by Emily James
The tremor that rolled over Mandy’s body made her shiver like I’d forced her to run outside in a Michigan January without any shoes on. “In the freshly washed laundry I folded this morning.”
My mind split down the middle, with one side wanting to know who would have put blood-covered items in The Sunburnt Arm’s washing machine but left a giant puddle on the floor, and the other knowing I had to keep this on track. “Have you called the police already?”
“Not yet.” Mandy couldn’t seem to stop shivering. Her teeth rattled slightly as she answered. “I didn’t want to call them over a misunderstanding and upset my guests. Even if it’s blood, someone might have cut themselves shaving. Or maybe they have bad hemorrhoids. Or…”
She brought her shoulders all the way up to her ears and dropped them down. Her voice had that please-tell-me-I’m-overreacting desperation to it.
I stripped off my jacket and draped it over her shoulders. It was too narrow for her to actually put her arms through the arm holes, but it’d give her a little extra warmth at least. We needed to call the police, and then I needed to move her somewhere she could sit. She could be going into shock.
First, I should at least assuage her fears that she might cause a fuss over nothing by making sure it wasn’t an overreaction. “How much blood was on the laundry?”
She ran a hand down her front from her chest to her waist.
I took a step back. Good Lord. That wasn’t I-cut-myself-shaving blood. That was I-decided-to-gut-a-deer-in-my-bedroom amounts of blood.
“We have to call the police.” I held my hand out to her. “Right now.”
She shrank away.
She could be involved in whatever happened here, the lawyer voice in my brain that sounded suspiciously like my mom said. You caught her, and now she’s making up a story to cover up.
I shook my head. Mandy wasn’t a killer. Not that senior-aged women couldn’t be killers. They could. But Mandy loved murders in the pages of a book, not in real life. Despite feeding almost daily on the Fair Haven rumor mill, she’d shied away from speculating on any of the murder investigations I’d been involved in previously.
Still, I’d expected a different reaction. I closed some of the distance between us. “Is there a reason you’re worried about calling the police?”
Mandy hugged my jacket around her broad shoulders like a cape. “What if they think I did it?”
“They might,” my mom’s voice said from behind me.
I gasped and jerked around. My mom stood inside the doorway, much too magazine-perfect for a woman who’d traveled all day yesterday. Her charcoal-gray designer pantsuit looked freshly ironed. Her makeup accented her natural good looks without being obvious, and her short hair could have been fresh from the hairstylist.
It was completely unfair that none of her natural composure had carried through her genes to me. If it wasn’t for the obvious physical similarities, I might have accused my parents of adopting me and lying about it. They certainly weren’t above lying under the right circumstances.
Most mothers and daughters would have hugged after not seeing each other for months. I loved my mom as much as any of those pairs, and we talked on the phone multiple times a week, but I knew better than to seek a hug—even though I could really use one right now, given the scene in the bathroom.
Instead, I said, “You scared me, sneaking up on us like that.”
My mom pursed her lips. “It’s hardly sneaking when you’ve left the door open so anyone can hear you. You know better. You should never hold a sensitive conversation when you can’t control who might be listening in.”
Mandy was beside me now. Her gaze bounced between my mom and me, and her eyebrows had descended over her eyes in the closest I’d ever seen Mandy to a scowl.
I couldn’t blame her. From her perspective, a stranger had invaded a private and stressful situation between friends. Invaded the situation and reprimanded me.
My mom shut the door, made eye contact with Mandy, and extended a hand in a way that clearly implied she expected the handshake to be accepted. “Kathleen Fitzhenry. Nicole is my daughter.”
Mandy gave her a limp hand, as if she’d been sucked in by the tractor-beam force of my mother and couldn’t resist regardless of her intentions. “Amanda Gibson.”
“I know.” My mom broke the contact. “Now tell me what’s happened so we can get your story straight before we call the police.”
Mandy opened her mouth. I held up my hand, and she clamped it shut again.
Forget tractor beams. My parents were like bug zappers. I felt like screaming don’t fly into the light. She’d have Mandy pawning the family heirlooms to pay for legal services before there was any need to.
“Mandy’s not a client. She hasn’t done anything wrong, so she doesn’t need to get her story straight. We just need to call the police and let them figure out what happened.”
An expression I couldn’t quite decode flashed across my mom’s features. If she’d been anyone else, I’d have sworn at least one of the emotions was pride.
Was that the first time I’d stood up to my mom in person?
She strode past Mandy and me, and stopped next to the vacuum. She drooped her pointer finger toward the vacuum handle. “I assume you cleaned the room, essentially destroying evidence, before you noticed the blood.”
Crap. I saw where my mom was going with this. Mandy’s innocent action could easily be spun to look guilty. Cleaning the room meant all trace evidence in the vacuum would be inadmissible because no one could prove what room it’d come from, and she’d have wiped away any fingerprints.
What my mom didn’t know but I did was that Mandy also had a tendency to come up with crazy theories. If she started spinning those for the investigating officers, she could make herself seem like she was trying to distract the police or cover up her actions without even realizing it. And heaven knew she’d never pass a polygraph, innocent or not.
