Corpses & Conmen (Rosewood Place Mysteries Book 2)

by Ruby Blaylock

  A sudden, horrible thought filled Annie’s head. Hadn’t she been told to expect a package for Mr. Ross? And hadn’t he told her himself that it would contain a gift for his mother? Possibly even a jewelry box like the one she now held in her hands, that she’d opened, unwrapped, and sniffed, of all things?

  “Crap.” Annie used the edge of her shirt to wipe her very visible fingerprints from the outside of it, then placed it carefully back into the box, wrapped in the tissue paper. She crammed the foam peanuts back inside, then put the entire box into her deepest desk drawer and locked it.

  She’d have to call Emmett. He’d definitely need to know that she’d received the anticipated package, and she’d have to confess to him that she’d opened it, which she was sure was some sort of federal offense. With a groan, Annie placed her head down on her desk and let out a long, frustrated sigh. Well, she thought, I suppose Marie can do her seance now.

  20

  Annie Makes a Plan

  Rory ran the water in the guest bathroom sink until he was satisfied that he’d cleared the blockage that Annie had asked him to fix. Annie admired him for tackling the plumbing jobs--he was a carpenter, not a plumber--but he wasn’t afraid to take on most of the minor plumbing issues they’d had at the old plantation farmhouse, and they’d certainly had more than their share.

  “I think that’ll do it,” he told her. “Just drop a hint to Kizzy that makeup sponges do not belong in drains,” he added, tossing a blackened sponge into the trash.

  “I’m sure it was an accident,” Annie defended her guest. “And you’ve got it all fixed now, so let’s just leave it.” She held her hand out to take the empty bucket he was trying to juggle along with a toolbox, plunger, and bottle of vinegar, which they’d used with some baking soda to flush the sink’s drain after the blockage was cleared. Rory handed her the bucket but kept everything else. Annie noticed that he had a hard time letting people help him with things, which was silly since he helped practically everyone who asked him for help and sometimes those who didn’t.

  They carried the things downstairs and out to the barn, which had become Rory’s temporary headquarters. He had repaired a few minor leaks in the barn’s roof and now the building was the ideal place for him to stash his tools and ongoing repair projects. One such project--a new spindle for the staircase’s banister--sat in a lathe in one corner of the barn. Annie loved to peek in and see what Rory was working on at any given time. She rarely told him what to repair or replace, just let him get on with keeping the place looking and functioning beautifully.

  “So, I received a package,” she said casually, passing the empty bucket to him so he could hang it from a nail on the wall of the barn.

  “Another one? What’s that, like three in two days? Gotta stop that late night shopping,” he teased.

  “No, this was one of the ones we picked up the other day. Did you put them both in my office, by the way? I could only find one of them.”

  Rory nodded. “I sat them both on your desk, the little one on top. Why?”

  “Well, I only found one of them, the smaller one,” she added. “Anyway, I opened it.”

  Rory looked at her, waiting for further clarification. “And?”

  “I don’t think I was supposed to,” she said, lowering her voice despite the fact that they were alone. “Rory, I think I opened Lou Ross’s package by mistake.”

  It took Rory a moment to digest what she’d just said. “You what? Annie, you know that opening someone else’s mail is a federal offense, right?”

  She put her face in her hands. “I didn’t know it was his package,” she said through her fingers. “The label was torn and my name was written on there, too. You know, ‘in care of’?” She pushed her hands through her hair and lifted it off her neck. She wished she’d put it up in a ponytail while she’d been in the house because the heat and humidity outside was making it stick to her.

  “Well, that’s probably alright, then,” he reasoned. “If your name was on the package, you’re probably okay.” He cocked his head to one side. “So, what was inside?”

  She blushed. “It was a jewelry box. He did say he was having something delivered for his mother,” she added. “You want to hear something weird?” Rory nodded. “The return address on the package was Lou’s home address. At least, it was the home address he gave me when he booked his room.”

  “So?”

  “Well, why would he mail something to himself from himself? I mean, I could understand ordering something online and having it delivered to wherever you were staying, but mailing something to yourself from home? Don’t you think that’s really odd?”

  “Yeah, I do.” Rory had been leaning against the wall of the barn, but now he stepped away from it towards Annie. “Why would you mail something to yourself when you could just pack it up in your luggage?”

  Annie thought about the state of Lou’s car. Emmett had told them that it had been ransacked, torn apart in someone’s search for something. “Maybe he was worried that someone would find the box. Remember, Emmett told us that someone had been looking for something inside Lou’s car the night he died. What if Lou Ross expected someone to be searching for that box, so he hid it by mailing it to himself?”

  Rory thought about this for a minute. “Well, he sure didn’t expect someone to kill him, did he? I mean, he brought the dog with him. You wouldn’t do that if you thought you were going to be murdered.” He wiped the sleeve of his shirt, brushing away some dirt. “You know you’re going to have to call Emmett and tell him about this.”

  “Yeah, I know. I almost just want to tape it back up and forget I ever opened it,” she admitted. “But I think I have a better plan.”

