The Inn at Holiday Bay: Letters in the Library

by Kathi Daley

  I was about to make a comment about the Denver Woodford case when Georgia’s phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. “I need to take this.” She stood up. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  Georgia got up and headed into her room. I heard her greet someone named Mitch before she closed the door, cutting off my ability to hear the conversation. Just because she was living with me, didn’t mean she wasn’t entitled to have conversations with men I didn’t know, so I returned my attention to Ben’s desk calendar and organizer. I hadn’t realized the extent to which he had made notes about every aspect of his life. It could have been a coping mechanism if he was prone to being forgetful, but I didn’t remember him as being forgetful in the least. Of course, if all the notes were any indication, he didn’t need to remember much on his own.

  “That was my friend Mitch,” Georgia said after returning to the room.

  “I don’t think I remember you mentioning someone named Mitch.”

  “You wouldn’t because I’m sure his name has never come up. I met him when I lived in Boston. He works for the city as a planner. He has access to property records, so I asked him to look up the address Eleanor Quinn gave you to see if he could verify current ownership. The house is now owned by a couple named Cole and Emily Williams, but he was able to find out that Regina Upton owned the house before the Williamses purchased it.”

  “So Reggie is still using the Upton name.”

  Georgia nodded. “It appears that way. At least as of ten years ago. I asked Mitch to look for property currently owned by Regina Upton and he just called to tell me that he’d found both a house and a business with deeds held by Regina Upton in Concord, New Hampshire.”

  I sat back in my chair. “That isn’t all that far away from here. We could make a trip there once we get all this sorted out.” I waved my hand over the table in front of me.

  “We could. But should we? I really think we need to talk to Velma before we go any further.”

  I knew that Georgia was right, but I was worried that we’d get her all excited about finding her sister and then Reggie wouldn’t want to see her. I thought of Annie. It had occurred to me to drive over to her place, ring the bell, offer her a sincere apology, and hope that she invited me in rather than slamming the door in my face when we were in San Francisco. I suppose part of the reason that I hadn’t acted on that impulse was because we were short on time, but there was another reason: I really did suspect that my overture would be met with a door closed in my face.

  “We have bigger fish to fry right now,” I finally answered. “Let’s put the search for Reggie on the back burner and revisit it when we have time to focus on all the angles. I take it you wrote down the addresses?”

  Georgia held up a piece of paper. “I did.”

  “Okay, then. I doubt she’ll be going anywhere in the next few weeks. Let’s focus on this and then think about Reggie Upton again later. And Georgia—thanks for checking with your friend. I know that you have been conflicted about my search for Reggie from the beginning.”

  “I am conflicted. I don’t want Velma to be hurt, but I also think that God put sisters together for a reason, and I believe that those paired by fate should find a way to share the lives they were meant to share.”

  “Very poetic and I agree. Maybe you are right. Maybe our next move is to talk to Velma.” I picked up a file that was resting on the top of the pile. “For now, however, let’s find out who killed my husband and son.”

  Georgia nodded. She returned her attention to the file she had been looking at before the call. “I’m with you a hundred percent, for however long it takes.”

  I looked down at the organizer in front of me. I’d gone back several months and nothing had popped. I was about to toss it aside in favor of the case files when something caught my eye.

  “Ben was in Philadelphia,” I said aloud.

  “When?” Georgia asked.

  “The last week in August prior to his death.” I looked up. “He told me he was going to Bethesda. He told me that he had training of some sort.”

  “Are you sure he didn’t go to Bethesda?” Georgia asked.

  I shook my head, pulling out an airline stub. “This was in the pocket of his organizer for August. It is a round-trip ticket between San Francisco and Philadelphia. Mark died in Philadelphia. I wonder if Ben went to see him. And if he did, I wonder why he didn’t mention it to me.”

  Chapter 12

  “I pulled the accident report for both your husband and Mark Stinson,” Colt informed me several hours later. “It does not appear that the two deaths were linked in any way.”

