by J. R. Ripley
“Did you ever think that maybe your problem is that you don’t worry enough?” she whispered right back.
Friendship is a wonderful thing.
At the top of the stairs, I paused and strained my ears. I couldn’t hear a thing except for the sounds of Christmas carols rising from the first floor. I tried the doorknob.
It wasn’t locked. I stuck my tongue out at Kim, turned the doorknob, and went inside. Kim hustled in behind me, bumping into my backside.
“Careful!” I said softly. But there was no need. The loft was deserted. I pulled the door shut behind us.
“This is really creepy.”
I waved away her concern.
“What if we get caught?” Kim pressed.
“There’s no crime-scene tape.”
“That doesn’t mean we should be here. What are we doing here, anyway?” Kim held her arms wrapped across her chest, but I didn’t think it was due to the coldness of the room.
I walked slowly around the perimeter while Kim stood near the door, watching me. Except for the missing noose, the room appeared unchanged.
“I don’t know,” I answered in reply to my friend’s question. “I was hoping being here might jar your memory.”
“It’s jarring, all right.”
“Ha-ha.” I crossed over to the antique rolltop desk. The computer was gone and the nearby space heater was turned off. “I wonder who’s going to live here next?”
“It wouldn’t be me.” Kim finally removed herself from the vicinity of the door and joined me at the desk.
“Maybe Franklin’s ex-wife.” How would she feel, moving into a space in which her husband had been murdered? Happy, sad, or indifferent?
“Not a chance,” Kim replied. “According to Mr. Belzer, she’s decided to sell.”
“Since when?”
“Since this morning. I overheard him talking to her when I stopped in the office. Apparently, she feels like Christmas House Village is nothing but trouble and she’s happy where she is.” Kim stamped her feet against the cold. “I don’t blame her. Can we get out of here now? It’s cold and creepy.”
“Fine.” A drawing protruding from one of the slots in the desktop caught my eye. “What’s this?” I slid it out and held it open using both hands.
Kim peered over my shoulder. “It looks like something a kindergartner would draw.”
I nodded. “It’s pretty rough. But what is this? Look.” There were six poorly drawn squares, a line down the middle, and a big rectangle to the right filled with lines. I planted a fingernail on the rectangle filled with lines. “Is that supposed to be a parking lot?” I tapped the sheet of paper. “I think it is. And these squares are Christmas House Village.”
Kim pulled a face. “That’s not a parking lot, that’s the Antiques Mall.”
“Maybe our Mr. Finch had designs on turning it into a parking lot.”
“Christmas House Village could use some on-site parking. Was he going to call it Santa’s Parking Garage?”
I rolled my eyes.
What?” Kim added as I gaped at her. “I’m just saying.”
“I’m saying let’s go to the Antiques Mall and see if anybody knows anything about this.”
“Polly Carter owns the Antiques Mall,” Kim said. “She’ll probably be in. She usually is.”
I went to the attic window and looked down. A black-and-white cat scooted along the edge of the fence and disappeared in a crack between the boards.
A tiny thread of something outside the window caught my eye. I unlocked the window and pushed up.
“What are you doing, Amy? It’s freezing in here. Shut that thing.”
I waved her complaint away and bent lower. “Look at this.” Several thin strands of hemp had become wedged in a splinter.
“A splinter?” Kim said, unimpressed. “Call maintenance.”
“Not the splinter, what’s in it.”
“Some I-don’t-know-what. Crud.” Kim’s face was close to mine.
I fingered the slender bits. “I think it’s hemp.”
Kim arched her brow in question.
“Hemp as in hemp fibers like the rope Finch’s rope was made of. Just like the bits of it that were here on the floor the day you found him.”
“Maybe it’s from an old bird’s nest.”
“Maybe.” Kim was right. “A bird might have used the bits of hemp to build a nest sometime in the past. But I don’t think so. Besides,” I said, “that wouldn’t explain the bits that were on the inside of the window.”
Kim stood. “What’s it doing there then? What does it mean?”
I rose and latched the window. “I have no idea.”
We left the loft not much the wiser except for the possibility of Franklin Finch wanting to add a parking lot to his Christmas empire.
I had just pulled the door closed behind us when a voice called up from the stairwell.
“What are you two ladies doing up there?”
I looked over the rail. It was Max, the surly young security guard, and he looked even less happy than usual. I cleared my throat and started down the stairs, dragging Kim with me. “We were looking for Eve Dunnellon. Have you seen her?”
Max stood in the center of the step, his hand gripping the banister, preventing our passing. “That’s private quarters. Off-limits.”
I gulped. “Sorry. We’ll be going now. Mr. Sever stated he would be bringing my van around. Is it here?” I eyeballed his arm.
After a moment, he dropped it and stepped closer to the wall to let us pass.
Kim hurried after me. Glancing over my shoulder, I noted that Max was following closely.
We hurried outside. I was relieved to see that Max wasn’t still on our tail. We crossed the grounds of Christmas House Village and entered the sprawling Antiques Mall, which was a collection of smaller sellers under one roof. The Antiques Mall, like so many businesses in town, had been around at least as long as I had been.
