Cozy (Stanley Hastings Mystery, #14) Read online

  Praise for Parnell Hall’s mystery COZY

  “... a whimsical parody ... Applying his peculiar brand of twisted logic to the case, Stanley has some droll exchanges with a literal-minded cop and catches the killer with a trick worthy of Miss Marple.”

  —Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

  “The rousing return of Stanley Hastings ... like many a Christie mystery—or like Lawrence Block's Burglar in the Library (1997), in which another New Yorker, Bernie Rhodenbarr, solves a murder in a New England B & B—this one is so clever and so much fun that whodunit takes a backseat to the delicious style with which the tale is told.”

  —Booklist

  “Ingenious plotting and a hefty dose of humor. The B and B chef's yummy recipes are also a plus.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  COZY

  Parnell Hall

  Copyright © 2001, 2011 by Parnell Hall

  Published by Parnell Hall, eBook edition, 2011.

  Published by Orion Publishing Group Ltd., 2002.

  ISBN:978-0-752-85302-4

  Originally published by Carroll & Graf, 2001.

  ISBN:978-0-786-70874-1

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the author, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-936441-33-4

  ISBN (ePub): 978-1-936441-34-1

  Cover design: Michael Fusco Design | michaelfuscodesign.com

  For Jim and Franny

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Books by Parnell Hall

  1.

  “I MISS HIM already.”

  Oh, dear.

  It was not five minutes since we’d dropped Tommie off at sleep-away camp, and Alice missed him already.

  Which is not surprising. This marked the first time Tommie’d been away from home. Oh, he’d been to camp before, but that was day camp in Riverdale, not ten minutes out of New York City. Camp Keewaydin was a good six-hour drive, and he was staying eight full weeks.

  The camp was located on Lake Dunmore in Vermont, and a more idyllic setting would be hard to find. Tommie’s platform tent, in which he would be living with a counselor and three other campers, was just behind the backstop of a baseball diamond. Right across the lawn were the clay tennis courts and all-dirt basketball court, which would become mud holes the first time it rained, doubtlessly to the delight of all; the outdoor boxing ring, which I hoped Tommie would have the good sense not to enter; the wooden footbridge over the road to the riflery and archery ranges, which we had been assured were supervised with great caution; and of course the dock with swimming raft, canoes, kayaks, and windsurfing. By all rights, Tommie was going to have a wonderful time.

  We weren’t.

  Or at least, that was Alice’s judgment. Alice felt sending Tommie off to camp was going to make the two of us suddenly feel old and useless. This hadn’t occurred to me until Alice pointed it out. The minute she did, I began to feel old and useless. Only I wasn’t sure if I really felt that way, or was just very suggestible.

  I don’t mean to sound cynical. I know Alice is totally sincere. As soon as she began sewing name tags in Tommie’s socks, she got a misty look in her eye. Old and useless was just around the corner.

  A further extension of Alice’s theory was that we should not go home—returning to an empty apartment would only make us depressed. Instead, Alice had planned a vacation for us, hiking in the mountains of New Hampshire. She had done so on her own. It is not exactly the vacation I would have planned. Hiking is not a sport I recognize. Neither is jogging. Basically, for me to move in one direction or another, there has to be a ball involved. Either that or water. I am very happy at the seashore. I can ride the waves all day.

  Inland, I do not prosper.

  But Alice had her theories, and Alice had her plans. And as they stemmed from an emotional need, I didn’t feel it was my place to argue with them.

  At any rate, the long and the short of it was, Alice and I were off on an elaborate adventure to make sure that we didn’t miss Tommie too much.

  Only Alice missed him already.

  So did I.

  2.

  “WHERE ARE WE?”

  I hate it when she does that. There it is, the simplest of questions, but it drives me nuts. Where are we? Well, how should I know? I’ve never driven these roads either. And I’ve seen the same road signs she has. So, basically, “Where are we?” is a euphemism for “Look at the map.”

  And I hate looking at the map. I mean, are we driving through the country to see the country or to see the map? I could have stayed at home in New York and looked at the map. If we’re in the car, I would like to look out the window and see the scenery. But, oh no, Alice says, Where are we?, and there I am, fumbling with the map, trying to locate the last recognizable landmark that we’d passed.

  And knowing that when I’d found it, the job isn’t done. Because Alice will say, What’s it near? And then I have to get out the guidebook and look up the nearest point of interest. And read the description so Alice can make a value judgment as to whether it’s worth us stopping to see it.

  As if that weren’t bad enough, we have two guidebooks.

  Anyway, we were on our way to the inn, and Alice wanted to know where we were.

  The short answer was on Route 112.

  I gave Alice the short answer.

  She gave me a withering look. Hard to do without taking one’s eyes off the road, but she managed. “I know we’re on Route 112,” Alice said. “Where on Route 112 are we?”

