Murder in a Cape Cottage

Book 4: Cozy Capers Book Group Mystery

by Maddie Day

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery

Synopsis

It's beginning to look a lot like murder in Agatha-awarding winning author Maddie Day's latest Cozy Capers Book Group Mystery, as Cape Cod bike shop owner Mackenzie "Mac" Almeida and her book club sleuths must solve a murder before Mac and her fiancée's New Years Eve wedding . . .



'Tis the day after Christmas, following a wicked-busy time of year for Mac's bike shop. It's just as well her Cozy Capers Book Group's new pick is a nerve-soothing coloring book mystery, especially when she has last-minute wedding planning to do. But all pre-wedding jitters fade into the background when Mac and her fiancé, Tim, begin a cottage renovation project and open up a wall to find a skeleton—sitting on a stool, dressed in an old-fashioned bridal gown . . .



As Mac delves into the decades-old mystery with the help of librarian Flo and her book group, she discovers a story of star-crossed lovers and feuding families worthy of the bard himself. Yet this tale has a modern-day villain still lurking in Mac's quaint seaside town, ready to make this a murderous New Year's Eve . . .

Release date: September 27, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Starting a home renovation project five days before our wedding was possibly a risky move. I had my fingers crossed nothing would go wrong.

Outfitted with work gloves, construction mask, and safety glasses over my contact lenses, I lifted my sledgehammer as my soon-to-be-husband, Tim Brunelle, hefted his own larger one. He’d wanted to add a bathroom to the bedroom downstairs in his hundred-year-old Cape-style cottage. A bedroom suite did sound kind of nice. And this, the day after Christmas, was the first chance we’d both had to begin the demolition. On Christmas Eve afternoon, I’d closed Mac’s Bikes, my Westham, Massachusetts shop, for three weeks. Tim had done the same with his bakery, the best one on Cape Cod. Sure, I had a lot to finish up for our Saturday night New Year’s Eve wedding. But I could fit in a morning of demo with everything else on my list. Maybe.

“Ready, Mackenzie Almeida?” Tim asked, his big baby blues twinkling behind his safety glasses.

I nodded. We whacked opposite sides of the wall in unison. And again. We’d decided to sacrifice one of the two closets in the room for the bathroom. It backed up onto a utility room at the rear of the house. On the other side of the closet wall were awkwardly situated deep shelves that Tim had used only for storage. Combining the closet and the shelf area would yield enough space for a compact full bath, and we could replace the storage with a tall cabinet in the utility room. The other bathroom in the house already had a tub, so a shower stall would suffice for this one. It would have been nice to get the work finished before the wedding, but that wasn’t going to happen. We were both busy people with bustling successful businesses. We did what we could.

We whacked away, the plaster crumbling and collapsing. It was fun to work together and felt like it was helping with my pre-wedding nerves. Our work revealed a framework of the thin, inch-wide lathe. Plaster had been spread over the lathe when automobiles still shared the roads with horses. When only risk takers flew in airplanes. When cell phones were a science-fiction fantasy.

“Why don’t you use a regular hammer and start prying those off while I clean up the debris?” Tim handed me a hammer.

“Sure.” This was only the second time I’d done something like this. When I’d moved back to my hometown and bought the building my bike shop was in, I’d helped demolish one wall to expand the back. It was a bit nerve-racking to destroy something well built, except I knew a new space would be the result, and it would end up orderly and clean. That was how I liked my life, when I was honest with myself.

“There’s a pry bar here if you’d rather use that.” Tim pulled down his mask and leaned in for a light kiss.

“Ooh, plaster. My favorite flavor.” I smiled at him.

The nails squealed as I wedged the claw under them and pried. It was almost as satisfying to rip the boards off as it was to smash the plastered walls. I pried and ripped. I started off kneeling and worked my way up. At six-foot-one, Tim could easily finish off the top of the wall.

He came back from hauling a bag of plaster outside and picked up the pry bar. “Race you? I’ll take down this side and you do that one.”

“You’re on. Loser buys lunch at the Rusty Anchor.”

He gave me two work-gloved thumbs-up, with eyes smiling above his mask.

I had a head start on him. I pried and ripped, ripped and pried, glancing over at Tim, laughing. We weren’t really racing, because he kept stopping to fill bags with debris and haul them out. I finally got to more or less my eye level. I’m five seven, so at about five and a half feet up.

