Chapter 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Holy crap! The last thing I wanted was to be caught at the pool with them. I popped up from my chair, startling Nicole and Morgan.

“Sorry. Got an emergency at work and need to go call my boss.”

I put my phone on silent and hurried off to the hot tub, where I filled Gertie in and told her to switch to the other side so that her back was to the friends. Then I headed toward the pool entrance, shifting behind the bar at the last minute when I was certain the friends were no longer watching. The bartender didn’t even raise an eyebrow as I put my phone to my ear and slipped around the pool screens until I was positioned close enough behind the friends that I should be able to hear anything that happened.

My phone signaled another text.

On his way to the pool.

I texted back.

Took cover and had Gertie turn around. Stay out of sight.

I got back the thumbs-up just as Bryce strode out of the hotel and into the pool area. He locked right in on the friends and stomped their way. Morgan spotted him and mumbled something I couldn’t hear to the rest of them and all their heads whipped around to stare. I had to assume the ME had been as good as his word because Bryce looked as though he’d sucked on lemons. His face and neck were flushed red, and I could tell he was clenching his jaw.

“There’s been a change,” he said. “The ME has declared Justin’s death suspicious, so this is now a homicide investigation.”

There was a sharp intake of breath by several of them, and they all looked shocked and more than a little scared.

Daniel sat forward and stared at Bryce. “You can’t possibly think one of us killed him.”

“Of course I do,” Bryce said. “Unless you think it makes more sense for some old couple running a B and B to go around murdering clientele.”

“No…I…” Daniel fumbled for words, clearly shaken. “You’re positive it’s murder? I thought it was an allergic reaction.”

“It was, but someone suffocated him just to be sure,” Bryce said. “So now is the time to come clean and maybe get some leniency.”

They looked at one another, eyes wide, but no one said a word.

“Fine,” Bryce said. “Who had chocolates with them?”

They remained quiet and I wondered if anyone was going to speak up, but finally Morgan said, “Tyler brought chocolates.”

Tyler jumped out of his chair and glared at Morgan. “They didn’t have peanut butter in them, and I brought them for Nicole, not Justin.”

“He’s right,” Nicole said. “The chocolates he brought me were filled with more chocolate and that’s it. I still have some. ”

“Please go get them. My deputy will come with you.”

He motioned to a skinny, scared-looking guy who’d been lurking in the background and the deputy hurried after Nicole.

“So no one has anything to confess?” Bryce asked, looking around the group.

Daniel shook his head, now clearly angry. “This is absurd. That door was locked from the inside! Tyler and I had to break it down the next morning. How in the world could someone have suffocated Justin when he was locked inside alone?”

I knew Bryce didn’t have an answer to that riddle any more than I did, but he just shoved his hands in his pockets and stood there, his gaze locked on Daniel’s, pretending he knew something they didn’t. It was a common cop ploy and worked on plenty of people, but I knew it wouldn’t fly with Amanda.

“Are you arresting anyone?” Amanda asked.

Bryce smiled. “The attorney, right?”

“That’s correct, and I’d like to remind all my friends that you shouldn’t say anything without representation. If the sheriff would like to question us further, then it can be done at the sheriff’s department and with counsel present.”

Bryce snorted. “If you’re innocent, you don’t have anything to worry about.”

None of them looked convinced, and I couldn’t blame them. As soon as Bryce found someone to railroad for this, he was going to snap on the cuffs and call it done.

Nicole hurried back out with the deputy, who had the chocolates in an evidence bag. He nodded to Bryce, who pulled out his phone and looked at the display. When he smiled, I knew if something had made him happy, it was going to be bad for everyone else.

He looked over at Tyler. “Tyler Dow, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Justin Barbet.”

He motioned to Tyler to stand .

“What?” Tyler jumped up, his eyes wide. “You can’t do this. I didn’t do anything!”

“Motive, opportunity…” Bryce shook the evidence bag. “And now that I have the delivery system in hand, I think I’ve got a pretty good case.”

“If I could walk through walls, you mean?” Tyler protested.

“Shut up, Tyler,” Amanda said. “Don’t say a word. Not a single one. I’ll get you an attorney. I mean it. Not. A. Word.”

Tyler gave her a stunned look as it finally hit him that he was really being arrested. But what I didn’t know was if he was shocked to be arrested for a murder he hadn’t committed or if he was shocked that he’d committed what he thought was the perfect crime and been caught.

While the deputy placed the cuffs on Tyler, I eased back to the entrance and slipped inside the hotel and around the corner behind a vending machine. I waited until Bryce walked by with Tyler and the deputy, then peered around and spotted them leaving the hotel. I hurried out to the pool wearing my surprised look.

