by Mae Fox
“I don’t. Sorry.”
“If I didn’t put it in the safe, what could I have possibly done with it?” she mused.
“I wish I could tell you.”
Julie leaned back in her chair, feeling deflated. “Me too.”
Daniel offered to come over and help her search, but she declined. If it had been misplaced, she’d find it.
It wasn’t under the papers piled on her desk. Or in any of the drawers. It wasn’t buried in the recycle bin or mixed in with the stack of old newspaper crossword puzzles that she always kept but never managed to get around to working.
Before she knew it, two hours had passed, and there was still no Civil War journal. She pushed back from her desk and made her way to the kitchen.
As usual, Hannah was in the middle of baking something scrumptious, still neat as a pin as she did so.
“What’s on today’s menu?” Julie asked.
“These are sourdough rolls for tonight,” Hannah explained. “I thought I’d get a jump on them so they have plenty of time to rise. Did you come to lend a hand?”
“You know you don’t want me in the kitchen.”
“Sadly, yes. So, what brings you in?”
Julie plucked a pear from the bowl of fruit on the counter and wiped it on a nearby towel. “I can’t find the Civil War journal.”
Hannah stopped kneading the dough and pushed her glasses up using the back of one gloved hand. “It’s missing?”
Julie took a bite of the fruit and nodded as she chewed.
“Have you talked to Shirley? Maybe she’s seen it. Or Inga.”
Inga. “Good idea.”
With her crepe-soled shoes and austere gray uniform, Inga was like a ghost in the inn. She cleaned things without anybody noticing she was there until the deed was done. Inga had to have seen it. Maybe the housekeeper didn’t realize its significance and moved it back to the basement where Julie had found it. Or maybe she did recognize it, called the school, and had them come get it for the auction, not knowing that Julie had only this morning received the green light to donate from Millie. She was nothing if not efficient.
“Thanks, Hannah.” Julie smiled at her friend and went in search of the elusive housekeeper. She found her on the third floor, changing the linens in Carrie’s room.
“Inga, can I ask you something?”
The woman paused long enough for Julie to continue, but otherwise didn’t answer.
“Have you come across a really old book recently?”
A deeper frown than usual marred her strong brow. “Yes. The library is full of them.”
“This one would have been in my office. I haven’t seen it since Friday, and I need it.”
“I’m sorry. I cannot help you.”
“Then can you do me a favor? As you’re cleaning today, will you keep an eye out for it?” Julie gave a brief description.
“Of course.”
Julie nodded her appreciation and turned to leave the room. But a feeling that something wasn’t right made her stop. She swung her gaze around the room, taking in every detail.
One small bag sat in the room’s only chair. There was no makeup bag filled with cosmetics or clothes hanging in the open closet. And there was nothing personal in the room. No favorite pillow or lucky charm. Nothing to indicate that the occupant owned anything other than the sparse contents of the one small bag.
Odd for a young twenty-something girl.
It was a long shot, but better than nothing. Julie pushed into the library and scanned the shelves for the missing journal.
She’d spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon searching for the confounded book, but it was as if the thing had simply disappeared.
Ridiculous. She tucked one strand of her dark hair behind her ear and ran a finger along the spines of the many books in the small library. Inga was right. A lot of them were old—really, really old—but not one of them was a Civil War journal from 1861.
No closer to finding the book than she had been hours earlier, she left the library and headed back to her office. There was only one thing left to do. With a sigh, she picked up the phone and called Detective Frost.
It was almost four when Frost let himself into the inn. Julie was waiting for him and the rest of the guests to arrive from their day of church and sightseeing.
Frost shook his head and shot her a small smile. “It’s always something around here, huh?”
“It seems that way.” She swallowed back her sigh.
The bell over the door chimed, and Susan and Kenneth Calhoun swept into the room. Susan looked even better than she had that morning. Church seemed to have done her a lot more good than a decent night’s sleep.
“I’ve had a wonderful day,” Susan gushed.
Julie smiled in return. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“And not once did I think about that mean old snake.” Susan gave a wobbly smile.
“Snake?” Frost turned his dark gaze to Julie.
She nodded. Evidently, Susan wasn’t over her shock as much as she pretended to be. Was her sunny disposition a ruse to keep suspicion off her husband?
Kenneth led Susan across the foyer and up the stairs. Julie couldn’t help but view the pair with different eyes. Had Kenneth known Alice before they met on Friday night?
“You going to tell me about this snake?” Frost pinned her with a look.
Julie merely shrugged. There wasn’t much to tell, but before she had the chance, the bell chimed again.
Sadie and Joyce entered, chattering like magpies.
“Just a moment.” Julie excused herself and went to fetch Shirley. “Can you help me please?” she asked the redhead.
Shirley looked up from her book, A Short History of Missouri. The tome was about four inches thick. Little wonder that Shirley knew so much local lore; Julie had seen dictionaries with fewer pages.
“Of course,” Shirley said. “What do you need?”
“Everyone is starting to get ready for the quilting. And Detective Frost is here.”
