Connie nodded. “We were taking it apart anyway, and Arthur was fine with that. He gave us permission, so we weren’t breaking any law by tearing it down.”
“It turns out it’s not a working fireplace, but someone hid the photos between the brick surround and the fake vent—you know, the hole that’s supposed to go up a chimney. Know what I mean?”
“Yes, I know the hole that’s supposed to go up a chimney,” Gilroy said.
Ian bit the inside of his lower lip.
“And you thought with the hotel emptied of guests,” Gilroy went on, “except for ones expecting some ghostly noises in the night, you’d get on with your renovation.”
“Yes,” Ian said meekly. “We thought everybody would head down to the basement if we hinted that the banging was coming from the air ducts. That would leave us free to get on with things before the Purdy anniversary ended.”
“We thought it was good timing,” Connie said. “All the other hotel guests were gone, and the radio audience expected strange sounds. We were helping out, if you think about it. We were adding atmosphere. Everybody enjoyed themselves.”
“What did you think you’d find in the fireplace?” Shane said.
Gilroy turned and gave him a sharp look. “Mr. Rooney.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Shane held up his hands, palms out, and backed off.
“We didn’t kill Arthur,” Ian said. “He gave us this job, he paid us well, we live in the suite on the third floor”—he pointed feebly at the ceiling—“and it’s nicer than any apartment we could afford. We liked him. We have a life here.”
“Did you tell Mr. Jago you found the photos in room 311?” Gilroy said.
Connie hung her head. “We said we found them in the basement. We told everybody that.”
“So you could keep anything else you found in the room to yourselves,” Gilroy said.
After a moment’s hesitation, Connie relented. “Yeah.”
“And have you found anything else?” Gilroy said.
“We haven’t,” Ian said adamantly. “Nothing. Just old bricks and mortar.”
“And you’re going to give me permission to search your suite,” Gilroy said. He wasn’t asking a question—or asking their permission. He was flat-out telling them what he intended to do, and they were expected to comply.
“Of course,” Ian said.
“But Ian . . . ,” Connie began.
“We have nothing to hide,” Ian said. “And I have a feeling we’ll be in a better position if we cooperate. Am I right, Chief Gilroy?”
Gilroy stood. “I think I can look past the obstruction charge. What the hotel’s new owner wants to do with you after that isn’t my business.”
Ian dug into his jeans pocket and handed Gilroy a key. “The door is labeled Suite 3.”
“Take a seat, everyone,” Gilroy said, looking around the room. “This time, no one leaves the lobby.”
CHAPTER 9
The pale winter sun was slanting through the hotel lobby’s windows when I woke. Hours of sitting on the couch, crunched between Julia and Holly, had left me sore, but I was wrapped in both my coat and the bedspread from my room and so toasty warm I was reluctant to move. After Gilroy had insisted that everyone spend the night in the lobby, Underhill had made several trips to the bedrooms to bring back coats, blankets, and pillows. I had considered sleeping on the floor—at least there I could stretch out—but I knew I would regret a night on cold wood planks and thin rugs even more than a night sitting stiffly on an old couch.
Gilroy was outside pacing and hobbling, probably waiting for the coroner or the power company. I could only see him above the waist, but he walked like a man slogging through snowdrifts. And a man who hadn’t slept all night. Underhill, fast asleep and snoring, his head resting against the wall, was sitting by the door in a wooden chair brought from the kitchen. He was younger than me, and certainly fitter, but he too was going to be sore when he woke.
I stretched a little, testing my bones and muscles before I stood. I have to start exercising. It wasn’t just the extra twenty-five pounds I carried and still hadn’t shed, it was my increasingly sedentary life. When I wasn’t sniffing out killers, I was sitting in my home office, pounding out mystery novels, hour after hour. I’d been promising myself for months that I’d start walking the lovely trail behind my house, but so far the gumption to do so had eluded me. Gilroy was five years older than me but trimmer and healthier. I had some work to do.
