by Kylie Logan
My friends said it was only natural. I was young, reasonably good looking, and pretty darned successful in a career I hadn’t chosen as much as it had chosen me. Of course people were watching me.
For a while, I actually fell for the story.
But when strange notes and gifts began to arrive . . . When I got the heavy-breathing phone calls . . . When I heard someone walking through the condo at night when I was the only one there . . .
The thought crackled through me like a jolt of electricity, and I snapped out of it. And though I didn’t remember my knees giving out, I found myself sitting on the bottommost of the steps that led up to my guest suites.
“South Bass Island, Bea,” I reminded myself, shaking myself back to reality, my voice entirely too small and breathy for my own liking. “All that is yesterday’s news, and George Mattlingly is in prison.”
At least that’s where I’d last heard he was.
My hands began to shake again, and I clutched them together and reminded myself that since the trial and Mattingly’s conviction, I’d taken every precaution humanly possible to keep my movements private and my life, a secret. I’d thrown off all the trappings of my old life. I’d left New York. In an effort to disguise myself, I’d even taken to hiding behind these silly glasses . . .
I put a hand to my face and realized I’d left my black-rimmed glasses next to my bed.
No matter, I didn’t need them, anyway; the lenses were nothing more than window glass.
I was good. I was covered. No one knew I was here on the island, and the people who did know knew because they were here on the island with me, but they didn’t know I was me.
Trust me, this little bit of twisted logic made perfect sense inside my cannonballing mind.
Besides, I reminded myself, if Mattingly wasn’t right where he was supposed to be for the next six years, I certainly would have heard the news from Jason Arbuckle, my attorney. Jason would never lie to me. Not about the man who’d made my life hell.
Soothed by the thought, I pulled myself to my feet, ignored my Silly Putty knees, and started up the stairs. At the top, I paused, bending my ear, waiting for the sounds of footsteps to come again.
I wasn’t disappointed. This time, the shuffling footsteps were followed by a smooth, mechanical sound, like a doorknob turning.
There was a nightlight on outside the bathroom, but really, it didn’t help much. I squinted, and looked from door to door, and when I thought I saw the door of Suite #5 inch open, all my hard-won logic went right out the window and I careened from nervous straight to panic mode.
Suite #5 was Hank Florentine’s room.
Yes, of course I told myself to get a grip, but it was kind of hard considering that my mind was suddenly racing through the possibilities, all of them bad.
If one of my guests didn’t like the subject of murder being brought up at the dinner table because that guest had killed Peter . . .
If that person thought his (or her) secret wasn’t safe with a cop in the house . . .
If that someone decided Hank had to be kept quiet—or worse . . .
Before I even realized I was moving that way, I was outside the door of Suite #5. There was a table nearby, with a brass candlestick on it, and I grabbed it and wrapped my sweaty fingers around the base. When the door finally opened, I was ready, candlestick raised over my head.
Good thing I had the presence of mind not to bonk Chandra with it!
“Oh my goodness! Bea!” She gasped and pressed a hand to her heart and the unbuttoned blouse she was holding closed with one hand. “What on earth are you doing?”
“What am I doing?” My heart was pounding so hard, I could barely hear my own rough whispers, what with all the noise. “Chandra, you scared me to death! What are you doing?”
Her grin was the only answer I needed.
That, and a glimpse of Hank through the open door. He was lying in bed, one arm bent behind his head. It was a good thing the lights in Suite #5 were off and I couldn’t see much. I swear, the man was as naked as a jaybird.
• • •
“I thought you couldn’t stand him.”
That was me, my voice low. After all, my dining room was filled with guests eating breakfast, and one of those guests was Hank. I might still be reeling from the discovery of Chandra’s midnight tryst, but I’m not completely without good sense. Tapping one toe, I stared at Chandra, who was plucking English muffins from the toaster and buttering them.
Carefully, carefully buttering each one.
