Chapter 19 #2
I had started making notes before we’d left the inn, trying to capture all of the strange hints Tawny had dropped.
I wished I’d gotten more of them down. Now I’d never be able to ask her what she’d meant.
There had been other hints, too, from other members of the Rose family.
What had Denise said about this bunch? There’s lots of dirt. That was for sure.
“There’s no question this time,” I said, rousing myself. “Tawny had to have been murdered, right?”
“Yes, that much seems clear. And there’s no question this time about a second person. We both saw that person. We just couldn’t see who it was.”
“I’m going to start brain dumping,” I said. “I feel like we have almost all of the pieces. We only need to figure out how they fit together.”
Ricky rested his head on my shoulder. “Lay it on me.”
“From my notes before. We’re fairly certain that Tawny was the other person in Richard’s room when he went over the side of the balcony. Why were they together?”
“They were desperate, she said, right?”
“Right,” I said. “Richard needed money. They got carried away with something, which led to Richard’s fall. And if that hadn’t happened, she didn’t know if they really would have gone through with whatever it was they were planning.”
“Richard and Tawny do seem like an odd pair, though,” Ricky said, snuggling further into the crook of my neck. “I mean, we never met Richard, but a man who would marry Rachel—you sort of make some assumptions about that person. Do we know what Richard did?”
“Yes,” I said, gazing distantly into my memory. “He was a professor at Cal. I might have seen him there a hundred times and never known it. And they lived in Kensington. There was something about where they lived. …”
“Who told you all that?”
“Their daughters,” I said. “That was it! Tawny had come to visit them. She claimed to have an aunt in Oakland.”
Ricky popped up, looking at me. “She came without Wiley?”
“Yes, and always when Rachel wasn’t there. And the girls said they never actually saw her go visit her aunt.”
“I smell an affair,” Ricky said.
“Wiley said something strange, too. He said that Tawny took lots of walks on the beach, and she always took her shoes off, but before the day Richard died, she never came back with sand on her feet. He didn’t say it exactly that way—he didn’t mention Richard—but now that I think about it, it seems like that was the implication.
She wasn’t doing what she said she was doing, she was with Richard. ”
“So Wiley knew,” Ricky said.
“It seems that way.” I thought a minute longer. “Even Denise said she and Lis thought Richard was having an affair, though if they suspected it was with Tawny, she didn’t say so. She said he and Rachel were always on the brink of divorce.”
“Didn’t you say Rachel was meeting with a lawyer when Richard died?”
“That’s right,” I said. “And Rachel had the money in their marriage, until Richard would inherit from Cecilia. So if she was going to leave him, that would explain why he and Tawny needed money.”
“I think I’m almost seeing something,” Ricky said.
“Almost,” I nodded.
A pair of footsteps crunched toward us down the hill. Deputy Duncan rounded the back of the ambulance, glowering at us, her plait, tied tonight with a green velvet bow, swaying in a pendulum effect for a second even after she had stopped.
“Okay,” she growled. “This time it’s one coincidence too many. Hey!” she yelled to an approaching EMT. “You need to do anything else to these two?”
“No,” the woman said. “Keep monitoring them for symptoms of smoke inhalation, but for now they seem okay.”
“Got it,” Deputy Duncan said. “I’m monitoring. I’m taking you both with me.”
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “We could use your help with a couple of things.”
At precisely eight thirty the following morning, well in advance of the reading of Cecilia Rose’s will at ten, Erik taped a piece of paper to the door of room 202 at the Rose Beach Inn. It read:
This morning’s will reading has been moved to the Lounge. The Inn will be closed today to prevent any interruptions.
Neither Ricky nor I were there to see him, or to read the note. I only know about this, and about what was going on at the inn that morning, from talking later to those who were there.
One of them, Wiley Rose, was already in the lounge.
He had been there for hours, since he had returned from the sheriff’s office in town at around four a.m. He stared straight ahead, dark bags under his eyes, his fingers resting, but not moving, on the keys of the silent piano.
Erik left him alone as he entered the lounge and busied himself cleaning all of the cocktail tables and chairs and bar stools and putting on a pot of coffee.
At a couple minutes past nine, there was a knock on the locked front door of the inn.
Erik opened it to admit Ronnie Wise, bearing a large box of muffins and assorted pastries.
She set the box down on the bar, walked over to the piano, and wordlessly laid a caressing hand on the side of Wiley’s face, letting the memory of a sad, lonely little sandy-haired eight-year-old boy linger between them for a moment. Then she left.
