Houses and Homicide

by Alabaster, Stacey

  I had a lot of choices. They were just all options I didn’t want to chose between. Some of them were far too young—eighteen-year-old students were going to spend all their time partying and definitely wouldn’t make the tidiest houseguests. And if I chose someone in their forties or fifties, I was going to start feeling like I was living with my parents.

  But one of them seemed relatively normal. Her name was Sue, she was my age, and she didn’t come with a family of five. All pluses so far.

  “Ooh,” I said, reading her info. She was an artist, and worked as an editor for a museum in town. Even better. She would certainly make an interesting housemate.

  “She can only meet with me this afternoon,” I said to Pippa as we entered the front of the bakery again. “She works as an artist and at a museum. So her schedule is a little crazy.”

  “Oh, does she just?” Pippa seemed like she had an attitude about this, though I didn’t know why. Maybe she was just teasing.

  “Apparently. Do you mind if I dash home to meet her? I need to give her a tour of the house, to make sure she’s actually happy with the place.”

  Pippa stopped and placed her hands on her hips.

  “My bed is hardly cold and you’re moving another person in?”

  “You didn’t leave a bed,” I said, confused. “I advertised the room as empty. She’ll have to supply her own furniture.”

  “It was a figure of speech.” She crossed her arms. “Fine, if it’s the only chance for her to come see the room, you’d better take it. You don’t want little miss artist to have to stand around in the cold. She might freeze off one of the limbs she uses for painting with.”

  All right then.

  Sue was already waiting for me when I pulled up into the driveway.

  She was wearing a yellow and black polka dot dress, and her hair was in 1940s style victory rolls. She was wearing bright red lipstick and even before I’d pulled in, I’d been able to spot her coming a mile up the road. I suppose she really was an artist, then.

  “Let me show you in,” I said brightly, thinking about all the other highly inappropriate wannabe housemates that were sitting in my text and email inboxes. I was anxious to get her to sign the deal there and then, but I also wanted to make it seem like there was a lot of competition for the room. Which there was. Just not competition I was interested in living with.

  “This house is fantastic,” Sue murmured as she practically skipped down the floorboards in her kitten heels.

  “I’ve had a lot of people inquire about the room,” I said to Sue as I led her down the hallway and showed her Pippa’s empty room. I tried not to get too sentimental looking at it all empty like that, thinking about where all her stuff used to be. It would definitely be weird living with someone else.

  “Oh, really?” Sue said, sounding disappointed. Her brightly made-up face fell a little. “This room is great. I’d love to have it. How many other people have you shown it to?”

  None. But I just shrugged noncommittally. None, because I didn’t want any them inside my house. “A few. Hard to keep track, really.”

  Sue seemed nervous. I wondered if I had overplayed my hand. She might realize I was bluffing, or she might just decide it was too much bother and go looking somewhere else.

  Luckily, she told me the words I was dying to hear.

  “I can pay three months rent up front if that sweetens the deal,” Sue offered.

  It certainly did.

  “That sounds like it could work,” I said casually.

  “Great, so we can lock it in?” Sue grinned at me.

  I smiled and reached out my hand so we could shake on it.

  “And I’d be more than happy to help cook the meals. We could create some kind of food roster, so we each only have to cook half of the nights per week.”

  I actually had a boyfriend, and half the nights of the week I ate with him. But for some reason, I didn’t say that to her. “Sounds like a deal. So, when can you move in?”

  “So, how did you go with Miss Artiste?” Pippa asked me, pronouncing it in the French fashion. We had met in front of a home wares store in Belldale where Pippa was shopping for a lamp. I had owned most of the furniture in the house when we’d lived together, so unless the furniture had been in her bedroom, it didn’t belong to her. So far she’d bought most of her large items—couch, dining table, TV set—from secondhand stores at rock bottom prices, but she’d decided to splurge a little on the soft furnishings and décor, which was why we were at this fancy designer store.

