Death on Windmill Way

by Carrie Doyle

  “Let’s start with when you entered the inn. How did you know where to find Gordon?”

  Matt furrowed his brow and didn’t speak.

  “Matt?”

  “Yes, I just want to reconstruct the scene in my mind.”

  “Okay.”

  They sat in silence for what seemed like a minute while Matt reconstructed the scene in his mind. His forehead finally cleared, and he spoke at last.

  “There was a woman at the front desk who told me he was out back.”

  “Can you describe this woman?”

  Again, a lengthy pause. Antonia’s patience was wearing thin.

  “She had brown curly hair. Middle aged.”

  “Okay, you must mean Connie. Although she’s only about thirty-eight, not really middle aged,” laughed Antonia, attempting to lighten the mood.

  Matt remained unmoved. “The average life expectancy for a woman in the United States is anywhere from 73.5 to 81 years of age. So technically she is middle-aged, assuming she lives to the median of the average.”

  “Really? I didn’t know that. Good point but not fun to think about.”

  “As an EMT, I have to think about that all the time.”

  “Right, I’m sure. Okay, well, when you found Gordon in the yard, who was with him?”

  Matt puckered his lips and squinted his eyes, again thinking hard. It was funny to Antonia because she knew that these looks must please the hoards of girls who found him attractive, and she could even hear them describing him as smart and impressive. But there was something so contrived and self-conscious about everything he did that put Antonia off. Sure, he was a nice guy, but a little too humorless. She found him to be nothing like his parents and again wondered if he was adopted.

  “The gardener was there, the one who found him.”

  “Right. And how did he seem?”

  “Upset. But not emotional.”

  “Guilty?”

  “Why would he be guilty?” asked Matt.

  “Sorry, wrong word choice. I meant concerned. Concerned that his boss died.”

  Matt shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Anyone else there?”

  “Nope.”

  “So you only talked to the gardener and Connie the entire time you were there.”

  “Yes. But on the way out, when we were loading him into the wagon, his girlfriend showed up.”

  “His girlfriend was there?” asked Antonia, perking up.

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Barbie?”

  “I don’t know that I ever heard her name.”

  “Are you sure it was his girlfriend?”

  “I mean, I used to see them together all the time. I always assumed it was his girlfriend.”

  Antonia nodded. “And how was she reacting?”

  He tilted his head as if it helped him to recall the scene. “I think kind of in shock, because she was keeping it together. She wasn’t crying or anything. She just kept asking me if I thought he would make it, and what did I think happened.”

  Antonia perked up. “Did it sound like she was worried he wouldn’t make it? Wait, I know that sounds absurd. I’m sure she was. I just mean, was she acting suspiciously?”

  Again a long pause while Matt thought. “I don’t think so, but then I wasn’t focused on her. I did mention that I thought it was a bee sting…”

  Antonia lunged forward to the edge of her chair. “And what did she say?”

  “You know, this I remember. She said, ‘No, no, no.’ Like really strong, as if I didn’t know what I was talking about. She said it was December and there were no bees out in the garden. Then my colleague said, ‘Let’s roll,’ so we left. She didn’t come with us. En route we performed…”

  His mouth kept moving but Antonia was no longer listening. So Barbie had wanted to shoot down the bee theory from the get-go. Very interesting.

  * * *

  When Antonia walked out to the parking lot, she noticed that a thick layer of clouds had spread out against the sky, erasing any evidence of the sun. It had become a gray day that looked as if it would melt into a gloomy night, and the air was chilly and ripe with moisture and dampness. Antonia got in her car and turned it on to get the heat going. She put down Matt’s business card on the seat next to her (Matthew Powers: Physical Therapy Expert, EMT, CPR Instruction, Notary, Life Coach, Motivational Speaker, it read) and dialed her cell phone.

