Chapter 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

I pushed up on my knees, searching her for the source of the injury in the dim light, and heard people running from behind and above me. Brittany squinted and finally realized who I was and started yelling.

“Get off me!”

I jumped up, figuring if she could yell that loudly, she wasn’t hurt. Then the big chandelier in the entry flickered on, illuminating everything as though it were daylight. Brittany popped up and I could now see that the red substance covering her definitely wasn’t blood. It was way too thin. So thin, she was dripping everywhere.

Daniel rushed downstairs wearing only his boxers, and he grabbed Brittany by the shoulders, clearly distressed and probably assuming the same thing I had. Morgan and Nicole were close behind him, Morgan wearing shorts and a T-shirt and Nicole clad in her robe. Clearly, they’d all been in or preparing for bed. Amanda was the person I’d seen coming in the front door, and Tyler had come from the hallway that led to the back porch. Ida Belle and Gertie had been in the kitchen, and Gertie held a now-empty pitcher with only a couple drops of red liquid in the bottom. I had a feeling Brittany was wearing whatever that pitcher had held.

“What the hell is going on?” Daniel demanded.

Brittany pointed at me. “She attacked me!”

Daniel turned to me and glared. “Explain yourself.”

“I came downstairs to get a water and heard my aunt scream. When I ran for the kitchen, Brittany came running out, almost hit me with the door, and knocked me down. I thought it was an intruder who had hurt my aunt, so I tackled her before she could get away. I had no idea who it was until the lights came back on. It was too dim to see anything but the outline of a person.”

Brittany put her hands on her hips and flung her hand at Gertie. “I did not attack anyone. I was going to get water when the lights went out and then someone—obviously her—doused me with whatever this red stuff is. It startled me, and since I didn’t know why it had happened or who had done it, I figured running was the smart thing to do. If this doesn’t wash out of my hair, you’re paying to have my hair fixed.”

Everyone looked at Gertie, who gave them a sheepish look. “I’m sorry. We thought we’d try to get some pictures of ghosts but then I got thirsty and was just about to pour myself some fruit punch when the lights went out. Then we heard something moving around. I thought you were an evil spirit.”

Brittany stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “And you thought you’d protect yourself by drowning me in fruit punch?”

“I prayed on it before I threw it,” Gertie said, sounding as if it was completely reasonable.

Tyler started laughing and Brittany shifted her glare to him, but it didn’t even put a dent in his glee.

“It’s the politically correct version of Carrie ,” he said. “Punch on the prom queen instead of blood. ”

He finally dropped into a chair, bent over, his shoulders shaking, and I could see his hair was damp.

“I apologize,” I said. “It was obviously a huge misunderstanding. I’m happy to pay for your clothes and your hair, if it’s ruined.”

Brittany whirled around and stomped up the stairs, not even bothering to acknowledge what I’d said. Daniel cast a final disapproving look at the three of us and hurried after his wife. At that point, he’d spent more time chasing after his angry wife than people did running the Boston Marathon. Nicole gave us all a ‘holy crap’ look, then headed upstairs after her friend, calling for Brittany to wait for her as she had a good shampoo to use.

Amanda shook her head. “Anyone need a drink? I’m pouring.”

“Might as well before I go mop the kitchen,” I said.

Everyone followed her into the library, and Amanda hit the liquor cabinet and mixed up cocktails. Gertie took a sip and her eyes widened.

“This is really good!”

“Better than that fruit punch?” Amanda asked.

Gertie sighed. “I didn’t actually get any, and it seemed rude to ask her to wring out her clothes…”

Tyler choked on his drink and started laughing all over again. Even the ever-serious Morgan couldn’t hold back a smile.

“I feel horrible,” I said as I did a dramatic flop into a chair. “I heard Aunt Gertie scream and then I got slammed with the door and Brittany. All I could think of was getting the person who’d hurt my aunt.”

“It was rather impressive,” Morgan said. “And not exactly the norm for a quiet insurance processor.”

“For real!” I said and blew out a breath. “I can’t believe I did it. It’s like I momentarily lost all sense of self-protection. What if it had been an intruder? What if he’d had a weapon? Jesus, that might be the dumbest thing I’ve done all week. Well, besides come here, that is.”

Amanda finished mixing her own drink and sat on the couch across from me, and I noticed her hair was damp and flat on her head. “Don’t worry about it. Brittany will get over it. It’s not like you did it with ill intent. She’s a barracuda about our own grandmother. When she gets a new robe and gets the punch out of her hair, she’ll be fine.”

“Did I see you come in the front door when I went on my suicide mission?” I asked.

Amanda nodded. “I’m a night owl and I like to watch storms. Most people back away from them but I find them soothing.”

Ida Belle raised one eyebrow. “Is that the only reason?” she asked and touched her nose.

