Detectives Lindstrom and James, along with an evidence team, arrived later that morning and began by presenting a search warrant to Melanie for the B&B and her home. She glared at them, furious. How much more of this would she have to tolerate?
“What do you expect to find? A bloody glove in the desk drawer?”
Elias just raised his eyebrows.
“Rashida, take an evidence tech with you to Miss Wells’ house. The rest of us will start here. I’d like to do your office first, and I’ll need your computer and your phone.”
“How do you expect me to run my business if you take my computer,” she said. “All my reservations are on it.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Elias removed a USB stick from his pocket. “I can download all your files to this and leave the computer here, with your signed permission of course.”
Melanie got up from her desk chair and motioned Elias to sit down.
“What about my phone?”
“We’ll get it back to you as soon as we’re done with it. You’ve got a landline. Why don’t you have a seat in the lounge while we’re searching? We’ll try not to make a mess.”
“Like the neat job you did in the kitchen?”
“That was different,” he said. “The kitchen was a crime scene.”
“May we have your house key, Miss Wells,” Rashida asked. “Or would you prefer to walk over with us and let us in?”
Melanie took the key from her purse. “You’d better finish the house before Josh comes home from school at three thirty,” she said.
She didn’t want her son drawn into this fiasco and she was pretty sure there was nothing incriminating in her home. Let the bastards waste their time.
“I’m starting to get hungry,” Daniel said. “Would you like to go to the café for lunch? Or should I ask Luke to make us some sandwiches?”
Hannah hadn’t said a word all morning. He was hoping she would talk to him at lunch.
Hannah glanced out the window. “Let’s save the café for a sunny day. It’s still pouring. Want to tell me what you found out about Samantha?”
“Her real name is Mildred Hunter.”
“Would you read a romance novel by someone named Mildred?”
“I wouldn’t read a romance novel at all, but there’s so much more. Mildred is a distinguished professor of history at the University of Chicago. She was married to a politician named Bernard Hunter. He was in the Illinois State Senate and he died in 2003. The obituary didn’t mention how he died, so I looked up the death certificate. Bernard took an overdose of barbiturates and the conclusion was suicide. I took the liberty of accessing the Chicago police report. You’ll never guess where he died.”
Hannah gave him an interested look. “I can’t imagine, but if I wait patiently, I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“He was in a room at the Century Hotel where Scott Nilsson was the chef. I can’t believe that was a coincidence.”
“So you’re suggesting that Scott is somehow implicated in the death of Mildred’s husband?”
“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. I’m going to see if I can get in touch with the detective who handled the case, and see if he had any ideas about the reason for the suicide, or any doubts that it was suicide.”
“I’m impressed. I haven’t uncovered anything as interesting about Kylie, other than the fact that she and Scott Nilsson attended the Culinary Institute at exactly the same time. I wish you had a squad of junior detectives. You could set them to tracing their other classmates and finding out if there’s any history between Kylie and Scott.”
“I’m afraid we’re on our own here. At this point, we might learn more by engaging people in conversation. You seem to have developed that skill to a fine art. So, about lunch…”
“Let’s eat,” Hannah said.
Hannah and Daniel entered the empty lounge. While she poured herself a glass of ice water, Daniel opened the kitchen door and greeted Luke. The smell of something baking was tantalizing.
“Any chance for a couple of sandwiches?”
“Sure. Roast beef and cheese okay?”
“Perfect.”
Luke sliced a baguette into four sandwich-sized pieces and spread them with mustard. He took thin slices of rare roast beef from the refrigerator and topped them with gruyere, slices of tomato and a sprinkling of salad greens. Sliding the two sandwiches onto plates, he handed them to Daniel.
“Many thanks. How are you holding up?”
“I was doing fine until the damn police showed up again.”
“Again?” Daniel was surprised. “What did they want this time?”
“They’ve got a warrant to search Alder House. They’re in Melanie’s office at the moment and boy, is she pissed.”
Daniel raised his eyebrows. He was not pleased at this news.
“I wish they’d hurry up and solve this,” he said. “Thanks again for the lunch.”
Leaving the kitchen, he motioned to Hannah.
“Let’s go upstairs and eat there.”
“Why? It’s more comfortable here.”
“Elias Lindstrom is back with a warrant for the B&B, which may include our room. I don’t want him to find out we’ve been investigating his case.”
Hannah followed him back to their room and watched as he locked the door.
“Can he take our computer and phones?”
“It depends on the warrant. The judge typically limits what detectives can take. You have to show probable cause that your search will reveal criminal activity. I think it would be a stretch for Lindstrom to argue that either one of us was a suspect serious enough to necessitate taking our devices, but I can’t guarantee it.”
“Do you think I should destroy the notes I took?” Hannah asked.
“You have a right to be looking up publicly available information about our fellow guests, but it might be best to avoid annoying him. If we discover anything truly significant, I’ll feel obligated to share it.”
“Got it,” she said, gathering her notes. “I’d hate to annoy the local police. Don’t you think it’s a perfect rainy afternoon for a fire?”
Melanie Well’s farmhouse was a white, shingled, single-story cottage with green trim. It was in need of a paint job. Rashida knew from the background check that Melanie had inherited the farm and the B&B from her grandparents. It appeared that little in the way of exterior maintenance had been done.
She opened the door and entered a small foyer with the evidence technician. Coats, down jackets, windbreakers and rain gear were hanging from a series of large hooks on the wall. Below the coats was a pile of rain boots.
