by Karen Pullen
“You’re with the police? I’m Kate Olmert, Mike’s sister.”
Kate rolled her shoulders and flexed her fingers, as if preparing for a typing contest. “What’s going on?”
“The ambulance is for Justine.”
“Does Mike know? Is the wedding postponed? Oh, dear. I didn’t mean that was important. But all those people . . .” She stood and turned around slowly several times, her billowing dress nearly knocking a couple of stuffed Scotties off the table. “I’ll talk to Mike and my parents. They’ll decide what to do.” She paused. “What’s the matter with Justine? Tell me what’s going on.”
I shook my head, unable to think of any euphemism that would soften the truth. “Are her parents here?”
“No.” She grabbed my arm with a hand like a vise. “Is it bad?”
“It’s bad.” I gently unpeeled her grip. “I think she’s dead.”
The color drained from her face and the three tiny moles looked like ink dots. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. Would you go and help the innkeeper guard the back door? No one is to enter this building.”
Kate danced on her toes for a bit, then went into the hall to the back door, pushing past Wyatt and raising her arm to get the guests’ attention.
Someone rapped on the front door and I opened it to a man in slacks and sports coat carrying a notebook. A detective. I automatically sized him up—mid-forties, six feet, a fat-free one-sixty pounds. He wore wire-rim glasses and his hair was cut short, peppered with a premature gray.
“Lieutenant Anselmo Morales,” he said, with a hint of an Hispanic accent. I identified myself and told him briefly what to expect upstairs in Justine’s bedroom. I offered to help.
“We’ll talk later.” He started up the stairs.
I decided to check on the crowd control. I had almost reached the back door when it flew open and Mike Olmert barreled through. For an instant I thought to stop and warn him, but he was too wild, pushing past me and charging up the stairs only a minute behind Morales.
In back of the inn, bedlam reigned as the guests milled about, buzzing with speculation. The musicians continued to play seventeenth-century dance tunes but the chatter nearly drowned them out. Wyatt and Kate stood guard at the door. “Did you make an announcement?” I asked.
“I told them Justine was ill and there’d be no ceremony,” Kate said. “My stepdad told the waiters to start serving champagne. They’re going to put the food out too.”
Sweat beaded on Wyatt’s flushed face. “Wait till the papers get this. I’ll be ruined. Ruined!”
I pushed past him into the crowd, looking for familiar faces. I wasn’t a bit surprised to see Fern talking with a new man who seemed entranced by her smile. She accumulates them like some people collect state quarters. Despite a vicious scar running from hairline to chin, partly covered by a patch over his left eye, he was handsome in a tough-guy way, olive skinned with a spare build. I whispered in her ear that she should take my car, that I’d get a ride since I’d be very late, and handed her my car key.
Then, to my utter shock, I saw Hogan Leith, my ex-fiancé, looking equally surprised at the sight of me. Until eight months ago, I’d lived with Hogan. For four years, I scrambled his eggs. Cheered on his softball team. Washed his boxers with my briefs. Until the evening I found him having cyber-sex with a teenager. Okay, she was twenty, but still. He loved her, he said, so I packed up and moved out. Seeing Hogan usually stirred up unwelcome feelings of anger, humiliation, and loneliness, a big problem since I had to work with him. He was an SBI researcher, and such a good one that I couldn’t dismiss him entirely from my life. But it took all my self-control to act professional around him. Sometimes I had to let a little something out. I crooked my finger and beckoned him to me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“Mike’s a fraternity brother, a good friend.” He grinned.
“You look amazing, by the way.”
I might have known they were both Pi Kappa Alpha. Hogan’s entire social circle is comprised of Pikes from NC State. “There’s a dead woman upstairs, the Falkirk room,” I said. “Can you help with perimeter control?”
His grin faded. “Someone died? Who?” He took hold of my arm and leaned close. I felt a brief stab of confusion as his familiar smell and the feel of his hand on my arm mixed with irritation and sorrow, and no, I still wasn’t over Hogan.
“Justine Bradley. The bride. She’s dead. I don’t know what happened but you could be useful right now.”
