On Wednesday morning both sisters slept in, and I explained that I needed to transfer to the Owl’s Roost for the sake of the wedding preparations. Mom was still doubtful, but Owen was clearly just as happy to keep them and me apart for the moment. So he pretended to believe me, and I packed my bag and slung it in Scarlet’s backseat.
“You will come on the picnic to Eagle Island, though?” he asked, as he brought Mom and me coffee on the veranda before I left. I do love a man who brings me coffee. “It looks like Friday would be best. You won’t be too busy?”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” I said, quite sincerely, and both he and my mother looked pleased. “Lily doesn’t arrive till Saturday, and this is a small wedding, so the arrangements are pretty manageable.”
Mom saw her chance and seized it. She’s good. “In that case, I’m sure you’ll have time for lunch with the four of us tomorrow? You have to eat, after all. Shall we say noon?”
Her eyes telegraphed the message: Make peace with his daughters, please. For my sake.
Peace was unlikely, but a truce was possible. So for her sake I said, “That sounds nice. Thanks for the coffee, Owen, and I’ll see you tomorrow at noon.”
By the time I drove up to the Owl’s Roost, the news of Guy Price’s untimely end had run through the island’s grapevine. Pamela, red-eyed and somber, seemed genuinely sorrowful, but Donald’s eager curiosity kept bobbing up through his clichés. I tried to keep Jeff Austin’s attitude in mind—“They don’t mean anything by it”—but I still found his inquisition distasteful.
“I suppose you wanted to get clean away from there, huh, after your horrible experience?” He made Roche Harbor and Lonesome Cove sound two hundred miles apart instead of two and a half. “I can understand that, I surely can. Here, let me.”
With a great show of helpfulness he pulled my luggage from the SUV, stopping to adjust his glasses and dropping my jacket on the driveway in the process. “I mean, you must be darned near traumatized after seeing what you saw . . . ?”
I ignored this invitation to spill the details. “I just need somewhere quiet until Sunday.”
“Of course you do, poor thing,” said Pamela. She picked up my jacket and tucked it into the crook of her arm as if it were a kitten. “You’ll be nice and private back in 6C. You even have your own separate parking.”
“It’s not our very best unit, you understand,” said Donald, toting my suitcase through the spacious, comfortable lounge of the A-frame. An older couple sat reading in the easy chairs by the fire, and they gave us friendly nods as we passed them to go down a little hallway. “But it’s where the missus and I camped out till we built the cabin, so it can’t be too shabby, can it?”
“Not shabby at all,” I assured him.
And in fact the bedroom was much larger than the one I’d had at the Winters’, with its own shipshape bathroom, a desk and chair in the far corner, and even a mini-kitchen with hot plate, microwave, and half-size fridge. The unit’s back door opened onto a small private porch facing the woods.
“This will be perfect.”
“If you need to talk about your horrible experience,” Donald said gravely, “you know, just to get it out of your system, I’d be happy to—”
“There’s a path down to the beach right through the trees there,” said Pamela, busy fluffing the pillows on the double bed. She seemed to be on automatic pilot after the death of their helpful neighbor. “And those are your two parking spaces next to the porch. If you go the other way on the path it leads to our cabin, which is the office too. Breakfast served in the lounge from eight to ten, and we rent kayaks and bicycles by the day or—oops!”
A thin beeping sounded, and she checked the pager clipped to the waistband of her stretch pants. “Someone’s waiting. Come on, Mr. Coe, I’ll see to whoever it is and you get back to making your chili. Let Carnegie settle in and relax.”
What I really needed was to settle in and get myself organized. Eddie Breen was always pushing me to do more business development, and before I left he’d suggested that I offer Made in Heaven’s services to the larger hotels on the island. In all the turmoil, I had forgotten that he’d set me up with an appointment in Roche Harbor today. Sometimes I wondered who worked for who.
