by K. J. Emrick
“Course I am. I already admitted that, but I was setting the deal up first. I don’t have it with me… hold on, now. Oh, nuts. Do you think I had something to do with that guy attacking you in our hotel room, then?”
“Of course I think that! It’s the only explanation.”
Her jaw drops, and her eyebrows are scrunched down so hard that a line creases in her brow, and suddenly… I’m not so sure about what I’ve been thinking. Is Jasmine this good of an actress? She’s either lying to my face, and doing it convincingly, or…
She honestly doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
Gladys suddenly slaps her hands down on the table, rising halfway out of her chair. It’s not the drama between me and Jasmine that’s got her upset, though. “Wait, wait, wait,” she says to both of us. “Just hold on. Let me get this straight. Am I understanding that she doesn’t even have the note to sell me?”
She’s pointing at Jasmine, who sits there helplessly swinging her head back and forth, caught between my accusations and the realization that her deal with Gladys Austin is falling apart. There’s tears in her eyes. Her hands are trembling on the tabletop. If that’s acting, it deserves a Logie award.
Do I feel sorry for her? I would, if I didn’t remember the feel of that man’s hands around my throat in the dark. I would, if the bruises didn’t still hurt. I would, if I wasn’t watching her sell me out for whatever money Gladys Austin was willing to throw her way.
Only now, it looked like there wasn’t going to be any money for her, after all.
I answer Gladys’s question for her. “No. There’s no note. If Jasmine doesn’t have it with her, then I don’t know where it is.”
“Well, that’s just perfect, now isn’t it?” Gladys pushes herself away from the table, nearly tipping over her chair. “Wasted all this time talking to this one, only to have the great James Callahan and his girlfriend come in and ruin it all. The two of ya deserve each other, and that’s a fact.”
Jasmine finally finds her voice when she sees her pay cheque about to walk out. “No, hold on. You want the story, right? Me and Dell are the only ones who have the story. You could still pay us for the story, right?”
“No dice,” Gladys says dismissively. She’s already putting her coat on, stuffing her hands into her pockets. “I can’t run a story with no proof, less I want to be run out of the network on a rail, and believe me that’s not anything I want to experience. Got my career to think of, after all. Tell ya what. Why don’t ya tell it all to James here? He can make any load of kangaroo dung smell like roses.”
“Thanks,” James says to her. “Might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me. Can I quote ya?”
The smile Gladys gave him could’ve frozen Hell. Then she turns, and storms out of the Thirsty Roo without so much as a good day.
Rude.
At the same time, Jasmine slumps back down in her chair. “Aces. Just aces. That’s it, then.”
“Not quite,” James says. “I think there’s more’n a few things the police will want to talk about with ya.”
“That’s the second time you two have mentioned the police,” she says, her voice low and miserable. “I can’t imagine what you’re thinking I’ve done, Dell.”
She can’t be serious. “You mean other than try to sell Orville McGowan’s note to an opportunistic reporter like Gladys Austin?”
“Well, yeah. I told you why I was doing that. I need the money, Dell. I really do. What’s the harm? It’s an interesting bit of history, sure, but it’s not state secrets I was trying to sell!”
“It was mine,” I remind her. “You had no right to take it, and no right to sell it. Besides, we talked about this. We decided that it was too dangerous to show anyone else. You agreed. Remember that whole conversation? What happened to that, Jasmine?”
“Oh, come on, now,” she says with a ghost of a smile. “I just said what you wanted to hear. Wow. You really are a naïve one, aren’t ya Dell?”
Her words stung. Not just the part about shining me on during that conversation in the car as we were leaving the McGowan Mansion. More than that. The idea that she thought of me as naïve, like I was easy for someone like her to fool, really hurt. Was this what she thought of me back in University? Did she always think of me as some naïve little fool who didn’t know which way the wind was blowing?
Well. I guess you never really know a person until the chips are down.
