Ghost On Duty (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 2) (3 page)

When I got to the station, I was ushered into a room that looked suspiciously like the sort of place where they questioned the bad guys. It even had a large window that I was pretty sure was set up so others could see me, but I couldn’t see them.
 

“What is all this about?” I asked the clerk who showed me in.
 

She shrugged. “The captain will be here in just a moment,” she said. “He has a few questions for you.”

“Am I a suspect?” I asked, shocked and pretty much outraged at the possibility.
 

She barely risked a smile. “Sorry. I can’t talk about that. You’ll be able to ask the captain any moment now.” And she made a quick escape.
 

I sat there fuming. On what possible ground could they suspect me of foul play? It didn’t make any sense at all.
 

The door opened and Detective McKnight came in. He didn’t smile.
 

“Hi,” he said, not sitting down.
 

“Hi,” I returned warily. “You all don’t really think I’m a suspect, do you?”

He looked surprised. “Who said you were?”

I shrugged. “Why am I here in the interrogation room?”

He made a face but didn’t answer.
 

“You saw me before I went out to Ned’s house,” I said defensively. “You know how nervous I was.”

“True. But by the time you got there, there was no more reason for you to confront him. Ned was already dead. Right?”

“Yes. Lucky for me, huh?”

He looked troubled. “I don’t know about that. So you didn’t have anything to do with that, did you? You didn’t get there, argue, and give him a little push?”

I gasped, unable to believe this man could suspect…no, even suggest!--something like that. “No. I didn’t do that. I’ve never killed anybody and I don’t plan to.”
Though if I did ever go on a spree, a certain suddenly indifferent cop would be the first on my list.

He nodded, so I guess he couldn’t read my mind.
 

“If you guys are cooking up some crazy little conspiracy theory about me, you can just…”

He held up a hand to stop me and finally he smiled. “Okay. Don’t worry. I knew that. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “Okay. I’m glad we understand each other.”

“Oh yeah. No worries on that score.” He turned and opened the door. “Just be cool. Tell him the truth. You’ll be okay.” And he was gone.
 

I stared after him, realizing he wasn’t the one who was questioning me. That meant the Captain was going to be my guy, didn’t it? My grand inquisitor. Oh boy.

The door opened and a tall man with silver hair cropped close and curly, like silver wire, and a sharp, though handsome face entered. I’d seen him before, but this was the first time we’d spoken. He held out his hand and smiled.
 

“Ms. Mele Keahi, isn’t it? I’m Captain Stone. A pleasure to meet you at last. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

That threw me off a bit. I shook his hand but I didn’t smile.

“I’ve already been questioned at the house,” I noted, sounding like someone saying, “
I gave at the office. Don’t bother me for more
!”

His mouth stayed in a smile but his eyes lost it immediately. “Yes, but you haven’t been questioned by me,” he said simply, dropping into a chair across the table from where I sat. “I understand you haven’t been here in our little town for long. Is that right?”

I nodded. “I’ve only been here a few weeks. I’m staying with my Aunt, Bebe Miyaki.”

His blue eyes narrowed. “And yet you’ve already been the one to find two separate dead people within moments of their deaths. Isn’t that right?”

“Moments?” The word threw me off. “I don’t know about ‘moments’. I did arrive pretty soon after they…it had happened in each case, I guess. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Don’t you find it curious that you’re always the first one to find the body lately?” he said, staring at me with suspicious eyes. “I’m wondering if this is going to be some new trend.”

To tell the truth, I couldn’t understand that one myself, but I would have eaten dirt before I would have admitted it to him.
 

“Just lucky I guess,” I snapped at him.
 

“It’s interesting. You know, we don’t have a lot of crime in North Destiny Bay. In fact, we’ve only had three murders all year. And you found two of those victims-and weren’t far from the third. Strange, don’t you think?”

I did, but I wasn’t going to admit it. I got stuck on the facts as he was presenting them, though. “You’ve definitely decided Ned Barlow was murdered?” I asked. “Couldn’t he have just fallen? An accident?”

