Mayhem at the Orient Express (13 page)

“You’re not.” It wasn’t a question, so technically, I couldn’t be accused of sticking
my nose where it absolutely, positively, totally had no business.

Levi didn’t so much lean forward as he shifted just slightly in his seat. The air
stirred and I caught the combined scents of burgers and onion rings that clung to
his jeans and red wool sweater. Have I mentioned that I’m nuts about onion rings?

He fixed his gaze to mine. “I like a woman who keeps me guessing,” he said.

I grabbed my coffee cup and took a sip, and while I was at it, I told him there was
more coffee in the pot. He declined with a shake of his head that caused one honey-colored
curl of hair to brush his forehead.

The coffee was supposed to distract me, and it would have worked if it weren’t for
that damned little curl!

“I’m not sure you’re going to find that kind of woman up here on the island,” I said,
and three cheers for me, I called on all the experience I’d garnered from years of
attending cocktail parties, and made it sound like we were having the most normal
small-talk conversation in the world.

Even though something about Levi’s tall and gorgeous presence made me feel anything
but normal.

But then, a sizzling bloodstream and a pounding heart have a way of doing that to
a girl.

“The people I’ve met here on the island are pretty up-front and not very mysterious,”
I said. “They’re good people. Honest people.”

“I didn’t say I was looking for dishonest.” With a tiny smile on his lips, Levi pushed
a hand through his hair. “Besides, if I listen to everything Chandra says, it sounds
like some people around here have lives that are plenty interesting. You know . . .”
He raised his eyebrows. “Dramatic and passionate.”

I felt my cheeks flame and set down my coffee cup, the better to drop my face in my
hands and groan, “I hope you don’t believe everything you hear from Chandra.”

He laughed and I came out of hiding to find his smile warming the space between us
for one second. Two.

A gust of wind rattled the branches of the tree outside the kitchen window and we
both flinched. Levi got up and poured himself a glass of water. He brought it back
to the counter, but he didn’t sit down.

That was a good thing, I told myself. I could switch positions in my chair. I did . . .
thus assuring a little more room to breathe, and a lot less of the heat that inconveniently
erupted when Levi was sitting too close.

He set his glass on the counter. “No worries,” he said. “About Chandra, that is. I
haven’t lived here more than a couple months, but hey, Levi’s is nothing if not the
center of island gossip. Even before I met Chandra, I’d heard about her. I know she’s . . .”

Searching for the right words, he hesitated, so I filled in the blanks. “Inventive.
Imaginative. Funny. Funky.” These were not bad qualities, I realized with a start.
In fact, they were the very personality traits I admired in so many of my friends
back in New York. “Chandra’s not a bad person,” I announced, and no one was more surprised
to hear it than me. Which didn’t mean I’d completely lost my mind. “Now if she’d only
do something about Jerry Garcia.”

I expected Levi to ask what the heck I was talking about, but instead, he laughed.
“Alvin Littlejohn loves my Caesar salad,” he explained. “I know all about you and
Kate and Chandra and your coerced book club.”

“Then I guess some of that stuff Chandra was talking about at dinner . . . about thirteen
suspects and being snowed in, and the way she was asking questions . . . I guess it
all makes sense. We just read
Murder on the Orient Express
.” Oh yes, this was subtle of me, and I congratulated myself. I had successfully nudged
the conversation to where I knew it had to go. Even if I didn’t want to see it arrive
there.

“It’s only natural everybody on the island would be talking about the murder.” Levi
stated the obvious. “And like you said, Chandra has quite an imagination.”

“I guess she’s not the only one.” I clutched my hands together in my lap. “When we
stopped at the bar this morning—”

“And you grilled me about what I saw the night of the murder.”

I pursed my lips. “That wasn’t grilling. It was polite conversation. And like you
said, only natural. Of course I’m as curious as everyone else about what happened
to Peter.”

“Hence, the grilling. About what I saw.”

I poked my glasses up to the bridge of my nose. “Only you didn’t see anything. Remember,
that’s what you told me. You didn’t notice what was happening across the street because
you were so busy in the kitchen and behind the bar.”

Levi didn’t need to confirm or deny. I have an excellent memory.

He downed his water and took the glass over to the sink.

Dumb luck? Or a calculated move?

It was hard to say.

I only know that it was dark over by the sink, and when Levi turned around, his face
was lost in the shadows. “Like I told you back at the bar, we were slammed.”

The warmth had been nice, but sometimes—like it or not—it’s impossible to ignore the
cold, hard facts. “Except tonight,” I reminded him, “when I came in here to get dessert,
I heard you tell everyone in the dining room that you brought the apple cobbler because
you didn’t want it to go to waste. You said that since the storm started, it’s been
slow at the restaurant.”

