Death in Room 7 (Pine Lake Inn Cozy Mystery Book 1) (4 page)

“Senior Sergeant, I told you.  I opened her door with my master key.  When I saw…what I saw, I closed the door again and called you.”

Also for the fifth time, he scratched that information down in his little spiral notebook.  Then he shook his head and put notebook and pen away in the front pocket of his shirt.  “Right.  Then.  Looks to be cut and dry to me, Dell.  Sorry ‘bout your friend.  Sometimes people end it.  Just the way of the world.”

Rosie came up the stairs just as I was wondering how much time I’d get in a cell for slapping a cop across his stupid face.  She took me by the arm and pulled me away from the Senior Sergeant.  “I took care of informing all the guests that there was a problem,” she said.  “I let them know the police would be here for a bit and then gone.  No worries.”

“Thank you.”  A problem.  That’s what we were calling Jess’s death.  A problem.

In a way, that’s exactly what it was.  I was so angry at Jess right now that if she was right here with me I would’ve taken her by the shoulders and shook sense into her until her teeth rattled.  She had come here, to my Inn, just to kill herself.  Now we had the police coming in and out, and we’d have to wait for two hours before a coroner could come down from Hobart to take the body.  There would be an autopsy, of course, because of the way she…died.  I’d learned that from Kevin.  Sometimes having a police officer for a son came in handy.

Sometimes, I just feel like I know too much.

Anyway, angry as I was at Jess, I was also deeply sad for her.  Obviously her marriage with Horace wasn’t working.  If that phone call I got from him at…what, four thirty this morning?  If that phone call was any indication then it’s no wonder she had to come here to catch a break.  Now this…

A sudden sob choked me.  Rosie put her arms around my shoulders and it helped but not enough.  Poor Jess.  Why?  It was so senseless.  Why would she do this?

As I stood there, another officer came out of the room where Jess’s body still sat in that chair.  I only knew he was an officer because I recognized his face.  He was in jeans and a long-sleeved work shirt, not a uniform.  His name escaped me.  There was a total of six officers in town, including Senior Sergeant Cutter over there.  In a town like Lakeshore everyone knew everyone else.

“Got everything, Senior Sergeant,” the officer said to Cutter.  Blake Williams.  That was his name.  He held up a clear plastic bag and in it I could see a bloody razor blade.

My stomach turned over on itself.

“Took the pictures, too,” Blake said.  “Every inch of the room.”

Cutter took the bag with a scowl.  “Why’d ya go and waste the time on taking pics?  It’s clear as the desert sky what happened in there.”

Rosie caught me glaring at him.  Good to have friends who know when to give you a bit of a hard yank to keep you out of trouble.

Feet came pounding up the stairs.  Kevin never did have a very light step.  He came right over to me, hugging me fiercely.  Me and my son are still very close.  In moments like this, I’m glad of it.

“Sorry, Mom.  I had my mobile off.  I just got your message and came right over and…is she really dead?”

I nodded and started to say something only to have Cutter interrupt.

“You’d know that,” he snapped at Kevin, “if ya ever answered that phone of yers.  Mind tellin’ me why ya weren’t where I could get hold of ya when I needed to?”

Kevin met his Senior Sergeant’s stare but I could feel the way he tensed up.  Things haven’t been so good between Cutter and him.  Lot of jealousy there, on the Senior Sergeant’s part, knowing my Kevin’s the better officer.  That’s not just a mother’s pride talking there, either.

“Sorry, Senior Sergeant,” Kevin said to him.  “Won’t happen again.”

Smart boy.  Don’t pick a fight with your boss.  Even when you’re right.

Cutter rolled his eyes.  “Well, yer here now.  Might as well make use of ya.  I know Dell here’s yer rellie and all but I want ya to write out her statement.  Think ya can handle it?”

With a thin smile, Kevin answered, “Sure thing.”

“Beauty.  Go do that downstairs.  We’ll finish up here.”

It was a dismissal, a way for Cutter to get my son away from the scene.  He’d been doing that a lot recently, from what I understand, and Kevin was just about fed up with it.  He’d put his application in to the Australian Federal Police, and he was just waiting to hear back from them.  I’d hate to see him transfer to the national police force, but he was always too good for a small time department like we have here in Lakeshore.

