Bubble, Bubble, Tea and Trouble

Book 7: Tea by the Sea Mysteries

by Vicki Delany

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Mystery

Synopsis

When Cape Cod tearoom owner Lily Roberts finds a group conducting a séance in her grandmother’s Victorian B&B, she has no idea the trouble that’s about to be conjured up . . .

When Lily stumbles across five middle-aged women gathered in a dark corner of the tearoom for a “book club,” she firmly reminds them that the inn’s no-smoking policy also applies to their oddly ritualistic candles. As they head outside, Lily overhears them chalking their bad luck up to the absence of their leader, Katya. Whatever they’re doing, it certainly isn’t reading—and their cover is starting to sound like weak tea . . .
While they enjoy Lily’s homemade banana bread the next morning, they make their intentions clear—grilling Lily about any past paranormal activity in the cliffside mansion. Their attempts to contact spirits have been falling flat, it seems, and the mysterious Katya is catching the heat. Levelheaded Lily thinks the real reason is that there’s no such thing as ghosts.

But Lily’s pal Bernie has found another explanation: the half-baked spirit-seekers have the wrong house. The haunted reputation belongs to the place next door—where Lily’s gardener boyfriend is currently staying. But before they can inform the luckless ladies, the missing medium shows up—dead on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Now, Lily has two jobs: serving afternoon tea, and solving a murder before someone else gets sent to the great beyond . . .

Release date: July 28, 2026

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

They sat in a circle on the carpet, legs outstretched, ankles crossed over each other, heads bowed, eyes closed. They held hands, and three tall, white pillar candles set into a silver candelabra burned in the center of the circle. The lights in the hallway and on the landing had been turned off, and the candlelight threw deep shadows under their eyes and chins. One of the participants coughed, and one shifted on her bottom. The candles weren’t the best, and they smoked.

“Excuse me. What are you doing?”

Five pairs of eyes opened. Heads lifted and turned toward me.

“Shush,” one of them said. “This isn’t a good moment.”

“Unfortunately, it is. We have a no smoking policy here, clearly laid out in the form you signed when you checked in.”

“We’re not smoking.”

“You aren’t, but those candles are.” I waved my hand in front of my face to make my point. “You’ll have to put them out.”

One of the women took a deep breath, leaned forward, and prepared to blow.

“Stop!” another said. “Please, Ms. … uh … we won’t be long.”

“Who are you anyway?” someone asked.

“I’m Lily Roberts,” I said. “My grandmother is Mrs. Campbell. She smelled the smoke and sent me up here to check.”

The women eyed each other. There were five, ranging in age from midforties to midsixties, clad in an assortment of sweaters and jeans or loose trousers, with sneakers or low-heeled shoes on their feet. Some were carefully made-up, some were not; some wore good jewelry, some did not.

I watched them, hoping they’d do as I asked. I’m not one for confrontation, and I didn’t want to have to step into their circle to blow out the candles myself.

As for what they were doing here in the hallway of the second floor of Victoria-on-Sea, my grandmother’s B & B, I had absolutely no idea. It looked as though they were preparing to have a séance. I desperately hoped they were not preparing to have a séance.

The women exchanged hesitant glances before one of them made up her mind. With no further discussion, she extinguished the candles in one big breath and rose to her feet. Not entirely gracefully. She struggled slightly to get her feet beneath her, but she didn’t need to use her hands for support. “My apologizes. We want to be respectful of your property. It won’t happen again.”

The other women stood, some with more ease than others.

The candle-blower thrust out her hand. “I’m Lori Morrison.”

I took it in mine. Her hand was soft, her grip strong, firm without trying to be dominant. “Thank you.”

“This is not what I signed up for,” the shortest of the women grumbled. “What are we going to do now?”

I looked at Lori, waiting for her to respond.

“Is smoking permitted outside?” she asked me.

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll go outside. It’s a nice night. Marietta, bring the candles and lighter.”

“It’s windy.”

“We can manage,” Lori replied. “If you need sweaters or scarves, get them. We’ll meet at the back by the cliff in ten minutes.”