I made my way to the door—not without discomfort—and went outside. Gilroy smiled when he saw me, but we avoided greeting each other with a kiss or hug. He was on the job, after all.
The sight of Gilroy and the morning light, gray as it was, instantly lifted my spirits—until I remembered poor Arthur Jago in the library. Eight or ten inches of snow had fallen overnight, not enough to knock out power in a town like Juniper Grove, but the foothills were another world. A pine tree, weighted down by the snow, could fall on a line and take out power for miles.
Gilroy followed me as I trudged through foot-plus drifts to the side of the hotel to check on Holly’s car. It looked like a giant marshmallow, but other than that it was fine, so we headed back to the front door.
“The Grandview doesn’t look bad in the daylight and from the outside,” I said, surveying the building’s large windows and pleasant sandstone facade. “It could really be something. A real getaway in the mountains.”
“The renovation costs would be out of most people’s reach,” Gilroy said, “but yeah, it’s a nice building in a great spot.”
“Juniper Grove owns the land. I wonder why the town never collaborated with Arthur to fix the place up. Paint wouldn’t cost much. Paint anything that isn’t original wood paneling a soft white or cream color. Instant facelift. Bring in some new furniture, especially to the lobby, put some flower vases around the place.”
“You’ve thought this through.”
“Spending a night in the most depressing place I’ve ever seen might have something to do with that. Have you tried your phone again?”
“No signal. They know we’re up here.”
“What do you think about Arthur’s murder?” I asked. A few months back, when we’d first met—over a dead body in my backyard—Gilroy would have answered that question with an icy stare from his pale blue eyes. But he knew my writer’s imagination and my curious nature often got the best of me. If clues presented themselves, I simply had to work them out. But more than that, he now respected my opinion on cases. He was the police chief, but I’d proven myself to be a not-too-shabby sleuth.
“I don’t think either of the Swansons killed him.”
“Really?”
“I’m not writing them off entirely, but they were focused on tearing apart that fireplace using Herbert Purdy’s ghost as cover for the noise. I don’t see them taking on two jobs—hunting for treasure and killing Mr. Jago. They don’t seem sufficiently organized or motivated. All they care about is finding something worth money in the fireplace.”
“I see what you mean,” I said. “Too much for them to handle. And they had no motive, really. By all accounts Arthur was a good employer.”
“They have a nice suite on the third floor. Rent free.”
“Trouble is, I can’t see why any of them would kill Arthur. What’s anyone’s motive? Shane benefited from the remote broadcasts on the anniversaries of Purdy’s murder. So did Dustin—he’s been here before. Maria and Conyer are new to the Grandview broadcasts, but that gives them even less of a motive to murder Arthur.”
Gilroy sighed and rubbed the dark stubble on his chin. He looked in need of a good strong cup of coffee. “I need to start doing some digging in town,” he said. “I don’t think additional interviews are going to get me anywhere.”
Feeling the chill—made worse on an empty stomach—I wrapped my arms around my chest. “The killer could be anyone. Everyone except the Swansons were in room 108 just before the banging started. Then Shane and the crew left to reco
rd the noise.” I threw out my hand. “No, wait. Dustin told Maria and Conyer to record the noise. Everyone assumed it was coming from contracting air ducts, so those two went to the basement, Dustin ahead of Maria.”
“Before the others did,” Gilroy said, nodding.
He already knew the sequence of events, but I had to go through it again in my mind. I had to say it out loud in order to picture it.
“So Maria and Conyer left while Arthur was still in 108,” I went on. “Then after Shane asked how long they had until air time, he and Dustin took off. A minute later, so did Holly and I. Julia says Arthur left right after that. He poured her a cup of coffee, said he had something important to do, and took off.”
“And the only people you saw in the basement were Shane and Maria,” Gilroy said.
“Right. Maria first, then Shane. I never saw or heard Dustin or Conyer, but they were already back in the room when I got upstairs. Shane and Maria came upstairs with Holly and me. I remember Julia asking if we’d seen Arthur.”
