This Old Homicide (21 page)

“What accident?”

Jane was perplexed and uneasy. “I—I got a telephone message Saturday afternoon saying that you’d been in a bad car accident and that you wouldn’t be able to make your trip. I’m sorry. There’s clearly been a misunderstanding.”

“Clearly.” He gave her a thin-lipped smile, which was no smile at all. “Because as you can see, I’m here now and I’m perfectly fine. If you’ll show me to my room, there won’t be any problem, right?”

“But… we understood that you wouldn’t be coming. Your room has been taken.” Jane stood again. Her eyes were wide with distress as she bit her bottom lip. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

His mouth opened and closed in shocked anger. “But… but this is unacceptable. It’s outrageous. I’ve paid for the entire week in advance.”

“Yes, I know,” Jane said calmly. “But when I got the news about your accident, I refunded your credit card. You probably haven’t seen the statement yet.”

He shook his head, unable to speak.

“I appreciate that you’re upset,” Jane said. I really admired how she handled herself so professionally. Still, I ached for her. This was a bad mix-up. “I would never have given away your room if I hadn’t received the message from your doctor saying you weren’t coming at all.”

“But that’s the problem. There was no accident. No doctor of mine ever sent that message.”

Jane’s gaze met mine. What in the world had happened? Sandra had taken the message and she wouldn’t lie about it, would she?

“I can only apologize profusely for all the confusion,” Jane said, “and I’ll be happy to pay for your room at a comparable hotel in town. The Inn on Main Street has several rooms available and it’s a lovely hotel, closer to the beach, with its own highly rated restaurant in-house.”

“But I wanted to stay here,” he said, and his tone was almost whining. I couldn’t fault him, though. “I’ve heard so much about it.”

I almost said something like
Why don’t you kick Stephen out of his room?
But that probably wouldn’t have been the most professional decision for Jane to make in this situation.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Let me see what I can do.” She sat and began to click the computer keys rapidly. I could tell she was upset, for good reason. Something weird had happened and she was the one who would take the blame, whether it was her fault or not.

“Here’s what I can do,” Jane said finally, looking up from her computer screen. “As I said, I’ll be happy to comp you a room at the Inn on Main Street for the next four nights. On Friday, I can have your things brought back here and move you into the Rosalind Suite for the rest of your stay… also comped.”

I could tell that Andrew Braxton was taken aback. Jane was amazing. She was obviously rattled by the situation but was willing to make things right for Mr. Braxton.

“I… I guess that’s as good a deal as I can ask for. I appreciate your willingness to accommodate me.”

“There’s been an unfortunate mix-up and I will certainly find out what happened. But you shouldn’t have to pay the price for someone else’s error. I’ll have my assistant manager walk with you to the Inn on Main Street and make sure that everything is to your liking. And then on Friday, we’ll be happy to move you out, pack your clothing if you want us to, and bring you back here for the rest of your stay.”

“Well, thank you,” he said, and shook Jane’s hand. “I appreciate it.” He held on to her hand and smiled. “Maybe I can buy you a drink some night and we can laugh about it.”

Jane smiled at that. So now he was flirting? Maybe the guy wasn’t such a stuffed shirt after all. But his emotions sure ran the gamut. I wasn’t certain Jane should be flirting with this guy, but that was none of my business.

Once he had left with Sandra, Jane looked at me. “What just happened here?”

“That was quite a mix-up. You should ask Sandra about it as soon as she gets back.”

“I will. Maybe she can shed some light.”

“I hope so.” I remembered hearing Sandra say that she’d follow up on the accident. Had she talked to someone about it?

Jane twisted her lips in puzzlement as she stared at her computer. “Maybe I’m hallucinating.”

“You’re not. I was right here the other night when you got the message that he was canceling his trip because of a bad car accident.”

“Right. I guess that’ll teach me to follow up on things like this myself. Particularly when a message to cancel a room comes in.” She sighed. “At least he went away somewhat mollified.”

But as I drove home, I wondered why Andrew Braxton had been so adamant about staying at Hennessey House in the first place. How could he have heard so many great things about it when it had only opened two days ago and hadn’t even been rated by any of the travel associations yet?

Had he heard about the necklace? Was that why he was so anxious to stay here? Did he think Jane had it? Who else did he know in town? Maybe I was being paranoid, but I wanted to know who in the world Andrew Braxton was. I intended to find out before Friday when he’d be moving back into Hennessey House.

I mentally added his name to my suspect list because why not? His odd, mistaken cancellation and untimely arrival were weird. I couldn’t wait to get home to my Google machine.

