Unsurprisingly, the sale was brokered by Beckett Caldwell, whose parents just happened to own the neighboring lakefront property to the Parks.
Not wanting to get distracted by his personal distaste, Ethan crossed to the other side of the desk. Settling into Michelle’s cushy leather desk chair, which was way nicer than his, he saw that the video clip was pulled up on the laptop. He moved the cursor and clicked play.
The first burst of recorded activity involved the bartender locking the front door at eleven-fifty-nine. Yawning, she removed her keys from her purse and then walked out of camera range, presumably toward the employee entrance in the back. At twelve-fifteen, a middle-aged couple whom Ethan recognized as some of the other hotel guests came in through the front door. Despite the fact that the video lacked sound, it was obvious they were involved in a disagreement. The woman was doing a lot of talking with her hands, and as soon as she turned her back, her male companion rolled his eyes. They moved through the lobby fairly rapidly.
At twenty-six minutes past one a.m., Julie Harlowe stumbled into the lobby barefoot, dressed in an oversized T-shirt and one of the hotel’s plush robes. The clothing was consistent with what she’d been found in, minus the belt from the robe. That had been caught in the iron railing of the balcony. One theory he’d been mentally tossing around was that she’d been trying to unhook the belt after getting it caught, and somehow tumbled over.
Glancing around, Julie shoved her dark hair from her face and then made her way toward the bar. Without hesitation, she walked behind it and began attempting to open the liquor cabinets, which Michelle already informed him were locked overnight. After several minutes of trying, Julie appeared to give up, folding her arms on the bar top and resting her head on top of them. Just when Ethan thought she may have actually fallen asleep, she lifted her head, looking toward the back hall which led to the bathrooms, this office, the dining room and the patio door. Her head moved, and even though her face was hidden from the camera at that angle, Ethan got the impression that she may have said something.
He frowned.
However, no one else appeared onscreen, and then Julie moved around the bar, climbing onto one of the barstools. She spun back and forth in half circles for several moments, before gripping the edge of the bar and hanging her head. He imagined, given how intoxicated she appeared to be, that she’d made herself dizzy.
Having steadied herself sufficiently, Julie reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out…
Well shit. Her phone.
Hitting pause, Ethan stepped to the door of the office and then peeked his head around the corner. Spotting Captain Tully, the head of the Criminal Investigations Division, getting some coffee from a cart that Michelle set up, he gestured him over.
“Sir?”
“Did anyone find Ms. Harlowe’s phone?”
Tully, whom nearly everyone called Chuckles in honor of his permanent frown, furrowed his brow. “Not that I recall.”
“Did the coroner check the pockets of her robe before they removed her body?”
“You can double check that with him, but I’m pretty sure he did. You want me to talk to the woman she was bunking with? Have a look at the room?”
“Yes. We need to locate it.”
“Will do.”
Maybe she’d set it down somewhere, maybe she’d dropped it. Maybe she’d taken it back to her room and her friend hadn’t heard her come in. Maybe someone else had picked it up and taken possession of it, although as far as Ethan knew, no one had admitted to it so far.
Not that he was accusing anyone of anything. This wasn’t a homicide investigation.
He returned to Michelle’s desk.
Onscreen, Julie messed with her phone some more, making hand motions that indicated both scrolling and typing. Could be texting, could be tweeting or emailing or messaging a potential hookup from a dating app, could be any number of things. At this point, there wasn’t sufficient cause to attempt to access her private messages, but he’d definitely be looking at any public social media that she had, just in case.
After a few minutes of that, Julie once again glanced up, looking toward the back hallway. Something on her phone then drew her attention, and she tapped out a quick message before doing a sort of modified fist pump. Whatever she’d just responded to, she’d been happy about it.
Sliding her phone back into the pocket of her robe, she hopped off the stool, adjusted her shirt, and then – looking in the mirror behind the bar – fluffed and arranged her hair before wandering offscreen again.
The clip ended, and Ethan reversed it to watch the last thirty seconds again.
When it was finished, he sat back.
He might have been out of the dating world for the past ten… shit, no, eleven years, but he seemed to recall that women usually did that hair-fluff routine when they were trying to entice a man. Or another woman, for that matter, although he didn’t have any evidence that Julie Harlowe had swung that way.
Curious, Ethan once again opened the door, stepped out into the hall. To his right lay the entrance to the bar and lobby, straight ahead was a short hall that led to the bathroom and what looked to be a storage closet. To his left, the dining area, kitchen door, and the stairs to the second floor.
The sounds of forks scraping against plates had disappeared, so he gathered breakfast might be over.
Heading that direction, Ethan descended the step into the dining room. Cozy booths lined the far wall, including a deep banquette that was wide enough to lie down on. If one were meeting a late-night hookup and didn’t want to disturb one’s roommates, there were certainly less comfortable places to mess around.
Crossing to the patio door, he studied it to see if it was an emergency exit, but he guessed since guests were expected to go out and sit or lounge at their leisure, it wasn’t alarmed. There was a deadbolt, along with a sign asking guests to please lock up behind themselves if they were coming in after hours.
