Inn Over Her Head

by Dixie Davis

  Heidi straightened her already perfect jacket. “Now, we can’t stop anybody from buying a business in town, but this is a private organization, and we make our own rules. I propose that we amend our bylaws to prevent convicted felons from being members — and to state that if a member is accused of a felony, their membership is automatically rescinded.”

  A split second of silence testified to the impact of her words. It took Lori a second to process the statement, too. But she didn’t have to be convicted to lose in the court of public opinion.

  Would this tide turn against her?

  “Second,” a man called from the back. Possibly the man who was in a hurry a minute ago.

  “Let’s put it to a vote,” Heidi said. “All in—”

  Lori leapt to her feet. “Wait! You can’t do this.”

  Heidi’s bloodthirsty grin grew wider. “Of course I can. I’m the vice president, and this is a private organization.”

  “I know — I know that. But, please, listen to me.”

  Heidi stopped short of rolling her eyes, and silence fell over the room like nightfall.

  Great. Now what was she supposed to say?

  Lori looked around at the audience — her friends and neighbors. Her community.

  “Is this who we really are? When someone has something terrible happen to them, we can’t listen to them, instead of spreading vicious rumors?”

  Lori tried hard not to send a pointed look in Kim Yates’s direction and pressed on. “Who here hasn’t had a bad experience with a customer?”

  Silence.

  “Come on, show of hands.” Lori waited, but no hands went up. “Exactly. Now, how many of you have murdered the customer over it?”

  A chuckle passed through the room, though with the events of the month, it was hardly a laughing matter.

  “I know you probably don’t believe me. I’m not going to ask you to believe, even though I am innocent.” She barely dared to check for a reaction to that statement; she saw none.

  “Regardless of what you might think about me, we’re supposed to be a community here. Yes, we want families — like the family staying in my inn right now — to feel safe and comfortable here. But the composition of the DCBOA isn’t what brought them here.”

  Lori paused for another mild laugh before continuing. “People come here to experience our community. That’s what brings tourists and residents alike to Dusky Cove and every other small town like us. It’s what brought me here, first on vacation, and then to live and work. We come to feel like we’re part of this community. Maybe I was naïve, but I thought that was what I was doing by coming here and joining the BOA in the first place: to be part of this community.”

  “But you’re not.” Heidi’s voice sliced across hers. “You’re inexperienced. You overreacted to your very first customer over what? A review?”

  It felt like a cold wind swept through the room. She’d felt people warming to her, seen the nods and smiles, but Heidi’s icy tone was avalanching all those inroads.

  “I propose,” a man called from the back, “that we adjourn.”

  “What?” Lori and Heidi said in unison. Lori turned to find Mitch sitting in the back corner, looking bored out of his mind.

  “We have work to do, and bylaw votes take forever. Submit the change in writing to the committee and give us time to think about this change — and remember all the things we’ve done wrong over the years.”

  Still standing, Lori had a good view of the reaction to Mitch’s proposal. Half the room seemed to be nodding in an oh-yes-that’s-very-reasonable way, while the other half was simply impatient. Though Lori couldn’t be totally sure whether they were impatient with Mitch’s proposal or just the length of the meeting.

  “Well,” Heidi started.

  “And,” Mitch cut her off, “I propose that we don’t really need to go messing in the bylaws where we’ve already laid out the reasons for removal.”

  Lori beamed at him and finally remembered to sit down. As much as it felt like everyone was against her, there were still a few people who believed in her: Andrea, Ray, Mitch.

  Community indeed.

  Lori couldn’t make out enough of the responses to Mitch’s latest proposal amid the chatter filling the room. Heidi pounded on the lectern and called for order, but it looked like she’d finally lost this one. Other members were standing, even starting to fold chairs, led by Mitch himself.

  Lori definitely had to thank him. She hopped up and folded her chair, and hurried over to the rack where he was helping to load the folded chairs.

