Two Scoops of Murder (Felicity Bell Book 2) Page 13

  She immediately raised her husband from his slumber and when he stared at her as if she’d lost her mind, she repeated, “Someone’s being murdered!”

  Grumbling, he rose and phoned reception. A sleepy male voice answered and when he told the man a murder was taking place in the room directly above theirs, it was obvious that the news was badly received, for the phone was immediately thrown on the hook.

  “Such lousy service!” Mrs. Thomson vociferated, then pointed to the phone. “Call 911. And don’t give me that look. This is murder, I simply know it is!”

  Her husband directed a pointed look at the nightstand, where an Agatha Christie was lying open on page thirty-one, but gave in and dialed 911. The operator didn’t hang up the phone, though she did seem a little skeptical when she announced that she would send a unit by.

  Five minutes later, dressed in her nightgown, Mrs. Thomson descended the stairs to the lobby to await the patrol car. A young man emerged from the small room behind the reception desk, rubbing his eyes. “Evening, ma’am. Anything I can do for you?”

  “Not you,” she said huffily and tripped over to the door to stare out.

  “Pardon?”

  “Lousy service,” she muttered under her breath and left it at that.

  Moments later a car did pull up and a gangly policeman strutted over, hiking up his pants. He didn’t exactly inspire confidence, but then this was Happy Bays, not New York City. The moment the officer entered she launched into her story and ignored the receptionist’s muffled chortle. The cop, to his credit, didn’t burst into chuckles, but asked the receptionist which room was directly above the Thomsons.

  “Mrs. Long,” said the young man cheerily. Then, as he realized the implication, he blanched and brought a hand to his freckled face. “Oh, no!”

  As the realization hit that in a household where the husband has just been murdered it isn’t all that unlikely for the wife to meet the same fate, things suddenly moved very quickly indeed. Moments later the three of them were pounding up the stairs, and mere seconds had elapsed before they were hurrying down the corridor to the room in question.

  The cop ordered Mrs. Thomson to stand back, then entered the room with the receptionist. Mrs. Thomson, who’d never let a man order her around before in her life and wasn’t about to do so now, followed on their heels. When she saw Mrs. Long lying on the floor of her bedroom, eyes wide open and staring into nothingness, she fought two conflicting emotions. One of horror and sadness at the fate that had befallen her hostess, the other of satisfaction that she’d been right all along.

  Chapter 41

  Night had fallen and Felicity was having a nightmare. She dreamed that something had happened to Rick—that he’d come under fire from a terrorist outfit in Paris and had been gunned down. The outfit, a small posse of white-bearded maniacs in red hats, belonged to a religious cult called The Santas. They claimed they were the real Santas as opposed to the false ones posing in department stores.

  And since Rick had dressed up as Santa for a piece he was doing on the holidays, he’d insulted their religious beliefs and had to die.

  The last image impressed upon her retina before she awoke with a start was the lead terrorist, pumping out bullets from his submachine gun, all the while uttering his battle cry of ‘ho ho ho!’ and Rick lying on the floor, surrounded by Christmas presents and being nuzzled by a reindeer wondering what was going on.

  She sat bolt upright in bed and realized it wasn’t the terrorist crying ‘ho ho ho’ but the ringing phone on the nightstand that had awakened her. She picked it up and blinked to read the display. Stephen Fossick. What did he want in the middle of the night?

  She pressed the green button and hoarsely rasped, “Yes?”

  “Fe! If you’re not at the Happy Bays Inn already, get your butt over there right this minute!”

  “Why? What’s the emergency?”

  “Haven’t you heard? Mary Long has been murdered.”

  Sleep disappeared as if wiped away with a squeegee. “What?!”

  “Bludgeoned to death. Better get over there if you want to catch the scoop.”

  One minute later, still a little bleary-eyed, she was waking up Alice, who was sucking her thumb and apparently dreaming sweet dreams of her Hollywood hunk, for the moment she jerked awake, she muttered, “I love you too, Reece.”

  “Get up, honey,” she urged. “Mary Long’s been murdered.”