Stepping outside, he moved toward the wooden gate that was part of the privacy fence surrounding the outdoor space. Pulling on a glove, he opened the gate and then examined it from the other side. There was no latch on the exterior. Allowing it to close without applying force, he noted that the spring tension was sufficient to pull it back into place, automatically engaging the lock.
Unless someone opened it from inside, or propped it in some way, he didn’t see how anyone could access the patio without climbing the twelve-foot, solid wood fence. It was possible, of course. Especially with the right equipment. But that would suggest a level of premeditation that the evidence – so far, at least – didn’t appear to warrant.
Ethan exited through the gate, coming around the front of the building. Like most of the streets in town, this one was built on a hill so that the ground on the opposite side of the inn sat at a higher elevation. On that higher elevation sat Veteran’s Park, accessed by a set of stone steps beside the inn, or a flat sidewalk on the side facing main street. It provided a shady spot to sit and feed the birds, or whatever one did in such locations. Ethan climbed the steps, crossing through the park toward the back of the inn, where a short driveway led to a door that accessed the inn’s second floor guestrooms. Since the building lacked an elevator, this was a way for them to accommodate handicapped guests.
The porch covering the upper access door was blocked off with yellow caution tape.
Ducking beneath it, Ethan studied the door, and then turned back to look at the park. If Julie Harlowe really had been looking for some fresh air, he guessed it would be a good, if less private than the patio, place to do it.
Depending on one’s level of adventurousness and tolerance for cold, it would work for a late-night tryst, also.
Maybe someone she’d met at the bar. Maybe even someone staying at the hotel, although as far as he knew, the three male guests were all here with their wives or girlfriends.
Not that it necessarily precluded that sort of thing. But it would raise some important q
uestions.
Ethan walked along the porch, which spanned the back of the building. A retaining wall held back the ground beneath the driveway, creating a deep sort of well under the porch. The area was paved in concrete, as it was used to bring in deliveries for the kitchen.
It was on that concrete where Julie’s body had been discovered.
At some point after she’d left the bar, she’d presumably come upstairs and exited through the handicapped access door, onto the porch. The belt from her robe was tangled in the railing at the very end.
Ethan leaned over, looking down.
The railing was regulation height, but it wouldn’t be impossible to fall over if one were leaning too far, or attempting to climb it for some reason, or intoxicated, which she was.
Or if one were pushed.
There was no evidentiary reason to believe that. No statistical one, either. Hell, there hadn’t been a homicide in town in close to a decade.
Property crimes, yes. It was a thorn in Ethan’s side that his county ranked higher than the state average, but when you combined a sparse residential population with a lot of expensive seasonal homes and little in the way of surveillance or security, theft was bound to happen.
Murder was another matter.
Ethan studied the pavement again. His speculations about midnight romps were just that, speculations. Unless or until the autopsy turned up signs of recent sexual activity, anyway. And even if such evidence turned up, it didn’t necessarily mean that Julie Harlowe’s death had been intentional. Any number of things could have transpired that caused her to fall. But leaving the scene of that sort of accident, if someone else were witness to it, certainly set them up for a wrongful death claim.
However, it was far likelier that the woman simply had had too much to drink and gotten careless. It was a tragedy, but not a crime. Ethan didn’t even think that the inn could be held liable in a lawsuit, given that Julie’s friends admitted they’d been drinking in their rooms from their own supply both before and long after they left the downstairs bar. It wasn’t like they’d been overserved.
He was probably just being paranoid, overanalyzing and projecting every possible outcome, because his brother’s name was loosely involved.
Ethan rubbed the back of his sore neck again. He loved the hell out of Sutton, and was happy to have him back home. But he couldn’t deny that misfortune – or maybe misadventure – seemed to follow his younger sibling like a black cloud. It was strange, given Sutton’s essentially sunny and upstanding nature. It wasn’t like he went looking for trouble. But for whatever reason, it seemed to find him.
“Sheriff McCloud?”
Ethan turned to see the hotel manager, Michelle, standing on the other side of the caution tape. She was twisting her fingers together but when he glanced at her hands, she made a point to still them.
“I wasn’t sure if you were finished in my office?”
“Almost.”
“Charlotte called. She should be here in less than thirty minutes.”
Ethan’s brows went up. He imagined she and her brother had spent the morning on the phone with their attorney. Fatal accidents weren’t good for the bottom line.
Which was kind of a shitty assumption on his part. Just because they were friends with Beckett, that didn’t mean they lacked humanity.
“I didn’t realize she was coming.”
“Oh.” Michelle looked confused. “Did no one tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
Visibly distressed, she started twisting her fingers together again. “Julie Harlowe wasn’t just a regular guest,” she said. “She was Ms. Parks’ college roommate.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DESPITE having at least a hundred things still to do at the clinic, Sutton found that he was too restless to focus on any of them. He kept gravitating toward the front door, scanning the street for new signs of activity at the inn. It had pretty much died down by lunchtime, and though he’d waited to hear something else from Ethan, his brother hadn’t called. When Sutton stopped by the station to sign an official statement regarding his recollections from last night, Ethan was still out. He knew he had a lot of things on his plate, but it felt like his brother was purposefully avoiding him. And given the content of their conversation this morning, it made Sutton antsy.