“Kevin,” I asked him on the way downstairs, where I could be sure none of the guests would hear us, “why does Cutter need you to take my statement?  It doesn’t sound like he’s interested in doing an investigation.”

Just a suicide after all, I added bitterly to myself.

“We still have to follow the book,” was his answer.  “Don’t worry.  I’ll make sure there’s an investigation.  The autopsy might tell us something more than what we already know.  Let me ask you some questions, too.”

“Like what?” Rosie asked from behind us.

“Like, was the door locked when you got to her room?”

“Yes,” I answered him.  “We had to use our master key to get in.”

“Dell, tell him,” Rosie urged.  We were at the bottom of the stairs now and we made sure to keep our voices down so that none of the guests who might be in the dining room or the commons would hear us.  “Tell him about the keys.”

“Oh, right.  I’d nearly forgotten.”

Kevin waited, watching us both, then scratched at the back of his neck.  “Er, mom, I’ve never been psychic.”

I chuckled in spite of myself.  Kevin could always make me feel better.  “Rosie means the keys to the rooms.  The key to Jess’s room, more to the point.  You see—”

“Where is me wife!” a loud, familiar voice boomed out from the front door.

A deep breath did nothing to calm me down.  Horace was here.  Perfect.

Kevin stepped up and put himself in the path of Jess’s irate husband.  He was as tall as I remembered.  Taller than my Kevin, to be sure.  In University he had always been an athlete, strong and lean, every girl’s dream of a perfect man.  A real spunk.  The muscles were still there, but over the years he’d packed on more than a few pounds to his midsection.  The beer belly strained the material of his white cotton shirt. 

His looks were slipping, too.  What had once been a full head of wavy black hair was now a comb over trying to hide a huge bald spot.  Permanent scowl lines had been etched in around his eyes and mouth.

Rosie stepped in behind the registration desk.  Couldn’t blame her, considering the dangerous look in Horace’s murky hazel eyes.  I wondered if she felt the same way about Horace as she did about Jess.  If she didn’t, I had enough distrust of the man for both of us.

He stopped halfway across the room when Kevin made it obvious he wasn’t going to move out of the way.  “Can I help you?” he asked in that professional police officer voice he has.

“Help me?  Doubt it, bucko.  Unless you’re hiding me wife in your back pocket.  That it?  She come here to see you?”

Kevin didn’t rise to the bait.  “You must be Jess’s husband?”

“Well don’t you catch on quick?  Step aside.  Jess!”

“No need to shout,” Kevin said calmly.  “My name’s Constable Kevin Powers.  Let’s go in the next room.  We need to talk.”

“I don’t want to have a convo, you bloody walloper!”  Horace reached out and shoved Kevin by the shoulder.  “I’m here for me wife!”

With practiced, smooth movements, Kevin put himself behind Horace, taking a firm grip on that one arm, twisting it up and back and using it like a lever to walk the man up against the wall.

“Hey!  Leggo!”

Kevin held Horace in place without any effort at all.  He never raised his voice, never threatened.  He was simply calm and professional.  He might have been holding a stray cat in his arms for all the world to see.  “We need to talk first.  There’s been an incident.”

“An…?”  All the wind blew out of Horace’s sails all at once.  “Tell me where Jess is.  You tell me where she is!  Did something happen to her?”

“I’ll tell you everything I know,” Kevin promised.  “In the next room.  I’m going to let go of your arm now, and you and me will have a sit down.  All right?”

Horace nodded, his eyebrows narrowing, finally catching on that there was something going on here at the Inn, and that he wasn’t in control.  “Uh, sure, Officer.  Just tell me what’s going on.  I’m here for Jess.”

As promised, Kevin let go, and motioned for Horace to go ahead of him into the commons room.  They sat down on the couch in there, out of my view.

“How’d he get here so fast?” Rosie wondered out loud, still behind the desk, talking quietly enough that only I could hear her.

That was a good question.  Unless he’d already been heading this way when I got that call, he shouldn’t have arrived until late afternoon at the earliest.  He must have been on his way.  On the road.  A lot closer than I had thought.

Only to find Jess dead when he got here.

The irony of that didn’t escape me.  I just didn’t want to dwell on it.

“So what now?” Rosie asked me.

