Ben was equally astounded to see her, Autumn realized. Stopping in his tracks, he did a double take, and then stepped hesitantly forward, looking around at the activity – the paramedics wheeling the stretcher up to the door, Autumn and Willow with their pale, strained expressions. And then, from the street, the sound of the police siren blared out.
“Autumn! What’s happening?” Concern was evident in his bright blue eyes. He was breathing hard, and she realized he must have been alerted by the sound of the ambulance, and run straight from the veterinary clinic, down here, perhaps to check if there was an emergency. “Is everything alright?”
“I’m afraid it isn’t.” She stepped toward him. In other circumstances, she might have hugged him, but what with everything that had happened in the past few hours, she settled for a polite nod.
“Has there been a death?” The fact that the paramedics weren’t going anywhere with the stretcher clearly clued Ben, and again, Autumn nodded.
“It’s Trevor Brewster, the owner here.”
“Trevor?” Ben’s frown became more perplexed. “I think I know him. He’s served me a few times when I’ve come in here.”
He glanced around uneasily as the siren reached a crescendo and then cut off. A car door slammed, and the next moment, Officer Warring, the Magnolia Bay police officer, rounded the corner at a loping walk. On his belt, his radio was crackling.
“Morning, morning.” Concern shone from Officer Warring's round, good-natured face. He immediately took in Autumn's presence with a quizzical glance before returning to the paramedics. "What's the problem here? I understand there's a suspicious death?" Again, his gaze rested on Autumn, as if she'd been far too closely associated with suspicious deaths in his view so far.
“Yes, Officer,” the paramedic replied politely. “The first witnesses on the scene, these two ladies, saw that there were some suspicious circumstances. When we took a look we confirmed that the suspect was deceased, but didn’t interfere with the scene further. We decided it would be best to call you immediately.”
“What circumstances are these?” Already, Warring had his notebook out. “Give me an overview of what you saw.”
“Well, we were the ones who saw it.” Willow spoke, her voice breathless. “I came to deliver tablecloths because Trevor hadn’t come to the coffee festival. I thought he must be here, so I came down.”
“And you walked in?” Officer Warring asked.
From around the corner, more running footsteps signaled the arrival of a junior officer, who must have been called from elsewhere. Perhaps he’d arrived by bicycle, because his face looked reddened and flushed as he rushed up, adjusting his helmet and taking position next to Warring.
“Yes,” Autumn said. “We called out, but Trevor was clearly nowhere around, so we decided it would be better to go in and find him. We saw the shop was unlocked, you see, and knew that he must be inside.”
“So we headed in,” Willow said breathlessly, as if determined to give her version, too. “We headed all the way to the back room, and we saw him dead on the floor. I’d probably have gone straight up to him, but Autumn caught sight of the oil on the floor.”
“Oil on the floor?” Officer Warring said thoughtfully.
“Yes,” Autumn said. “There was a bottle of olive oil spilled on the floor. The bottle is still lying there, and the oil’s all around his feet.”
“Thank you for the explanation,” Warring said. He turned to his junior officer. “We’ll need to be careful in there, especially while wearing the foot covers. Watch where you walk, and don’t disturb any possible evidence.”
Everyone watched in silence as Warring and his junior officer headed in.
“Why did you think it wasn’t accidental?” Ben whispered to Autumn, as the paramedics moved toward the door.
“Because there was no sign of him slipping in it,” she said. His eyebrows rose.
“That was well observed,” he said, and she felt a prickle of warmth at the praise. Were things still okay between them? Perhaps it was her own imagination, creating problems where none existed.
Except then, as she had the thought, Ben’s phone rang, and glancing at the screen, he moved quickly away to answer it.
"Hi, Louisa. Yes, perfect," he said. "Just head out the kitchen door and go straight down to the main road. Then turn right. You'll see the town hall ahead and about a hundred signs for the festival. You can't possibly miss it."