An old-fashioned living room was to the right of the hall. A plump sofa faced a white brick fireplace, and was covered in a faded print slipcover. An old oak rocking chair with a cracked brown leather seat, and a chintz-covered armchair flanked it. A vase filled with dried pussy willows decorated the mantel, and two green china lamps with yellowed shades sat on mismatched side tables. There was dust on the wood coffee table.
To the left was a family room furnished in a matching black vinyl suite of reclining furniture and a flat-screen TV. This room looked lived in. Newspapers and magazines were strewn over the coffee table and floor. In the corner sat a desk, a computer, and a file cabinet.
“Why don’t you start in here?” Rashida suggested to the evidence technician. “We’re looking for any files connecting Melanie to Scott Nilsson: contracts, tax returns, etcetera. You know the drill. We should also copy all the files on the computer. I’ll check the kitchen and bedroom.”
It was the kitchen that interested Rashida the most. She was looking for evidence that Melanie could have created the truffles. The kitchen was also a vintage throwback. The cabinets were simple wood, painted a pale yellow. There was a farmhouse sink, an old gas stove and equally old refrigerator. The only modern appliance was a microwave.
Melanie didn’t seem to be a neat freak. There were unwashed dishes in the sink and the remains of breakfast on the kitchen table. A forlorn clean bowl occupied the dish drainer.
Rashida put on a pair of latex gloves and started opening cabinets in a search for cookbooks and fine baking chocolate. All she found was a dog-eared edition of the Joy of Cooking circa 1965. The pantry contained cereals, cookies, chips and canned goods, nothing that couldn’t be opened and eaten immediately. The refrigerator was equally unrewarding. The freezer was filled with frozen pizza and Weight Watcher’s meals.
Melanie owned a few frying pans and sauce pans, but nothing for baking or cookie sheets. Despite an exhaustive search, Rashida found no candy thermometer. Clearly, Melanie had told the truth about not cooking. This did not totally exonerate her in Rashida’s mind. She could have commissioned the truffles and left them in the Alder House kitchen. Melanie was one of the few suspects who admitted knowing about Scott’s allergy.
The master bedroom contained an unmade, queen-sized bed with built-in night tables and an old oak dresser. The only interesting items in the night tables were a box of condoms, lubricant, and a vibrator. No intimate diaries. The dresser drawers were messy, which made them easy to search, and yielded nothing of interest.
Melanie’s closet seemed to express two sides of her personality. On the left: comfortable jeans, sweats and slacks with oversized tops and sweaters, clearly her work clothes. On the right: several low-cut silk nightgowns, and a collection of dresses designed to cling to every curve. The few pockets in her clothes were empty and nothing was concealed in her shoes or purses.
Rashida took a quick look into the bathroom, finding birth control pills, aspirin and Tums tablets.
The second bedroom clearly belonged to Melanie’s teenaged son. She could tell by the mess and the music posters, and decided it was unlikely that anything incriminating would be found.
When she returned to the family room, she found the evidence tech boxing up a pile of files and the computer.
“We’d better give her a detailed receipt for all of this,” she said.
“Find anything?”
“Not anything I was looking for. Hopefully, Elias had better luck.”
Elias and Rashida placed the boxes of files from Melanie’s home and office in the back of the police van and locked it. He listened as she described the house and the disappointing results of her search.
“What do you want to do next?” Rashida asked.
“Let’s you and I go upstairs and do the guest rooms. We can send the techs to start on Scott Nilsson’s home, and then we can do Luke Murray’s. I’m particularly interested in his kitchen.”
Elias was hoping something of interest would turn up. So far, he’d also found nothing.
“Unfortunately, we got a picky judge. He’s allowing us to confiscate electronics from the two women who have a prior connection to Scott, and from Gunderson, but not from any of the others. We can search their rooms, but I doubt we’ll find a supply of leftover truffles in any of them.”
“What about Daniel Ross?” she asked.
“I couldn’t convince the judge that he might have a motive.”
“You couldn’t convince me that he had a motive,” Rashida said. “Where do you want to begin searching?”
“Let’s do the romance writer,” he said. “That should be quick.”
Samantha Allen was at her computer, in the midst of editing a very explicit erotic fantasy, when she heard a knock on the door. Annoyed at having her concentration disrupted, she got up and opened it.
“Detective? I thought you were done here.”
“I’m afraid not, Dr. Hunter. I have a warrant to search Alder House including all the guest rooms. Could you please wait in the lounge while we search yours?”
Samantha was not intimidated. “May I see your warrant, please?”
Elias handed it to her and she put on her reading glasses to peruse it.
“Fine. I’ll just take my laptop downstairs and finish what I was doing while you search. If I’m not mistaken, this warrant does not give you permission to search my computer or phone. Incidentally, the first draft of my new novel is printed out and sitting on the desk. If I find out that the boys at the station are reading and posting the sex scenes, there will be an intellectual property lawsuit.”
Samantha stuck her phone in the back pocket of her jeans, closed the lid on her laptop, and tucking it under her arm, made an exit.
As soon as she reached the lounge, she called each of her fellow writers.
“The Detectives are back and they have a warrant that includes your electronics,” she told Kylie and Ilana. “I suggest you back up your work, delete this phone call and anything else you don’t want them to see before they get to your room.”
She deleted all her recent calls, poured herself some black coffee, and sat down to await developments.