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“If Horace is on his way here now it seems we should find Jess sooner, rather than later.”
    “Or we could just let her problems belong to her,” Rosie suggests.
    I study my friend’s expression, trying to read what I see there.  This isn’t like Rosie.  She’s usually nice to everyone, happy to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and go out of her way to help.  Now that Jess is here it’s like someone spit in her porridge.
    She turns under my scrutiny and heads straight for the kitchen.  “I’m sure she’ll turn up.  Ooh.  Turnips.  In the soup.  Perfect!”
    “Rosie, come on,” I plead with her.  “Jess is our friend.  What’s wrong with you?”
    She stops, her back still facing me, tugging at the sleeves of her white blouse.  “Maybe Jess and me were never the good friends that you thought we were.”
    “What?  What does that mean?”
    After a quiet moment where I can hear the clock ticking and the drone of conversation in the dining room, Rosie turned to look up the stairs.  “It means we probably should go check on her.”  She didn’t quite look back at me as she added, “Dell, there’s some things you should know ‘bout Jess.  Things I never said back at University, ’cause you and she were such good friends.”
    “Rosie?  What are you talking about?”
    Her gaze went back up to the stairs.  “I’m saying…I’ll tell ya later.  Let’s go check on her.”
    It wasn’t said with a lot of enthusiasm, and I still wanted to know what Rosie was talking about that could have been so bad, but that tingly feeling all up and down my back was still there, and I decided we could wait to talk about the old times.  I needed to see if Jess was still in her room.  If she wasn’t, my first instinct was to call Kevin up and have him and some of his police buddies go looking for her around town.  She couldn’t have gotten far.  I had seen her car still in the parking lot through one of the windows.
    Besides the spare keys to the rooms, I have a master key as well, something every smart Inn owner should have in case of a guest who doesn’t want to leave or such.  That’s in the wooden cabinet, too, behind the peg board, with the keys to the rental car I keep for the Inn and a few other things as well.  Swinging the peg board out I get that key, close the cabinet up, and start upstairs with Rosie.
    She doesn’t say anything to me the whole time.  Her lips are pressed tightly together in a frown.  In fact she looks like a woman on her way to her judgment.  Maybe I should have asked her before agreeing to let Jess come and stay here.  I just never thought it would be this much trouble.  She’s my friend.  That’s all that should matter.
    I’m not sure Rosie would agree with me.
    At Jess’s door I insert the key and then wait, knocking one last time, calling out to her again, telling her we’re coming in and she’d better be decent.
    The joke falls flat when there’s still no answer.  I look at Rosie.  Her eyes are a little unfocused, her expression grim, as if she knows what we’re going to find in there.  For a moment I hesitate, not sure I want to know what Rosie apparently already suspects.
    Gathering my courage against…well, I really didn’t know what, I pushed the door open.
    The smell hit me first.  A coppery tang mixed with damp wetness.  There’s only one thing in the world smells like that.
    Blood.
    Then I saw her.
    Rosie lifted her hand to her mouth with a gasp and then turned away.  I couldn’t.  Turn away, I mean.  I couldn’t turn away.
    Jess sat in the room’s only chair, over in the corner by the window.  She sat very stiff, and very pale.  She was still wearing the clothes she had on yesterday.  Like she’d never even gone to bed.
    On the floor at her feet were pools of drying blood.  Streaks of it ran down her arms from the uneven, jagged cuts in both wrists.  Her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, her head rolled back.
    Jess