A Body to Die For (34 page)

We rushed back into the inn, clinging to each other. Danny wasn’t saying anything, though I could hear her breathing hard
and shivering. With only my wrap around me, I should have been freezing, but the only thing I could feel right then was fear.
And guilt. I should have told Beck about the release massage. If I had, Piper might not be dead.

Earl and Lacey were right where we’d left them in the lobby. Without explanation Danny grabbed the phone at the front desk
and called 911. Her first words were an incoherent scramble, and I could tell the operator was asking her to slow down and
repeat herself. I was about to offer to take over, but she took a deep breath, calmed down finally, and explained that she
had found a woman dead on the grounds of the inn. When she set the phone back down, Earl just stood there with his mouth agape.
Lacey erupted.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” she yelled. “It’s Piper, isn’t it? I should have known something like this would happen. She was terrified
of this place. And now look what happened.”

“Why don’t you try to calm down,” I told her. “Your screaming isn’t going to help one bit.”

“Earl, please go check the dining room,” Danny said. “See who’s there.”

“There’s nothing—there’s no one in the dining room. The last people left when you went outside.”

“Start rounding up people from the staff, then,” I said. “No one should leave the inn.”

I pulled Danny aside and suggested that I stand outside so I could direct the ambulance and police and that she remain indoors
and keep an eye on the staff.

“All right,” she said. Still not much of a reaction on her part. I wondered if she was in shock.

This time the ambulance arrived ahead of the cops. As I stood on the step, my shawl pulled tightly around me, they lurched
to a stop in front of the inn. When the driver rolled down his window, I quickly explained what had happened. I jogged across
the parking lot in front of them, and once the ambulance had stopped I used the flashlight to point the paramedics in the
right direction. I waited a few minutes at a short distance, until I overheard one of them say she was dead. Then I hurried
back to the inn. Ten or twelve inn personnel had gathered in the lobby, looking bug-eyed with terror. As Danny tried to comfort
them, I watched out the window.

It was only a few minutes before two cop cars arrived in unison, one a cruiser, the other unmarked. From what I could tell,
Beck wasn’t with them. While most of the entourage headed around the building, two detectives, whom I recognized from last
Friday night, came into the inn and spoke with Danny. She told them quickly about Piper being missing and us finding the body.
One of the detectives walked over to the lounge doorway, glanced inside, and suggested we all sit there until the police had
a chance to speak to us. Within two minutes Danny was called outside. I was left with Earl, Lacey, and a dozen other people
I didn’t know, all inn employees. I felt as though I were in one of those disaster movies where you find yourself in a grim
situation with a bunch of strangers who by the second half of the film will be at one another’s throats.

I realized suddenly that my body was chilled and achy, thanks to the cold that had been gaining ground all evening long. I
found the remote control I’d seen Danny use, turned on the gas fire in the fireplace, and flopped into one of the armchairs
directly in front of it. The flames performed the same monotonous dance over and over. I watched them anyway. My brain felt
sodden with fear and guilt and anxiety, hindered from forming a coherent thought, but I tried nonetheless to piece together
what might have happened to Piper.

She had obviously been going to her car when she was attacked. Maybe she had needed something from her belongings. Or maybe
she was finally taking off, tired of waiting for loudmouth Lacey to arrive with her money. The killer had either spotted her
unexpectedly in the parking lot or he may have lain in wait for her, knowing that she was heading out sometime tonight.

Had
Josh
done it? Piper had told me she was afraid of him. But what purpose would it have served for Josh? Piper was leaving town,
going someplace, in her words, as far away from Warren as she could get. Besides, as Piper had told me, Josh didn’t want to
draw any attention to the sordid little situation at the spa.

Since Anna and Piper were both involved in release massage, it wasn’t a big leap to assume that their deaths were connected
somehow
to that, rather than simply to their being employed by the spa. If there was one thing I’d learned as a crime writer, it
was that bad things often led to other bad things. Maybe the killer was a client who’d been serviced by both girls. Or a sexual
predator targeting them because they were prostitutes.

