“I’m… no, not really. It’s terrible!” She cried the last words and ran toward the king-sized bed with its puffy sheets behind her. She threw herself onto it and buried her head in the pillows. Kayla sobbed, her entire body wracked with emotion.
Gamma and I exchanged a glance.
We entered the bedroom, and I shut the door carefully behind us.
“Don’t cry, Kayla,” I said, and came over. I opened the drawer in the dressing table and removed a box of tissues—I cleaned these rooms every day, so I knew where we kept everything for the guests. “Here. Take this.”
Kayla sniffled and sat up. She accepted a tissue from me and used it to dab the end of her nose. “This is so horrible,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it’s happened.”
“What’s happened?” Gamma asked, her tone soothing.
Kayla wiped the end of her nose on the tissue, then balled up the white square in her fist. “Everything’s going wrong. I—I lost the necklace.”
“The necklace?”
“Yes, the necklace Jordan gave me, and my sister won’t speak to me anymore because of him. And now Jordan’s dead, I—” Kayla burst into tears again, and this time, the shared glance between my grandmother and I was frustrated.
“It’s OK,” I said, and patted her on the back. “It’s OK. Let it all out.”
“How did you and Jordan meet?” Gamma asked. “Did you know each other long?”
“No,” Kayla replied, her sniffles dying down again. “Only since we arrived at the inn, but we had a connection, you know? Whenever I went to see the kittens, we would talk, and I just—sometimes, you’ll meet someone, and you’ll know that it’s meant to be. That they’re your soul mate. That’s how it was with Jordan. He was my soul mate.” Kayla’s lips peeled back over gritted teeth. “But my sister.” She hissed out ‘sister.’ “She was angry with me for enjoying Jordan’s company. She thought I was crazy, and she told me I’d better stay away from him or she’ll make sure I never speak to him again. She thinks she owns me!”
“Oh dear,” Gamma said.
“Yeah. But I told her I’d never talk to her again if she said anything mean about Jordan because he and I were… we were meant to be. She laughed at me! She actually laughed at me! And now, she won’t talk to me anymore and Jordan’s dead and the necklace and—”
“The necklace?” I prompted, because Kayla could burst into hysterical tears again.
“Jordan gave me a necklace as a show of our love. It wasn’t much, but it was special.”
“When did it go missing?” It had to be relevant, right? To the murder? Or maybe I was completely off-base. Everything in this case had me questioning motives and causes.
“I took it off the night before Jordan… before he died.” A sob stifled behind her fist. “And the next morning when I went to put it on, it was gone. Someone took it right off my bedside table.”
“Was your door unlocked?” I asked.
“My bedroom door? No.”
“The bathroom door?” Gamma suggested.
“Yes, that’s always unlocked at night so I can go to the… wait, you don’t think my sister took it, do you?” Kayla gasped and smacked her hand over her mouth. Unfortunately, she’d used the one holding the tissue, and she inhaled the crumpled up ball and choked frantically.
I thumped her on the back until she spat it out into her palm.
Kayla rubbed her chest and looked up at us, watery-eyed. “She wouldn’t do that to me, would she?”
“No clue,” I replied. “You know your sister better than we do.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Kayla said, her lower lip stiffening. “I’ll get the truth out of her. How dare she betray me like this! How dare she!” She leaped from the bed and stormed toward the bathroom door. “Josephine! Are you in there?” Kayla’s frantic banging went unanswered.
Gamma tapped me on the forearm and nodded toward the door. We made our hasty escape before Kayla could return and continue crying.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“That there might be a motive for murder hidden somewhere in the evidence, but Josephine, as the killer, doesn’t add up with what we found at the crime scene. This is tricky, Charlotte. A very tricky mystery to solve.”
On the ground floor, my grandmother paused, her frown more worrying to me than the prospect of Kyle turning up. When Georgina Mission—her original last name before she’d had to change it—didn’t see a solution, there was foul play at work.
“We could talk to Kayla,” I said.
“We should do that.” Gamma nodded. “But I’m much more interested in what happened to Jordan’s body. And who would want to steal it. Let’s make an appointment to see Dr. Briggs.”
10
Dr. Briggs sat behind a small walnut desk in his office, his watery brown eyes regarding us over the rim of his coffee mug. He rocked from side-to-side in his chair, because he was soothing himself or it was a tick, occasionally touching his fingers to the last of his brown hair covering his scalp.
“I already spoke to somebody from The Gossip Rag,” Dr. Briggs said.
“Oh?” Gamma cocked her head to one side.
“Yeah. I spoke to Jacinta Redgrave.”
“Well,” my grandmother replied, “we’re not from The Gossip Rag. We’re from an independent online publication finding its footing in the industry. We’d appreciate it if you furnished us with the information we need to write an article about recent occurrences in Gossip.”
Dr. Briggs put down his coffee mug and rolled his lips from one side to the other—a sight to behold.
“You’re not with Jacinta?” he asked.
“No,” Georgina said. “Totally independent. And we’re not a tabloid either. We report the bare bones facts.”
“What’s the name of your website?” Dr. Briggs asked.
Here we go. The moment of genuine risk. The lie we’d told to get an audience with the doctor and ask all the questions we wanted about the disappearance of Jordan’s body would probably come out, eventually. We needed it to work for the next half an hour while we spoke to
