Inn Keeping With Murder

by Lynn Bohart

  I put my mother’s phone on the night stand before lying back for my own well-deserved rest. Ever since my mother had contacted me, I felt the need to keep her close.

  I slipped into a deep sleep. Sometime later, I was on stage in my high school production of Grease. John Travolta was there and had just finished belting out, “You’re The One That I Want,” when suddenly Bill Haley and the Comets began singing “Rock Around the Clock.” My eyes fluttered open as I slowly became aware that my mother’s phone was ringing next to the bed.

  The room was dark except for a faint light spill from a nightlight in the hallway. My eyes were only halfway open, as I reached out blindly for the phone. As I groped in the darkness, a hand appeared from nowhere and slapped a cloth over my mouth and nose, pushing my head back into the pillow before I could resist. I tried to cry out, but couldn’t and grabbed a pair of thick wrists, scrambling to pull them away as a suffocating, acrid smell set off all sorts of alarms in my head. I remembered that smell. I’d had my tonsils out when I was seven. The cloth was drenched in chloroform!

  I gagged and my head began to spin. I tried flipping to my side, but my attacker was too strong. The world began to swirl, and I was about to succumb to the horrid fumes clogging my nostrils, when Lucy came awake with a start and made herself known. From the depths of that big, hollow chest, came a deep, rumbling growl. The attacker hesitated, and my gaze darted to the other side of the bed.

  What appeared out of the darkness was straight out of a horror movie.

  Lucy’s black and white harlequin face emerged from the shadows like some grotesque gargoyle. Her left eye seemed to float in space, while the other side was completely visible, right down to her curled lip and spit-covered, enormous teeth. Her entire body vibrated with rage, and she began to move slowly around the end of the bed, stalking her prey.

  That’s all it took. The man fled.

  He ran from the room, and Lucy lunged after him. He had just enough time to pull the bedroom door closed behind him. Lucy slammed up against it, eliciting a chilling howl. The door bounced open again, and she ran to the front door, throwing herself at the closed door and barking a high pitched alarm.

  Meantime, I rolled out of bed and onto the floor, gasping for air. When she realized her pursuit was cut short, Lucy abandoned it and came back in to lick my face.

  I stumbled to my feet and heard a car engine start up. Tires screeched as a car peeled out of the gravel driveway. I made it back to the bed and grabbed the bedside phone to dial 911. With a raspy voice, I reported the assault. The operator told me to stay on the line, and that’s when I heard loud knocking at my outer door. It was José. I hadn’t thought to give him a key to my apartment and so had to make the arduous trip down the hallway.

  “Ms. Applegate, you okay?” he said in alarm when I opened the door.

  He helped me to my chair and knelt down beside me.

  “What happened?” he said, his face twisted in concern.

  I was still coughing, and I must have looked a wreck. He got up and went to the sink and got me a glass of water, which I took gratefully.

  “I heard the dog and then a car,” he said.

  Lucy watched José with little interest. He clearly wasn’t a threat, so she climbed up on the sofa and stretched out, completely relaxed now.

  “Someone…attacked me.” I wheezed and then coughed.

  Libby appeared in the doorway behind José, her hair in curlers and dressed in a long nightgown. When she heard I’d been attacked, her eyes went wide, and her hand flew to her mouth. This might be getting to be too much for my shy and retiring housekeeper.

  “I’ll call the police,” she screeched.

  “Already done.” I squeezed the words out, holding up my cell phone.

  My throat burned, and my head was swimming. I hadn’t inhaled enough of the chloroform to knock me out, but enough to make me groggy. It was hard not to just put my head down and go to sleep. Just then, we heard the distant wail of a siren, and I was able to hang up on the 911 operator.

  By the time the two patrol cars rolled into our driveway—again—Ms. Jenkins appeared in the hallway, only to be pushed aside as the emergency personnel burst in. Just great, I thought. Even the ghosts of Christmas past wouldn’t keep her here now. The place would be empty by morning.