  “Thank you so much,” she said as soon as she was in range. “I was worried nobody out there had a lick of sense.”

  Mitch took her folded chair and grinned. “I do try to keep at least a lick about me. Too much and people talk, though.”

  “People talk no matter what you do.”

  He nodded and hung her chair on the rack. “Too true.” His voice turned almost wistful.

  Lori shuffled closer a step to lower her voice. “I really do appreciate your backup. Seems like I’m already guilty to most people around here.”

  Mitch gave the room a grim glance. “Let’s just say I know what that’s like.”

  Lori furrowed her brow at that admission, and his serious tone. Had he done something, or even been accused of it? Would Heidi’s proposed bylaw hurt Mitch too?

  Before Lori could invite Mitch to talk about it if he — or she — ever needed, another group of members brought over their chairs all at once.

  Kim Yates was the ringleader this time. She leaned over to one of her cronies, but there was no way she thought she was being subtle. “I heard Heidi might still have a key to the Mayweather House from her sister,” Kim said in a stage whisper.

  Kim traipsed away, trailing her entourage behind her, and Lori watched her go. Had the town’s gossip mill joined Lori’s side in this one?

  Mitch hung up the last chair and maneuvered closer to Lori to half-whisper, “Did you hear that?”

  “How could I miss it?”

  “You know,” he said, raising his voice to a normal conversational level, “I never did get to take a look at that sliding door that was giving you trouble.”

  Right, the door from Dawn’s room to the porch. Because when they’d tried to go in, they’d found her.

  He dialed his volume back down a notch. “And it might not be a bad idea to get new keys.”

  Lori nodded in complete agreement. “Don’t tell me you’re town locksmith, too.”

  “We’ve only got so many people in town. We had to double up on the career cards in The Game of Life.”

  Lori laughed. “So you’re handyman and locksmith?”

  “No, if you really want new locks, I’d pick them up from the hardware store.”

  “Then what’s your second card?”

  The question seemed to catch Mitch off guard. Or maybe it was finding himself actually answering her that surprised him. “I teach at Brunswick Community College. Botany.”

  “Oh.” She couldn’t keep the I’m-impressed cadence out of the single syllable. “Putting your degree to good use?”

  “Yep, that and saving amateur gardeners from the plants that want to eat them.”

  A laugh died in Lori’s throat. Those not-delphiniums — the wolf’s bane in her yard. Before she could continue the conversation, another man — Walt from the Riverboat Motel — called Mitch over to help push the rack of chairs into its spot in the corner. “I think I could squeeze you in tomorrow afternoon.”

  “For . . . ?”

  “New locks.”

  “That would be great. Thank you.” They were going to run up quite a bill by the time he got around to that squeaky door.

  Lori found Joey working in the flower beds when she reached the Mayweather House.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “DCBOA meeting.”

  He cast a grimace up at her. “Was Heidi there?”

  “Unfortunately. But t
urns out I have at least a couple people on my side.”

  Joey yanked out a dandelion. “Yeah? Like who?”

  “Ray,” Lori began, pointing at Dusky Card and Gift, “Andrea, Mitch.”

  The last name got Joey’s attention. “Mitch?”

  “The handyman?”

  He nodded slowly. “The guy who was leaving when I got here after you found the body?”

  She was surprised he remembered that. “I think that was him, yes.”

  “Hm.” Joey left his reply at that.

  “What do you mean, ‘hm’?”

  “I’m not sure if that’s all he wants.”

  Lori started to defend him, but then she remembered: Mitch was on the suspects list. The chief of police suspected him, though that might be for personal reasons. And he’d identified the plant that was used to poison Dawn.

  Was being friendly with her one way to throw her off the trail?

  He still had no motive, but Lori couldn’t rule him out quite yet, much as she wanted to.

  For purely professional reasons. A good handyman was hard to come by, especially in a town where they had to double up on the career cards.

  Lori caught herself smiling at the joke again.

