A Fright to the Death (19 page)

I am in a room that is so cold I am shivering. It is plain and white and there is nothing there but a wooden door. I walk to the door and feel the rough texture under my fingertips. There is a cool metal handle and I reach out to pull the door open. A strange scene greets me. Tables adorned with white tablecloths and white plates languish in the grass. The cloths billow gently in the wind and the trees rustle softly. It looks like a summer garden party.

As I take a step forward, Duchess appears and begins to walk next to me. I see Vi sitting at a table. She is wearing a long white gown and her hair is loose around her shoulders. I call to her, but no sound comes out. When I try to approach her, the cat stops me. She blocks my progress and then Vi is gone.

René is there in his white chef’s coat and tall white hat. He is looking out over the garden toward the woods. Again, the cat stops me from approaching. But, René comes toward
me. He smiles and holds out a silver tray with a ball of white yarn sitting on it. I reach out to take it, but he passes me and approaches Clarissa, who sits in a tall white wicker chair with a wide curved back. She laughs when she takes the yarn and it turns a deep blood red in her hands.

Linda gasps from behind me and I see that she, Jessica, Tina, Isabel, and Mavis are all here at this strange party. They wear white and carry red knitting needles. The cat jumps onto Clarissa’s lap and watches me with its gold eyes.

A sudden wind blows the tables over and the napkins and tablecloths flap in the wind and fly up over the castle. I watch them drift away and when one floats up to the turret window, I see a white filmy face in the window. It is trying to speak, but I can’t hear it. The wind grows stronger and all I can hear is the howling of the wind as the white table linens form a tornado and pick up all the furniture in its swirling chaos. The tornado heads toward me and just as I think I will be swept up in it, it collapses in front of Duchess, who has placed herself between me and the incoming storm.

My eyes flew open and I was glad for the blue numbers on the electric clock by my bed. The howling wind noise still filled my ears and I realized the blizzard that the weather people had predicted had arrived. I hoped the generator wouldn’t fail again and pulled the covers up over my ears to try to go back to sleep.

It was no use. The dream continued to haunt me and every time I closed my eyes, it started up again as if I had merely paused a DVD. I got out of bed and went to the window. It was such a strange dream. Often, the predictive dreams show me events that will happen, but not in the weird, surreal way of this one. I felt like I had been watching a strange art film with symbols and references I didn’t
understand. But, the underlying feeling was that this dream meant something. I was often frustrated by my own lack of ability to understand these messages, but never more so than when I felt that there was true danger lurking.

Looking down, I saw a small patch of light on the ground below me. I could hardly make it out with all the swirling snow, but because everything was so dark, it stood out. Someone else couldn’t sleep and he or she was in the kitchen.

Thinking this was probably a very bad idea, I tossed on my sweatpants and Vi’s sweater over my T-shirt and sleep shorts and quietly slipped out of the room. I was thankful for the electricity once again as the hallway was at least dimly lit by the sconces along the wall. I walked quietly down the stairs trying to decide whether to announce myself or sneak up on the person in the kitchen.

I decided stealth would be best and quietly approached the kitchen door once I reached the main floor. Cracking the door open, I wasn’t surprised to see Linda there in her pale gray robe again, but this time Emmett joined her. They sat at the small table, sipping something out of mugs and talking quietly.

I hesitated. While I was surprised to see them together, they weren’t doing anything wrong and Linda had certainly had a rough enough couple of days. I turned to go back to the staircase and just as I put my foot down, an angry yowl came from the white cat. I threw my hands over my mouth to stifle my reaction. She had snuck up on me and must have been sitting with her tail right where my foot had landed. I bent down to calm her, but she backed away from me with her hair puffed up, hissing and spitting.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to step on you,” I said to the cat. “You’re very sneaky.”

“Yes, she is,” Emmett said from the door. “I can’t keep
track of her. She’s always trying to trick her way into the kitchen to steal food. And after the last time, René might lose his mind if he sees her in here again.”

I sucked in air and decided to play through—I hadn’t planned on revealing myself to these two, but sneaky cat had taken care of that.

