An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena
“The others think you did it,” she says.
“They’re crazy. I didn’t kill anyone,” he says defensively. “It could have been any of them.”
“Who do you think did it?”
He’s silent for a moment, and then says, “I don’t know.”
She raises her eyebrows deliberately. “No idea at all?”
“I’m not a detective,” he says stubbornly. “But whoever did it must be crazy. This whole situation is crazy.” He licks his lips nervously. “Honestly, last night I was scared for my life. If it wasn’t for David—if it hadn’t been for him, they might have murdered me. That asshole Henry suggested it. David managed to calm him down.”
She looks back at him impassively. “And now Henry is dead too.”
He looks up. “I had nothing to do with that either, I swear!”
“We don’t know how he died yet,” she tells him. “There will be an autopsy, of course. That’s all for now. You may go back to the lobby.”
Sunday, 3:30 p.m.
Sergeant Sorensen and Officer Lachlan move to the first-floor sitting room, where James has made them a fire. It’s more comfortable than the dining room. The others remain in the lobby, under the watchful eyes of Wilcox and Perez. Perez reports that they’ve been fed, but are getting restless. Sorensen knows there isn’t much she can do about that. She’s feeling impatient too—the police chief, the medical examiner, the forensics team—and the detectives—will get here when the roads are navigable, and not before.
She has looked at the physical evidence as best she can herself; until the forensic crew arrives, there is not much more she can do on that front. She has interviewed everyone present as far as she dared without them all clamming up and starting to ask for legal counsel. She’s not happy about being in this remote hotel without the techs to quickly and expertly secure the evidence the way it should be secured. She wishes they would hurry the hell up clearing the roads.
There’s nothing to do but watch her charges—keep them safe and make sure no one tampers with the evidence. Trapped here, without the forensic team, she has only her wits to work with.
“At first glance,” she says to Lachlan, sitting across from her by the fire, “none of these murders seems related to one another. The victims didn’t know each other until they arrived at this hotel. At least, not as far as we know. Maybe something will come to light as we dig deeper. What we don’t have right now,” she adds, “is any kind of motive.”
Lachlan says with obvious frustration, “I hate sitting here with our feet up and our hands tied.”
She sighs and says, “It’s Bradley who’s bothering me.” She continues to think out loud, but in a lower voice. “I knew Bradley. He was always up to something—very enterprising, always had some scheme going. He’s involved with this somehow, I’m certain of it. He saw something, or knew something, and it got him killed. What did he know?”
“Up to a bit of blackmail, perhaps?” Lachlan suggests.
She looks up at him and nods. “That’s what I’m thinking. I wouldn’t be at all surprised. But who was he blackmailing? Which one of them is our killer? Or do we have more than one?” She looks into the fire for a moment, and then says, “Any one of them could have killed Dana. Any one of them could have killed Candice. Any one of them could have killed Bradley, except for Henry and Beverly. They’re the only ones who didn’t go outside when he was killed.”
“Yes,” Lachlan agrees.
“And any of them could have slipped something into Henry Sullivan’s drink, for instance, if in fact he was murdered somehow and didn’t die of natural causes. They all admit they periodically warmed themselves in front of the fire, and Henry was sitting right there.” She adds, “Not to mention, it sounds like Henry was making himself a bit of a pest with his snooping and his theories, and our killer had to be getting nervous.”
* * *
• • •
David aches all over from sitting in the chair with his muscles tensed all night. He longs to go home. But he knows it’s going to be a while before any of them can leave.
He passes the time watching Gwen—wondering if there is any possible way she might be willing to see him when this is all over—and thinking about who the murderer is. The rest of them seem convinced—or had at least seemed convinced last night—that Ian was the culprit. But he doesn’t think so.
There is only one person here who knows the truth, he thinks, and that’s the killer. And he has a pretty good idea who that is. He just doesn’t have any proof. And he doesn’t want to share his theory with Sorensen. At least, not yet.
* * *
• • •
Gwen desperately wants to know who the killer is.
She thinks uneasily about what happened in the early hours of the morning—when Henry had suggested killing Ian. How dangerous people can become when they’re scared, she thinks. She’s grateful to David for putting a stop to it. Surely a man who maintains his reason while others around him are losing theirs—surely such a man could never kill his wife or anyone else?
She needs to know who the murderer is because she has to know for certain that David didn’t do it.
* * *
• • •
Ian paces back and forth in front of the windows of the lobby, ignoring the others as best he can, but he can feel them all watching him. He’s glad there’s a police officer in the room, watching everybody, protecting him. Even so, he’s frightened. He’s insisted to all of them that he didn’t kill anyone. They don’t seem to believe him. What matters is what the police believe. He might need a very good lawyer. He thinks about David Paley, sitting over there with the rest of them. David probably saved his life. Perhaps he will represent him, if it comes to that. If he’s arrested.
THIRTY-FIVE
Sunday, 4:10 p.m.
