A Bat in the Belfry : A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery

When it comes to home repair, Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree is a fervent wielder of power drills and paint brushes. And when catching criminals, she’s been known to really bring down the hammer. But when a shocking murder rocks the small town of Eastport, Maine, Jake may be the next victim for whom the bell tolls. It is nearly midnight when the enormous bell in the belfry of All Faith Chapel—silent for decades—booms forth, startling awake the entire town of Eastport. Upon inspection of the steeple, the police uncover the body of local teenager Karen Hansen, who had climbed the belfry’s dark, rickety stairs for a midnight rendezvous. But instead of the promise of an exciting new life, Karen meets her death. Meanwhile, as an epic nor’easter bears down on the idyllic island town, Jake Tiptree hurries to shore up her ramshackle old house against the big blow. An amateur detective, she has sworn off chasing criminals. But when the news of Karen’s murder spreads and much of the evidence points to Jake’s likable houseguest, she and her sleuthing partner, Ellie White, get to work. They discover an unexpected ally in newcomer Lizzie Snow, a woman from “away” who seemed to have blown into town with the nor’easter, and who also seems to know a lot about the mind of a killer. Can Jake and Ellie trust her? As a killer roams free and the townsfolk struggle against the pounding, screaming storm, the resulting tempest of gossip and suspicion rivals anything the Atlantic could brew up—and threatens to keep Jake and Ellie from putting the final nail in this cold-blooded case. Complete with Home Repair Is Homicide repair tips! BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Sarah Graves's Winter at the Door. Praise for A Bat in the Belfry “Stylishly suspenseful.” — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “Nobody else can take a home repair project and turn it into a first-class mystery the way Graves can. It’s a top-of-the-line story.” — RT Book Reviews “Graves does the Down East region justice, nailing not only the scents, sounds, sights, and people, but the culture. . . . It doesn’t hurt that she’s a damn good storyteller, to boot. [Her] prose is sharp, smart, and witty.” — Crimespree Magazine Praise for Sarah Graves and the Home Repair Is Homicide series “Graves’s trademarks are edgy, traditional mysteries peppered liberally with humor, and sprinkled with layered, well-written characters.” —Julia Spencer-Fleming, New York Times bestselling author of One Was a Soldier “Just hearing her list the ways you can kill yourself fixing up an old house . . . is a hoot.” — The New York Times Book Review “What distinguishes the novel are its likable, no-nonsense protagonist-narrator, her references to home repair that the author cleverly fits tongue-and-groove into the story and, especially, the detailed descriptions of the town.” — Los Angeles Times “Graves makes rehabbing shutters and other chores suspenseful.” — The Boston Globe ExcerptCHAPTER 1"Carolyn, if you're going to lie to me, you could at leastmake it a good one," Chip Hahn said sorrowfully into the phone.Hesat by the window in the upstairs front guest room of the big oldhouse on Key Street, looking out at a late-night view of Eastport,Maine. Through the wavery antique panes in the elderly wooden windows,the full moon seemed to wobble liquidly.Or maybe that was because hewas seeing it through tears. Angrily he swiped them away, then closedhis hand reflexively on the rabbit's foot hanging from a thinchain on his belt loop.Not, he realized miserably, that the talismanhe'd carried around for years was going to give him any good lucktonight. How could it? After all, it wasn't as if he hadn'tknown what he was getting into, becoming involved with Carolyn.In theblue-white moonlight downhill beyond the houses of town, PassamaquoddyBay was a pewter-colored disk. Above, a plane's contrail streakedthinly northeast through the indigo night, the aircraft itself alreadyracing out over the Atlantic."Carolyn?" Two miles distant acrossthe bay on the Canadian island of Campobello, a car's headlightsappeared, then vanished."Carolyn, are you still there?"Shesaid something in reply, but he couldn't make out what. He'dforgotten how poorly his cell phone worked here in remote downeast Maine;his city phone plan was wrong for the area. But he hadn't wantedto use the landline. Someone in the house might pick up an extension andoverhear this conversation.Its tone, especially: the ragged pain in hisown voice, which he tried to hide, and the carelessness in hers, which shedidn't. The CD player on his laptop played the Roche sisters'first album, nearly as old as he was but in its wry lyrics and harmoniesthe perfect background music for him now."I had dinner and then a fewdrinks with Siobhan," Carolyn went on unconvincingly. "It gotlate, she let me sleep on her couch. End of story, okay?"Throughthe window, he watched clouds begin