Jessie Delacroix_Fright Night at the Haunted Inn Page 6

  Audrey was filled with joy, which spilled out through every pore of her beautiful body. She kissed the Sheriff’s cheek and said to him, “This might turn out to be the luckiest night of your life, sailor.”

  Muldoon just looked at Ginny and me. “It already has been, dear. I’m lucky to have you – and to have such good friends too.”

  Chapter Ten

  It ended up being a long night, but I knew today would be even busier. We had a crime to solve and some secrets to unlock. Arthur and I were up with the sun, and I thought I would join Kyle and Zach for breakfast in the Tea Room to talk about what they had learned. They were there early pretty much every day.

  Wally and Molly were there at a table by the window too. Wally was looking great, but Molly seemed very quiet and sullen.

  “It’s great to see you up and around today, Molly. I hope you’re feeling better.” I patted her shoulder, and she seemed to wince when I touched her.

  “Oh, I’m doing just fine, Jessie. A touch of the flu can’t keep an old girl like me down for long!”

  She did her best to put on a brave face, but I could tell she was still under the weather…and I noticed a bruise on her arm as her butterfly sleeve fell back when she reached for her coffee cup.

  “I thought Wally said you had a headache yesterday.”

  She gave her husband a disapproving look. “Well…yes…I get migraines when my stomach’s upset.”

  That was something I hadn’t heard of before. “Wow – a double whammy. Well, you two take it easy, and maybe we’ll see you tonight. Stop by for dinner – my treat.”

  “Thanks, Jessie,” Wally said with a huge smile. “But we’ll probably close the shop early today and give Molly one more night of rest to convalesce.”

  I nodded and headed for the kitchen to greet Ginny, who was back there slinging hash. She was really busy, so I just waved at her through the pass-through window.

  Something didn’t feel quite right with Molly, and I could tell she was hiding something – maybe something awful. Maybe she had some bone or muscle disease and had fallen to get that large bruise. It seemed like she had extra foundation on her face too, maybe hiding more bruises there. I’m sure Wally wouldn’t…no, of course not. I’d feel it. It wasn’t that. But I can’t just go crashing into people’s minds all the time.

  I slid into the booth with Kyle and Zach to see if I could get some juicy information from them about the case. They had talked to Wally last night, so maybe they would be able to shed some light.

  “You’re not getting anything out of us,” Zach was quick to say, “so you can put away that gorgeous smile and aim those big blue eyes somewhere else.”

  “Well, good morning to you too, Mr. grumpy pants. How are you this morning, Kyle?”

  I gave him my sweetest little girl smile and opened my eyes wide. Kyle had been like a big brother to me since I was a kid. Lexi was my baby sitter, and he’d be there with her most of the time – usually making out on the couch.

  He looked at me for a long moment, then glanced at Zach, and then looked back at me.

  “Okay…here’s what I know…”

  Zach rolled his eyes and his entire head…but, hey, Kyle’s the boss. Besides, I’ve helped him solve some tough cases.

  “…so, Wally says there were two beasts. They were fighting over the Colonel and tore him apart like a wishbone. Each of them had an arm, and then they each took a leg. One beast took Tramador’s leg and clobbered the other one with it, and then the dog jumped on the one who got clobbered. They struggled for a while, and then the dog chased it straight back into the swamp. The other one came out onto the lawn, and that’s the one we saw run into the basement.”

  I was thinking it through, but something was missing. “So, how did Wally get blood all over his face?”

  Zach tilted his head and looked at the ceiling for inspiration. “Maybe he got too close and the beast hit him. It’s hard to remember every detail when you’re in a traumatic situation like that. He was probably numb and didn’t even feel it.”

  “Except for he doesn’t have a mark or cut on his face – so it couldn’t be his blood. Right?”

  Kyle let out an exasperated sigh. “Why do you always have to complicate things with the facts, Jessie? Maybe Tramador’s blood squirted on him when they pulled his limbs off.”

  “Sure…” Zach agreed with that scenario. “There had to be a lot of blood flying around back there.”

