Keeping the Peace (12 page)

“Yes, sir,” said Cully, and he ran back to the cruiser.

John heaved his sharp sigh and opened the front door of the inn. With his officers and Gabriel close behind him, he stepped into the lobby.

Chapter Nine

J
OHN
H
AD
N
EVER
L
IKED
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. Although it had always been the primary go-to place in the area for weddings, meetings, prom night dinners, and every other function public, private, or municipal, the one-hundred-fifty-year-old ramshackle structure had always struck him as creepy. Melanie claimed it was because the place had always been an inn, cobbled on to every decade or so to accommodate a constantly evolving clientele. First, it had been a stagecoach stop, a small pub with a few rooms upstairs and a stable in the back where tired travelers and horses alike could rest and eat. More rooms were added when the railroad came through, and still more when people began to take automobile vacations to the Green Mountains. Finally, the last and biggest addition was in response to the blossoming post-war ski industry. Melanie maintained that she was sensitive to buildings, and because the inn had always housed a temporary population, it had never had the chance to develop a solid and established air about it. This transient population kept the building in a state of insidious and permanent disruption, she explained.

Consciously, John did not share her existential interpretation, but the fairy tales and ghost stories his grandmother told him were still there and not as deeply buried in his subconscious as he would like them to be. The building was huge, dark, and drafty. It seemed to John to be hiding something, and just being inside the place made him jumpy. Maybe it was as Melanie said: the old inn carried the mark of every owner it’d had since it was built. Every part of the inn except the original tavern had been built rather hastily and never properly cared for. For reasons most likely rooted in finances, each innkeeper down the years had maintained this tradition of neglect. Throughout the decades, only the most visible wounds had been dressed. A coat of paint would be slapped across the front, but not on the back. The original slate shingles had been sold off years ago and subsequent leaks in the roof were patched on an as-needed basis until the whole roof was a mosaic of mismatched asphalt. The rattley old windows were caulked here and there around the edges rather than replaced. Except for the chimney block, the whole building was wooden. John shuddered to think about the dry rot that must be prevalent in the sills and load-bearing beams. Sprinkler system or no, he thought, one mislaid match and the whole place would burn like tissue paper, taking most of the middle of town with it. Either that or an above-average snow load would prove to be too much for the rafters over the dining room that John had suspected for years housed a bustling metropolis of carpenter ants. He imagined the entire ceiling over the dining room, the only part of the inn with no attic, crashing down and squishing all the out-of-state skiers as they sat eating their prime rib and shrimp scampi. Still, the inn enjoyed widespread popularity. It was convenient for locals and quaintly country for urban tourists, who, on approach, only saw the wide front porch and the garden off the breakfast room and never got around to the back of the building.

So it was with his usual trepidation that he stood here now, surveying the huge, chilly room that was the lobby. The twenty-five or so guests, driven from their rooms by the cold, were huddled in a clump on the far wall in front of the fireplace. They were mostly dressed in pajamas, wrapped in the quilts off their beds, robes, or their ski parkas. Three or four children were curled up under blankets on the big, overstuffed pink and green floral couches. An elderly man sat in a wing chair. As one, they eyed John and his entourage suspiciously, but nobody spoke. The fire was the only sound. It spit and hissed anemically, not throwing much heat. Randomly, John reckoned that innkeeper Bill Noyes, cheap as he was, had probably purchased green wood.

John looked up as Noyes approached him, crossing the room from the innkeeper’s desk in the opposite corner. The floor creaked under his step.

“This isn’t good, John,” the small, skinny man whispered. He shook his head rapidly back and forth, and his hands clenched and unclenched. “This isn’t good at all. You gotta get that body out of my inn.”

“Did anyone see anything? Do they even know what happened?” asked John.

Noyes had been married to John’s cousin Susan for twenty-two years now, and although he was basically a decent sort, John still found him annoying.

Bill Noyes continued to shake his head as he spoke. “No. Most everybody had already drifted down here because of the power outage. Oh, they know someone died, but they don’t know it was murder. No one heard the gunshot. Except Tiffany.”

“Tiffany?” John raised his eyebrows.

This time, it was Joe Bernard who spoke. “Tiffany Carroll, sir. She was, ah, with the deceased. She’s sitting in the back room with Mrs. Noyes.”

“Hmm,” said John. “Is she the girlfriend?”

“She’s a waitress, sir. She works here.”

Gabriel broke from where he had been standing beside Steve Bruno. He strode across the room and ducked under the “Police Line” tape that stretched across the stairwell.

John called out sternly, “Strand! Stop where you are!”

Gabriel was taking the stairs two at a time. John moved after him, followed by Joe. Steve held his ground, not taking his eyes off the guests, who formed a tighter knot around the fireplace like a flock of startled sheep.

On the landing, John was able to reach out and catch Gabriel by the arm.

“I said stop,” he said quietly.

The musician caught his breath in a dry sob. He looked directly at John. “I think it’s Bruce Blake,” he said.

“Bruce Blake?”

“The promoter.”

John looked back over his shoulder. “Where’s the body?” he asked Joe.

“On the floor of the bedroom, just inside the door. He was shot from behind as he was entering the room from the hall. At least, that’s what it looks like to me.”

“Okay, let’s see.” He tightened his grip on Gabriel’s arm. “I’m sorry if this is one of your friends, but this is a crime scene under my jurisdiction and a violent crime besides, so you stay right behind me and do exactly as I tell you to do. And don’t touch anything, not even something you don’t think is important. You could ruin crucial evidence. Am I clear?”

“Yes.”

