Murder, Wrapped Up

by K. J. Emrick

  Alfonse stopped, his hand on the open door at the top of the stairs. He blinked at me, and then he shrugged. “Guess I don’t. He came back, and this morning he was dead. Just kind of assumed he stayed put to get killed. Maybe he didn’t.”

  I frowned. That was less than helpful. Cutter had said no one had seen Bostwick after he left my Inn. Well, obviously that wasn’t true because Alfonse here had seen him come back to the pub alone. Alone, meaning without me. If there was one witness running around town that Cutter had missed, there might be others. If Bostwick had left his room again, or if someone else had come up to see him, there would be other witnesses to interview.

  Not that I could expect Cutter to work that hard at his job.

  Other people coming up to see him. Like the murderer. Now, why did that theory bother me so much?

  “Here we go,” Alfonse said, snapping on a light switch that lit up the hallway we found ourselves standing in. Fresh, white wallpaper lined the whole length of it. Two doors stood to either side, four rooms in all. In-between the doors were cheap paintings of flowers and trees and things like that. The kind you find at flea marts. Still, I had to admit that Alfonse had actually put a lot of thought into making this place look nice. He might actually start giving me competition once word got around these rooms were here to rent.

  James snapped a few pictures with his mobile. “Which room was Bostwick staying in?”

  “This one.” Alfonse tapped on the door immediately to our right. A black metal number was screwed in place to it. Room number two.

  It was just a door. No police tape. No official looking notice that declared the room a crime scene, everyone stay out.

  I looked over at James, and I could see he was thinking the same thing that I was. Where was the crime scene?

  Alfonse was already opening the door up for us, using the same key that he’d used before. With a smile and a little flourish of his hand, he stepped aside for us.

  The room was much smaller than the ones I rent out at the Pine Lake Inn. It had its own bathroom, off to the side, which wasn’t anything more than a toilet and a sink in a little space the size of a closet. The bed was a single, all neatly made up with the sheets and comforter in place and the pillow fluffed up at the head of the bed. There was a four drawer chest next to the bed, the top of it bare except for a lamp with an ugly blue shade. There was a desk up against the other wall, also bare on top.

  Hesitantly, I looked down at the floor. I remembered the photos that Senior Sergeant Cutter had shown me. I remembered the pattern of this gold and brown carpet, I remembered Bostwick lying there, with a bullet hole in his head, blood pooling under him.

  Only, there was no blood. Not even a spot of it.

  James stepped in, taking pictures, checking every corner of the ten foot square room. “Alfonse, are you sure this was the room Bostwick was using?”

  “’Course,” was the simple answer. He was still smiling, still proudly showing off the little cubbyhole of a room like it was some Hollywood mansion.

  Maybe he wouldn’t be much competition for my Inn, after all.

  “Where’s his things?” James asked. “He must’ve had... I don’t know, luggage?”

  That was the second most important question on my mind, too. Only the second, because at the top of my list I still had to wonder where the blood stains had gotten to.

  Alfonse looked at both of us blankly. It was like the idea of his guest’s belongings hadn’t even occurred to him. “His things? Hm. Can’t say that I know. Maybe Officer Caveman took it all.”

  “Officer Kay,” I corrected.

  “Right. Him.”

  It made sense, I guess, except it didn’t explain why the police would bother to tidy the room up afterward. Make the bed. Clean up the blood. I mean, how could anyone clean up all that blood, anyway? And why?

  This was a crime scene, for the love of God.

  “Can we check the other rooms?” I asked Alfonse. “Maybe he got shot in one of the other rooms.”

  He shrugged at my suggestion, but then he led us down the hall, opening each room in turn. All of them were just as clean and tidy—and empty—as the first one had been.

  James put his phone away. There was nothing to see. “I think Cutter has some explaining to do. My paper’ll be happy to give him the chance to answer some questions.”

  “And quote me, of course,” Alfonse put in, clapping his palms together. “When d’ya think I can expect that exclusive on the one and only me?”