So I unpacked quickly, arranging the paperwork for Lily’s wedding on the wobbly little desk, with Eddie’s notes on top of that. Even on this sunny day the corners of the room were dim, so I clicked on the desk lamp. Dead bulb. A search through 6C, including the plywood cupboard beneath the bathroom sink, got me nothing but a jagged splinter in my thumb. I dotted the carpet with blood before I noticed it.
Might as well go ask Pamela for a bulb, I decided as I made myself a toilet-paper bandage, and have her run my credit card at the same time. This was an expense I hadn’t planned on, but well worth it to get away from Adrienne. I could visit Mom and Owen just as easily, and much more sanely, from here.
The woods outside my new lodgings were eerily reminiscent of the fir trees and madronas around Afterglow Vista, but when that thought occurred I gave myself a stern mental shake. San Juan Island was covered with woods like these, and I was determined not to be haunted by Monday’s tragedy.
So I squared my shoulders and strode up the path, listening to the bird calls, breathing in the salt-tinged air, and trying to breathe out all the anger and stress of the last three days. Lily and Mike are getting married on Sunday, that’s what really matters.
From the outside, the Coes’ cabin was utterly ordinary, a small shingled building set among the trees, with beige-curtained windows, a film of moss on the north slope of the roof, and a set of swaybacked wooden steps leading up to the front door. A sign on the door said OFFICE, and below that a folksy plaque informed all comers that a stranger is just a friend we haven’t met yet. It might have been any manager’s cottage at any modest countryside resort in the Pacific Northwest.
But inside the cabin was another matter. I tapped on the door, opened it, and froze in horror at the sight of a huge, grotesque object sitting on the office counter. It was a lamp, I realized, an owl-shaped lamp of such surpassing green and brown ceramic ugliness that it seemed to leave an imprint on my retinas when I blinked.
Slowly my gaze traveled upward to a macramé owl with buttons for eyes that hung from the ceiling, and then traversed the walls, which were covered with owl posters bearing captions like Who Gives a Hoot? and The Eyes Have It.
Houston, we have touchdown on the Planet of the Owls.
“Back here!” fluted Pamela.
There was a utility room behind the counter, but her voice came from a connecting door off to one side. I stepped through it into a small living room crowded with furniture just as comfortably plump as the lady of the house.
The lady was perched on the sofa talking to a young woman, but I could hardly take them in through the onslaught of the decor. Here, too, the owl plague had spread. Lamps, figurines, throw pillows, cuckoo clocks—there were several cuckoo clocks—all of them bore brown feathers and black beaks and enormous circular dark-pupiled eyes.
I was seriously creeped out.
“Carnegie, I was just telling India here all about you.” Pamela leaned forward to pat the seat of an upholstered chair. As she did so, a rhinestone owl pendant with garnet eyes swung out from between her generous breasts. “Come sit down and visit.”
But the young woman popped to her feet and thrust out a hand that jangled with bracelets. She wore a fluttery flowery gauze top, bell-bottom corduroys, and platform shoes that made her almost my height. Ropes of beads draped her narrow chest, along with some kind of amulet on a rawhide cord and an antique silver perfume vial dangling from a black velvet ribbon. At least it wasn’t shaped like an owl.
“India Doyle, assistant community editor for the Friday Harbor Tideline.” She gave me a look of mingled awe and lust that I would have welcomed from Aaron, or even Jeff Austin, but that felt damn odd coming from her. “You’re the one who found the body.”
M
s. Doyle was what they used to call coltish. Not just her frisky, long-limbed movements, but also her large protruding brown eyes and the yard-long mane of brown hair that she sporadically flung aside with restless little tosses of her head. Even her mouth had an equine look, its short upper lip revealing strong square white teeth. Definitely coltish.
I shook her hand and backed away a step, because her other hand was clutching a reporter’s notebook. “Listen, um, India—”
“It’s really Jennifer,” she confided, flinging. “But do you know how many Jennifers there are? I chose India because it’s so soulful. I think I must have lived there in another lifetime. What does Carnegie symbolize?”