  “What makes you say that?” I asked. I glanced at Georgia, who sat on the sofa next to me with Rufus in her lap.

  “According to witness statements gathered at the time of the accident that killed your husband and son, a woman with blond hair who appeared to be in her twenties driving a late-model Mercedes veered into oncoming traffic. Your husband swerved to avoid her, lost control of his car, and it flipped three times before it settled onto the shoulder of the road. Both your husband and son were dead at the scene.”

  I was sure I was going to throw up. I never had asked to see the incident report. I knew my family was dead and I was struggling to get through each day. Somehow the need to know all the details never had become an issue with me. In fact, I could distinctly remember not wanting to know so no images would enter my mind.

  Georgia reached across the sofa cushion and took my hand in hers. “The woman didn’t even stop?”

  “She did not. The witnesses were more concerned with trying to help the victims of the rollover than tracking down the woman who caused the accident, so, unfortunately, no one even got a license plate number. The car was black, which is a common color, and while most agreed it was a Mercedes, the witnesses didn’t agree on the year or exact model.”

  “I just assumed it was a male driver who caused it,” I whispered. “I don’t know why I assumed that, but I did.”

  “I would have assumed the same thing,” Georgia said. “Generally speaking, men are much more reckless behind the wheel than women.”

  I noticed Colt’s lips tighten, but he didn’t argue.

  “And Mark?” I asked. “Do we have a description of the person who pushed Mark?”

  “Male. Tall. Over six feet, according to witnesses. Thin, with light-colored hair. He was wearing a baseball cap. Witnesses could not agree on a team, but apparently it was blue. He also had on dark glasses.”

  “So not the same person who ran Ben off the road.”

  Colt shook his head in answer.

  I leaned my head back and tried to ward off the tears pooling in the corners of my eyes.

  “It sounds to me as if the death of Abby’s husband was truly an accident,” Georgia said. “But that Mark Stinson’s death was intentional. Do you think that perhaps Mark’s and Karen’s deaths could be connected?”

  “I think they could very well be. Karen fell in July, which is a popular month for hikers in the area where the falls originate. After her fall, I put out a call for anyone who might have been hiking that day in the hope that someone had seen something. No one I spoke to had witnessed her fall, but I did find a few hikers who remembered passing her on the trail. Everyone I spoke to said she appeared to be alone. I asked about other hikers who had been seen nearby that day and got a variety of responses. Two or three people remembered seeing a tall man hiking alone, so I went back to speak to those witnesses again and was able to confirm that the man was probably around six feet two or three inches tall, with a thin, lanky frame, and blond hair.”

  “Sounds like the man who pushed Mark,” I said.

  He nodded. “The fact that a man fitting the description of the individual who pushed Mark in front of the bus also fits the description of a man hiking in the area on the day Karen died does not prove she was pushed, but it certainly points to that conclusion in my mind.” Colt looked at me. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to let you know tha
t it didn’t look like Ben’s death was linked with the deaths of the Stinsons before you went all the way to San Francisco.”

  “It’s fine. It’s not your fault. I should have let you know what we were doing.” I narrowed my gaze. “It does sound as if Ben’s accident really was caused by a distracted driver, but I found a ticket stub in his organizer for a flight to Philadelphia in August, just a few months before his death. Given the fact that Mark died in Philadelphia, I have to wonder if Ben went to see him for some reason.”

  Colt frowned. “He didn’t tell you he was going to Philadelphia?”

  I shook my head. “Ben told me he was going to Bethesda for training. I knew he and Mark were friends. If he wanted to visit Mark for some reason, all he would have had to do was tell me that was what he was doing. I don’t understand why he chose to keep the trip from me.”

  “I’ll look into it,” Colt said. “I’ll see if I can find out how long he stayed and what he did while he was there.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

  “Do you have old credit card statements from that period? Phone records?”