  “Uh, I’ll have to run it by the head office.” James evaded the question as best he could. I knew he’d only promised the interview to help me figure out what was really going on here. “It’ll run soon enough. Count on it.”

  All the way down the stairs as we were leaving Alfonse would not stop talking, about himself, about his career, about the different stars of the music world he had worked with. He was in an incredibly good mood. I guess knowing that someone died in your place of business can do that for some people.

  The only other reason would be he was happy to see us leave. Hard to believe that, with James promising to put his name in print again.

  When James and I finally left him, humming and singing at the front of the pub, we walked back up to his Charger, standing very close together. “You owe me,” James whispered in my ear.

  “I know,” I whispered back. “Maybe I can come over to your house tonight and make it up to you.”

  His smile said the answer was a definite yes. “Ya haven’t been over in a few days.”

  “I know, James. I’m sorry. Things’ve been hectic.”

  He squeezed my hand and then swung it in rhythm to our footsteps. “Seems to me I’ve heard that before.”

  “Only when it’s true,” I promised.

  He shrugged, and I didn’t know how to respond to that.

  The streets of Lakeshore were starting to get busy, with people out doing their last minute holiday shopping. Soon all of the tourists would start to leave for the holiday, I knew. Four days till Christmas. Time to head home and be with your family. Lots of checkouts to see to. Just because I’d been arrested didn’t mean the world would come to a standstill for me. After all, time moves on.

  I smiled at a few people I recognized walking by as James unlocked the door on my side. I hoped none of them had heard about me being hauled into the police station for a murder investigation yet, but I had a feeling it was already the hot topic of gossip. Cutter would’ve made sure of it...

  My thoughts got cut off as I stared at the car keys in James’s hand. His old car had been built long before keyfobs and electronic keyless entry had been thought up. He needed a key to open the doors.

  Just like Bostwick needed a key to get into his room above the pub. Not just his room, but to open the hallway door, too. He needed a key.

  So then, how did his murderer get up there?

  “Let me see your mobile,” I said hastily to James, holding my hand out.

  He gave it over, obviously wondering what I was on about. “Don’t ya have your own?”

  “Don’t worry,” I told him, “I’m not going to break it.”

  “Famous last words.”

  I swiped the screen of his smartphone to life and then opened up the camera app, looking through the pictures James had taken of the Thirsty Roo and the apartments upstairs. Lots of pics of Alfonse, then shots of the alley, the garbage outside that Alfonse claimed wasn’t his, the stairs leading up...

  The door at the top of the stairway.

  I enlarged the image. No sign of forced entry. No pry marks. No splintered wood.

  I flipped forward to the photos of the rooms and the doors in the hallway. It was the same with these. No signs of forced entry.

  “What is it?” James asked me.

  I showed him, pointing out the lack of suspicious damage. “Either somebody picked the locks on these doors...” I started, letting my voice trail off as understanding dawned in James’s eyes.

 
“Or somebody used a key of their own to get in,” he finished.

  We both looked back toward the Thirsty Roo.

  I know who has access to the master keys in my Inn. Me, and Rosie, and George our maintenance guy. Nobody else.

  I had to believe that here, at Alfonse Calico’s place, the only one who had a master key was him.

  That made him a strong suspect, in my mind.

  The scenario played itself through in my imagination. Alfonse goes up to Bostwick’s room, shoots him, then calls for the police. He leaves and then shows up later and makes like he doesn’t know anything. But the room... Did he clean it up? Or did Bruce Kay?

  I could see either of those two possibilities being true.

  But what was the motive? There had to be a reason for killing Bostwick. He was a Federal Officer. What reason could either Alfonse Calico or Bruce Kay have for killing him?

  I looked up at James, into his crystal blue eyes, hoping maybe he had a better theory than I did. Something that would make sense of this whole mess.

  He shook his head. For right now, we were left with our questions and very little else.

