Dead and Breakfast

by Lisa Rene' Smith

  “He killed her!” Sheriff Thomas pointed at the pale-faced man lying on the floor.

  “I did no such thing.” Micah’s whisper frightened Alex. He would die if she didn’t get help for him soon.

  “I think the answer to Bethanne’s disappearance has something to do with that fireplace and I’m going to find out what it is even if I have to remove every stone in it.”

  Sheriff Thomas lost all the color in his face and for a moment his pale skin matched Micah’s. Then the red crept back up his neck and into his jowls. He looked from Alex to Micah, then he licked his lips and sputtered. “Good idea. I’ll help you.” He stomped up to Alex, grabbed her by the arm and jerked her with him to the fireplace.

  Alex glanced over her shoulder to see that Micah had lost consciousness. His dark lashes rested against ashen cheeks. The Sheriff pulled an enormous serrated knife out of the sheath on his belt then hesitated, holding her arm in one hand and the evil knife in the other. Putting the knife down on the hearth he dragged her back over to Micah, removing handcuffs from another leather pouch attached to his belt.

  “Sit down here.” He jerked Alex off her feet down to the floor beside Micah. Before she regained her balance he’d snapped one of the handcuffs onto her wrist and locked the other to Micah’s pale arm. “That ought to keep ya.”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Fear made her voice quaver. The sheriff had an odd twinkle in his eye now and it scared Alex more than anything that had happened so far.

  “Keep your trap closed or I’ll shoot you too. Understand Miss Buttinsky?” Alex gulped, but didn’t say a word. He jumped to his feet and left them.

  As soon as the insane Sheriff slammed the door Alex reached toward Micah’s face, tapping his cheek. “Micah. Micah can you hear me? Micah!” No reaction. Alex felt for a pulse in his neck and sighed when she found the rapid beat. She tried to lift him so they could escape, but his dead weight proved too much for her and she collapsed beside him again just in time to see the sheriff storm back into the cabin. He carried several tools, a pick ax, a big sledgehammer with a short handle and some kind of chisel.

  Without even glancing at his prisoners he crawled inside the fireplace and went to work on the floor, stabbing at the mortar holding the rocks together until he worked them loose, tossing them out onto the floor. Alex winced as one of them landed close to Micah’s vulnerable head. She planted her feet against the floor and pulled with all her might to slide Micah’s body farther away from the frantic sheriff and the explosion of dust and large fireplace stones. Like a whirling dervish he worked at removing the rock until finally he ceased his crazed digging, then Alex heard the sound of something heavy sliding. The sheriff disappeared from view.

  Long moments passed before he reappeared and crawled out of the fireplace. His uniform filthy and a layer of dust in his hair, he towered over her, a column of dirt and menace. “All right girlie, you wanted to see the wine cellar—so let’s go see it. I guess I’ll have to carry your boyfriend.”

  Instead of lifting Micah he yanked him across the floor and pile of loose rocks to the hearth then he pitched his limp body into the fireplace. Alex scrambled to keep up but she fell onto the hearth as the cuff dug into her wrist. Her ribs ached where she fell and she gasped in pain. Sheriff Thomas ignored her as he climbed over both her and Micah to get inside the fire pit. The hidden door stood open and Alex glimpsed the slate steps leading down into oblivion. Without warning the sheriff grabbed Micah and headed downward. Micah moaned as his body took a beating on the hard stairs.

  Alex almost fell as she trailed behind, her wrist screaming in agony with the weight of Micah’s body and the sheriff’s pull combined. After an endless journey down they reached the bottom, and Alex glanced around the wine cellar. A single dingy bulb illuminated the low room but she saw a bed in the corner—and a skeleton occupying that bed. A silent scream left her lips, her mouth gaping. Alex fought to breathe as it seemed all the air had left the earthen room in that one instant.

  “Alexandra Murphy, meet Bethanne Martin.” Sheriff Thomas climbed the stairs as he spoke. “She chose the monster over me too.”

  “Don’t leave us here! Sheriff!” He stopped at the top of the stairs and grinned back at Alex. “You should’ve left well enough alone.”