  “Actually…” Kyle took a sip of his coffee as Ashley put his Denver omelet down in front of him.

  “Anything else, Mr. Carnigan?”

  “Just keep the coffee flowing, Ash.”

  “Will do, Mr. C. Your chicken and waffles will be up in a minute, Mr. Fontaine. Ginny just butchered it fresh this morning!”

  Zach looked a little confused, and I held back a chuckle. I wonder what he’d think if he knew his chicken was 200 years old?

  “Ginny’s whipping up some oatmeal and fruit for you, Miss Delacroix, and I’ll get your coffee.”

  “Perfect! So…Kyle, what were you saying?”

  “Um…actually, they didn’t find a lot of blood back there. And according to the report that Dr. Gastineau put out this morning, there wasn’t much blood in the torso either.”

  A chill came over my body as a dark possibility began to dawn on me. Two beasts…little blood. The door in the basement had been open. What if Kaya and Leo came back to kill Colonel Tramador? She turned into a werewolf and pulled him apart while Leo – the vampire – sucked out most of his blood.

  “We’re going to the morgue in Stony Point when we’re done with breakfast, guys,” I said, just as Ashley brought the rest of the food and my coffee.

  Zach stayed in Whispering Pines to take care of law enforcement matters, and Kyle and I took a couple of the Inn’s little ATV four-wheelers up to the ferryboat landing not far away. Arthur came along for the ride – with Granny on board, of course.

  “What did you feed this mutt for breakfast, Jessie?” Granny was sending me a mental message, in her usual cantankerous style. “Our breath tastes like butt, and we’ve got a bad case of the farts.”

  “I think he scarfed up the chicken liver and other entrails Ginny left out by the garage.”

  “Stop this go-cart! I’m going to hurl!”

  “Granny! He’s a dog. What do you expect?”

  “I mean it Jess…stop!”

  We were just cutting through the Yates ranch, where my guy, Travis, lives with his dad. They did a pretty good horse-riding business there, but Trav had called me last night to say that he and his brother, Carson, had to run back to Oklahoma for a few days to finalize some details on the sale of their ranch there.

  Arthur scampered off my lap and ran around to the side of the ranch house when I stopped, and Tavis’s dad, Percival, was on the bench on the front porch with a friendly smile and wave. His hound dog and best friend, Sadie, was asleep with her head on his lap.

  “Hey, Mr. Yates! How are things here at the ranch?” I walked up and leaned over to give him a hug.

  “Quiet. Not much doing with the boys out of town.” He said, stroking Sadie’s ear.

  Kyle waved to Percival from his ATV, and I could tell he was impatient to move on. He wasn’t crazy about taking time out of his day to get me into the morgue anyway.

  Arthur came back and jumped up on the porch with us, stretching his tongue and coughing. He waltzed up to the dog dishes on the porch and promptly lapped up a lot of water and several gulps of Sadie’s dry dog food. Old Sadie just opened one eye, yawned, and went back to her nap.

  “Well, we’re just passing through to the ferry landing, Percival. Say hi to Trav if you hear from him.”

  “Oh, he’ll probably call you before he thinks about calling me, Jessie. You have a good day now.”

  I always felt so at-home and comfortable around Percival, and being at the ranch always made me happy.

  We got to the landing just in time for the 10:00 a.m. ferry to
Stony Point, and Kyle had arranged for a police car to pick us up and bring us to the morgue on the fourth floor of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, right between the hospital and city hall.

  I hoped the big mean woman was there at the metal detector at the entrance. I already had her convinced that Arthur was my psychiatric service animal. Fortunately, she was there – but she was never happy about letting Arthur in.

  “Are you really going to have a panic attack if that animal isn’t in there with you, Miss…” She looked at my ID. “…Delacroix?”

  “I’m afraid I might ma’am. Dead bodies can really upset me…”

  Kyle decided to interject as he flashed his badge. “She’s a top consultant for Whispering Pines and for Sheriff Muldoon as well, Miss Honeycutt.”

  “Not one of those psycho psychic types, I hope.”

