The Pirates' Hill Murders

By John A. Miller, Jr.

Fifteen-year-old Mary Ann Markham, and her best friend, Jennifer Martin, decide to host an innocent Halloween party for some schoolmates at the Victorian mansion of Mary Ann’s wealthy grandfather. Her live-in writing coach, Art Parker, and his fiancée, Marsha Brown, M.D., have joined the other party attendees in a rather complicated treasure hunt when the game is interrupted by the discovery of a very dead body in a cave.
After Mary Ann and Jennifer are nearly killed in a school bus accident another body is found in the cave, and then two more, but what makes things even more bizarre is the presence of symbols indicative of black magic. While the local sheriff’s department seems stymied, Art, Marsha, and the two girls join a local hiking club, thinking maybe its members are somehow involved in the murders. However, instead of finding the murderer or murderers they discover another body in the cave.
Things go from bad to worse, with Mary Ann, Jennifer, Art, and Marsha all in line to be victims before the mystery is solved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John A. Miller, Jr.
• Release date: Jan 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465877055

John A. Miller, Jr.

John Miller, writing under his full name of John A. Miller, Jr., started writing novels back in late 1991 after working for many years in the mainframe computer and telecommunication fields. He had lived in southern Arizona so he knew the area well and set his first novel, Pima, in that area. Shortly after writing that novel he moved back to southern Arizona where he wrote five more novels in the Pima Series. He returned to his home area near Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1999 and continued to write, launching the Victorian Mansion Series with its nine novels.Since retiring from their day jobs John and his wife have enjoyed visiting Cape Cod and The Bayside Resort in West Yarmouth, Massachusetts at least once every year, so with their permission he partially set there a standalone novel, The Bayside Murders.Recently, after reading a number of cozy mysteries, John decided to launch a new series in that genre and named it Three-Zee for its main character, Zelanie Zephora Zook.

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Prologue

The beginning of October had come and gone, and once again our house was going to be turned into a haunted mansion for Halloween, or at least for a party planned for that very day. Last year Mary Ann had staged a successful Halloween party for about thirty of her schoolmates; successful, that is, if you discount the kidnapping and near murder that occurred at the end of the party followed almost immediately by Drummond suffering a major stroke. The good thing is that both Mary Ann and Jennifer, the kidnapees, are still alive and well and mostly a pain in my ass, and Drummond, the stroke victim, has recovered quite nicely and continues to pay my salary. Besides, we’ve been around so many real murders, both before and since, that mere attempted murder is hardly worth remembering.

As had happened last year, several of Mary Ann’s classmates turned up one Saturday morning around the middle of October and helped decorate our ballroom. I had gone with our chauffer and gardener, Hiram Blasko, to various commercial enterprises in the area, and we had stocked up on large quantities of the standard Halloween decorating fare because we have a big ballroom and we, or I guess I should say Mary Ann’s grandfather, can afford it.

It’s a bit difficult to tell the players without a program, so allow me to elucidate. I am Arthur Parker, former hack journalist and now writing coach for Mary Ann Markham, a quite pretty girl of fifteen with long, dark hair, a petite figure, and the personality of an angel (I must say that because I’m her employee, but to be truthful at times her personality is more like that of a Doberman).

Mary Ann’s grandfather, Charles Drummond, is one of the world’s wealthy. Okay, he doesn’t have billions, but he certainly has many millions. He’s elderly, spends much of his time in a wheelchair, and until recently had been pretty much of a recluse. That had been the case ever since his only daughter and son-in-law, Mary Ann’s parents, were killed in an automobile accident when the girl was four—Drummond was driving the car and has never forgiven himself.

Jennifer is Jennifer Martin, Mary Ann’s best friend, who lives with her divorced mother a few miles away from us, but spends a great deal of her time at our house helping Mary Ann drive me stark, raving mad. Jennifer is also fifteen, just a few days older than Mary Ann, but there the resemblance ends. I won’t say the girl is ugly, but beauty of face is not her long suit. As far as her figure being petite, let’s just say she has a figure like a stick has a figure. Her taste in clothing is execrable—on the day we put up the decorations she wore a pair of purple and white striped shorts and a pink and green plaid shirt with blue and gray sneakers. Old guys on golf courses dress better. One thing she has going for her is a well-above-average intelligence, which occasionally she even exhibits. Also, she has a rather pleasant personality when she isn’t assisting Mary Ann in some deviltry, usually aimed at yours truly.

Our household also includes Rachel Peabody, our cook, who has been with Drummond for many years and lives to make others fat. The food she prepares three times a day is outstanding. I’d tell Bon Appétit magazine about her, but they’d probably want to steal her away from us and that would be horrible, for us that is.

