When Magic Is Murder (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 4) (3 page)

CHAPTER
4

I stared at Jasper for a brief moment,
my mind racing with the inexplicable news. Then a massive bolt of adrenaline
surged through me, igniting the familiar sensations from my years as a PI. Even
though I’d returned to my hometown to run the family business, my mind was
hardwired to take action whenever I heard about someone in need.

“We need to call 911,” I said,
reaching into my purse. “And we need to—”

“I did that already!” Jasper lifted
his hand so we could see his phone. “They’re on the way.”

“Okay, perfect. In that case,
someone should…”

I turned to Connie, but she was
slumped against the counter, mouth open and unblinking eyes fixed on the floor.

“Connie?”

Her eyes widened, but she didn’t
say anything.

“I’m going outside to take a look.”
I waited until she’d acknowledged my remark with a small nod. “Will you go out
front and wait for the police?”

She nodded again.

“And Jasper?” I turned to the man
in the chef’s coat. “Where’s Eloise?”

He pointed at the open door. “She’s
on a bench out in the gardens. She started walking back with me, but then her
legs got really unsteady. I was afraid she was going to faint.”

“Okay,” I said. “Come with me and
sit with Eloise until she can get back inside. I’ll go down to the gazebo and
have a look.”

“Sure,” he said. “But the guy’s
dead. There’s nothing you can do for him.”

I gave Connie’s hand a quick
squeeze and hurried out the door. Jasper followed me across the flagstone
terrace. With a picturesque view of the mountains and a built-in fire pit, the
expansive outdoor space was utilized often when the weather was favorable.
Since it was January and winter was upon us, the tables and chairs had been
covered with heavy green canvas tarps.

“Were you coming outside to meet
Eloise?” I asked Jasper as we descended a flight of stone steps. “Or did she
come and—”

“I heard her scream,” he said
before I could finish. “I’d stepped outside for a second to cool off.” He
gestured to the left when we reached a fork in the path. “We have three events
tonight, and I got pretty sweaty hustling in the kitchen. I just thought maybe
it would be…” He let the thought fade into a tense silence. Then he said, “I’ve
never seen anyone look as terrified as Eloise did just now.”

“Let’s go find her, okay? You can
help her get inside and I’ll go on down to the gazebo.”

Jasper nodded silently and lead the
way. We walked another twenty feet down the curving path to a long stone bench
that was nestled beneath a pergola made of pine and oak. Eloise Turner sat in
the chilly air, teeth chattering and fingers working the hem of a white apron.
I’d met her a few weeks earlier when I delivered a cake for an anniversary
celebration.

“Eloise?” My voice sounded too loud
for the quiet setting.

She didn’t acknowledge our arrival
in any way. Jasper took a few steps closer before kneeling on the ground and
gently shaking her arm.

“Oh!” she gasped. “I’m sorry…” Her
eyes quickly moved from Jasper’s face to mine and then back again. “Did you
tell Connie?”

“Yes,” Jasper answered. “And the
police are on the way.”

“Eloise,” I said. “My name is Kate
Reed. I think you—”

“From the pie place, right?”

Her question seemed incongruous to
the situation, but I answered with a quick smile. Then I suggested that she
return to the hotel with Jasper.

“What for?” Her voice was delicate
and low. “I’m okay here.”

I walked under the pergola and sat
beside her. “You should probably go inside,” I said slowly. “Maybe someone can
fix you a cup of tea.”

She shook her head. “I’m not
thirsty.”

I shot a quick look at Jasper, lifting
my chin and tilting my head just enough to invite him to intervene.

“Wheezy?” A faint grin crossed her
lips at the sound of the nickname. “Come into the kitchen with me, okay?”

When Jasper took her hand and stood
up, Eloise followed him without question. Between the fright of finding a body
and the ensuing tempest of emotions, she was clearly numb with shock.

“Thanks, Jasper,” I said as they
walked away. “I’ll wait out here until the police arrive.”