The fire has burned low in the grate, and James arrives in the sitting room to build it up again. Sergeant Sorensen and Officer Lachlan are still in front of the fire when they hear a sound in the distance. The sound of heavy machinery out on the drive.
“The road crews must be out,” Lachlan says, standing up eagerly.
“Thank God,” Sorensen says with relief, rising from her chair. “It won’t be long before everybody else gets here then.”
They leave the sitting room and reach the lobby, where everyone’s attention is turned toward the windows. The sound is louder out here. Through the windows, she sees a big yellow snowplow coming slowly and laboriously up the drive.
She turns away from the window and looks back at the survivors in the lobby. James has come out of the kitchen at the sound of the plow; the rest remain where they are, as if frozen in place. Sorensen looks at each one of them in turn: James, Beverly, Matthew, Gwen, David, Ian, and Lauren.
Sorensen turns back to look out the window. She sees then that there’s a truck following behind the snowplow—and she recognizes the crime team. She feels her face break into a relieved smile.
* * *
• • •
Gwen watches as the forensics team disperses and gets to work. Officers Wilcox and Perez remain in the lobby, as if afraid that someone might try to make a run for it.
Gwen wonders what the crime team will find.
She has spent so much time with these people over this appalling weekend. She has learned their secrets—at least some of them. They have all been scraped raw. And yet, she still feels she knows them hardly at all. She has survived this weekend only to take something ugly away with her—she’s learned that you never really know anyone else. That is terrifying. Because you can’t tell, can you? When she leaves here and goes back out into the world, she will think of everyone she meets as having the potential for evil deep inside.
* * *
• • •
Sergeant Sorensen gets a call saying that the detective has been delayed. For no
She follows the technicians around the hotel as they put out their careful little markers and take their laborious photographs. She hovers over them while they study the bodies, one after the other, and mutter to each other as they work. It will be awhile yet before the bodies can be moved, although they are working as quickly as they can.
Now she’s outside, watching them pore over the area in the snow where Bradley died. Bright floodlights have been set up in the late afternoon; the effect is almost blinding.
“Looks like he was hit once, on the back of the head,” one of the techs says. “The blow was strong enough, and heavy enough, to kill him.”
Now one of the other techs waves her closer. “Look at this,” he says.
She looks closely as he bends over and points at something in the snow. But she can’t see anything. She adjusts her glasses upward a bit, to get the full effect of her trifocals. “I don’t see anything,” she says.
The tech bends forward again, and using a pair of tweezers, removes something tiny from deeper in the snow and holds it up for her. It’s a small diamond earring. No wonder she couldn’t see it.
“Are you telling me that that was underneath the body?” she says.
The technician nods. “It was frozen into the snow, so it can’t have been here long. Only since the snowfall Friday night. And it’s a pierced earring. Ought to be able to get some satisfactory DNA off of that.”
“So it’s a woman,” Sorensen says, unable to hide her surprise.
“Looks like it.”
“Good work.”
* * *
• • •
Back inside, Sorensen asks Ian Beeton to come with her into the dining room to answer some more questions. She doesn’t look at him when she asks for him. She notices the others stir in expectation.
Ian, pale and shaken, lurches his way into the dining room.
She asks him to sit, reminds him that he is still under caution, and he drops as if his knees have buckled beneath him.
“I’ve got a couple of more questions for you, Ian,” she says.
He looks at her, his eyes wide with fear.
She holds up a little clear plastic evidence bag and places it on the white linen of the dining table. “Have you ever seen this earring before?”
He looks down at it, as if stricken dumb. Whatever he was expecting, it obviously wasn’t this.
“Do you recognize it?” she asks.
He nods slowly. “It’s Lauren’s. I mean, it looks like the ones she was wearing. . . . ”
“When was the last time you saw her wearing it?”
He sits back in his chair, aware now of what is being asked of him. “Where did you find it?”
She doesn’t answer; she waits.
“She was wearing that pair yesterday, I think.”
“You think?”
“She was wearing them yesterday.”
“Okay.” Sorensen made a point of noticing when she came through the lobby that Lauren isn’t wearing any earrings now. But Beverly and Gwen both are. She knows that none of them would have had the opportunity to go back up to their rooms to get another pair, if they’d lost one. “Did you happen to notice when she stopped wearing them?”
He shakes his head and whispers, “No.”
* * *
• • •
They all watch warily as Sergeant Sorensen returns to the lobby. They’ve been on tenterhooks since Ian returned, white and silent, to the lobby and sat down, clearly shaken.
Lachlan stands beside Sorensen, ready with a pair of handcuffs.
David notices how still everyone is, how alert. He feels his heartbeat escalate as they come to stand in front of Lauren.
“Please stand,” the sergeant says to Lauren.
Lauren rises, visibly trembling.
