by Leslie Kelly
“Who was it?”
“The person skipped out before investigators could talk to them. The police did get a name and location, though, from the mortuary records.”
Hmm.
“Who was the family member?”
He shuffled some papers. “A Lou Harrington from Philadelphia.”
Hmm again. Brother Lou? Cousin Louie? Uncle Luigi? Not enough information.
“Anyway, beyond that, the jailed suspect still isn’t cooperating. Philadelphia police have looked into it and don’t have any criminal background on either one of the attackers.” Mark cleared his throat.
“What?”
“Well, the investigator I talked to did have some things to say about the victim.”
I immediately tensed. “Oh?”
“Yeah. Mainly what a poor son of a bitch he was to stumble onto these two, because they really messed him up. That balcony apparently looked like a slaughter had taken place, but all the blood was the intended victim’s.”
Hot moisture rose to my eyes but I blinked it away. Simon wasn’t hurting physically anymore. And dammit, soon he wouldn’t be hurting emotionally. I’d see to that if it was the only important thing I ever did in my life.
“He also said the bartender and hotel staff had noticed the woman hanging around a couple of nights before that one, never talking to anyone. But the minute this Lebeaux guy came in, she was all over him.”
“She—they—targeted him,” I said, never doubting it. “Not just any wealthy-looking hotel guest would do.”
“Looks that way.”
Big hmm. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up and if I had a mirror handy, I knew I’d see my pulse throbbing in my temple. Because I sure felt it.
“Lottie, just thought I’d mention…the staff also told the investigators that Lebeaux hadn’t been, you know, trolling the bar during his stay. They never saw him with a woman until that night and she was definitely the aggressor.”
Hearing a note of gruffness in Mark’s voice, I suddenly realized why he’d told me that. He knew. He somehow knew, without me saying, that I was involved with Simon. And though he was far away, it almost seemed as if he were offering his approval, and his support. Have I mentioned I really do love my brothers?
“Thanks, Mark. Give Noelle a hug for me.”
“I give her plenty of my own, but I’m always happy to give her one more.”
Laughing, I promised to call later. And I promised to be careful. Then I disconnected the call and went inside to find Simon. It was time to search Seaton House and get to the bottom of what was happening within its walls.
14
Simon
WITH THE SKELETON KEY in hand, they searched the entire house. Every room. Every closet. From the attic to the basement. It took most of the day, but by Sunday night, Simon felt sure they’d exhausted all possibilities within the building itself.
That didn’t mean someone hadn’t been doing exactly what Lottie theorized—it just meant they hadn’t taken up residence in his house. There were a few outbuildings—the free-standing garage, a gardener’s shed and a small building where Roger had kept the outdoor lawn equipment. But it was getting dark, so they’d have to search those tomorrow.
There were other things that had to wait until tomorrow as well, including word from his uncle’s attorney, who hadn’t, despite Simon’s best efforts, been reachable today. So by that night, he was feeling irritated and frustrated.
“Look, we’ve searched the whole place, we know we’re secure for tonight,” Lottie murmured as they lay sprawled on his bed. They’d both collapsed there, fully clothed, tired from their long, dusty day of creeping over every inch of the place. “We’ll find out more tomorrow and search the grounds.”
“I just wish there was more to do tonight.”
“You could do me tonight.”
He tugged her onto his chest. “I fully intend to.” Smiling, he added, “But first, I’m absolutely starving.”
Some women might take offense at being put in second place after a meal, but not Lottie. She immediately shot up. “Excellent. I’ll make us something fabulous.”
Laughing, he tried to pull her back down. “I didn’t mean right this minute.”
There was no stopping her, though. Following her into the kitchen, he watched her dive into the fridge and start pulling out enough food to feed an army. Or a big Italian family.
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Absolutely not.”
Restless, he paced the kitchen. “I’d feel better if I had something to do,” he muttered, talking more to himself than her.
She paused, turned around and said, “I know. Listen, I had another thought. Something else we could research without waiting for the lawyer.”
“Tell me. I need a distraction.”
“I brought a box of papers up from the basement and left it in the old restaurant. There are a lot of guest ledgers, registration records and correspondence. It’s recent stuff, like from the last year or two.”
He immediately followed. “If someone was really interested in the hotel, they might have approached Uncle Roger directly.”
She nodded. “Very good, you’re catching on to this investigative stuff.”
“I’m a fast learner.”
“Unlike me, who didn’t decide until I’d nearly finished college what I wanted to be when I grew up.” Getting back to work, she rinsed a few tomatoes in the sink. “You might also want to look through the ledgers to see if there’s anyone who stayed here a lot, particularly last spring when someone was trying to get your uncle to sell. They might have come as a hotel guest a few times before deciding to try to buy the property.”
Damn she was smart. And gorgeous. And sweet.
And he was falling for her. Staring at her back across the kitchen as she started chopping vegetables, he froze, unable to move as the truth washed over him.