Autumn's heart was pounding faster. Louisa? Whoever she was, she was clearly on first-name terms with Ben, and she'd been staying at his house from the sounds of things. Scenarios loomed in her mind. A secret girlfriend that he hadn't told anyone about? Perhaps he'd wanted to wait until he was settled here.
At any rate, whatever the reason for Louisa’s presence here was, she knew she was going to find out. Ben turned to her and he said, in a quiet voice, “Listen, Autumn, I need to tell you…”
And then, before he could say another word, Officer Warring came out. He was walking carefully in his plastic foot covers, but his face was grim. His gaze went straight to Autumn.
“I’m calling forensics,” he said. “They are on their way from the mainland. I need to interview both you ladies, if you were the first on the scene.” Again, his gaze flicked from Autumn to Willow. “Separately,” he added. “I don’t want you influencing the other’s version.”
He beckoned to the door that led into the main coffee shop, and Autumn followed him in, gulping as she did so.
A version of events? Without a doubt, this was a suspicious death, and dread chilled her stomach at the thought.
"Tell me your movements from the time you arrived here," the officer invited her.
In a voice that sounded shaky but resolute, Autumn described what had happened.
“We came down here to deliver the tablecloths. And when we walked in, it felt so – so empty and spooky. I had this strong feeling that something was badly wrong,” she said. “We called out, but when Trevor didn’t answer, we headed through to the back room, and he was there. Autumn was about to go forward, and try to help him – but I saw the oil and knew that something was strange about all of this. I managed to avoid the oil and I grasped his wrist, and knew he was dead.”
She squirmed uncomfortably as she spoke. That unseeing gaze had provided her with the clue she needed.
"When was the last time you spoke to Mr. Brewster or had any contact with him?"
“I was in the shop a couple of weeks ago,” Autumn said. “I haven’t seen or spoken to him since then. Willow had been in contact with him recently.”
“Ah.” He looked at her in a considering way. “Now, Ms. Ray, I know that in the past, when we’ve been unfortunate enough to have serious crimes on the island, you’ve been compelled to try to help.”
“Yes. Yes, I have.” Scenarios spun through Autumn’s mind. Her intervention had been scary, but necessary. It had helped to solve the crimes. She thought it had been worthwhile, but she also acknowledged that it had put her in danger.
“I need you to leave the police to do their job,” he said in a terse voice. “This could affect the success of the festival, and the town council is extremely invested in it going without a hitch. When the 911 call came in, I was patrolling the street outside the festival. We were trying to make sure nothing goes wrong. How were any of us supposed to know that a crime would happen down at the harbor?” He sounded frustrated, an emotion that Autumn shared.
I definitely won’t interfere,” she promised. But already, stress was surging inside her. Officer Warring had two different jobs to do. He had to investigate the death, and he had to police the festival closely. Those two roles were not possible to do simultaneously. Yes, he could get help from the mainland. Maybe they’d have a few spare officers they could send over to help out – if they were not on vacation, or sick, or suffering the same staffing issues that everyone on the island seemed to be experiencing right now.
"Did you see anything else? Hear anything?" Warring asked, and Autumn crinkled her forehead, trying her hardest to remember. The problem was that she and Willow had been distracted. They'd been carrying the bag between them and talking nonstop. Plus, Autumn had been suffering from caffeine-induced hiccups. Those hadn't helped either. What with one thing and another, if someone had left the area furtively, Autumn didn't think she'd have heard.
“I didn’t notice anything,” she said.
Again, as the officer nodded, scribbling notes, she wondered what the reason for this suspicious death had been. Maybe he’d had personal things going on in his life. This surely couldn’t have been a random crime.
“You can go,” Warring said, and Autumn stood up and left the quiet, lonely coffee shop, beckoning Willow over.
Looking pale, Willow headed in. Before she went through the door, she whispered, “Ben had to leave. He was – he was meeting someone at the festival.”
