The Inn

by William Patterson

Richard pulled his car into the station lot. The reason any case Tammy might bring against Devlin might fail was because she also said some other things had happened at the Blue Boy. And if people questioned her about those things, they’d question her claims about Devlin as well.

  Tammy had claimed she’d seen a little man eating a human arm.

  Richard had dutifully taken all the details down in his report. The little man, Tammy estimated, was no more than three feet tall, maybe less. He was slender, and had a bluish tint to his skin. Kind of like the blue boy on the sign out front. Richard understood the power of suggestion when under distress. Clearly, that was the explanation for Tammy’s little blue man. She was upset and anxious after the harassment from Devlin and imagined she’d something horrifying. Richard thought psychologists called it “counterprojection.”

  Still, he worried about Annabel in that house.

  He got out of the car and headed inside. He’d been right when he’d told Millie he had a long night ahead. He needed to get the ball moving on a search warrant. If he had to drive up to see the judge personally tonight, he’d do it. He needed to arrange a forensics team to check out that chimney. And he needed to finish going through all the cold case files relating to the Blue Boy Inn.

  There was something very odd about that place, and Richard aimed to figure out what it was.

  He was surprised to find the Blue Boy’s English guest waiting for him when he reached his desk.

  “Chief,” Neville said, “I have something very important to tell you. And show you.”

  He opened his hand to reveal an opal ring.

  71

  “Maybe I’m crazy to be going out with you to the tile store, as if everything back home is all peachy keen,” Annabel told Chad, sitting beside him in his truck as they rattled north on Route 7. “But after yesterday, I just had to get out of that house.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Chad said, looking over at her. “A little time away will do you a world of good.”

  She smiled over at him.

  “Seriously,” Chad continued. “Think to the future. Someday this crap will all be over. They will have caught the guy who killed Roger and maybe killed Paulie and Priscilla, and you can go back to making the Blue Boy a first-class destination.”

  That was what she needed to do, Annabel thought, watching from the window as the countryside flew past her. She needed to focus on the renovation. She needed to throw herself into it—transforming that house from its gruesome past to something new, something she could call her own. She had to think ahead, and not dwell in the past, or wallow in her delusions.

  Annabel ran the risk of decompensating again. She couldn’t let that happen. During her time in rehab, she had been told over and over again how important it was to stay strong in her mind. She had a tendency to retreat when things became difficult. It was sort of like the way some people curled into the fetal position to take shelter from the hard realities of the world. Annabel called it her “black hole.” She’d sink down into it and her mind would go berserk. She’d imagine things. She’d hallucinate. She’d fall into a world that wasn’t real, that existed only in her mind. She’d believe nothing was safe.

  She supposed it had started all those years ago when she was a little girl, locked in the closet by Daddy Ron. The young Annabel would fall down into a rabbit’s hole of illusion, imagining Tommy Tricky and all the terrible things he would do to her. This had been her tendency ever since, when she became afraid or anxious. She’d withdraw, decompensate—tumble down into her black hole where nothing made sense.

  But she could no longer allow that to happen in her life.

  Despite what Tammy Morelli claimed to have seen, Tommy Tricky did not live at the Blue Boy Inn. Annabel had to believe that. Tommy Tricky was a childhood fantasy, told to her by Daddy Ron to frighten her. Tammy had been frightened by Jack, and then she had hallucinated, much as Annabel had done herself. To believe anything else, Annabel was convinced, would have been to admit madness.

  And she was not going to do that.

  Last night, Jack had been conciliatory. He’d taken Annabel in his arms and kissed her tenderly, explaining how much he, too, wanted to start over, to make the Blue Boy theirs, to free it from its lurid past. That was why he was so resistant to the police searching the place. Annabel was cool and reserved, remembering what Chad had told her about Tammy. Once again, she chose not to confront Jack. She planned to do so—she wasn’t going to just let this slip by—but not just yet. Annabel wasn’t sure she could trust her husband anymore. In fact, she’d become a little bit afraid of him. She worried that Jack would blow up at her, or try to control what she did, and if Annabel had learned anything during her time in rehab, it was how to stay safe. Nothing was more important than that. So until she felt safe with Jack again, she was not going to bring anything up with him that might set him off.

  Of course, things couldn’t stay this way. This was no kind of marriage. Annabel knew she and Jack were at a breaking point. Either they got through this, or they didn’t. Not for much longer would she live with Jack’s volatility, or stand for his continued flirtation—and maybe more than that—with other women. She would see how the next few weeks went. If things only got worse—if Jack remained hostile to a police investigation, for example, or if he continued to seem angry and distant—Annabel would suggest they needed some time apart. She had no family other than Jack, so she had no idea where she’d go. But surely there must be some old friend in New York who would take her in. Or, if necessary, she’d go deeper into debt and stay at a hotel. If she needed to get out of here, she’d find a way.

  But Annabel wasn’t running just yet. For the moment, she would stay on course. One of the other things she’d learned in rehab was to resist the urge to flee. She learned that she was strong enough to face anything. So she would persevere for the next few weeks, keeping her mind clear, resisting the hallucinations, rejecting the fear. She would resist feelings of paranoia. She was safe here. Safe!

