“Hello. Lee? Roger Temple here. I guess you’ve heard about our nephew.”
I hadn’t heard from Roger Temple—or from his identical twin brother, Ray—for nearly a year, but I knew from Roger’s “cop voice” that this wasn’t a casual, just-to-say-howdy call. The Temple twins are retired Boston police officers who’d taken a course on television production I’d once taught.
I’m Lee Barrett—nee Maralee Kowalski—thirty-three, red-haired, Salem born, orphaned early, married once, and widowed young. I’ve worked in television, mostly in front of the cameras, since graduating from Boston’s Emerson College. I’d been a show host on a Florida home shopping channel, a network weather girl, and even had a brief, ill-fated stint as a call-in psychic, but for a short time I’d worked as an instructor in television production at the Tabitha Trumbull Academy of the Arts—Salem’s newest school—known locally as “the Tabby.” The school was located in the sprawling old building that had once housed Trumbull’s department store in downtown Salem. Now it bustled with the activities of aspiring dancers, poets, painters, actors, and more.
“What’s going on, Roger?” I asked. “And what’s this about your nephew?” I sat at my kitchen table, waiting for the microwave to ding, telling me that my frozen macaroni and cheese dinner was ready. I remembered that the twins had often spoken about their sister Phyllis’s boy, but I’d never met the man.
“Hey, it’s been in all the newspapers. Maybe you didn’t recognize his name. Cody McGinnis? He’s been teaching at the Tabby like you used to.”
“Cody McGinnis! Oh my goodness, Roger! No. I didn’t know your nephew’s name.” I was shocked by this news. Astonished, actually. “I’m so sorry!”
Roger was right. It was in all the newspapers. Cody McGinnis, an associate professor of history at Essex County University had recently taken a nighttime job teaching Salem History at the Tabby.
Even more recently—only a few days ago—he’d become a prime suspect in a murder investigation. As a matter of fact, my police-detective boyfriend, Pete Mondello, was the lead detective in this particular case. That didn’t mean I had any more information about Cody McGinnis than anyone else did. Pete doesn’t discuss police business with me, especially since I’ve been promoted to field reporter at the Salem-based TV station, WICH-TV. The station had covered the case from the start. I’d even done a standup in front of the courthouse when Cody was first charged with the crime and so far the evidence against the twins’ nephew was pretty much circumstantial—but the circumstances were downright weird.
“Well, of course the kid’s not guilty.” Roger spoke with conviction. “He’s our favorite nephew. A great kid. A good man. That problem he had with the dead guy was no big deal. Nothing you’d want to kill anybody over. Ray and I are coming down to Salem in a couple of days to straighten out this mess before Chief Whaley convinces the prosecutor to file criminal charges. We’ve hired lawyers for Cody. We wanted to give you a heads-up—see if you want to do a little snooping for us before we get there.” He’d dropped the cop voice. “We know how much you love snooping.”
He was right about that. Sometimes Pete calls me and my aunt, Isobel Russell, “the snoop sisters.” My sixty-something, tech-savvy Aunt Ibby and I share the big old family home on Winter Street along with our gentleman cat, O’Ryan. We also share a penchant for getting involved in things that are sometimes none of our business.
I didn’t hesitate. “How can I help, Roger?”
“Thanks, Lee. Could you see what you can dig up about the victim? Samuel Bond? Not the stuff about him being a much-beloved retired professor, pillar of the community and all that crap. Nobody’s as perfect as the press is making him out to be. There must be a good reason somebody offed the old SOB. And it sure wasn’t Cody!”
From what I’d read in the paper, seen on TV—and from the few remarks Pete had made about the case, the old man had no known enemies. Yet he’d been mercilessly beaten to death in his own bed—and so far the evidence pointed directly to the Temple twins’ nephew.
“I’ll do what I can, Roger,” I said, meaning it. I glanced at my kitchen clock, a vintage Kit-Cat, complete with googly eyes and a tail that swings back and forth, marking the seconds. It was six-thirty, still light outside on a pretty New England spring evening. “When will you guys be coming to Salem? Do you have a place to stay?”
“We’ll be there the minute we can get away from here. I guess we’ll be at Phyllis’s. She’s pretty upset about all this.”
“I should think so. I’ll call you right away, Roger, if I find anything interesting. Tell Ray I said hi. See you soon.”
The microwave dinged, Roger and I said our goodbyes, and O’Ryan strolled into the kitchen through his cat door and hopped up onto the windowsill directly behind my chair. The window was partly open, admitting the pleasant early June breeze. “What do you think of that, O’Ryan?” I said, not actually expecting an answer—he is, after all, a cat. But before he came to live with Aunt Ibby and me, he used to belong to a witch named Ariel Constellation, so he’s not exactly an ordinary cat. Some say he was her “familiar.” In Salem, a witch’s familiar is to be respected—and sometimes feared.