At about nine fifteen, Mary Alice wheeled a vacuum cleaner into the lounge. When she saw Wiley sitting at the piano, she said, “Oh. Well, I’m sure it’s okay,” and took the vacuum cleaner back to the closet.
At 9:36, there was another knock at the door. Neither Mary Alice nor Erik were in the lobby, and the knocking continued sporadically for the next three minutes until Mary Alice, having received a text message, bustled up to let Lis and Denise in.
“Sorry,” Lis said apologetically. “I spent the night at the motel with Denise. I’m sure you can understand.”
“Of course,” Mary Alice said. “There’s been a little juggling of plans. We’ll be in the lounge today. And there’s something I think I need to tell you before you go in there. …”
The three women were still huddled around the front desk when, at around a quarter to ten, Rachel Rose and her daughters, Reille and Rayleigh, stepped out of the elevator and strode around them into the lounge.
The girls hovered over the box of pastries while Rachel poured herself a cup of coffee.
She sat down at a cocktail table near the piano, not really facing Wiley, saying to nobody in particular, “Horrible night, wasn’t it. ”
A moment later, Lis, Denise, and Mary Alice entered the lounge.
Lis briefly sat on the piano bench next to her cousin, laying a hand on one of his.
He never moved. After a long moment, she got up, accepting a cup of coffee from Denise.
The two of them selected a table of their own, with a table between theirs and Rachel’s, where she still sat alone, her daughters having draped themselves over their customary bar stools.
Minutes dragged by. Mary Alice fussed nervously over the box of pastries, rearranging them every time someone took one. Erik was nowhere to be seen.
“Where the hell is that lawyer?” Rachel complained to the room a few minutes after ten. “I think it’s in awfully poor taste to be doing this today, but if we must, let’s get it over with. I’d like to be getting out of here.”
“Why are you still here?” Lis’s tone wasn’t unkind, but there was a pointed edge not far below the surface. “You won’t be in Mother’s will. Anything Richard was going to inherit doesn’t go to you.”
“No, of course not, but I’m sure there’ll be something for the girls,” Rachel said confidently. “Cecilia wouldn’t overlook her only grandchildren.”
The two girls whispered something between themselves. The younger burst into loud giggles, then abruptly stopped herself at a glare from Rachel.
At about ten fifteen, Erik appeared briefly in the doorway of the lounge, shrugged to his mother, and left again.
“Brad is coming, isn’t he?” Lis asked Mary Alice.
“Of course he is,” Mary Alice said. “We spoke only a couple of hours ago, about changing the room. He’s probably tied up with something he was working on in town.”
Finally, ten minutes later, Erik, waiting in the parking lot, unlocked the doors to let in the group he had been waiting for.
Deputy Duncan strode in first, followed by Brad Benson.
Ricky and I brought up the rear, Ricky limping but moving more easily than yesterday, no more crutches needed.
A flurry of confused chatter greeted the deputy and the attorney, but the room fell silent when Ricky and I appeared.
Suddenly, Wiley’s fingers slammed down where they had been resting on the piano keys, banging out a single, long, cacophonous chord. His hands frozen in place, he half rose, his face going a deep scarlet.
“Th-th-them,” he spat out. “Why are they here? Why aren’t they locked up? Why aren’t they dead, for what they’ve done?” He was roaring now, nearly hysterical, a vein bulging in his forehead.
Deputy Duncan rushed toward Wiley, in a stance that suggested that she planned to restrain him, using force if necessary. “Calm down, sir. We talked about this last night. We have no basis on which to charge these two.”
“Honestly, Wiley,” Rachel chimed in. “You can drop the act. It was not bad, though. But everyone knows you killed Tawny. Probably Richard and Cecilia, too!”
“Folks, folks,” Brad Benson said, waving his hands to quiet the room.
Rachel couldn’t help herself. “What are they doing here, though, Brad? Surely they’re not in Cecilia’s will? She was a horrible racist and homophobe, after all. No accounting for taste, mind you,” she added, cocking a hungry eyebrow at Ricky.
“We’ll get to the will,” Brad assured the family. “But Deputy Duncan here and I have asked Mr. Popp and Mr. Warner to join us this morning to clear up what’s been going on around the inn this past week.”
He turned and waved a hand, as though presenting the room to us. “Gentlemen, the floor is yours.” I gulped as we stared down what was left of the Rose family, which included at least one killer.