The back door opened and Mike Olmert came outside, pushing his way past Wyatt and Kate to face the crowd of guests. He’d taken off his tuxedo jacket and bowtie, and rolled up his shirt sleeves to expose gym-hardened forearms. His face looked carved from ice. “Folks, I have terrible news.” He bowed his head and ran his hands through his hair, and the crowd grew quiet, waiting. He took a deep breath, then, his voice low, said, “Justine is dead.” He covered his face with his hands. Kate wrapped her arm around her brother’s thick shoulders and pulled him to her.
Only a few people heard him. Murmurs grew—What? What did he say? She’s dead? Justine is dead? What happened? Shocked, unbelieving looks spread through the crowd as they shifted gears from a tardy bride to a dead one. A buzz of chatter surrounded Mike as people lined up to express sympathy.
In the food tent, wait-staff had spread long banquet tables with a lavish buffet. It looked like the party would go on, though it was more like a wake at this point. My stomach growled and as I thought about food, I realized the obvious—Justine had probably been poisoned. Should people be eating here?
I corralled the caterer, a sprightly woman wearing a chef’s coat. “No one has tasted the food yet,” she said. “It didn’t come from the inn, it’s been in my van until a half-hour ago.”
“Do you know the bride? You sure she didn’t sample something?”
“Of course I know her but I haven’t seen her in a week. My food is amazing, the best. Here, have a plate and see for yourself.” Unfortunately I now felt officially on duty, more than a wedding guest, so I couldn’t very well pick up a plate and load it from the seafood station, an ice sculpture filled with shrimp, crab claws, and oysters. Or sample the canapés. Or taste-test the spring rolls and beef medallions. I reluctantly passed, but allowed her wait-staff to begin serving guests.
Anselmo Morales was responsible for solving this murder, if indeed it was murder, and I hoped he’d resolve it as soon as possible, in days. Surely not months, nor years, if ever. I felt a chill, reminded of my mother’s disappearance long ago—eventually a presumed homicide, never solved. A cold case. Grace Lavender was only twenty-three when she vanished. She’d gone into a gas station to pay, leaving me in the car, and apparently interrupted a robbery. A college student tending the cash register was murdered, my mother Grace presumably abducted. The cops found me clutching my Talking Beans doll, scared by the flashing lights of the ambulance and the crowd of uniforms. A gentle young policewoman took me under her wing and bought me a soft-serve ice cream cone and a teddy bear with a red hat.
The bear is still around, in Fern’s attic—it pops up in her paintings now and then.
Four years ago, right after joining the SBI, I scrolled through the dusty microfiche of my mother’s case file to see what I could learn. But there had been no witnesses to the robbery or shooting; the only physical evidence, two spent thirty-eight bullets and casings. Barring a deathbed confession or the gun popping up in another crime, the case was as cold as Antarctica in July.
A familiar tension crawled up my spine to my neck, then down my arms. I dug my nails into my hands.
“Call me Anselmo,” he said. His voice was gravelly and gentle. “She didn’t die of natural causes.”
“Whatever it was, it developed quickly,” I said. “According to the bridesmaid, she was fine at noon, calling out just after one, and dead a few minutes later.”
Anselmo surveyed the wedding guests wan
dering into the food tent, carrying champagne flutes. “We won’t know for certain for at least a couple of days,” he said. “Meanwhile, I’ve sealed off the entire inn until the evidence team is finished. I could use assistance with today’s interviews. I want to start with the innkeeper. I also want the identity of everyone else on the premises.”
“There’s an SBI researcher here. He’ll be glad to help, I’m sure.” I pointed to Hogan, still guarding the back door. Screening was the ideal job for him, a perfectionist with neat handwriting and a compulsion for detail.
He studied Hogan, seeming to size up his lean physique and plentiful brown hair. “Your date?”
I shook my head. “No, he’s a friend of the groom,” but my face warmed. I turned away before my blush was obvious. “I’ll get us a room to work in.”
Anselmo picked up a knife and clanged it against a wineglass. I cringed—didn’t he know that was the traditional signal for the bride and groom to kiss? But it got the crowd’s attention, and they hushed and turned to listen with expressions of alarm, curiosity, and sympathy. They’d been told there was to be no ceremony, and why.
