Inside Out: A Heather's Forge Cozy Mystery, Book 5 Read online

  Inside Out

  A Heather’s Forge Cozy Mystery

  Book 5

  By

  N.L. Cameron

  www.NLCameron.com

  Copyright

  First Edition, June 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by N.L. Cameron

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and situations are the product of the author's imagination.

  All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written consent from the author.

  License

  This book is available exclusively on Amazon.com. If you found this book for free or from a site other than an Amazon.com country specific website it means the author was not compensated for this book and you have likely obtained this book through an unapproved distribution channel.

  Table of Contents

  Inside Out

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  More Books From N.L. Cameron

  About The Author

  Chapter 1

  I sat in my bedroom with the door locked, behind my locked apartment door at the Barrell Inn. I’d given my staff specific instructions not to disturb me under any circumstances. So, how come I still couldn’t decide what to do?

  I stared down at the carved statue of Anubis stolen from the Ashfield Calliwell Museum last week. The statue depicted a large black dog with huge ears perched on top of a stone pedestal. The dog wore a gold chain around its neck and stared out at the world with bright, cheerful eyes.

  I’d helped recover all the other articles that had been stolen. I should have felt good about that, but I didn’t. I should have handed back this statue, too, so why was I sitting on my bed looking at it?

  Not even finally earning the respect of Sheriff Conrad Mills could overcome the guilt of hiding this last piece of evidence. I’d solved three murders in the little town of Heather’s Forge, found a missing child, and now put this robbery to bed, so what was left?

  Too many loose ends still dangled in the breeze to leave the case alone. For a start, someone had snuck into the local jail and murdered the thief in his cell. This Anubis statue was the last piece of evidence to solve his murder, and we still didn’t know who’d hired Freddy Wright to rob the museum in the first place.

  Freddy told us he was hired to steal the Anubis statue, but he died before he could identify the man who’d hired him. He’d stolen a papyrus, a scarab, and a few other trinkets to throw the police off his trail, but the man who’d hired him didn’t care about them. Freddy had dumped them in the stream behind the inn, so what was so important about this statue?

  I picked it up and swiveled the bottom panel to reveal an opening in the pedestal. There must be something interesting about this statue, and if I turned it into the police, I might never find out what it was.

  I fiddled with the Anubis statue while I thought. I wasn’t thinking particularly about the murder cases I helped solve. I couldn’t have solved any of them and would probably be dead now if Levi hadn’t helped me. I’d recently found out he used to be a high-profile detective in New York. He ran away to Heather’s Forge to start a new life, only to get raked back into detective work by nosey old me.

  Sheriff Mills always told me to keep my nose out of police matters, but he changed his tune after Freddy wound up dead on in the sheriff’s own jail. He asked Levi to become a consultant to the Sheriff’s Office. Levi reluctantly agreed as long as we could do it together.

  No, I wasn’t thinking about Aunt Bea’s murder, or the murder of Harold Hart in his jacuzzi, or even Max Nash’s death for a parking lot behind the gas station. I was thinking about the tunnels. They occupied my every waking moment these days.

  Who built them, and why? Did the smugglers and bootleggers who used to operate in this area during Prohibition days construct this elaborate maze to avoid detection? There must be someone in this town who knew the truth, but I couldn’t exactly go knocking on doors to find out.

  I swiveled the swinging trap door in Anubis’s pedestal again and again while I thought. Knowing it swung open didn’t help me much, either.

  I turned it over and swiveled it open, and shut, and open. The tunnels were far more interesting than this statue of the Egyptian god of the dead.

  All of a sudden, I noticed something inside. I peered through the opening. A light glowed into the inner pocket under the pedestal. I dashed out to the front desk and got the flashlight I kept there in case of power outages.

  Voices rose and fell from the dining room down the hall. Camille Haynes, the cook, supervised all the servers and kitchen staff nowadays, so I could have the evenings to myself. I cocked my ear to listen. Then I tiptoed down the hall to peek in.

  Eight guests occupied the dining room. Abel Richards served. The guests sat in two distinct clusters of four men and four women. The men wore identical black suits. Thank goodness they didn’t wear black sunglasses, or I would really start to worry.

  Chester Robertson, Tony Gonzales, Richard Whitby, and Fred Coleman had gone to high school together. They formed a secret society, just the four of them, even though it wasn’t secret. Everybody knew who the membership was, and anybody could see when they met to discuss their secret business.

  The four men continued their secret meetings into adulthood, and they held every meeting at a different tourist destination somewhere around the country. That way, their wives would have something to do while the four guys sat with their heads together and planned their global takeover or whatever.

  Their wives had told the inn staff the whole story, and they sat together in the second cluster. They didn’t whisper with their heads together, though. They laughed and swilled martinis and discussed their kids and their projects and their friends like normal people.

