Something Most Deadly Read online

  SOMETHING

  MOST

  DEADLY

  ANN SELF

  AnnSelfMysteries.com

  To my husband—

  who helped make this book possible

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. All names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination—with the exception of Mean Chicken. Truth really is stranger than fiction, and the author did not invent Mean Chicken out of whole cloth. He actually existed in a barn long ago...

  ONE

  Boston’s inner harbor was stunningly beautiful, glazed in a patina of May sunshine under a periwinkle sky. Massive wharves along the waterfront now docked hotels, condominiums, and pleasure boats in place of old-time schooners and clipper ships.

  Fanueil Hall/Quincy Marketplace lay a block from the harbor, an open-air mall of bricks, cobblestones and historical buildings, tucked into a forest of concrete towers. It was the ultimate in festival shopping and had the flags, banners, and outdoor cafés to prove it. Fanueil Hall itself—birthplace of the American Revolution—sat on an apron of brick pavers in the upscale market, its dipped-in-gold belfry gleaming like a sunrise.

  The shadow of this old building fell over a young woman as she stood frozen in place, staring at shoppers near a sidewalk kiosk. Long hair wafted around her startled face in the breeze and gulls floated overhead and screeched like banshees.

  That’s him! That really is him...

  The belfry chimed at that moment, making her jump. A grasshopper weathervane swung into the wind and sparkled like a charm bracelet, glass eyes observing the panorama of Boston and the excitement far below, right under its nose.

  Jane Husted looked up at the old meeting hall, but its historical significance was lost on her at the moment—just a stopgap to rake in scattered wits. She took a deep breath, trying to get a grip on shaky nerves and trembling hands, and let her eyes plunge back to ground level, sifting rapidly through pedestrians and pouncing on the man she had followed through the crowd: A tall man buying roses in front of the glass-canopied shop. She was still out of breath from the chase.

  My God, Brian Canaday, it just can’t be possible...

  Her heart thundered in her ears. Flags, banners and flowers coalesced and turned surreal. Ocean air seared her lungs.

  People began to stare, so she shook off the startled demeanor and made an effort to blend in with shoppers, office-workers and tourists in a city that was a tapestry of quaintness. Bulfinch architecture, gilded eagles, domes and teapots, old steepled churches (one if by land, two if by sea), monuments to past battles for liberty and lumpy graveyards of freedom-fighters—all huddled at the toes of expressways and skyscrapers like historical mushrooms.

  In this antique oasis the unrequited-love monster had sprung on Jane when Brian walked toward her in a crowd of shoppers and took her breath away. Thank God she’d seen him first and had quickly changed direction, even though it was unlikely he would recognize her. At least she was fairly sure he wouldn’t. Not positive, but fairly confident she had changed far too much. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure he ever knew who she was, or even knew her name. But that was her fault, after all.

  She scrutinized Brian to jar her memory up to date: he was wearing a summer business suit, gracefully lean and fit as always, but a decade had made him slightly taller and broader through the shoulders. He hadn’t changed much—she’d recognize him anywhere. And, as it turned out, she had.

  Again, she tried to settle her mind and get her heart to stop careening around in her chest. She couldn’t even remember what she had planned to do next, could barely remember her name, she was so stunned. “So much for a day off to unwind and relax,” she whispered.

  Sleek black hair that hung nearly to her waist still feathered across her eyes, and she raked it away to clearly focus on the man. She couldn’t help herself. At well over six feet he was easy to locate in a handful of patrons selecting flowers. Bunches of colorful balloons anchored by strings bobbed over his head on the breeze, and paver bricks swarmed between them like a crazy quilt.

  Where have you been for ten years? she wondered. After high school, he’d flown off to college in California, then dropped off the face of the earth for a decade. As she continued to observe Brian, time ground to a halt and Jane’s mind rolled back over the past to the days when she and her chubby friend Madeline had roamed the cement halls of Brockton High seeking “sightings” of Brian Canaday. Their mutual hobby consumed almost as much time as actual studies and the girls had to work hard at logistics to arrange decent stalking time.