I should have spoken up. Yes, I’d wanted to protect Danny’s business, and that was the main reason I hadn’t come clean to
Beck about the prostitution, but I had also been caught up in playing
Nancy Drew and the Case of the Cedar Inn Corpse.
Because of my pride and my ego, I was partly responsible for Piper’s death.

And what a pathetic detective I was. I’d been on a wild-goose chase for the last few days, pursuing the “Anna’s mystery date”
angle and the “haunted by her past” scenario. And neither had turned out to be right.

The lounge began to receive new arrivals: five or six inn guests in their jammies and robes, looking either frightened and
disoriented or totally put out. One guy still had one of those Breathe Right strips across his nose. I was anxious to know
what was going on and what had happened to Danny, but when I walked over and tried to poke my head out the doorway, a patrol
cop who had been stationed there asked me to step back inside.

Danny returned about ten minutes later. As shaken as she must have felt, she’d now moved into stay-in-control gear.

“They’re going through the inn, room by room, asking people to come down here,” she whispered. “They’re also trying to track
down everybody who ate at the restaurant.”

“Is there any guest who’s registered tonight who was also here last weekend?”

She smiled ruefully. “Only you. I checked on the computer.”

“Just watch,” I said sarcastically. “Beck will probably arrest
me
when he realizes it.”

“He’s here, by the way—running the show. He asked if you were waiting in the lounge. I’m sure he’s going to talk to you before
long.”

The mere thought of that made me nervous. And not just because of the contentiousness between Beck and me in the lobby earlier.
I’d found another body and would have to confess everything I’d dug up on Anna so far, including the release massage. I didn’t
want to think about what the fallout would be. I could just imagine Beck bringing out cuffs and a red-hot poker.

The doors behind us slid open and we turned automatically to see who was entering the room. Danny and I stared in utter disbelief.

Piper had just walked through the door, alive, whole, her bright red hair pulled back in a ponytail. Danny and I looked at
each other in utter disbelief, then rushed to her.

“How—how did you…?” Danny fumbled, completely disoriented. “Wait, what’s going on?”

“I have no idea,” Piper said, looking both confused and scared. “The police knocked on the door of my room and told me to
come downstairs. What’s
happened?
”

“That wasn’t you—in the—”

“But what room were you in?” I asked, interrupting Danny. “We looked for you in room twenty-seven, but there was no sign of
you.”

From the far end of the room, Lacey must have suddenly glanced up, because she let out a scream and practically flung herself
in our direction. Everyone in the room stared at her.

“My God, Piper, they said you were
dead,
” she said, reaching us. “This place is insane.”

“
What?
” Piper demanded. “Will someone please explain what’s happening?”

“We will,” I said, “but please just tell me first. Where
were
you all this time?”

“I moved to another room. Natalie asked me to switch because the room I was in is part of a suite and she said they needed
to make sure it was ready for a guest checking in tomorrow morning. I asked her to tell Lacey when she got here. Then I fell
asleep.”

I knew as soon as she’d said the name what the truth was. I turned to Danny. Her face was wrinkled in confusion as she struggled
to understand what had happened, to figure out who was actually lying dead in the leaves.

“Danny,” I said, pulling her aside. “Danny, look at me.”

“Bailey, what in the world is going on?”

“Danny,” I whispered, trying not to show how distraught I was. “You’ve got to brace yourself. I think it’s Natalie out there.”

“
What?
Oh dear God, no.”

“Yes,” I said. “I just automatically assumed it was Piper because of the red hair and because she was missing. Does Natalie
have a tan raincoat?”

“Yes, yes, yes.” Her eyes began to fill with tears.

“We better go out and tell the police. Though they probably know by now if they’ve found ID on her.”

As we started to leave the room, Piper grabbed my arm.

“Aren’t you going to tell me what’s going on?” she asked desperately.

“Someone’s been killed,” I said. “We thought it was you because we couldn’t find you. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

She looked freaked by the news and began peppering me with more questions, but I explained that Danny and I needed to speak
to the police.