Louisa. Autumn felt a sense of doom. He was meeting Louisa there. Who was she in his life? Why had he felt the need to explain her presence to Autumn in a way that had sounded hesitant? She was suddenly very afraid of what this all might mean.
“I’ll head home,” she said.
She didn’t feel like going back to the festival. It would be far better to go to the guesthouse and make sure everything was on track there. She didn’t want to be around anyone right now. Unusually for someone who was usually so gregarious and who thrived on her interaction with people, Autumn found she just wanted to be alone.
She trailed back along the side street, turning onto the main road, and noticing that there was a small knot of people standing near the police car, talking among themselves and staring at the car as if it was a spacecraft that had just landed on the island.
“What happened, I wonder,” someone asked as she passed.
"Do you know what it was about, Autumn?" One of the onlookers who recognized her, raised their voice as she passed.
“The police are down there. And yes, there’s been an incident,” she said. It was as much as she felt comfortable saying.
She headed briskly past before anyone could think of any other questions that she wasn't ready to answer. There were a few called to her, but she pretended not to hear. The wind was blowing very hard, after all. By the time she got out of earshot, Autumn felt seriously stressed, as if she'd run the gamut in every direction today.
Having thought the debacle with Ben would be the low point of her day, she was shocked that it had gotten so much worse. A suspicious death. The sight of that body was seared in her memory. It had shocked her to her core. How evil that somebody had tried to cover it up, making it look like an accident by pouring olive oil over the floor. That glistening residue – she couldn’t get it out of her mind. Little details surged in her memory as she walked.
The way that his shoes had been shiny, the soles spotless. Not smeared in oil, she now realized. If he’d slipped in that oil, his shoes should have been covered in it, and it would have splashed up. Wouldn’t it?
She remembered the hand that had been outstretched when she grasped it, the fingers weakly curled. That wide sightless gaze. Creepy, disturbing, and mystifying.
Stop, Autumn told herself. Stop this now. Harking back to it won't do you any good, and it will only upset you. And there's no need to do anything. The police can handle this and will handle it. They'll get backup from the mainland, and should find the killer in no time.
Not that there was a bright side in such a terrible situation, but at least this murder had happened in an out-of-the-way coffee shop that wasn't even on the island's specially created Coffee Route. The festival wouldn’t be severely impacted by it, because it had happened elsewhere. A few people might be disturbed by it, but it would surely not cause general panic. It seemed to be a personal attack on Trevor Brewster, not a random robbery.
The police would do their work, and in due course, this shocking death would be a thing of the past, the crime solved, and the killer caught.
She headed up the pathway, trying to lift the burden of worry that hung over her. There was plenty to do to distract her from it. She could tidy the bedrooms, do some food preparation for tomorrow’s breakfast, and bring some wood from the shed out back to pile next to the fireplace. Max would help her with the chores. Then, later this afternoon, perhaps she’d go up to the festival again and have another look around.
“It’ll be a wonderful day,” Autumn told herself firmly, shutting the front door and starting to busy herself with her tasks. Hopefully, if she focused on them hard enough, she’d be able to forget this crime had happened at all
But it seemed like only a minute later that there was a hard, urgent knock on her front door.
The rapid series of bangs was so loud that Autumn almost dropped the tray full of empty cups that she was taking to the kitchen.
The cups rattled against each other as she set the tray hastily down on the desk in the lobby, before rushing over to the front door. Her first thought was that a guest had forgotten their keys. That sometimes happened, and it always seemed to fill people with a desperate sense of urgency when they couldn’t get in.
She flung it open, to see Willow standing on the doorstep.
Her sister’s face was chalk white, and she looked as if she’d seen a ghost.
“What is it?” Autumn asked, her own pulse now going into overdrive. “What’s gone wrong?”
“I’ve just finished being interviewed by Officer Warring,” her sister got out in a quivering voice. “And he thinks I did it! He’s about to officially accuse me of the crime – and he’s forbidden me from leaving the island.”