“Rachel?” Julia whispered. She was wide awake, sitting straight up in bed.
“I hear it.” I swung my feet from the bed.
“Where is it coming from?”
My eyes rose to the ceiling. “Upstairs?” I checked my watch. “It’s two in the morning. I’ve only been asleep an hour.”
“It sounded like it was coming from the basement before. Didn’t it?”
“It’s impossible to tell.”
“I’m going to kill whoever is making that noise,” Holly mumbled.
“Connie Swanson has a nerve saying that’s a contracting air duct,” Julia said.
“Even if it was, the heat was turned down hours ago and then the power went out,” I said. “The ducts wouldn’t still be making noises.”
Holly sat up with a groan and pulled the bedspread under her chin. “I don’t suppose I’m going to sleep.”
I walked to the door and slid the high-backed chair from under the knob.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Julia said. “You are not leaving this room.”
“Keep your voice down. I’m just going to listen.”
In a second, Holly was at my side.
“You two,” Julia hissed. “If you get us killed.”
“No one’s going to die,” I whispered.
“Those were probably Arthur Jago’s last words,” Julia said.
I opened the door part way, and Holly and I peered into the darkness.
“It stopped,” Holly said under her breath. “No, wait. There it is.”
The clanging began again, though to my ears it seemed no louder than before. “I don’t think it’s coming from this floor.”
I tiptoed into the hall, Holly behind me.
“Oh, honestly,” Julia huffed. “With a murderer on the loose.”
“It doesn’t seem to be coming from room 108,” Holly said.
I heard Julia’s feet hit the floor. “You’re not leaving me by myself.”
The three of us stood in the doorway, trying to determine where the sound was coming from.
“Could it be the basement again?” Julia said.
“I don’t think it was the basement the first time,” Holly said.
“The flashlight,” I said, heading back into the room. I needed to know that Gilroy heard the noise, and he needed to know that Arthur had been murdered shortly after the first time we heard that same noise. I started again for the hall, but Julia caught my arm and stopped me.
“You can’t go out there,” she said.
“Julia, that noise is connected to Arthur’s murder, and I need to tell Gilroy.”
“But we stay together,” Holly said.
“Get your coats, and Julia, put your shoes on.” I aimed the flashlight into the room.
“This is madness,” Julia said, pulling her shoes from under the bed. “What would Chief Gilroy say? Never mind. I know what he’d say. I can just hear him now.”
Holly put on her coat and joined me at the door. “Julia, all we’re going to do is walk to the lobby and tell him about that noise,” she said. “He may think it’s nothing but old-house noises, and he needs to know it could be significant.”
Tugging on Julia’s coat sleeve, I pulled her into the hall and then shut the door. “Look at it this way. Maybe he and Underhill can find the source of the sound and we can finally get some sleep.”
I pointed the flashlight down the long hall, shining it into the blackness, and the three of us stepped tentatively toward the lobby. Julia twitched like a nervous hen, hesitating, moving again, looking over her shoulder. As we drew closer and my eyes adjusted to the dark, I realized the high-beam lantern Ian had placed on the coffee table had been turned off—or taken to someone’s room. Not even the faintest light shone from the lobby. It was as perfectly black as the hall.
When we rounded the corner into the lobby, I did a quick scan with the flashlight. The lantern was gone, the fire had shriveled to embers.
“Where are Gilroy and Underhill?” Holly breathed.
“Maybe they’re hunting for the noise,” I said. “What’s that weird smell?”
“Like an old furnace smell?” Holly said.
“Not quite. Besides, the furnace isn’t on.”
“I don’t like this,” Julia said. “I keep feeling something behind me. Like it’s creeping up on me. Don’t you feel that?”
I spun back, swung around the corner, and directed the beam down the hall. Nothing. I was about to turn back to the lobby when the sound of a door creaking froze me in place. An instant later, a dim shaft of light emerged from one of the rooms. “Who is it?” I called out, long past caring if I woke anyone.
A dark figure stepped into the hall, pointed a flashlight my way, and then tilted the beam upward, lighting up his face. “It’s Shane. I heard something.”
“That banging again,” I said.
“You realize he could be the murderer,” Julia whispered in my ear.
“I’ve made it my life’s mission not to murder anyone, Miss Julia,” Shane said, heading toward us, his flashlight pointed downward, illuminating his steps.
“How did you hear that?” Julia said.
“What can I say? I have good hearing. It’s handy in my business.” He walked past us into the lobby, shot his flashlight around the room, and then aimed it at the ceiling. “Where are the cops? I thought they were going to stay in the lobby.”
“They’re in the kitchen,” Julia said. “They’ll be out any second now, so you stay right where you are.”
Shane raised his eyebrows. “Now, Julia, you really think I’m a murderer?”
“Why wouldn’t you be?” I said, coming alongside Julia.
“You too, Rachel?”
“It’s you or one of your crew,” I said.
“You forget the Swansons.”
“So you admit it could be one of your crew.”
Shane chuckled. “You should be a lawyer.”
“Have Dustin, Maria, and Conyer all been here before?” I asked.
“Only Dustin. Why?”
“How well do you know them?”