Amanda’s eyes widened. “You can smell it on me?”

Ida Belle nodded.

“Wow. You have a nose like a bloodhound,” Amanda said.

Morgan frowned. “Don’t tell me you’re vaping again.”

A flash of guilt crossed Amanda’s face. “Okay,” she said. “I won’t tell you.”

“You know how horrible it is for you,” he said. “And you’d quit. Why start up again?”

“I know. I know. Come work my job for a week and let me know if you don’t pick up a vice. I just need to get this big case settled and then I’ll quit again. I promise.”

“Hey, should we be worried that the old couple haven’t come out to see who’s tearing their house down?” Tyler asked.

“On the way over, Corndog told me they sleep with earplugs,” I said. “I might need to get the brand because…yeah. ”

Morgan frowned. “I suppose it makes sense to take extra steps for a decent night’s sleep when you turn your home over to strangers, but it doesn’t seem without risk.”

“Who the heck is going to come all the way out here to commit a crime?” Tyler asked.

“I would imagine the list is fairly short,” Ida Belle said. “And given that most people around these parts sleep with a loaded firearm nearby, there would have to be a good reason to risk it. The house has some nice things in it, but nothing looks particularly valuable, except the house itself.”

Amanda nodded. “I agree. The value here is in the structure, unless there’s a Monet hidden in the attic.”

I shrugged. “Or assuming the guests aren’t the perpetrators.”

Amanda gave me an appreciative look. “I hadn’t considered that, but you’re right. However, I still think it’s probably better that Corndog sleeps through this sort of thing. With all that squinting he does, I wouldn’t want him startled awake and running out with his gun.”

She looked over at Tyler and narrowed her eyes. “What were you doing down here? I saw you come in from the back hallway.”

He shrugged. “Same thing as you, I guess. Minus the vape.”

She didn’t look remotely convinced. “You were sitting on the back porch watching the rain and contemplating the next stages of your life and career?”

He grinned. “I was just contemplating breakfast and if Molly Parker’s boobs got bigger since high school.”

Amanda gave him a disgusted look and Morgan frowned.

“Crude, much?” Amanda asked him. “And even if Molly’s boobs were as big as the parish, she still wouldn’t let you put one of your dirty paws on them. Well, I’m done with my drink and since it seems the storm has moved off both inside and outside, I’m going to bed.”

Morgan rose along with her and gave us a nod. “Good night, ladies.”

Tyler watched them leave, then headed for the liquor cabinet and poured himself a healthy dose of straight whiskey. He knocked back half of it, refilled it, and held his glass up.

“Thanks for the show,” he said. “It’s not often I get to see Brittany taken down a peg or two from her ivory tower. Happy ghost hunting.”

I rose as Tyler headed for the door. “I guess I better wipe up the kitchen floor. I don’t want Petunia or Corndog to walk in there tomorrow morning, see all that punch, and have a heart attack.”

Ida Belle, Gertie, and I headed for the kitchen and located a mop and some rags.

“Give me a minute,” I whispered. “I want to make sure Corndog and Petunia are good.”

I headed down the little hallway off the back of the kitchen and accessed the door to their owner’s suite. It was unlocked, which was something I’d consider the downside of later, and I crossed a tiny sitting area and went for the door on the back of the room, which I assumed led to the bedroom.

I turned the knob and gently eased the door open. A night-light from the bathroom illuminated the room well enough to spot the couple in their bed, both wearing masks and I assumed, the earplugs, as they were snoring and didn’t seem to have been remotely bothered by all the goings-on in the rest of the house.

Satisfied that they were fine, I headed back to the kitchen to collect Ida Belle and Gertie. I needed to tell them what I’d discovered, and I couldn’t risk talking anywhere but my room. As soon as we were secured inside, I looked at Gertie .

“Why did you really throw the punch on Brittany?” I asked.

“I wanted to make sure whoever was skulking around down there was easy to identify,” Gertie said. “I remembered the punch from earlier today and figured whoever was wearing it would be easy to spot.”

Ida Belle shook her head. “Or you could have just turned your phone flashlight on and blinded her.”

“The punch was far more exciting,” Gertie said. “And she has no way of denying it was her. If I’d just blinded her we could have been the old women with bad eyesight and the power was out and blah, blah, blah.”

I had to smile. “For a last-minute plan, it wasn’t the worst we’ve seen. And the whole tackling thing helps us narrow down where everyone was, although I have to admit, I wasn’t counting on half of them being downstairs wandering around. Your backup story, however, was genius. The housecoats just sealed the deal, by the way. They think you’re off your rockers.”

“One of us is,” Ida Belle said. “Did you figure out who was moving around upstairs?”

“No. And that’s the most interesting thing that has happened since we got here.” I told them about someone going out the window in Justin’s room.