  Annie had been thinking about her mother’s request to let Marie perform a seance. She hadn’t really been entertaining the idea seriously until she’d noticed the return address on the package. Her mind had been working overtime, considering all the reasons why a man might want to send something as unimportant as a cheap jewelry box to himself in the mail. When she’d recalled the state of Lou’s car after his body was found, the pieces of the puzzle started falling into place. Someone wanted something that Lou had, and if they’d found it, one of her guests would probably have checked out by now.

  “Someone wanted something in Lou’s car, right?” She waited for Rory to nod before she continued. “I’m thinking that if they found what they were looking for, they would have just left by now, right? I mean, that is if the person who searched the car is the same person who killed Lou Ross.

  “So, if the killer didn’t find what they were looking for, maybe they stayed because they either didn’t want to look suspicious or maybe they thought they might just find whatever it was they were searching for if they kept looking long enough.”

  Rory’s eyes told Annie that he was mulling this scenario over. “But why stay if they weren’t sure that the mystery item would even turn up? I mean, that’s a long shot, right?”

  “What if they had no plans after leaving here? What if they didn’t really know their next move, but just needed a few days to lay low? If they weren’t already a suspect, why would they do something as suspicious as to cancel their vacation halfway through?” Annie knew that her suspicions were a long shot, but her gut was telling her that the killer was still at the house.

  “So how does the package help us figure out who killed Lou Ross?”

  Annie grinned. “We can use it to lure out whoever killed him,” she answered confidently.

  Rory crossed his arms. “And how do you plan to do that?”

  “We’ll let my mother talk to the dead man.” She grinned at the absurdity of what she’d just said, and Rory’s confused expression was priceless. “I mean, we’ll let her and Marie have a seance to communicate with Lou and see just who’s interested in the whole process. I’m betting that once the killer finds out we have a package that Lou mailed to himself, they’ll come creeping out of the woodwork trying to find out what’s inside,�
� she finished.

  Rory pursed his lips, trying to think of an argument against her idea, but he had to admit, it sounded pretty good. “You’ve got to tell Emmett,” he countered, “but otherwise, that crazy plan might just help the police figure out who killed Mr. Ross.”

  Annie smiled. “It might just help them catch them, too. Now I just have to go let my mother know that she can have her little spiritual communication session, and I have to make sure all the guests know that the dead guy got a package in the mail.”

  Rory shook his head in mock disbelief and grinned at Annie. “That sounds like a plan, Annie Purdy, and a darned good one, too.”

  They headed out of the barn and back towards the house. Annie felt certain that she could figure out who killed Lou Ross once she saw her guests’ reactions to her revelation about the package. She just hoped Emmett wouldn’t be too mad at her for taking things into her own hands in order to do so.

  21

  Planning a Seance

  If it hadn’t been for the fact that Emmett Barnes was completely smitten with Bessie Purdy, Annie would have never even considered using the dead man’s jewelry box to try and tease out his killer. Since the Chief of Police was so fond of Annie’s mother, she felt at liberty to ask him outright if she could ‘borrow’ Lou Ross’s package in order to carry out her plan.

  Of course, to anyone else, the idea would seem ludicrous and incredibly foolish, especially since there was no way of knowing how Lou’s killer might react. However, Annie had begun to realize that life was too short for being sensible. She’d wasted many years in a ‘sensible,’ loveless marriage with a man who had, in the end, carried on his own fantastically impractical love affair right behind Annie’s back.

  Buying Rosewood Place had been Annie’s first big risky act after she became a widow, but something told her that it wouldn’t be her last. While she wasn’t precisely ready to don leathers and join a motorcycle gang, or jump out of any airplanes, for that matter, she was beginning to feel that being a rebel sometimes could be a wonderful thing.

  Because Emmett wouldn’t want to see his darling Bessie’s only child thrown in jail for such a tiny thing as opening a package that wasn’t strictly hers, Annie felt fairly confident about sharing her plan with him. She hadn’t felt confident enough to actually do that in person--telephones were great for the cowardly advancement of bold plans--but she did at least let him know what she was planning, which kept her on the right side of the law, as far as she was concerned.

  “Hmmm.” That was the first and only thing that Emmett said after Annie’s brief, breathless explanation of her plan. She could practically hear him twisting his mustache while he thought of how to reply, and she imagined him fussing at the facial hair so much that it would eventually just fall off altogether.

  “Well, Annie, you know that tampering with someone else’s mail--especially mail belonging to a murder victim in an ongoing murder investigation--is bad juju. Plus, it’s illegal. However, since your name was on the package, we’ll say, for speculating purposes, that it would be fine, under normal circumstances.” She could tell he was trying to talk himself into allowing her to carry out her plan, but she worried that he would talk himself right out of it.

  “Emmett, I promise I will keep an eye on the box. I don’t even have to open it for the seance.” The absurdity of what she’d just said made her want to laugh, but she held it in.

  Emmett sighed loudly on the other end of the phone line. “I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that you taped the darned thing back up as if you never touched it, or the fact that you’re letting that crazy woman fool your mama into thinking she can talk to dead people.” He paused, trying to think of a gentle way to phrase his next statement. “You do know what’s next, don’t you? She’ll have your mama thinking that she can talk to your daddy again.” The accusation was a gentle one, but Annie felt its sting just the same.

