by Dixie Davis
There could have been reconciliation. There could have been peace. There could have been healing. Instead, there were lies and secrets and cheating.
And Ray was going to continue it all. For Katie’s sake? For his own?
But did Lori have any right to stop him? Could she march upstairs and tell Katie the truth herself? She didn’t want Katie’s death on her hands any more than Ray did.
Lori set her jaw and let her gaze fall to the table. “No easy answers here, are there?”
“Is it bad that I almost wish she hadn’t come back? That she’d stayed missing?”
Lori patted his wrist where it laid on the table. “No, I think that’s pretty normal. No wrong way to grieve, you know.”
Ray nodded, his gaze distant again.
Ray’s words piqued a new curiosity in Lori’s mind. She’d been so upset that she’d come back that Lori had never stopped to consider it: why had Debbie come back? She’d apparently settled and built some kind of life in Atlanta. Had running gotten to her? The lies? Did she want closure? To say goodbye? Or did she want Mitch back? Her parents? Had she decided to reconcile with them all?
Lori turned to ask Ray, but he was still lost in the distance. He wouldn’t know what she wanted. It would be only a guess. Hadn’t he just lamented that he apparently didn’t know his daughter at all?
“One conversation,” Ray murmured. “What I wouldn’t give for just one conversation. One question, even.”
“There are always questions when someone dies.”
Ray turned to her. “When your husband died?”
Lori had to admit that Glenn’s death seventeen years ago didn’t leave many unanswered questions. Although he hadn’t been sick terribly long, she’d had a chance to settle things, say goodbye, get closure.
“For all we know, that was exactly why Debbie came back,” Lori pointed out. “And she was killed before she got the chance.”
Dimly, Lori remembered that yesterday, she’d wondered if Ray might have been capable of violence. Looking at this deflated, defeated dad, she knew he hadn’t hurt his daughter. All he wanted from her was one answer, and surely if she’d come back here, she would have given him that.
“We’ll never really know,” he said darkly.
“No, we won’t. Sometimes, we just have to choose the thing that gives us the most peace. The most hope.”
He turned his faded blue eyes on her. “I’ve let hope fester for ten years, but now I see what a mistake it was. Hope is cruel.”
Lori patted his wrist again and let the conversation lapse for a long time, sitting, suffering in silence until they heard stirrings from upstairs. Ray stood to go to his wife, and Lori stood to leave.
“Ray?” she said. He paused on the stairs. “We’re going to find out who took her from you.”
Ray simply nodded, numb again, and continued up the stairs.
She’d braced herself, Lori realized, for his argument — no one had taken Debbie. She’d left.
But she’d come back, and someone had taken her.
Lori locked the door behind her, vowing to herself: she would find out who had done this. Even if it meant Mitch or Chip went to jail for the rest of his life.
Lori returned to the inn, determined to head straight to her office. She needed to make a list or something, try to organize and evaluate the evidence, figure out what she was overlooking. There had to be some clue or something she just hadn’t noticed yet.
When she reached the kitchen, however, she remembered her other responsibilities. The joys of innkeeping. Her primary job, she reminded herself.
She stopped by the laundry room and gathered up the clean linens. With a quick folding session — a load of towels was only a couple minutes of work these days — she was ready to refresh her guests’ rooms.
Lori changed out the towels downstairs first. The suite had been empty last night, but Adam would be arriving tonight. Normally, she was grateful for the help, even if her sons weren’t working like hired housekeepers around the inn. But this weekend, she needed help of a different kind entirely, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to involve her sons in that kind of work at all.
Lori carried the towels up past the main floor to the guest rooms upstairs. The Oak Island Room and Bald Head Island Suite didn’t need new towels. Lori knocked at the door to the Carolina Beach Room. When there was no answer, she ducked in to change out the towels, make the bed and grab the trash bag, glad she’d filled the can with several liner bags so she didn’t have to spend time changing that out. She deposited the trash — only brochures — in the trash bag in the linen closet, leaving the dirty towels on the cart for a moment while she visited the last two rooms.
Next, she knocked at the door to the Ocean Isle Beach Room. “Housekeeping.”
“Just a minute,” called a man from inside. Mr. Kirk, Lori reminded herself. Shawn, the one who was sad and had a tan line from his missing ring.
She’d hoped her chores would be quick, but this delay was already messing up her timeline. Lori tried to be patient as she waited for him, reminding herself that her grief — and Ray’s and Katie’s and Mitch’s — wasn’t the only one in the world. She wasn’t sure she could really gain that much perspective, though, in the midst of a murder investigation and all the other emotional baggage that was coming with this one in particular.
When Shawn finally opened the door, she was hit with a strong smell of smoke. She tried to peer past him to find the source.
“Can I help you?”
Lori held up the towels. “Housekeeping.”
“Right.” He stepped back to let her in. Lori headed for the bathroom, still trying to surreptitiously check for something burning. There was a book on the table, not on fire, and the remnants of his dinner in the trash can, also not smoking. The microwave and minifridge seemed fine.