Now they’d be told that one of them may have committed murder.
CHAPTER 3
* * *
Saturday Mid-Afternoon
Afternoon light poured through arched windows into the cavernous dining room, bounced off the chandelier crystals, then vanished into muddy green walls. Fraying tapestries captured scenes of medieval mayhem—kilt-clad warriors clubbing each other, a pack of greyhounds chasing a rabbit. Dreary, brutal, and dim. No wonder they invented Scotch.
“I’m done for. Finished.” Wyatt Craven’s eyes were closed, his lashes damp, his expression twisted as he bubbled those tearful words of defeat. He had gargled mouthwash recently and smelled like a mint julep. “Suspicious death at my inn. The cancellations will pour in. They’ve been trying for months to shut me down and now they’ve succeeded.” He sat back abruptly and wiped his nose. “But I’ll rise again! Like a phoenix from the ashes!” He raised a dented pewter tankard like a salute and took a large slurp.
“You think this death is an attempt to close you down?”
Anselmo sounded astonished.
“The final straw.”
Hardly a straw, I thought. Not that I was buying his hypothesis, but if there was an ongoing conflict with this innkeeper, perhaps it had gotten out of hand.
“It’s war, and it’s being going on for months. My business is being sabotaged right into the ground. First the health department inspector shows up—without warning—on the same day someone’s put ammonia in the water softener. Not a coincidence! And last month it’s a hundred degrees and the air conditioner dies. We find maple syrup in the compressor. I lose a dozen bookings.They want me to quit!To give up my dream!”
“Who does?” Anselmo asked.
“Don’t know. Maybe you can find out?” He looked at us with hopeful bleary eyes.
“It’s not our first priority today, Mr. Craven. Tell us who stayed at the inn last night.”
“You’re missing the point. It wasn’t a guest, I know it!” He lurched into his office, a small space that also functioned as a coat closet, clicked on his keyboard a few times, and pulled a sheet of paper from the printer. He slid it across the table. “Last night’s occupancy chart. Dates down the left, room names across the top, guest names filled in.”
The inn had been full, all five rooms occupied. I recognized the names of the occupants of two of the rooms—Justine in the Falkirk room and in the Balliol room, Tricia and Scoop Scott, Mike’s mother and her minister husband.
“The Canmore room. Webster and Delia Scott. Any relation?” I asked.
“He’s Scoop Scott’s brother.” Wyatt pointed to the names Evan and Lottie Ember in the Stirling room. “This couple have a child, a little girl in a wheelchair. Sad.” He took a sip out of his tankard and I caught a whiff of coffee and the alcohol he’d spiked it with. The drink also smelled like hazelnuts, very pleasant all together. “Gregor McMahon is in Dunkeld, by himself. The best man, I think. All wedding guests. They’ll all be here tonight, too. That is, if you ever let them back in.”
Not so, I thought. Tonight, one room will be empty.
“Give us whatever you have on these guests—phone numbers, addresses,” Anselmo said.
Wyatt sighed, then went back to his computer and tap-tapped for a minute. The printer spit out more paper.
Anselmo put the pages in his notebook. “Tell me about your staff.”
Wyatt’s chuckle turned into choking laughter. “That’s funny. Staff.”
“I saw a boy by the kitchen door. Looked like he worked here,” I said.
“That’s Blue Stone. He does odd jobs, whatever I need. And Liesle comes in every morning to help with breakfast and cleaning.”
I thought about the timing. If Ingrid’s account was to be believed, just after noon she’d helped Justine with her hair and veil, leaving her dressed for her wedding. An hour later, Ingrid heard Justine’s dying moans. In that hour did someone enter Justine’s room and administer a lethal substance? Or was it planted earlier in the morning, or even days before? The time window was crucial. “Did everyone show up for breakfast?” I asked.
“Breakfast was at nine, and no, they didn’t all show up. The groom’s parents slept in. So did Delia Scott. I think she gets her nutrition somewhere else.” He raised his tankard and grinned.
