“Someone who sounds young and naive,” Archie added thoughtfully.

  “Archie!” I yelled, my hands on my hips.

  “This guy thinks he’s a sly dog. He’ll fall for that,” he insisted.

  I thought for a moment, pacing in front of the fireplace. “And what about the map? It needs to look old and valuable enough to pique his interest but not so much that he gets suspicious right away.”

  “We can find a sheet of blank paper. A bit of coffee staining, some burning around the edges, and it’ll look the part,” Jane suggested, already searching online for techniques to age paper convincingly.

  The plan was taking shape. But something didn’t feel right. I crossed my arms as a fear came over me. “How do we know Vincent was involved in the attempt on Thomas’s life?”

  “He was there today with the two sabotage attempts,” Jane pointed out.

  “I know. But are we sure they’re all linked? What would be his motive?”

  “I mean, we do have townspeople who are upset that Thomas purchased, then tore down buildings for development,” Jane said.

  “And that big runaround with theater people coming to Archie’s room,” I mused. “But who ultimately gave the order to plant that bottle?”

  “One step at a time,” Archie advised.

  “Okay, draft an email from the niece then,” I said, pulling up a chair next to Jane. “It should be formal but enticing. Invite him to a meeting at the café next to the bed-and-breakfast. We can control the environment there, and watch who comes and goes.”

  Jane started typing, her fingers quick on the keys. “Subject: ‘ Exciting Investment Opportunity Linked to Historical Discovery.’”

  The email read:

  Dear Mr. Vincent Marlow,

  I recently inherited a fascinating piece of history from my late uncle, a renowned historian, which includes a map suggesting the presence of a significant treasure beneath our family home, possibly linked to Captain William Flintlock’s legend. Given your interest in local properties and your past dealings with Thomas Keating, I believe this could be of mutual interest for investment and exploration. I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss this further at your earliest convenience. Perhaps we could meet at the café on Maple street this Thursday at 3 PM?

  Sincerely,

  Margaret Flintlock

  “Margaret Flintlock?” I questioned.

  “It was the first name I could think of that’s tied to the pirate lore,” she said. “Does it work?”

  “It’s perfect.” I smiled. “Now, we need to prepare for all possible outcomes. If he bites, we need to be ready to read between the lines, see if he slips up.”

  Jane stood up, stretching her back. “I’ll also research more about Marlow, see if there’s anything in his past that might connect to this. Maybe there’s a reason he’s so interested in Thomas’s projects, or the theater.”

  Archie nodded. “I’ll be there too, to keep an eye on things.”

  “You can’t be there!” I said. “You were the one set up. Obviously, they know you.”

  The room was quiet for a moment, the only sound the soft crackle of the fire.

  “Collin, then,” he said, pulling out his phone. “He can pretend to be representing this Margaret Flintlock.”

  20

  After Archie’s phone call with Collin, we all sat back in our chairs.

  “What do we do now?” Jane asked.

  “Let’s put Vincent Marlow on the back burner for a bit,” I said, my mind buzzing from the visit to the library.

  “And do what? Just wait?” Jane’s brows furrowed, her fingers twitching toward her laptop.

  “No, let’s dig into Miriam Wells,” I said firmly.

  She looked at me with shocked eyes. “What on earth for?”

  “Because she’s the head of the theater,” Archie started in his know-it-all tone, leaning against the armrest of my chair.

  “Because we saw her with Vincent Marlow,” I corrected, cutting him off. “At the theater that very first night.”

  “The night Thomas collapsed,” Jane said, leaning back in realization, her gaze darting to the fruit bowl on the coffee table.

  I nodded. “You see, the one thing that’s always bothered me is the apple.” I pointed to the bowl in my room. “I have a whole bowl of them. And you said you only had oranges.” I gestured to Archie.

  He pushed his glasses up. “That’s right. And I like apples,” he said moodily.

  “Did you ever have apples?” Jane pressed, leaning forward.

  He shook his head. “No, never.”