“Thank goodness, it’s warm in here.” I unbuttoned my jacket and Kim did the same to hers.
Kim led the way to Polly Carter’s office in the rear of the store. The door marked Office stood open, so Kim knocked on it as she went in, and I followed. A woman in her sixties, by my guess, sat behind a decidedly contemporary desk of stainless steel and glass. In fact, the entire office was filled with furniture of a modern age rather than the vintage merchandise that filled the indoor mall.
“Ms. Carter?” Kim began.
The woman looked up from her computer. “Yes?” Small lines ran the edges of her mouth and under her pale blue eyes. Half-rimmed glasses balanced on her nose. Her hair was blond going to gray. “You’re with Belzer Realty, aren’t you?” She wore loose blue jeans and a floppy red sweater lined with colorful nutcracker soldiers.
Kim nodded. “I’m Kim Christy. This is Amy Simms.”
The woman bobbed her head and motioned for us to sit.
“That’s okay, we don’t want to take up much of your time,” I said, remaining standing. “We were wondering if you were planning to sell the Antiques Mall.”
Ms. Carter pulled her glasses lower. “Is that why you’re here? Are you hoping to get a listing?”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” Kim said hastily.
“We heard rumors,” I said, “that Franklin Finch was looking to maybe buy your business.”
“Ahh.” Polly Carter smiled and laid her glasses on her desk. “That man.” She shook her head. “What a pain in the patooty.” She rubbed the sides of her face.
“So he did want to buy the Antiques Mall?” Kim asked.
Polly Carter nodded. “I started getting letters from the man, quite insistent letters, before he’d even arrived to take possession of Christmas House Village.” She grunted. “As if I would ever let anybody turn the Antiques Mall into a par
king lot!”
“You told him no?” I asked, to be certain.
Ms. Carter’s brow flew up to her hairline. “Of course, I told him no. And I kept telling him no. I saw what he’d done to Christmas House Village. You should hear some of the words that Toby used to describe Finch when he found out what his plans were and how he was operating.”
“Toby?”
“Toby Kinley.”
Alarms went off in my brain. “Would that be one of Tyrone Kinley’s children?”
Polly nodded. “His youngest.”
“And you’ve talked to him?” I pressed.
“Sure, me and the Kinleys go way back. Whenever one of them is in town, we get together.”
“He’s in town now?” Kim asked.
“That’s right. Staying at the motor inn.” She rose. “Now, if you don’t have any more questions, this is the height of the busy season.”
“Of course.”
We left as quickly as we’d come.
“A fat lot of good that did us,” Kim complained as we started back for the minivan.
“We learned that Toby Kinley is in town.”
“Are you suggesting he may have murdered Mr. Finch?”
“Let’s find out.”
I went inside Elf House to grab my key ring while Kim waited on the porch.
“Can we get out of here?” Kim stomped down the steps to the walk. “Frankly, I don’t care if I ever come back to Christmas House Village for as long as I live.”
“I don’t particularly like the way you phrased that, but I agree with your sentiment.”
25
I drove straight to the Ruby Lake Motor Inn on Lake Shore Drive.
Built in the so-called neon era, the L-shaped lodging contains an office and a small diner in the shorter line of the L, with the rooms spreading out in the longer section. A row of small, rustic cabins with kitchenettes had been added later behind the inn.
Rust-pitted thirty-foot-tall steel posts held up the giant ruby-red neon sign. A smaller amber sign braced high up between the posts proclaimed that the inn was full for the night. People had suggested for years that the inn expand. There was nowhere to expand, but they could have built up, adding floors. The owners said they liked it the size it was.
“Look,” I said, pointing to a black Toyota sedan, “South Carolina plates. What do you want to bet that car belongs to Toby Kinley?”
“I’d say I see at least two more cars with South Carolina plates and tell you that you were wrong,” replied Kim, “except that one does have a Christmas House Village decal in the rear window.”
I hadn’t noticed, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. I pulled in under the portico. We found Dick Feller, the inn’s front-office manager, resting on a stool behind the counter. He’s a thin man in his early forties with receding dirty-brown hair, skin the color of flour paste, and espresso-brown eyes. One hand held a sturdy coffee mug, the other a copy of the Ruby Lake Weekender, our local paper.
“Sorry, full for the holidays, folks,” he said, without turning around.
“Hello, Dick,” I said.
He turned. “Howdy, ladies.” Dick’s Southern drawl was thicker than cold molasses in winter. “What brings you to the inn?”
“My Kia,” I quipped with a smile.
Kim punched me in the shoulder.
“Ow!” I glared at her and rubbed my upper arm. “We’re here to see Toby Kinley. The thing is . . .” I drummed my fingers against the polished wood surface of the counter, “we forgot what room number he said he was in. Didn’t we, Kim?”
Kim, ever slow on the pickup, said, “Uh, yeah?”
Dick slid off his stool and stood at the counter. He wore a long-sleeved white dress shirt with thin gray and brown stripes and a pair of cuffed dark brown trousers. “Listen here, Amy. This isn’t the first time you’ve tried to get me to tell you what room somebody or another is in.”
“And it won’t be the last.” I grinned at him. He frowned back. That wasn’t the way it was supposed to work.
