Checking Inn (17 page)

“A week later, I come home to get ready for dinner, and there she is sitting on my bed.  Painting her nails– with 
my
 nail polish!  She wanted to show me the review she planned on submitting to the New Yorker the next day.  Said that she had come to town because she wanted to see my face, so we would both know what it feels like to lose everything.” Vivienne takes a step towards me holding out her hand.  “She had already decided to ruin you while she was here and tell everyone about her affair with Greg; she said it was an added bonus.”

“Did you kill her because of 
me
?” I ask, raising my hand to my chest.

Vivienne must see the guilt-ridden look on my face because she bursts out laughing.  “Heavens no!  I killed her for 
me
.  I thought maybe she was bluffing, that maybe I could get Greg to speak to her, but then she just kept taunting me at the dinner,” she says.  “I stole your master key and came up here to talk to her, to offer her more money.  When I got to the room though, she wouldn’t listen to anything I was saying.  She kept telling me it was too late, telling me to get out.  I just wanted to make her be quiet so she would listen to me.  She just wouldn’t shut up.”

“Listen Vivienne, you’ve done a terrible thing, but if you tell the police, I’m sure they’ll–”

“Oh Kate,” she says walking over to me.  “I don’t plan on ever telling the police.”

I see the hard set look in her eyes and start to take a step back.

“And I can’t let you tell them either.”

I see the blur of an object before I feel an immense amount of pain on the side of my head.

And then I see nothing at all.

Fifteen

Am I dead?  I don’t feel dead.  But at the same time, I’ve never been dead before, so I’m not entirely sure what it should feel like.

I open my eye a crack and see a bright light. 

Oh God, is that 
the
 
bright light
?  

I open my eyes a little further and I can see the lamp I picked out at an antique sale last year is turned on. 

Oh, good.

Vivienne is sitting on the arm chair in the corner, staring at me.  I look around and realize I’m lying on the same bed Samantha died on, and as I try and raise my hand to my forehead I feel the tight pull of the rope around my wrists and groan at the immense pain in my head.

“I’m glad you woke up.  I couldn’t wait much longer, but I did want you to hear my plan.  I know how much you love it when people are organized.”

“How–” I cough to clear my throat.  “How long have I been out?”

“Oh, just a few minutes.  But long enough for me to figure things out.”

“What things?” I say, trying to raise my head off the pillow.  Vivienne walks over and pushes it back down with her hand. 

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to get rid of you, Kate.  I can’t trust you won’t say anything,” she looks regretful and then shrugs like it is out of her hands.

“You’re going to 
kill me?”
 I say, shaking my head.  “You won’t get away with it.”

I test the ropes on my hands but they are pretty tight.

“No one will have any reason to believe you have been murdered,” she says and picks a piece of rope off the bedside table.

My left hand gives a little as I subtly try and pull on the binding, hoping that Vivienne doesn’t see that I am testing the knots she has tied.

“What are you going to do?” I take my eyes off the rope in her hand, focusing on her again.

“I’m not going to do anything,” she says, her eyes wide with false innocence.  “I came to the Inn, to check on you after the news of the murder got out, and found you in this room.  You had hung yourself, because your Inn’s reputation is ruined.  Everyone will be very sad at your funeral.”

“I just don’t understand, all this time you seemed like you cared about me, and now you’re not going to even blink an eye at killing me?” My eyes fill with confusion and fear.

“Kate, you’re a very sweet girl.  A little neurotic, but very sweet,” she says, patting the side of my face.  “I was hoping you would be able to tame my son a little.  He’s always been so smart, but that girl was always his undoing.”

I can see the anger in her eyes and I realize I have to let her vent; I have to keep her talking while I try and free my hand.

“Did you know about Greg and Samantha before she told you that night?” I ask.

Vivienne laughs.  “I know everything that my son does: he’s never been able to hide anything from me.”

“And you never told me?” I ask, and I can’t help the hurt in my voice.