  I smiled at her as Arthur did a handstand on his front paws and barked the melody to Dixie. “I can assure you that I’m no psycho ma’am. As for psychic? Not really. But if I were to guess, I’d say you had two apple pancakes for breakfast at Sally Jo’s across the street, you forgot your wristwatch on the bathroom vanity today…”

  “I have the same breakfast there every day, and it’s obvious that my wrist is white where my watch usually is. Just a parlor trick.”

  “…and you have zebras on your underwear, a letter from your mother in your purse postmarked three days ago in Columbus…and your computer password is Zuba75pistachio. And your mother said you should eat more fiber.” I snatched the visitor passes from her hand for Arthur and me, and we headed for the elevator.

  Kyle gave me a puzzled look.

  “Lucky guesses.”

  Audrey was just coming out of the swinging doors to the autopsy room at the end of the hall on the fourth floor, which also held the drawers for all of the dead bodies passing through. She stopped and waved us over when she saw us get off the elevator.

  “Filling in for the medical examiner today, Dr. Gastineau?” Kyle asked her as we entered the room and approached Tramador’s remains. The smell of alcohol and formaldehyde permeated the air.

  “Well, let’s just say that Lester prefers his corpses to be in one piece.”

  “Anything unusual with the body, Audrey?” I did my best to sound professional and look serious. I knew she was all business around dead bodies.

  “Well, as Kyle may have told you from the report, there was much less blood than one would expect from a dismembered body.”

  The body was lying naked on a gurney with a folded sheet over the private area and all of the pieces set out in their proper places. The body had the typical big post-autopsy “Y” incision, though the stem of the Y on the abdomen looked like it had been ripped open rather than cut. Sutures were holding it closed, and from the thin appearance of the torso, it appeared that not much had been left inside.

  The head had been ripped cleanly off, with some of the contents of the skull still attached to the top of the spinal column protruding from the body. I suppressed my gag reflex and tried to get a closer look at the neck.

  “Yes,” she said, “look here.” Audrey rolled back the skin of the neck above the chest on the torso. “Are there any snakes in the woods behind the Inn, Miss Delacroix? There are two puncture wounds here, as if he were bitten, but I could find no sign of venoms or toxins. We are seeing if we can get any kind of DNA sample from the wound entrance points to find out what kind of animal might have done this. I don’t really know what to expect though, since the puncture marks are quite large and perhaps two inches apart, so it would have to be a large snake.”

  That’s what I had come here for. It seems my instincts may have been right. In fact I’m sure of it: This was the work of a vampire.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I’m a-coming, I’m a-coming, Jess. Just hold your shorts on there, girlie. I’m almost done cleaning the grill.”

  Ginny was finishing her shift, and I was trying to hurry her along so we could go find Leo, Kaya, and Moondance. Hopefully they were still in 18th Century France. I had put on an old calico mid-calf peasant dress with some white knee-highs, and I found a white lace apron to put over the skirt. I parted my hair in the middle and made two ponytails. I figured that would help me blend in with the peasant women of France in 1793.

  “C’mon, Gin! We’ve still got to run down to the antique clothing shop to get you something authentic to wear.”

  Carlo came out of the walk-in cooler whistling one of his favorite opera tunes. “Hello, ladies! I can take it from here, Ginny. Most of the lunch crowd is gone, and I can prepare today’s tea sandwiches and then get things started for dinner.”

  “It seems like you’re in an especially good mood today, Carlo. Did you have another date with Gladys Perkins?”

  “How did you know, Jessica? Yes, I met her after closing last night, and we took a walk through the park. It was lovely with the big full moon.”

  “Well, I saw that you came in with a couple of library books, so I figured you might have stopped by the library to see her again this morning.”

  “Yes, I think she’s catching on that I don’t really read the books, but…”

  “I’m sure she doesn’t mind. Anyway, Ginny and I have to run off.”

  “Another one of your secret adventures, I suppose.”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “Have fun, you two.”

  “All done, Jess.” Ginny turned around and wiped her hands on a kitchen towel. “Yeah, I reckon these fancy modern duds won’t quite do the trick for old-time Paris.”

