Reservations for Murder (14 page)

Alex laughed. “You’re not going to believe
this. He’s taking a tour of Europe with Ham Roberts. He’s over
there right now planning it all.”

Mor said, “I’ve seen everything now. Les
isn’t going to believe me when I tell him tomorrow.” Les was the
older part of the partnership of Mor or Les. The two handymen kept
most of Elkton Falls running while forming a deep friendship,
though neither man would admit it under knifepoint.

Mor nudged Jefferson’s bag with his toe. “So
what did you find in there? Were there any clues?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,”
Alex said as innocently as he could manage. “It’s just his clothes
and toiletries.”

“Don’t play that game with me, bucko. I know
you’re not about to let a perfectly good opportunity to snoop get
past you.”

Alex shrugged in admission. “For all the good
it did me. That man barely made an impression on the room. It was
almost as if a ghost had stayed there.”

Mor said, “Maybe you’ve got one around here
now. Have you given that any thought?”

“What are you jabbering about, Mor?”

The big man had an odd expression on his
face. “You know what they say, Alex. Ghosts hang around after a
violent death, and getting skewered is about as violent as it
gets.”

Alex snorted at his friend’s serious tone.
“Who knows? Maybe a ghost or two will help business. I can put it
in my brochures.”

Mor laughed. “Alex, you’re an innkeeper
through and through, aren’t you?”

“It’s in my blood. Listen, do you have
anything pressing planned for today?”

“No, this is the last place on my list to
look for Emma. I’m not sure what to do now.”

Alex asked, “How would you like to do me a
favor, then?”

“What’s the matter, does the septic system
need to be cleaned out?”

“No, this is easy. Hang around here a couple
of hours by the front desk and answer the telephone for me. My
guests are all gone now that the crafters have left, and the next
group isn’t scheduled until tomorrow, but I’m expecting a call from
a travel agent who’s promised to book the entire inn for a full
week this autumn.”

“Why can’t you put your answering machine on
for that?”

“Because she’s not going to want to use
Hatteras West if she thinks I’m an absentee innkeeper. Listen, if
it’s a problem, I’ll hang around myself.”

Mor picked up a magazine and said, “No, I’ll
take care of it. I need to have a talk with Emma anyway, and she’s
as likely to show up here as anywhere I could look.”

Alex wasn’t about to open that hornet’s nest
if he could help it. “Thanks, man, you’re the best. I’ll be back in
a few hours.”

After Alex loaded all of the luggage in the
cab of his old gray Ford pickup, he drove toward town, glancing
back at the lighthouse as he went. The structure stood there as a
constant, a landmark in his life, always watching over him. Somehow
its presence made him feel safe. Too bad it hadn’t helped Jefferson
Lee or Marilynn Baxter.

Alex’s first stop was the hospital. He wanted
to check on Marilynn’s condition, and the luggage he was carrying
would give him the perfect excuse to be there.

He asked a volunteer at the front desk
wearing a name tag that said Bob about Marilynn. The man tapped a
few keys on the computer and directed him to the Intensive Care
Unit.

Alex found Craig Monroe there looking a
hundred years older than he had the day before. Was it worry or
guilt that had aged him overnight?

“How’s she doing?” Alex asked.

Craig looked surprised by his presence, lost
in his own thoughts. “No change. Alex, I’ve been meaning to ask
you, what were you doing up in our room, anyway? Not that I’m not
grateful,” he added hastily.

“I was doing my daily cleaning. When no one
answered my knock, I used my passkey.”

Craig pushed. “Alex, did she say anything at
all the whole time you were there?”

What an odd question! Alex was just about to
answer when he saw Sheriff Armstrong strolling down the hallway.
“Hey there, Alex. Got a second?”

“Hang on, Sheriff, I’ll be right with you.”
He turned back to Craig. “I’ve got your bags with me in my truck.
Where would you like them?”

The potter said, “Why don’t we head over to
my house together, and you can help me carry everything
inside.”

“Don’t you need to be here with your wife?”
Alex asked pointedly.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Alex, I still
need to talk to you later.”