  Two suspects. Well, it was more than what I had ten minutes ago.

  Chapter Five

  James dropped me off at the Inn, and after a long kiss goodbye we promised to see each other again tonight. He hesitated in the driveway, like he wanted to ask if he could stay with me, but then he found his smile again and drove away. I found myself hoping there wouldn’t be much to do around the Inn today, because the sooner I could meet him at his house the better, as far as I was concerned.

  Not every day a girl gets arrested for a murder she didn’t commit. Kind of ruins your mood, I’m here to tell you.

  This close to Christmas, too. Happy holidays to me.

  I looked around the lobby of the Inn. There were a couple of guests filtering down from upstairs, ready to start their exciting day in the not-so-sleepy town of Lakeshore. They wished me good morning on their way through and I smiled back at them. I realized they’d be hearing about the latest murder in Lakeshore soon. For better or worse, murder and mayhem were becoming part of our charm.

  This close to noon the sunlight was coming in bright and strong through the windows in the common room off to the side of the lobby, and it showed me something I’d missed before.

  This place looked very bare. We needed decorations.

  Fuzzy red stockings. Tinsel. Those little cardboard cutouts of Santa and his reindeer. That’s what this room needed. Sure, I was still on the hook with Cutter, but that didn’t mean I was going to cancel Christmas. Our scrawny Christmas tree was nice, but it just wasn’t enough. I had a nativity scene out in the storage shed behind the Inn, too, along with a full box of Christmas crackers destined for our holiday meal. The ones with poems inside. I usually preferred the crackers with jokes inside but this year I thought I’d try being a little more refined.

  Bringing culture to Lakeshore with Christmas crackers. That was my idea of refinement.

  So. Decorating would be the order of the day. Get the supplies out, and the tape, and make the place look cheery. Bring some joy to the tourists while I tried to figure out the mystery surrounding Bostwick’s death. Who says a girl can’t multitask?

  I thought over everything that had happened this morning. All the clues I’d gathered so far. I had to assume that the picture Cutter showed me was real and not Photoshopped. Cutter’s IQ hovered somewhere between a boulder and a cane toad. I doubt he could spell Photoshop, let alone use the program. So clue number one: Bostwick died in that horrible little room of Alfonse’s above his pub.

  The next thing wasn’t so much a clue as it was a question. Why was the room all cleaned up? Who cleans up a crime scene? Answer, the killer. That’s who. Thing was, the police already had pictures of the dead man. What was the sense to cleaning it up after that?

  I racked my brain on that one while I went out to the little shed behind the Inn and moved things out of my way to get to the decorations. I just couldn’t come up with the answer. Someone had cleaned up the room. I didn’t know why, and I probably wouldn’t know why until I knew who the killer was.

  The boxes I needed were behind my trusty red bicycle, the Wallaby. I gave her the nickname myself because she’s fast and she’s cute. I’d had her for years, and she’s literally saved my life more than once. This Christmas, I promised myself, I was going to give her a new paintjob. She deserved it.

  Carrying the decorations back to the Inn I turned my mind to the second fact James and I had learned. No forced entry. The locks were either picked open, or someone used a key. I didn’t doubt there were more than a few people around town who knew how to pick locks. Most folks in Lakeshore still kept their doors unlocked at night because we trusted our neighbors. Still, that didn’t mean there weren’t a few professional crooks living hereabouts. Folks that made their living by stealing from other people. Picking a lock seemed like a lot of trouble to go through just to kill a man, but then I’d had a hitman in my Inn who jumped his way from one second story window to another, the day he’d committed murder.

  A shiver went down my spine. Not something I liked thinking about.

  The other possibility was that whoever got into Bostwick’s room had a key of their own. I found that a lot more believable. If that was true, then it was better than even money that the person who got into those rooms was Alfonse Calico, owner of the Thirsty Roo and keeper of the keys.

  He hadn’t seemed entirely believable when me and James had been talking to him. There were a couple of spots when he’d been downright dodgy. All that talk about himself and his career and his willingness to give James an interview. Had that all been an act?

