by K. J. Emrick
I grip his fingers in mine, tight as I dare. He was in East Timor, chasing a story that he knew was big and that he knew was dangerous and it had gotten him in more trouble than he’d bargained for. That was the reason he hadn’t contacted me. He couldn’t. Here I’d been cursing his name and wanting to tear him limb from limb and it looks like someone else had gotten to it ahead of me.
He hadn’t abandoned me. He’d been taken from me.
Impulsively I throw my arms around him and pull him tight even though he grunts in agony when I do because now I need, need, need to hold him close. When I thought that I’d lost him because he’d become the biggest loser any man could ever be, I’d gotten over it because hey, men are men. But now the thought that I might have lost him for good and never even known why has my knees shaking and my heart hammering in my chest.
“You didn’t leave me?” I ask, needing to hear him say it.
“No, Dell,” he grunts, gently pushing me away. “I know I’ve let ya down in the past, been a real tool, but I’ve known the two of us were meant to be together for a long time now. No way I’m gonna mess that up. Considering what I went through to be here, I’d say I’ve proven that.”
I could almost cry to know I was so wrong about him. This man got snatched, and somehow still fought his way back to me. There must be a bugger of a story there. He must have been through hell.
And he came back to me.
“Tell me what happened,” I say, when I can get my breath back. “Was it bad?”
His expression darkens before he’s able to answer me. “It isn’t something I’m ready to talk about. Not yet. I need to get it all out on paper first, put the story down so I can get it sent out to the major news outlets. Everyone needs to know what’s going on there. I just… I need a night where all I’m thinking about is us, and Lakeshore, and simple small-town stuff.”
A snort slips out of me. “Like murder?”
The shadows flicker across his eyes. “Someone got killed here? Again?”
“Don’t sound so surprised, James.” I can’t believe he’s back here with me. Right when I need him, he’s here. Jackson Fillmore getting stabbed to death in the Pine Lake Inn could ruin me but with James here to help, to love me and support me and help make things right, I know everything will turn out fine.
He stands up, slowly and painfully, and takes a few steps to stretch out a stitch in his side. “Should’ve known. We were way overdue for something bad to happen here, weren’t we? So. Tell me what happened.”
I’m still a little stung by the idea that I might have never seen him again, and how he won’t open up to me about why. “You first. What happened in East Timor?”
He reaches out for my hand. I give it to him. “I will tell ya, Dell. All of it. Right now it’s just too fresh. Too much pain there, and I’m not talking about the injuries I took. It’s a hard tell. Right now it’s jumbled up in me head and I need to get it straight before I talk about it. I’ll give you the whole story, just give me time. Please? These were bad men who had me. I can tell ya that much. They’ve got connections to some bad organizations, including the ‘Ndrangheta.”
“Well, we know those blokes, true enough.” Those mobsters had tried to kill me and James and lots of other people I cared about over the years. I guess it was too much to hope for that we’d heard the last of them. “So… it was that bad?”
“It was, but it’s over now. I kind of get the impression that what’s going on here is more pressing. Am I right?”
“Sort of. This could be bad for the Inn. For me and Rosie, too. Come on and sit down again. Might take me a bit.”
I start with the Royal Hobart Regatta, and with the officials from the Tassie government deciding to stay here, leading up to Jackson Fillmore’s murder. Shortly right after that Carly came back in with the white plastic first aid box. From inside, she and I take out iodine wipes and gauze bandages and start cleaning James’s face while I tell the rest of the story. Carly fills in details when I miss them because there’s a lot to remember. The murder, the knife from my own kitchen, how both suspects might have a motive and how one of them is under arrest even though either one of them could have done it.
At the end of it, he gives a low whistle. “That’s pretty wild, even for Lakeshore. Been some crazy things here in this town. Not the first murder in your Inn, either, but you’re right. This one’s gonna be bad if we don’t solve it. No witnesses, two good suspects. So what was the plan? Dell Powers always has a plan to solve these things.”
Carly snickers. “He knows you right well, doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” I say, “he does.”
Sort of got stars in my eyes, I have to admit. I love this man, like I’ve loved no one since my husband died. Having him with me, knowing he didn’t abandon me, makes me feel like I’ve found a piece of me that I didn’t even know I’d lost. There’s no one understands me like James Callahan does. Not Carly, not my best friend Rosie, not even my Kevin. If there’s such a thing as being lucky enough to find two soulmates in your life, then I’m the luckiest girl alive because here sits the second great love of my life.
James shifts on the bed, tapping gingerly at the hydrogel bandage I stuck over the wound on his forehead. “So, seriously. What was the plan to catch the killer?”
I take out my mobile to demonstrate. “I’m going to call Thornton Dunfosse’s credit card company and pretend to be him, complaining about my bill, and have them read off every transaction he’s made in the last few months. If there’s something fishy there, Kevin can follow up on it. I should have all the information I need right from the registration form he filled out to stay here.”
James nods, obviously impressed by my well-thought-out plan. “Okay, but say they ask for a security answer? What’ll you do then?”
I shrug. “Wing it, and mutter something into the phone and hope the person on the other end of the call just gives me the answer trying to confirm what I said.”
