Manor of Death--A Short Read

by K. J. Emrick

  “What’s that?” Jack asked, his hand twitching toward the inside of his jacket where Miranda knew he wore his gun.

  “It’s okay, big guy,” Miranda told him. “I put a kettle on for coffee.”

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay put with the others?”

  She gave him a wink. “One thing you’re going to have to learn about me if we’re going to continue dating, Jack Travis, is that I rarely follow orders.”

  “I’m beginning to see that,” he admitted. “And I can’t say that I don’t like it. Well, come on. I’d like some coffee myself.”

  Just as he motioned toward the kitchen, a blue streak came racing up the hallway. Kyle, finally back from the errand she’d sent him on. She stared at him, acutely aware of the handsome detective next to her watching her every move.

  “You won’t believe what just happened I can’t wait to tell you this because you’re never going to believe it yourself!” he stumbled over his words.

  Then he saw her face, and the way she kept flicking her eyes toward Jack.

  “Oh, right, right,” he said, a lot more slowly. His hands came up to pat the air. “It’s all right, it’s okay, I’ll do both sides. Ready? You would say, where on Earth have you been, Kyle? To which I would say, why, I was following our suspect down a dark tunnel through the bowels of this very house, Miranda. Then you say, wow, what a great job you did! I would then thank you profusely and protest I was just doing what came naturally to a ghost who could follow him around unseen until he finally stepped foot outside…”

  Miranda’s eyes widened.

  “Oh,” he said to her, “I didn’t tell you that part yet, did I. Well, it’s true. Morgan Dale isn’t even in this house anymore.”

  Miranda turned to Jack, trying to quickly think of some way to tell him how she knew the vital information that Kyle had just given her. Then she saw the look on his face. He was regarding her oddly, which probably made sense considering she’d just been staring at empty air for two solid minutes. At least, from his point of view she was.

  “Let me explain…” she started.

  “It’s okay, I think I get it.” He surprised her by looking back up the hall, nearly straight at where Kyle was floating. “I’m pretty sure I know the secret you’ve been hiding. Anything you want to tell me?”

  “Oh so much,” she said, realizing she hadn’t told him about the medicine bottle or the note or the baking pan yet, either. “It’s not fair though, if you get to figure out my secret and I don’t know yours yet.”

  He shrugged, and gently guided her into the kitchen. “I thought a little mystery made a relationship more interesting. Let’s get this kettle off the stove before we burn the house down and then I’m going to call for more officers to assist us, and you can fill me in on the snooping you’ve been doing.”

  “I do not snoop!” she protested.

  “Yes, you do,” he disagreed.

  “Yes, you do,” Kyle said at almost exactly the same time.

  Miranda was helpless against the two of them. The men in her life—alive and dead—were going to drive her crazy.

  Chapter 5

  By the time the other officers had arrived Miranda had told Jack about the note in the garbage and the pills, too. He’d taken both of them for evidence, remarking that he was glad she knew the basics of police tactics so that when she did stick her nose into his cases at least she could collect evidence the right way.

  Then she told him that she thought she saw someone moving around in the bushes right outside of the kitchen window. He looked at her very dubiously, but he nodded and added that to the list of things he asked his fellow police officers to check out.

  As Jack began giving orders about collecting everyone in the house into one room again, Miranda slipped away once more, with Kyle floating in hot-pursuit.

  “And what are we doing? Should you not be in the dining room being kept safe by your handsome detective?”

  “I’m just having a look around, Kyle. And he’s not my handsome detective.”

  “Says you,” Kyle teased.

  “You and I are going to have a conversation when we get home,” she promised him. “If nothing else we need to work out some hand signals or something for when we need to communicate in front of other people.”

  “What? I thought I performed brilliantly back there.”

  “Oh, sure. You took minutes to give me a single bit of information that should have taken seconds, leaving me standing there looking like a fool, but you certainly did get the job done.”

  “There, see?” he said proudly. “Even you admit it.”

