Death in Room 7 (Pine Lake Inn Cozy Mystery Book 1) (6 page)

After another hug I leave him there in Cutter’s office.  On my way out, I give the Lakeshore Senior Sergeant of police a hard stare.

I sincerely hope it’s the last time I see him standing there in that uniform.

He doesn’t deserve it.

***

Back near the middle of town, just down the street from the fountain with its miserable little gurgle of water, is a plain white house a lot like every other white house next to it.  I haven’t been here much.  Just once or twice.  The couple who live here, the Browns, are nice folks.  We say hello on the street.  Everyone knows me, of course, because of my Inn.

Everyone knows the Browns, too, for a very different reason.

I knock on the door and wait, tugging at my unicorn necklace.  No reason to knock again.  The Browns are old but they aren’t hard of hearing.  Mrs. Mabel Brown greets me with a smile just a moment later.  “G’day, Dell.  Percy and I are just sitting down for a bit of a bite.  Care to join us?”

“No, thanks Mabel.  Can I pull Percy away for just a few minutes?”

“Well, I’ve made a mint pea salad and grilled chicken, but I’m sure he can give ya some time.  Percy!” she called out, walking back into the house.  “We’ve company, dear.”

I stood in the living room, looking at the pictures of the Brown’s grandkids on the wall, until Percy came out of the kitchen, walking slowly, shuffling his feet, his browned and weathered face smiling.  “Why, Dell Powers.  Always glad to see that mug of yers.  What brings ya to our home tonight?”

“Mayor Brown,” I greet him, “I need to talk to you about Senior Sergeant Cutter.”

He made an impolite sound between his lips.  “That man again.  What’s he done now?”

See?  Everyone knows everyone in a small town.

It’s all in who you talk to.
 

The Inn seemed so cold the next morning.

After talking to Mayor Brown and making sure he understood the issue with Cutter, it had been late.  The sun had been setting on the Tasmanian wilderness, painting the green pines with hues of purple shadows.  Lakeshore was rolling itself up for the night.  The eastern sky was turning a deep indigo.  I loved this time of the evening.  Like a bridge between today and tomorrow, you know?  It made me feel better, knowing a new day was coming.

I felt better after talking to the Mayor, too.

“I'm not able to get rid of him, ya know, but I do know someone that I can talk to.” Percy had explained with a thoughtful shake of his head.  “Been Senior Sergeant for years now.  Gonna be hard to convince the folks that need convincing to remove him.  Course, can’t let him go arresting folks like your son just ‘cause he’s a mind to. I’ll talk to him, don’t know how much good it’ll do but I’ll fix it if I can, Dell.  Ya have my word on it.”

That might help fix part of the problem if he could pull it off. I was still going to make it my goal in life to see to it that Cutter lost his job anyway.  That could wait for now, as long as I knew my Kevin was out of danger.

So it was well after the dinner hour when I got back to the Pine Lake Inn, and when I went looking for Rosie it was too late.  My business partner had already gone home for the night.  It was only a ten minute walk from the Inn to where Rosie and her hubby lived, but I just didn’t have the energy to go back out.  I was drained past the point of empty.

After making sure our night manager had things taken care of I made my way upstairs.  I was heading to my room but to get there, I had to go past the room that Jess had been staying in.  The stairs to the third floor are on the other end of the second floor hallway.  No getting around it.

The officer was gone now.  The coroner would have come and gone by now, and Jess with him.

But standing there outside of her room, I couldn’t help but feel her presence, like she was still here, just waiting to pop out and say g’day.

Wishful thinking.  My friend was gone.  I would never see her again.

Forcing myself to look away I climbed up the stairs to my room.  Once there I sank into my bed without even bothering to change out of the clothes I was wearing.  Then I promptly cried myself to sleep.

The next morning was when the feeling of cold struck me.  The Inn felt different.  I knew it was just my mind coloring things, but I swear to you the place felt cold.  Like all the negative feelings of yesterday had soaked the warmth out of the air. 

Silly of me, I know, but sometimes you just can’t help the way you feel.

I was up early, and down at the front desk before my usual time.  Life at the Inn always starts early in the morning but today I was up before the sun.  Rosie wouldn’t be in for an hour or better yet.  I busied myself with paperwork, and doing a bit of cleaning, and other little tasks.  When the phone rang I jumped to answer, hoping it would give me a distraction, but it was the same glitch we can’t seem to get rid of.  Just static.  No one on the line.

I checked the clock on the wall.  I know I’m fond of saying time moves on but in this case it actually had.  After seven o’clock now.  I know our morning kitchen staff will have cooked up eggs and sausage and what-not, maybe even some pikelets if they’ve been industrious, but it’s odd that Rosie isn’t here yet.

