When she rounded the front of the inn, Mitchell and Carter were loitering near the entrance.
“Did you see anyone come out this way?” she demanded, out of breath and advancing on them.
It occurred to her that both of them looked a bit serious.
Mitchell said, “No, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so, or you know that no one came out of the inn?” she insisted, her hand already reaching for the entrance door.
“No one came out,” said Carter before exchanging glances with Mitchell.
“Call 911,” she ordered, throwing the door open.
But they were too confused to process her demand, and as Kate barreled into the lobby, she grabbed her cellphone and dialed the police herself.
As the call rang, she rushed to Gillian who was still working behind the front desk and told her, “Keep the guests inside. No one can go outside.”
“I’ve already called the police,” she said, just as the 911 operator greeted Kate from her cellphone.
“Hi, yeah, I’m at Over the Moon and one of my contractors just had a windowpane slice through his neck. I think he’s dead.”
“Kate,” Gillian interrupted. “I already called them.”
Ignoring her, Kate rushed into the lounge, expecting to ask everyone to go back into their rooms as if she might be able to prevent them from ogling Eddie through the window.
But they already were. Gathered around the window at the back of the lounge were at least a dozen guests. Some were taking pictures with their cellphones and others were murmuring about the accident.
“Everyone,” Kate began, speaking up over their hushed conversations, “it would be best if you could return to your rooms.”
They weren’t listening. Only a few guests glanced over their shoulders at her, but when she met their gazes, they seemed more enthralled than horrified.
Gillian had trailed in behind her, which Kate realized as she turned. “Maybe Amelia can get them to go to their rooms,” she suggested.
Gillian winced and her agreement sounded doubtful as she said, “Maybe.”
“Did you call her? Where is she?”
The receptionist winced again and as a frown came over her expression, Kate realized she had sounded blameful.
“She’ll be right here,” said Gillian finally.
And she was.
Amelia breezed into the lounge. Kate noticed a strange smile on her face, which the older woman quickly straightened out, clapping her hands and shouting, “Guests, please step away from the window. The police will be here any moment and they’ll need their space.”
“Was it murder?” one of the guests asked excitedly.
Amelia shot him a reassuring smile. “Fortunately, it looks like an accident.”
Kate wasn’t so sure about that.
Speaking in a low tone, the innkeeper asked, “What exactly happened? The window fell out of the frame upstairs?”
Until the police arrived, Kate wasn’t sure she wanted to make any statements, but she also didn’t want Amelia suspecting foul play, which would only spread around Rock Ridge like wildfire.
“It looks like it,” she agreed.
“Well, I hope that poor man has insurance,” said Amelia, glancing toward the window where her guests hadn’t dispersed one bit.
“Life insurance? I’m not sure he has a family, but if he does, I hope so too.”
“You’re insured for this type of thing, correct?”
Kate closed her eyes and sighed. In fact, she was insured with worker’s comp and all of her payments were up to date, but realizing the endless paperwork she would have to deal with knocked the wind right out of her.
However, if she was right and this was no accident, then all the insurance in the world wouldn’t help her. She didn’t like that Maxwell had been working on that window minutes before it fell. The last thing she needed was for her assistant to be arrested for involuntary manslaughter.
Josephine began whimpering in her ear and then broke out into full-blown wailing.
“I’ve got to feed her,” said Kate.
Amelia met her gaze and nodded understandingly. Kate started off through the lounge and after passing through the lobby where Maxwell was consoling Gillian, she stepped outside into the warm afternoon.
Mitchell and Carter were still hanging out around the entrance. They hadn’t followed her inside and they hadn’t asked what all the commotion was about.
She found it odd.
“You both should stay here. The police will want to talk to you.”
“Police?” asked Carter.
How could they be so oblivious?
“Eddie was just killed when one of the windowpanes fell onto him from the second floor,” she explained.
Carter’s eyes widened and Mitchell’s jaw dropped, but he snapped his mouth shut, composing himself before asking, “He’s dead?”
She pressed her lips into a hard line, which was her way of confirming the strange news, and then she started for her truck.
After wriggling her shoulders out of the baby carrier and scooping her daughter out of it, she grabbed a diaper and the changing mat from her baby bag on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat and brought Josephine to the back of the truck.
A quick smell confirmed Josie could use a diaper change, so she laid out the changing mat onto the truck bed and set her daughter down. As soon as she had swapped the soiled diaper out for a fresh one, Josephine quieted and began smiling up at the blue sky. Kate hopped onto the truck bed and as she unfastened one of her overall straps and began unbuttoning her cap-sleeve shirt, she hoped she would get at least a few minutes of breast-feeding in before police cruisers tore through the parking lot.
She wasn’t nearly so lucky. After less than a minute of feeding her daughter, while Mitchell and Carter snuck sideways glances at her, snickering and at times frowning as if disgusted, Kate saw Scott’s truck, followed by two police cruisers, driving down the road.
