by Skylar Finn
“I can only imagine,” Nick said. “How did you cope?”
“In the worst way possible,” Liam replied. “It wasn’t a secret that Tyler sold prescription drugs under the table. I bought sedatives or anti-anxiety pills from him, depending on what he had that day. The first time I asked him about it, he got really suspicious.”
“Why?”
“Because we never talked before that unless we had to,” Liam explained. “I distanced myself from Tyler as much as possible. I never wanted to be wrapped up in his crap. Look what happened to Karli when she got involved with him. I guess he thought I was going to narc him out to his dad or whatever, but I didn’t care if Tyler got arrested. I just needed to be able to function.”
“So you did drugs.”
“I took them as if they were prescribed to me. Mostly.”
“But they weren’t,” Nick reminded him. “Why didn’t you see a psychiatrist instead? You could’ve gotten medication legally.”
“Because I don’t make enough money here to afford health insurance,” Liam said. “And because I couldn’t talk about it. I can barely talk about it now with you.”
“I’m glad you’re confiding in me,” Nick said. “I know how hard it can be to keep a secret that’s destroying you inside.”
“There’s more.”
“More than having an affair with the owner’s wife and buying drugs off his son?” Nick said, and no matter his promises, his tone held the tiniest bit of judgement. “My, you’ve had quite a few weeks, haven’t you?”
Liam wrung out his hands. “You still won’t tell anyone, right?”
“I gave you my word.”
“The more I bought from him, the more Tyler snooped around in my business,” Liam said. “Eventually, he figured out what was going on between me and Thelma. The day before he died, he threatened to kill me. I thought he was serious, so I called him up that night and begged him for a hook-up. It was a low point for me, groveling to that prick, but it was the only way I thought I could get the upper hand over him.”
“What exactly was your plan?”
“Get in his room,” Liam said. “Threaten him back. I took a knife from the kitchen. Matisse saw me do it, but he didn’t say anything. I got into Tyler’s room through the back door since the detective was watching the front. The snow was so bad I thought I was going to freeze to death before I made it there. When I did—”
He cut himself off, leaning over to rest his forehead on the table in front of him. His shoulders heaved, not like he was crying. Instead, he appeared to be holding back a gag. Nick clapped him on the back.
“Are you all right?” Nick asked. “Should I get you a glass of water?”
“I can’t,” Liam choked out. “I can’t, man. It’s too much.”
“What can’t you do?” Nick urged. “What happened that night, Liam? What did you do with the knife?”
Liam stood abruptly, covering his mouth with one hand and clutching his stomach with the other, and ran from Nick and the Eagle’s View. He knocked into the table with the camera as he did so. The camera fell over, the lens obscured by a napkin holder. Liam’s rushed footsteps pounded over the audio, then the less hurried sound of Nick’s cane across the floor. After that, it was all silence and a black screen.
“Is that it?” I demanded as Jazmin exited out of the video clip. “Is that all there is? Because it sounded like Liam was on the verge of admitting he was the one who killed Tyler.”
“The weapon matches,” Riley agreed. “Liam said he stole a knife from the kitchen, and Tyler was stabbed a bunch of times.”
Jazmin spun the desk chair around to face me. “Didn’t you say Tyler’s wounds were really narrow though? Kitchen knives tend to have a little more oomph to them, don’t they?”
“Are we really arguing about the type of knife?” I said. “This is the closest lead we’ve gotten during this entire investigation.”
“Liam didn’t say he killed Tyler,” Jazmin pointed out. “He didn’t even say he had the intention to. He just wanted to scare him a little.”
“Yeah, with a knife in hand,” I argued. “Both of them were probably hopped up on prescription drugs. I have to tell Daniel.”
Jazmin held me back. “How are you going to do that without admitting we’ve been recording people without their permission? We’ll all go to jail for interfering with a homicide investigation.”
