Early Check Out

by Diane Capri

  Sheriff Jackson looked at me curiously. I shook myself out of my brain fog and moved away from the body so the doctor could do her thing. Dr. Neumann immediately crouched next to Mrs. Walker and checked her non-existent vitals, then started to look over the body under the sheriff’s watchful eye. I hung back and put my attention on the framed pictures on the walls.

  Most were of painted flowers and landscapes. Prints, not originals. There were only three actual photos. One was, I assumed, a younger Mrs. Walker, in her sixties maybe, a portrait. She sat in a high-backed chair, the one I’d spotted in the living room, wearing a floral blouse and dour black skirt. Her hair was nicely coiffed, and a set of pearls rested at her throat. She wasn’t smiling. She looked like a very sad woman.

  The other photo was of her, much younger, and two other people, a man and a woman. They all looked similar, so possibly her siblings or cousins. Again, she had no smile but was wearing the pearl necklace. The others were grinning like fools. I wondered whether she had contact with them anymore.

  The sheriff came up to my side, took out his little notebook, and gave me that look of frustration that he always seemed to display any time I was around.

  “You know the drill,” he said with pen poised over paper.

  I proceeded to tell him the time we arrived at the house (2:25 p.m.), that the back door was open (Daisy told me it was always unlocked), that there was a bag of groceries on the counter when we came in, and that I found the body accidentally while feeding the birds in the living room.

  “Did you know the deceased?”

  “No. I was just here doing a favor for Daisy.”

  “And you know Daisy…how?”

  “My two cats are temporarily boarded at her pet hotel.”

  He closed his notebook. “Okay. You can go.”

  “I’d rather just wait until Daisy can leave. I’ll drive her back to her place.”

  He was about to say something when the doctor stood and came over. “She definitely fell and broke her neck.”

  “Time of death?” the sheriff asked.

  “It’s always a guess, as you know. But rigor’s not set, so I’d say no more than two hours ago.”

  “Okay, thanks, Doc.”

  She nodded to me again and left the house through the back door.

  Sheriff Jackson went over to Daisy to take her statement. “Andi told me most of it, but I just want to ask you a few follow-ups.”

  “Sure.”

  “How often do you visit Mrs. Walker?” he asked.

  “I come every Monday with seed for the birds, and I feed them for her. She can’t get around too good. Couldn’t,” Daisy corrected and shook her head. I could see the tears forming in her eyes, and I grabbed her hand. She gave me a pitiful smile. “She used a cane to help her walk.”

  “You have a key to the house?”

  Daisy nodded. “But only to be used for emergencies. The back door is usually open this time of day.”

  “Andi mentioned there was a bag of groceries on the counter when you arrived.”

  “Yes. I put them away for her, and then Andi called out to me about…you know, finding Mrs. Walker.”

  “Does Mrs. Walker do her own grocery shopping? I didn’t see a car in front of the house, so I just wondered, since she can’t get around well.”

  Daisy shrugged. “I’m pretty sure she gets home delivery.”

  “She doesn’t have relatives who help her out?” he asked.

  “The only relatives she has on the island, as far as I know, are Peter and Colleen Walker. I think Peter is her great-nephew. She didn’t talk very highly of him, though. Called him an ingrate on more than one occasion.” She shook her head and smiled wistfully. “She didn’t suffer fools easily. She was a grumpy old lady, but I dug her, you know? Although I don’t think many did.”

  He nodded, then closed his notebook. “Thanks. That’s all I need. You two can get on home now.”

  “Thanks, Sheriff.” Daisy got to her feet and then frowned. “What will happen to her birds?”

  “That will be up to her next of kin. Probably this Peter Walker.”

  “Could you let him know that I will gladly take them if he doesn’t want them?”

  “I’ll let him know.” He tipped his hat to us and then wandered back toward the body.

  I clenched my hands, knowing that I had no business following him. I had done my duty as a witness, and now my responsibility was to get Daisy back to work.