Honestly, I think I would have thought less of him if he’d scrambled to come up with
some half-baked explanation.

But I wouldn’t have been as disappointed as I was when he headed for the door.

“It’s getting late,” he said before he walked out of the kitchen. “I think I’ll turn
in.”

After he was gone, I spilled the rest of my coffee into the sink and watched it go
down the drain.

Just like my hopes.

No, no, no . . . not those kinds of hopes! Like I said before, I wasn’t looking for
a relationship with anybody. Even if the anybody in question was tall, gorgeous, and
honey-colored.

I was talking about murder.

And how I’d hoped that Levi would slip up and tell me why he’d lied about what he
saw the night Peter was killed at the Orient Express.

• • •

I woke up at 3:17.

My first thought was to blame the coffee, but I knew that wasn’t true. It must have
been years of living in New York that inured me to caffeine; I often drank coffee
late at night, and it never made me toss and turn.

No, something else was bothering me. Something I couldn’t put a finger on.

Until I realized it was deathly quiet outside.

No wind.

As if moving would break the spell and call back the storm, I lay perfectly still
in my queen-sized bed, listening for the all-too-familiar sounds of creaking trees
and scraping branches.

Instead, all I heard was the distant drumming of waves on the beach. For the last
few days, their tempo had been pounding, furious. Now, it reminded me of the gentle
rhythm of a lullaby.

One, two. One, two.

I closed my eyes, and let the sound lull me back to la-la land.

One, two. One, two.

Thud, thud, thud.

My eyes flew open.

That wasn’t an outside sound. It came from inside the house.

I propped myself on my elbows and held my breath, and I was just about to tell myself
that I was imagining the sound of footsteps—or dreaming—when the sound echoed through
the silent house again.

Thud, thud, thud.

Someone was walking around upstairs.

No sooner had the thought occurred to me than I told myself to get a grip. There were
thirteen adults and two kids in the house, after all, and no rules against getting
up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom.

Except I didn’t hear any water running.

Thud, thud, thud.

I swung my feet over the side of the bed, poked them into my slippers, and reached
for my robe.

My private suite is at the back of the house, parallel to the kitchen. It’s not nearly
as big as my condo back in New York, but it’s plenty roomy enough for me. I had the
door closed between my bedroom and the living/reading/den area where Kate was sleeping
on the pull-out couch, and I inched it open and bent my head to listen.

The only sound I heard was the muffled rhythm of Kate’s breathing.

And more footsteps from overhead.

As quickly and quietly as I could, I slipped through the living room and out into
the hallway. From here, the sounds were more defined, and there was no doubt they
were coming from the upstairs hallway.

I stood frozen at the bottom of the steps, and when I realized my stomach was in my
throat and my hands were suddenly shaking, I grabbed the banister and tried the calming
exercises I’d practiced nonstop with the therapist who’d helped me get from one day
to the next in those final, chaotic months in New York.

“Stop being stupid, Bea,” I reminded myself. “Stop being a wussie.” These were not
words Dr. Byncrest ever used. He was supportive, positive.

“It’s your house, Bea,” he’d remind me, and I reminded myself of the fact right now.
“It’s your life. Nobody can keep you from being in charge and in control. Nobody can
take your power unless you let them.”

Brave words, and thank goodness, I finally came to believe them. Dr. Byncrest saved
my life. And my sanity.

But then, all this sounds a little crazy, doesn’t it? That’s because I’ve never confessed
about what happened in New York.

And about the stalker who turned my world upside down.

13

H
is name was George Mattingly, but of course, I didn’t know that. Not at first. Back
when it all began—three years before I moved to South Bass Island—all I knew was that
I sometimes felt as if someone was watching me, that I sometimes was sure someone
was following me, that I often felt as if my life was under a microscope, every moment
of it dissected and examined.

My friends said it was only natural. I was young, reasonably good looking, and pretty
darned successful in a career I hadn’t chosen as much as it had chosen me. Of course
people were watching me.

For a while, I actually fell for the story.

But when strange notes and gifts began to arrive . . . When I got the heavy-breathing
phone calls . . . When I heard someone walking through the condo at night when I was
the only one there . . .

The thought crackled through me like a jolt of electricity, and I snapped out of it.
And though I didn’t remember my knees giving out, I found myself sitting on the bottommost
of the steps that led up to my guest suites.

“South Bass Island, Bea,” I reminded myself, shaking myself back to reality, my voice
entirely too small and breathy for my own liking. “All that is yesterday’s news, and
George Mattlingly is in prison.”

At least that’s where I’d last heard he was.