  That was so not what she meant, Miranda thought to herself. “Look, if I see anything that worries me, I’ll run back the other way. This house is full of secrets and I’m going to find them out. Especially now that we know for sure Lea was murdered.”

  Taking the same corridor that led away from the kitchen, Miranda went further on, taking a random turn here and there. After they had been looking for only a few minutes, Miranda stopped in her tracks.

  “What is it?” Kyle whispered, even though as a ghost he could have shouted and no one but Miranda would have heard it.

  “I can hear voices.” She strained to listen harder. “They’re coming from one of the rooms down there.”

  Once they had made themselves sure which room the conversation was coming from, Kyle looked at her with a grin.

  “Now you’ll see how useful I can be. I’m going to pop my head in through the door.” He began to chuckle. “And I mean that quite literally.”

  He pushed his body into the door and through, with just his backside and his long legs hanging out. Then, almost immediately, he pulled himself back into the hall again.

  “I bet you wish you could do that,” he said brightly. “I mean, for a nosy amateur sleuth like you, this would be such a boon.”

  “Will you be serious? What did you see?”

  “For one thing, I’ve just seen a very shirtless Algernon Keaton.” Kyle grinned. “I’ve got to say, he is quite a beefcake. There’s not an ounce of fat on the man.”

  “Try to concentrate, lover boy, will you?”

  “No worries. He’s not my type. He’s that kind of good-looking which is sort of cheesy, you know? Like a male stripper or something.”

  “Kyle, that is not what I was expecting you to concentrate on. Tell me what’s happening in there!” Miranda hissed in a whisper.

  “Oh, he’s trying to flirt with Fiona, that attorney,” Kyle said, almost as if that was an afterthought. “I don’t think she’s interested.”

  Sure enough, Miranda could just hear the edges of a brewing argument.

  “You can have all the attention you want,” Algernon was telling Fiona, as if he was such a great prize. “All you have to do is just convince the old man to do what I want with the will. That’s what you’ve come here to speak to him about today, isn’t it? He’s fiddling with his damn will again, and I want to make sure it comes out in my favor.”

  “What your father chooses to put in his will is his business, Algernon,” Fiona said in a clipped tone. “Now, please for the love of God put your shirt back on.”

  “Look, Fiona dear, there’s a killer on the loose in this house. I can protect you far better than my father ever could. All you have to do is just play nice.”

  “I’m getting sick of this, Algernon. You try every time I come to this house and, if you don’t stop, I will tell your father.”

  There was a long moment of muttered words between them that Miranda couldn’t make out no matter how closely she pressed her ear to the door. She would have given anything to hear that part of the conversation.

  “Well,” Algernon finally said out loud again. “I will just find another way to get what I’m due.”

  Realizing that the pair would very likely be coming out of that room soon, Miranda tiptoed away, looking for another room in which to hide. Darting into the first open door she quickly closed the door almost shut
and peered back out into the corridor. She saw Algernon stalk away, tucking his shirt in, and she breathed a sigh of relief. There was something about that man which unsettled her. She had already witnessed how violent he could be, up close and personal.

  Miranda turned to look around her and found she was in a rather luxurious guest room with bags in it. Lea’s room! Quickly closing the door tight, she raced across the room to have a quick peek inside the luggage. They were definitely the clothes of a young woman inside the bags, fashionable in a most up-to-the-minute way.

  Miranda could see a cell phone plugged into a charger on the bedside table. Picking it up she jabbed at one of the buttons. It was locked down and required a password to get into anything of interest, but as the phone sprang into life and lit up, Miranda had an a-ha moment of her own; there, as the phones wallpaper, was a photograph of Lea Maroney kissing Jonah Keaton’s cheek. For all that it was a simple kiss on the cheek, it had a certain intimacy about it.

  So, had Jonah been the person who had caused the pink in her aura?

  The table had a single, small drawer in it. Pulling it open on a whim Miranda saw a handwritten note, or at least the beginnings of one. It was addressed to somebody identified only as “K,” and the writer—Lea Maroney herself presumably—was expressing the need for help.