But . . . opposite me wasn’t the storage area. I gazed into a dark space, with the lathe side of another antique wall so close I could almost touch it.

Huh? I kept prying, enlarging the space. I stared, frowning. I dropped the hammer and fumbled to rip off gloves, glasses, and mask. I shined the flashlight from my phone into the space. My breath rushed in.

“Tim!”

He hurried in. “What is it?”

I could only point. He leaned over my shoulder to look.

The light illuminated a skeleton seated on a wooden chair. What was left of her arms stretched behind the chair. Why? A cracked leather suitcase sat on the floor between her and the back wall.

“There’s a skeleton in here.” My voice wobbled. “A really old skeleton.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“You’re going to have to.” I shook my head slowly, still staring at the bones.

“Is she wearing a wedding dress?” he asked, his voice muffled by his mask.

I slid off my mask. “She is.”

I stared at Tim. At the skeleton. Back at Tim, who took off his own mask and frowned.

“How could I have missed that space?” He extended his arm and touched the opposite wall without leaning in. “I thought I’d measured it all out. I clearly missed two and a half feet by five.”

“We have to report what we’ve found.” But I didn’t jab 911. I gazed at the remains, parts of which had been remarkably well preserved in a gruesome kind of way. Bits of skin remained, now brown and leathery. Her skull lolled back against the tall-backed chair. The jaw yawned open with upper teeth missing. The eye sockets were empty, dark holes. A gold chain encircled her neck, with a heart-shaped locket hanging against her sternum. A wide ribbon anchored a short lace veil to dark hair.

Her dress looked like it had been made of a fine white linen. It was now stained, with portions in shreds, but the long sleeves showed delicate pintuck pleats at the shoulders. The skirt of the dress reached nearly to the floor. She wore similarly stained light-colored low heels with an ankle strap, her forlorn toe bones visible in the peep-toe cutout. I peered at her lap, where several teeth lay, and shuddered.

I shifted my position a little, shining the light along her arm bones, and gasped at the sight of a metal chain bolted into the wall.

“Tim,” I whispered. “I think she’s handcuffed to the wall.”

“Really?”

“I think so. See how her hands are behind her? The poor thing. Somebody seriously didn’t want her to get married.” My heart broke for her, but it was also starting to feel like a horror movie. And me with my own wedding only days away.

“Or go on her honeymoon.” He focused on the suitcase. “Maybe she was planning to elope?”

“Could be. But then why is she wearing her wedding dress?” I stared at him. “Nobody elopes in their wedding finery.”

“I’m clueless about that, obviously.” Tim cocked his head, regarding me. “The authorities are going to need the whole wall open. Let’s finish removing it and then we’ll call.”

“I don’t think we should. We could contaminate the area with our DNA.” I’d learned a few things during the previous murder investigations in Westham, and that was one. “This might be a big enough opening for them to get at her.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. I’m sure you’re right. No more working, then. Why don’t you call? I’ll keep hauling out the rubble.”

“Hang on. I want to take a few pictures first.” I held my phone up to the opening. I itched to see what was in the valise but restrained myself. It’d be my luck the leather would disintegrate in my hands and, anyway, I had no business mucking around in there. I made sure the flash was on and shot a couple of pictures without touching the bride or her traveling case, which I now saw was marked with the initials DLR.

I zoomed in behind her. Sure enough, each wrist had a metal band clamped around it, bands attached to a thick, short chain, which in turn was linked to a chain bolted into the wall. I checked the bones of her left hand. Neither a wedding band nor an engagement solitaire adorned the second-from-last digit, but a delicate gold bracelet encircled the wrist next to the metal that had imprisoned her. That, and the wall her jailer had constructed after she was in there, was called homicide.

I shook my head. What a terrible way to die. Alone, helpless, with no water and no comfort. My eyes welled up. I swiped at them. This was murder, plain and simple, and we needed to inform the authorities. Tim wrapped his arm around my shoulders, and I leaned into his warmth.

I’d somehow gotten myself involved in solving a few murders over the last year, with the help of the cozy mystery book group I was part of. My intrinsic need for order and having things tidy—which certain people in my life called an obsession and a compulsion—made me want to sort out the facts of this ancient murder, too, horrific as it was. A young bride had been chained to die in here. Alone, without her love, whoever he was—unless he had killed her himself, which was even more horrible to contemplate.

