A Candidate For Murder (Old Maids of Mercer Island Mysteries Book 2) (26 page)

I slipped into the office and called David. He agreed to have a police car stationed at my back door and offered to come and sleep in the study himself once they had processed Roger’s arrest.

A half hour later, the breakfast room was filled with guests milling about and chatting. Goldie and Ben knocked on the door off the breakfast room, and I let them in.

“Any news on the big case?” Goldie whispered to me as she stepped through the door. “I heard sirens a little bit ago.”

“Uh…, actually, Roger Romero was just arrested.”

“Who’s that?” she said. “I don’t know him.”

“Isn’t he that security expert?” Ben asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “It appears that Roger was involved, although we don’t know to what extent. But he
is
the one who tampered with our security system, allowing the thief to get in to steal Ahab.”

“Someone should hang him from the rafters,” Goldie said with venom. “That’s a low-down thing to do…steal a bird. I’m just glad you’re okay, Julia, and that Ahab is back.”

“Did you ever get your gun back?” I asked, hoping she hadn’t.

“Absolutely,” Ben said. “It’s our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. We’re not going to let the police take that away.”

“Of course not,” I agreed. “But perhaps you should have it checked out. It did seem to go off awfully easily.”

I inadvertently glanced at my wall, where I’d hung an arrangement of collectible plates to cover the pellet holes.

“The plates look nice,” Goldie said. “But if I were you, I’d get that son-of-a-bitch they just arrested to pay to have your ceiling fixed.”

The three of us glanced up. Ben’s eyes opened wide. “Nice shooting, Goldie.”

“Humpf,” she grunted. “So how long do you have to put up with her highness?” she asked, meaning Dana.

I sighed. “Just until tomorrow or the next day. Her husband will be back.”

“Too bad for you,” She glanced around. “Are those good-looking detectives here?” Goldie quickly raised her eyebrows and glanced around.

“They were, but they’re downtown now, booking Roger.”

“You and that older guy…you’re a thing, huh?” she said with a lascivious grin.

“C’mon, Goldie, let’s get something to eat,” Ben said. He took her elbow and guided her away, giving me a sympathetic look.

I smiled and closed and locked the door, just as Rudy came up behind me. “I think they’re ready in the other room,” she said.

I nodded. “Okay.” I clapped my hands to get everyone’s attention around me. “We’re ready to start.”

People started moving slowly into the living room, where we had extra chairs set up around the perimeter. I turned out lights as I moved into the hallway. We purposely left on the night lights plugged in along the hallways, just in case someone had to go down the hall to the restroom. Then I locked the front door, just in case.

In the living room, we left one hurricane lamp on in the corner, giving off a soft glow. Willow was seated at my antique library table, her hands placed flat on the surface in front of her. Frankie was manning two computer screens at the table next to the fireplace, while Jason sat on a stool. Shorty stood next to him with some kind of meter in his hand.

“Welcome, everyone,” Jason said in a deeply melodic voice. “My name is Jason Spears. This is my wife, Willow,” he said gesturing to his right. “That’s Frankie back there on the computers, and Shorty has the EVP recorder, which can record audible ghost phenomena. We are the Salem Paranormal Investigation Team, or S.P.I.T., and we hunt ghosts.” There was a mixture of murmurs and chuckles around the room at the acronym. “My wife is a medium,” Jason said. “She can speak to the dead and entice them to appear. That’s our goal tonight. We ask that you stay calm and relaxed. Afterwards, if you’re interested, I’ll be signing some of my books,” he said, gesturing to another table. The wind smacked a branch against one of the windows, and Jason turned. “Seems we have the perfect night for a haunt,” he said with a smile.

A woman by the window suddenly shrieked. Everyone turned, but she slapped the hand of the man next to her. “Sorry,” she said. “He pinched me.”

“Please,” Jason said. “We need all of you to concentrate. I know many of you are skeptical, but we’ve had some success with this in the past. Let’s give it a try. Now, here’s what I want you to know. Often, if a ghost is nearby, the temperature will drop. Sometimes, batteries in use will drain.”

“Because they draw off the energy?” a young man asked.

“That’s right. And you might see what we call an orb. It’s a little ball of light. Sometimes, we don’t see it with the naked eye, but we’ll see it later on one of the cameras. We also have an infrared camera, which detects heat and turns it into an electronic image. So we can sometimes get an actual image of a ghost that can’t be seen by the naked eye.” He turned to his wife. “Willow will try to contact the spirits known to frequent the Inn. I understand that John St. Claire’s wife, Elizabeth, is still here, along with their daughter, Chloe. Is that right, Mrs. Applegate?”

