Murder at the Rusty Anchor

Book 6: Cozy Capers Book Group Mystery

by Maddie Day

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery

Synopsis

Set in a picturesque Cape Cod town, the latest in this cozy mystery series by the Agatha Award–winning author will delight fans of Lorna Barrett’s Booktown series and Kate Carlisle’s Bibliophile mysteries, as bike-shop owner Mackenzie “Mac” Almeida and her fellow book club sleuths solve a bookstore murder.

A rainy July weekend in Westham means the beaches are empty and business is dead at Mac’s Bikes but couldn’t be livelier inside the Rusty Anchor Pub. But come Monday morning one patron is not so lively when the chef opens up and finds a body behind the bar. It’s last call for Bruce Byrne, an elderly high school teacher who’s been around so long it seems like he taught everybody.
 
When Mac’s friend Flo, the librarian, makes the list of suspects, Mac gathers the Cozy Capers Book Group to clear her name. With no end in sight to the rain, the group has plenty of time to study the clues and sort through a roll call of suspects to determine who decided to teach Mr. Bryne a lesson. But with a killer desperate to cover their tracks, Mac and the group will be tested as never before . . .

Release date: June 25, 2024

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

Hurrying to open my bike shop on time during yet another day of pouring rain might seem like madness. Nobody wanted to rent bikes while a mid-July downpour drenched the beaches and the rail trail. The only Westham, Massachusetts, businesses doing well this week—at the height of the year’s tourist season—were retail shops and restaurants.

But hurry I did. At eight thirty on a Monday morning, I was running late to open Mac’s Bikes at nine. I didn’t like to be late.

Part of our business was retail, after all. My shop covered the three Rs: rental, retail, and repair. And maybe an optimist or two would want to buy a new bicycle for whenever the heck the rain stopped.

My hurrying didn’t actually extend to running. Hunching into the hood of my rain jacket, I trudged as fast as I could. I slowed a bit in front of Greta’s, the bakery my gentle and talented husband, Tim Brunelle, owned. The aroma of fresh baked bread and brioche lured me into being even later, but I resisted and kept going.

The door of the Rusty Anchor pub in the same block flew open and nearly hit me in the face.

“Careful,” I warned whoever had been so heedless as I sidestepped.

Yvonne Flora, the pub’s head cook and manager, burst out. She cast wild looks right and left.

“Yvonne?” I asked. “What’s the matter?”

“Mac! You have to help me.” Her normally pale face was now ashen. Her brows pulled together, and her mouth turned down at the corners. Her eyes looked haunted. She grabbed my hand and tugged.

“Wait,” I began. “Are you okay?”

“No. Not at all. Mac, there’s a . . .” Her hand flew to her mouth. She swallowed and dropped her hand. “He’s . . . just come with me, please.”

My heart chilled as I followed her inside. I didn’t like the sound of this. Not one bit.

Even though it hadn’t been open since last night’s closing time of nine o’clock, the pub still smelled of hops and hamburgers, chowder and coffee, beer and brats, fries and fillet of fish. But the dark wood of the rustic booths, the cold gas fireplace, and the dim lighting gave the place a spooky vibe. And the background scents had an additional component I couldn’t identify—except that it wasn’t a pleasant one.

Yvonne stopped so abruptly I bumped into her.

“Sorry,” I murmured.

She’d paused at the open end of the horseshoeshaped bar. Other than the red glow of the EXIT sign above the door to the kitchen, the only illumination was from a row of pendant lights. They shone onto the lower workspace on the other side of the bar’s shiny maple surface, its gleaming layers of finish impermeable to spilled drinks or careless customers.

Yvonne pointed behind the bar. Her hand shook. Her nostrils flared as she shook her head, slowly, with what looked like sorrow.

At first, a black leather shoe was all I saw. A shoe with a brown sock wrapped around an ankle. Which emerged from a gray polyester pants leg. No. My breath rushed in. I edged past her. A man lay crumpled on the floor on his side, his pale-green shirt ghostly against the black mat. His hands, now clawlike, were at his stomach, as if he’d clenched it in pain.

The side of his face, all that showed, was stained around the mouth. A string of gray hair hung across a waxen and yellowing cheek. His chest didn’t move. The bad smell I’d detected was way worse back here and seemed to come from a drying pool near his mouth.

I whipped my face around to stare at Yvonne. “Did you check for a pulse?”

She nodded. “Nothing. He’s dead, Mac. And his skin is cold.”

