“Brighton, honey, they’re gone. The guests all left,” Annika said.
“Oh,” I said. “I guess I expected that. Well, I can stay in one of the bungalows, then. Meri and I can stay out in the main bungalow.”
“I’ll stay out there with you,” Annika said.
“Okay.”
I just sort of stood there for a few seconds until Annika gently guided me to the back door. Meri followed behind us. When the cool night air hit my face, I snapped out of my stupor. I’d been in a bit of a shock.
“We’ve got to clean up all of this food,” I said and stopped on the back patio.
“Let’s just get to the bungalow,” Annika said and pulled me away from the tables. “We’ll come back and take care of this when everyone is gone.”
The main bungalow had four different rooms. One of them had two queen beds, so that’s the one Annika and I chose.
“I wish we had a bottle of wine,” Annika mused.
“Check the mini fridge,” I said.
Sure enough, the four mini bottles that I’d stocked the room with were still in the door. There were two red and two white.
“I still get red and you get white?” Annika asked.
“Sounds good to me.”
“Should we go down to the station and bust Remy out?” she asked.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I responded. “I’m sure he’ll get out soon. There’s no way that he just randomly killed a guy at my party.”
There must have been something in my voice that betrayed the sliver of doubt I felt. The way Annika looked at me made me wince. My heart felt heavy with guilt.
“What?” Annika asked. “You’re not entirely sure. Why?”
But we both knew why. The fact that Remy had almost gone dark in the past wasn’t enough to convince me he was guilty, but it was enough to make me question what I saw.
“It was just the way he was standing over him with the knife. I know it doesn’t mean anything, but it still…”
“It still makes you worry,” Annika said.
“Please don’t be mad at me.”
“Why would I be mad at you? I love Remy like a brother, but I can understand after everything he went through before, why finding him that way would freak you out.”
“This whole thing is a mess,” I said.
“You said that Remy was standing over Finn?” Annika asked.
“Yeah.”
“Maybe he’d yanked the knife away from Joanna and pushed her to the side.”
“She had those cuts on her hand. The implication is that he tried to kill them both?” I choked back a sob. “Now that I think about it more, and I’ve had time to calm down, you’re right. That makes absolutely no sense. Why would Remy be trying to kill two strangers that only know us because they stumbled onto our property days ago? He’d have to be full-on evil for that, and we’d know. He’s not evil.”
“Maybe Finn tried to kill Joanna,” Annika offered, “but she got the upper hand somehow and took him out before Remy caught them.”
“But why would she say Remy did it?”
“I don’t know. If Finn was trying to kill her, maybe it wasn’t the first time he’d been violent. Perhaps she was having some sort of trauma response? She’s conditioned to defend him?”
“That could be,” I said. “But then why didn’t he just kill her in the woods when they were lost?”
“Maybe they weren’t really lost,” Annika said. “Maybe he was trying to kill her off that way so it would look like an accident.”
“Or maybe it was the other way around.”
Chapter Six
I woke up to the sound of someone knocking on the bungalow door. I’d downed both mini bottles of white wine and drifted off to a restless sleep.
It was still dark outside, but I pulled myself out of bed. I hoped it was Remy, but when I opened the door, I discovered Gunner instead.
“We’re done in the house,” he said. “Do you know who to call to clean up the biohazard in that room?”
I had no idea, but it was nothing a little magic couldn’t handle. “Sure, I’ve heard of a few places nearby. I’ll call one.”
“Better sooner rather than later,” he said.
I heard Annika get out of bed and move toward us. She stopped behind me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“You want a ride home?” Gunner offered.
“I’m not going to leave,” she said. “But thank you.”
“Call me if you need anything,” he said.
Annika took her hand off my shoulder and stepped in front of me. She kissed Gunner and ruffled his hair.
“Call me later?”
“Yeah, I’ll check on you guys tomorrow. I can stay if you want me to deal with the biohazard cleanup,” he offered before leaving.
“We’ll be fine. I promise,” Annika said. “Go get some sleep.”
We waited for Gunner to drive away. I was tired and wanted to sleep, but I knew it was a bad idea to leave any of the mess for the morning.
“Where do we start?” I pondered more to myself than anything.
“Let’s go up and clean up the blood first,” Annika answered. “We’ll get the food cleaned up once the worst of it is done.”
The police tape across the back door had been cut so we could go through. Meri was right behind us the whole time, but once we got to the base of the stairs, he ran up ahead.
I must have looked uneasy. Annika put her hand on my arm. “I’ll go in first and get rid of the blood. Then we can go through and see if there’s anything the deputies missed.”
She walked in and back out in about ten seconds. Annika motioned for me to follow her in.
“That was fast,” I said.
“Easy work,” she said with a shrug.
“Thank you.”
“I figured you’d been through enough trauma for one evening.”
We looked around the room and didn’t find anything. I wasn’t surprised by that, but it would have been nice to know what the heck they were doing in there.
