Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
I jerked awake. There was a sound—too sharp to be the wind. Glancing at the clock, I saw it was a little past five a.m. And now I could hear the sound of hushed voices outside my room.
I rolled out of bed and moved quickly to the door, glancing through the peephole. There was movement just off to the side, and then Ellen came down the hallway. She paused outside my door, and I shrank back in alarm.
What was going on? Was she going to knock on my door?
And then I heard another voice. Anna?
I looked through the peephole again and saw Anna crossing in front of my door with a backpack on her shoulders.
What on earth was going on? Why would they be in the hall at this hour?
I turned the knob and cracked my door open, but the dimly lit corridor was empty now. I closed the door and locked it, then got back into bed. I stared up at the ceiling for several minutes, my mind racing with more questions and no answers.
I tossed and turned for the next hour, and then I must have fallen asleep, because sunlight was streaming through the curtains when I woke up again. I grabbed my phone, shocked that it was now half past nine.
My phone showed several missed texts from Tessa, starting about thirty minutes ago.
You up? Going down for breakfast. Want me to bring you something?
Cassidy???
Getting worried. Text me back.
I quickly typed: Sorry! Didn't fall asleep until late. Just woke up.
Her response came immediately: I'm glad you're okay. I grabbed muffins and fruit. Coming up now.
A minute later, there was a knock on my door. I let Tessa in, still in my pajamas, my hair a mess.
"Hope you're hungry. I grabbed a bunch of stuff." Tessa set a tray on the desk. It was filled with pastries, fruit, and coffee.
"Thanks. I must say you look better than I feel."
"I think it was the bath. The lavender knocked me out." She grabbed one of the coffees and took a sip. "Did you do any more research after I left last night?"
"I looked up Tyler Pierce. All I could find was a short paragraph about him on his company website. He is an architect for an NYC firm and got his degree at Yale. I couldn't find him on social media, but I was too tired to search further. I can do more today."
"Why don't you get Morgan on it? That's something she can do from New York and feel more a part of this. At least, we know Tyler is an architect. That part of his story holds up."
"It does. I'll text Morgan. I also want her to research Ray Connors. We've been focusing on Ellen, but Ray seems to be her right-hand man, and it's difficult to believe Ellen searched our rooms on her own." I paused. "There's something else I need to tell you, Tessa."
"What?" She sat down on the bed and sipped her coffee, giving me an expectant look.
"I woke up around five this morning to hear someone outside the room. It was Ellen and Anna. It looked like Anna was leaving."
"At five in the morning? That's odd. I guess she could have had to make an early flight somewhere."
"Sure. Or maybe…"
"She was checking out early, never to be seen again," Tessa finished.
"No one saw Natalie leave the inn, except for Ellen, who said Natalie checked out at eight. Maybe that was a lie. Perhaps she also left before dawn."
Tessa thought about that. "It's a possibility, but you're jumping to a lot of conclusions, Cassidy."
"You're right. I have no proof of anything, but my gut says I'm on to something."
"Okay. But I'm not sure there's anything we should do about it. I doubt asking Ellen will get us anywhere. We can ask Sophie if she knows whether or not Anna checked out. But I didn't see her at breakfast today, so I'm not sure if she's working."
"I can look for her later. What time are you meeting Finn?"
"He's picking me up at eleven."
"How are you planning to get info out of him?" I asked, turning my attention toward her upcoming lunch.
"I'm going to charm him into thinking he's just telling me about his life, his family, his friends, the quirky characters that make up the town, that kind of thing. I'm hoping that there's a bar where we're going, so I can loosen him up with a few drinks."
"Don't get too loose. You need to keep your wits about you. We don't know anything about Finn. And he was in the military for a long time, which means he knows how to fight, how to—"
"Don't say it," Tessa put up a hand. "Don't let your imagination get carried away."
"I just wish you were meeting him in town. I don't like the idea of him picking you up and taking you somewhere. It seems like a bad idea."
"Well, I can't bring you along on a date, which is how I pitched this thing. It's daytime. It's lunch. Nothing is going to happen. And if he expresses any concern about the missing women or Ellen, I'll confide in him, but I'm going to play that by ear."