But the smoke wasn’t a food smell or paper or wood or candle, Lori realized as she hung up the fresh towels. It was a harder, plastic smell. Had he tried reheating something in Styrofoam? She’d just added the small microwaves and fridges a month ago, and already they were causing problems.
Lori scooped up the dirty towels from the floor and hurried to toss them into the hall. As she turned back to the room, Shawn appeared behind her to close the door. Lori hopped back, startled. “Oh, I’m not quite finished.”
Shawn’s eyebrows lowered, but he stepped back again to let her in. She quickly straightened the bed, which hardly looked slept in anyway, and grabbed the bag from the trash can.
“Uh —” Shawn started to reach for her, but Lori stepped back into the hall.
“Is there anything else I can do for you? Dinner arrangements?”
The look of discomfort on Shawn’s face dissolved. “That would be great. Just something simple like a burger.”
Lori smiled and retrieved the towels from the floor. “Cheese? Onions? Pickles?”
“All of the above.”
“I’ll get right on that.” Lori turned away but stopped short. “Oh, and just so you know, because of insurance, we can’t have flames or fires of any kind in the guest rooms.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry, I left lunch in the microwave a little too long.” He gave a sheepish laugh.
“New microwaves.” Lori gave him a what-can-you-do shrug and turned away. She’d have to write up instructions on using the microwaves when she got a spare minute. Could she stick them to the microwaves? The fridges? Should she laminate them?
Yep, just another joy of innkeeping.
Finally, she knocked at the Sunset Beach Room. “Housekeeping.”
“Uh — come back later,” called the guest. Jared Lehanneur, Lori reminded herself. Some relative of the former chief.
“Can I just give you some clean towels?” Lori offered.
The door flew open and Jared leaned out, far too close to Lori. She skittered back. Had she not been in close enough quarters with him before to notice his total lack of understan
ding of personal space and hospitality?
Lori chided herself. Few people lived in an inn full-time, and maybe Jared wasn’t a big vacationer. She should work even harder to make sure he was comfortable. “Here you go,” she said, offering the towels.
Jared snatched them. “Thanks. Do you have a do not disturb sign or something?”
She tried not to take offense. “It should be in the nightstand drawer. Can I take your dirty towels?”
He shut the door in her face. This time it was a little harder not to be offended, but the door swung open again and a towel flew out, hitting Lori in the face.
Jared didn’t apologize and probably didn’t notice, slamming the door shut again.
He was certainly in a hurry to get rid of her. Good thing she had lots of other things to be doing.
Lori pondered on the best way to put up instructions for the new appliances, grabbing the rest of the dirty towels and dropping them off in the washer. She wouldn’t run it until the morning, just in case she ended up making any more laundry tonight. Seemed to be a bad habit — or an unlucky streak over the last year — whenever she started the washer, something else got dirty or stained immediately.
Once she was at her desk, she put in an order for a burger at Slush Puppy’s and pulled out her trusty legal pad. At last.
What evidence did she have?
She’d seen the body. She couldn’t tell what might or might not be evidence just by looking. Lori made a list of what she had noticed about Debbie’s body. Black blouse with tiny blue flowers. Black pants. No shoes. Dark hair, possibly dyed, but it was hard to tell when it was wet. Ring on her left ring finger.
The doorbell rang in her office, and Lori sighed, setting aside the legal pad. Shawn’s dinner was fast. Lori left her office and headed through the parlor to the front door, not bothering to check the peephole.
Chief Branson stood on her porch. When he saw her, he gathered up his weight and his breath and his belt, as if girding up his loins for hard work.
Or hard battle.
“Chip.” Lori nodded to him, trying to keep her tone cordial while her mind raced back to yesterday at the police station. Where he’d intimidated her.
Was he here to do that again?
And hadn’t Ray just told her he’d long believed Chip knew more about Debbie’s disappearance than he was letting on?
“Can I come in?” he asked.
He actually asked. Lori couldn’t remember perfectly right now, but it had seemed like most of the time, he’d pretty much demanded to come in, not waiting for an invitation.
Lori did the polite thing and moved out of the way. He stepped into the parlor and took the doorknob from her, pulling the door from her hands to shut it. “Are you busy?” he asked.
The legal pad flashed through her mind, and Lori measured Chip for a moment. He seemed calm, somber even. “No, not busy,” she said.
“We need to talk.”
Ice seemed to wash over Lori. Had something happened? One of her sons? Adam was on his way here right now.
Ray? Katie?
Mitch?
“What’s the matter?” Lori asked, the fear bleeding into her voice.
“We need to talk about your . . . investigation,” Chip said, as if choosing that last word with much care.
Oh. Lori pulled back before the relief even registered. “What about my investigation?”
“Lori.” His voice held pity and empathy. “You’ve got to stop this.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop pestering people about this. You’re digging up old wounds.”
Lori declined to point out the mixed metaphor. “It’s not my fault things came to the surface again.” She wasn’t proud of her word choice, either.
“You’re not helping,” Chip said, his tone now gentle. “I know that’s all you want to do, but you’re just making it worse for us.”
“‘Us,’ the police, or ‘us,’ you and somebody.” She waved a hand to indicate that could mean anyone. Not Ray or Katie or Kim specifically, even though they were the main ones she’d talked to.
