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CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS AN INGRAINED HABIT to return to the kitchen. I had dishes to wash and a kitchen to tidy.

Olivia was already stacking dishes in the dishwasher and the prep table gleamed, with not a thing on it.

“Why don’t you go and get a drink, dear?” she told me.

“It’s barely one in the afternoon,” I pointed out.

“Everyone’s in the bar,” Olivia said. “Except Broch, of course.”

Of course ?

“Go on,” Olivia added.

I shrugged. It would be nice to not have to clean up for once. I moved down the kitchen – it was nearly twice as long as it was wide – and thumped the swing door open with the heel of my hand as usual, went through and moved out from under the stairs running overhead.

The door to the bar was just at the other end of the short, wide passage, up by the front door. Where the stairs started, the corridor widened into the foyer.

A few months ago, Hirom had found an old, scratched and dented wooden rocking chair in the cellar. He’d spent a lot of spare time stripping generations of paint and restoring it. Ghaliya had donated one of the many cushions in her storybook bedroom to add to the seat of the chair. I’d placed the chair in the space along the wall beside the bar door.

Broch was sitting in the chair. He had a laptop open on his knee and was typing furiously.

It was amazing to me that he could move his big fingers so fast across the keyboard, but he wasn’t deleting or hesitating. He looked up as I came up to the door. “Shh…” he breathed.

Mysteriouser and mysteriouser.

I pulled the curtain over the bar door aside and went in. When I tugged the curtain back into place, I saw the screen of his laptop.

He was typing out dialogue. Something about the Rangers.

Hockey.

Neither hockey nor fiction seemed to be quite Broch’s style.

I moved around the big teak bar. Hirom hopped off his chair at the local’s table, ready to run over and pour me a drink, but I waved him back. I poured myself a glass of lemonade and moved over to the table where everyone was sitting.

With a quick glance, I confirmed that it was everyone who lived in Haigton, except for Olivia, who was in the kitchen; Broch, who was writing a novel; Harper, who was being questioned; and Frida, who was upstairs preparing the four guest rooms for my new guests.

That left Trevelyan, Ben, Hirom, Wim, Harper and Ghaliya. The table was round, wide and sturdy. It easily accommodated all of them. The chairs were barrel chairs, which didn’t tuck under the table, and took up more space than the spindle-backed wood chairs that populated the rest of the bar. I knew from experience the barrel chairs were deep and comfortable.

I suspected that guests would automatically pick this table, except that at least one or two of the locals were invariably already sitting around it. That also scared any guests away from the cozy window seat and the long table in front of the window, for the local’s table sat only a few feet away. Anyone sitting at the local’s table could enjoy both the view through the mullioned windows onto Haigton’s high street, or the warmth of a fire, if one was set in the massive fireplace the table sat beside. No fire burned today, and I felt in need of it.

I sank into the chair that Trevelyan pulled out for me, with a deep sigh. “I can’t stay long,” I told everyone. “Olivia virtually shoved me in here.”

“We’ll have something soon,” Ben said softly.

“Have what?” I asked.

“What they have,” Hirom said, lifted his tankard toward the bar door.

I realized he was referred to the feds in the dining room. My heart gave a little patter. What did the FBI want Harper for? Yeah, I didn’t like her, but it still offended me the way they strong-armed everyone, including Harper. It felt as though they thought we were all criminals, just not proven yet. The disdain, and the expectation that we would jump when they snapped their fingers, was irritating. I’d stopped answering to anyone with that sort of attitude about a decade ago. It was doubly annoying that I had to buckle under now.

I looked directly at Harper. “What did they want to know?”

Harper shrugged. “Where I was and what I was doing, two days ago. Where I was and what I’ve been doing around the state for the last twenty years.”

“Why?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. “I know exactly why, because the feebs are really into over-sharing.”

“That’s it?” I asked, ignoring her typical-Harper retort. “Just where you were two days ago and your history?”

“Harper’s history would be difficult to explain, I imagine,” Wim said quietly.

Harper grimaced. “I’ve had practice. But that King asshole…he knows there’s more that he can’t see.” She considered. “He’s got good instincts.”

“It sounds as though that’s all he’s working on,” Ben said. “Instinct.”

“Well, I didn’t give him anything, because I have nothing to give.”

“They didn’t tell you more about Calloway?” I asked.

“Oversharing. Hello,” Harper replied.

“Right.” I nodded. “And you don’t know who he is?”

“I have no fucking idea.” For the first time, Harper showed an emotion other than her usual anger. It was bafflement. I suspected that Harper didn’t like showing ignorance about anything. She would consider it a weakness.

But clearly, King had given her no information at all, while grilling her about her movements two days ago. That had to be when they figured the man had died.

Lunch had interrupted their interrogation.

“Why did you tell me to feed them?” I demanded of Ben.

“You were going to refuse seventy dollars a head?” Trevelyan asked, his mustache wriggling as he smiled. “Expensive burgers.”

