Murder at Pride Lodge [A Kyle Callahan Mystery: 1] Read online

  “You can’t hide forever,” Danny said, putting the last of his clothes in his suitcase. “She’s at the desk now, pestering poor Ricki for details. Ricki and anyone else unlucky enough to show up this early.”

  “I never should have called her,” Kyle said. He was packing up his camera, wondering if he’d taken any good pictures at all, then feeling guilty for caring.

  “It’s not so much that you called her, Sweetie,” Danny said. “But that you never called her again!”

  “We were a little busy,” Kyle reminded him. “We spent what, two hours at the police station giving statements? I didn’t get to sleep until three a.m. this morning, and that was fitful.”

  “Murder doesn’t care. Hell, we’re lucky that’s all the time we were there. At least we get to leave! Dylan Tremblay won’t be seeing the outside of a jail cell for a very long time.”

  “Nor should he,” Kyle said, with a little too much righteousness.

  “Nor should he,” Danny agreed.

  The two then fell silent as they continued packing for their exit from Pride Lodge. Finally, Danny said, “Do you think they’ll find her?”

  “It would only be right,” Kyle said, not looking at him. He knew it was highly unlikely that the taillights he’d seen from the upstairs window were those of Bo Sweetzer. They hadn’t even known she’d fled until later, when the police who came to support Linda Sikorsky found no trace of her except the clothes and pocket watch she’d left in her room. And even if they had been her taillights, what was he supposed to have done? Cried out for someone to chase her? He knew he was simply feeling guilty for having wanted her to get away.

  “She’s a murderer, after all,” Kyle said, closing his suitcase. “It would only be right.”

  When they got to the check out desk Kyle glanced around nervously and asked Ricki in a hushed voice, “Where’s Imogene?”

  “You mean Genie? The reporter lady?”

  Ricki was unusually alert and seemed more than a little excited. Kyle knew it meant he must have already been interviewed, however quickly. An interview with Imogene meant flattery, a wink if the person she was talking to was a straight man, and letting a desk clerk at a countryside gay resort call her “Genie.” That really was the giveaway. No one called Imogene Landis “Genie” and lived to tell about it. Except Ricki. Kyle could see it now, the not-too-sophisticated man who’d never lived in a place with more than a few thousand people in it calling the diminutive newswoman “Genie,” the way a waitress in a roadside diner calls everyone “Sweetheart,” and Imogene saying, “You can call me Genie, everyone does.” Anything for the story.

  “Yes, her,” Danny interjected.

  “Oh, she’s out by the pool talking to the twins. They’re on set-up today.”

  “She’ll love that,” Kyle said. “What murder in the woods is complete without a set of identical twins? But it gives us a chance to get out of here. I’ll just say I didn’t see her, didn’t know she’d come. Give me ten minutes down the road and I’ll call.”

  “As long as you tell her we’re just about into the Lincoln Tunnel. No turning around! You know she’ll ask.”

  It was then Kyle realized that the Lodge had gone on, even with Sid dead and Dylan in jail. He and Danny had missed the coroner’s van coming to take Sid’s body away. They’d missed the other cops helping to handcuff and incarcerate Dylan. They’d wanted to be away from it as quickly as possible and had headed to the police station in their own car as soon as backup for Detective Sikorsky arrived.

  “What happened?” Kyle asked quietly.

  “Oh, she asked a few questions, took some footage,” Ricki said.

  Footage, Kyle thought. Of course Ricki would consider a few minutes on a digital video camera footage, as if he were going to see his name in the final credits at an Imax.

  “No,” he said. “I mean last night, after . . . you know.”

  “If you mean, did the band play on? Yes, it did. They put yellow tape up outside the Master Suite, but most of the people downstairs never knew what went on. The cops weren’t interested in them, and the staff wasn’t about to empty the place. It’s our best weekend!”

  That thought struck Kyle and Danny both. Dancers danced on, drinkers drank on. Halloween weekend at Pride Lodge celebrated and partied unfazed as the lives of the very people who provided it were destroyed.

