Private Bodyguard. Tyler Anne Snell

bad, bad luck.

      A car door shut in the parking lot some time later. Whether it was seconds or minutes, she wasn’t sure. The room hadn’t been the only aspect of her reality that had warped when she had seen the body. However, instead of sending her into a bigger fit of worries, the sound of the outside world started to make her focus.

      She took two deep breaths and slowly righted herself. The camera around her neck slapped against her chest, reminding her of the reason she had been there in the first place.

      Nigel Marks and his mistress had been in this room the night before. He had gone, but his mistress hadn’t checked out. It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to guess it was her unfortunate fate that she was the one wrapped up in the tub. Darling knew she had to call the police, just as she knew that once she left the room, she’d never be allowed back in.

      At the moment, it was a thought that didn’t sit right with her. So, blaming the impulse on her desire to solve mysteries, even ones seemingly cut and dried, she took her camera from her neck and walked back to the bathroom doorway. With hands she let shake, she snapped a few pictures of the bathroom and its deceased guest before she turned back and took a few of the bedroom. Another car door slammed shut in the distance. She glanced once more toward the bathroom.

      Darling felt a mixture of anger and sadness pull at her heart. Nigel Marks might be a powerful man in the business world, but by killing this woman, he had unwittingly stepped inside Darling’s domain.

      Darling hurried to the main office and was thankful that Dan was still alone. He didn’t look up when she came in, he just raised his hands.

      “I know nothing,” he said, still in a bubble of humor. It was a bubble she was about to pop.

      “Dan, you need to call the police. There’s a dead body in room 212.”

      Dan laughed, thinking it was a joke until he finally met her eyes. Darling figured she must have looked as serious as the situation was. She watched his face and mood sober.

      “Where?” was all he could manage.

      “Wrapped up in a shower curtain in the tub.”

      His lips thinned, and his brows pulled together. “You better give me the key and leave, then,” he said after a moment. He pulled the only landline phone the office had from the second shelf of his desk. Darling felt a quick wave of fondness for the man. He was always trying to cover for her.

      “I don’t want you to lie about how you found the body,” Darling said. “I’ll tell the deputy the door was already open.” She handed the key back to him. “We don’t have to tell anyone about the key. Though I don’t think they’ll care either way.” It seemed obvious to her what had happened.

      Dan nodded and pocketed the key.

      “Then you call them,” he said, already shrugging into his coat. “I want to go see it for myself.”

      Darling sat behind the front desk with a very loud, long sigh and did as she was told. Deputy Derrick wouldn’t be happy she had managed to get into this mess, but at least this time she wasn’t guilty. Not that she would have admitted she had been guilty that morning. Instead of dialing 9-1-1, she called the man directly. In a small town like Mulligan, where the members of police force could be counted on two hands, Derrick had the dual duty of being their trusty investigator as well as deputy. Instead of puttering around with someone else in the bull pen, Darling went straight to the source.

      “Deputy Derrick,” he answered on the second ring.

      “Derrick, it’s Darling. I hope you’re not busy right now.”

      She heard him snort. “Is that your way of trying to ask me out? We both know how well that works,” he said, all humor.

      “Well, not quite.”

      “Where are you calling from?” he asked after a pause. She knew him well enough to recognize something close to suspicious concern creeping into his tone.

      “The Mulligan Motel,” she paused for a moment and then dove in. “There’s a body in room 212, wrapped up in the tub.”

      “A body?”

      She nodded. Then, realizing he couldn’t see her, she said, “And Derrick? The last person seen leaving the room was Nigel Marks.”

      There was silence on the other end.

      “Stay there and tell Dan don’t let anyone else in that room,” he finally said. “And I mean it, Darling. No one else goes in there.”

      Darling agreed to his no-tampering-with-a-crime-scene rule. Suddenly her morning indiscretion didn’t seem as bad. She even bet Oliver’s need to question her would disappear when he found out.

      Oliver.

      She pulled his card out of her back pocket and looked at his number.

      If Nigel did kill whoever it was in the tub, where did that leave Oliver?

Chapter Three

      Oliver didn’t answer when Darling called him.

      Somewhere in the back of her mind, she felt she owed it to him to give him a heads-up that the man he had promised to guard was about to need a lot more protection than he could offer. Oliver had said she wasn’t a threat, vouching for a woman he no longer knew. Plus, it was no fun to be blindsided. She knew that from experience.

      “This is Oliver Quinn. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible,” his voice mail recording answered. Darling felt her face heat up after the beep to leave a message came and went. She realized then that giving him a heads-up might also give Nigel one before the cops were even able to see the body in the tub. She didn’t want to be the one responsible for giving the number one suspect time to lawyer up or possibly run. Although he probably had already done one or the other. It wasn’t as if the body could have gone unnoticed for too long.

      “Um, hi, it’s Darling,” she floundered. “I need you to call me as soon as you get this. Something’s happened. Thanks.” She let out a long sigh as she ended the call. She liked to believe she was a very confident and sure woman, but mix any part of Oliver into her life and she suddenly felt off her game.

      Darling went back up to the second floor to find Dan, trying to push thoughts of her ex clear out of her head. She had walked into the crime scene that, most likely, her current client’s husband had created. That gave her a new set of problems and concerns without adding the complication of the man from her past.

      “I talked to Deputy Derrick,” Darling told Dan, who was standing in the doorway to room 212. “He said no one else needs to go in there until they get here.”

      Dan didn’t answer right away. His eyes were stuck on a point somewhere in the main room. She wondered if he had peeked in the bathroom yet. When he met her gaze, she knew he had. He looked haunted.

      “Do you think he really did it?” he asked. “Nigel. Do you think he really killed her?”

      Darling shrugged. “I can’t say for certain, but I can make the leap and say I think there’s a pretty good chance he did. You said yourself that he stayed the night here.”

      Dan nodded, but there was no enthusiasm in it.

      “Do you want me to wait in the lobby and send the cops up when they get here?” she asked when it was clear Dan wasn’t going to talk. He nodded again and returned to staring into room 212. She patted him on the shoulder and made the walk back, thinking a dead body in your hotel couldn’t be good for business.

      Darling sat behind the desk again but didn’t let her mind wander. Instead she thought about Elizabeth Marks, the only other woman who knew about her husband’s affair. Or, at least, she had thought so. If Nigel went to jail for murdering his mistress, she’d be in the clear to take what was hers, and possibly his, and leave without any strings attached.