Braking for Bodies (7 page)

But George didn't materialize and neither did anyone else. Fact is, the soldier and I were the only two, and usually the place was buzzing with tourists this time of year. “Hey, Cal, what are you doing here?” I called out as I slid off the bike. “The fort's over that way.” I pointed in the other direction.

Cal Sandman was early thirties and an islander. He'd lived here all his life and had no desire to live anywhere else. Last year he won the Great Chili Cook-off trophy from one of the old guys, and he built a special case in his house to show it off. He was captain of the spudding team, an island sport consisting of brave derring-do snowmobilers who ventured out onto the lake when it froze to check the depth of the ice for us sissies sitting on the shore. He and the others like Sutter marked the safe path to the mainland with the Christmas trees we all stockpiled just for this occasion. The fact that Cal used a wheelchair didn't slow him down one bit.

“Mayor Doud called out the soldiers,” Cal told me. “Around here it's us reenactment soldiers from
Mackinac Fort. I'm guarding the butterflies till the ladybugs get here.”

Anywhere else on the planet, a crack like that would have you on a psychiatrist's couch.

“Good to see you, Evie,” he went on. “All I've dealt with today is cranky tourists who are none too happy when I won't let them in to see the butterflies. There was even a group from the Grand in orange T-shirts called the Body Baggers trying to solve some kind of mystery game and find a killer. They just knew the Butterfly Conservatory being closed had to be involved. Took me a half hour to convince them aphids do not kill people, and sometimes butterflies are just butterflies. One gal with red hair tried to call the governor and complain, and when her cell phone wouldn't work she actually sat and cried. Said she didn't know how to live without her phone.”

“Did she use
like
every other word?”

Cal gave me a toothy grin. “That's the one. Hey, if you need part-time help at the bike shop, let me know. I could sure use the cash, and now that you got that ramp for getting bikes in and out, I can roll right in. I got my eye on a Newfoundland.”

“Dog? Vacation?”

“1812 musket with bayonet. It's a humdinger.”

Friend or foe, anyone who talked firepower with bayonets and held the fort against Zo and the Body Baggers probably wasn't into breaking the rules for Irma's wedding. I told Cal I'd keep him in mind for working at the shop and climbed back on Yankee. The
Grand was a ten-minute bike ride away that would probably take me twenty minutes at best in my present physical state. I needed to drop off the rental and maybe find a place for Irma's wedding while there. She had her heart set on butterflies fluttering as the string quartet played Pachelbel, but the front porch of the Grand Hotel would work. Enough champagne and all of us would forget someone had just taken a header into the bushes and gotten whacked by olive oil, and that Fiona was the prime suspect.

Midday traffic at the Grand was heavy, and in an hour when the dinner crowd arrived it would be horse-to-horse around here. I parked Yankee in front of the yellow awning over the ice cream parlor named after Sadie the dog, gone but not forgotten. I reminded myself I'd already had ice cream once today and that two times and the bazillion calories that went with it was not an option, no matter how cute the shop was, or I'd never be able to pedal these hills.

I asked one of the employees directing traffic to keep an eye on Yankee till the renter picked it up. Deep in thought over the wedding, losing the blasted dress, letting Irma down and the Fiona mess, I started up the crowded sidewalk toward the hotel. How was I going to fix any of this, I wondered as I headed for the main stairway. I stepped around a herd of tourists on a lilac walk, avoided two kids with drippy chocolate cones and was jostled right off the sidewalk and smack into the path of four fast-trotting horses pulling a wagon taxi rounding the corner and coming right at me.

Freaking hell!
I jumped back; the driver veered right, saving my bacon, and yelled, “Watch where you're going, lady!”

He was right! I needed to pay attention! Except I thought I was paying attention. Hey, I missed the drippy cones, didn't I? I was on the sidewalk, and then somehow I wasn't on the sidewalk. How did that happen? I was out of shape but I could still walk in a straight line.

Still shaking from my near-death-by-horse experience, I spotted Sutter up ahead. He stood in the middle of the crime scene, which was still surrounded by yellow tape. Gabi and the Corpse Crusaders looked on, scribbling furiously in their notebooks.

