~ Jenna ~
It’s nearly two a.m. once we get checked into our room at the Hemlock Inn, which happens to be on the fourth floor, a couple of doors down from the suite where Kellen was killed. It’s a little creepy, but the hotel is full and at this hour beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to rooms.
We need a bed for the night and tomorrow we can go home. The only problem is once we get settled in, both of us are too wired to sleep.
“How was your date with Jack?” I’m baiting her to see how quickly she jumps in to correct me, to set the record straight that the two of them are just friends and they discussed the Kellen Corsi case all night. I mean, she did get home before I did.
But she doesn’t correct me. She doesn’t set the record straight.
“He kissed me, Jenna.” She’s lying on her bed staring up at the ceiling. When she says the words, her fingers go to her lips, as if she’s reliving the moment.
I’m probably more tired than I realize because the strangest feeling washes over me. After all this time I’ve been her biggest go for it cheerleader, and she has brushed it off, saying dating someone would make her feel unfaithful to my father… her husband. It’s almost become routine.
Now, she’s changing the choreography.
I’m happy for her. Really, I am. But it sort of feels like one of those times when I’ve gotten so wrapped up in a cause that seems like it will never happen, only to discover I’m shocked when I get what I wished for.
She goes on to tell me that that they discussed Tom and how Jack thinks it doesn’t look good for him.
“What does that mean? Does he think Tom killed Kellen?”
Mom sits up and shrugs. “He wasn’t completely clear about it. Sure, Tom has a motive. He was in the area—right place, right time, relatively speaking. But here’s where I hit a snag with Tom being the killer. How did he get ahold of a dress box from my shop—how did he know I was even giving Kellen a box? And how did he get the box with the beehive into the suite between the time the last person checked out and she checked in? For that matter, he would’ve had the wedding dress that ended up in my place with the nasty gram scrawled on.”
I stand up and start pacing. “Let’s think about this. Let’s take it in order. It wouldn’t hurt to retrace our steps that evening. First, we need to find out how long the suite had been vacant before Kellen checked in.”
Mom stands up, too. “Since we’re here, why don’t we go down and ask Sabrina? At this hour, she probably won’t be busy. She might even be happy to have someone to talk to.”
It’s a great idea. Sabrina is fascinated by Mom’s mystery writing. She was super excited when she learned this year’s ladies’ league fundraiser fashion show would have a mystery theme. What do we have to lose by talking to her?
When we leave the room, we have to pass by Kellen’s suite, which is still cordoned off with crime-scene tape. I grimace as we walk by. But Mom stops and looks back to the door.
“You know what? If we’re going to retrace our steps, we really should start here.”
She points to the door.
“We can’t. The place is still a crime scene.”
“Which means we’ll have to be extra careful to not contaminate it,” Mom whispers. “We really need to go in and have a look around. It’s the best place to start if we’re going to figure out who killed Kellen.”
“Since we were on our way down to talk to Sabrina, maybe we could just ask her for a key to the room?”
The minute the words leave my mouth, I realize how dumb they sound. Like she’s going to say, “Here’s the key to the murder room. Have fun you two crazy kids.”
“She’s not going to give us the key, Jenna. Plus, then she’d know that we were thinking about going in and she’d have to tell someone.”
“I know. I was just trying to think of a way that we could do it without breaking the law.”
The curse of being a rule follower.
“I guess the question is,” Mom says, “are you breaking the law if you don’t hurt anything and no one is the wiser?”
“Wow, I wish I would’ve known about your no-one-is-the-wiser philosophy when I was in high school. I could’ve had a lot more fun.”
Mom snorts. “Says the girl who was usually in by nine p.m. on most Saturday nights.”
“You’re such a bad influence on me.”
“Come on, if we’re going to do this, we need to do it before someone sees us lurking.”
I frown and squeeze my eyes shut, remembering that the hotel is almost full tonight. Some of the guests are reporters who would love to get a scoop on Kellen’s murder. It’s a wonder that we’re the only ones plotting a way to get a look at the crime scene.
“Look, if you don’t want to come in with me, I can do it by myself, but I’d rather have both of us there so one of us can act as a lookout.”
I glance up and down the deserted hallway, suddenly swapping my fear of snooping journalists for every horror movie ghost and monster I’ve ever seen, half-expecting to see The Shining twins waiting for us at the end of the corridor. I glance around warily and feel a little bit better when I don’t see the pair of creepy little girls watching and willing us to come play with them forever.