  Antonia’s first choice would be to visit Barbie in person and confront her with this recent revelation, but she didn’t know where she lived or even how to attain her address. She was certain that Barbie was too angry with her to agree to meet in person, so a phone call was her only option. Antonia scrolled through her phone for Barbie’s contact info, which Barbie had given to her when they were on friendlier terms when Antonia first purchased the inn.

  “Hello?”

  “Barbie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Hi, it’s Antonia Bingham. Please don’t hang up,” she added quickly.

  There was silence on the other side and Antonia wasn’t sure Barbie had adhered to her request.

  “Hello?” asked Antonia again.

  “Yeah, I’m here. What do you want?”

  Antonia was uncertain how to phrase it. If she were accusatory or hostile, Barbie would just hang up. She had to make up something.

  “I had a question for you. It’s of a delicate nature, but it’s important.”

  Antonia waited. Barbie didn’t respond.

  “Okay?” asked Antonia.

  “Look, I don’t have all day. I gotta get to work. Just spit it out,” she commanded.

  “Okay, when you found Gordon in the backyard, after his heart attack…”

  “I didn’t find Gordon,” she interrupted.

  “Right. I mean, I know Hector found him, but then when you came out to see him…”

  “What are you talking about? I wasn’t there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I wasn’t at the inn that day. I had…a meeting elsewhere.”

  Antonia was confused. “But Matt, the EMT worker, said you were there.”

  “He was mistaken. I wasn’t there.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Are you friggin’ kidding me? I told you I wasn’t there. Now is that all? ’Cause I have to go.”

  “Yes, that’s all.”

  After her call Antonia exited her car again and went back inside the Physical Therapy center to confirm with Matt. He was working with a new patient but Antonia strode past the receptionist and approached him. He was massaging his female patient’s thigh but answered Antonia’s question.

  “Sorry to bother you again, but I just want to confirm with you one last time. I just spoke to Gordon’s girlfriend and she says she wasn’t there when he collapsed, or any time after that. Are you sure you saw her?”

  Matt shrugged, as his fingers kept kneading the woman’s muscle. “Some woman was there. I know I saw her at the inn a bunch of times. I remember she was at the New Year’s Eve party I went to one year.”

  Antonia was utterly confused when she drove back to the inn. It wasn’t until she pulled back into the parking lot that something dawned on her. Naomi had also been at the New Year’s Eve party. Naomi was often seen with her brother. It was probably Naomi at Gordon’s side when he died. And it was now possible once again that Naomi had killed him.

  30

  When Antonia entered the inn, she discovered that all hell had broken loose. Both Glen and Lucy were waiting outside of her office, both vying to be the first to get her attention. They immediately spoke in unison, bombarding her with their urgent news. Antonia could only decipher the words accident, hospital, ghost, and haunted before she threw the card down on her desk and threw up her hands in surrender.

  “What
’s going on?”

  Again, they began to speak at the same time, and she silenced them.

  “Lucy, you first.”

  Glen sniffed that he was not chosen and instantly began pouting, while Lucy began her story. Antonia noticed that the front of Lucy’s beige dress was covered in a dark stain, almost the color of Hawaiian Punch.

  “About an hour ago, I came to your office to go over some of the latest bills. I knocked on the door, of course, and I thought I heard you say to come in. When I open the door an entire bucket of red dye fell on top of me! Someone had propped it to the door so that when I opened it, it spilled. Nearly missed bonking me on the head!”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, but my dress is destroyed.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Lucy tersely. “Obviously, you didn’t rig your own door.”

  “Do we know who did?” asked Antonia.

  Lucy shook her head. “No. Connie didn’t see anyone come in, and neither did the cleaners.”

  “And no one fessed up? Thought it was a fun prank?”

  “No,” said Lucy. “But I think—”

  Glen interrupted her. “Can I talk now? My situation is freakin’ urgent.”

  Lucy bristled and folded her arms with impatience. She refused to look at Glen while he spoke, instead focusing her eyes on Antonia’s desk in an act of defiance as if to convey that whatever Glen had to say was of little meaning to her.

