by K. J. Emrick
Even so, this isn’t something I can talk about. Not even with my staff. Or maybe I should say, especially not with my staff. As much as I depend on Danni, I know she likes to gossip. “I’ll tell you all about it,” I promise her. “Just not right now. Can you trust me for a day or two and keep it to yourself? One of those things that’ll make or break us and I’m going to need your help with it, okay?”
Which was as true as true could be. I was still very aware how bad this could be for the Inn, especially if word started getting around before Kevin had a handle on which of our suspects really was the killer. I was going to need all the help I could get to save the reputation of the Pine Lake Inn.
She looks disappointed but tries to hide it with a little roll of one shoulder. “Okay, Dell. No worries.”
“Thanks, Danni. My son has got enough on his plate now without his mother being a blabbermouth. He’s got the issue here to worry about, and then he’s also trying to help Suzanna Martin with her ex-boyfriend troubles. You know what they say, when it rains it pours.”
“Not here,” Carly pipes up, crossing her arms and looking outside through the open doors at the very dry, very arid late afternoon sky. “This summer we’ve hardly had a sprinkling, let alone a downpour.”
She’s not wrong.
I really want to get upstairs to get moving on what I promised Kevin I’d do, but Danni’s still being inquisitive. “Suzanna Martin? She works down at the Thirsty Roo, doesn’t she? Who’s the ex? Someone I know?” She squints her eyes, probably thinking over all the boys she knows in town. “Not a lot of good ones to be had in Lakeshore.”
When she says it, she looks over her shoulder to where Janus is standing behind the registration desk, and I think maybe there’s at least one more good guy in Lakeshore as far as she’s concerned.
“It’s nobody you know, I think,” I answer her. I really want to be upstairs in my room, and I don’t see any harm in telling her the name of someone she’s likely never heard of anyways. “Some bloke by the name of Harry Kewell. From up on the mainland. Guess she tried to leave him behind and he followed her out this way. You know how some guys can get.”
Apparently she does, because her expression goes blank and she clutches at the bottom of her cute sweater top. “Er, yeah. Well. I think I’ve got somewhere to be. Thanks, Dell.”
She’s off before I can say anything else, which is just fine with me because now I’m free to try my idea for getting at Thornton’s financials. Taking my daughter’s hand, I lead her over to the stairs with me. “C’mon. I’m going to use the phone up in my room.”
“What? Why?” she asks, following at my heels but not exactly with enthusiasm. “There’s a phone just down there at the check-in desk. Why not use that one? Or your mobile?”
“Because, my dear, I’m about to do something slightly illegal and I’d like it if no one saw me doing it.”
“Oh,” is all she says. “Er, I’m not sure how Kevin’s gonna feel about his mother breaking the law to help him.”
“We already discussed it,” I tell her, keeping my voice low as we pass a knot of guests in the middle of the first floor. The next set of stairs, up to the top floor, is at the other end of the hall. “We talked about it while you were out making eyes at Ben Isling. He’s aware this isn’t strictly by the book.”
“I was not making eyes at Ben Isling,” she says defensively.
I smile, but don’t say anything more about it. Finally she rolls her eyes and gets back to the phone call I’m about to make. “So what did Kevin say about your idea?”
“He decided he was better off not knowing.”
Her snort of laughter is loud in the empty top floor. She knows exactly what her brother is like.
We both avoid looking at the room where Jackson was killed. The door is closed again, and I’m glad for that. He might not be lying in there with a knife sticking in his back anymore, but seeing the bare floor where the carpet got cut away was going to be just as hard to look at for me. Would the floorboards underneath be stained with Jackson’s blood?
For that matter, would there be another ghost in my Inn, trapped here until he felt it was time to move on? I stop in the hallway for just a second, and wait, and listen, expecting to have an ethereal form with bushy eyebrows appear out of nowhere.
