Murder in Death's Door County (17 page)

“Wait!” Lizzy yelled to me. I stopped. She
continued, “Look more closely at those colored pieces of glass on the floor.
Doesn’t it seem odd that a black and white mug would have colored pieces of
glass mixed in with its shards?”

At Lizzy’s question, I turned around and
looked at her.

She tried to quirk her eyebrow. “Just
take a look at the ‘colored pieces of glass’ on the floor, okay? Tell me what
you see.”

Shrugging, I complied. Being careful to
avoid little shards of mug, I got down on my hands and knees to view the glass
pieces more closely.

Ruby red, emerald green, sapphire blue,
and diamond sparkly colors made themselves apparent. My mouth dropped open.
Wide-eyed, I looked up at Lizzy. She realized I finally understood and nodded
knowingly at me.

“Gems?” I squeaked out.

“Gems. From the looks of it, you have a
King’s ransom sitting here.”

“Oh my gosh! What’s next with this? This
puts a whole new angle on why Harry was killed, doesn’t it?”

“I think it narrows things down.
Especially since now we can assume his murder probably wasn’t random.”

“I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Lizzy looked over at me, alarmed. She
crossed the room to my side and put an arm around me, “Steady. Try to stay
calm.”

“Stay calm? In the past week and a half,
I have quit my job, moved away from home, been screamed at by my client, found
my editor dead, had my room ransacked, found out the guy I like is an FBI agent
who was investigating me, and discovered jewels—probably stolen jewels—hidden
in a mug.” To my horror, I started to blubber, “And you are telling me to ‘stay
calm.’ You ‘stay calm!’”

“What happened?” came Kitty’s voice from
the doorway. She saw my stricken face and ran over to us, “What’s wrong? Are
you okay?”

“D-d-do I-I l-lo-o-ok o-okay?” I said
between sobs. Kitty offered me a tissue and wrapped her arms around us.

“Annie’s having a rough week, I think,” explained
Lizzy. A bit of an understatement. They both patted my shoulders. I felt like
we’d like been here before.

Kitty broke the hug first and declared, “Well,
first things first. We need to get this mess taken care of. Then we need to
figure out what to do.”

Lizzy ran to the closet to get the
cleaning materials, including the dustpan. As she left the room, she called
back to me, “Annie, see if Kitty can spot the stuff!”

Looking at me quizzically, Kitty said, “Stuff?
What stuff?” Wordlessly, I pointed to the jumbled mess of broken mug shards and
jewels.

“I’m sorry, I still don’t see it. All I
see are a bunch of pottery shards.”

“Maybe this will help. The mug that
broke was only white and black, it didn’t have any color on it,” I explained as
I wiped my eyes and blew my nose.

Kitty ducked to get a closer look at the
remains of the mug. “What the heck? What are all these little pieces of…?”

“Colored glass?”

“Yeah.”

“No. Look more closely.”

“These are GEMS!”

“Yep,” Lizzy said as she re-entered the
room with the supplies.

“Oh my gosh! Where did they come from?”

“I don’t know if you remember that
stoneware mug that Harry gave me?”

Kitty screwed up her face in thought, “Nope,
can’t place it. But is that why your room looks like a tornado went through it?”

“Near as I can figure. We also think it may
be why Harry was killed.”

Kitty helped Lizzy and I clean up the
mess. Our task took us until after midnight. The three of us decided to hide
the jewels. Clearly, someone wanted them. I didn’t want to keep them, but I did
want to find out who wanted them. Kitty said she could keep them in the
Lighthouse’s safe.

“The Lighthouse has a safe?” Lizzy said,
clearly surprised.

“All hotels do, honey. Of course we have
one. Remind me to show you where it is. And, for you, Annie, I’m thinking that
you should probably temporarily move to another location.”

“Yeah, Kitty, I think you’re right.
Someone is clearly trying to get to me. But where should I go?”

“Let me talk to my sister and
brother-in-law. I’m sure they’d let you stay with us. You can sleep in the room
I’m in, it’s the guest room. I don’t think it will be a problem. If it’s okay
with both of you, I’ll head home now and talk to Maggie and Nick first thing in
the morning.”

