Chapter 5
“So, that conversation,” I said to Ricky as we neared the highway back to the Rose Beach Inn. “That sounded kind of … suspicious, didn’t it?”
“I was thinking the same thing,” he nodded.
“It seemed easy to assume that what had happened last night was an accident, but what if it wasn’t?
Nobody seems to know if he was drunk or otherwise impaired, but if he wasn’t, how likely is it that a presumably healthy middle-aged man would simply fall off a balcony? ”
I thought about this. “I wonder what the sheriff’s deputies found in his room. Are they treating it as an accident?”
We both pondered this for a minute as we motored up the highway, following its curves as it dipped toward and away from the coastline.
My ponderings took a turn. I’d been having a great morning for the most part, other than my terrifying driving lesson, and even that held a certain kind of satisfaction.
Most importantly, all of the morning’s activities had been largely successful at keeping my mind off last night’s horrors.
I had a job to do, a promising fake relationship to nurture—into the real thing, if I could figure out how—and some sense of equilibrium and order to maintain.
Whatever had happened to Richard Rose, and whatever his sister and her companion had been talking about, seemed like Rose family matters, not something Ricky and I needed to go bumbling into.
I turned to Ricky. “We’re not doing this again, are we?”
“Doing what?” He raised his eyebrows in a mock-innocent look.
“Making a mess of our plans by playing detective. It’s none of our business. The police are on it. We have work to do. Besides, don’t we have more important, more fake-boyfriendy things to be doing?”
“Hmm. When you put it like that,” he said, his expression turning from mock-innocent to mock-solemn. “But there’s no harm in keeping our eyes and ears open, is there?”
I was incredulous. “Really? After what happened last time, in DC?”
“What happened last time? I had fun,” he said.
“And we got our work done, too. Our job here is basically to be on vacation. That’s not that hard.
And there are lots of couples that solve mysteries together.
Like Nick and Nora Charles. And Holmes and Watson, and, um, the Curies, solving the mysteries of science. ”
“Huh.” I thought back to my trip to Washington.
My sense of the experience had been colored over time by the stress of getting my article ready for print and my feelings of guilt and regret over not keeping in better touch with Ricky.
If I put myself back in those moments, though—racing around town in Ricky’s car, seeing places and meeting people I otherwise wouldn’t have, laughing and joking and bouncing ideas around with Ricky, learning after a lifetime of preferring to work alone that I could do so much more if I had the right person to do it with—had I had fun?
Maybe I had.
We stopped near the turnoff to the village of Rose Beach, down the highway from the inn, at a bakery and deli that Drea had wanted us to include in our piece.
We chatted briefly with the owner, Ricky took pictures of their beautiful displays of towering cakes and gem-colored petits fours, and they sent us on our way with two generously layered sandwiches on fresh-baked bread so that we could get back to the inn in time for our massage appointment.
We decided to eat our lunch quickly in the lounge and then go straight to the spa.
As we entered the lobby we encountered Mary Alice in deep conversation with her late cousin’s widow.
Rachel stopped talking at the sound of the door, turning her sharp, perpetually displeased glare toward us.
After what she had been through in the last day, I was willing to let her feel however she liked.
She was as carefully and tastefully put together as she had been last night, but there was no disguising the dark circles under her eyes.
She reached out a hand to stop us as we passed through to the lounge. “Is one of you Oliver? You’re the ones from the magazine, right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said.
She lowered her hand to her hip. “I wonder if I could ask you a big favor. My daughters and I were hoping to get a little rejuvenation at the spa—it has been a trying day, you know.”
I nodded, wondering what this had to do with us.
“Well, anyway, they were saying that the soonest they could get us in for a massage was at four o’clock, but they mentioned that you had an appointment at one, and I was wondering if you’d mind taking the later time so we could go sooner?”
Aha. I didn’t even bother to think about whether the change would affect any plans we had for the afternoon. “Of course we can do that. No problem.”
“That’s wonderful, thank you,” she said. “I’ll let Letitia know, so you just come at four.” She waved us on and turned back to Mary Alice, and we continued into the lounge.
Rachel either didn’t know or didn’t care that there was no privacy between the lobby and the lounge; as we arranged our lunch on one of the round tables in the center of the room, she resumed what she had been saying to Mary Alice, at full volume.
