Death in Room 7 (Pine Lake Inn Cozy Mystery Book 1) (7 page)

“I know, I know, but you’ve got people who can handle that.  Look.  My son’s coming over soon with a search warrant for Horace’s room and effects.  I don’t want you to be here when that happens.  If anything happened to you…”

Like Jess, is what I couldn’t make myself say.

Rosie figured out what I meant anyway.  She’s always been able to understand me, whether or not I’ve actually said anything.  “Sure, Dell.  I’ve got some things piling up back at the house, anyway.  And my man and me are still trying to…you know.  Tell you what.  I’ll go make things straight with the serving staff and then take off.  You can call me when things are settled here.”

Relieved, I hug her tightly, glad there’s one less thing I’ll have to worry about.  “Thank you.  And thanks for telling me all of that.  Really.”

“But if he does turn out to be the Devil himself, you’d best call me first.”

The way she says it makes me laugh, and maybe makes me feel a bit better.

“You’ll be okay?” she asks me.

What can I do but shrug?

As Rosie makes off toward the kitchen, the phone rings again.  Sure, why not?  I needed one more thing to do.  Reaching over the counter I pick it up.  It’s an internal call, the red light on the phone blinking twice, then going dark, then blinking twice again in a repeated pattern.  A call from one of the rooms.

“Front desk, may I help you?”

Silence on the other end.

“Oh, don’t tell me we’ve got more problems with the phones,” I mutter to myself.  “Hello?  Is there anyone there?  Can you hear me?”

A hideous burst of static nearly deafens me in that ear.  I jerked the phone away to stare down at it, wondering if maybe we have moisture in the lines or mice chewing on the cables.

“The phones again?” Rosie asks, on her way out through the lobby.

I hold the receiver out to the end of its coiled cord for her to hear.  She rolls her eyes, but gives me a serious look before she leaves.  I know if I don’t call her soon she’ll be calling me instead, to find out if I’m all right.  At least, she’ll call if the phones start working properly.

The static cuts out.  A voice whispers,
“You don’t know him.”

I think. 

It might have been something else because I’ve got the receiver held out far enough that I can’t really hear whoever is speaking.  “Hello?” I ask, putting it back to my ear gently.  “Hello, are you there?”

“Who’s that, Mom?”

Kevin walked in while I was standing there talking to a disconnected line.  Hopefully whichever guest had been calling will ring back in a few minutes. 

I hung up, hoping that was all it was.

In the meantime I was much more interested in the piece of paper that my son was holding in his hand.  Two other officers are with him, which makes half of the entire police force.  I know the one, Maxwell Stocker.  The other’s face is familiar but I don’t have a name to go with it.  Newbie, must be.

“Nobody,” I tell Kevin.  “Phones are still buggy.  That the warrant?”

“Yep.  Your guest still up in his room?”

“Far as I know.”

A shadow passed over the stairs.  Me and Kevin and the two other officers turned as one to look.

Mister Brewster stood there, halfway down, one hand on the railing, dressed all in black.  His oddly colored eyes regarded each of us.  “Horace Sapp is still upstairs,” he said, as if Kevin’s question had been directed to him.

Then he made his way down the rest of the steps and turned toward the common room without another look at any of us. 

“Now, who was that?” Kevin asked me.

“Mister Brewster.  Stays with us at the Inn at various times of the year.”

Kevin keeps watching Mister Brewster for a moment, through the door to the common room, then shrugs one shoulder.  “Odd man.”

“More than most.”  There’s really no way to put a description to Mister Brewster.  I’ve given up trying.  With a quick glance at the registration book I find the room number that Rosie had put Horace into.  “It’s the room right next to where Jess was.  Come on.  I’ll show you.”

“I’d rather you stayed down here,” Kevin told me, that look on his face that says he needs to protect me.  Big tough police officer watching out for his mother.

Which means…

“You found something out, didn’t you?  Something about this case?”