“Thank you,” I said again, as I took my leave.

“Katya would have put that one in her place,” a voice said as I descended the stairs.

“Katya’s not here, is she?” Lori replied. “Ten minutes.”

My grandmother was in her rooms on the ground floor, awaiting my report. She put her book down and folded her hands in her lap as I came in. The blanket over her knees shifted, but Robert the Bruce, her big black cat, did not bother to appear. I dropped into a comfortable chair. “They lit candles. They’ve agreed to take them outside.”

“Good. Any problems?”

“A couple of them might have put up an argument, but one stepped neatly in and agreed, so the rest of them fell into line. Who are they, anyway?”

“A book club, here to enjoy the glories of Cape Cod in the springtime. Some have come from Boston, some from New York.” After almost sixty years in America, my grandmother’s English accent is not only still strong but had even strengthened during the visit to Yorkshire we took last fall.

“Strange book club. I didn’t see any books.”

Rose shrugged. She was ready for bed in a nightgown of white eyelet cotton, her feet in hand-knitted pink slippers, makeup scrubbed off, gray hair sticking up in all directions as it dried from the shower. “The reservation was made for the group by a woman calling herself Katya Ivanova: six rooms for six people, including herself.”

“I only saw five women, although one of them mentioned someone named Katya.”

“She didn’t make it. Apparently, she broke her leg the day before they were due to depart.”

“That’s too bad.”

“It was a block booking, paid in advance. Some of them attempted to get out of their reservation. I informed them our cancellation window had passed. One lady”—Rose thought for a moment—“Marietta something, tried to argue with me.”

“The success of which I can guess at as I saw five women upstairs.”

“Indeed. Thank you for doing that, love.”

“Not a problem. I’ll be off. Do you need anything?”

“See you in the morning.”

I gave my grandmother a light kiss on the top of her head and headed back to my own place.

Rose doesn’t often involve me in the day-to-day running of the B & B. I make the breakfasts and that’s about all, but earlier tonight, she phoned and asked me to check into the goings-on upstairs. She didn’t say why, but I suspected she thought if it came to an argument, the way she would have slowly and laboriously (she is eighty-five, after all) climbed the stairs would put her at an initial disadvantage in a verbal joust.

I live in a small cottage on the property of my grandmother’s grand Victorian mansion, proudly situated on a cliff top overlooking Cape Cod Bay. The main house is big enough for eight guest rooms as well as a suite for Rose herself. Tonight, instead of going out the front door and around the house to access my place, I decided to have a quick check on our visitors first. I have to admit, my curiosity had been piqued. What sort of book club sits on the floor, not only with nothing but candles for light but also with no wine or snacks?

On top of which, I hadn’t seen any books.

I went into the kitchen. With the exception of the bathrooms and this kitchen, Rose’s B & B is decorated throughout as though Queen Victoria might drop in at any moment. The bathrooms are thoroughly modern. The kitchen is not.

It was likely last “modernized” sometime in the 1950s, with the very latest in harvest gold appliances, linoleum flooring, dark wooden cupboards, and Formica counter-tops. But other than breakfasts, little cooking is done here. I have a small kitchen in my own place, and Rose, after a lifetime of working as a kitchen maid and cook in a grand Yorkshire home and then catering to a husband and five children, had hung up her apron with much fanfare. She now usually reheats or orders in ready-made meals.

The kitchen lies three steps below ground level at the back of the house, harkening back to days when no one other than servants ever ventured into the working areas of a house. I opened the door and stood in the darkness of the entrance. Benches on the lawn in the back allow guests to sit out and enjoy the view over the bay. A sturdy wooden fence lines the property, protecting the unwary (and small children) from tumbling over the edge of the cliff. It’s not all that far down, but it is dangerously rocky below, and the sea can be rough.

It was early May, shortly after eight o’clock, almost dark. The skies had been cloudy all day, and they showed no signs of letting any light from the moon or stars through.

The French doors off the dining room opened and voices broke the night silence.

“It’s cold.”

“I told you to put on a sweater.” I recognized Lori’s voice.

