Speaks the Blue Jay

by K. J. Emrick

  “He did live on a boat, actually,” Miranda told him. “At least, before he burned it down and faked his own death.”

  It shouldn’t have been possible for Alfie’s eyes to get any bigger than they had already, but he managed it somehow. “Faked his death? Why would he do that?”

  “That’s what we’d like to know,” Jack said. “Once we find him we’re going to ask him. We’re pretty sure this is the man who attacked Skye up in her room. It may have even be the man who killed Caleb Owen. So. He was here, you said?”

  “Well, yes. A few times. I mean, not recently. Although, I do think I saw him a few days ago, maybe. I was quite busy at the time and I only chanced to look over my shoulder as he was leaving.”

  Jack and Miranda exchanged a look. They might not know exactly when Caleb was murdered, but ‘a few days ago’ certainly fit their loose time frame.

  “Alfie,” Miranda asked him, as an idea suddenly struck her, “who was it that this man was coming to see here in the Blue Jay? If he wasn’t staying here, then he must have been visiting one of your boarders.”

  “Oh, he certainly was.” Alfie was nodding his head vigorously, happy to be helping and still have the chance to keep his beloved Bed and Breakfast. “He always went straight up to Skye’s room. I didn’t think anything of it because Skye is, well, just that sort of lady. She liked to entertain men in her room, I mean.”

  “Yes,” Jack said wryly. “I know what you mean.”

  Miranda gave him a look that would have stopped most Swiss watches, but he wisely ignored her.

  “I mean,” Alfie said, “even Ben Clark is always going up to her room whenever he’s here.”

  “That’s what Ginger was telling me, too,” Miranda said.

  Jack held his hand out to Alfie. “All right. I think that covers everything. If we have any more questions, we’ll be back.”

  Alfie looked as grateful as it was possible for a man to look. He said something to Jack that was probably another heartfelt promise to do whatever he could to help, but Miranda didn’t hear any of it. She had read somewhere, once, that it wasn’t humanly possible to concentrate on two people speaking at the same time.

  At the moment, Alfie’s voice was being drowned out by Kyle’s.

  “Miranda! Miranda come quick! I found Josh Bates! He’s here. He’s here!”

  Chapter 17

  Miranda grabbed Jack by the arm and tugged him toward the office door. “Uh, Jack, we have to go. The man in the photo. He’s outside. Right now.”

  Alfie looked positively dumbstruck. “How could you know that? There aren’t any windows in my office.”

  “Thank you for your help,” Jack said to him quickly. He didn’t need to ask Miranda to know where she’d gotten her information from. “We’ll be back. Right now we’ve got some, um, police business to take care of.”

  Jean-Paul and Sapphire saw them running through the lobby, out of the Blue Jay. They jumped up from the dining room table and raced after them, Butter running at the end of his leash, all of them swept along in the wake of Kyle’s call.

  “Over here!” Miranda heard him shout. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear him clear as day. He was at the back of the Blue Jay, in the carpark area. “Miranda, he’s got a gun!”

  “Of course he does,” Miranda muttered.

  “Of course he does what?” Jack asked.

  She caught his arm again, this time to pull him back and stop their group from rushing headlong into the sights of a deranged tour boat captain. “He says Bates has a gun,” she explained to Jack.

  “Excuse me?” Jean-Paul asked. “Did you say Josh Bates? That crazy man who came to ask you about your Aunt Connie? That man is here?”

  “Yes,” Jack said simply. “The same one we thought might be dead, since his boat burned down. He’s here, and we think he assaulted Skye Rogers, and possibly killed Caleb Owen.”

  “And we are running towards this person? Surely, this must be some mistake.”

  “Miranda,” Sapphire joined in, “we need to stay away from that man. I have such a bad vibe from this. I can almost sense the man’s black aura from here. Oh, this is going to be so bad. Miranda, please, stay away from him.”

