“I’ll drop you off at your house,” he said.
“But we can walk from there. It’s not far.”
“Funny thing is, Rachel,” Underhill said as he started the car, “the Chief is my boss, so I tend to follow his orders.”
I sat back and bit my tongue.
Julia, on the other hand, began to nervously speculate out loud. “Who would stab Maria? What’s she got to do with anything? They must have sneaked up on her in the dark. Did you hear what she said? She didn’t have a clue who did it. And I bet Shane doesn’t even know it happened. They’re all probably looking for her right now.”
Five long minutes later, Underhill let us out in front of my house. Judging by the way he sped off, his tires spinning on the slick street before gaining traction, he too was aware of the danger Gilroy was in.
“Gilroy will be fine,” Holly said. “You know he can handle himself. How about that cocoa you were going to make?”
“Isn’t it getting close to a baker’s bedtime?” I replied.
“I can’t sleep until I hear what’s going on at the hotel and find out how Maria is. Besides,” she added, heading through my front gate, “we have some crime solving to do.”
“I’m sorry about your car,” I said. “We’ll send a tow truck in the morning.”
“Believe me, Rachel, it’s the least of my worries.”
We slung our coats over kitchen chairs, and minutes later we were in my living room, sipping hot cocoa. Feeling a chill in the air, I’d turned the heat up. I was too fidgety to play with newspapers and kindling in the fireplace. If Conyer and Shane—and maybe even Ian—were in on Arthur’s murder, Gilroy wouldn’t stand a chance. Especially wearing his ankle boot. That’s ridiculous, I thought, taking a deep, calming breath. They’re not all in it together. “Underhill must be at the hotel by now,” I said, checking my watch.
“I’m sure he is,” Julia said, “and I’m sure Gilroy is fine.”
I wasn’t so certain. The events of last December, when he could have died after being driven off the road, or frozen to death in any icy canyon outside Juniper Grove, had disabused me of the idea that he was untouchable. Some kind of super cop who could never be hurt. When he was released from the hospital, he made sure I understood the nature of his job—how dangerous it was—before we continued our relationship. He gave me an out: I could leave before we became so entangled it was impossible for me to leave. But it was already too late. I’d fallen in love with him.
Still, most of the time I was proud that he was a police chief. His was a good job, a noble job. Though he’d only been hired by our little town because the city of Fort Collins, off to the east, didn’t care for his unbending honesty. Gilroy was a straight arrow, and before coming to Juniper Grove, he had paid dearly for it. When he caught the mayor’s wife driving drunk—and not for the first time—he had refused to buckle to pressure from the mayor and his cronies to let her go. Soon after the incident, he was searching for a new job. Luckily for me, he found Juniper Grove.
“I say Connie and Ian are back on the suspect list,” Holly said. “I don’t see Shane or the rest of his crew attacking Maria.”
“But murder victims almost always know their attackers,” I said, “and I don’t think Connie and Ian know Maria. They know Shane and Dustin because those two have done remotes from the hotel before, but Conyer and Maria are new to it.”
We sat in silence for a while, sipping our cocoa, trying in our own ways to make sense of what few clues we had.
It was Julia who finally spoke. “I still don’t understand what Herbert Purdy’s death has to do with it all.”
At first I’d thought there had to be a direct link between Arthur’s murder and Purdy’s death, an undiscovered connection between the two men, but no more. It wasn’t about them, it was about money, and the only connection between the two men was that the killer had cleverly used Purdy’s death to draw Arthur to his own.
“Purdy is a gravy train,” I said. “The last I heard on the radio, Raymond Jago was raving about special ghost tours he planned for the Grandview. Ghost guest packages, Halloween weekends, more radio shows and TV shows. He had it all planned, and Arthur’s death was a bonus. There are now two mysterious murders to advertise.”
“I wonder what Arthur would have thought of Raymond’s plans,” Julia said.
“Didn’t Connie tell us she was making headway talking Arthur into upgrading the Grandview?” Holly said. “That was her word. Headway.”