“Did I just see the sheriff taking Tyler out of the hotel in handcuffs?” I asked.

Amanda nodded, a grim look on her face.

“Oh my God,” I said. “I’m so sorry. What the heck is he thinking?”

“He’s thinking motive and opportunity,” Morgan said.

“He’s not the only person who isn’t sad Justin is gone,” Amanda said. “And since none of us can walk through locked doors, his opportunity is no better than the rest of ours.”

Brittany bit her lower lip. “Do you think they’ll charge him? I mean, with the whole locked door thing…”

Amanda shrugged. “That sheriff is a loose cannon. Nothing would surprise me. If those chocolates Tyler bought for Nicole match what was found in Justin’s stomach, then probably. ”

“But if Tyler doctored a chocolate to try to kill Justin, that means he kept some back from the bag in order to do so,” Brittany said. “Doesn’t that make it premeditated?”

Amanda blew out a breath. “A case could be made for it, yeah.”

Brittany paled. “But that could mean the death penalty.”

Amanda nodded.

Brittany’s hand flew over her mouth. “Oh my God.”

Daniel put his arm around his wife, but it was clear that his Cloak of Control was slipping. Nicole looked as if she was going to be ill. Morgan, as always, looked deep in thought.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

“No,” Amanda said as she rose. “There’s nothing any of us can do. Except me. I’m going to call a friend and get him down here before Tyler ignores my advice and runs his mouth.”

She hurried off and the rest of them rose and silently set off after her.

As soon as they cleared out, Gertie, who’d remained in the hot tub the entire time, waved.

“Can you help me out of here?” she said. “I think I’m waterlogged. Everything is weak.”

“It’s no wonder,” I said as I strode over and helped pull her out. “You’ve been in hot water with those jets on you for an hour now. You might not get your legs back until tomorrow.”

“Serves you right,” Ida Belle said as she hurried up to grab Gertie’s other shoulder. “Now you know how I felt, except worse. I saw them hauling Tyler out. What happened?”

We sat Gertie in a lawn chair to recover and I filled Ida Belle in on what I’d overheard. When I was done, she shook her head.

“What do you think Bryce got in that text?”

“I don’t know. If I had to guess I’d say they lifted a fingerprint of Tyler’s in Justin’s bedroom. ”

“Well, he was at the top of our list, wasn’t he?”

I shook my head. “Something about it doesn’t feel right.”

“Uh-oh,” Gertie said. “Well, you better figure out what it is before Bryce railroads his next victim.”

“I think that’s going to be harder than one might think,” Ida Belle said. “Bryce still has to explain how the door was locked and the only key inside. And then there’s the small matter of how they got in as well. Do you really think Justin would have let Tyler into his room?”

“If he wanted to taunt him, maybe,” I said. “But then one would think Morgan would have heard them. Justin was drunk. He probably wouldn’t have been quiet about it.”

“Maybe Corndog is wrong and there is another key somewhere,” Gertie said.

“But how could one of them have known about it and gotten hold of it if Corndog isn’t even aware of one?” I asked. “Besides, they didn’t even know which room Justin would be in before they got there, so unless they found one of these mythical keys for every door, I just don’t see how it could have happened that way.”

“What about a 3D printer?” Gertie asked.

“Maybe,” I said, “but how would they have gotten it into the house without someone noticing? They all had overnight bags when they left. None of them was carrying something large enough to hold a printer.”

“Maybe one of them visited the island before,” Gertie said. “Corndog said he leaves the keys in the door. If one of them stayed previously, they could have brought a printer then and made copies of all the keys if the place wasn’t occupied, which would be fairly easy to do in the winter and midweek.”

Ida Belle shook her head. “That means they’d have to have visited twice before. Once to even learn about the keys and again to haul in a printer. And talk about premeditated. ”

I pulled out my phone and called Corndog. He put Petunia on speaker, and I told him about Tyler’s arrest.

“But we’re still stumped on the locked room,” I said. “Did any of that group stay with you before this week?”

“No,” Petunia said. “And I have an eye and mind for faces and names. I would have remembered if they had.”

“Do you think that young man did it?” Corndog asked.

“I wish I knew. Clearly one of them did. I just don’t know how.”

I disconnected and slumped into a chair, running all the information through my head. Tyler fit—he’d brought the chocolates; he had a multilayered history with Justin and none of it pleasant. But there was something about his reaction when Bryce said he was arresting him that looked like genuine bewilderment. And I hadn’t learned anything about his past that led me to believe he was that good an actor.

“If Tyler did it, then it was Brittany looking for that earring,” Ida Belle said.

