Worst Laid Plans (A Maddox Storm Mystery Book 1)

by Claire Robyns

  I glanced around the lounge. Burns was still napping. Mr Hollow had settled into one of the couches. Jack was out of sight, guarding the front parlor against…well, whatever he was guarding it against.

  I sighed and sank down opposite Jenna, resting my back against the supporting panel of the counter. The strip behind the bar was narrow. Our knees were tucked up to our chins and we were close enough to knock foreheads.

  Jenna passed the mug to me, freeing her hands to unscrew the bottle and spike my coffee with a lot more than a sniff. I didn’t protest, I was too busy munching on chocolate chip.

  “Drink up.” Jenna tapped the bottle against my mug, then put it to her lips.

  I raised a brow.

  She shrugged. “I’m also in shock. I just heard my best friend bought out Hollow House and never breathed a word of it to me.”

  “You heard wrong,” I told her. “I invested in the inn, but that excludes any ownership of the land or any fixed assets.”

  The fine print of the contract made that crystal clear.

  ∞∞∞

  Two shots of whiskey later, one spiked with coffee, one neat, I’d told Jenna the whole morbid story.

  “I get why you’d want to stick it to the asshat,” Jenna said after she’d cursed Joseph McMurphy from here to Iceland, “but this…?”

  She swung her arms out, banging the half-empty bottle against the cabinet at her back. “If you wanted to burn his money, you should have splashed out on a round-the-world funfest. Hell, you could have invited me along.”

  I laughed. “Sounds like fun, but I didn’t want to burn his money.”

  “You could have fooled me,” Jenna said. “This place isn’t a sinking ship, Maddie, it sank years ago and it’s been languishing on the ocean floor ever since.”

  “Joe will get his money back. As soon as he discovers what I’ve done, he’ll find another investor to buy out our shares. All I wanted was free board, beverages on the house, a place to sit it out until the divorce goes through while Joe gets a big fat headache.”

  I raised my mug to Jenna, cheers, and drained the last few drops of my free beverage. “If he hoped I’d slink quietly into the night, he never knew me at all.”

  Jenna wasn’t convinced. “You know what they say about the best laid plans.”

  “Nothing was laid.”

  “Oh, someone was definitely—” She slapped a hand over her mouth. “Did I just say that? I’m such an idiot.”

  I waved her gaff aside. “And there was no devious plan. It was just an idea that popped into my head.”

  Jenna still didn’t look convinced, but it was the truth.

  After running the full eight blocks home from the theater, I’d locked myself in the spare room. Right through the night and into the next day. Butt on the carpet, arms hugging my knees, back propped up against the bed, staring dry-eyed and numb-brained at the wall.

  The world fell away from me.

  Thinking hurt too much.

  Nothing made sense.

  I’d heard Joe pounding on the door, begging, cursing, threatening to call 911, begging some more, but it all wafted past me like a putrid smell I didn’t dare breathe in.

  And then I’d remembered my mom saying something about Mr Hollow and the brokerage firm in Syracuse and I’d had a thought. And it didn’t hurt. It made perfect sense. It gave me focus.

  Sure, I’d been dehydrated and malnourished at the time, but look at Moses. He’d gone off into the desert and fasted for forty days and nights for clarity.

  “Ladies…”

  My head snapped back, eyes turned up.

  A smoky gray gaze pierced me, then moved on to Jenna. “Which one of you is Maddox Storm?”

  I scrambled to my feet and instantly teetered to the side. I wasn’t a lightweight and I wasn’t drunk, but Jack Daniels before breakfast was breaking new ground for me.

  I slammed a palm to the bar counter to steady myself and glared up at smoky eyes.

  There was more to the man, of course. Crop of tangled brown hair, chiseled jaw that needed a shave, dark jacket that spanned broad shoulders, immaculate white shirt and blue silk tie, that kind of thing. But I wasn’t in the mood to notice.

  “Who’s asking?” I demanded.

  “Detective Bishop,” he said curtly. He flashed a badge at me, then returned it to the inside pocket of his jacket. “Auburn Detective Division.”

  “Where’s Chief Matthews?”