  Chilly made a sudden appearance. Alex felt her brush past and rush up the stairs. Sheriff Thomas beat at the air with his hands, a girlish scream accenting his vain attempt to escape the cold wind. His scream intensified as his big body tipped and he fell headfirst down the stairs. Bones snapped with a sickening crunch as flesh met stone and he landed at Alex’s feet in a shattered heap, his lifeless eyes frozen into a look of sheer terror. One of his broken legs had flopped across Micah’s head. Alex reached to move it when she noticed the blood flowing from the split skin of the dead man’s leg toward the vampire’s parted lips.

  Micah quickened. His eyes fluttered and he opened his mouth wide, drinking down the blood, gaining strength with every swallow. It would not be Alex and Micah that kept poor Bethanne company. No, Sheriff Thomas finally got his wish—to have Bethanne all to himself.

  THE STAND-IN by Cash Anthony

  Slipping off her galoshes by the inn’s back door, Emily Placett tiptoed into the kitchen of the Canyon River Inn. She was happy to get inside on a cold, dark morning, and like a moth she flew toward the night-light over the six-burner stove, pulling her coat and gloves off on the way. On the central wood-block island, she saw that Martha, the innkeeper’s wife, had left the silver coffee urn set up and ready to plug in. Under its feet was the list of tasks for the morning maid.

  Emily, a responsible if less than driven sixteen-year-old from an outlying farm, activated the urn right away. She liked to hear the water bubble through the old-style percolator when the house was quiet like this. She breathed in the aroma of fresh coffee and pine greens, gazing at the decorations that made the Victorian-style inn such a delightful place to work, if you had to have a part-time job over the holidays.

  Martha’s list started, “Get morning paper, put in reading room.” Emily considered her options: Did she really have to retrieve the Oakville Clarion from the front yard? She didn’t want to put her coat and her boots back on; she was just warming up from her walk to work. It was still dark out, and it wasn’t much after 7 a.m. on New Year’s Day, so obviously nobody else was up. The earliest riser among the guests could bring in the paper if they wanted it.

  Emily scanned the rest of the list with a similar eye to priorities.

  After heating the oven and baking cinnamon buns—the inn’s breakfast trademark—the only important item was circled in red ink. It appeared at the bottom, added late the day before, Emily surmised. ‘Whipple party, BCB, Room Service—Coffee.’

  Meaning they must be special guests. Martha and Tom Arpeccio had enough to do on a murder mystery weekend without coddling regular guests in such a way.

  Martha had thoughtfully left a tall thermos bottle on a tray waiting to be filled, so by 7:28 a.m. Emily was knocking on the door to the Brushy Creek Bedroom, bringing the Whipples the thermos, two mugs, sugar and cream, Sweet‘N Low and Splenda, along with a dash of teen resentment of privileges for anyone else.

  Hearing no response, she tried turning the crystal doorknob. Few of the upstairs guests bothered to lock their rooms, and indeed, this one opened with a little push. Emily peeked in.

  She didn’t like how dim the room was. Were the Whipples not even awake? Around white voile curtains, gray light from the overcast sky leaked in and gave a ghostly substance to the furniture, lamps and various other strange, shadowy shapes.

  Mindful of her orders and now ready for a little fun, Emily clomped in with the tray. She slid it on top of a maple high chest and ran her hand over the exterior of the cream pitcher to be sure none had spilled, wiped a drop off and sucked her finger.

  From behind her came a sound—half-groan, half-whisper.

  Emily froze. After a moment, when it didn’t come aga
in, she identified it as ‘someone turning over in bed,’ and looked over her shoulder to see if she was right.

  Yes, two long forms lay under the covers, and one waved a naked knee in the breeze. The maid looked away at once, discretion having been emphasized in Martha’s training.

  Unwilling to leave without an acknowledgement of this extraordinary service, Emily reached over and flipped the wall switch on for the overhead light. She also gave the open door a set of good, loud raps this time, adding, “Room service! And Happy New Year’s, too!”

  The body attached to the naked knee sat bolt upright. Emily, startled and staring in spite of herself, gave a little screech.

  In the king-size bed, Myrna Sawyer blinked sticky eyelids, awakened by the girl’s stifled scream. She rose up on one elbow, threw the covers back, and ran a hand through her short black, spiky hair. Her eyes managed to focus on the maid, who stared back, mouth a-gape, at the nude woman in the bed.

