The Extinguished Guest (A Lexie Starr Mystery, Book 2) (3 page)

"Ms. Starr, are you certain you read the clock and remember the time correctly? You'd
have been barely awake, alarmed, and possibly disoriented," Detective Wyatt Johnston
said as I poured a refill into his coffee cup. In my severely anxious state-of-mind,
I sloshed coffee over the edge of the cup onto the kitchen counter. The detective
absentmindedly wiped the spill with the sleeve of his blue shirt and gazed at me with
unwavering eyes.

"I was completely awake at the time, Detective Johnston, I assure you. I have occasional
bouts of insomnia, and last night it was kicking in at full force."

"Any particular reason for your insomnia? Were there unusual noises keeping you awake?"

"Like an argument or a life-and-death scuffle in the room above me?" I asked.

"Uh-huh, something of that nature." Detective Johnston shrugged and nodded with an
expectant expression, as if convinced I'd heard such things and was suffering temporary
amnesia. I knew he was going to be disappointed if I didn't have something more sensational
to add to my statement.

"No. Sorry Detective, but I heard nothing of the kind."

"Okay," he said, obviously not convinced. "We'll come back to that later."

"I think she couldn't sleep because she needed a man beside her," came from a squeaky
male voice behind me. "She was no doubt frustrated and unsatisfied."

I was flabbergasted by the remark as I looked up into the rheumy eyes of Cornelius
Walker. I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly. Was he unaware that the proprietor
of this inn was my boyfriend? Then he winked at me through his thick, horn-rimmed
glasses, with one of his bloodshot, watering eyes, and I nearly dropped the carafe
of coffee on the floor. I started to make a sarcastic reply, but he spoke again.

"I think Dr. Walker has just the prescription she needs to make her sleep like a baby,
Detective," the innocuous-looking, sixty-something-year-old man said, totally oblivious
to my revulsion.

I glanced over at the policeman's amused expression and then back at Mr. Walker, who
winked at me again and crossed toward the parlor. He was a short man, just a couple
of inches taller than I, maybe five-four or five-five at the most. He wore plaid polyester
slacks and had thinning, greased-back hair, large, prominent ears, and a slender build.
I thought he looked more like a library assistant than I did.

As Cornelius walked out the kitchen door, Stone walked in, nodding politely at the
slightly older gentleman as they passed.

"Stone, did you hear what he just said to me?" I asked, in complete astonishment.

"Who?" Stone asked with a chuckle. "Horny Corny?"

"Horny Corny?"

"I've heard several guests call Cornelius that, but not to his face, of course. Late
yesterday evening, I heard him ask Rosalinda Swift if she'd like to 'participate in
some passionate parlor games' with him. He suggested 'tonsil hockey' or 'spank the
monkey' and for a moment I actually thought she was going to pass out 'with the vapors.'
" With the last few words, Stone had raised his voice in perfect imitation of Rosalinda's.
I laughed at his mockery.

"Horny Corny's a very fitting moniker, but he looks so, so... well, so harmless."

"Oh, I'd imagine Cornelius is harmless enough. He's just desperate to draw attention
to himself. A man like Mr. Walker tends to blend in with the wallpaper if he doesn't
make a substantial effort to be noticed. I'd bet if some woman was to go along with
one of his off-the-wall sexual comments and respond in a positive manner, he'd be
the one on the verge of fainting," Stone said.

"You might be right, but just in case you aren't, I don't think I'll test your theory.
Is the guy really a doctor?"

"No," Stone said, as he laughed louder this time. "He's a fertilizer salesman or something.
That's why he's so full of it."

Detective Johnston, who'd been silently drinking his coffee and listening to the exchange
between Stone and me, started laughing, too. I'd almost forgotten the policeman was
in the room. He leaned back in his chair and said, "Actually, he's a floor manager
at the Farm and Ranch Supply store in downtown Rockdale, but he does sell fertilizer
in his department. I had to pick him up once on some kind of charge for 'lewd and
lascivious' behavior. We found out later that the woman he'd been groping was actually
a man—a transvestite in drag. Talk about rubbing salt in a guy's wound. The charges
eventually got dropped, but all of us guys down at the station got a good laugh out
of it."