  It was a testament to Alice’s remarkable capacity for deep sleep that she muttered, “She can’t be murdered. We haven’t interviewed her yet.”

  “Well, it’s too late for that now, unless you can talk to the dead.”

  Alice was unperturbed. “Wouldn’t that be something? We could solve any murder. Just have a little chat with the murder victim.”

  “Let’s go, sleepyhead.”

  “Gotta notify the team,” she muttered as she crawled out of bed.

  Felicity admired the Hello Kitty pajamas. “Team? What team?”

  “You know, the team. We’re a team now, honey, remember?” She counted on her fingers. “You and me, the holy trinity, and Reece.”

  Felicity’s eyebrows rose. “You’re gonna drag Reece out of bed?”

  “Sure thing. He wanted to be on the team, he has to do what we do.” She searched around for her pants, then started dragging them on over her pajama bottoms. “This is the real world, Reece Hudson, no movie set. In the real world detectives get out of bed at an ungodly hour—what time is it anyway—Christ! It’s only one o’clock!”

  Felicity stared at her friend, hands on her hips. “Yeah, terrible, isn’t it? Why couldn’t that murderer have waited until tomorrow? So inconsiderate.”

  Alice got the gist. “Poor Mary. Who would want to kill that nice old lady?” She flapped her arms. “And who’s next on the hit list? This town is turning into a den of violent crime!” She wagged a finger. “We need to put a stop to this, Fe. This is getting out of hand.”

  Felicity couldn’t agree more. She just hoped Reece’s father would have that chat with Chief Whitehouse soon, so they could finally be a more active part of the investigation. While they both stumbled down to the living room, Alice was already on the phone, alerting the other members of the team that stirring events had taken place.

  As they were racing out the door, she said, “They’ll meet us there.”

  “Reece too?”

  Alice hesitated. “I haven’t called him yet.”

  “Probably for the best,” opined Felicity as she fired up the van’s old engine. With a few coughs it sputtered to life and they were off in the direction of the inn.

  Alice stared out the windshield morosely, then turned to Felicity. “Maybe you can call him. I mean, we can’t simply exclude him, you know. He told us he wants to be a part of this so we need to keep him informed.”

  “All right,” huffed Felicity as she snatched the phone from Alice’s hand. She pressed connect and grimaced when Reece’s sleepy voice came on. “Someone here to talk to you,” she grumbled, then pressed the phone against Alice’s ear.

  Alice gave her a dark frown, then caroled into the phone, “Reece! Hi! It’s, um, it’s Alice. Remember me? Alice Whitehouse? The girl who mistook you for a pigman? Haha.” She swallowed. “There’s been another murder and I was just wondering if—just thinking that—just—”

  Felicity, tiring of this charade, snatched the phone from her friend’s hand. “Mary Long’s been bludgeoned to death. The team is meeting at the inn in five minutes.”

  “Damn, that’s terrible!” the man said. “I’ll be there in three.”

  She blinked, surprised at the crispness of his voice. From asleep to wide awake in seconds flat. She didn’t know how he did it. “See you there,” she said curtly, then disconnected. Feeling Alice’s cold stare, she asked, “What? If I’d let you handle it, it would have taken forever. Time is of the essence here, hon.”

  Alice shook her head. “I hate it when you do that.”

  “Do w
hat?”

  “Act like you’re my older sister.”

  Felicity grinned. She’d never actually seen Alice’s vulnerable side. She reached out and patted her head before Alice swiped her hand away.

  “I hate you,” Alice grumbled.

  “Yeah, yeah. I love you too. Now let’s solve a murder, shall we?”

  An unintelligible sound came from Alice’s throat which she interpreted as a yes.

  She stomped down on the accelerator and raced through town at a healthy clip, her lips tight and her face set. This was her town, she thought, and no one had the right to start killing off its inhabitants.

  “Fe?”

  “Mh?”

  “Let’s catch ourselves a killer.”

  She grunted her approval. “Let’s, indeed.”

