A Killer Plot (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

vulnerable here. She sighed. If truly returned to exhume the past-scatter it like ashes — and get beyond chapter five once and for all, I must start with this room.
    Another breath of imprisoned air swirled around her knees as she entered her old room.
    With one glance, it would have been obvious to the most witless bystander that this space belonged to a neglected child.
    There was a cot pushed against the far wall—the kind of cot that folds in half and can be stored in a closet, that squeaks each time one shifts during sleep, and that has probing springs to dig into one’s back and prevent sweet dreams from ever approaching too near. There was a comforter stained by mildew, a circle of black mold on the ceiling above the bed, and a lamp stalk filled by a cracked lightbulb positioned on top of an overturned wooden crate.
    A three-tiered bookshelf near the door held an assortment of wrecked books. They were used to begin with, bought at library sales or from Goodwill, and reread so often that the pages were as supple as tissue paper. Below the single window, covered by an old crib sheet embellished by faded yellowed mermaids, was a dollhouse.
    Olivia and her mother had built the dollhouse from a kit bought at the Five and Dime. During a rainy spring week, they’d glued, painted, and decorated the diminutive Victorian mansion. Now, its royal purple clapboard and ivory gingerbread had faded to a sickly lavender and brown.
    Easing the front open, Olivia was unsurprised to find the interior riddled with spiderwebs and the carcasses of moths and beetles. The doll family had long since been removed from the house and all the furniture was gone, save for a four-poster bed and a claw-foot tub.
    “Please. Be here,” Olivia whispered hopefully and then stuck her fingers into the oversized fireplace located in the formal front parlor. She grasped a faux brass andiron and pulled—the motion as familiar to her as though she’d repeated it yesterday. The entire fireplace came away in her hand, revealing a small hidden cavity. Inside, there was a square of wax paper, which Olivia unfolded in hurried movements. Holding the treasure to the dust-filtered light, she sighed with relief.
    Her eyes ran over the contours of the gold starfish pendant while her fingertips unclasped the fine gold chain. She bent her head, enjoying the feel of the cool gold against the back of her neck and the weight of the starfish as it nestled into the soft depression of flesh between her collarbones.
    “Mother.” She closed her eyes and cried silently for a little while. The dull ache in her heart throbbed to life and the image of her mother—tan, freckled, and laughing as she leapt through a fan of sprinkler water—appeared before Olivia’s eyes. It was one of the last times they’d been together, and Olivia remembered the ghost of a rainbow shimmering in the water’s mist, her mother’s long legs severing the colors, only to discover they’d re-formed instantaneously in her wake.
    Olivia stood, thinking that her few precious memories of her mother were as ephemeral as that summer rainbow. Wiping her eyes, she brushed off the dirt clinging to her knees and pulled out her cell phone. “Enough!” she declared as she began to punch in numbers.
    That woman in the food market was right, she thought. The people of Oyster Bay saved my life. They found me on that boat and cared for me until Grandmother came. Devitalizing abandoned buildings, hiring the jobless, and opening the finest restaurant this place has ever seen has made me wealthier but I’ve done nothing selfless to repay that debt.
    She listened to the cell phone ring. “Oyster Bay can have this house. As soon as I’ve expunged its history.”
    A man’s voice burst a greeting through her phone’s speaker and she walked out of her little girl bedroom without looking back, the only treasure left within its confines now safely hidden beneath her shirt. “Clive? It’s Olivia. Listen, I’d like you to halt your work on the King Street building for the moment. Something more pressing has come up. Can you meet me at the lighthouse keeper’s cottage right away?” She paused, listening to him ask what she had in mind.
    “A total overhaul. New roof, siding, flooring, plumbing, you name it. And Clive”—she walked out of the house and didn’t bother to shut the door—“I need it fast.”
     
     
    Several weeks later she called Camden Ford and offered the Bayside Book Writers