We also have a housemaid named Bridget O’Donnell, a comely lass of Irish decent, who has been with us for nearly a year and a half, and on top of the pile or perhaps on the bottom is our brand-new butler and nurse for Drummond, Jason Pincola.

It seems I’m forgetting someone. Oh yes. In a weaker moment in late July while we were vacationing in a beach house in the East Coast town of Shipwreck (I kid you not) I accepted a proposal of marriage from one Marsha Brown, MD, a lovely young woman with either very bad vision or a desperate need to take pity on those more unfortunate in the looks department than she. You are probably asking yourself—or maybe not—did he say he accepted a proposal from her? You got it. I admit I was thinking of popping the question at the time, but she beat me to it. Anyway, she abandoned her job working mostly in the emergency room of the Shipwreck Hospital and Medical Center, and at Drummond’s invitation moved in with us. Now she was studying for the medical license examination so she could practice in our state and making plans to establish a clinic in the small town of Bearford, twelve miles to the south. Drummond had already informed her he would provide the financial backing because for most medical care we’ve had to drive a number of miles farther to the paper-mill town of Bridgewater, our county seat.

Marsha and I occupy a large, pleasant bedroom with its own private bath on the second floor of Drummond’s immense Victorian-style mansion, which is set more or less in the middle of about two hundred acres of woods, lawns, hills, and one beautifully restored lake. The house is so large that there are currently eight unoccupied bedrooms, yet everybody I’ve mentioned so far with the exception of Jennifer lives there. The ballroom, seldom used, is at the back of the house and is a good forty feet square and at least two stories high.

And as a final introductory note, Marsha and I aren’t married yet, so I guess you could say we’re living in sin. Sin is fun.

Day 1

Saturday

I’ve already mentioned Jennifer’s bilious attire, so I won’t go into any more details. Fortunately, everybody present at the decorating session was already well acquainted with the girl’s terrible taste in clothing, so nobody paid much attention. Not only do I wonder where the girl finds such hideous color combinations, but also I wonder what manufacturer in his or her right mind would even produce such abominations.

The decorating went well. As they had done last year several of the boys and girls who were far more agile than I am did the trapeze-artist stuff, whizzing up and down the tall ladders with ease to hang the higher decorations and string the crepe paper streamers while I stood on the floor and shuddered in fear that one of them would make like a falling leaf or crashing airplane or some other similar disaster. Fortunately, nobody died although I believe I aged at least twenty years in those couple of hours. I must remember to check my head for gray hairs—okay, more gray hairs—among the red.

When the ballroom was fully decorated and the vast quantity of food Mrs. Peabody had prepared was eaten—I swear a herd of elephants couldn’t have eaten as much as those ten teens although I must admit Blasko, Pincola, and I did provide a small amount of assistance—the school chums departed to do whatever modern teens do on Saturday afternoons, and I retired to the library with Mary Ann and Jennifer after we had taken a final survey of the decorations.

So what now? I asked my two cohorts in crime. You’ve got the ballroom looking like a cornfield, and I especially like the scarecrows. All we need is for a few live members of that avian family to swoop through at the height of the party. Probably at least half the guest list would be able to forego laxatives for several days.

Yeah, but the aroma… Mary Ann held her nose.

Hey, it would give it that real barnyard feel. After all, the smell of people poop isn’t all that much different from that of cow poop.

I suppose, Mary Ann said. Anyway, were you able to get in touch with Farmer Joe? Last year we had been able to hire a local farmer named Joe Belchinfuss, who happened to possess two aging draft horses and a large hay wagon. The hayrides were a highlight of the party.

It turns out he’s discontinued the hayride business because one of his youthful steeds is no longer with us.

Youthful? Those horses were probably retired from pulling Roman war chariots. So what do we do now?

I suspect there’s somebody around with a tractor and wagon that might be available although it is getting rather close to the holiday to make arrangements.

No, those damned tractors make too much noise. Actually, Jen and I have an idea that I think might work and will occupy the kids for several hours.

Oh, what’s that?

A treasure hunt.

A treasure hunt. You plan to hide a chest full of gold and jewels somewhere on the property and have the party guests search for it?

That’s more or less the idea. Of course, the chest won’t contain real gold and jewels although I might throw in a ten-dollar bill just to make it interesting.

Ten lousy bucks when you could probably afford half a million or so. You’re getting cheap in your old age.

