Murder at the Lobstah Shack

Book 3: Cozy Capers Book Group Mystery

by Maddie Day

Genres: Craft & Hobby Cozy Mysteries; Culinary Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

When murder turns out to be the special of the day at her friend's seafood restaurant, bicycle shop owner Mackenzie "Mac" Almeida and her fellow book club sleuths have to net a killer . . .



From clam chowdahs to oysters on the half-shell, Tulia Peters' Lobstah Shack offers locals and tourists in Westham, Massachusetts, some of Cape Cod's most amazing cuisine. But when the body of Annette DiCicero is discovered in the kitchen's walk-in freezer—with a custom-made claw-handled lobster pick lodged in her neck—spoiled appetites are the least of Tulia's worries.



After a heated public argument with Annette, Tulia is a person of interest in the police's homicide investigation. To clear Tulia's name, Mac and the Cozy Capers Book Group snoop into Annette's personal life. Between her temperamental husband, his shady business partner, and two women tied to Annette's past life as "Miss New Bedford", there are now several suspects and multiple motives. And they're getting crabby about Mac intruding on their affairs . . .

Release date: November 30, 2021

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

“This kind of weather could make anybody commit murder.”

“Abe, don’t say that.” I twisted my head to stare at my husband of six weeks, seated in the camp chair next to mine in Jupiter Park, waiting for the weekly Friday night South Lick fireworks.

“I hope it doesn’t, Robbie.” He blotted his brow with a folded handkerchief. “But you have to admit, it’s stinking hot, even now, at nine o’clock.”

“I know. And hot can lead to tempers.” This July had broken records for heat here in southern Indiana, and tonight, the temperature was not falling in tandem with the midsummer dusk. I patted my own forehead and neck with a turquoise bandanna. What made it worse was the humid air sitting as still as the water in the pond. Not a breath of breeze moved to alleviate the oppressive evening.

“With any luck, whoever gets mad will be too wiped by the temperature to do anything about it,” Abe said.

We’d set up our chairs at the edge of the park, which gave me a good vantage point to see who was there. “It looks like Buck is helping out with weapons checking.” I pointed toward the entrance, where tall, lanky Lieutenant Buck Bird in uniform stood with arms folded, shaking his head at a couple of young dudes. While it was legal for civilians to carry guns in the state, a town ordinance prohibited them from municipal gatherings like this one.

“Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?” Abe asked. “The ordinance is posted right there at the gate.”

I glanced at my metal water bottle, which tonight held a refreshing white wine spritzer. Alcohol was off-limits, too. I gave a little mental shrug. I was a married woman of thirty with a handsome designated driver and no intentions of getting rowdy. Judging by the relaxed appearance of other spectators holding opaque water bottles, I might not be the only wrongdoer.

Buck sauntered over. “Howdy, there, Robbie. O’Neil.”

Abe stood and shook Buck’s hand. “Were those guys giving you trouble?” He gestured toward the entrance, where another officer now stood guard.

“Not really. I’ve knowed ’em since they were snotty-nosed tykes. They didn’t dare give me no lip. Say, my pop is over yonder. I wondered if y’all wanted to meet him.”

I set down my bottle and rose. “I’d love to, Buck. We still have half an hour until the fireworks, don’t we?”

“Yup.”

“I’ll stay and watch the chairs,” Abe said.

I expected he might have a quick catnap, too. We were both super-early risers. After I’d closed Pans ’N Pancakes, my country store restaurant, and finished breakfast prep for tomorrow, I had grabbed a little rest this afternoon. Abe, on the other hand, had helped his teenage son, Sean, pack to spend a week camping with his grandparents. Sean, now motherless, was a great kid, and I loved having him and his black Lab, Cocoa, live with us. Still, Abe and I both looked forward to having the house to ourselves for a bit. They’d taken the large and energetic pooch with them, so we didn’t have him to walk and feed.

As I left with Buck, a man’s voice said, “Abe, my man.” I glanced back to see Abe greet a petite man, the two exchanging a bent-elbow hand clasp. So much for Abe’s nap. I thought I might have seen the guy playing at a bluegrass concert last June.

I walked with Buck toward a line of chairs holding senior citizens at the rear of the crowd. They sat in front of the woods that formed part of the park, not far from the restroom building at the back. “Does your dad live around here?” I asked.

“He surely does, over to the Jupiter Springs Assisted Living place. Just so’s you know, he’s blind, but it don’t hold him back none. The man is adaptable as all get-out.”

We reached the group.

“Evenin’ there, Miz Vi,” Buck said to a tiny woman who sat knitting. “Hey, Pop. This here is my friend, Robbie Jordan. Robbie, please meet Grant Bird and Vi Perkell.”

