The Hound of Bar Harborville (A Jane True Short Story) (Trueniverse Book 1) (3 page)

“What the fuck?” she shouted, lunging for the light switch even as I reached to flick it on.

She turned on her heel and we both looked at the figure in our bed.

It was our host, Jack(ques). He was propped up on the pillows, the covers—that I’d so carefully strewn with rose petals—pulled over his thighs.

He was very naked.

He was also very dead.

His eyes stared forward, his color already pallid. I couldn’t see any signs of blood or bruising or any other trauma, but he was definitely dead.

Jane looked at me, eyes wide. I looked back at Jane. Then I swore, moving just far enough into the room to set the tray down on a small table by the door before steering her away by the elbow to go call the human police.

So much for our romantic getaway.

“I can’t believe they think I killed that man!” Jane hissed at me, her voice furious, as soon as I’d shut the door onto our new room.

“They don’t think you killed him,” I soothed. “They just think he died because of you. There’s a difference.”

Jane’s eyes bugged and she was about to start yelling again when someone knocked on our door. It was Timmy, bearing all of our luggage and bags from the old room.

“Hullo,” Timmy said, standing still as a statue.

I motioned Timmy into the room. “You can set the stuff down over there, thank you.”

“Okay,” came Timmy’s stock response.

“Have the police gone?” Jane asked Timmy, who stared at her. She was clad in an enormous white hotel robe that she’d found in the closet of our first room, and she looked like some sort of priestess rather than the dancing vixen of earlier. Still, I’d prefer the man-boy didn’t stare at her with quite such intent.

“Timmy, have the police gone?” she repeated.

“Yup,” he said. “Think so.”

“Okay,” she said, realizing she wasn’t going to get much help from the valet. “Thanks for bringing our stuff.”

Timmy nodded. “Okay.” And then he left. Again, without a tip.

“Timmy, wait!” I called, reaching for my wallet and bolting toward the door. But once I hit the hallway I realized Timmy had again vanished into thin air.

“What the hell?” I asked, scratching my head. I considered following the man’s scent but decided that was stupid. We’d had enough mysteries for tonight, and the love of my life was undoubtedly winding up to let me have it.

And by “it,” sadly, I didn’t mean the sex.

Sure enough, Jane’s voice hit me as soon as I walked in the door. “He did not die because of me!”

I sighed as I sat in a chair near our new door to take my boots off. This room, although also elegantly decorated, was much smaller than our former one. The bed was still a king, but not a four-poster, and the bathroom, which I could see from where I sat, only had a normal bathtub.

And while there was a fireplace, there was no rug in front of it.

“Throw a dog a boner,” I muttered, ruing that lack of a rug with all my heart. I did love shagging on a rug.

“‘What?” Jane asked sharply. She was in no mood for puns.

“Nothing,” I said. “But don’t worry, I know Jacques didn’t die because of you. And the police do too. Or they will. Your beautiful boobies didn’t give him a heart attack.”

She appeared appeased by my words. “That’s what I said. But what was he doing there?”

Boots off, I sat back in the chair with a sigh. Jane went and sat on the end of the bed, casting a glance over her shoulder to make sure no dead bodies were already in it.

“I was only in that bathroom for twenty minutes, tops,” she said.

“More like twenty-five,” I said. “I was gone twenty.”

“And Jack…I mean, Jacques, wasn’t there when we went in. Or did we manage to miss his dead body?”

“No,” I said. “We’d have noticed a dead body. And I put the rose petals on the bed, which were disturbed. He got in the bed after I put the rose petals down.”

“And then he just died while I was in the shower?”

I shrugged. “That’s what the police think. The coroner will give us the final word, but they’re pretty sure he died of a heart attack. They said he did have heart trouble,” I reminded her.

“So he came to our room and got in our bed in order to die?”

“He probably didn’t know he was dying.” My nose itched, so I scratched it. Jane watched me contemplatively.

“But he was naked.”

“Well, that’s usually why a man gets in a woman’s bed,” I said. “To be naked.”

“But it wasn’t my bed. It was our bed. He met you at the same time he met me.”

“Maybe we have a swinger vibe.”

“We do not have a swinger vibe, Anyan. And you’d just left the room.”