  “Do you think we need flowers?” Joey interrupted her thoughts with a gesture toward the rosebushes in her sandy side yard. “For the wedding?”

  “I think some of our roses will be perfect.”

  Joey held out a hand for help up and she obliged him. “Another thing about you: you always make the best out of everything. And everybody.”

  Lori smiled up at him. But did that include trying to overlook evidence against Mitch because she liked him — rather, because he was nice?

  The next afternoon, Lori sat on the dark floral couch in the middle of the parlor and pretended her crossword was absorbing all her attention. Joey had picked up new locks at the hardware store and Mitch had managed to find a few minutes to come by. Now, Mitch was installing the new deadbolts for them.

  The more she thought about it, the less sense it made for Mitch to be involved at all. Somehow the killer snuck aconite into the lemon thyme zucchini bread, and there would be no way of knowing who would eat them or when. Did an indiscriminate killer warn a potential victim away from his poisonous plant? Or did he cultivate that plant on the victim’s property?

  He’d have to be pretty twisted. Mitch didn’t seem twisted. Volunteering to help her out, standing up for her at the DCBOA meeting yesterday, teaching at a community college. She’d checked Brunswick Community College’s website that morning. M. Griffin was teaching Biology 120: introductory botany Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. The only other piece of evidence against him was Chief Branson’s grudge that dated back to high school.

  Unless his grudge was more than juvenile rivalry.

  One way to find out, and Chief Branson wasn’t about to answer her questions. Or work on her doors.

  Lori set aside her crossword and stood up from the couch. “So, Mitch,” she began once she was close enough. “Chief Branson doesn’t seem to like you very much.”

  He concentrated on his work. “Yeah, well, a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.”

  Lori shook her head, blinking away her surprise. “What?”

  Mitch looked up, already laughing silently. “No, he doesn’t like me.”

  “Feeling isn’t mutual?”

  “The guy who wins is a lot less likely to hate the guy who loses.”

  “A one-time contest, or a long-standing thing?” Lori asked.

  “When you think of rivals in Dusky Cove, you think of us.”

  Lori pondered him for a minute, but Mitch was focused on his work, driving in the screw on the lock. “What was the rivalry over? Not sports, I hope.” That really would be juvenile for the chief of police to hang onto.

  Mitch flashed a grin at her. “Yes, sports. And everything else.” He turned back to his work, paying that screw a little more attention than seemed necessary. “He was football captain, and I was basketball.”

  “You?” Lori realized a second too late that her tone was incredulous. “I mean, not that you don’t seem like an athlete. You seem very strong. Um, athletic. Uh . . .”

  Mitch pursed his lips to hide a smile, letting her tongue trip all over itself. “Thanks,” he finally said, once her face was fully burning.

  Time to change the subject. “So the chief assumes you’re guilty of murder because . . . your team had a better record than his?”

  He laughed. “You know it wouldn’t have gotten that ugly if a girl hadn’t gotten in the middle of it.”

  Ah. Now that made a little bit more sense. But only a little. “And you won?”

  “Married her.” Mitch got to work on the lock again, still driving that screw home.

  Right. Ray had recommended him as his son-in-law.

  But Mitch had corrected that title the first time he’d come over: former son-in-law. If Chief Branson was still this mad, hardly seemed likely that the girl had left Mitch for the chief.

  Sounded like unhappy endings all around. That might be enough to spark twenty-odd years of bitterness.

  Most of all, it sounded like enough of a reason to dismiss Mitch as a suspect.

  “How’s it going?” Joey’s voice came from behind Lori. She jumped and turned around.

  “Almost done,” Mitch said, giving the screwdriver a final twist.

  “Good.” The smug finality rang through that one syllable, like Joey would be as glad as Chief Branson to be rid of this guy.

  But not for the same reason, of course. Right?

  “Mitch, right?” Joey asked.

  Mitch stood and shook his hand. “Remind me of your name?”

  “Joey. Lori’s fiancé?”