  Right behind the police cars was an ambulance, and before long my apartment was filled with enough emergency personnel to staff a natural disaster. Amidst the EMTs checking my blood pressure and the police asking me questions and looking for clues, Ms. Jenkins reappeared a second time with her suitcase in tow.

  “I’m leaving, Mrs. Applegate,” she nearly shouted from just inside my door. “Mrs. Applegate?”

  There were so many people milling about, I only saw flashes of her as she tried to get my attention. So I nodded and waved her away. Meanwhile, Lucy was up again, wandering around sticking her nose into everything, while Ahab chattered nervously down the hall, running through his repertoire of movie quotes.

  “Here’s looking at you, kid,” Ahab called out. “Go ahead, make my day! Squawk! You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?”

  I called José in from the kitchen, where he was talking to Ms. Jenkins.

  “José, can you go and try to calm Ahab down?”

  “Sure, Ms. Applegate,” he nodded.

  The police collected the chloroform cloth from the bedroom and looked for how the intruder had gained entrance. They found no broken windows or locks, which meant that whoever it was may have had a key. That was as unsettling as the intruder himself.

  As one of the officers was taking my statement, Detective Franks appeared in the background, looking a little bleary-eyed. After all, it was the middle of the night.

  “You okay?” he asked, stepping forward, his face pinched with concern.

  “Yes, just shaken.” I rubbed my throat, which still burned.

  He lingered for a moment, watching me, and then said, “Okay, just give me a minute. Let me talk to the officers and I’ll be right back.” He left to confer with the other officers on the scene. Within a few minutes, he was back.

  “When you’re up to it, we’d like you to walk through the apartment and let us know if anything is missing. What chased the guy off?”

  “The dog,” I said, nodding toward Lucy, who was now sitting by my side, watching an EMT take my blood pressure. “Whoever it was wasn’t counting on Lucy.”

  “Your other dogs are still gone?” he said, looking around the floor for the little wieners.

  “Yes, they’re still with Sybil. Remember? She wanted me to get some rest,” I scoffed. “Fat chance.”

  He looked thoughtful. “Did anyone else know you had the Great Dane here?”

  I stopped massaging my throat for a moment. “Yes. All the girls from my book club were here for a short meeting tonight. But I don’t think anyone else knew.”

  José and Libby were both hanging about in the hallway in case they were needed. But they were out of earshot.

  “What about your staff?” he asked, nodding in their direction.

  “Um, no. They didn’t know. My daughter brought the dog in through the side door.”

  He wrote a note in a small notebook.

  “It had nothing to do with either one of them, Detective,” I said.

  He put up a hand. “I’m not making any accusations. But we’ll have to talk to them, nonetheless. How many guests are still here?”

  I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “Well, until a few minutes ago, I had two registered guests.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “My last long-term guest just checked out. I think having the police show up every five minutes was more than she bargained for.”

  “I see,” he said apologetically. “Look, it appears that whoever this was had to have had help. Which means that…”

  “They had to have had a key,” I said, finishing his thought. My stomach tightened.

  “Not only that, whoever
attacked you didn’t expect the dog, not this dog anyway,” he said, indicating Lucy, who by now was sprawled across the floor, snoring. “And so far, it appears that only three people were unaware of the dog. And one of those people just suddenly left.”

  My eyes opened wide. “You think Ms. Jenkins was the inside person?”

  “I don’t know. But do you have her license plate number and contact information?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I called Libby in and asked her to get it. When she returned with the information, Detective Franks called one of the uniformed police officers.

  “Put a BOLO out on this Ruth Jenkins. Here’s her license plate number.”

  As he gave direction to the officer, I thought about Mickey and Minnie. Normally, they would not only have been with me, they would have been sleeping on my bed. Had they been there, I doubt anyone would have gotten within six feet of my bed without alerting them, which made me agree that whoever it was knew my dogs were going to be gone, or perhaps didn’t know I had dogs to begin with. Detective Franks turned back to me.

