by Dixie Davis
Both Clint and Karl had disappeared?
Lori turned around to check on Tom’s table. Had all three of Howard’s InnCon enemies vanished?
Tom was rounding the BedandBookingz.com table, looking like he was headed out.
She’d better catch up to him before he followed Clint and Karl’s example. Lori jogged across the exhibit hall, coming even with Tom.
When he turned to her, his eyes widened, showing off the startling shade of green. He didn’t have anywhere to run unless he actually wanted to flee from her, and Lori figured his business sense wouldn’t let him run from a potential customer. That was who she needed to look like — not someone investigating Howard’s death.
“Hello, again,” Lori said.
Tom nodded, biting his lip.
She searched for something to put him at ease. How about the one thing he’d always enjoyed talking about — his business? “So, your rates?” Lori asked for what felt like the millionth time.
“Yes, let me show you.” She could hear the “again” in his tone, but Tom flashed her a thin smile and pulled a brochure from his back pocket.
She glanced at the table of rates inside and nodded. “You’re right, that’s very competitive.” Lori lowered the brochure as they reached the doors to the hall. “I’ve been thinking about the other thing we talked about yesterday.”
Tom cocked his head to the side, stepping into the sunlight pouring through the plate-glass walls. “What was that?”
“Howard.”
He slowed to a stop, his eyes even warier. “What about him?”
“You told me he and Clint almost came to blows two years ago?”
“Oh, yeah. That.” Tom frowned. “Ugly business.”
Lori nodded. Everything seemed ugly when it led to murder. “So when you said that, were you . . . using hyperbole?” Her tenth-grade English teacher would surely be proud of her right now.
“Hm?”
“Exaggerating.”
Tom’s lips screwed up in a thinking expression. “I don’t know. You should have been there. I, personally, was scared for what they might do to one another. And who else might get hurt.” He tacked a shy smile on to the end of his sentence like he was looking out for her, when she obviously hadn’t been there.
There was charming, and there was plain stupid.
“Why do you ask?” Tom said. “You don’t think —”
He cut himself off as he obviously reached the same conclusion Lori had, but she filled in the blanks anyway. “Do you think another confrontation between them could have turned violent?”
Tom took a deep breath, folding his arms across his chest, really thinking this through. “I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to hear that it did, either.”
Lori’s stomach seemed to shrink.
“You think Clint might have hurt Howard?”
She shrugged, though the answer was obvious.
Tom rubbed his mouth, thinking another minute. “Okay, I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but I overheard something this morning in the breakfast room, and I just can’t get it out of my head.”
Lori moved a little closer, and Tom lowered his voice. “Two of the convention committee members were talking, and they were discussing the awards ceremony. They mentioned how tight the race had been for lifetime achievement — between Clint and Howard.”
Clint and Howard were up for the same award. That hardly seemed like a motive for murder, but it was another straw on a very heavily laden camel. And she’d seen them in action. Those two hardly needed another excuse to light the tinderbox that was their relationship.
Lori wrung her hands. “Have you seen Clint around today?”
“No, didn’t you hear? Something’s happened, and they canceled the whole prospective innkeeper track — all of Clint’s classes.”
Those classes were another reason Clint saw himself as Howard’s rival.
Tom jerked a thumb toward the nearest exit. “I have to step out for a minute. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.”
Lori nodded her thanks. She headed back into the exhibit hall. Though most people she talked to knew Clint or Howard or usually both of them, no one had seen Clint since the first day of the convention.
So much for finding evidence. By the time the last classes let out and the exhibit hall closed for the day, Lori had two very tired feet and no new leads in her case.
And every reason to think Clint was long since gone.
She’d been so close to him yesterday — right after he’d killed Vera. Why couldn’t she see that something had happened? Shouldn’t you be able to tell if the person you’re talking to just murdered your friend?
Lori sighed. She’d done everything she could here. She’d have to check for more leads from Dusky Cove.
By the time she reached the Mayweather House, Lori was surer than ever that Clint had killed Howard. The fit of passion only made sense. She’d seen both of them lose their tempers with one another. One unfortunate shove could have turned an argument into an accident. And then he’d fled from the scene.
But Vera’s murder made less sense. Why would a man who’d just killed someone — accidentally or not — hang around a small town, practically waiting to get caught, and then seize the opportunity to murder his first victim’s widow?
There was the rivalry aspect, but even that seemed like a weak explanation. They’d coexisted in Charleston all these years without murder. Why would InnCon or Dusky Cove change that? Some stupid award? Surely the loser for this year would be a contender in the future. It was an utterly ridiculous motive.
Leaving Lori with even fewer options than when she started.
Lori reviewed the last two days. It was hard to believe that it had only been yesterday morning that she’d last seen Howard alive. That felt like years ago, going to the Riverboat with the growing crowd, comforting Vera.
If it hadn’t been gruesome rubbernecking, that would have been a moment that felt like true community: her neighbors coming together in a time of need, people who could support and help one another.
