Inn Over Her Head

by Dixie Davis

“Well, thank you! I’m guessing you know where the Mayweather House is.”

  “Yes,” he said slowly, “but can I get an idea what we’re dealing with first?”

  “Of course. I’ve got a sliding glass door that’s acting up, and a lamp that keeps killing our light bulbs.”

  “Okay, sounds like something I can handle. Is now a good time?”

  Lori glanced at the smooth, cream-colored ceiling above her, as if it would reveal its secrets. Or Dawn’s. “Yes, now is fine.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you in a few.”

  “Thank you!” Lori tried not to chirp the words — a businesswoman wouldn’t chirp, would she? — but failed.

  Oh well. Lori walked out to the porch and looked up, but the slivers of light between the ceiling planks above her — the floor planks of the porch of Dawn’s room — didn’t convey quite enough information. Lori backed off the porch and into the patchy grass of the yard, craning her neck to try to catch a glimpse. From what she could tell, the upper porch rocking chair was empty.

  She glanced at the gravel lot to her left. Yep, Dawn’s silver Jetta was still parked in the same spot.

  For all Lori knew, Dawn was already on the Boardwalk or canoe trails. Dawn had been here before. She probably already knew where to go if she wanted to think or be alone. Or she was having a good long soak in the garden tub.

  Lori started back for the house. She could always slip a note under the door for Dawn when she came back. Or came out. Or came to.

  Before Lori made it to her office, however, the porch door slapped closed a second time behind her. She whirled around to find a tall, broad-shouldered man filling her inn’s doorway.

  Not for the first time, she wished Joey was around today. But this man couldn’t want to hurt her. Right?

  “Can I help you?” Lori asked.

  “I’m looking for Lori Keyes.”

  “That’s me.”

  The man smiled, a warm, friendly light kindling in his brown eyes, and he offered a hand. “Mitch Griffin.”

  Lori shook his hand. “Thanks for coming. You’re quick.”

  “Thanks. You’re lucky. I had an opening.”

  “I can show you the lamp, if you want to start there. The guest isn’t out of the room with the problem door.”

  Mitch nodded and followed her to the dining room. Fortunately, sunlight flooded in through the large windows with views of the huge, gnarled oaks and other historic-homes-turned-businesses on this end of the street. She showed Mitch the wayward lamp and he started examining it. “How long have you been with the Mayweather House?” he asked before Lori had a chance to head to her office.

  “Two and a half weeks. I’m the new owner.”

  “Hm.” Mitch sounded impressed. “Didn’t think anybody could convince Beth Owens to sell.”

  “Wasn’t easy, but we had some good heart-to-hearts, and she realized she was ready for a vacation of her own.”

  “She definitely was. Any possibility you can do the same over at Dusky Card and Gift? Ray’s never going to retire.”

  Lori laughed. “I’m guessing Dusky Cove wouldn’t be the same without him.”

  “We’ll lose him that much sooner if he doesn’t start slowing down.” Mitch’s voice took on a more serious tone.

  “Of course. I’m sure he’s more to you than just a Dusky Cove institution.”

  Mitch leaned down to unplug the lamp but glanced up at her with a raised eyebrow. “Hm?”

  Hadn’t Raymond told her about their relationship a few minutes ago? “Because you’re his son-in-law?”

  “Ah.” Mitch finished unplugging the lamp and wound the cord around the brass base. “Former son-in-law.”

  “I’m sorry.” Unhappy endings left and right this week.

  “It’s okay. I should’ve known what you meant. Been so long sometimes I don’t remember it even happened.”

  “But you don’t want to forget — you don’t have to forget. My husband died thirteen years ago, but I don’t want to pretend those years never happened.”

  Mitch looked at her, his eyes filled with a bittersweet mix of compassion and pain. “Some people do want to pretend.”

  “Sorry.” Doubly unhappy, then. Lori felt her cheeks grow warm. She wasn’t used to being the one who pried or prompted where she wasn’t wanted. Usually, she couldn’t stop people from spilling their life stories on her, good, bad or ugly.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Mitch said. The light note in his voice sounded forced, but at least he was trying. “I’m probably going to have to take this lamp in to work on it. I think it’s a loose contact, but I want to be sure I get it fixed right.”