I wriggled free of her grip. “I’m starting to feel like this will never be over, but don’t worry. I’m not going to out us. I’ll tell Daniel I overhead Nick and Liam’s conversation. Riley?”
“Yeah?” she said.
“If you leave this room before I get back, you lose my Blondie shirt forever. Got it?”
She clutched her arms around her body, and I strongly suspected that my old T-shirt was underneath her big sweater. “You wouldn’t!”
“I would,” I threatened as I returned to the bedroom to get dressed. “So don’t even think about it. Jazmin, you’re in charge of her. Don’t let her out of your sight.”
Jazmin saluted me. “You got it. Be careful.”
“I always am.”
Finding Daniel proved trickier than I thought it would be. I hadn’t seen him since the debacle with Riley yesterday. Even then, he was fidgety and distracted. He wouldn’t look me in the eye and when I asked him if he’d found anything regarding Riley’s episode, he dodged the question. For someone who put his trust in me a couple days ago, he was acting like a slippery eel. As I crossed through the lobby for the third time in my search for the detective, I ran right into Oliver. He carried a huge bucket full of perfectly cubed ice, but when I knocked into him, it dropped out of his hands and spilled its load across the marble floor.
“Oh, crap.” I stuck my foot out to trap a wave of ice before it could spread farther. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”
“Don’t worry, Miss Star,” Oliver said with that customer service smile I hadn’t seen since my earlier days at King and Queens. Today, for the first time since Tyler died, he appeared clean and tidy. He wore a crisply ironed shirt, a gray blazer, and pressed slacks. His hair was combed to the side to cover up his bald spot. His face, for once, wasn’t red with fury or fear. Were it not for the giant mountain of snow blocking the front door of the resort and the current murder investigation, Oliver’s chipper demeanor almost made it feel like nothing was wrong.
“These things happen,” he added cheerfully, kneeling down to sweep some of the ice back into the bucket with his hands. “It’s no one’s fault.”
“Right.” I helped him kick a few more cubes into place. “Oliver, did anyone tell you about what happened to Riley last night?”
“Another nightmare, I imagine?”
“No, we found her in the butterfly garden,” I explained, keeping my distance from the resort owner in case the information triggered a violent response. “She’d been sedated. If we hadn’t gotten to her in time, she would have frozen to death.”
“Huh.” Oliver swept the last ice cube up and righted the bucket. “Well, I should go. Mr. Porter was complaining about the lack of ice on in the machine in his hallway. He says the service at King and Queens shouldn’t be compromised by the unfortunate situation. Crazy, right?”
He shook his head, chuckling as he passed me. I stared at him, mouth agape.
“Oliver, shouldn’t we talk about this?” I called after him. “Hey, you’re not going to put the dirty ice in the machine, are you? Oliver!”
He kept walking as if he hadn’t heard me, whistling a joyful tune. Clearly, the recent events at the resort had driven him out of his mind. Riley was the most important thing in his life. On a normal day, he would have never dismissed last night’s close call so easily. In addition, I was dying to ask him about the 1988 fire. How had he made it out alive? What did he remember about it? How did the fire start in the first place, and why were the spirits so angry about it?
“This place is a hellsca
pe,” I grumbled as I kicked a rogue ice cube off the top of my shoe.
“I’m in agreement,” Daniel replied as he emerged from the office behind the front desk. No wonder I couldn’t find him. I never expected him to have taken over Oliver’s safe space. “How’s Riley doing?”
“She seems okay,” I reported. “No side effects from the sedatives.”
“What about the hypothermia?”
“Good there too,” I said. “She’s just tired.”
He nodded curtly. “Glad to hear it. Excuse me.”
I blocked his path as he tried to get past me. “Actually, I need to talk to you.”
“I haven’t got the time,” he said.
“Because we’re all on such a strict schedule right now with the snow-in?”
He didn’t quite roll his eyes, but he looked up to the sky as if to ask God what he did to deserve this conversation with me. It was the same look I gave Riley or Odette when either of them asked for something particularly straining from me. Daniel had practiced it once or twice before, probably on his daughter and wife.