Grant also held a knitting project in his lap, his fingers deftly clicking the needles through forest-green yarn. He glanced up. “Forgive me if I don’t get up, Miz Jordan. Once I drop a stitch, it’s a lost cause.” He was an older version of Buck, with the same long limbs but way more lines in his face and thin gray hair that might or might not have been combed before he left his residence.

“Please don’t do either,” I said. “I’m happy to meet you both.”

Despite the heat, Vi wore a red cotton scarf wrapped around the neck of a pink-flowered blouse. She peered up at me. “Aren’t you the girl who runs the best restaurant in town?” Her high voice was as birdlike as the rest of her.

“People do seem to enjoy coming in for breakfast or lunch,” I said. “I’m happy you’ve heard good things about my place. Have you been in to eat?”

“Not yet,” Vi replied.

“Breakfast is the best meal of the day, I always said, didn’t I, Buckham?” Grant asked his son with a toothy smile.

“You did, Pop, and you’d be right. Jupiter Springs should oughta round up the crew of you and load up that bus of theirs, drive it over to Pans ’N Pancakes.”

A thin woman sitting beyond Grant piped up. “I put in a request for a lunchtime field trip to your country store, but they turned me down.” She jabbed a long needle into the elaborate needlework on her lap.

“Robbie, this is Nanette Russo,” Grant said.

“Good evening, Ms. Russo,” I said.

“Ms. Jordan.” She picked up a blue plastic water bottle with Jupiter Springs Assisted Living printed on it in white letters. She took a long swig and set it down with a satisfied look.

I could smell the whiskey from where I stood. I glanced at Buck, but he only gave a What can you do? shrug.

“Ten minutes, South Lick,” a loudspeaker blared. “Are you ready?”

A man in a wheelchair beyond Nanette began to sing in a loud voice, “I’m a Yankee Doodle dandy, a Yankee Doodle do or die, a real live—”

“Hush up, now, Horace,” Nanette growled. “Independence Day was a couple weeks ago.”

The man looked bewildered but stopped singing. Instead, he whistled the same tune in a beautiful warble.

“I’d better get back to my husband,” I said. “Enjoy the fireworks.”

“You’ll come visit us at the old folks’ home one day soon, won’t you?” Vi asked.

“I’d love to.”

“Bunch of characters, they are.” Buck walked me halfway back. “Poor old Horace. There’s a light on, but nobody’s home upstairs.” He pointed to his head. “He used to be a brilliant scientist over to the university. Dementia is a terrible thing, Robbie.”

“Let’s hope you and I don’t end up that way, but it comes with the territory of aging for some.”

“It surely does.”

“See you later, Buck.” I thought I might very much want to pay a visit to the old folks, as Vi put it. Including to dementia-plagued Horace, who nevertheless remembered all the words to a song he must have learned as a child.

The worst phone call I ever got came in on an early October morning.

“Mac!” Tulia Peters wailed. “You have to come help me. Quick!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just come.”

I stared at my phone and the disconnected call. My no-nonsense friend didn’t make a practice of wailing. At eight thirty, I’d already locked the door of my tiny house to walk the thousand yards to Mac’s Bikes, my bicycle repair and rental shop. I steered myself instead to Tulia’s Lobstah Shack next door to my store. Sunshine slanted through the reddening leaves of a Cape Cod fall.

No lights lit the front of the small seafood restaurant and fish store. I didn’t even try the door. I hurried around to the alley and went in the back door.

Inside the kitchen, I called, “Tulia?”

She stuck her head out from a heavy stainless-steel door with a handle like those on refrigerated trucks. She waved me over and pushed open the door of the walk-in cooler. “Thank God you’re here. It’s awful, Mac. I didn’t know what to do!”

“What’s going on? Are you okay?” What in there could have made her wail and ask for help? Had she spilled her lobster bisque stock? Broken a five-gallon crock of homemade pickles and cut herself? I hurried across the kitchen to join her.

Tulia, shaking, pointed at the floor. She didn’t shake only from the cold. On the cement lay Annette DiCicero, as still as a washed-up log of driftwood. Her skin, usually a warm Mediterranean tan, had become a yellowy porcelain. A bright overhead bar of light illuminated the corpse. The light glinted off the chrome of an object embedded in her neck. Her eyes were wide, her brow furrowed, her open mouth drawn down.

Tulia’s other hand covered her mouth. Her deep brown eyes brimmed with emotion. She stood between shelves laden with boxes of green peppers and see-through bags of sandwich buns, towered over by gallon jars of mayonnaise and sliced dills. The thing sticking out of Annette’s neck, which was shaped like a lobster-claw, looked a lot like the handles on Tulia’s custom lobster picks.

