Bake Sale Murder (Lucy Stone #13) - Leslie Meier
Prologue
The last customer hadn’t left the bar until nearly two a.m.—well past the eleven p.m. closing time mandated by the town bylaws in Tinker’s Cove, Maine—but that didn’t bother Old Dan very much. He’d never been one to fuss about rules and regulations. No, he was one who took the inch and made it a mile. If they wanted him to close at eleven, well, they could jolly well send over a cop or two or ten and make him. Though he’d be willing to wager that wouldn’t go down well with the clientele. He chuckled and scratched his chin, with its week’s worth of grizzled whiskers. That crowd, mostly rough and ready fishermen, didn’t have a high regard for the law, or for the cops who enforced it, either. No, close the Bilge before the customers were ready to call it a night, and there’d be a fine brouhaha.
And, anyway, he didn’t sleep well these days, so there was no sense tossing out some poor soul before he was ready to go, because, truth be told, he didn’t mind a bit of company in the wee hours. He knew that if he went home and to bed, he’d only be twisting and turning in the sheets, unable to calm his thoughts enough to sleep.
That’s why he’d started tidying the bar at night instead of leaving it for the morning. The rhythmic tasks soothed him. Rinsing and drying the glasses, rubbing down the bar. Wiping the tables, giving the floor a bit of a sweep. That’s what he was doing, shuffling along behind a push broom to clear away all the dropped cigarette butts and matches and dirt carried in on cleated winter boots. He braced himself for the blast of cold and opened the door to sweep it all out, back where it belonged. But it wasn’t the cold that took his breath away. It was a bird, a big crow, and it walked right in.
“And what do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, feeling a large hollowness growing inside him.
“You know quite well, don’t you?” replied the crow, hopping up onto the bar with a neat flap of his wings. The bird cocked his head and looked him in the eye. “Don’t tell me an Irishman like you, born and bred in the old country, has forgotten the tale of Cú Chulainn?”
He’d not forgotten. He’d heard the story often as a boy, long ago in Ireland, where his mother dished up the old stories with his morning bowl of oats. “Eat up,” she’d say, “so you’ll be as strong as Cú Chulainn.”
He found his mind wandering and followed it down the dark paths of memory. Had it really been that long? Sixty odd years? More than half a century? It seemed like yesterday that he was tagging along behind his ma when she made the monthly trek to the post office to pay the bills. “’Tisn’t the sort of thing you can forget,” he told the crow. “Especially that statue in the Dublin General Post Office. A handsome piece of work that is, illustrating how Cú Chulainn knew death was near and tied himself to a post so he could die standing upright, like the hero he was.”
“Cú Chulainn was a hero indeed,” admitted the crow. “And his enemies couldn’t kill him until the Morrighan lit on his shoulder, stealing his strength, weakening him….”
“Right you are. The Morrighan,” he said. The very thought of that fearsome warrior goddess, with her crimson cloak and chariot, set his heart to pounding in his bony old chest.
“And what form did the Morrighan take, might I ask?” inquired the bird.
“A crow,” he said, feeling a great trembling overtake him. “So is that it? Are you the Morrighan come for me?”
“What do you think, Daniel Malone?” replied the crow, stretching out its wings with a snap and a flap and growing larger, until its great immensity blocked out the light—first the amber glow of the neon Guinness sign, then the yellow light from the spotted ceiling fixture, the greenish light from the streetlamp outside, and finally, even the silvery light from the moon—and all was darkness.
CHAPTER 1
“I’d like to kill that kid.”
Something in her husband’s tone of voice caught Lucy Stone’s attention. He sounded like he really meant it, and in more than twenty years of marriage Bill had never, until now, expressed homicidal tendencies. It was true, however, that the roar of Preston Stanton’s Harley could drive even the most mild-mannered soul over the edge.
“What’s the matter with his parents?” yelled Bill. “We never let our kids drive around like that, making a racket.”
Lucy waited before answering, easily following Preston’s noisy progress down Red Top Road, where he paused to rev the motor several times at the stop sign before roaring on off towards town. Only then could she make herself heard without raising her voice. “We could complain to the police. There are noise limits for motorcycles, you know. I checked.”
“That’s not likely to get very far. His mother works at town hall and you know how those town employees stick together.”
“At least we’d get it on record.” She paused, reaching up to pat her husband’s beard, lightly touched with gray. “It might come in handy as a defense when they put you on trial for murder.”
Bill wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. “Very funny.” He was bending to kiss her when they were interrupted by their youngest daughter, Zoe.
“Mom! I’m going to be late!”
Lucy checked the clock and sighed, pushing Bill away. It was almost eight, time to get Zoe to Friends of Animals day camp. Zoe, almost nine, was the caboose on the family choo-choo, five years younger than her next oldest sibling, her sister Sara. Sara, 14, would be a freshman in high school when school reopened in just a few weeks. This summer, Sara had her first job; she was working as a chambermaid at the Queen Victoria Inn where she was following in her older sister Elizabeth’s footsteps. Elizabeth had spent her summer abroad, backpacking around Italy and France with a couple of girlfriends. Home for barely a week, she’d returned early to Chamberlain College in Boston, where she was going into her junior year, to help with freshman orientation. Lucy often wondered where the years had gone; her oldest, Toby, was engaged to his long-time girlfriend Molly and they were saving for a house.