But the relief is short-lived when I remember movie monsters aren’t the real threat. Someone, who I can only presume is the killer, broke into Mom’s house a few hours ago and left that love note scrawled on the wedding dress. Would the killer be inclined to return to the hotel? If so, now would be an ideal time.
Because of that, it would be an even worse idea to let her go in alone.
“The room should be cleared in another day or so. Why don’t we wait until then… and come back in the daytime?”
I know what she’s going to say before she even opens her mouth.
“We can’t wait that long. The earlier we get on this, the better chance we have of figuring out who did this.”
“Yeah, but we stand a better chance of not coming face-to-face with the killer if we wait.”
“If you don’t want to go with me, I can do it myself,” Mom says as she starts walking back toward our hotel room.
“Right, as if that’s even a choice,” I say as I follow her. “But where are you going?”
“We’re not going to open the door with our minds,” she says as she unlocks the door to our room.
“Speaking of… how do you plan on breaking into the crime scene?”
“Watch and learn.” Mom takes her wallet out of her purse and pulls out a credit card. “I have no idea if this will work, but it’s worth a try.”
“You’re going to pick the lock?”
“Technically, I don’t know if this is considered picking. It’s more like sliding or nudging the lock open, but I’m going to try.”
The hotel’s door locks are old. They’re the kind that require a metal key rather than a card key.
“How in the world did you learn to do this?” I ask.
She tilts her head to the side and smiles. “It’s one of the tools of a mystery writer’s trade.”
I shake my head.
“What exactly are you expecting to find in a room that the police have already gone over with a fine-tooth comb?”
She shrugs. “I’m not expecting to find physical evidence as much as I’m hoping to find out how the killer might have gotten the box inside. Maybe he or she was waiting for her in there and after the bellman left. But you never know. Something might jump out at us.”
My eyes bug, and she says, “Okay bad choice of words. What I meant was, even though the police have already gone through the suite, there’s a slim chance we might see something they missed. Wouldn’t you feel good if you knew you played a role in bringing Kellen’s killer to justice?”
“Of course,” I say. “But what are the chances of us discovering something trained professionals missed?”
“I know, but if nothing else, this will be a good experiment that might reveal how Kellen’s killer gained access to her room.”
“I just thought of something,” I say. “Earlier tonight when Alicia and I were here, I was talking to Ron Alder. He works as a valet parking cars. He is friends with the bellman who took up Kellen’s luggage. He told Ron he saw nothing out of the ordinary. No signs that anyone had been in the room and no signs of a beehive frame when he took her suitcase into the bedroom. I mean, something like that would stand out.”
My mom nods. “That means the killer either switched the box between the time I put it on the luggage cart or the killer entered the room after the bellman left. Since I’m certain no one else got their hands on the box when we were standing there, that means the perp somehow got into the room. Which makes it all the more important that we get into the suite and see how he could’ve gotten in there.”
Resigned to the fact that I will soon be in the room where Kellen Corsi was murdered, I follow my mom back to the door with the forbidding yellow crime scene tape strung across it in an X. Part of me hopes that she won’t be able to get the door open. The other part of me wonders where she learned how to do this. I know. I know—it was probably research for her books.
“Stand guard,” she whispers. “If you see someone, nudge me.”
My heart is thudding. I remind myself it’s unlikely that she’ll be able to pop the lock and if she does, it’s not as if we’ll find Kellen’s dead body in the room. Or her ghost.
Ugh. Wonderful. Why did I have to think of that?
I don’t believe in ghosts.
I don’t believe in ghosts.
I don’t believe in ghosts.
Rooted to the spot, I repeat the mantra as Mom inserts the credit card between the door and the frame. For a second, I squeeze my eyes shut just in case fate chooses this moment to prove me wrong and unleashes a specter.
The next thing I know the door gives way with a click and a tired squeak that seems to echo throughout the quiet hall, revealing a dark void inside.
We exchange surprised glances.
“Hurry before someone sees us,” she whispers.
I turn my gaze back to the hall as she agilely steps through the tape and into the room. By the time my brain urges my rubbery legs to move, Mom has turned on a light.
I quietly close the door and as I start to lock the door behind us, Mom says, “Wait! Don’t touch anything.”
I put my hands in the air like a criminal apprehended by the police.
Mom walks over and uses the tail of her shirt to turn the lock.
“I can’t believe it was that easy to get in here,” she says.