Who could she turn to for help now? Obviously the police weren’t interested in pursuing this further since their case seemed to be closed. Walt wasn’t involved and had told her everything he knew. Mitch had been an amazing support the last two days, but it wasn’t like he’d tracked down a witness to interview in the meantime.
Wait. Who else might be interviewing witnesses? Curtis Hopkins, the newspaper editor, and husband of her Front Street neighbor, Andrea.
Lori was dialing Andrea before she even completed the sentence in her mind. “Hey, Andrea,” she said when her friend answered. “What’s the news?”
Andrea laughed. “I’m fine, thank you for asking. Are you calling about your friends?”
Lori silently thanked her friend for understanding. “Yes, I’m afraid the police aren’t really going to investigate. Chief Branson gets so stubborn when he has a suspect —” Lori cut off her criticism of the police. That wasn’t helping anything. “Has Curtis had any better luck?”
“Sometimes I think the two of you would make better friends than us.” Andrea gave a dramatic sigh. “But yes, Curtis dug up a witness, out walking his dog that morning.”
“What?” If Lori had had time to sit down, she would’ve shot to her feet. “A witness? Do the police know? What did he see?”
“He didn’t see anything: he heard it. And yes, we told the witness he needed to talk to the police about what he knew.” Andrea sounded like pushing the witness toward law enforcement was a hard choice.
Before Lori lived in Dusky Cove, she never would have understood that attitude. Now, although she knew the police usually tried their hardest, reluctance to go to the cops was beginning to make sense.
“Unfortunately,” Andrea continued, “he won’t be much help in identifying a suspect unless he has a voice sample to work with.”
Lori found herself wishing she’d tape recorded
the arguments they’d had with Clint two days ago. Surely that would have been the perfect sample.
“Could your witness make out what they were saying?” Lori asked.
“Hang on.” In the background on Andrea’s end, Lori could make out footsteps, then voices, then paper rustling. “Curtis wrote down that he heard, ‘You can’t; you’ll ruin us’ and ‘How much is my integrity supposed to cost?’”
Not as pointed as she’d hoped, but if the witness had heard Stop, Clint, you’re going to kill me, this whole mystery would be solved now. And Vera would still be alive.
“No names?” Lori asked.
“Nope, sorry. That’s all he said he heard, and then a crack and a thud. He ran around the corner to see, but there was nobody in sight.”
Lori nodded. She hadn’t been able to see Howard until she was right next to the walkway, and whoever pushed him must have run away immediately.
“He thought about checking the rooms, but it’s not his hotel, you know?”
“Yeah,” Lori murmured. She definitely wouldn’t want someone snooping around and bothering her guests.
Or would she, if a life was on the line? Probably.
“And besides, it wasn’t any of his business. He had no idea someone had gotten killed because of it.”
Lori nodded slowly. He was right, of course, but that didn’t make her job any easier.
“You’re welcome for the scoop for the next edition of the Dusky Chronicle. Try not to spread it around too much. We like to make it look like it’s worth subscribing to the newspaper and not just Kim Yeates’s Facebook feed.”
Lori allowed a little laugh, though Kim, owner of the Mimosa Café down the street from both the Mayweather House and Andrea’s museum, really was a one-woman gossip factory. It was a wonder she hadn’t already spread around some wild theory about the Bughs.
Or maybe she had.
Lori let the idea of going to Kim for suggestions float in her mind for less than a second before shooting it down. She’d only succeed in feeding the gossip mill, not getting anything useful out of it.
“By the way,” Andrea said, “your guests seemed to really love the museum yesterday. Even made a donation.”
“That’s wonderful, Andrea,” Lori said. “Thanks for all your help. I’ll talk to you later.” But simply saying thanks felt hollow. Andrea didn’t owe her anything, and yet she’d looked out for Lori once again, and she’d been willing to share her husband’s private reporterly notes.
She definitely needed to thank her friend somehow.
It took no time at all to see the convergence of all her needs: she did her best thinking while cooking and baking, and food just happened to be the best way to thank just about everyone.
Food really deserved to be its own love language. In fact, it was like a lingua franca of love.
Lori headed to the kitchen and Beth’s prodigious cookbook stash. She’d already found a few favorites on the shelves, and Lori grabbed one with a bookmarked recipe to try.
Once she’d read over the ingredients, Lori gathered them. The leftover croissant dough scraps in the fridge would be perfect for this, and she’d frozen peach slices earlier in the year when Tina Mendez brought by half a bushel.
Small-town living at its finest.
Lori thawed the peach slices in the microwave and made sure she had everything else she needed — sugar, cinnamon, and . . . soda? Lemon-lime soda, the recipe called for. She usually had a can or two of that around as it helped prevent sliced fruit from browning without the bitterness of lemon juice. Plus, the soda was good to have on hand for guests.
She found the soda just after the peaches finished their turn in the microwave. She rolled each slice into its own croissant blanket, placing them in a casserole dish.
Lori melted the butter in the microwave and stirred in the brown sugar. The recipe notes said it would probably be grainy, which was somewhat reassuring, since it meant she hadn’t made it wrong, but also not very appetizing.
