Trick or Treachery

Table of Contents

 

 

A loud wail cut through the air, even as the party was dying down.

“I thought they turned off the sound effects,” Marshall said.

The wail erupted again, raising the fine hairs on my arms. We jumped up as a group and rushed onto the patio to see where the sound had come from. We heard it again, now more like a scream, coming from the direction of the cemetery.

“Good lord,” Marshall gasped.

“I’d better see what’s happening,” Mort said, and took off at a run with the rest of us following. We approached two costumed figures standing in the cemetery, one of whom was sobbing.

“Stand back!” Mort ordered, bringing us to a halt.

There, in a pool of moonlight, lay a motionless form. A stain, the same rich hue of a rose, had turned white hair to crimson. A pair of incredibly blue eyes were open and dull—and dead. . . .

The party was over.

SIGNET

Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

 

First Printing, October

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eISBN : 978-1-101-16574-4

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

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For Renée Paley

October 27

Dear Matt:

First, thank you for the kind words about my latest novel. There was a point during early September when I doubted whether I’d meet the deadline. Then things opened up, and the final third of the book seemed to write itself.

As for starting the next one, I think I need a month or two of decompression, a time to do some serious thinking and to plan my research.

In the meantime, I’ve been enjoying my leisure this fall. I think I’ve mentioned before how people in Cabot Cove seem to take Halloween more seriously than others I’ve met. It makes for fun actually, lots of parties and pageants and inventive costumes. Strange, though, how the days leading up to this particular Halloween seem different. There’s an aura in the air that’s unsettling at times. Sounds silly, of course, to hear me speaking this way. You know that I tend to believe only in what I can touch and see, although I’ve never been so arrogant as to summarily dismiss any phenomenon beyond my ability to personally interact with it. But this Halloween is . . . I’m sounding silly, and I know it. Ghosts and goblins live only in the wonderful imaginations of children.

Thanks again, Matt, for the words of praise. I’ll be in touch.

Fondly,
Jessica

As I dropped the letter to my agent, Matt Miller, in the mail slot, I laughed and shook my head. Imagine me actually admitting there might be something to Halloween’s mysterious aspects, the ghosts and goblins, witches and cauldrons, and broomsticks that fly. “Silly,” I said aloud as I stepped outside and got on with my day.

“Her name was Hepzibah Cabot. She was the wife of the founder of our town, Winfred Cabot.”

Tim Purdy, Cabot Cove’s historian and president of our historical society, stood over a small, weather-worn gravestone in the town’s oldest graveyard. Two dozen people, most of them residents, the others tourists, stood in a semicircle across from him as he concluded his annual Halloween tour of Cabot Cove’s more infamous historic sites. Tim showed us where murders had taken place: the scene of a scandalous duel between rival candidates for town mayor, in which one had been killed; our stunning, rugged coast-line that was a favorite safe haven for pirates plying their trade; and now the burial spot of Hepzibah Cabot, whose murder of her husband and subsequent suicide had been embellished over the decades to create what had become known as the “Legend of Cabot Cove.”

“Hepzibah was a proud, staunch woman,” Tim continued. “Her husband, Winfred, was a sea-going man, as most men from here were in those days. He was away at sea for long stretches of time, although the relationship between them was, according to the town’s rumormongers, such a volatile one that Hepzibah was never especially unhappy during his absences. She was a big woman, tall and raw-boned, who, it’s claimed, could cut wood and lay bricks faster and better than any man in town.”

A few people snickered.

“People didn’t divorce in those days, and I suppose they would have lived out their lives together if Winfred hadn’t taken up with another woman during one of his trips. I’m not sure how Hepzibah found out about it—some accounts claim he told his wife to make her jealous—but the result was violent and bloody. I usually leave out the graphic aspects if children are on the tour, but since we don’t have any little ones with us today, I’ll say that Hepzibah took an ax to her husband, severing his head and throwing it into the sea from a large rock along the shore. Then she threw herself into the ocean and drowned.”

“A regular Lizzie Borden,” someone said.

“Except that no one has ever denied the facts in this case,” Tim observed. “She killed her husband and killed herself.”

A man who’d introduced himself and his wife as being from Burlington, Vermont, asked, “Why did the murder and suicide turn into a legend? Women have killed philandering husbands and then killed themselves before, and still do.”

“True,” Tim said, “but in those cases, once the principals were dead, that was the end of them. Not so with Hepzibah Cabot. Even today, people claim to see her in various places, wandering on the beach with seaweed streaming from her hair, or right here in this cemetery, staring down at her husband’s grave.” Tim pointed to a far corner. “Townsfolk buried them on opposite sides of the cemetery because of the bad blood between them.”

A woman let out an anguished rush of breath. “I hope she doesn’t decide to show up here this morning,” she said.

Tim laughed. “Frankly, I keep hoping she does every time I give this annual Halloween tour. Would sure add some drama.”

I observed the others on the tour, especially a man who stood back from the rest. I didn’t recognize him, nor did he look like a typical tourist. I judged him to be in his late thirties, perhaps forty. He wore a blue suit that had the rich look of British tailoring, and a vest and tie. He was clean shaven. If it wasn’t for his hair, which was pulled back into a ponytail and secured by a leather strap—perhaps an attempt to make himself appear younger—he would have looked very much at home on Wall Street. As Tim led us from the cemetery, the man left in the opposite direction, meandering through the graveyard and stopping to read inscriptions.

I followed the group back to the town dock, where the tour had started.

“I thank you for your interest and patience,” Tim said. “And a happy, safe Halloween to all.” Halloween was two days away.

I went directly into Mara’s Luncheonette, where my friend of many years, Dr. Seth Hazlitt, waited for me. I’d stayed away from Mara’s the past few weeks because I was trying to drop a little weight; her blueberry pancakes have been known to add pounds at a single sitting. But Seth convinced me that with winter not far off I’d better start packing in the calories, like a squirrel storing nuts, in order to get through what is often a severe, although for me always enjoyable winter season in Cabot Cove. Seth is generally unhappy when I’m dieting and declining his invitations to join him at Mara’s, where calories are celebrated, not counted. He loves to eat; his waistline is testimony to it.

I joined him in a booth.

“Enjoy the tour?” he asked.

“Yes. I hadn’t taken it in a while. Tim is wonderful, really knows how to keep a group’s interest. But it started to get cold. Why is it always colder in a cemetery than anywhere else? It isn’t, of course. The temperature is the same as a block away. But there’s always an extra chill.”