  “Lucky man.” Mitch clapped him on the shoulder.

  Joey slid his hand into Lori’s. “Guessing we won’t need your services quite so much here on out.”

  What? Lori glanced at Joey, then Mitch. He gave the lock a final once-over and then met Joey’s gaze. “Oh?”

  “I’m going to be here full time, once we’re married. In three weeks.”

  Lori barely managed to keep her mouth shut. Joey was many things, but handy wasn’t one.

  Mitch nodded. “Great. Congratulations.”

  “Uh,” Lori said. Both men turned to her, and their gazes fell like a weight. She didn’t want to contradict Joey, but they would need a handyman. With the whole town doubling up on career cards, it wasn’t like they could cut ties. “Thank you,” she finally finished.

  Mitch smiled, and something about his eyes said he understood way more than either of them had said. “You’re welcome. Have a good day.”

  Mitch handed over the new keys to the Mayweather House and headed out. Even without him standing there, Lori decided not to call Joey on his bluff, especially not when he’d see the light soon.

  “Hey,” Joey said, “did you want me to fix the date on your computer now?”

  Was it still wrong? “That would be great.”

  “Okay, I’ll give my buddy a call. He’ll know what to do.”

  “Thanks, hon.”

  Joey’s return grin seemed a little . . . off, somehow. Maybe it was his wounded pride at not being Mr. Fix-It.

  Lori headed to her office to change out the keys and tackle the last of the data entry catch-up. She’d only made it through two pages, however, when the phone rang. “The Mayweather House,” she answered. “Lori speaking.”

  She’d figure out a good phone greeting one of these days.

  “Hi, um, Lori?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Hollis Boice.” When Lori didn’t respond, he added, “Your lawyer.”

  Her stomach began to petition for a rebellion. “Hi, Mr. Boice.”

  “Please, Hollis. I’m afraid I have bad news.”

  Lori drew a bracing breath and gripped the edge of the desk. What would “bad news” look like to the lawyer of a woman facing murder charges?

&nbs
p; “The DA called today and offered a plea deal.”

  How was that bad news? Wasn’t that admitting their case wasn’t very good? “Why did they do that?”

  “They seem to think you’d cave in light of their new, overwhelming evidence. Apparently, somebody has brought an email you wrote to the police and — that was really stupid.”

  Lori glanced around, like she could search her email with her eyes. She hadn’t written anything incriminating, had she? “What was stupid? What did it say?”

  “Well, where you said the victim was insufferable and you knew how to fix her before she ruined you.”

  “What?” Horror crept over her. “I never — is this real?”

  Hollis sighed. “The police said the headers and the IP address checked out, that it had to have come from your computer, a day before Dawn’s body was found.”

  No. No. “Mr. Boice, Hollis — I would never, ever — I didn’t —”

  “Okay, okay. I know. You’re innocent. It just looks bad.”

  That was an understatement. “Yeah. Did it say who I was writing to?”

  “Uh . . . Kelly something. Hang on, I’ve got it here.” The sound of paper shuffling carried across the line. “KellyArmstrong at yipmail dot com.”

  She didn’t know a Kelly Armstrong. Lori mumbled a goodbye to Hollis and turned to her computer, dismissing the Skype window where Adam had postponed their big talk. She opened her email program and typed Kelly in the search box. No results. She tried Armstrong and KellyArmstrong, too, but found nothing, not even in the deleted messages. She even scrolled through her sent messages back to that day and found nothing.

  What was going on here? Had someone hacked her, or broken into her office?

  If someone had poisoned the zucchini bread, breaking into the office and faking an email would have probably been easy.

  Before Lori could figure out what to do, her phone rang again. This time, she recognized the caller: Dusky Card and Gift. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Lori, it’s Ray.”

  She forced herself to smile even though he couldn’t see her. Hopefully he wasn’t calling to find out why Joey had sent Mitch packing. “How are you, Ray?”