  “So, do you have any idea who might have attacked you?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. But then something occurred to me. “Wait a minute. Actually, I might,” I said, picturing a head of white hair in my mind.

  Libby appeared with a mug of hot tea. I took a sip. It felt good trickling down my throat. Detective Franks waited patiently.

  “Who?” Detective Franks asked.

  I looked up at Libby. “Libby, please take Detective Franks to Mr. Brown’s room and see if he’s there. I don’t think he will be. Nor do I think you’ll find his car in the driveway.”

  They did as I asked, while the EMT’s finished giving me some advice for my throat and left. Libby and the police officers came back a few minutes later to report that not only was Mr. Brown gone, his bed hadn’t been used, and there were no personal belongings left behind except for his suitcase, which was open but empty. And his car was gone.

  We gave the detective a detailed description of Mr. Brown, including the license plate number he’d given us. Once I was feeling better, Detective Franks asked me to walk through my rooms to see if anything had been taken. The apartment had two bedrooms and a small study that included a desk, file cabinet, and computer. The study was a mess. Someone had thrown the box addressed to Graham on the floor and rifled through my desk. I checked the inside pocket of my purse.

  “Well, I can tell you one thing that’s missing,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “A book. Mr. Garth, my furniture refinisher, found a small ledger book in the drawer of that table of Martha’s when he was refinishing it. He gave the book to April, who dropped it into the pocket of her apron and forgot about it. She remembered tonight and gave it to me. I was going to bring it to you first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “What was in it?”

  “A bunch of numbers and abbreviations,” I said. “It didn’t make much sense. I showed it to my daughter when she was here earlier, and she had no idea what it was, either. But apparently it meant something to whoever broke in here, because it was in the side pocket of my purse and it’s the only thing gone.” Then I remembered the MP3 player. “Wait, there’s something else.”

  I led him into the kitchen.

  “I was also going to bring you this MP3 player Blair had with her tonight. Martha gave it to her just before she died…”

  The end of my sentence froze in my throat. The MP3 player was gone as well.

  “Damn!”

  I looked around the floor and behind my flour and sugar canisters, but it was nowhere to be found.

  “It’s gone, too.”

  I leaned out into the hallway and called José.

  “José, did you see a small MP3 player sitting on the counter earlier when you got me that glass of water?”

  He thought a minute. “Maybe,” he said. “I think there might have been something there. I’m not sure.”

  “Thanks, José,” I dismissed him.

  I looked over at Detective Franks, feeling sick to my stomach now.

  “Let’s go back and sit down,” he suggested.

  He helped me back into the living room and into the chair.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “If the MP3 player was there when José got me the water, then someone other than the intruder took it. And that means it had to be someone who was in here within the last…oh…twenty minutes.”

  He nodded. “Unless José was mistaken, or took it himself.”

  José had gone back into the hallway.

  “Listen,” I said, bristling. “There were probably fifteen people in and out of here, including you. It could have been anybody.”

  “Touché,” he said, with a lift to his eyebrows. “Did the Jenkins woman actually enter the apartment?”

  I had to think. “Yes, at least by a few feet. But it was so busy and crowded that I couldn’t see her very well. But all she had to do was look into the kitchen and she would have seen it lying on the counter.”

  “Actually, Ms. Applegate.” José interrupted us, stepping back in from the hallway. “She did go into the kitchen. When she came to tell you she was leaving, she stepped into the kitchen. I came in behind her as she was just getting something out of her purse. When I interrupted her, she turned around and said she just wanted to leave you a note to let you know to mail her the bill. She didn’t want you to think she wouldn’t pay.”

  “Could she have been putting something into her purse instead of taking something out of it?” Detective Franks asked him.

  José shrugged. “Sure. I guess.”

