A Corpse at the Cove

by Blythe Baker

  A big roll.

  I gasped and covered my mouth, even though there was no way the couple could have heard me through the wall.

  Mrs. Smith began flipped through the money. From where I stood, I could see that it was mostly small bills—fives and tens—but there were a lot of them. More than any normal person would carry around in their bag. Page and I had both noticed how liberal Mr. Smith was with tipping. He’d tossed Blaire ten dollars just for bringing him a napkin. But we’d chalked it up to him being a generous, rich man. However, suddenly my suspicions were piqued.

  I turned back to Matthew. “Have you seen that couple before?”

  He followed my finger to Mr. and Mrs. Smith, who had finished counting their wad of cash and were now walking across the road in front of the Marina back towards town.

  He squinted and then nodded. “Yeah, almost every day for the last week. They’ve been riding the ferry to the mainland in the morning and then riding it back in the afternoon.”

  That was unusual, as well. Mr. and Mrs. Smith weren’t from Sunrise Island. They’d come here specifically to sun themselves on the beach, according to Mrs. Smith. So why would they leave the island almost every day?

  I couldn’t be sure why, but it felt important. Although, I was also aware how desperate I was for a clue. Could I be projecting my desire for a new lead onto an innocent elderly couple? Perhaps, but that wasn’t a good enough reason not to check them out.

  “They’re staying at the bed and breakfast, right?” Matthew asked. I was still too deep in my thoughts to respond, but Matthew lifted his eyebrows and bounced on the toes of his feet. “Is that a clue? Did I just help you crack the case?”

  “No case cracking just yet,” I said. “But let me know if you notice anything suspicious, alright?”

  He eagerly agreed, and I left, hoping I could make it back to the bed and breakfast before the Smiths.

  It was easy enough to get into Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s room. I owned the bed and breakfast, after all, and since Page and I were nowhere near being able to afford a maid, we also did all of the cleaning. The guests were used to seeing us in and out of the upstairs rooms during the day, so no one said a thing as I unlocked Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s room—The Victorian—and stepped inside.

  They’d rented out our best room, and now that I’d seen the massive wad of cash Mrs. Smith considered “pocket money,” I knew why. They were loaded.

  The room was a deep burgundy with an intricately carved fireplace that had cost a small fortune to restore, and a lush four-poster bed in the center of the far wall. The Smiths had reserved the room for two weeks, so they’d gone to the trouble of unpacking their suitcases into the mahogany dresser and matching boudoir, and stored their luggage on the top shelf of the closet. On any normal day, I would have appreciated their tidily kept room. On this day, however, it would have been nice if they’d made more of a mess. Then, if I was caught snooping through their drawers, I could argue that I was tidying up.

  First, I stripped the bed and replaced the sheets, because as much as I wanted to immediately rummage through their drawers in search of something—I wasn’t yet sure what that something was—I actually did need to take care of their room. Page and I had watched videos online about how to make a bed to five-star hotel standards, and it required a lot of pulling and tucking that always left me a little breathless. However, it was also a little therapeutic.

  When I finished, the new bedding straightened and smoothed to perfection, the dirty linens on a pile in front of the door, I turned to the drawers. I knew it was wrong. Looking through drawers, especially through the drawers of paying guests, was really bad, and Page would almost certainly advise me not to do it. But Page wasn’t there to advise me about anything because she had been in an interrogation room for the entire morning and most of the afternoon. Something told me that, perhaps, this instance was an exception.

  I started with the bottom drawer because I wasn’t yet ready to investigate the undergarments of an elderly couple, and I’d watched a documentary that followed around rehabilitated burglars, and they said they always started with the bottom drawer. It meant they could move on to ransacking the drawer above without having to close the one before it. Apparently, it saved time.

  All I found was a mess of Hawaiian t-shirts, tan shorts, and elastic-waisted jeans. The next drawer didn’t yield anything more interesting—tall white socks, a pair of black dress pants, and a worn pair of suspenders. I closed the drawer, even though I knew burglars everywhere would disapprove, and prepared myself for the top drawer. Old man underwear were something I hoped to never see until I was married to an old man, but desperate times called for desperate measures. I reached for the drawer and yanked it open, hard and fast, before I could back out.

  I jumped back as though a small army of spiders had crawled out of the drawer, though that might have been less worrying than what I’d actually found.

  A drawer full of purses, fanny packs, and money clips that put the stash I’d found in Matthew’s back seat to shame. One billfold was black with plastic silver spikes, another was covered in pink stones, yet another had the logo of the Houston Texans stamped on the side. I hesitated to touch anything, thoughts of fingerprints and crime scenes popping into my head before I realized I was looking at stolen wallets, not a dead body. Still, I reached into the drawer with nervous fingers, as though the wallets had teeth, and pulled one out. It looked expensive—soft leather, a crystal snap—and when I opened it up, a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman named Hannah Geyser smiled up at me. She had a Kansas driver’s license and was an organ donor. The wallet didn’t have any cash in it, but it was full of debit cards, credit cards, and punch cards for frozen yogurt and coffee shops. When I pulled out the debit card, a small slip of paper came out with it and fluttered to the floor. I bent to pick it up, and immediately recognized it as a ticket to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. It was time stamped for three days ago.