"I'm sure you did," I said, somewhat annoyed at the detective's attitude. "Sorry,
I never did answer your question, and by now I've forgotten what you were asking me
about earlier."

"I believe I was asking you about the exact time you heard the loud thud and if there
was a reason why you were awake at the time. Most people are sound asleep at five
in the morning." Detective Johnston was like a pit bull gnawing on a bone.

"Didn't hear a thing, other than the victim hitting the floor, huh?"

"That's right. That's all I heard. There's no particular reason I was awake, other
than the mattress on my bed is harder than my last batch of cookies."

Officer Johnston nodded as he fiddled with the squelch control on his police radio.
Stone looked at me with an apologetic expression and said, "Sorry, Lexie. I've been
meaning to buy some new mattress sets for all the beds, but I've had so many other
irons in the fire, I just haven't gotten around to it. The one on my bed's pretty
uncomfortable, too."

"No sense buying entire mattress sets, Stone. All you really need are featherbed mattress
pads to place on top of the existing mattresses. I noticed some nice ones on the Internet
for about ninety bucks apiece. The mattresses are even baffled."

"Baffled?" he asked, with a comical expression of confusion on his face.

"Quilted in such a way to keep the feathers from bunching."

"No kidding?" Stone considered the idea for a moment. "Can you order some for me if
I give you my credit card number?"

"Sure. I'd be more than happy to order some for you."

"Thanks for the suggestion. It would save me a bundle. A king-sized mattress and box
springs can run over five hundred, easily."

"Easily," I said, in agreement, before turning back toward the other man in the room.
Somehow we had gotten distracted from the pressing matter of Prescott's murder. "By
the way, Detective Johnston, has Mr. Prescott's next of kin been notified?"

"I'm not sure. I know he's not currently married, and his parents are both deceased,
but he does have a daughter named Veronica, from his first marriage. Still lives out
in Utah, last I heard. She was in my graduating class. She was drop-dead gorgeous,
but she always acted like she thought she was better than the rest of us and never
had much social interaction with anyone in the class. She always looked at me as if
I was something her cat hacked up. I'd heard she married a guy from a Mormon family
in Leavenworth, but I never met him."

"And she moved to Utah with her husband?" I asked.

"Yeah, just outside Salt Lake City," Wyatt said. "Hey, I noticed Rosalinda Swift's
name on your guest list. I had to arrest her recently, too; it was on a DUI a couple
of weeks ago. She was three sheets to the wind and just missed running over a small
child on a bike. It was only about four in the afternoon when I pulled her over."

"Rosalinda Swift? Are you sure it was the same Rosalinda Swift from the Historical
Society?" I couldn't quite picture her behind the wheel of a car, three sheets to
the wind, as the detective put it. "She was drinking and driving?"

"Uh-huh. She was weaving all over the road, from one shoulder to the other."

We chatted with the police officer about Rosalinda and Horatio's daughter Veronica
and also the unfortunate and mysterious demise of her father for about ten more minutes
before the officer had to leave to respond to a domestic abuse call. Before he left,
he asked Stone if he'd inform all of the guests that it would be appreciated, but
not necessary, if they could all stay at the inn for a few days while the investigating
team took statements and collected evidence. He'd already taped off Mr. Prescott's
room as a crime scene and had assigned a couple of detectives who were busily dusting
for fingerprints and searching for clues and potential DNA evidence. One slim young
recruit was fingerprinting everyone who was on the premises when the murder occurred.
I noticed Rosalinda Swift was quite agitated by this indignity. She finally agreed
to the "humiliating procedure," but not without significant complaining. Only Patty
Poffenbarger appeared more offended than Rosalinda by the request.

Stone was completely cooperative with the detective squad and readily agreed to speak
with his guests about staying over a day or two—at no expense to them, of course.
As Wyatt Johnston backed his squad car down the driveway, Stone answered his ringing
phone. He listened to the caller for a moment and shook his head in bewilderment.
After a few brief comments, he re-cradled the phone with more force than normal.

