An Unwanted Guest

by Shari Lapena

  • • •

  Henry finds the sight of the body deeply disturbing. He can’t bear to look at it any longer, so instead he studies Matthew, whom he hasn’t seen since Dana’s body was first discovered early that morning. Gwen’s scream has pulled him from the seclusion of his room. Some of them, he thinks, suspect that Matthew pushed his fiancée down the stairs. This changes things. He glances at David. The attorney’s usually calm exterior is definitely ruffled.

  The fact that Candice has been murdered—it means that there is definitely a killer here, in the hotel. And the police aren’t coming.

  Henry looks around at the rest of the little gathering and can see they are of one mind. The fear is palpable.

  He can hear Beverly breathing heavily through her nose beside him. Henry wonders just how much danger they’re in. And suddenly he has a terrible thought. He realizes that if only it had been Beverly who had been strangled, instead of Candice, all his problems would be solved. It’s the first he’s recognized that he would be free if only his wife were dead. It makes him feel strange, agitated. He has a fleeting fantasy of finding her strangled in their room, but it’s interrupted by David.

  “It might be one of us,” David says.

  There’s an awful silence.

  Then Beverly shakes her head in disbelief. “Surely not,” she says. When David doesn’t answer, she begins to protest. “You think that one of us is a murderer?”

  “It’s possible,” David says.

  “But that’s absurd,” Beverly insists, looking around wildly at the rest of them. “You seem to think that almost anybody is capable of murder. Murderers are not normal people.” She looks desperately around the room at the others.

  Henry silently agrees with his wife—the idea that it’s one of them is ludicrous, like something out of a novel. He was willing to credit that Matthew may have, in a fit of anger, killed his fiancée. But he doesn’t think that Matthew also killed Candice, in cold blood.

  David has spent too much time with criminals, Henry tells himself now. He can’t picture any of his companions pushing that young woman down the stairs, then smashing her skull against the step. Nor can he imagine any of them strangling Candice. There must be someone else here. He looks around anxiously in the flickering dark.

  Saturday, 5:45 p.m.

  “We should search the hotel,” David suggests, as they stand above Candice’s corpse.

  The others turn his way, startled.

  David knows they are all in shock, and probably not thinking clearly. “Two people are dead. Murdered. We may not be the only ones here,” he says bluntly.

  Frightened faces look back at him from the shadows.

  “Whoever did this must be insane,” Lauren whispers.

  “There’s no one else staying at the hotel,” James stammers.

  “No other staff we don’t know about?”

  James shakes his head. “No. Just me and Bradley. Because of the storm. The others couldn’t make it in.”

  “Someone might be here without our knowing it,” David says.

  “No,” Bradley says, shaking his head. “The rooms are kept locked.”

  “This room was locked,” David says, “and there’s a dead body inside. How did that happen?” They all fall silent for a moment.

  “Maybe she answered the door,” Matthew suggests, no doubt thinking of his own Dana, inexplicably found dead outside of her own room.

  “Possibly,” David says, thinking aloud. “But judging from the position of the body, she was standing at the desk with her back to the door when she was strangled. She either answered the door to someone she knows, and trusts, or at least recognizes—one of us perhaps—and was comfortable enough to let them in and then turn her back on them, or someone unlocked the door without her being aware of it.”

  “But that’s not possible,” James says. “The keys are kept behind the reception desk.” Then he colors, as if realizing the inadequacy of his argument.

  “But there isn’t always someone there,” David points out. “Not this weekend.”

  Henry says, “Someone could have taken the key—if there was no one in the lobby to see them.”

  “But wouldn’t she have heard the door open?” Ian asks.

  David raises a hand calling for quiet. The sound of the wind howling violently outside answers Ian’s question.

  “Jesus,” Lauren says, in deep dismay.

  Riley blurts out, with barely concealed hysteria, “You’re suggesting that there’s someone else in this hotel? A killer? Who can get into our rooms?” Her eyes are wild.

