Chapter 10 Hughes
HUGHES
It’s a dark afternoon. I’m no closer to solving the case than I was the day Dr. Merriweather died, even after trekking down to the city hall to sweet-talk the kind little old lady at the counter into giving me all of the complaints lodged by Dr. Merriweather against these small-town residents.
My feet carry me to his office. But someone’s been here before me. The place is probably ransacked.
The door is ajar—like a bad present half wrapped, begging to be opened.
I pushed it inward slowly, and the hinges creak like an old carol sung off-key.
The lobby smells of pine cleaner and stale peppermint schnapps.
A sad little tree slumps in the corner, its lights blinking like a guilty conscience.
The stairs loom ahead—narrow, steep, the kind of stairs that whisper secrets when you climb them. I take them one at a time, my hand brushing the banister, which is sticky from forgotten candy cane fingers. Each step is a drumbeat, each creak a warning….
I hear someone up there. Is it the murderer returning to the scene of the crime?
I reach for my gun.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” The door to Dr. Merriweather’s office, at the top of the stairs, is flung open.
“Willow?” I fumble my pistol back into the holster.
“Were you gonna blast someone with that peashooter?”
“No!” I’m defensive.
“He almost dropped it, did you see?” Josie pulls the lollipop she’s sucking on out of her mouth.
“No, I didn’t!”
“What are you doing here?” Willow narrows her eyes.
“What are you doing here?” I demand. “This is a crime scene.”
“Yeah, we’re investigating the crime,” Josie shoots at me.
“Moron,” Willow mutters.
My heart’s beating a little fast. Part of me is glad it wasn’t actually the murderer up here.
“So, what’d you find?” I ask her.
“Typical man. Shows up, wants to copy a girl’s homework.”
“Or we can all wait around here while I search the same places you searched, and maybe in that time, the police will stop by and arrest all of us,” I say dryly.
“Not Josie. She’s special.”
I pull out a black light.
“He wasn’t murdered here. Why do you need that?” Willow complains as I flick off the lights and close the curtain.
“Oof, it looks like someone was murdered here.”
“Seriously?” Willow appears in my phone viewfinder. “That’s like semen and pussy-juice stains.”
I feel my face get hot when she says the word “pussy.”
“Oh, that’s—” I drop my phone, bend to pick it up, and realize that I’m practically looking under her skirt. I try not to freak out. “That’s, um—”
“Gross! It’s gross! We were sitting on that couch. Blech!” Willow makes retching noises.
“I’m going to wash with bleach when I get home.” Josie makes a face.
“That explains the panties.” Willow sighs then shows me the little plastic baggie containing pink underwear. “Recognize them?”
“What? No!” I hold up my hands.
“They don’t belong to Taylor Grace?” She waves them in my face.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her unmentionables.”
“Cute. He’s cute, isn’t he, Willow?” Josie beams. “So, Dr. Merriweather is—er, was—cheating on his wife.”
“Motive,” Willow and I say at the same time.
“Show him the papers.” Josie pokes her friend.
“I’m not—fine.” Willow rolls her eyes and thrusts a stack of papers at me.
I whistle. “He was trying to take her for everything.”
“Can he do that?”
“He’s gonna try. Or was going to, anyway. I don’t suppose either of you have a law degree, do you?” I ask.
“I have college loan debt and no usable skills. Sorry.” Josie shrugs.
I pull out a little pocket scanner and fold it open.
“Um, what is that? I need that in my life.” Willow inspects it.
“One of my college roommate’s inventions. I coded the software for it.” I preen.
“Well, aren’t you clever? Isn’t he smart, Willow? Man like that is a good provider.” Josie waggles her eyebrows.
I run the documents through the scanner. My phone beeps when they’ve been uploaded.
“Man,” Willow says as she scans through the documents before putting them back into the desk drawer. “Lenore really got lucky Jonah died when he did. She’s set up for life.”
“She had to have done it, right?”
“We’ll see if we can get any clues out of her at the funeral.”
The morning of the funeral is even colder and darker than yesterday.
I look longingly at the puffer jacket Nana has hung on the door.
She pokes her head into the room.
“Nana, I’m changing!”
“I used to wipe your bum! And it’s still as cute as a button. All that working out—has it paid off yet?” She practically skips around the room.
“Why are you so… happy?”
“It’s a great day!”
“Because of the funeral?” I frown.
“Silly goose.” She pinches my cheek. “We have Airbnb-ers! They’re in town to see the snowy mountains and take in the Christmas market.”
“Oh, great. Do you need help getting the carriage house ready?”
“No, bubby. I have a nice couple staying there. This is a big group coming in. So I hope you have a girlfriend because you need to go stay with her for a few days.”
I sag.
“Or you can stay with me and Horace. He has a tricked-out RV. The walls are thin, though, so bring headphones!”
“I’ll figure something out,” I grumble. “And I’ll take that down. I have it organized,” I tell her as she starts to deconstruct my crime-scene wall. “After the funeral.”
“I knew I should have rented an office space,” I mumble against my turned-up collar as I head down the sidewalk. I also should have worn my coat.
It might be early to show up at Willow’s house to pick her up for the funeral, but I didn’t want her and Josie to run off without me.
There’s a sign on the front door when I walk up onto the porch and stomp off the snow: Tinsel & Tea B&B.
The door flings open.
“Oh, good, there you are,” a woman with a Manhattan accent says. “The coffee maker isn’t working.”
“I told you, it just needs a filter change,” a man calls from within the house.
“The coffee machine doesn’t have a filter, Artie!”
