A Candidate For Murder (Old Maids of Mercer Island Mysteries Book 2) (23 page)

It was early in the morning when I got up to pee. I was heading back to bed when April’s lemon bars began to call to me.

Julia. Juuulia!

I did an about-face, put on my slippers and opened my bedroom door. I snuck into the hallway, leaving the dogs behind this time. I tiptoed past Angela’s closed door.

No sound.

I kept going.

I opened the apartment door and tiptoed into the main hallway, heading for the breakfast room, wrapping my arms around my chest for warmth.

I should have grabbed my robe,
I thought. It was chilly out in the hallway.

I was passing the library, when the front door to the Inn opened. I flashed back to the attack on the night Ahab was stolen and ducked into the library, hiding around the corner. My heart was pounding. I heard tentative footsteps echo in the entryway.

I peeked around the wall. It was only Mr. Campo, a young man in town for his sister’s wedding. I sighed with relief. I’d given him the code to the alarm system. He stopped and checked his cellphone and then climbed the stairs unsteadily.
Must have been a great wedding reception,
I thought. I watched him disappear and then leaned into the hallway to listen. I heard his door close and carefully re-emerged.

I stepped into the hallway, shivering from the blast of cold air that had followed him inside.
Should I go back to the apartment and get my robe?
I glanced down to my favorite Mickey Mouse pajamas, realizing that I wouldn’t look very professional if I ran into one of my guests. But then, I could taste the burst of lemon in my mouth. It would only take a minute.

I stepped forward and glanced up the staircase, just to make sure I was alone. I moved quietly into the entryway and was just about to turn into the breakfast room, when a door on the second floor opened.

Damn!

I started for the office – changed my mind – turned back for the library. Nope. Too far. I whipped around and ducked behind the registration counter, my heart beating wildly.

The sound of light footfalls whispered across the upstairs landing and then began to descend the stairs. I pushed myself into the farthest corner between the counter and the staircase, to one side of the closed office door. I felt really stupid. I was hiding only because of my vanity. But really, maybe it was time to upgrade my pajamas.

Fortunately, darkness shrouded the area behind the registration counter so that I wasn’t visible, but I dared not peek to see who was coming downstairs.

The footfalls descended the stairs and then paused at the bottom. Perhaps my visitor was making sure they were alone as well. Finally, the individual crossed in front of the reception counter and came around the corner. I scrunched myself into a ball so that all I saw were two fluffy slippers disappearing into the breakfast room.

There wasn’t any food out, and it wouldn’t be for several hours. We didn’t even have the coffee pot going. But I was ultra-sensitive to anyone who got too near Ahab. I listened intently and heard the kitchen door swing open.

Someone was raiding the kitchen!

The kitchen wasn’t necessarily off limits, but out of courtesy, people didn’t usually go in there. And there wasn’t really anything worth stealing – other than the lemon bars. But I was more than a little curious about who had the gall to invade the sanctuary of our kitchen in the middle of the night.

Dana!

I crept forward on hands and knees and poked my head around the corner to make sure no one was in the breakfast room. Then I got up and scurried through the entryway to the front door, where I hid behind one of the steamer trunks used in my antique display. I quickly reached up and turned off the small table lamp we kept lit there for late arrivals, so that once again, I was hidden by deep shadow. I crouched down and peeked around the corner of the steamer chest. I wanted a clear view of Dana when she came out of the kitchen. Before she could make her escape, however, another door opened and closed on the second floor.

Really?
This was beginning to remind me of a Peter Sellers movie.

I poked my head above the steamer trunk and watched as the twins, Barry and Sherrie, quietly descended the stairs, whispering to each other like co-conspirators. They rounded the bottom of the staircase and tiptoed with stealth, giggling, to the reception desk. Sherrie scooted around to the back of the desk and placed something into a potted fern that sat on top of the counter. Then she reached through the fern and handed something to her brother.

Another string.

Barry ran the string under a heavy table runner that stretched the length of the counter and over to the staircase. Barely containing his mirth, he gestured for Sherrie to come back around to the front of the counter. Just as she did, she glanced my way, making me duck down.

