Thirty-one

Zelda had to know, immediately.

Apologizing to Twinkletoes, I set her on the floor of the porch and dashed inside. In the empty lobby, I took a minute to compose myself. Pretending to be calm, I poked my head into the private kitchen. Axel and Zelda were in a sweet embrace.

I cleared my throat. “Sorry to interrupt. Zelda, could I speak with you for a moment?”

“No,” she said, not letting go of Axel.

Crooking my finger and wiggling it, I forced a smile and said, “I need to speak with you out here. Please?”

There was no mistaking her reluctance to release Axel. “I’ll be right back.” She glared at me and muttered, “This better be important.”

When she emerged, I seized her hand and towed her over to the Dogwood Room in case Axel was listening at the door.

“Holly! What’s going on?” Zelda looked at me with worried eyes.

“Remember when I went over to your house to distract Hank and lure him away?”

“It was last night, Holly. Of course I recall it.”

“That wasn’t Hank hanging around outside of your house.”

She stared at me in silence for a moment. “Of course it was. I saw him.”

“You saw someone. I did, too. But it wasn’t Hank. A couple of hours earlier, Hank had stopped Mick from stealing Celeste’s purse. After I tried to lure Hank away from your house, I went to Tequila Mockingbird. That’s when Nessie found out Hank’s real identity and left in an uproar. Celeste said her mother embarrassed her to death and walked her home. Hank walked separately but kind of followed them. That means it couldn’t have been Hank outside of your house. He was with Celeste that entire time.”

Zelda’s right hand trembled as she covered her mouth. “Who was it, then? Why would anyone else be stalking me?”

I helped her to a seat, but she popped right back up and paced back and forth. Four steps away from me. Four steps back to me.

“Axel?” she whispered. “Is that who you think it was?”

“I don’t know.” I wanted to ask my next question kindly, but in the end, there wasn’t a nice way to put it. “Have you been flirting with anyone else?”

Fortunately, she did not appear to be offended. “No. Well, maybe. You know what it’s like. Somebody says something funny in a bar and you give him a retort.”

There were hundreds of single men in town! “Zelda, I want you to concentrate. Think back. Did you notice anything about that person? Height, weight, was he carrying anything? Did you notice what he had on?”

Zelda shivered when she said, “He was a dark blob of a human in the night.”

Unfortunately, I knew exactly what she meant. I had seen the same thing. A hunched-over person dodging through the yard.

Zelda seized the neckline of her top in her fist. “What do I do now? If it was Axel, he’ll get angry if I try to ditch him.”

I’d been thinking about that. We had to keep Zelda safe. “I think it’s best if you stay here tonight. The more people around you, the better. Maybe when Ben comes home he can walk over to your place with us to get what you need for the night.”

“Ben? He couldn’t save me from an attacking wasp!”

She was right. I sucked in a deep breath. “I guess we have to tell Dave.”

“What if he thinks we’re making it up?”

“That’s a chance we have to take,” I said.

“Maybe we should talk to Ben first, so we don’t do anything stupid. He told me not to say anything to Dave unless he was present.”

I could understand that. “Ben’s on two dates tonight.”

“Two? Are you kidding?”

“Amazing, isn’t it? Okay, here’s what we’ll do. Oma and Gustav will be back soon. Meanwhile the three of us will stick together, and I’ll try to get ahold of Ben.”

“How do I explain to Axel that we can’t be alone?”

That was a very good question. “Tell him you feel sorry for me because I had to stay here to work. Bring the food out to the dining area, and we’ll be in full public view.” My head was reeling, but another thought occurred to me. “Zelda, when did you first see Hank hanging around outside at night?”

“The first night he was in town. After he came to the inn looking for me. You know that.”

“I wanted to be sure,” I said.

Zelda looked like she might burst into tears. “Why is this happening to me? Who would want to stalk me?” She chewed on her lower lip. “Holly, I’m scared.”

I gave her a big hug. And I took comfort in knowing that she was safe at the inn, and would soon be surrounded by a lot of people.

At that moment, Oma walked in with Gustav, followed by Sky and a woman who looked very much like her. Duchess bounded over to greet Trixie and Gingersnap while Sky introduced me to her sister, Cate.

“I’m so very sorry about your husband,” I said.

“Thank you. It came as such a shock. Poor Randall. In spite of his tendency to be bullheaded and opinionated, I never imagined that anyone would murder him.” She dabbed at her nose. “His last moments must have been horrific. I can’t get them out of my head.”