He shook his head. “Highly unlikely. The coroner believes evidence suggests murder. The trajectory of the fall is in accordance with a push, not a jump. And only moments before you say you arrived. And yet, you didn’t see anyone, hear anything?”

“No, I didn’t.” I hesitated, suddenly remembering the flash of red I’d thought I noticed in the forested area behind the house. I hadn’t told anyone because I’d forgotten all about it. Should I…?

“It wouldn’t be wise to hide information from the investigation, Ms. Keahi. I want to know everything you know. And please don’t forget that hiding pertinent information from the police is a felony. You can do time for that.”

Anything I might have had to say got stuck in my throat after that. I sat there, eyes wide and a sort of tingling in my soul. How did I know what was pertinent and what wasn’t? I wasn’t actually involved in this in any way.
 

Just an innocent bystander—that was me. Oh boy.

“The entrance to the Barlow mansion is about half a mile from the main road,” he pointed out, shuffling through papers that seemed to be my statement from earlier that day. “If a murder had just occurred, you should have passed the murderer going the other way as you came in.” He pinned me with a steady stare. “Are you sure you didn’t see any other cars? Any other person?”

I nodded. “I’m sure,” I said, my voice breaking in the middle in a very embarrassing way. I coughed to cover it up, then added, “I was thinking at the time that his place was sort of isolated and out of the way. Spooky, even. I was a little nervous about being out there with only him after the way he’d treated me when we met before….”

Now I was in danger of babbling. I bit my lip and forced myself to stop.
 

“Of course, there might be a good reason you passed no one,” he said in a low voice, heavy on the vibrato. “If you were the perpetrator, there would be no one to pass. Isn’t that right, Ms. Keahi?”

Words were tumbling into my aching head, crazy words, things that were going to get me into trouble if they made any sense at all, and I had to stop them. I put a hand over my mouth and suddenly noticed that Dante was standing behind the Captain, looking right at me—something he hardly ever did. He was shaking his head slightly, as though warning me, and then he put a finger to his lips.
 

I stared at him, perplexed. What did he mean?
Lower your voice? Don’t babble? Don’t spill the beans?
But there were no beans to spill!

Suddenly I knew it meant all of those things and one more, the most important one.
Don’t antagonize the captain. It can only bring you grief.
 

I took a deep breath and then I took Dante’s advice. I even managed to smile. But no one seemed to be telling the captain he ought to take it easy. His next statement was a doozy.

“We’ve had reports that you were discussing methods of murder for Ned Barlow this morning at the Mad For Mocha coffee bar. Is that right?”

I choked. I don’t know what I choked on, but it took a minute or two for me to catch my breath and get rid of that what-ever-it-was in my throat so that I could talk normally again. And by that time, it seemed like we’d both forgotten what this was all about—and Dante had vanished.
 

The captain looked over his papers and quickly went back over every detail I’d given the detective who’d taken my statement. I kept my temper and kept the peace. We didn’t exactly become best buds, but we ended up in fairly good spirits, and he’d given up on trying to make me feel like a liar.
 

“I’ll see you at the meeting tonight,” he said as he ushered me toward the door.
 

That stopped me. “What?” I said, turning on my heel to stare at him. “What meeting?”

“The Victorian Village Community Support meeting. I’m sure you’re planning to marshal your forces to defeat the reinstatement of the lawsuit against the pageant.”

“Oh. Yes of course.” I frowned. “But what are you coming for?”

“Are you kidding? Whoever killed Ned Barlow will probably be in that room. I think I ought to be there, don’t you?”

“Oh. Certainly.” I gave him a stiff smile. “Then I’ll see you later, won’t I?”

“Seems like.”

He stood with his arms crossed across his chest and watched me leave, so I got the pleasure of feeling awkward and self conscious all the way down the hall. But I still glanced into rooms as I passed, wondering where my detective guy was hiding now. It seemed strange that he was suddenly so often gone from my life.
 