  The four wives considered their husbands’ secret society a great joke. They cackled with glee whenever it came up in conversation, and they enjoyed themselves like you wouldn’t believe whenever the four couples got together for their annual meetings.

  They’d spent the week at the Barrell Inn hunting out every local attraction and appreciating every pleasure the countryside had to offer. In the few short days they’d spent at the inn, they’d probably learned more about Heather’s Forge than I had in the last year.

  I went back to my apartment again and shut the door, knowing the guests were enjoying themselves. I picked up the Anubis statue and set to work.

  I shone the beam into the statue’s opening, but I didn’t see anything. I turned it around again, and the light blinked into the dark space under the statue. That was strange. After hunting around some more with the light, I caught sight of something else. The light shone out onto my bedroom wall.

  I jammed the flashlight into the opening and held the statue upright. Yes! The light shone out through Anubis’s eyes onto my wall. When I moved it, the pattern changed. After more twisting and turning, I got the pattern to focus. It was some kind of drawing. Even from here, I recognized curving lines that looked like r
oads, tiny pictures of houses or building, and other signs of location. It was a map.

  I tried propping the thing up on cushions on the bed, but it didn’t work. I tried jamming the whole contraption against the wall, but the map slipped out of focus and fell over before I could get a decent look at it.

  I raced out to the kitchen and grabbed two bar stools and some duct tape. Camille jumped when I barged in. “What are you doing?”

  I waved the duct tape over my shoulder. “I’m… uh…. fixing my broken lamp.”

  I ran before she could ask the details and bolted my apartment door behind me. I set the Anubis statue between the stools and rigged the flashlight to shine up through the base. I adjusted the whole set-up so the map showed crisp and clear on the wall.

  I stared at it for a long time. What did it mean? What was it a map of? This must be why the killer hired Freddy to steal the statue in the first place. He was after the map.

  I took a picture of the map on my phone. I went to copy a sketch of it into my notebook, but I found all the sheets used up. I traced some of the lines on my wall with a pencil instead. I would have to buy another notebook in town tomorrow.

  I still couldn’t make heads or tails of the location. It didn’t show any road names or indicate any of the buildings. You would have to know what the map was to make sense of it.

  I put everything away, including the flashlight, then sat on my bed staring at the statue for another long hour. Now I knew why the bottom opened up, but I was no closer to finding out the secret of the theft and Freddy’s murder. Aunt Bea wasn’t much help, either.

  I curled up on my bed. Anubis stared out at me with those curious eyes of his. I had no reason to keep the statue. I was subverting justice by keeping it, so why didn’t I turn it in?

  I made up my mind I would do that—just not right now. I would wait just a little longer. That would give me some more time to think about… everything.

  I fell asleep still staring at the statue. It haunted my dreams. In my sleep, I wandered the tunnels in search of something I couldn’t find. I kept consulting the map I’d copied from the statue’s eyes, but I couldn’t figure out where I was going or where I was.

  I got up a few hours later and headed into town. I set the statue on the sheriff’s desk. His big belly touched the desk in front of him, and his old chair creaked when he leaned back and forth in it to make room for his ample form. “I found this in that garbage can right across the street. Take a look. There’s blood on one corner and the bottom swivels open.”

  He picked it up, tilted it over to see the swinging door, and set it down. “Very interesting. That’s the last piece. The museum will be happy to get it back.”

  I regarded him for a moment while he shuffled the papers on his desk. Why didn’t I tell him about the map? Wasn’t I subverting justice by keeping it to myself? “One more thing you might want to know, Sheriff….”

  He heaved himself out of his chair. “Would you mind being present while I question Laura Lane? I don’t have a female officer available today, and you can’t be too careful about sexual harassment these days.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “What do you want to question her about? We already know Freddy robbed the museum. Is she still saying she did it?”

  “She must be mental,” Sheriff Mills grumbled. “I just need to find out where she found that falcon piece of the god Horus. She might not be the thief, but she found it somewhere.” He waved toward the cells. “Do you mind?”

  He showed me to the interview room. This was the first time I’d ever gone inside it. I always watched behind the observation window, but I wasn’t here to interview Laura. As far as I could tell, she wasn’t even relevant to this case. She was just a sad lady in need of attention.

  Sheriff Mills sat down and arranged his papers. “Now, Laura, we just need to clear up a few details, and then you’ll be free to leave.”

  “I don’t want to leave,” she insisted. “Where’s my lawyer?”

  “You don’t need a lawyer,” Sheriff Mills replied. “You just need to tell me where you found that Horus piece you brought in.”

  “I told you,” she shot back. “I stole it from the museum.”

  Sheriff Mills sighed. “Listen, Laura. We already know who stole it from the museum, and it wasn’t you. We have all the other pieces recovered, so just tell me where you found it.”

  I spoke up from the corner of the room. “Did you find it in the stream near the Barrell Inn?”

  Her head shot up, and she stared at me in horror. Then her chin fell onto her chest. “Yes. I found it there when I went for a walk in the woods. How did you know?”