My hands began to shake again, and I clutched them together and reminded myself that
since the trial and Mattingly’s conviction, I’d taken every precaution humanly possible
to keep my movements private and my life, a secret. I’d thrown off all the trappings
of my old life. I’d left New York. In an effort to disguise myself, I’d even taken
to hiding behind these silly glasses . . .

I put a hand to my face and realized I’d left my black-rimmed glasses next to my bed.

No matter, I didn’t need them, anyway; the lenses were nothing more than window glass.

I was good. I was covered. No one knew I was here on the island, and the people who
did know knew because they were here on the island with me, but they didn’t know I
was me.

Trust me, this little bit of twisted logic made perfect sense inside my cannonballing
mind.

Besides, I reminded myself, if Mattingly wasn’t right where he was supposed to be
for the next six years, I certainly would have heard the news from Jason Arbuckle,
my attorney. Jason would never lie to me. Not about the man who’d made my life hell.

Soothed by the thought, I pulled myself to my feet, ignored my Silly Putty knees,
and started up the stairs. At the top, I paused, bending my ear, waiting for the sounds
of footsteps to come again.

I wasn’t disappointed. This time, the shuffling footsteps were followed by a smooth,
mechanical sound, like a doorknob turning.

There was a nightlight on outside the bathroom, but really, it didn’t help much. I
squinted, and looked from door to door, and when I thought I saw the door of Suite
#5 inch open, all my hard-won logic went right out the window and I careened from
nervous straight to panic mode.

Suite #5 was Hank Florentine’s room.

Yes, of course I told myself to get a grip, but it was kind of hard considering that
my mind was suddenly racing through the possibilities, all of them bad.

If one of my guests didn’t like the subject of murder being brought up at the dinner
table because that guest had killed Peter . . .

If that person thought his (or her) secret wasn’t safe with a cop in the house . . .

If that someone decided Hank had to be kept quiet—or worse . . .

Before I even realized I was moving that way, I was outside the door of Suite #5.
There was a table nearby, with a brass candlestick on it, and I grabbed it and wrapped
my sweaty fingers around the base. When the door finally opened, I was ready, candlestick
raised over my head.

Good thing I had the presence of mind not to bonk Chandra with it!

“Oh my goodness! Bea!” She gasped and pressed a hand to her heart and the unbuttoned
blouse she was holding closed with one hand. “What on earth are you doing?”

“What am
I
doing?” My heart was pounding so hard, I could barely hear my own rough whispers,
what with all the noise. “Chandra, you scared me to death! What are
you
doing?”

Her grin was the only answer I needed.

That, and a glimpse of Hank through the open door. He was lying in bed, one arm bent
behind his head. It was a good thing the lights in Suite #5 were off and I couldn’t
see much. I swear, the man was as naked as a jaybird.

• • •

“I thought you couldn’t stand him.”

That was me, my voice low. After all, my dining room was filled with guests eating
breakfast, and one of those guests was Hank. I might still be reeling from the discovery
of Chandra’s midnight tryst, but I’m not completely without good sense. Tapping one
toe, I stared at Chandra, who was plucking English muffins from the toaster and buttering
them.

Carefully, carefully buttering each one.

Kate zoomed by. She’d just delivered the first dish of eggs to the dining room and
she stopped at the stove and waited for Luella to reload the bowl. “Who hates who?”
she asked.

“Whom.” My correction was instinctive, and with a wave of one hand, I told Kate not
to pay it any mind.

“Chandra.” I pointed, and whispered, “Chandra said Hank was a snake in the grass.”

Chandra’s expression was deadpan. “He is a snake in the grass,” she grumbled, carefully
buttering another muffin. “He’s a creep. A hard-headed jerk. A—”

“Then what were you doing in bed with him?”

Kate’s mouth fell open. Luella turned off the stove and stared at Chandra. They both
hurried over and we gathered in a tight knot around Chandra and the toaster.

“You? In bed with—”

“Sandy, I can’t believe you. I remember the day you divorced the man. You said you’d
never—”

“You were upset when he got here. You didn’t want to be under the same roof as Hank.”
She’d finished with the last of the muffins and I plucked the plate out of her hands
then hurried into the dining room with the muffins in one hand and the newly filled
bowl of eggs in the other. “Don’t try and talk your way out of this,” I warned Chandra
when I got back to the kitchen in record time. “When I heard you walking around upstairs,
I thought there was a burglar in the house. You owe me an explanation. What were you
doing?”

A tiny smile played around her lips. “What weren’t we doing?”

I felt heat rise in my cheeks. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, what were you thinking?”

Chandra rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, girls. None of us is a kid. You know I wasn’t
thinking. Except to think about how good the sex always was with Hank.”

“But you hate the man!” Yes, this declaration came out just a little too loud. I clapped
a hand over my mouth.