I watched them for a few seconds
longer. There was something sweet and touching about the way he slipped one arm
around her waist and she dropped her head onto his shoulder. After they
vanished around a tall hedgerow, I turned and quickly walked another thirty
feet down the winding gravel path to the gazebo.

Connie and her husband had added
the outdoor pavilion to serve as an open-air location for yoga classes,
intimate dinners and special events. It was a spacious structure, something
around fifteen feet in diameter, built from hand-hewn beams that were reclaimed
from an old ski chalet that once stood on nearby land.

I approached slowly, watching for
anything underfoot and pausing at the bottom of a short staircase. With the
exception of a single muddy footprint and a few drops of what appeared to be
coffee, I didn’t notice anything significant on the stairs. When I reached the
top step, I stopped again to take in the scene.

A man dressed in a tuxedo and white
shirt was sprawled in the middle of the gazebo. He was on his back with one leg
tucked beneath the other at an awkward angle. He looked to be around forty or
so, with a scruffy beard, a prominent scar on one cheek and a tattoo on the
back of his left hand. There was a contusion on his forehead, a jagged and
bloody blemish that appeared to be fresh. His eyes, wide and dark, were fixed
on the metal roof. His mouth was open slightly and white foam speckled his
lips. The cuffs of his trousers were frayed slightly and his shirt was
splattered with reddish-brown drops of dried blood. A white glove covered his
right hand and a tuft of bright pink fabric extended from inside the left
sleeve of his jacket.

“What were you doing out here?” I
whispered, kneeling beside the man. “And how did this happen?”

I carefully pushed up his right
sleeve. When I checked for a pulse, there was nothing to discover; his heart
had obviously stopped beating and his skin was growing cold. I repositioned the
sleeve and leaned in to study the sizeable wound above his left eye. It looked
like blunt force trauma; the type of injury sustained when you’re hit by a
heavy object or strike your head during a fall. There was something gritty and
brown on the wound. After a few moments of speculation about the granular
substance, I stood and scanned the interior of the gazebo.

My eyes came to rest on the nearest
bench, jutting toward the man at an unusual angle. It was one of six arranged
around the edge of the platform. Since the other five were flush with the
railing, it seemed reasonable that the man had somehow fallen, struck his head
on the bench and then tumbled to the floor. I moved closer and noticed blood on
one corner of the seat.

After ten years as a PI in Chicago,
I knew that protecting the integrity of a crime scene was paramount. Since I’d
confirmed that the man was dead, I decided to go back down the steps and wait
on the gravel pathway until the first responders arrived.

As I stood in the silence, I
spotted something bright blue a few feet from the edge of the path. It was one
of the textured paper sleeves that coffee shops use when serving hot beverages.
Since there are only a handful of java joints in Crescent Creek, I knew
instantly that the blue sleeve was from Uncommon Grounds on Westminster Street.
I looked around the area, sweeping my gaze left and then right, until my eyes locked
on a white paper cup a few feet further down the path.

“There you are,” I said quietly,
walking closer to take a quick picture of the cup with my phone.

Whether purposefully thrown or
accidentally dropped, the cup had landed just under a juniper bush. It was
close enough that I could make out the day’s date and a name written on the
side in black marker:
Bitsy
. There was only one person in town with that
name, a woman called Bitsy Sanger. As I wondered why she might have visited the
Lodge earlier in the day, I heard the familiar squeal of a walkie-talkie in the
distance. A few seconds later, I saw Amanda Crane, an officer with the Crescent
Creek PD, scurrying down the gravel path. She was followed by Dina Kincaid, the
department’s lead detective, and a pair of EMTs carrying trauma kits.

“Kate?” Amanda said as she
approached. “Did you call this in?”

“No,” I answered. “I checked for a
pulse and then came down here to wait until you arrived.”

Dina moved closer, peering at the
man in the gazebo. “Did you find him?”

I shook my head. “Eloise Turner,” I
said, as the EMTs began to examine the man. “She works in the kitchen.”