“Nothing, really.” It was hardly the time to discuss my father’s fondness for Andrew Carnegie’s libraries. “Listen, I can’t talk about Guy Price, especially not to the press. I’m sorry, but that’s final. Pamela, could I get a lightbulb?”
“Of course you can. Mr. Coe, 6C needs a bulb changed!”
I heard noises from the kitchen and said, “I can do it myself, honestly. I just need the bulb.”
But Donald was already bustling in on a gust of warm onion-scented air, mopping the sweat from his bald head with a paper towel. His apron said WHAT’S COOKING, GOOD LOOKIN’?
“At your service! Let me just get my burners turned off and— My golly, we are just as busy as two bees today! There’s another car pulling up out front. You want to talk to them, missus, while I help Carnegie here? Hello, India. What’s new in the news?”
He chortled to himself at that, and explained, “She’s with the newspaper, y’know.”
I confirmed that I did know and was protesting again about the lightbulb when the room suddenly filled up with large men. One of them was a uniformed police officer, another was Jeff Austin, and the third, a lean and stoop-shouldered fellow in jacket and tie, was holding up an identification card and staring at me with an utter absence of expression on his dark, narrow, pockmarked face.
“Detective Lieutenant Anthony Orozco, Washington State Patrol. Are you Carnegie Kincaid?”
I allowed that I was, and he said, “May I ask why you changed your domicile?”
“My . . . Oh, you mean why did I move here?” To hide from my future stepsisters didn’t seem like a plausible answer. “Well, I’m planning this wedding, and the bride and groom are going to be staying here, so I wanted to check it out. . . .” That sounded lame, so I added, “Why shouldn’t I move where I want, anyway?”
“You should have notified us. Would you accompany me to your lodgings, please?”
“What’s going on?”
“Please.”
He wouldn’t say more, and Jeff Austin gave me a reassuring nod from behind him, so we trooped outside. I led the way past the hideous ceramic owl lamp and under the repulsive macramé owl hangings and over to owl-free 6C, stammering questions all the while.
“This is about Guy Price, right? Do we have to do this now? I’ve already told Deputy Austin everything I know, but I’d be happy to—”
“Please take a seat,” said the detective. He spoke with punctilious formality, but his face was still expressionless.
Jeff stayed outside to deal with India and Donald, who had shown an unseemly eagerness to follow. I was grateful for that, anyway. I sat at the desk chair, but the cops stayed on their feet.
“Thank you,” said Orozco. He produced a sheet of paper and intoned, “You are hereby commanded to go to 808 Owl’s Roost Road in the County of San Juan in the State of Washington—”
“But I’m already here!”
“‘You’ means us,” said the other cop helpfully. “It’s a search warrant.”
“Oh. I see.” But I didn’t. “Why do you need to search—”
Orozco cleared his throat thunderously and began again. “You are hereby commanded . . .”
The search-warrant thing wasn’t like on TV. Nobody said, “Freeze!” and everybody was painstakingly polite and not so much as a clothes hanger in 6C was touched until Detective Orozco read me the entire search warrant aloud.
The warrant was quite wordy and rather tedious to listen to, so by the time he read the second one, which kept referring to “said vehicle,” I wasn’t really following. But the gist of it struck home once they asked me to step outside and I saw my poor Scarlet rolling backward up the driveway chained to a tow truck.
“Hey! Hey wait, I’ve got a meeting to go to!”
I jogged after them, waving my arms in vain, as said vehicle disappeared into the trees. As the truck changed gears onto the main road, I staggered to a halt and stood there swearing. Children of the merchant marine can really swear.
“You’ll get it back in a day or two,” said Jeff. He had followed me up the driveway with India Doyle trotting along behind him. Donald and Pamela must have returned to the office. I wondered how they felt about the occupant of 6C now, and decided not to inquire.
“We’re done with this,” said Jeff, handing me my purse. “Did you say a meeting? I can call you a taxi. It might take a little while, but—”
“I’ll take you,” said India, ready and willing to pursue her scoop. “And I won’t ask you a thing unless you say it’s OK.”