“I bet someone like Jack(ques)—” I pronounced it with two syllables, “—thinks everyone’s a swinger. But you’re right. The timing is weird.”

“Exactly. If he was a swinger, why wait till you’d left? But what’s the alternative? Seduce me, make love to me, and get out of the room in the time it took you to go downstairs?”

“He didn’t know where I was going. Maybe I was leaving for the night.”

“That’s stupid,” Jane said, with her usual tact. “Besides, where were his clothes?”

I chewed on my bottom lip, wishing she’d take off that robe. She was still wearing that stunning lingerie underneath, yet not a peep showed through all that cotton.

“Anyan,” she said drily. “I asked a question. What happened to his clothes?”

I threw up my hands. I’d thought about that earlier but hadn’t wanted to mention it. This wasn’t our problem! We were on vacation.

“They weren’t in the room,” Jane answered. “So he must have walked to our room naked. That’s a bold move, even for someone who owns the hotel.”

“I think getting in a strange couple’s bed is a bold move, naked or not.”

She frowned, clearly ignoring me. “I think he didn’t die in the bed. I think he was put there.”

“Why on earth would he be put there?” I asked, because we weren’t going to get involved. Because we were on vacation.

“Because he was murdered,” she said, doing her best impression of a determined amateur sleuth in a mystery written by Agatha Christie.

I sat back in the chair and shut my eyes. “He wasn’t murdered. He had a heart attack.”

“They think he had a heart attack. They don’t know for sure.” And then Jane yawned, a huge, drawn-out yawn that reminded me we’d gotten up at the butt-crack, as usual, with the twins, and we’d already had a very long day that included travel and a lot of food and booze and a corpse.

“Yet,” I reminded her, determined to drop the subject. “They don’t know for sure yet. But they will in the morning. And speaking of morning…”

I got up from the chair and stalked toward her. She watched me with a lazy, indulgent smile.

I put my hands on either side of her thighs, bending at the waist to peer down into her face. She put a small hand on my jaw, coaxing me forward for a kiss.

As I laid her back on the bed, prepared to feast on her body till we were both full and satiated, I remembered something.

“Shit,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

I practically flew back to our room, which wasn’t locked, thank the gods. No one besides Jane thought Jack(ques) was murdered, so they’d just carted his body away after asking only the most basic of questions about his medical history.

Luckily, the strawberries and champagne—not cold anymore, but still champagne—stood where I’d abandoned them on their silver tray. I picked them up and went back to our new room, down the hall.

When I got back, Jane was clad in all that sexy lingerie, lying in bed with her black hair fanned out alluringly on the pillow.

And sound asleep, snoring like a tiny barnyard animal. I resisted the urge to howl.

“Tomorrow,” I told her sleeping form. “I’ll love ya, tomorrow.”

It was only a day away, I reminded myself, and we’d already found a body. What else could go wrong?

Still half asleep, the morning sun streaming over my face, I reached for Jane.

And kept reaching, since she wasn’t there.

Muttering, I opened my eyes and looked around the room. She wasn’t anywhere else in the room and the bathroom, when I got up to investigate, was similarly empty.

I considered texting her, till I saw her phone lying on the bedside table. Which meant she was probably still in the hotel, as she wouldn’t go too far without it.

A quick shower and change of clothes later, I found her already in the dining room we’d seen the previous day. Edeet! sat at the end of the table, only her red-rimmed eyes displaying her grief. Jane sat across from Kitsy.

An empty chair sat opposite Edeet!, conspicuous with its lack of a place setting. Jacques wouldn’t be taking his spot this morning, and his wife’s gaze kept flickering across the table like she was touching a wound.

“Good morning,” I said to the room, taking my place next to Jane. Edeet! gave me a small smile, and Kitsy a sober nod.

“You’re up early,” I said to my ladylove, my tone suggesting I wanted to know why she’d thought that was a good idea.

“I was hungry,” she said, which was certainly partly true, since Jane was always hungry. But it wasn’t the full truth.

“And?” I whispered, sotto voce, under the cover of Aisha carrying a tray with a rattling coffee service spread across it.

