I sighed a little with relief when I was through the doors without making any noise. But I still had to get close enough to the office to be able to hear their conversation.
I was so preoccupied with walking slowly and being quiet that I forgot to watch my way. I banged right into the corner of a desk and had to stop myself from crying out in agony as the edge dug into my thigh. But that wasn’t the worst bit—I’d knocked over a book and it teetered over the edge, about to fall, and it was a hardcover. And the floor was made of tiles. I could see it falling in slow motion.
I caught the book right before it hit the floor and held my breath. Careful, George. It wasn’t Jasper I had to worry about, it was my own clumsiness.
With the book still in my hands, I tiptoed over to the editor’s office.
I sat down as low as I could get against the wall without being seen.
Anthony was handing Mathew an envelope. It was plain, but it was thick. Mathew opened the envelope and pulled out the bills, counting them. “Looks like it’s all here,” he stated. “It’s good to have you back in town, Detective.”
I started to gasp, but slapped my hand over my face so that I wouldn’t be heard.
It was a bribe.
My mind was racing. This must have been why Matilda’s murder was barely mentioned in the paper. Because Anthony didn’t want it to be. He was paying Mathew off, so he wouldn’t cover it.
That’s why her laptop was never taken into evidence.
Were the police even investigating this case at all? Or was Anthony just trying to cover his own tracks?
Anthony shook his head. “I ain’t sticking around here, remember that. So you’ll have to find some other arrangement. I’m done with this place.”
“This goes two ways, remember,” Mathew said, keeping his voice low.
What does that mean?
Anthony nodded and exited the office abruptly, before I had a chance to hide properly.
I scooted down and lay on the floor, hiding my face underneath a desk. What if he saw Jasper when he left?
Chapter 11
I hurried back to the cottage so quickly that I was practically running the whole way. Jasper didn’t complain, he thought we were playing. I don’t know how, but somehow he had managed to escape detection when Anthony exited the office…maybe he had been in such a hurry to get out of there without being seen that he hadn’t even noticed the obvious things around him. Sure didn’t speak to his skill as a detective. Then again, after what I’d seen, I knew that he wasn’t much of a detective in any sense.
I was on the run myself, not paying much attention to my surroundings as I hurried back to the cottage.
But when I finally got there, drank a large glass of water, and started to brew some peppermint tea, I calmed down a little and stared out onto the beach.
I blinked a few times. It was Mathew, searching the sand near the spot where Matilda’s body had washed up.
Without thinking, without even stopping to make sure Jasper was tied up, I walked out onto the sand like I was being pulled there by some other force. My body just took over.
“What are you looking for?” I asked Mathew.
He turned back toward me. There was an eerie look in his eyes. “A paperweight,” he said.
“A paperweight?”
“Yes. Shaped like a bear. I think it might have fallen out of the window of my office.” He stared at me. “You haven’t seen it, have you?”
I shook my head and backed away. “No, I haven’t. Sorry.”
What if the clues in Agatha’s blog were not about Matilda at all?
What if there were two different Ms?
What if she was talking about Mathew?
I re-read the blog posts hurriedly, with one eye out the window. The Ms! I had thought she was talking about her and Matilda all that time. At one stage, she had been. In the posts when she’d been talking about a crafting friend. But now, when she’d started talking about corruption down at the newspaper, she was talking about someone different.
Agatha had been threatening to reveal a secret all right, but I no longer thought it was Jason’s. It was Mathew’s.
I shook my head. But what about Matilda? She wasn’t directly involved with anything that Agatha wrote on her blog. How had she gotten mixed up in all of this?
I leaned against the counter, thinking for a moment.
No, she wasn’t directly involved with anything that Agatha wrote.
But she was a writer.
The news agency was already closed when I finally arrived back in town; my legs were aching from taking the steep walkway two steps at a time. It seemed dangerous now, to be back in town, but I had no choice.
“Hello! Bill!?” I cried out, banging on the glass, hoping that he might just hear me if I banged and cried out loudly enough. All the lights were off, but I thought it was worth a shot.
He was already pulling out of the side alley in his station wagon, but he slowed down when he saw me.
I ran over and sighed with relief when he wound down the window. “Oh thank goodness. I thought you were closed for the night, and I have no idea where you live…”
He sighed in a grumpy manner. “What is it, George? Is everything okay with my little guy?”
“Yes, Jasper is fine.” I pointed to him.
“Then what is it?”
I tried to expand it all as quickly as I could. “The newspaper doesn’t archive its columns online…” I was still breathless from my run up the hill. I’d only had a few minutes to check online to see if I could find Matilda’s old columns. Only the present week’s version was kept, though. “I was wondering if you kept copies, at all? Or know someone who does?”
Bill’s engine was still running. He thought for a few seconds and shook his head. “Maybe a few editions,” he said. “Maybe going back a few weeks.”
Darn. “It’s better than nothing,” I said. “Would you be able to open up and let me take a look at them?”
“George, it’s after six.”
But Jasper was whimpering and garnering sympathy for me.
“Please? Do it for Jasper.”