  We moved through the shop, Pippa oohing and ahhing as she admired all the glimmering items in silver and rose gold. She stopped in front of a tall, standing lamp made of glass, which looked expensive. A quick look at the price tag proved my suspicions correct.

  “Um, it went great, actually.” I was surprised by how smoothly it had all gone with Sue. I already had the three months rent, as promised, in my account, and she’d already measured the room to make sure all her furniture would fit. “She can move in tomorrow.”

  Pippa almost dropped the glass lamp she was now carrying. The shopkeeper looked up in alarm. I was pretty sure they had a ‘you break it, you buy it’ policy going on. Pippa really didn’t want to be paying for a pile of smashed glass. “Tomorrow? Isn’t that a bit soon?”

  I didn’t want to point out that Pippa had kind of moved out in a hurry and left me high and dry. She was already touchy enough about being replaced.

  She placed the lamp down. “It’s probably not very child-friendly, is it?”

  “No. Not exactly.”

  We exited the store without buying anything, but I think the shopkeeper was just glad to see us go.

  “That lamp was really beautiful,” Pippa mused, staring at it back through the window. When the light hit it just right, it looked like it held a thousand rainbows inside the glass. “I really shouldn’t be spending any more money at the moment, though.”

  I managed to drag her away from the store so she wouldn’t be tempted to spring back in, and we began to walk down the street towards the bakery. Simona was thankfully too busy with a customer to stop and talk to us when we walked in, so we sat down on one of the empty tables. She did shoot us a suspicious look though.

  “Don’t worry about her,” I said. “We need to focus.”

  We needed to talk about Cheryl. And about the business. I kept my voice down. “I haven’t heard a peep out of The Pastry Tree since Cheryl died. No one has sent me so much as an email.”

  “I suppose that is probably to be expected,” Pippa said with a shrug while she played with a sugar packet, shaking it back and forth. “Their head of acquisitions just died, and their deal with us is probably at the bottom of their list of priorities.”

  I supposed so. Still, not even a phone call or an email? No one had even tried to reach out and contact us?

  Were we not important to the company at all?

  Pippa accidentally ripped the packet open and sugar spilled all over the table. “Well, if we don’t hear anything by tomorrow we are going to have to contact them. But in the meantime, where do we start with investigating Cheryl’s death?”

  I cast a glance up at the counter to make sure Simona hadn’t heard that juicy little tidbit. I was still hoping to keep that info from her—and everyone else—as long as possible.

  I knew what we needed to do. “We need to figure out what she might have done to Anderson—the manager of the Gold Medallion—that annoyed him so much that he wanted her dead.”

  “So what do we do first?” Pippa asked, jumping up. Loose sugar that had fallen onto her shirt flew up with her and hit me in the face.

  “I say we trace Cheryl’s last two weeks in Belldale,” I said. “The answers have to lay there somewhere. So let’s start at the Gold Medallion.”

  “Where are you two going?” Simona called out as we raced back out the front door. “I do need to take a lunch break at some stage, you know?”

  “We just need to go to the wholesal
ers, to pick up some more flour!” I called back. “You know how much we go through! I appreciate you minding the shop, Simona! Be back soon!”

  But knowing us, ‘soon’ was a relative concept.

  Chapter 4

  “At least the police seem to have gone,” I commented, looking around the parking lot of the Gold Medallion. Cheryl’s red BMW was no longer there either. I gulped a little and stared at the empty space. Who had taken it? The cops? The car dealer? I ran my hand through my hair. Somehow, seeing her car gone made it all hit home: she was not coming back.

  “Yeah, and so has everybody else,” Pippa said, nodding at the empty parking lot.

  “Dead bodies are bad for business,” I commented as I climbed out of the car. We knew that by now.

  “How are we going to go about this?” Pippa asked as we walked through the empty parking lot.

