A Whale of a Tail Read online

  A Whale of a Tail

  A Whales and Tails Mystery

  by

  Kathi Daley

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

  Copyright © 2019 by Katherine Daley

  Version 1.0

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  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

  UP NEXT FROM KATHI DALEY BOOKS

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  Books by Kathi Daley

  Come for the murder, stay for the romance.

  Zoe Donovan Cozy Mystery:

  Halloween Hijinks

  The Trouble With Turkeys

  Christmas Crazy

  Cupid’s Curse

  Big Bunny Bump-off

  Beach Blanket Barbie

  Maui Madness

  Derby Divas

  Haunted Hamlet

  Turkeys, Tuxes, and Tabbies

  Christmas Cozy

  Alaskan Alliance

  Matrimony Meltdown

  Soul Surrender

  Heavenly Honeymoon

  Hopscotch Homicide

  Ghostly Graveyard

  Santa Sleuth

  Shamrock Shenanigans

  Kitten Kaboodle

  Costume Catastrophe

  Candy Cane Caper

  Holiday Hangover

  Easter Escapade

  Camp Carter

  Trick or Treason

  Reindeer Roundup

  Hippity Hoppity Homicide

  Firework Fiasco

  Henderson House

  Holiday Hostage

  Lunacy Lake

  Celtic Christmas – December 2019

  Zimmerman Academy The New Normal

  Zimmerman Academy New Beginnings

  Ashton Falls Cozy Cookbook

  Tj Jensen Paradise Lake Mystery:

  Pumpkins in Paradise

  Snowmen in Paradise

  Bikinis in Paradise

  Christmas in Paradise

  Puppies in Paradise

  Halloween in Paradise

  Treasure in Paradise

  Fireworks in Paradise

  Beaches in Paradise

  Thanksgiving in Paradise – Fall 2019

  Whales and Tails Cozy Mystery:

  Romeow and Juliet

  The Mad Catter

  Grimm’s Furry Tail

  Much Ado About Felines

  Legend of Tabby Hollow

  Cat of Christmas Past

  A Tale of Two Tabbies

  The Great Catsby

  Count Catula

  The Cat of Christmas Present

  A Winter’s Tail

  The Taming of the Tabby

  Frankencat

  The Cat of Christmas Future

  Farewell to Felines

  A Whisker in Time

  The Catsgiving Feast

  A Whale of a Tail

  The Catnap Before Christmas – December 2019

  Writers’ Retreat Mystery:

  First Case

  Second Look

  Third Strike

  Fourth Victim

  Fifth Night

  Sixth Cabin

  Seventh Chapter

  Eighth Witness

  Ninth Grave

  Rescue Alaska Mystery:

  Finding Justice

  Finding Answers

  Finding Courage

  Finding Christmas

  Finding Shelter – Fall 2019

  A Tess and Tilly Mystery:

  The Christmas Letter

  The Valentine Mystery

  The Mother’s Day Mishap

  The Halloween House

  The Thanksgiving Trip

  The Saint Paddy’s Promise

  The Halloween Haunting – Fall 2019

  The Inn at Holiday Bay:

  Boxes in the Basement

  Letters in the Library

  Message in the Mantel

  Answers in the Attic

  Haunting in the Hallway – August 2019

  Pilgrim in the Parlor – October 2019

  Note in the Nutcracker – December 2019

  The Hathaway Sisters:

  Harper

  Harlow

  Haunting by the Sea:

  Homecoming by the Sea

  Secrets by the Sea

  Missing by the Sea

  Betrayal by the Sea

  Christmas by the Sea – Fall 2019

  Sand and Sea Hawaiian Mystery:

  Murder at Dolphin Bay

  Murder at Sunrise Beach

  Murder at the Witching Hour

  Murder at Christmas

  Murder at Turtle Cove

  Murder at Water’s Edge

  Murder at Midnight

  Murder at Pope Investigations – July 2019

  Seacliff High Mystery:

  The Secret

  The Curse

  The Relic

  The Conspiracy

  The Grudge

  The Shadow

  The Haunting

  Road to Christmas Romance:

  Road to Christmas Past

  Chapter 1

  Tuesday, October 22

  The best stories, I’ve learned with time, seem to exist within the crossroads of fact and fiction.