On top of the peaches-in-a-blanket, she poured the brown sugar and butter mixture, then the sugar and cinnamon and . . . the soda?
If the recipe said so. With more than a little trepidation, Lori poured soda onto her peaches-in-a-blanket casserole.
She loved to try new things, but, she reminded herself, that did mean trying more than a few things that failed. Spectacularly.
Still, Beth had starred this recipe, so it must have worked out for her at least once. There were no adjustment notes.
Lori slid the pan into the oven and set to cleaning up the stainless steel counters.
Her mind got to work, too, contemplating the case again. Could Clint have had an accomplice, perhaps? Someone with a reason to kill Vera while Clint was at dinner with her?
Clint had asked to delay their dinner. But she and Vera hadn’t made their plans yet, so there was no way he could have known where Vera would be.
Who else might want to hurt them? Usually the biggest danger from disgruntled customers was getting a bad review, not murder. Besides, if an unhappy customer wanted to kill you, they knew where you lived. Why follow an innkeeper to a town three hours away?
Lori moved on to scrubbing not only the dishes in the sink, but the stainless steel sides themselves.
Should she even consider the police’s theory, that Vera had accidentally killed Howard and then committed suicide because of the guilt?
Sure, she could think of reasons why it looked like Vera had motive: she and Howard bickered, she had that new-ish life insurance policy on him. But that didn’t necessarily add up to murder. And with how much she talked about getting home to Peggy, she couldn’t have tried to kill herself before she got the chance to console her daughter.
Lori turned her rag to the stainless steel refrigerator doors.
The police’s theory was ridiculous, and that was the number one reason why Lori knew she had to investigate — because the police refused to take this seriously. A double murder, and it was up to her, an innkeeper and a newcomer in this town, to figure out who’d done it.
The timer rang. Had it been forty minutes already? Lori looked around: she’d scrubbed every surface in sight.
Just showed how much the case had her worked up.
Lori pulled the peach dumplings out. The smell of the cinnamon and brown sugar mixed with the perfectly ripe peaches was heavenly. She set the dish on the counter, and then hesitated.
This was a dish she’d fixed to bring to a friend, but what kind of friend would she be if she didn’t at least try it herself first to make sure it wasn’t one of those spectacular failures?
Lori scooped out two of the dumplings onto a plate and let them cool a little. The syrupy filling spread over the plate, thick and sweet. She fanned the plate until they were cool enough to eat, then finally tried a bite.
The tender, flaky dough had absorbed some of the sweetness of the sauce and the spice of the cinnamon. Wrapped around a juicy slice of fresh peach, it was the perfect combination of the tangy-tart peach and sweet brown sugar, with the buttery layers of croissant between them.
Lori eyed the rest of the casserole. She couldn’t bring over a dish clearly missing two pieces.
Lori found a slightly smaller dish with a lid and carefully transferred them, making sure to pour the last of the syrup in the pan over top of the rolls. Yes, this would definitely do as a thank-you gift.
Lori wished she could walk the dish down the street to the museum, but they were closed for the evening. It wasn’t much of a drive, but Lori was already becoming set in her small-town ways — where driving “across town” for a delivery like this was a chore, but driving to Wilmington for something big was a trip that felt worthwhile.
Lori shook her head at herself, already pulling into Andrea’s driveway. She carried the warm dish up to the door and knocked.
Andrea checked the sidelight window before she opened the door for Lori. “Hi there,” Andrea said. “You come bearing gifts?”
“Just a
quick thank you for passing along information.” Lori tried to keep her statement somewhat vague, though none of the neighbors were out after dark.
Andrea laughed. “You’re welcome. Hope it was helpful.”
Lori couldn’t help the skeptical look that flitted to her face. “I’m still stuck at square one in a lot of ways.”
Andrea patted her shoulder and accepted the casserole. “You’ll stumble across the right idea.”
“Thanks.” As much as Lori appreciated the vote of confidence, it was beginning to feel like she would stumble across another body before she got any closer to finding the killer on the loose in their town.
Andrea met her eyes with a steady, convincing gaze. “Lori, baby, you know you’ve got this. You figured it out the last time and got a confession on tape and everything. I have faith in you this time around, too. Have some faith in yourself.”
Lori managed an almost-real smile and thanked Andrea.
Unfortunately, she still had a lot of work to do before she could accept those assurances.
Back at the Mayweather House, Lori still couldn’t think of the right thing to do next. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, so it was still too early to try sleeping on the problem and hope a solution would come by the morning.
If she couldn’t work on the case, the least she could do would be to pack up Howard and Vera’s things. Obviously she’d have to get them back to Peggy.
Lori started in the bathroom, collecting the little travel tube of toothpaste and the toothbrushes. For a moment, she debated throwing them away. It wasn’t as though Peggy would have any use for them. Just as fast, however, she knew that it wasn’t her decision to throw away anything of Howard and Vera’s.
With a heavy heart, Lori made a sweep of the room, packing up the laptop, clearing the table, scooping the dirty clothes into one of the empty suitcases. She zipped up the bags, then carried the suitcase and laptop case downstairs.