by Joni Folger
The little bell over the lobby door jingled cheerfully as they entered the building, signaling the arrival of potential customers. Harriet Wilson had been in the back room but hurried out to the front desk as soon as she heard the bell.
“Hey, Elise, Maddy,” she said and punctuated her greeting with a snap of her gum. “What brings you girls out this way in the middle of a Tuesday? Elise, this might be a record. Two days in a row?”
“Ha! That’s funny, Harriet. We’re actually on a mission and hoping you can help.”
Harriet leaned a hip against the counter, and her eyes lit up with interest. “Oh, yeah? What kind of mission?”
“Well, we’re looking to retrieve a couple missing items from Mr. Larson’s original room that might have been left behind.”
The woman gave her a doubtful look and chomped on her gum like a cow chewing a cud. “You mean down in 12, the room where his wife was murdered?”
Elise nodded. “He would’ve come himself, but he had to go into the station this morning.”
“I don’t know,” Harriet said with a skeptical frown. “I thought they let him move his things on Saturday after those CSI folks had swarmed through the room like locusts. I can’t imagine they left anything behind.”
“I figured as much.” Elise sighed and gave the woman a commiserative look. “But the thing is, he’s really tied up at the station with Jax, talking about the case and all. Poor man is still not himself after just losing his wife in such a horrible manner.”
“Oh my, yes.” Harriet shook her head with sadness. “And how do you think we feel that it happened right here at our little motel? We run a clean, safe establishment. Something like this could ruin it all for us.”
Oh yes. By all means, let’s make this about you and not the poor man losing his wife in a heinous crime.
“Anyway, we thought we’d just check it out. You can call Jax to clear it if you need to,” Elise said in hopes of getting the woman back on track.
She held her breath as she watched Harriet’s face. If the woman called Jackson, he would have Elise’s head on a platter by evening for even trying to gain access to his precious crime scene.
But after a long moment, Harriet shrugged. “I guess it don’t matter none. I talked to Jax yesterday about when we could get the room back, and he told me it’ll be any day now.” The woman waved a bejeweled hand in the air. “Good Lord, we’re gonna need to completely overhaul that room before we can use it again. Gonna cost us a pretty penny, that’s for sure.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head, sending her gaudy, dangly earrings swinging back and forth with wild abandon. “And even when we do, who’s gonna want to stay in a room where a woman’s been murdered, I ask you?”
Elise made a noise of agreement, but didn’t actually respond. Then again, with Harriet a response to her ramblings was rarely necessary. “So, is the room unlocked, or do I need a key?” she asked when the woman just stood there chewing her gum and blinking her fake eyelashes at them in a vacant, owlish way.
“Well, of course it’s locked!” Harriet bellowed and gave her a look that clearly said she thought Elise was the brainless one. “Don’t be goofy, Elise. It’s still technically a crime scene, after all. Hang on, and I’ll get you the key.”
Elise glanced over to where Madison stood with a disgusted look on her face.
“Not a word,” Elise warned her before she could speak. “Not one word.”
Though Madison kept her mouth shut, she shook her head, and Elise could feel her sister’s judgment hanging overhead like a black cloud.
Harriet finally came back with the room key, reminding Elise to bring it back the minute they were done. “I don’t want to get into hot water with Jackson for not keeping the room secured.”
“Don’t worry, Harriet,” Elise assured the woman as she and Madison headed out the door. “I promise we’ll be quick about it. I’ll bring the key back just as soon as we’ve had a quick look around for Mr. Larson’s things.”
“You’re taking the express elevator straight to hell for lying that way. You know that, right?” Madison commented as they left the office and walked back toward the room.
“Oh please, I didn’t actually lie,” Elise replied over her shoulder. Stopping at the drink machine in the breezeway, she dug a dollar’s worth of change from the bottom of her purse and selected a bottle of water. “Besides, Harriet doesn’t give a rip one way or the other. She just wants the room freed up so she can charge some unsuspecting traveler an arm and a leg for it as soon as possible.”
“You keep telling yourself that, sista,” Madison said with a smirk. “But you’re just skirting the issue. You gave her the impression that Garrett Larson sent you over here and that it was okay with Jax.”
“Come on, Maddy. You heard her. Jax is going to release the room any day now, anyway. What’s it gonna hurt?” Elise grabbed her water out of the dispensing slot and turned, giving Madison the stink-eye.
But her sister just shrugged. “Hell. Express elevator. I’m just sayin’.”
“Well, keep it to yourself. My headache is coming back with a vengeance, and you’re not helping.”
They walked the rest of the way to room twelve in silence. The yellow crime scene tape was still stretched across the door frame, and Elise was careful not to disturb it as she turned the key to unlock the door. She felt like some kind of circus contortionist trying to squeeze underneath the tape to enter the room, which had obviously been shut up tight since the murder and the subsequent scouring by the investigators. The air inside was stuffy and overly-warm, giving the room a slightly claustrophobic feel.
“Can’t you leave the door open?” Madison asked as Elise closed it behind her. “It smells like death in here.”
“Oh, for the love of mud, it does not. And no, we can’t leave the door open. We don’t want to draw attention to the fact that we’re in here when we shouldn’t be.”