  “I don’t know what to do. I’m so worried that I just can’t sleep anymore.”

  “What do you suppose was keeping her awake nights?”

  Miranda jumped. Kyle had been reading over her shoulder. She hadn’t seen him come into the room.

  “Kyle, I swear to you I’m going to find a way to put a bell around your neck.”

  He smiled at her. “A-ring-a-ding-ding.”

  “Funny. Look, something isn’t right with all this. I’m not entirely convinced of Algernon’s innocence, for one thing. But at the same time, I can’t see what he would stand to gain.”

  “I can!” Kyle said triumphantly. “Just think about it. That picture on her phone tells it all. If Lea and Jonah really were an item then isn’t it probable that Fiona lawyer chick was here to rewrite Jonah’s will to put Lea in it? That would mean less money for Algernon, right? He may well have killed her so that he could claim a larger share of the will once the old man bit it. You heard what he said to Fiona down the hall.”

  “That’s true,” she said thoughtfully. “When you put it that way it makes sense. I don’t know. I still feel like we’re missing something. Why did Morgan Dale run? Why won’t Jonah just admit he was in love with Lea, if that was the case?”

  “Because people are stupid?” Kyle offered as an explanation to both questions. “At least the living are. I swear to you, Miranda, I’m beginning to believe that ghosts are the only ones who truly know how to live.”

  “That’s really insightful and all, Kyle, but how does that help us solve our murder case?”

  As Miranda began to put pieces together in her mind, she heard footsteps stop right outside the door.

  She had to hide. Now.

  Miranda looked desperately around for some place in which to tuck herself away out of sight, finally throwing herself down behind the far side of the double bed. Not the greatest hiding place but there wasn’t anywhere else.

  Holding her breath, she listened to the sound of footsteps approaching her, sweating bullets with the fear that the killer, whoever that might be, was in the room with her.

  “It’s all right, scaredy-pants,” Kyle said, chuckling. “You can come out now.”

  Miranda trusted Kyle more than she trusted most anyone else in her life. Still, under the circumstances she decided to carefully peek up over the edge of the mattress.

  “Miranda?” The voice was unmistakable. It was Sapphire who had found her here. “What are you doing in Lea’s room?” Miranda let out a quick sigh of relief.

  “Um. I’m investigating, like I said.” That was close enough to the truth, she supposed. No need to say she had come in here to hide. She got up on her feet, brushing off the front of her jeans. “Wasn’t everyone supposed to be in the dining room?”

  Sapphire shrugged. “The police are more interested in their investigation than they are in keeping us together. Everyone’s wandering about now. Can I help? Is there anything at all I can do? Maybe a crystal reading would help?”

  Somehow, Miranda didn’t think so. Information would be more useful. “Tell me, how do you know Lea? I mean, where did you meet?”

  “We met a couple of years ago,” Sapphire explained, “at a natural foods restaurant. We were both sitting alone at our tables and ended up kind of chatting and, before we knew it, we were sitting together. We used to meet there regularly.”

  Perfect. “Do you know if Lea had any food allergies?”

  “I doubt it. We pretty much tried everything on the shelves of the natural food store over time, and she never seemed concerned by any ingredients. She never mentioned if there was anything she couldn’t eat. Why? Did you find anything out?”

  Yes, she had, but she wasn’t sure what to share with Sapphire at this point and what to keep secret until she knew more. Some of the clues she had found could add up to very different conclusions, depending on how one looked at them. At the same time, she could see how upset the death of her friend had made Sapphire.

  “Well,” she decided to say, “we did determine this was a murder. The police are searching for Morgan Dale. He ran away from the closet before Jack could talk to him.”

  “That’s suspicious, don’t you think? Oh, I don’t know what to think about this, Miranda. I wish Lea could have been a ghost so you or I could have spoken to her. She might have been able to tell us who had done this to her.”