Chandra puckered. “I hate certain things about Hank. That’s for sure. But there are
other things . . .” Her face split with a grin. “Besides,” she added with a look at
the closed dining room door, “Hank and I, we were talking. I mean, when we weren’t
doing other stuff.” She added a wink for dramatic effect. “And guess what, ladies?
I found out something interesting. You know, about Peter’s murder.”

Chandra scooted over to the kitchen table with Kate and Luella right behind her. It
took me a moment to shake myself out of my surprise-induced stupor and follow.

While they sat down, I stood at the head of the table, my fists on my hips. “Are you
saying that you had sex with Hank just to try and get him to talk about the murder?”
I asked.

Chandra’s laugh ricocheted against the ceiling fan above the table. She grabbed my
arm and pulled me into the seat next to hers. “That’s not all I was trying to get
him to do, and I have to say, honey, it worked like a charm.” She laughed again, and
when she was done, she smoothed a hand over the heavy sweater she’d pulled on earlier
before she ducked next door to feed the cats.

“It’s sweet of you to worry about my morals. Really.” Chandra gave my arm a friendly
pat before she burst into another laugh. “But don’t be silly. I went to bed with Hank
because I wanted to go to bed with Hank. Having him talk about the murder, that was
just icing on a very sweet cake.”

“So?” Luella leaned closer. “What did he say? About Peter?”

“And the murder?” Kate chimed in.

Chandra held up a hand, her index finger pointing to the ceiling, and in a really
bad Belgian accent said, “Well, for one thing,
mon ami
, it was not, how you say, a robbery.”

I ignored the literary reference. And the incorrect French. Since I wasn’t sure Kate
and Luella had picked up on the real significance of the statement, I filled them
in. “If the Orient Express was robbed, that would mean it could have been a random
crime. Somebody taking advantage of the fact that Peter was alone. Or thinking no
one would discover the robbery for a while because the weather was so bad. But since
nothing was taken—”

“It could be because we showed up,” Luella said. “Maybe there wasn’t time for the
killer to ransack the cash register.”

“Except that we didn’t see anyone in the restaurant. Unless . . .” Thinking, I drummed
my fingers against the table. “I suppose the killer could have escaped through the
door in the kitchen.”

“How can you say that so calmly?” Kate’s complexion was green. “That means when we
were walking in . . .” She didn’t finish the thought. But then, she was busy swallowing
hard.

I nodded. “He could have been right there, just walking out.”

“So the fact that Peter wasn’t robbed?” Chandra wrinkled her nose and shrugged. “Okay,
I admit it. I don’t really get it, either. Hank made it sound like it was some kind
of big deal.”

“Because it means the killer might have had another motive,” I pointed out. “Something
more personal.”

As one, all our gazes traveled to the dining room.

I knew they were thinking what I was thinking. Which is also why I knew I had to cut
off any panic at the knees. “We can’t say for sure,” I reminded them. “We don’t know
if it’s one of my guests.”

“But we know Amanda got the same kind of threatening note Peter got,” Luella said.

“And we know the Princess is here on the island to see a man,” Kate put in. “What
if that man was Peter?”

“And we know Ted and Peter had a fight,” Chandra said.

“And we know Levi lied about being busy Monday night.” This was a detail I had yet
to report to the ladies, and though it gave me no pleasure (and yes, I was annoyed
at myself when I realized it), I told them everything that happened with Levi the
night before. Well, not exactly everything. I left out the stuff about the darkness
and the warmth of his smile.

Taking it all in, Luella tipped her head. “So we know plenty.”

Kate sighed. “But we don’t know anything.”

“Not anything about Peter.” This was a new idea, and I wondered why it hadn’t occurred
to me sooner. I popped out of my chair and headed into the dining room, and the other
ladies trailed behind.

Lucky for me, everyone but Ted was done with breakfast and had already left the room.
That meant I didn’t have to face Levi and wonder what was going on behind those gleaming
blue eyes of his. Or face Hank, for that matter.

For one thing, I wasn’t sure I could talk to Hank with a straight face, not after
seeing him the way I’d seen him in the wee hours of the morning. For another, I wasn’t
sure I was all that comfortable interrogating Ted, not with a professional in the
room.

Ted was just scooping up the last of the eggs from the serving bowl, and I sat down
next to him.

“You were Peter’s landlord.”

We both knew this to be true. That would certainly explain the
no duh!
look he tossed my way while he tucked into the last English muffin.

I was in no mood to beat around the bush. “What can you tell me about him?” I asked.

Ted chewed and swallowed. “The man was an unprincipled creep,” he said.

“Come on.” Kate took the chair on the other side of Ted. “We all knew Peter. He was
charming.”