by Carol Miller
“She’s still the safest, Ducky. Your mama is the only one who can stay put and lock the door.”
“Don’t fuss about me,” Lucy protested. “I’ll be fine.”
“Of course you will.” Aunt Emily’s lips curled into a slight smile. “You’ve got the Remington.”
“If you want to take it and put it back in the kitchen—”
“We are not taking it,” Daisy cut her mama off. “And we’re certainly not putting it back in the kitchen. I can’t think of a worse possible place for a gun at the moment. Anybody can get to it there. Henry hid the Remington for a reason. Unfortunately, it didn’t do him much good in the end. But he obviously knew that someone might use it.”
“I wonder,” Lucy’s brow furrowed, “is everybody at the inn familiar with how to use a shotgun? Would Henry know who was and who wasn’t?”
Aunt Emily could only shrug. “He might have simply assumed that anyone could figure it out. It isn’t very complicated, after all.”
Lucy turned to her daughter. “Didn’t you say something about Georgia staring at the Remington when it was still in the kitchen?”
“I did,” Daisy confirmed. “It was after she dropped that tray of glasses and stared at somebody in the dining room, hard. Drew talked to her about it, and he said that it didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Henry.”
“So what did it have to do with?” Aunt Emily asked.
“He didn’t tell me. He didn’t want to break her confidence.”
Aunt Emily raised a disapproving eyebrow. “It’s all well and good to hold a secret, Ducky, but Drew shouldn’t have kept one from you. Particularly under these circumstances, when he’s no longer able to spill the beans.”
“He didn’t know that he was going to die,” she argued in Drew’s defense.
“Even so—”
“That isn’t helpful, Emily,” Lucy interjected in a stern tone. Then she added, returning to the previous subject, “Dropping glasses and staring aside, I’ll say one thing about Georgia. She’s been extremely conscientious about my tea.”
“Drew said the same thing,” Daisy told her. “Apparently she kept mentioning it to him.”
“Georgia kept mentioning my tea to Drew? How odd.”
“We thought so, too. I just assumed it was some sort of nervous tick, but Drew had the feeling there was more to it. He said that it seemed awfully important to her. She wouldn’t stop talking about it.”
“How odd,” Lucy repeated, squinting at the empty cup and saucer that were sitting on the adjacent nightstand.
“And to think I was trying to be nice and do my duty by giving the girl a job and a place to live.” Aunt Emily clucked her tongue in self-reproach. “Clearly my ability to judge character has become as rotten as an egg.”
“Don’t be silly, Emily,” Lucy retorted. “It was very kind of you to take Georgia in, and there’s nothing rotten about your judgment. I have no doubt that in due course everything will be explained to our full satisfaction.”
Aunt Emily responded with a dubious grunt, then she looked at Daisy. “Speaking of judging character, that brings me back to Rick.”
It was Daisy’s turn to raise an eyebrow.
“Do you remember when I said that it would be helpful to have Rick’s opinion on Bud?” Aunt Emily didn’t wait for her to answer. “Well, that’s what I want now. Only not in relation to Bud. Although that would be helpful, too. Of all the folks here, we still know the least about him.”
She couldn’t argue with that. Bud Foster was disturbingly good at disappearing. He didn’t run off and hide like Georgia. On the contrary, he was almost always together with the group. Except somehow he managed to fade into the background, unnoticed. He would sit quietly in one corner or another, watching everybody and listening to everything, but never revealing a stitch about himself. The only information they had was the false name that he had adopted from the newspaper and the fishy story regarding his arrival at the inn.
“I want you to ask Rick,” Aunt Emily continued, “what he thinks we should do with everyone.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s as I said before, Ducky, we can’t stay in this room much longer. Eventually we have to go back downstairs. But there’s a killer down there, and we have to do something with them. We can’t simply pretend that they don’t exist and hope for the best. So do we send everybody to their room, or would it be safer to keep everybody together?”