  Then they both looked over to Myrna’s right.

  The maid resumed her shrieking, this time without cease and for real, and when Myrna saw that her boyfriend’s head was half blown away on the pillow next to hers, she joined in. Emily turned and ran.

  “Ugh. I can’t go for that.” Myrna avoided the red and gray mess from David Whipple’s shattered cranium and grabbed him by the shoulder. She pushed and rolled him away from her, then pulled up the inn’s hand-stitched quilt to cover his lifeless face.

  Two seconds later, in the center of a rose-bedecked needlepoint rug next to the bed. Myrna threw up. In the three minutes after that, while urgent phone calls to 9-1-1 were made from the inn’s kitchen office accompanied by Emily’s incoherent sobs, Myrna dressed, grabbed her purse and her overnight bag, and departed the inn.

  By the time the county’s newest deputy sheriff arrived 45 minutes later, she had disappeared.

  * * * *

  Deputy Jacob Teischer climbed the broad stairs to the inn’s second floor without urgency. He kept his blond hair shaved short enough to please an Aggie Corps commander, but he sported a trace of a mustache which a compulsion forced him to stroke, today starting when he first heard the word “murder.” His crisp new uniform almost rattled with starch as he moved. He placed each size 13 foot on the treads with care, as if it was prudent to sneak up on the crime scene.

  At the top of the staircase, he used an elbow to push open the bedroom door—only to see a small, mousy-haired, long-nosed woman already inside.

  “Hey! What’s going on?” Teischer barked, or tried to.

  Jessie Carr, dressed all in black, stood holding a short-barreled .32 pistol with a wooden grip. When Teischer shouted, she held it up to show him it was a revolver.

  Teischer ducked back into the hall.

  Tom the innkeeper, edging up to look over the deputy’s shoulder, got a shove backwards for his reward. Teischer waved at him to stay out of the anticipated line of fire. He put his hand on the holster attached to his belt and unsnapped its flap.

  Arpeccio stopped Teischer mid-move. “She’s with us. She’s not a real guest.”

  The deputy’s gaze rose to the ceiling in thanks.

  Real guests of the inn, displaying a motley set of hangover symptoms, whispered in the hall and on the stairs, drawn by the notion of witnessing violence in their midst when the New Year had scarcely begun.

  “Someone moved my gun!” From inside the crime scene, Jessie’s irritated cry came through to them loud and clear.

  Teischer took out a fresh white hanky and unfolded it, then waved it out the door at Jessie, as if in surrender. He peered around the doorframe.

  Jessie was crouched in a weird position over the victim.

  “What the hell you doin’, ma’am? Oh, Lord. Would you please put that gun back where you found it?”

  Jessie laid the pistol on top of the quilt with care, but she continued to prowl around the room as if she belonged there—and as if Teischer didn’t exist. Teischer glanced back at the innkeeper, unsure what to do next. He folded and pocketed his hanky. He hitched up his pants. He re-snapped his holster flap. Finally he took a deep breath and entered the room, planting himself at the foot of David Whipple’s deathbed.

  “Excuse me, but who are you, and what are you doing now?”

  “Name’s Carr,” Jessie answered, turning around. “Plenty of miles on this model, as you can see.” She gave Teischer a brilliant smile.

  Her hands were enclosed in a pair of latex gloves, and in one rested a thin cell phone. “It’s all grist for the mill, don’t you know?”

  She aimed the phone at the deputy’s face and clicked the camera. Teischer ducked when it flashed.

  Her next shot captured the innkeeper, who leaned against the wall in shock beside the maple high chest. His eyes were fixed and unblinking as he assessed the property damage to one of his best rooms. He ignored the body.

  “Jessie wrote the play the guests were doing. She even played Myrna’s part last night after she—dropped out.” This information came from Martha Arpeccio, the tall woman with a strained expression and a smudge of flour on her cheek. “She got—sick.”

  Her husband Tom had had enough of the room’s various unpleasant odors and sights. His face went pale, and he rushed past Martha toward the upstairs bath.

  The young deputy looked at the ceiling to avoid a sympathetic response, but his own creeping nausea won out. He raced to the room’s casement window and jimmied with the latch.