“About the book?”
Julie nodded.
“I just can’t imagine where it got off to.” Shirley shook her head.
“Me neither. But I don’t want to talk about it in front of the guests.”
“Good plan. You go talk to the detective, and I’ll hold down the fort,” Shirley said.
Julie smiled. “Thanks.”
As they went back to the front, Carrie stepped inside.
“Hi, Carrie,” Shirley chirped. “Did you have a good day?”
“I did,” the girl answered timidly.
“What did you do this morning?” the detective asked.
Carrie turned as pink as the hanging basket of petunias on the front porch. “I went to church and then did some shopping.”
“It doesn’t look like you bought much,” Frost said. It was an understatement if ever there was one. Carrie had no bags to speak of, just a slouchy purse slung across her small frame.
“I window-shopped,” she said before hurrying into the tearoom, bumping into the doorframe on her way in.
The detective caught Julie’s gaze and arched his brows.
Yes, she knew it was strange to shop all afternoon long and not buy a single thing. And it was even weirder to say you were from one place and there be no record of you living there.
Yet just because Julie couldn’t find out anything about the shy girl didn’t mean she had taken the journal or that she had killed Alice. But one thing was certain—the petite blonde was hiding something.
NINE
“Where was the book when it disappeared?” Frost asked as they entered Julie’s office.
“Locked in the safe.” Julie paused. “I think.”
“Think?”
“It’s been a long couple of days.” Julie tapped a finger to her chin. “I had just shown it to the guests—”
“All of them?”
She nodded.
“Together or one at a time?” h
e asked.
“Together. It was after everyone arrived.”
He took out his notepad and made a few notations as Julie filled him in on the details.
“The article that appeared in our local paper was picked up by a larger publication,” she said. “Word got around that we’d found a Civil War journal here at the inn, and they asked to see it.”
“You’re saying that your guests came here knowing you had the journal?”
“Yes.” She didn’t want to believe that any of her guests were capable of stealing the journal, but the fact remained that someone had. Was it the same person that killed Alice Peyton? Or did she have two criminals under her roof? “Or at least some of them did.”
“Who?”
Julie thought back. “Sadie and Joyce knew about it. And Alice.”
“Our murder victim?”
“The same.”
“Anyone else?”
“I guess they were the only ones. At least they were the only ones who had said anything at the time.”
“I see.” Frost scribbled something on the notepad and then turned his sharp focus back to her. “You brought out the journal for everyone to see. Then what happened?”
“I brought it back in here and put it in the safe. … I’m almost positive.”
“And this was before Ms. Peyton was murdered.”
“Yes.”
The detective walked to the safe, studying it from a variety of angles. “Could you have put the book away and then accidentally set it on a day lock? Or perhaps not even locked it at all?”
“Unfortunately, that’s very possible,” Julie said.
“Did you unlock the safe when you discovered it was missing?”
“Yes,” Julie said. “Then I searched the whole house for it.”
“We could dust for latent prints, but the possibility of getting a clear print that isn’t yours would be a long shot.”
“Right,” she muttered with irritation, even though she knew it wasn’t the detective’s fault.
“Has anyone staying here shown an exaggerated interest in the book?” Frost asked.
Sadie and Joyce had been eager to see the book, but Sadie was a retired librarian, and Joyce seemed to follow her lead on most everything. Liam had seemed very interested as well, but given the facts that he was a writer and a professor of literature, that would only be normal. Kenneth, Susan, and Carrie had shown average curiosity, while Alice and Gregory hadn’t given it a second glance.
“Wait a minute,” Julie said, pausing to get her thoughts in better order. “Even the average Joe would find something old and rare a little fascinating.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Alice and Gregory,” she said. “Neither one of them even looked at the book.”
“And you think that’s strange?”
“Well, yeah,” Julie replied. “I think most people would be at least a little interested in a Civil War journal from 1861.”
“Noted,” Detective Frost said. “Anything else?”
“I’m not sure if this matters or not, but Gregory was arrested for stealing a rare baseball card.”
“When was this?” he asked. “When was he arrested?”
Julie shrugged. “A couple of years ago.”
“And he came right out and told you this?”
“I searched it online,” Julie admitted.
“What about Alice Peyton? Did you find out anything unusual about her?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I did. Alice worked for Eric Rutherford, the first book expert I called about the journal. Now Alice is dead, and the journal is missing.”
“Hmmm …” Detective Frost wrote something in his small notebook.
“I’m wondering if the crimes are related.”
“It’s possible, but hard to know for sure. I hate to say it, but so far our investigation has turned up nothing in the way of concrete evidence that would point to any one person being responsible for Ms. Peyton’s death.”
Julie nodded. Not exactly comforting news.
“There’s one other thing,” she said. “We found a snake in one of the bathtubs yesterday.”
“Is this the same snake Mrs. Calhoun mentioned earlier?” Frost asked.
“Yes,” Julie said, feeling very much like a kid called before the principal for telling lies.