A memory of a circled red D on a double-spaced typed page flashed into my mind. I gazed at the dead man.

“Is this Mr. Byrne?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

My long-ago freshman English teacher had aged in the twenty years since I’d graduated. I hadn’t seen him since then. What was left of his essence remained, right down to the shirt pocket holding index cards and two pens. One black, one red.

“We have to call the police.” I slid my phone out of my jacket pocket.

She again nodded, her eyes now brimming with tears.

I had so many questions. How had Mr. Byrne been left, dead, inside the pub? Was that dark pool blood or vomit? Was this suicide, homicide, or a natural death? And why was Yvonne here so early?

Calling 911 came first.

I asked Yvonne to sit at a table near the front door so she could let the police in when they arrived. The Westham station was a block away on Main Street. It wouldn’t take them long.

Then I sent a quick text to my bike mechanic, Orlean Brown, saying I was unavoidably detained and to please open for the day. Should I tell her to take the rainy morning off, instead? No, she was likely already on the road from Falmouth, where she lived. And I knew she had repairs lined up for the day. Orlean, like me, appreciated a set routine.

Yvonne, who didn’t object to being directed what to do, selected a chair as far from the bar as possible. Good. She sank into it shakily and kept her gaze pointed in the opposite direction from where Mr. Byrne lay. The two of us had already contaminated the crime scene by being nearby, but that couldn’t be helped.

While it was hard to believe I even knew that much about crime scenes, the several—well, four or five—murders in our town in the last couple of years had educated me in ways I’d never dreamed of. My small successes in helping track down killers, assisted by the members of the Cozy Capers book group, had also earned me more than one caution from the Westham PD, as well as the state police detective, to stay well away from investigating homicides.

I tried. But when a person I was close to was a suspect—as my bestie, Gin, had been one time—I truly had no choice. I switched on my phone’s flashlight app and approached the body. I had to admit, my native curiosity also drove me. That, and my intense dislike for messy situations.

Mr. Byrne lying dead behind the Rusty Anchor bar was nothing if not messy.

I didn’t touch him, but I squatted and shined the light on his face even while breathing through my mouth. It wasn’t blood that stained his mouth and was drying on the floor mat. Something had caused him to vomit.

Scanning the teacher’s head and shirt with the light, I didn’t see blood anywhere. No gunshot wounds. No marks on the wrinkled skin of his neck, at least the part of it not covered by his shirt’s open collar. The skin on his age-spotted hands was like parchment but didn’t bear marks or stains. Even though he lay on his left side, his left hand was visible at his collar. No wedding band adorned the ring finger, nor a pale line indicating he’d worn one recently.

He’d seemed old twenty years ago, and he had to be close to retirement age by now. As a young teen, I hadn’t even thought about Mr. Byrne’s personal life. What had he loved doing when classes were over for the day? How had he spent his weekends? All I knew was that he’d been strict to the point of petty and unfair. I had not deserved a big red D on my paper about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Still, the sight of those old-man hands about did me in. Mr. Byrne did not deserve to die on the floor of a bar, and especially not in questionable circumstances.

“What did you find?” Yvonne asked.

At the same time, a knock on the front door sounded. I stood and stepped out from behind the bar, trying to thumb the flashlight app closed. I failed, dropping the phone in a fit of nerves.

August Jenkins stepped inside. “Westham Police. Ms. Flora, you have an emergency?” He was an officer about ten years younger than my thirty-seven. He usually patrolled on bicycle, but not during a frog strangler—my grandma’s term—like today’s downpour.

Yvonne pointed to me. And the bar. At least it was August responding and not Victoria Laitinen. The Westham PD chief and I had been at loggerheads back in high school and had never really mended the relationship.

“You called this in, Mac?” August asked.

“I did.” I scooped my phone off the floor and pocketed it, gleaming light and all.

“What’s the nature of the emergency?” he asked.

All I’d told the dispatcher was that we had an emergency and were not in danger. I’d thought the “body” part could wait.

“Sadly, there’s a dead man behind the bar.” I tilted my head in Mr. Byrne’s direction.

August blinked. Swallowed. Squared his shoulders. He pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves and headed toward the body. He squatted, laid two fingers on Mr. Byrne’s neck, and waited, then touched the mike in his shirt and mumbled into it.

All I could make out was “death.”

“Who discovered the remains?” He stood, glancing from me to Yvonne.

She raised her hand, still staying silent.