  “Thank you.” Lori glanced around the room. Better find some other light source before her next guests joined her for breakfast.

  “Should I come back another time for the door?” Mitch asked.

  Lori checked her watch. Twenty minutes past check-out time. And no sign of Dawn all day. “You know, I’d feel better if I went in and checked on her. Dawn’s going through a rough time. And if she’s not there, you can take a look at the door.”

  Mitch nodded and waited in the parlor while Lori fetched the keys from her office. He followed her up to the Sunset Beach Room. Lori tried knocking one last time. “Dawn? Are you in there?”

  Just as before, no answer. She hardly expected one now.

  “Okay, Dawn, I’m coming in.” Lori turned to Mitch. “Can I have you wait here? In case she’s . . . indisposed.”

  “Sure.” Mitch stepped back from the doorway, and Lori turned the key in the lock.

  “Dawn?” she called, tapping on the door one last time as she opened it.

  A black suitcase — the one Lori had carried up the stairs two days ago — sat on the chair, open, with the contents spilling out. Other than that, the room was clean. It didn’t look like her bed had been slept in since Lori made it yesterday.

  Was Dawn not here? Better make a full sweep of the room before she let Mitch in. Lori headed for the bathroom door, but a flash of blue on the dresser caught her attention: the plate for the lemon thyme zucchini bread. Empty. Had Dawn eaten them all? And Lori thought she was eating her emotions.

  Lori glanced in the trash can — and then did a double take. Nope, Dawn hadn’t eaten her emotions. Nearly the whole plateful had been dumped in the trash can. Ungrateful little —

  Lori forced herself to take a deep breath. She’d made the bread for Dawn, not herself, and if Dawn didn’t like them, it was better to throw them away than for Lori to eat them all.

  The bathroom door was open a crack, so Lori knocked once again. “Dawn? Is everything okay?”

  By now, Lori didn’t expect a response, and she wasn’t surprised. Until she pushed the door open.

  Dawn lay on the cool tile floor, her blonde bob covering her face.

  Shock bolted through Lori’s veins. She dropped to her knees next to the other woman, brushing her hair out of the way. “Dawn? Dawn, are you all right?”

  She didn’t move. Lori finally got her hair clear of her face, revealing her icy blue eyes, half closed and rolled back in her head. Lori pressed two fingers to Dawn’s jugular, but she didn’t have to wait for a heartbeat. Dawn’s skin was cold.

  She was touching a dead body.

  Another freezing bolt lanced through her. Lori hopped up and away, like a woman twenty years younger than her. Dawn . . . was dead?

  “Help!” Lori shouted. But Joey wasn’t here — Mitch. Mitch was still there. “Call 9-1-1!”

  Lori sat in the parlor, watching the police officers parade through. How could this have happened? Was Lori in danger, too? She wrung her hands.

  Mitch offered her a can of ginger ale from her own mini fridge, and she accepted it with a nod of thanks. The treats were not supposed to be for her, but she’d make an exception this once.

  “Poor Dawn.” Lori traced the logo on the soda can. She might have been ready to patch things up with her husband — or to finally move on. “Do you think
whoever did this could kill again?”

  “For all we know, it was a suicide,” Mitch replied, his eyes on the officers across the room. “Though I guess it wouldn’t hurt to be extra cautious.”

  Lori nodded slowly. The pair of officers at the foot of the stairs finally focused on them and crossed the room. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” said the younger officer, “but I have to ask you two not to talk to one another.”

  “Right.” Lori popped the top on her soda. How had this happened?

  The African-American officer signaled for Mitch to come with him.

  “Do we have to do this, Ken?” Mitch muttered.

  The officer simply sighed, and Mitch followed him into the dining room. The younger officer, tall and pale, settled into the chair Mitch had left. “What can you tell me about the victim?” he asked.

  That she could do. “Her name is Dawn Vogel. She checked in two days ago, and was supposed to check out today.”

