Playing With Magic

Chapter Thirty

Thirty

Detective Kim had been as kind as he could be given the situation, and I was grateful to learn that Leo hadn’t officially been arrested . . . yet. Still, I left the police station a bundle of rage. As I stomped back to the car, Rich chased behind me, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me to a halt in the middle of the parking lot.

It was still raining, though not as hard as before, but neither of us had umbrellas, so in a matter of seconds I was soaked to the bone, water dripping down my chin and into my eyes. We probably could have picked somewhere a bit more comfortable to have a heart-to-heart.

“Phoebe, talk to me. You’ve got this look on your face like you’re about to do something you might regret later, and I brought you here, so it’s gotta be up to me to talk you out of doing whatever it is you have in mind.”

I huffed a fake laugh. I was a little mad at him right now for knowing me so well. “He’s our friend, Rich; we have to get him out of there. You know how this town is. Audrey at the B and B. Leo and his grocery store. How are they supposed to recover from this?”

He made a helpless gesture.

“We need to figure out who did this, and why .”

“There’s a chance that these crimes have nothing to do with each other. I think we need to take that into consideration,” Rich reminded me.

“Two people were killed the same way, at the same place, in the same week.” I ticked the items off on my fingers. “I thought you were a good cop once.”

His brows furrowed together. “Hey. I know we’re both upset right now, but we are on the same team.” He gestured back and forth between us. “So don’t start building these walls up like I’m the enemy and I’m trying to keep Leo in jail. That’s not what’s happening.”

I was suddenly glad it was raining so he couldn’t see my tears of frustration. Rich was right, as usual. I was stressed out and frustrated, and he was the closest thing I could take those feelings out on. It wasn’t fair to him, and it wasn’t helping Leo.

“I’m sorry. That was cruel, and I didn’t mean it.”

He nodded tightly. “I’m kind of a jerk sometimes too when I feel helpless.”

I wanted to argue that that wasn’t what was happening here, but the more I thought about it, that was exactly it. I wasn’t mad because he wasn’t helping, I was mad because there really wasn’t much we could do to help.

I had only one idea, and it was something we could do that wouldn’t put us at risk and wouldn’t make anyone at the police department mad at us. At least not immediately.

“I want to go talk to Audrey again,” I said.

“At the inn?”

I nodded. “I don’t know if there’s anything more she can tell us, but if she was working overnight during both killings, she might have something to share that the police missed or that we didn’t hear about. When Deacon came to talk to me, he said he’d spoken to Sebastian the night of the murder. But maybe he also interacted with Andrew. Audrey might know. We didn’t know what was going to happen to Andrew when the police might have asked her about Deacon. It’s worth a try.” I shrugged.

He waited a long time to answer me, long enough that I felt certain he was going to say no, but instead he gave one short nod, then said, “But if we’re going to do that, we need to go get changed.”

*

Twenty minutes later we were both dry and parked in front of the B and B in Rich’s car. It took me back to the night of the stakeout, as we’d sat in almost this exact same place, watching the same house, waiting to see if Melody would make a move.

Melody was missing now, and so was Deacon, leaving us two prime suspects short of a closed murder investigation. Since Detective Kim had made it very clear that we couldn’t go looking for them, we were doing the next best thing—asking anyone who had been at the inn that night if there was perhaps some new information they remembered now that they hadn’t before.

It was a long shot, but short of running out and adopting some bloodhounds to go on the hunt for our missing suspects, it was the best idea I could come up with.

If I went back to the store, I was just going to stew on my anger over what had happened to Leo, and that wasn’t going to help anyone. It would just make me a miserable jerk to be around—not exactly ideal when working in retail—and nothing was going to get done.

I’d texted Imogen and Daphne to let them know I’d be back later to collect Bob and to call me if they needed anything. From the sound of Imogen’s reply, they had everything under control, which I’d known before I even texted.

I had the best staff, and I promised myself I would do something soon to show them how much I appreciated them. Sure, I told them so often, but they deserved a special treat to really show them how I felt. My love language was gift giving; it couldn’t be helped.

