Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-Two
Since we were on foot, even at a jog we arrived at the Primrose Inn well after the ambulance had already gotten there. A small crowd of locals and a few guests of the hotel were milling around on the sidewalk, but Rich and I had no problem getting to the front.
Overhead, fireworks continued to whistle and boom, dulling much of the chatter around us. Someone was on their phone trying to find a new room to book, and I heard them grumble, “. . . can’t be expected to stay somewhere after two murders.”
A chill crept up my spine, and all I could think of were Honey’s haunting words.
The wrong person died.
Rich had his hand on my back, angling me toward the front of the B and B. We had beat the police here, and we didn’t even need to come up with an excuse to get inside; no one stopped us.
Unlike the morning of Sebastian’s murder or even my visit earlier today, it felt like a funeral home inside. There were no clusters of guests arranged in different areas of the lobby; in fact, it seemed like most of the folks staying here tonight were only just beginning to realize something was wrong, as a few bleary-eyed patrons peeked down from upstairs mumbling about the lights.
I suspected, given the festivities, most people who were staying at the inn were out at the street party still. The owner of the B and B hovered nervously in the hallway outside one of the main floor bedrooms, still clutching the phone she must have used to make the call. Her face looked ashen, and she was muttering something to herself about not believing this could happen.
Rich approached her, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. She almost jumped out of her skin, letting out a surprised yelp. “Oh, good heavens, Rich, you scared me half to death. I’m so sorry.” Her hand, still with the cordless phone in it, went to her chest as if to check that her heart was still beating. She glanced past Rich to me, but she didn’t seem to recognize me. Raven Creek was a small town, but not so small that I’d met every single person who lived here.
“Are you here with the police?” she asked me, and looked at Rich to see if he might confirm.
Rich shook his head. “Phoebe had some professional guests staying here, and we were just in the area and wanted to see what was going on.”
This, as vague as it was, seemed to satisfy the woman, who gave a nod and gestured toward the back bedroom. “One of the guests had received a call.” She held up the phone like perhaps she wanted to prove this point. “I went and knocked, but he didn’t answer. I tried again, and normally I’d just leave it, but the caller did say it was quite urgent, so I tried the door, and it wasn’t locked. I called his name, and when he didn’t answer, I looked into the room, and . . .” Her voice drifted off and was replaced by an unexpectedly loud sob.
“Hey now, Audrey, it’s okay.” Rich took her gently by the arm and guided her toward the library area, helping to settle her onto one of the overstuffed couches and taking the phone from her hand.
“I just can’t believe this has happened twice. I’m going to be ruined.”
I wanted to allay her concerns, but I’d heard what people outside were whispering, and it was hard to blame them for not wanting to continue to stay at the inn. I probably wouldn’t want to spend the night somewhere that two people had been recently murdered either. Not when the police hadn’t tracked down who had done the first killing.
Were the two deaths connected?
“Can you tell me what you saw?” Rich asked Audrey in a calm, steady tone.
“Someone had . . . someone had st-st-sta . . .” Her voice drifted into a fit of hiccups and incomprehensible crying sounds. I had heard enough to gather that the victim, like Sebastian, had been stabbed.
Not a natural death, then.
If the murders were similar, there was a very real chance they were connected. What else could explain two men being killed in the same inn within forty-eight hours of each other? Unless the killer had a vendetta against Audrey or the B and B, the target was the guests involved and not the inn itself.
“Who was staying in the room?” I asked. I had been certain when I saw the ambulance that something had happened to Melody. She was the one who’d been skulking around all night. Perhaps trouble had followed her home. But Audrey kept saying him , which meant Melody wasn’t the one lying dead in the main floor bedroom.
“Andrew Bachman. The lawyer. The one who was here asking everyone about their property.”
A hundred thoughts went through my head at once, but the one that was blaring in my mind’s eye in bright-red neon was a single name: LEO .
At least twenty people had been in Lansing Grocery to witness the fight between Leo and the lawyer, and I hadn’t been the only one to hear the threats he had made. That was going to stand out to people, especially because of how out of character it was for my friend.
He’d been so mad on Amy’s behalf at the shop earlier today. I didn’t think he would actually have done anything, but his name was going to be connected to this, I felt certain. I also couldn’t see how his death was connected to Sebastian’s, unless Andrew had been the target all along.
Sebastian had swapped rooms, and even though his room had been assigned to Melody in my notes, maybe it had originally been meant for Andrew? I was beginning to believe that Sebastian hadn’t been the killer’s intended victim at all.
“Rich,” I whispered. “We should go.”
“When you just got here?” came a voice from behind us. “Why would you want to leave so soon?”
I turned to see that the voice did indeed belong to Detective Patsy Martin, who was wearing an expression somewhere between annoyed and amused, which she was trying her darndest to show as nothing at all.