  We passed a sign for Greely Ponds.

  “Greely Ponds,” I said.

  This did not win her heart.

  “Where is Greely Ponds?”

  I whipped out my guidebook, located Greely Ponds, and was about to triumphantly impart the information to Alice when I discovered the map had no scale.

  “Come on,” Alice said impatiently. “Where are we?”

  “Well,” I said. “We’re somewhere between Lincoln and Bear Notch Road.”

  “What?”

  “And it looks like we’re a little closer to Lincoln.”

  “Where is Lincoln?”

  “Didn’t we go through Lincoln a few miles back?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Then why do you think we did?”

  “Because 112 appears to go through Lincoln on the map.”

  “Appears?”

  “This is a hike location map. It doesn’
t have dots for the towns.”

  “You’re looking at the map in the guidebook?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s the wrong map.”

  “It’s the one that shows Greely Ponds.”

  “You’ve gotta look at the other map.”

  I didn’t want to look at the other map. It was hard enough dealing with the guidebook. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Let me look up Greely Ponds.”

  “I don’t care about Greely Ponds.”

  “You wanna know where it is. Hang on. Greely Ponds, page 121. Greely Ponds, Greely Ponds. Here we go. Greely Ponds. The parking lot for Greely Ponds is on the south side of Route 112, nine miles east of Lincoln. There you are,” I said triumphantly. “We’re nine miles east of Lincoln.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Huh?”

  “What are we near?”

  “Greely Ponds.”

  “No, damn it,” Alice said. “What’s next?”

  See what I mean?

  We were driving along what the other guidebook had described as the state’s most popular road for viewing foliage. And it was indeed a gorgeous little mountain road. Only I wasn’t seeing any of it. I was reading guidebooks and maps.

  “Next up is Champney Falls,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know. I have to look it up.”

  “Well, hurry up before we get there, in case we wanna stop.”

  I sighed, flipped through the book.

  “Champney Falls,” I said. “A three-point-five-mile round-trip with a six-hundred-foot elevation gain. It has a wooden footbridge over the brook and rocks to scramble on at the falls.”

  “So how far is it?” Alice said.

  “I told you. Three-point-five miles.”

  “No. On the map.”

  “Oh. About a half an inch.”

  “Stanley.”

  “Let’s see. It’s just past Bear Notch Road.”

  “We just passed that road.”

  “Then we should be there.”

  We were. Around a bend a sign announced Champney Falls. We pulled into a parking lot with about a dozen other cars. Alice popped the trunk, took out a backpack.

  I shouldered the backpack. Considered what conceivable subterfuge could save me from schlepping it three-point-five miles. Failing to find one, I smiled stoically and followed Alice down the path.

  In the beginning it wasn’t that bad. The path was relatively wide, and while there was a slight incline, it wasn’t steep enough to slow us down. At least to slow Alice down, which, if I may say so, is my main problem hiking with Alice. Though shorter than me, she takes longer strides. Either that or quicker ones. At any rate, wherever we’re walking, it’s all I can do to keep up with Alice. Throw in a backpack, and I’m really in trouble. So, even though the going was easy, I found myself lagging behind.

  We stopped to rest shortly after that, sitting on a tree trunk that was lying beside the path.

  “Want some water?” Alice said.

  “Just a minute. I want to see where we are.”

  “Where we are?” Alice said. “We just got started.”

  “Yeah, but there’s a map,” I said. I looked in the guidebook. “Did we pass a big boulder with a tree on it?”

  “Huh?”

  “A great big rock with a tree growing off the top of it. You recall seeing anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “Damn.”

  “What’s the matter.”

  “It’s near the beginning. If we haven’t passed that, we haven’t gotten anywhere.”

  “I told you we’re just getting started.”

  “We’ve been hiking fifteen minutes. We should have passed that.”

  “We’ll pass it soon. What other landmarks are there?”

  “Just that. Till we get to the top.”

  “We’re nowhere near there.”

  “My point exactly.”

  “So, let’s go,” Alice said.

  And with that she was up and off, with me tagging along behind.

  A little farther along we passed another couple coming down. That was fine. But five minutes later another couple passed us going up. Which was okay by me—we were sitting having another rest. I was drinking water this time, having exhausted the information in the guidebook, and Alice was sitting there doing her best impression of a person who didn’t mind stopping again so soon.

  She did okay until the couple went by. I don’t think that pleased her at all.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  I took a breath. “They’re younger than we are.”

  “What?”

  “And they’ve probably hiked before. This is my first time.”

  “How are we going to hike if we don’t ever hike?”

  “Just a few more minutes.”