“Not a problem,” Alex said as he walked down
the hall with Armstrong. There had been an edge and an urgency to
Monroe’s request that Alex didn’t like. He promised himself that if
he did have another talk with the potter, he was going to make darn
sure it was in a well-lit place with lots of other people
around.

Alex asked Armstrong, “Are you here
investigating what happened to Marilynn Baxter?”

The sheriff shook his head. “Nope. From what
I hear, there’s nothing to investigate. She tried to kill herself.
Whether she succeeds or not is still up in the air. I had to swing
by the hospital to check on a drunk driver from NewCon. Some guy
got a snoot full, then decided to go joyriding in Elkton Falls. Why
he didn’t stay there and be Dave Wooster’s headache, I’ll never
know.”

“I don’t know how to put this, but I’m not so
sure Marilynn Baxter tried to kill herself.”

Armstrong grabbed Alex’s arm and led him to
an alcove nearby. “Alex, do you have any facts to back up that wild
talk?”

“Nothing for sure.” He hesitated telling the
sheriff that his gut reacted strongly to Craig Monroe’s attitude
about his wife.

The sheriff grimaced. “Alex, don’t go
spreading this around Elkton Falls. I’ve got enough trouble on my
hands without you adding to it. I understand the lady’s been
depressed lately. It happens more often than you and I would ever
imagine.”

“Where did you hear that she was depressed?”
Alex asked.

“Why, her husband told me himself. He would
know if anybody would, don’t you think? After all, he lived with
the woman.”

Not exactly a reliable source at the moment,
Alex thought to himself. Before he could voice his suspicions that
Craig Monroe might have had something a little more active to do
with his wife’s current condition, the sheriff said, “Alex, I’ve
seen that look in your eyes before. Drop this, you hear me? If you
want something to do, I’ll try to find it for you, but leave this
one alone.”

Alex decided to change tactics. “Have you had
any luck solving Jefferson Lee’s murder?”

“I’m close to an arrest; that’s all I’ll
say.” The smug look on the sheriff’s face was too much for Alex.
“I’ll grant you this, you were right about the postcard. I’m almost
positive it was connected to the murder.”

“Come on, Sheriff, you’ve got to tell me more
than that. Who do you think did it?”

“You’ll find out when the rest of Elkton
Falls does, Alex. I’m not about to say anything and have my suspect
get wind of it before I can make my arrest.” He held up his hands.
“Not that I don’t trust you, but these walls have ears, if you know
what I mean.”

Alex suddenly remembered the blacksmith’s bag
in his truck. “Sheriff, I’ve got Jefferson Lee’s things from the
inn. I was going to run them by your office, but you can get them
now, if you’d like.”

“I’ve already been through all of it, Alex.”
The sheriff scratched his chin, then said, “Tell you what. It
couldn’t hurt to check them out again, so why don’t we walk out
together, and I’ll have another look. Who knows, there might be
something that will help my case.”

After the sheriff had gone through
Jefferson’s bag outside, he said, “I just don’t get it, Alex. His
house is the same way. You can barely find a personal thing in the
whole place. I mean it was creepy. There were no photographs, no
collections on display, the man barely made a dent in his own home.
I just can’t imagine living like that.”

“So, what happens now?”

“I’ll take this bag over to his house.” The
sheriff suddenly had a thought. “Hey, you have a few minutes to
spare?”

Alex knew he shouldn’t impose on Mor any more
than he had to, but he was intrigued enough to ask, “What did you
have in mind?”

“I thought I’d give you a gander at the man’s
house and see what you thought yourself. Strictly unofficial, if
you follow me.”

“Let’s go,” Alex said eagerly. Maybe he could
find something the sheriff and his team had missed.

For once Armstrong hadn’t exaggerated.
Jefferson Lee had barely made an impression on his living space. It
seemed as if the entire set of furnishings had been ordered from
one catalogue, perfectly matched and coordinated. All the proper
shades of color and tone blended together until there wasn’t the
slightest personal touch or originality in the whole place. Alex
wondered if the man’s workshop was the same as the house, and he
started to ask the sheriff if he could peek inside the outbuilding
as well, when a sudden squawk came from the sheriff’s beeper.

Armstrong checked the number, then called his
dispatcher on Jefferson’s telephone.

“Yeah, you just paged me. What’s up?”