“I know, and with a killer on the loose, I won’t get any sleep tonight. Unless we move the dresser in front of the door. Because I think that old-fashioned security chain will protect us just about as well as these locks.”
I take a deep breath and look around as I try and to calm my racing heart. The suite is nice and larger than my college apartment. The living room is furnished with a large leather couch and antique-looking furniture. There’s a console along one wall with an Impressionistic looking painting hanging over it. I wonder if it’s one of those pieces that doubles as a painting but when you turn it on you see it’s really a television. Funny where my mind goes at this hour of the morning. At least I’m not thinking of horror movies anymore.
Or at least I hadn’t been. Until my sleep-desperate brain went there.
Mom is walking over to a set of double doors set at an angle. As she pushes them open, I remember the way Kellen looked lying on the bed. I hold my breath until Mom flips on the bedroom light, which reveals the only thing amiss in here is that the bed hasn’t been made up. The mattress is bare.
“They probably took the bed clothes in as evidence,” Mom says, as if reading my mind.
“This room is creepy.”
It is. There is a stillness about it that makes my skin crawl. I don’t know what I expected breaking in at this hour of the morning, but even the air seems dead. Until the air conditioner chooses that moment to switch on, causing me to nearly jump out of my skin. It’s a wonder I didn’t scream.
“Oh, my gosh, that scared me,” I say. “Let’s just hurry and find whatever it is we came in here for and get the heck out of here. Remind me again? What are we doing here?”
“We’re looking for a way the killer could’ve gotten into the room,” Mom says.
“That’s right.”
“And remember, try not to touch anything,” she says. “Leave that to me.”
Last Christmas, when I was working with my mom to clear my name after my ex-boyfriend Riley Buxston was murdered, the two of us and his brother had sneaked into Riley’s condo to have a look around. Maybe his place didn’t feel as haunted as this one because I’d been in it before. It had been full of Riley’s possessions and, of course, I was bound and determined to find some shred of evidence to prove I wasn’t the one who’d clubbed him over the head with a crystal decanter.
So, why am I here right now?
To make sure my mother doesn’t come face-to-face with the bee killer.
“Look,” Mom points to the sheer drapes that line the wall. Just beyond them I can make out what looks like windows or—
“French doors leading out onto a terrace,” she says as she lifts a section of the drapes and uses it to unlock the door handle.
I follow her out onto the terrace, the door closes behind us with a soft click. I start to try the handle to make sure we’re not locked out, but stop myself before I touch it and use my mom’s shirttail trick.
To my relief, the handle gives. We’re not locked out, which is good because the last thing we need is to get stuck on this balcony.
“This is interesting,” I say. “The patio door isn’t self-locking. It could’ve been open the night Kellen checked in. The perp could’ve gotten in this way.”
Mom and I both step to the railing and look down. I’m sure she’s thinking of Todd Devlin, who used his parkour skills to gain access to Riley’s condo last December and kill him.
I know I am.
Todd is in jail now.
What are the chances that another person would scale four floors to the balcony while holding a box full of beehive? Unlikely, but the killer gained access somehow.
Mom steps to the side wall and peers around it to the adjoining balcony connected to the next room. As if reading my mind, she says, “It wouldn’t be impossible for someone to slide around the wall and across the railing from one of the rooms on either side to get in.”
“True,” I say, “but four floors up… I wouldn’t want to chance it.”
“That’s because you’re not a murderer. Let’s go back inside and go down to the lobby and see if Sabrina will tell us if either of the rooms were occupied the night Kellen died.”
I look at my phone. It’s almost two thirty a.m.
“Then we need to get some sleep. Tomorrow—or should I say today—will be a tough day. Oh, that’s right, I won’t be sleeping tonight.” Even so, I shake my head. “Maybe we should wait until tomorrow. I don’t think it’s a good idea for either of us to be running around this hotel by ourselves at this hour. Let’s go back to the room.”
We spend a little more time carefully looking under the bed and around the living room furniture. We check all the closets and look inside the cabinets in the kitchenette area, but we come up empty.
Of course, it’s unlikely the crime scene investigators would’ve missed anything, but it was worth a shot. Finally, after we make sure we’ve returned everything to the way it was before we started snooping around, we’re ready to leave.
Mom turns off the light and I use my shirt to unlock and open the door.
I pull open the door and stop in my tracks because Tom Corsi is standing there with his hand outstretched as if he’s been trying the doorknob.