  I followed her slowly to the hotel lobby. I could smell the perfumy fragrance of the hotel, crisp and citrusy, through the revolving doors. Pippa’s question was a good one, but I hadn’t thought that far ahead. We did need to gain access to Cheryl’s room, I knew that much, at least.

  “I know what room number she was staying in. Level three. Room fourteen,” I said. “But without a room key, I’m not sure how much that is going to help us.” Especially if Anderson was still hanging around. If he wasn’t there, maybe we stood a chance, however slim, of sneaking into the room.

  But of course, he was manning the reception desk. Tall and bug-like, as per usual

  And he didn’t seem happy to see me again. He glared at me with a reptilian intensity as I approached the reception desk and I had to try my best to smile and not seem rattled.

  I also had to play it very cool, not let on that I had heard anything of the phone call. And not let on that we were there to snoop.

  “What, precisely, can I do for you two ladies?” he spat at us, not sounding the least bit hospitable.

  Pippa shot me a look that seemed to say, Well? What the heck are we supposed to do?

  We had to come up with a lie to get into Cheryl’s room. I had to think quick.

  Anderson seemed to read my mind. “I don’t know what your obsession with Cheryl Spellman is, but if you don’t get out of here, I am going to have to assume you were involved with her death and call the cops.” He looked at me with smug raised eyebrows like he really had me cornered.

  I blinked a few times and played innocent. “How could I have had anything to do with her death? I came here yesterday looking for her, remember? Why would I have done that if I’d killed her? I wouldn’t want the body found.” I stopped and shot Anderson a low look. “Besides, I had no reason to want her gone,” I said, choosing that last word very carefully.

  Anderson straightened up and blushed a little. Did he know what I was hinting at? “What are you doing here then?” he asked.

  “She has some of my medicine,” I explained to Anderson. “Had, I suppose.” Past tense.

  “Medicine?” Anderson replied skeptically. “What sort of medicine?”

  “The kind that is none of your business,” I replied, ramping up my fake offense to eleven. “It is a very private condition. But it is life-threatening.”

  “Go to the doctor and get another prescription then,” he said, waving his hand in dismissal.

  “It will be too late by the time I get to the doctor’s office and then to the pharmacy,” I said. “It’s my heart.”

  I saw Pippa bite her lip out of the corner of my eye. I don’t know if she was trying not to laugh or trying not to score me for telling such a serious lie.

  Anderson was stony-faced. But I knew from previous experience that he could crack if you pushed the right buttons. Preyed on his sympathies. Or fears.

  “Come on,” I said, practically pleading with him. “It’s not like Cheryl was killed in her room. She was killed in the pool. I’m sure the police won’t mind that much if I look around for a moment. Especially for life-saving medication.”

  “It’s still a crime scene, regardless of where she was killed,” he whispered, looking around. “Oh, fine then! Follow me!”

  Geez, he really was an easy nut to crack. I shot a wink to Pippa and soon we were being led to the third floor. Forgetting that I’d acquired the info through dishonest means, I walked ahead of Anderson once we got to the elevator and stopped right in front of room fourteen.

  He stopped. “How did you know this was Cheryl’s room?”

  “I…I, uh. Lucky guess,” I said, shooting him a smile. “Now, quickly. I need that medicine.”

  Anderson rolled his eyes and used a key card to open the door, then stood there in the doorway, watching Pippa and me like a hawk as we crept into the room. I felt self-conscious, looking around for this fictitious ‘medicine’ and wondering how I was going to play it. Maybe I can go to the bathroom and grab a packet of ibuprofen she left behind, pretend those are my pills. But we still needed a chance to look through the rest of her stuff. We needed freedom.

  I was worried Anderson was going to stand there watching us the entire time, but he got called away by a female voice asking him to come to the lobby to talk to a guest about a disputed mini-bar bill. “Thank goodness,” I said, heaving a sigh of relief when he was finally out of sight.