Her mean words also reminded me that everything she was trying to sell me now might be a lie. She lied to me on the car ride when she was just telling me what I wanted to hear, apparently. What else was a lie here?
All of it. Best to decide all of it was lies. It might not hurt as much later on.
“I’ve heard enough,” I tell James. I’m not even going to bother talking to Jasmine any more. If she wants to think of me as plain and simple and gullible, then so be it. Our friendship obviously didn’t mean that much to her. Why should it mean anything to me?
I was going home tonight. She was going to jail.
James gets up from the table and takes my arm, turning us both toward the exit. There’s two ways out of the Thirsty Roo, but the back door is over that way, past the restrooms, and we’re already heading to the front. That’s aces with me. Quickest way out is all I’m looking for.
“Wait, Dell,” I hear Jasmine calling after me when we’re only halfway to the doors. “The note’s really gone?”
My shoulders slump as I roll my eyes. The award for the best performance of an ignorant former friend of Dell Powers goes to… drumroll please… Jasmine Faraday. Had just about enough, I have.
Still, I turn back to her to answer the question. “Fine, I’ll play along. Yes, the note is gone. Somehow, someone got into your locked car, and into your locked glove box, and took it. Now, seems to me you’re going to have a hard time explaining that to the police. Especially since your car keys were in my pocket. Hard to get in that locked glove box without the key, or a spare.”
She bites her lower lip, focusing on her own thoughts. “Actually, there’s a push button release under the dash, if you know where to look.”
Oh. Push button release. That made sense. I didn’t know it was there, and I’m willing to bet anyone who wasn’t familiar with that same model of car wouldn’t know either, but if that was true…
Someone wouldn’t need a key to get at the note.
I shook my head. “No. The doors were locked, too. The car doors were locked. No way for someone to get in without a key.”
Only, a car door can be jimmied, if someone knows how.
And suddenly, just like that, my whole theory of the crime had changed. Just that quickly, it seemed possible that Jasmine might be telling the truth. Just like that…
I felt very, very vulnerable.
Because if the bad guy in this mystery was my friend, well that sucked out big time, but at least arresting her would lead to whoever she was working with. She could give us the name of the guy who attacked me. We could catch the guy, and throw him in jail next to Jasmine, and the whole thing would be over.
If it wasn’t Jasmine, then that was something altogether different. Then my attacker would still be out there, somewhere, and he might try to get at me again.
Zacron, I thought suddenly. It could still be Zacron. Here I was thinking that Jasmine had gotten someone to help her take the note out of her car. Zacron had an alibi for the time frame I was attacked in the hotel room, but why couldn’t he have gotten someone to help him? He could’ve slipped someone a card key that got him into our room. The sliding bolt lock could have been accessed with a pass key that I knew every hotel like that kept on hand.
It didn’t have to be Jasmine. It could still be Zacron, and whoever he was working with.
Which meant anyone around me, anyone I met on the street, anyone who booked a room at the Pine Lake Inn, could be the man who attacked me.
Anyone…
No. I couldn’t think that way. A
ll the evidence was pointing to Jasmine, and that was just the way it was. The note was taken out of her car, after all. Zacron couldn’t have even known the note was there.
Not unless Jasmine told him so. Maybe he was her accomplice…?
I was thinking in circles. For right now, all I knew was that everything pointed to Jasmine. Even the fact that she snuck her way out of the Inn as soon as my back was turned, coming here to sell both the note and the story to Gladys Austin, told me that she was guilty. Her money troubles said she was guilty. All of it. Every single little scrap.
My hand touches the unicorn necklace at my throat, and then the bruises right beside it. There were all kinds of friends. Some good, some bad. It’s the good ones make it worthwhile to have friends in the first place. Sometimes you have to take the bad, to get the good.
Just wish there weren’t so many bad ones out there.
If only Mabel’s ghost had shown herself to me sooner, maybe I would’ve kept a closer eye on the note. If she’d been a little more precise with her messages, I might’ve kept the thing in my pocket. Let’s see someone try to steal it then.