Several children—the couple’s grandkids, probably—race around.
“Now, young man, what time do the carriage rides start, and where exactly are we supposed to go to get one?”
“Agnes, I have a map!” Artie calls.
“Um, in front of the town hall. They should start in an hour or so, I think.”
“He thinks?”
The pack of tourists brushes past me. I step into the house.
“Willow!” I call. “Willow?”
I step back outside, unsure what I’m supposed to do about the house.
“Hey there, sonny!”
I bite back a yelp as Beryl pops her head out of the window of a parked car.
“Jeez! The, uh, coffee maker’s broken?” I peer at her. “Are you living in your car?”
“Damn right! Got the whole place rented out. I let Willow have the garden shed just in case she wanted some male company to keep her warm at night.” She winks at me.
“Is this even legal?”
“Now that Jonah Merriweather’s dead, it is. Going to toast his murderer at the funeral!” She cranks the window back up.
I make my way to the backyard, where there’s a quaint carriage house. “Willow?” I call up at the window. My voice sounds muffled in the snowy backyard.
There’s another B-and-B sign on the front door. That can’t be it.
I spin around in the yard. A tiny shed with a slanted roof stands in one corner of the yard, like a potting shed.
“She can’t seriously be in here.” I stomp through the snow, the white powder muffling my footfalls. “That can’t be what her granny means, can it?” I press my face to the foggy square window on the side of the shed and almost choke on my tongue.
Willow’s in nothing but a black bra and black panties, her back toward me as she rolls dark tights up her legs.
Don’t look. Don’t look.
But I can’t help but stare. She has her hair up off her neck, and she looks—well—I don’t think they have scenes like that in film noirs.
I make a strangled noise as she leans forward, turning slightly so I can see the curve of her—
“What the fuck?” Willow screams.
I jump away from the window, trip over my feet, and land in the snow.
The shed door bursts open. Willow’s there with a hatchet. She has her tights on but not much else.
“I wasn’t looking!” I clap my hands over my eyes. “I swear!”
“Pervert!”
“Don’t kill me!”
“Hey!” someone yells from the carriage house. “There are supposed to be quiet hours. And what time is breakfast? I’m going to leave you a bad review.”
“Coming right up with that!” Willow chirps.
“Oh my god.”
Willow drags me into the shed. It’s even smaller on the inside than it looks on the outside. The top of my head almost bangs against the roof. A guinea pig munches on leaves in the corner.
“What the hell? What are you even doing here?”
“I wanted to strategize for the funeral. Can you—” I take off my coat and drape it gingerly over her while she glares at me. “You, uh, that’s a, um—” I swallow. “That’s a nice funeral outfit.”
“That’s not what I’m wearing,” she snaps, crossing her arms. “Go outside and get those boarders their breakfast while I change.”
Willow’s boots crunch the ice as she and I walk to the funeral home. I’m carrying a platter of chocolate toffee cupcakes balanced on a warm casserole dish.
“Did you know Lenore well?” I ask.
“No, but you have to bring something to a funeral. We’re probably not the only ones using the casserole excuse to attend.”
“You weren’t lying,” I say when we cross the street to the church.
“Gotta love a small-town murder mystery!”
It’s bedlam—a sea of people all carrying flowers, cake boxes, and yes, casserole dishes.
“Do you even see Lenore?” Willow asks as we enter the church.
I peer over the crowd. She’s there in the back, near the oversized poster of Jonah, surrounded by flowers.
“She doesn’t look like a crushed widow,” Willow whispers.
“Everyone grieves in different ways, or something like that,” I whisper, tugging her over.
Lenore looks like a woman out with her girlfriends, gossiping over a glass of wine, not like someone at a beloved husband’s funeral.
“Ohhh, you’re the cute PI. This is the one I was telling you about!” Lenore giggles to her friends. “I love a man in a fedora.”
“See?” I tell Willow.
“We’re so sorry for your loss,” Willow says to Mrs. Merriweather.
“Don’t be!” She waves a hand. “We don’t have his body yet, but we have to do some sort of memorial service.
It’s a requirement for the life insurance policy.
You have to have the obituary, and for that, you have to have the memorial service,” Lenore explains to a group of sympathetic women.
“Set what you brought on that table over there. My friend’s daughter is helping take care of the food. ”
Willow sets her casserole dish on the groaning table.
“Oh, are those cupcakes?” Bobby, one of the Harrogate PD officers, comes over, his plate piled high with food. “I need to grab one of those before the rest of the town does.” He balances a cupcake on his plate.
“Hey, so, Bobby—”
“Hmm? Oh man, this is a good cupcake.”
“There’s more where that came from,” Willow offers. “Did you happen to request the records for Jonah Merriweather’s phone yet?”
Bobby is chowing down on the funeral food and asks, “You can do that?”
God help me. “Yeah, you just ask the telecom company,” I tell him.
“Oh, well, no.” He swallows. “I’ll do it after lunch. Oh, did Mrs. Costa make her manicotti?” He plods off.
Lenore lets out a peal of laughter. “I know! He got what was coming to him.”
One of her friends tries to shush her.
“I have an alibi. I was watching the Christmas tree lighting, just like everyone else. You should have seen my face when they told me he was dead!”
Her friends all laugh.
“I mean, she couldn’t have murdered him, right?” Willow whispers. “If she did, she’d at least try to pretend to be sad. I mean, who murders someone and brags about it?”
“Shockingly, a surprising number of people. They want people to know they got away with it.”
Willow frowns and looks at her phone.
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh—” She hides her phone from me. “Nothing.”