“No. He never had any. Jack didn’t want them because they were a lifetime responsibility. You could cheat on a wife, but kids were always your kids. It upset me early in our marriage, but it was a blessing in disguise. If we’d had children, I would have been left solely responsible for them. Not just for taking care of them, but for the emotional fallout of having a father like Jack.”
The more I talked to her, the more I realized that Mrs. Maynard hated her husband. Loathed him even, but in a quiet way. She didn’t rage or scream, but she seemed very much like a woman who had gotten the ultimate revenge.
Feeling like I’d gotten everything out of her that I could without revealing that I’d broken into her house, I decided to wander away from the conversation and let her finish her breakfast. I knew I’d come up with a plan to get more evidence somehow.
While I was thinking about my next move, two special visitors arrived. Connor came in with a very much alive, if not a little pale, Jessica.
“Hello,” I said. “You guys come in. There’s plenty to eat, so grab some breakfast if you’d like. Jessica, I hope this is a social call and not you trying to come back to work today.”
“I wasn’t sure if I’d even still have a job.” Concern was etched across her face.
“Of course, you do,” I said. “I’ve been holding down the fort okay while you’re gone, but I’m very much looking forward to having you back. When you’re ready, of course. I can keep things under control for a while longer.”
“Oh, that’s good.” Jessica looked relieved. “I have a doctor’s appointment later today to determine when I can come back. I hope it’s soon. I really want to get back to work.”
“Well, you don’t need to worry,” I said.
“But, I do. Every day that I can’t work is another bill I can’t pay,” she said. “Plus, I miss my job. I really do enjoy working here.”
“You’ll be paid sick time for the time you’re out. So, please don’t worry about that. About your job,” I began, “I was going to wait to tell you this, but maybe it will cheer you up. I’m going to promote you to assistant innkeeper when you get back. I’ll help you clean the rooms each day, and you’ll be able to take a more hands-on approach with the rest of the business. Since Cassidy cross-trained you, I think it’s only fair.”
Jessica’s bottom lip began to quiver. She took deep shuddering breath, and for a second, I almost cried too. A big, bright smile spread across her face. “Thank you.”
“And Connor, whenever you have time, I have a small list of things for you to do around here,” I said. “Just some more landscaping and a few preventative maintenance things.”
“My mother is taking me to the doctor,” Jessica said. “So Connor can run me home now and come right back.”
“Connor?”
“Yep, I’ll do that. I’ll get her situated at home and be right back.”
Chapter Eleven
Word of the haunted murder inn must not have gotten out yet because aside from another big group booking coming up, things were really quiet at the bed and breakfast.
The only booking we had for the day showed up early, and I still had several hours before Remy got off work. I thought about going over to Annika’s shop and bothering her, but we’d talked on the phone that morning. She had a huge sale going.
Meri and I went out of the car, and I made a decision. “Let’s go talk to Isabella Gibson,” I said.
“You think she killed Jack?” Meri asked.
“Not really, but I do think she might have some insight as to why Mrs. Maynard might have. It was paperwork about her that was out on Jack’s desk.”
“How are we going to find her?”
“She lives on Main Street one town over. House number 457. You guys really did a good job healing my brain.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Meri said.
“Whatever,” I said as I scratched behind his ears.
“Whatever.”
There was a car in Isabella’s driveway, a really nice foreign sedan, and I hoped that meant she was at home. I pulled my car in front of her house, and let Meri get into my large shoulder bag. There was no way I was leaving him outside.
I walked up the cobblestone path past the perfectly manicured grass and professionally done landscaping. The house wasn’t huge, but it was beautifully maintained with a lot of expensive features. It was without a doubt the nicest house on the block. I rang the doorbell and waited.
A few moments later, a young woman answered the door. She had a young child balanced on her hip. Both of them were dressed in what I could tell right away were expensive designer clothes. Her slacks were perfectly tailored, and the baby’s shirt had a name brand label on the back.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m looking for Isabella Gibson,” I said and straightened my bag on my shoulder.
“That’s me,” she said. “How can I help you?”
Suddenly, I was at a loss. I hadn’t thought it through at all. Did she even know that Jack was dead? What if she didn’t, and she freaked out. I cursed myself for not using the drive over to at least plan what I was going to say when she was home and opened the door.
“Do you know Jack Maynard?” It was the first thing that popped into my mind.
“Oh, no. What’s he said? Did he tell you about us? I can’t believe he told someone else,” she said, and her whole body went rigid. “Look, if you’re here looking for a fight, I didn’t know about you. I thought he was finally being faithful.”
“Finally being faithful to his wife?”
She thought that I was another woman he was having an affair with, but it didn’t escape my notice that Isabella still thought she and Jack were in a relationship. That seemed odd considering the baby she was holding, probably the one she’d tried to trick him with, wasn’t his.
