That Last Weekend

by Laura Disilverio

  “When was that?”

  “Middle of last week. Wednesday? Thursday?” She dragged on the cigarette and the nicotine hit seemed to spur her memory. “Wednesday. I was getting ready for the last of three night shifts in a row, and praying one of my patients, a woman I’d grown to like, had made it through the day. She didn’t. I work on the oncology ward.” She said it matter-of-factly as she stubbed out the cigarette.

  No wonder the talk of death didn’t faze her, Laurel thought. “Did they argue a lot?”

  “I only ever saw him two or three times, counting Wednesday.” Tisha yawned. “Look, I’m coming off a twelve-hour shift and I’ve got to get some sleep, and I’ve still gotta call the cops, so … ”

  Laurel was standing by the time she finished. “Thanks for your help. I appreciate your time.”

  “Good luck finding your murderer. Or maybe it would be bad luck for you to find him. Or her—I don’t want to be sexist.” She gave a tired laugh and showed Laurel to the door.

  Twenty-Two

  The first person Laurel ran into when she returned to the castle near noon was Mrs. Abbott. Her normally pristine apron was smudged and flour streaked her nose, as if she’d pushed her glasses up while baking. She was hanging up the squat, old-fashioned phone that sat on a table in the foyer when Laurel entered.

  “Is anything wrong?” Laurel asked, and then berated herself mentally. Of course something was wrong—a guest had been murdered in her B and B, it was being turned into a nursing home, and she was moving to Texas.

  “That was the mother of Braden’s friend, the one he stays with sometimes. She says Mindy was supposed to pick Braden up first thing this morning—her family needed to leave early to drive to Atlanta for her mother-in-law’s funeral—and she hasn’t heard from Mindy. Her cell phone goes straight to voicemail, the woman says. She’s hopping mad—says she’s on her way here now to drop off Braden.” Anxiety creased Mrs. Abbott’s face. “I can’t take care of the boy, not on top of everything else.”

  Laurel bit her lip, concerned about Mindy’s continued absence and her failure to pick up her son. She’d parked beside Mindy’s car, which hadn’t moved. “Shouldn’t Braden be in school?”

  “Oh. Oh, yes,” Mrs. Abbott said, her face clearing. “Stephen can run him over to the school—he was going into town to visit the farmers’ market anyway. I’ll just catch him before he leaves. Excuse me.”

  Laurel hesitated only a second after Mrs. Abbott disappeared before dialing Sheriff Boone’s number. In normal circumstances, the police wouldn’t get too excited about a grown woman missing for a day, but these were not normal circumstances, and someone would have to figure out who should have charge of Braden if Mindy didn’t turn up by the time school let out. She was relieved when Boone took her concerns seriously.

  “She’s been missing how long?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. I don’t know when she dropped Braden off with his friend. Her car’s here, and I think it might have been here all night, maybe longer. It had dew on it this morning.” While Laurel talked, her gaze rested on a Tiffany-style lamp with stained glass peacocks.

  “Shit,” Boone muttered under his breath. “Okay, look. I was headed out there anyway. I’ll send an officer around to her house, and have a conversation with this woman who’s been taking care of the kid. We’ll go from there.” He hung up without saying goodbye.

  Dawn came into the foyer while Laurel was talking to Boone, purple maxi skirt wisping around her ankles. “What’s up?”

  Laurel filled her in.

  “Mindy’s missing?” Threading her fingers through her curls, she said, “Surely she’s just late. Maybe she stayed over with a boyfriend.”

  Laurel didn’t know Mindy well enough to guess if that was plausible, or if she would have neglected to pick up Braden, if so. “Her car’s been here all night.”

  “The boyfriend could have picked her up.”

  “Possible,” Laurel conceded, “but there’s still Braden.” They started toward the kitchen so Laurel could tell Mrs. Abbott that the police wanted to speak with the woman dropping Braden off and not to let her leave.

  “Speaking of cars,” Dawn said, “did you hear what happened to Geneva?”

  Laurel halted. “Geneva? No. The baby—?”