  Gwen looks anxiously at Riley and says quickly, “Maybe the door was already open. Maybe she left it open. Maybe she just came up to get something.”

  “Maybe,” David says.

  There’s a long silence as everyone ponders the position they are all in.

  David says again, “I suggest we search the entire hotel, including our own rooms—unless there is anyone here who objects?” He surveys them all carefully. He wants to know if anyone has anything to hide. And he wants to find out if there is someone else here. Someone they don’t know about.

  The guests look at each other uneasily, but no one objects.

  “Shall we cover her?” Bradley asks, his voice uneven.

  “No, leave her as she is,” David says. He adds, “It would probably be better if only some of us search and the rest of you go back downstairs and stay by the fire. I’ll need James and Bradley with me.”

  “I’ll go back downstairs,” Riley offers quickly.

  “I’ll come with you,” Lauren says. “I don’t want to go around this place in the dark.”

  “I’m staying with you,” Ian says protectively. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  Henry says, “I want to help search.” He turns to his wife and says, “Why don’t you go back downstairs and stay warm, with the others.”

  “No, I want to be with you,” Beverly says, as if being with her husband is the only way she will feel safe. Her husband is the only one she knows here.

  David turns to Matthew. “What about you?”

  “I’ll join the search party,” Matthew says decisively.

  David says to Gwen, “Why don’t you go with Riley and the rest of them?” He’s worried about her. She looks so frightened and vulnerable.

  She nods and slips away from him. David watches Ian usher Lauren, Gwen, and Riley out the door on their way back to the lobby.

  * * *

  • • •

  Riley follows Ian, Lauren, and Gwen out of Candice’s room. She sticks so close to Gwen that she almost steps on her heels. Out in the hall, the darkness seems absolute, even though there’s a pinprick of light ahead from Ian’s cell phone. But she is at the back of the little group. As they make their way silently down the stairs from the third floor, Riley tries to extinguish the image of Candice’s lifeless body from her mind. But she can’t discipline her thoughts. Her imagination takes control—she imagines what Candice’s final moments must have been like. Someone came to find her in that cold, dark room and snuffed the life out of her. Riley imagines how it must have felt to have that scarf pulled so tightly around her neck that she couldn’t breathe. She must have struggled. . . .

  Riley can feel her own breath quicken and become shallower. She glances uneasily over her shoulder, into the dark. The darkness is like a drape of rich black velvet—you can’t see past it. She realizes she is falling behind, her feet not as steady on the stairs as the others. She grips the banister tightly. She ran so quickly up these stairs, just a short while ago, but now—since seeing Candice dead—she feels like she’s walking through molasses, one slow, thick step after another. She’s not herself. She tries to hurry, to catch up before the others make the turn on the landing and the small beam of light disappears.

  She can’t
shake the sense that there is someone else in the hotel, someone watching their every move. He must have been watching Candice, and now she’s dead. Maybe he’s watching Riley now, maybe he’s behind her on the stairs, waiting to pick her off, the straggler left behind. . . . Suddenly she can feel him watching, knows that he is behind her, behind that black curtain, a grim reaper reaching out for her.

  She senses movement above and behind her on the stairs, hears someone, something. Panicking, she rushes toward the others, stumbling, leaning heavily on the banister. “Wait!” she cries. She tumbles into Gwen in front of her; Gwen is not so far away, after all. Gwen takes her in her arms.

  “I’m right here, Riley,” she says.

  “I think there might be someone up there!” Riley gasps.

  The light from the cell phone flashes in her face, almost blinding her, then moves off, playing against the stairs and walls behind her. They all look up. They can’t see far.

  “I don’t think there’s anyone there, Riley,” Ian says firmly.

  “Come on,” Gwen says, taking her by the arm. “We’re almost there.”

  * * *

  • • •

  David turns to the others. “Let’s start with the empty rooms on this floor.”