“Another day, another dead guy,” Jill said as she poured out my latte. “Don’t you get tired of making statements to the police?”

“You bet I do. And I’ve taken a vow of detachment from now on. No more death in my future.”

She looked at me wisely. “Ah yes. We all wish for that one.”

“No, I mean it. I’ve had it with these people who clutter my day with their corpses. I could just kill them!”

I glanced around quickly to make sure no one could overhear my outrageous and very silly talk. Jill was, after all, my oldest friend, and my best friend too. I could talk trash around her, things I wouldn’t want anyone else to hear me saying. It was nice to feel that comfortable.

But was it wise? I wasn’t so sure about that one. At least Dante hadn’t shown up to give me his reprimanding looks.
 

“Want to go with me to the Victorian Village meeting tonight?” I asked her. “It should be exciting. Lots of arguments and maybe a little yelling and screaming.”

“What about?” She definitely looked interested.

“About whether or not to allow the law suit to stop the pageant to go forward now that Ned is gone. Originally it was planned as an organizational meeting. The pageant starts in a few days and there are still loose ends to tie up. But now…” I shrugged. “Who knows what the winds of December will blow in?”

Jill was watching the door to her café. “I know one thing they’ve blown in. Lance Mansfield. The man behind the entire operation you’re supposed to be shepherding.”

I turned to look. I’d heard about Lance but I hadn’t met him yet. He looked nice—blond and preppy. I would have given odds he’d graduated from USC in business management.

“I’ll introduce you,” Jill said, calling him over.
 

I watched his response. He turned, smiling in a friendly way at Jill. When he looked at me, his eyes widened and so did his smile. He wasn’t bothering to hide the fact that he liked what he saw.

Chapter Four
 

It was nice having an attractive man be ostentatiously admiring after the week I’d had with McKnight blatantly turning his back on me and Captain Stone suspecting me of murder. Funny what a little appreciation did for my outlook on life.
 

He sat at our table and Jill went off to get him a black coffee, while he and I chatted about the pageant and how important it was to the town.

“I can’t pretend to be sorry that Ned is no longer going to be a problem for us,” he told me after I’d explained my unique contribution to what had happened the previous day.
 

“The captain told me that there’s still a chance the community may vote to let the lawsuit go forward.”

“Yes, there is.” He shook his head, more in sorrow than in anger. “That’s why we have to work the vote tonight. We’ve got to stop that movement in its tracks.”

I nodded, sure he was totally right. He just looked so sure of himself.

“I do have a personal reason to want it to go on,” he admitted, smiling as Jill placed his cup of coffee in front of him, gave me a wink, and went back to work the counter with her barista.

“Years ago my family owned a huge swath of the coast here –even the cliff-side area where Ned Barlow fell to his death. The property was
 
handed down by generations of Mansfields, starting in the nineteenth century. Rancho Verde and the Victorian Village are all we have left. And we don’t even own them outright.”

Somehow, sitting there talking to the man, I felt the tragedy of it all. “What happened?”

“My father did his best, but we fell on hard times and had to take the property public, taking on shareholders. Ned bought up a controlling interest in the Victorian Village project. He seemed to hate everything it stood for, and yet he wanted to control it. My father fought him until the day he died. It was quite a shadow over his happiness those final years.”

“What a shame.”

“Lately Ned’s been trying to break the contract in the trust that holds the Village together.
 

I frowned. “You know, I’m not totally clear on what the contract includes.”

“It’s pretty simple, really. The consortium still owns the land. People who wanted to participate in our project were given an opportunity to lease the land and their house itself, for fifty years, starting in the Nineties. When they do so, they agree to participate in the Christmas Pageant every year. You agree to make your home available for the Victorian House Tour in December, and you agree to decorate your home and put on some sort of program-be it a skit or a tableau or even a musical event, during December when the tours come through and when the general public is allowed access. The theme is something from Charles Dickens’ writings. Most people use A Christmas Carol as their guide.”

“So you could have a skit about the ghost of Christmas Past, or that sort of thing?”