“I’m okay,” I said to my own love. “It’s just . . . unbelievable, isn’t it? And so terribly sad.”

He gave a slow nod. “Now call.”

“Yeah.” It was hardly an emergency, so I tapped the Westham Police Department’s regular number, which I happened to already have in my contacts list. They used a regional dispatch for 911, but the office was answered by whichever officer got the short straw.

“Westham Police, Officer Kimuri speaking.”

“Hi, Nikki.” I’d met her in the fall after a body had been deposited in the Lobstah Shack’s walk-in. “This is Mac Almeida. I need to report a human skeleton.”

She went quiet for a moment. I could picture her pressing her eyes shut, trying to process my words.

I jumped into the auditory gap. “Tim Brunelle and I are doing demolition inside his—well, our—cottage on Blacksmith Shop Road. We opened up a wall and found a skeleton.”

“All right. Please keep away from the scene. You and Mr. Brunelle. Have you disturbed the remains?”

“No. The thing is, the skeleton is chained to the wall.”

Nikki’s gasp was unmistakable.

“So it has to have been a homicide.” My voice no longer wobbled.

Nikki cleared her throat. “I’ll get a team over ASAP.”

“Great.”

“And, Mac?”

“Yeah?”

“How do you do it?”

I waited, pretty sure she meant how I kept encountering murder victims.

“Never mind,” she said. “Leave the room, close the door. Both of you. That’s all I ask.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I disconnected and turned to Tim. Except he was gone with the latest bag of plaster and lathe. Now that I thought about it, there might be evidence on the lathe. The bags hadn’t gone anywhere except outside. I would alert the crime scene team to them.

I held out my left hand and gazed at my lovely, simple gold engagement ring, which featured a simple Victorian knot with a small diamond in the middle, then looked back into the formerly hidden compartment. “We’ll figure this out, Bridey,” I whispered to the bones. “I’ll get you justice. I promise.”

Despite my wanting to linger in there, Tim and I behaved ourselves and shut the door to the room, as Nikki had ordered.

“You know what finding this skeleton means, don’t you?” I asked him.

“We’ll have to put the project on hold.”

“Yeah. But if they’re prompt with their crime scene team, maybe they’ll be done with it today.”

“Somehow that seems optimistic.”

Of course it was, but a girl could dream. “Tim, what do you know about the history of this house?”

“I know it was built in 1925 by the Swift family. That’s what the original deed says. By the time I bought the place five years ago, it had passed through several families. I purchased the cottage after the matriarch of the most recent family died, and none of her children wanted it. That family had lived here since 1971.”

“Swift. I feel like I know that name.” I’d grown up here in Westham, but I’d been essentially away since I’d left to attend Harvard College at eighteen until I’d returned to open my bike shop almost two years ago. An absence of seventeen years could do a number on memories of people I hadn’t known well to begin with.

The doorbell rang. “I’ll let them in.” At the front door, I greeted Nikki and Officer August Jenkins, who did bicycle patrol during the warmer months. I peered behind them but didn’t see my favorite state police detective, Lincoln Haskins.

I greeted them. “No Lincoln?”

“Hey, Mac,” Nikki said. “No, he’s out of town. So you and Mr. Brunelle happened across a skeleton in a closet.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“And you left everything alone?”

“After we spoke with you, we did, of course.” They didn’t need to know about the pictures I’d snapped or about the itchy fingers I’d managed to control. “But before that, we had opened half the wall. That’s when I saw her.”

“Her?” She squinted up at me. “How can you tell it’s a female?”

“The wedding dress is kind of a giveaway.”

August whistled.

“And what’s left of the dress looks pretty old-fashioned.” I stepped back from the open door. “Come on in. You can see for yourselves.” They followed me down the hall.

Tim held up a hand in greeting from the kitchen as we passed. Nikki only nodded at him. He and August exchanged a dude-type fist and elbow bump. I opened the door to the bedroom and pointed at the gaping hole inside the closet. August pulled a flashlight off his duty belt, picking his way through the rubble still remaining on the floor.

He shone the light in and whistled again. “That’s an old one, all right.” He stepped back.

Nikki took the light. She spent a long moment shining it around the space. She examined the walls. It looked from where I stood that she made a careful study of the suitcase, too.

