A Fright to the Death (5 page)

We regrouped in the bedroom. Mac asked Jessica when she thought the power would be back on.

“It should have come on by now.” Jessica held her hands out and shrugged. “The generator works very well and can usually supply power for a couple of days. I don’t know why it hasn’t kicked in.” She put a shaky hand to her lips. “I had planned to go find our maintenance man after I dropped off the candles in the lounge.”

Mac paced in front of the bathroom door. “Okay, we’ll need to call the local police and see what they want us to do.”

“I thought
you
were a police officer,” Linda said.

Mac stopped moving.

“Yes, we both are,” he said, and gestured toward me. “But Clyde is on leave and I’m out of my jurisdiction. If the local police can get here, they’ll be in charge.”

“I doubt anyone can get through tonight,” Jessica said.
“The snow is still coming down and when René arrived this afternoon just before dinner, he said he almost didn’t make it.”

“Surely we don’t need to call in more police,” Linda said. “We can make arrangements with a funeral home. . . .”

Mac held up his hand. “I’m afraid it’s more complicated than that.”

“Because it was an accidental death?” Jessica said.

Mac and I exchanged a glance and I could tell he thought it would be best not to upset Mrs. Garrett further.

“Police need to be notified whenever someone unexpectedly dies,” I said.

Mac pulled out his cell phone and dialed. He looked at it again, and sighed.

“I don’t have service. Clyde, is yours working?”

Mine was the same—no service.

“There’s only one cell tower near here and reception can be spotty,” Jessica said. “We have a landline tucked under the front desk.”

“Let’s go try the landline,” Mac said.

We trooped down the circular stairs. Mrs. Garrett had begun crying again, but it was more of a slow leak than a flood.

“Maybe you can take your mom to her room and get her some tea or . . . something?” I said to Jessica.

She nodded. “I’ll meet you downstairs.” She put an arm around Linda. “C’mon, Mom, let’s go.”

Jessica took the lamp and led her mother off a side hallway that I assumed led to the family’s living area. Mac and I went to the front desk and found the phone. Mac dialed 911 and listened. He clicked the button on the phone and tried again. He groaned.

“The landline is out as well?” I asked.

“I’m not sure what to do.” He shook his head. “I don’t like the idea of leaving her body up there.”

“We don’t want to disturb any potential evidence,” I said.

Mac nodded and rubbed the back of his neck.

He took a deep breath and blew it out. “Leave it to us to stumble onto a murder.”

“Murder?” said a voice from behind us. “I knew it!”

I turned, but it had to be Vi and her selectively tuned hearing.

She hurried over to us, her candle flickering wildly. “She’s been murdered? Poor Clarissa!” She paused and lowered her voice. “Of course, she didn’t have many fans around here.” She looked from me to Mac.

Neither of us spoke.

“Unless . . . it was the ghost seeking her revenge!” Vi announced.

“Ms. Greer, that’s ridiculous,” Mac said. “And dangerous. Don’t get everyone all worked up about a ghost story.”

Violet was silent for a moment. “You’re probably right.” She nodded. “We’ve got to figure this out—there’s a murderer among us!” She turned to go back into the lounge.

I grabbed her arm. “Vi, you can’t tell anyone. Let us handle it. We know what we’re doing.” I glanced at Mac for backup.

“We wouldn’t want to let the murderer know we’re onto him, or her,” Mac said.

“Oh, of course. But I can tell Rose, right?” she said to Mac and then turned to me, her finger already pointing in a menacing fashion. “You can’t suspect your own mother of murder?”

“Shhh! No, I don’t suspect Mom,” I said. “But let’s just keep this between us until we can figure out what’s going on.”

“Okay, got it.” Vi nodded, and then winked.

I looked at the ceiling and hoped it was too dark for her to notice.

“What’s going on?” Wally emerged out of the shadowy hallway.

“Ms. Carlisle is definitely deceased,” Mac said.

“Oh, no.” Wally put his hand up to his neck. “How did she die?”

“We think she hit her head,” Mac said, “but we’ll have to wait until the police get here to examine the evidence.”

“That could be a while,” Wally said. “The emergency weather radio says the snowstorm has stalled over Southwestern Michigan. If the phones are already out, it’s not likely we’ll get a call out anytime soon.”

“How did you know the phones were out?” I asked.

“I tried to call our head of maintenance earlier when you were upstairs. His assistant is down in the basement working on the generator, but I thought if we could call Gus, he could tell us how to fix it.” Wally leaned closer to me and whispered, “The new guy is not that good.”