“Aaaargh!” she screamed.

I’d been made.

Barry’s matching scream set my teeth on edge.

Damn!

I was about to rise, but a movement to my left stopped me. Elizabeth’s unearthly image shimmered in front of the door. She turned her ghostly head to me and then pointed a transparent finger in the direction of the children. The kids screamed again. She made an abrupt turn and flew through the opposite wall.

The kids wailed a third time and ran crying up the stairs as doors flew open on the second landing. I watched as Mrs. Brewster came running out of the kitchen and ran up the stairs behind them.
So it wasn’t Dana, after all.

Mickey and Minnie had begun to bark and the noise grew louder as my apartment door opened, which meant Angela was on her way down the hallway. I had only moments to figure out what to do without anyone seeing me.

Angela appeared and began to ascend the stairs. I scooted out from behind the trunk and stepped in behind her.

“What’s the matter?” I called out, as if just arriving on the scene.

Angela turned in surprise, but kept going up the stairs. I flipped on a light switch as I passed, illuminating the entire area.

Everyone was huddled around the kids at the top of the landing. Their father stood behind his wife, pulling a robe around his shoulders. The children blubbered, while everyone murmured their support.

“They say they saw something,” Mrs. Kohl said to me as I arrived on the scene. She was leaning over Sherrie, her arms around her daughter’s shoulders. The little girl was sobbing and visibly shaking.

“It was a ghost,” Sherrie said, her voice wavering. “She walked right through a wall.”

Her mother looked up at me for clarification. I didn’t have any, so I shrugged.

Mr. Campo had come down the hallway. “Damn, I wish I’d seen it. I just came in,” he said with a slight slur.

“Maybe the children just saw you,” the mother said hopefully.

Mr. Campo frowned. “I doubt it. First of all, I haven’t walked through any walls lately.” He laughed stupidly. “And anyway, I was already in my room.” He teetered and almost bumped into the wall closest to him.

“No…no, it was a woman in a nightgown, downstairs,” Barry sputtered.

Tears streaked his face, and for the first time he looked like the kid he really was. The once ballsy boy was tucked behind his mother, clearly frightened.

“What were you doing downstairs?” I asked as innocently as I could.

They both stopped blubbering and stared at me, wide-eyed. Barry, the consummate liar, spoke up. “We thought maybe there’d be some cookies left.”

“Ah…” I said. “Well, the excitement is over. Perhaps we should all go back to bed.”

Mr. Kohl was being uncharacteristically quiet, and I couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking. Mr. Brewster had come up belatedly behind Mr. Campo and stepped out onto the landing.

“Don’t tell me we missed the excitement again,” he said.

His wife slapped his arm. “Oh, forget it, Harry. I don’t think we’re going to see any ghosts. I’m going back to bed.”

Clearly, she wasn’t going to confess to her secret trip to the kitchen. She turned and padded back down the hallway. He reluctantly followed, and everyone turned to go back to their rooms.

“Where’s Dana?” Angela said once everyone was gone.

Dana’s door had remained closed, even though we were right in front of it.

“I don’t know! All that commotion should have woken her up.”

I knocked on Dana’s door. No answer. I knocked again. No answer.

“Do you have a key?” Angela asked.

“Behind the registration desk,” I said.

I was headed back down the stairs, when Dana’s door finally opened. She poked her head out. “What’s going on?” she murmured.

Her eyes were only half open, and I realized she’d been sound asleep.

“Can we come in?” I asked.

She pulled the door open and we stepped inside.

“Dana, are you okay? Didn’t you hear the screams?” I asked.

“I took a sleeping pill.”

I relaxed with a sigh. “Well, sorry, then. The kids next door just…they had a fright.” The room was freezing and I shivered. “Did you close the heater vent?” I pulled my arms around me again for warmth.

“No. Why would I do that?” she mumbled. She climbed back onto the bed and pulled a blanket around her.

I felt an actual breeze and turned towards the window. “Is there a window open?” I stepped over to the window next to a small desk and pulled the curtains aside. It was wide open. “Dana, why did you open the window?”

“I didn’t,” she said stubbornly.