“Emmett, I’m sorry to interrupt,” I said. “I couldn’t sleep and just came down to find a magazine or something to read in the lounge.”

“Come in,” he said. “Lin—Mrs. Garrett makes the best hot chocolate ever. It will be sure to help you sleep.”

After my bizarre dream, I wasn’t sure I wanted to sit in a dimly lit castle kitchen in the middle of a stormy night. But I couldn’t think of two more unlikely companions for a midnight hot chocolate run and figured I had been handed an opportunity to do some more investigating.

“Who is it, Emmett?” Mrs. Garrett asked.

“It’s Clyde Fortune,” Emmett said. “A fellow insomniac.”

“I can never sleep on a windy night,” Linda said. She got up from the small table, poured cocoa into a mug, and placed it in front of me. “I find the warm milk helps.”

Emmett picked up a bottle of Baileys and waved it in my direction. “I find this helps even more.”

I nodded at the offer and he poured a glug into the cocoa. As he tilted the bottle, I noticed an angry red scratch across the back of his hand. Duchess?

“If I’d known there was hot chocolate and Baileys, I would have roamed the halls earlier,” I said.

They both chuckled. “It’s mostly on the windy nights that I’m here,” Linda said. “Emmett caught me here messing up René’s kitchen a while back, so it’s become our little secret.”

“I guess neither one of you is afraid of the ghost,” I said.

They exchanged a quick glance that made me think they wondered if I was joking.

“As long as it stays away from my Baileys, I don’t care what that ghost gets up to,” Emmett said.

“I’m more afraid of the cat than the ghost,” Linda said. “I don’t know what we’ll do with her now. Ever since Clarissa . . . died, I haven’t been able to figure out what she’s up to. She used to seek me out for cuddles and now it’s like she’s gone feral.”

“She’ll calm down after a while,” Emmett said. He put his left hand over the scratch on his right.

“I think once she realizes she’s still being fed, she’ll adjust,” I said. “Was she very close to Clarissa?”

“That’s the funny thing,” Linda said. “I don’t think she was very attached to her. The cat loves the turret room and tolerated Clarissa.”

“Who does she belong to?” I asked.

“I suppose she belongs to the castle. She’s lived here for about five years. She just showed up one day, we fed her, and she stayed.” Linda sipped her chocolate. “If I ever needed to find her, I’d go up to the turret room and there she’d be, sitting in the window seat in a warm patch of sun.”

“She was a real friendly little thing,” Emmett said.

“Clarissa didn’t mind that the cat lived in her room?”

Linda smiled. “No, they seemed to get along just fine. They mostly ignored each other. Sort of like two cats who had been forced to live together.”

“Cats are very sensitive,” I said. “You should talk to Vi. She’ll tell you all about cats and their emotional lives.”

“Vi has certainly done well for herself as a pet psychic,” Linda said. “Do you really think she can communicate with animals?” She leaned forward and rested her chin on her hand.

That was a tough question. I wasn’t sure how much of Vi’s success had to do with her treat bag and animal-training knowledge and how much had to do with another kind of connection to the animals. I believed
Seth
could communicate with them—Tuffy and Baxter listened to him and he could get them to do just about anything. But, I didn’t want to betray Vi by questioning her abilities to strangers.

“She seems to be very successful in her pet interventions,” I hedged. “She must be doing something right.”

Linda watched me sip my drink. “Well, I better get back up to bed. It seems we’ll have a full house again tomorrow night. I hope Wallace managed to cancel our Sunday-night reservations.” She rinsed her mug in the sink and I pushed my chair back as well. Suddenly I was bone tired.

I followed Linda up the main staircase to the second floor. She turned toward the hallway that led to her rooms and stopped.

“Ms. Fortune . . . ,” she said. She slowly turned toward me and covered the distance between us. “I didn’t want to say anything before . . .”

“Yes?” I said.

“I heard something that night. The night Clarissa died.” She stopped and looked away from me. “I didn’t say anything before because I wanted to protect my daughter.”

