by Blythe Baker
I was sitting on the sitting room couch reading one of the trashy romance novels Page had begged me to throw out and not display on our library shelves, but that I’d instead expertly hidden behind her many legal dramas, when I heard Blaire walk through the front door.
“Hey, B,” I said, setting the open book face down across my knee.
Blaire turned the corner into the sitting room and I immediately forgot all about the particularly steamy scene I’d been reading, and let the book fall to the floor. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
Her face was as pale as printer paper against her dark black hair, and her lower lip was bright red from chewing on it, something she only did when she was upset. During her parents’ divorce, her lip had been permanently cracked and bleeding.
“I saw a picture of the dead body,” she said, still standing in the doorway as though she were rooted to the spot.
“What? How?” I asked, growing angry. I’d seen too many dead bodies for a lifetime in the past few months, and it was shocking every time. I’d prayed Blaire would never have to see anything like that. “Did Shep show you? I’ll kill him,” I said, reaching for my cell phone, already reciting the police station number in my head.
She shook her head. “No, he didn’t. He showed Matthew’s parents, but Greg held the picture up to Matthew to see if he recognized him, and I caught a glimpse.”
“That old drunk,” I said, still grabbing my phone. I didn’t know Greg’s number, but I’d find it out and give him a piece of my mind. The island was small enough that everyone knew everyone else’s business, addresses and phone numbers included. “You and Matthew shouldn’t have even been there for that. What were they thinking?”
“I’m not a child, Aunt Piper!” Blaire said, nearly shouting.
“I know, Blaire, it’s just—”
She interrupted me. “Would you listen to me for a second?”
I bit my tongue, took a deep breath, and nodded.
“I’m not upset because I saw a dead body. I’ve seen worse things in movies than that photo. I’m upset because I saw the picture, and I recognized the man.”
My heart dropped. I hadn’t even considered that. The dead person wasn’t found on our property, so I’d assumed it had nothing to do with us, but I hadn’t paused for a minute to think about who the dead person could be. Had I become so accustomed to dead bodies lying around that I’d forgotten they were once real people?
“Who was it?” I asked, my voice coming out in a whisper, though I didn’t know why.
“The guy,” she said.
My serious face fell away and my eyes narrowed. “Oh, you mean the guy from the place? Come on, Blaire, that is zero information. I need more than that.”
“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “The guy from the other day. The one mom sent away for not being able to pay for his room.”
“Oh, okay,” I said, trying to decide if that had anything to do with us or the house or the bed and breakfast. “Well, that’s not great, but technically he never even stayed here, so his death still has nothing to do with us.”
“Is that seriously what you’re worried about, Aunt Piper?” Blaire asked. “Whether or not it will hurt business?”
“Well, kind of,” I said, glancing at the floor, embarrassed to have come off so callous in front of Blaire. “But, I mean, obviously it’s too bad what happened to him.”
“Too bad?” Blaire asked, her eyebrows raised almost to her hairline. “He was bashed in the head. I saw his brains.”
“I get it, Blaire. I’m sorry. Obviously, it’s terrible. And I’m sorry you had to see that. You know I understand how that feels, and I would never wish that sight on anyone, but I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
Blaire stared at me, her eyes deep and pensive. Then, she shrugged her shoulders and turned away, heading for the stairs. “Nothing, never mind. I don’t expect you to say anything. Nothing is wrong, and I’m fine.”
“Blare, wait,” I said, calling after her, trying to understand what I’d done wrong.
“Goodnight,” she yelled down the stairs. I heard her moving down the long hallway to her room, the old floors creaking with every step, and then her door slammed shut.
CHAPTER 9
The next morning found me, once again, handling breakfast by myself. I’d heard Page come home extremely late the night before, so I hadn’t even bothered trying to wake her. And from what little I’d gathered from Blaire’s behavior the night before, I’d done something horribly wrong, and she was quite angry with me.
“You’re a regular Rachael Ray.”
I turned to see Jude standing in the kitchen doorway, his hair still wet from a shower and sticking straight up, as though he’d just run a towel through his hair and come downstairs. Men were so annoying. They didn’t even have to try and they looked great.
“Or, is that sexist?” he asked, his eyes widening, but a smile still sitting on his lips. “Should I call you Gordon Ramsey or Emeril, instead?”
I laughed. “Absolutely not. Rachael Ray is preferable. How was your night?”
I asked because I was desperate to know about his date with Page, but I also thought Page might appreciate hearing how things were from his point of view. Of course, if he’d had a terrible time, he probably wouldn’t tell me, but perhaps I’d be able to discover something from his phrasing or his body language.
“Great,” he said, reaching for a banana on the island and peeling it back. “It was a lot of fun.”
Well, that was effectively useless information. No detail and too few words to over analyze with Page later. I flipped the three pancakes cooking on the griddle and then turned back to him, trying to put the pressure on. “I heard Page come home pretty late,” I said.
He shrugged. “Not too late, though I suppose that depends on your definition.”