  Unopened for years, its many coats of old paint were like sticky cement, but Teischer finally got the wooden frame to swing open, letting the damp January air and small-town odors in. He leaned far out and took several deep breaths.

  When Teischer turned back, Jessie stood so close she almost touched him. She seemed to be looking past him at the roof of the porch below, searching for tracks from the missing young woman, of which there were none.

  Startled, the deputy pushed off to get away from the open space and the chance of falling 20 feet to the sidewalk below.

  As he passed her, Jessie handed him a tiny tube of Vicks Vapo-Rub. He opened it at once and dabbed some under his nose. His face showed his huge relief but he wasn’t sure whether it was okay to smile. He cleared his throat.

  “Anybody here ever met the woman who was with him— what’s her name—before?” Teischer asked, this time his voice loud enough to be heard down the hall.

  “Her name’s Myrna Sawyer,” Jessie replied. “She’s from Waco, I believe.”

  Martha, waiting with a half-dozen other rubberneckers, shrugged. The guests shook their heads ‘no’.

  The question was passed back in a murmur, until a honey-blonde woman in a black velveteen tracksuit raised her hand. She pushed forward through the crowd.

  “I’m Stephanie Marsberg,” she told Teischer.

  Martha interrupted. “That’s Doctor Marsberg. She’s a lady dentist.” Martha puffed out her chest with pride that such a high-class clientele would patronize her inn in remote Oakville.

  “Orthodontist. I didn’t know her, but I knew him. Mostly by reputation. He’s one of the biggest criminal defense attorneys in the state. I’ve seen him and his wife at a number of charity balls.” Marsberg stressed the word ‘wife’ ever so slightly, but Jessie heard the implication.

  “And Myrna Sawyer was not the wife in question.” Jessie raised an eyebrow as if waiting to nail this down, but her inflection left no room for doubt.

  “Nope.” Marsberg sucked her porcelain crowns for emphasis.

  This drew a few “ahs” from the closest listeners, encouraging the ones farther away to lean in, step up or shuffle closer.

  “Eva Whipple is a lady of the first class.” Martha made the comparison without mentioning Myrna’s name. “Doctor Mars-berg travels in good company.”

  “Oh? You know the wife?” Teischer asked. He handed the Vapo-Rub back to Jessie and lifted the bedspread, far from the vomit pool. He bent over and looked under the bed, without much hope.

  “I do. She a
nd David have stayed here a number of times. I considered them both old friends.”

  This revelation set the guests to murmuring.

  “She told my wife she used to fix hair,” added a woman’s voice. “Myrna, I mean.”

  “She told me if he didn’t get her off, she was going to jail,” said another.

  The guests buzzed with speculation. Fresh facts about Myrna Sawyer reminded them that the young woman with the spiky black hair and numerous colorful tattoos—in the company of a well-heeled professional, middle-aged man—had been a topic of intense interest well before her disappearance.

  Teischer glanced at the bloody mess on David Whipple’s pillow. He took out a ballpoint pen, picked up the revolver with it and dangled it near his face.

  “Well, this ain’t no murder weapon,” he groused. “This here’s a starter’s pistol.”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you,” said Jessie. “And it’s mine. We needed a shot fired in the middle of the night.” She nodded toward the victim. “I already felt for a pulse. He’s toast.”

  Next the writer bent down by the bedside table and examined the pool of vomit with clinical dispassion. “Typical New Year’s Eve,” she opined. “Got too hungry and too drunk, and then all she had time to eat was bread.”

  After studying the nightstand, Jessie came up with a shell casing in her gloved fingers. She brought it up close to her face, cocked her head and examined the stumpy piece of brass.

  “The murder weapon was a .38 semi-automatic, I’d say.”

  Teischer, who was busy pulling out empty dresser drawers, paused at this remark.

  Jessie held the casing up so Teischer could see it, but when he narrowed his eyes, stroked his mustache and began to look huffy, she laid it back down in its original position. Then she took another shot of the scene with her phone.

  Finding nothing at all of interest in the empty dresser, Teischer hitched up his over-stiff pants and tried to look confident enough for interrogation. “Okay, I got it. When Tom does these murder things, you’re the lady who tells everybody else where to go.”