“To me,” she said. “I know he’s married, but their relationship was just on paper. He couldn’t divorce her because she’d take half of everything. Jack said that meant he’d have less for me. But, whatever. Why are you here? Do you have a kid with him too?” She was really nervous.
“I thought the baby wasn’t his,” I said. Not having to hide what I knew from her made things a great deal more straightforward than they were with Mrs. Maynard.
“That’s none of your business…” She started to tell me off, but I felt Meri shift around a little in the bag. Her face softened, and Isabella even smiled a little. “You know, it’s good to have someone to finally talk to about this stuff.” She sounded like someone about to tell a secret to an old friend. Meri must have used a little magical inspiration to get her to talk. “Little Christopher here is Jack’s son.”
“But I thought there was a DNA test that proved he wasn’t.”
“Wow, he even told you about that?” she asked.
“Yeah. He said there was a DNA test that proved the baby wasn’t his.” Sure. I figured we’d just go with that.
“Oh, that test was fake. It was just something I put together in Photoshop and printed out. It was for Jack to show to his wife so she wouldn’t divorce him.”
“Why would you go along with that?” I asked. “Didn’t that mean you couldn’t get financial help with your baby?”
“Not at all,” Isabella said. “In fact, I got more doing it that way than I would have if I’d gone to court for child support. As you can see by looking around, he’s taken good care of us. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut about who fathered Christopher.”
“And he was still seeing you on the side?”
“We didn’t see him as much.” She frowned. “Not after Chris was born, but he kept taking care of me. He had a lot of serious work stuff going on. Jack swore that as soon as things calmed down at work, he’d be around more.”
“So, your baby is for sure his?”
“Yep. I wasn’t seeing anyone else at the time. Jack knew that. He knew I’d been faithful.”
This created a problem. It gave Isabella a motiv
e to kill Jack, but she didn’t even seem like she knew he was dead. And she appeared to still love him.
Mrs. Maynard had less reason to kill Jack because once Isabella found out about his death and revealed that she’d faked the negative DNA test results, Mrs. Maynard would have to share the inheritance with the baby. Or perhaps she’d already found out that the baby really was Jack’s, and she’d killed him in a fit of rage? That could still be a possibility.
“But why are you here?” Isabella seemed to suddenly regain a little more of her focus. “Why are you here asking me about Jack? Were you two seeing each other? Did he dump you or something?”
I had to decide whether to tell her about Jack’s death. It wasn’t really my place, but there I was. My first instinct was to run down the steps and jump into my car. Isabella would figure out that Jack was never going to contact her again. She’d be sad, but she’d legally get her share of Jack’s estate for little Christopher. Everything would be fine, as long as she wasn’t the killer.
“What’s your name?” she asked when I didn’t say anything.
“I have bad news,” I said. “I’m not sure how to tell you this, so I’ll just say it. Jack is dead. Someone killed him.”
She just stood there speechless for a moment. I saw her blink about a hundred times as if she expected me to disappear. Unfortunately, what I was telling her was not a bad dream. I wasn’t going to vaporize.
“He’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“Someone murdered him?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you the police?”
“No, I’m not.” I didn’t want to tell her who I was, so I left it at that.
She let out a breath. “For a second, you had me worried that I was a suspect.”
“Should you be?”
“No more than you should be,” she said.
At first, I wasn’t sure what she meant, but it dawned on me that she was back to thinking I was another woman Jack had a relationship with. It was probably better if I left soon, and I let her continue to believe that.
“Did you have any children with him?”
“I did not. I don’t know if he had any others,” I said.
“He’s never coming back,” Isabella said. “What am I going to do? I don’t make enough money…”
“You probably don’t need to worry about that,” I said. “I imagine that his estate will take care of your child financially.” With that, I turned to leave.
“Hey, are you a lawyer?”
“I’m not that either,” I said, but I didn’t stop or turn around.
Chapter Twelve
When I arrived back at Hangman’s House, Gunner’s cruiser was parked in my driveway. He opened the car door and got out as soon as I pulled my car in behind him. Annika wasn’t with him, and I could tell by the look on his face that it wasn’t any kind of social call.
“Hey, Gunner. What’s up? Everything okay?” For a second I panicked. “Is Annika all right?” But surely, Remy would have called me if anything had happened to Annika.
“I apologize for dropping by,” he said. “Though, that’s usually how we do things in my line of work.”
“Did you come by because you need help with the case?” I asked with a chuckle.
He just looked at me with a completely straight face.
“Oh, you do,” I said sheepishly, but I felt a twinge of excitement.
“I can see I’ve made a big mistake,” he said and turned to get back in the vehicle. “Thank you for your time.”
“No, you haven’t,” I said. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t making fun of you. I just didn’t expect you to need my help or ask for it.”
“Well, you’re smarter and have better instincts than my deputies.”
“Is that a job offer?”
“Do you want it to be?” There wasn’t a trace of humor in his voice. He was drop-dead serious, and I almost couldn’t believe it. Almost.