“You heard Jessica?”

Linda shook her head. “No, no. I heard René.” She hesitated again, and studied the floor. I had the sense she was trying to make me believe she was crafting this story right on the spot.

“You heard René? Where?”

“I went up to talk to Clarissa earlier, before the lights went out.” Linda looked up and down the dark and silent hallway and lowered her voice. “We’d had that staff meeting on
Wednesday and there were some disagreements about the management of the inn. Anyway, I wanted to talk to her and maybe calm things down a bit, but before I knocked, I heard loud voices in her room and decided not to interrupt.”

“You’re sure it was René?”

She took a deep breath and let it out. Frown lines appeared on her forehead as she wavered.

“His accent is . . . distinctive,” she said.

“Thank you for telling me,” I said. “You should have told us before.”

“I didn’t want to bring it up in front of Jessica. She can get so jealous of Clarissa. Ever since they were little, Clarissa has always wanted everything Jessica had. If Jess had a new doll, Clarissa had to have one. When they got older, Clarissa went after any boy that Jess was foolish enough to show interest in.”

“Do you think there was something going on between René and Clarissa?” I was whispering now as well, even though the whole place was likely asleep.

“Something was up with them, but I don’t know what and I don’t like to think that René would betray Jessica like that. Truly, I don’t know what to think. I just thought you should know.”

She patted my arm and turned toward her hallway. I stood for a moment watching her and wondering if she was telling the truth.

Sunday morning Mac’s four-beat knock sounded on our door at seven thirty. Vi grumbled and pulled the covers over her head. I staggered to the door, pulling on a robe, and stepped into the hall.

I rubbed my eyes and tried not to glare at him for waking me up.

He grinned and pushed my hair out of my eyes. “I have news, are you awake enough to hear it?”

I yawned and nodded.

“I called the police department this morning to see if they got any information back about René Sartin.” Mac glanced up and down the hall and lowered his voice. “He’s dead.”

My stomach dropped and I felt a bit dizzy.

“What? Another murder?” I moved away from the door so Vi wouldn’t hear us. “How can he be dead?”

“The only René Sartin they were able to find in their database was from the Upper Peninsula, went to Paris to
attend the Cordon Bleu school, and then died in a car accident when he returned home to Michigan. Eight years ago.”

“So, who has been cooking all our meals?”

Mac shrugged. “The backstory is all just as our René claimed it would be, except for the fact that the real René is dead. He did, however, have a younger brother.”

I met Mac’s eyes. “Do you think the younger brother took over René’s identity? Why would he do that?”

“He could use his brother’s credentials to get a job as a chef.” Mac leaned against the wall. “I’ve asked them to look further into the Sartin family and see what they can dig up. But, it probably has no bearing on the case.”

I crossed my arms and burrowed further into the thick terry robe I had taken from the closet. It was one of the things that I disliked about investigating. When a murder occurred, everyone with even the slightest connection to the victim would have their lives and their secrets exposed.

“Let me get dressed and we can go get something to eat,” I said. “Are you going to confront him?”

Mac was silent for a moment. “I haven’t decided. I don’t know whether this is related and I hate to ruin this guy’s life. On the other hand, he’s been committing fraud and I feel like I have to delve deeper.”

I knew he had more to say and waited.

“This isn’t my jurisdiction and as far as I know, he hasn’t done any harm. If he is faking his identity, then it’s likely Jessica doesn’t know, which means not only will he lose his job, but potentially his fiancée. I hate to throw a bomb into someone’s life like that for no good reason.”

“I guess you’re right, but it seems suspicious to me,” I said.

Mac paced the hallway from the turret entrance to my door. “It may be none of our concern. I’m barely in charge
of this murder investigation. I don’t have any authority over restaurant licensing.”

“If your person was able to find out overnight, it can’t be that well hidden,” I said.

“The officer who found the information has connections in the Upper Peninsula. When René Sartin popped up as a U.S. citizen, not French, he followed the trail and called his contact,” Mac said. “That guy remembered the story—but it’s been wiped from any easy search engine—even the local newspaper has deleted all references to the accident.”

