This story started here.

When my employer emerged from the bathroom, trailing clouds of steam, I reported, briefly, on my conversations with the sheriff and the reporter. She listened politely.

I did not mention my final visitor on the deck.

* * *

The back deck of the inn was pleasant, now that I had it to myself. I listened to two cars start up and drive off.

I drank some coffee, wondering if I'd have any assignments today. The cold breeze was a reminder that winter was now very close.

Mostly I was thinking about breakfast.

The kitchen door opened and a woman's voice, not Mrs. Jessup's and not my employer's, said my name.

I rose and turned, and I saw Miss Tamara Nelson, Esq. She was wearing a cream-colored trench coat and a pair of dark slacks. She had a teacup in her hand.

She motioned for me to resume my seat. "Ms. Nelson," I said as I gestured for her to join me, but she demurred.

"'Miss Nelson,' please," she said as she placed her cup on the glass table and sat down. "I am proudly unmarried." She sipped her tea. "Is Jan going to do anything about the Deacon case?"

I shrugged, "I don't think so."

She looked down into her teacup. "Does that bother you?"

I shook my head. "I-"

"That's not your role. I understand." She looked up, her eyes twinkling.

I laughed. "I do draw a salary, but my job description doesn't say I can't have opinions."

"Do you occasionally express those opinions, in the course of your typical working day?"

"I may take the Fifth on that-"

She rapped her spoon briskly on the glass-topped table. "Overruled. Please answer the question."

I was beginning to enjoy this. I leaned back in my chair.

"To be honest, my biggest concern, in very general terms, is getting paid. Getting her paid, of course, which results in, among many other things, me getting paid. That's my main concern – keeping the firm functioning."

"Is that challenging?" She was keeping a smile at bay.

I shrugged. She waited, and then she smiled as she let the question drop.

"I saw the sheriff and Kate Lane driving off a few minutes ago. I imagine they might have been here to 'grill' you about the Deacon case?"

I shrugged. "There was no intense questioning, since I have no information that the sheriff doesn't have, and I have no reason to give any information to Miss Lane."

She nodded, waiting to see if I would say more before she spoke.

"By the way," she said casually, "just in case you were wondering, I try to stay away from trials where sanity is an issue. The Crier will, I'm sure, have an article tomorrow saying that Julie Deacon is a 'sociopath' or a 'psychopath' or some other sensationalist and unscientific term which carries no legal weight. It's... It's messy, or it can be."

She finished her tea.

"So, therefore, in case you were wondering, it is not a problem that you and I are having this conversation now, and it's not a problem that I was present when your employer and the sheriff were discussing the case two days ago.

"Just in case you were wondering."

She stood up. "This was pleasant," she said. She left her cup and saucer on the table, and, after a brisk knock on the kitchen door, she re-entered the inn.

 
The End

This story started here.

Rhonda got out of her car and walked toward the steps to the porch.

"Sheriff," I said, rising. "We're short on chairs here." I looked at Miss Lane. "Shall we three adjourn to the rear deck? Coffee is available, and I could use a refill myself." I gestured with my empty mug.

We went into the front hall, where I refilled my mug and they filled theirs, and then we went back outside and around to the rear deck, where we sat at one of the tables. Everything on the deck was damp with dew, but I had anticipated this and I'd brought a stack of napkins from the supply in the hall.

When the three of us were seated and sipping our coffee, I wondered who would speak first. It was pretty clear that each of my guests would have been much happier if the other one had not been there.

For me, I was thinking how pleasant it would be if I managed to finish my entire cup of coffee in silence. That did not seem likely.

The reporter finally turned to the sheriff. "Rhonda," she said, "do you have any comment on the death at the college?"

Rhonda shook her head. "Not yet." She turned to me. "Is your employer going to look into that?"

I shrugged. "She may not even be aware of it. I do know that she is writing against at least one pressing deadline."

The sheriff was regarding me thoughtfully. "It does seem like it's her kind of case. The death of an exchange student, in a locked room, apparently with no way in or out."

"And the knife," Kate Lane put in. "With the word 'Revenge' on the handle in Spanish."

"How did you find out about that?" the sheriff demanded.

"I do have my sources," the reporter said happily.

Rhonda frowned. "I have no comment on that case."

The reporter continued to look pleased. "Any update on the Deacon case?" she asked.

"The Deacon sisters and Prescott Owens are in the hospital, recovering from their injuries."

"Are they in custody?"

"Nobody is in custody at this moment."

"And Dr. Deacon–"

"Right now, all indications are that he and his brother killed each other."

She did not raise the question of which brother had died first, and nobody asked. If Kate Lane was not aware of the possible significance of that information, I didn't see any reason to send her in that direction.

Some minutes later, after I had put the dirty coffee mugs in the kitchen, I went back to the room. My employer had finished her coffee and she was taking her shower, so I did a quick check and the knife which had been thrown at our porch two nights before, the one with "vingança" on the handle (which was Portuguese, by the way, not Spanish), was no longer where I had hidden it.

 
To be continued...

This story started here.

My employer opened her eyes, just enough to see the morning sun streaming into our room. She groaned and threw her forearm across her eyes as she said, "Your tasks for this morning: One: Get me some coffee. Please. Two: Take your coffee and have it somewhere other than here. I'm expecting at least two callers this morning, and you're going to talk to them, not me. I'm far too busy. Deadlines and so on.

