Chapter 2
Jessica Sterling was an early riser, too. Or maybe she had as long a to-do list as I had. Either way, I was glad to find her awake when I arrived at the Melville about thirty minutes later. She was having breakfast with her mother at Ahab’s. Jessica is a couple of inches taller than I am, and I played JV basketball in high school. Her hair has that golden color that is so bright she looks like a light bulb going off. Her mother is equally tall and gray haired, but an elegant gray that tells you to mind your manners. I had been told by Emily that she was addressed as “mom” by Jessica and “Mrs. Sterling” by everyone else, including Jessica’s fiancé, Joe Handler.
Some locals have it in for rich people who come to their island. They think they’ll be snobs, or disrespectful. Funny thing about being a local on Nantucket is that you can be either a big fish in a small pond, or invisible to the seasonal visitors. Jessica, however, was not the type to see through anyone. She’s a good egg. I was dying to meet her fiancé, Joe. He was certainly a lucky guy. I imagined he must be some sort of Disney-looking prince with a British accent and maybe small children, waifs, hanging off of him, whom he had saved from peril while wearing a custom-made James Bond–type suit. I don’t know. It was a slow spring.
Something about the body language between Jessica and her mother made me pause at the entrance to the restaurant rather than interrupt them. Both mother and daughter had presumably rolled out of bed for an early coffee, but what would have been sweats and whatever T-shirt was on the floor for me, they were in outfits that were perfectly pressed. Jessica was wearing her now infamous engagement ring, which shined ruby, emerald, sapphire, and diamond reflections across the room. The ring did not fit Jessica’s approachable personality, but it was a family heirloom and Emily had told me it meant a lot to Mrs. Sterling that she wear it. I like the idea of a huge gaudy ring, but maybe that’s because I don’t have to lug one around on my finger every day. Ah, who am I kidding? I think I could manage that kind of problem.
“It’s not that I think Joe’s a bad man,” Mrs. Sterling was saying to her daughter. Her brow was furrowed over her coffee cup. “I just hope he’s strong enough for you. And, I don’t see why you two had to do so much of the wedding yourselves. A mother should be in on everything, even if the groom was a surprise choice.”
“I know you’re disappointed, Mom,” said Jessica. “It breaks my heart. But we won’t let you down.”
On the one hand, I was suddenly aware that I was walking in on a private conversation. On the other hand, I couldn’t walk away from the smell of freshly baked goods and brewed coffee. I inhaled the welcoming aromas.
“Stella,” Jessica said with a big smile, perhaps one of relief at my arrival.
It was too late to make a quiet exit. Jessica waved at me and I crossed the room to their table.
“Good morning,” I said, shaking hands upon introduction to her mother. “I woke up thinking of you.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me? Stella is stellar,” said Jessica to her mother. I immediately liked the pun much better than Hound or Candle Lady.
“Hopefully still stellar when you hear me out,” I said, as if I were used to the nickname. “I noticed the air is a bit crisper this weekend than we anticipated, and I’m wondering if you would prefer Option Three from the samples we tested for the scented candles. Since we’re linking the island to the wedding and the couple, I’ll gladly remake the gifts and unity candle, and have them to you this afternoon. No extra costs for you.”
Jessica reached behind her and grabbed an unused china cup and saucer from an empty table.
“Sit,” she said, and patted an empty chair at their square table.
I sat.
Jessica poured a steaming cup of coffee that looked delicious and pushed it toward me.
“I love that candle, Stella. I expect that it will remind me forever of this special weekend.” Jessica suddenly got a little misty. “In fact, I’m planning to order more so I can light them every year on Joe and my anniversary and we can tell the kids all about our wedding.”
“I already made you extras,” I said, waving off my own set of waterworks. “You’re sure you still like it?”
“She’s sure,” said her mother, pouring a pack of sugar into her cup in a way that told us to cut out the sentiment before she lost it, too.
“Come on,” Jessica said to her mother. “Let’s take a last look at the unity candle. Tomorrow it will be up on the altar.”
“No. You’ve made it clear. You’ve got everything covered,” said Mrs. Sterling definitively. If Emily were here, she would understand the subtleties of this dynamic from years of experience, but I was winging it.
“It’s no problem,” I said, rising.
“Please?” Jessica said to her mother.
A deep love flickered across Mrs. Sterling’s otherwise controlled face as she looked at her daughter. I concluded in that moment that whatever issues Mrs. Sterling was having about her daughter’s wedding, she adored Jessica more than anything else in the world. She rose and adjusted her sweater.
“It is a beautiful scent, Stella,” said Mrs. Sterling. “I like the seagrass note.”
I beamed at the compliment, feeling that Mrs. Sterling did not hand them out lightly, and I led our small group to a room off the kitchen that had become the wedding’s staging and storage area. Given its size, it was more like a glorified closet, but it had a window and a good-sized worktable in the middle, plus lots of shelves along the walls to keep track of things in an organized way. I opened the door to find all of my boxes of candles and ten times more of Emily’s supplies. Yesterday, I’d placed the unity candle on a shelf in a shaded area of the room, but now, to my horror, I noticed that the shelf was empty.