Bill sighed. “All right then. Anything for my favorite little guy.”
The archives he had only went back six weeks. “And you’re lucky I have these at all,” he said, throwing the pile onto the counter. “I usually only hang on to a week or two at most, in case a customer comes in who was sick the previous week or something.”
“I am very appreciative, Bill, believe me…”
He was still agitated. “How long is this going to take, George? My wife has dinner waiting for me. Can’t you take these home with you?”
“There’s no time,” I mumbled, tearing through the sheets of paper. “It won’t take long, Bill, I promise.”
I gasped when I came across Matilda’s old column. Sandy Talking Points. I read one, then the next, then the next. For the weeks leading up to her death, it was the same thing. The same references in Matilda’s columns that had been in Agatha’s blog. To M & Z. She certainly wasn’t referring to herself.
I gulped. “Oh no…”
“What’s the problem?” Bill asked. He sounded annoyed as much as he did worried. Well, he actually sounded far more annoyed than worried, truth be told.
“I think Matilda was killed to protect a secret. I think Mathew was taking bribes not to cover certain stories and Matilda found out, so he killed her.”
Bill’s face fell.
“Oh, come on now, that is absurd. Things like that just don’t happen in Sandy Point.”
I turned back to the pile of ripped open newspapers. “Except that they do,” I murmured. It had happened to Matilda, and…I stopped.
Agatha had made the same references as well, hadn’t she?
Only Matilda’s were far more public, published for the whole town to see and read. It might have taken a little longer for Agatha’s to be discovered.
But now I was fearing that they had been.
“Bill? Do you have a car I could borrow?”
Chapter 12
My phone was ringing, but I didn’t recognize the number. Bill was on the phone to his wife explaining that he was going to be late, that some emergency had come up.
I almost didn’t pick up my own phone, then thought it might be Brenda calling from a private number about Casper.
“Hello?”
“Hello?” the voice said back. “Is this Georgina?”
“It is,” I replied. “Who is this?” I was growing short on patience. This was the last thing I needed.
“It’s Rebecca,” she replied. “From the Rosebud Motel.”
“Oh.”
“George. I saw your friend last night. Long blonde hair. Curls, right? She checked in. But today, when I knocked on her door, there was no answer. I never saw her leave, though. I just can’t shake the feeling something has happened. I’m sorry. I should have called sooner…”
I quickly hung up and ran to Bill. “Please, Bill. This really is an emergency. I know where Agatha is, but we need to get there quickly.”
The road where we had broken down was eerily familiar. Jasper started barking wildly at the window, causing it to fog up.
“What’s wrong with Jasper?” Bill asked, looking over from the driver’s window.
“We just have bad memories of this place, that’s all,” I explained, shivering in the night air.
He reached over to the backseat and gave Jasper a quick pet. “Good boy, come on now, it’s all right.”
Jasper stopped barking and settled down on the seat.
Bill really did have a way with him.
“This is the hotel,” I said, pointing to it as we approached the town. “Quick, pull over.”
I didn’t even wait for Bill to park properly before I jumped out of the station wagon and ran inside, only to be confronted by the last person I wanted to see in that moment.
“Oh, there is no way that you are coming back in here,” Vance said, blocking my way so that I couldn’t even get inside the lobby.
“Please, it’s an emergency, I am looking for my friend. I think she may be in trouble—” I caught sight of Rebecca. Standing back, out of the way, hidden toward the staircase.
She gestured for me to meet her around the side of the building, the same spot we had met the last time. I looked Vance square in the eye. “No worries. I will leave. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Is she still here?” I asked, racing toward Rebecca. “Did you find out anything else since we spoke?”
“I never saw her check out, but I don’t know for certain,” Rebecca said. I noticed that her uniform was different from the last time I’d seen her. “I’ve been demoted to room keeping duties ever since the incident,” she explained. “So I don’t have access to the booking system anymore.”
I sighed. “What do we do, then?”
“I know the room she was staying in,” Rebecca whispered. “I can show you.”
“How can we get in?” I asked her.
Rebecca thought for a moment. “Okay, I have a plan. I saw you arrive with some guy and your dog, right?” There was a little smile dancing on her lips. “I’m pretty sure he knows how to create a distraction.”
We crept down the corridor, confident that Vance would be too distracted trying to keep Bill and Jasper out to be trolling around on the third floor.
We both jumped when her phone rang. Rebecca took the call. “I have to, it’s the boss. Uh oh. Maybe he realizes the distraction was my fault.”
I nodded and waited, but kept creeping on ahead until I was close to Agatha’s door. Room 15.
“Okay then,” Rebecca replied glumly and put the phone back in her pocket. She shook her head and called for me to come back. “It’s useless. Agatha isn’t booked into that room, I must have been wrong. I must have knocked on the wrong door,” she said, turning to walk back down the hallway.
“But how do you know that?” I called out. “You said you didn’t have access to the booking log…”
“I don’t,” she replied as I caught up to her. “But the boss just called me, telling me not to disturb room fifteen. Said it was a special request. The guest is some newspaper editor, here to write a story. Says he needs some peace and quiet.”