  I got my few minutes. Unfortunately, another couple went by. And this time there was no need to point out they were younger than we were. They were, in fact, straight out of some hiking brochure designed to give the illusion that all participants in the sport were young, tan, and healthy.

  Not to mention blonde. This couple could have come from a Swedish hiking brochure. The boy looked lean and athletic. The girl looked lean and athletic. And fresh. And supple. And limber. And smooth. And soft. And—

  But I digress.

  The point is, this was an attractive young couple. I say boy and girl but I shouldn’t, they were probably in their early twenties, and I’m sure they considered themselves quite mature, despite how adolescent they seemed to me.

  At any rate, they breezed right on by us, underlining the fact that I was still sitting down.

  So I stood up.

  And Alice said, “Who you trying to impress now?”

  It took me a moment to figure out what she meant. When I did, it seemed totally unfair.

  Yes, indeed, the woman’s blond pageboy cut did bob in a casually fetching way along the high cheekbones of a most attractive face. But that was not why I got up. I had not sprung to my feet to chase after my unobtainable lost youth. I had got up so as not to suffer any more of Alice’s abuse.

  Unlucky there.

  There was nothing for me to say that wouldn’t make things worse, and sitting back down again wasn’t an option, so I gritted my teeth, shouldered my backpack, and set off down the path.

  Did I say down the path? I should say up the path, because the incline had just gotten steeper. Of course this didn’t bother Alice, she breezed right by me, forging on ahead. I trudged along behind, looking for landmarks and wondering how soon it would be safe to suggest stopping again.

  We never found a big rock with a tree on it, but after a while I noticed we were traveling alongside a stream. Which seemed an awfully good sign on the one hand, and a reason for stopping and getting out the guidebook on the other. I did, and discovered the stream was called Champney Brook, and did indeed come from the falls.

  And, unless we’d been walking parallel to it for some time without knowing it, we still had an awful long way to go.

  I also found out we needed to take a left turn when the path forked. Which stood us in good stead more than an hour later when it finally did. By then we had ascended most of our six hundred feet, and it was just a short scramble over the trail to the base of Champney Falls.

  I must admit, it was quite a sight. Water cascading over a series of ledges down to a pool below. There were children wading in the pool, a boy and a girl. Their parents sat on a rock nearby. The older couple that had passed us were there, too, sitting on a rock eating a picnic lunch. There was also a woman with a large dog of indeterminate breed, which was lying in the shade and looking hopefully at the people eating lunch.

  The young couple was not there. Not that I looked for them, you understand, but one would have expected them to be. But they were nowhere to be seen.

  Alice and I had lunch, which I hadn’t even noticed she’d packed, but somehow turkey sandwiches miraculously appeare
d in a brown paper bag, purchased no doubt the night before while I was watching a ball game in the motel. Their appearance not only startled me, but also attracted the large floppy dog. It came galumphing over, plopped down in front of me, and proceeded to drool.

  The woman followed him over. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Prince has no manners. I’ll put him on a leash if you mind.”

  “We don’t mind,” Alice said. “He’s a sweetheart.”

  Easy for her to say. It wasn’t her sandwich the sweetheart had his eyes on. Prince was a large, shaggy, golden-brown, floppy-eared beggar, who seemed to have perfected the art of making people feel guilty about whatever it was they were eating.

  “What kind of dog is he?” Alice said.

  “Oh, the best kind. Golden retriever, Labrador, German shepherd, a dash of cocker spaniel, and maybe just a little St. Bernard.”

  It seemed to me that while she’d been saying this, Prince had somehow inched closer to my sandwich. I don’t know how, I hadn’t seen him move, but his paws appeared closer, and I could feel hot dog breath on my knee.

  “Can I give him some?” I said.

  The owner was a chunky woman who seemed to smile a lot. She did so now. “You can if you want to. I have to warn you, though, you’ll make a friend for life.”

  “I’ll risk it,” I said.

  I tore off a crust of bread, tossed it in front of the dog. He scooped it up, held it in his mouth on long teeth, as if reprimanding me for throwing it in the dirt. Then with one sudden huge gulp it was gone, and Prince was back in his begging position, down on all fours, saliva dripping, eyes turned up at me. And this time I actually saw him move, subtly, surreptitiously, scrunching first one and then the other paw forward, very much like a soldier with a rifle creeping forward on his elbows in the tall grass. Before I knew it, he was drooling on my hiking boots.

  “I warned you,” the woman said.

  “Stanley’s a sucker,” Alice said.

  I tore off another piece of sandwich, held it up, and said, “Sit.”

  His eyes never left the sandwich, but his expression said, “Are you kidding?” He continued to drool on the spot from which I had moved my foot.

  I don’t know how long the dog and I might have kept it up had there not come a loud snapping sound, like the crack of a whip. It cut right through the background noise of the waterfall, and echoed in the mountain air.