“Jessica, did someone move the unity candle?” I asked. I wondered if perhaps it had been moved to the Siasconset Chapel about twenty minutes down the road, in anticipation of the evening’s rehearsal.
“I took it to the Game Room to show Joe and the others last night. The bartender said he would return it safe and sound,” said Jessica. “Why?”
“Is there a problem?” said Mrs. Sterling in full-on Mom mode that scared the socks off of me.
“No,” I said lightly. I picked up the phone to call the inn’s manager to find out if he had seen the candle, but Jessica motioned to me to hang up.
“I bet Joe has it,” she said. “That’s so damn sweet. All I’ve done is tell him how much I love it. He probably didn’t trust the bartender to bring it back in here last night.”
Jessica called Joe, and gushed a little. They were so cute. She hung up a moment later, however, looking confused.
“Joe says he doesn’t have it.”
“Call Tony,” said her mother, folding her arms. She looked at me. “Have you met Tony Carlson?”
I shook my head, although I knew she was referring to the best man. I also knew there were a total of five members of the Sterling-Handler wedding who had arrived last night. They were Jessica, Mrs. Sterling, Joe Handler, Tony Carlson, and Jessica’s uncle, Simon Sterling. As I understood it from Emily, Jessica’s father had died just over a year ago.
“Tony probably had too much to drink last night and thought it would be funny to take it,” said Mrs. Sterling.
Jessica dutifully called Tony. She apologized for waking him, then hung up looking more concerned.
“No, again,” she said.
“Well, I can’t imagine what Simon would want with it, so someone at the hotel must have it,” said Mrs. Sterling. “Call the manager.”
“Let me call Simon,” said Jessica. She flipped through her contacts, called, and waited. Then, she frowned, looked at her watch, and dialed again. “No answer. Maybe he has his phone on mute. I’ll knock. Mom, you look for the manager. Stella, can you come with me? I don’t know Simon Sterling very well. He’s my dad’s brother, but they were estranged so I’d never met him before last night. That probably sounds weird, but I need someone to walk me down the aisle. If for some reason he took the candle, though, I wouldn’t mind if you, um—”
“I understand,” I said. “I’ll tell him we need it back so there’s no tension between you two.”
She squeezed my arm in thanks as we headed up the stairs to the second floor. Ten paces down the hall, however, we heard a strange scratching noise against Uncle Simon’s door.
“What’s that?” said Jessica. She lagged behind me, but I forged ahead in search of my candle.
I knocked on the door.
“Uncle Simon?” Jessica said from behind me.
The scratching stopped for a moment. We both put our ears against the door. I don’t know why I did. I surely did not want to hear that noise again.
“Uncle Simon?” said Jessica, more loudly.
“Eeeeow,” came an unmistakable sound from the other side of the door.
It was a cat. Not a quiet cat, but one with a screeching, horrible mew.
“Excuse me,” said Jessica to a passing housekeeper. The woman was Maude Duffy, a dear family friend whose son I used to babysit when I was in high school. “Can you let me into this room? My uncle is staying in here, but we can’t seem to rouse him.”
Maude looked at me and I gave her an all-go nod, so she fished out her passkey. No sooner had she opened the door than a flash of black fur, darker than my own wild mane, dashed out of the room and down the stairs. We peeked inside, but the bed was still made. No sign of Uncle Simon.
“Did you already clean the room?” I asked Maude.
“It’s seven in the morning,” she said without a trace of defensiveness. “I just got here.”
In the distance, the sound of scratching and mewing resumed.
For a moment there was silence.
Then, came a scream I’ll never forget.
They say that when people go into shock, they sometimes do the opposite of what they should. Like someone pulls out a gun, and the person just stands there. Or an earthquake hits and instead of staying inside, everyone runs outside. Stuff like that. A scream would suggest danger ahead. The scream I heard would suggest that as creepy as Uncle Simon’s empty room was, the best idea would be to run into it, lock the door, and dodge under his bed. Instead, we all did the opposite. We ran down the stairs, past the reception desk, and toward two open doors to the Game Room, in front of which that cursed cat sat, still and erect, eyes on us like a sentry.
Inside, Mrs. Sterling stood shaking and looking as if she were ready for another scream. The inn’s manager, Frank, a tall, slim man, about my age, who was impeccably dressed for work at this early hour, was beside her looking as if he were summoning every fiber of strength not to join her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, but didn’t get a chance to hear the answer because Jessica, a step or two ahead of me, let out her own scream.
Doors above us started opening.
Footsteps from other areas of the hotel began to stampede toward us.
Maude, who I once saw kill a snake with her own hands, fainted.
And then I saw the most horrible image I’d ever seen.
Lying on the floor, was my once mighty unity candle, broken in two.
The candle itself would be easy enough to fix, but the fact that Jessica’s estranged uncle, Simon Sterling, was lying next to it with his head bashed in suggested a cause of death no one could dispute.