After Hours

by Anina Collins

  From the looks of things, she’d pulled out all the stops that morning as she stood in front of the mirror planning out how she’d begin her seduction of my partner. Dressed in a green sundress that left little to the imagination, she looked sexy and cool all at the same time. As I studied her face, I saw she’d gone the whole nine yards with her makeup too.

  Were those false eyelashes on her eyes? Was she wearing eye shadow? She never wore anything but a quick swipe of mascara during the day. Well, at least not when she was going to work at The Eagle. She’d once commented on how little effort she put into getting ready for work because nobody appealing worked with us at the paper. I’d teased her that Prince Charming might someday come through the front door and then what would she do. Clearly, this morning was an altogether different affair.

  “Poppy! Good morning!” she chirped at me when she was about six feet away from our table.

  There was one time when I was in high school and I liked a boy who was a year ahead of me. I was sure he’d never noticed me staring at him with that dreamy look girls get when they see someone they like, but one day at lunch he must have since he walked up to me and asked me out to that Friday’s dance. For a few minutes as I stood there talking to him, it felt like the world around us faded away until it was just the two of us. I’d never forget that feeling of being so entirely immersed in the way someone made me feel for the rest of my life.

  At that moment as Bethany came toward where I sat with Alex, I had the same feeling, but this time, it was like the rest of the world had simply moved off to the sides of the coffee shop to watch on the sidelines as she made her move and I did absolutely nothing to stop her. I imagined onlookers staring as the scene unfolded and wondering why I was so lame.

  I saw Alex look around to see who had said my name and then he turned back to look at me as he took a drink of his coffee. “Looks like we’re going to be three this morning.”

  “Yeah. Looks like it,” I said in what could only be described as a grumble.

  Bethany stole a chair from a nearby table and pulled it up to ours to sit with us. Giving me her best smile, she said, “Funny seeing you here. I have just a few minutes before I have to get to the office, but I wanted to come over and say hi.”

  I wanted to be polite as much as I wanted to chop off my right arm and beat myself with it, but I didn’t have a choice. Even that teenage girl in the high school lunchroom would have known she had to be polite, and I wasn’t a teenage girl anymore. I was a grown woman who had done nothing to stop what was about to happen, so I had no choice but to accept it.

  “Bethany, you remember my partner, Alex Montero. Alex, this is Bethany Lewis. She works at The Eagle with me.”

  I wasn’t sure how that sounded to the two of them, but with each word all I heard was the sound of the end. The end of my friendship with Alex and maybe even the end of my working with him. The end of everything I’d come to love about every day.

  The end.

  They shook hands, and I saw in Bethany’s eyes as she looked at him that he was everything she’d built him up to be. For his part, Alex seemed more polite than smitten. At least there was that consolation.

  “What are you two up to today?” she asked. “You’re not dressed in your uniform, Alex, so do you have the day off?”

  I watched as he explained how he’d just finished the overnight shift and now he and I were going to work on a case we were involved in, and I had to admit he didn’t seem to be bowled over with interest in her. I wanted to think that maybe his head wouldn’t be turned by her, but I knew better. He was a red-blooded American male, after all, and a beautiful woman sat next to him practically drooling over him. Why wouldn’t he want that?

  Unsure whether I was driven to be helpful or petty, I blurted out, “Bethany works in the advertising department at The Eagle. It’s her job to get people to pay money for ads in our little newspaper.”

  Somewhere not so deep inside I wanted him to look at her and think she was boring because she worked in advertising. Until recently, I’d never seen her job as anything close to dull since she often got to leave town and travel around Maryland to meet with potential clients. In fact, I’d often envied how her job allowed her to meet so many new people. Now, though, whatever jealous demon lurked inside me had taken over and I wanted her to appear so much less than the pretty young woman sitting too close to him.

  Always the gentleman, he politely listened to her as she explained her job responsibilities a bit too excitedly for me. They talked a little more about his job as a police officer, and then it was time for her to go, thankfully. I forced myself to be nicer than I wanted to be and smiled as she told me she’d see me at work, wishing her a good day as she left.

  Her interruption of our morning coffee irked me. It was childish and petty and I had no one but myself to blame, but it annoyed me nonetheless. This was something Alex and I did every morning, just the two of us at our table with only two chairs, and she’d barged in and disturbed it.

  “She seems nice,” he said in a casual voice as he lifted his coffee cup to his mouth to take a drink.

  “Yeah. She’s nice.”

  What else does someone say in that position? The jealous demon screamed inside my head to tell him something bad about Bethany, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t that kind of person. Or at least I didn’t want to be.

  “Are you two close?” he asked, his tone far more pointed now. He wanted to know more about her.

  My heart sank, and I swallowed hard. “I’ve known her for a few years. You know, co-workers.”

  “Interesting.”

  No, it isn’t interesting. She isn’t interesting. She goes through men like I go through tissues when I have a runny nose. She isn’t serious about anything, like you are, Alex. You have nothing in common. Why can’t you see that?

  “I guess,” was all I could say, my brain and my heart engaging in a full-scale tug of war as I watched him as he became interested in her.