  I nodded. “When you first mentioned that, I thought it was a bit weird because the entire bed-and-breakfast has bowls of apples.”

  Jane frowned. “Maybe that’s why they think it came from you, like you had a missing one.”

  “But I never had any,” Archie insisted, his voice tinged with a mix of confusion and indignation.

  Jane gasped and touched my arm. “Sorry to change the subject, Aunt Clara, but I just remember something. The first day we got here, didn’t we see Miriam put something in that old costume trunk in the parlor?”

  I thought about it and nodded. “Yes, that’s right. What of it?”

  “Do remember she seemed quite surprised when she saw us?”

  I frowned. “She was?”

  “Yes, she sort of jumped. And I remember she was quite nervous and in a hurry to get us down to the dining room. You don’t suppose…”

  “You want to check it out?” I shouldn’t have framed it as a question, especially as her eyebrows settled in her determined look.

  “I think it would be a good idea. After all, she was super stressed that day.”

  Archie’s eyes lit up with the thrill of the hunt. “To the parlor then! Do you think we need to sneak in? Let’s not get caught!”

  Sneak we did, or tried, looking more like the Three Stooges (especially after I missed a step, but, luckily, Archie caught me) than any svelte ninjas. However, we managed to make it to the parlor without being seen, and Archie quietly shut the door behind us.

  The room was a treasure trove of history. Below the clutter of vases, silver picture frames, and knickknacks stood the ancient trunk, its wood darkened with age, its lock rusted but intact.

  “This it?” he asked.

  Jane, with a hairpin, squatted down. “Yep. Let’s see what’s inside.” She started to poke at the lock.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Trust me. I have a knack for locks.”

  “What?” I was confused. “Why? How?”

  Her eyebrows knitted together in concentration. “Dad used to keep special chocolates in his desk drawer. I had a hankering for them when I was a kid. He never knew.”

  With a satisfying click and a big smile, she managed to unlock it. Carefully, she raised the lid.

  Inside, layers of costumes lay in folded, musty heaps. Jane carefully lifted them up to search through the trunk. And at the bottom, we hit the mother lode.

  “Look at that!” Jane breathed, lifting out a sheaf of letters bound by a faded ribbon and a tarnished silver locket.

  She passed it over to me. I gently brushed the edges of the locket, searching for a way to open it. Finding a catch, I pressed it. The locket popped open to reveal two portraits. One side was of Elias Morgan. The other was of a young woman, unmistakable in her resemblance to Miriam.

  I sucked in a breath. I’d seen this picture before in the newspaper clipping from The Flintlock Chronicle Jane found the morning after Thomas’s collapse.

  “Is that Miriam?” Jane whispered.

  “Looks like it,” I whispered back.

  “I thought Beatrice Hawthorne, the librarian, and Elias were a thing?” she answered.

  How many mysteries were we dealing with here?

  The letters, it turned out, were addressed to Miriam and read like a sappy romance novel. I quickly put them back; It didn’t feel right to read through them. This was Miriam’s actual life.

  “We have to go,” I whispered. But not before Jane held out a postcard to me.

  “I don’t want to read it.” I shook my head.

  “You have to.”

  Sighing, I turned it over and read, “You know how I love apple pies.” It was signed, “Thomas.”

  My eyes opened wide in shock. “What the heck?” I suddenly felt very confused.

  “Maybe you should peek at the letters,” Jane urged.

  Groaning, I opened one up and flipped it over to see the signature. It was from Miriam, and read, “Thomas, I’m sorry for being too forward. I thought an apple might make you smile. Please forgive me, Miriam.”

  I sank back on my heels. “She was in love with Thomas.”

  We heard a noise on the stairwell, a soft scuffle from the sole of a shoe on the wood tread.

  “Quickly!” Jane whispered.

  Frantically, we put everything back in the trunk, not in the right order, I was sure. I cringed for when Miriam went back into the chest. She would know right away someone had been in it.