“Maybe that’s how a Cordon Bleu chef ended up at a small bed-and-breakfast in Western Michigan instead of a big city. Maybe he was hoping no one would ever look into his credentials. I think Jessica has a right to know what she’s getting herself into before she marries him.”

Then I remembered my strange conversation with Linda the night before. I told Mac that she suspected Clarissa and René might have been involved somehow.

“It sounds like René had all sorts of trouble headed his way. Maybe we’ll be doing her a favor by letting her know,” I said.

“You’re right, but we should talk to him first.”

I slipped back into my room and quickly got dressed. As I pulled my hair back into a ponytail, it hit me. What if Clarissa had found out about the real René? She didn’t strike me as someone who would balk at a little blackmail, especially if it also messed around with her cousin’s life. If she was blackmailing René, that gave him a pretty good reason to kill her. Maybe there wasn’t an affair, as Linda seemed to think. But Clarissa could have ruined his whole life if Jessica was unaware that he’d been passing himself off as his brother.

I quietly slipped back out into the hall. I opened my mouth to tell Mac when I noticed a new gleam in his eyes.

“What if Clarissa was blackmailing René?” he said.

“Just what I was thinking,” I said. “It seems like a pretty good motive for murder.”

Mac took my hand. “Let’s go have a chat with the chef.”

We walked down the stairs, cut through the dining room, and knocked on the kitchen door before entering. René and Emmett were busy cooking eggs, bacon, and pancakes. My stomach growled.

“Mr. Sartin?” Mac said. “Can we speak with you a moment?”

The chef glanced up with a scowl on his face. He rearranged his expression when he saw us. He gestured at Emmett to take over pancake duty, wiped his hands on a towel, and followed us out into the dining room.

“What can I do for you?” he asked after we sat.

Mac took a breath, but I cut in ahead of him.

“One of the hardest parts about a murder investigation is that we have to look at everyone. Unfortunately, many secrets are revealed whether they relate to the crime or not.”

René sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I told you everything I know. I was busy in the kitchen when Clarissa was killed. I don’t know anything.” His accent was in full force and I almost felt admiration for his acting skills.

I leaned forward.

“But you do have a secret,” I said. “We have to ask you about your past.”

He rubbed his arms and glanced toward the kitchen door.

“There’s not much to tell.” He shrugged and didn’t meet my eyes. “I grew up in Paris and went to the Cordon Bleu school—”

He stopped when Mac held up a hand. “Please, don’t make this worse by lying.”

René’s cheeks turned pink. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do,” Mac said. “We have no interest in revealing your secret to anyone unless it relates to Clarissa’s murder.”

“You think
I
killed Clarissa?”

“We think you aren’t who you say you are, which makes us wonder what else you’re hiding,” Mac said.

Loosening the collar on his chef’s tunic, René let out a breath of air.

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Maybe you should just tell me what you think you know.”

I was impressed by the way he stuck to the story. It almost had me thinking Mac’s source had made a mistake. That’s probably how he’d gotten away with it for so long.

“Okay,” I said. “We know that officially René Sartin is dead.”

The chef’s face went from pink to white almost instantly. He seemed to shrink into his chair.

The door from the kitchen opened and Emmett came through, his arms full of serving platters and food. He grinned in our direction, unaware of the tension around the table.

René lowered his voice.

“How did you find out?” he asked. The accent fell away, and I felt like I was meeting him for the first time.

“We’re detectives,” Mac said.

“It’s not what it looks like,” René said. He put his hands up as if to hold us back.

“It never is,” Mac said. “Why don’t you tell us your story?”

Fake René leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.

“René was my brother,” he said. “My grandmother raised us all on her own in the Upper Peninsula. She was from Quebec and had come to Michigan when she married my grandfather. She was an incredible cook and taught us all
the old recipes from the time we were both young.” He stopped and cleared his throat.