“The luggage has the initials DLR on it,” Nikki murmured as she turned.

I hadn’t thought of it earlier, but if those were the bride’s initials, she wasn’t a Swift, even though she’d been imprisoned within their cottage walls.

Tim appeared in the doorway to the room. “Should we assume we have to cease demolition for a while?” he asked her.

“Yes. I’ll get the Cape & Islands SPDU crime scene team out here, and some kind of forensic historian.” She frowned as she smoothed back a wisp of her black hair into the bun she wore at the nape of her neck.

“What’s SPDU?” Tim asked.

“State Police Detective Unit,” Nikki said. “I have to admit, this is a first for me.”

“That’s probably a good thing,” I said. “I’d hate to think you found a lot of skeletons in walls around here.”

She nodded. “Jenkins, we’ll need crime scene tape up.”

“Not on the whole house, I hope.” I grabbed Tim’s hand.

“We’re both living here,” Tim said in his deep, soft voice.

“And we’re getting married on Saturday,” I added.

Nikki waited a beat too long, but finally said, “Only this room should be fine. Show me the back wall, will you? We should block that off, too.”

I followed Tim and her around through the kitchen to the utility room near the back door. A stacked washer and dryer sat next to a deep sink on the outer wall. Across from them were a deep set of now-empty old shelves where he’d kept odds and ends of extra laundry soap, a box of extension cords, a small toolbox, a few vases, and other miscellany. That was the area we’d decided to sacrifice to the new bathroom on the other side of the wall.

“I guess I never made careful measurements before we started,” Tim said.

“You don’t have an architect?” Nikki asked.

“No. I’ve done other renovation projects elsewhere, and I have good design software. Never had a problem before.”

I’d seen his plans. They looked professional to my eyes and had been adequate to pull a building permit for the project. I was learning so much, including that one uses the verb “pull” for applying to the building department for permission to knock out walls and add plumbing and electricity. I had many skills, including high-end bicycle repair and maintenance. Home renovation had not been among them until now.

“You haven’t broken through here yet.” Nikki waved a hand at the wall.

“Clearly not.”

“I guess we don’t have to tape this off, then.” She set her hands on her slim, uniformed hips. “You’re both to stay out of the other room, though. Understand?” She addressed the two of us, but her gaze was firmly on me.

“Yes, ma’am.” I restrained myself from saluting.

“Good. Someone will be around all day to let in the team?”

Tim and I exchanged a glance. “Sure,” he said.

Since we’d both closed our businesses in part to be here doing demolition, one of us could easily be here.

“Thanks.” She headed for the kitchen. “I’ll be in touch.”

Nikki knew I’d been involved in three murder investigations in the last year. The department’s chief, who happened to be my high school nemesis, remained reluctant to accept that I had any contribution to offer. It was too bad Lincoln wouldn’t be the lead on this one. He and I had come to a tentative agreement. Then again, with an old case like this one, maybe he wouldn’t have worked on it, anyway.

After Nikki and August left, I changed out of my work clothes upstairs in one of the two dormered bedrooms we were using until the downstairs was ready to move into. I wanted to wait around until the crime scene team came, but I also needed to walk downtown and check on wedding flowers at the florist. I pulled on skinny jeans and a green turtleneck sweater and ran a hand through my inch-long curls, which was basically the only styling they ever needed—or got.

I stepped into the other bedroom and unzipped the tall garment bag holding my wedding dress. My friend Gin, who was serving as my attendant and lead bride team member, had insisted I abide by the rule that Tim didn’t get to see the dress until I was in it for the ceremony. The tradition seemed silly to me, but I’d agreed, and he’d promised not to peek into the bag.

With the high metabolism I’d inherited from my tiny dynamo of a grandmother, I still sported a slender figure at thirty-seven. When Gin and my mom and I had started looking for wedding dresses this fall, I’d been worried. I so wasn’t the lace-and-ruffles type, and I also didn’t want some strapless extravaganza. By some miracle we’d happened across a simple, body-hugging satin dress cut on the bias, and we’d found it right here in Westham at Cape Bridal, a new shop on the outskirts of town. The cream-colored dress—also comfortable, as it turned out—had a flattering scoop neck, pintucked short sleeves, and a short train that could be butt. . .