  “Hawaii,” Jenna said, sliding into place beside me. “It’s his granddaughter’s christening next weekend and he decided to combine it with his annual leave.”

  The detective cleared his throat. “If you wouldn’t mind answering some questions, Ms Storm? Mr Hollow has turned the library over to us for interviews.”

  Jenna’s arm came around me. “I’ll go with you.”

  His jaw tightened as he set those smoky grays on her. “Private interviews.”

  “That’s not a problem,” Jenna informed him. “Maddie and I don’t keep any secrets from each other.”

  “And you are?”

  “Jenna,” she said. “Jenna Adams.”

  “I’ll have questions for you, Ms Adams, once I’m done with Ms Storm.”

  “Or you could just interview us together,” Jenna persisted. “Twice the gain for half the pain.”

  Detective Bishop stood back and looked at me again. “If you don’t want to be alone with me, Ms Storm, I can arrange for a uniform to sit in on the interview.”

  Heat flared to my cheeks. “I don’t need a chaperone, Detective Bishop.”

  His brow arched. “Are you sure?”

  “Quite,” I said prissily and slipped free from Jenna’s arm to follow him.

  The library was a small den that opened off the lounge beneath the south wing. The walls were paneled walnut and the furniture was bulky leather; even the desk in front of the tall drop windows had a leather inset. One full wall supported a floor-to-ceiling shelving system crammed with everything from World War I Heroes to Modern Techniques in Agriculture to Pride and Prejudice to Lee Child’s latest thriller.

  “Ms Storm?”

  I turned from the bookshelf to see the detective already seated behind the desk, a legal pad flipped open before him, a silver pen in hand.

  He indicated at the enormous leather armchair that had obviously been dragged from the fireplace to the other side of the desk. It was big enough for two of me and divinely comfortable. I sank deep into the padded cushion and tucked my legs in, elbow on the armrest, head tilted, cheek cupped in my palm, one hundred percent relaxed and toasty warm.

  Detective Bishop’s eyes skimmed over me, then settled into mine. “You were the first person on the scene?”

  “May I ask a question?” I said, wondering how old he was. Late twenties? Early thirties? Not that I was looking, but I noticed that his ring finger was bare.

  He tapped the pad with the point of his pen. “Please, do.”

  “You’re very polite for a detective.”

  “Are you acquainted with many detectives?”

  I shrugged. “Only from TV shows.”

  “Ah…” He glanced down at his pad, back to me. “Right, so, you were the first—”

  “I haven’t asked my question yet,” I said.

  He placed the pen down and sat back in his hardback chair, giving me a look that spoke of endless patience.

  “Is Ms Daggon’s death being treated as suspicious?”

  His demeanor sharpened. “What makes you say that?”

  I sat up straighter to show him I meant business. I was tipsy mellow, not incompetent. “They brought you in from Auburn.”

  “Your chief is out of action and Officer …” His eyes dropped to the notepad. “Officer Spinner called us for an assist.”

  “Guess that would explain it,” I murmured, breathing a sigh of relief. “Jack’s new on the job and, um…” I trailed off, deciding not to mention Deputy Harvey’s predisposition to get flustered. He was nearing retireme
nt age and I didn’t want to make him look bad.

  Detective Bishop picked up his pen. “You know Officer Spinner?”

  “We went to school together.”

  “Old friends?”

  “Not friends, exactly, although I suppose that will change now that he’s dating Jenna,” I told him, then explained, “She’s my best friend.”

  “U-huh.” He scribbled on his pad.

  “What are you doing? Don’t write that down.” I pushed up onto my knees and leaned in, but couldn’t make out a word from the upside down, messy scrawl. “It’s not against the law to date an officer, is it?”

  “Nothing to worry about except my poor memory.” His smile started off slow and hitched one corner of his mouth.

  A smile that had no doubt melted its share of hearts throughout the county.

  “Jotting notes helps me keep it all together in my head,” he added. “Now, this Jenna, would she be the Jenna Adams out there?” He tipped his pen toward the door.