My cell phone began to play
Rock Around the Clock
, just as I heard my name. I jerked to attention. “Yes, that’s right. And their dog, Max.” I was forced to sacrifice my opportunity to talk about our ghosts so that I could talk to my own ghost. My mother!

I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and clicked it on, turning away from the people closest to me. “What?” I said. “Now’s not a good time, Mother.”

“It’s never a good time with you,” she said. “But there’s a storm coming.”

I glanced out the window to where the trees looked like someone was shaking the life out of them. “What else have you got?”

“Something is about to happen,” she said.

Just then the lights in the living room flickered. Several guests gasped.

“You’re not helping, Mom. I don’t need that right now.”

“Need what?” she said.

“For you to play with the lights.”

“Sorry,” she said. “Not me.”

The lights flickered again. Then they went out and came back on.

“Seriously, Mom, I don’t need your help right now. Stop fooling with the lights. We’re inside and things are fine.”

“Again, not me,” she said. “Be careful. A storm’s coming.”

A huge gust of wind suddenly rattled windows and slammed against the front door. The lights went out and stayed out.

“Damn!” I muttered. “Hold on, everyone,” I called out. “Don’t move. I’ll get some flashlights.”

I used the light from my phone to get to the reception desk where we kept several flashlights for just such occasions. Rudy followed me, so I turned and gave her one and asked her to give one to Jason. April came in from the kitchen carrying a small lantern.

“Can you get some candles?” I asked her.

She nodded and returned to the kitchen. The wind was rattling the upstairs windowpanes and making a whooshing noise that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

And then someone screamed.

I rushed to the living room and elbowed my way through a number of people who had backed into the hallway. I moved up next to Blair. Elizabeth’s hazy outline hovered just in front of Jason, facing me. Elizabeth had her hands to her throat and seemed to be squeezing. She’d done this once before, when she was trying to tell me that Martha had been poisoned.

“She sure is putting on a show tonight,” Blair said, watching her casually.

But there was something about Elizabeth that told me it wasn’t a show. When squeezing her neck didn’t elicit the response she wanted, she turned and walked through the wall into the entryway.

More gasps and screams.

“Are you getting this?” Jason called to Shorty.

“She’s out here!” someone called.

All of a sudden, twenty people herded into the entryway, pushing me back into the breakfast room. Elizabeth was by the front door. I squeezed my way back through the crowd. Once I got to the front of the crowd, she took one look at me and walked through the wall into the library.

“What the heck?” I muttered.

The herd followed her, pushing and shoving their way down the hallway. And there she was in the middle of the library. Once again, as soon as she saw me, she turned and walked through the next wall into my apartment.

“What is she doing?” Blair said behind me.

“I don’t know. But it looks like she wants us to follow her to my apartment.” I inhaled as a thought occurred. “Oh my God. Dana! C’mon!”

I turned and pushed my way through the stunned crowd and ran as fast as I could down the darkened hallway to my apartment. I used my key to open the door and burst inside. A quick check of the apartment revealed what Elizabeth had been trying to tell us.

Dana was gone.

“Where the heck did she go?” Blair exclaimed. We were gathered in the hallway just outside my apartment. Jason had steered everyone else back to the living room.  “Wouldn’t we have seen her leave?”

A heavy blast of wind buffeted the back door. I turned that way, and a thought came to mind. “Wait, she could’ve gone out the back. C’mon.”

We hurried down the hallway and out the back door into a small lot. Only Doe’s Mercedes, Blair’s BMW, and Rudy’s sports car were parked there. The rain had stopped, but the wind blew down the driveway like a train howling through a tunnel, bending the trees in a macabre sort of dance. Lights were out everywhere, leaving us in the dark. The beams from our flashlights cut through the inky blackness, illuminating small swaths of ground as we rotated them back and forth.

“There,” Rudy said. She rushed forward to where Dana’s orange scarf was lying next to a deep tire track in the mud. Rudy picked it up and turned to us.

“That’s her scarf all right,” Blair said with a sneer. “But where is she? And where is that cop car?”

“They’re probably still booking Roger,” I said. The dogs had followed us outside and wandered over to the bushes that hugged the side of the building. For the moment, I ignored them. “Someone must have picked Dana up,” I said, glancing around.

“You mean someone took her,” Rudy said, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth.

Minnie suddenly started to bark, startling us and making Rudy swing her flashlight that way.

“Just ignore her,” I said.

“So, what now?” Blair asked, stamping her feet to warm up. “How do we figure out who took her?”

“I don’t know, but we need to let the police know.” I pulled out my phone and clicked it on. “Damn, the cell tower must be down. I can’t get a signal.”

