Ring for Murder (Lighthouse Inn Finale) (7 page)

The man nodded. “I need a room, and I was
wondering if you could help me.”

“I’d be delighted. How many nights will you
be with us?”

“As long as it takes,” the man muttered
under his breath. Alex heard it, anyway.

“As long as what takes?” he asked.

“What? Never mind, I was just talking to
myself.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills.
“Will this do for now?”

Alex nodded as took the cash. He would have
offered the man a free room if it meant getting him to stay at the
inn. At least one of their suspects was going to be right under
their noses.

“Here’s the register. You need to sign
in.”

The man didn’t look all that pleased about
it, but he took the pen and wrote something in the book Elise liked
keeping up front. She thought it gave the place a certain amount of
charm, and Alex had to agree with her.

Alex studied the quickly scrawled
handwriting to confirm what he’d heard the night before, and then
said, “Welcome to Hatteras West, Mr. Jackson.”

“Sorry about your brother,” he said as he
looked around the lobby. “Do I have to stay in this building, or
can I bunk over there?” he asked as he pointed to the Main Keeper’s
Quarters.

“Sorry, it’s not available.”

Jackson just shrugged at the news, as though
he’d been expecting it.

“May I help you with your luggage?” Alex
asked, a clear shot since the man wasn’t carrying so much as a
notebook.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll get it later.”
He reached for the key Alex was holding out to him.

“I’d be glad to show you your room,” Alex
said.

Jackson frowned, and then said, “I’ll see it
later. For now, I’d like to walk around some.”

“Fine. If you need me, just ring the
bell.”

Mr. Jackson reached down and pushed the bell
once, then went out the door.

Alex debated waking Elise to tell him the
news, when he was surprised to see her coming down the stairs
along.

“I didn’t even realize you were up,” he
said.

“I’ve been up for an hour. I didn’t want to
wake you. I was just seeing about our guest.”

“He just left,” Alex said. “How did you know
about that?”

“It could be because our ‘he’ is really a
‘she’.”

Alex was confused now. “There’s no way that
was a woman who just walked out of here.”

“I’m talking about Monique Combs. I just
checked her in and got her settled in the Carolina Jasmine
suite.”

Alex bit his lower lip. “I didn’t think we
were taking on new guests.”

Elise looked excited as she said, “She’s the
woman from the rehearsal dinner, the one who slapped Tony.”

Alex didn’t like that a bit. “And I just
checked in the man he had an argument with.”

“It’s a little too much to take as
coincidence, isn’t it?” Elise asked.

Alex nodded. “Don’t kid yourself. They’re
here looking for something, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s
that little piece of paper that Mor and I found in the Main
Keepers’ Quarters.”

“I looked at it, too, and it looked like
nothing special to me.”

Alex just shrugged. “Then maybe there’s
something else they’re after, but at least we won’t have to go
hunting for them now. They came to us.”

Elise nodded. “It’s handy that we can grill
them right here.”

“Only they shouldn’t know they’re being
questioned,” Alex added.

“This isn’t my first time investigating a
murder, remember?”

He laughed at that. “Don’t remind me. How
many times have we come close to getting caught snooping by one of
our guests?”

“I try to forget things like that,” she said
with a grin, “but the answer is too many, I can tell you that.” She
looked around to make sure no one was nearby, and asked softly,
“Should we search Jackson’s room for clues?”

“That would be kind of pointless, since he
hasn’t even been there yet. He got the key, and then decided that
he wanted to take a walk.”

“You don’t think he’s out strolling around
though, do you?” Elise asked.

“No,” Alex admitted. “I wanted to give him
time to go over to the other building before I surprised him.”

“Let’s go, then,” Elise said.

Alex shook his head. “It might be dangerous.
You should stay here. Call Sheriff Armstrong if something happens
to me.”

Elise shook her head resolutely. “You’re not
going anywhere without me, mister. If one of us goes, the other
tags along. I’m not about to lose my groom before we’ve had a
chance to say our vows.”

“Then technically, I wouldn’t be your groom
yet, would I?”