  It was stolen. There was almost no other explanation. Unless, of course, a 20-something girl from Kansas who was visiting Texas on vacation decided to willingly hand over her wallet to an elderly couple. Though, that seemed rather far-fetched.

  Mr. and Mrs. Smith weren’t rich—at least not by conventional means. They were thieves. They rode the ferry morning and evening, stealing from other passengers on the boat and, most likely, from people on the mainland. Even as the thought formed in my mind, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Mr. and Mrs. Smith were so nice. She reminded me of my own grandmother. Though, that was why they had so many purses and wallets. No one would suspect a sweet elderly couple of robbing them. They used their age to their advantage. In a way, I was almost impressed.

  Almost.

  I quickly dug through the drawer, opening every wallet and purse, unzipping every zipper, and unclasping every clasp, to check IDs. The Smiths had stolen from people all over the country, though the majority were from Texas, and based on the driver’s license photos, they did not discriminate. They had IDs from every age and race and sex. Apparently, no one was immune to trusting the elderly. However, there was no sign of the dead man’s ID in here. I studied every picture until my eyes felt watery and raw, but he wasn’t there. Though Mr. and Mrs. Smith were definitely thieves, and I was going to have to keep a serious eye on their luggage at check out to ensure they didn’t rob us blind, they hadn’t stolen the dead man’s wallet.

  The large clock downstairs chimed, and I realized how much time I’d spent in their room. Far more than was required for a simple linen change. I pulled the top drawer open all the way and used both arms to slide the purses and billfolds on top of the dresser into the open drawer, and then pushed it closed. I scooped up the dirty sheets piled in front of the door and hurried out of the room and into the hallway.

  No sooner had the Smiths’ door closed behind me than I heard footsteps on the stairs. I said a silent prayer of gratitude that I hadn’t been caught snooping through an elderly man’s drawers, dumped the sheets
down the laundry chute hidden behind a cabinet door in the hallway, and turned to face whoever was coming up the stairs.

  I’d assumed it was the Smiths or Page or one of the other guests, but instead, it was Sheriff Shep. He had on his tan uniform, though it looked creased with wear and a bit dingier than usual, and he had a fine layer of stubble across his entire face to go along with his thick mustache. He looked exhausted.

  Behind him, small and nervous, was Page.

  I moved towards them, eyes narrowed. I wanted to hit Shep. Police officer or not, he deserved it for holding my sister at the police station all day. “What’s going on?”

  Page jumped ahead of Shep and grabbed me by the shoulders, already trying to calm me down. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Shep just wants to take a look around,” she said.

  “Do you have a warrant?” I asked, leaning around Page to block Shep’s view of the hallway.

  “I let him in,” Page said. “We have nothing to hide.”

  “So? You should still make him get a warrant. I bet he couldn’t get one because they don’t have enough evidence on you. No judge in their right mind would issue a warrant because of suspicion,” I said.

  Shep didn’t seem to have the energy to spar with me. Instead, he kept his eyes straight ahead and moved down the hallway. When he came to Page’s bedroom door, he stopped. “This one?”

  Page nodded, and Shep stepped inside.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed.

  “I’m clearing my name,” Page said. “They think I’ve done something wrong, and I know I haven’t, so I’m going to let them investigate until they’re satisfied.”

  “Do they have something on you?” I asked. “You were at the station for a long time. What did he say?”

  Page sighed, and I noticed the dark circles under her eyes, the sag in her shoulders. “Shep originally thought Theodore—his name was Theodore, by the way—could have been killed because of money. His bank account was entirely empty and his wallet had been stolen, but when he got in touch with his ex-wife, Margaret, she admitted that she cleared his bank account.”

  “So, why aren’t they investigating her?” I asked, nearly screaming. “Most murders are committed by someone the victim knew. Family members should always be the first suspects.”

  “She had an alibi,” Page said, interrupting my rant. “She claimed that she only emptied the money from his account to ruin his vacation. It was a joint account, and he had been spending it like crazy since they separated. She didn’t spend it, though, and she has been living with her parents in Nebraska. She wasn’t even in the state on the day he was murdered.”

  I groaned. “So, his next thought was that you must have killed him?”

  Page’s eyes were laser focused on me. “I kicked him out of our bed and breakfast and he threatened our business. That’s motive.”

  “Barely!” I said. “People don’t kill people over threats that small. Plus, it is our business. How does Shep know I didn’t kill him?”

  “Shh!” Page said, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. “This isn’t a joke, Piper.”

  “I know it isn’t. I’m mad. Shep has no evidence, yet he is treating you like a criminal. This is absurd.”

  I turned away from Page and took off down the hallway towards her bedroom. How did Page not see how ridiculous this all was? She was acting as if there was any kind of credence to Shep’s accusations, which there absolutely was not. It didn’t matter that she didn’t see it, though. I did, and it didn’t matter that Page allowed Shep inside. It was my house, too, and he was going to need a warrant to search anything. I threw the door open.