  Glen’s eyes moved from Lucy to Antonia with importance. He lifted his chin as if he was about to recite a church eulogy. “Kendra is in the hospital,” he announced dramatically. He paused to let the words sink in, before continuing. “The kitchen is a serious disaster. We have a full house booked tonight, and it’s lookin’ like nothing is going to get done.”

  He folded his arms and raised his eyebrow.

  “What happened to Kendra?” asked Antonia.

  “It went down like this: she went in the changing area to put on an apron, but she couldn’t find any. She came back and started complaining that they were still missing. I admit at this point I just thought she was being a prima donna, especially when I found Rosita, who said she had put them all there. Kendra went back again and said there were none. So then we all went and looked, and sure as sugar she was right. There weren’t any. Rosita started opening the lockers, like, where could they be? Then we all pitched in, and when Kendra opened your locker, this giant hammer smashed her on the head.”

  “What? A hammer? Is she okay?”

  “There was a lot of blood,” said Glen, waiting for the words to sink in.

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  “I had Hector take her to the emergency room in Southampton. She’s gonna be laid up for the night, but I think she’ll be okay. But the big news is, someone is setting booby traps here at the inn. And I gotta say, I think they’re trying to take you down.”

  Both Lucy and Glen stared at Antonia as she grasped what they were saying. Someone was playing mischief…or someone was playing murder. It was not good. No, not good at all.

  “And we have no idea in either case who did it?”

  They shook their heads. “No one saw anything,” said Lucy.

  “Let’s call a spade a spade,” said Glen. “Either someone is messing with you, or the joint is haunted.”

  “Haunted?” asked Antonia.

  Glen shrugged. “Those are your two options. Take ’em or leave ’em.”

  “There must be a third.” Antonia sighed. “What do you think, Lucy?”

  Lucy’s answer surprised her. “I don’t usually subscribe to the belief that paranormal activity exists but…all these things are very, very strange. And with the coincidence of Biddy dying this week…maybe there’s something to it.”

  “I didn’t expect that from you.”

  “Well, regardless of what it is, we have decisions to make. Shall we cancel dinner service? I think we also need to consider shutting down the inn.”

  “Shut down the inn? Right now? Are you crazy?” asked Antonia.

  “We can’t do that…” agreed Glen.

  “We need to seriously consider it,” said Lucy sternly. “Think about the liability. It would cost the inn a ton of money if more of these things happened. What if a customer got hurt? Then we’re to blame.”

  Antonia sighed deeply. Her head was spinning; it was all too much to absorb.

  “No, we’re not shutting down anything. Give me ten minutes to check my messages in my office then I’m heading to the kitchen STAT. Marty and I will get it under control. Dinner is on.”

  “But what about all these…accidents? What if they are some kind of warning?” asked Lucy.

  Antonia grimaced, before nodding authoritatively. “Then let them warn me. I’m not going anywhere. And I have Chubb insurance.”

  * * *

  After they left, Antonia eyed the bills that Lucy had left for her on her desk, and did a quick flip through. There were the usual utility bills, which honestly seemed particularly high, and vendors’ bills, which appeared to be growing with every installment. Wasn’t Marty supposed to be haggling with those guys? It clearly wasn’t working. The good news was a notice from the Town of East Hampton regarding her building inspection, which stated the inspector didn’t think she had any violations. She smiled when she read the signature at the bottom, confirming it. At least something was going her way.

  Antonia had several voicemails, including one from a travel agent who wanted to book three rooms at the inn for the entire week of Christmas, which pleased Antonia to no end, and another from a woman inquiring about room rates for Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. A British man named Jonathan had called back to confirm that she had received his resume, which she had not, so she made note of that. There was a message from some bank that was clearly left in error, and one from the vendor who was still trying to entice Antonia into buying his beer. The last and most important message was from Larry Lipper, which she listened to twice.