  And so she would push on with the renovation, the plan to make the house her own. She had no other choice. Otherwise, she might decompensate again and wind up nearly catatonic, as had happened yesterday morning. Annabel would not go down that road again.

  “Kind of lost in thought over there, aren’t you?” Chad asked, interrupting her reverie.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Annabel said.

  “No need.” He smiled over at her, revealing dimples in his cheeks. “I know you’ve got a lot on your mind.”

  “Well, maybe it’s time I put some of it out of my mind.” She returned his smile. “So, tell me, Chad. Do you plan someday on taking over your father’s business?”

  “That’s the goal. My brothers aren’t into it. But for me, I’ve loved remodeling houses ever since I built a loft in my bedroom when I was nine.”

  “Nine!”

  Chad nodded, his eyes on the road ahead of him. “I’ve always been good with my hands.”

  Annabel laughed. “I’m sure your girlfriend appreciates that.”

  Chad looked over at her and smirked. “Annabel, was that a double entendre?”

  She blushed suddenly. “I guess it did sound that way. But not what I meant. I just meant a woman likes to have a handyman around the house.”

  “Still sounds dirty,” Chad said, laughing. “But the point is moot. I don’t have a girlfriend. Not anymore.”

  “What happened?”

  “Not really sure. I was dating this girl Claire ever since junior year of high school. I guess she just got tired of waiting for me to marry her, and she gave me the old heave-ho a few months ago.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.’

  “It’s okay, really. If I’d have really been in love with her, like she said, I would have asked her to marry me a long time before that.”

  Annabel frowned. “Well, did she ever ask you to marry her?”

  “Oh, plenty of times.” Chad switched on his turn signal. “I’m just not the marrying type, I gu
ess.”

  They headed off the highway.

  “That’s okay,” Annabel said, looking off into the miles of bare, shivering trees on the side of the road. “Marriage isn’t for everybody.”

  Chad looked over at her. “Is it for you?” he asked, and then quickly added, “I’m sorry. That was too personal.”

  “No, it’s okay,” she said. “To be honest, I’m not sure.”

  They were silent after that.

  “Here we are,” Chad announced a short time later, steering the truck into the lot outside a shop called BERKSHIRE TILE & PAINT. “Let’s go in and let our imaginations run wild, shall we?”

  Annabel smiled.

  But as she headed into the shop, her own imagination was already racing far ahead of either of them. It was something Neville had said to her, late last night.

  “I suspect this will all be cleared up in the next few days,” he’d whispered, out of earshot from Jack, after he came back into the house from some trip into town.

  Annabel had asked him what he meant, but he’d just smiled enigmatically, his finger to his lip.

  What had he meant? He’d appeared so certain. He’d still been asleep when Annabel left with Chad this morning, so there had been no chance to question him further.

  But Annabel prayed he was right. All be cleared up in the next few days.

  Passing through the lot, Annabel noticed a few tiny snowflakes swirling through the air.

  “We’re supposed to get a big storm tonight,” Chad said, sticking out his tongue to collect some of the flakes. “Guess these are the first arrivals.”

  Laughing, they made their way inside the well-lit shop. With music playing and cash registers jangling, people laughing and cell phones ringing, Annabel felt her anxieties evaporate. She was comforted that, at least for the moment, she was back in the real world, far away from the dark warrens of the Blue Boy Inn.

  72

  “I told you,” Jack Devlin growled, standing at the front door of the inn, blocking their way, “I won’t have you tramping through this place, making us any more notorious around town than we already are.”

  Richard Carlson had anticipated this. Calmly, he reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew the court order that he’d just gotten from the judge. After Neville had paid him a visit last night, revealing the ring he’d found on the basement floor—the ring Priscilla Morton never, ever removed from her finger—Richard had made a special request of the judge to issue an immediate warrant for a search of the Blue Boy Inn. He had picked it up this morning, and showed it now to Jack Devlin.

  “You’ll see that this is a court order signed by a judge,” he told Devlin.

  The man’s face darkened as he read the document. Behind Richard, Adam Burrell and two other deputies stood ready as backup, in case Devlin resisted. They would arrest him if they needed to.

  Jack’s dark eyes lifted from the paper to meet Richard’s.

  “Well, then,” he said, his voice even. “I guess I’ll have to let you come in then.”

  “Thank you for being reasonable, Mr. Devlin,” Richard told him.

  Jack stepped aside to allow the officers to enter the house.

  “You two start in the attic,” Richard directed two of his deputies, “while Adam and I will start in the cellar.”

  The chief looked around to see that the old caretaker, Zeke, had come into the parlor. Richard did not miss the look he exchanged with Devlin.

  “Do you have the bolt cutters?” Richard asked Adam.

  “That I do,” the deputy replied, producing them from his pocket.

  Richard nodded. With a flashlight showing the way ahead of him, he started down the basement stairs.

  The padlock was easily dispatched with the bolt cutters. It fell to the earthen floor with a thud.

  Richard opened the old iron door of the ash dump. It creaked in the stillness of the basement. Pointing the beam of the flashlight through the door, he looked inside.

  “This thing has been recently cleaned,” he said.