“Oh, would you Lizzy? Do you mind? It
would really help me out. But I don’t want to put your family in danger.”

“Pish! We thrive on danger,” Lizzy said
jokingly as she wriggled her eyebrows. “But, seriously, it won’t be a problem.
I don’t think you’ll be putting us in danger. I doubt they—whoever ‘they’ are—will
know where you’ve gone.”

Kitty left shortly after Lizzy. Before
leaving, she made sure that I was okay to sleep in the room alone. I reassured
her that I’d be okay for one more night alone in the room.

I turned on the TV for white noise right
after Kitty shut the door. My mind kept churning over this recent development.
Why were there gems in the mug Harry gave me? What could that possibly mean? I
assumed Harry wasn’t that generous. Those jewels had to be worth a lot of money.

At about three in the morning, I woke up
to my cell phone ringing. Darn it all! Only a few hours of sleep for me. The
ringing crept into my dreaming subconscious. I thought my alarm was going off
and that I kept getting air when I tried to hit snooze. The ringing wouldn’t
stop. Finally, I swam to the surface of consciousness and realized my phone was
ringing off the hook. Oh my gosh, who the heck is calling at this time of the
night? I wondered as I raced to my cell phone. The phone stopped ringing just
as I picked it up. I saw 11 missed calls on my phone’s display. All of the
calls had happened between two and three. Clearly, someone wanted to contact
me, but didn’t want to leave a message. The missed calls also didn’t display a
real number, only “000-0000.” I felt a deep chill go down my back. Had my dream
been that prophetic? The phone rang again, startling me out of my reverie. I
dropped the phone as I tried to answer it.

It rang four times before I could get
it. Finally, I breathlessly answered, “Hello? Who is this?”

A synthetic voice box said, menacingly, “This
is your worst nightmare. You should never have gotten involved in this. Give us
the jewels and don’t ever contact Marcos and Diana Landrostassis again.”

“Who are you? Why are you doing this?”

“This has nothing to do with you. If you
get out now, you won’t suffer the same fate as Harry.”

“What are you talk-,” I began to say
when the faceless voice abruptly hung up on me. Unable to sleep again, I
decided I might as well get up and continue working on a plan of action for our
informal investigation.

K
ITTY HAD AGREED TO CALL
DONOVAN
with the news of my
temporary residence. I felt weird about talking to him, but given his
involvement in the case, he had to know where I was staying. Kitty handled the
cops, too. Since I had to leave a lot of my stuff behind for the cops’
investigation, I only packed one small bag. I also grabbed my laptop.

Lizzy came to pick me at eight. Our
drive to her sister’s house was pretty uneventful and quiet, which helped
soothe my nerves. I was still in shock about the recent events, and told Lizzy
about my dream and the call I had earlier that morning. Clearly shaken, Lizzy
almost drove off the road when I told her about the voice on the phone.

I sunk a little lower in my seat and
stayed quiet for the rest of the short drive.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I met Lizzy’s
sister and brother-in-law, but I was pleasantly surprised. They were even nicer
than I had imagined. Since Lizzy had filled them in on the situation, they hadn’t
gone to work before we arrived. We got there around eight thirty a.m. and they
welcomed me with open arms. Lizzy made the introductions and raced inside to
get the bed ready. Well, not really a bed. Lizzy had told me that since she
lived in their guest room, we’d be sharing a room. She’d keep her bed and I’d
be on the couch. She had wanted me to take the bed, but I couldn’t do that to
her.

Her sister, Maggie Williams, hugged and
fussed over me as though she’d always known me. Maggie had the same blond curly
hair as Lizzy, but she wore it a little shorter. She stood a little taller than
Lizzy and was almost a full foot taller than me. Her husband, Nick Williams,
was a big guy, probably as tall as Donovan, but with an extra 30 pounds.
Dressed in jeans and a sweater, Maggie was taking the day off from her job as a
kindergarten teacher. Nick was also dressed in jeans and had arranged to work
from home that day.