“After midnight is late by every definition,” I joked.
His eyes narrowed. “I didn’t think it was that late when we got back.”
“You must have had so much fun you lost track of time,” I said.
Jude turned his head to the side as though he were trying to remember something, and then he shrugged it off and smiled at me. “I suppose so. Well, I’ll leave you to it. Mr. and Mrs. Smith looked extra hungry this morning, so you have a lot of pancakes to make.”
He wasn’t lying. Mr. Smith ate a stack of four pancakes, squirting a huge dollop of syrup between each one, and Mrs. Smith had three. I had to make more pancakes halfway through breakfast to keep up with them.
When Page finally came downstairs, I was loading the dishwasher.
“There’s our little party girl,” I said. “Good morning.”
Page yawned and smoothed down her shirt. She’d gone back to her usual wardrobe of black slacks and a white button down. “Good morning. Sorry I missed breakfast. I slept through my alarm.”
“That’s alright. You just owe me a super huge massive favor,” I said.
Page groaned. “You’re going to ask me to clean the bathrooms, aren’t you?”
“For a week,” I said, smiling.
“Three days,” she bartered.
“Four!”
She grabbed her box of bran cereal from the cupboard and poured a bowl. “Fine, but you still have to empty the trash cans. The trash cans are the responsibility of the person on trash duty, not the person on bathroom duty.”
“Deal,” I said, thrilled at the thought of going four days without cleaning splatter stains off of toilet lids. “Have you talked to Blaire yet?”
Page shook her head. “No, her door was closed and the light was off. I guess she’s still sleeping. Why?”
I explained our brief conversation the night before, and how she’d stormed off to her room.
“Wait, the guy I was talking to? The guy who threatened to sue us?” Page asked, face pale, her mouth hanging open.
I nodded. “That’s what she said.”
“This is not good. Not good a
t all,” she mumbled, stirring her cereal absently, the bran flakes disintegrating into milky sludge. “We cannot have another death on our hands.”
“It’s not on our hands,” I said. “He didn’t even stay the night here.”
“Right! Because I turned him away! He may have lived if I’d let him stay.”
“Page, that is ridiculous,” I said. Though, honestly, I had to admit she had a point. He died that very night. If he’d stayed at the bed and breakfast, he likely would have spent the evening playing board games and losing to Mrs. Smith, who seemed to always win, despite the games being entirely luck based.
I could see Page spiraling away into guilt and I tried to bring her back.
“The only person responsible is the person who bashed in his head,” I said.
“His head was bashed in?”
I nodded. “And your daughter saw a picture of it.”
“Oh, Blaire is fine,” Page said, waving away my concern. “Remember how badly she wanted to go down to the beach to see the body you found buried in the sand? This kind of stuff doesn’t bother her.”
“I’m not so sure. She seemed really upset.”
“Welcome to living with a teenager,” she said, spreading her arms wide as though she were a particular movie character beckoning me in to a fantastical chocolate factory. All she needed was a purple top hat and a cane. “She could have been upset about a million other things, but just chose to channel it into that for the moment. One time she was upset because she spilled coffee all over her favorite shirt, and she screamed at me for not using my blinker while I was driving home.”
“That makes sense, though. It’s super annoying when people don’t use their blinker,” I said. “Honestly, it is just a tiny flick of the wrist and the whole road is a much safer place. You should use your blinker.”
Page rolled her eyes. “The point is that Blaire is rarely ever actually mad about what it seems like she is mad about. There are layers to her. Like an onion.”
“That is a stupid saying. When you peel back a layer of an onion, you know what you find? More onion. It’s just more of the same. You should really say that she is like a jaw breaker. At least those layers are different colors.”
“Either way, you know what I mean,” she said, finally taking a bite of her cereal and grimacing. It had gone entirely soggy. She pushed it away and picked up a muffin. “Do you think we should reach out to Shep?”
“About what?” I asked.
“The guy. The dead guy. He was here earlier that day. They might want our insights to help figure out the timeline. Isn’t that something they like to figure out when someone turns up dead? The timeline?”
“Yeah, I suppose so. It wouldn’t hurt to reach out. I’ll give him a call once I’m finished in here.” I wedged the last plate into the dishwasher between a frying pan covered in egg remnants and several glasses with chocolate milk residue around the top. “I saw your boyfriend this morning. He said your date was ‘great.’”
“Did he?” Page asked, trying to look nonchalant, but unable to contain her smile. Then, realizing what I had said, she bit down the corner of her mouth. “He isn’t my boyfriend.”
I nodded. “Was it a great date for you, too?”
“He packed a picnic basket with cheese and bread and wine, and we listened to jazz music on a tiny portable radio while we looked at the stars. It was totally cheesy, like a scene from a movie,” she said.
“So, you absolutely loved it?”
“Totally,” she gushed. “It was the most romantic thing ever. And I pulled out my chunky sweater and sneakers halfway through the night when it got chilly.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
Page tipped her head to me in recognition of my help, and then stood up, brushing the crumbs from her muffin off the table and into her palm. “I should go check on Blaire and make sure everything is okay. But you’ll call Shep this morning?”