There was a pause, then he said, “I’ll be
right there.”

“What happened?” Alex asked as the sheriff
hung up the phone.

“There’s a wreck out on Highway 127. Some
joker with a Jet Ski on his trailer was headed for the lake, and it
slipped off the back end. Smacked right into a hearse, and now
nobody can get through. I need to head out there pronto. Listen
Alex, I hate to do this to you, but can you get back to the
hospital on your own? It’s a good four miles out of my way, and
they need me out there right now.”

“I’ll be fine,” Alex said. “Do you want me to
lock up when I’m done here?”

Armstrong looked as if he’d assumed Alex
would leave with him, but he was obviously in too big a hurry to
stand there and debate the fact with him.

“Just pull the door shut when you’re done,
and don’t let anybody else in, okay?”

Alex agreed, and as the sheriff headed for
the door, he added, “Alex, if you find anything, you call my office
right away, you understand?”

“I promise,” Alex said as the sheriff took
off.

Now maybe he could do a little snooping of
his own.

An hour later, Alex was no closer to finding
anything inside Jefferson’s house than he had been when he’d first
come in. How in blazes could the man live like that? Alex only
hoped the shop would yield something, any clue as to why Jefferson
Lee was murdered.

The key to Jefferson’s shop hung on a Shaker
peg by the doorway. Alex knew the blacksmith’s building, with its
roaring fires and blackened soot, had to be separate from the
house, and he was glad he’d spotted the neatly labeled key as he
walked back to the modern shop.

It turned out that Alex hadn’t needed the
key, after all.

Someone had beaten him to the search, and
from the look of the place, they hadn’t been too careful disguising
their presence there. He was certain the sheriff would never have
wrecked the shop in his investigation, nor would he have left it
like that without saying something to Alex about it.

As Alex headed back inside to phone the
sheriff’s office, he wondered if the thief had found what he’d been
looking for.

Chapter 17

Alex called the sheriff’s office and spoke
with one of Armstrong’s deputies, a young man named Dave Jeffries.
Alex had known Dave all of his life. He’d been coming out to the
lighthouse with his family since he was a small boy, and he’d
always tried to convince Alex to light the beacon for him, even if
he was visiting at high noon.

The deputy asked him to hang around until he
could get there, and Alex readily agreed.

After he hung up the phone, Alex walked back
to the shop to have a look around before Dave arrived.

Instead of the old-fashioned equipment Alex
had been expecting to see in the shop, he found huge steel machines
outfitted with wicked-looking attachments spread all through the
blacksmith’s shop. It appeared that the quaint equipment Jefferson
had set up at the fair had been more for the exhibition than for
his daily work. Alex wasn’t all that surprised.

The floor of the shop was littered with a
thousand papers. Was there a key in all that mess to Jefferson’s
murder, or had the killer taken a piece of evidence after disposing
of the man himself? Alex saw bills, plans, even correspondence with
other blacksmiths discussing things like power hammers and a host
of other topics Alex didn’t understand, but nothing that might
point to the murderer.

“Find anything good in there?”

Alex didn’t know how long he’d been looking,
but he was startled to hear the voice. He looked up from his
squatting position to see the young deputy standing in the doorway.
There was a smile on Dave’s narrow face and an easy way about him
that Alex had always liked. Armstrong’s uniform was in constant
need of expansion, but Dave’s was as neat and tailored as the day
he’d first put it on.

“Hey, Dave. I was just—”

“Snooping again, Alex? Hey, I’m not the one
in our department who has a problem with that. As far as I’m
concerned, you can look all you want, as long as that’s all you
do.” He looked at the papers strewn on the floor. “Now that is one
major mess. You didn’t touch anything, did you?”

Alex shook his head. “I know better than
that. I’ve just been doing some light reading.”

Dave stroked his chin. “I wonder if they
found what they were looking for.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

The deputy said, “Alex, thanks for calling
this in, but you’d better take off. I talked to the sheriff on the
way over here, and he’s heading back just as soon as he can clear
up that accident.” Dave grinned. “From the sound of it, he’s a
little unhappy that you found this break-in instead of him. It
wouldn’t hurt to keep a low profile for the next few hours, if you
know what I mean.”