I grabbed Rebecca by the arm. “Did you say newspaper editor? Rebecca, are you sure?”
“Yes…” She looked startled. “George, what is it?”
I was breathing way too fast. Shoot. Mathew was in the room. And he had asked to not be disturbed.
He has Agatha.
“Rebecca, we’ve got to go into that room.”
She shook her head and backed away. “I-I can’t. I can’t lose my job. I’m not even sure I’m going back to college in the fall, George. I’m sorry.”
I nodded. “Okay, I can do it alone. If you give me the key, I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”
She tossed it to me and ran away.
I couldn’t allow myself to get psyched out. I gripped the key card, stalked right up to room 15, and slid the card into the door, then pushed it right open.
Mathew didn’t even look angry when he first saw me. He just looked shocked. Purely and utterly shocked.
“What are you doing here…”
But I was barely even looking at him. I was looking at Agatha, tied up by the open window. We were on the third floor. Not a massive fall, but if pushed hard enough, she could break her neck. Mathew certainly had experience.
“George!” Agatha cried out. “You gotta get out of here!” There were tears running down her cheeks.
“I’m not leaving without you—”
I stomped into the room, but Mathew grabbed me by the wrists and started to pull me toward the window, tying my hands as well. I could feel the cool breeze on my cheeks. I couldn’t remember ever hating a cool breeze so much.
“You two just couldn’t resist sticking your beaks in where they don’t belong, could you?” Mathew shook his head and looked at us.
Agatha was still crying softly, but she managed to speak. “You can shut us up like you shut up Matilda, but someone will eventually find out the truth. Just like Matilda did. Matilda knew that you accepted bribes from people to run stories. You’d take them from everyone. Even the cops, when they didn’t want something printed. Like when Detective Nicholas screwed up that old case, and you didn’t print anything. And kept making him pay up for years afterward. Forced him out of the town. Not exactly exhibiting journalistic integrity there, were you? You even took a bribe from Jason’s father so that he could get a job at the paper. She saw it one day when she was there to hand in her column…”
Agatha turned to me. “She was threatening to expose all of it. So Mathew killed her.”
I nodded back at her. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “I know.” I shook my head. “What are you doing here, though?” I rushed to ask her.
“I’d been staying in my cabin,” she whispered tearfully. “But Mathew knew about it. So I moved here for the night. Thinking I’d be safe…” She started to weep even harder.
I turned my attention back to Mathew. “It all took place in the office, I assume. A good location to kill someone, with the cliffs and the ocean right below…”
Now Agatha was about to pay the same price. And I’d probably be next. Mathew reached out and grabbed Agatha, but just at that moment, the door flew open.
Before I knew it, there were paws on my chest and a wet tongue on my cheek. And he was followed by three uniformed cops, with handcuffs and guns pointed right at Mathew’s chest.
“Oh, good boy!” I cried out, laughing at Jasper as he continued to lick me. I never thought I would be so pleased to see Jasper there in the hotel. I just hoped Rebecca wouldn’t be in any trouble.
“I knew something was wrong,” Rebecca said as she untied my wrist
s. “So I called the police.”
“You did well,” I said, giving her a hug. “I think I owe you my undying gratitude once again.”
I was not surprised to see that none of the arresting officers were Detective Anthony Nicholas. I had a feeling I wouldn’t be seeing him around again. If he wasn’t arrested for bribery, then he’d definitely be sacked from the police force.
Vance was standing at the bottom of the stairs with a glower while Bill grabbed Jasper and took him outside to safety. Rebecca, Agatha, and I reached the bottom, and he opened his mouth to speak.
But I interrupted him. “You ought to be grateful that Rebecca saved this hotel from having a murder take place here,” I said, watching his face turn red. “And promote her back to her old position.”
Epilogue
I gave Agatha a hug and told her I was going to miss her, and Sandy Point, but that I had to get back to my real life.
“Are you sure? You’re really more than welcome to stay here for as long as you like.”
I shook my head. “I appreciate it, but I’ve got a doggie and a craft store waiting for me back in Pottsville. I’ve neglected them both long enough.” I sighed. “Plus, I’ve got a dog wedding to throw.”
“Huh?”
I shook my head. “No time to explain. Hey, maybe I’ll blog about it!”
Time always seems to move faster when you are returning home from a trip, doesn’t it? The trip back to Pottsville took three hours on the clock, but I felt like I was back in the blink of an eye. As I pulled the truck into the driveway, I could see that my lawn was littered with people and there was a banner signaling my arrival hung between two trees.
“Well. I wasn’t expecting a welcome back party!” I said, my cheeks flushing a bit. But I had to laugh. All the people I cared about most were there…and Brenda too. Little Casper ran into my arms and I hugged her tight as she licked my cheek, fully recovered.
“You and Adam are getting along?” I said to Ryan, later, while we took off for a moment to walk by the lake with our plates of cake. I’d been surprised to see them talking.
Beaches, Blogging, and Bodies Page 9