That was an excellent question. Daisy considered it for a moment. “Well, if everyone was in their own room, then that would obviously separate the murderer, or murderers, from the rest of the group. But the problem with that is how do we stop somebody—namely the killer—from sneaking out and going into another room?”
“We can all lock our doors,” Lucy reminded them.
“In theory, yes,” Daisy agreed. “But I’m afraid that it would be far too easy to convince some of the guests to open their door again. Both Edna and May, for example. And also Parker probably, depending on Lillian’s mood.”
Aunt Emily nodded. “I would suggest locking everybody in. I have a duplicate key to all the rooms. Except everybody still has their own key. They could just let themselves out whenever they wanted.”
“So then maybe it would be better to keep the group together,” Daisy said. “There is protection in numbers, after all. No one can get hurt, or do any hurting, if no one leaves the herd—”
“There is one room that we could use,” Lucy remarked suddenly.
They looked at her.
“Henry’s,” she explained. “Only you have a key to his room now, Emily. We could lock someone in there.”
“First we have to figure out who,” Daisy replied grimly.
“But I have my doubts about trying to keeping everyone together,” Lucy went on. “I’m not sure that it will work like we want it to. Won’t people keep wandering off? And won’t that just put them in more danger?” She shook her head. “Or maybe that’s not right. Maybe it’s my judgment that’s off.”
“That’s why I want Daisy to talk to Rick,” Aunt Emily said. “We’ve all been cooped up in this house like a bunch of stale anchovies in a tin for too long. I’m worried that we’re not seeing what we should. We’re too close to it—and to everybody else here. Rick’s smart. He knows us and the inn, and he’s got a good handle on people.”
“Particularly criminals,” Daisy couldn’t help murmuring.
“Exactly!” Aunt Emily exclaimed. Then her voice softened. “I realize that it’s not going to be pleasant for you to tell Rick about Drew, Ducky, but—”
“It’s fine. I’ll talk to him.”
She knew that Aunt Emily was right. They were hemmed in like anchovies, and they were too close to the deaths, so much so that they could very easily be missing something of importance. In her case, that was especially true with Drew. Even after seeing his lifeless body at the bottom of the cellar stairs, it didn’t seem entirely real to her that he was gone. She felt a strange sense of detachment mixed with bitterness.
Daisy rose from her seat on the bed.
“Please, please be careful, honey,” her mama said anxiously.
“I will.” She walked over and kissed her on the forehead. “And I’ll make sure that Beulah doesn’t come to the inn.”
Lucy pressed her hand encouragingly.
“You need to lock the door after us, Mama.”
“Don’t let anybody in,” Aunt Emily warned her. “No matter what they say or how they try to convince you.”
“Not even Georgia with your tea,” Daisy added.
“No one,” Lucy promised. “Except you and Emily.”
“And Sheriff Lowell.”
It was Daisy who said it, but they were all silent afterward, because each of them understood that if Sheriff Lowell came knocking on Lucy’s door, it meant something bad had happened to the others.
CHAPTER
22
After waiting for her mama’s l
ock to click behind her, Daisy headed across the hall to her own room. She and Aunt Emily had decided that while she called Rick and Beulah, Aunt Emily would go downstairs and check on the group in the parlor. Coffee and breakfast would keep everybody occupied and in one place for a while. Hopefully Rick would be able to offer some helpful input they could use after that, assuming he—and Beulah—were still at the roadhouse.
With some trepidation, she picked up the phone and dialed. Beulah answered almost immediately.
“Hey, Daisy! I was just about to call you. The boys have been working on digging us out since first light, and they’re making pretty good progress.”
Daisy breathed a sigh of relief. She had caught her in time.