“Mom, you know I can’t tell you things like that.”

“You just did.”  He might think he needs to protect me, but I’m one smart lady.  “Must be pretty serious.  I just spoke with you this morning.  What could you find out between then and now?”

He knew I had him.  No sense in trying to deny what was written all over his face.  Still, he can’t just blurt things out to his mother on an ongoing investigation.  I get that.  Looking behind him at Maxwell and the other guy, he takes me by the elbow and ushers me over to the other side of the room.

“Mom, you know I can’t tell you anything,” he says, loud enough for the other officers to hear.

Then he lowers his voice to a whisper.

My kid’s a smart one.

“We traced the numbers on her mobile.  Lot of the usual.  Her husband, her mother, a few friends.  Then there was a bunch of calls to and from another number.  Traced that to a woman by the name of Torey Walters.”

I searched my memory.  “I don’t know that name.”

“No reason you should.  She’s a prostitute.  Not sure why Jess would have her in her contact list.  Might just be a friend.  Thing is, I recognized the name right off.”

I’m sure my expression said it all.

“Not like that, Mom, seriously.”  With his face turning red, he rolled his eyes.  “Like I already said, me and Ellie have a thing going.  I’ve got no reason to go anywhere else.”

That might be more than I needed to know, but in a strange way it was nice to hear.  Besides.  I’d started it.

“Anyway,” he whispered, intentionally bringing the conversation back to Jess and this prostitute, Torey.  “I recognized the name from the Roy Fittimer case.  Remember our famous drug dealer?  She was a known associate of his, suspected of helping him run his product.  The Australian Federal Police were supposed to be working on that angle.  Haven’t heard anything since.”

“Why?  What are they dragging their heels for?”

“Might have something to do with a piece of information that was almost buried in the report.  Roy had connections to organized crime.  He was an up and coming drug dealer, he was.  Got himself noticed by the heavy bad guys.  Which means this Torey had those same connections, too.”

I sucked in a breath.  Rosie’s words came back to me.  Prostitution and organized crime.  Jess’s past might have more to do with her fate than even she had realized.

“So,” he says to me slowly, letting me process all this information.  “Do you have any idea why your friend would have been calling this Torey Walters?”

Unfortunately, yes I did.  If he’d asked me that question yesterday, or even just a few hours ago, I would have said no.  There was no way Jess would associate with that kind.  Prostitutes.  Drug dealers.  Organized thugs.

Did I even know my friend at all?

As I tell Kevin all the sordid details as Rosie gave them to me, I could see things adding up behind his eyes.  He was coming to the same conclusions as I had, no doubt about it.

“That puts things in a new light,” is his comment.  He’s talking to me like a cop now, and I try not to take offense.  “She might have been slipping back into her old ways.  Her and Horace had been having trouble.  Maybe she wanted to find comfort in the old familiar, and make some money on it besides.  Or maybe she was even coming down to Lakeshore to see if she could pick up the pieces of Roy’s drug business.  I don’t know.  I do know this.  If Horace knew that she was making these calls to Torey…”

“It would be the perfect motive for murder,” I finish for him.  “Right.  Already landed on that myself.”

He puts his hand on mine, and now there really is comfort in his protecting me.

With a nod, he tells me that’s all he knows.  For now it’s back to the show.

“Now, I don’t want to say it again,” Kevin says in his normal voice, stepping back from me, nodding to the two officers like he’s just put me in my place.  “I just can’t tell you anything, Mom.  It’s just the way of it.  Be against Cutter’s explicit orders.”

Right.  I keep the smile from my face and act all upset like I’ve just had the talking to of my life.

After all, we sure wouldn’t want to go against Senior Sergeant Cutter’s explicit orders.

Sometimes, sarcasm helps.

Don’t you think?
 

I’ve never spent such a long half hour in all my life.