Madison made a face. “Oh, right. Like us climbing into the room under the crime scene tape wouldn’t do that in the first place?”
Elise closed her eyes briefly and prayed for patience. “Let’s just look around and get this over with as quickly as we can, okay?”
“Fine,” Madison said in a huff as she stepped over the hole in the carpet where the CSIs had removed a piece for evidence. “But what exactly are we looking for, anyway?”
“I don’t know, Maddy,” Elise said with irritation. “Something, anything that might have been missed.” Setting her bottle of water down on the dresser, she began to search through her purse for her little pill box and the aspirin it held. She wasn’t going to be able to think clearly with a headache brewing.
She finally found it and set her purse next to the water as she opened the container. But before she could remove the much-needed pain medication, Madison startled her with a squeal. The little box went flying, along with her salvation of aspirin tablets.
“Maddy, for crying out loud, what’s wrong with you?”
“Sorry.” Madison gave her a sheepish look. “I thought I saw a mouse in the closet, but it was only a balled up nylon sock.” Turning, she disappeared into the bathroom.
With a shake of her head, Elise knelt down to collect the tablets that had rolled every which way. Several had gone under the credenza, and when she peered under it, she saw not only her wayward pills, but something else as well. Reaching all the way up to her shoulder under the piece of furniture, she felt around until she could locate and get hold of whatever was there.
Pulling her arm back out, she sat back on her haunches and opened her fist to get a look at her prize.
“There’s absolutely nothing here, El,” Madison said as she came out of the bathroom. “That rolled-up sock in the closet, but nothing else that I can see. What are you doing on the floor?”
Elise pressed her lips together and looked up at Madison with a grim loo
k. “I dropped my pill box when you screeched over the sock mouse, and when I went to pick up the tablets that had flown everywhere, I found this.” Elise lifted her open palm.
“So what? It’s a button? What kind of clue is that? It could have been there for months.”
Elise shook her head. “No, sweetie. I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure that I know whose button this is. And if you think about it, you do, too.”
“What are you talking about?” Madison frowned. “How would I know who that belongs to? How do you, for that matter? You’re always making something out of nothing. For crying out loud, it’s just a button, El.”
Elise stood up and let out an exasperated sigh. “Take a good, close look at it, Maddy. It has a pretty distinctive design that we’ve both seen before. You even commented on it at dinner last Friday night.”
Madison blinked several times in confusion before taking the button out of Elise’s hand. She stepped closer to the window and the meager light coming in through the curtains. Elise clearly saw the moment when recognition dawned on her sister’s face.
“I’m sorry, Maddy, but that’s the button that was missing from Toby’s jacket when he got to the restaurant … just before Gram called to say his mother was dead.”
Madison looked up with shock and disbelief in her eyes. “You can’t be suggesting that Toby murdered his own mother, El. I mean, there has to be another explanation. He wouldn’t do something like that. I know he wouldn’t,” she insisted.
Elise’s heart went out to her sister; because she knew that Madison and Toby had become a bit more than friends. And it was hard to think of someone you were truly fond of as a cold-blooded killer.
“Give me another explanation that fits.” Elise ticked off the facts with her fingers as she continued. “Toby showed up late for dinner the night of the murder, he was distracted and flustered when he arrived, and he was missing a button from his jacket—that button. It puts him in this room sometime before Divia was killed but after the festival closed for the day, because he wasn’t wearing that jacket earlier out at the venue.”
When Madison didn’t respond but continued to stare down at the button in her hand, Elise put her arm around her sister. “I’m sorry, Maddy. I know you two had been hanging out during the festival this year, that you’d gotten closer, but this doesn’t look good.”
Slowly, Madison nodded. “I know, El. But I just can’t believe he would do something so monstrous.” She looked up with wide eyes. “To kill his own mother? I mean, Divia was hard on him and treated him poorly at times, but he always spoke of her with respect. And I saw his devastation when we got to the motel that night. Her death wrecked him. Now, this? I can’t reconcile it with what I’ve seen and know of him. We’ve gone out a couple of times. You know, just the two of us. I was really beginning to like him, and I’m telling you I would know if he had that kind of evil in him.”
“I get it, honey.” Elise sighed and hugged her close. “I know exactly how that feels. But sometimes we just have no idea how folks will react to certain things. It could be that he snapped. Maybe all the years of abuse finally caught up to him.”
“Maybe,” Madison murmured. But when she looked up, Elise read the shock and heartbreak in her eyes. “Can we go now, El? I don’t want to be in this room another minute.”
“Absolutely, sweetie. Just let me get my things.”
Taking the button from her sister, Elise stuck it into her pocket, and then put the pills she’d gathered back into the container, dropping that into her purse.
“Are you going to tell Jax about this?” Madison asked as they left the room, climbing back out under the crime scene tape the same way they’d entered. “Won’t he be angry?”
“Oh hell yeah,” Elise sighed as she re-locked the door. “Jax is gonna blow a gasket, but he’ll get over it when he hears what we found.”
“Hello, ladies,” a nearby voice snagged their attention and they both turned in that direction.