“For now, it’s business as usual,” I suggested.  “We still have guests to take care of.  What happened to Jess…I hate it.  I hate everything about it.  Doesn’t mean we get to close up shop.  As much as I’d like to pack it in for a few days until everything’s over, we can’t.  We both have bills to pay.”

She nodded, her expression full of understanding.  “Why don’t ya take the rest of the day off, at least?  I can run things for that long.”

I knew she could, but the last time I let her take over for a day we had to replace two tables in the dining area that somehow caught fire.  Besides, working would give me something to do to take my mind off seeing Jess in that chair, with the blood on the floor, and that look on her face... 

I could still picture it in my mind, in perfect detail.

Every detail.

Wait.

Now that I was calmer, I realized something.  Something about the blood.  I couldn’t be right.  In my mind I knew I had to be wrong.

But I wasn’t.

“Uh, Rosie, I need to run back upstairs for a minute.  Thanks for the offer to watch things today but I’d rather be here.  Oh,” I said, remembering something else.  “What was it you were going to tell me about Jess?  Remember, from earlier?  You said there was something I didn’t know about her?”

“Oh, my.  This isn’t the time, Dell.  Ask me again later.  Don’t see how it could matter now, anyways.”

Maybe it didn’t, but if I was right about what I had seen in the room, where Jess died, then it might mean more than either of us realized.

From the commons room, a terrible shout broke the silence.  There were no words in it, just the sound of anguish.  Kevin must have told Horace about Jess.

Kevin kept Horace downstairs.  Probably by telling him that the room his wife was in was a crime scene now and he’d be able to see his wife after the Coroner had removed her.  I wasn’t sure how long that would keep Horace away, but hopefully it would be long enough.

I went back up the stairs two at a time, knowing I had to look back in that room quickly before Cutter and Blake did something to change things.  I had to see it, again, for myself.

At the door to the room I knocked, then stepped right in like I owned the place.  Which I do, if we want to get technical.

“Are you nuts?” the Senior Sergeant demanded, his voice raising with each word.  “This is a crime scene!  Get out!”

“Oh, right, sorry,” I said, playing the sweet, innocent woman.  “Didn’t mean to muck anything up.  Just wanted to let you know that her husband is downstairs.”

“Great, just what I need.”  Cutter threw his hands in the air and paced back and forth.

In that moment I saw what I needed to see.  I looked over at Jess.  She was so pale and stiff.  Tears stung my eyes but I forced myself to look down at the blood on the floor.

There was a puddle of it around her feet.  That was to be expected when someone bled out, I’m sure.  That could be explained by a suicide.

The spatters of blood that trailed away from her chair, across the pale brown rug on the floor, and then up the wall to the windowsill definitely could not be explained by a woman who sat in a chair to slowly cut away at her wrists.

I ran the scene through my mind in several ways, hating myself for being so cold and logical when my friend was sitting in a chair, right there, dead.  No matter how I tried to picture it there was no way I could explain the bloodtrail to the window.  Not if Jess had killed herself by cutting her wrists.

It didn’t add up.

Which meant only one thing.

“Come on, Dell,” Cutter said, walking up to me and pushing me—not very gently—back into the hall.  “Blake, stay out here and make sure no one else goes in that room until the Coroner shows up.  Hear me?”

“Yes, Senior Sergeant.”  Blake followed us out, too, and then shut the door so I couldn’t see inside anymore.  Didn’t matter.  I found what I was looking for.  Not what I had wanted to see, but what I needed to see.

Jess hadn’t killed herself.

Someone had done it for her.

I held my trembling fingers over my mouth and let Cutter direct me to the stairs and down.  This day was quickly becoming a nightmare.  Cutter had to know about this, didn’t he?  Not even a yobbo like him could have missed that.

“Senior Sergeant Cutter, did you see…?”

“I want you to let the Coroner into that room when he gets here.”  He spoke right over me, ignoring my question entirely.  “Understand?  We’ll get your Inn back to ya in short order.  No worries.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” I tried explaining.

“Right.  So.  I’ll go have a convo with whomajigger now.  Jess’s husband.  What was his name?”

“Horace, but—”

“Right.  Be a good sheila and bring us some tea, right?”

Oh, he did not just call me a sheila.  I am so going to slap that stupid look right out of his eyes!

“Mom,” Kevin called to me from the front door, motioning me over to him.  I guess he could see the intention written on my face, and once again he saved his mother from doing something she might have to explain in front of a judge.