“So…” Dina’s mouth formed a weary
smile. “I’m a little confused here, Kate. We had an anonymous call shortly
before Jasper Turner’s. It was a woman reporting someone in distress. She used
one of the house phones inside the hotel.”

“I don’t know about that. I was in
the kitchen with Connie when Jasper rushed in and told us that Eloise had found
this guy.” I nodded at the man in the tuxedo. “Since Jasper had already called
911, I came straightaway to see if I could render aid.”

She nodded. “Okay, so the distress
call was—”

“He’s gone,” one of the medical
techs announced. “No BP, no pulse.”

“Thanks, Tom.” Dina pulled her
phone from a pocket. “Will you excuse me for a sec, Katie? I’m going to get the
Medical Examiner’s office out here.”

While she stepped away to make her
call, I watched the EMTs as they packed up their kits. Amanda had joined them
in the gazebo. She was slowly walking around the interior, staring intently at
each board and crevice.

“Amanda?”

She stopped and looked over her
shoulder. “Yeah?”

“There’s blood on that seat.” I
pointed at the bench that was angled away from the railing. “Looks like maybe
he hit his head on the way down.”

She nodded silently and walked
toward the bench. “I see that, yeah. Thanks, Katie.”

When she looked at me again, the
tight smile on her face told me it was time to keep quiet. I wasn’t on the
force. And I had no real role at the scene. The last thing I wanted to do was
compromise the investigation or get in the way.

“Maybe I’ll go back inside,” I
said. “I’ll wait in there if you all want to talk to me.”

Amanda answered with a silent nod
before resuming her search. As I turned to leave, Dina called my name.

“Don’t leave until I can get your
statement,” she said.

I repeated what I’d already told
Amanda and moved slowly up the gravel path. On the walk back to the terrace, I
didn’t see anything else noteworthy or unusual. I started to turn around
and share that detail with Dina, but then decided it would be better if I
simply went back inside to wait.

CHAPTER
5

Eloise Turner perched on the edge
of a guest chair in Connie’s office, twisting a clump of knotted tissues in her
hands. It was an hour after she found the body while walking through the hotel
gardens. I’d offered to wait with her until Dina came to take her statement,
and we’d passed the time sitting beside the cluttered desk talking about
anything but the dead man in the gazebo. Between each brief conversation, the
office was silent and still. I could hear the clock on the desk ticking and the
heating duct shuddering in the ceiling overhead.

“I should be working on the hors
d’oeuvres for the party,” Eloise whispered after one lengthy silence. “I’d already
finished the Bacon-Wrapped Dates and Stuffed Piquillo Peppers with Goat Cheese,
but there are about a million shrimp to prep.” She pressed the tissues against
one eye. “And Jasper needs me to—”

Someone knocked on the door before
it opened slowly. I leaned forward and saw Dina in the hallway. She gave me a
small nod and walked into the room.

“Miss Turner?” she said gently. “Do
you think you could answer a few questions now?”

After introducing herself to
Eloise, Dina walked around and sat behind Connie’s desk. Dina and I had been
best friends in high school until she’d wooed away my boyfriend at the time.
Even though Trent Walsh and Dina married and divorced during the years that I
was in Chicago, they’d developed a cordial working relationship at the Crescent
Creek PD. He served as deputy chief; Dina was the department’s lead detective.

“I wanted to ask you about finding
the man,” Dina said. “Can we talk about that for a few minutes?”

The room was quiet. I heard part of
a conversation in the corridor; hotel staff discussing the bachelorette party
in hushed voices. I kept my eyes on Eloise, but she didn’t seem to have noticed
Dina’s question. When I reached over and touched her arm, she flinched and
gasped.

“Eloise?” I said gently. “Detective
Kincaid wants to ask you a few questions.”

There was no response for a moment,
as if Eloise was trying to decide if the events of the past hour had actually
happened. When her eyes finally drifted up to meet mine, rivulets of tears were
streaming down her cheeks.