  Well, Calico had certainly been on stage often enough during his singing career, playing to the audiences, the cameras, the crowds. I think he even starred in a couple of those made for television movies. So the man knew how to act, sure enough. He’d have the skills to fake ignorance if he wanted to.

  Then again, if he was telling the truth, then Bruce Kay was the person there when Bostwick’s body was taken away. The only person there to clean up the mess. And, that meant he was probably the killer.

  Alfonse. Bruce Kay. I didn’t have a motive for either of them, but I had the other two things. Means and opportunity.

  Of course, there was a third possibility. I’d thought of it on the way back to the Inn with James. If there was no sign of forced entry to the room, that might just mean that Bostwick let his murderer into the room himself. Which meant...

  Bostwick might have known his killer.

  I pursed my lips, kneeling down in the lobby to open the box of decorations. Bostwick wasn’t from here. Who could he know well enough to let them into his room? Well, me. If I had shown up at his door and said I’d changed my mind about being a witness, he probably would’ve invited me in with a big smile. I was sure Cutter had thought of that one, too. He could add it to the “proof” he had against me.

  I wasn’t a detective. Or a police officer, or anything like that. I was just Dell Powers, single mother and owner of an amazing Inn tucked into one of the most beautiful places in the world. That didn’t mean I was one of those helpless damsels in the romance novels, but I wasn’t Superwoman, either.

  Sometimes I wondered if I had kangaroos loose in my top paddock.

  That’s Aussie for being off your rocker.

  Who in their right mind steps into the middle of a murder case just because they want to see the bad people punished and the good people—in this case, me—kept safe?

  Thing is, I know who I am. I’m just as smart as I think I am. And I’m going to figure out who really killed Officer Jason Bostwick.

  Everything in the box of decorations was still neatly packed away just like I’d left it last year. Ceramic figures were carefully tucked into bubble wrap. Cardboard cutouts were carefully stacked. Strings of plastic bells were looped around themselves. And then, in one corner of the box, was a can of fak
e snow.

  It’s my own little joke. Snow on Christmas in Australia.

  “Dell!” I heard Rosie call for me.

  Then I heard a huge crash.

  I jumped up to my feet and spun around, in time to see my friend trying to stand up the four or five chairs she’d just barreled over in the dining room. An older couple sitting a few tables away eating a late lunch looked at Rosie oddly, but they didn’t say a word. They were locals, and they knew how clumsy Rosie could be. Although, I had to say she’d really been outdoing herself the past few days.

  With most of the chairs back upright, Rosie threw her hands up in the air like she was disgusted with the way the furniture was treating her. When she made it as far as the lobby she began wringing her hands over and over into her white apron, twisting the cloth into bunches.

  “I heard,” she said. “Oh, Dell, I just heard what that nasty slime Cutter did to ya. If I could get my hands on him right this instant I’d sure give him what for! Arresting Dell Powers for murder. Ridiculous! As if you’d murder anyone. Specially that nice Officer Bostwick. He gave me such nice compliments on my cooking.”

  “Thanks, Rosie.” I’ve never seen her so upset. I felt my insides twist. “I take it the rumor’s gone all around the town by now?”

  She pulled a face. “’Fraid so. I heard it from Lexi down at the hair salon, and she heard it from Gretta’s daughter, and... oh, Dell, what’re we gonna do?”

  That’s my Rosie. Always worried about everybody but herself. “Here’s what I think we should do,” I told her. “You should go back into the kitchen and make sure we have everything we need for the Christmas buffet. I’m going to stay here and put up the rest of these decorations. How’s that sound?”

  “But what about Cutter? What’ll we do ‘bout him?”

  “I know what I’d like to do about him,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Me too!” Rosie managed a wink and a smile. “Put it on your Christmas list and see if Santa can make it happen. Meantime, here you are charged with murder and what’s to do about that?”