Sour grapes, the voice in my head that sounded like my mother said.
I hated that even her imaginary voice in my head was right.
Mandy walked my mom through everything she’d already told me.
“Why didn’t you call the police as soon as you saw the blood on the laundry?” my mom asked. “Why wait and clean all the rooms first? Did you intentionally destroy evidence?”
Mandy flattened her hands against her forehead. “If you don’t believe me, the police never will.”
The quiver in her voice was stronger than before, as if the thought of going to prison scared her more than whatever might have happened in her guest room. It probably did. Prison coffee would be too weak for her taste.
My mom’s disapproving glance landed on me rather than Mandy and clearly said this is the woman you were going to hand over to the police without any preparation?
It wouldn’t do any good to explain that, in my world, I didn’t look at everyone I interacted with as a client first and a person second. That I’d approached the situation as helping a friend through a frightening emotional experience. I hadn’t considered she might be a potential suspect.
We’d been together less than ten minutes and I’d already disappointed my mom. That had to be a new record even for me.
Now all I could do was try to mitigate the fallout by translating for Mandy what was happening here.
I touched Mandy’s arm. “She believes you. She’s trying to prepare you for how the police might approach this. If they do think you could have been involved, they’ll try to fluster you.”
“Right.” Mandy made a motion with her hands in front of her like she was miming pushing air up from the bottom of her lungs and back down again. “I’ll try to remember to breathe.” She shook her head. “Sleuths in the books are always too calm about finding a body. Even you, Nicole. I don’t know how you haven’t cracked like Humpty Dumpty with all you’ve seen.”
My therapist and a lot of prayer deserved credit for that, but my mom would see needing either as weakness, so I simply smiled in response.
“You grow numb to it after a while,” my mom said.
I snapped my gaze to her face, but if her expression had been anything other than professional, I’d already missed it.
She pointed back at the vacuum. “Now why did you keep cleaning even though you found laundry covered in blood stains?”
“I wasn’t sure that it was blood until I reached this room. You’d be surprised at what you see when you run a bed-and-breakfast long enough. I had one guest who ruined three hand towels by eating a whole bag of pomegranates. They were stained red and yellow, and it never came out.”
My mom gave Mandy the smile she reserved for encouraging her clients. “Better.”
For the next five minutes, my mom walked Mandy through her story, correcting her every time she shared too much. Then we headed down to the front desk.
Mandy picked up the receiver but hesitated with it halfway to her ear. “Do I tell the police that I thought about washing away the blood and pretending I never saw it?”
“No!” my mom and I said in unison.
Even with the prep work my mom had done, I had a feeling this wasn’t going to go well.
3
When the police finally arrived at The Sunburnt Arms, Mandy, my mom, and I sat on the couch in the lounge, lined up like Russian nesting dolls.
The officers came through the front door, and I suddenly wished we were nesting dolls so I could disappear inside Mandy.
Chief McTavish led the way. And he hadn’t brought along any of the officers I had a good relationship with. The officer next to him had an ash blond buzz cut, muscles that strained the arms of his uniform, and a gut that was starting to peek over his belt, like he spent all of his time at the gym lifting weights and none of it doing cardio. I thought his name was Scherwin, but I wasn’t confident about it. He and Mark made oil and water look friendly. Mark had once described him as “badge-heavy.”
The combination of him and Chief McTavish didn’t bode well for me.
Chief McTavish stopped a few feet from the couch, rolled his lips in until they disappeared, and shook his head. “Miss. Fitzhenry-Dawes. I wish I were surprised to see you here.”
At least he hadn’t sneered my last name. The last thing we needed in an already complicated situation was a showdown between McTavish and my mom.
“Nicole’s here as my attorney,” Mandy blurted.
I groaned internally. My mom still asked at least once a week when I was coming back to my job at the firm. If she thought I was open to practicing again, she’d be like a dog when a piece of bacon hit the floor.
But that wasn’t the most pressing problem. No one called a lawyer when they were simply reporting a possible crime.
Chief McTavish jutted his narrow chin forward, making him look more like a fox than usual. “Do you need a lawyer, Mrs. Gibson?”
My head shake might have appeared a bit too emphatic. I slowed it down and rested a hand on Mandy’s arm. “She doesn’t. I came to pick up my mom”—I inclined my head in her direction—“and stumbled upon Mandy after she’d found the blood in the bathroom of the room next door.”
“Your mother was staying in the room next to the possible crime scene?” Chief McTavish asked. His tone of voice suggested that if this had been April Fool’s Day instead of the middle of May, he might have suspected one of his officers of putting us up to pulling a prank on him.
I started to cross my heart, but pressed my hand down on my chest before I could finish. Both Chief McTavish and my mom would have seen the gesture as childish.
Chief McTavish must have decided I wasn’t about to shout got ya because he sighed and turned to Scherwin—up close, I could read his name tag now.
“Please take Mrs. Gibson upstairs and take a look at this substance that looks like blood.”
Chief McTavish waited for them to leave, then pulled an arm chair closer to the couch. He sank into the chair and adopted a posture much more practiced-relaxed than actually relaxed.
The man was good.
