Page 5 of The Dead Come to Stay

A victim had been murdered a crow’s mile from Jo’s cottage. A year earlier, and a man had been murdered in Jo’s cottage. Would nothing trigger even an ounce of self-preservation in this woman?

“How, Jo? How can you forget to lock up?” he demanded.

“I swear, I meant to! Especially with a guest staying,” she said, as though this weren’t even more baffling.

“All right. So he left sometime in the night.” His eyes fell upon the bedstand where two keys glinted in morning sun. “And

you’re lucky he didn’t take those with him, or the murderer might have them right now.” He resisted saying again .

“I just don’t understand,” Jo said, looking around. “He seemed in such a hurry to get to bed, then doesn’t sleep here?”

MacAdams turned his attention to the overnight bag, pulling a latex glove from one pocket.

“Don’t touch anything,” he cautioned. “You said he was on business. Did he say what kind?”

“No. Do you always keep forensic gloves in your pocket?” Jo asked, peering into the bag from the other side of the bed.

He didn’t unless he started the day off with a corpse in a ditch.

The nagging irritation was spreading like an itch.

MacAdams pushed back the duffel flap with more violence than necessary and fished out a knit vest, an unworn long-sleeved tee, the blue button-down and one very soiled and still damp pair of trousers.

They’d been shoved in on top of the cleaner clothes, which didn’t make much sense.

He looked closer at the fabric—all of it spattered in mud.

“That’s what he had been wearing,” Jo said. “Plus a rather short raincoat. It only went to his hips.”

The man must’ve walked to the cottage last night, like Roberta had done. It might explain why Jo hadn’t noticed a vehicle.

But who walks across the fields in a downpour?

“Where’s the raincoat?” MacAdams asked, peering into the empty bag and then casting his eyes around the room. Jo closed her

eyes and flapped her hands at the wrist.

“Double breasted, dark buttons. A sort of Sherlock cape thing at the back—gun flap.” She opened them again. “Not here, is

it?”

It was not. And the body wasn’t wearing it, either. MacAdams called Green. It was a clue, if an absent one. He rang off to

find Jo in the closet-small toilet.

“I don’t believe it,” she said, voice muffled. “He stole my soap and washcloth—” she looked at the clawfoot tub “— and the towel?”

MacAdams made a quick survey of the toilet and bath, even crouching to look under the bed. No towels. The duffel had an assortment

of toiletries tossed in the bottom. A very strange business trip indeed.

“This doesn’t make any sense ,” Jo complained. “He left in the middle of the night without his bag, but takes my towels ?” She had walked to the nearby chair and prepared to sit in it; MacAdams caught her by both elbows.

“Evidence,” he cautioned. Jo grasped back and hung suspended from his forearms with a sorry! expression. He leaned backward, pulling her upright next to him, if a foot shorter.

“Detective?” A uniformed officer stood in the doorway. “Was unlocked, sir.”

MacAdams let go of Jo a little abruptly.

“Thank you, Officer,” he said, crossing the room. “Get the team in here and get the contents of that bag to Struthers.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No one in or out till we’re through, Jo. I mean that. No strangers, no guests, no random businessmen.”

“He wasn’t ‘some stranger,’” Jo interrupted. “He was a guest at my rental cottage .”

“Yes, and I need to see his booking.” Possibly, he’d switched rather suddenly into hard-boiled. Consequence of the job , he told himself, unconvincingly. And Jo was catching the edge of his ill humor. But she sent him the booking details as

requested, and handed over her keys before they returned to what should have been a celebratory event.

***

Forensics (minus the head of the department, Struthers, who was busy with their victim) bagged Foley’s belongings and made

the usual sweep. Nothing else of note. MacAdams met Green at the station with Jo’s keys in his pocket, and in a very unpleasant

mood.

“What’s the news?” he demanded.

Green waved her phone at him.

“Gimme a minute. Getting Uniform over to his apartment,” she said. MacAdams waited until she closed the call, though not very

patiently.

“Okay, so, Foley’s flat. Turns out to be an extended-stay place. The kind that comes already furnished.”

“How long was he there?” MacAdams asked.

“Last six months. Sold a flat in Whickham, apparently. Struthers isn’t finished with his analysis on the duffel yet, by the

way.”

“Well, we have the death window, regardless. Jo saw him close his door at eleven.”

“And Roberta found him at eight thirty.” Green nodded. “What about the cottage?”

“They’re looking at his clothes right now. Trousers were muddy, suggests a walk.” MacAdams looked to the whiteboard.

Someone had written “Hammersmith” in bright blue, and both “Ronan Foley” and the “CEO” were stuck by magnet underneath.

“Where is this place?” he asked.

“Gallowgate in Newcastle,” Green explained. “A Knight Frank kind of setup for commercial real estate, but smaller scale.”

“And his executive, Stanley Burnhope?” MacAdams asked, tapping the photo of a dark-haired, smiling city boy type.

“We tried his office,” Gridley said, emerging from her ramen and egg. “Closed on weekends, and I figured you might want to

make a house call anyway. Opens Monday at 9:00 a.m.”

MacAdams tapped rhythmically on the back of a plastic chair. It meant they would lose all Sunday for that angle; weekend murders

were very inconvenient.

“On the bright side, we got cleared for the work email. It matches the one on the booking form you forwarded,” Andrews said,

handing him a printout. “It’s basic—rfoley@hammersmith. No personal stuff, apparently. Must have another email for that.”

The subject headings mostly concerned a series of overseas properties—and an unfinished job in York. MacAdams made a mental

note.