“Kevin,” I hissed, not even at a whisper. 

“I know Cutter’s hard to take, Mom, but you can’t just—”

“Nevermind him!  I need to tell you something.  I don’t think Jess killed herself!”

“I know.”

That answer made me feel faint.  “What do you mean, you know?”

He pulled me out onto the front porch and pulled the door closed behind us.  “I was just talking to Horace.  Not a nice bloke.”

“I kind of figured that out.  I knew him before, you know.  Hasn’t changed a bit.  He called here this morning, before dawn, demanding to know where Jess was.”

“That so?”  He nodded several times, and I could see him sorting information in his mind.  “Interesting.”

“Interesting?  How’s that?”

“Because,” he said.  “I think someone did kill Jess.  And I think Horace was that someone.”

At the same time, we both looked in through the window, to where Senior Sergeant Cutter was talking with Horace.  His eyes turned toward us, as if he could feel us watching him, and there was something in them I can’t quite describe.  Something dark.

Something murderous.

***

When my son came home from school one day and told me that he wanted to be a police officer, it was one of the happiest days of my life.  I was so proud of him.  Worried, too, because what mother wouldn’t be, but that didn’t keep me from framing a picture of him in his police uniform his first day on the job here in Lakeshore.

Even so, there’s been times when I wish he’d picked a different career.  Cutting stones in the quarry outside of town.  Becoming a fisherman in Sydney.  Moving to the States and going to work in Hollywood, even.  He had the face for it.

As a police officer, he sees a lot of the bad things in life.  People doing bad things.  Robbing.  Lying.

Murder.

‘Course, this time I got to see the evil that men do to each other firsthand.  My own friend, killed in a room at my Inn.  It was just too much.

The coffee was helping.  It was the middle of the afternoon and in Lakeshore that meant that most people were either at home or at work.  I should be at work.  I just couldn’t bring myself to be in the building right now.  I know I told Rosie that I wouldn’t take the rest of the day off but after finding out that Jess’s death was actually her murder, I had to get some air.

That, and pick my son’s brain for what the police were going to do about it.

At least we were alone in Cindy Morris’s Milkbar, just me and him and Cindy over behind the deli counter slicing up meat to make some of her famous sandwiches.  She always had a few wrapped and ready for people stopping through for something quick to eat.

Tall coolers stood along the walls around us, filled with cold drinks and cold cuts and other assorted perishables.  Rows of shelves on the one side displayed canned food products and dry goods like flour and salt.  Me and Kevin sat at one of the three round tables Cindy had in place for folks who wanted to sit and have a meal here.  She did a pretty brisk business in this little store of hers.  It was the town’s grocery store and deli and gossip bar all in one.  She’d had the walls painted white to match the outside not too long ago, and the wood floors had been waxed just last month.  Cindy took good care of her place.

“You and I both know Cutter’s gonna try and sweep this under the rug,” Kevin said after swallowing a bite of his vegemite sandwich.  “He’d rather take the easy answer than dig in the dirt.”

“We all know that.  How that man keeps his job is beyond me.”

“He must be very well connected, have friends in high places.” He shrugged it off.  “That’s the way of it sometimes. Corruption happens everywhere.”

I was a little surprised at his casual acceptance of the situation. “Someday that’ll change.”  I really, really hope I’m right in that.

“Maybe,” Kevin admits, “but that day isn’t today.  Right now I need to find proof that Horace killed your friend.”

“What did he say to you?”

Putting his sandwich down, Kevin brushed crumbs off his hands, giving me that look I know so well.  “You know I shouldn’t be telling you ‘bout this.”

“Yes, but you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“Because you’re just going to keep pressing me until you find out.”

That, at least, makes me smile.  “You know me so well.”

“The great Dell Powers.  To know her is to love her.”  He took a sip of his soft drink before leaning his elbows on the table, closer to me, so I could hear him as he lowered his voice.  “Horace is one right tosser, I can tell ya that.  Tosser with a capital T.  He’s upset, and he’s angry, but I don’t get a sense that he’s sad that Jess is dead.”

“I tell you, Kevin, from what he said to me over the phone I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the two of them come to blows.”

“Maybe they did.”