“The whole thing would go much faster if they had actual shovels, but there aren’t any. So they’ve been making do with a couple of plastic buckets and some beer pitchers.” Beulah laughed. “I wish you could have seen what Bobby Balsam did a little while ago…”
Daisy sighed again. Bobby was Rick’s younger brother by two years and had the exact opposite personality. He was harmless, clueless, and frequently bamboozled by anyone who talked too fast or too smoothly, especially if that person happened to be an attractive female. But the important point from Daisy’s perspective at that moment was if Bobby hadn’t yet left the General, then in all likelihood, neither had Rick.
“… He thought that he could somehow save time and effort by jumping from the roof of one pickup to the next. It didn’t work, of course, and he ended up headfirst in a snowbank.” Beulah laughed harder. “He was stuck upside down like a Popsicle, buried to his middle, with his legs kicking furiously in the air. It was one of the funniest things I ever saw in my life.”
Well familiar with many of Bobby’s ill-fated schemes, Daisy could easily picture the scene and almost laughed herself. It was also extremely nice to hear such a cheerful voice from the outside world, particularly one not connected with the growing number of dead bodies at the inn.
“And then they had to get him out,” Beulah continued, still chortling. “That was a hoot, too, with everybody slipping and sliding and sinking into the snow themselves. It could have been a circus act. I was almost in tears, it was so hysterical.”
“But Bobby’s okay?” Daisy asked, grateful for the temporary distraction.
“Oh, he’s fine. As soon as they got him free, Rick handed him a beer, and Wade gave him a blanket. Bobby was as right as rain a minute later. Speaking of Wade,” Beulah dropped her voice discreetly, “he’s great, Daisy. I don’t want to jump the gun or jinx myself, but I really like him. Mind you, it’s been the weirdest first date in the history of blind first dates, considering that it’s gone on for two days straight, and we’ve been stuck here the whole time—”
“Is that Daisy?” It was Rick’s voice in the background. “Will you find out if she—”
“Wait.” Beulah stopped him. “It’ll be easier if I put the phone on speaker. Then I won’t have to repeat everything back and forth like a parrot.”
A click followed.
“Hello, darlin’,” Rick drawled. “How is it at the inn?”
“Hey, Rick…” Daisy hesitated, not sure where to begin.
“What did Sheriff Lowell end up saying about Henry Brent?” he asked her.
“Sheriff Lowell hasn’t come yet,” she answered, a bit unsteadily. “But we’re hoping that he can get through before the end of the day.”
“The end of the day?” Beulah scoffed. “I’ll be back much earlier than that.”
“No!” Daisy exclaimed. “You can’t come here, Beulah!”
There was a startled silence.
“What’s going on, Daisy?” Rick said sharply, his instinct showing.
Her throat tightened, and for a moment, she couldn’t respond. Then her words came out dull and disconnected, as though somebody else were speaking them. “Drew. He’s dead.”
Beulah let out a strangled gasp. “Good God, did you just say…”
Her voice faded away, and a second later, there was a thud.
“Whoa! Don’t fall down on me, sweetheart.”
Rick was talking, but Daisy could hardly hear him.
“Sit on that chair. There you go. And drink this. It’ll help.”
After a minute, there was some clattering with the phone, and Rick’s voice grew louder.
“Daisy? Are you still with me?”
“Yes. What happened?”
“Beulah started to faint and dropped the phone.”
“Is she all right?”
He gave an affirmative grunt. “Don’t worry about her. I caught her before she hit the floor. And now she’s sucking on a glass of whiskey. That’ll bring her round.”
Daisy drew a shaky breath.
“Don’t worry about Beulah,” Rick repeated. “We need to worry about you. Tell me what the hell is going on over there. From the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”
With some fits and starts, Daisy explained it all as well as she could, trying to include as many potentially pertinent details as possible. It wasn’t easy, especially when she had to describe the scene with Drew at the bottom of the cellar stairs. Rick didn’t interrupt and let her talk at her own pace, even when she faltered at the difficult portions. She concluded by telling him that Aunt Emily had wanted his advice.
