As we were leaving the stage I looked over the audience, who were politely clapping, still thinking about how I’d almost screwed up again. When the woman I’d checked in with the name like pasta waved at me and gave me a thumbs-up, it suddenly came to me why I kept messing up. I didn’t go with the others when they went to join Zak, who was holding seats for them. Kevin had figured out a way to keep the audience for the whole show by giving out door prizes throughout the evening. And then afterward there was a wrap party.
I didn’t care about the prizes or the party. Something was swirling in my mind and I thought I finally knew who had killed Vanessa. With everybody occupied in Hummingbird Hall, it was the perfect time to check things out.
The Lodge was deserted when I went inside and Cloris was still handling the registration counter. I felt bad about lying to her, but it was for the greater good. I told her that Lucinda had misplaced her key and I needed to get some medicine for her. Cloris gave me a master key without a second thought. She didn’t hesitate to answer when I asked her a few questions about who was in what room.
The grounds were eerily still and fog had begun to creep in, shrouding everything in a white veil. I went up the slope to the Sand and Sea building. There was no one in the lobby and the fire was dying in the fireplace. I climbed the stairs to the second floor and looked down the dark hall. It was deserted and silent. I found the room and stopped outside, listening to make sure no one was inside. With a hard swallow, I unlocked the door and went in. The cold blast of air surprised me, but when I flipped on the light I saw that the windows had been left wide open. My plan was to look around, and if I found some incriminating evidence, turn it over to Lieutenant Borgnine. The first order of business was to see if my guess was right. It only took a quick glance at a boarding pass sitting on the table next to the bed to see that I was. But it wasn’t enough to give to the lieutenant. I needed to find whatever had been taken from Vanessa’s room. But talk about looking for a needle in a haystack—I had no idea even what it was.
I didn’t think it would be in plain sight so I ignored everything on the sink or table between the narrow twin beds. A suitcase was sitting on a stand and seemed like a good place to start. It was mostly empty except for a pair of jeans, a shirt and a hat that I recognized. I saw a pair of heavy gloves stuck in one of the pockets. I began to fumble through another pocket along the side and saw something white. When I felt it I realized it was an envelope, and I had my hand inside of it when I heard a key scraping in the lock. My heart went into overdrive as I looked for an escape. There was only the one door, and being on the second floor I couldn’t go out the window. I frantically came up with my only option. It was an old trick but I’d seen it work before and I hoped it would now. Grateful that these old locks were slow to work, I quickly turned off the lights and slipped next to the entrance. As the door opened and someone came in, I’d slip out before they turned on the light.
I held my breath and waited as the scraping of the key stopped and the door began to open, but my plan was ruined when the light came on before she stepped inside.
“What are you doing here?” Blair demanded when she saw me.
“I could say the same since this room is registered to Barbara Henderson.” She was speechless for a moment. “It was a mistake not to check in again, this time as you,” I said.
Her lively face had grown grim. “There’s no crime in arriving incognito,” she said.
“Unless you’re planning to plant a fake bomb and use it as a diversion to kill someone.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Vanessa had a heart attack. You said so yourself.”
“But I left something out—like an air embolism was the cause of it. And since Vanessa hadn’t been doing any diving, it was obvious someone had pumped air into her vein.”
“That’s all supposition. There’s no way to prove anything. Why would I kill Vanessa when she was such a good friend?”
I wanted to kick myself for being such a blabbermouth when what I really needed to focus on was getting out of there. “You know you’re right. Of course, you were a good friend of Vanessa’s.” I’d begun edging to the door.
Blair suddenly looked wary and moved to block the exit. Then I saw the small gun in her hand. It was silver with turquoise stones in the handle. “These days politicians are targets and we have to carry protection.” She glanced around the room. “I could say I came back for something and found an intruder in my room, shot first and asked questions later. Everyone is still at the talent show, so nobody would even hear the gunshot.”
Now I wanted to stall her. “Vanessa wasn’t such a good friend, was she?” I said, hoping to get her talking.
Blair appeared angry. “Vanessa had put me in a corner. The Legace dealership is in Hillston and she was insisting that I get the zoning changed to commercial on some land she bought adjacent to it. The only reasonably priced apartments in Hillston are on the land now. As soon as she got the zoning change she was going to push out all the tenants and level the buildings so she could add onto the dealership, making it the biggest in the world and finally making her the shining star in her father’s eyes.” Blair shifted her weight. “She wouldn’t listen to me when I told her I couldn’t do it. She kept telling me I could do it by an executive act.”