Elise didn’t respond, just headed for the
front door. “Do you want to stand here and have a debate, or should
we start snooping?”

“I vote for snooping,” Alex said.

“That’s the man I want to marry,” she said,
and the two of them left the Dual and headed for the Main.

Alex tried the main door, and found that it
was still locked.

“It doesn’t mean he didn’t find another way
inside,” Elise suggested.

“There’s only one way to find out.”

They used his key to open the main door, now
that the police tape was gone. The sheriff must have moved quickly
to search the building, and Alex wondered if perhaps the search had
been done too hastily. There was a great deal of space there, and
he believed that it was possible that he and his force had missed
something. If they had, he was sure that he and Elise would find
it. After all, no one knew the inn as well as they did.

After a quick inventory of the rooms, Alex
said, “It’s pretty clear that he’s not here. Should we go looking
for him outside, or look around a little more carefully while we’re
here?”

“I vote we inspect the building before
anyone else can get in,” Elise said.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Alex answered.

“Why, because you like agreeing with me?”
she asked with a smile.

“It doesn’t hurt, does it? Besides, that’s
as good an idea as any.”

“Then let’s start our treasure hunt. What
exactly are we looking for?”

“Anything that doesn’t fit,” Alex said. “And
we should start in the room where Mor and I found Tony.” Alex hated
the thought of going back in there, but he really didn’t have any
choice. Sooner or later he’d have to face the memory of seeing his
brother in the bathtub, and the quicker he could put that image
behind him, the better.

They pulled the mattress off the bed, looked
behind the lighthouse painting on the wall, even checked under the
bed.

Elise frowned at Alex. “Nothing’s out of
order,” she said. “The floor needs a good waxing, doesn’t it?”

“And the drapes need to be replaced
too.”

She looked at him quizzically, and he
explained, “I had some time on my hands waiting for the sheriff to
take my call.”

“What should we do?”

“We have to keep looking, no matter how
painful it might be,” Alex said. He couldn’t believe that Tony
could be killed so easily without at least one clue being left
behind. He’d tried to put it off, but he finally forced himself to
walk into the bathroom.

Elise touched his hand, and then took it in
hers as they went inside. Alex felt a rush from her touch, and a
new determination to push his way through this.

He looked around the bathroom, trying to
take everything in. It was odd what the police had confiscated. Two
towels were gone, he still couldn’t find that blasted mat, the
shower curtain was missing now along with a complementary bottle of
shampoo as well, but the packet with a shower cap and razor were
still there, along with an unwrapped bar of soap in the shower, an
unopened bar of soap by the sink, and a wrapped roll of toilet
paper on the back of the toilet. Elsewhere on the sink, he did a
quick inventory of the mouthwash, hand towels, facial tissues,
still there, but all out of their regular order. The towels had
clearly been unfolded, and then folded back up, but nothing else
looked as though it had been touched. Still, nothing stood out as
he purposely kept his glance away from the tub as much as he
could.

“There’s not a thing wrong here that I can
see that a little tidying up wouldn’t take care of,” Elise said,
though it was clear that she was much more focused on Alex than she
was exploring the room. “Come on,” she said as she tugged at his
hand. “They didn’t miss anything.” Alex let himself be led out of
the bathroom, but something stuck in his mind, something he’d seen,
but failed to recognize the significance of.

“Hang on a second.”

“Alex, don’t put yourself through this.”

“Something doesn’t add up.”

Elise followed him back into the bathroom,
and as Alex double-checked what he’d seen, Elise followed his gaze,
listening as he explained what had bothered him. “That soap in the
dish in the shower has been unwrapped, but the one at the sink
hasn’t been touched. That doesn’t make any sense. If Tony or anyone
else in here had washed his hands, he would have used the soap at
the sink, but it hasn’t even been opened. Why put an opened bar in
the stall if he used it to wash his hands? He wasn’t exactly over
here so he could take a shower.”

Elise frowned. “You’re right, Alex. It
doesn’t make sense.”