When he doesn’t, I take a breath, and keep going to my room. “Let’s hope this works. Kevin might not think he needs our help, but everybody needs some help sometimes. Even smart guys like him.”
“My brother always was the smart one,” Carly agrees, pursing her lips thoughtfully.
I know what’s going through that pretty head of hers. “I have two great kids. Him, and you. Everyone has their own way of being smart, you know.”
“Sure, Mom,” she says. “I’ve been pretty stupid recently. It’s all right if you say so.”
I was in a rush, but hearing her say that stops me in my tracks. This is what I’ve been worried about ever since she’s been back. Nobody here blames her for getting mixed up with that lot at the commune. There are places like that around that are nice, and full of decent people. This one… not so much. I met the man leading the one Carly moved to. He was slick, and his words were smooth, and he had more than a few women Carly’s age there who had been suckered in with his patter. I shudder to think what might’ve happened if Kevin and I hadn’t driven out there and convinced her that she really could leave, if she wanted. She came back to us, and that should’ve been the end of it, but nobody’s ever as hard on you as you can be on yourself.
Carly’s been blaming herself all this time for putting her family through that, feeling stupid, waiting for someone to yell at her and tell her how dumb she is. It’s not going to happen, but she’s walking on eggshells anyway. We all make mistakes, especially when we’re young. I understand the need to stretch your wings and try to be your own person even if it lands you in the wrong nest, so to speak, and I don’t think my daughter’s dumb for that.
Thing is, how do you convince someone that you love them and accept them when some charismatic duffer has got her head all turned around? If I’d had my way, I would’ve slapped the stupid smile right off his face. He would’ve been scrambling to pick up his own teeth, if Kevin hadn’t stopped me.
Now, all this time later, I place my hands on Carly’s shoulders, and she doesn’t exactly pull away from me. More like how a deer freezes when it’s caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. “You listen to me, daughter of mine. You are part of my heart. You will always have a place here with me. You’ve been hiding away because you thought everyone, including me, was going to tell you that you’re just as stupid as you feel. Well. Part of being your mother means I get to tell you when you’re being stupid. If that ever happens, I will tell you.”
“But, Mom… I knew going with those people was a mistake. I just got so lost in my own head. I didn’t know which end of my world was up anymore. I thought being with them made me part of their family. And, yes, I know I had a family here, but they were something special. It made me special, or so I thought. They had me thinking you didn’t want me around anymore. I’m just… I’m just so sorry for what I put you through. If I could take it all back and have it never happen, you have to know that’s what I would do.”
When she ran out of breath, I smile at her. “You are still young, and by definition that means you’re going to make mistakes. That doesn’t make you stupid. It makes you human. It’s part of life, and it happens to everyone.”
“No it doesn’t. Not like this. Not like what I did.”
I sigh, wishing I could be this young and naïve again. “You think your mother was always as smart as I am, right here, right now?”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Of course I do. You were born always knowing the right thing to do.”
“Oh really? Well. It’s nice to know that you think that, but it isn’t even close to the truth. I’ve made my fair share of mistakes, thank you very much. I’ll trade stories with
you sometime but, for now, just trust me. There’s nothing to forgive. You’re home. I love you today same as I did when you were first born, and maybe more. Stop beating yourself up over what’s in the past.”
She relaxes, if just a little, and at least gives me a nod. “Because I’m bound to make plenty of mistakes in the future, you mean?”
“Exactly. You, and me both. Now. Let’s you and I agree that the mistakes can wait until tomorrow, and that for today we’re going to do some good. Sound like a plan?”
To my surprise, she gives me a quick hug. “I like the sound of that. So, what this plan of yours, exactly?”