“And you didn’t notice anything in the library?”
I cringed. “He must have been dead when we walked past the door on our way back to 108. But you have to step inside the room to see someone sitting in that chair. Which makes me wonder now how Connie saw Arthur.”
“She told me she went to the library to get that photo album for Shane so he could talk about it during the show.”
“That sounds about right. Shane was asking to see it.”
“So at one time or another,” Gilroy said, “everyone but you and Holly were separated from the others.”
“You’re right. Conyer came back with Dustin, but he left with Maria. Dustin left with Shane, but he came back with Conyer. And Shane left with Dustin, but he ended up alone in the basement, just like Maria. Any of them could have run upstairs, killed Arthur, and then gone back to the basement—or to the broadcast room.”
Gilroy shoved his hands in his coat pockets, pivoted back to the lobby windows, and stared impassively through them. I knew that expression. His wheels were turning.
“I think the killer asked to meet Arthur in the library,” he said after a moment. “This was well planned. Did Connie or Ian make a point of telling you about the banging noises before they began?”
“Connie did. She said they weren’t sure what the sounds were, but they were probably the air ducts.”
“Leaving open the possibility that they were the work of Herbert Purdy.”
“Exactly.”
Gilroy returned to that unfocused stare of his. By now I knew enough about how he solved crimes to let him think in peace. I told him I was going to see if I could rustle up some fireplace coffee, then headed back inside.
Holly was wide awake and Julia was valiantly trying to stir herself when I returned to the couch. “Still no sign of the coroner or power company,” I said quietly. Underhill was up too, I saw, stretching his legs and arms and gazing longingly at the now-empty coffee carafes. “I’m going to see if Connie and I can make coffee.”
“Good idea,” Holly said. “I’ll come with you.”
Ten minutes later, Holly and I had restarted the fire in the fireplace and Ian had set a cast-iron pot on the logs, getting our hot water going. Connie brought a French coffee press and a fresh set of mugs from the kitchen and set them out by the carafes. By now the radio crew was awake. Shane had gone outside to talk to Gilroy, Maria and Dustin were talking about radio commercials, and Conyer, having found a deck of cards in an end-table drawer, had started a game of solitaire.
From what I’d seen of Conyer, his card game was appropriate. He was a solitary man, which I found odd for someone in the very public business of radio, and most of the time he appeared glum and dissatisfied with his life. But maybe it was the hotel that bothered him. Outside of its dark walls, he might have been as bubbly as Shane.
The scene before me was tranquil, almost cozy, but if Gilroy was right, Shane or one of his crew was a murderer. I wasn’t ready to erase Connie and Ian from my list of suspects, but I was leaning in that direction.
Find the motive and I’ll find the killer, I thought. Was Herbert Purdy’s death connected to Arthur’s? Did Shane or his crew have any connection to that fifty-year-old murder?
I needed to go back to room 108, to study the photos on my phone and go over in my mind, step by step, the circumstances surrounding Purdy’s death. I couldn’t put a finger on it, but something was very wrong with that crime scene. More than the pajamas, the single knife wound, and the unmade bed. It was a long shot, but if the two murders were connected, making sense of one might unlock the door to the other.
“Holly, didn’t you say you had some pastries in your room?” I asked.
“Want some?” she said. “I wouldn’t trust the cream puff after a night in my suitcase, but the donuts and bear claws are okay.”
“I need to go to room 108,” I replied in a low voice. “Let’s say we’re getting the pastries so no one follows. Coming, Julia?”
“The things I do,” she said, throwing off her blanket.
Holly announced that she had extra pastries in her room—setting the lobby buzzing—and the three of us took off, looking as casual and innocent as possible. When we hit the hall, we quickened our pace.
I glanced at the library door as we sped past, half expecting it to be open, but it remained shut. Near the other end of the hall, room 108’s door stood wide open.
I was taken aback by how airy the room seemed in the light of day. The sun, reflecting off the snow, had vanquished the gloom. Julia had noticed, too. When I shut the door behind us, she calmly went to a corner of the room and sat on the chair Arthur had occupied the night before as he ate his eclairs.