No, it’s just that Grandfather and Frome keep me on a tight budget. Ethan Frome—I swear that’s his real name—is our attorney, and he keeps a tight rein on the purse strings. Drummond, of course, may spend whatever he wants. After all, it’s his money. However, Mary Ann is not given free rein although her wants generally are surprisingly simple considering the scale of resources available to her.

I’d say you should at least make it a twenty. The price of Happy Meals is probably going up as we speak.

Okay, twenty it is, but I get to keep the fake gold and jewels after the winner finds the chest. We can always use them again next year.

Cheapskate. However, I guess the average person wouldn’t have a whole lot of use for a chest full of fake gold and jewels. Oh, hang on to the chest, too. That’ll probably cost you more than the fake jewelry.

I guess Jen and I had better get started on making up clues.

May I help?

No, I want you as ignorant as everybody else so you don’t go giving away where the chest is hidden.

I’m hurt. Are you insinuating I have a big mouth?

No, I guess you can keep a secret. You never ratted on Jen’s Uncle J.J. when he fed you all that information about the murders. However, I thought you and Marsha could make up one of the search teams. You’ll love it; believe me.

Yeah; right. I looked at Jennifer. Has she told you yet where she plans to hide the treasure?

Of course. In fact, the whole thing was my idea.

Okay, you hide the treasure in some spot, let’s say the gazebo on the island although that wouldn’t be practical because the only way to get there at this time of year is by boat unless you’re a polar bear, and we don’t want herds of kids fighting over our one rowboat to get to the island. Now you let loose about thirty teenagers plus Marsha and me to search for it. How do you plan to keep us all from following each other?

We thought about that, too, Jennifer said. Everybody will start out with an original clue, but there will be several different ones leading to several different routes; let’s say six. Then we start six searchers at a time about five minutes apart. By the time the second group starts, the first group will be out of sight or wandering around lost. We’ll have everybody out there in a half hour or so, and if we set up the intermediate clues so that the paths cross at various places we’ll have mass confusion with nobody really knowing where anybody else is on their route. The tough part will be figuring out good but confusing clues, and enough of them to make it pretty difficult to find the chest.

And nobody will be willing to help out anybody else because if they do they won’t get the twenty bucks, Mary Ann added.

Are your friends that mercenary?

They’d kill for twenty bucks. Remember, except for me most of the kids around here aren’t too well off. Most of their parents are farmers or work in the paper mills or stores, and lately the paper mills have laid off a bunch of people.

Yes, I know. It’s kind of bad right now. Bridgewater’s mostly worthless newspaper, The Logroller, had carried several articles recently about the cutbacks in various areas of local employment. Fortunately for the party attendees Mary Ann’s Halloween bashes required no expenditures on their part unless they wanted to rent or purchase a fancier costume than they could create on their own.

Jennifer, I said, have you heard from your DJ cousin?

Yes, I talked to him a few weeks ago, and he said he reserved the date last year already figuring we’d have another party. His business has been slow, too. Not many people can afford to have big parties these days.

Then what else do we need?

Food, Mary Ann said.

Oh yeah, that stuff. The caterer?

All set. We’re going to have pretty much what we had last year. He’ll set up outside and make the hot dogs, hamburgers, and sausage sandwiches. If the weather’s bad, Hiram and Jason said they can move all the cars out of the garage and the caterer can set up in there with the big doors open for ventilation and some fans to bring in fresh air. The kids will just have to hoof it from the garage to the ballroom although there’s probably enough room in the garage to set up folding chairs for them to eat. I’ve already arranged for enough chairs, too, both for the ballroom and the garage. The caterer can’t have his charcoal grills inside an enclosed room like the ballroom. Apparently everybody would die of carbon monoxide poisoning.

And as much as I believe the world is overpopulated, I wouldn’t want to be one of the ones sacrificed to reduce that overpopulation, I said. I assume Mrs. Peabody is going to handle the desserts again.

Yes, she said she’d be more than happy to do it. She’d probably do everything if we asked her, but I don’t think it would be fair.

I know. The woman lives to cook. So, as you two seem to have everything pretty much in hand, I’ll retire and let you come up with clues for your treasure hunt, the tougher the better.

Oh, one more thing, Mary Ann said. Do you think we can have the tiki torches again this year?

Sure. I think we’ve had enough rain this fall that the leaves aren’t too dry. However, we can check with the Bearford fire laddies just to make certain, and I can have Blasko wet down the leaves around each torch the morning of the party just like Davies did last year. At last year’s party we had torches set up around the grounds and along the trail to the lake. I had worried a great deal that we would start a forest fire, but Davies, our gardener at the time, had taken precautionary measures including using the garden sprayer to soak the leaves around each torch to make sure no such conflagration occurred. Blasko could easily do the same this year. Of course, if it rained the day of the party we could probably light the torches—they’ll put up with a lot as long as it’s not too windy—and there would be little likelihood they would start any sort of fire.