streaming in gauzy tatters overthe moon. Something ugly was coming, according to the weather forecasthe'd heard earlier. Something . . ."Chip?" The leaflessbranches of the ancient maples lining Key Street were elongated fingers,reaching out for something they could never have. Like me, he thoughtmiserably, still clutching the rabbit's foot."Yeah,"he said. "End of story." But of course it wasn't.Silencefrom Carolyn, who after two days of not answering her cell or respondingto his messages had at last taken his call. Now he imagined her sittingcross-legged in the oversized leather easy chair he'd bought fortheir apartment in Manhattan, a year ago when they'd first moved intogether.Her slim frame clad in a black leotard and a smock dress--thepurple corduroy one, maybe, now that it was November and gettingchilly--and her glossy dark hair falling in waves over her shoulders,she would be tapping her long nails impatiently on the chair'ssoft leather arm. Her high-heeled boots would be on the thick Persianrug nearby, probably, flung where she'd shed them."Haveyou eaten lately? I mean today?" he asked. She wasn't lazy,and she could be very well organized. But Carolyn had never learnedto take care of herself.She had him for that. "No," shesaid guiltily. "But I will. Chicken and corn, maybe. And a bakedpotato."Yeah, right. The idea of her cooking a meal for herself inhis absence, let alone a decent one, was beyond far-fetched. More likelyshe was subsisting on takeout until he got back.If she was even eatingthat. But he didn't press it. "Sounds good," he told herinstead, not wanting to start a quarrel. "Drink some fruit juice withit," he advised, knowing she wouldn't do that, either. In hersimple obduracy Carolyn was like a stone, impenetrable unless you wantedto crush it, or break it.And he'd never wanted to. After nearlythree years' working together, he as the researcher and she thewriter of a string of bestselling true-crime books, they'd becomea couple, and Chip had briefly thought his life was complete. Evenbefore they began sharing the same address he'd imagined themcurled together in the leather chair, large enough to hold them bothcomfortably.Just how comfortably, he had also pictured in considerabledetail. But once it was delivered, Carolyn had claimed the chair as herown, her pointy knees and sharply jutting elbows fencing it off fromhim silently but definitively."Chip? You believe me, right? Aboutlast night?"His hand felt cramped. Tucking the phone awkwardlyin the crook of his neck, he heard the signature opening fanfare of TheTonight Show with Jay Leno coming on in the background at her end.Good oldCarolyn, the original multitasker. "Sure," Chip said, absentlyworrying the cuticle on his right thumb. "Like you said, you wereat Siobhan's."This too was improbable, however. Siobhan wasCarolyn's editor, and in that role had proven to be an honorable,reliable friend. But she was about as likely to have a writer sleepingon the sofa in her elegant apartment overlooking Gramercy Park as shewas to have bedbugs infesting it."I believe you," he said,since what good would it do to say otherwise? Carolyn was in Manhattan,over five hundred miles away, and he was here visiting his old friend SamTiptree in a place so different from the city, it felt like some otherplanet."Good." He heard relief in Carolyn's voice. It wasthis faint whiff of her caring that he clung to, knowing she dependedon him not to give up on her or forsake her. He'd never done thateither, even when he'd known her only as his employer, the writerof crime literature.Which it was: What she wrote was never just anotherhack job on yet another wife-murder, child disappearance, or greed-fueledparent-slaughter, turgid tomes mixing sex, cash, and subnormal IQs topredictably gory effect. Instead, word by word and sentence by carefullycrafted sentence, she presented the human elements behind the headlines,delicately and in their subtlest colors.It was what he'd lovedfirst about her, this freakish genius she had for communicating theemotions and motives of others while--the tragic irony of this didnot escape him--possessing almost no insight into her own. But therewas more.Much more. Even now, if he'd been there he'd havegathered her in his arms, brushing aside the jutting knees and thesharp little elbows, and that would've been the end of it. For along time her mercurial side had seemed a small price to pay for therest of it.All the rest of it. "You should get some sleep,"he told her gently. "You're okay? You're going to be ableto?"Sleep, he meant. She wasn't any better at that than she wasat eating, when he was away.He heard her put her drink down on the lowmarble table that had been her only contribution to the room's decor,the little click of the glass striking stone. Even that had been grudging;if he'd left it to her they'd still be using stacked milkcrates."I'm okay." Then: "Chip?""Yeah,"he exhaled. All the rest of it . . . which he'd adored, andstill did. The trouble was, something was changing. And in the weeksince