“What is the deal with that dog?” Blaire snapped, looking over to where Minnie continued to yap incessantly at Mickey.

I flashed my light that way, but all I saw was Mickey’s stocky little butt. It was obvious he’d found something under a bush, and Minnie didn’t like it. “He’s found food, I bet. And Minnie is tattling on him.” I marched over to the side of the house. “Come here, you two.” I reached out for Mickey and pulled him back. The beam from the flashlight caught the corner of a cell phone lying underneath a bush. I pushed him away and picked it up. “It’s Dana’s cell phone.”

“Why was he eating it?” Blair asked, coming up behind me.

I groaned. “Because Dana was eating chicken wings. And now it’s covered in dog slime.”

“Turn it on,” Rudy said. “Maybe you’ll find something.”

I wiped my fingers on my slacks to get rid of the slime and then clicked on the phone. When I swiped the screen, her last text message appeared. “Meet me in the back parking lot,” I read out loud. “We’ll bury our differences, and you can still be mayor.” I looked up at my friends. “It’s from Tony.”

“Morales?” Rudy said. “We need to call the police.”

“But how? I can’t get a call out,” I said. Just then, my own cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and clicked it on. “Julia!” David snapped. “Roger got away!”

“What?”

“He…away.”

“David, your phone is breaking up. What’s happening?”

“The electricity…he…out. We’re in Seattle…looking…him. Stay put…might come back.”

Another blast of frigid air blew through my back lot, nearly blowing me off my feet. Twigs and leaves came with it. I had to lean against Doe’s car to steady myself. I shouted into the phone. “But David, it’s not Roger, it’s Tony. He has Dana!”

“What?” he said.

“Tony Morales has Dana. You have to find them!” And then my phone went dead. I shook it. Pushed buttons. The light stayed on, but there was no signal. “Shoot. It really went out this time. Try your phones!” I shouted.

Everyone pulled out their cell phones, but no one got a signal.

“Now what do we do?” Doe asked, hugging herself. The wind had whipped her hair into a virtual froth, and her crepe blouse was flapping to a quick rhythm.

“Let’s go back inside,” I said. “I’m freezing.”

We returned to the apartment and shut the door. I was shivering so hard, my teeth had begun to chatter. As the four of us tramped down the dark hallway, we met April coming the other way with the small lantern in her hand.

“Dana is gone,” I informed her, rubbing my upper arms to warm up. “We think she’s been kidnapped.”

“I saw something,” she said. “That’s why I came to find you. Here.”

“What’s this?” I asked looking down at a piece of paper she’d handed me.

“As soon as the lights went out, I…started getting something. A string of words in my head.”

In the small halo of light from the lantern, I could see that she was kneading her temple with two fingers as if she were in pain. I looked down at the paper again.

“Watchtower,” I read. “What does that mean?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. But I kept hearing that word over and over in my head, followed by something about the wind howling.”

Her comment reminded me of my mother’s phone call. “I got a call from my Mom earlier. All she said was that a storm was coming.”

“I think we know that already,” Blair said.

“Something about this sounds familiar,” Rudy said, stepping into the light.

“Maybe the Inn is the watchtower,” Doe said, peeking over my shoulder.

“No,” a deep voice said from the hallway behind us. Jason Spears stepped out of the shadows and reached out his hand. “Willow got a message, too. May I?” I gave him April’s note. “Willow got much the same thing,” he said, reading it. “This is from a Jimi Hendrix song.”

“What the hell does Jimi Hendrix have to do with all of this?” Blair demanded.

“It’s from
All Along the Watchtower
,” he replied, turning to her. “There must be some kind of way out of here,” he sang. “Don’t you recognize it?”

“I remember that song,” I said. “Said the joker to the…to the…what?” I said, snapping my fingers trying to quote the next line.

“Thief,” he replied. “Said the joker to the thief. But the last stanza starts with, ‘All along the Watchtower,’ and then ends with, ‘two riders were approaching and the wind began to howl.”

“And Willow got the same message?” I asked.

“Yes,” a light voice said from the darkness.

Willow had appeared quietly behind Jason, her red hair glistening in the low light. Jason stepped aside so that she could move into the circle. She had much the same pained expression that April did. “I heard the lyrics in my head,” she said. “But I don’t know why or what they mean.”

I sighed. “We think our friend has been abducted.”

“She’s the one that had something to do with that guy who got arrested tonight, right?” Jason asked.

“Yes. And April…” I said, gesturing to my partner. “Well, she’s a bit like you, Willow.”

Willow turned an appreciative glance at April.

