He hung up and for what had to be the tenth time today, found his finger hovering over Lauren’s name. He’d had a myriad of reasons for calling her. To see if she’d gone back to his place to get her phone; to make sure she was staying out of trouble; to tell her about speaking to the ex-fiancé; to see if everything was good at her place; to see if he still had cake.
Pulling up to his aunt’s, he learned that the things she wanted him to move were actually people.
“It has been an eventful day, mijo,” she told him, avoiding his gaze.
“What did you do?”
“Sibling quarrel, tempers were running high, I had to intervene with calming tea.”
“Tia Carolina.”
She walked to the parlor waving him to follow.
“I have three new guests. A very good day for business, si. But what I find is these young ones, they have very weak constitutions.”
Stepping into the salon he saw two twenty-somethings, one man and one woman, unconscious. The woman was laid out on the floor, and the man was half on the floor and half on the couch.
“The Singhs and the Montrells came by for dinner earlier. They began discussing town lore and ghosts. After the tea, this one became paranoid. He imagined he was seeing demons. He was attempting to call ghostbusters…or paranormal hunters, I can’t remember. Then he passed out.”
“I’m confiscating the tea.”
“It’s totally legal.” She shrugged. “Plus, they signed a waiver, Lauren had me include that in my terms and conditions of stay.”
“Of course she did,” Santiago muttered. “You said you had three guests. Where’s the other one?”
“Oh, Mable’s been upstairs for ages. She’s Lauren’s mother you know. Arrived this morning. She had no problem with the tea.”
“Wait, did you just say Lauren’s mother is here?”
“Upstairs. Room one.”
“Her sister?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t have enough room for another guest,” his aunt said coolly. There were four bedrooms upstairs. The sister had unknowingly made an enemy.
Santiago rubbed a weary hand over his face and sighed. “Where do you want them?”
“The sister is in room two and the brother is in room three. I tried to move them, but I can’t do it on my own.” Santiago picked up the male. “The pair stopped by on their way to Asheville. They found out about my place online. Isn’t it exciting?”
“Not really.”
“You’re being grouchy, you need rest.”
“I’m off tomorrow. Unless there’s an emergency?—”
“There will be no emergencies.”
Santiago left his aunt’s but didn’t do his ride around town before going home. He was concerned about how Lauren was handling her mother coming to town; about how she was processing Cody’s body being found in the lake.
Everything went to shit after the discovery. Cody Earl’s family was prone to violence on their most well-behaved days, and they took the news as expected. Two of them where crying in their jail cell last time he saw them. He’d release them tomorrow. They just needed time to process. Everybody needed time to process.
Not long after the incident with Cody Earl’s family, Anderson Archer arrived at the station, again accusing Lauren of murder. Didn’t matter to him that Cody Earl had been reported missing over a month before her arrival. Anderson believed she was a part of some kind of conspiracy to bring him down.
What concerned Santiago was that people were beginning to listen to him.
There were no leads on who broke into Lauren’s house yet, and they were no closer to solving Mrs. Willoby’s or Bailey Joe’s deaths, because Doc Cleveland determined that the latter was also a homicide.
“I got toxicology back on Bailey Joe,” the county coroner said excitedly.