Kate zoomed by. She’d just delivered the first dish of eggs to the dining room and she stopped at the stove and waited for Luella to reload the bowl. “Who hates who?” she asked.
“Whom.” My correction was instinctive, and with a wave of one hand, I told Kate not to pay it any mind.
“Chandra.” I pointed, and whispered, “Chandra said Hank was a snake in the grass.”
Chandra’s expression was deadpan. “He is a snake in the grass,” she grumbled, carefully buttering another muffin. “He’s a creep. A hard-headed jerk. A—”
“Then what were you doing in bed with him?”
Kate’s mouth fell open. Luella turned off the stove and stared at Chandra. They both hurried over and we gathered in a tight knot around Chandra and the toaster.
“You? In bed with—”
“Sandy, I can’t believe you. I remember the day you divorced the man. You said you’d never—”
“You were upset when he got here. You didn’t want to be under the same roof as Hank.” She’d finished with the last of the muffins and I plucked the plate out of her hands then hurried into the dining room with the muffins in one hand and the newly filled bowl of eggs in the other. “Don’t try and talk your way out of this,” I warned Chandra when I got back to the kitchen in record time. “When I heard you walking around upstairs, I thought there was a burglar in the house. You owe me an explanation. What were you doing?”
A tiny smile played around her lips. “What weren’t we doing?”
I felt heat rise in my cheeks. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, what were you thinking?”
Chandra rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, girls. None of us is a kid. You know I wasn’t thinking. Except to think about how good the sex always was with Hank.”
“But you hate the man!” Yes, this declaration came out just a little too loud. I clapped a hand over my mouth.
Chandra puckered. “I hate certain things about Hank. That’s for sure. But there are other things . . .” Her face split with a grin. “Besides,” she added with a look at the closed dining room door, “Hank and I, we were talking. I mean, when we weren’t doing other stuff.” She added a wink for dramatic effect. “And guess what, ladies? I found out something interesting. You know, about Peter’s murder.”
Chandra scooted over to the kitchen table with Kate and Luella right behind her. It took me a moment to shake myself out of my surprise-induced stupor and follow.
While they sat down, I stood at the head of the table, my fists on my hips. “Are you saying that you had sex with Hank just to try and get him to talk about the murder?” I asked.
Chandra’s laugh ricocheted against the ceiling fan above the table. She grabbed my arm and pulled me into the seat next to hers. “That’s not all I was trying to get him to do, and I have to say, honey, it worked like a charm.” She laughed again, and when she was done, she smoothed a hand over the heavy sweater she’d pulled on earlier before she ducked next door to feed the cats.
“It’s sweet of you to worry about my morals. Really.” Chandra gave my arm a friendly pat before she burst into another laugh. “But don’t be silly. I went to bed with Hank because I wanted to go to bed with Hank. Having him talk about the murder, that was just icing on a very sweet cake.”
“So?” Luella leaned closer. “What did he say? About Peter?”
“And the murder?” Kate chimed in.
Chandra held up a hand, her index finger pointing to the cei
ling, and in a really bad Belgian accent said, “Well, for one thing, mon ami, it was not, how you say, a robbery.”
I ignored the literary reference. And the incorrect French. Since I wasn’t sure Kate and Luella had picked up on the real significance of the statement, I filled them in. “If the Orient Express was robbed, that would mean it could have been a random crime. Somebody taking advantage of the fact that Peter was alone. Or thinking no one would discover the robbery for a while because the weather was so bad. But since nothing was taken—”
“It could be because we showed up,” Luella said. “Maybe there wasn’t time for the killer to ransack the cash register.”
“Except that we didn’t see anyone in the restaurant. Unless . . .” Thinking, I drummed my fingers against the table. “I suppose the killer could have escaped through the door in the kitchen.”
“How can you say that so calmly?” Kate’s complexion was green. “That means when we were walking in . . .” She didn’t finish the thought. But then, she was busy swallowing hard.