“I didn’t even want to come. Not without Katya. What’s the point?”

“The point is as much to have fun as anything else.”

“Not for me. I’ve been looking forward to the full Katya Ivanova experience for months.”

“You’re welcome to go home, Marietta.”

A snort of disapproval. “I’ve paid, haven’t I? Besides, we came in the tour van, and it dropped us here and left.”

“If you want to leave, maybe we can rent a car to get us to Boston, and you can get the train there for New York.”

“Thanks, Grace, but that would be an extra expense. Like I said, I’ve paid for this little excursion. I might as well make the most of it,” Marietta replied.

“I’m fine with it. I’ve had so much stress in my life these past months, I need a break. I came more for a holiday on Cape Cod, anyway, and the price was cheap, with it being offseason.” The speaker had a trace of a Southern accent, liquid and charming. “I mean, this place is absolutely fabulous. Look at that view.”

“What view? It’s dark, Scarlet. You can’t see a darn thing.”

“The view will be nice in the daylight,” Scarlet replied.

“No one has to participate if she doesn’t want to,” Lori said. “I brought a blanket. Here.”

“Do we have to sit on the ground? It’s going to be cold.”

“We have to make the circle, otherwise it won’t work. That’s one of Katya’s prime principles. The circle encloses the power.”

“You’d think with all her power, Katya would have seen she was going to fall down those stairs and avoided them, wouldn’t you?”

“Have you considered, Anita, that her accident might have been part of a plan larger than even Katya herself? We’re here, together, now. We’re open to the elements.”

“Whatever.”

Women grunted and groaned and muttered as they took their places on the blanket.

“Silence,” Lori ordered. “I am not Katya, but I will do the best I can in her absence. Now, please, calm your thoughts and gather the strength of your wisdom around you.”

A small light flickered, then another and another. The candles were lit. A glow against the night.

I don’t make a habit of eavesdropping on our guests’ private conversations. I stood in the dark kitchen doorway, wanting to ensure they kept their fire outside, planning to slip away once I’d done that. But my curiosity was aroused. Whatever these women were, they were not a book club, and they were not of like mind when it came to why they were here.

“Ghost hunters,” I said.

“Really?”

“Yup, really. After I chased them away from the upstairs landing, they went outside, and I just happened to overhear—”

“Totally possible to do. The walls in this hundred-and-fifty-year-old house are so thin.”

“I just happened to be passing,” I said, slipping neatly around a discussion of the soundproofing of the house, some of which was not as it might initially appear. “As they were attempting to summon a ghost.”

“Any success?” Simon McCracken asked.

“What do you think?”

“I think,” Edna Harkness said, “you see all sorts of things in the hotel business. And as long as they don’t summon a vengeful spirit who burns down the place, let them amuse themselves as they like.”

I put a tray of bacon into the oven. We were getting started on the breakfasts. Edna is the breakfast waitress for the B & B. Simon is our gardener, and he always pops in first thing for a coffee and to grab whatever I’m making or thawing for the breakfast pastries. Carrot and oat muffins today. Simon’s good at his job. Victoria-on-Sea is the number-one garden attraction in North Augusta, according to Tripadvisor. Honesty forces me to admit there is no number two.

“Edna’s right,” Simon said in his super-sexy English accent. “You have several rooms booked at the beginning of May. Surely, that’s a bonus?”

“You’re right about that, particularly considering they’ve all taken individual rooms, and for four nights. They came together, in a van with a driver, but no one’s sharing a room, which makes me assume they’re not friends. Before this trip anyway.”

“Anyone else in here last night?”

“Two couples, according to Rose’s note. I haven’t met them.”

As her final task of the day, Rose leaves a note for me outlining any allergies or food restrictions our guests might have. Last night’s note held numbers only, with no instructions, which is always a good thing for a harried breakfast cook.

“Take your guests where you can find them.” Edna carried a tray containing jugs of orange and tomato juice into the dining room to start laying out the self-serve options.

Simon took advantage of her absence to wrap his arms around me and give me a kiss.

I returned the kiss and snuggled into him. It felt so nice.