Rich and I dashed across the street—this time we had brought umbrellas—and managed to get from the car to the inn with minimal soaking. We let ourselves in through the front door, and it was a stark shift in mood the second we got inside.

The B and B was quiet as a tomb. A grandfather clock in the hallway ticked the seconds by loudly, but it was so silent overall that the patter of rain could be heard in every room.

Audrey was seated behind the front check-in desk, not bothering to hide her dismayed expression even as she spotted us enter. “Afternoon, Rich. Phoebe.” She nodded. I was impressed she’d remembered my name, since we’d only been introduced at a crime scene and needless to say she’d been under quite a bit of stress that day.

She looked to be under quite a bit of stress now as well.

“Hi, Audrey. How are you holding up?” The tone of Rich’s words conveyed an entire world of sympathy without him having to say too much. Audrey appeared as if she might start to cry.

“Terrible, if I’m being honest. We’ve had forty-seven cancellations, Rich. Forty-seven .” She waved a hand at her laptop screen. “They tell me polite lies, you know? Forgotten wedding plans, someone in the family got sick, relative died, credit card was stolen. None of them can just up and admit it, but they’re bailing because of the murders. And who can blame them? Would you want to stay in a murder house?” Tears started to stream down her cheeks, and I wasn’t sure she was even aware she as crying. “Do you know what the kids are calling it? The dead-and-breakfast .” She hiccupped a little sob. “That’s too catchy. That’s going to stick.”

Rich rounded the side of the counter and gave Audrey a tight hug. Her shoulders trembled, and her hand fisted in the material of his jacket. “This town has a very short memory about bad things, Audrey, we both know that. You run a great inn, and if our memory is short, the outside world’s is even shorter. As soon as they find who did all this, things will be back to normal. Don’t forget, there’s not a heck of a lot of other places for people to stay.”

She sighed. “Maybe I should have sold to that lawyer when he suggested it. I laughed in his face, y’know. But if I’d said yes, I could have retired early, could have been sipping drinks on a beach chair in Bali right now. But I’m ruined .”

My ears perked up. “The lawyer asked you to sell too?”

Audrey nodded, grabbing a tissue from a decorative box on the desk and dabbing her eyes with it. “He said he would pay me three times what the house was worth if I would leave it intact for a new owner to take over. I couldn’t do that, though, you understand? This was my parents’ place, and theirs before. Some of the furniture in here is from my great-great-grandparents. I wasn’t just going to up and leave that. But now? Who knows if anyone is ever going to stay here again.”

Rich rubbed her back gently. “You’re going to be fine. This is going to be fine.”

“I wish I could believe that.” She gave a mighty sniff. “Anyway, you all didn’t come here to listen to an old lady moan about her problems. I don’t suppose you’re looking to rent a room?” Despite how puffy her eyes were, she still managed to give us a cheeky wink, which made me think she was going to be fine—and that gossip about Rich and I really was all over town.

“Oh. No, no,” I said quickly. “We were actually hoping you might be able to answer a few questions about what happened over the last couple of days, just to see if maybe you remembered something you didn’t before.”

Audrey came out from around the counter, and we followed her into the library sitting area. “I’m not sure how much help I can be. The police already asked a million questions, but I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

We sat around the little coffee table, Rich and I squished in side by side on the love seat and Audrey in a huge overstuffed armchair that made her look almost childlike.

“On July fourth, did you see Melody Fairbanks leave the inn?”

“Oh sure, she headed out that evening, said she was going to check out the street party and wouldn’t need any dinner.”

“Did you see her again after that?”

Audrey shook her head. “No, I don’t recall ever seeing her come back, but we did have such a hullaballoo that night with the second murder, there’s a chance she could have come and I wouldn’t have seen her.”

“Are there any other entrances to the house?” Rich asked.

“Not for guests, but there’s a storm door in the basement and an exterior staircase on the back of the house. It was an old servants’ entrance; goes from the backyard up to the third floor. But I keep that door locked from the inside, and I’m the only one with a key.”