  David notices that this time, Bradley seems more distraught than his father. He watches as James quietly takes the keys from Bradley—whose hands are visibly shaking—and sorts through them. They start with the room next to Candice’s, which is across the hall from Lauren and Ian’s. James inserts the key into the lock, as David holds the oil lamp up so James can see what he’s doing. David glances over his shoulder at the rest of them, hovering in the darkened corridor. The door swings open, and David enters the room first, carrying the lamp. The others follow, some with iPhones giving off beams of light.

  There’s nothing there. The room is pristine, as if waiting for the next guest. They check the bathroom, the closets, look under the neatly made bed. There’s nothing.

  They exit the room and move on to the next unoccupied room, the one next to Candice’s on the other side. It’s empty as well.

  It’s when they move to the last unoccupied room on that side, across the hall from the room currently occupied by Gwen and Riley, that they find something disturbing. James inserts the key and opens the door, David beside him with the light. James’s face registers surprise, and David turns his attention away from the owner to the room itself. The first thing he notices is that the bed has been slept in.

  “Nobody move,” David says tersely. He stands still, listening keenly for any sound. His eyes fly to the bathroom door, which is open. Someone has been in this room. Maybe he’s still here, in the bathroom. He feels a chill of fear. But something, perhaps his sense of hearing, or smell, something running below his conscious radar, tells him that there is no one else here. He steps quickly to the bathroom and looks inside. It’s empty.

  “What’s going on?” Beverly asks from the corridor, her voice shrill.

  “Nothing, it’s fine,” David says.

  The others spill into the empty hotel room and David hears their gasps of dismay at the sight of the unmade bed.

  “Christ,” Henry says, his voice tense.

  David walks up more closely to the bed, its covers thrown back in disarray. The oil lamp casts a small pool of flickering light as he moves observantly about the dark room. There’s no luggage, no clothing, no sign of anyone’s effects. It’s as if the person had checked out and the room had not been made up. But there is no customary tip for the housemaid lying on the pillow, or resting on the desk or the bureau, as you would certainly expect. David opens the closet doors, but finds only empty hangers. He looks again into the bathroom, more closely this time. There is water splashed around the sink, a towel left on the counter, but no personal items. The others are milling around the room now, clearly distressed.

  “I don’t understand this,” James says, visibly unnerved.

  David asks, “Is it possible that housekeeping simply missed this room? That the previous guest checked out and the room was missed somehow and not made up again?”

  “That would never happen,” James says emphatically. “This is a small hotel. It’s not hard to keep track of the rooms.”

  “Bradley?”

  “I don’t know,” Bradley says, sounding shaken. “I think it’s very unlikely. It’s never happened before.”

  “Well, it’s either that, or someone we don’t know about has been using this room, and possibly moving about the hotel without us knowing,” David says. The room is directly across the hall from the room Gwen and Riley are staying in. He feels a sudden fear for Gwen clutching at his heart. He looks around at the others, huddled together, their faces drawn.

  “Let’s move on,” David says.

  NINETEEN

  Henry doesn’t know which is worse—the possibility that one of the people in their little group might be a murderer, or the possibility that there is someone they’re not aware of, moving about the hotel, who has already killed two people.

  As they search Gwen and Riley’s room, Henry wonders what it is they’re even looking for. He’s not sure why David suggested they search the guests’ rooms, too, not just the empty ones, or why they all agreed to it. He doesn’t know what David expects to find. It feels like they’re playing at something, some sort of parlor game, or murder mystery evening, with the lights out. Only no one’s having fun.

  Beverly finds some medication in Riley’s bag and holds it up to the light.

  “What is it?” Henry asks, for all of them.

  David looks at it. “For anxiety,” he says, and Beverly puts it back in Riley’s overnight bag.

  Continuing with the third floor, they search the sitting room by the stairs and then the housekeeping closet. In Lauren’s room, they discover that she uses strong sleeping pills—Ambien. But they don’t find anything else of interest.