And I couldn’t forget about Stephen Darby, who was already staying at Hennessey House, thanks to a fraudulent telephone message about Andrew Braxton being in a car accident. Did Stephen have sinister plans to find the necklace as well? According to Lizzie, Stephen’s own father had admitted that Stephen had been desperate to get a good look at Jesse’s house that time he and Ned stopped by. Were Stephen and Ned in cahoots? Were they responsible for Jesse’s death?

I thought about Stephen’s credit card being rejected when he had checked in Saturday night. I knew things like that happened all the time, but it made me wonder about his competence as a financial adviser. Working as a part-time chef wasn’t exactly a big moneymaking occupation. Did Stephen need money? Did he think he could find the necklace and sell it for ready cash?

And who could forget that he’d already asked Jane out on two dates? Of course, what guy wouldn’t want to ask her out? But did he have an ulterior motive for getting close to her?

And if Stephen wasn’t responsible for Jesse’s death, who was?

And who was Andrew Braxton?

Stephen and Andrew were only two of the names on my newly revised suspect list. Which reminded me that I still needed to visit some of the pawnshops around the area to see if Jesse had shown the necklace to anyone else. Beginning tomorrow, I would start looking. Because people and things were closing in on Jane and I had a feeling we were running out of time.

Early Tuesday morning after gulping down two cups of coffee to steel my nerves, I drove over to the Rawley Mansion to meet Wade and Emily. I was concerned about my crew working there while an errant ghost haunted the premises. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. And I still couldn’t explain what had happened to Gus. Luckily he hadn’t been hurt, but his possession—what else could we call it?—was about the weirdest thing I’d ever witnessed.

I parked my truck on the street and walked up to the front door. It was open, so I walked inside. And felt the grief hit me like the heat of a blasting furnace.

“Wade?” I called.

“In here, Shannon.”

I heard pounding and ran into the dining room, where three of my guys stood with Emily near the wall of green paint. Sean was using an ax to tear into one of the wall panels—directly at the spot where the arrow was pointed.

“What’re you doing?” I shouted over the sound of the ax slamming and tearing the wood.

“There’s something in here,” Sean said. “I’m sure of it.”

“How do you know?”

Wade glanced at me. “He saw it in a dream.”

I smiled, then instantly sobered when Wade gave me a warning look. “No, really. He saw it in a dream.”

“I felt something here, too,” Emily said. “Remember the other day when the wall felt warm?”

“I remember.” It had been vibrating, too. So maybe that meant something.

“Couldn’t hurt,” Wade reasoned. “If nothing’s there, we can always patch up the wall and call it a day. Weirder things have happened, right?”

No, not really, I thought. All in all, the ghost of Mrs. Rawley was about the weirdest thing I’d ever experienced.

Sean pulled the last of the wood shards away and we all stared into the wall. Wedged inside was a small book. Sean grabbed it and held it up for us to see. He handed it to me.

“It’s a journal of some kind,” I said, staring at the faded red leather cover. I opened it to the first page and read the delicate handwriting. “The Diary of Winifred Rawley.”

I glanced at Sean. “Was this part of your dream?”

“No.” He leaned the ax against the wall. “I dreamed I was being shoved into this room and the ax floated up and into my hands. And I started tearing into this wall. Then I woke up.”

I held the book out to Emily. “Do you want to read it?”

“I do.” I started to hand her the book, but she waved me off. “You should read it first. It might indicate if your men will be safe here or not.”

“Okay, I’ll read it.” I looked around at my guys. “Are you okay working here today? If not, I’ll pull you off this job and send you to another site.”

Sean was defiant. “No way am I leaving.”

“I think we’ll be okay, boss,” Wade said. “I don’t feel the same vibes anymore.”

“Nor do I,” Emily murmured, meeting my gaze. “There’s a sadness still, but it’s mixed with a sort of positive resolve. And you’re looking at me as though I’ve lost my mind.”

“Then we’ve all lost our minds,” I said. “So I guess we’ll carry on.”

*   *   *

After sensing a grieving ghost that morning, I figured nothing else could scare me. At least, I hoped not as I strolled into Cuckoo Clemens’s shop on Main Street.

Cuckoo turned at the sound of the doorbells chiming and I saw that he was rearranging a clothing rack stuffed with old tuxedos along the back wall of the store.

“Well, well,” he said in a sarcastic tone. “If it isn’t Miss Pinky Tool Time herself.”

I’d been called “Pink” and “Pinky” plenty of times in my life and it rarely bothered me, but I didn’t like hearing it from him.