“My brother worked three jobs to save enough money to go to France and train there as a chef. I was only nineteen when he left. He went to the Cordon Bleu school and came home with his certificate. About two weeks after he got home, he was in a car accident and died.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He tilted his head at me, and cleared his throat. “My grandmother and I knew that René wouldn’t want all that work to go to waste and she said she always thought I was the better cook. We arranged to cover up his death and I would take his name and his credentials so that I could get a job as a chef.”

I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms. How did he think he would get away with it?

“Who else knows about this?” Mac asked.

René shook his head. “No one. I took a job in Traverse City and learned everything I could. Then my grandmother died of a stroke.”

He passed a hand over his face. “She was so proud that a Sartin was working in a ‘fancy’ restaurant. After her death, I headed south and ended up here. Linda and Jessica were wonderful to me. They let me have free rein in the kitchen to set the menu and experiment. It was a dream come true.”

“They have no idea that your credentials are fake?”

He shook his head. “After a while, I decided I should tell them, but then Jessica and I started spending more time together and she was so impressed that I had grown up in France . . .”

He held his hands out to us. “I just didn’t want to disappoint her and by that time, I didn’t want to lose her. I was in too deep and felt like I couldn’t tell her the truth without her feeling like our whole relationship was a lie. So I kept quiet.”

“And no one ever found out?” I said.

“No one until Clarissa,” René said to his shoes. “She went through all the employee files when she came here six months ago. I guess Linda had never looked into my credentials, but Clarissa did. She traced my brother’s information and found out that he didn’t grow up in France, which led her to discover his car accident. She must have put the rest together somehow.”

“Was she blackmailing you?” Mac asked.

René nodded, and studied the floor.

“She wanted to renovate the whole hotel and open a fancy spa. She threatened to expose my secret if I didn’t take her side. I told her there was no way Jessica would buy it. I’ve worked for the past five years for our reputation. Jessica knows I wouldn’t give it all up to open a spa, but Clarissa wouldn’t listen.”

“So you tried to convince Jessica to go along with the spa plan?” I asked.

René hung his head. “I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to lose Jessica even more than I didn’t want to lose the restaurant. I think she thought Clarissa and I were having an affair. She got very touchy over the past couple of months and criticized Clarissa every chance she got.” His hands went up in a placating gesture and he briefly met my eyes. “Don’t get me wrong, I had nothing good to say about Clarissa, either, but it put a strain on our relationship. So, ironically, my plan to go along with Clarissa and buy her silence was backfiring and causing more trouble with Jessica.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and rested his head in his hands.

“It sounds like Clarissa’s death will work out in your favor,” Mac said.

René’s head snapped up. “I didn’t kill her. I may not have liked her, but I didn’t kill her.”

“So you didn’t see her after she left the dining room on Thursday night?”

René shook his head, but wouldn’t meet our eyes.

“We have a witness who heard you arguing with Clarissa in her room that evening,” I said.

His face drained of color even more and he looked like he might be sick.

He rubbed a hand over his mouth, and closed his eyes briefly. “Okay. I saw her that night—she was agitated over a meeting earlier in the week and wanted me to convince Linda to sell some of the antiques to support the spa.”

Mac stared at him and waited.

René looked at me and then sighed. “It was before we served dinner, maybe around six forty-five. I snuck up the back stairs, talked to her, and came back down. I saw her later in the dining room talking to the guests and then I focused on serving dinner.”

“You were in the kitchen or dining room the rest of the time?” I asked.

René nodded. “Except for a few minutes when I went to the basement to get the dessert. I did not kill her. I may not have been honest with Jessica and Linda, but I’m not a murderer.”

“Okay, Mr. Sartin, we may need to talk to you again,” Mac said.

René glanced at the door again and lowered his voice. “Please, don’t tell Jessica,” he said. “I know she has a right to hear the truth, but I’d rather it come from me.”

“We have no reason to tell her anything right now,” I said. “But if you had anything to do with Clarissa’s death, we can’t guarantee your secret will stay safe.”

René nodded. “Thanks, I’ll tell her . . . soon.” He stood and strode back toward the kitchen.