  “She’s right,” Jack said to Miranda. He hefted the radio his patrols had left behind. “I need all of you to stay back. I’m calling for the patrols to swarm this place. I won’t let him get away. Not again. Can you bring Jean-Paul and Sapphire back inside and make sure everyone in there is safe? Find Ben Clark if you can and tell him what we’re doing. He can help.”

  “Yeah, if we can find him.” Miranda had forgotten all about Ben. “Where do you suppose he went?”

  “I’m going to worry about that later. Right now, let’s snag Josh Bates.” He gave her a quick kiss on her cheek. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she told him, feeling her skin tingle where his lips had been. “Kyle is by the cars. Keep your head down.”

  “Always.”

  With that he was off, racing toward the corner of the building. The three of them, with Butter, turned back toward the Bed and Breakfast. Miranda did not like the idea of leaving Jack to do this alone. Even with the patrols just down the road to answer his call, she didn’t like it. There was a feeling building inside of her. A bad feeling. A feeling that something tragic was going to happen that she couldn’t stop. It was like her belly was suddenly full of slush, cold and heavy and nauseating.

  This would be a good time for her spirit guide to be around, she thought to herself, and then immediately changed her mind. This was the perfect time for Kyle to be where Jack was. Maybe he could move a chair to help stop Josh Bates, or even a rubbish bin, maybe.

  Once she was inside the safety of the Blue Jay’s front door she realized that wasn’t good enough for her. She decided that she was going to get Jean-Paul and Sapphire settled with Ben Clark like Jack had asked, and then go back out to help him with Josh Bates. She was about to tell her friends her plan, when she saw Ben coming out into the main room from Alfie’s office.

  “There you are,” she said, relieved she wouldn’t have to search the entire Bed and Breakfast for him. “Listen, Jack is outside. He’s got a location on Josh Bates and he’s calling in some of his men to make an arrest.”

  She didn’t tell him how Jack got the location. Detective Ben Clark from the Melbourne PD was apparently as aware of ghosts as she was, but his weren’t the only ears around at the moment. At any rate there wasn’t time to explain everything.

  Ben looked surprised. “He’s got Bates outside? Why didn’t he come and get me?”

  “Well, for one thing,” Miranda said, “we didn’t know where you were. You were supposedly going off to make an arrest the last time I talked to you.”

  “Never mind that,” he said. “That arrest didn’t happen. Stay here, I’ll go out and help Jack.”

  “No,” she told him. “He wants you to stay in here and keep Jean-Paul and Sapphire safe. He’s the officer in charge of the scene, remember. Those were his instructions.”

  The way his lips twisted at the corners spoke volumes. “Miss Wylder, I don’t work for Jack Travis. If he’s going to arrest Josh Bates, I want to be there. I’m assuming it’s for the assault on Skye Rogers, as well as the murder of Caleb Owen?”

  “Well, yes.” Something nagged at Miranda’s thoughts. Something about what Ben had just said… “How did you know about Skye Rogers being assaulted?”

  “I saw the officers leaving with her earlier,” he explained. “I was just talking to Alfie about it, actually. He says you found a notebook in her safe?”

  “Well, yes we—”

  “I’ll want to see that notebook,” Ben told her. “If it shows criminal activity for her and Caleb, I want to see it.”

  Miranda glared at him. “That’s a key piece of evidence. We aren’t going to just pass it around for show and tell.”

  “Look,” he insisted, “whoever struck Skye’s head off the corner of that table must
have been looking for that notebook to cover up their involvement in the car theft ring. It must have been Josh Bates, I suppose, and we’ll have him soon enough if you let me go help your boyfriend. I’m an officer with the Melbourne PD, and I’m giving you an order. Get out of my way.”

  Instead, Miranda planted herself between him and the door. Now she knew what was bothering her. The picture just got a whole lot clearer. “Josh Bates isn’t the killer. It was you.”

  His eyes narrowed on her. “You’re insane. I knew it from the first time I set eyes on you that you’d be trouble. I can spot the type.”

  “It was you, Ben Clark. You killed Caleb Owen, and you tried to kill Skye Rogers.”