  Chapter 42

  “So where did you find him?” Virgil asked, tapping his notebook with his pencil. He directed an inquisitive stare at the Brit seated in front of him. The young man looked disheveled, his sallow face liberally sprinkled with pimples and his carrot-colored hair pointing in all directions.

  “I dunno, mate. I was just passing by, going for a gasper, when I saw this bloke passed out, innit? At least I thought he was passed out. Then when I tried to wake him up—”

  “Why did you want to wake him?”

  “Because I thought he would get cold, lying out here in the middle of the night. Freeze his nuts off, if you catch my drift.”

  Virgil caught the man’s drift, all right. What he didn’t catch was why a guest of the hotel would wake up in the middle of the night and go for a smoke. Highly suspicious, he felt. “Do you always go for a smoke in the middle of the night?” he asked, putting some bite into his tone.

  “Yes. Yes, I do, gov,” the man said. “Though I don’t usually have the leisure to breathe this pure ocean air. See, where I come from—”

  “And where might that be?”

  “Manchester, England. Like I said, back home all I can breathe is the stinkin’ factory fumes, see. And I usually do my smoking indoors.”

  Virgil wrinkled his nose. He wasn’t keen on smoking to begin with and looked askance at people who smoked indoors, thereby rendering the air unbreathable to non-smokers. He decided to let it go. There were more important matters to deal with at the moment.

  They were holed up in the small conference room next to the dining room, and this Sully Parker was the first guest of the inn he’d interviewed who seemed to have some information to impart. The others had all proved useless. He scribbled down a note and returned to his line of questioning.

  “So you tried to wake up Rob Long and then what happened?”

  “Well, I didn’t know his name was Rob Long, innit?”

  “I’m sure you didn’t.”

  Young Mr. Parker nodded, satisfied that this copper he was talking to was jotting down his exact words and not concocting some sort of mockery of his statement. “Well, I shook him, innit? And he didn’t stir, innit? So I shook him harder, innit? And then finally he woke up and told me to bugger off and so I did, innit?”

  Virgil, who had trouble grasping the exact meaning of the word ‘innit’, nevertheless felt he had heard enough. “And this was at what time exactly?”

  “Oneish.”

  Virgil cocked an eyebrow. “Can you be more specific, Mr. Parker?”

  “One fifteen,” the man specified. “I remember because I was thinking about having a second ciggy and when I took out my pack to see how many I got left, my phone fell out and I happened to see the time.”

  Virgil jotted down this last piece of information with a flourish, dotting the Is and crossing the Ts. This was one fine way of conducting an investigation. Two suspects could be scratched off his list. “Thank you, Mr. Parker,” he said. “That’ll be all.”

  “Thank you, mate. I’m free to go now, eh?”

  What part of ‘that will be all’ the man didn’t understand, Virgil didn’t know, but he obliged the Englishman. “Yes, you may go now, sir.”

  The man tapped an imaginary cap and pottered off.

  With a sigh, Virgil looked around the small conference room and called out, “Next!”

  After finding Mrs. Long unresponsive the medical examiner who’d been summoned to the scene had declared her dead from a blow to the head with what appeared to be some sort of blunt instrument. Chief Whitehouse, not too well pleased with this second homicide on his turf, had immediately ordered Virgil to cordon off the room and gather everyone present in the downstairs dining room for questioning.

  This had proved rather difficult, for most of the guests of the inn had been asleep in their respective beds. Nevertheless, with the help of the receptionist, young Jack Barnes, they had managed to rouse the inn and herd the guests into the dining room.

  He checked his list. Five down, three more to go. So far no one had noticed anything out of the ordinary, except of course the Thomsons. He praised Mrs. Thomson’s tenacity in following through on her initial suspicion and had already personally commended her for being so quick to respond.

  A tall man with white hair stumbled in, and he recognized him as Mr. Alan Shaw, one of the inn regulars. He usually stayed here once or twice a year and spent the entire vacation fishing. Judging from his red-rimmed eyes the man hadn’t had nearly enough sleep. But then no one had.

  “Mr. Shaw? Please take a seat, sir. This won’t take long and then you can go right back to bed.”