  At last they are finished with the third floor. They move down to the second floor, where the rest of the guests have their rooms. David’s room is in the northwest corner, directly below Gwen and Riley’s, next to the sitting room. Across the hall from the sitting room is Dana and Matthew’s room, kitty-corner from David’s. Next to it, across from David’s, is another unoccupied room.

  They start with the empty room across from David’s. It looks the way a properly made-up hotel room should look.

  Next, David leads them to his own room, across the hall. Henry’s certain they’re not going to find anything there. They move about in the dark with their fading iPhones, pulling open the drawers of the bedside table, the dresser, the bathroom vanity. Matthew stirs the cold remains of the fire in the grate with a poker. The room—the entire hotel—is chilly, and Henry wishes he had a thicker sweater, or his jacket. Henry looks under the bed. Beverly looks through David’s luggage while David watches, picking through the contents of his overnight bag—boxer shorts and socks, clothes, books—and opening zippered pouches. Meanwhile Henry lifts the mattress and looks beneath it. He remembers hiding porn mags under his mattress as a teenager.

  Finally, they are finished, and as they all leave the room, Henry casts an anxious look out the window. The sky is black outside. The wind howls around the hotel. He can hear the creaking of the ice-coated branches sawing in the wind outside the windows. He feels a sinking sensation in his core—more than that—it’s a sensation of dread.

  * * *

  • • •

  They step out of the room, and David closes his door behind them. The others are already entering Matthew’s room, where David leaves it to them to feel through luggage, open drawers, lift carpets, stir ashes. He watches Matthew’s reaction as his and Dana’s room and private belongings are searched. He is uncomfortable at having his things examined, but nothing more than that.

  David is startled when Henry finds a gun. It’s in Matthew’s lugga
ge, properly locked and stowed, along with ammunition.

  “I have a permit,” Matthew says a little defensively. “I don’t normally take it anywhere,” he tells them. “I keep it in my bedside table at home, in case of intruders. But I thought it might be handy if we did some skiing or hiking up here. There are bears. Better to be prepared.” He turns to James. “You can scare them off easily with the sound of a shot. Isn’t that right?”

  James nods nervously. “Yes.”

  David nods, and Henry returns the gun carefully to the overnight bag and puts the bag back down on the floor.

  Matthew leans over and grabs the overnight bag and pulls it toward him and puts it on the bed. He takes the gun out of the bag and methodically loads it. David freezes. Everyone has stopped what they’re doing to watch Matthew. He grabs extra ammunition and shoves it into his pockets. He’s not looking at anyone. He holds the gun in his hand; David wonders if he should say something, do something.

  Time seems to stop. David’s heart is racing. Everyone is transfixed by the sight of Matthew handling his gun. As if they are afraid that Matthew is the murderer, and he is going to kill them all. But then Matthew looks up, and it’s just Matthew.

  “We could use this, for protection,” he says. And the moment passes.

  Henry and Beverly’s room is beside Matthew’s, across from the empty housekeeping closet. They find nothing there. Now even David doesn’t know what they’re looking for. He’s starting to think he’s on a fool’s errand, searching the guests’ rooms. The two rooms across from each other at the end of the hall, near the back staircase, are unoccupied, and cleaned, prepared for the next guests.

  Saturday, 6:30 p.m.

  “We’d better search the rest of the hotel,” James says. “The entire first floor, and then the cellars.” James is very disturbed by the appearance of room 302. Nothing like this has ever happened before. He asks himself if it is possible that there is someone here that they’re not aware of—some interloper. But he has no enemies. Not that he can think of. No mad relatives hidden away. No disgruntled employees. He wishes now that he’d installed security cameras, but he hadn’t wanted them in his quaint, old-fashioned hotel. He hadn’t thought they would ever be necessary. But now, if only he’d had cameras installed in the corridors, they might have shown what happened to Dana—if it happened before the power went out. But then he realizes they wouldn’t have been able to review the video anyway, without electricity.