  “I told them to stay the course,” a voice said from behind them. “They weren’t being greedy, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Kyle and Danny turned to see Jeremy standing just a few feet away, leaning slightly on a cane in his left hand. He was doing just fine without the walker today. He seemed much sturdier this way, not like the frail old man everyone imagined him to be. Kyle wondered if that had been what he wanted them all to think. He was a cagey sort, an observer and listener, for whatever his purposes.

  “Pucky told me you were the silent partner here,” Kyle said. “That’s how I knew, how the pieces fell together. Dylan wanted me, Sikorsky, everyone, to think Sid had stolen all that money.”

  “They weren’t a happy couple,” Jeremy said. “At least not Dylan. Sid, probably, he was older, his options more limited, by time if nothing else. But Dylan wanted his freedom, as long as it came with the property.”

  “If you knew all this, why didn’t you say anything?” Danny asked.

  “Say anything about what? I never imagined Dylan Tremblay would kill people to get what he wanted. I thought he’d stick it out, maybe try for something in a divorce. Honestly, I thought he would even just wait it out. Sid was in poor health, he’d probably die at least twenty years before Dylan. The whole thing is conjecture anyway.”

  “Correction, Jeremy,” Kyle said. “Teddy dead at the bottom of the pool is not conjecture. Happy dead in a creek is not conjecture. And Sid dead upstairs with a knife sticking out of his neck is not conjecture.”

  Jeremy had defended himself as much as he intended to. “ I can’t help it that my imagination is not as vivid as yours, Kyle,” he said with a shrug. “We’re going to need new innkeepers here. I don’t suppose I could get the two of you . . . “

  “Not on your life,” Danny said. “Pride Lodge is a great place to visit, and I’m sure we’ll be back, but running a resort is the last thing I would ever want.”

  “True, true,” the old man said. “I expect you’ll be running Margaret’s Passion soon enough. No one lives forever, it’s just the way life goes. But have it your way. For now I’ve got Ricki, the twins, Cowboy Dave, everyone really, except the owners! Oh wait, that’s me.”

  “So the place is yours?” Kyle asked.

  “It is now,” Jeremy said. “Sid and Dylan made monthly payments to me, with Pride Lodge itself as collateral. If for any reason the loan was not paid off, which I imagine it won’t be now, the Lodge becomes mine. Had I died first that wouldn’t be the case. Apparently Dylan didn’t think of everything or I’d be the one dead at the bottom of a pool. I’m not the old fool people take me for, you know.”

  Kyle smiled at him. “I never thought you were. But that’s what you want people to think. Camouflage. Pretty impressive, too. It probably saved your life.”

  Jeremy stuck out his right hand. “So, boys, onward and downward.”

  Kyle and Danny each shook his hand. They knew he hadn’t omitted anything out of malice, and that he really had no idea what lengths Dylan was going to to secure a fantasy future for himself.

  A sound of laughter floated up from outside. Imogene, “Genie” to Ricki the desk clerk, was working her charm. And she was charming, to anyone who didn’t know her as more than an acquaintance or a brief encounter. To her loyal assistant Kyle Callahan she was a terror, but a lovable terror. He was in no mood to have that love tested this morning.

  “Quickly,” Kyle said to Ricki. “Just the bill. We have appointments with destiny in, oh, about ten minutes.”

  “Five,” Danny said, hurrying them along. “A laugh means she’s just about through with the
m.”

  “Whoever she is,” Jeremy said, “I like the sound of her.”

  Kyle turned to him. “Yes, I think you would. I think the two of you are going to hit it off very well. You might want to get back in your chair. She’s as much a sucker for frail old men as the rest of us. “

  “Call her,” Danny said, signing the credit card slip. “Ten minutes down the road.”

  “Lincoln Tunnel,” Kyle finished. “Got it, now let’s go.”

  They each grabbed the handle of a suitcase and hurried out of the Lodge. They took the steps two at a time as they turned right into the main parking lot. Moments later Danny was pulling out of the drive just as Kyle saw Imogene hurrying down the hillside, waving at them.

  “Look the other way!” Kyle said. “Drive! I’ll call her back eventually.”