  “How can you tell?” Adam asked.

  “I can see the marks of whatever sort of brush that was used,” the chief said, snapping photographs of the interior of the chimney. “Wind and condensation would have dissolved them after a few days. But now they’re plain as day. This was just cleaned this morning, in my opinion.”

  He brought the light closer to the floor of the ash dump.

  “But there’s still some residue that doesn’t look like soot,” he pointed out. “You see?”

  Adam peered inside and nodded. “It’s a different color,” he offered.

  “That it is.” Richard swung the beam of the flashlight out of the ash dump. “When forensics gets here, make sure they take a sample of that stuff.”

  “Will do, chief.”

  Richard made his way around the rest of the basement. He saw nothing. He was hoping to find something else besides the ring that had belonged to one of the two missing persons. But there was nothing in the basement other than an old chest, which, when Richard opened it, turned out to be completely empty.

  He hoped his deputies in the attic were having more luck.

  73

  Neville was steaming mad. He stomped down the stairs behind the two officers who had let him out of his room—rescued him, in his opinion! He was bursting to give someone a piece of his mind—and he expected it would be Jack Devlin.

  But in the parlor he found the Blue Boy’s owner speaking with Police Chief Carlson. Well, that was convenient!

  “I want to report an assault!” Neville shouted, rushing into the room and interrupting the two men’s conversation.

  The chief turned to look at him. Neville noticed the cagey expression that crossed Jack’s face.

  “An assault?” the chief asked.

  “Yes, indeed,” Neville replied. “I consider it an assault to be locked in one’s room, unable to get out! What if there had been a fire?”

  “You were locked in your room?” the chief inquired, looking from Neville back over at Jack.

  Neville nodded. “That I was! I have been trying to get out for the past two hours, banging on the door and calling, but no one came to my assistance until these two officers here.”

  “We heard him calling on our way back down from the attic,” one of the two deputies told Carlson.

  Jack’s face turned compassionate. “Oh, Neville, I’m sorry to hear this. Zeke and I were shoveling snow off the walk and must not have heard you. Annabel is up in Great Barrington with the contractor, so none of us were here to respond. I’m so sorry.”

  “There was a key in the lock outside the room!” Neville shrilled. “I was deliberately locked in there!”

  “No one here would do such a thing,” Jack assured him.

  Neville swung his eyes to Chief Carlson. “He’s lying!”

  The chief said nothing, just studied both men.

  “Look, Neville,” Jack said, trying to sound reasonable, “you must have left your key in the lock last night. The doors are old. Sometimes if you don’t remove the key, the door will lock again when it’s closed.”

  “That’s not true, chief,” Neville said. “Someone came into my room while I was sleeping, found the key, and then locked me in there!”

  “For what purpose would someone have done this?” Carlson asked.

  “I don’t know,” Neville admitted. He looked over at Jack. “To be free to hide evidence, perhaps? Or look for it?” He opened his fist, which until now had been tightly clenched at his side. “Were you looking for this, Jack?” Neville asked, revealing Priscilla’s ring.

  “I don’t know what that is,” Jack said calmly.

  “The night before Priscilla disappeared,” Neville told the chief, “Jack was putting the moves on her. He was very aggressively getting her drunk. I don’t know what happened, because I was too drunk myself.”

  The chief’s eyebrows lifted. “How come you didn’t tell us this before?”

  Nevill
e frowned. “I didn’t think it had any relevance. But mostly because I didn’t want to offend Annabel, who has been very kind to me.”

  Jack was smiling. “We all had a little too much to drink. I told you that, chief. But I was certainly not putting the moves on Priscilla, as Neville says. I think he might just be a little jealous because Priscilla clearly was coming on to me.”

  Neville saw the way the chief looked at Jack, the deep suspicion in his eyes. “Just like Tammy Morelli was putting the moves on you, too?” He smirked. “Seems every woman who comes into this house gets the Jack Devlin treatment.”

  “I don’t think that’s fair, chief,” Jack told him, looking wounded.

  “Look,” Carlson said, turning his attention back to Neville. “You may well have locked yourself in by mistake. There’s no way to prove otherwise. I’d just suggest you pack your things and leave. But before you do, I’d like you to come down to the station and give us an amended statement. Tell us everything you left out the first time.”

  “Gladly,” Neville sniffed. “I leave tomorrow for England, but I think I’ll head down to Hartford this afternoon and stay at a hotel outside the airport tonight.”

  “If flights are taking off,” the chief commented, and they all looked up at the window. The snow was coming down heavier now. “We’re supposed to be getting a nor’easter tonight.”

  “Well,” Neville said, “I’d rather brave snowy roads than spend another night in this place.”

  He turned and headed back up the stairs. He could feel Jack’s eyes on the back on his head until he was out of sight.

  74

  “Surely, you don’t think I’d lock him in his room, do you?” Jack asked Richard once Neville was gone.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Richard replied. “All I know is . . .”

  He was distracted by the sound of people coming through the front door.

  “The forensics team is here,” Adam announced.

  “What’s that for?” Jack asked, his eyes narrowing as he watched Adam direct the two women and one man down the basement stairs.