  “Has she stayed here before?”

  “Yes, but I’d have to check the records to see how many times, or when, or anything like that.”

  The officer made a note in his pad. “Did you talk to her?”

  “Of course. Personal attention is why people stay at B&Bs.”

  He nodded slowly, and Lori realized her mistake: that personal attention came at a price that the average cop might not be able to afford.

  “Did she meet with anyone here, or talk to anyone?”

  Lori hesitated. “She went out a couple of times. I saw her with a redheaded man, but I don’t know who he is. Other than that, I don’t know who she saw. If anyone.”

  “Was she traveling alone?”

  Lori nodded.

  “She has a wedding ring.”

  “Right, she’s married.” Lori bit her lip. It wasn’t gossip if it might help a police investigation, right? “She said they were having some trouble, though. Headed toward divorce.”

  The officer’s eyebrows shifted a fraction of an inch, as if that news was very revealing. And maybe it was. People on television died from unhappy marriages, and that could definitely happen in real life. Even if none of this felt like real life.

  “Do you have her husband’s information? We need to contact him.”

  “Sorry, I don’t. I only know she’s not from around here. I can check the records, though.”

  The officer stood, tucking his notepad into a pocket. “Yeah, we’ll have you do that in a little bit.”

  “What are we waiting on?”

  “The crime scene unit is coming from Bolivia.”

  Lori had to think a moment before she remembered the tiny hamlet that was the county seat, rather than the South American country. That would have been quite a commute.

  “And the chief should be here any minute.” The officer looked up like something behind Lori caught his eye, and she followed his gaze.

  Mitch was walking back into the parlor, the other officer following. “No,” Mitch was saying, “I’ve told you everything I know, and it’s time for me to go.”

  “We’ll have to decide that, Mitchell,” came a voice from the B&B’s front door. Lori turned back to find a heavyset man in a suit.

  “Chip.” Mitch’s greeting was about as warm as the neglected soda sweating in Lori’s hand.

  “A woman dies and we find you here?” Chip stared laser darts past Lori.

  “Good to see you too.”

  As if there wasn’t enough tension in the room already. Lori stood, like she could be a human shield between the two men. “I’m Lori Keyes, the innkeeper.” She dried a hand on her jeans and offered it to Chip.

  “Chip Branson.” He shook her hand before he finished his introduction. “Chief of Police.”

  Lori gasped softly. She knew they were expecting him, but the chief had to be a couple years younger than her. She didn’t need more proof of his identity, but Chief Branson handed her a business card.

  “Sorry to drag you out here,” she said. As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized the town was small enough that nowhere was “out here.”

  “Mind telling me what we’ve got here?”

  Lori told the story — the third or fourth time she’d recounted it for the officers — and the chief nodded. He left to go check on the officers who’d secured the crime scene, and the officer who’d interviewed Lori followed.

  Mitch slumped into the chair he’d left a few minutes before, and Lori joined him. She sipped her soda, then used it to gesture at the stairs, meaning the chief who’d just gone up them. “Old friend of yours?”

  “Long story. Goes back to high school. Doesn’t end well.”

  “And that ending could get a lot worse if you antagonize him here.”

  “I really doubt it.”

  The younger cop dashed in and fixed them both with a warning look. “Chief wants to talk to you.”

  Lori stood, but the officer shook his head. He pointed to Mitch.

  “Come on, Eddie, I got here right before we found her.”

  “Before I found her,” Lori corrected. “Mitch didn’t even go in the room. Like I told you and the chief.”

  The cop blushed behind his freckles, but only offered a helpless shrug. Mitch sighed and hauled himself out of the chair to follow the officer upstairs.

  Ken, the African-American officer, cleared his throat and Lori turned to him. “Be careful with that one, ma’am.”

  “Careful?”

  Ken moseyed across the room. “We know you’re from out of town, so you wouldn’t know his history, but you’ll want to keep away from him.”

  He’d seemed perfectly nice — but Lori wasn’t looking. “I’m engaged, actually.”