  The shoe clicks came closer down the hallway. By the time the door opened, we were all settled in the chairs with various books in our hands, looking as innocent as three sneaks could possibly be.

  Miriam stood in the doorway, her eyes narrowing. I hoped she didn’t notice we were sweating. Slowly, she took in the scene with a single, sweeping glance. I swear she could sense the tension in the air.

  “You all look rather cozy with those books,” she remarked, her voice a mix of curiosity and suspicion. “Found anything interesting in your reading?”

  Archie, always quick on the draw, smiled disarmingly. “Oh, just diving into some local history. This house has quite the story, doesn’t it?”

  Miriam’s gaze drifted to the trunk, now closed. “It does indeed,” she replied, her tone softening but not losing its edge. “Everything in here tells a tale.” Her eyes lingered on the trunk a moment longer before returning to us. “I hope you’re treating our relics with the respect they deserve.”

  Jane, who had been holding her breath, exhaled slowly and managed a nod. “Absolutely, Miss Miriam. We’re just fascinated by the past.”

  The woman stepped into the room, her presence filling the space with an air of authority. Slowly, she wandered over to a shelf, pretending to rearrange some of the knickknacks.

  “It’s quite late for you all to be up.” The statement ended as if it were a question.

  I rushed to fill in an answer. “With everything that’s been going on, we’ve found we’re having a hard time sleeping.”

  Jane made a move to steer the conversation. “You know, this town has so much history. It must have been quite the spectacle back in the day, with all the parties and such.”

  Miriam paused, her fingers brushing against an old, dusty vase. “Yes, it was, indeed.” she said, her voice wistful now.

  I couldn’t help but glance at the trunk, feeling the weight of the secrets we’d just uncovered. The letters, the locket, the postcard, each piece a fragment of a larger puzzle.

  Jane gently probed, “Speaking of history, we were looking into the Morgan house that burned down here a while back. The picture we saw at the library showed it was quite beautiful. Do you know the story behind it?”

  Miriam’s expression changed, a mix of nostalgia and caution. “Ah, the Morgan house. Really marked the town, didn’t it? Rumors.” She sighed. Then her gaze met mine sharply. “But some stories are better left untold, don’t you think?”

  I nodded, feeling the chill of her words. It was clear we had stumbled upon something far more intimate than we had anticipated.

  Archie, trying to lighten the atmosphere, chuckled. “Well, we certainly won’t be solving any mysteries by staying up all night. Should we try to get some sleep?”

  “Good idea,” I agreed quickly, eager to escape the intensity of the moment. We stood, books still in hand, ready to retreat.

  Miriam watched us go. I tried not to run up the stairs.

  21

  This time we piled into Archie’s room. I leaned back in the chair, pondering. “What did you think of the letters?”

  Jane quipped, “’You know how I love apple pies,’ signed by Thomas. And the second where she wrote, “ Thomas, I’m sorry for being too forward. I thought an apple might make you smile. Please forgive me, Miriam.”

  Archie nodded. “It appears Miss Miriam had a crush on Thomas, the kind where you’d bake him a cake just to see him smile.”

  “I wonder when those were written, because I know Thomas wasn’t into her, at least not at the moment.”

  “How do you know?” Jane asked.

  “Eliza told her co-stars that first night backstage. Remember, she said that Thomas and her were dating, but keeping it secret.”

  “I don’t know about that, Archie said. It seems I’ve caught Miriam looking awfully moony-eyed in his direction. I believe she was in love with him.”

  Jane’s brows lowered. “So, was Thomas playing with her? Was that the reason why he wanted Eliza to keep it a secret? ”

  “I think she had to know,” I said.

  Archie stared at the oranges in his fruit bowl, then back at me. “You mean, you think she gave him the poisoned fruit?”

  “Maybe,” I said. I thought for a moment, then added, “Maybe Miriam offered him that apple as a gesture, an apology for something, like she did before, but laced it with something? And when it went wrong, she panicked?”

  Jane shook her head. “Maybe Miriam was trying to woo him back, somehow, like a little nostalgic gift. You don’t think someone else could have messed with the fruit?”