"News travels fast in a burg like this, doesn't it?" Stone gave a sigh of disgust
and ran his fingers through his silver hair. "Now I know what they mean by a small
town's 'grapevine.' That was a reporter with the
Rockdale Gazette,
wanting details on the murder and my opinion concerning who might have committed
it. Does he really think I would open myself up to slander and libel charges by naming
names? I told him I couldn't make any comments at this point, but I can see it now
on the front page of the paper tomorrow, the headline 'Local inn opens with a bang.'
"

I knew Stone was discouraged and dejected. It was a matter of personal pride to him
to see the Alexandria Inn be successful. He'd paid a handsome price for the rundown
old mansion and had pumped a lot of money into restoring it.

I'd met Stone while I was on the east coast last fall, investigating the unsolved
murder of my son-in-law's first wife, Eliza Pitt, a case in which my son-in-law, Clay,
was a prime suspect. I'd had no investigative background or training, but I felt it
was necessary to do whatever I could to protect my daughter, Wendy, from possibly
suffering the same fate.

Stone, an online jeweler whom I'd contacted to help me replace a charm bracelet and
charms that Wendy had recently lost, offered to assist me in my investigation. The
two of us had formed an instant bond and found we had much in common.

We'd both been widowed for years—he's fifty-five, and I'll turn forty-nine soon—and
we'd met at a time when we were both finally ready to consider having another "significant
other" in our lives.

We decided to pursue the relationship, and after his father, suffering with Alzheimer's,
died in December, Stone sold his jewelry business to an employee and moved to the
Midwest to be near me. Before heading west, he'd also resigned his volunteer position
as a reserve police officer for the Myrtle Beach Police Department, a service he'd
chosen to help fill his idle time.

Lacking serious hobbies, Stone wasn't the kind of man who could sit around and do
nothing. He became interested in operating a bed and breakfast after staying at the
Camelot B&B in Schenectady and helping the owner, Harriet Sparks, make some repairs
around the place. In Missouri, he discovered the old deteriorating mansion in nearby
Rockdale by accident, while scanning the classifieds in the
K. C. Star
newspaper. He quickly made the decision to purchase it and restore it to its original,
elegant condition. The project was a massive undertaking, but Stone appeared to enjoy
the challenge immensely.

Once the job was completed, he succeeded in having the mansion listed on the National
Register of Historic Places. Then he hired a young woman named Crystal to serve as
combination cook and housekeeper and opened it as a fully functional and operating
inn. He christened it after my given name, Alexandria Marie, which pleased me immensely.
The Alexandria Inn, located in the small town of Rockdale in northwestern Missouri,
was about an hour's drive from my home in Shawnee, Kansas. It was ideally situated
in the heart of the heavily populated historic district, with homes built during the
late 1800s, but the inn was only a half dozen blocks from the business district.

Stone enlisted my help in decorating and furnishing the inn while he supervised the
crews doing most of the actual restoration. Between us, we managed to give the home
its original dignity, charm, and beauty. Stone stayed busy at the inn during the week,
but we spent the majority of the weekends with one another. So far the arrangement
had worked out perfectly.

Stone was not a classically handsome man. He was of average height and carried a few
extra pounds on his waist, but it was his personality more than his looks I found
so attractive. He was attentive, witty, and considerate. His smile lit up his face,
despite the small gap between his two front teeth. His silver hair and almost translucent
blue eyes added an air of refinement. He was a "glass half full" type of guy, and
his optimism was contagious. Being with him tended to give me a more tolerant attitude,
too. And tolerance wasn't a trait I came by naturally.

Wendy, my twenty-seven year-old daughter, had moved back home with me following the
annulment of her marriage to Clay Pitt. Living with me was a temporary arrangement,
she said, while she saved money on a down payment for a place of her own. She worked
with the local coroner, primarily assisting with autopsies. To me, the job seemed
a bit gruesome and depressing, but she appeared to enjoy it. She'd managed to put
a few extra pounds on her too-thin body and was looking more relaxed and contented
than she had in many months.