he'd been away from her it had gotten worse, this feelingof not being able to bear the few things he didn't adore.A lotworse. "Chip, could you do me a favor? Call up Maury Cahill for me,ask if I could go in and see him for a minute?"Chip felt his mentaleyebrows rising; Cahill was a criminal lawyer specializing in the kindsof scandalously illegal antics rich people's kids got up to, keepingthem out of Rikers and off the front pages of newspapers.Maury's sonhad been Chip's classmate at prep school; they still got togetherfor a beer once in a while. But why might Carolyn need his old schoolpal's dad?"It's for a friend," she assured himhastily but unconvincingly. Still, if she or her "friend"needed a lawyer, she had picked a good one.And a request from Chipwould indeed produce the desired appointment. So he agreed to phoneMaury Cahill in the morning, then made a mental note to check in withhim again later in the day. The old attorney wouldn't violate anyoaths, but if Carolyn was in real trouble he'd probably give Chip ageneral heads‐up."Thanks," said Carolyn. "I'msorry I didn't call you.""Right." He knew she wassorry. That wasn't the point. "Get some rest. Just . . . go onto bed. You'll be all right tomorrow."Would he be, though? Thetrouble was, he was beginning not to be sure how much longer he couldtake the situation before something bad happened. He drew his gaze fromthe moonlit rooftops, skeletal tree shapes, and the few warmly litwindows still visible in the village of Eastport at this late hour,and from the metallically gleaming bay. Here in this room the softlyhissing radiator and the wallpaper's faded florals lent the sensethat everything might still be fine, that he could get through thissomehow.His shirts and slacks hung on hangers in the tiny closet, but hissocks and underwear were still in his suitcase, open on one of the plainpine twin beds. The room-size rug was a threadbare Persian long missingits fringes, indigo and red.The bedspreads, white chenille, smelled ofsoap and bleach. "Listen," he told Carolyn. "Tomorrowyou'll work, and you'll feel fine. And when I come home,we'll look at my new research together, all right?"Acrossthe room on a round wooden table were heaped his open laptop, stacks ofpapers, and spiral notebooks, preliminary materials having to do with aseries of killings in Milwaukee two years earlier. If all went well, thecrimes were to be the subject of his and Carolyn's next book.Atopthe heap lay a photograph of a human torso, or what was left of it aftersomeone got done with the acts he'd committed upon it. All told--ifindeed all had been told; the perpetrator had died in jail of a heartattack before he finished confessing--there were a dozen photos likethis. All were taken by the killer while committing the crimes, aboutone per month during the time he had been active.Which was another thingnobody was sure of: How long? And its corollary, How many? The accusedman had said a year, but his methods were sophisticated. His staging oftableaux, especially, was what the FBI analyst out of Madison had termed"fully developed.""Yes, Chip, I'll sleep,"Carolyn agreed, sounding subdued. "And work sounds good."Thevictims in the dozen photographs had all been young women. These werethe only known photographs in the series, but a new cache of themmight yet turn up, Chip believed, because the police weren'tthe only ones who had seen the pictures. Long before his capture,the killer had also posted them on the Web, in private chat roomsChip had found while following obscure links the way a hound sniffsscent.He'd phoned and emailed the Wisconsin authorities in case theydidn't already know about the websites, but hadn't heard backyet. He'd never have found the sites himself if his own researchtalents weren't as prodigious as Carolyn's writing chops.Butthrough long practice and stubborn persistence, Chip could click hisway unerringly to a needle in an electronic haystack; thus he'ddiscovered the forums where the gruesome pictures had resided, andsince then memories of what else he'd seen and read there clungdankly to the inside of his head. Chat rooms for killers, he thought,what a concept."Good night, Chip," Carolyn said. "I loveyou.""I love you, too," he answered, because he did.Hetruly did. "Good night," he added, and hung up.Only then didhe realized that while he and Carolyn were talking, he'd torn offthe strip of cuticle he'd been worrying without even feeling it,and now the rabbit's foot he always carried was smeared with his ownbright red blood.Just across the hall in his own room, Chip's oldfriend Sam Tiptree was also having problems with women.Two women, to beprecise.WHERE R U? W8TNG W8TNG W8TNGThe first one, pretty and fun-lovingCarol Stedman, had been texting him all evening. She wouldn't takeno for an answer, which under other circumstances he tended to findattractive.He supposed he should have known that she was going to bea difficult girlfriend; from the start, she had not by any means beena safe bet. He'd met Carol while she and a guy