  “Hi, Bingham, it’s me, making your day yet again. I found out how they nailed Naomi. Anonymous call to the police. Apparently, that missing carbon monoxide detector was found in Naomi’s neighbor’s garbage bin. Got that? Cops have been all over. They’re fine-tuning the case against Naomi. She’s going down for this.”

  Antonia leaned back in her chair and glanced out the window. Her mind drifted to the picture of Naomi standing in the backyard of the inn. She had been following a cardinal, she said. She was watching birds. Something clicked in Antonia’s brain.

  31

  Sunday

  Clarity strikes at the most peculiar times, but when it does, ah, the joy it brings. It’s like a sudden pinprick in the brain that releases the juice of revelation that washes over the entire body. It’s a cleansing bath of lucidity that transports the newly sober recipient to an alternate level of wisdom. It’s the moment that you reprimand yourself for not seeing it earlier, but also experience the full euphoria at having reached your destination at last.

  Saturday night had been challenging, frantic and exhausting for Antonia, but she and Marty, with the help of Glen, Liz, and Soyla (whom she had called in for reinforcement and who had performed beautifully) had pulled it off. Antonia pushed aside all thoughts of murder and ghosts and poured every bit of passion she had into the kitchen, producing meal after meal and putting her whole self into it. She sustained this momentum from the second she entered the kitchen until she helped shut down the restaurant at eleven thirty. The evening was busy, not without flaws, but overall a success. The rib eye with cauliflower gratin and caramelized carrots as well as the fettuccine with lamb ragout sold particularly well.

  Afterward, Antonia had carefully entered her apartment, slowly opening the door to ascertain if there were any hammers or buckets of ink waiting to clock her. When she was
certain that the coast was clear, she congratulated herself on having changed her locks. She was pretty sure that’s why she was still okay. Despite that fact, she still crept around her apartment in the dark; slyly checking under every piece of furniture and behind every door and curtain to make sure that nothing awaited her. She basically did a full cavity search of her apartment, which took about ten minutes, before she allowed herself to collapse into bed and sink into slumber.

  She slept deeply but had strange dreams. Flashes of everything and everyone that she had come into contact with over the past week appeared in odd places. But what was even more bizarre was that the secondary players seemed to take prominence in her sleep. Gordon and Biddy hovered in the background of her mind, limiting themselves to the shadows, but random people like the girl from the farm stand, and Biddy’s neighbor, Sharon Getz, and the Winslows—the couple who had just stayed at the inn—were center stage. Antonia’s dreams were like a kaleidoscope where she would turn her head and everything and everyone in her mind would shake out in a different way, tumbling forward in different directions, but all somehow inextricably linked.

  Antonia woke rested, despite the chaos of her dreams. She preceded her alarm, and rose to find a glint of light streaming through her shades, curling its way around the room. The day would be bright and sunny. A soft breeze slid through the open window, ripe with freshness and the salty lick of the ocean. Birds were chirping, their song an optimistic soundtrack to the morning. The day held promise. (The only bummer was that she wished she could go see Nick Darrow at the beach, but he would definitely be gone by now.) And as soon as Antonia sat up in bed, she experienced the moment of clarity that had eluded her.

  “Of course,” she said aloud, running her burgeoning theory through her mind. “It all makes sense.”

  She knew what she had to do. She gently unfolded herself from her thick comforter and padded across the carpet to her bathroom to wash her face. With each splash of cool water that hit her cheeks, her plan began to form. After quickly dressing, she went to the kitchen and began mixing scones and muffins, pouring in streams of chocolate chips and raisins depending on which baked item she was making. With each swirl of her wooden spoon, her plan further took shape. After closing the oven door and wiping her hands on her apron, she walked out into the cloudless day and across the bouncy green lawn to the back corner of the yard. She used her foot to slide through the leaves until her toe knocked into a rock. She had found what she was looking for.