  “Emmett, I can’t help what my mother believes, and although I doubt very seriously that Marie Robichaud can do any of the things she claims she can, she could help us lure out the murderer. If any of my guests start acting, well, weirder than they already do now,” she promised him, “We’ll know who killed Lou Ross.”

  Annie had ended the call feeling fairly positive about the whole situation. Emmett hadn’t threatened to come and arrest her or even confiscate the package, though he did tell her that she shouldn’t let anyone touch the jewelry box itself or damage the package. She supposed that the box’s origins might yet have clues about Lou’s past and those poor victims he scammed out of money.

  Emmett had told her that most of his leads--including those from the laptop, which had been accessed but had proved frustratingly free from any helpful information--had led to dead ends. Lou Ross, it seemed, had also been Jerry Garrity, Emile DePascal, and Bob Smith at various points in time. As for his victims, those still remained a mystery, though Emmett still held out hope that he could identify a few by comparing them to police records in other states.

  Annie wondered about the accomplice that had been working with Lou. Did anyone at Rosewood Place seem like the type of person who could lie and cheat innocent people out of their money?

  Her mind drifted back to Frank Martin. A nagging thought reminded her that if he had killed Lou out of anger and revenge, the seance wouldn’t necessarily tell her that. But would he be uncomfortable with the idea of Marie talking to the man’s ghost and asking about his murder?

  Annie reached down and unlocked her desk drawer to verify that the package was still inside. It was, but she felt very anxious about keeping it in the office. If anyone were to come inside--and she was sure that people had been in here without her permission because they kept letting that darned cat in--the box would be vulnerable. She imagined the drawer’s lock was simple enough to pick, but she didn’t really have a better place to hide it, did she?

  Annie closed the drawer and locked it once again. She’d have to just make sure that no one came into the office, and that would mean keeping the guests together and entertained until Marie could organize the seance. She picked up the clipboard with the guest information on it. Tomorrow Rob and Kizzy were due to check out. Mr. Alexander would leave, too. She realized that she’d never organized the cookout that she’d wanted to have for her guests. There was no time like the present, she supposed, and she’d already started mentally making her shopping list as she backed out of the little office and locked the door behind her.

  She could hear Bessie in the kitchen, humming loudly and moving things around. The older woman didn’t hear her daughter approach, and she jumped when she turned to find her giggling quietly. “Oh, for goodness sake! You scared me to death, just standing there like that!” She put her hand on her chest for dramatic effect. “Make a little noise, next time, will you?”

  “Sorry, Mama. I thought you heard me. Listen, I want to run something past you.” Annie pulled out a chair at the small dining table that sat on one side of the kitchen and motioned for her mother to sit. She sat down opposite her and put her hands palm-down against the cool surface of the table. “I’ve been thinking that we should do this seance thing after all. I talked to Emmett and Rory and they both agree that it could help us shake things up a little, maybe draw out Lou Ross’s killer.”

  Bessie’s face shifted through a few emotions. Happiness, relief, slight embarrassment, and finally confusion. “But what about the package? Did Emmett agree to let you use that? Marie said we’d need something that definitely belonged to the dead man in order for her to contact him.”

  “It’s all been cleared by Emmett, but with one caveat. He says we have to make absolutely sure that nobody opens up the package or messes with it in any way.”

  “What do you think is in there?” Bessie asked.

  Annie hated lying to her mother, but she didn’t want her to know that she’d opened the box by mistake. “Whatever it is, I’m hoping that it lures the killer out.” She explained her theory about the murderer
looking for something in Lou’s car and being unable to find it.

  Bessie nodded her head. “I guess it makes sense. It might raise suspicion if you left an inn because a complete stranger died accidentally while you were there. But, what if the killer wasn’t looking for something that belonged to Lou? What if the killer was someone else, like one of his victims?”

  Annie was caught off-guard by her mother’s statement. “I thought you said that you didn’t think the Martins were capable of doing something like that?”

  Bessie looked flustered. “Not the Martins, just Frank. Annie, he has a terrible temper. Doris told me that he used to be so calm and peaceful, but since their incident last year he’s been just awful. She told me that he practically got into a fistfight with a co-worker just a few months ago and that’s part of the reason why they want to move so far away. They need a fresh start.”

  Annie’s gut tightened, trying to feel out her mother’s suggestion. Yes, Frank could very well have killed Lou Ross, but then again, so could any of the other guests.

  “And, of course, there’s always the possibility that the killer wasn’t even one of our guests,” Bessie added, though neither of the women actually believed that to be true.

  “So you think it’s a bad idea to have a seance?” Annie was beginning to get very flustered and frustrated with her mother.

  “Oh, no, I think it’s a good idea!” Bessie explained. “I just think it’s also good to look at every single possibility. I adore the Martins, and I would completely understand where Frank was coming from if it was he who killed Mr. Ross,” she reassured her daughter. “But, I just can’t for the life of me see any of our other guests being so, well, so murderous!” Bessie threw her hands up in frustration.