  The room was a lot messier than I would have expected. I’d always pegged Cheryl as clean-cut and glamorous. Maybe she was one of those people who seemed well put together in public, but in private were hoarders who never threw out anything. It looked like she hadn’t folded, let along hung up, any of her garments in the entire time she’d been staying at the Golden Medallion. They were strewn all over the bed and lampshades. And all her briefcases and document folders were open, with papers and files spewed over the bed and the floor.

  “Try not to touch anything,” Pippa reminded me. “We don’t want our prints in here.”

  But I ignored that very good advice. I had to. Anderson could return at any moment and we didn’t have time to carefully peer through the items. I started turning discarded jackets over and riffling through piles.

  “Well, when in Rome,” Pippa commented, and started doing the same.

  “What is this?” she asked, picking up what looked like a collection notice. “How has she already gotten in trouble with debt collectors after only being in town for thirteen days?”

  It was a very good question. “Maybe it’s not from Belldale?” I asked.

  Pippa shook her head. “The letterhead reads Belldale Luxury Car Rentals.” She passed it over to me.

  “Hmmm. It looks like Cheryl didn’t pay her rental car bill.” I thought about that red BMW and the empty parking spot. I’d always thought she owned the BMW. I guess that solved the mystery of who had taken it back. “I guess they’re not in the practice of being patient when the bill is so high.” From the looks of it, Cheryl’s credit card was supposed to be billed automatically for every day she had the car, but after the first day, the payments had been declined. The company was not happy about it.

  I shoved the collection notice into my bag.

  I was suddenly starting to wonder where Anderson was. I had to remember we weren’t actually hiding from him; we were there to investigate him as much as anything.

  “When Anderson gets back, we are going to have to ask him about Cheryl,” Pippa commented while she looked through one of Cheryl’s briefcases.

  “We can’t ask him about the phone call,” I said to Pippa. “Not directly. He’s not going to be honest with us, is he?”

  She shook her head slowly and abandoned the briefcase, which apparently no longer held any interest. “No, I suppose not.”

  “The real question is, who was he talking to on the other end of the line?” I said. “Because whoever it was, Anderson was awfully happy to let them know that Cheryl was gone.” And they must have been awfully glad to hear it.

  “So how are we going to find out who he was talking to?” Pippa asked.

  “We’re going to have to steal his phon
e.”

  “Did you find your life-saving medicine?” Anderson asked as he re-entered the room. He looked a little ruffled, like he’d just been in a fistfight. Maybe the dispute over the mini-bar bill had turned violent.

  “Yes, thanks,” I said, smiling. “Just swallowed a few pills just then. All good now.”

  “Oh yes. Where is this pill bottle?” he asked me, his hands behind his back.

  “That’s a very rude question to ask to see somebody’s pill bottles,” I stated, my voice full of offense.

  He rolled his eyes and walked into the room, inspecting it to try and see what we had done to it. If we had done something, it would have been very hard to tell, with all the mess and chaos.

  I was ready to leave, when something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. There was a file with “business plan” written on the top and at a quick glance, it seemed to detail the Pastry Tree’s takeover of the bakery. I quickly grabbed it and shoved it in my purse while Pippa distracted Anderson with a question about whether they had any rooms spare that week, making out like she was genuinely interested. He wasn’t buying it.

  “I think it’s time that the two of you left,” he said. “Follow me.”

  We followed two feet behind him down the red velvet-carpeted corridor. “How are we going to get the phone off him if he chucks us out?” Pippa whispered worriedly.

  I gulped. She was right. We were quickly running out of time.

  We were going to have to act quickly.

  “Can I please use your phone?” Pippa called out.

  Anderson spun around. “What for?”

  She swallowed. “It’s, um, it’s private.”

  He rolled his eyes so hard they almost fell out of his head. “Oh, I’m sure it is. It’s all very private with you two. There’s a phone in the lobby, if you really need it. It will cost you five dollars to make the call.”

  Pippa looked a little startled. “No, I can’t wait that long,” Pippa said. “I need to make the call immediately. Don’t you have a cell phone on you?”