  “By the way, where were you when Ms. Applegate was attacked?”

  José paused and glanced at me. “I was upstairs. Ms. Applegate asked me to sleep over here tonight after the warehouse was broken into.”

  “That’s right, Detective. I did.”

  Detective Franks looked at me, his brown eyes cautious. Then he shifted his gaze to José. “We found your fingerprints on that can of spray paint today, the one that was used to paint graffiti in the warehouse,” he said.

  José wasn’t surprised by this information, but his dark features tensed. “There are several more cans in the garage with my finger prints on them, too,” he said. “I can get them for you, if you’d like. We don’t lock the garage.”

  José was an inch or two shorter than Detective Franks, and yet he stood straight and tall. He knew he was under suspicion and was fighting back. Detective Franks took a moment to contemplate his response, and then relented.

  “That’s okay. Just stay close. I may want to talk to you again.”

  José frowned and left. Detective Franks dropped onto the end of the sofa.

  “I think you’re far too trusting when it comes to your staff,” he said. “They have access to everything here at the inn.”

  “I understand, Detective,” I said, a thin edge to my voice. “But I think we should focus on Mr. Brown and Ms. Jenkins. She could have easily taken the MP3 player.”

  “We’ll catch up to her,” he said. He looked at me with caution. “I think it would be a good idea if you slept somewhere else tonight. I’d like to get a forensics team out here to dust for prints first thing in the morning. I doubt we’ll find any, but it’s worth a try.”

  “I can use one of the guest bedrooms. I have plenty…now,” I said with a grimace.

  “Does José have a key to your apartment?”

  “No. In fact, I had to let him in after I was attacked.”

  “Okay. Just the same, I think I’ll post an officer here tonight,” the detective added. “Just in case this guy decides to come back.”

  “Thank you, Detective. I appreciate that.”

  He really was a nice-looking man, and I felt suddenly exposed sitting there in my nightgown. I crossed my arms over my chest and stood up.

  “I should get some things to take upstairs.”

  I quickly got my robe and slippers, a chang
e of clothes, a few bathroom items, and my mother’s phone. I called Lucy from where she’d commandeered her favorite spot on the sofa, and we all paraded down the hallway to the front desk. Detective Franks had one of the police officers string yellow crime scene tape across my doorway as we left.

  “I’ll have a forensics team out here first thing in the morning,” he said. “Do you mind if Officer Barnes sits inside here tonight? It’s pretty cold outside.”

  “Of course not. I’d feel better if he did.” I turned to Libby. “Libby, could you bring him a cup of coffee?”

  She nodded as Detective Franks turned to speak to the officer. When he was finished, he turned to me.

  “I’m really glad you’re okay,” he said quietly. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  I nodded and he left. I locked the front door tight and climbed the stairs.

  “I’ll sleep with the door open,” José said to me from the door to his room.

  “Thank you, José. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  As I organized my things a few minutes later, I pulled my mother’s cell phone from the pocket of my robe. I was beginning to think it was a necessary part of my attire, and I couldn’t help wondering why my mother had called me tonight. Had she wanted to warn me about the intruder? I’d have to ask her next time she called. And thank her, because she may have saved my life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The next morning was Monday, and I awoke with a headache. I grabbed a glass of water and slammed down a couple of aspirin, cringing as the pills slid past my raw throat. My rooms were still blocked off, and Detective Franks called to say the forensics team would be out by nine o’clock. The thought of having another team of police officers in my home turned my stomach to lead. So I decided to go to the shelter for my normal day of volunteering and leave oversight of my apartment to Elizabeth.

  Officer Barnes was gone when I came downstairs. I offered to make José breakfast, but he declined and returned to the guest house. The tension in his facial muscles told me he was feeling the stress of constantly being under suspicion.

  I woke Ahab and greeted him.

  “Good morning, Juuulia,” he said, stretching my name out as Sybil might.