He was no longer developing feelings for her. He was in love with her.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked, looking at him over her shoulder.
“Eyes front, lady, watch that knife,” he said, seeing her continue to slice into a ripe tomato with a sharp blade.
“Fine, but get out of my kitchen and make yourself useful.”
Laughing, he left the room to do exactly that.
He found the box right where Lottie had left it. Pulling it over to the nearest table, he made a mental note to give her hell for carrying the thing up by herself. It was not light.
For the next hour, he went through every piece of paper, organizing them all by date where possible. Lottie wasn’t the only one who knew how to do a little research. One of these days, he was going to have to remind her what he did for a living.
One of these days.
Like, tomorrow? Wasn’t that, after all, the only day he had left with her? She was leaving on Tuesday, driving out of his life as quickly as she had driven into it.
Ask her not to go.
He thought about it, but quickly realized he couldn’t. Yeah, he was a selfish bastard. He’d proved that in any number of ways since he’d known her. But asking her to stay here meant asking her to babysit a screwed-up man. One who’d obviously been so emotionally whacked-out, he’d practically invited someone to terrorize him in his own home.
She would probably do it. Lottie’s tenderness, her concern for him—her pity—meant she’d probably give him whatever he asked.
Which was why he’d never ask.
He didn’t want her to stay on those terms. He didn’t want her pitying him, thinking she needed to save him from the dark morass he’d allowed his life to become.
No.
If she stayed, it would have to be because she saw—and loved—the real man. The man he’d been before. The man he would become again. Maybe not by Tuesday, but someday soon, he would be the kind of man she’d be proud to be with.
After this is over….
Thrusting all those thoughts out of his
mind, he got back to the task at hand. He had to push away the sadness whenever he stumbled across something handwritten by his uncle, knowing Roger would have wanted him to get to the bottom of this nonsense. The hotel had been in the family for decades. If someone was trying to make a grab for it by using some stupid psychological game, Uncle Roger would be the first one to insist that Simon nail the bastard.
Starting with the older paperwork, he realized it would take too much time, so he moved forward, to this past spring, as Lottie had suggested. It wasn’t long before he stumbled across a note his uncle had jotted down on his daily planner. A note about a meeting with his attorney regarding the offer on Seaton House. He set the note aside, knowing he was on the right track.
It was soon joined by several more items, including the guest records from the final few months the hotel had been in business. A few names showed up more than once, but one visitor had come back to Seaton House six times between March and June.
When he saw the notation on the final visit, Simon frowned. Though no smell preceded it, he felt a throbbing begin in the base of his skull, as if he were about to get one of his headaches. But he knew it wasn’t a migraine. Something else was making his blood pound harder in his veins and tension flood through his body.
He’d been looking for a suspect in the recent events targeting him. But what he greatly feared he found was something much—much—worse.
Almost dazed as the possibilities flooded into his head, clicking into place, he closed the books, rose from the table and walked back to the kitchen.
Lottie, looking so sweet and sexy in her tight jeans and a big white apron, obviously heard him come in. “Perfect timing, the pasta’s just about al dente.”
“Lottie,” he murmured, standing numbly in the doorway.
She spun around. “What is it?”
“I think…” He paused, hating to continue. A part of him didn’t want to bring the words out into the open, to give them life and make the possibility real.
Dropping a slotted spoon on the counter, she hurried over to him, putting her hand on his chest. “Tell me.”
He did. “I think it’s possible that my uncle’s death wasn’t an accident.”
At her stricken look, he continued, “As bizarre as it sounds…I think someone who wanted this hotel might actually have murdered him to get it.”
IT TOOK A WHILE to make her understand his suspicion. Simon knew it sounded crazy and as he walked back to the shadowy restaurant with her, he told her so.
“I had a feeling. An intuition at first. Seeing the name so many times.”
Taking down another chair so she could sit with him at one of the small tables, he began showing her what he’d found. The notes, the planner, the ledger. “One name kept popping up. She came here so often and always stayed in the same room.”
Lottie’s jaw dropped. “She?”
He nodded. “Yes. The same woman. And apparently she met with Uncle Roger a couple of times during her stays—he had her initials marked in his planner.”
“It could have been about something else,” she said, though she sounded doubtful.
“It could have. But it wasn’t.”
He opened a book his uncle had used as a private journal. “Uncle Roger was old-school. The hotel had a computer but it was archaic. He did just about everything by hand, including making notes to himself. Check out the one on May fifteenth.”
Lottie looked at the book and read it. “Who’s Andrews?”
“The lawyer.”
She read the single paragraph to the end, her eyes growing wide. “He scheduled an appointment to talk to his lawyer about L.M. How to convince her he wasn’t selling, and to ask if there was a legal way to bar her from staying at the hotel.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, my God, she was the buyer and she kept coming up here harassing him about it. How bad must it have been if he wanted to try to prohibit her from ever staying at the hotel again?”
“I can’t imagine. He was the nicest old guy you’d ever want to meet.”