Figures. I have a ghost follow me all the way from Blue Laguna to keep the note safe, and even that isn’t enough. All Mabel McGowan managed to do was make a wonderful mess of my bathroom mirror.
Hmm. Something about that snags at my memory. Not the mirror. The other part, I mean. It’s hard to explain, I guess. I admit that I’m being a bit slow on the uptake today, but I blame that on the emotional ups and downs of this roller coaster ride I’ve been on ever since finding that bottle in the sand on Blue Laguna beach. The gears are still turning, as they say, just a bit slower than usual.
I was thinking about how Mabel had followed me. All the way from Blue Laguna to here. Something about… being followed. Maybe in Blue Laguna. Maybe from there… to here?
Whatever thought is trying to poke its way through my muddled brain isn’t letting me shake it loose. None of my roundabout speculation made any sense and it didn’t matter, either. Best to put it aside, and just do what needs doing.
When we got outside I stopped and took a deep breath of the evening air. It had to be done, I told myself. I had to see this through to the end.
“James, can you stay here with Jasmine and make sure she doesn’t do her disappearing act again?”
“Er, sure I can. What’ve ya got in mind?”
“I’m going to call Kevin and have him come take Jasmine into custody. He can sort the rest of it out from there. It’s better in his hands than mine, anyhow.”
“All right. Any way we can arrest that Gladys Austin, too? Wouldn’t mind seeing her behind bars.”
“Sorry, James. Just arresting the bad guys today.”
I looked over my shoulder, back through the front window of the Roo, where Jasmine is still at her table. She’s holding her head in her hands now, in that way people have when everything’s come crashing down. She must have really been counting on the money from selling our story. Come to think of it, now that I look back over our vacation I can remember a bunch of times when she asked me to pay for this or that. She kept promising to pay for the next thing or split the cost. My friend really was broke.
For all I knew, this whole trip had been an attempt on her part to hit me up for a loan. She must’ve been planning on it right from the start. Didn’t she say she had some alternate reason for being here? Sure. My wayward friend comes all the way down here to Lakeshore to spend time with me, the successful business owner that she hasn’t seen for years. Sure. This whole trip had been nothing but a way for her to get some much-needed funds.
Now that chance was gone. Not only was she not going to get anything for selling the story of Orville McGowan’s note, but her chances of asking me for anything at all were well and truly shot.
I kept looking at her through that window. Would I ever see my friend after this?
Hopefully not. At the end of this mystery, I never wanted to see Jasmine Faraday again. Not ever.
“I’m going back to the Inn,” I tell James suddenly, leaning up on my tiptoes to plant a kiss on his cheek. “Come find me after… you know. When everything is done, okay?”
“Of course. I’ll take care of it. Wanna wait for me to give ya a lift?”
“Thanks, but no, I’ll walk. It’s not that far and frankly, I need to clear my head.”
“Yeah. Think I understand that.”
“James?”
“Yes, Dell?”
“Would you have taken the note from Jasmine? Would you have bought this story from her?”
He shakes his head, his smile bordering on gorgeous. “Not without asking my girlfriend first.”
Dear God, I love this man.
He gives me a reassuring hug and promises again that he’ll take care of everything.
Walking away with a tear in my eye, I pull out my mobile and speed dial my Kevin’s number. It takes me a few minutes for me to get it all out, but before long we hang up, and he’s on his way.
Chapter 8
Back in my room again. All alone and wishing life could be a little simpler.
All right. A lot simpler.
I had a friend once who used to say that if life was simple, it wouldn’t be interesting. I used to believe him, too. Frankly, right now, I’d take a little boring.
The broken specks of glass are still all over the bathroom floor, and the sink, and even the toilet seat. With a sigh, I set about sweeping all of it up. It’s not like I can leave it there. Not if I expect to take that bubble bath. The idea of soaking in bubbles up to my neck sounds even better to me now than it had earlier. Can’t get into the tub until I’ve gotten it all cleaned up, though. Not unless I want to come away with bleeding feet and a sparkly bum.