“No other way she could have come in, then, without being seen?”

“Nope. Like I said, she may have come in when we were otherwise distracted. I mean, she must have come in at some point, because a bunch of stuff was taken out of the room.”

This was news to me. “Wait, some of her stuff is missing? I thought all of her belongings were still here.”

Audrey looked confused for a moment. “Oh, well . . . I mean, not everything was removed. To be honest, I thought perhaps the crew had started shuffling rooms around again. Her suitcase is still here, but I remember doing her turndown service that night and seeing a wallet sitting on the dresser, but it’s gone now. I just assumed she had come back to grab it later.”

“And the police didn’t take it? Are you sure?” It seemed odd to me Melody would come back just to get her wallet but not any of her other belongings.

Audrey nodded. “Very sure. They were going to wait until the lawyer was taken out before they went through everyone’s rooms and they asked me not to move anything, and I guess when they went back a few hours later, the wallet was gone. They didn’t find it in anyone else’s room either. They must have asked me a hundred times if I was sure I hadn’t moved it or anyone on my staff, but no, we didn’t touch anything .”

So at some point between when the murder was discovered and when the police checked everyone’s rooms, Melody—or someone with access to Melody’s room—had been able to take her wallet. Which indicated she was either planning to split and needed funds, or else she had something in her wallet that she was so desperate to hide she would be willing to face a run-in with the police just to sneak it out of the inn. I wondered if it had something to do with the bank statement I’d found. Was there even more to incriminate her in potentially illegal activity? A suspicious debit card, maybe?

I thought about my earlier encounter with someone who might know a bit about what Melody was hiding. “Is Connor back yet?” I asked.

Rich gave me a quizzical look, and I realized that with the hasty departure surrounding Leo’s not-arrest, I hadn’t told him what I had learned just before he arrived. I’d need to fill him in after, because right now we had bigger fish to fry.

“No, he’s been out now for a few hours. Seems like a nice boy—what a frightful week he’s had. He might be the only one of my guests who hasn’t asked about a refund or discount, as if their bank balances are the only thing that matters at a time like this.” She made a little harrumph noise, and I decided not to remind her that mere moments ago she had been making the murders all about her bottom line as well. I knew she was upset—and who wouldn’t be in this scenario?—but her double standard was interesting.

“Did any of the other guests leave early?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, thank goodness. The police have asked that everyone stay put for the time being, just in case any additional questioning is necessary. That nice man from the publishing house did leave, though. Some sort of emergency that needed to be handled back in New York. He cleared all that through the police, though, I think. At least that’s what he told me when he checked out. He was very nice, paid full price for his room even though he was leaving early. Wish everyone was like that.”

I mulled all this over, trying to decide which avenue to pursue next. If Connor wasn’t here, I couldn’t ask him about Melody’s vanishing act—even if could have, I wasn’t sure he’d be much help—and I already knew from Patsy that Travis wasn’t a suspect anymore, so his exit wasn’t news to me.

In retrospect, Travis was an illogical suspect anyway. Sebastian had been on the cusp of a very lucrative book tour, and with his stardom on the rise, there was surely going to be talk of a second book. And sure, book sales went through the roof after someone died, especially tragically, but a dead writer—especially one on the verge of possibly discovering a previously lost species of bird—wasn’t going to be the same kind of cash cow as a live one.

Rich leaned forward in his chair. “Audrey, you said the two other entrances to the house are locked from the inside. Would you mind if we just went and had a look?”

I raised an eyebrow at him. The police would have checked those doors already, wouldn’t they? What was he hoping to find?

“Oh sure. Follow me.” She got up from the armchair with a little effort but refused Rich’s offer of assistance. “I’m not that old yet, pal.”

He grinned at her.

We headed upstairs to the third floor first. All the guest room doors were closed, and despite Audrey confirming that almost all the guests were still present, the silence was thick. I heard only one muted conversation behind one door; otherwise, everyone else was either out for the day or being quiet.

