with a calloused finger. “Mark my words.”
And then she was off again.
    I think I gasped in the right places but didn’t add anything at the
end of the performance except that I thought it might be coming on rain that
night and hoped no one would be abroad. Mrs. Mickle’s eyes got very big and she nodded solemnly.
    I had a vision of my own as I stepped out of the shop, so clear it
passed for divine—or perhaps diabolical—insight. There was a mass of clouds
rolling in on the islands like giant boulders thundering down a mountain and
the sun was driven into a boiling sea. The image was nourished into almost
certain reality by the smell of ozone gathering in the air in spite of the sky
being completely clear by that time.
    I shook the hallucination off, but disquiet remained. There was no
fighting it when these moments happened and I surrendered to the inevitable. A
storm was coming. Possibly something else as well and the thought of it made me
cold.
    Bryson put away his cell and sniffed at the air as he reached for the
cardboard box I had tucked under my arm. I hoped that he had begun passing the
word while I shopped that people should stay off the water. I didn’t want to
leave the task to young Mrs. Mickle alone, formidable
gossip though she was.
    We took the direct route to the docks. It came as a bit of a shock to
see people cavorting about in costumes in front of the Emporium. There were
pilgrims and pirates, women in hoopskirts and bonnets that might have come off
an old-fashioned Easter card, soldiers in red coats and soldiers in other color
coats with coonskin caps carrying around very realistic muskets, all of which
had likely been dragged out of people’s attics. There were some bows and
quivers of arrows being toted by people in
anachronistic dress. There were a lot of whiskers, beards, mustaches, and
muttonchops, but these did not come from the attic. They were standard
face-wear among certain islanders, though usually they did not gather all their
beards in one place. The scene was absent any vendors selling ice cream or
popcorn, but the street was as crowded and disorganized as opening day at the
county fair and had the same air of expectation.
    The sight was more disconcerting that amusing. I was used to everyone
in their proper place in proper dress. This trying on of other identities made
the world seem skewed at a time when I wanted things to be normal.
    Could they truly be oblivious to the danger drawing in around us?
    The buildings seemed to know we were threatened. They huddled together
as though wishing