I nodded. “He could have been right there, just walking out.”
“So the fact that Peter wasn’t robbed?” Chandra wrinkled her nose and shrugged. “Okay, I admit it. I don’t really get it, either. Hank made it sound like it was some kind of big deal.”
“Because it means the killer might have had another motive,” I pointed out. “Something more personal.”
As one, all our gazes traveled to the dining room.
I knew they were thinking what I was thinking. Which is also why I knew I had to cut off any panic at the knees. “We can’t say for sure,” I reminded them. “We don’t know if it’s one of my guests.”
“But we know Amanda got the same kind of threatening note Peter got,” Luella said.
“And we know the Princess is here on the island to see a man,” Kate put in. “What if that man was Peter?”
“And we know Ted and Peter had a fight,” Chandra said.
“And we know Levi lied about being busy Monday night.” This was a detail I had yet to report to the ladies, and though it gave me no pleasure (and yes, I was annoyed at myself when I realized it), I told them everything that happened with Levi the night before. Well, not exactly everything. I left out the stuff about the darkness and the warmth of his smile.
Taking it all in, Luella tipped her head. “So we know plenty.”
Kate sighed. “But we don’t know anything.”
“Not anything about Peter.” This was a new idea, and I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me sooner. I popped out of my chair and headed into the dining room, and the other ladies trailed behind.
Lucky for me, everyone but Ted was done with breakfast and had already left the room. That meant I didn’t have to face Levi and wonder what was going on behind those gleaming blue eyes of his. Or face Hank, for that matter.
For one thing, I wasn’t sure I could talk to Hank with a straight face, not after seeing him the way I’d seen him in the wee hours of the morning. For another, I wasn’t sure I was all that comfortable interrogating Ted, not with a professional in the room.
Ted was just scooping up the last of the eggs from the serving bowl, and I sat down next to him.
“You were Peter’s landlord.”
We both knew this to be true. That would certainly explain the no duh! look he tossed my way while he tucked into the last English muffin.
I was in no mood to beat around the bush. “What can you tell me about him?” I asked.
Ted chewed and swallowed. “The man was an unprincipled creep,” he said.
“Come on.” Kate took the chair on the other side of Ted. “We all knew Peter. He was charming.”
“Charming to customers, maybe. But that’s because he wanted to keep you coming back and spending your money. In business dealings, he was underhanded, dishonest, and unscrupulous,” Ted said.
Chandra shook her head. “But he was such a good cook!”
“Which doesn’t mean he was an honest person.” I can’t say how the ketchup bottle ended up on the breakfast table, but it had been a busy morning and lots of people came and went in the kitchen; Ted grabbed the ketchup and doused his eggs. He shoveled up a mouthful.
“I first met Peter Chan twelve years ago back in Cleveland,” he said, ketchup on his lips. “He rented a building from me and opened a restaurant, and it tanked. How do I know?” Ted stabbed another forkful of eggs. “Because I went around to collect the rent one day, and found that Peter had moved out. Took all his equipment. And left me in the lurch.”
“He owed you money?” I asked.
Ted poured coffee from the carafe on the table and added two spoons of sugar and the last of the cream. Really, the last. I’d drained the carton when I set the table that morning. “Lots of money,” he said.
“But then, why . . .” I wondered if I was missing something, so I thought through my question once, then again, before I gave voice to it. “Why would you rent him another place?” I asked. “If he owed you money and you didn’t trust him, why lease him the building for the Orient Express?”
Ted was about to polish off the last of the eggs on his plate, and he tossed down his fork. “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? That’s why I was so mad when I walked in there Sunday afternoon and found Peter behind the counter. I sure didn’t expect to see him. And I bet he didn’t think I’d just stop in out of nowhere, either. His jaw just about hit the floor when I walked through that door! I never would have rented another property to Peter Chan, and he knew it. We did the whole lease agreement months ago, worked through an attorney, and the only contact we had was via email. That lousy, no good son-of-a-gun had somebody else sign the lease agreement for him. Somebody named Amanda Gallagher.”