  Daisy opened the back door, looking at me over her shoulder expectedly.

  My index finger came up. “Just give me one second.”

  I fast-walked over to where the sheriff stood looking down at the body, and then he looked up at the staircase. He turned and flashed a scowl at me when I stepped up beside him. “Shouldn’t you be going home?”

  “This was an accident, right?”

  He sighed. “Andi, please take Daisy back to the kennels, then drive that cart back to the hotel, pour a glass of wine, and have a hot bath, or whatever it is you do to relax.”

  “That’s not really an answer.”

  His brow furrowed deeper as he looked at me. For one fleeting moment, I wanted to reach up and smooth away those lines with the pad of my thumb. He always looked so weary, like he carried so much more than the weight of this town on his shoulders. “You’re testing my patience…again.”

  The sensation vanished like a puff of gray smoke.

  I lifted a lip in a half grimace. “I’m going. And I do Sudoku to relax, for your information.”

  “Figures,” I heard him mumble before I was out of earshot.

  I joined Daisy at the back door. “What was that about?” she asked.

  “Nothing. I thought I left my purse over there.”

  Her one eyebrow came up as she stared directly at the red leather pouch sitting at my hip, the strap across my chest. The one that had been there the entire time, where it always was. I shooed her out the door.

  As we crossed the yard toward the golf cart parked on the street, the front door of the neighboring house opened, and an elderly man in a plaid shirt, denim jeans, and suspenders shuffled out. A blue baseball hat settled on his sparsely haired head.

  “What’s going on?” he asked gruffly.

  Daisy ignored him, so I did, too. I didn’t know the man, and I really didn’t want to be spreading rumors.

  He leaned over the railing of his porch and barked, “Did something happen to Ida?”

  “I’m sure the sheriff will come talk to you about it, Mr. Rainer,” Daisy said.

  He huffed and mumbled, “That woman’s always causing trouble.” He then shuffled back into his house and slammed the door shut.

  I glanced at Daisy. “What was that all about? He doesn’t seem very friendly.”

  “He’s not. He’s actually quite nasty.” She shook her head. “I’ve been present a couple of times when he’s shouted at Mrs. Walker. He even called her the B word once. I’d been shocked, but it didn’t faze Mrs. Walker. She called him worse in return.”

  “What was he so angry about?”

  “Everything. He complained about Mrs. Walker’s yard being too weedy, about the fence being too low, about the birds squawking at all hours of the day and night.”

  “Yikes.”

  “But most of the time, it was about little Lulu. He was always complaining about the dog. Saying how much noise she made, about how useless she was. Mrs. Walker said he hated that dog. I think he hates all animals, to be honest.”

  “You don’t think he had anything to do with Lulu’s disappearance, do you?” I shuddered at the mere thought of something like that happening. But the truth was people could do horrible things when motivated by frustration or rage or a chance for revenge. I’d seen those emotions put into action firsthand recently when I’d discovered the dead body at the hotel.

  Daisy frowned. “I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind a time or two.”

  We jumped into the cart, and I
started it up. As we pulled away from the curb, I glanced at Mr. Rainer’s house. I could see his face peering out from behind the curtains in the front window, and he didn’t look too happy.

  Chapter 5

  After I dropped Daisy off at the kennels, I drove back up to the Park. I returned the cart to its designated spot—thankfully, no one called me out for taking it off premises—and then entered the lobby of the hotel. The second I was through the doors, Ginny pounced on me.

  “I heard about old Mrs. Walker.”

  I gaped at her. “How did you hear so fast?”

  “Let’s see…Mrs. Duka lives across the street, and she saw the doc and the sheriff pull up. So, she called her daughter Anna, who does hair at the salon on Main. Bethany Atkins was getting her brows waxed. Bethany is Vicki’s mother. That’s Vicki who works at the tea house. So, we all pretty much knew shortly after that.”