He frowned. “Why didn’t you call me then?”
“The wildlife removal expert seemed to believe that it was a chance occurrence. He said the snake most likely crawled up a pipe.”
“Was the snake venomous?” Frost asked.
“No.”
“Hmmm …,” the detective said again.
“It seemed like a perfectly logical explanation at the time,” she added.
“But you think it’s suspicious now?” He eyed her over the top of his notepad.
“I don’t know. I’m starting to think everything is suspicious.”
“Crime will do that to you.” The detective’s mouth twisted into a wry smile.
Lovely.
He made a couple more notes in his little book and then clicked his pen and tucked the tablet back into his pocket. “I’d like to talk to the guests. Find out if anyone saw anything that might shed some light on this.”
“Of course.”
Julie led the way back to the tearoom, where everyone had gathered. As promised, Shirley was playing hostess. The guests were seated around the frame, quilting and listening to Shirley spin another of her fantastic tales about the rich history of Straussberg. Julie wondered if everyone was quiet because she was telling a story or if she was telling a story because everyone was quiet.
“Did you find out who killed poor Alice?” Susan asked, her eyes darting anxiously around at the group.
“We’re still investigating that, ma’am. Tonight I’m here for another matter. It seems that a very valuable book is missing, and I need to talk to you all about it.”
“What’s this?” Gregory grumped, looking up from his tiny stitches. “Now you’re accusing us of theft?”
And so it begins.
“No one is accusing you of anything,” Julie said calmly. “But the detective needs to know if anyone has seen anything suspicious recently.”
“Besides a dead body in the dining room and a black mamba in the bathtub?” Joyce asked.
“We’ve already established that it was a rat snake and not anything poisonous,” Julie said.
“Venomous,” Sadie corrected. “There’s a difference.”
Julie said nothing and kept her pleasant smile pasted firmly in place.
“Perhaps it would be helpful if you clarify exactly what you mean by ‘suspicious,’” Liam said.
This from the mystery writer.
“If you saw someone lurking in the halls after everyone had gone to bed,” Julie clarified. “Or saw someone where they weren’t supposed to be. Basically, anything out of the ordinary.”
“No matter how small,” the detective added. “Whatever it is, I need to know about it.”
Julie made a mental note to tell the detective in private what Gregory had said about Kenneth. She wasn’t sure how much stock to put in it, but he needed to know—assuming Gregory hadn’t already told him.
“This entire weekend is out of the ordinary,” Gregory said with a scowl.
“At least it’s turned out to be interesting,” Kenneth countered. Then he immediately looked like he wished he could take back the statement.
His wife smacked his arm. “Kenneth! What a thing to say.”
Carrie ducked her head over her work and didn’t look up. Was she concentrating? Maybe hiding something? Or merely laughing at the Calhouns’ antics?
Detective Frost gave his spiel about contacting him if anyone remembered anything. He handed out business cards as Julie paced.
Despite his stern request, no one said a word. Of course not. There was a murderer among them. Everyone was afraid to step forward, thinking they might be next. Yet Julie wondered how many
of them would be on the phone with the detective before darkness fell.
Millie was not going to like this. Julie didn’t like it much either. It was ironic, really. She’d left behind the intrigue and subterfuge of underground antiquities thieves to have a peaceful stay in small-town Missouri. So far, her time here had been anything but peaceful.
Gregory held the detective’s card as if it were contaminated with bubonic plague.
“And one more thing,” the detective said, “I feel I should remind everyone that a murder investigation is still underway.”
As if they could forget. Though the yellow police tape was gone from the dining area, they were still eating every meal in the breakfast room.
One more day, Julie told herself. Just one more day.
“Everyone is required to remain in town for the full duration of the seventy-two hours. I’ll come by tomorrow evening and release you when it’s time for everyone to leave.”
Dinner was a quiet affair—as most of the meals had become. There was no denying that the inn’s first murder mystery weekend had turned out to be a disastrous affair. Julie thought it was a solid argument against ever hosting another one. But knowing the owner the way Julie did, she was sure Millie would do whatever she felt like doing. It was one of the reasons Julie both admired her and wanted to strangle her at the same time.
Rich tomato soup started their meal, followed by a fresh green salad. Then the main course: Amish-inspired oven-fried chicken. Hannah had outdone herself again. The chicken was crispy on the outside, not too greasy, and perfectly seasoned. On the inside, it was tender and juicy.
The guests seemed to think so as well. Even Gregory was more relaxed. It appeared that the way to his good side might be through his stomach.
“This is so delicious,” Sadie said.
Joyce moaned in response.
It was good, but hardly that good. Julie glanced up to see Joyce close her eyes. OK, maybe it was to some people.
Julie looked back to her plate but then jerked up her head as Susan screamed.
“Oh my word! Joyce is dying!” Susan exclaimed. “The killer struck again!”
Joyce careened over, falling to the floor with a soft thud.
Kenneth was on his feet in a split second. He raced to Joyce’s side, turning her and grabbing her wrist to check her pulse.