Obviously, they’d looked me up after stumbling into my house and found out that I was having the grand opening. The big question was why they had crossed over the sign I’d put up warning people not to go upstairs?
If they were going up there to get some privacy while they had a fight, why not just leave? Were they there to rob me? I had to remind myself that I had no way of knowing if they were good people or not. Going camping didn’t make them normal.
“I’m going to look around the other spare rooms,” I said.
“Okay, let’s take a look.”
It was in the spare room next to my bedroom that we had our first break. There was a purse sitting on the dresser that did not belong to me.
I opened it up and found a wallet. The driver’s license inside was Joanna’s. Either because the murder hadn’t occurred in that room or because the deputies assumed the purse was mine, they hadn’t checked it.
“What’s that?” Annika asked.
“It’s Joanna’s purse. Should we call Gunner and tell him the deputies left it?”
“No,” she said with a snort. “I really like him, but we’re not doing that. What’s inside?”
“We’re going to withhold evidence and go through it?” I asked to make sure.
“Yep,” she said. “I can do it if you don’t want to.”
“I’ll look,” I said.
The first thing I did was go through the wallet. Beyond the driver’s license, it was packed full of credit cards. I didn’t even know a person could get that many credit cards. They all had the name Joanna on them, but there were three different last names.
“You think it’s credit card fraud?” I showed Annika the different names on the cards.
“Could be, or it could just be that she’s been married before.”
“Oh, right. Married name one. Married name two. And maiden name.”
“Or it could be credit card fraud. It doesn’t look good
, but we should find out for sure.”
There were only two dollars in cash and a quarter tucked into the billfold part of the wallet. “Not much cash,” I said.
“With that many credit cards, I’m not surprised,” Annika said. “What else is in there?”
“In the wallet there are a few business cards too,” I said. “Most of them are for salons, but this one is for an insurance agent.”
“Oh, now that’s interesting,” Annika said.
She plucked the card from my fingers and read it over. I folded the wallet back together and set it aside.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“Well, they are possibly drowning in debt as evidenced by the pile of credit cards and lack of cash. Maybe she took out a life insurance policy on him and was going to use it to pay off all of those cards.”
“Maybe it was him,” I offered. “Maybe he found the agent and gave her the card.”
“That’s possible too,” Annika agreed.
The rest of the contents of the purse was standard fare. There was a little package of tissues, a pack of gum, a set of keys, lip balm, and one thing that did strike me as odd. Well, it was three things. Joanna had three tubes of concealer in her purse. I handed one to Annika.
“This is concealer,” she said.
“Yeah, she’s got three of them in here and no other makeup besides the tinted lip balm.”
“You think she had a lot of concealing to do?”
“I mean, it all fits into a pattern,” I said with a sign. “We can’t say for sure, but it does seem that it’s possible he was abusing her.”
Chapter Seven
It didn’t take us long to finish cleaning up, and after that we decided to stay in the house. With everything cleaned up and back to normal, there wasn’t any reason to sleep in one of the bungalows. I just wanted to be at home in my bed.
Annika took a different guest room than the one where Finn was stabbed, and that was completely understandable. As I was drifting off to sleep, I made the decision to turn that into something other than a bedroom. I figured it could be a music room or an art room even though I didn’t paint or play music. It was a nice thought to help me sleep, though.
When I went downstairs in the morning to get coffee and feed Meri, I was startled by the presence of someone on my sofa. That was when I realized that Meri wasn’t in bed with me. He was curled up next to the man on the sofa.
Remy.
“You’re back,” I said softly.
He sat up on his elbows and slightly disturbed the cat. “I didn’t want to come into your room in the middle of the night and scare you, but I wanted to make sure you knew I was okay first thing. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course, I don’t mind.”
I rushed over, practically sat on Meri, and threw my arms around Remy’s shoulders. He hugged me back, and we just stayed that way for a few moments until Meri started to thrash around wildly between us. I hadn’t realized I’d trapped him.
“Sorry,” I said.
“There had better be bacon on the menu today,” was his reply.
“I’ll make coffee and breakfast,” I said. “Remy, what do you want to eat? I’ve got tons of just about everything.”
And I did. It was supposed to be my first morning serving breakfast to my new guests. Once I had breakfast squared away, I needed to check my reservations and find out who was checking in that evening.
“I’m sorry,” Remy said.
“Why? You’re not responsible for this.” I wanted to throw in: are you? but I held my tongue. It wasn’t fair, and I knew deep down that he wasn’t.
“I know I’m not, but it feels like I am,” he said. “What were you going to serve for breakfast this morning? We can have that.”
“I want bacon and tuna,” Meri said. “Thanks for asking.”
“All right, everyone into the kitchen. I’ll have breakfast ready in a jiffy.”
I got Meri’s bacon and tuna first. For Remy, Annika, and me, I whipped up fried chicken and thick, fluffy Belgian waffles. In addition to the real Canadian maple syrup I had on hand for the waffles, I made fresh whipped cream and a strawberry reduction. Remy’s eyes lit up when I brought it all to the table.