  The words tumbled out of her without a breath between them. Fascinating. She should have taken up long-distance swimming with those lungs.

  I shook my head. The speed at which information and gossip traveled around this island was amazing. Ten times better than the internet and didn’t cost a cent.

  She put her hand on my arm. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She gave me a look.

  “I know. How can a girl be so lucky?” I chuckled.

  “You know what you need?”

  “No.” I was afraid of what she was going to suggest. The last time she asked that question, we were in college. We both got drunk, and I ended up plastic-wrapping her bed with her brother Eric’s help. The hangover caused me to swear off booze for years.

  “A night out. Since you’ve been on the island, we haven’t gone to any of the bars for a few drinks and some good music and fun.”

  “Not sure I’m up for socializing, Ginny.”

  “C’mon.” She wrapped a hand around my arm. “You can’t just work all day and sequester yourself in your suite all night. It’s not healthy. You need to be around people. You need to drink, and eat, and laugh, and flirt with some sexy guy who’s entirely no good for you.”

  That made me think of Mayor Daniel Evans. He was a sexy guy, but he was probably entirely too good for me. His business card burned a hole in my wallet. I’d been tempted a time or two to call him, like he’d invited me to, but then I thought of a million reasons why it was a bad idea:

  1. He was too good looking and single—something had to be wrong with him.

  2. He was the mayor of the town on the mainland. Pretty sure that would be seen as disloyal to the islanders.

  3. I didn’t want to fall in love when I knew I’d be leaving the second I got the cloud off my license.

  “I don’t know…”

  “Oh, c’mon. Please. It is your day off, after all.” She literally batted her eyelashes at me, while her puffy lips turned down in a pout. Oh, she was good. No wonder she got men of all ages to do whatever she wanted.

  “Fine. I’ll think about it.”

  She smiled. “Well, that’s definitely the firmest answer I’m going to get out of you. So, I’ll take it.”

  “But now? Now I’m going to go to my suite, grab some food, and sit out on my patio and read.” I was determined to do this today, and nothing was going to stop me, not Ginny, not poor dead Mrs. Walker, not anything.

  “Okay, I’ll text you later about hitting the bar. Swan Song has karaoke tonight.” She mimicked holding a microphone and did her best Tina Turner impression.

  I laughed. “Absolutely no karaoke.”

  “All right, not this time,” she said, giggling.

  “Not ever,” I said more firmly.

  I hugged her, then before I could set off toward my suite, one of the servers from the restaurant—she was still in her uniform—came out of the restaurant crying. She rubbed at her nose and was saying something into her phone.

  “Who’s that?” I asked Ginny.

  “Colleen Walker.”

  My eyebrows came up. “Related to Mrs. Walker?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, her husband Peter is Mrs. Walker’s great-nephew.”

  “Oh, that’s sad for them, I’m sure.”

  Ginny harrumphed.

  “What?”

  “It’s just that I’ve never known Colleen to be sad about anything, especially not her great-aunt,” Ginny said.

  The Walkers seemed to have an interesting family dynamic going on. Well, interesting to me, at least. But then, my own family dynamic was nothing to brag about, either. “Really?” I asked as casually as I could. I wanted to shout, Tell me more! But that would have been just plain rude.

  “Colleen’s never said a nice word about her once. In fact, in the past, she has spewed quite a lot of venom about the old woman.”

  My eye twitched, and I started chewing my cuticles. Anything to keep me from asking questions.

  Ginny narrowed her gaze at me. “Don’t even think about it, Andi.”

  “What?”

  “You have that look in your eyes again,” she said.

  “Don’t be silly. I’m just a concerned citizen.”

  “Right. You’re a horrible liar, you know? You’ve never been any good at it. Good thing you never tried to be a criminal lawyer.”

  I pouted. “I think I always find out the truth.”

  “Yeah, but you could never have represented anyone who was guilty. Your face would have given him away every time.”