That’s how long, according to the clock on the wall, that Kevin was upstairs with Horace.  I must’ve paced a little trench right through the floor with all that walking back and forth.  When one of the guests asked me what we were serving for dinner I’m pretty sure I told her we were serving water.  She walked away with a confused look on her face, anyway.

When another guest asked what all the noise was upstairs I just said the police were handling it.

My little Inn was getting quite the reputation.  Maybe I should just have Cutter set up his office in the lobby.

That reminded me.  I picked up the phone and dialed quickly.  With just a few words, I kept my promise to a friend.

When they finally came back downstairs, it was with Horace in handcuffs.  His stringy hair was all over the place and his face was beet red.  And he wouldn’t shut up.

“I didn’t do this!  Are you insane!  Why would I kill me wife?  Why?  Why!”

Maxwell and the other officer took him out, still struggling and arguing, to the waiting police car in the parking lot.  The Lakeshore PD had exactly two police cars at the moment.  I saw that they’d brought the better one for this.  The one that didn’t have rust all up around the front fender.

When the front door closed behind them, Kevin broke into a smile and held up a plastic evidence bag.

Inside it was the missing key.

There we go Jess, I said to her in my thoughts.  We got him.  We’ll make him pay.

“Wasn’t even hidden very well,” Kevin said.  “You’d think after being here two days he would have done something more’n just stuff it in the trash bin.”

“That’s where it was?”  I can’t believe that, either.  Definitely not a criminal mastermind.  Just a murderer.  “Well, no one ever said Horace was the smart one.  Doubt that Jess took up with him for his brains.”

I took another, closer look at the key, just to make sure it’s the same one we were missing.  “What’s that?”

Stuck to the key is a colorful pink square of waxed paper.  Looks familiar, somehow.

“Candy wrapper,” Kevin explained, turning the bag round to look at it himself.  “Some kind of hard candy.  Was stuck to the thing when we found it.  Lots of others in the trash, too.  Guess our Horace has a bit of a sweet tooth.”

Huh.  “Not something you picture a murderer doing, right?  Sucking on candies while he…while he plans to…”

I can’t make myself even say it.

Kevin put the key in its bag into his pocket.  “No, I suppose not.  Some killers have been caught by having a smoke and leaving behind the butt end of a cigarette.  Guess this guy doesn’t smoke.”

Thinking back to University, I believe Kevin’s right.  I don’t ever remember seeing Horace have a smoke.  Or Jess, for that matter.  Don’t remember Horace being much of a candy fiend, either, but I suppose he had to do something while he waited to kill my friend.

“So he got here early, killed Jess, then left again.  Just like you thought.”

“Right.  Then came back in all vinegar and bluster to make it look like he had just shown up.  Pretty crafty, I guess.  Just not crafty enough.  We’ll know the answers to all the other little bits when the Coroner’s done their investigation.”

It all fit together.  It just seemed, I don’t know, too easy.  Killer in our midst, killer caught, killer arrested.  All because he threw the most incriminating piece of evidence in the trash along with his candy wrappers.  Not exactly movie of the week material.

“Mom,” Kevin said, with a shake of his head.  “I know that look.  Ya have to let this go.  Your friend got killed.  Right here in your Inn.  You’re gonna feel some guilt over that.  Don’t let it make you crazy.  We got him.  The bugger won’t be getting away with it.  Spend most of the rest of his life in prison, I’d wager.”

I like the way that sounds. 

“Didn’t Cutter want to be here to show off?” I asked him.  “Figured he’d be mugging for the cameras on this one.”

“Heh.”  He scratched a finger behind his ear.  “Yeah.  Don’t think Cutter’s going to be sticking his face in public anytime soon.  Still not sure what you did, but I’m grateful.”

“Hey.  A mother will do anything for her son.  You’ll find that out yourself one day.”

“Subtle, Mom.  Kids aren’t on my horizon just yet.  Me and Ellie are just starting out, and I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on her.”

