Whispers of Murder

by Cheryl Bradshaw

  CONGRATULATIONS LEO AND ISABELLE

  WE WOULD LIKE TO GET TO KNOW YOU LEO IF YOU’LL GIVE US ANOTHER CHANCE

  ENJOY YOUR WEDDING NIGHT

  P.S. ISABELLE--I KNOW THIS WINE IS YOUR FAVORITE, THIS IS FOR YOU

  “My favorite?” Isabelle said. “What kind is it?”

  Leo spun the bottle around in the bowl. It’s a Chateau Lafite Rothschild, whatever that is.”

  “What year?”

  “Says 1996.”

  Isabelle stuck her hand out. “Let me see that bottle.” Leo handed it to her and she flipped it around, giving it a full inspection. “It’s a Bordeaux. In the mid-18th century there was a French politician who became hooked on this stuff. He gifted some bottles to King Louis XV who preferred it to most of his other wines. Because of that it earned the nickname ‘the King's wine,’ not that you’re interested in all that information. It just slips out sometimes.”

  Leo shook his head. “Wow, are there any wines left that are unfamiliar to you?”

  “My father wouldn’t have it any other way. By age ten I’d memorized all the wines in our vineyard. He used to tell me stories like the one I just told you. I guess that was his way of bonding with me.”

  “So it’s a peace offering then?”

  She squinted. “If it came from him. The card was typed and it wasn’t signed.”

  “And is it?”

  “What?”

  “Your favorite?”

  “One of them. If I told you how much this bottle cost, you wouldn’t believe me.”

  Leo uncorked it, reached for two glasses and poured. “Let’s make sure it doesn’t go to waste then.”

  Isabelle’s head throbbed. She compressed her temples with her hand.

  Leo raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

  “I want to have this with you, but I’m still a little woozy from earlier today.”

  “I’ll wait then.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t. It won’t be the same. Now that you’ve opened it, you should have some.” Her hand passed by the wine he’d just poured her and she grabbed a glass of water from the bedside table and clanked it against his flute of wine. “To our future,” she said and they both flicked their heads back and drank in their respective liquid.

  Leo leaned forward and kissed her. “Why don’t you rest for a while?”

  “I’m fine. Besides,” she said with a glance toward her open robe, “I got all dressed up in this thing.”

  “Just for a few minutes,” he said. “And then you’ll wake up refreshed—we have all night. I tell you what, I’ll shower and have some of this food, and if you’re still not up, I’ll wake you.”

  Her body cried out in approval so she gave in and curled up on the bed. Leo grabbed the duvet, folded it over her body and curved his body behind hers.

  “I’m sorry for the way my family has treated you,” she said. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”

  “I love you Isabelle,” he whispered. “Nothing else matters to me. Only you.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Light filtered in rich shades of orange and yellow through the sheer curtains that spanned the length of both windows, and Isabelle realized she hadn’t slept a few minutes, she’d slept all night. Her legs and arms were draped over Leo like a spider monkey struggling to find warmth, only she wasn’t warm at all, she was cold—freezing.

  She peeled her face apart from Leo’s arm, propped herself up a few inches and peered around the room. The bottle of wine was tipped on its side. No wonder he was still passed out. She slanted her eyes toward him. He looked so peaceful.

  With the tips of her fingers Isabelle moved her hands up and down his arm to rouse him from his sleep, but he didn’t move. She leaned in close and turned his face in her direction. His skin didn’t look right. It had a yellowish hue, and as she grazed her hand over his lips his mouth propped open, but no breath expelled from it.

  Isabelle gasped and tripped over a pile of Leo’s clothes as she flung herself over her handbag on the floor. She heaved all the items out until she spied her cell phone, and then pounded her fingers on the keys until it rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Who’s this?” Isabelle said.

  “Mavis Carlyle.”

  “Sorry, wrong number.”

  Isabelle swabbed her eyes with her fingers, blinked a few times and dialed again.

  “Isabelle?”

  “Emmett?”

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “I dunno, I’m—it’s Leo. I can’t…he’s not…I need—”

  “Where are you?”

  “Langley Hotel, room number…”

  What was the number? Her eyes danced around the room looking for any sign of it.

  “I don’t know, Emmett. I don’t know!”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  When Emmett entered room 152 at the Langley Hotel he found Leo sprawled out on top of the four-poster bed, but there was no sign of Isabelle anywhere. He approached Leo and pressed two fingers to the side of his neck but there was nothing. No pulse. No sign of life. He was still like the bed that surrounded him.

  A faint whimper echoed from behind a closed door a few feet away. He approached it and jiggled the handle. It was locked.

  “Izzy, open the door.”

  No response. The toilet flushed followed by a gurgling sound. Isabelle expelled all the stomach contents in her body and then it flushed again.

  Emmett balled his hand into a fist and pounded on the door. “Let me help you.”

  “I can’t…move. My legs feel like they’re stuck to the floor.”

  “Crawl to the door if you can. If you can’t I’ll go get someone who can pry it open.”

  “No!”