“But right now they’re doing too much business with the ghost crowd,” Julia said. “She said that too.”
“It sounds like Arthur may have been willing to drop the whole Purdy business and turn the Grandview into a proper hotel,” I said. “Maybe not right away, but soon.”
Holly sat forward and restlessly clinked her fingernails on her cup. “Raymond wouldn’t have liked that. Those two brothers were at odds when it came to the future of the Grandview.”
“But Raymond wasn’t at the hotel when Arthur was killed,” I said. “Though it was Raymond who introduced Shane to Arthur, and Raymond who first suggested a remote broadcast on the anniversary of Purdy’s death.”
“Really?”
“Connie told me.”
Unable to sit still any longer, I set down my cup and walked to the window overlooking my front yard. I felt a chill from the windows. Mine seemed to be as leaky as the Grandview’s. No wonder I was always turning up the heat or starting a fire. January was the coldest and deadest of months. By January, autumn had long since departed and spring was no more than a distant hope. Yet in its own way, the month was supremely beautiful, wiping away the old slate and preparing the world for the new. Snow blanketed my yard, wrapped itself around the remains of my rose bushes, and turned to icicles on my overburdened gutters, but beneath that protective layer of snow, a thousand roots and buds stood ready for the longer, sunnier days of March.
“They all had the opportunity to kill Arthur,” I said, continuing to gaze out my window. “Any one of them could have. They all separated from each other at some point, and Arthur could have been murdered in as little as sixty seconds. But we don’t need opportunity, we need motive.” I twisted back from the window. “And that’s what we haven’t got.”
“Then let’s get it,” Julia said. “You think it has to do with money, so let’s start there.”
“Who doesn’t need more money?” Holly asked grimly.
I walked back to couch and sat, but my anxiety over Gilroy and the shock of seeing Maria with a knife in her back—still very fresh in my mind—had left me unsettled and unable to relax or even lean back in my seat. “Who among them had the motive to kill Arthur and try to kill Maria?”
“Could Maria have stumbled upon something?” Julia asked.
“Like what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Connie and Ian digging up another fireplace? Or maybe she saw something the night Arthur died and talked about it to the wrong person.”
“That’s possible,” Holly said. “It’s also possible that someone up there is a raving lunatic who doesn’t need a motive to kill people.”
I reflexively checked my watch—for the third time since sitting down with my cocoa.
“I didn’t mean that, and you know he’s fine,” Holly said.
“No, I don’t, Holly. That’s the problem. For goodness’ sake, he has a broken ankle.”
“He’s getting along very well on it,” Julia said. “It’ll be off in two weeks.”
“Underhill’s a good cop too,” Holly said.
“I know he is. But that hotel,” I moaned. “Pitch black and full of lunatics.”
“That’s how I felt about my house when the power went out a year ago,” Holly said.
Julia laughed.
“My in-laws were over. You weren’t here then, Rachel. Remember, Julia? They were visiting from Omaha, and I was in the middle of cooking my first dinner for them in two years. My mother-in-law kept saying we should or
der pizza because even if the power came back on in a few minutes, dinner was bound to be ruined, and my father-in-law got it into his head that if the power came back on, a power surge could start a fire in the house. He floundered around in the dark, unplugging everything. He even went into our bathroom and unplugged the electric toothbrush. We had cords hanging everywhere.”
“Sounds like a nightmare,” I said. I knew what my friend was doing, of course. Distracting me with a domestic horror story. And I loved her for it.
“They haven’t been back to the house,” she said with a laugh. “We put them up at the Lilac Lane B&B when they come. Lord help the owners of that place if they ever have a power outage. I wouldn’t put it past my in-laws to pull every electrical cord in the entire building.”
I had just leaned back in my seat when my cell rang. I bolted to the kitchen, followed there by Holly and Julia, and pulled my phone from my coat pocket. “It’s Gilroy,” I said, looking at the screen.