“Someone else mentioned to me that I should have applied for your job,” I said. “But I like running the bed and breakfast.”
He shrugged. “So?”
“So? Oh, right. You’re here to see if I have any information on the case. Does this make me an official police informant? I think I’ve seen something about that on television.”
“Sure,” he said and that time there was a trace of a smile. “Do I need to pretend to arrest you, so your gang buddies don’t know you’re a snitch?”
“That won’t be necessary. Would you like to come in for coffee?” I was thankful he’d lightened the mood.
“Coffee would be nice. Thank you.”
“Remy will be coming over after work. I’ll probably start cooking dinner. You are welcome to join us. I could invite Annika over as well.”
“I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“It’s not an imposition if I’ve invited you. Consider it my way of welcoming you to our little town.”
He followed me inside and sat down at the kitchen table while I started coffee. Before I even turned to look, I could sense Meri in the doorway watching us. I hadn’t wanted Gunner to know that I was carrying him around in my shoulder bag, so I set it down on the floor inside the front door like it did not contain a magical familiar.
“That’s a huge cat,” Gunner said.
“Yeah, but he’s mostly friendly,” I responded.
“Mostly?”
“He can get a little feisty, but he’s not big enough to do any real damage.” I smiled impishly in Meri’s direction knowing it was killing him that he couldn’t snark back at me.
What I also knew was that he could do far more damage than his size betrayed. He was more powerful than a tiger and even most witches, but he was stuck there with his cute little face and fuzzy little ears unable to say a word. I was sure he would get me back later, though.
When the coffee was done, I poured two cups. “Would you like cream or sugar?”
“No thanks,” he said, but then reconsidered. “Actually, both if you have them handy.”
“I do,” I said.
“It’s kind of a relief not to have to pretend I like black coffee,” he said.
“You don’t have to pretend to be anything with us,” I said.
I was a little surprised at his admission, but I shouldn’t have been. People seemed to automatically open up to me. It was something that had happened in my former life before Coventry, but it had grown stronger since I’d begun to come into my powers.
After getting the cream from the fridge and the sugar from the pantry, I joined him at the table. We sipped our coffee quietly for a few minutes. Eventually, Gunner got to the meat of his visit.
“I’ve hit a wall in the case for now,” he said.
“Oh?”
“I was waiting on the toxicology, but the coroner isn’t much help in that regard. He said that he knows what the poison is, but it could be months or years or never before they can definitively prove the source with testing. And frankly, the county doesn’t have the money for that kind of expense if there’s little chance of finding any answers.”
“And suspects?”
“I wanted to get a warrant for Prue’s shop, but no judge will give me one. Not for the kind of testing that would prove the candies were poisoned there.”
“Too expensive?”
“Yes,” he said with heavy resignation. “And there’s just not any evidence that she did it. I’ve talked to her, and I don’t believe she is capable of murder.”
“I could have told you that,” I said with a shrug.
“So, who are you thinking?” he asked casually. Too casually.
“Right now, I think it was the wife,” I said.
“What makes you think that?”
I had to come up with a reason that didn’t involve me having broken into Jack’s house. “Well, it’s almost always the spouse, isn’t it? Plus, she came to the inn the next day and insisted on checking into the room where he’d stayed. It was weird. She’s a l
ittle weird.”
“But she didn’t check in with him the night she died? So how would she have poisoned the candies?”
“I thought about that too,” I said and took a sip of my coffee. “She could have come later. I leave the inn for the evening when all of the guests are checked in. They know there’s no innkeeper on staff at night. People are told that when they book the room.”
“You have no way of knowing that she was here, though.”
“That’s true, but I also know she doesn’t have a real alibi for the night of the murder,” I countered.
“And, how do you know that?”
“When she came down for breakfast the next morning, I worked it into the conversation.”
“Anyone else?” he asked.
I wanted to tell him about Isabella, but how could I? The information I’d gotten about her, I’d obtained during a break-in. I had no other way of knowing it either. I didn’t believe that Isabella had killed Jack, so I decided to leave it alone for the time being.
“No,” I said.
“What about this Jessica that works for you?”
“I don’t think that if she’d done it, she’d have eaten the candy after,” I said. “That would have to be Olympic-level forgetfulness.”
“I have a meeting scheduled with the wife tomorrow morning,” Gunner said. “The information you’ve given me will be helpful.”
“I’m surprised you guys hadn’t talked to her yet. I thought that would be the first place you’d go.”
“Well, we tried but we couldn’t pin her down. I didn’t know she was staying at the inn until you told me just now. We weren’t able to get her at home. I was only able to set up the meeting in the morning because her attorney contacted me to arrange it.”
“Oh, wow. She’s already lawyered up?”
“I’m not sure. I think it might be a case of her and her husband having a lawyer on standby. Rich people stuff,” Gunner said.
“Are you going to let me know what you find out?” I asked hopefully.
“Are you going to become a deputy?” he countered.
“No,” I said.
“Then, no.”
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