A Twist In The Tail

Ava leaned over the tape for a closer look. ‘No, those are all already published. His wasn’t published yet. He usually makes notes in one of those binders, you know the refillable kind that you used to use in school?’

‘A three-ring binder?’

‘Yeah, that’s the one.’

I glanced back at the bookcase. No three-ring binder. Maybe the police had taken it.

‘We didn’t find any binder in there,’ Mom said.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he just started that rumor to make himself look important and wasn’t even working on anything. He was washed up old has-been.’ Ava leaned toward us and lowered her voice. ‘It’s a mystery to me how the women still found him so attractive.’

‘They did?’ I couldn’t imagine anyone finding Charles Prescott attractive, and judging by the sour looks on Mom and Millie’s faces neither could they.

‘Yes, can you believe it? Of course he used to be a looker back in the day, but now… well you saw him. Nothing to write home about. But I heard he still had a string of women.’ Ava glanced down the hallway, then turned back to them and lowered her voice again, this time to a whisper. ‘He even had one here.’

‘Here?’ Millie looked aghast.

‘Yep, I saw Tina coming out of his room late the other night.’

‘The other night? You mean the night he was killed? Are you sure?’ Mom asked.

‘I’m as sure as a monkey’s uncle. But it wasn’t last night. It was the night before. See, I’d fallen asleep in front of the TV in the sitting room and I was coming up the back stairs over there.’ Ava pointed to the stairway at the end of the hall. ‘When I saw Charles’ door open, I must confess, I ducked into the bathroom and hid behind the door because I didn’t want to talk to him. But it wasn’t Charles who came out. It was Tina.’

‘Did she say anything about why she was in there?’ I still couldn’t picture pretty Tina cavorting with Charles, but stranger things have happened.

‘I didn’t talk to her. I ducked back behind the door and I guess she just slunk off to her own room because I heard a door close, and when I peeked out the hall was empty. She never saw me.’

Millie turned to me. ‘Did you get any indication that they were that chummy?’

‘Not at all. It seemed like they didn’t even know each other.’ I thought back to the interactions I’d seen between Tina and Charles. Charles had arrived four days ago, Tina had arrived the next day. Had they acted a little strangely around each other? It did seem like they’d made a point to avoid each other. Was I reading things into it because of what I now knew?

‘Well that is his modus operandi,’ Ava said. ‘He has a wife back home, so when he has these affairs, he just pretends like he doesn’t know the girls. Oh, there were plenty of young girls at the papers we worked at years ago who were quite smitten with him. Though even then, I couldn’t figure out what they saw in him.’

‘Tina did seem overly upset at his death, didn’t she?’ Mom asked.

Millie chewed her bottom lip and glanced back at the door to Tina’s room. ‘Yes, she did. Was that because her lover had been killed or perhaps because she had killed him and was afraid of getting caught?’

‘I wouldn’t be so quick to pin the murder on her. She seems like a nice person and if you ask me, there are plenty of people who would’ve wanted Charles Prescott dead,’ Ava said.

Mom’s eyes widened. ‘Really? You mean like old lovers?’

‘Or his wife?’ Millie asked.

‘Not just them. Charles was a jerk. He wasn’t above stepping on someone to get ahead, throwing a co-worker under the bus or even blackmailing someone if he had something on them. I say good riddance to him.’ Ava shot a sour look into Charles’ room, then turned and strode down the hall.

We watched her go into her room before Millie turned toward the stairs. ‘Come on, we’ve got our work cut out for us. If what Ava says is true, we need to prove that there was a connection between Tina and Charles.’

Six

‘I didn’t realize you were being so literal when you said we should go back to the guesthouse and sniff around.’ Marlowe lifted her nose from the flower bed and sneezed. ‘All this sniffing is making me hungry.’

Nero gave an exasperated sigh. Marlowe still had to learn the art of patience. ‘We can eat soon. First, we must cover every inch. You never know where the killer might have dropped a clue.’

‘Right. Every inch.’ Marlowe stuck her nose back into the flower bed, then moved along to the corner of the guesthouse.

Nero continued on his course. So far he’d sniffed up several toads, a grasshopper and a few gull feathers. The feathers gave him pause, but luckily the gulls didn’t come over from Smugglers Bay Inn often, which was just fine with Nero.