  “No,” he insisted. “That was Josh Bates, remember? He’s our bad guy.”

  “He’s one of them, but he’s not the only one. No, he’s just a small fish in this game, whatever this game might be. You’re the one running this operation. It’s you.”

  Behind him, Sapphire gasped loudly, throwing her hands up to her face. “I knew it! I knew I still felt the black aura around this building. It was him, oh yes, now I see the darkness spreading off of him in waves.”

  “Shut up, crazy woman,” Ben snapped at Sapphire without turning away from Miranda. “Tell your friend to be quiet, Miss Wylder. She needs to let the grownups talk. I don’t know where you got this idea from that I killed Caleb, or that I hurt Skye, but you can’t prove anything like that.”

  “Oh really? Then tell me, Detective Clark, how is it that you knew Skye hit her head on a table? You didn’t learn that from the two officers who carried Skye out of here, and you certainly didn’t learn it from Alfie. So, how did you know?”

  The realization of his mistake hit him hard, and his whole expression cracked. One eyebrow twitched. His smile evaporated. He was caught in his own lies, and he knew it.

  “You see,” Miranda continued, “no one else but Jack and I and the two officers were in Skye’s room, except the person who hurt her. The door was locked from the inside. Her attacker left by the second story window and a convenient trellis. The only way you could know how Skye was hurt was if you did it yourself. That makes you our bad guy, Ben Clark. All this time, all of it was you.”

  “Ben?” they heard Alfie Parker say as he came out of his office. “Is this true? Did you kill Caleb?”

  “No!” he exploded, throwing his arms wildly in the air and making Miranda jump back a step. “Even if she thinks she has something on me with Skye Rogers, little miss goodie-two-shoes here has nothing to tie me to Caleb Owen’s murder. Nothing.”

  Miranda glared at him. “Except, I do. I have a phone call from you to Josh Bates. We might have to get a subpoena to get the phone records from the Blue Jay and your personal mobile, but it won’t be any problem to get one. Once we do, we’ll see it was you who made a call asking Bates to try and remove Caleb’s body. The display on his phone said something, and at the time we thought it was a name. Only, it wasn’t a name. It was his way of identifying his partner.”

  Kyle had only seen part of the word on the screen. ‘Mel,’ was what he thought it said. Miranda now understood there had been more to it. What Kyle had actually seen was the name of the place where Detective Ben Clark lived and worked.

  “Melbourne,” she said to him. “That was what was on the display of his phone when you called. He has you listed as Melbourne.”

  “How could I make a phone call from my mobile when the service here is lousy?” He looked very pleased with himself.

  “Perhaps you have a mobile satellite phone like Josh Bates. I’m sure it’s hidden in your room.” As Miranda spoke the more certain she became that she was correct. “No matter, Jack and his officers will find it.”

  Now Ben’s face went a deep shade of purplish red. He was angry and he was scared, and a host of other things besides.

  And she wasn’t done yet.

  “In that notebook you’re so keen on seeing, there are several entries with the letter M after them. I knew that meant the same person who called Josh Bates. M for Melbourne. Detective Ben Clark from Melbourne.” She nodded as the pieces continued to fall together. “So I’m betting when we check your finances we’ll see deposits to your accounts that match those dates. You were in on the car ring. That’s why you kept coming to the Blue Jay. That’s why you spent so much time with Skye Rogers. It wasn’t that you were having a love affair with her. It was because you were involved in her criminal enterprise. You probably provided cover for any police investigation into the thefts.”

  His jaw clenched. His hands twitched. “You’re too smart for your own good,” he growled.

  “All of that is also why you wanted Caleb to stay away from Ginger,” Miranda said, putting one more piece into place. “You knew what he was up to, and you actually did care about your niece. You didn’t want her getting tangled up in your mess.”

  His hands twitched again. “That’s right, I didn’t. Only, she found out. Caleb was stupid and recorded his phone calls with our clients. Ginger found that antique tape recorder of his and listened in. When she showed me, I told her to hide the recording and keep it to herself. I told her to stay away from him. I told her he was bad news.”