  Dawn made calming motions. “No, no. They’re both fine. It’s just that on her way back here from the police station, her steering went kaput. She couldn’t make it around that curve just before you get to Cygne if you’re coming from town, and she went off the road. She didn’t roll or anything, didn’t even scratch the rental. She’s napping now.”

  Relieved that Geneva hadn’t been hurt, Laurel let out a long breath. “How did—”

  “Ellie and I came up on her about ten minutes after it happened. She was pretty shaken up, as much by Sheriff Boone interrogating her as the accident, I think, but not hurt at all.” Dawn put her hands on her hips. “I can’t believe he dragged a pregnant woman down to the station. I don’t care where he found her fingerprints. Can you see Geneva sneaking into Evangeline’s room and dumping strychnine in her water glass?” Her nostrils flared. “It’s ridiculous. Absurd. Anyway, the Triple A guy came out pretty quick and had a look. He says there was a hole in the power steering line and all the fluid had drained out.”

  “Did he say if it looked deliberate?”

  Dawn’s winged brows came together. “Why would you think that?”

  Laurel resumed walking. “Evangeline’s murder, the snake in your room, Mindy missing … all sorts of strange things are happening around here. You think it’s coincidence?”

  Dawn pondered Laurel’s question for a full thirty seconds before saying, “Well, if it was sabotage, I wonder if it was meant for her or you? You’re driving an identical car, after all.”

  Laurel thought she preferred the idea that someone was after her and hadn’t intended to hurt Geneva. Of course, draining the power steering fluid wasn’t a sure-fire recipe for grievous bodily harm, as Geneva’s non-accident had proven. If someone really wanted to hurt one of them, wouldn’t he or she have cut the brake line? But if the saboteur hadn’t intended serious harm or death, why bother at all? Maybe it was a simple accident …

  They emerged into the kitchen, where Laurel told Mrs. Abbott what Boone had said. She overrode the innkeeper’s exasperated “And how’m I supposed to do that?” by asking if Mindy had a boyfriend.

  Mrs. Abbott knit her brow. “She had kind of an on-and-off thing going with a man from Weaverville, the next town over. It’s possible she had a date with him. Jimmy Willett, that’s his name.”

  “Should we look for her? Put together a search party?” Dawn asked.

  “It couldn’t hurt,” Laurel said. Normally she’d have counseled waiting a bit, but unease pricked at her. There had been too many unexplained happenings since Evangeline died.

  She and Dawn passed through the foyer, planning to ask Geneva and Ellie to help hunt for Mindy.

  “You don’t suppose … ” Dawn started, and then shook her head. “No.”

  “What?”

  Dawn slowed. “Could Mindy’s leaving have anything to do with Evangeline’s death? I mean, do you think she could have … been involved?”

  Laurel frowned. “You mean you think Mindy killed Evangeline and now she’s taken off? Gone on the run? What motive could she have for killing Evangeline?”

  Shrugging, Dawn said, “I don’t know. But they both lived here in the same town. There could be something between them that we don’t know about. An old grudge, a boyfriend thing. It makes as much sense—more—as thinking you or I or Geneva or Ellie did it.” She knocked on Ellie’s door.

  What Dawn said did make sense. Laurel had no idea what Mindy’s relationship with Evangeline might have been, if any, outside of Cygne. Was Mindy devious enough to plot Evangeline’s death by strychnine, to acquire the p
oison and then wait until the inn was full of possible suspects before administering it? There was a certain slyness to Mindy, a hint of opportunism, and Laurel suspected the younger woman had gone through her things once or twice while cleaning her room, but she had trouble seeing her as a premeditated murderer.

  The most likely explanation for Mindy’s absence was that she had hooked up with a friend or lover and blown off work because she was losing her job anyway. She’d probably forgotten that Braden’s buddy wouldn’t be going to school today because of his grandmother’s funeral and that the mother wanted an early pickup. Garden-variety lack of consideration—nothing sinister.

  Ellie unwittingly confirmed her analysis after Dawn told her about the search party. “That’s way overreacting,” she said, flapping a dismissive hand. “The woman’s in her thirties—she’s not sixteen. She won’t thank us for making a big fuss if she’s sneaked off for a booty call. You can’t much blame her for not showing up for work, not when they’ve yanked her job out from under her.”