she'd beentraveling with were wreaking small-town havoc--no violence, and themoney and stolen car were recovered, but still--in Eastport, and thishad been an omen of things to come, relationship-wise.I HV SMTHNG 4 U. . .I'll bet, Sam thought. He'd never been convinced by thenew leaf Carol had sworn she'd turned over.Still, she was livelyand irreverent and game for all kinds of delightful adventures. Tall andathletic, she'd even sampled new-to-her activities like kayakingand camping, things that involved getting dirty, wearing clunky boots,or carrying your toilet paper along with you into the woods (or allthree), and she had ended up really liking the outdoorsy stuff.Orat least she did as long as it was liberally diluted by weekends indowntown Portland, on tours of bars, clubs, films, concerts by bandshe'd never heard of, and plenty of time in bed."Sam? Are youstill there?" The voice, not Carol's, came from the phone heheld to his ear, the landline handset because his cell was being occupiedby Carol's messages."Are you texting someone while I'mtalking to you?"This voice belonged to Maggie, the other young womanin Sam's life. A longtime friend, she had gradually turned into muchmore; for a while there'd been a clear, unspoken sense between themthat they would marry, sooner or later.That it was inevitable, which waswhat had spooked him, he guessed. "Uh, no," he managed whilehis thumbs moved deftly. "Why would you think that?"TOLD U NOTCOMING SORRY. He pressed Send."The way you breathe when you'retexting. And I can hear it, the way your sleeves rustle a certain way orsomething. So stop it. What's she trying to do, anyway, get you togo out?"Carol was at a party on the mainland, on the Golding Roadnear Boyden Lake in Perry. She'd been cajoling him to join her sincenine-thirty. But he had early plans tomorrow, with Chip.(Continues...) When it comes to home repair, Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree is a fervent wielder of power drills and paint brushes. And when catching criminals, she's been known to really bring down the hammer. But when a shocking murder rocks the small town of Eastport, Maine, Jake may be the next victim for whom the bell tolls. It is nearly midnight when the enormous bell in the belfry of All Faith Chapel'silent for decades'booms forth, startling awake the entire town of Eastport. Upon inspection of the steeple, the police uncover the body of local teenager Karen Hansen, who had climbed the belfry's dark, rickety stairs for a midnight rendezvous. But instead of the promise of an exciting new life, Karen meets her death. Meanwhile, as an epic nor'easter bears down on the idyllic island town, Jake Tiptree hurries to shore up her ramshackle old house against the big blow. An amateur detective, she has sworn off chasing criminals. But when the news of Karen's murder spreads and much of the evidence points to Jake's likable houseguest, she and her sleuthing partner, Ellie White, get to work. They discover an unexpected ally in newcomer Lizzie Snow, a woman from "away" who seemed to have blown into town with the nor'easter, and who also seems to know a lot about the mind of a killer. Can Jake and Ellie trust her' As a killer roams free and the townsfolk struggle against the pounding, screaming storm, the resulting tempest of gossip and suspicion rivals anything the Atlantic could brew up'and threatens to keep Jake and Ellie from putting the final nail in this cold-blooded case. Complete with Home Repair Is Homicide repair tips! Praise for A Bat in the Belfry "Stylishly suspenseful."'Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "Nobody else can take a home repair project and turn it into a first-class mystery the way Graves can. It's a top-of-the-line story."'RT Book Reviews "Graves does the Down East region justice, nailing not only the scents, sounds, sights, and people, but the culture. ... It doesn't hurt that she's a damn good storyteller, to boot. [Her] prose is sharp, smart, and witty."'Crimespree Magazine Praise for Sarah Graves and the Home Repair Is Homicide series "Graves's trademarks are edgy, traditional mysteries peppered liberally with humor, and sprinkled with layered, well-written characters."'Julia Spencer-Fleming, New York Times bestselling author of One Was a Soldier "Just hearing her list the ways you can kill yourself fixing up an old house ... is a hoot."'The New York Times Book Review "What distinguishes the novel are its likable, no-nonsense protagonist-narrator, her references to home repair that the author cleverly fits tongue-and-groove into the story and, especially, the detailed descriptions of the town."'Los Angeles Times "Graves makes rehabbing shutters and other chores suspenseful."'The Boston Globe From the Hardcover edition When a local teen beauty-pageant winner from a troubled family is found murdered in the beloved 200-year-old Seaman's Church steeple, Jacobia Tiptree, while preparing for an epic nor-nor'easter, must wade through the rising waters of gossip and suspicion to find the truth.