  For the first time, she realized she should call Joey. She tried not to ask too much of him — from maintenance to coming to see her — when he worked at a B&B forty-five minutes away, but this was an emergency.

  “Would it be okay if I called my fiancé? I’d really like to see him.”

  The officer watched her as she retrieved her phone and called. Joey was shocked, of course, and promised to get there as soon as he could.

  That turned out to be an hour, but even that was impressive. By the time he arrived, and the police were persuaded to let him onto the scene, the crime scene unit was also on site.

  The chief alternated between observing the county’s work upstairs and Mitch’s behavior downstairs. When Joey walked in, the chief was on his third rotation. Mitch stood up from his chair and looked the chief square in the eye. “Chip, c’mon. I didn’t do anything here. I’m losing work standing here waiting for your photography team upstairs.”

  The chief leveled him with a sharp look. “You know a woman died here.”

  “And you know I’m not responsible. Besides, I haven’t run for the last eight years.”

  Eight years? Lori had been so caught up in the police and waiting for Joey, she hadn’t bothered to ask about Mitch’s history with the chief.

  “Fine. You can go. But don’t go far.”

  Mitch shot him an are-you-serious? look and maneuvered between the chief and Joey and the cop who’d escorted him in.

  Lori rushed over to him. “I can’t believe this. What is going on?”

  “I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for all of this. She probably died of natural causes with really bad timing.”

  That was the first time someone had suggested something so simple. Lori threw her arms around Joey, and he hugged her, and she finally released the tears she’d been holding back.

  Joey stroked her hair. “What do you need me to do?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.” For the most part, there was nothing she could do. Except that she might have contact information for Dawn’s husband. “I should get into the system to see if we have any information for Mr. Vogel.”

  “Right.” Joey pulled back and looked her in the eye. “Do you want me to do that?”

  “Sure.” She appreciated the help, though part of her really ne
eded the distraction of navigating the old records, doing something useful for Dawn. Possibly the last thing she could do to help the poor woman.

  Joey fetched her a Diet Coke from the mini fridge and had her sit on the sofa while he went to work in the office. It only took him five minutes to come back with a phone number for the chief. “Looks like they stayed here about a year ago. Her husband is Travis. He listed this as his cell phone number.”

  The chief nodded his thanks and pulled out his phone. Joey grabbed a soda for himself and sat down next to Lori. Just having him here seemed to help. Even if there was a dead woman — her very first guest — upstairs.

  For once, Lori had no desire to talk to anyone, and Joey let her sit in silence, both of them observing the cops — probably the entire Dusky Cove Police Department — and the crime scene unit. When was the last time something this serious had happened in Dusky Cove?

  Maybe Mitch was right, though. Maybe it was a suicide, or maybe Joey was right and it was natural causes and bad timing. People died of natural causes all the time, even in Dusky Cove.

  But what if it wasn’t?

  Shouting from the front porch drew Lori’s attention. “That’s my wife in there!” came the loudest bellow.

  Oh no. Dawn’s poor husband already? That redheaded man she’d seen her with. Lori hopped to her feet and hurried over to the screen door. A police officer gripped the man, short and stout and swarthy, by the shoulders, restraining him. Who was this?

  “I need to see her!” the man shouted

  “I’m sorry,” the officer said, “but you can’t right now.”

  Someone stepped up to Lori’s side, and she turned, expecting to find Joey. Instead, Chief Branson stood next to her. “You already contacted him?”

  Lori shook her head.

  “Then who told him where to go? I said to meet at the station.”

  Lori looked back at the man as he dissolved into tears. The officer directed him into a rocking chair.

  Travis Vogel. Did he know where Dawn was staying while she was in town? It wasn’t a huge leap since they’d stayed here together at least once, but still.

  With a back-off warning stare, the chief pushed past Lori to talk to Travis on the porch.

  Then the real question sprang up in Lori’s mind. It wasn’t surprising that he might guess where his wife would be staying in Dusky Cove. Dawn said she wasn’t from around here, and Travis had only taken about ten minutes to get here. And he was definitely not the man she’d seen with Dawn yesterday.