  Shep was on the far side of Page’s bed, rising up as if he’d just been searching underneath it. He jumped when the door bounced off the wall, and something dropped to the floor.

  “You need to get out, Shep. Come back when you have a warrant,” I said.

  Page was close behind me. “No, Shep. It’s fine. Finish up.”

  Shep bent down to pick up whatever he’d dropped, not responding or reacting to either of us. Whatever it was had hit the floor and skidded under the bed. He pressed his face against the purple comforter and swung his arm across the floor, blindly searching. Finally, he grabbed it and hauled it up, lifting it into the air.

  It was a wallet. Nothing extraordinary about it in any way—worn brown leather, a few rips and snags in the stitching around the edges, and a blue ink stain as big as my pinky nail on one of the corners. There was nothing particularly noteworthy or unusual about the wallet, except that it had clearly belonged to a man, and it clearly did not belong in Page’s room.

  Shep held it up as though it were the skull in a high school production of Hamlet. I just knew he was imagining dramatic theme music playing in the background, adding another layer to the tension.

  “What is it?” Page asked, though we all knew that what she’d really meant to ask was, Whose is it?

  “I think you may already know,” Shep said, eyeing us both with a mixture of sadness and suspicion.

  “Is it…his?” Page asked.

  “We don’t know whose it is,” I said, doing my best to talk over Page, to cover her words which could potentially be twisted into an admission of guilt. “Why don’t you tell us?”

  I’d lied. We all knew who the wallet belonged to, and Shep knew we knew, but he still flipped open the old leather and held out the ID towards us as if it were a badge.

  Theodore A. Wallace.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Would you care to explain how his wallet found its way under your bed, Ms. Lane?” Shep asked. Only moments before he’d looked work weary and exhausted, but now his eyes were wide and alert, staring at Page.

  Page, on the other hand, looked shell shocked. Her eyes were glassy and unseeing, her mouth hanging open as if she were half asleep.

  “Someone put it there,” I said.

  I knew the explanation was thin and unprovable, but it was the only thing that made sense. Page couldn’t have hurt the man, let alone killed him. And up until that very day, she hadn’t even known his name. It didn’t make sense. Nothing made any sense.

  “I’m speaking to the other Ms. Lane,” Shep said, giving me a warning look.

  We both turned to Page, who looked no more ready to speak than she had the first time he’d addressed her. I turned to her, grabbing her by the upper arms.

  “Page,” I said, as gently as I could. “You have to help me out here. Explain this.”

  Page’s eyes searched and then locked in on mine, and she shook her head slowly. Her mouth opened and closed several times, the words lodged in her throat, and then she finally croaked, “I don’t know.”

  Shep pulled a plastic bag out of his back pocket and dropped the wallet into it, and I found myself surprised that he even carried around evidence bags. “I’m going to have to ask you to come back down to the station with me,” Shep said.

  “She doesn’t have anything left to tell you,” I said, moving to stand in front of Page, who seemed to have entered a catatonic state.

  “This is evidence,” Shep said. “I can’t ignore it.”

  “Evidence of what? Evidence that the man was at our bed and breakfast before he died? We already told you that! It doesn’t prove that Page had anything to do with it,” I challenged.

  “It was in her bedroom, Piper.”

  “You busted her daughter’s boyfriend for stealing wallets. Ever think maybe he could have left it here? And let’s not forget the elderly Bonnie and Clyde sleeping in the room across the hall. They could have stashed it under her bed when they discovered he’d turned up dead.”

  “Elderly Bonnie and Clyde? What are you talking about?” Shep asked.

  I didn’t have the energy to explain what I’d found in Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s room. I needed Shep out of my house. I needed to talk to Page. I needed a minute to stop and think about what was happening around me, so I could piece it together.

  “Leave,” I said, my voice steady and ev
en, despite the adrenaline-fueled shake that had set into my arms and legs. “Either arrest her or get out. She doesn’t have to go anywhere with you.”

  Shep hesitated, staring at me. He knew I was right, but he was trying to figure out a way around it. Finally, he closed the zipper of the plastic evidence bag containing the wallet and stomped past us, leaving behind the musty scent of sweat and sun block.

  Mason, Blaire, and Jude were sitting at the dining room table, each of them staring down at their own folded hands, saying nothing. When Page and I walked into the room, they all jumped to their feet.

  “What happened?” Mason and Blaire asked at the same time.

  Jude looked from Page to me and then back to Page, eyes widening as he took in her pale, listless state. “Did he find anything?”

  “Of course he didn’t find anything,” Blaire said. “Mom is innocent.”

  I pursed my lips and lowered Page into one of the wooden chairs. She sunk into it gratefully and lowered her face into her hands.

  “Right?” Blaire asked, suddenly not sure. She took the chair next to her mom, placing her hand gently on her shoulder. “He didn’t find anything, did he?”

  Blaire’s fear seemed to wake Page up. She placed her hand over Blaire’s and patted it in the soft way only moms know how to do. “He found the man’s wallet.”

  “The dead guy’s wallet?” Blaire asked, leaning back as though the sentence was a bomb and she didn’t want to be hit by the shrapnel.