The sergeant says in a firm voice, “Lauren Day, you are under arrest for the murder of Bradley Harwood. . . . ”
David tunes out the rest; as they read Lauren her Miranda rights, he’s watching her. She opens her mouth to protest but it looks as if she can barely breathe. She throws a panicked glance at Ian, but he’s unresponsive; he seems too shocked to react.
Then Lauren turns to David, her eyes full of panic. She needs someone in her corner; she needs an attorney. But when she looks at him, he meets her eyes only briefly, then turns away. He sees the others’ faces, stunned at the turn of events.
* * *
• • •
When Ian hears the handcuffs click as they lock around Lauren’s wrists, he feels physically sick.
This can’t be right, Ian thinks, his heart pounding in his chest. He can’t believe it. This can’t be happening. He runs his hands agitatedly through his hair.
She seems so normal.
He thought it was Matthew who had killed everyone—born with a silver spoon in his mouth, maybe he’d killed his fiancée after an argument and then tried to cover it up with the natural arrogance of the born rich. Maybe Candice and Bradley knew something, and he’d had to keep them quiet. But it hadn’t been Matthew at all. Matthew is a victim; he has lost the woman he loves. Ian looks at him now and feels terrible for him; he will never be the same.
Ian will never be the same either. None of them will ever be the same.
He has a sudden bout of dizziness, fights another wave of nausea. Maybe the police have made a mistake. Surely Lauren did not kill all these people. What possible reason could she have?
He looks at her again, her lips now pressed in a tight line, her eyes closed. And suddenly he knows it’s true. He can’t stop staring at her, wondering what’s going on behind those closed eyelids. He realizes that he does not know her at all.
He tells himself that he has made a very narrow escape. He shudders. They have spent months together. He’d thought he was falling in love with her.
* * *
• • •
Matthew watches the police arrest Lauren. He doesn’t know what evidence they have, but he trusts the police. They must have good reason for arresting her. He is filled with inexpressible grief and rage, but also relief. Relief that he is no longer suspected of killing his fiancée. He takes one instinctive step toward Lauren and stops. She’s the one who murdered Dana! It was her. He can hardly believe it. She’s the one who pushed Dana down the stairs and hit her head at the bottom to make sure she was dead. And then, for a time, she allowed everyone to believe that he had probably done it. He’d almost wanted to kill himself out of despair and fear.
“Why did you kill her?” he demands, his voice loud with anguish.
“Please step back, sir,” the sergeant says.
Lauren’s eyes fly open and she looks back at Matthew with desperation. “I didn’t kill her!” she cries. “I didn’t kill anyone! They’ve got it wrong. This is all a mistake. It wasn’t me!” She turns frantically to Ian. Surely he will help her. “Ian, tell them! Tell them it’s not me!”
But he looks back at her strangely, as if he’s afraid of her. What did he say to the police just a few minutes ago, when he was in the dining room? What does he know? He can’t know anything!
David steps forward and cautions her. “Don’t say anything. Not a word.”
THIRTY-SIX
Sunday, 5:45 p.m.
Lauren looks into David’s eyes—and they aren’t the eyes of someone who believes her, someone who will protect her. She collapses to the floor, handcuffed, and closes her eyes again. They let her stay there on the floor, leaning against the sofa; she hears them talking in low voices in the background.
She’s not going to tell them anything. She has the right to remain silent and she
When Ian invited her up here for a naughty weekend, she had no idea what was going to happen. None of it was planned.
She thinks back to that first night. She’d taken a dislike to Dana right from the start. She thought it was because she reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t think who. It wasn’t until after cocktails, when they were having dinner, that she realized who Dana reminded her of. It wasn’t until Dana’s comment, It sounds like someone fell off the roof, and her laughing about it, that she realized exactly who Dana was. And then Lauren’s heart began to pound and she could feel herself turning hot and cold and breaking into a sweat.
Dana—she had been Dani when Lauren knew her—had given no sign of recognizing her. Not until that comment. Then she knew for certain that Dani had recognized her, but had pretended not to. Dani always was a good actor. But Dani obviously wanted Lauren to know that she knew who Lauren was.
They’d both changed. At least on the outside.
It was a long time ago. Fifteen years. Half her lifetime. Lauren had been a plain, sullen, overweight teen then, and Dani had taunted her relentlessly. But she had recognized her.
Dani looked different now too. At fifteen, she’d worn her hair very short. She had a tough, mean look. She was a tough, mean girl. Now, fifteen years later, she was completely different. This new version—Dana—was very feminine, polished, expensive-looking—no wonder Lauren hadn’t recognized her at first. But Lauren was certain that the scrappy Dani was still there—Dana was a fake. Dana didn’t look like she’d ever spent a single night in a miserable group home, taking her frustration, rage, and fear out on others more vulnerable than she.
Lauren, too, had put her past behind her. She didn’t want it to come out now. She had Ian now. She couldn’t let Dana ruin everything. She had to be sure that Dana wouldn’t say anything.