Instead, she invited them into her living room, where she immediately attempted to ply them with lemonade and cookies.
“I just made them. They’re fresh out of the oven,” she told them proudly. “Please,” she said, placing a platter of the chocolate chip cookies on the coffee table. “You’ll be saving me from myself. I can’t resist them.”
Brianna looked at Jackson. She could almost see the words forming in his head. He was going to ask the woman why she bothered baking the cookies if she didn’t want to wind up eating them.
For the sake of not antagonizing the woman, she headed him off quickly. “We’d love some,” she assured the woman. “They look delicious, Mrs. Caulfield.”
“Oh, call me Roberta, please,” Mrs. Caulfield insisted, dealing out napkins to both of them. “Johnny, my late husband, called me Bertie, but I always hated that name,” she confided. “Still, you can’t criticize your husband and tell him what to do, now can you?” The woman chuckled.
Brianna saw a smile curving her partner’s mouth. “Some women might,” Jackson told the widow, slanting a look in Brianna’s direction.
“Mrs. Caulfield—Roberta,” Brianna quickly corrected herself, “we’d like to ask you a few questions about the Old Aurora Hotel, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, I don’t mind at all,” Mrs. Caulfield answered. She planted herself on the love seat that faced the sofa they were on. “It was such a lovely establishment,” she said with a note of wistful longing in her voice. Reaching for one of her cookies, the woman shook her head as she took a bite. “Such a tragedy.”
Listening, Brianna decided to just allow the woman to elaborate on what she meant. Watching Mrs. Caulfield’s kindly face, she asked, “Tragedy?”
“Well, yes,” the other woman said with feeling. “If it were up to me, I certainly wouldn’t have torn down that lovely building. Oh, the memories that were made in that place,” she said nostalgically.
“According to the hotel records,” Jackson cut in impatiently, “you stayed there on three different occasions before the hotel was closed down.”
The woman nodded with enthusiasm. “Yes, that is correct.”
Jackson asked the widow what he felt was a logical question. “Why would you stay at the hotel when you were living in Aurora?”
Rather than take offense, to Brianna’s relief, Mrs. Caulfield seemed to take the question in stride.
“Well, working my way backward,” the woman began, “the first time I stayed at the hotel, it was because my husband surprised me with reservations. He called it a getaway weekend,” Mrs. Caulfield recalled, a dreamy smile playing on her lips. “We were celebrating our thirty-fifth anniversary.
“The second time was because Katie, our youngest, was getting married there and she and her fiancé were putting all the out-of-town guests up at the hotel. We stayed there, too. It was a beautiful wedding. I have an album if you’d like to see for yourselves,” she volunteered.
“Maybe later,” Brianna told the woman. “About the last time...?”
“And the last time...” Mrs. Caulfield’s voice trailed off for a moment as she looked at them sadly, tears glistening in her eyes. “The last time was because I’d just lost my Johnny and I wanted to go where we’d had some of our happiest times.” Glancing at the plate, she raised her eyes to look at Jackson. “You’re not eating, Detective,” Mrs. Caulfield pointed out.
“I had one,” Jackson replied, trying to sound friendly.
“Oh, one’s not enough, dear,” the grandmotherly woman chided. “You don’t get the full effect of the cookie’s flavor until you’ve had at least two or three more.” She pushed the platter closer to him, her meaning clear.
“I’m afraid his limit’s one. Detective Muldare can’t have too much sugar,” Brianna told the woman, coming to her partner’s rescue with a solemn expression. “His doctor said sugar isn’t good for him.”
Mrs. Caulfield was clearly disappointed, but she didn’t want to argue. Instead, she nodded. “Can’t go against doctor’s orders, I suppose,” she sighed.
Brianna immediately took advantage of the momentary lull and quickly redirected the woman’s attention to the reason they were here.
“Tell me, Roberta, during your stays at the hotel, did you ever observe anything odd or unusual going on? Or maybe something that struck you as odd later, when you looked back on it?” she coaxed.
“Odd?” the older woman repeated, as if she was having trouble comprehending the word. “What do you mean by odd?”
At this rate, they were going to be here all day, Jackson thought. “The workers doing demolition found bodies in the hotel walls,” he said bluntly.
Mrs. Caulfield’s mouth dropped open. She turned pale as she sucked in air and then covered her mouth to suppress a squeal of alarm.
Brianna shot her partner a really irritated look.
“Well, tiptoeing through the tulips wasn’t getting you anywhere,” he pointed out.
Brianna looked back at the woman on the love seat. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid that my partner’s a little rough around the edges—”
But the former schoolteacher waved away Brianna’s words of apology, indicating that they were unnecessary. “Don’t apologize, dear. My Johnny was just the same way.” She smiled at Jackson. “To tell the truth, you rather remind me of him. He always liked to get to the heart of the matter,” she told them with a bittersweet smile. “No beating around the bush for him.”
“Well, since the ice has been broken,” Brianna said, “did you notice anything unusual during your stays at the hotel?”
“Unusual?” the woman repeated thoughtfully. “The staff was all very nice and the dears were eager to please. Even the last time, when I was there by myself.”
She paused again, this time for so long Brianna thought that perhaps she’d drifted off.
Just as Brianna was going to try to get the woman to continue talking, Mrs. Caulfield suddenly told them, “You know, that last time, I thought I heard noises in the walls. You know, some kind of scuffling, the kind of noise