Alex reached for the soap, and as soon as he
touched it, he knew that it had been run under hot water at some
time recently from the tackiness of its surface. It felt oddly
heavy as well, and when Alex turned it over, he saw why.

Sunk slightly into the back of the bar of
soap was a gold coin, something that looked quite valuable, and
ancient as well, with markings and engravings like he’d never seen
before.

Alex had to wonder if that was what the
killer had been looking for. One old gold coin didn’t seem to be
enough of a motive for murder, but a handful of them might. “Let’s
look around again, but this time, we need to be creative. Search
for anything that might hide more gold coins, no matter how strange
a hiding place it might seem.”

It wasn’t until Alex got to the box of
tissues in the bedroom that they found anything else. The box
weighed considerably more than it should have, and it was clear
that Armstrong and his men hadn’t done that thorough a search of
the place after all.

Alex tore open the tissue box, pulling out
nearly a full batch of the white sheets until he unveiled what was
hidden beneath them.

Inside, there were twenty nine coins
identical to the one Alex had found in the soap.

They weren’t exactly thirty pieces of
silver, but Alex had to wonder if they had led to betrayal
anyway.

Chapter 7

“What should we do?” Elise asked. “Do we
need to call the sheriff?”

“Not yet,” Alex answered, careful not to
touch any of the coins just in case there were fingerprints on any
of them. “After all, we’re already not telling him about two
suspects staying here with us at the inn. If we hand all of this
over to him at once, what chance is there that we solve Tony’s
murder ourselves?”

“I suppose so,” Elise said. “But when he
finds out, he’s not going to like it.”

“And that would be different from how he
normally feels about me exactly how?” Alex asked as he got to work.
Removing the shower cap from its paper sleeve, Alex carefully
dumped the coins in it. The cap nearly broke under the pressure of
the weight, but Alex held them carefully and tied off the opening.
After he did that, he wrapped the soap, along with its coin, in a
hand towel, and then carefully put it all into the clean liner of
the trashcan in the bedroom.

“Aren’t we withholding evidence if we don’t
tell him about what we’ve found?” Elise asked.

“I’d say that’s true, but Armstrong’s
already searched this room. If there’s a way we can keep our
discovery secret for a day or two, we might be able to work it to
our advantage.”

“How are we going to do that?”

Alex shrugged. “I’m still thinking about
that. I don’t have a plan yet, but I have high hopes. After all,
I’m doubly motivated to wrap this up as quickly as I can.” He
looked carefully at her. “Are you okay with that?”

“Maybe we’ll get jail cells that touch,” she
said, trying to force a light grin. “At least we could hold hands
then.”

“I’ll see if I can pull some strings if it
comes up,” Alex replied. As he looked at what they’d found, he
added, “I can’t imagine what Tony was doing with these coins.”

“Are they real gold?” Elise asked.

Alex hefted the weight again. “If they
aren’t, the weight is matched pretty closely. What was Tony doing
with these?”

“Any thoughts?”

“I have a hunch they were part of some kind
of scam,” Alex said. “I hate to speak ill of the dead, but it’s not
going to help us find Tony’s killer if we don’t accept the fact
that my brother was a bit of a lowlife.”

“He fell on some hard times, that’s all,”
Elise said.

Alex knew that she was just trying to help,
but it wouldn’t work. He knew his brother for what the man had
really become. If he accepted that, even used his knowledge of Tony
to his advantage, it might just help him find his brother’s
killer.

“There you are. We thought you might have
bugged out on us already,” Mor said as Alex and Elise walked back
into the lobby of the Dual Keepers Quarters. They’d done there best
to straighten the room back up before they’d left, even taking
fresh soap and tissues from the maid’s closet down the hall. When
they left the scene of the crime, it was as much like it had been
when they’d first searched it as they could manage. Alex had closed
a paperclip in the lower part of the door so that if it were
opened, he’d see it on the floor. It wouldn’t keep anyone out, but
it should tell him if someone had broken in.

Alex shook his head. “No, but things have
changed. We’re not going in search of our suspects.”