“I’ll do it right now.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m ready to put this whole thing behind us.”
Putting it behind us would prove slightly more difficult than having a simple conversation with Shep. In the time between Page going upstairs and my call to Shep, three different guests came into the kitchen to ask me about the dead body that had been found on the beach. Somehow, the rumor mill on Sunrise Island had already begun to turn, and people knew that he’d been at the bed and breakfast earlier in the day. The guests were concerned about what may have motivated someone to kill the man, and whether it had anything to do with the bed and breakfast. I tried to remind them all that the island was small and the man had likely been to many local hangouts before his death, and that his brief appearance at the bed and breakfast had nothing to do with his death. However, people were hardly convinced.
When I finally called Shep, he answered on the second ring. “I was wondering when you’d be calling.”
“I gather you’ve made the connection between the dead guy and the bed and breakfast?”
There was a long pause. “What?”
“The murder investigation…the man was at the bed and breakfast earlier in the day,” I said, my words drawn out in a kind of question.
“Oh, well, no,” Shep said, clearing his throat. “I thought you were calling to assist with the investigation.”
Even our out of town guests were buzzing with the news that the deceased had spent one of his last moments on our property. How did the sheriff not know about it yet? Also, how was he still convinced I was going to help with his investigation? I’d declined his offer in no uncertain terms. What did it say about our police force that he was sitting in his office waiting for me to call rather than out chasing leads?
“I suppose I am helping in a way,” I said. “Page and I want to come in and give you everything we know.”
“You two are offering to come in and be interviewed?” he asked. “That’s unusual.”
“We aren’t turning ourselves in or anything,” I said, making sure that was incredibly clear, because with Shep, you never really knew. “We just know there must be an ongoing investigation and we wanted to offer up what little information we have.”
He took a long time to respond, but finally said, “How about today at 3?”
“See you then, Shep.”
I hung up and closed my eyes, doubting my decision to move to Sunrise Island. Sure, it had scenic views and the near-constant humidity meant my hair never went staticky, but how safe did I really feel? Not only had I become a target of two different murderers, but the police force didn’t seem to have a handle on things. Especially since the police force was Shep and a few brainless deputies. I shook my head and pushed myself to a standing position. It didn’t matter. This murder investigation wasn’t my business. Page and I were going to give Shep an interview and then I was going to mind my own business. Shep didn’t need my help. Or, at least, he shouldn’t need my help, and I certainly didn’t want him to get used to having it. So, no, I absolutely was not going to work on this investigation.
I repeated that to myself several times throughout the afternoon as my mind wandered back to thoughts of the dead man. I am not going to help with this investigation.
CHAPTER 10
“Thanks for coming in,” Shep said, meeting us in the front lobby of the tiny jail house.
The place had a small lobby with tan tile floors, dingy white walls, a large receptionist’s desk that appeared to be empty, and three metal chairs in a waiting area. Through a large pane of glass in the back wall I could see into the holding cell. It was a large room with a wall of bars cutting it in half, forming one large cell.
“Of course,” Page said. “Anything we can do to help.”
I could tell she was nervous, and I wanted to whisper to Page that she didn’t need to be so professional—Shep was barely holding it together—but I held my tongue and followed them both through a side door, which led to a wood-panelled office.
“Take a seat,” Shep said, g
esturing to two chairs across from a cluttered desk. One was a wooden arm chair, the other a plastic lawn chair. “I only had the one chair, so please forgive the lawn chair. I brought it from my patio at home.”
“No problem at all,” Page said, beaming her brightest smile at him as she sat in the wooden chair.
I shot her a look as I lowered myself into the plastic chair, but she either didn’t notice or ignored it.
“So how does this work?” she asked. “Is there a recorder somewhere or are you just going to write it down, or…?”
Shep looked at her blankly. “I was just going to listen to what you had to say.”
Page hesitated, her mouth partially open in surprise, and then she nodded. “Right, of course. That works.”
She turned to me with a wary look in her eyes, but I just smiled. I hadn’t expected anything more from Shep, but clearly Page had expected something more along the lines of the many detective shows we’d watched growing up.
“So, you knew the deceased?” Shep asked, folding his hands carefully on the desk in front of him, leaning forward onto his elbows.
Page nodded. “Well, we didn’t know him. But we briefly encountered him.”
“He tried to book a room at the bed and breakfast,” I said.
“Tried?” Shep asked.
“His payment didn’t go through,” Page said. “He asked if we could let him stay in a room until he sorted out whatever was wrong with his bank account, but I told him we couldn’t, and he got upset.”
I shook my head. “He was more than upset. He became disorderly and threatening.”
“He threatened you?” Shep asked, perking up as if he would jump up and go arrest whoever had disrespected us, even though that person was now sitting in the morgue.
“He threatened the business,” Page said. “He swore to write a bad review and warn people against booking with us.”