Alright, I mean, I know it is a little much to expect loyalty from a woman who is currently trying to kill me, but at the same time I feel like everyone was in on this big secret, and I was the butt of the joke.

“If you found out, Greg would have gone back to pursuing Samantha out in the open.  He was devastated when she broke up with him right before college.  Even when they were together these past few years, I don’t think she would have ever allowed Greg to be a real part of her life.  Samantha didn’t let anyone in.  She was too good for us all,” Vivienne says, mockingly.

“So you 
both
 just used me?” I accuse.  My hand slips ever so slightly, gaining slightly with every pull.

“Honey, you allowed yourself to be used,” she says.  “If you can’t hold onto your man, then that’s your problem.”

“Is that how you justified sleeping with my father?” I ask, and I hate the smile that spreads over Vivienne’s face.

“I wondered when she was going to get around to finally telling you,” she says, coming closer towards me with the rope.  “Now, it has been fun going down memory lane, but I have a two o’clock with my masseuse.”

I make a move to avoid her hands, but lifting my head only allows Vivienne to wrap the rope quickly around my neck.  She pulls it tight from beside me and my fingers desperately try and escape their binds, wanting to claw away the constriction around my neck.  My right hand is useless because she has tied the rope too tight around it, but my left hand has managed to move the rope.  I can feel the rough twine digging into my skin as it settles on the wide part of my hand where my thumb and outer knuckle span.  The suffocating feeling around my neck is so tight and I can’t get any breath.  The panicking feeling causes my body to glisten with sweat, and it’s all I need to finally free my left hand from its binding.  I swing my hand around and manage to strike a fist against her side, but the next thing I know the rope is being pulled down, and Viviane has put her knee on my chest to stop me from moving.

The rope burns into my neck, and the panic makes my hands frantically shake.  My eyes plead with her, but she looks so crazed I’m not sure she is paying attention to anything I am doing.

I start to gurgle as the lack of oxygen begins to make my struggles weak.  My hand falls to the side, resting on the bedside table, and it encounters cold metal.  With the last sap of adrenaline in my body my hand wraps around the antique metal phone, and I swing it in an arc as quickly as I can.  When the force hits Vivienne on the side of the head her eyes look confused before she crumples on top of my body.

I roll to the side, forcing her dead weight off of me before I reach for the rope around my neck and finally feel the air enter my lungs.

I reach in my pocket for my inhaler and take a deep breath as soon as it touches my lips.

The door to the suite bursts open and Ben comes rushing inside, first seeing Vivienne’s crumpled form, then seeing me with the rope wrapped loosely around my neck.

“Kate!” Ben rushes over and frantically unties my hand.  “I heard all the banging– what the hell is going on?”

“Vivienne killed Samantha,” I say and try to point at her without looking at her limp body.

“What?” he asks, looking from me to her again.

“She told me everything.  Samantha’s bad review was about her,” I say, following Ben’s gaze.  “Is she dead?”

“No, I can see she’s breathing,” he says and releases my right hand to help me up from the bed.  “I need to call this in. Let’s get you out of here.”

Ben leads me out of the room and into the hallway.

“Stay right here, don’t move,” he orders, and I nod.

He goes back in the room.  I look down at my hands but I can’t stop them from shaking.  That was close.  No, close isn’t the right word.  That was so close it was almost too close.

Never, in all the scenarios that I envisioned in my head, did I think Vivienne might try and kill me.  I thought maybe, if I could finally get her to confess, that she would come with me to turn herself in.  More than likely though, I thought she would try and run, and I would have to turn her in myself.

I guess I was just banking on the fact that she cared about me– that she would never hurt me.  Well, I was pretty far off with that assumption.  So much for being the daughter she never had.

Ben comes out of the room a few moments later. 

“She’s still passed out, but I handcuffed her to the bed just in case.  You must have hit her pretty hard.”

I nod absently and he leads me down the stairs, forcing me to sit down at the reception desk.

I hysterically tell him all the things Vivienne confessed to me.  I’m so afraid I will forget that I keep repeating the same things over and over again.