A part of me wanted to go over to Sutter and tell him my great plan of getting Irma and Rudy married at the Grand. Truth be told, I wanted to go over to Sutter to feel safe for a moment. Sutter and I had our moments, but when push came to shove—like right now—Sutter was the guy to have around. He knew stuff like how to survive, get the bad guys and keep cool. I was an emotional billboard, I knew how to paint bikes and survival was sometimes hit-or-miss, but I knew how to make kick-ass spaghetti sauce. The secret was a double dose of oregano and a half bottle of Chianti. After that much alcohol, no one cared what the sauce tasted like.

But right now I had other things to take care of besides my jangled nerves. While I was here, I needed to talk with Idle Summers, or maybe I could even poke
around in her room if I could sweet-talk Penelope again. Fiona had complete confidence that Idle would not set her up to take the fall for doing in the Peepster, but I wasn't so sure. Idle was a performer, an actor; she had baggage and she had something to hide.

How could Peep do this, I wondered. What kind of a life was it when you made money off the trials of others? I'd met some slimy people in my time—my ex being top of the list—but the Peepster even had him beat.

Slouching down to keep out of sight, I ducked behind one of the big Grand Hotel carriages. I walked along beside it as it moved, then kept to the far side of the wide stairway and darted up to the big porch. I scurried across, losing myself in the gaggle of milling guests, and sidled up to the long mahogany front desk with massive vases of lilacs scenting the air. Using the vintage house phone straight out of
The Great Gatsby
, I called the guest who'd rented the Yankee bike to let them know where I'd parked it.

Penelope was on duty and chatted with a family of four as she arranged pink and purple lilacs in a vase. She handed them a Lilac Festival flyer from the stack on the counter, sitting on top of the yellow
I
the Town Crier
bag. Holy cow, someone had found the missing bag! Who? Where? Maybe the killer? Someone had taken the olive oil bottle out and whacked Peepster.

Penelope looked more kempt this time with her hair in a perfect bun, understated neat makeup and a pressed
blazer, but she still had a deer-in-the-headlights look about her. Madonna and Zo had that effect on everyone.

“No way can I help you again,” she whispered to me after the family left. She took out a white lilac sprig and added it to the purple ones already in the vase. “I can't let you in another guest's room.” She pointed over her shoulder to a short forty-something guy with sandy hair, brown eyes and
Hotel Manager
scripted on his name badge. “My boss said no way could the room thing happen again, and he doesn't care what the excuse. That policeman guy had a holy fit when he found out. All of us here at the Grand want to get this over with as much as you do, probably more, but we can't lose our jobs. We need the money.”

I tapped the yellow stack of flyers. “Where'd these come from?”

“The gardener was cutting these for bouquets.” She nodded to the flowers heaped in front of her. “He found the yellow bag this morning right by where the crime scene tape is. I was so happy I kissed him right there in front of everyone. Now I can give the guests the information and they won't be driving me nuts with all their questions of what time are the tours, where do they go, how long does the tour last, can I take my toddler, can I pack drinks, can I take my dog and my personal favorite, what's a lilac!”

Penelope added a pink sprig to the vase, making it beyond obvious that she should stick to running a hotel and not be a florist. “So, how about I call Miss Zo for you,” Penelope continued. “That's what she wants to
be called, Miss Zo, do you believe it? She just went up to her room with one of the maids to let her in because she forgot her key. I think she's really excited about her Betsy Ross outfit, and—”

“Betsy Ross?”

Penelope leaned over the counter and whispered, “She just bought the costume today. Seems she wants to march in the Lilac Parade on Saturday, and she's wearing the outfit to get in the mood and think of happy things. She said she needed to do something fun 'cause she was so down in the dumps with her guy being toes-up over there at the medical center. I can understand that, can't you? I mean, losing someone you care about like that would just be terrible, and—”

“What costume?”

“All red, white and blue with a gray curly wig, bonnet and padding, and she's even carrying around a flag and sewing basket to fit the part. She looks real authentic, not like herself at all. I didn't even recognize her. I'll make the call and get her down here and—”

I yanked the phone from Penelope's hand and dropped it back in the brass cradle. “Let's not bother Miss Zo, and I know who this yellow bag belongs to, so I can take it to her, what do you say?” I reached for the yellow bag, and a big hand reached for mine and held it tight.

