Thankfully, the rest of the evening passed by uneventfully. The evening was rather enjoyable without Mr. Haggerty present and Amelia no longer telling fortunes. The marching band booster club passed out s’mores-making kits, and the French club gave out complimentary hot chocolate. I did buy one of the blankets at the PTO booth and snuggled with Vance around the fire while hanging out with Diane and Roger, Clemmie, Luke, and Aunt Thelma. I wasn't sure where Misty had run off to, but hopefully, it was to catch up with Daniel.
Mayor Parrish also disappeared early, and I couldn't blame her. She had put in a lot of work trying to make Silverlake everything Mr. Haggerty wanted it to be. I knew she had been disappointed, but in my opinion, Mr. Haggerty turned out to be the type of man who didn't deserve to be impressed. As I replayed some of his comments, I couldn't believe half of the things he said, especially the digs about shifters and vampires. His prejudice and poor attitude made me consider reaching out to the magazine's managing editor. Nothing good might come out of it, especially if the editor was anything like Mr. Haggerty. Still, if I was running a magazine, I would want to know if my reporters were disrespecting people and making the publication look bad.
The next morning, I was online looking up the editor's contact information when Eleanor, Percy the Poltergeist's wife and head housekeeper, approached me. The inn had never been cleaner since she took over.
"Canceling your subscription?" Eleanor said once she realized what website I was on.
"Something like that. What can I do for you?”
"It's about Mr. Haggerty."
"Don't tell me he trashed his room." He didn't seem like the type, but I had come to expect the unexpected in this business. People didn't respect hotel rooms.
"I'm not sure. The thing is, he hasn't checked out yet."
I looked up at the clock. It was going on noon. Checkout time was eleven o'clock.
"I was trying to be respectful of his privacy and keep out of the room, but I'd appreciate it if he could leave sooner rather than later. We have a full house tonight.”
"You're right. We do." Confronting Mr. Haggerty was the last thing I wanted to do, but Eleanor had a point. We did have a full house tonight, which meant she had plenty of work to do. "I'll go see what's keeping him."
Eleanor followed me down the hall to the last room on the right. It was a ground-floor suite that overlooked the lake. Mayor Parrish had insisted I reserve the best room for Mr. Haggerty. No amenity was to be spared. In hindsight, I don't think it would've mattered what room I had reserved for the gentleman. Nothing would have pleased him.
"Mr. Haggerty?" I knocked on the door and waited a few moments before knocking again. "Mr. Haggerty, it's Angelica Nightingale. Do you need any help checking out?" I looked at Eleanor. She raised her translucent blue shoulders as if to say she had no clue what was keeping him.
"I'll just take a quick peek," Eleanor whispered as she proceeded to stick her head through the wood door. I guess there were some benefits to being a ghost. Eleanor must not have been able to see Mr. Haggerty because a moment later, her entire body slipped through the door. I waited impatiently for her to return, trying to hear what was happening. I thought I heard Eleanor say something, but I couldn't be sure what she said.
My ear was pressed up to the door when the ghost came flying back through in a hurry. The coldness of Eleanor's body slammed into mine, and it felt as if she'd drenched me with a bucket of ice water. The coldness sucked my breath away, and I stumbled backward with an intense brain freeze. I squinted my eyes shut, hating the feeling, and exhaled, hoping the warmth of my breath would take a bit of the chill away.
"I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to run into you, but you need to get in here right away. Something is wrong with Mr. Haggerty!”
"Hang on, let me grab a key." I wasted no time getting a key for Mr. Haggarty's room, and I quickly followed Eleanor inside.
"Mr. Haggerty?" The man was lying face down on the carpet. He had a cup of coffee in his hand with a lid on it. The beverage had spilled out, soaking into the carpet.
"Mr. Haggerty?" I jostled his shoulder, but he didn't even flinch. My fingers quickly searched for a pulse on his neck, but I couldn't find one. "I don't think he's breathing."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, I think he's dead."
Eleanor gasped. "Go find my aunt. I'm going to call for an ambulance and the sheriff." Eleanor nodded and did just that while I made the phone calls.
"Oh, hi, Angelica. How's it going?" said Dottie, the relatively new secretary at the sheriff's department. Seeing we were a small town, we didn't have a central dispatch. If you had a fire, you called the fire department. If you needed the sheriff, you called the sheriff's department.
"Hi, Dottie. Sorry, this is an emergency. I think one of our guests passed away at the inn. Can you send a deputy?"