“So, do we think this is all connected?” Jason asked. “Because something also happened in the living room. Your stereo suddenly went off.  It started playing
Purple Haze
, another Jimi Hendrix song,” he said. “I don’t mean to make too much of this, but isn’t Hendrix buried in this area?”

“Yes, he is. In Renton,” Rudy said.

“Actually, right next to where Al Dente used to live,” I said, thoughtfully. “This keeps going back to Renton.”

“Wait a minute,” Rudy said, snapping her fingers. “When we were at the restaurant yesterday, there was a
Renton Reporter
sitting on the table. I skimmed an article that talked about moving Jimi Hendrix’s grave. There had been some soil erosion under his memorial because of an underground pipe that burst. So they were going to relocate him temporarily until they could get it fixed.”

“When?” April asked.

“Tomorrow, I think,” she said with a shrug. “There was a picture of the skip loader and the area where they had already dug the hole.”

“I don’t get it,” Blair said in frustration. “What does Jimi Hendrix have to do with Dana?”

I looked down at Dana’s cell phone in my hand and read the text again. “Meet me in the back parking lot. We’ll
bury
our differences.” I inhaled a gulp of air and then looked up at the lamp lit crowd gathered around me. “What if he’s going to bury her?”

“Seriously?” Blair said. “Why would he do that? He could just throw her into the lake.”

“No, I think Julia’s onto something,” April said, turning to me. “Haven’t you noticed? Every time Roger is here working, he always has 60s and 70s rock music playing. I’ve heard Jimi Hendrix several times when he’s been here.”

“So he’s a fan. So what?” Blair said obstinately.

“So I bet Tony is setting Roger up again,” Rudy said, catching on.

“But Roger just got arrested,” Blair countered. “He couldn’t have abducted Dana.”

“But Tony wouldn’t know that,” I said. “And David just told me that Roger escaped when the electricity went out.”

“Could they be working together?” Doe asked. “Roger and Tony?”

I pulled my fingers through my hair in frustration. “I don’t know.  They certainly know each other. But I still can’t figure out why in the world Tony would want to kill Dana in the first place.”

There was a scream from the living room and then someone shouted, “She’s back! The ghost is back.”

“We’ve got to go,” Jason said. He and Willow turned and disappeared down the dark hallway.

“Listen,” Doe said, getting our attention back. “Jason said the next part of that Hendrix line was something about a thief. Didn’t Detective Abrams say that Dana’s first husband had been incarcerated for embezzlement?”

“You’re right. You think this is all about him?” I asked.

“It could also be Tony who is embezzling money,” Rudy said. “Remember, Doe, you told us your niece overheard the Mayor chastising Tony for having Trudy spy on Dana. Maybe the reason Tony spied on Dana was because she discovered something incriminating about him, and we just never got her to tell us what it was.”

“Like stealing from the city?” Doe asked.

“Right.”

“Okay, but regardless who has her, the question now is how do we find her?” I said. “
Purple Haze
came on when Blair and I were fighting with Big Al in his apartment, too. Somehow this keeps coming back to Jimi Hendrix and Renton.” I glanced at the text message again. “What if whoever has her is going to bury Dana in Jimi Hendrix’s new burial site?”

“Then someone needs to stop them,” April said grimly.

There was a short silence. I turned to April. “Can you take care of things here?”

“Of course,” she replied.

“Let me get my purse.” I ran into my apartment, threw on my coat and grabbed my gloves and purse off the counter. When I came back out, I asked, “Who’s driving?”

Everyone looked at Blair. “I’ve got this,” she said. “But we need our coats.”

We all hurried to the kitchen. Willow and Jason were in the living room, presumably recording Elizabeth. As the girls got their coats on, I spoke to April in the entryway. “Can you keep trying to get through to the police? Maybe even send someone down there to tell them what’s happening. I don’t know if David heard me when I told him about Tony, but even if he did, they wouldn’t know where to look.”

She nodded. “Okay. Just get going. And be careful. It’s beginning to snow. Here, take this,” she said, quickly reaching behind the reception desk and grabbing my baseball bat.

“Take this, too,” Jason said, coming in from the living room. “It’s the EVP recorder. It recorded the stereo when it came on. I don’t know if it will help, but Willow insisted I give it to you.”

I looked past Jason to where Willow stood at the entrance to the living room. April had positioned a bunch of candles on tables, so Willow’s face was barely visible, her eyes mere pockets of shadow.

“You need to hurry,” she said. “You don’t have much time.”

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

“They’re chattering…the spirits here. They don’t like what he’s doing. It’s an abomination.” She paused and then said, “He’s going to bury her alive.”