• • •
That explained everything!
Well, part of everything, anyway.
“That’s why she was pretending to be sick,” I said, popping out of my chair and leading the way up the stairs to Suite #1. “Amanda was probably surprised to find out Ted was here. She didn’t want to run into him.”
“But why would she sign the lease, then try to avoid the man?” Chandra’s question came from right behind me.
“And how did she know Peter?” Luella was in back of Chandra, but she asked her question, too.
“And why—?”
At the top of the stairs, I stopped Kate’s question with one hand out like a traffic cop, and led the way to the door of Amanda’s room. I knocked. Three times.
There was no answer.
At least not from Amanda’s room.
Across the hall, Mariah stuck her head out of her door. “I thought I heard someone knocking. Now that the storm is over, it’s so wonderfully quiet here. I can see why you love this island, ladies. I’m thinking I’m really going to like it here, too.” She stepped out into the hallway, resplendent as always, even if she was wearing the same black pants and red cashmere sweater I’d seen her in the day before. I forgave her the fashion faux pas. Even the most with-it princess can be forgiven for not packing every gorgeous outfit she owns when she doesn’t know she’s going to get stranded in a snowstorm.
“If you’re looking for Amanda,” the Princess said, “I think you’re looking in the wrong place. While we were all at breakfast, I saw her tiptoe down the steps bundled to the teeth. It looked like she was going out.”
Indeed.
We hurried into the kitchen and got on our coats and boots, and when we stepped outside, I paused for a moment, savoring the quiet and the blinding light of the sun glancing off the mounds of snow. The sky was clear and an amazing shade of blue, and somewhere nearby, a cardinal called out. Grateful we’d made it through the storm, I lifted my face to the sun. That is, right after I whisked off my glasses, got a pair of sunglasses out of my purse, and popped them on.
Thank goodness for a good pair of sunglasses that cut the glare. When Chandra whined, “How are we going to find her? We don’t know where she was going,” I was ready.
I held up a hand, my index finger pointed upward much like a Belgian detective. Or at least an incense-burning, crystal-reading cat spoiler who has dreams of being a Belgian detective. When I had everyone’s attention, I slowly lowered my hand, pointing down to the snow.
“Footprints!” Kate was on it like . . . well, like white on snow.
Our heads down, we followed the trail Amanda had left, around the back porch and on to the front of the house. From there, the footprints led down the road toward town.
I was still studying them when I heard the engine of the VW van cough into life behind me.
“Come on.” Chandra stuck her head out the window of the van and waved us in. “There’s no way I’m walking all the way into town. We can drive slow and still follow the footprints.”
We did, and honestly, it wasn’t any big surprise when we saw that they stopped right in front of the Orient Express.
Then again, Amanda was standing outside the front door, so that was pretty much a giveaway, too.
I popped out of the van before Chandra had it in park, and even before I was up to the door, I saw what Amanda was doing, and sucked in a breath. She had a nail file in her hands, and she was working on the lock of the door.
“What on earth are you up to?” I glanced around, grateful that the street was empty and that Levi’s across the road was closed so no one could be watching from the window. “Give me that.” I held out my hand and, red-faced, Amanda dropped the file in it. “Are you trying to get arrested?”
“I’m not trying . . . I mean, I am trying . . . That is, I’m not . . .” Amanda’s shoulders heaved. By now, the other ladies were out of the car, and we closed in around Amanda. “I just wanted to get inside,” she said, her voice clogged with tears. “I just wanted to see the place.”
“The place you signed the lease for?” For a warm and fuzzy tree hugger, Chandra can be pretty intimidating when she tries. She stood up straight, pulled back her shoulders, and leaned in nice and close to Amanda. “Why would you need to do that?”