  The old man, face haggard, shuffled toward him and took a seat on the opposing chair. He leaned forward. “Is it true? Is it really true?”

  Virgil closed his eyes and nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Poor woman. That poor, poor woman.”

  Virgil expelled a sigh, indicating he shared the man’s sentiments. “Did you notice anything suspicious, Mr. Shaw? A noise perhaps? Some altercation? I see that your room is directly adjacent to Mrs. Long’s?”

  “It is.” The man stared at him, wide-eyed. “What will happen to the inn now that the Longs are both gone?”

  “I assume the family will take ownership. Mr. and Mrs. Long have—had two children.”

  “I know. I’ve seen them around.”

  “Of course you have.” He tapped his notebook. “But let’s not get distracted from the main issue. Did you or did you not hear any suspicious noises, or anything that could shed light on our investigation into the murder of Mrs. Long?”

  The man’s eyes widened. “So she was murdered, was she?”

  “I’m afraid she was. Cold-blooded murder.”

  “I thought perhaps—when I saw the ambulance arrive—perhaps a heart attack. What with the husband and all…” His voice trailed off and he blinked. “What were you saying, officer?”

  “Mh? Oh. Ah. Yes.” He tapped his notebook again, his way of forcing a wandering mind back to the issue. “Any suspicious noises?”

  Mr. Shaw creased his brow into a deep frown. “Well, I did hear a loud banging noise just before the ambulance arrived. I think it’s what woke me up in the first place.”

  “Mh. Yes. That was me, I’m afraid. I was trying to rouse Mrs. Long. And before that?”

  The man shook his head. “I was asleep.” He clasped his hands nervously. “Can you imagine? To be sound asleep with a murderer only a few feet away from your bed? Terrible!”

  “Yes, well, it’s better not to dwell too much on that, Mr. Shaw. You will only drive yourself crazy if you do.”

  The man’s eyes widened. “How did she die? Not too painfully I should hope?”

  “She was bludgeoned to death with a blunt object,” Virgil said pointedly, briefly forgetting his own advice not to dwell too much on the gruesomeness of having a murderer in the next room going about his business.

  The man stared at him, visibly aghast. “That’s horrible!”

  “Yes, it is not a very nice way to go,” Virgil agreed. He nodded thoughtfully, putting a tick next to Mr. Shaw’s name. “Will you be all right, Mr. Shaw? Or do you wish to change ro
oms, perhaps? Our people will be up there for quite a bit, ferreting out clues and whatnot.”

  “No, I’m fine,” the old man said with a weak smile. “I will pop in my earplugs. Always sleep like a baby with my earplugs.”

  Virgil smiled. “Thank you for talking to me, Mr. Shaw, and I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “No inconvenience. We must do what we can to catch the maniac.”

  “Yes, we must. Well, that’ll be all, then, sir. Have a good night.”

  “Yes, yes…” Mr. Shaw said vaguely and started for the door. Then, before he left, he turned around. “I hope the Longs keep this place. I’ve been coming here for forty years. Never missed a trip. Would be a shame to see the place close down.”

  “Yes, it would,” agreed Virgil. He didn’t know what would happen to the Happy Bays Inn, but it would definitely be a pity if it were to be sold. He glanced at his list. Only two more guests. And if they didn’t yield any new information things weren’t looking very good. As Chief Whitehouse had indicated it was almost as if whoever was committing these murders was a professional. But why would a professional killer target the Longs of all people?

  He shook his head and called out, “Next!”

  He was surprised to find Alice Whitehouse enter and not the Potters as was indicated on his list. He frowned. “What are you doing here?”

  “Nice to see you too, Virgil,” Alice said amiably, and took a seat.

  He gazed at her, surprised at her audacity. “Please vacate that chair, Miss Whitehouse. You know very well I’m in the middle of a police investigation and won’t be disturbed by civilians butting in.”

  “I’m not butting in,” she said. “I’m just offering my help solving this case.” She gestured to the notebook. “Any suspects? Leads? Anything?”

  His face was gradually reddening, as it always did when he encountered this meddling girl. “Please leave now. I still have two more people to interview.”