"Someone died? How awful! Are you sure they're dead?" The receptionist sounded more curious than anything.
"I think so. He's not breathing. There's no pulse. And he's nonresponsive. I have no idea what happened to him. Looks like he was drinking a coffee and then just passed away. He's facedown in his room."
"My word. You don't hear of that every day."
Tell me about it. "Can you let a deputy know?"
"Oh, right. I'm on it. I'll send someone right away."
"Thank you." I hung up with Dottie and took advantage of being in the room alone to survey the scene. Mr. Haggerty had a rough draft of his article on Silverlake on the desk in the corner. I quickly scanned the document. He didn’t have a nice thing to say about anyplace. I snapped a few pictures of the article and then a picture of the spilled drink. I didn't take any pictures of Mr. Haggerty himself. I didn't need to be reminded of what he looked like. The images would stay with me forever unless I used a memory charm to erase them.
I took a closer look at the coffee cup. It was the same cup that Diane served at the bakery. The heat was turned up in the room, and you could smell the pumpkin spice, but there was another scent underlying it. I couldn't determine what it was, maybe black licorice? I wasn't sure if that was right or not. I wanted to take a closer look, but that was when Amber arrived, also known as Deputy Reynolds; although, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d addressed her as such. She had a new deputy with her, one whom I hadn't been introduced to yet.
"What are you doing?" Amber said when she walked in. I still had my phone out. "Nothing. I just had a text message. I was waiting for you to arrive."
"Uh-huh." Amber looked over her shoulder at the new deputy and said, "Never trust what she says. She's always up to something."
"Hey," I started to interject but realized now wasn't the time. Amber bent low and checked Mr. Haggerty's vitals, concluding the same thing I had. There was no need to put a rush on the ambulance. Mr. Haggerty was dead.
The new deputy wasn't as interested in the body as she was in the rest of the room. Her instincts immediately went on alert as she began sniffing. "Do you smell that?" the new deputy asked.
"Smell what?" Amber took a cautionary sniff and scrunched her nose. “All I smell is pumpkin spice.” Amber then turned to me. "Shifters," she rolled her eyes indicating that the new deputy was a shifter.
I ignored Amber and turned my attention to the new deputy, Deputy Lopez, according to her badge on her chest, and agreed with her. "No, I smell something too."
"What are you still doing in here? This is a crime scene, my crime scene, and you're stepping all over it," Amber snapped at me.
Aunt Thelma arrived on the scene just then. "What's going on here? Oh my word, is that Mr. Haggerty?"
"I'm afraid so. He must've passed away sometime between last night and today," I replied.
Amber stood up and walked toward us. "You seem pretty confident in that timeline of yours. Something else you're not telling us?"
I pointed down to the spilled latte. "Mr. Haggerty was at the high school last night, and Diane was selling pumpkin spice lattes." I meant the connection as just a time reference and not to implicate Diane in the crime. That's not the way Amber took it.
"Let's get an APB out on Diane Granger. Middle-aged woman. Chin-length brown hair. About five two."
Deputy Lopez nodded her head and was ready to spring into action when I spoke up. "No, hang on just a second. By all means, go and talk to Diane, but use common sense for once. Why would Diane kill Mr. Haggerty and ruin her reputation in the process? Diane would never do anything to jeopardize her business."
Aunt Thelma backed me up. "Angelica's right. You're always jumping to conclusions, Deputy Amber, and they're rarely correct."
Amber scoffed. "You don't know what you're talking about. My conviction record would say otherwise." Amber then turned back to Deputy Lopez. "Put the APB out. I'll stay here and secure the crime scene. On second thought, I'll call my father directly. It’ll be faster.”
Aunt Thelma and I excused ourselves from the room, and I immediately called Diane from my cell phone. Thankfully, Diane answered right away. "Hey, I have some bad news. Mr. Haggerty was just found dead in his hotel room."
"My goodness. That's awful. He was a horrible person, but now he's dead? I'm so sorry that you are dealing with that."
"That's not the worst of it. He had a pumpkin spice latte in his hand, and Amber's sending the sheriff to come question you." I hoped he was only going to question Diane. He certainly didn't have enough to arrest her. "I think you need to lawyer up."
Diane blew out a breath. "This is ridiculous, but you're right. Let me give Roger a quick call, and then do you know where Vance is?”
I looked at the clock on the wall above my head. "He's probably just finishing up with his run. I'll text him to call you right away.”