He wanted me to know he was okay, and so was Underhill. The lights had gone out at the Grandview because someone had deliberately turned off the main circuit breaker. And the phones were out because the line had been cut.
Turner was on his way up, he said. As soon as he got there, they were all heading back to the station—the Swansons as well as all the radio people. He had “suggested”—in an I’m-serious police-chief voice, I was sure—that the Swansons close down the Grandview until it was safe to reopen it.
Underhill had contacted the hospital and found that Maria was expected to live. She’d been lucky, they said. Soft-tissue damage, but nothing she couldn’t recover quickly from.
Shane and his crew hadn’t even realized that Maria was missing. Or so they had said.
CHAPTER 17
I made more hot cocoa and filled a large Thermos with it, determined to take it downtown to the police station. Bearing a hot beverage on a cold January night, one could show up at almost any inopportune time and be forgiven. That was my theory, anyway.
Julia, who never missed a chance to see Gilroy, came with me, but Holly headed home. If she was lucky, she’d get seven hours’ sleep before having to rise and go to work again. I told her I would be at the bakery first thing tomorrow morning and fill her in on all the details. She yawned, gave a weary wave, and gingerly made her way across our unplowed street to her house.
While opening the door to my little shed-like garage, I slid on an icy patch of snow, my first warning that the day’s melting snow had frozen over and made the streets touchy if not treacherous. “Slow and steady,” Julia said as I drove for the station. “We survived the Grandview, so let’s not ruin things by dying on the streets of Juniper Grove.”
I pointed out that I was going about twenty miles an hour and death, at that speed, was unlikely.
The usual five-minute drive to the station took about eight, but to Julia’s relief, we arrived safely and managed to find a parking spot directly in front of the building. Travis Turner, the new officer, was at the front desk when we entered.
“Rachel,” he said, grinning broadly, “it’s been a while.”
“That’s right. I haven’t seen you since—”
“The chief got forced off the road and went down the canyon.”
“And tried to climb up it with a broken ankle.”
“Oh, what an awful night,” Julia chimed in.
I looked to my left to see Underhill ushering Shane into the lobby. They headed straight for the coffeemaker. “Tonight, you mean, Miss Julia?” Shane said. “Yeah, it’s awful. Maria in the hospital, another failed broadcast, I can’t go home or to the Grandview, and here we are, suspects of the Juniper Grove police.”
“It could be worse,” Julia said.
Shane came to a halt. “I’d love to hear how.”
“You could be in Denver.”
Shane’s laughter echoed in the lobby. “You have a point. A small one, but a point.”
“What are you doing here, Rachel?” Underhill asked. “Not that you’re not welcome.”
“Technically, I’m meddling.” I raised my Thermos. “But I brought hot cocoa. Less caffeine than coffee.”
“I don’t suppose I could have some.”
“Absolutely,” I said. I took a Styrofoam cup from a stack by the coffeemaker and poured Underhill a short cup. I needed to reserve some for Turner, Shane, and Gilroy. “Has the library crime-scene report or autopsy on Arthur come back yet?”
“The autopsy did,” Underhill said. “Nothing surprising there. He died from the stab wound. The weapon was a knife from the hotel’s kitchen, but then the Swansons told us it was missing. Now they probably have another one missing.”
“The one used to attack Maria?”
“I’m guessing it was also taken from the hotel. We should have the report on the library crime scene any time now. The lab said they’d email a pdf tonight.”
“Did they search for blood that had been cleaned up? I’ve read you can’t see it under ultraviolet without spraying it with luminol first.”
Underhill smiled. “That’s right. Blood reacts with the luminol and glows blue under ultraviolet. Are you working on your next mystery?”
“Something like that.” I turned to Shane. “Cocoa?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, holding out a cup.
Underhill knew I wanted to talk to Shane—I could see it in his eyes. I poured another cup of cocoa, handed it to him, and asked him to take it to Gilroy. Underhill told Turner to keep an eye on Shane while he headed back to the interview room.