  And then he said the very words that made me feel like a knife slicing right through me.

  “Is she single?”

  Nodding as my heartbeat pounded in my ears, I answered truthfully, knowing I’d be sealing the deal without even making her do any more work. “Yes.”

  I excused myself to go to the counter as I couldn’t think of any other way to avoid showing Alex how disappointed I was. I willed myself to be okay as I stood in line, and when Jennie asked me what I wanted, I had to hold myself back from telling the truth, instead just asking for a cherry danish. When you’re down, comfort food helped.

  I was going to need a lot more than that to find any comfort in the fact that the man I cared for was now going to be dating Bethany.

  Taking a deep breath, I returned to the table and hoped more than anything that we could talk about poor Canton Walters and his untimely death. Even our boring conversation about different ways of drinking coffee would be better than Alex’s not-so-sly questions about Bethany and her availability.

  “So where are we on this case?” I asked, deciding that if I was going to have to live with Alex liking Bethany that at least I’d do it on my terms. And that meant not thinking about it unless I absolutely had to.

  For a second, he looked at me like I’d interrupted him during some important explanation, but then he nodded and began talking about the case, thankfully. “Right. I talked to the night desk clerk at the Hotel Piermont when I had some time on my shift last night.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  Alex opened his notebook and flipped through a few pages before he got to the one with the information he was looking for. “Joseph Steadman.” Looking up at me, he said, “That’s the night clerk’s name. I asked him if he remembered the last time he saw Canton Walters before his death. He said he didn’t see him at all the night of the murder.”

  “There have to be emergency exits on every floor, right? Maybe if when he left his room to go out, he left by one of them.”

  A
lex nodded again. “I thought that too, but I asked the clerk and he said that if anyone tried to open any of the emergency doors on any of the floors, an alarm would sound. I checked and he was telling the truth. He’s sure no alarm went off that night, so if Canton left the hotel, he would have had to go past the front desk and he would have seen him.”

  “Are we sure this Joseph Steadman, night desk clerk, isn’t someone we should consider a suspect? Is there any reason not to believe him?”

  Smiling, Alex pointed his finger at me. “Exactly what I thought, so I checked with the owner. He has cameras on the desk and in the back office, and he says Joseph Steadman didn’t even take a bathroom break on his entire eight hour shift. He was either out at the front desk or in the office for no more than a minute or so.”

  “Do the cameras show who came in and out during the night?”

  “Nope. They’re focused on the owner getting to watch his employees, not the guests. Seems he’s had some problems with some of his recent hires. He installed the cameras about six months ago.”

  “Okay, so Canton decided to make it a night in. Did the desk clerk remember anyone coming to visit him?”

  “Not according to Steadman. Only three people came in after midnight. Two wanted a room and one was already staying at the hotel for the past two days, according to him.” Alex flipped a page in his notepad and tapped his finger on the names. “Josh Meyers and Britany Jones were the couple who wanted the room.”

  Chuckling at dear Britany’s name, I said, “Now there’s a fake name if I’ve ever heard one. Sounds like someone didn’t want anyone to know she was there.”

  Alex smiled but didn’t say anything about Britany, likely some poor guy’s cheating wife. “The third person who came in but who was already staying there was named Cecil Simon.”

  “Really? You don’t think that sounds like a made-up name too?”

  “Yes, but it’s not like the Hotel Piermont requires ID to get a room. It’s not exactly that kind of place. Steadman says Mr. Simon checked in two days before the murder and was a perfect guest. He never called down to the front desk, and he didn’t even ask for extra towels, which from what he said seems to be a common request for their guests.”

  I didn’t want to think about why people needed extra towels at the Hotel Piermont. If I did, I’d start to think like my editor and all sorts of freaky deaky ideas would be popping up in my brain.

  “Did you get to talk to Mr. Cecil Simon while you were at the hotel last night?”

  Alex frowned and shook his head. “No. Unfortunately, he checked out just hours before our victim was found by housekeeping that morning.”

  “That’s interesting, don’t you think?”

  “I agree, but we have nothing to go on concerning Mr. Simon. The desk clerk said he’d never seen him before at the hotel or anywhere else, for that matter.”

  I took a bite of my danish and thought about our hotel guest who had coincidentally left the scene of the crime in time to have murdered Canton Walters, calmly check out of the hotel, and walk away scot-free.

  “What did he look like?”

  Alex read directly from his notebook. “Tall, dark hair, average build. That’s about all Joseph Steadman remembered.”

  He looked up at me and twisted his face into an expression of frustration. I knew how he felt. That wasn’t exactly much to go on.

  “You just described half the average American males in this country. That narrows it down.”

  “Even worse, the desk clerk isn’t exactly a big guy, so when he says someone is tall, it may not be what you or I think is tall.”

  “Well, this is certainly a conundrum then because we now have a possible suspect we may never be able to find. And even if we find him, if our mystery hotel guest Mr. Simon was just in the same place at the same time as a murderer, we’re left with the fact that if no one came in, then how did Canton end up with a kitchen knife in his back? Assuming we don’t think it’s any of the cleaning staff, which I don’t think we do, then we’re looking at someone else who works at the hotel, right?”