“I say not so fast,” came Sutter's voice from behind me.

“S
o we now have the bag that held the murder weapon?” Sutter said as he snagged the bag in one hand and my arm in the other. “You wouldn't be trying to take it, would you?”

“Hey, I'm just dropping off a rental bike and thought maybe I could fix our wedding problem while I was here. And when I got to the desk, lo and behold, do you believe it, there was Fiona's bag.”

“Lo and behold?”

“You caught me off guard.” My heart settled back into my chest after Sutter surprised the bejeebers out of me. My guess was that Fiona was right upstairs over our heads posing as Miss Zo and searching for an incriminating cell phone while I was here with our resident cop in the lobby.

“But . . . but think about this,” I offered, trying to keep Sutter's attention on me and not the stairs if Fiona/Betsy Ross chose this particular moment to appear. “Fiona says she lost this bag. Anyone could have swiped the olive oil out of it to do in Peep and frame her. Sounds pretty good, huh?”

“Sounds like Fiona's lying through her teeth and hid the bag to back up her story.”

I swiped a pink lilac sprig out of Penelope's hand and smacked Sutter on the arm. “How did you get to be such a skeptic?”

“Comes with the badge.”

“Fine, but now that you're here I'll tell you my great idea.”

Sutter let out a long-suffering sigh, and I lilac-smacked him again. “What about having the wedding on the front porch of the Grand? We can use the round area at the far end that overlooks Lake Michigan and the gardens. It'll be adorable, just look at this place.”

I swept my hand over the lobby, all posh and beautiful and serving up high tea. I turned to Penelope. “Aren't weddings at the Grand fantastic?”

Penelope fumbled the two lilacs she tried to stuff in the vase. She bit her bottom lip and started wringing her hands. For some reason Penelope didn't like having Sutter around any more than I did.

“Wedding? Right. Yeah, they're amazing. Let me see what I can do.” Penelope pulled out a big long black book with
Events
stenciled in gold across the
front. “Now what month are you two considering for your wedding?”

I froze. “You . . . two?” Was that high squeaky voice really mine? “No, no, no, you got this all wrong,” I said, holding up my hands as if warding off a charging bull. Sutter's mouth opened and closed a few times, but nothing came out. I jabbed him in the chest with my pointy finger. “It's his mother's wedding, and it's in three days. We're the best man and maid of honor, and we're here to set things up and that is all.”

Penelope closed the book and perched her hand on her hip. “Let me get this straight. You want to have a wedding here, at the Grand Hotel, in three days?”

She blinked a few times as if hit with a bucket of cold water, then burst into laughter. It wasn't just a polite tee-hee laugh but the kind that draws attention because someone's crazy as a loon.

“You're kidding, right?” She swiped a tear from her cheek and tried to stifle one last chuckle. “This is the Lilac Festival.” She waved her hand over the heap of lilacs on the desk. “We are booked solid and everyone's working around the clock to keep up. We have three weddings scheduled every single day and have since a year ago. How about booking a date for next year's Lilac Festival?” Penelope handed me her business card.

I shoved the card in my jeans pocket. “We'll figure out something.” I grabbed Sutter's arm and hustled him toward the porch.

“Good luck with that figuring,” Penelope called. “Every place is as jammed as we are.”

And that was a shame, but it wasn't all bad. At present Sutter was in
where to have the wedding
mode and not
where is Fiona
. I just had to get him out of there before he switched modes.

“We'll find someplace to have the wedding,” I said to Sutter, guiding him toward the steps, keeping him distracted with wedding plans, trying to keep the angst out of my voice. “There's got to be a room or an annex or—”

“Betsy Ross?” Sutter stopped dead by the little stand of
Town Crier
newspapers; two people collided into him, but he didn't budge one bit. He glared down at me. “Betsy Ross is
your
costume.”

“Don't be silly.” My eye started to twitch. “There's more than one Betsy Ross costume in existence.”

“Here on the island?”

“That Betsy girl really gets around?”

Sutter hauled me back into the hotel. He stopped at the desk, yanked the pink lilacs from the vase in front of Penelope, added two purples and three whites and fluffed the tall spikes to the middle; the bouquet was done to perfection in thirty seconds flat, and then he headed up the main stairway.