“But why would someone go to all that trouble to hide being in the room?” Gertie asked. “Do you think someone killed Justin and left evidence behind?”

“We don’t know that Justin was murdered,” Ida Belle said. “And even if he was and someone had dropped a button or left fingerprints or whatever, it’s still a fool’s move. I get not announcing your plan to enter a crime scene, but if someone discovered you once you had, it would make more sense to just say ‘My bad. I was looking for a pen I lent Justin and was hoping I wouldn’t have to deal with that idiot sheriff.’”

I nodded. “Scaling the side of a house during a storm definitely raises eyebrows. And the room was cleared of any personal items, so I assume Bryce removed them. But maybe they didn’t know that. Or thought he might have missed something. Given how incompetent he is, I can see why they might.”

“Maybe whoever was in the room isn’t as good at making up lies on the spot as we are and they panicked,” Gertie said. “Maybe they had nothing to do with killing Justin, but they lost something in his room for completely other reasons…reasons they might not want anyone to know.”

I frowned. I had to admit, that was an interesting theory given that the friends had confirmed that Justin had been a serious player with the women, so the idea that someone might want to hide evidence of other shenanigans wasn’t completely without merit.

“Morgan said Justin always had a thing for Brittany,” I said, “but surely she wouldn’t be stupid enough to carry on with him when her husband was literally right down the hall. And since she ditched him in high school for bad behavior, why make a move now when it doesn’t sound like he’d changed at all, except maybe to get worse?”

Ida Belle shrugged. “There’s also Nicole and Amanda. Both are very attractive women. Given Justin’s less-than-stellar reputation, I don’t think either would want the others to know if they’d had drunk sex with him, even though they’re both single.”

“Probably not,” I agreed.

“So assuming you’re right and someone did risk going out the window in the storm, who could it have been? ”

“Nicole, Morgan, and Daniel all came from upstairs and were dry,” Gertie said. “So it wasn’t any of them.”

“Amanda came in the front door,” I said. “And she was damp, so she’s definitely on the list, but so is Tyler. He claimed he was out back, and his hair was wet.”

“So one of those two,” Gertie said.

Ida Belle shook her head. “You’re forgetting one. Brittany was downstairs, and since you doused her with punch, we have no way of knowing if she was wet before that. She could have planned to go out the window if she got caught and had stashed the robe downstairs just in case. Maybe her clothes were wet underneath as well.”

I nodded. “Excellent point. And even if Amanda and Tyler were exactly where they claimed to be, there’s a third door into the house, remember?”

“Through the kitchen,” Gertie said. “She could have already been in there when Ida Belle and I walked in. Maybe hiding in the pantry when she heard us coming. We were quiet, but sound echoes down there.”

“It’s certainly possible,” Ida Belle said. “It was too dark to see much of anything after the lights went out. She could have been standing behind the curtains for all we know. But she never called out, which is suspicious in itself. I mean, if you’re not up to anything, why be so quiet about it?”

“And as Ida Belle pointed out, she could have used her phone as a flashlight,” Gertie said. “I’m sure she had it on her. The robe had pockets and young people don’t move without their phones.”

I nodded. “She probably tried to make a run for her room when the lights went out. And the phone and not calling out aren’t the only suspicious things. There’s a whole mini fridge of water in the library, which is easier to access and something she would have been well aware of. Plus, it’s there specifically for guests. Why go into the kitchen when guests aren’t really supposed to be in there?”

“So we have three suspects, one of whom broke into Justin’s room for an unknown reason and risked scaling a trellis in a rainstorm rather than get caught,” Gertie said.

“We need that reason,” Ida Belle said.

I nodded. “But I don’t think we’re going to get it. Not easily, anyway.”

I rarely slept deeply and definitely not when I wasn’t in my own house. Knowing that someone had been creeping around a potential murder scene made sleep even more impossible. So I tossed and turned and dozed a little, but ultimately, gave up around 5:00 a.m. and headed downstairs.

Because the house was completely quiet, I figured everyone was still sleeping. And since the storm had turned to a drizzle that had finally ceased sometime early that morning, this would be a great opportunity to check the window in Justin’s room from outside. I headed down the hallway to the door that opened onto the back porch. It was a small area, especially compared to the front porch, which stretched the length of the house. This one was eight feet by ten feet with a roof above and lattice on each side with thick vines providing shade and privacy. Two chairs sat at the far end next to the ivy-covered lattice.

If Tyler had been sitting here, he wouldn’t have seen someone scaling down the side of the house. The lack of light and the storm would have already decreased visibility to almost nil for any distance, but the vines sealed the deal. Someone could have come down the side of the house, any noise they made lost in the storm, and then entered the house through the kitchen. Or it could have been Tyler, and he could have simply come in the back door and claimed he was sitting on the porch. Or Amanda, who came in through the front.

