“I guess you should come in,” Sasha said, holding the door to the Rose Room open.
Each of the rooms in the Gossip Inn were themed according to their colors. The Rose Room, decorated in dusty pinks and creams with a gorgeous four poster bed, a walnut armoire, and a dressing table with a mirror surrounded by lights, got a lot of bookings from returning guests. Sasha had been lucky enough to secure it.
“I’ve been waiting for someone to clean the room.” Sasha gestured to the piles of laundry that were strewn across the polished wooden floor. She appeared to have left them everywhere but the laundry basket in the en suite bathroom.
And, excuse her, but I’d cleaned her room yesterday. In fact, it looked as if she’d taken some of the laundry I’d deposited into the basket out of it again.
“I’m happy to be of service.” I bobbed my head and set about picking up the clothing and depositing it into the basket. At the inn, we offered laundry free of charge. One of the most annoying tasks if you asked me.
Once the laundry was back in the basket and next to the door, I made Sasha’s bed while she watched, her eyes narrowed.
“You’re the one who served the coffee at lunch, aren’t you?”
The one? The one what? “Yes, I am. My name’s Charlotte.”
“Sasha Dewar. I hope you didn’t take what Bella said seriously. I didn’t hate Julia. If I had hated her, she would never have made me her maid-of-honor.”
Why did Sasha care what a “lowly maid” at the inn thought? She was from New York so she shouldn’t have known that I was the town’s fixer. Or that I was investigating the case in my spare time—there wouldn’t be a lot of that to go around if I had to keep up with Sasha’s laundry. She’d produced more in a day than most guests did in a week.
“Because,” Sasha continued, when I didn’t immediately reply, “you know she’s lying. She’s obviously just looking for attention. Poor Bella was… well, this is kind of ironic, but she was always the bridesmaid and never the bride. I’m engaged at least, you see?” She twiddled the fingers on her left hand at me, showing off a massive engagement ring. “I’m happy and she’s not. That’s why she said that.”
I kept my silence.
It seemed that the less I replied to Miss Dewar, the more liable she became to share. The type of woman who couldn’t stand the sound of silence. That or she loved her own voice.
“I didn’t hate Julia,” Sasha said. “I was happy she was getting married.”
Sasha, the maid-of-honor, had been standing up at the altar when the lights had cut in the room. That meant that she was unlikely to have been the one who had either cut the lights or fired the gun.
How did the murderer know where to shoot in the dark? Night vision? Surely not.
This was a small town murder. No spies this time. Apart from Gamma and me.
What this meant was that Sasha likely hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger. But she might’ve attacked me and been in on the plan to get rid of Julia.
“You see, if anyone hated Julia, and I mean truly hated her, it had to be Mrs. Knowles,” she said, studying the side of my face as I plumped the pillows. “You know, Mrs. Knowles? The groom’s mother?”
I shrugged and kept my mouth firmly shut.
“Mrs. Knowles despised Julia,” Sasha continued, pacing back and forth now, her dark, nine-inch-heelsclacking on the floorboards. “And do you know why? Because Knowles comes from old money. The New York elite. You know? No one was ever good enough for her precious Ethan.”
I grabbed my feather duster and started going over the dressing table, neatening up Sasha’s makeup.
“And, of course, Julia didn’t try to impress her. She wanted to host the wedding out here in Gossip because she knew it would inconvenience Mrs. Knowles.”
“Inconvenience her?” It was the first time I’d prompted for more information.
“Oh yes,” Sasha said, nodding enthusiastically. The relief on her face was almost laughable. She was so happy I’d involved myself in the conversation. “So, what you don’t know about Julia is that she was super rich. Like, she paid for everything. All of the guests tickets and accommodation. Everything.”
That was news to me.
“She told me that she didn’t want Mrs. Knowles to control the narrative at her wedding, so she decided to remove everyone from New York. Julia said it was the only way to make sure that the wedding would go smoothly.”
Which it hadn’t.
“And I believed her. I mean, Mrs. Knowles was furious at first. And Ethan’s a real mommy’s boy. He was really upset that Julia went behind his mother’s back and planned everything so he insisted that Mrs. Knowles be involved in the catering of the wedding and choosing the decor. Which turned out to be a disaster.” Sasha stopped pacing. “They wound up fighting so much that Julia kept crying herself to sleep. She would visit me late at night sometimes, you know, so… yeah, she had insomnia too. So yeah. Uh. Yeah.”
That had been a muddle of information. I picked through it. “She would visit you at night. Here?”
“Yes,” Sasha said. “We met outside on the front porch.”
“Right.” So, not at the side door in the kitchen then. I’d have to ask Gamma to cross-reference Sasha’s claim with her camera footage. But there was something in this I could use. I had to sift through the extraneous information.
“The truth is, if anyone hated Julia and wanted to get rid of her, it was for sure Mrs. Knowles. For sure.” Sasha resumed pacing, occasionally cracking her knuckles. “Yeah, she wanted to get rid of her, all right. Couldn’t stand the fact that Julia had enough money to do what she wanted, when she wanted. That’s what it was about.”
“Did you tell the police this?” I asked.
“Yes,” Sasha replied, and once again, I asked myself why she was telling me this in the first place. “I talked to that hot detective. The one with the dark hair? Gosh, can you imagine how cute our babies would look? Maybe this town isn’t so bad after all, if you know what I mean?” She winked at me.
That was my cue.
I finished the last of my tasks in the Rose Room then slipped out into the hall. Cocoa Puff the cat sat underneath a table of oddities nearby. He meowed a greeting.
“I’m not done yet, Cocoa.” I’d promised him kitty treats when I was done with my cleaning for the afternoon. “I have one last stop to make.”
The Green Room.
Where the groom's mother and father were staying.