At the end of the third-floor hallway was a door with a frosted glass window in it, letting in quite a bit of light considering how rainy it was outside. It made the hallway feel bright and cheery.

“This was the room Mr. Marlow was staying in.” I already knew that wasn’t correct but couldn’t admit I had snooped around here on my own. She waved her hand at the door to Melody’s room. “And Miss Fairbanks was over here.” The room right across the hall. “Oh, gosh no, what a silly mistake; it was the other way around. The crew changed rooms on me and I keep forgetting, what with all this excitement. Originally, we had booked Mr. Marlow in the room that overlooks the street—it’s what you had requested, I remember; I picked it because it has such a nice view of Apple Street—but at the last minute, after check-in, as a matter of fact, I think they decided to change things. I believe Miss Fairbanks mentioned that Mr. Marlow wanted the room with the blackout shades even though it only looks into the backyard. At that point I was getting quite busy because we had a last-minute check-in with Mr. Bachman, and I wasn’t paying too much attention to the room swapping. Plus when I was doing turndown, everyone’s suitcases look so similar. Of course, now that we’re talking about it, I remember seeing Melody’s things, but at the time they could have belonged to anyone, you know? People could sleep where they wanted; the changes didn’t matter—it was just hard to keep track. And the lawyer was so lovely and patient during the check-in. He came right after they’d all gone upstairs. He’d been staying at another place over on Hummingbird, but they had also declined his offer to sell, so he was going to try out a few different spots. He was lucky we still had a room available, honestly.”

So Andrew hadn’t bumped into the bird crew at the hotel during check-in. It was interesting, however, that he had ended up murdered, considering he hadn’t originally been planning to stay at the Primrose. Audrey’s memory also left something to be desired, considering she had confidently mentioned seeing Melody’s wallet but then forgotten which room had been hers. Perhaps the stress of the murders was a bit too much for her.

I was right back to square one with figuring out who the real main target of the murder had been.

We checked the exterior door at the end of the hallway. Situated right between Melody’s and Sebastian’s rooms, it would have been an ideal entry point to get access to Melody’s room, and also to kill Sebastian.

The door, however, was locked from the inside. And not just a bolt that could be turned by one of the guests; it was locked with a padlock.

Probably not up to fire code, if I thought about it, but definitely not as easy or perfect an access point as it seemed at first glance.

“Let’s go have a look at the basement. Audrey, maybe have a look at getting a fire lock for that door instead. If anything were to happen here, I think you’d be liable, because that’s not an exit.” Rich patted her on the shoulder as we followed her down the stairs.

The basement of the inn was a lot like the basement at the Earl’s Study. It was dimly lit, and an underlying dampness hung in the air, making it smell musty and unwelcoming. Cobwebs clung to the corners of doorframes, and I gave silent thanks to the universe it was just cobwebs and not freshly built webs.

Audrey pulled a cord on an overhead bulb, just barely giving the space light. Shadows deepened at the edges of the main room, and the darkness of the storm outside didn’t do anything to help alleviate the creepy, claustrophobic feeling of being down here.

“The boiler room is under the stairs. I’ve got seasonal decor in here.” She tapped on a closed door. “Laundry is over there, and the storm door is this way.” Another dangling bulb awaited us about ten feet from the first, and Audrey showed us the heavy double storm door at the far side of a fairly empty room.

There were footprints in the dust all across the room, telling me plenty of people had come and gone down here before us. The police had obviously made a search of the space, so I wasn’t sure what else we could be expected to find, but it never hurt to look. Perhaps something had been overlooked.

The inn’s storm door looked exactly like the one in my own home’s basement, a not-uncommon design for old Victorian mansions of a certain era. These doors looked a little newer than mine, likely a replacement for the originals, because wood doors certainly weren’t an ideal solution as they aged. These looked to be made of a laminated material, and like upstairs, these were locked from inside. A chain had been wrapped around the interior handles and was fastened with a padlock.