He nods again. “Okay. Good, good. Just one more question.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t ya think they’ll notice that beautiful voice of yours isn’t a man’s?”
Carly claps her hands. “Yes! See, that’s what I told her.”
I frown at both of them, because I know it’s a good plan whether they want to admit it or not. “Fine, then what’s your suggestion, James Callahan?”
He holds his hand out toward me, wriggling his fingers in a “gimme” motion. “Let me make the call.”
Amazing what you can find out about someone from where they spend their money.
After what I can only categorize as an amazing performance by James with a woman who was left flustered and confused by the end of their phone call, we had a long written list of credit card transactions that had been made by Thornton Dunfosse. I have to believe that several of them were ones he wanted kept secret. They were the sort of thing a man didn’t brag about in public. They were also the sorts of things that could kill a career in politics, even for someone who made his career out of the public eye, as a professional assistant like Thornton did.
Which meant they were the kind of secrets he would have killed to keep Jackson Fillmore from spreading around. Did Jackson find out about some of this? All of it? Did he maybe threaten to expose Thornton just like Stephanie had suggested? If he thought that he would never find work in politics again he might just have thought that was a good enough reason to commit murder.
The real question was, how would we get Thornton to admit to that?
Rosie was the one who answered when I called the phone down in the kitchen. James finally told me that he hadn’t eaten at all today, or most of yesterday, but that was as much as I got out of him about his misadventure. It was enough, for now. Now I could do something to help him feel better, even if it was just getting food in his belly.
“This is Rosie Ryan,” Rosie answered. “The kitchen isn’t open. Sorry.”
“Rosie? This is Dell. What
are you still doing here? I thought you went home to that husband of yours before the twins tied him up and shaved him bald.”
“Oh my,” she laughs, and then laughs harder. “That does paint a picture, don’t it? My two little angels. They certainly do have their daddy wrapped right around their littlest fingers. Well. He’s just going to have to hold on for a bit longer. Had us an emergency down here.”
I roll my eyes. Rosie telling me there was an emergency in the kitchen is an everyday event, more or less, so much so that it doesn’t scare me like it used to. “What happened? Do we need to make an insurance claim?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that this time. We, er, just need to replace our shakshouka we had planned for tomorrow’s breakfast with something else. I may have broken the eggs.”
“How many? We can always run down to the Milkbar tomorrow morning and buy what we need.”
“Er, ‘fraid not, Dell. I didn’t just crack a couple of them. I, er, sort of broke them all. Every last one of the buggers.”
I don’t even ask how she managed to do that. She’s Rosie Ryan, and I’ve seen the sorts of things she’s capable of. But she is a great cook and replacing twelve dozen eggs because she’s a bit of a klutz is just the way it goes at the Pine Lake Inn. “Okay, Rosie. We’ll talk about that later. Can I get you to make up some sandwiches and bring them up to my room? For three people, please. And some crisps. Oh, and… I’ve got something I need to tell you when you get here.”
“Got it,” she says, followed quickly by, “Have them up in a jiff.”
It had occurred to me earlier that I hadn’t told Rosie about the murder yet. Sure we’re trying to keep it quiet but Rosie’s my partner and my best friend. She deserves to know. Especially since any negative consequences were going to affect her the same as they did me.
James was sitting up at the head of my bed now with all of my pillows stacked up behind his back. I’ve more than a few, but it’s a woman’s prerogative to layer her bed in pillows she may or may not ever use. Just like it was my prerogative to change my room to suit me. I had repainted again, and now the walls are pink, and the trim is purple. Next week I’d planned on putting little heart stencils on the wall around the window. I’m a businesswoman everywhere else in the Pine Lake Inn. Here, I’m just a woman.
From where he’s sitting, James reads down the list of transactions he meticulously wrote out on a page of a spiralbound notebook I keep up here to jot down ideas for the Inn when they strike me in the middle of the night. Consider bidets, one note said. Jet Ski rentals, said another suggestion that came to me way after midnight. Both of those got scribbled out when I looked at them in the more reasonable light of day. James’s list starts under the note about hot air balloon rides for the guests on Australia Day. Still considering that one.
“These payments here, the ones for meals,” he says, trying to group them into similar types, “these might be interesting, if we could show that he was with someone sketchy. That’d take time, and time is something we don’t have. So forget those. Got a few utility bills here, not a wise choice to pay those with a credit card unless a man’s looking to get buried so far in debt that he’ll never see sunlight again. Still, nothing criminal in that. It’s these ones I’ve underlined here, here, and these three here that’ll have him skewered. Bet ya both a fiver that this is what he killed Jackson Fillmore over.”
“So you really think he’s the killer?” I ask him, wondering how he can be so sure.
He shrugs and turns a page. “Maybe yes, maybe no. Don’t think we’ve got enough info to say it’s him over Stephanie, or her over Thornton. One of them did the deed. I’m just saying those transactions give us more than just motive. They point to a whole different life that Thornton’s been living. Got more of it on this page. More utility payments, too. Man must be up to his ears in debt…”
“Wait,” I say to him. “Let me see that list.”