“Wow,” he said with a smile. “This looks amazing.”
I heard stirring upstairs, and I knew the scent of the food must have woken Annika. A few minutes later, she came down the stairs and joined us in the kitchen.
“Wow,” she said with a smile. “This looks amazing.”
“That’s what I said,” Remy retorted.
“It’s exactly what he said.”
“Are you sure you two aren’t idiot twins instead of cousins?” Meri said in between bites of bacon. “What?” he asked when we all just sort of stared at him.
It was funny because he’d been so happy that Remy was back, he’d slept on the sofa with him. You’d never in a million years get him to admit it, though. He’d say he was keeping an eye on Remy to protect me, but Meri had slept curled up next to him. He could have kept an eye on him from the chair, so I knew better.
“You be sweet,” I said, but he’d gone back to eating and had completely tuned us out.
We ate quietly after that, but when everyone was done, Annika asked the question that was on my mind. “What happened?”
“At the sheriff’s station?” Remy asked.
“That and before. How did you end up standing over Finn with a knife?”
“Well, they took me to the station, but actually ended up taking Joanna to the hospital. The cuts on her hands were deep enough to need stitches, and she had some wounds on her body too.”
I hadn’t been able to see her bleeding the night before because she’d been dressed in a dark shirt and jeans. I also hadn’t been looking beyond when she showed her hands.
“So, he could have attacked her first?”
“It’s entirely possible,” Remy said. “From what I know, I walked into the room and she was attacking him. I pushed her aside and grabbed the knife. Gunner released me because he believes I was just intervening in the dispute, but he told me to stay close to Coventry.”
“Why?” I asked.
“He said that he doesn’t believe that I attacked them both, but since I haven’t been completely ruled out, I’m still a person of interest.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Annika said.
“By talk to him, do you mean have a chat about how you know I didn’t do this? Or do you mean use your powers to influence his decision making?” Remy asked. “Because you know you shouldn’t do that.”
“He said that he doesn’t believe you did it, so if I give him a nudge further in that direction, it’s not technically overriding his will. Plus, he needs to focus on figuring this out and not waste time on a dead end,” Annika said. “Besides, if I don’t get him to drop it, he’ll have to deal with our grandmother.”
“I need some sleep,” Remy said. “Brighton, will you keep my cousin from brainwashing her boyfriend until I get up?”
“No promises,” I said with a wink.
He let out a sigh, but Remy was smiling. “Okay, then. I’m going to go upstairs and sleep, if that’s all right?”
“My house is your house,” I said.
He kissed me and then headed upstairs. Fortunately, I had spare rooms besides the attack room and the one Annika had used. Although, Annika had probably left the room spotless and ready for the next person anyway.
“I should probably go to work today,” Annika said. “Will you be all right?”
“Yeah, I’ve got Remy and Meri here. I don’t think I’m in any danger, so you can go. It’ll be fine.”
Those were famous last words. As soon as Annika was gone, I got out my laptop to check my reservations.
They had all been canceled. Apparently, people who wanted to stay at a bed and breakfast did not want to stay at a place where an actual person had very recently been stabbed. I would have thought it would have added to the appeal,
but I was wrong.
“It’s not fair,” I said to Meri. “When Jack died at the other bed and breakfast, it didn’t affect the place one bit.”
“Probably the difference between someone being poisoned and someone being hacked up,” Meri said. “It will blow over.”
“I don’t want to do it anymore,” I said.
“What?” I had Meri’s full attention with that.
“I don’t want to have Hangman’s House be a bed and breakfast anymore. I’m done. Someone got stabbed on the first night. If that’s not an omen, then I don’t know what is. The house tried to stop this, and I didn’t listen then. I had to do things my own way. Well, I’m listening now.”
“Oh, thank gawd,” Meri said.
“What?”
“Well, you wanted this so much, even I felt bad telling you not to do it.”
“You’ve never had a problem telling me not to do something,” I said.
“You just really had your heart in this, and you liked working at the other place so much,” he said. “But I don’t think that it was the right call to open your own.”
“I thought I finally found a career,” I said and slumped down into my favorite chair.
“You may have a career of some sort someday, Brighton, but you’ve got a much bigger job coming up,” Meri said.
“What are you talking about?”
“How do you forget things so quickly? It’s almost like a talent,” he snarked. “You and Remy are going to get married, and you’re going to become a mother. You don’t want to have your home full of strangers when you’re caring for your newborn.”
“Meri, I cannot have children.”
“You could not have children before, but you will have children with Remy. I wish you would just trust me on this. I know it’s a sticking point for you, but I would not lie to you about this.”
“I’m going to be a mother?” It was more of a rhetorical question, but Meri answered anyway.
“Yes, Brighton. Maybe much sooner after the wedding than you think. And it’s not necessarily going to be like having a regular baby either. You’re going to have a tiny witch on your hands. I think you’ll love every minute of it, but toddler witches can be a handful.”
Broom and Gloom Page 4
