Love Is Murder

V

Lucy couldn’t sleep.

Her first night here, it had been the silence that kept her awake. Tonight, it was the howling wind as the snow continued to fall. That, coupled with the disturbing thought that someone in this lodge had murdered Vanessa Russell-Marsh.

She tried a hot shower, and while that eased her sore muscles, it did nothing to help her sleep. Finally, she put on her robe and left her room just after midnight. There was no light under Patrick’s door, but she knocked anyway. “Patrick?” she said quietly.

She heard a moan and movement. Patrick opened his door, alert. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I-” She felt stupid. “I can’t sleep.”

He groaned. “Warm some milk in the microwave.”

“Never mind. I’ll go find a book to read.”

She half-expected Patrick to go downstairs with her, but he closed his door and went back to bed. She wasn’t surprised, she supposed. They’d had a busy and strenuous day, physically and emotionally.

The hall lights were left on low throughout the lodge. Lucy padded silently in her slippers down the staircase, across the foyer, and slowly opened the double doors to the library. They’d left Trevor to sleep on the couch; Grace had made up the last available room for him, but he was too drunk to walk upstairs and had ended up back on the couch.

Angie DeWitt gasped. “Oh, you startled me!”

“I’m sorry,” Lucy said. “I didn’t know anyone was up.”

Angie was curled in a chair wearing a fluffy robe, a stack of books next to her. Trevor was snoring on the couch, all blankets on the floor. “I couldn’t sleep and thought reading would do it, but Kyle can’t sleep with the light on. And I wanted to check on Trevor. He was so upset. Justifiable, but-I didn’t want him to do anything stupid.”

“You have a kind heart.”

She shrugged. “Kyle says I have a bleeding heart, but I just laugh at him. He can act like a hard-ass sometimes, but he’s the sweetest guy on the planet, especially when he doesn’t think anyone is looking.”

“That’s when it’s most important,” Lucy said. “I won’t stay long. I just wanted to grab a book since I couldn’t sleep.”

Lucy perused the bookshelves, but nothing jumped out at her. She realized that she was worried about Steve Delarosa, and Grace, and Trevor Marsh. She couldn’t get Vanessa out of her mind, or the cryptic postcard she’d had the Larsons send her brother. Lucy didn’t want any of them to be guilty of murder, and just maybe there was another explanation for Vanessa’s death. Maybe the puncture wound in her neck indicated that something she’d yet to figure out.

She found it doubly odd that Kyle DeWitt had fainted-or nearly fainted-and complained of being dizzy. Very similar to Steve. Had the two of them been somewhere that no one else had? Could Vanessa have been exposed to the same thing and it killed her?

There was no place for any of them to go now. And with Grace and Beth both living here, it didn’t seem likely that whatever was causing the dizziness was airborne.

Lucy understood Steve’s deep desire to keep his family lodge running. Businesses were hurting everywhere, and it couldn’t be cheap to keep this place running, especially with only six guest rooms in the winter, and a few extra cabins open in warmer weather. The food, the heating, the generator for electricity, routine maintenance. And losing Leo to a heart attack had been doubly tragic because being this isolated had delayed getting him quick help. And then for Steve to find out that his father’s nest egg was gone.

Lucy liked the family, and wished she could help. That was one of her greatest assets, Patrick had always told her, as well as one of her greatest weaknesses.

“You want to save the world, Lucy. But sometimes the world doesn’t want to be saved.”

How many times had she heard that! She wanted to scream, “I don’t care!” But she did care. About the world, and the people in it. And she could never seem to sit idly by and watch good people suffer.

But what could she do? She wasn’t a doctor; she couldn’t examine Steve. She wasn’t a businesswoman; she wouldn’t tell the Delarosas how to run their resort. She wasn’t even a cop. She shouldn’t even like any of these people personally, knowing that most likely one of them killed Vanessa Marsh.

Logic reasoned that the person who had killed Vanessa knew her. The only person fitting the bill was Trevor Marsh, her childhood sweetheart and new husband.

Unless …

What if someone else at the lodge also knew Vanessa? Trevor said that Vanessa’s ex-husband had been an asshole. What if he was lurking around?

She shivered. Don’t be such a conspiracy nut! Where would he hide while it was a gazillion degrees below zero and a blizzard raged outside? And poisoning or faking a suicide attempt was hardly the standard method of a jealous or vengeful ex-husband.

A chill ran over her skin, raising the hairs on the back of her neck. At first she thought it was only her, but she noticed that Angie pulled her bathrobe tighter around her neck. Trevor’s snores halted momentarily, before the annoying noise returned.

Lucy grabbed a book without looking at the title and said good night to Angie. She entered the foyer and saw a wet spot on the hardwood floor, right inside the main door.

She stared. She’d watched Grace Delarosa dry the floor after Patrick and the others came back from securing Vanessa’s body. Grace and Steve had gone to their house via the door in the kitchen, which was closest to their cottage.

Someone had gone in and out. Or out, then back in.

Who? And why?

Lucy ran up the stairs, taking two at a time. She knocked on Patrick’s door. There was no answer.

Her heart pounded in her chest. She had the extra key to Patrick’s room and used it to unlock his door.

“Patrick?” she called into the dark.

He moaned from his bed.

She turned on the lights. He was lying in his bed, the covers kicked off, his bare chest bathed in sweat. His face was flushed. She rushed to his side and felt his head. He was warm.

“Patrick, what happened? What’s wrong?”

“Hey, sis.”

His words were slurred. He grinned.

“Patrick, what is wrong? Are you sick?”

“I’m fine. Really, I can drive. Nope, well, Carina is the designated driver again.”

She frowned. Carina was their sister. She and Patrick were thirteen months apart in age and had been very close growing up. The last time either she or Patrick had seen Carina was over Christmas, two months ago.

Thirty minutes ago she’d woken him up and he was fine. Groggy, but normal. Now he was hallucinating.

Someone had drugged him. How?

She looked around the room. Thirty minutes … there were lots of drugs that had a thirty minute or less reaction time. Maybe after Lucy had woken him up, Patrick had drank something.

She saw nothing on his nightstand. In his bathroom there was a water bottle, half full.

She ran back to Patrick. “Did you drink the water in the bathroom?” She picked up his arm and let it go. It flopped back to the bed. He tried to raise it, but couldn’t.

Patrick looked at her. “I’m so glad you’re here. But why did you do it?”

“What?”

“If you’d just told me, I would have fixed everything.”

Lucy didn’t know if he thought she was someone else, or what he was thinking, but his comments and physical symptoms told her he’d been slipped a sedative that suppressed his central nervous system. A date rape drug, like Rohyphnol or ketamine or a Mickey Finn-but why on earth would Patrick be drugged? Had someone tried to kill him to prevent his investigation of Vanessa’s murder?

That meant Patrick had already learned something that that the killer feared would expose him.

Lucy and he had been together the entire time. Except when Patrick had gone out to stow Vanessa’s body, and when she’d gone up to bed he’d been talking to Steve in the office.

“Patrick, please.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

Then he moaned and Lucy knew what was next.

She turned him to his side and he vomited.