“Wally, maybe you and Vi can go back in the lounge and try to keep everyone calm,” Mac said. “I need to talk to Jessica and figure out what we’re going to do.”

“Sure, okay.” Wally held his arm out for Violet and escorted her down the hall as if they were heading to dinner in an English country house.

“We can’t leave a body sitting up there all night,” I said to Mac.

He nodded. “I know. And I don’t know how to keep everyone out of there. I’d post a guard, but I don’t know whom to trust besides you, our mothers, and maybe your aunt. They can’t stand guard through the night.”

“No, Vi is likely to see the ghost and send up an alarm . . . if she doesn’t fall asleep on duty.”

“This sounds awful, but I’m tempted to wrap the body and put it out in the snow to preserve it. We know the general time of death is between the time we saw her before dinner and an hour later when the body was discovered.”

I suddenly felt queasy and leaned my back against the wall. No matter how many times I had dealt with violent death, there was always a moment when it snuck up on me. Mac pulled me toward him and we stood, leaning against one another more than embracing, for a long moment.

I took a deep breath and pushed away from him. “We should find Jessica and see if they have any large sheets of plastic—like a new shower curtain. Maybe there’s an outbuilding that we can put the body in that will keep it cold.”

“Good idea,” Mac said. He grabbed my hand and squeezed gently.

I followed Mac up the stairs, and back in the direction of the side hall where Jessica had led her mother. She turned the corner just as we got to the turret stairs doorway.

“Oh, there you are,” she said. “I just got Mom calmed down. She’s resting in her room. Did you get in touch with the police?”

“The phone lines are down,” I said.

“Oh, I thought . . .” She put her hand to her head. “This is all so awful. Are the guests okay?”

“We sent Wally and Violet in to keep everyone calm,” Mac said.

“I don’t know what to do,” Jessica said.

I stepped forward to touch her arm. “We’re so sorry, Jessica.”

“Jessica?” The chef strode up to us down the dark hallway. “I just heard about Clarissa. What’s going on?”

“She . . . she’s dead.” Jessica threw herself into René’s arms and sobbed.

Mac shifted his weight and I could see him sizing up the situation.

“How can she be dead?” René asked. “I just saw her at dinner.”

Jessica said something unintelligible into his shoulder. His brow wrinkled and he rubbed her back.

“Mr. Sartin, we need to secure the room and the body for when the police arrive.”

Jessica winced when Mac said “the body.”

“Police? I doubt anyone will get through tonight,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Jess.”

“Is there an outbuilding or someplace we can store the . . . Clarissa . . . to keep her cold?” Mac asked.

Jessica pulled herself together and nodded. “The garden shed would work. We just built it this past spring to store equipment. There’s plenty of room and it has a dead bolt.”

“I’m sorry, but we think it would be best to put her out there,” I said.

Jessica’s voice shook as she said, “Okay.”

“We need to keep people out of her room so no one can interfere with evidence,” Mac said.

“Evidence?” René said.

“We didn’t want to further alarm Mrs. Garrett, but we think she was murdered,” Mac said.

Jessica gasped and René’s mouth dropped open. Jessica leaned toward him and he slipped an arm around her shaking shoulders.

*   *   *

We sent the
knitters off to bed with promises of more information in the morning. Wally, René, Jessica, Mac, and I went back up to Clarissa’s room with a new shower curtain and the largest flashlights Wally could find.

The room felt still and silent when we entered, as if it held its breath. I had sensed this in other sudden-death cases. The vacuum left behind was palpable. Mac and I got to work quickly. We had both been trained in crime scene protocol
but Mac had far more experience. He took the lead and photographed the body as best he could in the poor lighting conditions. René had provided us with plastic kitchen gloves and paper bags. We examined the area around her body carefully and bagged anything lying nearby. We found an earring that matched the one in her left ear not far from the body, a used bandage under the front foot of the large tub, and a few stray hairs that appeared to match Clarissa’s length and color.

The lack of electric light hampered our efforts. Mac and I did the best we could to collect items near the body with the idea that we would return during the daytime to better examine the rest of the room.

We laid the curtain on the floor next to Clarissa, and Mac and René carefully lifted her onto one edge. They gently rolled her in the shower curtain to protect any evidence that might remain on her body, under her fingernails, or anywhere else on her person. As they shifted her over, a metallic clang sounded just underneath her. Wally shined the light on the ground and a reflective glint winked at us. I bent down to examine the piece of metal.

I knew immediately what it was and fought the urge to touch it to get more information. It was an elongated U-shape with one end longer than the other. I had seen Vi use something like it to do her knitted cables.

“Jessica, was Clarissa a knitter?” I asked.