  “Yes.” I sank lower in the chair and relaxed. “And sorry about the fuss earlier, she’s somewhat…”

  “Over-protective?” he offered.

  I nodded. “She’d literally kill for me.”

  Maybe that wasn’t the best thing to say to a cop. But he didn’t write anything down, just continued smiling and asked me to walk him through the events of this morning.

  I started at the very beginning, drawing helpful conclusions where I could, things the detective would never be able to figure out without me. Such as the short interval between the alarm going off and Mr Hollow’s arrival.

  “Mr Hollow must have heard my scream when I first stepped into the kitchen,” I told the detective. “That probably woke him and thank goodness there was…” a real emergency? I bit my tongue. “Um, well, I felt a bit silly, actually, screaming like that.”

  The detective waited a beat, then said, “It must have been a shock—”

  “It was,” I agreed emphatically.

  “—to find a dead body in your kitchen,” he finished.

  “Oh, I didn’t know Ms Daggon was dead at that point.”

  His brow knitted, his pen tap-tap-tapping on the pad as he looked at me.

  “Ms Daggon wasn’t a pleasant woman,” I clarified. “I was horrified to discover Mr Hollow had employed her. I can’t imagine why, it makes no sense, and why would she leave Silver Firs High? She was the Home Ed teacher and the town council have been trying to get her removed for years, but she clung to that job like a mother bear.”

  With a lot of help from Principal Limly. Now there was a pair of unlikely friends. Mr Limly seemed so normal, so nice, but those two were thick as thieves and he always had her back.

  “Ms Daggon enjoyed her work?” Detective Bishop said.

  “A fresh batch of sophomores to torment each year?” I sniffed. “She loved it!”

  “You didn’t like her very much.” A statement, and he was scribbling again even though his eyes were on me.

  “Did anyone?” I shuddered. “You wouldn’t believe the things she did.”

  “Try me.”

  Okay, he’d asked for it.

  “You know how it’s impossible to flunk Home Ed? Well, Ms Daggon overheard me saying that to someone in class and guess what? She flunked me! Senior year. She was spiteful that way. And maybe I did suck at Home Ed, but I couldn’t possibly have been the worst in the history of Silver Firs High and yet I was the only student who’d ever been failed. I checked the records.”

  Detective Bishop flipped to a fresh page. “You had access to the school records?”

  Uh oh.

  “That’s not important right now,” I said quickly. “The point is, Ms Daggon had a mean streak. Take last Christmas when she ran down Mrs Colby’s pooch. Poor Mrs Colby, that little dog was all she had since Mr Colby passed away, but do you know what Ms Daggon did? She climbed out and kicked Muffins to make sure he was dead, then she called, ‘Good riddance,’ to Mrs Colby, climbed back into her car and continued driving, straight over what was left of Muffins. I saw it for myself. Mrs Colby was in such a fluster, they had to rush her to the hospital in Syracuse. I didn’t blame her one bit that she vowed to put Ms Daggon out of her misery for once and for all.”

  I put my head against the back of the armchair, watching the detective scribble away. Jack Daniels on an empty stomach had certainly loosened my tongue, and my guilt. But as much as I’d tried to think nice thoughts of the dead, or none at all, these were the memories that had pressed on my chest all morning and it felt so good to get them off.

  “Are you saying Mrs Colby had a vendetta against Ms Daggon?” he said.

  “Not at all,” I assured him.

  Detective Bishop’s brow still hadn’t un-knitted.

  If anything, he looked more confused.

  “Ms Daggon was the one with all the vendettas,” I said. “And boy, could she carry a grudge. I’m sure Mrs Biggenhill will sleep easier tonight.”

  “And why is that?”

  I shared what I knew about the Daggon-Biggenhill saga, but I kept it short since the detective was beginning to show signs of strain around the mouth and besides, I didn’t know all that much. It had started long before I was born, although I was pretty sure Ms Daggon had chewed on that bone until the bitter end.

  After that, Detective Bishop steered me back to re-tracing my early morning footsteps.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said flatly when I was done. “You smoked out the kitchen, flooded away any evidence, then you further contaminated my scene by throwing your jacket over the body.”