I wished I had something comforting to say, but I suspected she was right. “Do they have any leads?”

“If they do, they haven’t told me. There’s been such a fuss over his patient files. Our lawyer says the HIPAA laws permit them to be examined, but they’re getting a court order first. Meanwhile, one of his patients could have killed him and fled the country by now!”

“Did he have dangerous patients?” I asked.

“Of course. He didn’t talk about them, so I wouldn’t know who to look for, but one of them made the news a few years ago when he took a knife and ran down a street trying to kill people. Randall was called to testify in that case.”

Could Randall have been looking for a patient? My gaze strayed to our guests who were returning from dinner. Was one of his patients staying with us? It was impossible to know.

“Every place in Wagtail is still full up,” said Sky. “Do you think you could put a roll-away bed in our room for my sister?”

“It will be tight, but we can do that. I assume it’s okay with Nessie?”

“If she stays out like she did last night, she won’t even notice.”

“You’re not worried about bunking with her anymore?”

Sky brushed off my question with a sheepish “No.”

Behind me, Zelda said, “I’ll help you, Holly!”

I hadn’t heard her join me. “We’ll bring it up right away.”

Sky and her sister thanked us and walked up the grand staircase.

Zelda elbowed me and hissed. “This is our chance to look around in their room.”

“For what?”

“Anything suspicious or out of the ordinary.”

“What about Axel?” I asked.

“I’ll tell him something came up. Now that people are here, he wouldn’t dare hurt me. Right?”

I hoped not.

Zelda hurried back to the kitchen and escorted Axel out within two minutes flat. When he tried to kiss her, she deftly turned her cheek.

Poor guy. He had to be wondering what he had done for her to go from not wanting to leave his arms to practically pushing him out the door.

“Come on. I need a bed, too,” said Zelda.

In the basement, we loaded two folding beds onto the elevator. Twinkletoes jumped on top of one for the ride to the second floor.

I stopped by the housekeeping closet for sheets, blankets, towels, and pillows and stopped dead at the sight of the box of disposable gloves.

Zelda bumped into me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Would Dave fingerprint boxes of gloves if I asked him to? But fingerprints on the boxes still wouldn’t mean someone had murdered Hank. My fingerprints were on them, too. It wouldn’t prove a connection at all.

Sky had left the door open. She and her sister had opened a bottle of wine and sat at the table by the window.

Zelda and I pushed the bed into the room. While I spread the bottom sheet over the corners, Zelda indiscreetly knelt on the floor.

What did she think she was doing? I tried to cover for her and finished making the bed. She popped up, smiling. I left the towels on the bed as well as an additional blanket in case the night was cool.

Sky thanked us profusely and promised to call if they needed anything else.

The second the door closed, I hissed at Zelda. “What was that about?”

She pulled a business card out of her pocket. It said Randall Donovan, MD, and gave a business address and phone number. On the reverse, someone had scribbled SaurianPail@selfdestructmail.com. “What does that mean?” I asked.

She held it by the edges. “It means one of them met and talked with Randall before his death. How else would his business card have gotten into their room?”

“It was under Nessie’s bed,” I murmured. “Saurian Pail? What kind of name is that?”

“I don’t know. But doesn’t saurian sound familiar to you? Like something from a science-fiction movie?”

I nodded. “The Saurians. Like a group from another planet or something.”

“Centurians, maybe? Who are they?” asked Zelda.

“Romans. I doubt there’s any connection.”

“Ben will know!” Zelda’s eyes shone. “And in any event, it means one of them was in contact with Randall.”

“His wife could have dropped it.”

“Under the bed? I doubt it. She just arrived.”

We took the elevator and the other bed up to the third floor and rolled it to the door of my apartment with Twinkletoes riding on top of it. I pushed it next to a wall in the living room, near the French doors. It had fit there well in the past.

Zelda disappeared into the kitchen. When she returned, Zelda scooped up Twinkletoes and cooed at her. I could hear Twinkletoes purring.

I phoned Ben but had to leave a voice mail message.

“I wrapped Randall’s business card in plastic wrap so we wouldn’t get any more fingerprints on it.”

“We’d better hand it over to Dave.”

“No way. I’m giving it to Ben. He can do it. I’m mad at Dave for treating us like suspects. Not to mention that he better find the guy who has been stalk . . .“ Zelda paused before screaming, “My cats!”