  Isabelle spread her fingers wide and pushed herself off the floor into a kneeling position. She moved her hands forward along the cold, hard surface of the marble floor and mustered all the strength she had to drag her body along with her. Every inch forward made her insides uneasy, but she finally reached the door, lifted her finger toward the knob and shifted the position of the lock.

  Emmett launched the door forward when he heard it click. His eyes shifted to a frail Isabelle who was still dressed in her black nightie from the night before. Her face was smashed into the marble, and her cropped chestnut-colored hair was bobby-pinned back on both sides. One of the pins dangled from a few strands of hair and begged to plunge to the floor and give up the ghost.

  “Look at me,” Emmett said.

  Isabelle didn’t move and stared with less than fascinated interest at the cabinet doors beneath the vanity.

  Emmett snatched a white washcloth from the counter and ran it under some water in the sink. He knelt beside Isabelle and held her head in his hands while he wiped the remnants of food that clung to both sides of her face. Even then, she refused to look at him.

  She boosted her hand into the air and tried to swat the cloth away, but he held her fingers with his other hand and rested it on his knee.

  “Izzy, have you called anyone?”

  “Leo is dead, isn’t he?”

  He leaned down until he was a couple inches away from her ear. “Do you know what happened?”

  Without moving an inch she said, “It’s my fault. I fell asleep and…”

  Emmett jammed his hands under Isabelle, scooped her up and shielded her face from the deceased while he traversed to the sofa in the next room. He grabbed a blanket from the hall closet, wrapped her up in it and turned to find her cell phone.

  He’d taken one step in the direction of her bag when his arm was snagged from behind. He turned and met her gaze. It was the first time he’d gotten a good look at her since he’d arrived there. Her eyes had taken on a purplish hue, and they were so filled with tears he imagined she couldn’t see anything through them. She muttered, “Thank you,” which sounded a lot more like, “Thay oooh,” but he knew what she’d meant.

  He smiled and smoothed away a fragment of hair that had
fallen across her brow. “Just rest, I’ll handle everything.” She nodded and curved her body into the soft velvet and allowed sleep to overtake her.

  Emmett searched her handbag but found nothing. He dropped it into her suitcase and skimmed the room. Behind the bathroom door on the floor was a hot pink cell phone with a bedazzled jewel hanging off the side. He snatched it up and searched the calls. She’d only dialed one number he recognized: his.

  He leaned up against the wall and pondered who to call first. Seconds later he pressed 9-1-1.

  An operator answered and he said, “I’m in the honeymoon suite at the Langley Hotel. A man is dead.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The second call Emmett placed was to Roland Donnelly, Isabelle’s father, who arrived faster than the police did.

  Roland stroked his chin with his fingers while he ogled Leo. “There’s no question the gold digger is dead. Has she told you anything about how he got that way?”

  “Not much.”

  Roland removed his glasses from his pocket, put them over the rim of his nose and shoved them back into place. He leaned closer to the body. “He’s got a nasty smell, but then he always reeked of some kind of pungent odor in my opinion, so I suppose that’s nothin’ new.”

  He scanned Leo from top to bottom. “Well, since all he’s wearing are these hideous boxers, it’s not hard to see there aren’t any wounds of any kind. A gash from what looks to be a knife on his lower chest, but it’s not recent.”

  Roland grabbed Leo by the torso and rolled him over.

  “What in the hell are you doin’? You shouldn’t be anywhere near that body, or my crime scene.”

  Roland turned and faced Fred Terrington, the town sheriff.

  “It might be your crime scene but that’s my daughter,” he said and bobbed his head in the direction of the next room.

  “What’s she got to do with this?”

  “The dead guy is her husband.”

  “She’s married?”

  “Where’ve you been, Fred? Wedding was yesterday.”

  The sheriff twisted himself over the body and then looked over at a chair where Leo’s watch and clothes lay. “What’s a daughter like yours doing with some city boy?”

  From across the room Emmett waved his flat hand in front of his neck. The sheriff got the message.

  “I’ll need to talk with her,” he said to Roland.

  “Can’t it wait?”

  The sheriff shook his head. “’Fraid not. We can do it here, or you can see her to the station and we’ll do it there.” He flared his nostril at Leo. “Probably best to get her out of here, away from…this.”

  “I’d like a minute with her first,” Roland said.

  “Only because it’s you Roland, but make it fast. My deputy coroner is just about here.”

  Roland entered the next room but held back when he saw Emmett sitting in silence next to Isabelle.

  “We have to wake her,” Roland said.

  “It might be best if you do it,” Emmett said.

  Roland nodded. He approached Isabelle and shook her in the gentlest way he knew how, but he still felt he nudged her the way he did one of his horses.

  Her eyelids fluttered open and she blinked them together a few times before her father came into focus. “Dad?”

  “We need to talk, and there isn’t much time.”

  She tried to sit up and then clenched her hand over her stomach and fell back onto the arm of the couch. “Where’s Emmett?”

  “He went to make you some coffee. What do you remember about last night?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t feel well. I was going to have some wine, but my head ached so Leo told me to lie down. When I woke up, it was morning, and he was…he was…”

  Isabelle shielded her face from her father. She hated him seeing her like this. He sat down beside her, reached his calloused hands toward her arms and encircled his fingers around them. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why? You couldn’t stand him.”