After I persuaded the patrol cop to let us out because we had new information, we were led to the suite of offices behind
the front desk. As we reached the door to the small sitting room, we saw Beck standing inside, talking to a guy in plain clothes
and a state trooper. The patrol cop indicated that we should go in.

Beck focused his attention on Danny, who, clearly shaken, blurted out the discovery we’d just made. I could tell from Beck’s
expression that we weren’t offering him anything he didn’t already know. He thanked Danny and told her that, yes, it
was
Natalie. Her parents’ number had been in her wallet, and they had been contacted. That was all he was at liberty to reveal
at the moment, he said, his eyes never leaving Danny’s face. We turned to go, and he called out to me.

“Miss Weggins. Will you stay, please?” he said. “I have some questions for you.”

I squeezed Danny’s arm as she left the room, the state trooper trailing behind her. Beck took a seat, and, unbidden, I did
the same, figuring that as miffed as he might be at me, he wasn’t going to force me to stand through the questioning. The
other cop busied himself with paperwork on the table.

“I’d like to hear your version of what happened tonight,” Beck announced.

“Sure. Though I was with Danny the whole time, so I probably don’t have much to offer beyond what she’s already told you.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” he snapped.

Clearly I was still in the doghouse. As he took notes in that trusty little notebook of his, I went through the story pretty
quickly: Lacey coming with money. My going to the parking lot. Danny and me searching the inn, etc., finding the body, and
assuming it must be Piper.

“Trouble just loves following you around, doesn’t it,” he said harshly when I’d finished. “Why do you think that is?” The
severity in his tone took me aback—and the other cop’s head shot up in surprise.

“I have no idea,” I said as coolly as I could. Maybe I’d been out of line earlier by implying he wasn’t being thorough enough,
but that was no reason for him to treat me like something nasty he’d just discovered on the bottom of his shoe. “I—”

“You need to come down to the station tomorrow to make a statement,” he said, cutting me off.

“Fine,” I said.

As I rose to go, so did the other cop. With papers gathered in one hand, he went out of the room ahead of me. I paused near
the door, wondering if this was the right moment to tell Beck about the release massage. Since it was Natalie lying dead behind
the boulders, not Piper, it meant that the murders probably had nothing to do with what had been going on at the spa—after
all, Natalie wasn’t even connected to the spa. But I knew that I still needed to come clean about my discovery. I’ll wait
till tomorrow, I thought. When I could grab Beck alone and the atmosphere might be less tense. I reached for the door handle.

“Miss Weggins,” Beck called out.

I turned around and faced him, hoping that because we were now alone, he might say something to diffuse the tension between
us.

“Don’t talk to anyone out there, do you hear me?” he snapped. “To any guests or to anyone who works at the inn. This isn’t
your business—and you’re to keep your nose out of it.”

It felt like a slap. I turned quickly and left, yanking the door closed behind me. I realized that Beck no longer trusted
me and I couldn’t entirely blame him. But his behavior seemed out of line. I tried to put it down to the enormous pressure
he was under with two murders on his hands—but that didn’t make it bother me any less.

Back in the lounge, I scanned the room for Danny, but she was now missing in action. There were a few new faces in the room—massage
therapists who I assumed were residents of the barn. Eric was with them. He stared at me from across the room, his expression
never changing. I looked around for Josh, then remembered he lived in a town house in Warren.

Someone had taken my seat by the fire, and I was forced to settle for a straight-backed chair at a game table. My throat was
really starting to throb. I sat down, resting my elbows on the table and my head in my hands, trying to shut out the noise.
Pushing my confrontation with Beck from my mind, I focused on Natalie. Why
her?
She wasn’t involved at the spa, she hardly knew Anna. Maybe there really
was
a serial killer at large, someone who worked at the inn or spa or who lived in the area and had simply targeted two victims
at Danny’s inn. None of it made any sense to me. But I also felt some of my guilt ebb away. When I’d thought Piper was the
one lying dead, I’d felt partly responsible because I hadn’t coughed up what I knew about the spa. But it didn’t seem as if
Natalie’s death could possibly be connected to that.