Jessica had been standing just outside the bathroom while we worked and she stepped inside. “No, not a chance. She mocked Isabel any chance she got.”

I pointed to the metal U without touching it. “Isn’t that a cable needle?”

Jessica bent down and looked. She took in a sharp breath. “Yes, it’s . . . it’s a cable needle.” She stood back quickly as if to put some distance between herself and the needle.

“Do you know who it belongs to?” Mac asked.

Jessica shook her head quickly and stepped back out into the bedroom.

Mac slid it carefully into a small paper bag and put it with the rest of our evidence bags. He directed Wally and René to lift Clarissa and we all trooped out of the bathroom and down the stairs after them.

I took up the rear and after we got down the stairway the guys moved ahead to bring the body out to the shed. I found Vi lurking in the shadows around the corner from the staircase.

“Vi, what are you doing here?” I hissed and hoped Mac was too busy to notice.

“I just wanted to see if I could help,” she said. “Where’s that cat? I saw her race out of the stairway when you guys went upstairs the first time. She might be able to tell us something about what happened.”

Vi had been known to interview dogs, cats, and even woodland creatures to try to solve a mystery.

“I didn’t see the cat upstairs,” I said. “Let’s get to bed and we can look for her in the morning.” I steered her back toward “our” room and pushed her through the doorway.

I told her I would be right back and used my own waggling finger to threaten. Mom began her interrogation of Vi as I swung the door closed.

I got to the back door just as the guys stepped outside with Clarissa’s plastic-wrapped corpse. Jessica stood in the doorway shivering. Her hands shook as she pulled her cardigan more tightly across her shoulders.

“They said we could wait here,” she said. “Kirk, our maintenance guy, has the keys and I didn’t want to . . . see her there. In a shed.” She scrubbed at her eyes, smearing her mascara into a raccoon mask.

“I’m so sorry, Jessica.”

She sniffled. “It’s not like we were close. Just the opposite, in fact.” She turned to me. “Who could have done this?”

“We’ll do our best to figure it out and the police will investigate as soon as we can get in touch with them.” I didn’t want to point out to her that as long as the storm continued, we would all be stuck in the hotel with a murderer; she had probably already concluded as much. I thought that Mac and I would have just as much work keeping everyone calm as we would investigating the murder.

After an uncomfortable night listening to the howling wind, snow lashing the windows, and Vi’s snoring, by Friday morning I felt cranky and tired. The frigid air chilled me through my thin sleep shirt as I climbed out of bed in the dark. A quick flick of the light switch confirmed that the power had not been restored.

I fumbled with a pack of matches and lit a candle.

Vi sat up in her bed as I shivered and hopelessly examined my suitcase full of shorts and T-shirts. I had planned for a Mexican vacation, not a blizzard in Michigan.

“Look in the closet, Clyde,” Vi said through a yawn. “I brought lots of sweaters. Knitters get pretty competitive so we all bring our best stuff.”

“Thanks, Vi,” I said.

I slid the closet door open. The candle flickered as I held it up to better examine the sweaters. Assaulted by the bright, multihued choices, I flipped through the hangers until I found a muted purple cardigan that looked soft and warm.

“That color will be perfect for you,” Mom said from the bed. “It will show off both colors of your eyes and complement your dark hair.”

“I’m just interested in being warm, Mom.”

“It never hurts to look nice while you’re getting comfortable,” Mom sniffed.

I tossed the sweater on over a T-shirt and my one pair of jeans, told the ladies I’d see them later, and slipped out into the hallway.

The candle cast jumping shadows on the walls as I walked down the staircase. I got a tingly feeling along my spine remembering Vi’s ghost story. I’m embarrassed to admit how many times I glanced over my shoulder. I wanted to run down the hall toward the lounge, but didn’t want the candle to blow out.

Mac and I had planned to meet in the lounge at seven a.m. to avoid the knitters, but we hadn’t planned on it being so dark. Their first workshop wasn’t until nine and they were meeting at eight for breakfast. At least the sun would be up by then.

After my spooky trek from upstairs, I found Mac huddled by the fire with a pot of tea all ready for me. His small notebook was open and he flipped it shut when I approached. He was wearing a thick, dark blue cardigan with no buttons and loose strings hanging off of it. When I got closer I saw the smiling snow couple that had been knitted into the front. Neither of us had packed for winter in a cold, drafty castle. I assumed one of the knitters had taken pity on him.

I sat next to him and kissed him in spite of the snowman.

“Nice sweater.” I tried to swallow the giggle.

“I think it brings out my eyes.” He wiggled his eyebrows to demonstrate.