  Emmett returned with a cup of coffee and set it down next to her. He exchanged glances with Roland and left the room.

  Isabelle hunched over the arm of the couch and pulled the blanket over her face until her eyes were the only thing that peeked out. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Any of it. I just want to get out of here.”

  “I know, and we will, but I need you to finish telling me what happened.”

  She tried to sit up and ignored the resistance she received from the rest of her body. “One of those hotel people came to the door with a cart of food and a bottle of wine which, after I read the card, I thought it was from you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was a Chateau Lafite Rothschild.”

  Roland’s eyebrows curled and his forehead wrinkled up like lines displayed on a piece of school paper. “I didn’t send it.”

  “Then who did?”

  He shot up from the sofa. “Do you feel well enough to get dressed?”

  She swaddled the blanket around her and stood. “I can try.”

  “Get your things together and I’ll be right back.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Roland re-entered the bedroom and spotted Emmett leaned up against the wall with both hands shoved into his pockets. “She’s getting dressed,” Roland said. “When she comes out, stay with her.”

  Emmett nodded.

  Roland pivoted his body around and scanned the room.

  “Looking for something?” the sheriff said.

  “A cart.”

  “Haven’t seen one.”

  “Me neither.”

  Roland scrambled out the door, down two flights of stairs and hunched over the front desk. The female employee behind it bit the inside of her lip when he approached and gave him a look that made him feel like he was the grim reaper, and it was time to collect.

  “Where…do…you…keep…the…” He breathed in and exhaled—twice. “Let me try again. Where’s the kitchen?”

  She frowned and shooed him toward a room with a glass door. “Through there, all the way to the back.”

  In the kitchen Roland found a lone worker. A boy dressed in grey skinny jeans and a soiled apron whistled an unfamiliar tune while he chucked dishes into a stainless steel sink.

  Roland cleared his throat loud enough for the entire first floor to hear, but there was no reply.

  He tried again. “Hello?”

  The boy tossed a pan into the water and then spun around on his heels like he was rehearsing for a starring role in the remake of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and Roland noticed a white cord dangling from his ears. He stepped forward and ripped it out. The cord and the device it was attached to tumbled to the floor.

  The boy rammed both his fists into Roland’s chest and he spiraled backward. “What the hell’s your problem, dude?”

  “I needed to get your attention, and I got it, didn’t I?”

  “So what?”

  The boy reached down, swiped the device from the floor and pressed his finger into the screen like he was administering CPR. “You broke it, asshole!”

  Roland shoved his hand into his pocket and drew out his wallet. He folded it open and retrieved a wad of cash. “How much?”

  “What?”

  “How much to replace the damn thing?”

  The boy thought about it for a moment. “Five hundred.”

  Roland licked the tip of his finger, counted out the money and shoved it into the boys’ outstretched hand. “Here’s three. I’m looking for the cart that was in room 152.”

  The boy snickered. “Like I’d know which one that is.”

  Roland wrenched the money out of the boys’ hand and turned toward the door.

  “Wait—hold on a second,” the boy said. “What was on it?”

  “A vintage bottle of wine, an expensive one. And a card.”

  The boy crossed the room and dug into a circular can that was heaped full of trash. He retracted a bottle and smiled. “Was it this one?”<
br />
  Roland shook his head. The boy tried again.

  “What about this?”

  “Nope.”

  The boy flicked his hands on his apron. “Do you want to look for it?”

  Roland held the cash out in front of him and shook it. “Find the bottle and I’ll throw in another fifty.”

  Two minutes later the bottle was found.

  “Whadd’ya know,” Roland said. “The third time really is charming. And the card?”

  The boy glared at Roland and then back at the can. “Do you see all the stuff in here? It’s wet. If there was one, it’s either soaked or shredded by now.”

  “How does another fifty sound?”

  The old method of dumpster diving was thrown out the window. The boy grabbed the liner out of the can and scattered all of its contents onto the floor. He seized a broom from the closet and circulated the trash around until it flooded most of the cheap vinyl floor.

  Roland compressed his eyes until they were almost shut and then pointed to a saturated envelope in the center of the pile. “I think I see it.”

  “What do you have there?” the sheriff said when Roland entered the room.

  Roland gripped the wine bottle in his Ziploc-baggied hand. “I’m not sure. Isabelle said a bottle of wine was brought up last night with a card.” He elevated it in the air. “This is it and what’s left of the card. The envelope didn’t make it.”

  “Some sort of gift?”

  “Yeah, and from the message typed on the note, it was made to look like it came from someone in my family. It didn’t.”

  The sheriff stretched his hand out, unfolded the card and perused through the words it contained. “You sure? Maybe your wife sent it and didn’t tell you.”

  Roland shook his head. “I’d know about it. Especially if it cost as much as this bottle did.”

  Through the open door to the hotel room, a group of people scampered in like a mass of overexcited worker bees. Some wore gloves and others didn’t, but they all had an objective in mind.

  One man approached and the sheriff passed the note off to him. “This was on a cart delivered to the room last night along with a bottle of wine.”