“Scotch nut coffee. Want some?”
“No, thanks,” Anselmo and I said together.
Deep green velvet curtains, frosted with dust, swathed the tall dining room windows. Past them I could see the tented dining area where Hogan was interviewing the wedding guests. They waited in clumps, seated at the tables. The men had removed their jackets; some of the women were barefoot.
I imagined the goings-on after breakfast. People taking showers, shaving, talking, listening to the news, going up and down the stairs to fetch things from their cars. Lots of traffic, in and out of rooms. “Are all five bedrooms upstairs?” I asked.
“Stirling and Dunkeld are downstairs, off the parlor. Gregor McMahon and the Embers were in those rooms.”
“The best man, and the couple with a child in a wheelchair,” I said. “And the guests upstairs were Justine; Mike’s mother and her husband; Mike’s step-uncle and his wife.”
“Sounds right.You’re good!” Wyatt took another generous sip of his nut coffee.
It’s not that hard if you’re sober, I thought. So Mike’s sister Kate and the bridesmaid Ingrid had not been staying at the B&B. And none of these people were Justine’s family or friends. Kate had told me that Justine had no parents. So far, no siblings or other relatives had identified themselves.
“Find these people for me, please,” Anselmo said, handing Wyatt the list of inn guests. “And file a report with the sheriff about those sabotage allegations.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He pushed himself up from the table and left the room.
“Knees that hairy should be covered up,” Anselmo said.
“Who’s first?” I asked.
“In a murder, always start with the one called sweetheart,” he said.
“Did you see her?” Mike Olmert spat out the question. He’d taken off his tuxedo jacket and bow tie. His face was blotchy and knotted in a grimace. “It’s a horror show. What would do that? Do you know? You better tell me if you know anything.”
Was he bluffing? Mike could know more than we did. Though, to poison your girlfriend just before the ceremony? Surely it’s easier to stay home, or hop on a plane, or go to a football game. She would get the message.
“We’ll know in a couple of days,” Anselmo said. “Right now it’s a suspicious death.”
“So what do you want from me?” Olmert rotated his white-knuckled fists in a jerky motion. It must be some sort of family tic, this business of odd gestures.
“Just background, Mr. Olmert. Start with where and when you two met.”
Mike took
a deep breath and blew it out. “I met Justine about a year ago, at a party at my sister’s house. She was a gentle soul—an angel—and we hit it off right away. I thought we had a wonderful life ahead of us.” He wiped his eyes and I handed him a tissue. His grief seemed genuine but that meant little. Grief takes many forms, ranging from catatonic silence to hair-tearing and wailing. Just like guilt.
“When did you see her last?” Anselmo asked.
“Last night. We had a small dinner here. I said good-night to her around eleven. She seemed fine, excited about today.” He took another shaky breath. “This morning I talked with her twice. She called me around ten, to make sure I was up.” He croaked out a chuckle. “Firefighters are on twenty-four-hour shifts. So I’m good at sleeping, and she knew I could oversleep.”
“And the second time?”
“I called her about twelve-forty because my mother was looking for her corsage. I remember being nervous, thinking it was about to start. Not because I was getting married, just nervous that everything would go right, that Justine would be happy.”
So Justine was alive and well at twelve-forty. Was Mike reliable? So far he didn’t seem to be hiding anything. But we didn’t know what we were looking for, yet.
“I wasn’t the last person to talk to her,” Mike said. “Someone knocked on her door while we were talking. I don’t know who it was. Once she was sure I knew how to find the flowers, she hung up.”
Was “someone” the last person to see her alive? “Did she have problems with anyone recently?” I asked.
“Everyone liked her. Except Gia Mabe. Gia and I were engaged once. When I broke it off, she took it hard.”
“But you asked Gia to your wedding.” I remembered the young woman in the straw hat in the seat next to mine. That she was once engaged to Mike explained her snarky comments.
Mike shook his head. “She wasn’t invited. But I wasn’t surprised that she crashed it. She still pesters me, I guess you’d say. Calls me, follows me around, writes emails. I wish she’d stop.”