I wasn’t going to win this confrontation, and it wouldn’t hurt to take a minute to protect Mandy from herself. Plus, it’d help the investigation in the long run. Making sure Mandy didn’t create a false lead meant the police could focus on finding the real killer.
I licked my lips in place of the sigh I wanted to heave. Sighs, my dad always said, show disrespect. “Fine. We’ll make sure she has a clear explanation for the police before we call them.”
Mandy handed my coat back to me. She’d stopped shaking, and her skin had returned to a normal flesh tone. No doubt warmed by the heat of my mom’s confidence, I told myself with a mental eye roll.
Sour grapes, the voice in my head that sounded like my mother said.
I hated that even her imaginary voice in my head was right.
Mandy walked my mom through everything she’d already told me.
“Why didn’t you call the police as soon as you saw the blood on the laundry?” my mom asked. “Why wait and clean all the rooms first? Did you intentionally destroy evidence?”
Mandy flattened her hands against her forehead. “If you don’t believe me, the police never will.”
The quiver in her voice was stronger than before, as if the thought of going to prison scared her more than whatever might have happened in her guest room. It probably did. Prison coffee would be too weak for her taste.
My mom’s disapproving glance landed on me rather than Mandy and clearly said this is the woman you were going to hand over to the police without any preparation?
It wouldn’t do any good to explain that, in my world, I didn’t look at everyone I interacted with as a client first and a person second. That I’d approached the situation as helping a friend through a frightening emotional experience. I hadn’t considered she might be a potential suspect.
We’d been together less than ten minutes and I’d already disappointed my mom. That had to be a new record even for me.
Now all I could do was try to mitigate the fallout by translating for Mandy what was happening here.
“Right.” Mandy made a motion with her hands in front of her like she was miming pushing air up from the bottom of her lungs and back down again. “I’ll try to remember to breathe.” She shook her head. “Sleuths in the books are always too calm about finding a body. Even you, Nicole. I don’t know how you haven’t cracked like Humpty Dumpty with all you’ve seen.”
My therapist and a lot of prayer deserved credit for that, but my mom would see needing either as weakness, so I simply smiled in response.
“You grow numb to it after a while,” my mom said.
I snapped my gaze to her face, but if her expression had been anything other than professional, I’d already missed it.
She pointed back at the vacuum. “Now why did you keep cleaning even though you found laundry covered in blood stains?”
“I wasn’t sure that it was blood until I reached this room. You’d be surprised at what you see when you run a bed-and-breakfast long enough. I had one guest who ruined three hand towels by eating a whole bag of pomegranates. They were stained red and yellow, and it never came out.”
My mom gave Mandy the smile she reserved for encouraging her clients. “Better.”
For the next five minutes, my mom walked Mandy through her story, correcting her every time she shared too much. Then we headed down to the front desk.
Mandy picked up the receiver but hesitated with it halfway to her ear. “Do I tell the police that I thought about washing away the blood and pretending I never saw it?”
“No!” my mom and I said in unison.
Even with the prep work my mom had done, I had a feeling this wasn’t going to go well.
3
When the police finally arrived at The Sunburnt Arms, Mandy, my mom, and I sat on the couch in the lounge, lined up like Russian nesting dolls.
The officers came through the front door, and I suddenly wished we were nesting dolls so I could disappear inside Mandy.
Chief McTavish led the way. And he hadn’t brought along any of the officers I had a good relationship with. The officer next to him had an ash blond buzz cut, muscles that strained the arms of his uniform, and a gut that was starting to peek over his belt, like he spent all of his time at the gym lifting weights and none of it doing cardio. I thought his name was Scherwin, but I wasn’t confident about it. He and Mark made oil and water look friendly. Mark had once described him as “badge-heavy.”
The combination of him and Chief McTavish didn’t bode well for me.
Chief McTavish stopped a few feet from the couch, rolled his lips in until they disappeared, and shook his head. “Miss. Fitzhenry-Dawes. I wish I were surprised to see you here.”
At least he hadn’t sneered my last name. The last thing we needed in an already complicated situation was a showdown between McTavish and my mom.
“Nicole’s here as my attorney,” Mandy blurted.
I groaned internally. My mom still asked at least once a week when I was coming back to my job at the firm. If she thought I was open to practicing again, she’d be like a dog when a piece of bacon hit the floor.
But that wasn’t the most pressing problem. No one called a lawyer when they were simply reporting a possible crime.
Chief McTavish jutted his narrow chin forward, making him look more like a fox than usual. “Do you need a lawyer, Mrs. Gibson?”
My head shake might have appeared a bit too emphatic. I slowed it down and rested a hand on Mandy’s arm. “She doesn’t. I came to pick up my mom”—I inclined my head in her direction—“and stumbled upon Mandy after she’d found the blood in the bathroom of the room next door.”
“Your mother was staying in the room next to the possible crime scene?” Chief McTavish asked. His tone of voice suggested that if this had been April Fool’s Day instead of the middle of May, he might have suspected one of his officers of putting us up to pulling a prank on him.
I started to cross my heart, but pressed my hand down on my chest before I could finish. Both Chief McTavish and my mom would have seen the gesture as childish.