  “You’re going to hear about this for days, Kyle. She may even threaten to replace you.”

  “Again?!” Kyle said, and the two of them shared a laugh for the first time in nearly two days.

  Danny watched Pride Lodge recede in the rearview mirror. “Do you think we’ll ever come back?”

  “Sure,” Kyle said. “It’s become an old friend by now, and one thing about old friends is that you want to know what happens to them. We’ll be back.”

  Danny nodded; they would indeed. He turned the first corner and took one last glance in the mirror to see Imogene standing in the road behind them, hands on her hips, wagging her finger at them. She wasn’t fooled. And she would never replace Kyle. Love was love.

  COINTUE READING for a preview of ‘Pride and Perilous AVAILBLE NOW!

  Next stop on the mystery train . . .

  Pride and Perilous

  A Kyle Callahan Mystery

  Kyle Callahan is about to have his first photography exhibit. His partner Danny and his friends have been nudging him a long time to finally show the world the photographs they’ve all enjoyed. Among those friends is Katherine Pride, owner of the Katherine Pride Gallery in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Kyle and Danny first met there, and now they’re about to enjoy another first . . . if murder doesn’t get in the way.

  Someone has been killing off artists, a diverse group whose only connection, Kyle realizes, is the very gallery where his first show is about to open. Will it still? Should it? And who is next on the killer’s list—Katherine Pride, or Kyle himself?

  Be re-introduced to Detective Linda Sikorsky from ‘Murder at Pride Lodge,’ in the city to attend Kyle’s show and tell him all about her new girlfriend. Here, too, you’ll meet Margaret Bowman, eighty-year-old owner of the restaurant Margaret’s Passion and second mother to Danny. Imogene Landis, livewire TV reporter on the far side of her career, making the most of it with assistant Kyle at her side. And of course the odious Linus Hern, up close and personal in his own cutthroat environment, clearing a path in front of him with a tongue as sharp as a saber. Come along as they all gather for a second installment of murder and mayhem, in ‘Pride and Perilous.’

  AND NOW FOR CHAPTERS 1 & 2…

  Chapter One

  Bluejacket, Oklahoma—1978

  The summer had been particularly hot, even for Oklahoma. Corn had withered and died on the stalk, acres of land had choked and killed many crops, leaving others so feeble the farmers who subsisted on them had been forced to charity. Predictions were made from pulpits across the state that if ever there were clear signs of the End Times, this fever baking the landscape was surely among them.

  The four Stipling children could only pray for cooling rain and fan themselves with paper fans their mother brought home from the Baptist church they attended. Clement Stipling, their father, considered the use of electricity to power fans an extravagance and a waste of money. Air conditioning was for rich people, and the Stiplings would never be rich. Clement had even refused to donate to the church’s special collection two years ago for a new ceiling fan. Paper on sticks worked just fine for him, and it would work for his family.

  The Stiplings were poor but proud. Clement worked as a handyman sometimes, other times as a farm hand, and every now and then as a carpenter, bringing in enough to pay rent on their small house and put food on the table most days. His tall, wiry frame, his natural agility and his unusually large hands made him well suited for physical labor. He’d never learned a trade, nor studied anything at the knee of his no-account father. He had left home at fourteen and never looked back, which made for thirty years of staring straight ahead, taking whatever next step there was to take. Those steps had gotten him a wife, Pearl, and four children, ages two to thirteen. He was about to be a father for the fifth time, if Pearl made it through, which was looking less likely with each passing minute.

  Pearl Stipling was an obedient woman. That was probably the most descriptive thing to say about her, and the virtue, as she saw it, of which she would be most proud, were pride not a sin. Humility, perseverance, and obedience. If Pearl knew what a mantra was, those three words would be it. She had humbly submitted to her life as Clement Stipling’s wife, even though she was pretty enough to have found several alternatives—or so she’d been told. Middling height, with a kind face and just enough plump to her to attract men looking to raise children, Pearl had been a prize in her youth, and marrying Clement had been seen by her parents as a waste of that prize. Running off with him to elope in Tulsa was the only significant act of disobedience in her entire life, and one she had been forgiven for once the grandchildren began to arrive.