Both of our work schedules are pretty fluid.  Rosie is here for serving times and when special dishes need to be cooked but otherwise she comes and goes as she pleases.  I literally live here, so twelve and thirteen hour work days just mean I’m working from home.  I don’t expect Rosie to be here as much as I am, but still…

I lost a good friend yesterday.  One I hadn’t seen in years.  Maybe that was making me jumpy.  Maybe that cold feeling that was still lingering was trying to tell me something.

There’s one way to find out.  I reach for the phone to call her.

Just as it rings again. 

Startled, I jump back a step, clutching my hand to my chest as if the phone had been about to bite me.  I take a breath, and calm down, and try again.  With a quick look around to make sure no one saw me getting freaked out by a telephone, I grab the receiver up to my ear.  “G’day, Pine Lake Inn.”

“Morning, Mom.”

“Hiya, Kevin.  Glad to hear your voice.”

“Are you now?  Why’s that?”

“It’s, uh, no reason.  Just happy it’s you, is all.”  Because the phone was going to eat me.  Because Rosie is missing and my friend is dead and I need to hear from a living person not a phone call full of static and white noise and half whispered words.  That’s what I wanted to say.  “No reason at all.”

“Oh.  See, I thought it might’ve had something to do with a call Senior Sergeant Cutter got from Mayor Brown.  Had the Senior Sergeant as mad as a cut snake.  Basically screamed at me in the office for an hour then told me to get out.  Even sent my search warrant over to the judge to be signed off on.”

The search warrant for Horace’s things.  So we could find the key on him and prove what he’d done to Jess.  I wondered what Mayor Brown had on Cutter that had gotten such quick results and then decided that I didn’t really want to know, I was just glad that he did. “Do you think he’ll still have it?” I ask in a hushed whisper.

“Don’t know.  Worth trying, I think.  I’m going over to the judge’s place now.  Just thought ya might want to know.”

“Thanks, Kevin.  Keep me informed?”

“Will do.  Mom…are you all right?”

He’s such a good son.  Here I was trying to hide my tangled knot of emotions and he saw right through me.  “I’ve been waiting for Rosie to come in.  She’s not here yet and I’m—”

The front door opened and in came Rosie, dressed in a pink blouse and a purple skirt that I’m very certain were never meant to be worn together.  Her hair had been hastily thrown up in a bun, as well.  She smiled apologetically, but didn’t race to the kitchen like I thought she would.  Instead she stood there, waiting for me to be done with my call.

“Actually, she’s here now,” I told Kevin.  “Just me being silly after all.”

“Okay.  If you’re sure that’s all it was.”  He doesn’t sound convinced, but he doesn’t push.  “I’ll be over as soon as this search warrant is signed.”

“Over here?  Why?”

“I thought you knew?  Rosie gave Horace a room at the Inn.  He’s staying there until Jess’s body gets released by the Coronial Court up in Hobart.”

No, I did not know that.  “Oh, right.  Sure.  Anyway, Kevin.  It was good to hear your voice.”

“Heh.  Love ya too, Mom.”

When he hangs up, I do too, locking eyes with my friend and business partner.  “You gave Horace a room?  Here?”

She wrapped her hands together, nervously playing with her fingers.  “Yes, I did.  I should’ve left a note, I know.  Figured it was the least we could do, ya know?  Jess dead, in our Inn?”

Which was good business sense, and it would make him easy to find once the search warrant was signed, but I really didn’t want that man within a hundred miles of me.

That’s when it hits me.  I haven’t told any of this to Rosie yet.  Cutter left here thinking it was suicide—until my Kevin showed him different and he tried to use it against him—and Rosie left before I could talk to her, and now I was left with having to explain to her the things me and Kevin had found out.

So I took a deep breath, and began.

It was a much shorter story than I thought it would be.  How could such an evil deed be summed up in just a few minutes?

“I…can’t believe it.”  Rosie’s blew out her cheeks and stared off into the middle distance behind me.  “You think she was murdered?  By who?”

“That’s what I’m hoping Kevin can find out.  This morning, actually.”

“You don’t think Horace…?”

“I don’t know.”  Which was a lie, actually.  Not that I wanted to lie to Rosie.  It was just that what I knew and what I could prove at that point were two very different things.  I did know it was Horace.  I was certain of it.  Just needed Kevin with that search warrant, and then we could prove it.

“Oh, Dell, I’m so sorry.  I never would have let him stay here if I’d known!”