“That Herbert Purdy crime scene is such a fake,” she said. “Stabbed in his pajamas in a hotel full of strangers. It was staged.”
I stared. “You think so too?” I asked.
“Of course I do. I’ve never heard such nonsense. I might not write mysteries for a living, but I know baloney when I hear it.”
“But do you think Purdy’s murder is connected to Arthur’s?”
Julia pursed her lips, considering my question, then nodded slowly. “Purdy’s murder is why we’re all here, isn’t it?”
CHAPTER 10
“Holly, stand by the door,” I said. “You’re the killer.”
Holly about-faced, stepped over one of the radio crew’s cables, and pressed her back to the room’s door.
“I’m Herbert Purdy,” I went on. “I’m a businessman who just drove from Sterling to the Grandview, on my way to Craig to meet my family.”
“It’s about a three-hour drive from Sterling,” Holly said. “Maybe a little more. I’ll bet he put in a full day at work first, and that’s why he stopped here instead of going straight through.”
“It wasn’t a work day,” Julia said from her corner chair. “It was a Sunday.”
“How do you know?” Holly said.
“While you were down in the basement chasing noises, Arthur told me. He said there weren’t many guests that night because it was a Sunday and Sunday was checkout day. Otherwise the hotel would have been fully booked.”
“I didn’t think you’d talked about it,” I said.
“We didn’t, really. Thirty seconds while he poured me coffee. For some strange reason, he thought I was interested. I suppose because everyone else is. When he said he had to leave, I said I didn’t want to hear any more about the murder. Seeing as I was about to be sitting all by myself in the murder room.”
I grinned. “Thank you, Julia. So why did Purdy stop at the Grandview? Connie said he ate dinner at the hotel, so he got here early enough for that.”
“It’s a convenient cutoff point, isn’t it?” Holly said. “From here west, it’s all mountain driving. Higher and higher.”
“And he wouldn’t want to take the mountain roads and passes at night,” I said. “Not in January. But he could have driven straight through if he’d left Sterling
at, say, seven o’clock in the morning. Wasn’t he eager to start his vacation?”
“Why start your vacation on Sunday?” Holly said.
“Connie’s the expert,” Julia said. “You need to ask her.”
I reached for my phone and started flipping through the Purdy crime-scene photos. “All the furniture is in the same place as it was back then,” I said. “Different furniture, but the same spots. There’s not much choice where to put a bed and dresser in a room this size.” I dropped the phone on the bed. “So I arrive at the hotel, eat dinner, talk awhile with the other guests, and go to bed about ten o’clock.”
“Sit on the edge of the bed,” Holly instructed. “It’s ten and you’re in your pajamas.”
“Right.” I sat.
“Are you waiting for someone to visit your room?” Julia asked.
I shook my head. “In my pajamas? Without even a robe? No, I’m not expecting anyone. It’s a total surprise when someone comes to the door.”
“Then why answer it?” Holly said. “Was there a peephole back then?”
“Good question,” I said, going through the crime photos until I came to one of the door. “Yes. Looks like the same peephole, too.”
Holly took a quick peek behind her. “And it works. What now?”
“Why do I let you in?” I said. I walked to Holly and pretended to open the door and let her in. “Do I know you? Is that it?”
“Could I be one of the other guests?” Holly said.
“You might have met someone over dinner,” Julia said.
“That sounds like a woman,” Holly said.
“But remember,” I said, “I’m in my pajamas. If it was a planned meeting, I would have stayed dressed.”
“Say you let me in,” Holly said, taking hold of my shoulders and turning me to face the bed. “We say hello at the door, and I enter. I shut the door behind us, and wherever you’re going in your room—the bed, dresser, bathroom—your back is now to the door, and I’m following you into the room.”
“And that’s when you were stabbed,” Julia said, her voice full of conviction.
Juniper Grove Cozy Mystery Box Set 2 Page 19