The nickname had started after my mother died, when my dad used to bring my little sister, Chloe, and me to his construction sites in lieu of hiring babysitters. The guys on Dad’s crew began teaching us how to build birdhouses and other small projects like that. That led to them buying us little pink tool chests and hard hats. Chloe was too much of a tomboy to go crazy over the pink thing, but I loved it. Because of that, the guys would sometimes call me Pink or Pinky, and the nickname stuck for a while. I still liked using pink tools because they were just as functional and strong as regular tools; plus, my guys didn’t walk off with them.

These days, none of my crew dared to call me Pinky. To my face, anyway.

“Hello, Cuckoo,” I said, attempting to sound cheerful. I tried to calm my nerves by taking in the ambience of the shop. It was clean, at least, and well stocked. Six shiny vintage guitars were hanging on the left wall with several old amplifiers, a drum set, and an electronic keyboard placed below them.

One shelf featured all sorts of items purported to have come from the
Glorious Maiden
, including a brass porthole, several old jars, an old apple peeler, and various other types of shipboard kitchen appliances, circa 1839. A stuffed moose head stared down at me from the wall above the cash register, its glassy eyes following me through the store until I had to look away. If that wasn’t creepy enough, there was a display of marionettes hanging from a rack in the center of the store. At any minute I expected them to start talking to me.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Cuckoo asked, sneering at me.

“I’ve been thinking about that necklace you claim Jesse had.”

He leaned against the front counter and folded his long, bony arms across his sunken chest. “I don’t
claim
it, little girl. I
know
it.”

As a female contractor, I’d been dealing with sexist attitudes all my life, but his arrogance really irritated me. I stood up straighter and found myself actually looking down at him. I mentally gave myself a high five for wearing two-inch heels. The guy was barely five foot eight with his shoes on. Where did he get off calling me
little girl
?

“I saw the thing with my own eyes,” he asserted, “and Jesse offered to sell it to me more than once. I didn’t have the money then, but I do now. And since I was the first one he showed it to, I should have first dibs on it.”

I hadn’t known how I would approach Cuckoo when I first walked in, but now I had the urge to shove him. Hard.

“But these deals usually favor the
highest
bidder,” I said, flexing my fists reactively. “Not the first one.”

He chuckled without humor. “I haven’t seen anyone else bargaining for it, so I just might be the highest bidder, too.”

“Yes, you might. If we were certain that the necklace existed.”

“What did I just tell you?” he shouted. Spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes took on a wild edge that left me with no doubt about why people had started calling him Cuckoo. “I said I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

“That’s what you’ve said, more than once.” I prayed my tone was reasonable despite my desire to run screaming out of the store. But if I wanted answers from him, I needed to keep things calm. “It’s just that Jane has never seen the necklace and neither have I. Did Jesse tell you where he kept it? Maybe he sold it somewhere else. Or maybe it’s in a bank vault. If we could find it, you might be able to make the deal with Jane.”

His face was turning red. “How the hell should I know where he squirreled it away?”

“You really don’t know?”

I was baiting him, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when he came even closer and began shouting, “It’s in his house! Look around! That place is full of secrets!”

So much for my smooth facade. I inched back a few millimeters because his rage was alarming. “I don’t know where it is, and I’ve lived next door to Jesse my entire life. He used to tell me everything, and I’ve got to be honest. He admitted flat out that he was making up the whole story about finding a necklace. Said he’d told a big lie. So now why should I believe you?”

“He changed his tune,” Cuckoo admitted, calming down a little. “Told everybody he’d been lying about it because people were starting to get a little too curious. Too aggressive. They wanted to see it, wanted to display it. They offered him money for it. He realized it was worth a lot more than he thought it was at first, so he had to regroup. But he was going to sell it to me eventually.”

“I wonder where he put it.”

“In his house,” Cuckoo said softly, as if he were talking to himself. “He would want to see it all the time, and touch it. He was obsessed with it. It was a priceless treasure.”

“Does that mean your offer of five thousand dollars is less than it’s worth?”

His eyes narrowed warily. “That was an opening bid. Now I’m willing to pay eight thousand dollars for it.”

“
Eight
thousand?” I said. “Last week you offered ten thousand.”

“Maybe I’m willing to pay twenty,” he said, his upper lip twisted in a snarl. “Why the hell am I negotiating with you, anyway? You’ve never even seen the damn thing. This is between me and Jesse.”

“You mean, between you and Jane.”

He blinked, suddenly looking a little disoriented. “That’s what I said.”

“You said Jesse, but Jesse’s dead.”