  She winced at the specter of the teenaged Madeline and Jane: Let’s see, she reflected, which of us looked the creepiest? Poor chubby Madeline with her bug-eyed glasses, or me, with skinny limbs poking out of clothes a Bag Lady would’ve donated to the Salvation Army. Fatty Maddy and Plain Jane, the nastier girls had called us. And those hideous, hacked-to-the-ears haircuts! Madeline’s was a foster home haircut, but her Aunt had no excuse, poor or not.

  Jane banished the unpleasant memories from her head and replaced them with images of Brian walking down the school hallways with the easy grace of an athlete. He was captain of the track team in his junior and senior year and she occasionally caught glimpses of him running with the guys. Besides being over-the-top handsome, with dark brown hair and chiseled features, Brian was also extraordinarily personable. And, as everyone knew, had an IQ off the charts. Jane remembered his navy blue eyes were unnerving—eagle eyes she had called them—capable of taking in every corner of a room in an instant, recording images and filing everything away in his mind. Classmates and teachers were always talking about his uncanny photographic memory. That information made Jane extremely wary. No way she was going to be committed to indelible memory in her scruffy, poverty-stricken state and penitentiary haircut.

  Brian’s omniscient, razor-sharp mind had forced Jane and Madeline into extreme cleverness as they stalked, spied, and attempted to be invisible. Jane herself was adept at choosing the exact moment to turn away, to prevent his quick eyes from snapping onto hers like a mousetrap. Even though she observed him at every opportunity she made sure his view of her was somewhat oblique—never straight on and never any eye contact. It would be a fuzzy memory, if any, filed in some dusty corner of his mind and probably forgotten.

  For Madeline, their spying had been a silly pastime, something for them to laugh about and compare notes on after school, giggling like deranged idiots. Jane had been devastatingly hooked, her heart completely stolen by a guy she’d never spoken a word to, but she did an outstanding job of disguising her feelings even to herself. The final day of graduation was desolate. Getting used to the idea that she could no longer see Brian—even from a distance—was more painful than she could admit to anyone and the heartache a surprise even to herself. Most of her classmates, including Madeline and her outstanding grades, had moved on to college; but Jane’s meager resources and less than sparkling high school performance left college out of the picture.

  Brian, she knew, was not plagued with money problems. He was the son and product of Canaday International, an obscenely wealthy and well-connected family business empire; a privately held investment company on the Forbes Platinum list of businesses with assets of over a billion dollars. Mr. Canaday senior sent all seven of his offspring to public schools, believing it the best education in life for his brood of future business people; a chance for them to experience something other than the rare air of the super-rich. It also made it possible—for a short time anyway—for less spectacular individuals to be in contact with a Canaday. This was the only reason that Jane, in her abject poverty and severely narrowed young-adult life, had ever laid eyes on such a man
.

  As always, rooting around in the past brought her right back to her parent’s tragic plane crash and she lamented it for the millionth time; their small Beechcraft blinded in fog, hitting power lines and crashing on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, removing a mother and father from her life. She was left at age twelve to the mercy of a short-tempered, aging relative.

  Great Aunt Edith had jumped on the bandwagon thinking there would be a little extra cash and maybe a few other benefits attached to a stray child. Both Edith and Jane were shocked to find voracious creditors nibbling away at every spare cent, not to mention the IRS with first dibs. Her father, it seemed, had been living way beyond his means and neglecting to send in his company’s withholding taxes.

  The vultures circled, and every stick of her old life was either sold outright, or auctioned off. Their comfortable upper middle-class lifestyle had been a house of cards. Jane was shocked at her new living arrangements in a run-down neighborhood of rabbit warren, three-deckers, complete with a dazzling view of railroad tracks. Bloomingdales to Wal-Mart. Moving in with old Aunt Edith though, did bump up the woman’s government check.