“Both.”
Lori looked away, trying to focus on her fireplace. She didn’t particularly care if she was making it hard for the police, since she’d seen firsthand that they didn’t particularly care about justice once they thought they had their man. But she wasn’t trying to make life hard for Ray or Katie or Kim or Mitch or whoever.
When Lori’s eyes settled on Chip again, she could tell she wasn’t giving him the answers he wanted. The tight set of his jaw, his knuckles white as he gripped his belt below his belly. “Lori.” Now her name sounded stern. “You’ve got to cut this out.”
“I’m trying to help,” she said again. “Ray and Katie deserve to know the truth.”
“Yes, they do. Look, I’ve put up with you because you were helping, but this time you’re just too biased to help with anything.”
“Biased? Toward Ray and Katie?”
“Toward Mitch. Obviously.”
Lori scoffed. “You’re not biased this time?”
Chip’s eyebrows crept higher. “Bias has nothing to do with it. Mitch did this.”
“You can’t prove that — again — and that isn’t your job. That’s for a court to decide.” Some tiny corner of her brain sent up a prayer that when Mitch faced a court for the first time in the morning, the judge would throw out this ridiculous, nonexistent case. Or at least set bail.
“The court decides using the evidence we collect.”
A chill ran through Lori again. That sounded almost like a threat. “What kind of evidence, then?” she demanded.
“I don’t have to tell you that. I shouldn’t.”
Lori folded her arms and fixed him with a look of you’d better tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, young man. “As far as I can see, there’s as much reason to suspect you as there is Mitch.”
His neck started turning pink above the collar again. Lori had never seen him lose his cool quite like this before this weekend, but she really didn’t want a repeat of yesterday here, alone.
“You want evidence?” Chip released his belt and began to tick off items on his fingers. “One, how did you decide where to go crabbing?”
“I don’t know. It was Mitch’s choice.”
“Wrong answer: it was Debbie’s favorite spot.”
Lori threw up her hands. “How on earth would I know that?”
“So Mitch picked the spot?”
She buttoned her lips. No more inadvertent evidence against him if she could help it. “How could you remember that, anyway?”
“Who do you think took her there first?”
Lori tried to picture the bridge fishing spot as somewhere for romance of any kind and failed utterly, miserably. Even her own proposal — if that was what it was at all — was only magical at the time because of the sunset and the company.
“We’ve searched his house.” This time, his voice sounded like he was breaking bad news to her, as if she’d know exactly what that meant.
“And?”
Chip ticked off the next item on his fingers. “We found her diary from ten years ago. Paints Mitch in a pretty bad light.”
“But he didn’t kill her ten years ago. Obviously.”
Chip ignored her, charging onward. “We also found her wedding ring in his nightstand.”
“How do you know it was hers?” The question was out before she realized how ridiculous it sounded. But was the wedding ring Chip’s rival gave his old flame really etched into the man’s memory? Couldn’t it have been the ring Mitch was about to give her?
If that was even the case.
“I know, Lori,” Chip said in a low voice. She decided to concede that point and pretend her boyfriend wasn’t keeping his not-really-late wife’s ring as close as he could.
He shouldn’t have been her boyfriend.
Chip wasn’t finished. “His ph
one records showed that she called that morning.”
“Did he answer?”
Chip, for one, didn’t. “You think it’s a coincidence he found her body?”
“Wouldn’t it have been better to not find it? Or at least not with me?”
“You’re the perfect alibi,” Chip said. “If nothing else, you’d be the perfect witness because he knew you’d take it upon yourself to meddle in this and get him out of jail.”
Lori fixed her eyes on his. “You didn’t see him when he first saw her face. He didn’t know she was in Dusky Cove.”
Chip hung his head, but not in defeat. Like it pained him to tell her this. “Listen, Lori, I like you, despite everything. I think you’re a good person. You don’t deserve what he’s putting you through at the very least.”
She figured it was best not to thank him quite yet.
“You do deserve to know this. I’m telling you as someone who’s worried about you: you’ve got to get out from under Mitch’s spell as soon as you can.”
Lori bit back a scoff, though some part of her certainly felt she’d been under Mitch’s spell. She’d loved him, and he’d lied about — everything, about who he was.
“On his desk,” Chip said slowly, carefully, “we found divorce papers.”
The words plinked into her mind in silence at first, but within seconds, ten thousand questions thundered after them. Divorce papers. From Mitch? From Debbie? Dated when? Served? When? Signed? Finalized?
Her heart sent up a flare of hope, and Ray’s words came echoing back to her.
It really was cruel.
Mitch couldn’t be secretly divorced, Lori told herself. He’d told her he’d consulted a lawyer and hadn’t mentioned that. Instead, she braced for the worst.
“What did the divorce papers tell you?” she asked, her tone flat, almost too detached.
Chip shifted, looking away form her. “We suspect that she’d tried to serve them to him. That was why she’d called, and why he hadn’t answered.”
“He didn’t answer because he didn’t know the number. Why would he think his dead wife wanted to get in touch?” Once the words were out, Lori realized her own mistake: Mitch knew she wasn’t his dead wife.