“Lucia, I’m trying to track down a murderer here.”
“And I’m trying to help,” I said. “I have information you might be able to use. I overheard a conversation between Nick and Liam while they were in the Eagle’s View. It didn’t sound promising.”
I filled Daniel in on the parameters of the conversation, checking my language to keep the truth about my source of information private. When I finished, Daniel checked his watch.
“Is that it?” he asked.
“What do you mean, is that it?” I said. “Don’t you think it’s suspicious? Liam confessed to going to Tyler’s room with a knife. What if he’s the killer?”
“Then it only solves one of my problems,” Daniel said, brushing past me. “Do me a favor, Lucia. Stay out of other people’s business unless you want to get hurt.”
I hurried to keep pace with him as he headed for the hallway of Tyler’s room. “Why are you brushing me off all of a sudden? I’m trying to help you. I want to make it out of here alive, remember? And if one of the employees is going on a murderous rampage, everyone else here has the right to know about it.”
Daniel whirled around, stopping me in my tracks. I bumped into his chest. “If you say a word about this to anyone else, I’ll have you arrested as soon as my team gets here,” he threatened. “The last thing I need is for you to incite panic. As it is, you shouldn’t be snooping around the resort as much as you do. You think I haven’t noticed you?”
“I haven’t—”
“Matisse came to me after your little incident with him in the kitchen,” Daniel said. “He told me you threatened him to come clean about his version of events. So you overheard Liam get emotional? Everyone gets emotional in times like these. Stop bouncing from suspect to suspect, determined they’re all guilty. That’s not how this works. You’re not a detective, Lucia. Hell, you’re not an employee of any kind, so mind your own damn business, stop interfering with my work, and keep Riley out of trouble. That’s your job from now on. Okay, Madame Lucia?”
He walked off. I stood rooted to the floor, stunned by his harsh words. He was right and wrong about me. I wasn’t a detective. I had no idea how to conduct a murder investigation, which was why I was flailing so much in the first place. Yes, I was unemployed, but for a number of years, I was self-employed and making enough money to keep myself afloat without the help of my mother or anyone else except Jazmin. That, in my opinion, was one definition of success, but Daniel equated me to the persona I’d created for a web show. As for my job at the resort, he was wrong about that too. Protecting Riley wasn’t my only responsibility. Jazmin was just as important, and so was Odette. In addition, the spirits from the old wing were growing stronger, and from the tone of Odette’s warning, I didn’t have much time to stop them from wreaking havoc on the rest of the resort. Maybe if the ghosts had a chance to enact their revenge, Daniel might finally believe that my psychic abilities were real.
“You know what?” I jogged across the lobby, my shoes squeaking against the damp marble. Daniel didn’t pause his long stride, so I put on a burst of speed to catch up with him. When he ducked under the velvet rope blocking off the hallway, that didn’t stop me. I stepped right over it to get in his face. “You don’t know me. Maybe you think you do, and you can judge me all you want based on the tiny amount of information that you have gathered in the last week and a half, but you don’t really know me. Because if you did, you’d know the only reason I’m so annoying and persistent is because I want to do the right thing. I want to keep my people safe. Ever since—”
My voice caught in my throat.
“Ever since what?” Daniel prompted.
“I lost my dad,” I said, though that wasn’t originally what I’d been planning to say. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever been through, and I hate having to watch Riley and Oliver go through losing someone too. They deserve better. Well, at least Riley does. The only thing I know about Oliver is that he doesn’t do very well under stress.”
Daniel’s eyebrows knitted together. “You think he’s hiding something?”
“Oh, now you want my opinion?”
“Lucia, you have no idea what’s going on in my life right now.” His voice pitched, echoing off the domed walls and bouncing back to us. He tried again in a softer tone. “I need allies here, okay?”
“Then stop alienating me.”
