A Fatal Feast by Jessica Fletcher

in that northernmost tip of Scotland had remained in his family for generations. I’d visited there with a contingent of friends from Cabot Cove and was swept away by its spectacular visual splendor and the warmth of its people. Unfortunately, as with our initial meeting in London, murder would bring us together again, this time in George’s ancestral home. I sighed as I thought back to that situation. Too often, murder seems to follow me when I travel, or even when I stay put in Cabot Cove. Given a choice, I’d much prefer to write about murder than experience it in my personal life, but I haven’t always had the benefit of that choice.
    “What are you thinking?” I asked as spray from a particularly large wave bounced off the rocks below, showering us with tiny droplets of frigid water and causing us to narrow our eyes against the briny mist.
    George put his arm around my shoulders and briefly hugged me to him. “I was thinking about Thanksgiving, your special holiday. How wonderful to have a day set aside each year to give thanks for our blessings.”
    “It is a nice tradition, isn’t it?”
    “When you view the world with open eyes, you realize how much we have to be grateful for,” he said.
    I didn’t respond, although I certainly agreed with him. My mind had wandered elsewhere—to my unfinished novel, Hubert Billups, the Thanksgiving pageant, the afternoon’s event, the upcoming holiday dinner at my house, the dishes I had yet to cook, and, of course, my relationship with the handsome man standing next to me.
    “Where are you, Jessica?” George asked.
    “What? Oh, I’m sorry. I got lost in my thoughts.”
    “It’s good to do that from time to time,” he said. “Nice to escape the here and now.”
    I nodded, then shivered as another thought crossed my mind. During my brief moment of reverie I had forgotten what might be in the next day’s postal delivery. Usually, I look forward to opening my mailbox, even though its contents increasingly seem to consist of what’s commonly called “junk mail,” the noncomputer equivalent of “spam.” But I wasn’t looking forward to opening tomorrow’s envelopes, not with the likelihood of another message formed from letters clipped from magazines.
    “Glotcoy,” I said into the wind.
    George laughed. “Yes, the mysterious Glotcoy.”
    “No such word in the dictionary,” I said.
    “Perhaps we’ll never know what it means, unless of course the sender wishes to expose himself.”
    “Or herself,” I said.
    “Right you are. It could be a woman. In fact, Jessica, it may even be more likely that a woman is behind those letters.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “It’s such—it’s such a passive-aggressive action. Nevertheless, if it is a woman, it doesn’t render this campaign any less threatening.”
    “I can’t imagine that someone would go to so much trouble and not eventually reveal the motivation behind it.”
    “The perpetrator may already have achieved her objective—to unsettle you. In that case, there is no need to reveal herself. She has accomplished her mission. Staying anonymous perpetuates that goal.”
    “I will be very upset if I can’t get to the bottom of this,” I said.
    George glanced at his watch. “Time to head back, Jessica, if you’re going to be on time to serve up turkey with all the trimmings to Cabot Cove’s needy.”
    I had only a few minutes in the house to gather up aprons and utensils before we were to head downtown, where the free turkey dinner was being served at the senior center, recently renovated through the generosity of Wilimena Copeland.
    “Need this?” George asked as he picked up the box containing the carving knife Seth had loaned to me. He slowly drew it from its custom case.
    “I’m reluctant to take it,” I said. “It was a special gift to Seth.”
    “I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” said George, holding up the ten-inch knife to better catch the light from a ceiling