Simon swallowed, wishing he’d done more to stay in touch with his uncle. In May he’d been finishing up the Atlanta book and preparing for his trip to Charleston. He’d probably called his only living relative three times that entire month. “I didn’t know this was happening. If I’d realized someone was bothering him, you can bet I would have done something about it.”
“Of course you would have.” She put her hand over his, reading the next entries in the journal. There weren’t many more—his uncle hadn’t written any kind of diary, he’d just made detailed notes about important things going on in his life.
One entry the first day of June had mentioned Simon.
S called. Another book in the fall. What a success—his mother would be so proud.
Simon had had a hard time reading that one. And when Lottie got to it, she squeezed his fingers hard. The journal ended three days later. The day before Roger Denton had died.
“Okay,” Lottie said, “I think you’re right. This potential buyer wasn’t normal. Your uncle was being harassed—stalked almost by some obnoxious woman. But he doesn’t say in here whether he ever heard from her again. So why…”
He said nothing, merely opening the old-fashioned ledger book that had once sat on the front desk of the hotel. In keeping with the vintage theme of the place, Roger used to have his guests sign in the enormous journal, using a big, swooping feathered pen. They’d always gotten a kick out of it and it had fit the ambiance of Seaton House perfectly.
“Look at the names of the people who stayed here the first week of June.”
She ran her fingertip over the names—some easy to make out, some scrawled. She stopped exactly where he had. On a barely legible signature, scrawled Louisa Mitchell.
All the color left her face so fast, he’d have thought she’d seen a ghost. The ugly possibilities had occurred to her as quickly as they’d occurred to him.
“Do you think she had something to do with your uncle’s accident?”
“Lottie, seeing that name and the date…I think it’s worse than that. I think she killed him.”
HE DREAMED THAT NIGHT. Violent dreams of his uncle not just stumbling over a rock or being startled by a noise. But of a woman’s arm coming out of a misty cloud. Pushing against Roger Denton’s chest. Then the old man falling away into the nothingness below the cliffs.
Simon woke up several times, and each time Lottie murmured something sweet in her sleep and curled close to him, pressing as tightly to his body as she could get.
He pulled her even tighter. Held her closer.
Tomorrow, he would drive into town and track down this lawyer, Andrews. He’d find out everything he could about the woman he suspected had killed his uncle. Where she’d come from, what she looked like. If the lawyer couldn’t help, he’d at least be able to direct Simon toward the former employees of Seaton House. With a guest as regular as that one—especially a pushy one who was bothering the owner—somebody had to remember her.
He had no doubt he’d track down the woman. What would happen when he did so remained to be seen.
At some point during the night, he must have finally fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep, because the next time he opened his eyes, the bedroom was bathed in sunlight. The clock said it was nearly eight.
Beside him, he realized, Lottie was also awake. Lying flat on her back, she stared up at the ceiling. Her lips moved, as if she was talking to herself, and he couldn’t help remembering what she’d once said about cursing people she was mad at under her breath. She was obviously very mad at someone because she was frowning as she muttered.
“Hey.”
Jerking her head to face him, she murmured. “Good morning.”
But she didn’t curl back into his arms or offer him a good-morning kiss. Instead, she kept frowning, then slowly looked up toward the ceiling again.
He finally had to laugh, she looked so fierce. “Who are you muttering about?”
“I’m not muttering.”
“Ha. There was some definite muttering going on.”
Still not looking over, she admitted, “I’m thinking of your uncle. And what’s happened to you.” Finally rolling onto her side to face him, she continued. “I can’t imagine anyone killing someone for a building.” She reached up and scraped the tip of her finger against his scar. “But I guess it’s no more heinous than someone trying to kill another person for a hundred dollars and a watch.”
Yeah. Ugly. He knew exactly how she felt.
“You know,” she said, “there’s something bothering me. Have you ever had that feeling where you hear something, and you just know it’s important—that it has significance—but damned if you can figure out why? It’s like a tiny thought running rampantly around my brain, scampering out of reach every time I try to catch it.”
“You’re good with words.”
“I’m going to be a writer.”
“Good job,” he said, offering her as much of a smile as he could manage.
Lottie wrapped her arms around his neck. “Okay, we have some more searching to do. And I want to go online and do a little poking around. You think you’re okay with cold cereal for breakfast this morning?”
“No eggs Benedict? I’m crushed.”
She thunked him on the head. The woman actually thunked him on the head!
“Ow! Register those fingers of yours as lethal weapons.”
“Mama can leave bruises. But that’s not nearly as bad as when she grabs you by the ear.”
He immediately lifted a self-protective hand to the side of his head.
She laced her fingers in his and tugged his hand away. “You’re safe. For now.” Pressing a quick kiss on his lips, she said, “But I need to get moving. I’m going to track down that thought in my head no matter what.”
“Lottie,” he said, not releasing her, “it can wait a few minutes. I haven’t said good morning to you the way I want to yet.”