August gazed at me. “Do either of you know who—”

The door pushed open again. State police detective Lincoln Haskins stood backlit, his large frame filling the entrance. He pushed back the hood on his raincoat.

“What’s this about a body?”

I nodded as I pointed behind the bar. “He’s here.”

“And so are you, I see,” Lincoln said.

“I am.” Was he going to give me a hard time about once again being at the scene of a murder? Maybe. It wasn’t of my doing in the least, though. After Yvonne asked, I couldn’t have refused to help her.

“I’ve confirmed the lack of a pulse, sir,” August said.

“Thank you, Jenkins,” Lincoln said. “Secure the back door and then guard access to the remains.”

“Yes, sir,” August said.

“Mac, please step away and join us here,” Lincoln added.

He said “please,” but it was clearly an order. I stepped away. August must have already communicated that he thought Byrne’s wasn’t a natural death. If the guy had simply died back there, Lincoln wouldn’t have asked me to remove myself. But what had made August think that?

“Ma’am, I’d like you tell me what you know.” The detective addressed Yvonne.

“I’m Yvonne Flora.” Yvonne raised her hand. “I found Mr. Byrne. I rushed outside and found Mac passing by on her way to work. I asked for her help.”

I nodded my confirmation.

“Thank you, Ms. Flora,” he said. “I’m Lincoln Haskins, a detective sergeant with the state police. I believe we met last March. Can you verify her account, Mac?”

“A hundred percent,” I said. “She showed me where he was. Where he still is. And I called 911. That’s all.”

“You referred to him as Mr. Byrne.” Lincoln shrugged out of his jacket. “Did either of you know him well?”

We both shook our heads. Yvonne pointed at me.

“I had him for freshman English at Westham High,” I said. “But I haven’t seen him since.”

“Does this English teacher have a first name?” Lincoln gazed over the tops of his black-rimmed glasses.

“Bruce,” Yvonne said. “Bruce Byrne.”

“And how well did you know him, Ms. Flora?”

She cleared her throat. “Not too well.” Her voice was low, tentative. She worried a thread on the cuff of her cotton sweater.

Lincoln tilted his head. “What is your role here?”

“I’m the chef and manager.”

“Was Byrne a regular in the pub?”

My radar went up from the way Lincoln was looking at Yvonne. Did he already know the answer? Also, why did he ask her what she did here? He knew she was employed as a chef from the case in the spring. He must have intended to reconfirm her job.

“No,” she murmured, not returning his gaze.

“What was that, ma’am?” he asked.

“No.” She finally looked up. “He’d been in a few times lately, though.”

“Thank you. I will have many more questions for both of you, but right now I need to take a look at our Mr. Byrne. Please sit with Ms. Flora, Mac. Do not communicate with the outside world, either of you, until I clear you to do so. I’d like each of you to lay your phones on the table.”

He waited until we did so. I sat across from Yvonne.

“But I have to tell Carl,” she protested.

“And Carl might be?” Lincoln asked.

“Carl O’Connor. He owns the pub.”

That name rang a faint bell in the recesses of my brain, but I couldn’t place it.

“He will certainly need to be notified,” Lincoln agreed. “We will do that, however. Not you. Do I make myself clear?”

She gave a reluctant nod.

“Thank you,” he said. “Mac, have you told anyone what you saw?”

“No, although I did text Orlean to tell her I’d be late. I didn’t say why.”

“Keep the news out of your book group for now, if you don’t mind.”

“I promise.” Even if I did mind, I would follow orders. Nobody wanted to get in trouble with Lincoln Haskins.

“Good.” He turned back toward the bar, then faced us again. “And no more talking with each other about what you found, if you don’t mind.”

That seemed extreme. But one doesn’t argue with the police. The wail of more than one siren grew closer. My phone dinged and vibrated with an incoming text. I ignored it. Lincoln stretched a pair of gloves over his big hands. The gloves made the unmistakable snapping sound of nitrile.

I gazed at Yvonne. She looked terrible. Her already somewhat shopworn face was wan. Her ear-length dirty-blond hair, not yet tucked into her multicolored toque, appeared to have a new crop of white mixed in since the last time I’d seen her up close. I was about ten years younger than Yvonne, but this morning she appeared older than forty-seven.

“Are you okay?” I asked her in a soft voice.

“Not a bit. I’ve never seen a dead person before, Mac.” She sniffed, bringing the back of her hand to her mouth, and added in a whisper, “Poor, poor Bruce.”