“Anyway,” she said, “I simply want to be sure that you understand. Richard’s death doesn’t wipe the slate clean.
The money came out of my trust fund, for God’s sake!
He shouldn’t have even loaned it to you. ”
“I do understand,” we heard Mary Alice murmur in return. “I’ll do my best to keep to the repayment agreement I had with Richard. You know how grateful I am for the improvements we’ve been able to make to the inn.”
“Improvements!” Rachel snorted audibly. “If he had never made you that loan, there would have been no hot tub for him to fall into. What a stupid way to die!”
Ricky and I stared across our sandwiches at each other, eyebrows raised, but it seemed the conversation was over. A few seconds later, we heard the ding of the elevator doors, and the light tapping of Mary Alice’s computer keyboard resume in the lobby.
“It was okay to take the later appointment at the spa,” I said to Ricky, “right? I don’t think we have anything else this afternoon that we can’t work around.”
“Yeah, it was fine,” he said. “It was the right thing to do. Those ladies need the break.”
“What do you want to do instead after lunch?”
As Ricky was thinking, a short, round-faced man with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair rounded through the doorway from the lobby into the lounge, headed directly for our table.
He was wearing brown suit pants, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his tie slightly loosened.
His gold watch and brown leather shoes looked moderately expensive—more than I’d be able to afford, anyway.
“Excuse me, sorry to interrupt,” the man said. “You’re Mr. Popp and Mr. Warner, correct? Mary Alice said I’d find you here. May I join you for a second?”
I invited him to take the empty chair across from us, and he sat down. “What can we do for you?”
He pulled a business card from his shirt pocket, passing it across to me.
It read, brADLEY P. BENSON, ATTORNEY AT LAW.
“I’m the personal attorney to Mrs. Cecilia Rose,” he began.
“As I think you know, her son Richard died unexpectedly last night. Mrs. Rose asked me down here today to help her draft a new will as quickly as possible. A will in Oregon has to be attested by two witnesses, and it’s best if they have no potential interest in the estate.
Mrs. Rose called her personal secretary in, but we need a second witness.
Since you two are the only guests here who are not related to Mrs. Rose, I was hoping I might impose on one of you to be that second witness? Perhaps you, Mr. Popp?”
Ricky and I exchanged a quick glance. His eyes were dancing—keeping our eyes and ears open, indeed!
After the conversation we’d overheard earlier about this very will, to have this opportunity drop into our laps was catnip to him.
I had to admit to myself that I was probably almost as curious. We nodded at each other.
“I’d be happy to help,” I said. “You tell me when and where.”
“If you’re not busy now,” Mr. Benson said. “As soon as you finish your lunch, that is.”
He remained at the table with us while we finished off the last bites of our sandwiches, then I got up and followed him to the elevator, down two floors, then up the hall to Mrs. Rose’s room. He let us in with a key card, rapping lightly on the door as he opened it.
Mrs. Rose was sitting on the couch near the door to the balcony, her hands limp in her lap, staring straight ahead at nothing.
I had only seen her briefly in the lounge the evening before, but she gave the impression today of being noticeably smaller than before.
She wore a simple black dress, against which her pale face and red-rimmed eyes stood in stark contrast. Only when we had made it all the way across the room to stand before her did she seem to notice us.
“Cecilia, this is Mr. Popp,” the lawyer said, and I stepped forward to offer my hand.
Mrs. Rose made no attempt to rise, but weakly shook my hand.
Sitting in the armchair next to her was a birdlike woman in her late sixties, with long dark hair and wearing a floral print dress, her hands working deftly at knitting a small brown hat.
“And this is Mrs. Rose’s personal secretary, Miss Trixie Moon,” Mr. Benson said.
“Well, I’m retired now, actually, but always happy to help when Cecilia calls,” Miss Trixie said to her knitting, ignoring my offered hand. “I was with her for over forty years, so there’s not much I haven’t done for her already.”
Mr. Benson invited me to be seated, and as I sank down into the armchair next to Miss Trixie’s, I sensed Mrs. Rose regarding me more intently.
Finally, she addressed her lawyer. “Is this one old enough?” I blushed as I realized she was pointing at me. “He has to be over eighteen to be a witness, right?”