“A person’s room number”—he pulled himself up to his full height, which wasn’t saying much—“if that person is or is not staying here, is privileged information.”
“Please?” I whined.
He shook his head. “I could lose my job breaking a rule like that.”
I felt a hand push me aside. It was Kim. I’d almost forgotten she was there.
“Couldn’t you help me,” Kim purred, “just this once?”
Dick swiveled his eyes from her to me and back again. “Now, Kim, I already explained to Amy. You heard me,” he sputtered. “We have procedures.” He tugged at his shirt collar.
“Please?”
“But—”
Kim batted her eyelashes.
I frowned as the man started blabbing. Every time I batted my lashes at a man, they invariably asked me if I had something in my eye.
To make matters worse, he offered to walk us down. As if two grown women couldn’t find their way in a straight line from the office to Toby Kinley’s room at the opposite end.
“Are you sure it’s not too much trouble, Dickie?” Kim asked rather disingenuously, though the manager hadn’t seemed to pick up on her tone.
“No trouble at all. I’ll be happy to make the introductions.” Dick pulled on his overcoat, came from behind the counter, and hurried to open the office door.
Kim stopped at the door as Dick held it for us. “Aren’t you coming, Amy?”
“You go ahead. I’ll catch up. I need to make a stop in the ladies’ room.” There were public restrooms between the office and the inn’s restaurant.
“Suit yourself,” Kim replied.
I waited until they were some distance away, then scurried behind the counter to the computer. It didn’t take me long to find Toby Kinley’s registration. “Bingo.” Toby had checked in on the day of Franklin Finch’s murder. He had given an address in Spartanburg, South Carolina, as his residence. That was no more than a couple hours’ drive.
The jingle of sleigh bells alerted me to the front door opening. I grabbed the mouse, clicked out of the screen, and spun around. “Oh, hi.” I hoped my face wasn’t too red. “Back so soon?” Dick held the door as Kim stepped inside.
“He wasn’t in his room. At least, he wasn’t answering,” explained Kim.
“But his car—”
“Gone.”
“Oh.”
Dick leaned over the counter at me. “What are you doing behind the counter?”
“I-I was checking the newspaper. I placed an ad for the store. We’re running a big holiday sale and I wanted to see how it looks.”
Dick pulled open the swinging gate and motioned for me to leave. “If you please?”
“Thanks for your help, Dick,” I said, moving out to the front. “Would you let Mr. Kinley know that we stopped by, if you see him?”
“Oh, you can be certain of that.” Dick’s words sounded very much like a threat. His hand went to the Ruby Lake Weekender at his desk.
I hustled Kim outside.
“You placed a store ad?” she asked.
“No. Let’s get out of here before Dick figures out I was lying.”
Once in the minivan with the heater running, I explained to Kim that Toby Kinley had checked into the inn the day of the murder.
“Why would Toby Kinley, or any of the Kinleys for that matter, want to kill Franklin Finch?”
I pulled onto Lake Shore Drive with the intent of returning to Birds & Bees. “Maybe they weren’t happy with what he’d done to the family business. Maybe they wanted to buy it back.”
“You can’t buy something from a dead man.”
“No,” I had to admit, “but you can buy it from his widow.”
“That’s true.” Kim gazed out the window. “Drop me
off at the real estate office, would you?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“I promised Mr. Belzer I’d come in and work the floor. Not that I feel like it.”
That explained the gray wool suit she was wearing. “It will be good for you to keep busy.”
“I know. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure how much longer I can keep doing this, Amy.”
“You mean real estate?”
Kim nodded.
“What would you do instead?”
“I don’t know. Go back to school? Leave town? That’s probably best.” She sighed. “I don’t know. I’ll figure something out. Speaking of which, where are you going next?”
“Back to the store. I want to see if I can get a line on Bobby Cherry.”
Kim frowned. “That’s one character I think you should let the police handle.”
“I promise, any information I find I will turn over to Jerry. Okay?”
“Okay,” Kim answered. “But knowing you, and I do, you’re bound to do something stupid first.”
I kept my eyes on the road and fumed. I hated it when she was right.
Several minutes later, I pulled into the lot of Belzer Realty. “Look at that,” I said as I turned off the main road.
“What is that?” Kim leaned toward my window.
“It looks like somebody spray-painted your sign.”
Kim frowned. “Mr. Belzer isn’t going to be happy about that.” Jagged streaks of black paint crisscrossed the real estate agent’s sign. “Is it ever going to end?”
“Yes, and soon, I hope.” And I hoped I was right. I stopped outside the office and Kim climbed out.
“See if you can get a line on Bobby Cherry from your boss.”
“I will,” promised Kim. “But it’s a longshot.”
“Longshots are all I have to go on at this point. By the way,” I said with a smile. “I hate you.”
Kim laughed. “Because I have a way with men like Dick that makes you green with envy?”
“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Love you, too.” Kim giggled and wiggled her fingers.
I nodded and waved as she slammed the door shut behind her.
* * * *
I had told my best friend a small white lie. I wasn’t going back to Birds & Bees, I was going to Vincent Properties. I wanted a word with her former boyfriend.