To her surprise, Elise found the same man she’d seen with Toby the day before standing next to Madison. “Hello. It’s Sam, isn’t it?” she asked, remembering what Toby had told her when she’d arrived the previous morning. “You were here yesterday. You were just leaving when I pulled in, right?”
“Yes, ma’am. You have a good memory.” The man smiled and nodded, though something about his smile didn’t seem too awfully friendly to Elise.
“So are you a friend of Toby’s or a relative, Sam?”
The man stuck his hands in his jacket pockets and rolled back and forth on the balls of his feet. “You could say that. I’m Sam Raymond.”
“Oh my gosh! You’re Toby’s father?” Madison asked with surprise. “How long have you been in town?”
“A while.”
Thinking about all the unpleasant things she’d heard in the past about Sam Raymond, Elise felt the greasy fingers of unease slide through her system. And then he turned his attention to her.
“Now, tell me, Elise. What did you and Madison here find in that room that was so fascinating?”
“I beg your pardon?” Elise blinked up at him and tried to keep calm, though she was getting a very nasty vibe. Plus, she was having a hard time getting past the fact that he knew both their names. The note she’d found on her windshield the previous evening flashed through her mind.
“In the room,” Sam prompted. “What did you find in the room that you figure on telling Deputy Landry about?”
“I’m sorry, Sam, but that’s information regarding an ongoing investigation,” Elise said before grabbing Madison’s arm and inching toward the car. “I really can’t talk about that.”
But Sam stepped into the gap between them and the vehicle. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist, darlin’.”
Madison gasped, and that’s when Elise saw the gun in the man’s hand.
“What are you doing, Mr. Raymond?” Madison asked. “You can’t just go around pointing guns at people in broad daylight and threatening them like this.”
Sam took hold of her other arm and pulled her over to his side. Pointing the gun at her rib cage, he looked Elise in the eye and nodded toward the car. “Why don’t we take a drive? You can ride shotgun, Elise. Madison will drive, and I’ll get in behind her. That way no one will do anything stupid. Now move!”
twenty-three
“What do you mean you’re pretty sure you know who killed both women?” Jim Stockton asked Toby Raymond with a skeptical look. “That’s awfully convenient.”
“Look, I don’t have any concrete proof, but I think my dad may have killed them both.” Raymond looked back and forth between Jackson and Jim, nervously turning the empty water cup around in his hands.
“Toby, Garrett Larson has given us an alibi for the times of both murders. We haven’t confirmed those alibis yet, but if what he told us just an hour ago is true, then he couldn’t have killed either woman.”
“No. You don’t understand.” Toby shook his head with frustration. “Not Garrett. I’m talking about Sam Raymond, my biological father.”
“What?” Jim’s head popped up from his notepad. “I thought you said you didn’t know your biological father. So, how do you know he’s here in Delphine?”
Toby sighed and rubbed his eyes as if they burned. “Because I’ve seen him, talked to him. We’ve met on several occasions over the last few days. He’s staying in an RV park out by the fairgrounds.”
Jackson sat back and stared hard at Toby. He wasn’t sure if they could believe a word the man had to say, after the way he’d lied before. Plus the guy had embezzled a large amount of money from Garrett Larson’s vineyard, which didn’t help his cause.
By blaming a phantom, a father he’d never met, he could conceivably be trying to save his own ass. But there was something in Toby’s eyes, a fear that had Jackson interested in hearing more.
; “Okay, Toby. If that’s true, then walk us through it,” he said. “When did you find out your dad was in town, and why do you think he killed your mom and Grace?”
“Could I have some more water first?” Toby asked, looking like he might drop at any moment. “And maybe a couple of aspirin? I had kind of a rough night.”
“Sure.” Jackson waited patiently while Jim retrieved two aspirins and refilled Toby’s cup. “Now, take your time and start at the beginning,” he said after the man downed the tablets.
Taking a deep breath, Toby launched into his story. “I didn’t know my father. I wasn’t lying when I said that. I only knew of him through the terrible things my mother said about him. So when he approached me late Friday afternoon just before I left the festival and introduced himself, I was stunned, as you might imagine, and a bit leery to talk with him.”
“Because of what your mom had told you about him?” Jim asked.
Toby nodded. “Her diatribes regarding my father were always much the same. He had a violent nature; he was a loser who expected her to support the entire family, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes she would say that he wanted to take me away from her, other times it was that he wanted to hurt us.
“Don’t get me wrong, I loved my mother, and I think she loved me—as least as much as she could love anyone. But the older I got, the more I realized how manipulative and self-serving she was, which made me question all those awful things she said about him.”
Jackson sat forward and folded his arms on the table. “I’m assuming Sam Raymond had a very different version?”
“Yes. His story was very different—almost the opposite. And a large portion of what he said had the ring of truth to it. It resonated with what I’d seen and heard in recent years. He said that back then Mom was always looking for more. More money, more prestige, more everything. He said she’d never been satisfied with what he could give her, and one night when I was about four years old, she took me and disappeared.”
“That must have sounded familiar as well,” Jim said, leaning back and hooking an arm over the back of his chair. “Grace Vanderhouse had just told you the same kind of story only a few hours beforehand, right?”