He wrestled with the urge to yank open the door, march down the street, and tell the women he’d met last night how heartsick he was over the tragic turn of events. But he didn’t want to go against Ethan’s wishes.
Even if it did make him feel like he’d somehow done something wrong.
His phone rang while he was staring through the glass, and he practically sprinted toward the front desk, leapfrogging over a box of supplies that he’d been in the middle of unpacking. When he picked it up, it showed an unknown number.
“This is Sutton.”
“Sutton, it’s Willow.”
Finally. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all day.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I was in class all morning for my re-certification, so my phone was turned off, and then when we broke for lunch, I had like eight hundred missed calls and messages and… Jesus. What a horrible thing.”
“Have you talked to Ethan?”
“Briefly. And I just got off the phone with Hannah. That’s actually why I’m calling you from the landline here. My battery died.”
“Ethan let you call her?”
“What do you mean?” Willow’s voice held confusion. “Of course I called her. I offered her my condolences along with a full refund since they prepaid the guide fee. Why would Ethan care?”
“It’s… nothing.” He frowned at the cars passing by the front window, without really seeing any of them.
“Look, I don’t mean to cut this short, but I have to get back to class. We only have fifteen minutes for a bathroom break, and I actually have to go to the bathroom now. I just wanted to touch base, but we’ll talk more at dinner tonight. You still good with six?”
He’d forgotten all about it. “Yeah. Sure thing.”
“Okay. Gotta go. See you tonight.”
Willow ended the call, and Sutton stared at his phone before sliding it into his pocket. It didn’t mean anything, that Ethan hadn’t told Willow not to call the women. After all, she had a contract with them for services that would no longer be rendered, and therefore legitimate business to discuss. And he understood, logically, that his brother was exercising an abundance of caution where he was concerned, due to the fact that Julie had hit on him, and her friends felt that was significant enough to bring up.
And now she was dead.
Memories pushed their way to the surface, memories that had bile rising up the back of Sutton’s throat. Memories of another woman, another tragic accident. And another time when his personal involvement had been called into question.
He squeezed his eyes closed, bracing a hand on the counter to steady himself until the wave of grief and anger passed. It had been a long while since he’d felt either so keenly, but he remembered the sort of seasick aftermath all too well. Stomach knotting, Sutton went in search of the human first aid kit he’d ordered for the staff breakroom, and was relieved to find that it was complete enough to include antacid tablets. Ripping open a pack, he popped the tablets in his mouth, ignoring the fact that they tasted like chalk. Knowing that he’d never be able to settle until he cleared his head, Sutton grabbed his keys from the counter and then locked the front door. He needed air, and he needed space.
After climbing into his truck, Sutton headed out of town, no particular destination in mind. Driving for the hell of it was something that he hadn’t done much of since moving away from Rabun County, as neither Gainesville nor Atlanta highways were exactly designed for relaxation. More like a test of survival skills.
The hustle and bustle – if one could call it that – of downtown Clayton grew smaller in his rearview mirror, and some of the tension began to ease from his shoulders. He was almost certainly
overreacting, but then logic had very little to do with emotion, especially the sort of emotional residue left over from the most traumatic experience of one’s life. And the similarities between that experience and his conversation with Ethan this morning were more than a little unsettling.
He was starting to feel like he was cursed when it came to women. The romantic equivalent of a Typhoid Mary – or Typhoid Tim, as it were – bringing death to whomever he touched.
Not that he’d touched Julie, exactly. He hadn’t done more than stand there and politely not react to her advances. But Eliza… he swallowed hard, remembering the woman who’d been the love of his twenties. The woman he’d thought would be the love of his life. He could still smell the smoke, feel the acrid burn of it in his throat, even without trying.
Realizing that he was dangerously close to tearing up, Sutton forced his attention back to the road and discovered that he’d driven right to the border of North Carolina. And while the thought of just… keeping going held some appeal, he knew he couldn’t drive away from what was inside him. Not only that, but he’d promised Willow he’d be there for dinner, and quite honestly, he didn’t want to miss it. He’d get to see his niece, Harper, who was growing faster than she had any right to, and he’d be able to get some more information out of his brother.
Hopefully, anyway.
Turning onto a side road with which he wasn’t familiar, Sutton didn’t bother with his GPS. As long as he kept heading south and didn’t cross over into South Carolina, he’d eventually end up back around Clayton. He had a decent sense of direction – all those years of hiking with only a compass – and it felt good to not know specifically where he was going. Freeing, somehow. Maybe because he’d been living his life on such a careful, planned trajectory for so damn long. He needed a little spontaneity.
Slow Burn (Rabun County Book 1) Page 16