I could only nod my head in agreement.  “I was thinking the same thing.  Maybe he got to the Inn this morning, early.  Maybe even right after he called.  For all I know he might have called from my parking lot.”

“That’s what I was thinking.  Except, go another step further.  Maybe he got here before his phone call.  Then he gets into Jess’s room, they have a bit of a blue. They have go at each other, and he kills her.  Makes his call to you, hey I’m on my way in, where’s my wife, blah blah blah, and poof.  Instant alibi.”

That idea hadn’t occurred to me.  Could someone be so devious, so…evil, that they could commit a murder, then try to cover it up by pretending to be somewhere else?

Of course they could.

My hand found the string of the unicorn necklace, and pulled the little charm out of my shirt.  I held it tight as I thought about it.

“Wouldn’t I have seen him?  Coming into the Inn?”

“Where were you last night?” he asked, all police business.

I thought back.  It seemed like a lifetime ago.  “In bed.  I went to bed early.”

He nodded to that.  “And Rosie?”

“She left early.  Came in late.”  Oh, snap.  Anyone coulda snuck into the Inn.  Including Horace.

Kevin was watching me, waiting for me to make the same connections that he obviously had already made.  “But if they had a fight,” I wondered, “wouldn’t there be bruises on her?”

He shook his head.  “Maybe yes, maybe no.  Bruises take time to show up.  Plus, they don’t show up after death.  A person’s blood needs to be flowing for their skin to bruise.  Jess’s was…”

“Spilling out onto the floor,” I finish for him.

“Right.  Sorry.”

“No, it’s all right.  I have to deal with this.  It kind of happened in my own house.  So.  Horace could’ve beaten her up and then killed her.”

“That’s the theory.”  He drummed his fingers on the table.  “Except.”

“Except?  Except what?”

“Well, there’s a couple of things that don’t add up.”

“Like?”

“For one,” he said, “how did Horace get into her room?  Did she just let him in and then quietly let him beat her up?”

“That’s actually two things,” I point out, “not one.  How did he get in the room, and how could they have a fight without anyone hearing it.”

The corner of his mouth curled.  “You shoulda been the cop.  That’s some brilliant deduction.  You always did like solving puzzles.  So, yes.  Take the first part of it, then.  How’d he get into the room?”

“Oh!  That’s what I was going to tell you earlier.  The spare key to Jess’s room is missing.”

Kevin’s eyes widened.  “Really?  Well, that’s a stroke of luck then, isn’t it?”

“Luck?  Why?”

“Find that key…”

“Find the killer,” I said, catching on.  “We could search Horace’s luggage and his car and his blooming pants pockets!”

“Not without a search warrant.”

“You don’t need a warrant,” I pointed out, “if he gives you permission.”

“He’s not going to give us permission.”

He sounded so certain.  “Why not?”

“Because if Horace is a killer,” he said, slowly, “then he ain’t gonna just let me feel around in his pockets for the key to the victim’s room.”

“Oh.  Right.”  I felt foolish.  Foolish, and older than I’d ever felt in my forty-plus years.  Not old.  Just older.  “So our killer has the key, more than likely, we just can’t go looking for it without a judge giving us permission.  Fine.  We’ll get a judge’s permission.”

“We’ll try,” he shrugged.

Frustration started to slip over me.  “So what was the other thing that was bothering you?”

Tearing off a corner of his sandwich he popped it into his mouth and chewed around his words.  “See, it kinda goes in hand with the other problem.  How did they have a fight without anyone hearing them?  That’s the question, but more to the point,” and here he leaned in closer still, “how did Horace make her sit still so he could cut her wrists?”

I blinked at that image.  I hadn’t even thought of that.  Why would Jess sit still to be killed?  There hadn’t been one cut, there had been dozens.  For that matter, after her wrists were cut why would she sit in one place and just…die?

With a little shake of my whole self I pushed my lunch aside.  I sure wasn’t hungry anymore.  “So, lots of questions to be answered.  There must be something else that made you suspect Horace?  Something other than how not upset he was by her death?”

“There was.  Just not sure I should say.”

“That’s fine,” I told him with a pleasant smile.  “I already know about it, anyway.”

“What?” he asked, obviously surprised.  “Did Jess tell ya ‘bout their money troubles?”

He’s so cute when I surprise him.  Makes his accent come out stronger.  “Ah.  So, Horace had a motive.”