He’d only arrived back on the Cape two weeks ago. Simon’s a professional gardener who’s worked at some grand estates in England. We were lucky last spring when he was able to come to Victoria-on-Sea with no notice when his uncle, who’d had the job for decades, abruptly quit. With his contract over in the fall, Simon returned to England to take a post as the winter gardener at a famous manor house in Yorkshire.

He’d received plenty of job offers in England, but he came back here to North Augusta to be with me. Not ready to fully commit yet, either of us, he was bunking with our friend Matt Goodwill in Matt’s house next door.

Simon released me and picked up his mug and muffin. He was much the same age as me, six-foot tall and heavily muscled, as befitted a man who made his living digging up flower beds, lugging compost and moving garden pots and fittings, and digging holes in rocky soil for new bushes and seedlings. His summer tan was getting a start on his neck and lower arms, and his light hair was taking on a sandy glow from the strength of the Massachusetts spring sun.

“I got confirmation yesterday from the garden club about the dinner,” he said. “We’re to be there on Thursday at seven. Dinner first, then my speech, and after-dinner drinks to wrap up.”

“I’ll be ready. Are you nervous?”

“To talk about gardening? No.” He’d been invited to be the guest speaker at the North Augusta Garden Club’s annual general meeting, and he’d invited me to be his date. I’m not particularly interested in gardens, other than admiring them, and would likely be bored to death by his speech, but I was looking forward to the night out as an official couple.

“I’ll be off, then,” he said. “If any of those ghosts happen to have gardening experience, send them my way. You truly did let the place go to seed over the winter, Lily.”

“Not my responsibility!” I called as he pulled the kitchen door open.

Bernadette Murphy slipped in around him. “Ghosts? What’s this about ghosts, and is the coffee ready? Those muffins look nice.”

“A look is all you’ll get,” I said. “I’ve already lost one to Simon, and we have a nearly full house today.”

Bernie pouted.

“Oh, all right,” I said, as she knew I would. “Just one. If they’re popular, I can whip up more.”

She snatched up the prize as though afraid I’d change my mind. Which I might have.

“You’re up early, Bernie,” Edna said as she came back in, her tray empty. “As long as you’re here, make yourself useful and get to work on the fruit salad.”

“A small price to pay for one of Lily’s muffins.” Bernie took a seat at the round pine table, heavily scarred from decades of use. “I am not up early. Rather, I am up late. Haven’t been to bed.”

“Good night?” I said optimistically. Bernie was a writer, struggling to finish her first novel. Normally the most optimistic and cheeriest of people, when it came to her writing, Bernie could always see a storm on the horizon. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said in that tone that meant she wanted me to ask. “But first, before we don’t talk about my dark night of the artistic soul, tell me about the ghosts. You have ghosts?”

Edna put a cut-glass bowl on the table along with a paring knife, oranges, bananas, and apples. “Work.”

“Some of those bananas don’t look too good,” Bernie said.

“Put them aside. I’ll make bread out of them,” I said. “To answer your question, no. We do not have ghosts, but we do have ghost hunters in the house.”

“Have they found any?”

“Any ghosts? No, and I’m not expecting them to. For one thing, I don’t think they know what they’re doing.”

As I’d stood in the shadows last night, the women settled into their circle. The candles had been lit, and they’d joined hands. Lori, judging by the voice, mumbled a few things along the lines of reaching out to the Great Beyond.

And then … nothing. Nothing at all. A gust of wind blew, and one of the candles went out. They tried to get excited about that, but then another gust blew out a second candle and Anita said, “Don’t need a spiritual presence when you have wind.”

Whereupon Lori said, “I am trying my best here.”

They carried on like that for about half an hour. Lori asked the spirits to visit them, Anita failed to disguise her snorts of disapproval, Marietta kept saying, “Give them time,” and Grace complained she was cold.

Finally, Lori said, “Let’s not lose heart. I’ll call Katya in the morning and ask her for further details. We need to know more about the previous inhabitants of this house before we try again.”

They’d risen to their feet with much groaning and stretching of backs and trudged inside. I’d slipped away, heading for my own bed.