  “Sapphire…” How could she explain this? “I kind of get the sense that Lea was fine with dying. I have to wonder if that’s why her ghost didn’t hang around even though she was murdered. She was already at peace with it.”

  Next to her, Kyle laid a hazy blue hand on Sapphire’s shoulder, trying to comfort her from beyond the grave. Miranda gave him a nod to let him know how much she appreciated the gesture.

  With a little sigh, Sapphire started to say something that was interrupted by a terrible crash from the floor above, followed by a sickening thud outside of the building.

  All three of them hurried to the window and quickly threw open the curtains to peer out. There, lying face down on the ground outside was the body of a man. They couldn’t see his face, but Miranda recognized the clothes.

  “It’s Algernon Keaton,” she said, turning to look at Sapphire who, in that moment, passed out and dropped to the floor.

  Chapter 6

  By the time Miranda had made her way upstairs to the second-floor bedroom that Algernon had flown out of, Jack was already in there. She’d expected as much. After spending some time attending to a very faint Sapphire there was no doubt that Moonlight Bay’s finest would get there first.

  “Looks like Algernon’s bedroom.” She heard his voice drifting out through the open door, and peered in to see him standing side by side with his colleague, Officer Snopes. They were looking out through the open glass doors onto the balcony.

  “Looks like that wood railing gave way,” Snopes said. “It looks pretty old and was probably rotten on the inside.”

  Miranda paused outside, not wanting to just burst into a crime scene. One of her characters had done that once and it had ended with a stay in jail. No sense taking chances that life would imitate art. Instead she listened intently as Kyle rushed in to see what could be seen.

  “I took a quick look at the body,” Jack was saying, “before coming up here. He fell face first into the rock garden below. Not a pretty sight.”

  “Did you see this on the dresser, Jack? This great big long scrape… old damage, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” she heard Jack say thoughtfully. “It’s kind of low-down. What is it? Ankle height? Maybe from a suitcase being brought through here. Was Algernon on a trip anywhere recently?”

>   “No idea. Suicide, you think?”

  Jack waited a long moment before answering. “I doubt it but let’s not jump to conclusions.”

  “Or jump out any windows, eh?” Officer Snopes tried to joke.

  Suddenly, there came a shout from downstairs.

  “Arrest him, not me!”

  Recognizing Fiona Remington’s voice, Miranda hurried to the top of the stairs and peered over the curling balcony railing. She could see that both Fiona Remington and Morgan Dale were being led through the hallway by three uniformed police officers. Apparently, her tip to Jack about seeing Morgan outside had paid off. In spades.

  “Looks like the backup has arrived,” Jack said, as he and Snopes joined Miranda at the top of the stairs.

  “What’s going on down there?” Jack called down to the officers.

  The officers below stopped, craning their necks to look up at them. “Both of them were outside, Detective,” the officer with sergeant’s stripes on his uniform explained. “I don’t know what’s going on yet, boss, but these two really didn’t want to come back here.”

  Jack tapped a finger thoughtfully against the railing. “Thanks, guys. Can you take them both into the sitting room and sit them at opposite ends? It’s as good a place as any now that we removed Lea’s body. I’ll come down and interview them both.”

  As Jack passed Miranda on the stairs he gave her a knowing look. She blushed a little, realizing that he knew she’d been hovering outside the door just now, listening. Did he know that she intended to go snooping about in the bedroom as soon as he and Snopes were downstairs? Probably. He was a very smart man, after all. It was just one of the things she liked about him.

  The moment he was out of view, Miranda raced down to the bedroom and inside.

  Kyle was already there, his body hovering waist deep in the floor, staring at the dresser in the room. “Oh, hey. I’ve been waiting for you, Miranda.”

  “That’s really creepy, you know that, right?”

  “What? Oh, this?” he asked, floating up so his feet were above the floor again. “Sorry, walls and floors just don’t have the same meaning to me anymore. Look, I’ve been staring at the scratches they were talking about, here on this dresser. There’s some shiny flecks in them. Almost looks metallic.”