  I gave her a disapproving look and shook my head a little as I pointed to Carlo.

  “I mean…they won’t do the trick for a visit to see Auntie Paris at the old folks home.”

  I rolled my eyes a little, but at least it was an effort. Then I looked at her. She was perfect. She had on her trademark red and white striped long stockings, a gaudy cotton dress, a white bib apron, and a white chef’s hat with her red hair in braids.

  I waved her toward the back door.

  “Bye, Carlo. See you later. Lexi’s here if you need anything.”

  We went out the back of the kitchen into the lobby.

  “Ginny, you look perfect! Just pull that poufy chef hat down closer to your head, and roll it up from the bottom…”

  I helped her out with the hat, rolling the elastic band halfway up the length of the hat, until it looked a lot like the bonnets that we saw on many of the women in Revolutionary France.

  “And here’s a clean apron. Let’s go.”

  “Aw… I thought we were gonna get all gussied up in those billowy satin dresses with corsets like at a fancy ball, Jessie.”

  “I don’t think the Reign of Terror is a good time to try to look like an aristocrat, Gin – but we’ll get dressed up like that, and I’ll take you to the Court of Louis XIV in Stony Point for dinner next week. How’s that?”

  “You mean where wenches and scullery maids and men in tights serve you huge turkey drumsticks and pheasant and soufflés on a platter?”

  “Yes – and wine and dessert too. It’s kind of like a party at the palace in Versailles, with the king and his ladies in waiting.”

  “All righty! I’m in!”

  “Great, now let’s go and find our guests.” We headed down the stairs into the basement, and I grabbed a flashlight.

  “Okie doke, Jess, but I thought we were giving them one more day. The moon will still be pretty full and pretty big tonight.”

  “Yes, but we’re not going to take them back yet. I just want to find out if they had anything to do with Tramador’s death last night. What was the date that Marie Antoinette was beheaded, Ginny?”

  “You mean that nice lady we saw yesterday? The one who went upstairs and got some food? They cut off her head?”

  “Yes, Ginny.” I guess that was one of the things she didn’t know. I pulled out my phone. “Okay, Google…When was Marie Antoinette beheaded?”

  “Marie Antoinette die
d on October 16, 1793. Would you like to hear more?”

  “No thanks, Google.”

  Ginny grabbed the knob on the main door to the hallway of the past. “It’s locked, Jessie. Alohomora!” She tried it again.

  “We’re not at Hogwarts, Gin. Let me try it.” As soon as I touched it, it unlocked and swung open slowly. “But…I didn’t even…”

  “It knows your hand, Jessie. Lionel must have fixed this one up too so it’s working right. Let’s go.”

  We headed down the dark damp hall to the doorway we had taken Leo and Kaya through.

  “Ruff!”

  I shined the flashlight down and saw Arthur looking at me with eager eyes and licking his chops with excitement.

  “Gran?” I assumed this was her idea, so I inquired telepathically so as not to let Ginny know that Granny was hitching a ride in my little beagle.

  “Well, it ain’t Liberace, Jess. You’re going to need my help, so let’s get this show on the road.”

  Swell. Well, maybe she will be helpful…as unlikely as that seems.

  We moved pretty quickly through the dank hallway now, as we had become more familiar with it, and stopped at the door with the levers and dials. I locked in the settings for October 16, 1793 and turned the knob.

  “Paris, here we come…I hope!”

  It looked like the same place we had been to before, with the crowd having a morbid festival around the Guillotine platform, but there was no sign of Leo and Kaya.

  “Well, Jess, let’s join the party! It looks like a lot of fun!” Ginny was ready to go, but I wasn’t quite as eager. “Maybe we’ll see Leo up there.”

  “I guess…but I sure wish I were here to see the Eiffel Tower and drink Champagne.”

  “Well, you’re gonna have to wait around for about a hundred years before they get around to building that, Jess – but I’ll bet we can find a glass of wine.”

  “I’ll sniff around through the crowd and keep an eye out for your friends, Jessie. You two go and see what’s happening closer to the head-chopper.”