  Marking a star next to Mr. Simon’s name, Alex nodded his agreement of my assessment of the case as it stood at that moment. “A ghost for a suspect or one of the Hotel Piermont’s employees, but we can’t forget the grieving widow and the Roberts.”

  Choosing to ignore them, I decided that had to mean an employee other than the housekeeping and janitorial staff, which we’d thoroughly checked. All signs pointed to Elizabeth Freely since she had something in common with Canton Walters and had the opportunity because she could easily get in and out of the hotel without even garnering a second glance.

  And then Alex ruined my perfect murder scenario.

  “I know who you’re thinking, and I’m not saying Elizabeth isn’t our killer, but Delilah Roberts sent over another list of all the people who’ve ever attended one of her Naughty and Spice parties. I guess she forgot some people the first time. She’s had four parties in the last two years, and the list of people numbered a little over fifteen. I checked out every person but one, and they all have alibis for the night Walters was murdered.”

  “You certainly were busy last night. Who is this person?” I wondered, curious to know if I knew the name.

  “Mary Jessick. She lives at 1525 Sanderson Street.”

  I tried to remember when I’d heard Mary’s name before. It sounded so familiar, but in a town like Sunset Ridge, names often began to run into one another. So many families intermarried that sometimes when I thought I knew someone, it turned out that I’d confused them with their sister or brother who’d married into a family with that name.

  “You look like that name rings a bell, Poppy.”

  I put the last forkful of danish into my mouth and enjoyed the taste of the canned cherry filling on my tongue. I knew that name, but from where?

  “Old high school friend? Fellow cheerleader at the bottom of the pyramid?” Alex joked as I tried to jog my memory.

  “For your information, I was a cheerleader, thank you, but I don’t remember any Mary Jessick on any squad I was on.”

  One of his slow grins spread across his face, like what I’d said amused him. “I can see you as a cheerleader. You’ve got that fresh faced, girl-next-door look about you.”

  Feeling particularly defensive after all that had happened that morning, I folded my arms across my chest and asked, “Is there a problem with that? Does that make me less than other people?”

  “No. Why?” Clearly taken aback by my outburst and the scowl I didn’t plan on removing from my face any time soon, he continued, “Poppy, I didn’t mean anything by that. I bet you were cute as a cheerleader.”

  Cute? I was cute as a cheerleader? I knew he wasn’t trying to stick his foot into his mouth, but with each syllable he uttered, I felt worse.

  As my frustration mounted, I suddenly remembered where I knew Mary Jessick’s name from. “I’m going to let that cute comment pass because I know this Mary Jessick person. I mentioned her in an article I wrote a while back.”

  “On the society page?”

  “Yes. Mary Jessick is Dr. Roberts’ former sister-in-law. She was married to his brother until his death a few years ago. While she was out shopping for his birthday gift with her sister-in-law, he died sitting in a chair watching television. His passing left her a very comfortable young lady.”

  Alex’s eyes lit up with interest. “This town just gets more and more interesting every day. Let’s go pay Mary a visit and see if she’s connected to yet another man’s death.”

  Chapter Nine

  The robin’s egg blue house at 1525 Sanderson Street reminded me of a cottage on a small lake my father used to rent for a week each summer when I was a little girl. Quaint and compact, it always had more than enough room for my father, my mother, and me, even though each time my mother saw it for the first time of the season she’d remark how it wasn’t going to be big enough for all of us. My father would smile and take her hand in hi
s, never saying anything about her complaint but promising she’d love it.

  She always did, and at the end of each week, she’d regret having to leave to return to civilization, as she called it.

  Now that I was an adult, I knew her fake complaining each summer was just her way of teasing my father. That’s the kind of love they had. Gentle and free to let each of them be the person they wanted to be.

  That cottage had been brown instead of the pale blue Mary’s house had been painted, but it had the same tiny look to it. I expected to be surprised when we got inside, just like I was every summer when we arrived at the lake house.

  Alex nudged my arm with his elbow, shaking me out of my memories of summers long past. “It doesn’t look like she’s here. Want me to just ring the bell and you stay in the car?”

  He was right. The front door was closed, and all the windows were too. But that didn’t mean I wanted to sit in the car like an invalid.

  “Why would I want to stay here? It’s a beautiful day out.”

  “I figured you might want to stay and enjoy the air conditioning. I was just trying to be nice.”

  I looked into his eyes and saw something unfamiliar in them. Pity? Regret? What was it, and why did he feel that when he looked at me?

  “I’m fine, Alex. I can walk the ninety feet to her front door. Why are you acting like this?”

  He turned the car off and opened his door. “Like what? A gentleman?”

  “Like I’m some sickly thing you don’t want to tire out. I’m fine. Stop acting so weird.”

  Mumbling something as he slammed the door shut, he came around the front of the car still muttering. I had no idea what had gotten into him, but I wanted it to stop. The lame conversation problem back at the coffee shop was bad enough. I didn’t want us to move into the realm of him thinking I was some pathetic soul he had to worry about all the time.

  “I don’t know what you said there under your breath, but I don’t need you acting like I’m not someone who can handle herself.”