“There was blood,” she whispered.
“On his head and down the front of his shirt.”

I nodded. “Did you hear what I just
told you?”

She blinked, turning slowly toward
Dina. “You’re with the police?”

“I’m a detective with the
department,” Dina said. “I’d like to ask you about finding the man in the
gazebo.”

Eloise swallowed and took a deep
breath. “Okay. But I want her to be in here, too.” She gestured at me with a
nod. “I’ll feel better if she stays.”

“That’s fine,” Dina said,
retrieving a pad and pen from her coat. “How about we begin with you. What’s
your role here at the hotel?”

Eloise shifted in her chair.
“Pastry chef now, but I started two years ago in room service. I’d worked at a
Marriott down in Flagstaff, and fell in love with the industry. When I moved
back to Colorado, I enrolled at CACA and got my—”

Dina raised one hand. “CACA?”

Eloise blinked. “Oh, sorry,” she
said quietly. “It’s where I went to school—Colorado Academy of the Culinary
Arts. They have an accelerated program, so Connie let me work part-time while I
went to classes.”

“Okay, so you’re the pastry chef
now, but you started in room service,” Dina said, making a few notes on her
pad. “Can you tell me why you were outside in the gazebo earlier?”

“To get some fresh air,” Eloise answered.
“We’re kind of booked this week, so…” She looked down at the frayed tissues in
her hands. “I had an especially difficult exchange with a guest right before
that, a woman who was, uh, just really…well, she wasn’t the most pleasant
person in the world. I was in one of the meeting rooms, arranging the table
that we’ll use for the appetizers tonight. I guess this woman saw me and
thought…” She paused, shaking her head. “Anyway, that doesn’t really matter.
She was pretty rude and got me upset, so I asked Fern if I could go out and
take a little walk through the gardens.” She looked up, smiling for the first
time. “It’s really beautiful out there even when it’s cold. I like to go out
and take a few minutes to recharge my batteries on really busy days.”

“Is Fern another member of the
kitchen staff?” I said.

Eloise smiled. “Fern Dunwoody. We
started here about the same time. She does salads and appetizers for the dining
room service.”

“Okay,” Dina said. “You went
outside to clear your head and saw the man in the gazebo?”

“Not right way,” Eloise answered.
“The first thing I noticed was playing cards on the gravel. Like someone had
dropped a complete deck as they walked along.”

“They were on the pathway?” I
asked.

She nodded. “The one that runs from
the back terrace through the gardens. That’s my favorite place to take a break
whenever I’m feeling kind of stressed, you know? It helps me gather my thoughts
and such.”

“I didn’t see them,” I said. “Is
that because—”

“I picked them up!” Eloise blurted.
“I didn’t know they were murder evidence.”

Dina shot me a quick look. “Okay,
that’s understandable. Where are the cards now?”

“At the front desk,” Eloise
answered. “I thought maybe someone would come looking for them.”

“You picked them up,” I said,
“carried them to the front desk and then went back outside?”

Eloise smiled faintly. “It seemed
like the right thing to do.”

“I’ll stop by the desk later to get
them,” Dina said.

“I gave them to Will,” Eloise
volunteered. “He’s the one with the mustache.”

Dina nodded. “Thank you, Miss
Turner. Now, when did you notice the man in the gazebo?”

“A couple of minutes later I
guess.” Eloise looked at me; I gave her an encouraging smile. “I was still on
the gravel path, kind of looking up into the gazebo. And at first, I didn’t
know what I was seeing. I mean, who would expect some guy to be flat on the
floor in the gazebo in the middle of the day, right?”

The muscles in Dina’s jaw
tightened. “And after you saw him? Did you continue walking toward the gazebo?”

Eloise cleared her throat. “Can I
maybe get a glass of water?”

Dina glanced at me. “Kate? Do you
mind doing that for us?”

I nodded, got up from my chair and
went into the hallway. The first person I saw was Connie Larson, huddled
against the wall with a phone pressed to her ear.