I pull him to me, and kiss his cheek.  “I know that.  Take your time, son.  Find the right one.  If it’s Ellie, make her happy.  Just make sure you pick the right one.”

My voice is tight with emotion.  Kevin sees right through it.

“It’s not your fault that dad left us.”

“I don’t know that,” I tell him.  “He never told me why he left.”

His smile tried for reassuring but fell just a bit short.  “He left us, Mom.  Left us both.  He had his own reasons.  Might not know what those were, but I know it wasn’t because of you.  He loved you.  Lots of things in life I might hold a doubt on, but that ain’t one.” 

When I continue to doubt him, he tells me one more time.  “Dad loved you.  Whatever made him leave, it was something besides you.”

I wish I could believe him.

***

I was walking the halls of the Inn.  It was night.  Under my robe I was in my pajamas, the striped ones with the girlie butterflies up the front of the shirt on the right side.  I wasn’t even really sure why I left my bed.  I’d been warm and comfortable there and in spite of the emotionally jarring events of the past few days—or maybe even because of them—I’d fallen asleep quickly.

When I stood in front of the room Jess had been staying in, staring at the door, I knew this had been my destination all along.  I needed to see the room again.

The maids had been told to leave the room alone, for now, in case the police needed to go over the murder scene again.  It would be just like it had been two days ago, only without Jess’s body.

Thank God for small blessings.

I take the key for the door from my robe.  It has candy wrappers stuck to it.  I shake them off, and they fall away to the floor at my feet.

The door is open when I turn back to it.  Inside, the room has been made spotless with the floors cleaned, the bed made up, all ready for the next guest…except for the bloodstain that formed its irregular pattern on the rug.  Little droplets, tiny and scattered, still lead away from the chair to the window.

“Sorry about the mess,” Jess says to me.  “Didn’t have time to clean up for ya.”

I could weep, I’m so happy to see her.  In those ripped jeans and that Grateful Dead t-shirt, her blonde hair all swept back into a clip, she’s more the Jess I remember from Uni.  “You’re all right!” I blubber, even though I know that’s not true.  She can’t be alive.  I saw her, dead, here in this very room.

“It’s a lot to explain,” she says to me, smiling, turning…

As she turns, her clothes change.  One moment, she’s in a college girl’s Friday night outfit.  The next, she’s in a slinky black dress.  High heels with straps around the ankles.  Dark panty hose.  Her hair changes, too, into a carefully prepped and curled style, back to the black dye job from when she checked in.

She winked at me, and blew me a kiss with painted lips.

An escort’s outfit.  This is what a woman would wear to go out and about with a man on her arm.

“I made good money at it,” she says to me, spinning in place with her hands above her head, luxuriating in this new look.  Then she stopped, and her eyes snapped open in my direction.  “Don’t judge me.”

“I’m not,” I promised, although in my mind that was exactly what I’d been doing.  I was putting myself in her place, thinking how I would have made different choices.  I never would have put myself out like that.

So to speak.

Jess ran both hands down her sides, over the dress, and sighs.  I can feel the reluctance in her silence as she turns sideways again, into her jeans and t-shift and blonde hair.  It was like she had been more comfortable in the black dress.  Like she missed having that part of her life.

And like she hated having to hide it from me.

She walked away from me, to the window.  Even though I know how late it is, deep in the night, the sun is shining outside, silhouetting my friend’s girlish figure.

“Jess…” I started to explain myself, to tell her it was all right, to ask her to please not be dead.

Bent down over the window, like she was staring outside at the ground, she held up her finger.  Crooking it at me in a come-here sort of way, she said, “Look.”

Without seeming to move I’m at the window standing beside her.  She didn’t turn to me.  She didn’t speak.  She just stared out the window.  Following the direction of her gaze, down, I realize that it isn’t the grass or the edge of the crystal blue lake she’s looking at.  It’s the windowsill.