“How'd you do that?”

“Practice.” We stopped at the second floor and turned down the hall to the cheap rooms, and Sutter banged on Zo's door. “Fiona, I know you're in there.”

“Like, what's going on?” came Zo's voice behind us. “This is my room.”

Sutter turned around, dragging me with him to face Zo in green biker shorts, pink helmet and skinned knees. I could relate to the skinned-knees part.

“Betsy Ross, I assume?” Sutter said to Zo.

“Like, what is a Betsy Ross?” Zo fluffed her helmet hair, smiled hugely and assumed a sexy pose. “Hey, like, you know, like, I like it. Great name.”

I figured Zo just set some kind of world record for the number of times
like
was used in a sentence.

“Betsy Ross has like a really nice ring to it,” Zo went on. “Do you think it should like be my new stage name?” Her lower lip wobbled as a tear slid down her cheek, then another and another. “Peep would have loved that as my stage name. He always said I need something fresh to make it big in the newspaper world. He said
Zo
was so nineties.”

Zo opened her arms wide and looked to the heavens. “Oh, Peepy, my honey bunny, how could you leave me at a time like this when I needed you most?”

Sutter snagged the key card out of Zo's hand and jammed it into the lock. He turned the handle and the three of us stepped inside Zo's room. Betsy Ross, aka Fiona, was on top of the dresser unscrewing the air vent. She jerked her head around, her frontal padding throwing her off balance.

“Help!” Eyes wide and arms flailing, Fiona fell backward. She landed on the green-and-pink bedspread
looking like Miss Fourth of July in a garden with Zo screeching, “Like, what are you doing in my room?”

“Cleaning?” Fiona forced a smile. “Would you believe this is the new maid's uniform?” Fiona held up the corner of her white apron, rolling her eyes at Sutter as she sat up. “And you know what, that explanation would probably work if
you
weren't here.”

Sutter yanked off Betsy's bonnet and wig. “Mind telling me what's going on?”

“Fiona?” Zo gasped. “Like, is that really you? Why are you dressed up? Is it an island thing? Very Hollywood. Makes me homesick.”

She folded her arms and studied the toppled chair. “But why are you on a chair?” Zo's eyes thinned to slits. “You're here for that cell phone, aren't you? That's what you're looking for and that's why you killed my darling Peepster. He knew all about that affair you had and thought you should come clean about it and—”

“There was no affair.” Fiona stood, jabbed her hands on her padded hips and faced Zo. “I didn't do anything, and Xavier didn't do anything. Peep just made it look that way and was blackmailing me. But I didn't kill him, though Lord knows he had it coming.”

“Fiona!” I hissed, shaking my head in
shut up
fashion.

“Well, it's the truth. Peep was a cretin.” Fiona aimed her finger at Zo. “You're the one who killed him when you realized he was just using you for a fun roll in the hay all these years and had no intention of divorcing
Madonna. Her family had money and we all know Peep was about the money.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Zo screeched. “I would, like, never hurt my Peep, and I was out riding a bike when he was . . . you know . . . done in.” Zo pointed at me. “Ask her about the bike riding. We passed each other. She's the only person on this island who rides a bike worse than I do. Besides, how could I have pushed Peep . . . my darling Peepy . . . off the porch without being noticed, tell me that, huh?”

She held out her arms. “I had on a red biking outfit that I, like, bought in the hotel shop 'cause red is . . . was . . . Peep's favorite color? Red does not blend in with the evening dinner crowd in the hotel lobby around here. Like, someone would have remembered me, don't you think? Instead, they remember seeing that stupid purple hat Fiona wears all the time! She's just a terrible person. I told Peep not to hire her and that she was nothing but, like, big trouble.”

Zo yanked a ruffled pink pillow off the bed and swung it at Fiona, hitting her smack in the face. “How could you, like, do this to Peep? To me?”

“I didn't, like, do anything.” Fiona's eyes shot wide open. “Did I just say
like
?” She smacked Zo with a green pillow. “You're contaminating us all.”

“Don't you like make fun of the way I talk, you . . . you hillbilly.”