“Let me know when they come down,” I said to Edna.

“Why? You don’t usually speak to the guests.”

“Just curious. I saw them upstairs and heard them talking outside, and I caught some of the names. I’d like to put names to faces, that’s all.”

I glanced at the clock on the stove. Almost seven. Breakfast is served from seven to nine.

“I hear voices now. I need that fruit salad, Bernie. Chop-chop.” Edna went into the dining room.

“Chop-chopping.” Bernie continued slicing fruit. Bernie and I have been friends since our earliest school days, growing up among the high-rises and bustling streets of Manhattan. I’ve always called her the Warrior Princess, not only because she’s almost six feet tall, lean and fit, with wild red curls, dancing green eyes, and a face full of freckles, but also because she’s brave and bold, whereas I’m more often than not hesitant to tread into the unknown. When I moved to Cape Cod to help Rose with her B & B, Bernie had followed not long after, with the intention of pursuing her dream of writing a book. She was renting a tumble-down shack, the only thing she could afford, not far from here, and normally rode her bike around to save on gas.

“I wonder if they’re interested in anyone in particular,” Bernie said as she added roughly cut chunks of apple to the bowl, “or just generic ghost hunters.”

“I suspect they’re women who paid for an experience, and now that it’s proving to be not entirely as advertised, they’re trying to make the best of it.”

“When Rose first bought this place, I did some research on its history. Didn’t come across anything about any ghosts.”

“This house isn’t all that old,” I said. “It was built in 1865. Old by Cape Cod standards, but not compared to some of the places we saw in England.”

“I never got a hint of anything … shall we say supernatural … at Thornecroft Castle. Either in the castle ruins themselves or the house.”

“Which is because ghosts don’t exist.”

Bernie’s face perked up. “Hey! That’s an idea. Do you think a supernatural subplot would give the book a bit of a lift? I’ve been thinking something’s missing.”

“It would not,” I said. “Get it done, Bernie. No more misdirection or abrupt changes in plot. You are running out of time.”

“First guests down are a couple,” Edna said, returning. “He’ll have the full English, with fried eggs and whole wheat toast, and she’s going to have muffins and yogurt with the fruit salad. Which, I can’t help but notice, isn’t ready yet.”

“Chop-chopping,” Bernie said as she chop-chopped.

Mushrooms, sliced tomatoes, and onions grilled in a light splash of olive oil were simmering on the back of the stove, and the bacon was crisping in the oven. Edna had laid out cereals, yogurt, milk, and tea and coffee things in the dining room.

“Ta-da!” Bernie leaned back in her chair and gestured to the fruit bowl.

I cracked eggs into a hot frying pan and put two slices of bread into the toaster, and Edna carried out the glass bowl.

“I could do some further research, if you want,” Bernie said.

“I do not.”

“Another couple down,” Edna said. “She wants the egg white frittata, and he’s going to have the full English with poached eggs and white toast.”

I’d cooked the frittata yesterday, and all I had to do this morning was heat it up and sprinkle some finely chopped fresh herbs over the top. I served up the fried eggs, along with a hefty serving of bacon and sautéed vegetables, for the first table. Edna put toast on a plate and carried it all out.

Once the poached eggs were done, I turned off the stove and laid the food on plates, which Edna took into the dining room. When she came back, she dropped into a chair with a sigh. “No sign of the others yet. I’m getting too old to do this.”

“How ever will you manage?” Bernie said. “You’ve served a grand total of two tables.”

Edna grinned at her. We all knew Edna didn’t need this job. She’d originally taken it on a temporary basis as a favor to Rose, whom she met at bridge club, and simply settled permanently into the routine. Edna was retired, but as long as her husband was still working, she didn’t mind getting up early. Besides, she said working a couple of hours here provided structure to the rest of her day.

As long as I was waiting for the next bunch of diners, I started assembling ingredients to make a banana bread with the fruit bowl rejects. Banana bread freezes well, and I like to have several loaves on hand in case of an emergency, which in a B & B kitchen usually means overly enthusiastic eaters.

“Do you know any ghost stories from around here?” . . .