I took my dinner out of the microwave, poured a glass of iced tea, picked up the pencil and notepad I use for my grocery list, and returned to my nineteen-seventies Lucite kitchen table. While the macaroni and cheese cooled, I wrote “Cody McGinnis” followed by “County U,” “Samuel Bond,” “Salem History,” and “Tabby.” O’Ryan watched from over my shoulder with apparent interest—whether in my scribbled words or my dinner, it was hard to tell.
“Roger believes his nephew is innocent,” I said aloud. I often talk to the cat. So does my aunt. I guess most people talk to their pets—but it’s usually along the lines of “Good dog,” or “Pretty kitty.” With O’Ryan, it’s quite different. We talk to him as though he understands everything we say. He’s definitely not your everyday housecat. I continued. “Roger wants me to do a little snooping.”
“Mmrrup,” O’Ryan voiced his cat version of a snarky laugh. “Mmrrup mmrrup.”
“Well, excuse me. I’m very good at snooping.”
He turned his back and faced the window, his long tail swinging back and forth in a pretty good imitation of Kit-Cat’s.
“I am too,” I said, and started on my mac and cheese. “Right after dinner I’ll see if anything new has turned up today.”
“Mmrrup” came a muffled snicker from the windowsill. I ignored him, savoring every bite of gooey, cheesy goodness before grabbing my laptop from the kitchen counter and googling “Cody McGinnis.”
There wasn’t much of anything there that I hadn’t already heard at the station, or read in the Salem News or the Boston Globe. Usually a murder this far north of Beantown doesn’t rate much mention in the major papers, but this one was bizarre enough to get some national coverage.
Samuel Bond’s bloodied body had been found by his housekeeper when she’d knocked on his bedroom door as she did every day, carrying a silver tray with his morning coffee, two slices of whole wheat toast, a small pot of marmalade, and the Wall Street Journal. That kind of discovery is pretty upsetting all by itself.
But it gets even worse. The Bond murder darn near duplicates one that happened in Salem well over a century ago, and that’s what’s creeping everybody out.
“I guess I’d better go downstairs and tell Aunt Ibby about Roger’s call,” I spoke aloud in case the tail-swinging cat was still listening, then opened my kitchen door and stepped out onto the maroon-carpeted third-floor landing. Looking over the mahogany railing, I could see all the way down to the first-floor foyer where, within about twenty seconds, O’Ryan skidded to an abrupt halt at the foot of the stairs, then looked up at me with a smarmy cat-smile.
He loves that trick. He races down two flights to Aunt Ibby’s kitchen door, in through her cat door, and out to the front hall before I can get there.
“Smarty pants,” I mumbled when I’d reached the arched entry leading to her living room.
“Aunt Ibby, it’s me,” I called.
Her answer came from the direction of her office. “Come on in, dear. I knew you were on your way down here when O’Ryan streaked past me like a yellow-striped blur.” My aunt’s office is a neat and compact space off the living room. She sat behind her cherrywood desk surrounded by the very newest and most advanced technological gadgets, french-tipped manicured fingers flying across the keyboard of her laptop. “I’ll just be a minute. Brought a bit of work home with me.” Aunt Ibby is the semi-retired head research librarian at Salem’s main library, and bringing work home with her is not in the least unusual.
“Take your time. I wanted to see if you’re up for a bit of snooping to help out a couple of old friends,” I said, knowing that would grab her attention.
It did.
“This can wait,” she said, her green eyes—so much like my own—sparkling, her expression animated. “Which old friends and what’s their problem?”
“You’re following the news about the Samuel Bond murder, aren’t you?”
“Of course. Everybody in Salem is.”
“I had a phone call a little while ago from Roger Temple. Cody McGinnis is the twins’ nephew.”
“Good heavens. I had no idea. That is a problem. How can we help?”
“Ray and Roger are positive Cody’s innocent. They’ll be in Salem soon to help, but meanwhile, since Cody didn’t kill Professor Bond, somebody else must have. They’d like us to find out what the old man did to make someone angry enough to beat him to death.”
“They stabbed him too,” she said, making a “tsk-tsk” sound. “A vicious killing.”
“The papers say Cody had some serious issues with Samuel Bond,” I said, “but nobody’s been specific about what the problem was. I think Pete’s pretty well convinced that the prosecutor can build a solid case against Roger and Ray’s favorite nephew, and Chief Whaley is pushing to file criminal charges.”