“This is the Midwest, you geographically challenged Valley girl.”

Zo clobbered Fiona over the head, and feathers flew
everywhere into the room. “I'm the only one who loved Peep. You, like, hated him, and his rotten wife only wanted his money. That's all she ever thought about; she never had enough. He was my little Peepy and there will never be another one like him.”

“God willing and a little bit of luck.” Fiona pillow-punched Zo in the gut.

“That's it!” Sutter stepped between Fiona and Zo and a flurry of pillow feathers littering the floor. “Fiona, you need to come down to the police station.”

“Me? What about the avocado queen here? I don't care what the evidence is, she's in this up to her eyeballs.”

“Avocado queen? Like, you're nothing but a two-bit pencil pusher.”

Sutter yanked away the pillows and tossed them on the bed. “There is no way Zo could have been dressed for dinner, pushed Peep off the porch, run around and clobbered him with the olive oil, then changed and pedaled off for Evie to see her on the way to the hotel. The timeline just doesn't work. I was at the Grand and would have remembered seeing a red sweatsuit in the throng of evening wear.”

Sutter took out his handcuffs and faced Fiona. “I need answers right now from you, and you keep running off. It's not going to happen again, and how'd you get the split lip and bump on your forehead?”

Fiona took a step back. “Nate, we . . . we've known each other forever, I sold you Girl Scout Cookies, and saved all the Thin Mints just for you. You owe me!”

“And I got you through geometry. We're even.”

“You can't put Betsy Ross in handcuffs,” I added. “What will the kiddies in the lobby think of Betsy Ross, seamstress of the first American flag, in handcuffs, huh? They will all be in therapy for years over that one, their Fourth of Julys ruined forever, and they'll cry when they salute the flag. And . . . and the mystery groups will assume Fiona's the killer and that the game is no longer afoot.”

“Afoot?” Sutter arched on eyebrow.

“You have to admit that you aren't one hundred percent certain Fiona is guilty. What about Madonna?”

“She's on the list.” Sutter reached for Fiona.

“See? Not one hundred percent,” I shot back. “And it will crush Fiona's parents, who are here for your very own mother's wedding. What will they think of their darling daughter hauled out of the Grand Hotel, the soul of grace and decorum, in handcuffs of all things by the best man and someone they've known since he was in diapers?”

Sutter pulled the yellow bag from his jacket. “Fiona put the olive oil bottle in this, and it was found at the scene of the crime, and people saw the purple hat last night at the crime scene, and she has motive.” He gave me a hard look. “I bet you saw Fiona on that path last night, didn't you? I should lock you up too.”

“And if you're not guilty,” Zo said to Fiona, “why are you running all over the place and not talking to the police like I did?” She jutted her 36-Bs and added a superior smirk. “You're just like making excuses.”
Zo shook her finger at Fiona. “You did it, I know you did.”

Sutter looked mutinous, but he did put away the handcuffs—thank you, Lord—and said to Fiona, “We as in you and me will walk casually and together out of this hotel and all the way down to the police station.” He turned to me. “You get Shakespeare.”

“Sometimes I get Shakespeare, sometimes he mystifies the heck out of me,” I said, having no idea how
Macbeth
played into this, but I needed time to figure a way to help Fiona.

“My horse. He's around back, and Fiona and I will meet you in the front by Sadie's. Don't try anything cute,” he said to me. “I'm not in the mood.”

Sutter took hold of Fiona's arm, tossed the flag over her arm and then hauled her out the door as Zo called, “Justice is served.”

I grabbed a pillow and swatted Zo upside the head, adding more feathers to the occasion, then headed for the back stairway. As much as I was hell-bent on helping Fiona, she was the one with all the info. She knew what was on that phone, who was tickled to their toes that Peepster was out of the way, and she knew the island and the people here way better than I did. Fiona was loved, trusted and accepted, and people would tell her what was going on. I was still a come-here, and the trusted part was up in the air.

Sutter hadn't locked Fiona up yet, but I knew he had enough circumstantial evidence to do the deed. Being from a family of Chicago lawyers, I'd been exposed to
more than my share of legal chitchat over breakfast, lunch, dinners, any and all family gatherings. From time to time the brain-numbing information actually came in handy.