The smile vanished from Shane’s face. “I don’t hire murderers. But have you considered that maybe Arthur did? Not on purpose, naturally.”
“Do you suspect Ian and Connie?” Holly asked.
“I don’t suspect anyone.”
“That’s very charitable of you,” Holly said, “but someone in this hotel killed Arthur.”
Suddenly Shane threw a finger to his lips. “Shh.”
Julia clutched at me, her nails like barbs in my shoulder.
“Lights out,” I whispered, flicking off my flashlight. Shane followed suit.
I could hear a muffled voice coming from beyond the lobby and the soft thud of footsteps, both growing louder with each second. I leaned close to Holly and mouthed Connie’s name. She nodded.
“We have to finish this tonight,” Connie was saying.
I caught sight of her between the front door and the receptionist desk. The four of us huddled close together. Barely breathing, we hoped the dark would shield us.
Ian Swanson came alongside his wife. “Where are the cops? I thought they were camping out in the lobby.”
“What do you wanna bet they went to bed?”
“Aren’t you tired, Connie? I think this can wait. I’m sick of digging holes.”
Holly’s eyes grew wide.
“Cops are going to be all over this place by morning,” Connie said. “We need to do it now.”
“We don’t even know if anything’s there,” Ian said. “We should have waited.”
“No, it was perfect timing.”
“Perfect timing? With the cops sleeping in the lobby? I say we wait. Better safe than sorry.”
“Ian, come on. It’s our big chance.”
A bang sounded from somewhere in the hotel—the same metal-on-concrete sound as before, only louder this time.
“No,” Connie said, her head jerking as another
bang resonated. “How can that be? Who’s up there?”
“Up the back stairs,” Ian said, seizing his wife’s hand and rushing out of the lobby.
I switched on my flashlight. “I knew it. It was them.”
“What are you talking about?” Shane said.
“Connie and Ian were making that noise. Now someone else is, and I think I know who.”
“Were they trying to scare the guests?” Shane said.
“No, I don’t think so. That was just a happy consequence. My guess is they found something else along with the crime-scene photos and they’re trying to unearth it.”
“But they found the photos in the basement,” Shane said.
“The photos suddenly appear after fifty years?” I said, shaking my head. “They weren’t in the basement. If they had been, they would’ve been found long ago.”
“So who’s up there now?” Julia asked.
“Gilroy and Underhill.”
“You sound very sure of things,” Shane said.
I pointed my flashlight’s beam behind me. “Where are the stairs?”
“The public stairs are at the far end of that hall,” Shane said, “but the Swansons took the old room-service stairs, through the kitchen. Let’s go. I want to nail those two. They owe me a night’s sleep.”
“Wait a second.” I had seen it as I walked up the hall with Julia and Holly—the thing that was off, that wasn’t right—but until that moment, my brain hadn’t registered it. Now, as I pointed the flashlight toward the hall, I realized what it was. The door was open only a sliver, but it shouldn’t have been open at all. Gilroy had shut it firmly. “It’s the library door,” I said. “It’s open.”
CHAPTER 8
The clanging ceased moments after Ian and Connie ran from the lobby, and since I was sure Gilroy had things under control upstairs, I decided—to Julia’s horror—to check out the library door rather than find him and Underhill. Shane, on the other hand, looked ready to give the Swansons a major chewing-out and headed for the room-service stairs in the kitchen.
The library door was open an inch, that’s all, but it hadn’t opened itself. I’d closed that door myself, before Gilroy arrived, and it had closed solidly, firmly. Someone had opened the door after we’d all gone to bed.
“Do you think Arthur is still in there?” Julia said, hovering behind me.
“Where else would he be?” Holly said.
“For all I know someone moved him,” Julia said. “I wouldn’t put it past this bunch. Or maybe he got up and moved himself. That wouldn’t surprise me either.”
“Julia, really,” Holly said.
“I can’t help it. It’s this place. It does things to my imagination.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “We all feel the same.”
“But I’m imagining things. That’s only the first step, you know. Next I’ll be seeing things.”
“You heard doors opening, and that wasn’t imagining things. I told you it was probably people going to the kitchen.” I shook my head and pushed open the door. “I was wrong. Stay outside the library and keep watch.”
“You shouldn’t go in,” Holly said.
“Gilroy would kill me, I know. Give me one minute.”
Julia’s fear that Arthur’s body had magically left the library had spooked me a little, so the first thing I did was train the flashlight on the armchair.
“Is Arthur . . . ?” Holly said.
“He’s still here.” I felt ridiculous saying that. Of course he was still there. His fleshy face seemed to have sagged a little, making him look less frightened in death, but maybe that was a trick of the light and shadows. At the very least the man had died in shock. But then a lethal stab wound was a shocking thing.
I ran my light over the library furniture and shelves, looking for anything missing, anything disturbed. At first I couldn’t imagine anyone except the killer reentering the library, but I remembered that Shane and his crew were news people at heart. News people meant scoop people, and Arthur’s death was a scoop that was hard to resist.
Next I cast my light on the floor, but the oriental rug looked the same as earlier. No one had dropped a cigarette on it or stained it with muddy footprints. Nothing so easy or obvious.