  I shrugged. “Ben paid the bills, but I remember seeing a box with financial records in the storage unit. I didn’t bring them back with me.”

  “It would be easy to get the records from the credit card and phone companies. I can request them, but it would be quicker and cleaner if you asked for them yourself.”

  I nodded. “I’ll dig up the information today.”

  “What if Mark was in trouble of some sort?” Georgia asked. “Maybe he called his old college roommate who he knew was a detective and asked for his help. Maybe Ben didn’t tell you about his meeting with Mark because he asked him not to.”

  “I suppose it could have happened that way,” Colt said.

  “Was Mark living in Philadelphia at the time of his death?” Georgia asked.

  “No,” Colt answered. I admit I assumed he had been and was surprised by the answer. “He lived in Baltimore. I’m not sure why he was in Philadelphia. I plan to look into it.”

  “Mark was married the last time Ben and I saw him,” I said. “He and his wife, Sherry, were in Napa to go wine tasting and asked us to meet them for dinner. I guess that was maybe five years before Ben’s death. In fact, it was just a few months before Ben and I decided to get married. Mark and Sherry were living in Los Angeles at the time, I think. Anyway, a year or so after that, Ben told me that Mark and Sherry had divorced and Mark had moved east. If he specified where on the East Coast, I don’t remember. I never saw him again after Napa, and I didn’t think that Ben had either, but now the trip to Philadelphia makes me wonder.”

  Colt looked at me. “You said that you found the ticket stub for Ben’s trip to Philadelphia in a pocket in his organizer. Was there anything else there related to that trip?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll look again.” I glanced at my phone. “If you’d like, I can pull up Ben’s phone records and credit card receipts right now. We had online bill pay for both and I have the key with the passwords Ben set up.”

  “It might be helpful. If we can find out why Ben was in Philadelphia, we might be able to figure out what sort of trouble Mark may have been in, if that was what was going on. If he did ask for Ben’s help, one of them must have kept notes of some sort.”

  I was certain Ben must have. He kept notes on everything. All I needed to do was find them.

  Georgia took Ramos out for a walk while I pulled up the credit card and phone records Colt wanted, and he returned a few calls he had received while we were talking. I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed or relieved that Ben’s accident had most likely not been related to Mark’s and Karen’s deaths. I guess I was relieved that Ben wasn’t wrapped up in something that had resulted in both his death and that of our son, but not having an identifiable person to go after meant that the person who caused their death would most likely never be held responsible.

  The first thing I did was pull up the old credit card statements. I scanned through charges for airline tickets but did not find one for Philadelphia. I did find one for Bethesda, though, with a hotel charge during the same dates. Maybe he really had gone to training. I shuffled through the items I had set aside from that morning’s search and found the airline ticket from his organizer. It was one-way, from San Francisco to Philadelphia, on the day before he would have left for Bethesda. I wondered if he hadn’t simply made a stop in Philadelphia on his way to training. If he knew Mark was going to be there, that might have made sense even if there was nothing going on. They were, after all, good friends who hadn’t seen each other for a number of years. The only question I had was why he wouldn’t have told me that he was going to visit with Mark for a day or two on his way to his training. I also wondered how he’d paid for the airline ticket to Philadelphia if he hadn’t used our joint credit card. And where had he stayed while in Philadelphia? The only hotel charge I saw was for the hotel in Bethesda.

  “Is something wrong?” Colt asked when he finished returning his calls. “You are scowling at the screen.”

  “I found this ticket stub for a one-way flight in Ben’s name from San Francisco to Philadelphia that coincided with his trip to Bethesda. Actually, this flight was dated one day before the round-trip ticket from California to Maryland. I suppose it’s possible that Ben decided for whatever reason to make a detour, but I can’t find where he changed his flight. The ticket stub I found wasn’t charged to our joint credit card. I also didn’t find a charge for a hotel in Philadelphia, although there was one for Bethesda.”