  “That, or she’s just really bad at picking gifts,” Archie quipped.

  “Oh, Archie!” I swatted at him playfully.

  “It just seems so coincidental,” Jane mused.

  I nodded, my mind weaving through the clues we’d uncovered.

  “I think we need to be careful. It’s a big jump,” Archie warned, his voice cautious, reminding me not to let my imagination run too wild.

  “I don’t think it is,” I said, my heart grabbing onto that new theory. “Especially if she knew about Eliza and Miriam. Jealousy is pretty powerful.” Heck, half the roles I’d played through the years involved a jilted lover. This fit right in.

  “Jealousy?” Jane echoed, her eyes wide. She was always ready for a good romantic scandal.

  I nodded, feeling more enthusiastic.

  “But what about Vincent Marlow?” Archie asked, his mind always on the practical side of things.

  I sank back, confused again. The mysterious businessman did seem to be in the center of all things as well.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, frustrated.

  Jane pulled out her notebook where she’d been jotting down notes. “Let’s map this out. We have Miriam, with the possible motive of jealousy. Then there’s Vincent Marlow, whose intentions we need to uncover. But we have a clear link to him through real estate.”

  I nodded, grateful for Jane’s methodical approach.

  Archie, now more engaged, added, “We should look into any past records or conflicts between these individuals. There might be something there that ties everything together.”

  “You mean the two of them?” I asked.

  He nodded, still staring at the oranges, continued, “Or maybe it was all just a big misunderstanding. Someone else’s apple in the mix, like a theatrical prop gone wrong.”

  “It’s not. I know it’s not. The pieces of the puzzle might still be scattered but they’re beginning to form a picture. Either way, we need to talk to Miriam. Those letters and that postcard we found downstairs show she was smitten with Thomas.

  “How do you think the bottle got in my room?” Archie asked.

  Jane took over. “Eliza came here that night after Thomas collapsed. Eliza must have confronted her about Thomas, maybe accused her of meddling in their romance. And Miriam, in a fit of panic, decided to frame you. She runs this place, she had access to your room. She could’ve planted that bottle with the fake label and called the police to point the finger away from herself.”

  “So you think Miriam set me up?” Archie asked.

  “It fits,” I said. “That trunk downstairs, her hiding those letters and locket, shows she’s got secrets. Eliza’s visit might’ve pushed her over the edge. And Vincent Marlow being with her that night at the theater, he could’ve been in on it, maybe even supplied the poison. We need to find out what she knows.”

  Archie frowned.

  “Okay,” Jane said, determination settling in. “We can figure this out. I know we can.”

  “But wait,” I said, suddenly discouraged again.

  “What?” they both asked.

  “What about the cameo? Who invited you to do it, Archie? It’s that note started this mess.”

  Archie rubbed his chin, then snapped his fingers. “Charlie Finch! He asked me to meet him about a cameo. I thought it was a lark, never imagined it would land me in jail.”

  “Charlie?” Jane’s brow furrowed. “Why would he try to frame you?”

  “I don’t think he did,” Archie said slowly. “But someone turned it against me. Vincent, maybe, or Miriam. Maybe Charlie’s note was the bait.”

  Jane scribbled furiously. “That fits, Miriam plants the bottle after Eliza’s confrontation, Vincent pulls strings. We’ve got them cornered.”

  I stopped pacing, staring at the fruit bowl, the absence of apples mocking me. “Collin will visit Vincent tomorrow, let’s nail him with this.”

  Archie grinned. “Justice,” he said firmly. “Vincent’s curtain’s falling next.”

  22

  With all of that excitement, it was hard to go to bed as we’d told Miriam we’d do. But, eventually, sleep we did.

  Or at least a very earnest attempt was made. I confess, I spun around in that bed so many times that half the covers landed on the floor while the other half somehow entangled around me, and managed to hurt my neck sleeping on the wrong pillow. I gave up when I saw gray light around the edges of the curtains.

 

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