“They’re good burgers,” I replied, trying to smother my irritation as it flared higher. If I was going to get irritated about it, why not vent it upon someone who had done nothing wrong? The day was heading for the garbage chute anyway.

“Then why are you angry about it, mom?” Ghaliya asked. She rubbed her extended belly absently, down by the side. She had been experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions for about a week. And that had freaked me out. I still didn’t know what we were going to do when she went into labor. I didn’t know if the town would let both of us leave. And a home delivery was out of the question. Ghaliya’s pregnancy was too high-risk for us ignorant locals to manage.

I rubbed my temple. The headache that seemed to lurk behind my eyes, lately, was starting up again. “I’m not angry,” I told Ghaliya, then let out a deep breath, venting…well, yes, it was anger.

“You would have turned down their money?” Hirom asked, surprised.

“Yes,” I said shortly.

Everyone looked at me. “Why?” Wim asked.

I had to think about it. I’d have preferred to head up to my apartment and sit on the gilded and tucked green velvet sofa and think carefully, without the pressure to come up with an answer. But no one at the table would let me do that. They wanted to know now.

At my age, one was supposed to know themselves a little better than a flighty teenager. I had learned, though, that the more I dug into my brain, the more I learned how much I didn’t know about myself.

I rubbed my temple harder. “I just…” It occurred to me that I could just get up and leave. Cite too much work as a reason for not lingering to answer their questions.

And then I had it. “Six of them,” I said. “Demanding, snotty, and imperious. I already have enough to do, with just three guests. How am I supposed to deal with them as well? Frida and Hirom are run off their feet, and you tell me it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. That Beltane is Haigton’s Super Bowl. And that, frankly, scares the crap out of me. I just figured out how to operate the cash drawer!”

Everyone around the table considered me. No one laughed, which I was thankful for, because even I thought I had sounded whiney.

“Do you think,” Trevalyan said slowly, peering into his tankard, “That’s why Olivia is in the kitchen right now?” He looked up at me, peering through his glasses.

I felt small and ungrateful. But at the same time, I hadn’t lied, even if I had complained with a high school girl’s tone. “And I appreciate that she is,” I said firmly. “I might have to tap all of you on the shoulder and ask for help in the next while, if Beltane is as busy as you say, and you’re not just trying to haze the new girl.”

No one smiled.

Well, that killed my last hope that the next few weeks weren’t going to be as insane as they’d reported.

I got to my feet and put my lemonade on the table. “You drink it, Ghaliya.” I knew it was natural, homemade, and organic because I’d squeezed the lemons for Hirom.

I looked around the table. “I have to go and work.”

“Me, too,” Hirom said, pushing himself off the chair and landing on both feet.

Ben raised his hand. “We’re waiting for Broch,” he said, with a tone that implied I should wait with them.

“Why?” I asked.

“He’s listening,” Trevalyan said. “To the Feds.”

Oooooh . The details shifted my understanding. Broch wasn’t typing out a novel. He was taking dictation. It was the Feds who had been speaking about hockey. “He can hear everything said in the dining room from way over here by the bar door?”

“Easily,” Trevelyan said. “Vampires hunt by sound and scent. Sight comes last, especially at night, but he can see farther than any of us.”

I shivered. It was an atavistic reaction to the idea of being prey.

Moody, the FBI agent, appeared in the doorway to the bar. She looked around, found us at the table, and glared at us. “Ms. Gibbs? Please come with me.”

“Drinking time is over,” Harper announced and put her nearly empty glass of whisky on the table with a thump. She stood and strode over to where Moody was waiting. “Well?”

Moody blinked. “This way.” She turned and led Harper out of the bar and across the foyer, I presume, as if Moody was the local.

As the curtain fell back into place, I glimpsed Broch’s elegant leather loafer. He was still in the rocking chair. Moody hadn’t considered him suspicious at all.

“Harper could be there for hours yet. Which means Broch will be, too.” I didn’t spare any thought about Broch getting fatigued or hungry, because he couldn’t do either. “If this Ray Calloway has been murdered, and if they think Harper has something to do with it, they will keep going over and over it, hoping she’ll make a mistake or crack.”

“You know FBI procedures?” Hirom asked, sounding impressed.

“I watch movies,” I said. “And I helped produce some, years ago. I hired the consultants and stood around listening to them talking to the directors.” I shrugged.

Everyone looked impressed.

“It wasn’t like that,” I assured them.

“Like what?” Hirom asked.

“You’re all looking at me as though I’m Hollywood. I really wasn’t. I was paid to keep people happy because my boss had a way of pissing people off.”

“You were paid to be nice?” Trevalyan laughed.

Ben smiled. Wim pressed his lips together and kept his gaze on his beer. Even Ghaliya was grinning.

I scowled at everyone. “I can be nice when I have to.” I walked away, because I had to get back to work. My first stop was going to be the kitchen, because the food I had thought adequate to feed twelve people for the week wasn’t going to last much more than a few days, now. But I also didn’t want to miss what Broch had to say. “Let me know when the feds are done with Harper!” I called over my shoulder and went to work.