A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.
—Barbarella, 1969
WITH ALL SPEED, I ran across the manicured lawn, up the porch steps, and through the antique glass doors. Stopping dead in the middle of the foyer, I saw I wasn’t the only one to hear the woman’s shriek.
The genteel tranquility of Quindicott’s renowned bed-and-breakfast had been completely shattered. Guests who’d been enjoying high tea in the common room peered through the door in tense alarm.
Behind the carved mahogany front desk, fifty-something Fiona Finch had been so startled she’d dropped a host of travel brochures across the gleaming polished floor. Like her surname, Mrs. Finch was small and slight in stature with a birdlike manic energy and focused work ethic that had helped transform her husband’s broken-down family home and tangled estate into one of the most popular getaways in New England, complete with a newly constructed (and highly rated) French restaurant, Chez Finch.
The single scream had set her eyes so wide they seemed to raise the level of her wren-brown hair. Even the ruby cardinal brooch, pinned to the collar of her sea-green dress, appeared rattled enough to take flight.
“Where did it come from?” I gasped.
“The Peacock Room on the third floor,” Fiona said, gazed fixed on the ceiling. “It’s the only room currently occupied.”
“Who’s staying there?”
“Her name is Peyton Pemberton,” Fiona whispered. “She arrived yesterday with a friend, a handsome young—”
A second howl echoed through the great house, this one in anger and frustration.
Fiona, still in shock, appeared riveted in place. Not surprising. Outside of high school football games, Quindicott seldom heard screaming. Even though our bookshop sold hair-raising thrillers, we were a quiet concern. The same could be said about the Cooper Family Bakery, Koh’s Market, and Colleen’s House of Beauty.
The Finch Inn was especially serene. Situated outside town on a picturesque pond (really an inlet) near the shores of the Atlantic, the stately Victorian and the manicured grounds surrounding it were ringed by verdant woodlands with hiking trails that led to a pristine beach, all part of the package that made Quindicott’s only B and B a jewel-in-the-crown destination for our region and an economic engine for our main street businesses.
Now, as the echo of that second scream faded, Fiona and I made a beeline to the polished staircase. We nearly collided with each other in our rush.
We needn’t have bothered. Hurried footsteps came pounding down the carpeted stairs. The feet belonged to a petite young woman in pink spandex pants, matching midriff-baring top, and fluorescent yellow sneakers. Her luminous blue eyes were wide, her long blond hair tied so tightly behind her head that her features appeared pinched. The woman’s attractive face was without makeup and flushed beet red. Despite her workout gear, her breathless agitation was not a result of rigorous exercise.
“They’re gone!” she cried when she saw Fiona.
To avoid the curious stares from the teatime crowd, Fiona gently ushered the distraught young woman into the deserted library. At Fiona’s nod I followed and closed the door behind us. Together we faced the agitated guest.
“Now, Miss Pemberton, what is gone exactly?” Fiona’s tone was soothing, a futile attempt to calm the young woman. “Tell me what’s missing.”
“My antique gold-and-diamond necklace, that’s what!” she screeched. “Along with two teardrop-diamond earrings! They were clearly stolen while I took my afternoon run. They’re irreplaceable, one of a kind!”
Like a deflating blowup doll, Peyton Pemberton sank onto a chair and buried her face in her small, perfectly manicured hands. “Great Aunt Cora’s legacy,” she sobbed. “My great-aunt was once an acclaimed stage actress. Cora even ran her own theater company. Those jewels are the only thing I have left to remember her by, and now they’re gone!”
“Are you certain they’re gone?” Fiona prodded. “Because I don’t see how it’s possible. You were only out for an hour or so. No stranger entered the premises, or I would have seen them. Could your jewels have been misplaced, perhaps?”
“No! They’re gone, I tell you. I looked everywhere. I just wore them Saturday night at the Met Costume Ball in New York. They were in my luggage when I got up this morning. The jewels were obviously stolen while I was out.”
I had no reason to doubt Peyton Pemberton’s account, but Fiona stubbornly resisted the very notion that such a thing could happen in her establishment.
“Perhaps we should take a second look,” Fiona suggested. “We’ll search for your jewels together. I’m sure they’ll turn up.”
Miss Pemberton jumped out of her chair. “How do I know you’re not the one who stole them, or that you’re not in on it in some way?”
Fiona bristled. “Why, that’s, that’s—”
“I don’t know you people,” Peyton Pemberton ranted, throwing a paranoid glance my way. “Why should I trust anyone here?”
Fiona stood still as an ice sculpture, mouth agape. Nothing like this had ever happened before—not at her beloved inn. Barney, her husband and business partner, appeared to be absent at the moment, and she clearly didn’t know what to do.
The ghost did.
Don’t involve the cops if you don’t have to, he warned in my head. Get the house detective.
Jack, we’re not in New York, I silently reminded him. And the Finch Inn isn’t some three-hundred-room luxury hotel. They don’t employ a house detective!
Why not? he argued. If they got the kind of clientele who wear priceless diamond necklaces, they should have put up the coin for a plainclothes dick.
Well, they didn’t. And they don’t—I mean they don’t usually have the kind of guests who wear priceless jewelry.
As Jack and I debated, Peyton Pemberton ran out of patience.
“Don’t just stand there like a cow,” she shouted at Fiona. “Call the police right now. I demand you call them, or I will!”
Fiona winced, then flushed red. I knew she was fighting mad. I also knew she was trying not to involve the local authorities.
Jack? What should we—
Call the coppers, Penny. If you don’t, Blondie here will assume you and Bird Lady are tryin’ to cover up the crime.
As Fiona began to sputter, readying an angry retort, I touched her arm.
“Call the police,” I advised her. “Let them handle it.”