Aunt Ibby pointed to her computer screen. “Everything here seems to show the evidence against him building. His fingerprints are all over the ladder the killer used to climb into Bond’s bedroom window that night. They’re also on a glass in Bond’s downstairs bar.”
“Well, sure. It was his ladder. He told the police it was stolen from his tool shed weeks before the murder.”
“And what about the dagger that went missing from his desk at the Tabby?” she wondered aloud. “What about that? All of his students remembered the thing. Said he used to fiddle with it all the time while he was lecturing.”
“It was a letter opener! Not a dagger!” I knew I sounded a little shrill. “And we’re supposed to be helping the twins. Not thinking of reasons to convict their poor nephew!”
“Certainly we’re going to help the twins. But it’s important that we know exactly what we’re up against—exactly what evidence the prosecution has—circumstantial or not.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Remember, though, the last time Salem saw a case like this one it was eighteen thirty and the prosecutor was Daniel Webster.”
O’Ryan strolled into the office, hopped up onto Aunt Ibby’s desk, positioned himself in front of the computer, effectively blocking my aunt’s view of the screen, and proceeded to groom his magnificent whiskers.
“O’Ryan seems to think we’re wasting our time searching for information online,” my aunt said. “He’s right. Everyone in the world has access to that story. We need to do what Daniel Webster did back in eighteen thirty—talk to people the press hasn’t found yet.”
The 1830 court case she referred to was currently prominent in newspapers, tabloids, and television in Salem and elsewhere—and no wonder. The murder of Professor Samuel Bond was remarkably similar to the nineteenth-century murder of Captain Joseph White, wealthy ship-master and trader who’d been found dead in his Salem bedroom—beaten and stabbed to death—with a ladder leading to his bedroom window.
“Roger was quite specific about what we should look for,” I told her. “To quote him more or less exactly, ‘Somebody had good reason to off the old SOB.’ I guess we need to help the twins figure out who that somebody is. Any bright ideas on where to begin?”
She’d coaxed the cat into her lap by then, and scratched behind his ears, prompting some sonorous purring. “I think I do,” she said after a moment. “I have a couple of girlfriends who might have known the old SOB—uh—the gentleman—socially. Shall I call them?”
“Absolutely. Which girlfriends?”
“The first one who comes to mind is Betsy Leavitt,” she said, mentioning one of her high school classmates, “and the second is Louisa Abney-Babcock.”
Both suggestions made perfect sense. Both women moved comfortably in Salem’s social circles. Betsy, probably because in her mid-sixties she was still uncommonly beautiful and still worked as a professional model—and Louisa, by virtue of tons of old money and a pedigree as long as your arm. My aunt was no stranger to the newspaper society pages either and was well-known in the area’s literary and artistic worlds.
“Good idea. Do you think either of them knew the professor?”
“I’d be surprised if they didn’t,” she said. “I’ve met him a few times myself. Assisted him with some library research. He was an associate of Rupert’s too, and—if you ask me—a bit of a social climber.”
Rupert Pennington was the director of the Tabitha Trumbull Academy of the Arts and a special “gentleman friend” of my slim, trim, and attractive red-haired aunt—and had also been my onetime boss. “Mr. Pennington. Of course.” I snapped my fingers. “They must have known one another through the university.”
“That’s right. Rupert occasionally gives talks on Shakespeare to the English classes at County U. Shall I invite the three of them over? Say, tomorrow evening?”
“Good idea. What are you going to tell them? That we need their help in doing some snooping?” I asked.
“In a manner of speaking, yes, but I’d phrase it differently.”
“Like, how?”
She paused in her cat-scratching, prompting a pink-tongued cat-lick of her fingers, furrowed her brow for an instant, then smiled. “How’s this? I’ll tell them that a couple of Boston TV executives are looking for some creative people—the kind who think ‘outside the box’—to help with an important project.”
“You amaze me,” I told her. “That’s the absolute truth. Sort of.”
“Word choices, my darling child,” she said. “It’s all about word choices.”
I shook my head in admiration. O’Ryan climbed back onto the desk, watching as my aunt picked up her phone and pressed a key. “Hello, Betts?” she said. “If you’re available tomorrow evening—sevenish—for an hour or so, Maralee and I have an idea for something that’s right up your alley.”
She made two more similar calls, then leaned back in her chair wearing a look of satisfaction. O’Ryan stretched, yawned, then—maybe bored with the conversation—vacated his desk position and trotted out of the room. “Done and done,” she said. “Now we have to sketch out a presentation of sorts. Catch them up on all they need to know about the case so far, and point them in the direction of digging up any deep dark secrets Professor Samuel Bond may have had.”