When the vehicles turned into the inn parking lot, Kate snapped her maternity bra cup closed, smoothed her shirt down, and fastened her overalls, all the while holding Josie on her lap.
“I gotta put you back into your carrier,” she softly apologized, making her way to the driver’s seat where she had left the carrier.
Scott stepped out of his parked truck as Kate got her daughter situated in the carrier, which she soon slung over her shoulders.
“Where’s the body?” he asked, walking toward her.
Detective Kilroy was climbing out of one of the cruisers behind him and started over as well.
“At the back of the inn,” she explained, grabbing his arm. “I’m not sure this was an accident.”
“A sheet of glass fell on him?” he asked in a tone meant to shake her resolve. “There are much easier ways to kill a man.”
She released him the second Kilroy stepped in next to his chief.
“An ambulance is on its way,” he mentioned, planting his fists on his hips. “The guy’s dead, so they aren’t exactly rushing over with sirens blazing.”
“Did you see what happened?” Scott asked her.
“I heard it,” she offered. “But no, I didn’t see it.”
“Someone must have,” said Kilroy.
And Kate assured him, “At least a dozen people had a front row seat, the guests in the lounge.”
Scott instructed his detective to get started with the guests.
When Kate was sure Kilroy was beyond earshot as he neared the entrance door, she told her husband, “After I knelt down beside Eddie, the man who was killed, I glanced up at the second floor and saw a man turning away from the window frame.”
He didn’t seem especially intrigued.
“Scott, I think someone on the second floor pushed the glass. I think they meant for it to kill Eddie.”
Though he probably didn’t mean to seem mirthful, Scott let out a breathy laugh. “Kate, do you have any idea how much room for error th
at allows? You think someone meant to kill Eddie so they dropped a windowpane on his head?”
“Why else would someone turn away at that precise moment?”
“In a quaint bed and breakfast filled with over a dozen guests, I can think of at least a hundred reasons.”
She scowled at his point, but mostly because she couldn’t dismantle it. Yet she had a gut feeling about this, and her gut was rarely wrong.
Scott smiled at Josephine and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “She’s been good with you working? She’s not fussy?”
“I think she likes watching the show,” she said. “It’s entertaining.”
“I’m not sure we need you here,” he explained. “And since we’re going to have to make a full report, I doubt there’ll be much time afterward for you to get work done, so you might as well go.”
“A report?”
“I don’t know what kind yet. It could be an accident report. It could be a homicide. I need to get in there.”
She held her tongue. Pressuring him one way or the other would be a waste of time, so she gave him a hug.
Together they walked toward the entrance, but Scott then veered around the side of the building, and Kate got Mitchell and Carter’s attention.
“It looks like you’ll have the rest of the day off,” she explained. “But let’s plan on being here tomorrow morning at eight. I’ll call you if for some reason the police are still here, but at the moment, I’m sure they won’t be.”
“You got it, Boss,” said Carter, as he thwacked Mitchell’s chest. “An afternoon to ourselves.”
The contractors wandered off toward their vehicles and Kate started for the back of the inn where she was certain Zack was still fretting.
She heard an engine growling through the parking lot and glanced over her shoulder to find the ambulance creeping through, but she continued on.
Zack was standing with his arms folded and looking on as Scott and a number of police officers eyed the body. As she neared the contractor, she overheard Kilroy comment, “Hell of a coincidence, but there’s no way this wasn’t an accident.”
“I’m with you,” said Scott.
Zack glanced at her as she stepped in beside him.
“So, you should take the rest of the day off,” she said softly. “The police will be a while.”
“An accident,” he said under his breath, shaking his head. His gaze was locked on Eddie.
A pair of medics rolled a gurney around the side of the inn, and when they reached the body, they collapsed the gurney legs. Scott and Kilroy stepped back so that the medics could place Eddie on the stretcher.
Finally, Zack met her gaze. “The glass cut him clean across the neck.”
“I know,” she said regretfully.
But Zack wasn’t musing. He was making a point. “So Eddie must have been looking up.”
“Reflexes are fast,” she explained. “He probably sensed a falling object, looked up, and the timing of it all killed him.”
Experimenting with her theory, Zack looked to the sky a few times. Each attempt was faster and soon he shook his head at her.
“Then it should’ve hit him in the forehead.”
“What are you saying?”
Zack grumbled, folding his arms again. “The pane was broken. The jagged edge sliced through his neck. You saw it. It was almost horizontal.”
“You think someone on the second floor broke the pane, threw one half down, which made him fall on his back, and then threw the second half of the pane down so that it would slice through his neck?”
Zack held her gaze and the answer was in his eyes. He thought so.
“Then someone in the lounge must have seen it. Someone would’ve seen two halves of the glass fall.”
“You think these jerks are going to ask around?” he asked, jutting his chin toward the cops. “They already ruled it an accident. That’s how it is in this town. If you aren’t loaded, if you aren’t some rich prick, no one cares.”
Kate placed her hand on his forearm. “That’s not true, Zack.”