I nodded. “Probably so. Maybe she went in there to try to convince Justin to pay the money he owed.”

“But what about the lipstick on the pillow?” Gertie asked. “Won’t Bryce go through the evidence now and see it? Surely he’ll test it for DNA.”

“He should, but since he has his patsy, I’m not convinced he will,” I said. “And even if it came back with Brittany’s DNA, it doesn’t prove anything except that she was in Justin’s bed. Unless Bryce finds out about Justin scamming Daniel, he doesn’t have motive. Tyler is the easy pick given that Justin tried to frame him for assault, and all of Tyler’s accusations to that point would be part of police record.”

“Which Bryce could easily access given the current situation,” Ida Belle said. “Good Lord. That boy doesn’t have a chance with Bryce running this investigation. ”

“Maybe he did it,” Gertie said.

“Maybe,” I said. But something didn’t feel right.

Gertie and Ida Belle headed up to our room—Gertie to shower and change and Ida Belle to rinse her feet as she said the chlorine was already drying her skin out. I was too restless to sit closed up in our room, so I went for a jog around the hotel. Exercise was one of the best ways to shake my mind loose when I had a big messy ball of stuff to unwind.

I made two complete circles around the facility and on my third, I spotted Amanda on the smoking porch with her vape. And she was alone. I knew Morgan was the thinker in the group, but Amanda was the observer and from what I’d seen, she didn’t miss anything. If anyone could have planned a murder and gotten away with it, my money was on her. But I still hadn’t produced motive for her and my gut told me she hadn’t done it.

I slowed to a walk and headed toward the hotel, as if I was just ending my run, and then lifted my head as I approached the porch and pretended to just then spot Amanda. I gave her a nod and headed over and plopped on the bench next to her.

“Back on the vaping, I see,” I said.

She nodded. “I know it’s horrible for me, but it’s my stress crutch.”

“Plenty to be stressed about right now. I’m really sorry you guys are going through this. That sheriff is an idiot. Maybe he’s wrong about everything.”

Amanda shook her head. “I don’t think he’s wrong about Justin’s death being a murder. The ME would have made that call, and he’s a hack as well—I did my research—but someone suffocated Justin after he had an allergic reaction. Helped things along, if you will. My attorney friend debriefed me earlier and his undergrad is premed, so he can read an autopsy report better than most.”

“Oh my God. So Tyler really did it?”

She took a drag off her vape and slowly blew it out, staring across the parking lot. For several long, silent seconds, she didn’t speak or even blink, then finally she shook her head.

“That’s the problem,” she said. “I know he didn’t. I went back downstairs that night after everyone had gone to bed. To smoke, of course. I headed for the back porch, but he was already there. I didn’t feel like talking so I went to the front. I went back in a couple different times—once to grab water from the library and a couple of times to hit the bathroom. I checked every time—I’m not even sure why—and he hadn’t moved. He was on that porch when Justin was killed. The time of death is a fairly narrow window.”

I processed that information, then attempted to act as ‘Rose’ would have received it and stared at her, mouth dropped and eyes wide. “Then you need to tell the sheriff. He’ll have to let Tyler go.”

She pinned her gaze on me. “And then he’ll arrest someone else. And I would have made it happen.”

“Oh! Jesus. I hadn’t thought about that. So you really think one of you…I mean…”

She blew out a breath. “I wish I didn’t, but yeah, it doesn’t seem that there’s any other option. Corndog and Petunia don’t strike me as serial killers, and there’s a limited number of suspects, so here we are.”

“Do you know—never mind.”

“Who did it? I have my suspicions. But I have no proof. The only thing I’m certain of is that it wasn’t Tyler.” She gave me a small smile. “Or me. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to call my attorney friend and discuss this with him. I didn’t want to tell him until I’d mulled it over, but I’m afraid mulling hasn’t produced a solution.”

“I’m really sorry. Let me know if I can do anything.”

She nodded and headed off. I stared across the parking lot, factoring what she’d said into what I already knew. I still thought it was Brittany who had left the earring and likely the lipstick imprint and gone out the window, but had she also been the killer? Or had she gone into Justin’s room for another reason and the killer was someone completely different?

I sighed. No matter what, I still had a locked door problem because even if Justin had let the killer in, he definitely hadn’t let them out.

I watched as one of the hotel employees approached her car. It beeped as she drew near, and she opened the rear door and popped a backpack inside. When she leaned over, her keys fell out of her shirt pocket and onto the pavement. She cursed and grabbed the keys up before jumping in her car and pulling away.

I laughed out loud. What an idiot I’d been.

But now I knew how the killer had gotten out of the locked room.