“And I saw a police car roll in this morning at eight. I wanted to find out what he wanted, for our…”

Her voice trailed off as Aisha poured Jane a steaming cup of coffee.

“Thank you,” Jane said, smiling at the girl. I did the same when mine was poured before turning back to the mother of my children and the current bane of my existence.

“Our what?” I asked, knowing I didn’t want to hear the rest.

“Our investigation,” she muttered, not wanting anyone to hear.

“Investigation,” I said with a heartfelt sigh. “Jane, there is no investi…”

“Shh,” she hissed to me. “Delicious coffee,” she said, to the table at large.

Edeet! gave a small nod of thanks but was otherwise silent. My heart went out to her, even with the strangeness of the situation. Or especially because of the strangeness of the situation.

Breakfast was short and unbearably awkward. We ate delicious eggs benedict and barely spoke to each other except about the food. Aisha served the meal, although she looked the worst of any of us, her expression haggard.

It was a relief to escape back to our room, where I immediately took Jane in my arms.

“Don’t you want to hear what I learned from glamouring the detective?” she said, as soon as I stopped kissing her.

“Not really,” I said, trying to kiss her again. I figured that if she had my tongue in her mouth, she couldn’t keep talking.

“Jacques did die of a heart attack,” she said, drawing back from me to dish. I sighed and sat down on the bed, flopping backward in defeat.

“I told you. Nothing to do with us. Now, if you really want something to investigate…” I sat up, reaching for her, but she danced out of my way.

“But he did not die in our bed,” she said. “At least, they don’t think he did. He probably died in the conservatory and was moved into our bed.”

“And how do the police know that?”

“Because that’s where they found his clothes. They were stashed behind the fountain, the one in the flowerbed.”

“So how do they know he didn’t just take his clothes off in the conservatory and walk to our room and then die?”

“Because who does that, first of all,” Jane said. “He’d have taken his clothes off in the room rather than walk naked through the whole hotel. And there was dirt on the back of his shirt, and they found a Jacques-shaped imprint in the soil of that flowerbed. He fell in the conservatory, probably dead, and someone undressed him and brought him up to our room.”

“And why on earth would someone do that?”

“Come on, Anyan,” she said, watching me with pitying eyes. “It’s obvious.”

“Is it? You still think his natural heart attack was murder?”

“Why does a heart attack have to be natural?” she countered. “Maybe someone who knew he had a heart problem scared him to death.”

“And this is our problem because…?” I gave her a pointed look. “We’re on vacation.”

“And someone may have murdered an innocent man, right under our noses,” Jane said with an expression I knew well. It was the look she had when she saved the world.

“What do the police think?” I asked her, praying she’d see reason.

She looked away from me. “They think it’s strange his clothes were in the conservatory but that he definitely died of natural causes.”

“See? We are not getting involved with this, Jane. They’re humans. We’re on vacation. It doesn’t involve us.”

Jane’s eyes narrowed at me and she tapped her finger against her cheek in thought. Then she got her “epiphany” face, which I feared almost as much as her “save the world” face, especially since the two were usually related.

“What?” I asked suspiciously.

“I have an idea,” she said, confirming my worst suspicions. “I propose a wager.”

“A wager?”

“Yes, a wager.” Jane took a step toward me, running her pointer finger down my chest. “You know that thing you’ve been wanting to do?”

“The one you said was too filthy for a nice girl like you?”

“Yes, that one. The absolutely filthy thing…” Her finger trailed lower, over the zipper of my jeans.

“Yes, I remember that thing,” I said, only barely managing actual speech and not an inarticulate growl.

“And remember the thing I want to do, that you think may throw out your hip?”

“That one’s just dangerous,” I replied. “Tempting, but ultimately dangerous.”

“Well, how about we wager your thing against my thing?”

“I like when our things rub up against each other, but I don’t understand. What are we wagering over?”

“That I can get to the bottom of what really happened to Jacques. And if I do, you have to do my thing. If I fail, I’ll do your thing.”

I shook my head. “I wasn’t born yesterday, missy. Unlike you. All a powerful halfling like you has to do is glamour a few people and they’ll tell you the truth.”

She pouted, and I wanted to suck her adorable bottom lip between mine and nibble. But I resisted, instead upping the ante.