Who was likely not only dead, but murdered, judging from how Lincoln was acting. The door opened again before I could ask Yvonne about being on a first-name basis with Mr. Byrne.

Another Westham PD officer hurried in, followed by Penelope Johnson, a detective sergeant with the department. I’d met the detective last winter for the first time. I later discovered she lived down the street from Tim’s place. The Blacksmith Shop Road cottage was now also mine, ever since our wedding on New Year’s Eve.

Lincoln stood from where he’d squatted at the entry point to the bar. Penelope paused near us, the patrol officer behind her, and raised a hand to Lincoln in greeting.

“Morning, Johnson.”

Penelope nodded at him. “Sir.”

“I’d like you”—Lincoln pointed at the officer—“to secure the front entrance and guard it.”

“Yes, sir.” The young woman headed outside.

“I’ve called the BCI, Haskins,” Penelope said.

I’d learned in one of the last cases that the Bureau of Criminal Investigation assisted the Cape and the islands police, as well as the state officers, with forensic expertise.

“Excellent, thank you,” he said.

“What would you like me to do?” Penelope asked.

Lincoln, who was with the state police, ranked above Penelope when it came to homicide. They’d worked together a couple of months ago when a man was found killed in the bookstore, and they hadn’t seemed to get territorial with each other.

“I’ll show you the scene, then we need to interview Ms. Flora and Mac. Separately, of course.” He looked at Yvonne. “Where are the light switches for this room?”

“Next to the entrance to the kitchen.” She started to rise.

“Please stay there, ma’am.” Penelope pulled on gloves and switched on the lights, then joined Lincoln behind the bar. They both remained standing.

And we both stayed seated. I’d almost asked if I could be interviewed first so I could get to work. Except I knew from experience that the police did things in the order they needed to. All I could do was wait.

Penelope and I perched on stainless-steel stools in the pub’s kitchen twenty minutes later. The crime scene team had arrived. Lincoln had escorted Yvonne down the street to the police station to interview her there and get her fingerprints on file.

“I didn’t kill him,” she’d protested, her voice quavering, after he told her the plan.

He’d gently coaxed her out the front door saying that recording her prints was for elimination purposes only at this point, and that everyone had to clear the room where the body was found, anyway.

“Thank you for talking to me here,” I now said to Penelope. “I really need to get to work at my bike shop.”

All business, she tapped a few things on her tablet. “Do I have your permission to record this conversation?”

“Yes.” I knew to say it aloud and not simply nod. I continued with the answer to what would surely be her next question. “My name is Mackenzie Almeida, and I live at 85 Blacksmith Shop Road in Westham, Massachusetts. Today is July fifteenth.” I tacked on the year and folded my hands on the pristine stainless worktable between the detective and me. Even though I was a hundred percent innocent, being interviewed by the police invariably made me nervous, and I didn’t want to fidget.

“Please tell me what transpired this morning,” Penelope said.

“I was heading to my place of business, Mac’s Bikes, a scant block beyond the Rusty Anchor pub on Main Street in Westham.”

“You were on foot?” she asked.

“Yes.” I went on to describe a distraught-looking Yvonne bursting through the door and her urgent request that I come inside and help her.

“Did she say why she needed assistance?”

“She couldn’t seem to finish a sentence, but she mentioned a ‘he.’ I didn’t know what she was referring to, so I followed her in.”

“What happened then?”

“She showed me the body behind the bar.” I thought of a mystery our Cozy Capers book group had read recently. It was part of a long-running series by Katherine Hall Page in which every title was something like, The Body in the . . . , followed by the location. I was pretty sure she’d never written The Body Behind the Bar. Maybe I’d shoot her an email. Or not.

“Did you recognize that person?”

“Yes.” A lawyer had once cautioned me to answer only the question that was asked. Seemed like good advice.

“Who was it?”

“Mr. Byrne, an English teacher at Westham High School.”

“Do you know his first name?” she asked.

“I didn’t, but Yvonne mentioned it later, calling him Bruce.” Up to now, what I’d told Penelope was identical with my answers to Lincoln. I continued. “I had him for freshman English more than twenty years ago and hadn’t seen him since.”

“How well do you know Yvonne Flora?”

Her change of subject threw me for a second. “Not very well. We’re acquainted, but we don’t hang out at all.”

“Did she happen to mention any conflicts she had with the deceased?”

“No . . .” My voice trailed off.

“Is there more?”

“I don’t know. She . . .