“I’ll try.” He ran his fingers through his thick hair. “Do you really think Liam’s the killer? He needs a motive—”
“He was boffing Oliver’s wife.”
“That’ll do it.”
“So you’ll look into it?” I bounced up and down on my toes. The longer I was away from Riley and Jazmin, the antsier I got. All I wanted to do was hand this case off to Daniel and wait out the insanity from the comfort of my top floor suite. Unfortunately, that wasn’t much of an option, not with the threat of the old wing ghosts breaking free at any moment.
Daniel adjusted the straps of his holster. “Yes, I’ll check it out, but keep your nose down, will you? Eavesdropping tends to backfire.”
A rapid click announced Nick’s presence, his cane tapping against the floor as he skidded into the lobby, panting like a rabid dog. “Detective Hawkins,” he gasped, clasping one hand to his chest as if performing compressions on himself. “Just the man I was looking for. You should come quickly. I think something’s going on in the kitchen. I heard screaming—”
I broke into a sprint before Daniel did, but he was quick on my heels. We shot across the lobby, scaled the stairs to the Eagle’s View, hopped over the bar, and burst into the kitchen. It was empty. Matisse had prepared a few easy meals for the day, but he was nowhere in sight, and neither was Karli.
“Well?” Daniel asked Nick as he hobbled into the kitchen after us.
“I could’ve sworn I heard something.”
Daniel shook his head. “Porter, I can’t deal with anyone screaming wolf, you got me? Don’t come running toward a detective unless something’s really wrong—”
Someone pounded on the door of the storage freezer. From the inside.
“Help!” cried a feeble voice. “Somebody help me!”
Daniel crossed the kitchen in three strides and hauled open the freezer door. Liam Lavi fell out, his fists red and raw from where he’d been hammering against the inside. Like Riley had been when we’d brought her inside from the snow, his lips were blue, but at least he was conscious. Behind him, Tyler’s body—the hunk of plastic that it was now—lay on the floor, thankfully still wrapped. Liam fell to his knees, teeth chattering, and keeled over. Thinking fast, I went to the linen closet and grabbed several tablecloths to wrap around Liam, but when I tried to drape them over his shoulders, he swatted me away.
“Don’t touch me,” he stammered.
“Liam, I’m trying to help.”
He could barely control his tongue. “W-why? You need c-content for your web
show? You’re the one who tried to kill me in the first place.”
8
Liam recoiled as I made another attempt to warm him. “I said d-don’t touch me!”
“Fine.” I shoved the tablecloths into Daniel’s hands. “You do it. I’m done with this. Hope you don’t freeze, Liam.”
As I pushed past Nick, who was watching everything unfold with a worried frown, Liam called after me, “I know what you’re doing!”
I spun around. “If you really knew, you wouldn’t accuse me of trying to kill you.”
Liam allowed Daniel to wrap him in the tablecloths. The thin fabric didn’t do him much good, but his anger was hot enough to get his body back up to temperature.
“You’re nothing without Madame Lucia’s Parlour,” he spat. “I’ve been watching you ever since you arrived at King and Queens because I’ve learned to recognize when people don’t care about anything but money. You never wanted to help Riley. You thought this would be an easy gig for you. Tell me, how did you come up with the idea to start murdering people to get views for your web show? Were you that desperate to impress the Internet?”
Behind me, Nick made a small noise of disbelief, a little snort of his sinuses that gave me the courage to square my shoulders and stare Liam down. I didn’t care if he was halfway to freezing. There was no way I was going down for this, especially when I had so much on the line.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I warned Liam. “You might be right about my reasons for coming here—to make some quick cash—but you’re wrong about everything else. Riley means everything to me. I would never do anything to compromise her safety.”
“You met her less than two weeks ago,” Liam pointed out.
“So?” I challenged. “I’ve known some people for almost thirty years and never developed a real bond with them. Time doesn’t mean anything when it comes to love.”
“How much could you love a crazy twelve-year-old?” he said.