  I pursed my lips. “Well, when you put it like that…”

  “And all before you even realized Ms Daggon was dead?”

  Time to move the conversation forward. “It was her heart, right?”

  “We won’t know anything until the autopsy report.” Detective Bishop flexed his wrist, probably writer’s cramp. “Did Ms Daggon have a heart condition?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” I said. “They showed us a heart diseased from alcohol abuse in Anatomy class once.”

  Detective Bishop looked at me.

  That was it, just looked at me with those gray, gray eyes.

  “What?” I said. “It was so enlarged and weak, apparently it had just stopped pumping one day.”

  “Are you studying medicine, Ms Storm?”

  I laughed. “I’m an actress.”

  “Is the subject of anatomy a hobby, then?”

  My spine prickled. Some people just couldn’t appreciate the hard work and commitment that went into acting. It wasn’t all fun and games.

  “Anatomy was a required class in the acting school I attended in New York,” I informed him. “Our bodies are the tools of our trade,” I quoted from the schedule pack.

  “I see.” He scribbled a bit, then set his pen down and stood. “We’re done for now, thank you for your time, Ms Storm. You’ve been very, um, informative.”

  “Happy to help.” I unfolded my legs and scooted off the comfy chair.

  “One more thing,” he said nonchalantly. “If you plan on leaving town, would you mind stopping by the police station first and letting them know?”

  I frowned at him. “Why can’t I leave town?”

  “You can leave town,” he enunciated slowly, that endless patience apparently nearing its end. “If you could just let one of the officers know.”

  “I heard you the first time,” I clipped out. “But you said Ms Daggon’s death wasn’t being treated as suspicious.”

  “I didn’t say, actually.” He stepped out from behind the desk and came closer. “It’s standard procedure, Ms Storm. Until we know more, I can’t rule out anything, but you needn’t worry. You’ve implicated yourself on too many counts to be considered a serious suspect.”

  Suspect? Implicated myself? Okay, Ms Daggon might not have been my favorite person, but that wasn’t a crime, was it?

  “Unless that’s all part of your master Freudian plan,”
he said lightly. He scrubbed his jaw, his mouth softening into a hint of that gorgeous smile. “You didn’t happen to study Psychology 101 in that acting school of yours, did you?”

  I dropped my eyes, suddenly very interested in the grain pattern of the hardwood floor while I contemplated my answer. I had no problem with a white fib for the sake of a little harmony, but I thought an officer of the law might.

  “Oh, God,” he groaned.

  I raised my head to glare at him. “It’s important for an actor to delve deep into the psyche of characters they play.”

  “Of course it is.” He shoved a hand through his hair and showed me to the door.

  FOUR

  It was time to acquaint myself with my new temporary home.

  Ms Daggon’s body had been removed from the premises and the cops, both local and otherwise, had cleared out. Mr Hollow had retired upstairs, I presumed to change out of his sleeping robes. Despite breakfasting on Jack Daniels, Jenna had gone to work. Her family owned The Vine, a connoisseur delicatessen and wine tasting bar just off the square.

  Which left only me and… I glanced around for Burns, but he’d vacated the throne-like wing back chair without me noticing.

  He hadn’t gone far. I found him napping behind the reception desk in the foyer, his large body crammed awkwardly into a spindly wicker chair. I leaned my elbows on the high counter, wondering if this meant he doubled up as the inn’s receptionist.

  His neck was strung back over the top of the chair, mouth hanging open, his pale jowls quivering from his soft (thankfully) snores. I considered nudging his shoulder to wake him, maybe suggest he’d be more comfortable on the larger chair back in the lounge, but who was I to mess with the well-oiled machine that was Hollow House?

  Instead, I leaned further over and nabbed the leather-bound guest register resting on the lower tier of the desk. Not that I had any plans of involving myself in the management of the inn, but I was curious.

  The blue ribbon attached to the spine opened the register on today’s date. The embossed cream page was blank except for the thin black lines that delineated three columns. Thank goodness. In light of certain recent events, I wasn’t sure we could accommodate new arrivals, not if they expected to be served breakfast and dinner.