  “Welcome, everyone,” I greeted the group of men and women who had shown up for the Tuesday night Mystery Lovers Book Club. “I’m thrilled to see so many new faces in the crowd. My name is Caitlin Hart West.” It still felt odd using my new married surname. I glanced to my left. “This is my best friend and business partner, Tara O’Brian. We would both like to welcome our guest speaker, Winifred Westminster, to Coffee Cat Books. Winnifred pens novels in a variety of genres, including true crime, thriller, and traditional mystery.” I paused as the group applauded. “Winifred, who prefers to be referred to as Winnie, will be releasing a novel this Christmas. The novel is based on the real-life murder of Amy Anderson, a Madrona Island native who died almost fifteen years ago.” I paused to let that sink in. Tara and I had both gone to the same high school as Amy, although she’d been two years older, and we’d both been at the party following the homecoming game at which Amy died. To say that Amy Anderson’s murder hit close to home was putting it mildly, and while I had mixed feelings about Winnie exploiting the tragedy, I knew our patrons would be interested in hearing what she had to say, so when she asked to make a stop at Coffee Cat Books during her prepublication publicity tour, Tara and I had decided to welcome her. “I am going to turn the floor over to Winnie,” I continued, “but first, I’d like to remind everyone to hold their comments and questions until the end.”

  I stepped aside, and Winifred took the stage, which was really just a slightly raised platform my husband, Cody West, had built for the occasion. We’d transformed the lounge of Coffee Cat Books, the bookstore/coffee bar/cat lounge Tara and I owned, into an auditorium of sorts for our very special speaker, who had gained the interest of readers from as far away as Seattle.

  “Thank you for having me,” Winnie said after taking the floor. “The story of
Amy Anderson is one I have been working on for a very long time. Amy was a high school student here on the island when she was brutally murdered while attending a party following the homecoming game fifteen years ago. The death of this delightful girl hit the community hard, but I think it hit me harder than most because I’d first met Amy during a very difficult time in my own history and her sunny disposition had helped me to move on and take a second chance on life.”

  Winnie paused before she continued. She seemed to be a good storyteller who understood the art of pacing. Eventually, she continued in a slightly lower tone of voice. “My story opens where many good mysteries begin, on a dark and stormy night, this one in October almost thirty years ago. I first came to this island after my dear husband, Vinnie, passed away unexpectedly. Twenty-two was much too young to be a widow, and I found myself not only heartbroken but also completely lost and alone. I can still remember sitting in a dark house on my first night on the island. A storm had rolled in, and I watched in silence as the sky flashed with lightning and rain poured down over the angry sea.”

  Winnie took a sip of water and slowly looked around the room. It seemed she had much of the audience on the edge of their seats. “The house I’d rented for the summer was a large old thing. Not only were there two stories of living space, but there was a finished attic, which some past resident had used for storage, and a dank and damp, unfinished basement. The wind pounded the structure as it blew in from the sea, and the walls swayed under the force of it all. It entered my mind that the storm might very well bring the whole house down around me, but at the time, I didn’t care. Death, I’d already decided, would be a welcome reprieve from the life I now envisioned for myself.”

  I couldn’t imagine how difficult it must be to lose the person you most depended on. The person who was to play a starring role in your future. The person who gave that future meaning. I tried to imagine life without Cody, but all I could imagine was darkness and despair. I supposed I could understand how, in that moment, Winnie really hadn’t cared if she lived or died. I supposed that in a similar situation, I might not either. But Winnie had survived and thrived, and I guess I knew that if forced to face a life of darkness, I would find my way back to the light as well.

  Winnie continued. “I remember grieving for everything I had lost as the storm battered the island. I remember wondering if I had the strength to endure another day. I remember holding the bottle of sedatives I’d been prescribed and considering the options when I heard a noise that sounded a lot like someone crying. I was sure I was alone in the house, but it sounded so real. I listened for a moment but couldn’t tell what I was hearing, so I decided to take a look around. I began by exploring the main floor of living space, but when I didn’t find anything that would explain the crying, I headed down the stairs to the basement, where I found a little girl who couldn’t be more than four or five sitting in the middle of the unfinished room sobbing. I asked her who she was and how she had gotten there, and she shared that her name was Amy and that she had followed her cat into the basement through an air vent that led to the outside. I asked her why she was crying, and she said that her cat had disappeared and she couldn’t find the crawlspace leading to the small opening that would allow her to get out of the room. I’d just moved in and wasn’t aware of an exterior access point, so I picked up the child, took her upstairs, and then carried her to the house next door, where her mother was baking. The poor woman was a mess when she found out that Amy wasn’t upstairs taking a nap as she’d thought. She offered me a cup of tea. We got to talking and suddenly the dark and empty space that had been my life since Vinnie died, seemed a little brighter. From that moment, I knew I’d found a surrogate family of sorts. At least for the summer. Amy was such a cute little thing. She would come over to my house to visit with me, sometimes bringing flowers she’d picked from her mother’s garden. I wasn’t normally much of a baker, but that summer. I always made sure I had plenty of homemade cookies for Amy when she came by.”

  “So what happened?” one of the women in the audience asked. “After that summer?”