My breath rushed in with a rasp. I brought my own hand to my mouth. “This is terrible.”

“It’s exactly like in the book, Mac,” Tulia whispered. “When Gus yells up to Julia, ‘There’s a dead guy in the walk-in.’”

“I know.” My whisper rasped in the silence.

Except this was reality, not the first page of Fogged Inn, a cozy mystery set in Maine. Our Cozy Capers book group wasn’t going to discuss Annette’s death in a light-hearted banter about motive and suspects. In real life, right here, right now, there was definitely a dead person in Tulia’s walk-in.

I shook myself and stared at Tulia. “Did you call the police?”

Mute, she shook her head, her gaze still on Annette’s corpse.

“Why not? You have to.”

She waited a beat. “We’d argued, Annette and me. In public. About the . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Right. They’d argued right in front of Town Hall, too, and half the town saw them. “About changing the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day?”

“Yes,” she whispered through chattering teeth.

I let out a breath. “Come on.” I took Tulia’s goose-bumpy arm and nearly dragged her out of the cooler. I used my foot to shove the door shut, and it latched with a satisfying ka-chunk. I spied a heavy sweater hanging from a peg and wrapped it around her.

“We have to call this in.” I pulled my phone out of my back pocket. I didn’t feel totally steady, myself, but somebody had to take charge of the situation. Tulia clearly couldn’t do it.

“Wait. What if they think I killed her?” Tulia’s voice quavered.

“Tulia.” I set my phone down on the counter and laid my hands on her shoulders. “Get a grip, my friend. You didn’t kill her. They have to have evidence. They won’t find any evidence you murdered her. Right?”

She nodded.

“Okay, then.” I hit 9-1-1 and put the call on speaker. When the dispatcher picked up, I said, “This is Mackenzie Almeida. Tulia Peters, the owner of the Lobstah Shack on Main Street in Westham, has found a dead person in her walk-in cooler. She was frightened and called me because my shop is next door. We feel safe and no one else is here.” I’d had to answer the routine questions before, unfortunately. But . . . I hadn’t checked the front of the restaurant. Were we safe?

“Please stay on the line,” the dispatcher said. “We’ll have someone there shortly.”

“Thanks. Tell them to come to the back door on the alley.” I left the call open but set the phone down again. The kitchen had been cleaned. Like any place where good cooking went on, the air retained a hint of the delicious soups, fishcakes, and seafood salads and sandwiches my friend prepared.

Tulia hugged herself. When her gaze darted to the walk-in door, she shivered.

“Is this coffee?” I grabbed a lidded travel cup from the counter and handed it to her. “Is it still hot?”

She sipped and nodded.

“Good.” I cocked my head. Sirens wailed to life in the not-so-far-away distance. The police station was a quarter mile down the street. I had maybe a minute to ask her a couple of things. “Was the door locked when you got here?”

She pursed her lips. “I think so. I mean, I didn’t try it before I put my key in.”

“Do you have an alarm system?”

“In Westham?” She brought her brows together. “No way. I’ve always felt safe here. But now . . .”

The wah-wah of the sirens grew deafening before they shut off abruptly. A loud knock on the back door preceded, “Tulia Peters? Westham police.”

I hurried to the door, covering my hand with my sleeve, and pulled it open to a uniformed officer. With dark, Asian-looking eyes, she was maybe thirty, with hair the color of wildflower honey pulled back in a bun at the nape of her neck. Even with a wide, heavy duty belt that padded her waist, she looked as lean and wiry as I was. I’d seen her around but never met her.

“Officer Kimuri, ma’am.”

“Come in. I’m Mackenzie Almeida.” I moved back.

She stepped into the doorway. “Good morning, Tulia.”

“Hi, Nikki,” Tulia murmured. She kept her hands wrapped around her mug.

They obviously knew each other. Me, I’d been away from my hometown for years until I returned a year and a half ago. Outside, a bicycle officer rode up, having traded in his summer uniform shorts for long pants with the right leg in an ankle clip. August Jenkins, whom I’d met in the summer, leaned the bike against the wall. I gestured for him to come in.

He nodded to Kimuri, who said, “Jenkins, clear the front, please.”

“Will do.” He pushed through the swinging door to the dining room.

Good. One worry I could discard.

“Tulia,” Kimuri said. “I need you to show me what you found.”

Tulia stared at the floor. Her mug quivered in her hands.

“May I?” I asked. “She showed me when I came over a few minutes ago.”

Kimuri blinked. “All right.”

I reached for the handle of the walk-in.

“Wait. Let me.” The officer pulled on purple latex gloves. “Did you touch the handle earlier, Ms. Almeida?”