We’re at the door to my room now, and I’ve got the key out to fit it into the lock. “We’re going to make a few phone calls. I need to find out about Thornton Dunfosse’s finances. Kevin won’t be able to get any information from the banks in time. So I’ve got another idea.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Banks are closed on Sundays,” I say, explaining my thought processes. “But, credit card companies are open twenty-four hours a day to take people’s money. Someone has a problem with their card, they can call right up and ask for all of their transactions to be checked. So if I was Thornton, and I had a problem with my government-issued credit card that I use whenever I check into a nice out-of-the-way Inn on government business, I’d call my company up immediately and ask them to list off every transaction that showed up on my history.”
“Well, that sounds like a great plan, Mom, but I doubt we’ll be able to get Thornton to do that for us.”
“I know,” I say with a grin. “Good thing I have his credit card on file from when he checked in, right? Not to mention all of his personal information. The group of them used a government card to pay for the rooms, but I still require each of my guests to give a personal card for incidentals. So with that number, and a little bit of trickery over the phone, I figure I’ll know just about everything Thornton Dunfosse has bought and paid for in his whole entire life.”
Carly looks absolutely shocked at that idea. “But that’s… that’s…”
“Slightly illegal?” I finish for her.
“No, it’s completely illegal!”
“True, but only if I get caught.”
She’s unconvinced, and I can tell. “You don’t think the people on the other end of the phone call are going to know you aren’t a man?”
I pitch my voice low and gruff. “What if I talk like me big tough Strayan?”
She and I are both laughing at my poor attempt at a man’s voice as I open the door and swing it wide.
Inside, someone is sitting on my bed, waiting for us.
Chapter 7
James.
Know that good-for-nothing ex-boyfriend of mine that I’ve been griping about for the whole entire day? This is him, sitting right here on my bed, in my room, smiling at me from behind a black eye and a swollen cheek and a gash across his forehead that looks like it didn’t stop bleeding until maybe five seconds ago.
“Hey, Dell,” he says to me, one hand giving a little wave. “How’s things?”
I want to slap him. I want to hold him. I want to take his bruised-up face in my hands and ask him to explain himself over and over while I kiss away every bit of hurt he has. It’s not just his face that’s banged up, either. The way he’s got his other arm wrapped across his midsection tells me there’s something paining him there, too. Maybe broken ribs. Maybe worse. I’m hoping the blood on his jeans isn’t his.
I wanted him to get up off that bed and tell me he was a fool for ever leaving and he would love me forever and nothing would ever keep us apart again. And at the same time, I pretty much wanted to kill him.
That just about sums up the relationship between a man and a woman, doesn’t it?
All of those thoughts raced through my brain in the time it would take lightning to strike. In the next breath I open my mouth and say just two words.
“You idiot.”
I don’t know how many times I’ve rehearsed what I might say to James Callahan if I ever saw him again. The words I pictured in my head were a lot more insightful and meaningful than that little bit of name-calling. In the heat of this unexpected moment, however, that’s all I’ve got for him.
“Heh,” he mutters. “Guess I deserved that.”
“Mom,” Carly whispers to me, “he’s hurt.”
As if I don’t have eyes to see that. She’s right, though. No matter what his reasons were for leaving me like he did, he’s here now, and he needs my help. Can’t just tongue lash the man and send him on his way. That part will come later. When he’s feeling better.
Stepping quickly across the short distance from my door to my bed, I sit myself down carefully next to him, and probe his face with my fingertips. He winces and rocks his head to the side but doesn’t pull away. Tough guy. He always was too tough for his own good. The cut just below the line of his messy blonde hair isn’t as bad as it looks, but the bruising around his usually clear blue eyes certainly is. He stifles a yelp when I try to pull his arm away from his torn shirt, so I don’t push that issue. Not much I could do for a broken rib, anyway. So long as his insides aren’t coming outside, he’s better off waiting on a doctor.
I frown into those eyes of his, and the urge to slap him comes back to me. How could he be gone for four weeks, not a word, and then just sneak his way back into my room like this? It wasn’t fair.