  “I returned to my old life. When I’d arrived on Madrona Island, I’d been a broken woman, but after the long summer here, and the companionship of this very special little girl, I felt ready to rebuild the life I’d left behind. I came back to the island the following summer and a few times after that, but then I published my first book and began to spend time developing my career. My visits became shorter and less frequent, and eventually, my life as a writer took over, and I stopped coming altogether. I usually remembered to send Amy a card for her birthday, and I made a point of sending a package around the holidays, but I will admit we lost touch as the years went by. I’m sure my relationship with the child I’d found on that rainy day would have faded into a distant memory if left to decay naturally over time, but then I learned of Amy’s brutal death, and what had been a warm and pleasant memory turned into something dark and filled with rage.”

  “Who killed her? And why?” another of the women asked.

  “I didn’t know for a very long time. No one did. But then I came to the island a year and a half ago to spend some time with my thoughts after my life became hectic once again. I happened to run into a woman I’d met when I’d visited the island all those years ago, and we got to talking. She mentioned something about Amy and the events leading up to her death, which got me to thinking. I latched onto an idea that had popped into my head and began to dig around a bit. Eventually, I stumbled on to something that led me to the answer I’d been seeking. Once I began to puzzle things through, I realized I’d happened across a clue, which then led to another clue, which finally led to the answer.

  “So who did it? Who killed Amy?” the woman asked once again.

  “If you want the answer to that question, you will need to read the book.”

  I had a feeling that Winnie was going to sell a lot of books. Not only had the presentation she’d provided for our customers been completely captivating but if she had solved the murder, I knew that everyone, including the resident deputy, my brother-in-law, Ryan Finnegan, was going to be interested in learning the answer no one had been able to find to this point.

  “So you figured out who killed Amy and haven’t told anyone?” The same woman appeared to be beyond shocked.

  Winnie bobbed her head. “As I’ve already said, the answer to the question of who murdered Amy Anderson will be revealed when the book is published.”

  “But you are giving the killer time to get away,” the woman insisted.

  I found I had to agree with that, but while Winnie was willing to answer questions after her presentation, she refused to give away the ending of her book no matter how many people asked. In a way, I could see why she would want to keep that to herself until the book was published, but it seemed wrong to me that she had figured out the answer to a fifteen-year-old old murder yet hadn’t shared that information with anyone, including Amy’s parents and law enforcement.

  After everyone left, Tara and I began cleaning up.

  “So, what did you make of the presentation?” she asked as the first of many raindrops began to hit the wall of windows that overlooked the dark sea.

  “Winnie certainly is a good storyteller, and she seemed to be able to draw every single person in the room into her tale, but I do wonder how she solved a murder no one has been able to figure out in the past fifteen years.”

  Tara folded one of the chairs and added it to the stack to return to the storage room. “Yeah. I did find myself wondering about the specifics of the whole thing. I mean, if she has identified the killer, shouldn’t she have at the very least told Finn what she knows? And even if she didn’t want Finn to ruin her big reveal, doesn’t it seem dangerous to taunt the killer with the fact that he or she has been identified and it is only a matter of time before their secret is known?”

  “It does seem as if she is traveling a dangerous road,” I agreed.

  “When Winnie ask
ed to speak to our club, I knew she had been working on a novel based on the story of Amy’s death, but I had no idea she’d actually solved the murder. I wonder if Finn knows.”

  “I guess we can ask him. Siobhan mentioned that they had a babysitter and she and Finn were going to O’Malley’s for dinner and drinks,” I referred to my older sister. “They might still be there.”

  O’Malley’s was the bar my two brothers, Aiden and Danny, had bought and refurbished.

  “I wouldn’t mind a drink,” Tara said.

  “Cody is in Florida with his mother until tomorrow, so I have no reason to hurry home. If Winnie really has figured out what happened to Amy and isn’t just making this whole thing up to sell more books, I would think Finn would insist that she share that information with him.”

  “I’m not sure he can force her to tell him anything she has dug up, but there is the whole withholding evidence thing they always talk about on the cop shows I enjoy on TV, so maybe. Let’s finish up here and then head to O’Malley’s. I wanted to talk to Danny anyway. He wants to throw a Halloween party at the bar and asked me if I would help him with the food and decorations.”

  “It’s nice of you to help.”

  Tara shrugged. “I don’t mind, and he is letting us use the bar for the party following the homecoming game on Saturday. It seems that a lot of alumni plan to be in town this year. It will be good to catch up with everyone.”

  “I was talking to Owen Nelson about doing a photo of my cabin for the wall over the fireplace in the new house, and he mentioned that Archie planned to be in town this year.” Owen Nelson had been introverted and socially awkward in high school and had never really fit in with the popular crowd. He hadn’t been supersmart like his friends, but he had been a talented photographer who’d worked on both the yearbook and the school newspaper. After he graduated, he went on to open his own photography studio and seemed to be doing very well. His best friends in high school had been Archie Baldwin, a computer geek who went on to work for the NSA, and Becky Bollinger, another computer geek, who went on to own a major software company. Both Archie and Becky had moved off the island after graduation.