I just thought of something, I said. How will you handle the treasure hunt if it rains? That whole thing has to be outside. I’m sure your grandfather wouldn’t approve of herds of teenagers rummaging through his house looking for fake jewels.

No problem. I had Hiram order enough plastic ponchos for everybody. They’re really cheap. I think in bulk they were only about a buck apiece. I had noticed the girl was calling both Blasko and Pincola by their first names. Not a problem with me if they didn’t mind. After all, she was more their employer than I was. I usually addressed them by their first names, too, but then I was one of the peons.

I hope you remembered to order one for me, I said.

No, I thought I’d let you catch pneumonia so I could collect your insurance.

Geez, what I have for insurance probably wouldn’t pay to bury me nowadays. Anyway, Marsha would probably want a cut.

Yeah, that’s true. Oh well, she’s a nice person. I’ll share.

This from my surrogate daughter, a girl I had vowed to love as if she were my own. Just see whether I buy her another hamburger at the Bearford Diner. The damned kid can starve for all I care.

Day 15

Saturday

Halloween this year happened to land on a Saturday, an ideal day for a party for a bunch of kids who spend their weekdays in school. The day dawned bright and sunny with a forecast for continued dry, unseasonably warm weather for several more days. Last year the day had started out cloudy and ended as a damp, chilly, drizzly mess, so this year’s weather was a definite improvement.

Friday the local middle school had had only a half-day session—some sort of teachers’ meeting I believe—so Mary Ann and Jennifer spent the entire afternoon hiding clues around the property. Marsha and I were given orders to stay inside or go into town or do anything except try to follow the girls to find out where they were placing the clues. They had kept even the nature of the clues a secret. Anyway, to keep from being accused of cheating, the two of us crawled into Marsha’s car and headed for Bearford where we had a cup of coffee at the diner and then drove around town trying to ferret out possible sites for the new Bearford Medical Center. There were one or two larger houses with For Sale signs that might be convertible, but small commercial buildings of a suitable size didn’t appear to be on the market, not that Bearford has many of those anyway. Marsha told me many medical facilities had had their beginnings in renovated dwellings and then built more up-to-date structures when business warranted. We would have to contact a realtor to find out what was really for rent or for sale in the community. It was suppertime before we reappeared at the mansion, and by then the girls had completed their clue-hiding expedition, so once again it was safe for us to mingle with the young whippersnappers—God, I am getting old if I’m beginning to use terminology like that.

Halloween morning found the entire Drummond household, with the exception of Drummond himself, in a frenzy preparing for the party. Once again Bridget had opened up several normally unused bedrooms so the kids, segregated by sex, could change into their party costumes after the treasure hunt. As we had done last year, we planned to have several chaperones—parents who had volunteered to help—stationed in the changing rooms and hallways to minimize the risk of teenage hanky-panky. If the kids want to practice what they learn in sex education class, they can do it on their own time and at some other place.

The party was scheduled to begin at two p.m. when the first clues for the treasure hunt would be distributed. Names would be drawn from a hat, and four clues would be passed out every five minutes until everybody was out wandering around the property. Jennifer’s original idea of six separate routes had proved to be too many. Kids would be allowed to go as individuals or couples, but if a couple found the chest they’d have to split the twenty. Marsha and I were to be given our clue as part of the last group so we could get hopelessly confused along with the others.

The caterer was scheduled to arrive sometime during the afternoon to set up so that food would be available beginning at five. After eating, everybody would don his or her costume to be ready for the costume judging. Drummond had been too ill to participate in any of the activities last year—in fact, during the night after that party ended he had required hospitalization—but this year we had actually convinced him to be one of the judges. The other judges were to be Frome—I still wonder whether he charged his usual hourly fee to Drummond for the time he spent doing it—and Adele Martin, Jennifer’s mother. The latter wouldn’t be a conflict of interest because Mary Ann and Jennifer had decided to make themselves ineligible to win any awards even though they would be in costume. We had hired J.J. McClure, Jennifer’s uncle and a deputy sheriff in Mercer County, to be our hired security guard for the party as he had been last year.

Finally, as soon as the costume awards had been distributed the DJ would begin playing some of the assorted noise called music by the younger generation, and the festivities would continue until eleven p.m., after which all non-residents would be required to get the hell off the premises so I could get my beauty rest.