  The past popped like a bubble, and time resumed its march. Jane sat at an outdoor café table, a safe distance away and hidden by knots of pedestrians, but still with a view of the flower shop. She absently set a shopping bag holding new shoes down by her feet, attracting pigeons making eager side-eye glances, but Jane was oblivious to everything but a certain man paying for pink roses. “Here I go again,” she muttered. “Just taking right up where I left off so many years ago. I must find a new hobby.”

  Forgetting that thought, her eyes narrowed appraisingly, peeking between passing shoppers, making her view of Brian slightly jerky like an old-time movie. She could tell he had lost none of his charm by the effect he was having on the woman selling flowers to him.

  Smiling too much, gushing, dropping things....how pitiful.

  She imagined herself trying to remain intelligent in his presence and made a mental note not to giggle or gush or smile until her face cracked. Just in case she ever got that close. Her eyes lowered to a shopping bag between his feet, splashed with the logo of an exclusive men’s shop, and she speculated on what he might need fancy clothes for.

  “Where might we be going, Mr. unspeakably rich, brilliant and handsome?” she murmured, trying to guess if it was an incredibly lucky wife or girlfriend about to receive roses from him.

  Brian pocketed his change, took the cellophane packet of flowers and picked up the shopping bag. He departed the area slightly favoring his left leg as he walked. Jane was still mildly shocked at the limp, wondering at the cause. She had first noticed it when he was walking toward her on his way to the flower market, her attention drawn to the faint unevenness of stride, and it was a moment before recognition hit her like a falling piano. She had seen him approaching in enough time to cover her astonished expression, pretending great interest in a shop window as he strode past her. She waited a few minutes—staring blindly into that shop window—then carefully followed him at a safe distance; hidden in crowds of shoppers. She needed to find out if it really was him, or just an over-active imagination.

  Snapping out of the reverie, Jane grabbed her own shopping bag and jumped to her feet, scattering pigeons as she watched Brian make his way to the main market building. He was moving swiftly with a strong gait, despite the limp, and she was aware that she might lose him in crowds of milling pedestrians.

  Lose him lose him, echoed in her brain.

  The shadow of Fanueil Hall still touched her as she hurried to catch up. “I’m hooked again,” she grumbled, “imprisoned in front of the ‘Cradle of Liberty’ no less.”

  High overhead, the golden grasshopper shifted in a windy gust off the ocean.

  The Quincy Market building Brian approached was another historic landmark, a huge indoor pavilion of granite block, two stories high with a four-columned Doric temple for a grand entrance. The building was flanked by two more granite arcades: the North Market and the South Market. The main Market building was built by Mayor Josiah Quincy in 1836, and before landfill separated the building from the ocean, ran right to the town docks and fast-trading American Clipper ships. This central building was livened up by the “Bull Market” a collection of colorful pushcart vendors located under glass and steel wings sloping from either side. Jane wove her way past tubs of bright flowers, festive flags, and stage-set lamplights of twenty glass globes on a long black pole.

  The land of “Oz” and Jane suddenly felt like Dorothy chasing the Wizard. Up until this moment she had been firmly convinced she’d left her childish obsession with Brian Canaday far behind, along with the Goodwill clothes. Now the smothered feelings had exploded again and stunned her with their undiminished power to wrench and twist her heart. Ten years hadn’t made a dent.

  She tried to remind herself as she raced through the crowd of shoppers that she was not in the same league as this man and it was futile to think about capturing the attentions of anyone as outstanding as Brian Canaday. She had come a long way since her ragtag high school days, but she was realistic. She was not the top-flight trophy mate that Brian would be looking for if he hadn’t landed one already.

  Maybe not ‘Plain Jane’ anymore, but just ordinary Jane.

  An even larger crowd had gathered in front of wide granite steps leading through massive columns into the market building, as shoppers watched street performers spinning pie plates and juggling bowling pins.

  The Scarecrow? The Tin Man?