Chief McTavish must have decided I wasn’t about to shout got ya because he sighed and turned to Scherwin—up close, I could read his name tag now.
“Please take Mrs. Gibson upstairs and take a look at this substance that looks like blood.”
Chief McTavish waited for them to leave, then pulled an arm chair closer to the couch. He sank into the chair and adopted a posture much more practiced-relaxed than actually relaxed.
The man was good.
Thanks to the last investigation I’d ended up involved in, Chief McTavish knew my parents’ reputation. He knew we’d both see through any of the investigative techniques an officer might normally use in a situation where he wasn’t sure if he might be interviewing a suspect or a witness. So he’d decided to play it straight instead—despite his disdain for criminal defense attorneys.
A worm of respect burrowed its way into my mind. I might not like Chief McTavish, but one thing I couldn’t criticize him for was putting his own pride ahead of an investigation. He was a professional.
“Hopefully we won’t need to keep you long, Mrs. Fitzhenry-Dawes,” Chief McTavish said to my mom. “I’m sure you want to make the most of your time here with your daughter.”
My mom smiled her diamond smile—the one that sparkled but still carried a hard edge. “It’s just Fitzhenry. I kept my last name. You may call me Kathleen.”
One corner of Chief McTavish’s mouth twitched, and I could almost see him remembering a similar conversation he and I had.
At least my mom could take credit for teaching me whatever skills as a lawyer I did have.
“Kathleen, then.” He shot a sidelong glance at me. “I’m surprised you’re not staying with your daughter.”
In other words, what were you doing at The Sunburnt Arms last night when you have family here?
“My visit’s a surprise, and I didn’t want to call Nicole right before supper when she’d feel the responsibility to feed me. That would have been rude.”
Chief McTavish took his time opening his notepad and writing something down. “Did you hear anything suspicious last night?”
My mom unbuttoned the lower button of her pantsuit jacket. Watching the two of them was like a study in nonchalance.
“Unfortunately not. But that should at least help you cross off a gun as the murder weapon, and there couldn’t have been a prolonged struggle.”
Chief McTavish’s nose twitched. I’d never seen a nose twitch manage to convey arrogance before. “You didn’t hear anything that sounded like a car backfiring or a cork popping from a bottle?”
“If you’re asking whether a weapon with a silencer might have been used, it wasn’t. I’d recognize the sound. I know as well as you do that a silencer only deadens the sound, and I’m a light sleeper.”
They stared at each other for a second, and then Chief McTavish gave a sharp nod.
Scherwin returned to the room with Mandy in tow. “I don’t know whether it’s human or animal, but it’s definitely blood.”
Chief McTavish gave Scherwin instructions and turned back to us. “I’ll be in touch if I have more questions. You’ll need to find a new place to stay for now. I’ll be closing down the bed-and-breakfast for the time being.”
The same panicked look flashed across Mandy’s face as when she thought someone might take a book away from her before she finished reading it. “My guests have to leave?”
“There’s a pool of blood in one of your rooms,” Scherwin said. “You’d think you’d want us to find out what happened rather than crying about guests leaving.”
His tone was unnecessarily harsh. It seemed Mark’s caricature of the man had actually been an accurate depiction.
My mom tensed beside me. The motion was so slight it had to be in
voluntary. I felt it against my arm rather than saw it.
I knew my mom well enough to know what the reaction meant. She didn’t like Scherwin’s tone any more than I did, and had Mandy been her client, she wouldn’t have stood for it.
Mandy might not be my client, either, but she was my friend.
I’d have felt more confidence confronting Scherwin if I’d dressed a little more professionally. Always dress as if you expect to be judged, my dad used to say.
I hated it when my parents were right.
I rose to my feet. “The Sunburnt Arms is her livelihood, Officer Scherwin.” I emphasized officer more than was technically necessary. Hopefully it’d remind him to act like he deserved the respect given his position. “It’s no different than if you were suspended without pay through no fault of your own. Wouldn’t you be worried?”
The look Scherwin gave me said the only reason I wasn’t going to a cell on a trumped-up obstruction charge was because the chief was watching it all.
Chief McTavish rose to his feet, ignored us both, and went to Mandy’s side instead. “It’ll only be temporary, but we can’t risk that one of the guests might have been involved and would tamper with evidence. We’ll also need to speak to each of them before they check out.”
Mandy hung her head. “I was afraid of that, too.”
Chief McTavish sent Scherwin out to the car to call in the crime scene techs and another officer and then headed upstairs to start knocking on doors. My mom went to gather her bags. She’d already had them packed. Presumably she’d always intended to stay with me, though she hadn’t said so when she called earlier.
Mandy’s expression had progressed from someone took my book to and they’re ransoming it for my right arm.
I hugged her. “Do you want me to stay?”
She shook her head. She was so much taller than me that her chin didn’t even brush my hair.
“Call me if you need me, okay?”
This time she nodded as if she were afraid that if she tried to speak, she’d cry instead.
It was a good thing I didn’t believe in omens because, if I had, a possible murder on my mom’s first day in Fair Haven wouldn’t have been a good sign of how the rest of the visit was going to go.