“Don’t you worry, Officer,” Shane said, taking a seat near mine. “I have no intention of becoming a fugitive. I can’t wait to talk about this on my show, and how can I do that if I’m on the lam?”
Underhill rolled his eyes and headed back down the hall, and I poured another short cup, this one for Travis.
“Shane, if you had to guess, why was Arthur killed?” I asked. In my peripheral vision, I saw Turner watch us over the rim of his cup.
He didn’t waffle for a second. “The hotel, I’m sure. Imagine what it and the land it sits on is worth.”
“But no one who was at the hotel when Arthur was killed stood to gain from his death.”
“You’re still convinced one of my crew killed him.”
“And attacked Maria.”
“Then maybe I’m wrong and Arthur wasn’t killed because of the hotel. It might have been personal.”
“Arthur seemed like a nice man no one would want to hurt,” Julia said.
“It seemed that way to me,” Shane said.
“Could it have to do with the radio station?” I asked.
“Nah. How could it?”
I poured Julia a cup of cocoa, and for the umpteenth time, I tried to sort out my thoughts on Arthur’s murder. What should have made it easier to solve—the limited time window in which it could have occurred—was no help. It didn’t limit the suspects much. Conyer headed to the basement first, I recalled, followed by Maria—after she was handed a flashlight. Then Dustin and Shane took off. Soon after, Holly and I went to the basement, and Arthur left to meet someone in the library. At some point Dustin and Shane became separated, because Shane was on his own when I saw him in the basement.
Then there were those curious glow-in-the-dark spots on Arthur’s sweater. “No report on what the spots were on Arthur Jago’s sweater?” I asked Turner.
“Nothing yet,” he answered.
“What spots?” Shane said.
“Oh yes, you and Holly were talking about that in the car,” Julia said.
I clammed up, pretty sure I shouldn’t have mentioned a crime-scene detail like that. Not before Gilroy did. The best way to divert Shane from his question was to ask him a rather annoying one of my own. “Shane, I need to ask you again if you can think of any reason Dustin or Conyer would kill Arthur and hurt Maria. They can’t hear you, so be completely honest.”
The expression on his face was equal parts bewilderment and frustr
ation. “Rachel, I don’t know them well outside of work. I know Dustin more than Conyer, but still, we’re colleagues, not best friends, and if they don’t want to talk about their personal lives, I can’t make them.”
I nodded absentmindedly. Bear claws and honey-cinnamon rolls. Holly had said those were the only two pastries she’d brought whose ingredients could glow under ultraviolet light. But what about something else that might glow? Something from the kitchen or the guest rooms? Hand lotions, shampoos, tonic water?
I knew from plotting my mystery novels that certain bodily fluids glowed, like blood or even sweat. If the killer had wiped his anxious, sweaty forehead just before pushing Arthur into the knife . . .
“Are they doing a DNA test on those spots?” I asked Turner.
“Probably.”
“Rachel, what spots are you talking about?” Shane said.
Pulling my phone from my coat pocket, I did a quick search on food ingredients and other materials that glow under ultraviolet light—a surprisingly extensive list. But one item in particular caught my eye.
“Mind if I have more cocoa?” Underhill said as he walked back into the lobby. “It has the perfect amount of caffeine. Keeps me awake without making me all jumpy.”
“Go right ahead,” I said, handing him the Thermos. “Please take more to Chief Gilroy too.”
As Underhill turned to leave, I called to him. He stopped in his tracks and pivoted back. “Yup?”
“I wanted to ask you about Maria. You talked to the hospital about her?”
“Sure did. She’s one lucky lady. When I called, the nurse said she was sitting up in bed. Kind of pasty looking after that shock, probably, but doing well. They’re releasing her tomorrow morning.”
I think my jaw hit the floor. “Tomorrow morning?”
“They said if she had come in earlier in the day, they would have released her tonight. Like I said, lucky.”
“Or careful and precise,” I said.
Underhill frowned. “That’s the same word the chief used. Precise. What am I missing?”
“Arthur’s wound was precise too, but in a different way,” I said, thinking aloud.
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