I went down the steps and turned around to study the side of the house and as I suspected, the lattice from the porch ran all the way up the side of the house, covering a good quarter of it. Justin’s window was right in the middle of the latticework, and it extended all the way to the corner of the house to my left and stopped just before the hall bathroom window on the right.

I stepped closer, carefully scanning the ground on the off chance there was a footprint, but the ground cover was thick and even if there had been prints in the small spots of dirt, the storm would have washed them away. When I reached the wall, I grabbed a slat of the lattice and gave it a tug. Most lattice was decorative and eventually rotted in our environment, but this was thick and solid and appeared to be constructed from a hard resin rather than wood. I pulled myself up a couple of feet, and while it shook with my body weight, it stayed flat against the house and didn’t show any signs of instability.

I jumped back down, pulled out my phone, and took a couple shots of everything so I’d have a reference after we left. The lattice definitely made the climb down doable, but it was still dangerous, especially in a storm. One slip or one weak slat and they would have hit the ground. Given some of the sizable tree roots I spotted right below the window, a fall could have been deadly. The bottom line was that going out that window to avoid detection had been a huge risk. So was the intruder a foolish risk-taker or desperate?

I was leaning toward desperate.

I headed back inside, hoping to locate a coffeepot and get a brew going. With any luck, Corndog and Petunia would still be wearing their earplugs and I wouldn’t wake them. But as soon as I reached the front entry, I could smell coffee brewing. Despite the early hour, the couple was already dressed and hard at work in the kitchen, but then I supposed one could awake with all that energy if they got in enough sleep. Living with a lack of paranoia was a blessing when it came to rest. But not so much when it came to self-preservation—at least not in my case.

“Good morning,” Corndog said as I walked in. “You look like you could use a cup of coffee, if you don’t mind my saying it.”

“You can say whatever you like as long as I get a cup,” I said and slipped onto a barstool at the kitchen counter, where Petunia was making homemade biscuits.

“Was the bed not comfortable?” Petunia asked, looking concerned.

“It’s not that. I’m just not good at sleeping away from home. Heck, I’m not all that good at sleeping at home. But we had some events last night.”

I looked back and lowered my voice. “As soon as the other guests leave, I’ll fill you in, but you’ll be missing a pitcher of fruit punch. I can explain that later.”

Both their eyebrows went up, and I could tell they were itching for me to tell them everything now, but we couldn’t risk being overheard. My caution proved out a minute later when Nicole walked in. She hesitated just for a second before easing onto the stool beside me.

“I see I’m not the only one on an early coffee journey,” she said.

I nodded. “Too much excitement combined with rich food, entirely too much sugar, and more alcohol than I normally have.”

“Which is also sugar, much to my dismay,” she said. “I’ve been lying there for an hour now, trying to force myself back to sleep, but I finally gave up. I thought I’d sneak in and get a pot going, but I see you actually beat me to it.”

“Corndog and Petunia did,” I said and held up my cup. “I’m just on my first. How is Brittany? Did the fruit punch come out of her hair?”

Petunia gave a start and stopped working on her dough. “What happened?”

“Aunt Gertie had a bit of a blunder,” I said and sighed. “The aunts were wandering the house last night—unbeknownst to me—trying to capture a ghost on camera. They heard someone moving around when they were in the kitchen, and Brittany came in wearing a white robe right after the power went out and Aunt Gertie thought she was a ghost. Apparently, she decided blessing the fruit punch she was holding and tossing it onto her would properly expel her from the house.”

Corndog and Petunia both stared at me for a couple seconds, then Corndog chuckled.

“That aunt of yours is a pistol,” he said. “But don’t you worry about that fruit punch. She was trying to protect my house, and I can appreciate the sentiment if not the outcome.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Unfortunately, I’m not certain others involved were as amused. I cleaned up the mess in the kitchen, but I’m afraid I’m on the hook for a robe and a hairdresser.”

Nicole gave me a sympathetic smile. “Brittany’s hair is fine. If she’d sat around like that for hours then there might have been problems given her light hair color, but she went straight into the shower. The robe is questionable, but nothing for you to worry about. It was actually mine. We’re always borrowing each other’s things. Have done since we were kids. I accidentally packed two and she didn’t pack any, so… ”

“Seems like you two would have made better sisters than her and Amanda,” I said.

Nicole laughed. “We always thought so. But it would have been nice if Amanda had played the fashion game. Then we could have had three times the closet options, not just two. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take this coffee with me upstairs and get my things together. I know Daniel wants us all out of here early. If I don’t see you again, Rose, it was nice meeting you. I hope you and your aunts enjoy the rest of your vacation.”

I nodded and she headed out. I could see Corndog and Petunia were practically ready to burst wondering what the real story behind the fruit punch was, but I couldn’t risk telling them.

“When they clear out,” I said quietly, and they both nodded.