“I think maybe we’ve found the perfect snooping crew. Louisa knows everybody who is anybody just about anywhere. Betsy could charm the Supreme Court out of their robes—let alone gather dirt about an old professor. You are the research expert and word master. Mr. Pennington will be our Daniel Webster, and I’ll dig around in the media world.” I was excited. “Let’s get started.”
“Have you had dinner yet?”
“Mac and cheese.”
She gave a well-bred sniff but didn’t comment on my choice of cuisine. “I think O’Ryan has repaired to the kitchen for his happy hour snack. Shall we join him?” My aunt gathered up a few papers, pulled a couple of college-lined notebooks from a desk drawer, and together we walked through her living room and out into the big warm kitchen.
“Maybe we should have tomorrow’s meeting here,” I suggested, pulling out a captain’s chair and sitting at the round oak kitchen table. “This table has always been a great place for brainstorming.”
She smiled, poured some special treats into the waiting cat’s red bowl, put two wineglasses on the table, and took a chilled bottle of Moscato from the refrigerator. “And for homework and school science projects and cupcake decorating and writing Christmas cards . . .”
“And for making wonderful memories,” I said. Aunt Ibby had raised me in this house after my parents died together in a plane crash when I was only four. After my race car driver husband, Johnny Barrett, died in a terrible accident and I’d come home from Florida, she’d made the third floor of the house into an apartment for me.
“You’re right,” she said, pouring wine into our glasses. “But for right now, it’s Snoop Station Central.” She pushed one of the notebooks and a pen to my side of the table and kept the other in front of her.
“To Snoop Station Central,” I repeated, and we raised our glasses in a toast.
At that moment we hadn’t the slightest idea of what kind of mess we were getting ourselves—and our friends—into.
Our meeting preparation session took over an hour. We did it in a sort of outline form—with Roman numerals and all. It felt a little high schoolish, but as my librarian aunt pointed out, it still is a truly efficient way to put thoughts in order. I said good night to my aunt and left via her kitchen door. I carried my outline copy upstairs with the cat darting ahead of me on the narrow, spiral-like back stairway that opens onto my living room.
O’Ryan entered through his cat door while I used the old-fashioned, knob-turning way. When I stepped inside, he was already curled up on his favorite zebra-print wing chair, pretending he’d fallen asleep waiting for me. He gets a kick out of doing that. I went along with the gag, tiptoeing past him and down a short hall into the kitchen. I tossed my copy of the outline onto the table, next to my grocery-list notepad and the laptop. Kit-Cat showed eight-forty-five. Plenty of snoop time left in the day. It was even still a little bit light outside.
I ducked into my bedroom, pulled a pair of red satin pj’s from a bureau drawer, and headed down the hall to the bathroom. The pj’s were loose and comfortable, and if Pete happened to drop by after his shift was over, they were kind of glamourous looking too. About twenty minutes later, showered, shampooed, makeup-free, and satin clad, I slid into a Lucite chair and prepared to get to work.
The cat was under the table, maybe asleep and maybe still faking it. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference. I’m not sure, even as smart as he is, that O’Ryan realizes I can see him through the clear tabletop. I looked at the notes I’d made on the grocery pad. Not fancy, not efficient, but as a matter of fact the words lined up nicely with Roman numerals I, II, III, IV. And V. I decided to start with I: Cody McGinnis.
I put his name into the laptop. What popped up was a serious case of TMI, most of it repetitive rehashes from newspaper articles. Not particularly useful. I decided to use Aunt Ibby’s pitch to the girlfriends. “Think outside the box.”
I typed in “Tabitha Trumbull Academy of the Arts—Salem History.” Bingo. Up came the course description and requirements for attendance. The Tabby doesn’t have a lot of requirements and doesn’t give degrees. But it does give folks an opportunity to study dance, or music, or literature, or painting, or animation, or acting—or any number of other artistic pursuits. Many of the students are retirees, like the Temple twins, who’ve had to work at a regular job most of their adult lives, but always yearned for something else. Some are young working people who attend evening and weekend classes to broaden their personal horizons. Some of my television production students, like Roger and Ray, have gone on to work in the TV industry, and one young woman who studied acting at the Tabby is in Hollywood making movies.
Cody McGinnis had labeled his course Salem’s Rich History—It’s a Lot More Than Witches! Intriguing, I thought, and so true. He’d broken it up into semesters. Early Settlers; The Maritime Trade; Artists, Architects, and Adventurers. Samuel Bond’s untimely passing had occurred immediately after Cody had completed teaching a course he’d called “I Love a Mystery—Salem’s Most Famous Murder.” McGinnis had apparently spiced up each of his courses by including field trips in the itinerary. The Early Settlers segment included a tour of the Pioneer Village in Fore. . .
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