"You need to let him do the talking, which is not always easy for you."
Tessa laughed. "You know me too well. But I hope you also know I can handle this."
"I do know that."
"What are you going to do while I'm gone?"
"First, I'm going to shower and get my head together. Then I'll go downstairs and talk to Ellen about the room search and the note."
"Really?" Tessa said. "What if she's the one who had our rooms searched?"
"Then I'll see how she reacts when I confront her." I grabbed the threatening note from my nightstand, where I'd left it. "If she isn't involved, then she needs to know what's going on. And if she is involved, I'm going to make it clear that we don't scare easily."
"That just might encourage her to do something worse."
Tessa had a point, but it was a risk I'd have to take.
Two hours later, Tessa was off on her date, and now I was headed downstairs. Moira was at the front desk. She told me that Ellen had gone into town. She offered her help, but I didn't want to talk to anyone but Ellen, so I said I'd catch up with Ellen when she got back.
Disappointed that I couldn't confront her about the note or the room search, I wandered into the living room. Dorothy Winters sat in a chair by the fireplace, her knitting needles clicking rhythmically, the scarf on her lap getting longer and wider.
"Good morning, dear," she said with a warm smile. "How are you today?"
"I'm fine. How about you?"
"Can't complain. Why don't you have a seat? It's nice here by the fire."
I settled into the chair across from her, watching her hands work the yarn. There was something hypnotic and soothing about the movement. But I couldn't sit here and do nothing. "Can I ask you something? About the inn?"
"Of course."
"You said you come here often." I paused, choosing my words carefully. "I've heard that there's been some trouble here in the past year, women who come to the inn but then disappear."
"You're talking about that woman who went missing last year," Dorothy said. "Natalie."
My heart skipped as Dorothy said her name with some familiarity. "You met Natalie Warren?"
"Yes. She was here the same week I was, last June. I actually gave her a knitting lesson. She seemed anxious, and I told her that knitting calms the mind. You seem a bit anxious, too. Would you like to learn a few stitches?"
The offer seemed so incongruous with what we'd been discussing that I almost laughed. But there was something gentle in Dorothy's expression, something that said this was more than just a random suggestion.
"Uh, I guess. But I don't know anything about knitting."
"Then let me teach you." She pulled extra yarn and needles from her large tote bag. "Come, sit next to me."
I moved to the ottoman beside her chair, and she showed me how to hold the needles, how to loop the yarn. Her hands were patient, guiding mine through the basic stitches.
"Natalie sat right where you're sitting," Dorothy said softly. "She was troubled, that one. Looking for a way to change her life."
"She said that?" I asked, trying to keep my voice casual even as my hands fumbled with the yarn. "Did she tell you why she was upset? Was she having trouble with someone, maybe an ex-boyfriend or a family member?"
"She didn't get into specifics. She just told me she needed to fix her life, and she wasn't quite sure how to do that.
She didn't have any family support. She mentioned making some mistakes in her past that she wished she could take back.
I told her we all have regrets at times in our lives, but the important thing is to look forward and not back.
She had time to start over, to be whoever she wanted to be.
She seemed to lighten with those words. And the knitting calmed her.
She was less stressed after her lesson."
"Did she say anything about an ex-boyfriend or a man who might have been bothering her?"
"No. She said she was all alone."
"Did she say goodbye to you when she checked out?"
"I didn't see her. She left early in the morning, I believe.
I didn't think anything of it until a few weeks later when I heard she was missing.
I was very sad and shaken by that information.
I hate to think anything happened to her.
I prefer to believe she just did what she'd wanted to do—started her life over.
" Dorothy paused. "She had the prettiest locket.
It was silver, and her initials were engraved on it.
She couldn't stop playing with it. I asked her about it once, and she got a very pensive expression on her face.
She said she didn't know why she still wore it, but she couldn’t take it off. That maybe she would now."
Natalie's words in retrospect felt like a sign that she had been looking to change her life in a profound way. Had she just run away from her past? Was she completely fine living somewhere far, far away? I wanted to believe that. The alternative was very dark.
But if there was no mystery about Natalie, why had someone searched my room last night? Why had they left a threatening note? Why did they care what Tessa and I were doing here?