He paces up and down in front of me, stopping several times like he wants to say something but just starts pacing again instead.

Finally, he stops in front of me and puts both his hands on the arms of my chair.

“When did you know?” he asks.

“I knew this morning,” I say, and then shake my head.  “Well, I didn’t 
know
, I guessed.”

“You guessed,” he repeats.

“It was the red nail polish on Samantha’s fingers.  She didn’t have any polish that color in her closet at her apartment, and there wasn’t any red nail polish in her room here,” I say.

He nods his head.

“I knew you would never be able to arrest Vivianne based on nail polish, so I told her to come here so I would get her to confess everything to me.”

“And she did?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say, nodding my head.  “She used Viv’s nail polish the night before Vivienne killed her.  When I told Vivienne I knew, she told me she had to get rid of me.  I never thought…”

“But you got the confession, right?” he asks, his eyes wide with encouragement.  “Before she nearly killed you, you got her to confess everything?”

“I did.  I even recorded it on my phone, too.”

Through his smile I can see his jaw tightening and I frown.

“Are you 
mad
 at me?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head.  “Why would you ever think that?”

“You are mad at me,” I accuse.  “But I caught the bad guy!”

Well, in this case, girl.

“And nearly got killed doing it!” he yells, and then obviously sees me draw back and so tries to calm himself.

“It was the only thing I could do,” I argue. 

“You could have come to me,” he says, pointing to his chest.

“Would you have 
believed me
?” I ask.  “Even if you had, she never would have admitted it to you.  I needed to catch her off guard.”

“That’s the point though, isn’t it?” he says, shaking his head.  “You didn’t trust that I would do it properly.  You thought that you were the only one that could get it done, and it nearly cost you your life.”

“I do trust you!” I say.

“Just like you trusted me enough to tell me about Greg and Samantha?  Like you trusted me enough to tell me about the insurance policy?”

I open my mouth in shock.

“How did you know about that?”

“I’m the police; we are sometimes called 
investigators
, and are paid to find out these things,” he says.

“I couldn’t tell you.  You would think my mother and I killed Samantha for the money.”

“Really?” he asks and sits back on the reception desk.  “So, I guess I nearly lost my job trying to protect you and this Inn– keeping it from the media, dressing in costumes, keeping things from my partner and captain– because it’s my life’s mission to make sure at least one murderer goes free in my career.”

“I didn’t say–”

“I don’t understand you, Kate.  You bend over backwards to protect a man that never put you before himself.  He stood by while others taunted you, and you thanked him for it,” he says, and I can see the anger and hurt in his eyes.  “Yet, here I am.  I’ve been standing here, waiting, and you still don’t trust me.”

“Ben, it’s not that I don’t trust you, I do.  It’s just–”

“What if I couldn’t get here in time?  You could have 
died,”
 he says and stands up.  “I need some air.”

“Ben, wait,” I say, reaching my hand out for him.

“The police will be here in a minute,” he says, walking to the front door and turning the knob.  “They’ll want to know what happened, so you better work on your story now.”

And then the door closes.

I clamp my teeth and try to force back the tears from my eyes.

He wouldn’t even listen to me.

Alright, the irony is not lost on me that when he was willing to listen to me I was lying to him or withholding the truth.  But still, if he would just listen 
now
…

A few minutes later the cavalry arrives, led by Detective Rice.  I assure him I’m alright, and he leads the team upstairs to where Ben handcuffed Vivienne to the bed.

I slump in the chair behind the reception desk and the front door opens, my mother racing in.

“Kate!” she runs over to me and wraps me in her arms.  “How could you have done that?  You could have died,” she says, repeating Ben’s earlier argument, tears rolling down her face.

“I’m sorry, Mom.  It seemed like the only way,” I say, and wring my hands over and over in a guilty fashion.  “I’m fine.”

To be honest, I didn’t expect this reaction from everyone.  I thought they would be really pleased I found the killer and solved the case.

She looks me over, her eyes briefly stopping on the harsh red marking around my throat and eventually smiles.  “We will be,” she says.