  “Hey, what’s up?” Geneva appeared in her doorway, face pillow-creased, blinking.

  “Sorry to wake you, Gen,” Laurel said. “Are you okay? I heard about your accident.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t even an accident. Power steering failed—no big deal. What’s this about Mindy?”

  Dawn answered. “She hasn’t shown up for work, and she forgot to pick up Braden from a friend’s house. Sheriff Boone’s coming to talk to the friend’s mother, and we were discussing whether we should look for her.”

  “Of course we should,” Geneva said immediately. “It won’t hurt anything, and it might help. Let me put my sneakers on.”

  “You should stay here and rest,” Ellie said. “You look worn out.”

  “I’ll quit if I get tired—promise.”

  They paired up, with Dawn and Laurel searching the top three floors and Geneva and Ellie searching the bottom two and the outbuildings. If one team found something, they would call the other pair. They agreed to meet in the sunroom in an hour if no one had an update before then. Any hesitation Laurel felt about their going off in twos was mitigated by the workmen’s presence. They were all safe, she told herself.

  “Start at the top and work our way down?” Laurel suggested to Dawn when the other pair left.

  “As good a plan as any,” Dawn said.

  They climbed the stairs side by side and the sound of hammering got louder.

  “Have you heard from Kyra?” Laurel asked.

  “Not a word,” Dawn said, her clipped tone making it plain she didn’t want to discuss it. Laurel suspected she was seesawing between anger and worry and let the subject drop.

  On the fifth-floor landing, they ran into two men in work clothes, hard hats, and goggles reframing a doorway. Dust motes floated through the air, sparking to gold as they drifted through a sunbeam. The excised drywall lay against the wall in a pile of jagged chunks.

  One of the men moved to block them. Shoving his goggles onto his forehead, he said, “Hey, you can’t be up here. It’s a construction area. It’s not safe.”

  Laurel explained that they were looking for Mindy.

  “Attractive gal, mid-thirties, brown hair, got a kid?” he asked. When they nodded, he said, “I’ve seen her around, but not today. I can tell you she’s not up here.”

  “We’d like to look to make sure,” Laurel said politely but firmly. “We won’t be long.”

  “My insurance won’t cover it if you get hurt,” he complained, but he handed them each a yellow hard hat. “Here. Watch your step.”

  “We’ll be quick and careful,” Laurel promised, plunking the hat on her head.

  Dawn did the same and they entered the first bedroom on the left. It was immediately clear Mindy wasn’t there—denuded of furniture, the room also lacked a closet door. Spackle speckled the walls. The next two rooms were the same, and both smelled of sawn lumber. They ran into an electrical contractor in one, colorful loops of wire over his forearm, shouting through a gap in the ceiling at a helper.

  “This is depressing,” Dawn whispered as they neared Evangeline’s old room. “It’s like they’ve given Cygne a lobotomy, cut out all its personality.”

  “That’s exactly what it’s like,” Laurel agreed, struck by the analogy. She dodged a pair of sawhorses set up in the middle of the hall and pushed open the door to Evangeline’s old room. “Looks like they haven’t gotten this far yet.”

  Dawn hovered in the doorway as Laurel peeked into the closet. No Mindy. Instinct urged her toward the balcony and, after a brief hesitation, she pulled open the stiff French doors and stepped out. Sunlight made her blink. Drawn by a macabre impulse, she put her hands on the cool iron railing that topped the balustrade and looked over, half expecting to see—what? Mindy’s body? Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. History didn’t repeat itself—not like that. She spotted Sheriff Boone talking to a woman driving an old station wagon but couldn’t hear what they were saying. Stepping back into the room, she said, “Not here.”

  “No one’s here,” Dawn said.

  It took Laurel a moment to figure out that she might be referring to Villette. Laurel had never seen or felt the ghost of the castle’s former mistress, but she didn’t completely discount the idea that some sort of energy lingered. They retraced their steps, giving the yawning elevator opening a wide berth, and descended to the fourth floor.

  Laurel sneezed. The construction dust was giving her a headache. “Hey, I forgot to mention—I found Ray.”