When Kitty made the arrangements with
Donovan, she arranged for him to meet us there. He arrived soon after we did
and called out to Nick so they could talk. I heard Donovan introducing himself
to Nick as Maggie shut the door.

“Come on, now, Annie, let’s get you
inside. Would you like some hot cocoa? Do you have any bags?”

She put her arm around me and ushered me
inside. The guys stayed outside to talk for a bit. I assumed Donovan was
bringing Nick up to speed on the situation up to now. Since we hadn’t talked
since his revelations to me, I wasn’t sure what was going on between us. I
started to have a sinking suspicion that he only pretended to like me to find
out more about my connection to Marcos and Harry. Humpf!

After Maggie gave me brandy-laced hot
cocoa and some scrambled eggs, she showed me my room. Lizzy brought my bags up
the stairs. She told me to make myself at home and promptly went back downstairs.
The couch felt amazingly soft and I crashed hard.

When I woke up, the midday sun shone
brightly into the room. It took me a minute to remember where I was and why I
was there. I looked around the room. Since the room was really Maggie and Nick’s
guest room, I saw that Lizzy hadn’t put too much of her own personality into
it. I knew that she didn’t plan on living there for too long. To be honest,
though, I did love how Maggie had decorated the room. The guest room had white
woodwork, with a roses theme. The walls were painted light brown, and textured
to look like suede. The mahogany highboy dresser held a vase filled with pink
and yellow silk roses. The white bedspread had intricate rose-pink, cream, and
brown stitching throughout. And the couch I slept on was under a beautiful
Monet painting, of a couple standing near a little cottage in a bed of roses.
The painting—well, print really—accented the wall perfectly. I could live in
this room for a while.

Before I even got up, I heard a little
squeak in the room. I looked over by the bed and saw an itty-bitty little
girl staring at me. She must have been about three and had enormous blue eyes
like her aunt Lizzy. She had twisty little blond pigtails and wore a pumpkin
sweater. I would have thought she was a doll if I hadn’t seen her blink.

“Hello,” I said, smiling at her.

She waved at me, still clutching her
stuffed bear. She looked oh-so-solemn.

“What’s your name?”

“What yours?”

“I’m Annie. Is Maggie your Mommy?”

She nodded, very seriously. Her little pigtails
bobbed with her head. She seemed to relax a little when I mentioned her Mommy.
As if on cue, Maggie came rushing into the room.

“I saw your door opened, and guessed
that you might have a little visitor,” Maggie said breathlessly. “This is our
little girl, Lucy. Lucy, say Hi to Annie. She’s your aunt Lizzy’s friend.”

“Hi, Yannie.”

I held out my hand for Lucy to grab. She
grabbed one of my fingers and shook it.

“So good to meet you, Lucy.” I smiled at
her. She just nodded and kept staring at me. Then she smiled, and the sun came
out. She had me hook, line, and sinker.

I threw my legs over the side of the
bed. “Thank you for everything, Maggie. I didn't get much sleep last night. What
time is it?”

“About one in the afternoon.” She
straightened up the room a little, and brought me a towel, washcloth, and clean
toothbrush. “And it’s no trouble at all! Donovan explained everything to Nick.
And Lizzy explained you and Donovan to me,” Maggie winked as she swept out of
the room. Lucy followed her.

I got up, found my suitcase, and
rummaged through it for something to wear. I found a red wool sweater and pair
of jeans.

Maggie came back into the room with Lucy
following close behind, and said, “The shower is just down the hall.” She
smiled and added, “Oh, and Lizzy asked me to tell you that she went to work,
but she’ll be back in time for dinner tonight.”

With that, she grabbed Lucy’s hand, and
they left the room.

I grabbed the towel, washcloth, and clothes,
and headed for the bathroom. I took a long shower to clear my head of these
latest happenings.

Since I had time on my hands in the
afternoon, I went over my notes for the case and tried to contact Marcos yet
again. I wished I could go to the library to do some research, but was nervous
about going there by myself. Thoughts kept swirling around in my head, but I
couldn’t make any connections. The jewels hidden in the mug really stumped me.