  “That’s where most of the other stolen goods were found,” Sheriff Mills replied. “Come on. I’ll put you back in your cell while I fill out the release papers. You’ve caused us a lot of wasted time and trouble we could have spent doing more important things.”

  He led the way back down the hall and locked her in. He went on to his office, but I stood where I was and stared at the empty cell next to Laura’s. I pushed on the door, but it was locked. I turned around to find Laura watching me. “What are you looking at?”

  “This is the cell where Freddy Wright was murdered,” I replied. “The killer must have stolen Rufus Leonard’s keys to get into the cell. Then they locked the door behind them.”

  Laura gave me a sly wink. “That’s the secret behind this jail. Don’t tell anybody.”

  “What is?” I asked.

  “You don’t need a key to get in and out of these cells. Only someone who has spent as much time in them as I have would know that. Not even Sheriff Mills knows, and he’s here every day.”

  My eyes popped. “Really? How do you get the door open, then?”

  “You just have to know how to lift it, and the lock snaps open. Each door is different. The killer must have known a lot about this jail. All he had to do was walk in, kill Freddy, and walk out. No one would know he was here.”

  I wandered back to the office with my head in a spin. Could it be true? The right person could get into the cells without unlocking the door. How many people in Heather’s Forge knew the secret? If Sheriff Mills didn’t know, the number couldn’t be high.

  Sheriff Mills was on the phone, so I didn’t wait around to tell him. I would have to tell him later. I walked out into town and crossed the street to the supermarket. I couldn’t reconcile everything I’d found out. What did it mean? Who could possibly know about the jail being insecure?

  I ran through names and faces of everyone I knew in town. Most people had lived in Heather’s Forge all their lives, but how many had ever been arrested? Even considering that small number, the killer might never have been arrested. He could have found out about the cells from some other source. He could have been friends with the outgoing sheriff before Conrad Mills took over. Anything was possible.

  I bought a notebook from the stationary aisle. People greeted me and asked about the case, now that they knew Levi and I were working on it, but I couldn’t pull my head out of the clouds. What did it all mean?

  Now that I knew, I couldn’t look at this town the same way again. Everybody walking past on the street radiated suspicion. I scrutinized every person for what I thought might be signs of criminal behavior.

  I couldn’t just walk up to someone and start bombarding them with questions. “Have you ever been arrested in Heather’s Forge? Have you ever spent any time in the Heather’s Forge jail?” Just thinking about it was too ridiculous to consider.

  Chapter 2

  I drove home to find the four musketeers standing in the front hall. They whispered by the stairs while their wives regaled Camille about their plans for the day.

  “We want to go to that museum listed in the brochure,” Gina Coleman exclaimed. “I hear they have the best Egyptian collection in the state.”

  “It’s right across the lake, isn’t it?” Tanya Whitby asked.

  “You can’t go to the museum,” Camille told them. �
�Someone robbed the Egyptian collection last week. It’s closed while the criminal investigation is going on. They got the stuff back, but it’s still cordoned off. You can visit the grounds, though.”

  Tanya’s face fell. “Oh. That’s awful. Did they catch the thief and get the stuff back?”

  “They caught him, and then he wound up dead. You should ask Allie about it. She can tell you all about the murders in this town. You could follow the trail of clues. You could make it into a scavenger hunt.”

  Tanya whipped around to her friends with a gasp. “That’s a great idea.”

  All four women started talking at once. They fired ideas back and forth so fast no one could get a word in. In the end, Rose Gonzales turned to face Camille. “So, tell us where these murders happened.”

  “Well, the first one happened right here at the inn,” Camille replied. “The gardener was growing pot in a secret greenhouse. You can hike up the hill over there and find it. He killed Beatrice Garrett to stop her exposing him and cutting off his profits.”

  The women gasped in amazement and exploded in another fit of excited talking. A moment later, the four of them gaggled out the door on their way up the hill in search of Nathaniel Rowe’s greenhouse.

  As soon as they left, their husbands headed for the library. They would lock themselves in there for the rest of the day. I turned to Camille. “Great idea. I never thought to turn those murders into an attraction. We should make that into a regular thing. We could market it and have clues stashed around town.”

  She patted me on the shoulder. “And I’m sure you’re just the person to do it, Allie. It would be right up your alley, and you know more about those murders than anybody. I hope Sheriff Mills wouldn’t mind.”

  “You can do what you please on your own property, and most of the clues were here anyway. You could even do a hunt for clues to the museum robbery. You could plant fake artifacts around the grounds for people to find. It could be a big deal.”

  I stared at her in amazement. “Wow, Camille. That is a fantastic idea.”

  She beamed at me and returned to the kitchen. I went back to my apartment and flopped on my bed. I made a few scribbled notes about the scavenger hunt/mystery tourism angle in my notebook before I turned my attention back to the problem of the jail.