  “You did?” Dawn’s eyes widened.

  “Well, I found out who he is.” Laurel explained how she’d located him and filled Dawn in on her conversations with Sheriff Boone and Geneva.

  “It is strange that he hasn’t come back,” Dawn agreed. “Really strange.”

  “Did you and Ellie get anything from Evangeline’s coworkers?”

  Dawn swept aside a musty-smelling shower curtain to look into a tub and said, “She didn’t seem to like the job much, and they didn’t seem to like her much. It was sad. I know what it’s like to work at a job that drains you, that’s no more than a paycheck. One interesting thing: the woman we talked to—the office administrator—was pretty convinced that no surgery on earth could have made it possible for Evangeline to walk again.”

  Laurel frowned. “How weird. Evangeline said … ” She trailed off, thinking. “You know,” she said slowly, “there was no cane in her house, or in her room here.”

  “What?”

  “No cane. Evangeline didn’t have a cane with her. I know because I was in her closet and her duffel when I was helping her the night she died. Remember she said she was going to show us how she could take a few steps with only a cane for support? If she didn’t have a cane with her, how was she going to do that?”

  “It’s been an hour. We should meet the others. Maybe it was in the van and Ray ran off with it by accident.”

  “That’s possible,” Laurel conceded, not sure why the missing cane seemed important. She turned it around in her brain but didn’t come up with anything by the time they entered the sunroom, shortly after one o’clock. Ellie and Geneva were there before them, Ellie hugging a pillow on one chair and Geneva half-reclining on the loveseat, her bare feet on the glass-topped table. They were puffy and swollen, as were the ankles peeking out from under her slacks. Laurel felt a twinge of guilt for not stopping her from joining in the search.

  “Anything?” Geneva asked when they came in.

  Laurel shook her head. “You?”

  “Not a sign of her,” Ellie said. “Our only excitement was Stephen Abbott going all rabid on us when he found us poking around in one of the storage sheds. It was packed to the gills with furniture. No way was Mindy in there.” A wisp of cobweb clung to her bangs and she fluffed at her hair to get rid of it.

  Sheriff Boone strode into the room, bringing a
n unsettled energy with him. Their heads swiveled toward him. His brow was damp with humidity and his hands were shoved into his pockets.

  “Anything?” Laurel asked him before he could speak.

  “We don’t have any news about Mindy Tanger, no. Ivy Burrelsman, the friend who had Braden, says Mindy dropped him off Saturday afternoon so he could spend the weekend. She was supposed to pick him up on her way to work this morning and take him to school. She has no idea where Mindy is, but gave me the name of a boyfriend I could check with.”

  “Jimmy Willett,” Laurel said.

  He cocked a brow. “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing yet. We haven’t gotten hold of him by phone. An officer is stopping by his house.”

  Sheriff Boone settled himself in a scruffy chair, laying his arms on the armrests and sinking back as if he were planning to spend the day. “We got a copy of Ms. Paul’s will,” he said conversationally.

  A provocative note in his voice boded ill for one of them. Laurel tensed and felt a piquing of interest from the others.

  Boone spoke into the silence. “Mrs. Ordahl, can you tell me why Ms. Paul left you twenty thousand dollars?”

  Ellie goggled and dropped the pillow she was holding. “Me? She left me money?”

  Boone nodded, never taking his eyes off her face. “Yes.”

  Wanting to draw his attention away from Ellie, Laurel asked. “Who else benefited in her will?”

  Boone switched his gaze to her. “No one. Eleanor Jane Ordahl is the sole beneficiary of a checking account with twenty thousand dollars in it. Ms. Paul’s duplex is a rental, as is most of the furniture it in. The odds and ends that aren’t rental are to be sold and the profits divided between a charity that helps disabled people and one that does spine research. Ditto for the proceeds from the sale of her mother’s house, although a Realtor friend of mine says she was underwater on the mortgage.”

  “Why didn’t she give the money to charity, too?” Ellie asked.

  “Good question. Perhaps you’d like to take a stab at answering it?” Boone leaned forward now, his clasped hands hanging between his thighs. Laurel could tell he was sucking on a butterscotch.