I’m suddenly keenly aware that my daughter is standing behind us, watching the whole thing. I can’t hit the man with her in the room. Can’t kiss him, either, because as far as I know we’re broke up and wouldn’t that just be a wonderful thing to try explaining to Carly?
Turning to her, my hands still on James as if he’s about to disappear if I let go, I say, “Can you run down and have Janus get you the first aid kit from behind the registration desk? We keep it plenty well stocked up.”
“We have to,” is her reply. “Considering how often Rosie gets into one sort of scrape or another I’m surprised you don’t have paramedics on standby.”
“I’ve considered it. Go on, now. And don’t tell anyone James is here, right?’
“What? Why?”
I give her a look. James gives her a look. If he was in here, hiding, he obviously doesn’t want to be seen. At least, not yet.
“Right.” Her eyes are full of questions, but she keeps them to herself. Good girl.
When she’s gone, and the door is closed, I sit back and cross my arms. “Four weeks, James. I haven’t heard from you for four weeks, and now you’re just here and looking like you fell off a cliff somewhere? How’d you even get up here anyway, with no one noticing you?”
“That guest of yours met me at the door. Walked me on up.”
“Guest? What guest?”
“The tall one. Always dresses in black? Got those weird eyes like mirrors. Kind of gray, kind of silver. Weird bloke. He met me at the front door and talked to me the whole way up and I can’t remember a single word of it. Nobody really paid us much mind and the next thing I knew we were up here.”
Mister Brewster, he means. Mister Brewster brought him up here. I can see how that might happen, because people tend to look away from him rather than engage so I can see how that would’ve worked. It’s something about those eyes. Like mirrors? Huh. Never thought of it that way, but he’s not wrong. “All right, well… how’d you get in my room, then?”
Digging in his pocket for a second, he comes out with a little shiny bit of metal and drops it on the bed. “Still have your key. Wouldn’t be much of a boyfriend if I didn’t keep my girlfriend’s key handy, now would I?”
“You’re not much of a boyfriend, no matter how you cut it. You disappeared on me, James. Just left me without a word. You do not get to walk back into my life without an explanation.”
I see him swallow, and when he licks his cracked lips, I know he’s holding something back. We dated for a few years, and I got to know him pretty well. I know his tells. �
�I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” he says when he finally speaks. “I’m sorry if I upset ya, Dell, but I needed someplace to sit and collect my thoughts. Somewhere I felt safe.”
“And you felt safe with me?” I’m trying to stay mad at him, but I can’t help feeling touched by that. He needed somewhere safe and he thought of me. That was just about the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me. Although… wait. “Why did you need to feel safe? Your face, and your ribs… what happened to you?”
“Er, it’s kind of a not very pleasant thing to talk about.”
“Never known you to be at a loss for words.”
“Heh. No, I guess not. The truth of it is that I never meant to leave ya, Dell. Never meant to cause ya one moment of grief.”
“Funny, because that’s exactly what you did do.”
“I know.” He huffs out a long breath of air and shifts himself on the edge of my bed, wincing with every centimeter of movement. “But Dell, why would I ever just leave like that? We’re happy. We’re perfect together, don’t ya think?”
His free hand covers mine, warm and tender. Oh, how I’ve missed that feeling. “I used to think we were happy, James, sure. That was before you didn’t even send me a text message in all this time.”
“I couldn’t.”
“What does that mean? What are you trying to say?”
“I couldn’t text ya.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” he says, “they took my phone.”
“Who did?”
“The blokes who kidnapped me.”
My breath caught in my throat, and for a moment I was speechless.
That one word—‘kidnapped’—was the craziest thing I’d heard all day, and considering the day we’ve had here that’s quite the topper. “You were kidnapped? You’re telling me you were kidnapped. Someone’s been holding you as a hostage all this time?”
“Well, not all that time, but yeah. I’ve been a whole day just getting back here, to you.” He sucks in a breath as he holds his side tighter. “That was a trip and a half, that was. Nobody was around when I got here so I let meself in.”