Audrey’s proclivity for locking up emergency exits and entrances did make me question for a moment whether she was involved in the killings. After all, it was a bit strange that the only way into her house if bad weather hit and the only way out upstairs in the event of a fire were both sealed off, but I also figured that was just one woman’s way of protecting her home.

I hadn’t been here long enough to know what kind of issues Audrey had previously had with break-ins or maybe with guests taking things from the upper floor where she wasn’t able to watch them. I realized I was just looking for anyone convenient to point a finger at if I thought it might help Leo.

“Locked,” Audrey announced, rattling the chain by giving the padlock a shake. “And I keep the keys on me at all times.”

“There’s no way someone might have taken them out of a drawer and returned them without you noticing?” I asked.

With a flourish, she withdrew a long chain that had been tucked down the front of her dress. “Master key and the padlock key.” The two keys glinted in the low light from the overhead bulb. “I think I’d notice if someone took them.”

Well, that certainly eliminated one avenue of entry.

A loud ku-thwak noise made all three of us spin around at once. My once-calm pulse was now going a mile a minute, and Rich’s posture had stiffened. His hand had gone instinctively to his hip, I suspect where he had once worn his service weapon, but upon realizing he was unarmed, he moved instead to stand in front of Audrey and me.

Ku-thwak . The noise sounded again.

“Is that the boiler?” I asked hopefully.

“Definitely not,” Audrey answered.

We collectively edged in the direction of the noise, although I would have vastly preferred to unlock the big storm doors and head out that way instead. I was on the cusp of asking Audrey if she was perhaps washing a load of bricks in the laundry when we heard the sound again for a third time.

Ku-thwak .

What was that? I couldn’t contextualize the noise to give me the slightest idea of what we were hearing. It just sounded loud and heavy. I was grateful for what little light the overhead bulbs offered, but every shadow we threw against the wall as we walked made me want to jump out of my skin.

I was glad there was nothing in the room for my powers to pick up at the moment, but that just meant I was channeling all my anxiety inward and my brain was cooking up a million different horrible possibilities of what was making the noise.

When we got to the door that Audrey had said was for seasonal storage, the noise sounded again, and it was obvious it was coming from behind that door.

“Stand back,” Rich insisted, stepping aside from the door so he could open it without being right in front of it, just in case something came hurtling out at him or someone inside was waiting to attack.

With the door open, the sound was louder, but no one came charging out. Nothing immediately happened after the door was opened, so the three of us peered around the corner and into the narrow room.

As Audrey had said, the room was obviously intended for seasonal decor storage, something a lot of homes in town needed to find extra space for. She had deep wooden shelves built on either side of the room, and they were lined with clear plastic tote bins, all of them labeled with various holiday and season names to make it easier for her to see which was which.

The totes weren’t what was interesting, though.

At the end of the room was a window at ground level, probably about six or seven feet off the floor. That window was currently open, and the thing making the noise we had heard was the chain from the overhead light being jangled by a strong breeze from the storm outside. As the wind lifted the chain, the chain would fall back and smack loudly into the side of one of the plastic totes.

Ku-thwak .

While that mystery was resolved, it wasn’t the only interesting thing in the room.

Beneath the window, currently being doused with falling rain, were a navy-blue duffel bag and a crinkled-up paper bag from a fast-food restaurant. As we scanned the interior of the room, I could also make out a sad-looking blanket tucked away under one of the shelves and a few empty plastic bottles of water.

I didn’t need to ask.

“None of that was here when I checked a couple days ago,” Audrey said, her voice shocked. “Has someone been staying here?”

I entered the room before Rich could stop me. Whoever had been here was gone for now; they’d probably taken off when they’d heard us come down the stairs. I approached the duffel bag, whose zipper was open, and to avoid the risk of touching it with my hands, I used the tip of my toe to push apart the sides.

I gasped.

On top of a pile of clothing was the bank statement for the LLC in Melody’s name. The one that had been stolen from her room while I hid under the bed.

Beneath the sheaf of papers was an unmistakable orange-and-brown button-down.

This bag belonged to Deacon Hume.