“Yeah. Right,” he said, not at all convinced. “Eddie was a good guy. He didn’t bother anyone. He worked hard. He turned his life around. You know this contracting job meant the world to him. He was proud that you hired him. He thought it would mean big things for him. He thought he would start getting more high-end contracting jobs with this inn on his resume. And now he’s dead.”
Kate didn’t know what to say. She wanted to defend the police and assure Zack that if this wasn’t an accident, Scott would find the killer. But she couldn’t say that. Zack was right to a degree. The police did think this was an accident and at this point only she and Zack thought otherwise.
Hoping not to sound insensitive, she said, “We’ll meet back here at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Try to get some rest.”
His response was a grunt.
She touched eyes with Scott as she started off for the front of the inn. When she reached it, she passed through the lobby where Maxwell was still conversing with Gillian, so she stopped by the front desk.
“Obviously work is over for the day. I’ll see you at eight tomorrow. Have fun on your date tonight,” she said, offering Gillian a somber smile before heading into the lounge.
Amelia was chatting with a few guests, and though about half the guests had tucked themselves into their rooms, there were still a handful seated in front of the windows watching the police and medics deal with the body of Eddie Jackson.
Approaching the group, Kate sized each of them up carefully. Had anyone seen what really happened?
A woman in her mid-thirties rose to her feet, but her boyfriend caught her hand. She whispered that she was only going to the bathroom and he released her.
As she stepped away from the cluster of chairs, Kate locked eyes with her and said, “Excuse me.”
The woman looked unusually tan for this time of year, and judging from the sundress she wore, Kate guessed that perhaps she was visiting from California or maybe Florida.
“Yes?”
“Did you happen to see?” asked Kate.
The woman glanced down the length of her and Kate could almost see in her expression that she was trying to place whether or not Kate was a plain-clothes officer.
“I’m not a cop,” she explained. “Just interested in what really happened.”
“Oh, it was crazy,” she said, as her eyes lit up. “I heard a thud and when I looked over, a sheet of glass was slicing through that guy’s neck.”
Kate pondered the account for a bit then repeated, “You heard a thud, and then you saw the glass fall?”
It sounded like Zack’s theory.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
A thud would indicate Eddie had fallen to the ground... And then she saw glass fall.
“Did your boyfriend see what caused the thud noise?” she asked, glancing at the man who was now seated alone.
“I’m not sure,” she said. She turned, saying, “Hey John, come here for a sec.”
He looked like a business professional thanks to his slick haircut and tailored slacks, but he was also wearing casual sneakers and a t-shirt.
“Yeah?” he said, joining them.
“Did you see what happened?” asked the woman.
“The glass cut him across the throat,” he quickly supplied.
Kate asked, “So when you glanced through the window, the man was already on his back on the ground?”
“Ah...” he seemed to think about it for a moment, but agreed, saying, “Yeah.”
“Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”
Kate turned for the lobby and found Detective Kilroy staring at her from under the archway connecting the lounge and the lobby. As she neared him, she tried to sound noncommittal and casual. “So, an accident?”
“What are you doing?”
The way he was staring at her, his brow furrowing, had her momentarily thrown. “What do you mean?”
“Why are you still here?”
“Uh, I didn’t know I was expected to take off immediately.”
Detective Kilroy leaned in and as he spoke, his tone had an edge of warning. “I know what you’re doing. You’re poking around, and this time it won’t be acceptable.”
“Excuse me?”
“I think I’ve made my point clear.”
“Why would you be concerned with me talking to people if this was only an accident?” she challenged, in terrible timing to Josephine giggling and kicking her little feet.
“People in this town trust you,” he stated, but it didn’t sound like a compliment. “You don’t have to tell them outright that you think this wasn’t an accident. They’ll infer it if you ask around. And I don’t want the residents getting the wrong idea.”
“These aren’t residents. They’re tourists from out of town.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he insisted. “People talk. You should know that better than anyone.”
She stepped in, closing the gap between them. “And what if I don’t think it was an accident? What if I don’t care about the rumors I stir up?”
Detective Kilroy snorted a laugh. “I like you, Kate. But I won’t stand for your meddling. Not this time.”
“What’s so special about this time?” she demanded.
His sarcastic expression turned serious and he jabbed his finger at her chest, as he warned, “Stay out of it.”
Chapter Four
Kate parked her truck exactly six blocks away from the Rock Ridge Park, where she had agreed to meet Carly for lunch.
Josephine was conked out in her car seat and Kate wished she didn’t have to wake her. She packed a few diapers and the changing mat into the baby bag, which she slung over her shoulder, and then hopped out.
Her daughter felt like warm putty in her hands as she lifted her out of the car seat. It wasn’t until Kate was sliding Josie into the carrier that her daughter woke, yawning and blinking her eyes.
“Time to see Carly,” she cooed, engaging Josephine just enough as she pulled the carrier over her shoulders and fastened the waist and chest straps.
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