Yes, those were the plans.

** ** **

And here’s your clue, dear Daddy and soon-to-be Mommy of mine. Mary Ann had a smug, self-satisfied look on her face as she handed Marsha a small piece of paper.

You’re sure this is one of the legitimate clues, I said.

Of course. Would I cheat you?

In a heartbeat.

True, but in this case the clue is one of the real four, and if you follow directions precisely you’ll eventually find the treasure, assuming of course that nobody else has found it first.

I looked around the lawn where I noticed several confused-looking individuals and couples wandering around. Judging from their expressions I didn’t think finding the treasure chest was going to be the proverbial piece of cake.

Marsha looked at the paper. I could see she was completely baffled, but then she didn’t know the grounds like I did. After all, she had only been living here for a bit over a month.

Let’s see what it says, I said, taking the clue from her hand. It read, Where little fishies go for medical care.

I know these grounds—know them now pretty much like the back of my hand—but for a few moments I was totally lost. I knew the clue had to have something to do with the lake or maybe, if Mary Ann was really being perverse, the stream that fed it or the marsh that drained it, but the medical care bit really threw me. Marsha was the one who came to my rescue.

I think we’re dealing with a pun, here. I’ve been to the lake, so what there could possibly have to do with medical care. Let’s see, what words could possibly work. Hospital. No, nothing comes to mind. Clinic. We’ve been talking about that a lot lately, but the other kids wouldn’t know that, and she said this is one of the regular clues. Doctor. No, nothing there.

That’s it, I said. Doctor. What’s the short form for doctor?

M.D. No. Oh, Doc. Of course, the dock. As we were talking we had been following the trail to the lake, so we came in sight of the dock in a few minutes. There we found a couple from the previous set of clue-getters just beginning to walk southward on the lakeside trail. We walked out onto the dock and began examining it. At the very end, tacked on the post to which the rowboat was tied, was a picture of a dragonfly.

Oh great, I said. Another horse’s ass clue.

Marsha giggled. I love her giggle. Funny; it doesn’t look like a horse’s ass to me. I’d say it’s more like a dragonfly.

Okay, laugh if you must. They laughed at Eli Whitney, too.

What does the inventor of the cotton gin have to do with a dragonfly?

Nothing whatever. Anyway, does a dragonfly bring anything to mind?

Yes.

What?

Think about my name for a minute.

Oh, I wondered whether the other kids used to tease you about that.

All the time. Marshy Marsha, Queen of the Marshes. Kids can be so cruel.

I know. I was one once, too. Anyway, the only marsh on the property—and we often do see dragonflies there in the summer—is on the other side of the lake. Remember the long boardwalk and bridge? One of the first things I had done when Marsha had arrived was to take her on a walking tour of the grounds.

Yes, of course. That would be a great place for the next clue. Which way do we go?

Well, the previous couple went south, but that route’s just a bit longer than if we go around the north end of the lake. At least it seems they had the same idea. As I spoke I was leading Marsha toward the zigzag path leading over the low hill that bordered the trail from the house. On the other side of the hill we crossed the flat slab of rock where we once had discovered a young girl’s naked, partially decomposed body, but that’s another story.

We hurried along and soon crossed the creek that fed the lake. A hundred yards or so farther brought us to the boardwalk that threaded its way through the marsh. When we built the path around the lake we had come up against environmental regulations that forbade the desecration of wetlands. Not wanting to wind up in the slammer for pissing off Mother Nature, we had satisfied her by building an elevated boardwalk without railings across the marshy land that also served as the outflow for the lake. We hurried along to the first rest area, a bench placed at a wide spot on the boardwalk. A careful search showed nothing. A couple of hundred feet farther along was the second bench. Moving as fast as my tired old bones could manage, we reached the bench and began to examine it. Tacked to the bottom was a picture of a boy in a skintight, competition swimsuit.

Hm, I notice Mary Ann and Jennifer didn’t use a picture of a little boy.

Marsha, lying on her back beside me on the boardwalk, said, No, there’s nothing little about him, especially the bulge in the crotch of his Speedo.

Women! You’re all perverts.

And what kind of picture would you have used?

Well, she wouldn’t have had a bulge in the crotch of her Speedo.

No, more like two bigger bulges a bit higher up, say at chest height.

Okay, you win. Anyway, we’d better get up and get going. I’d say our next clue is probably at the pool.

We scrambled to our feet and hurried back along the boardwalk in the direction from which we had come. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw the couple that had been in front of us at the dock just coming into view. Good. We had gained a bit of ground mostly by taking the shorter route around the lake to