I don’t want that, for the record. If I’m gonna wear body glitter, it’ll be on some part of me that everyone can enjoy.
Just a little bit of humor. A little joke, to try to make me feel better. Ha, ha. I mean, let’s face it. I’m too old for body glitter.
I’m also too old to be worrying about what my friends think of me. Or if they think of me as naïve. Or, if they plan on quite literally stabbing me in the back.
The broom got most of the tiny sparkling pieces that used to be my mirror. They went in the dust bin. A careful application of wet paper towels picked up the rest of it, and then the towels went in the dust bin, too. I’m sure that in the weeks to come I’ll still find tiny cuts on my toes whenever I use the loo. I’ll be leaving bloody footprints that turn out to be my own. At least that mystery would be easy to solve.
Or maybe I’ll just wear socks everywhere I go for the next few days. And then throw those in the bin, too.
Just as I’m about to fill the tub with steaming hot water, there’s a knock on my door.
I don’t get visitors at my door very often, and when I do, it’s almost always important. Something to do with the Inn, usually. Rosie’s long since gone home to her husband and wonderful twin boys. Danni’s got the night shift at the front desk, and she knows enough to call if there’s trouble, not come all the way up here to knock. Kevin would call ahead, too, if there was any news about Jasmine’s arrest. Same with James.
So who could this be?
Knock, knock.
Not for the first time, I consider installing a security camera in the hallway outside my rooms. I haven’t gotten undressed yet but I’m still not opening that door until I know who it is that’s come knocking. Kind of surprising I haven’t set up all sorts of security alarms and gadgets all over the Inn, considering all the things I’ve gotten myself into. Thing is, I want to live as normal a life as possible and turning the Pine Lake Inn into Fort Knox isn’t going to accomplish that. Besides. I know the simplest way of finding out who’s knocking on my door.
Knock, knock.
“Who’s there?”
See? Just that simple.
The man who answers me isn’t anyone I was expecting. Not Kevin. Not James, either.
<
br /> Mister Brewster.
“Sorry for the intrusion,” he says politely through the door. “Might I bother you for a moment?”
I never entertain guests in my rooms. Ever. Not that I would be entertaining Mister Brewster… you know what I mean. Anyone who runs an Inn knows what a bad idea it is to have guests in your personal rooms. That’s just begging to give people the wrong idea, is what that is. That’s how rumors start. Lawsuits, too, when someone accuses you of doing things behind closed doors that never happened. My advice, is don’t do it.
At the same time, you can’t just ignore a guest when they come knocking.
So, when I open the door to Mister Brewster I stand with one foot inside and my other foot out in the hall, the door open just enough to make it obvious he isn’t invited in. I’m not being rude. Just professional.
Not sure Mister Brewster sees it that way.
He looks me up and down. “I don’t like to speak to people through a doorway.”
“Oh?” I ask him sweetly. “Why not? Does it violate some part of your religion?”
His silver eyes grow darker, even though a smile curls up one corner of his mouth. It occurs to me that I have no idea where Mister Brewster is actually from. For all I know, talking through an open doorway does violate his religion.
“Let’s just say,” he answers me slowly, “that I don’t like the symbolism.”
Interesting. Doesn’t answer a whole lot of much, now does it? Keep the guests happy, I remind myself. “Okay, tell you what. Let’s try this.” I step out into the hallway, closing the door behind me. “Is this better?”
His smile melts away. “Quite.” He takes another moment before he says anything else. “Miss Powers, I was wondering if there will be any events booked into the Inn over the winter?”
My mind’s been on the mystery of the note in the bottle and who was behind it all, not on matters to do with me Inn. I wasn’t expecting that question at all. “Er, events? Like things to do? We generally have a walking tour around the lakes when it gets colder. One year there was enough ice to go skating. I can get you the information about it, if you like…”