I gave her a guilty smile and half wave. “Evening, Detective Martin.”
“Mm-hmm,” was all she said.
“Patsy,” Rich added by way of greeting, going to give his former colleague a quick handshake. She allowed it, so I didn’t think we were in too much trouble.
“Dare I ask what brings you two to the scene of a murder before even the police could get here?” She looked directly at me rather than Rich, and I knew she was going to think this had all been my idea no matter what Rich said.
“Let’s have a quick chat,” Rich offered. “Somewhere private.”
Detective Martin sighed, then led us to the same small dining room where I had so recently seen the lawyer—Andrew—alive. When we were all seated around the table, Rich and I gave her the breakdown, from the argument I’d overheard to my discoveries from earlier that afternoon about the gloves to following Melody to the sanctuary, right up to the moment we’d seen the ambulance come to the inn.
Martin listened, her expression shifting between interested, surprised, and frequently very, very annoyed, especially after I detailed going through Melody’s room. “You should have come to me immediately after hearing that initial argument so we could have had Melody on our radar,” she said, sighing. “I appreciate that you are so keen to help find out what happened to Sebastian, and I know I asked you to keep an eye open to things going on, but I also specifically told you not to get yourself into any trouble.”
“In fairness, I didn’t actually get in to any trouble,” I said.
She cleared her throat. “Semantics aren’t going to be your friend here, Ms. Winchester. And you.” She pointed dramatically at Rich. “Of anyone, you should have known better.”
“Well, now, we didn’t actually know if Melody had any involvement. We followed her just to gauge if she might be involved.”
“The two of you deserve each other. Wait here and don’t touch anything.” She got up and went into the hall, where I heard her giving someone directions to go to the sanctuary.
“Do you think Melody is involved in this murder too?” I asked Rich.
He craned his neck to see if Martin was coming back in. “I don’t know. Did you get the sense that she had any connection to this lawyer guy?”
I shook my head. “Aside from them staying at the same place, there’s nothing. As far as I can tell, I don’t think they ever spoke to each other.” Melody hadn’t been in the room when I’d spoken to Connor and Travis after Sebastian’s death; she had been outside.
“Do you know what Audrey was talking about, about him asking people about their properties?”
“Yeah, that’s the other thing you should know about. He’s apparently representing some big megacorporation who wants to buy up property in town to milk the tourist industry by making everything cookie-cutter. I guess he went to Lansing’s to talk to Leo about selling the store, and things got . . . heated.”
“Things with Leo got heated.” Rich clearly didn’t believe me.
“If I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes, I’d call me a liar too. But I swear to you, Leo was on the verge of knocking this guy’s head off. I’ve never seen him so mad.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to Patsy?” he asked.
“Well, she didn’t ask me if I knew anyone who had been in an argument with the lawyer, did she? And I’m not about to throw Leo under a bus. You and I both know there’s no way he did this.”
Rich thought about this briefly, for a moment longer than I would have liked him to.
“Rich. Leo didn’t kill anyone.”
Rich shook off whatever had stretched out his contemplation. “No, of course. There’s no way. But you have to tell Patsy. She’s going to find out about this one way or another, and it’s better to come from you, who can vouch for his character, than some random person who might blow the whole thing out of proportion.”
I groaned. “Yes, you’re right. I know you’re right.”
With timing so perfect she might have a magical gift of her own, Detective Martin returned to the room and stood in the doorway with one hand propped on her hip. “I’ve got a team going out to scour the sanctuary, see if there’s anything there. It would have been helpful for us to know everything earlier; we might have been able to get her in the act of doing something. As it is, we have an APB out for her, and one way or another we’ll have ourselves a little chat with Melody Fairbanks soon enough. Now I heard my name, so I suspect you might have a little more to tell me?” She raised a brow in my direction.
“You might want to talk to Leo Lansing about the lawyer. He didn’t do anything, I guarantee you that, but you’re going to hear about a bit of a scuffle at the grocery store the other day between Leo and the dead man.”
“A scuffle? Like a physical fight?”
I shook my head. “No, though I think Leo probably felt like fighting him. It was a pretty loud disagreement, and I broke it up. The lawyer, Andrew, left, but it was a scene, and I wasn’t the only one there. So best you know about it now.”
“And do you happen to know if Leo Lansing has an alibi for this evening?” Detective Martin asked.
“I know the store was open later than usual; there’s a chance he was still there tonight,” I offered.
“Mm-hmm.”
I’d been around the detective enough to know she made that particular noise when someone was trying to sell her something she didn’t want to buy.
I hoped for Leo’s sake he’d been on the sales floor all night with plenty of people to see him, because otherwise I might have just gotten my dear friend into a heaping pile of trouble.