“Don’t worry about it, Rosie.  I suppose it was the right thing to do, given the circumstances,” I had to admit.  “Especially considering how you felt about Jess.”

“Yeah,” she muttered, dropping her eyes as she came around to the other side of the registration desk.  “Truth be told, Dell, that’s one of the reasons why I’m so late.  I was procrastinating.  I know I have to tell ya this part but it’s going to be tough to say, straight out.”

“What is it, Rosie?”  Her secret, I realized.  That thing she wanted to tell me about Jess.  “You’ve been acting a bit odd ever since we found out Jess was coming here.”

Rosie smoothed one hand across the desk and picked at wrinkles in her shirt with the other.  “It’s nothing I’m proud of knowing, mind you.”

“Something about Jess?”

Rosie nodded, her face serious.  “Back in Uni, Jess had this…job she worked.”

“Sure, Rosie, we all did.  We had to find our spending cash somewhere.”

“I know.  Thing is, Jess’s job was a bit, um, less respectable than most.”

“How d’ya mean?”  I knew Jess as well as anyone back in those days.  I mean, sure, she had her secrets.  What girl doesn’t at that age?  She was one of my best friends, though.  As good a friend as Rosie, in her own way, and a person just doesn’t find people like that every day.  I thought I knew all the important things there were to know about Jessica Sapp.

Now Rosie rolled her eyes to the side and chewed on the inside of her cheek before she could bring herself to tell me about this secret life Jess had apparently been living.

“Thing is, I never wanted to tell you about this, Dell.  It was Jess’s secret to keep or to give.  But now, maybe it makes a difference.  Besides, it’s not like it can hurt her where she’s gone.  Jess used to make a living as a, well, as a prostitute.”

I was staring at her, I knew I was, but I was waiting for a punchline that never came.  “Jess traded sex for money?  While we were at University?”

“Started before that, near as I could tell.  But, yeah, it went on while we were all friends back then.  Until she took up with Horace.  Then she stopped.  I think.  I’m sure she didn’t do that sort of thing after they were together for keeps.  Messed up as their relationship was, she loved him.  I’m sure she would never do anything to hurt him.”

“I’m not so sure he shared that feeling,” I muttered.  Rosie didn’t argue.

So.  Jess had been a prostitute in her younger years.  Not the sort of thing a woman likes to hear about a good friend, but still.  “It’s not illegal here in the merry old land of Oz.  Up in Sydney there’s a whole industry.  Government regulation and the like.”

She nodded along with every word.  “I know, but you heard the news stories a few years back from the Attorney General’s office.  There’s a big concern that regulating that particular, um, industry only brings in organized crime and other baddies.  And I tell you what, I used to see Jess with some real unsavory types.”

I did remember the news stories.  The Federal government was worried that Australia would be inviting the same kind of trouble on itself that Las Vegas did over in the States.  Make prostitution a regulated enterprise and the mob will come with it.  Not that Australia really had a mob, to speak of, but the idea had proven right more often than not.

And Jess had been doing that kind of work while I knew her.  I never even imagined.  I mean, I know she seemed to have a different boyfriend every week.  Sometimes every night.  Still, my brain refused to believe what Rosie was saying.  “Are you sure?”

Again, Rosie just gave me a nod.  “That’s where she got all that money to flash around.  Now, I know it’s not illegal or anything but I’m just an old fashioned woman, Dell.  I was just so mortified to know how it was with her.  It never sat right with me.”

Truthfully it sort of set my teeth on edge, too, but it was a woman’s right to choose her own life.  I wouldn’t hold it against Jess.  It was just one more piece of the puzzle to fit in.

Kevin had been right when he said I liked puzzles.  I just never imagined one like this would ever come my way.

Could Jess’s old life be catching up to her?  Worse, could it be that she’d gone back to that lifestyle?  Trading sex for cash could earn a woman who looked like Jess a tidy sum.

My line of reasoning came to its obvious conclusion.

If Jess was prostituting herself again, and Horace found out about it, that would give him one banger of a motive for killing her.

“Rosie, do me a favor?”  As I step around the desk I take her by both arms.  “This is important.  Do you think you might take today off?”

“What?  Dell, I’m sorry if I upset you, but—”

“No, I promise it was nothing like that.  Thank you, for telling me.  I needed to know.  Someone killed her.  There are no secrets now.  I just want you home today.  Somewhere that you’ll be, um, safe.”

“Safe?”  Rosie’s eyes can get pretty big when she’s surprised.  “Dell, what are you on about?  It don’t matter if we’ve got the Devil himself upstairs, I’ve got that roast to fix for lunch and don’t even get me started on the dinner menu!”