“Get out,” Rick responded, without the slightest hesitation. “That’s my advice to you. Get out now.”
“I can’t,” Daisy said. “It isn’t physically possible. The parking lot is buried. There’s no way for me to get to a car, let alone drive anywhere with it.”
“What about one of the barns or Beulah’s salon?”
“My salon,” Beulah murmured somewhat incoherently in the background. “Daisy should go to my salon.”
“I can’t,” she said again. “I can’t leave my mama.”
“Take your mama with you.”
“The snow is awfully deep around the inn, Rick. I’m not sure how far I could get through it, but I’m positive that my mama wouldn’t make it past the porch. She’s too weak. And she’s just beginning to get over her cold and cough. If I take her outside in the icy air now, I have no idea what will happen to her lungs. I can’t take that chance.”
“But you can take the chance of her staying there?” he retorted.
“Her door is locked, and she’s got Aunt Emily’s Remington.”
“Excellent. So at least she’s taken care of. What about your gun?”
Daisy winced, knowing that Rick was not going to like her answer. She owned a small Colt—a .380. Her daddy had given it to her mama the Christmas before he passed, but it belonged to Daisy now. Previously she had kept it at the inn, but several months earlier there had been a robbery at the bakery, which had left her and especially Brenda shaken. As a result, she had taken the gun there.
“The Colt is at Sweetie Pies,” she told him.
“For criminy sake, Daisy! Why isn’t it at the inn?”
“Because I thought we needed it at the bakery more. We already had Aunt Emily’s shotgun. Normally the inn doesn’t require an arsenal.”
Rick replied with an agitated snort.
“Well, the gun isn’t here, so there’s no use getting mad at me over it,” Daisy continued defensively. “And it’s not like I could go waving it around now anyway. May Fowler is already on the verge of a breakdown, and Edna probably isn’t far behind. We’re trying to keep them calm, not have them think that there’s about to be a shoot-out.”
“Does anybody else there have a gun? What about that fellow whose car went into the ditch and suggested calling the sheriff in relation to Henry?”
Even though Rick couldn’t see it, she shook her head. “I have no idea what Bud might have. I haven’t seen a gun, and he hasn’t mentioned one. But I doubt that we could trust whatever he said, regardless.”
“What about Parker?” Beulah asked, still in the background but more coherent.
Daisy shook her head again
. “Parker doesn’t like firearms. I think he had a bad experience with Lillian once.”
Rick gave another snort. “Every experience with Lillian is bad. If he doesn’t keep a gun, it’s because he’s afraid that one day he might not be able to control the temptation to use it on her.”
“No,” Beulah corrected them, her voice growing stronger as she dragged her chair closer to the phone. “I’m not talking about Parker having a gun. I mean, what about Parker doing the killing?”
It took Daisy a moment to process the words. Beulah thought Parker was the murderer? “Are you sure that she didn’t hit her head on the floor, Rick?”
“My head is perfectly fine,” Beulah rejoined.
“I told you that whiskey would do the trick,” Rick said.
“Yes, but how much did you drink, Beulah? Because thinking that Parker—”
“Why not him?” she argued. “He could have snapped. Lillian might have finally broken the poor man. We all know what a tyrant she can be, and nobody knows it better than her long-suffering husband. The two people who died were both ones that Lillian held a specific grudge against. Maybe Parker thought he was helping them.”
“Helping them by killing them?”
“I didn’t say it was rational. I said that he might have snapped.”
“But Parker loved Henry,” Daisy protested. “They’d known each other since Parker was a wee shaver.” She smiled, remembering how annoyed Lillian had gotten whenever Henry woofed and called him “Dog” Barker. “He never would have pushed a secretary on top of him. And Parker liked Drew, too, even though he’d only met him a couple of times before.”
“Exactly,” Beulah said. “Parker was fond of both of them—especially Henry—and he was tired of Lillian being so nasty toward them. He wanted to set ’em free.”