I ignored her and continued to stare at Jeff in disbelief. “You think I killed Guy. You think I killed Guy? Me?”
“Of course I don’t, not personally.” He gave a weak smile. “But Kimmie Winter made a big deal to Orozco about your being in Price’s bedroom, and he came down on us hard for not getting a warrant yesterday. I’m sorry about this.”
“But I’m not under arrest, right? I can go about my business?”
“Oh, sure. In fact I’m sure your room is clean, so you can probably get back in there soon. It only takes a long time if we find something like—”
“Deputy Austin!” barked Orozco from the porch of my erstwhile home. His voice carried, but his language stayed formal. “Could you join us, please? We seem to have some blood in here.”
Chapter Fourteen
Rather than miss my meeting, I let India drive me back to Roche Harbor in her salt-rusted Volkswagen bug.
“Maybe you can get a different car now,” she said helpfully, grinding through the gears. “That SUV must get, like, two miles to the gallon. Reliance on fossils fuels is just a—”
“I didn’t pick the damn car,” I snapped. “Let’s just hold the conversation for a while, all right? I need to focus on this wedding.”
I also needed time to rethink the idea of stonewalling India. Predictably enough, a small plastic Buddha sat impassively on her dashboard, and I stared at it and pondered. Now that I’m a suspect, I have a personal stake in discovering Guy Price’s killer. And who better to help me do that than a local reporter?
Roche Harbor’s marina is like a miniature of Friday Harbor’s, and the place itself is much smaller as well, a resort village rather than a town. The stately white-porticoed Hotel de Haro stands on a slope above the water, presiding over the modern cottages and condos like a white-gowned dowager with a gaggle of girls.
“You may have hot tubs and Internet connections and such,” she seemed to say to the modern lodgings, “but Teddy Roosevelt slept here.”
Roche Harbor village has various shops and restaurants to tempt the tourists and, of most interest to me, two exquisite and bride-pleasing Victorian gardens. These were being crisscrossed on this sunny day by strolling visitors, who were also wandering up the hill to visit the private chapel, the charmingly named Our Lady of Good Voyage. Many a couple had begun their matrimonial voyage in Roche Harbor, and Eddie wanted a piece of the action.
I parked India at an outdoor espresso bar and went in search of the resort’s special-events manager. But just as I feared, that gentleman was getting along fine without me and Eddie—and he hadn’t even heard yet that I was suspected of murder.
“I appreciate the thought,” he said, handing me back my business card, “but as you can see, we’re quite well staffed.”
I tha
nked him for his time, made a note to cancel my other appointments, and rejoined India. She had moved to a table in the shade, where she was sipping herb tea and inscribing haiku in her notebook.
“What’s a two-syllable word for what trees are like?”
“Leafy,” I said. “Branching. Verdant. You want to talk about Guy?”
“Heck, yeah!” She flipped eagerly to a blank page. “Let’s start with how the two of you first met.”
“No, let’s start with a deal.” I put the flat of my hand over the paper. “I’m sorry to let you down here, India, but there isn’t any ‘two of us.’ I met Guy Price for the first time in my life on Sunday, I was snug in my bed all Sunday night, and when I went for a walk early Monday I came across him by accident just before he died.”
“But the police—”
“The police are so far off base they can’t even see the base. But if you help me figure out who really killed Guy, so we can point them in the right direction, I’ll give you an exclusive interview with his last words and everything. How’s that?”
“Wow, he had last words?”
“Yep. But you can’t print anything before I say so. Do we have a deal?”
“Yes. Yes, absolutely.”
We shook hands solemnly, and for all India’s irritating flakiness, I took her at her word.
“All right, then. Just before he died, Guy asked me for something to write with so that he could warn someone.”
“Who?” Her eyes were owl-sized. “What about?”
“I have no idea. But maybe you do. I heard a rumor he was dealing drugs—”
“That too?”
“What do you mean, too?”
She toyed with her perfume amulet. “Well, I always kind of wondered about Guy and blackmail.”
“Blackmail!”
You May Now Kill the Bride Page 8