“Joe.” John motioned for the state trooper to take the lead.

They entered the dark hallway, flashlights blazing. The chief followed Joe until he could see an open door.

“In there, sir,” said the trooper, pointing with his flashlight.

He stood aside, and John entered the room. Pale light from the moon revealed the body, lying face down on the floor: a male, fully dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, and a hooded sweatshirt with “Vermont” across the back. One arm was stretched out over the man’s head. The other was curled under his body. The victim had been shot once in the back of the head. A pool of congealed blood spread out across the floor, shining blackly in the moonlight. John turned his flashlight on the doorjambs and the door itself. Both were splattered with blood. He approached the body. Joe Bernard walked in behind him, but Gabriel stood silently in the doorway, staring at the body.

John knelt down beside the dead man. Without looking up, he addressed the musician. “Is this your friend?”

Gabriel’s voice shook as he answered, “That’s Bruce Blake. He wasn’t really my friend. I really didn’t know him all that well. He’s a promoter in this part of the country. He’s out of New York.”

“Do you know why he was in your room?”

“Well, I did leave the key with him. He wanted some of the business cards I had in my guitar case. He’d said he was going to make some calls. I told him to help himself. I thought he was just going with that girl. They were drinking pretty heavily.”

John was silent. He looked back at Gabriel. Suddenly, a tiny gleam of reflected light caught his eye. A shiny object lay on the floor right at the toe of the musician’s boot.

“Don’t move a muscle, Strand,” said John, and he heaved himself to his feet.

The singer’s eyes widened a little, but he stood still.

John knelt down. Taking a pen from his pocket, he poked it into the object and lifted it into the glow from Joe’s flashlight. “Twenty-two caliber casing,” he said.

“Good job, Chief.” Bernard focused the beam of his flashlight to illuminate the shell.

“For all the good it’ll do,” John said with a sigh.

“Might have some fingerprints on it,” Bernard said, persisting with his support.

John stood up. “Let’s leave things as they are here,” he said, “until the Waterbury lab crew gets here. They can get samples. Joe, go check on Cully and see what he’s been up to. See that he’s contacted everyone. We’ve got to clean up here. I wish that power’d come back on.”

“Are you going to talk to the girl, sir?” asked Bernard.

“Yeah. Poor thing.” He started back down the hall, followed closely by the other two men.

“What should I do?” asked the musician.

“Go with Joe. Joe, leave him with Steve Bruno. They know each other.” Then, more compassionately, the chief said, “Don’t worry, Strand. You stick with Steve, and we’ll go back to the station together. I’ll have to question you after I talk to the girl.”

“Question me? Somebody should just tell me what the fuck is going on.” Strand was beginning to sound hysterical.

John let out a long breath. “A man was found shot to death in your hotel room. You knew him. More than that, you were doing business with him. He wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you. You’re a key figure in this whole mess.”

“I’m not, though.”

“You are. You could be a suspect. What if you shot him before you came to my house?”

“What? I didn’t shoot him!”

“Just go with Joe. I’ll be out after I talk to the girl.”

From the landing, John watched the young man—pale and slouched over—follow the state trooper down the stairs. Then he continued down the stairs himself, but turned into a short hallway at the bottom that led to the office and the kitchen and knocked at the office door.

“Come in,” said a woman’s voice.

John entered the small room lit by a kerosene lamp on the desk. Susan Noyes sat behind the desk, a cup of coffee in her hand. Sitting in a straight chair in the corner was a young woman. Her thin brown hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, and her mascara was badly smudged. She looked up at John with wide, frightened eyes, gripping a coffee mug so hard that he noticed her fingernails were white.

The innkeeper’s wife said, “This is Tiffany Carroll, one of our waitresses. I’ll leave you two alone now.”

John waved his hand towards his cousin. “No, please, Susan, stay. I just have to ask a few questions.” He pulled up another straight chair and sat down.

“Well, all right, if you like,” said Susan. “Shall I get you a cup of coffee?”

“You’ve got hot coffee?”

“Gas stove.”

“Yes, please. That’d be great. Sugar and milk, please.”

She nodded and disappeared through a door at the back of the office.

John turned to the young woman. “I’m John Giamo, police chief here,” he said. “Your name is Tiffany Carroll?”

The girl nodded.

“And you work here at the inn?”

Another nod.

“How long have you worked here?”

The girl answered in a whisper, “A little over a year, I guess.”

“Full time?”

“Mm-hmm, nights.”

“Where are you from, Tiffany?”

“Springfield,” she said.

At this point, Susan Noyes came back into the room and handed John a steaming mug of coffee. He reached for it gratefully and sipped. It was hot and it burned, but it felt good as the heat traveled slowly down his gullet, warming him from the inside out. Suddenly, the lights popped on.

“Well!” exclaimed Susan, looking around as though she had never seen the room before.

John could hear murmurs from the people in the lobby, and then that murmur rose into a sort of cheer. He heard the furnace kick, and the old radiator under the window shuddered. The chief sighed. He took another sip of the coffee and looked at his watch. It was ten minutes past four in the morning. He was glad the power was back on. The warmth and light might make the girl feel more comfortable.

He said to her, “I could ask you a lot of questions, most of the answers I’d know already, but I want the truth here. A straight story. You’re an essential part of this investigation. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did Bruce Blake try to hurt you, Tiffany? Did you shoot Bruce Blake?”

John put the hard question out first and watched the girl closely as her bloodshot eyes grew wide and dark with fear. Her mouth opened, and she gave a short gasp, sucking air down her trachea. Then, she gasped again, and again. She was hyperventilating.