“Well, someone did,” I said, slamming it shut. I shivered again and allowed the drapes to drop back into place. As I turned to step away from the window, I happened to glance at the floor. What I saw brought the sour taste of bile to my mouth.

There was fresh mud on the carpet.

Dana freaked out.

Once we’d calmed her down, we convinced her to come downstairs for the night. I just couldn’t force myself to call the police out one more time, so I reported the incident to Officer Capshaw, who was stationed in front of the Inn in the unmarked car. He came in and searched the Inn, just to make sure no one had actually made it past Dana’s room. Since the guests had all reacted to the emergency with the children, we didn’t feel it necessary to disturb them again. But Officer Capshaw looked into every other room. Since Dana’s window was at the back of the Inn with a trellis nearby, we figured whomever it was had come down the side drive past my apartment to the rear of the building and climbed up the trellis. So, this time, I asked Officer Capshaw to camp out in Dana’s room until dawn, just in case.

As I returned to my apartment, I smiled despite the anxiety I felt at a second break-in, thinking how surprised Dana’s stalker would be if he came back and found a burly male officer in Dana’s bed instead of her.
Oh, Grandma, what big teeth you have.

Angela had gone into the apartment first to make sure the dogs were safely tucked away in the bedrooms. Fifteen minutes later, Angela had retired again, and I was handing off a pillow to Dana for the couch.

“I know you don’t like me, Julia,” she said sleepily. “And I know this must be a great imposition, having me here at the Inn. So…thank you.”

I paused with a folded quilt in my arms. She was right. There was nothing I liked about her. But I had a natural compassion for the underdog and right now, she was the underdog.

I plopped down in a nearby chair. “I
don’t
like you, Dana. I think you take great pleasure in causing other people pain and distress. I don’t know if you do it in order to make
yourself
feel better, or…I don’t know, you’re bored. But just because you’re mean-spirited, I don’t think you deserve to be murdered. Maybe this will be a wakeup call and you’ll change.”

She dropped onto the sofa, a beaten woman. Everything about her had changed. All of her bravado was gone, along with any sense of confidence.

“I’m not sure I
can
change,” she said quietly. “It’s how I was raised. I told you about my mother. She spent her entire adult life finding ways to get back at people who had more than she did. She seemed to work hard at making their lives miserable, including mine. She once made a formal complaint against a kid in my sixth-grade class who had a glandular problem and weighed about 300 pounds. His parents were wealthy, which just naturally pissed her off. So she made a case to the school district that he should be home-schooled because of his unusual size, which, she argued, made the other kids uncomfortable. Somehow she got two other mothers to join her, and that poor kid finally dropped out of school. My mother gloated about that.” Dana took a deep breath and lowered her chin. “You may not like me, Julia, but it’s who I am. It’s who I was trained to be. I don’t know
how
to be different.”

“Did your husband really abuse you when you lived in Vancouver?”

Her face tensed, and tears appeared. “Yes. He beat me so badly once I had to go to the ER. I was actually in the process of making plans to leave him and go to a shelter when he disappeared.”

I handed her the quilt. “Well, I’m sorry about that. Really, I am. But at least now you’re being honest about things.”

She swiped a tear away. “It’s not easy being me.”

A laugh erupted from my throat. “Well, we finally agree on something.”

She glanced up at me, and then smiled. “Touché,” she said.

“Look, Dana, somehow we’ll get you through this. And then you can go back to being a pain in the neck again. Just hopefully not
my
neck.”

She slumped back on the sofa. “You know, I have to admit that I’ve sometimes been jealous of you.”

“Me? Why?”

She glanced around at all of my antiques and
Wizard of Oz
memorabilia. “Partly the Inn. It’s really lovely, and you get to meet such interesting people. And partly your husband.”

“Ex-husband,” I said.

“Well, he
is
the governor of the state. But most of all, your friends. You seem to attract people like a magnet. I’m just the opposite.”

“Let’s face it. We approach life very differently. I smile. You frown.”

I smiled. And finally, she smiled too. “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “I get it.”

“Now, let’s get some sleep. We have a busy day tomorrow. Jason Spears will be here.”