“Oh, it’s definitely
you
,” I said. “I assume it’s a loan from Mavis?”

“How did you know?” He pretended to be shocked.

“A hunch.” I smiled. “Plus, I’m psychic.”

Mac’s slow grin spread. “So I hear.”

“I’ll have to keep my eye on her.”

“Now that I have this sweater, you might have to keep an eye on all of them.”

I laughed and kissed him again.

“How did you get this?” I asked as I lifted the pot of tea and poured a cup.

“I have connections.” He smiled. “The gas stove still works if you light it with a match.”

I sipped the tea and pulled Aunt Vi’s sweater closer around my shoulders.

“What’s the plan for the day?”

His smile faded and was replaced by his cop face. “Ideally, the power comes back on, the phones are reconnected, and the police arrive to take over. But I’m not holding out much hope.”

I could tell there was more, and waited.

“I don’t see how we can leave now,” he said. “Even if the power comes back on and the roads are miraculously cleared, we’re witnesses.
I
wouldn’t let us leave if I was in charge of the investigation, and right now I guess we are in charge.”

I felt another little thrill at the thought of investigating a case with Mac, even though we’d miss our time alone in Mexico. Crystal Haven had unfortunately seen several murders in the last nine months and Mac and I had found ourselves, if not on
opposite
sides, at least on different teams. He viewed me as a civilian until I returned to the police force, but both situations had been too close to home for me to sit back and wait for the murderer to be caught. Now, we were
both
unofficial investigators.

“So, we start building a timeline and questioning people about their whereabouts?” I asked.

He nodded. “Maybe not everyone. I’d rather not start a
panic by telling them we think it’s murder, but we might not be able to avoid it. I made a list of the people that weren’t with us in the dining room. Remember, Clarissa came in, talked to a few people and left. That was the last we saw of her. Lots of people stayed in that room.”

I stared into the fire, and pictured the dining room. “Isabel left shortly after Clarissa. Jessica was in and out of the room. René and his assistant weren’t in the dining room the whole time. The maintenance guy and the housekeeper were presumably doing their work elsewhere.”

Mac poured more tea into my cup. “The only staff member in the clear is Wally. He was in the dining room the entire time we were, and then he stayed with the group when the power went out.”

“He left to get flashlights,” I said. “But that wasn’t long enough to get upstairs and kill Clarissa.”

He opened his notebook and read from his list. “We need to talk to Isabel, Jessica, Linda, the chef and his assistant, maintenance, and housekeeping. There’s only one entrance to that turret room, maybe one of them saw something if they were in the hallway.”

“I think your friend with the lipstick left for a little while.”

He glanced up at me. “She did?”

“I saw her get up and go into the kitchen, but I didn’t notice when she came back.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe I shouldn’t make assumptions about who was there.”

“We know
our
table stayed in the dining room.”

I sat back and wrapped my fingers around my teacup.

“Yes, but I didn’t suspect our mothers or your aunt.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Aunt Vi should never be assumed innocent.”

“Innocent of what?” Vi said from the doorway.

“Of murder, Vi,” I said to my tea.

“Oh, very funny.” She hustled to where we sat and pulled up a chair to get closer to the fire. “Are you making a list of suspects? I think that maintenance guy is kind of sketchy.”

She leaned over to look at Mac’s list.

“Nice sweater,” she said.

Mac held her gaze. He was even better at a stare-off than she was.

“We were just talking about who was in the dining room the whole time and then also in the lounge after the power went out,” I said to break up the tension.

Vi nodded. “Wally was there the whole time. He hovered with that water pitcher all through dinner. I’ve never been so well hydrated in my life!” She took Mac’s notebook and examined his list. “The only guests I saw leave were Isabel and Mavis. But I can’t believe one of the workshop gals would have done it. Frankly, knitting is what
keeps
us from killing anyone. It’s like therapy.” Vi shook her head. “It had to be the maintenance guy. Maybe that’s why the power went out in the first place. He was busy killing Clarissa and wasn’t dealing with the generator the way he should have.”

“That’s a huge leap, Ms. Greer,” Mac said. “The last thing we need is for everyone to jump to conclusions.”

“We need more information then,” Vi said. She flipped pages in Mac’s notebook. Mac’s fingers clenched. I took it from her and handed it back to Mac.

“It wouldn’t hurt to start asking people what they saw,” I said. “The longer we wait, the more likely they’ll forget, or talk about it enough that no one will remember what they actually saw that night.”

“You can start during breakfast,” Vi said. “You should talk to Isabel before she gets involved with her workshop.”