  “So you took matters into your own hands,” Miranda reasoned. In his own twisted sort of way, Ben Clark had been looking out for his niece’s best interests. “You couldn’t just have him arrested for what he was doing because if Caleb went to jail, he’d take you down with him. You and Skye, too. So you strangled him to death, and you dumped him where you thought no one would find him for months, if not years. You put him in a lake that no one uses anymore. No fishing, no boating, no chance of anyone seeing the body.”

  “Then came this blasted drought,” he confirmed. “Out pops the corpse, you and your meddling friends come zipping along the highway at just the wrong time, and here we are.”

  Here they were, Miranda realized. Alone in the Blue Jay with a killer.

  Not an ideal situation.

  “What about Skye?” she said, trying to stall for time. “She was your business partner. Why would you want to hurt her?”

  “I didn’t, really. She figured out it was me who killed Caleb. I mean, from her perspective it was easy because she knew that she didn’t do it, and she already knew the ins and outs of everything you just figured out.” He shifted his body menacingly. “Easy. So, she cornered me and she tried to blackmail me into getting a bigger cut for herself. I demanded she give me that notebook from her safe and she laughed at me. So I… I pushed her, and she fell, and she hit her head. Tell you the truth I thought she was dead. I was about to search for the safe when you guys started knocking on the door. I had to make a quick escape, and so out the window I went. Almost killed myself on that trellis, too.”

  “We thought it was Josh Bates. We had all the specifics. We just didn’t know it was you, until now.”

  “Wow,” he growled. “Maybe you’re smarter than I thought, Miss Wylder.”

  She was about to thank him when his hands twitched again and he reached under the front of his shirt to take out a little revolver. “Know what happens to smart women?” he asked her. “They die, right along with all of their friends.”

  “You can not kill us all!” Jean-Paul protested. “How will you ever explain that we are all dead?”

  Ben shrugged. “I’ll think of something later.”

  Then he pointed the gun at Miranda’s chest.

  “Kyle!” she shouted as loud as she could. They needed help. He was her spirit guide. Shouldn’t he be here in her moment of need?

  Only, he wasn’t. He was out protecting Jack.

  Instead of her spirit guide, a furry golden blur rushed up and crashed into Ben Clark. He was suddenly all teeth and claws, snarling and barking and furious. Butter’s weight tackled Ben to the floor and the gun went spinning away as the Melbourne Police Detective curled himself up into a ball with his hands up over his face to try to protect himself from the doggie onslaught.

>   Miranda was shocked to see Butter snapping at any bit of exposed skin he could find on Ben Clark’s arms or face. He never bit anyone. He never so much as growled. Except, now he did, when his human needed him most.

  Jean-Paul picked up the revolver and held it pointed at Ben. “I have him, Butter. It is all right. You can let him go now.”

  The golden retriever bounced off the man, his tail wagging, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. He came right over to Miranda and sat at her feet. He was proud of himself, and she thought he had every right.

  Did you see, did you see, did you see? I got the bad man. Got him good. Did you see?

  “Good dog,” she told him, patting the back of his head. “Good dog.”

  He whuffed in response, and that pretty much said it all as far as Miranda was concerned. Wait until Jack heard about this.

  Jack! She remembered in a flash that he was out there, alone except for Kyle and whatever backup might be coming their way from down the road, with a man whose motives in this mystery were anything but friendly.

  “Can you three watch him?” she asked hastily. With a look from Butter, she added, “Sorry, I mean you four?”

  “We have him,” Jean-Paul promised. “He will not escape. Go. Check on Jack.”

  As Miranda turned to the door she heard the wail of approaching sirens and knew that at least there were other officers who had arrived to help.

  Before she could step one foot outside, however, Jack was there in the doorway, leaning against the frame, one hand covering a shoulder where blood had soaked through his shirt.

  “What happened?” Miranda demanded, rushing to his side.

  It was Kyle who answered her, materializing through the wall beside them. “He got away,” he explained. “Josh Bates got away.”