I thought. “No.”

“Good.” She pulled open the heavy door. “Please stay out there.”

“She’s on the floor,” I said over her shoulder. “You can’t miss her.” I didn’t go in, but she didn’t tell me I couldn’t watch.

The officer squatted and laid two fingers on Annette’s neck, leaving them there for a moment. She pulled her hand back and glanced around the body, touching nothing. Pulling out a flashlight the size of a stubby carrot, she shone it in Annette’s eyes, on the object in her neck, and on the floor beneath. She flashed it in the darker corners of the cooler. When she stood, I backed away.

She clicked the walk-in door shut on poor Annette, who would never walk into anywhere again. An EMT bustled into the kitchen toting a red bag.

“She’s deceased,” Kimuri told him. “But do what you need to do.”

The EMT pulled out paper booties and slipped them on before taking his bag into the cooler.

Jenkins pushed through the swinging door. It whapped behind him. “Clear in front.”

Whew.

Tulia had perched on a stool at the counter. She gripped her cup as if it held salvation. The EMT had left the outside door open. My favorite state police detective, Lincoln Haskins, appeared. A big man, he filled the doorway.

“Mac Almeida and a dead body,” he began. “Why am I not surprised?”

Jenkins guarded the back door to the restaurant a few minutes later, or at least it looked like his job was to guard it. Lincoln had asked Tulia and me to wait in her car out back until he could come talk to us. He said the entire restaurant was a crime scene and we weren’t allowed inside. Tulia and I sat in the back seat of her Honda with the doors open. She studied her hands in her lap while I tried to reach my bike mechanic on the phone. I’d asked Lincoln if I could zip next door and open my shop. He’d said he wanted me to wait. Orlean didn’t enjoy running through my opening checklist, but she was going to have to. At least she had a key to Mac’s Bikes.

She finally picked up my call. “Mac, shop’s locked. Bunch of panda cars next door.” Orlean was a woman of few words.

“That’s why I called. There’s been an emergency at the Lobstah Shack. I came over to help Tulia. We’re both fine, but the police want to talk to me before I can head over there. I apologize, but you’re going to have to open up.”

“No worries. What about sales?”

I groaned. She had a key but not the code to open the safe where I kept the starting cash. “Say it’s credit only. Most people use plastic, anyway. I’ll get to the shop as soon as I can. Derrick should be in by ten, too.” Derrick was my older half-brother, who worked for me.

“Okay.” Orlean disconnected.

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess, Mac,” Tulia whispered.

I patted her hand. “Don’t worry. That’s what friends are for.”

“How did Annette get into my cooler?” She finally looked up, her usual ruddy coloring a memory. “Who could have done that?”

“Do your employees have keys? You have a server and a dishwasher, right?”

“Yes, but they don’t have keys, and I have a lot of turnover, you know, seasonally. It’s safer if I’m the only one with access. And I have a spare at home.” She started. “Mac, do you think I need a lawyer?”

Did she? “You probably will. Let’s see what Lincoln says.”

She nodded. She picked at a rough spot on her jeans.

I pictured the dining room of the restaurant. A counter at the side held napkins and cylinders of forks and knives. Next to them sat rectangular trays holding shell crackers and chrome lobster picks with a claw for the handle. Identical to the one currently in Annette’s neck.

“Tulia, did you keep any of the lobster picks in the kitchen?” I asked in a quiet, casual voice.

The corners of her mouth turned down. “Probably. I mean, we wash them there and then bring them back out front. I don’t know if there were any in there yesterday.”

Lincoln stepped through the door. Jenkins moved aside but Lincoln beckoned to him. After some soft-spoken words I couldn’t make out, Jenkins headed into the kitchen. Lincoln bent over to peer in at us.

“Can you both step out here, please?”

We obliged. Tulia stuck her hands in her pockets. I leaned against the car.

“So, ladies, what do you think?” Lincoln wore black-rimmed glasses. Dark hair curled over the collar of one of his signature Hawaiian shirts.

“What do you mean?” I asked, although I suspected I knew. Our book group had been eager to solve the last two murders in town, despite Lincoln’s admonitions not to get involved. He probably figured we were already hot on the trail of this one. We weren’t.

“I mean, how do you think the deceased ended up in your cooler, Ms. Peters?”

She cocked her head. “Lincoln, since when are you calling me Ms. Peters? We’ve known each other all our lives.”

Hearing some spirit back in her voice made me glad. She must have known Lincoln forever. Tulia belonged to the Mashpee Wampanoag people, and Lincoln was half Wampanoag.

“It’s a criminal investigation, Tulia,” he said. “I need to be a bit more formal.”

“That’s nuts, but. . .