  I shrugged. “True.” I tracked Colleen with my eyes as she walked across the lobby and outside. I wished I could hear her phone conversation. “Okay, text me later,” I said, then wandered off toward the lobby doors.

  “Andi, your suite is not that way.”

  “I just need some air.” I didn’t wait for her response, because she would only tell me to mind my own business, that there wasn’t anything nefarious going on. That Mrs. Walker falling down those stairs was just an accident and nothing sinister.

  Colleen stood on the sidewalk along the hotel courtyard, still on her phone. I walked toward her, then stopped and pretended to be digging around in my purse for something. It was a classic eavesdropping move and so much easier for women to get away with—we almost always had a purse full of unnecessary junk. While men…well, all they had were some sad little pockets to dig through. That feat would take a mere couple of minutes, while I could literally be sorting through the things in my bag for a half hour and no one would be suspicious.

  Now that she was out of the hotel lobby, Colleen didn’t look so tearful. She wiped at her cheeks, almost angrily. “She better have left us the house, Peter. We haven’t put up with her crap all these years for no reason.”

  That’s some seriously cold thinking right there.

  “I know we’ll have to wait until the reading of the will to finalize the deed, but there’s nothing saying we can’t start moving her stuff out and ours in, is there?”

  Yikes. I didn’t like the sound of that.

  I must’ve made some kind of disapproving noise in my throat because Colleen whipped around and shot eye daggers at me. I froze, with my arm elbow-deep inside my purse. Quickly, I yanked it out with my phone in my hand. I did the pretend answer trick and walked away. Before I turned the corner of the hotel, I glanced over my shoulder. She was still watching me.

  Once I was safely out of view, I slid my phone back into my purse and booked it around the long length of the hotel to go back in through one of the side doors. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I had to do something, tell someone. I stopped in my tracks and gave my head a shake.

  No, I’m not going to do anything, because there isn’t anything to do. I was being presumptuous about a fairly innocent phone call from a woman to her husband about the death of their great-aunt. Just because I thought Colleen was horrible and said mean things about Mrs. Walker, didn’t mean she’d done anything intentionally malicious.

  Mrs. Walker fell down her stairs accidentally. There was no indication anythin
g was amiss.

  Although…the sheriff had been studying those stairs intently, and there was the matter of the bag of groceries being left on the counter—when, why, and by whom—and the feuding with the nasty neighbor over her dog. Honestly, pushing a frail old lady down a set of stairs was a plausible way to murder her while making it look like an accident.

  Just to satisfy my own curiosity, I would simply borrow the golf cart again and pop down to the village and ask around about Peter and Colleen Walker. The way people liked to talk in this town, I’d know everything I needed to know and then some about the couple in an hour or less. The trip would hardly put a dent in my planned relaxing evening. I’d still have time to sit out on my patio and read my book before the sun dropped or before Ginny made me go out with her to the bar.

  My first stop was to the Weiss Strudel House on Main Street. I grabbed two cherry strudels for my next stop and an apple strudel for me. As I walked the two blocks up to the ferry dock, I devoured the pastry. I’d never tasted better and had to admit I’d become a regular patron of the old German couple, Wilhelm and Lena, who owned and operated the place. We were on a first-name basis now. I always got a hardy “Hello, Andi” from both when I walked in.

  The next stop was the dock where all the best and most up-to-date information could be had for the price of a couple of cherry strudels. I found JC and Reggie, as usual, at their table playing chess and arguing about something that probably happened twenty years ago and they still didn’t agree on.

  JC looked up, squinting into the setting sun as I approached. “Bon soir, ma jolie dame.”

  I smiled. Despite JC’s advanced age, he was still a charmer. I imagined he was quite the lady killer when he was young. Although from the way I heard it around town, he only had eyes for one lady, and that had been his wife Rose. They’d been married for over fifty years before she passed away from cancer a couple of years ago.

  I placed the strudel bag on the table. “I come bearing gifts.”