"If you have your coffee on the rear deck, please leave a note on the front door saying that's where you are. And make sure this door is locked."

"Who are you expecting?"

"Rhonda, and Kate Lane – probably in that order. Rhonda will want to give you information. You can take it or not – that's your call. I have nothing for her, and I don't care about the case – any case she may want to talk to me about."

 
Some time later, I was sitting on the front porch, in the rocking chair. My coffee mug was on the worn two-by-six of the porch railing.

No note on the front door would have discouraged Kate Lane from ascending the stairs and knocking on our door (at a minimum). Better to head her off on the ground floor.

The sky was slowly becoming overcast, and the air was damp and a bit chilly. I thought, idly, about going upstairs to get a sweater, but now that I was seated I was comfortable and reluctant to move.

Contemplating the easy availability of more coffee in the hall, whenever I needed it, I noticed a thin layer of condensation on the glass of the front door. I could still see the notch where the knife had landed the night before last.

My employer's coffee was ready on her bedside table. She had apparently gone back to sleep. I'd put a saucer on top of the mug, to try to keep the coffee warm for her.

I did wonder who had washed the four dirty mugs from the conference yesterday morning. They were clean and back among the collection in the hall, so somebody had dealt with them. I would have wagered a modest amount of money that it had not been my employer

Sitting in the rocking chair, sipping my coffee, enjoying the cool breeze, I remembered the woman who'd been sitting there two nights before.

She'd appeared to be tall and slender, with long, dark hair, wearing dark clothes and, possibly, wire-rimmed glasses.

Could she have been mistaken for my employer in the darkness? Is that why someone had thrown a knife at her?

I thought this was likely.

Had we met her before? I was pretty sure we had, but of course this was just... Well, my employer would have called it guessing, and "guess" was a dirty word in her lexicon.

A little while later, Mrs. Jessup, our landlady, poked her head out to wish me good morning, and I rose to return her greeting.

 
Kate Lane drove up and parked in front of the inn. I wondered if my employer had been right about Rhonda visiting this morning as well.

"Hey, Marshall," the reporter said cheerfully as she reached the three steps up to the porch.

"Good morning, Miss Lane," I said. I rose and offered her the chair, but she declined and half-sat on the flat railing.

"What brings you here this morning?" I asked as I sat down again.

"I wanted to find out what Miss Sleet thinks of the new case, at the college."

"As far as I know, she's not aware of any new case, at the college or anywhere else. I know I'm not. In any case, she's not available – she has deadlines."

She digested this. "Do you know how the Deacon case worked out?"

"Sheriff White interviewed me last night, and I know that Dr. Deacon is dead, but I don't know anything beyond that."

Of course, if the window in our room had happened to be open, my employer (if she were awake) would have been able hear this conversation. I was tempted to glance up and check, but obviously I couldn't do that with the reporter in front of me.

Kate Lane paused, as if this conversation wasn't going in the way she'd anticipated. As she started to speak again, I held up a finger and pointed as a police cruiser pulled up and parked behind her car.

 
To be continued...

This story started here.

"Do you want to know what I'm thinking?"

The sheriff shrugged, conveying that she didn't know (or possibly that she didn't care).

"The Deacon girls have just lost their father, and their uncle for that matter. Maybe we should go to their house, right now, and inform whoever happens to be there."

"And see who's there, and what's going on." She stood up, shoving her notebook into her back pocket. "Let's go."

The state police had arrived by then, and we paused on our way out so the sheriff could confer with the officer in charge. I stood a distance away, politely giving the impression that I couldn't hear anything, although of course I could. Nothing interesting was said.

Then, as we drove along Main Street, at less than the sheriff's usual breakneck pace, I noticed Elsa's van in front of the Wagon Wheel. Their roast beef sandwiches were not going to please her.

Seafood was pretty reliably fresh in Claremont, but red meat was, at best, unreliable.

Thinking about roast beef, I remembered when my employer and I had spent a few days (hiding out from the army, in fear for our lives – a long story) on a fazenda in Bellona, and we'd eaten beef, a couple of times, from an animal which had been slaughtered just a day or two before.

It was as different from ordinary restaurant beef as fresh swordfish is from canned tuna.

Not that any restaurant in Claremont was going to have beef like that–

"O'Connor!" the sheriff said sharply, and I realized that we were parked in front of the Deacon house, which showed no life or lights. The entire street was dark and silent.

I started to open the car door when the two-way radio demanded Rhonda's attention. She took the handset from the dashboard and demanded to know what was up.

As she spoke – mostly yes and no and terse requests for more details – I got out of the car and leaned on the hood.

Somewhere along the line I had miscalculated. Why was I leaning against a police cruiser, in front of this dark and depressing-looking house? I had been asked to provide whatever information I had and I'd done so – as a responsible citizen and as someone who, for professional reasons, wanted to maintain good relations with local law enforcement – but, like my employer, I was not a public convenience, or a public employee, and I certainly didn't care about any of the Deacons.

I was still slightly buzzed from the beers I'd consumed earlier, on an empty stomach. I decided to blame everything on that.

Rhonda ended her call and got out of the car. After a moment's study of my face, she said, "Do you want the new news, or are you out?"

"I'm out," I said. "This is not my case."

She nodded. "Fair enough. I wish I could say the same." She gave me a sketchy salute. "Have a good night."

"You, too."

 
To be continued...