He hands over the notebook to me and then settles back on the pillows, closing his eyes. What happened to him up there in East Timor? What did he go through to get back to me? He’ll tell me when he’s ready, he said. Kind of reminds me of the time Kevin got his arm broken playing football in high school. He was in mad pain, but he just sucked it up and said it was nothing. Men and their pride, I guess. It’s up to us women to be the reasonable ones.
The list on the pages was neatly organized, each entry with a space between, the date and the reason listed right beside the actual transaction number. James was right about how inflammatory the entries were that he had underlined, but I was more interested in some of the mundane ones.
“These utility payments,” I point out. “There’s electricity and there’s garbage pickup and TasWater and even a Netflix subscription.”
“Yeah?” Carly says. “That’s pretty much life in Tassie, isn’t it? Can’t get by without paying those bills. Unless your mother’s kind enough to let you stay in her Inn, that is.”
She pulls a sort of smile for me when she says that. I guess her living off my generosity has been grating on her more than I realized. Good for her. In no time at all she’ll be back on her feet. I’ve no doubt about that. “You’re right,” I tell her, “but my point is this. Every month there’s these utility payments, and then every month, he pays them a second time.”
James frowns at the notebook. “Huh. Didn’t notice that. Guess me girlfriend’s got a good head on her shoulders for details.”
“You know it.” I have to agree with him. Not just because he called me his girlfriend, either, although that’s a definite plus. “So riddle me this, you smart people here in my bedroom. Why is Thornton Dunfosse paying two sets of utility bills?”
It’s Carly who snaps her fingers with the answer first, although I kind of get the impression that James let her beat him to the punch. “He’s got two places he’s paying for!”
“I think so, yes.”
James coughs, and I can tell that it hurts him by the way he slouches forward. Then he breathes in deep and points to the list. “Know what kind of person keeps two residences?”
“Sure do,” I tell him. “Someone who’s got something to hide. Question is, what?”
“Think you should leave that to me,” he says. “A little more investigation and we’ll have it.”
Then he swings his feet over the edge of the bed, and his face turns red with the effort. If he thinks he’s fooling me then maybe he doesn’t know me anywhere near like he thinks he does.
“What I think you should do,” I tell him sternly, “is get yourself to hospital.”
He glowers at me but doesn’t argue. That’s how I know the pain is just as bad as I think it is. So now we’ll add a trip to the hospital in Hobart onto our to-do list for the night…
“Here we are!” I hear Rosie calling out in a sing song voice from the other side of my door. “Sandwiches for everyone!”
Carly goes over and quickly opens the door for her. Rosie’s there, smiling and holding up a tray of sandwiches cut in fourths. Turkey and swiss, ham and lettuce, and others. It’s a veritable feast she’s got there in her hands, complete with cans of lemonade that still have beads of sweat on their metal sides.
James looks at the food appreciatively. “Oh, that looks grand, that does. Haven’t seen anything that good in weeks!”
A yelp of surprise bursts out from Rosie as she sees who it is sitting there, and her hands fly up to cover her mouth.
Which means she just tossed the tray with our supper up into the air.
Just as I’m picturing all that food going all across my bedspread and the rug and the walls and possibly the ceiling, my Carly steps in to catch the tray from both sides as it comes down from its comically graceful arc, the sandwiches settling into place like nothing happened, the cans of drink toppling onto their sides like cylindrical dominoes and rolling, but not dropping.
For a moment, nobody in the room moves.
Then Rosie claps her hands together. “For goodness sake, Carly. T
hat was a bit of a miracle right there.”
Carly sets the tray down on the bed like she doesn’t want to risk hanging onto it any longer than she has to. “Yeah… Guess sometimes things just fall into your hands.”
“Like this guy here?” Now she’s smiling, thrilled to see James here again. “My, oh my, James, thought we’d seen the last of ya. Back for good this time? Please say yes. Place just isn’t the same when James Callahan isn’t here.”
“If I have my way,” he tells Rosie, looking over my way, “I’ll never leave here again.”
I don’t know exactly what that means, but I like the way he said it.
Well, there’s sandwiches to be eaten, and James is going to hospital tonight even if I have to drag him the whole way there myself, and I need to tell Kevin what we found out about Mister Thornton Dunfosse’s financials. Got all this to do, so I might just as well get to it.
Starting with filling Rosie in on what’s been happening in our Inn.
“Come on and sit down, Rosie,” I tell her. “I’m afraid that husband of yours will be watching your kids for a bit longer. Got some news to tell you.”
Chapter 8
I woke up the next morning fighting a headache. I couldn’t remember a single one of my dreams from the four hours I was able to squeeze in after getting back from hospital, but there was a feeling of general uneasiness and dark, fuzzy memories that broke apart like cobwebs.
Time to get up.
Lots to do today. Gotta talk to Kevin again. Gotta find Thornton and make him explain himself. That’ll be up to Kevin, actually, but it’s gonna have to start here, because the bloke came back to his room last night. That makes it my job to coax him down to the police station without him suspecting we’re onto him. A late-night call to my son set that plan into motion. After going through Thornton’s financials with a fine-tooth comb, and using a few other little tricks that James came up with, we now know that Thornton is guilty of several things.