  “He might have just stayed with Mark. And Mark might even have paid for the airline ticket to Philadelphia. I’ll see if I can find out how the flight was paid for. You keep looking for notes or additional receipts. We need to know what Mark and your husband were up to during that visit before his death.”

  I agreed with that, so I carefully made my way through Ben’s organizer one day at a time. If there was a clue to be found, I was going to find it.

  “How was your walk?” I asked Georgia a short time later, when she came in with Ramos.

  “Wonderful. It is a beautiful day today. You should try to get outdoors for at least a short break. It’s chilly, but the sun is out and the sea is gorgeous.”

  “I’ll try to take a walk later.”

  “Any progress?” she asked as she took off her coat and hung it on the rack.

  “Not really. It does look like Ben went to Philadelphia on his way to Bethesda, but I’m not sure how long he was there or whether he saw Mark. We are making that assumption based on the fact that Mark was killed there, but so far we have zero proof of it.” I leaned back in my chair. “I feel like we might be jumping to conclusions that aren’t true to make sense of things. It’s the same as with the boxes we found in the basement of the house. Yes, it was a huge coincidence that we found boxes that belonged to three girls who went to school together, were the same age, and were either dead or missing, so I understand why we came to the conclusion that the boxes were the link, but they weren’t at all. When we found that Ben, Mark, and Karen, all people who knew each other going back years and died within a few months of one another, we assumed the deaths were related. But now it looks as if Ben’s death at least is not related to the others. I found an airline ticket for Ben from San Francisco to Philadelphia and began working on the assumption he went to see Mark there, but he lived in Baltimore. We don’t even know for sure that he was in Philadelphia at the time of Ben’s visit.”

  “Actually, we do.” Colt came in from the bedroom holding his phone. “I was able to get hold of Mark’s credit card statement for that August. I didn’t find airfare, but he probably drove from Baltimore to Philadelphia. I did find a charge for a room for three nights, beginning with the date of Ben’s flight to Philadelphia. I called the hotel and confirmed that Mark rented a suite, and that there had been two men staying in it for the whole three-day period.”

  Okay, well, I guess that answe
red that question. If Ben had gone to Philadelphia to meet with Mark, he must have had a good reason. If he stayed for three days, it sounded as if he blew off the first two days of training. Why? He was serious about his career, so he must have had a really good reason. And even more importantly, why hadn’t he told me about it?

  Georgia made a fresh pot of coffee, then sat down at the table to continue with her perusal of the files we had brought back. Now that we knew that Ben’s death had not been linked to the other deaths, I doubted she’d find anything, but it didn’t hurt to keep looking. As I’d come to know, the clues that could blow a case wide open were often found in the most unlikely places.

  “I’m going to head into the office,” Colt said. “If you find anything, call or text. I have a few feelers out that I hope may give us some additional information. In the meantime, I have a thief to track down.”

  “A thief?” I asked.

  “Four businesses in town have been hit in the past three weeks. Each one was robbed after they closed, and each one reported a loss of cash amounting to less than five hundred dollars. I don’t think we necessarily have a criminal mastermind on the loose, but it is my job to track him or her down.”

  “Was the cash left in the register?” I asked.

  “Each business had a wall safe, which is where the money was stolen from. Whoever is behind this knows how to crack a safe; that much is a given. All of the safes were opened, not destroyed.”

  “Sounds like a pro,” Georgia said.

  “In terms of talent, yes, but as I said, no business lost more than five hundred dollars. There was over two thousand dollars in one safe, but only four hundred and fifty-nine dollars was taken.”

  “Weird.” I said.

  “Very,” Colt agreed.

  Chapter 13

  Willa Baker lived in a modest house about a mile from Holiday Bay’s downtown area. It was not large, but her home was well maintained, and while the yard was covered with snow, I could tell by the dormant shrubs that it was probably spectacular during the spring and summer, when the flowers were blooming.