  Jane kept her eyes glued to Brian as he threaded his way through spectators and darted up the wide steps to enter the open doorway. He was fairly easy to keep track of, being so tall and wearing a light suit. She watched him shift the shopping bag and roses to one hand to answer his cell phone.

  Jane plowed into the long building, jostled and smothered by heavy foot traffic. The center colonnade with its white columns and open food-specialty stalls was stacked cheek-to-jowl with hungry patrons. Enticing aromas of food and exotic coffees mingled with salty ocean air that flowed directly from the harbor through the building’s open doors. The noise level was high and the reception bad, forcing Brian to shake his head and close his cell phone. She followed him closely now, shielded by a wall of bodies, her nerves twanging just as they had so many years ago walking behind him in a high school corridor.

  She abruptly slowed and turned to the opposite side when he stopped at a bakery to purchase long loaves of French bread. Her anxiety was increasing by the moment, being so dangerously near him; and it didn’t help that he was, as always, hyper-alert to his surroundings—eyes snapping around raking in information.

  Jane found herself staring at lobster salad rolls on display in a glass case. She was directly across the aisle from Brian, but at least her back was to him and she would appear to be completely involved in food. She was still convinced, smart or not, he would have trouble recognizing her. She was no longer the stick-thin teenager wearing ghastly, oversized hand-me-downs. Jane’s masses of dark hair also looked far different than the chopped fright-wig of the old school days—courtesy of Aunt Edith and her ever-ready shears. A long fall of satin blue-black hair now framed her face like a comforting shield that defied Superman’s gaze.

  She occasionally turned her head just slightly, observing Brian in peripheral vision, to be aware of the direction if he left the building. As she stared dumbly at chopped lobster she mentally berated herself for chasing after a man. What in heck do I think I’m doing? It seemed she was helpless at controlling her own mind and letting him disappear into the crowd. Jane decided she was just overwhelmed with curiosity and excused her actions that way.

  Sounded less crazy.

  On the move again, swimming through a sea of people, Brian and Jane entered the open spaciousness of the large rotunda under the center dome where people brought their tasty treats to sit and eat. Brian walked halfway through, then quickly turned to the left, down steps leading out t
hrough the glass atrium full of push cart vendors selling everything from jewelry to saltwater taffy, back onto the brick mall. Jane rushed to follow, it seemed the man was in a big hurry—if he walked any faster she’d have to break into a trot to keep up. A leather bag slung over her shoulder bounced a rhythm on her hip, her shopping bag banged against her leg, and she was beginning to huff and puff again from the effort of keeping up with him. She was tall and long-legged, but he had almost a half a foot on her.

  They crossed the busy pedestrian thoroughfare running between the Quincy Market and North Market, weaving around shoppers, benches and trees. Seagulls shrieked and tattled. The grasshopper shifted north.

  Jane’s ankles began to wobble—even in low-heeled sandals. The fast walk over ground that changed from brick pavers to granite squares and then to large cobblestones was a challenge for heels and a short skirt; she was accustomed to living day in and day out in breeches and riding boots. Jane decided on the spot that civilian clothes were a total menace.

  When Brian entered an alleyway chopped right through the middle of the North Market building—between fancy plate-glass storefronts—Jane knew he was taking a short cut to Clinton Street and the Dock Square Parking Garage. The same place her old car was parked. She followed him into the narrow alley with its brick walls, brick arches and brick paving underfoot, and held her breath. At that isolated moment in time, Jane and Brian were the only two people in Boston traversing the alleyway. She was several yards behind him, but her heels echoed alarmingly in the narrow passage, giving away their owner’s eager pace.

  Don’t look back, she chanted in her mind.

  Don’t

  look

  back...

  He did look back for a brief moment, and then continued on. Jane faltered only slightly, staring at the bricks in front of her while wings of dark hair closed on her face. She forced her rubbery knees to maintain the same walking speed, reasoning that since her car was also parked in the Dock Square garage, she had a perfect right to be in just as much of a hurry as he was.