  She had persevered for thirty-two years of her own difficult journey. She had been obedient, foremost to the Lord, and secondly to her husband. She loved her little ones, even though Jeffey was officially a teenager now and would not kiss her anymore except on the cheek. Doreen was ten, Emiline eight, Jessica two, and now, God willing, they would finally have another son, whom they had decided to name Kieran, after Pearl’s late grandfather. Pearl, in her innermost thoughts she shared with no one and hoped God could not hear, wanted no more children after this. If Clement insisted, of course she would bear them, and if God saw fit to keep her pregnant, she would obediently stay that way, but she sure hoped the fifth time was the charm and that a second son would be the end of her child-bearing.

  The way the delivery was going, it might well be the end of Pearl. She had gone into labor three weeks early. It had caught them both off guard and unprepared to get her to the hospital. Clement Stipling did not own a car, which he considered even more of an extravagance than an electric fan. He walked everywhere he needed to be, and if that place was too far he hitched a ride. There was always someone willing to take him; they knew Clement Stipling wouldn’t distract them with useless talk, since he was a man of few words and the ones he spoke were seldom entertaining. So it was that on an extremely hot Thursday morning while Pearl was making breakfast, her water broke and she plunged into the hardest, most painful, most prayer-inducing labor she had ever experienced. None of the others had been like this, and two hours into it, as she lay in their bed sweating through the sheets, she knew something was wrong. She knew this would certainly be her last, as there would be nothing left of her when it was finished.

  Clement Stipling had not delivered any of his children. He had done repair work and house painting to pay off Doctor Simonson for bringing his other four into the world, but to be in his own bedroom, in his own home, desperate to have this child come out already and stop this terrible experience, was something from a dream worse than any he’d ever had. He sent Jeffey off to the neighbors to call the hospital (since telephones were a waste of time and money), only to be told the doctor was in surgery. Pearl was bedridden by then, and it was just her and Clement, trying to free her body from the baby who wanted to rip her apart and at the same time stay safely inside her.

  Mrs. Jansen, the neighbor woman, arrived a half hour into it. She was helping Pearl, or trying to, while Clement paced back and forth by the closed door. It was bad enough that his children could hear Pearl’s screams, he didn’t want them seeing an
y of this. Back and forth, back and forth, while Mrs. Jansen just kept telling Pearl to push. Something was terribly wrong. Well, yes, Clement thought, that’s pretty obvious. Terribly wrong.

  And just about the time Kieran was willing to let go and exit his mother, Pearl saw the sky open up, in the ceiling! It was the strangest thing she’d ever seen, but not frightening at all. Like a very bright skylight, like a window in the plaster, and it slid open, and there was Jesus. Smiling at her and waving. She knew then her belief had not been in vain, her faith not wasted. She knew, too, there would be no more children, no more hardship, and no more Clement.

  “What is she looking at?” Clement said, standing at the foot of the bed as Mrs. Jansen midwifed Kieran Stipling into the world. She ignored him, too busy with the birth. “What are you looking at?” he said to Pearl. She ignored him, too, immersed in the joy of her own liberation as she reached up as far as she could, took the hand of Jesus, to whom she had been most obedient all her life, and walked away into the clouds.

  The baby did not cry, even when Mrs. Jansen slapped him to get him breathing.

  “She’s dead,” Clement said, staring at the frozen rapture on his wife’s face. His voice was cold, flat and fierce. Within those two words were accusation, statement, and promise: he promised then and there never to love this child, never to give it warmth, never to forgive it. Not him; it. It was a thing, a murderous thing that had taken from Clement Stipling the only treasure his trying life had ever known.

  Clement was not the drinking sort, or he would have slipped into a bottomless bottle then and there. Instead he slipped into himself. By day’s end he was a widower, alone with five children, one of whom he would just as soon be rid of. The child had taken Pearl from him, and he never felt the slightest obligation to repay the theft with love. He didn’t love little Kieran and never would.