“Look at this latest one, though,” Andrews said. “It’s from Foley to Burnhope; it says ‘partner meeting.’ Except the website

doesn’t list Foley as a partner. And check this out—the email header says, ‘Meet Friday at 4:00 p.m. to discuss business.’”

MacAdams wrote a timeline on the board.

“Meeting at four, he reserves the cottage by five according to the registration, arrived at ten—dies after eleven, found by eight thirty Saturday morning.”

“Right. But he really shouldn’t have been,” Green said. She’d returned to her desk with a pile of curried chips in Styrofoam. In fact, everyone had managed

to get lunch except MacAdams, despite his proximity to sausage rolls. “The murderer picked a damn good spot. That access road

isn’t traveled all that much.”

“Hard to get to as well,” Gridley added. “I mean, what with the rain.”

“Hard to get to,” MacAdams repeated. “Like the cottage itself. Did he walk up there? If he drove, in what? Where is the car

now? And why are the towels missing?”

“The towels?” Green asked.

MacAdams filled them in on the missing items, which included the coat, as well.

Gridley cracked her knuckles. “A thought. It was storming, right? Maybe he started to drive to the cottage, got stuck and

walked the rest of the way.”

MacAdams rubbed his chin and paced under the fluorescents. Surely he’d have mentioned it to Jo when he arrived to the cottage?

“Keep going with the theory. His car is stuck and...?” he encouraged.

“Hang on, I’m getting a map.” There was a nearby stack of brochures for the garden’s opening that had the town map printed

in friendly cartoon colors on the back. She grabbed one and used it as a guide to draw a rudimentary copy in dry erase marker.

“Okay, here’s the road and here’s the lane. I’ve been up there walking, and it’s steep. Gravel gets waterlogged and muddy,

let’s say his car gets halfway. Maybe he even tried to push the car out.”

“It would explain the spattered pants,” MacAdams agreed.

“Right. So, then the rain stops and he thinks about going back for it.”

“In the middle of the night?” Andrews asked. “Surely you would wait for morning.”

“Unless you were lured back out,” MacAdams said. “But it doesn’t make sense. If someone calls him out, or even if he chooses

to go back on his own, why wearing your only dry pants? And why take soap and towel?” There were holes a-plenty, but the team

wasn’t quite ready to give it up.

“You said he left the cottage keys, right? Maybe he wasn’t going back for the car,” Green suggested. “Maybe he was leaving.

Bugging out. You said yourself there wasn’t much in the overnight bag, and most of the essentials he took with him.”

MacAdams frowned. That much about the empty duffel was true, and it bothered him a bit. What had he really been traveling

here for?

“We have his wallet, but no phone. We know his work email, but nothing personal about him. He’s a blank. We’ve had the local

constabulary search his flat, and nothing of import so far.”

“There’s the earring,” Green said. “Struthers still has it, but maybe that will lead somewhere.”

MacAdams nodded. It was the outlier, and incongruous as the red silk shirt. There would be more, little bits and pieces for

a fuller picture.

“We’ll go to his flat ourselves. That’s where we’ll go tomorrow, then.” He thumbed at his jaw. “About the missing car—if ever

it was stuck on the lane, it isn’t there now.”

“We could check CCTV, maybe?” Andrews asked.

Gridley was two steps ahead and merely turned her computer screen to face them.

“Once you get past the Mill, there isn’t much going. I have pulled files for a petrol station and the Mill’s security camera.

Anyone headed that way late at night in a thunderstorm might be of interest.”

“Give that to Andrews,” MacAdams suggested.

Youngest of the team, Tommy had a good eye for details, but wasn’t as experienced on the tech side of things.

“Gridley, you chase up Ronan’s details and whatever you can get on his company, Hammersmith.

Green, we’ll go hunting up the flat, and let’s look into his boss Burnhope, too. ”

“Got it. I take it we don’t have much hope, then, for helpful evidence from the cottage?”

MacAdams felt his earlier annoyance suddenly returning. “No. And yes. Why stay at Jo’s cottage, of all places? Why there ?”

“The Red Lion was booked,” Andrews reminded him.

MacAdams shot him a glance. “There’s a whole hotel on the south side called Abington Arms. Were they booked, too? I know the

opening was well attended, but most everyone was still a local.” MacAdams rolled his shirtsleeves up. “Ronan’s movements don’t

make sense. Middle-of-the-night business trip is strange enough. But why pick the worst possible place to stay?”

Green had just made a slight noise in the back of her throat. It did not bode well, but it was Gridley who spoke.

“I don’t know, boss. I’ve seen Jo’s cottage. Charming—Teresa wants to host a tea event there. And it’s on the doorstep of

the gardens. It’s a nice last-minute option.”

“For day trippers, maybe. Up a muddy lane, well outside of town. Alone.” He checked himself. “It’s out of the way, is my point.”

“You’re reaching,” Green cautioned. Behind her, Andrews put the phone receiver against his chest before speaking.

“The Abington Arms wasn’t booked up,” he said. “Rooms available, and a few low-end ones are cheaper than Jo priced the cottage,

according to Airbnb.” MacAdams gave Green a validated look.

“All right,” she agreed. “But it could still have come down to incidentals—like ease and last-minute timing. We know he had a business meeting. We don’t know that it

went well. ”

“As in, he’s been fired or such, and is now in a hurry to.

.. do what?” MacAdams took a breath. His stomach was growling.

He found himself looking around half-consciously for stray biscuits, half wishing he’d taken Jo’s leftover Jammie Dodgers.

“Something’s been coming, and I think he knew it.

Sells a house, lives in a furnished rental, takes flight in a hurry with a badly packed bag—ends up dead. ”

He had more to add, but his phone was ringing. A quick look told him all he needed to know. Struthers was ready for them.