“…to make it less upsetting for
everyone,” she was saying.

I started to walk past, but she
signaled for me to wait. As she finished her conversation, I overheard Connie’s
plans for the rest of the day: the bachelorette party was being moved to a
private dining room at Luigi’s, a popular Italian restaurant in downtown
Crescent Creek. The other special events scheduled that night at the Lodge had
already been relocated to the VFW Hall and a small bistro named Café Fleur.

“Okay, Allison,” Connie said. “I’ll
give you a call back as soon as we know more.”

After dropping the phone into her
pocket, she slumped down onto a small padded bench.

“Oh, Katie,” she moaned. “This is
such a horrible…” The rest of her statement was lost in a gasp as she clamped
one hand against the side of her face. “I mean, the poor guy out there…” Her
eyes locked on mine as I sat beside her. “Does Dina know who he is yet?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I was
with Eloise in your office and then she asked me to stay when Dina came to take
her statement.”

“Poor Eloise…” Connie closed her
eyes and leaned her head against the wall. “She’s such a fragile thing.”

“It’s a huge shock for anyone,” I
said, taking Connie’s hand. “Including you.” I waited until she looked at me.
“How are you doing?”

She heaved a sigh. “I can’t
understand how this could happen.” Her voice crackled with concern and jittery
nerves. “I mean…who is he? What was he doing in the gazebo?”

I squeezed her hand tightly.
“Dina’s on it,” I said. “Along with several uniformed officers and members of
the CSI team. They’ll answer all of your questions as soon as—”

Connie’s phone trilled loudly. She
pulled it out, checked the screen and got up from the bench.

“Sorry, Katie. I’ve got to take
this call.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I’ll talk to
you soon, okay?”

After she walked away, I headed for
the cocktail lounge near the lobby. The room was empty, so I slipped behind the
bar, filled a glass with chilled water and headed back toward Connie’s office.

“…makes perfect sense,” Dina was
saying as I quietly opened the door and slipped inside. “Just to clear your
head.” She studied her notes, adding a quick scribble before looking up. “And
have you ever seen the man before?”

I handed the glass of water to
Eloise and sat in the empty guest chair.

“Before what?” Eloise answered,
smiling at me and taking a small sip.

“Before you found him in the
gazebo,” Dina said.

Eloise shook her head. “No, but
Jasper told me that he’d seen him at a bar in town a couple of times.”

“So he’s local?” asked Dina.

“I don’t know about that,” Eloise
replied. “But Jasper said he’d seen the guy recently. He was with a woman,
having cocktails or whatever.” She stopped to drink more water. Then she looked
at me. “Thanks for getting this, Miss Reed. I was just, like, totally parched
from being so freaked out.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

Dina glanced at her pad. She ran
one finger down the page of notes before looking up at Eloise.

“Alright then,” she said. “Why
don’t we start at the beginning again. Tell me about your decision to go
outside for a walk.”

Eloise sipped her water. “Do we
really have to? I’ve already told you everything.”

“Yes,” Dina said. “I’d like to go
through the details one last time before we finish up.”

I peeked at the clock on the desk.
It was almost six-thirty. Zack was coming by Sky High a few minutes before
seven to pick me up for dinner.

“I hate to do this,” I said, “but I
need to step out and make a call.”

Eloise shifted in her chair,
straightening her posture and lifting her chin. “You know, it’s okay if you
want to leave. I think that I can handle the rest of this on my own.” She
smiled at Dina. “I mean, Detective Kincaid’s being really nice and everything.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” She got up from the chair
and waited until I was on my feet before giving me a hug. “I really appreciate
you being so nice to me.”

I glanced at Dina. “You okay with
me heading out?”

She smiled. “I think I can manage
the rest of the interview, Katie. But can you hang around for a bit so I can
get your statement?”

I was expecting the question, so I
answered with a quick nod. Then I told her that I’d be in the lobby when she
was ready.