The blood spatter traces up the wall, to the edge of the window, had been interesting enough.  That had been our first clue that this wasn’t a suicide.  Someone who killed herself isn’t going to walk to the window while her wrists are bleeding.  Not without getting blood everywhere.  Not without making a return trail.  This one went to the window, and then stopped.

Even more interesting than that is what Jess was showing me now on the other side of the windowsill.  A footprint.  A man’s boot.  Clear as day, there in the midnight sun.

Outlined in blood.

“You don’t know him,” Jess says to me, standing there now with her arms folded and a smirk curling her lips.

Those words.  I remember those words.  From the phone call.  I hadn’t been sure if I’d really even heard them at all.

I was sure now.

Jess had been trying to reach me.  Well, her ghost had been trying to reach me, anyway.  Her spirit.  To tell me something.  To tell me…what?

That I didn’t know him.

Which was when my brain finally accepted the fact that Jess was dead and none of this was real and even though it felt so good to have my friend standing right there, right here with me and close enough to touch, I would never have that again.

I woke up in bed, sitting bolt upright, gagging on a breath and shaking in the tangle of sheets.  The dream had been so vivid.  I felt over both shoulders, just to make sure I wasn’t actually wearing a robe with a key in it that was plastered with little candy wrappers.  I wasn’t.  Just the purple pajamas with the butterflies on them.

Trembling, I reached over to the lamp on the bedside table and switched it on.  The clock read four thirty-eight in the morning.  I could get maybe another two hours of sleep before I would have to get up and attend to the Inn.  Somehow, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get back to sleep if I tried.

The thing was, I knew that dream was more than just a dream.  That hadn’t been some memory of Jess, or my subconscious making up a version of my friend for me to talk to.  That had been Jess.  Her ghost.  Spirit?  Soul, maybe.  I wasn’t clear on the right lingo.  Talking with ghosts wasn’t exactly something I did on a regular basis.

But I knew someone who did.

Jess’s words weighed heavy on me as I found the number I wanted, tucked into the contact list in my mobile.  “You don’t know him,” she’d said.  I was beginning to believe that.  Horace wasn’t the man I remembered from back in Uni.  I certainly didn’t like the man back then, not very much, but I would’ve never guessed he was capable of murder.

I used the Inn’s phone to dial.  It was going to cost me either way, but less so if I used the landline.  I messed up the first try and had to hang up and dial again.  American phone numbers were weird.  Too long.

The phone on the other end rings, and a woman’s voice answers.  “Hello?”

“Hi.  Um.  It’s Dell Powers.  From Australia.  Sorry, I know it’s early.  Did I wake you?”

“No, Dell.  It’s just in the afternoon here.  Two-thirtyish.  Different time zones, remember?”

“Right, right.”  Of course.  I’m on the other side of the world.  “So, um, the reason I called.  I kind of need your help.”

“Anything Dell.  Although I’m not sure what I can do for you from America.”

“Need your advice.  You sure I’m not bothering you?”

I could hear her talking to her husband away from the phone for just a moment, and then I was sure I heard a cat meow before she got back on the call with me.  “No bother at all.  Jon was just leaving to go back to work.  We had a late lunch together.  So I’m all yours.  Tell me what’s going on.”

After a deep breath, I pushed myself to say it.  Out loud.  “My dead friend.  Her ghost.  I think.  I mean, I think I was just talking to her ghost.  In a dream.  I know this all sounds totally crazy.  It was just so real.”  I make myself slow down.  “You’ve got all the experience in this sort of thing, right?  Leastwise, from what you told me on your honeymoon, you do.”

There was a pause, a moment in time when I was sure she was going to tell me that I really was crazy and this isn’t how these things go and just go back to sleep and don’t worry about it.

Instead, I could almost hear her smiling.  “Oh, Dell.  You don’t sound crazy at all.  Believe me.  And I’ll tell you anything you need to know.  Let’s start from the beginning, okay?”