“Dead. Right.” He shook his head. “I know that. I know he’s dead. I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t think you were.” I tried another tack. “Do you know where Jesse originally found the necklace?”

“Of course I do. He was scuba diving out there by the
Glorious Maiden
.”

“Do you know any of the other people he showed it to?”

“Yeah.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and paced the floor in front of the counter. “That pawnshop down the coast a few miles. And there was some dinky little knickknack shop around Point Arena. Probably a few other places he didn’t tell me about.”

“One more question and I’ll leave you alone. Do you think the necklace was worth killing for?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I held my palms out. “Jesse’s dead, right?”

His eyes widened. “Hold on. Nobody’s killing anybody.”

“I didn’t say that.”

His cheeks puffed out like a fish’s. “So… what? What’re you saying? Somebody killed Jesse? Is that what you’re saying? Nobody killed him. He died, and that necklace belongs to me.”

“Legally it belongs to Jane.”

“Exactly. And I’m willing to pay her six thousand dollars for it.”

“Six?”
I choked out a laugh. “You’re crazy.”

He waved his hands in the air. “Hell, yes, I’m crazy!” He swooped in close to my face and stared at me through empty eyes. “Why do you think they call me Cuckoo?”

I flinched, afraid he might attack me physically. I began creeping backward toward the door.

“I’m Cuckoo because I’m crazy!” He shrieked with laughter. And not happy laughter. It was high-pitched and hysterical and disturbing. “Certifiable! And I want that necklace before he gives it to—”

I whipped around. “Gives it to whom?”

But his eyes were unfocused and I was pretty sure he had just blasted off to another planet. But then he whispered, “Get out.”

And I did. I continued backing out of the store, my jaws aching from the stiff smile I continued to flash him.

I ran all the way to my truck parked three doors down. As I unlocked the door, I had to inhale deeply a few times. That was when I realized I’d been holding my breath for the past few moments.

I climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed and locked the door. To whom did he think Jesse was going to give the necklace? Was it Althea? Jane and I had theorized that Althea’s presence in Jesse’s life might’ve been the catalyst for Cuckoo to start searching for the jewels in Jesse’s house. Could it be true?

One thing I couldn’t figure out was why Jesse had been friends with Cuckoo. The man was seriously nuts. Jesse had never been known for his patience and he didn’t put up with a lot of crap. Cuckoo, on the other hand, was completely full of it.

*   *   *

Over the next few hours, I visited three more pawnshops and spoke to several antique shop owners outside Lighthouse Cove proper but still within the fifteen-mile circumference I’d set up for myself. It was just a hunch, but if Cuckoo had overreacted to the necklace the way I thought he probably had, Jesse might’ve regretted showing him the piece or even talking about it around town. So maybe he had quietly visited some reputable shops a longer distance away from Lighthouse Cove.

Pretty early on, Jesse had claimed the story of the necklace was a fabrication, so he might’ve decided to go farther afield to sell it in a different town where he wasn’t known. That way, he would avoid the inevitable gossip that would snowball around Lighthouse Cove once people found out that the priceless necklace was a reality. I was frankly surprised that Cuckoo hadn’t spread the news, but he’d probably wanted to keep it under his hat in hopes of buying the piece before anyone else heard about it or saw it.

I stopped at the first shop I found on the other side of the interstate and struck out. Maybe it was too close to town, or maybe I was on a wild-goose chase.

I decided to keep going, to a pawnshop I’d read about six miles down the coast. I was pretty sure this was the place Cuckoo had referred to earlier. The shopkeeper, an older man who looked as reputable as any pawnbroker I’d ever seen—meaning he looked completely disreputable—looked at the photo of the necklace I’d snapped with my phone and told me he had indeed seen it and had been willing to take it, but only on consignment.

Jesse had refused the stingy offer and claimed the guy was trying to get something for nothing. Which, privately, I agreed with. I smiled and thanked him and couldn’t get out of there fast enough. While he didn’t shriek and hoot like Cuckoo, the pawnbroker came across as quietly menacing, as though he would willingly hock his firstborn son if he could get a decent trade out of the deal.

At another shop called the Chic Antique near Point Arena, a woman remembered seeing the necklace in the photo I showed her and told me she would love to have bought it. But she turned it down, telling Jesse she couldn’t afford the insurance it would cost her to keep it in her shop.

I was on a roll, so I drove a few miles inland to Greitsburg, another tiny, picturesque town along Highway 128. I stopped at Christa’s Cache and talked to Christa herself, who remembered the necklace and also recalled that Jesse had accused her of trying to cheat him.