I trained my light on Arthur again. Had someone ventured into the library to take a photo of him? It was almost unthinkable. But Shane was a hard-working man, an ambitious man, and he might have looked to the future and seen twice the ratings in an anniversary show next year. Two January murders, fifty years apart. Had Shane or his crew taken a photo of poor, dead Arthur? Or of the murder room for a future broadcast?
Then it hit me. Photos. I aimed the beam at the bookcase opposite Arthur’s chair.
The yellow photo album was gone.
I exited the library and pulled the door toward me, leaving it open an inch, just as before.
“I hear Gilroy,” Holly said. “His ankle boot thumps when he walks.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Julia said. “Some sanity.”
Gilroy’s voice sounded from the other end of the hall, and seconds later he and Underhill came into sight, Underhill bearing the bright lantern before them. As they trod down the hall, Shane and the Swansons behind them, more doors opened and heads popped out of them.
“What is all the noise?” Maria complained.
“You’re just now hearing it?” Shane said. “We’ve been up for ages, and you’ve missed a lot.”
“When I get home, I’m buying one of those high-beam things,” Holly said as Underhill approached. “This hotel doesn’t even have battery-lit exit signs. It has to be illegal. Imagine if there was a fire.”
That was it. That was the weird smell. “There might be something left of it,” I said, racing off and leaving Julia and Holly staring after me.
I cut across the lobby for the fireplace, hoping to find something left of the photo album, but when I got there, all that visibly remained of its pages and photos were strings and puddles of melted plastic. Irretrievable. The yellow album itself wasn’t in or around the fire, or anywhere I directed my light.
“What is it, Rachel?” Gilroy said.
I looked back. “Someone destroyed the Herbert Purdy crime-scene photos.”
Gilroy took hold of Underhill’s lantern and joined me at the fireplace, his eyes wandering over the scene as he moved the light back and forth over the fire, hearth, and surrounding floor.
“I don’t see the yellow album anywhere,” I added.
“How do you know that glob in the fireplace is the photos?”
“Holly, Julia, and I heard the noise just now, and we wanted to tell you we’d heard it earlier—just before Arthur was killed. We came to the lobby to look for you, and I noticed the library door was open.”
Gilroy lowered the lantern. “And you had a look in the library.”
I grimaced. “I couldn’t help it.”
“So someone took advantage of the noise distraction on the third floor to get into the library,” he said.
“They probably thought it was safer not to shut the door all the way. Everything echoes in this place. Did you find Connie and Ian upstairs?”
Gilroy’s eyes narrowed and a faint smile played on his lips. “You guessed right. They won’t tell me what they were looking for.”
“Did you lure them upstairs by banging on something?”
“They were breaking up an old brick fireplace. I hit it a few times with their sledgehammer to see how they’d react to the noise.”
It was my turn to smile. I shot a glance over my shoulder. The Swansons, looking properly chastised, were seated together on a couch. Connie smoothed her skirt, working out her anxiety on the fabric, and Ian ran his fingers through his short brown hair.
Across the coffee table from the Swansons, Underhill was on another couch, drinking what must have been a very cold cup of coffee. On the other side of the lobby, Dustin, Maria, and Conyer were talking quietly with Shane, who no doubt was filling them in o
n what they had missed.
“I wonder if those photos could have told us what the Swansons were looking for,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Connie said they found them last week.”
“I wonder.”
“Luckily, I have copies on my phone.”
“Yes, I believe you do.”
“Though where the Swansons found the photos might be the answer to our questions. Where was this fireplace they were breaking up?”
“In room 311.”
The number rang a bell. “Al Capone’s men kept a lookout in that room way back when. Capone himself stayed in 312.”
“More and more interesting. I think I’ll go have a talk with them.”
Gilroy walked up to the Swanson’s couch, set his lantern down on the coffee table, and sat next to it, staring silently at the couple.
Unnerved, Ian became twitchy, looking anywhere but at Gilroy. “Yes?” he said after a moment.
“No more games, no more lies,” Gilroy said. “This is a murder investigation.”
“We didn’t kill Arthur,” Ian protested. “I’ll tell you that right now.”
“You’ve been lying to me. It’s called obstruction of justice.”
“This has nothing to do with Arthur,” Connie said, her voice wavering. “Honestly, it doesn’t. He was our friend.”
“You don’t get to decide what you tell the truth about. What were you doing in room 311?”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Shane, riveted to the conversation, edge closer to Gilroy, making sure he caught every word.
“We can’t do a little after-hours renovation?” Connie said, her mouth twisting in a crooked smile.
I winced. Gilroy wasn’t in the mood for slick humor.
“That’s enough, Mrs. Swanson,” he said.
Ian leapt in. “All right, fine. We found the Purdy photos stuffed up the old fireplace. We thought it was weird. Right, Connie?” He looked to his wife.
“Yes, to find them after all these years,” she said. “No one’s seen them since the investigation. It was a coup for the hotel. Arthur went crazy over them and told Ian to put them on display in an album.”
“The only reason we found them is because we were trying to see if the fireplace could be restored, but with a new surround,” Ian said.
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