“And if you didn’t do it?” I asked. Blair looked around, seeming uncomfortable.
“You were always an outsider in the group and you didn’t need anything. So you didn’t know how Vanessa operated. She could seem like your guardian angel, but then you’d find out you had the devil to pay. The deadline was this weekend.” She seemed suddenly impatient and mumbled something about where it would be best to shoot me.
Shoot me? That sounded painful and final. I was in trouble now. What could I do? All I had was my tote bag and my imagination.
A gust of damp wind blew in and she shivered. She must have left Hummingbird Hall in a hurry and hadn’t grabbed her sweater. And suddenly I had a crazy idea, remembering something Zak had said.
“You know a real scarf would warm you right up. And not that silly cotton bandana Elizabeth gave you,” I said. Instinctively Blair looked down at her red bandana and began to tug it off.
“I have the sample scarves Crystal left.” I reached into the bag and pulled one of them out. Since she had a gun and I didn’t, Blair didn’t seem worried about my fumbling with the black and silver neckwear. I reached out with it as if I was about to hand it to her, but instead I tossed the middle of it toward the gun as if it was a net. The big loose stitches caught the silver girly weapon. I gave it a pull and it left her hand before she realized what was happening and could stop it. I didn’t have time to think about what to do with it and on sheer impulse sent the scarf-wrapped gun sailing out the open window. I wasn’t expecting what happened next. There was a bang as it landed and I realized the gun had gone off.
Blair was stunned, but only for a moment, and she made a run to get away. She’d pulled open the door and was about to go out when in a last-ditch effort to stop her I threw the other scarf around her ankles. She tripped and fell as footsteps came running down the hall.
“What’s going on? I heard a gunshot,” Lieutenant Borgnine said. He had his gun out and looked at me and then at Blair, who was still sprawled on the ground but was now trying to crawl away.
“When I saw you leave, I figured you were up to something.” He shook his head with annoyance. “I thought we were clear you weren’t going to investigate on your own.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Lieutenant Borgnine hustled us out of there and to his car. He put her in the front seat and me in the back and admonished us to be quiet. I could tell that Blair was fuming and really nervous by the way she was breathing. I was sure it wasn’t lost on Lieutenant Borgnine. I was pretty jumpy myself, anxious to tell him what I knew.
I’d never been inside the Cadbury police station and this wasn’t the time to consider the décor, other than it seeme
d rather gloomy. He handed me off to a uniform and told him to put me in “the office.”
He took Blair off somewhere else, which I hoped was a locked room with the bright lights he’d talked about.
“The office” turned out to be the break room. It had a white table and a few chairs and a counter with a coffeepot. I could tell by the smell that it was ancient and undrinkable. Not that I needed anything to give me a boost. I still hadn’t come down from the adrenalin rush brought on by the whole confrontation.
Lieutenant Borgnine finally came in. He actually poured himself a cup of the old coffee.
“So, what did she have to say?” I asked.
“She said that you were an intruder and might be crazy as well. When I asked her about Vanessa, she said that the rest of you didn’t know, but that your friend had been under tremendous stress and started mixing pills and wine and also had a bad heart.”
“You didn’t buy that story.” I looked at him directly. “You know that I’m not crazy.”
He moved his head back and forth as if he was considering that point. Finally, he shrugged. “I’m not saying you’re crazy, but Blair made a good point. The doctor could have been wrong.”
“But that doesn’t explain why she checked in early under a different name. And there’s the bomb scare.”
“She had some excuse why she was traveling incognito and there’s no law saying she couldn’t do that. As for the bomb scare, she simply denied having anything to do with it,” he said. “Is there any proof she did?”
“You’re going to let her go, aren’t you, and drop the whole thing?” I must have sounded a little panicky, because he actually patted my hand in a move to calm me. And I noticed that he didn’t deny what I’d said. I thought back to being in the room and remembered the gloves I’d seen. They were obviously for handling the dry ice, but there probably wasn’t any way to prove it. I shoved my hand in my jacket pocket, feeling frustrated and annoyed, and then I felt something. The envelope I’d found in Blair’s suitcase. I’d been looking at it when I heard the key in the lock. I must have gone into automatic pilot and stuffed it in my pocket. I told the lieutenant where I’d found it and laid it on the table.
He used a pen to poke inside, and a moment later a flash drive rolled out.
“I suppose we could have a look at what’s on it.” He led me to a desk in the reception area that had a computer on it and popped in the drive.
We both looked at the screen expectantly, but it turned out not to be something to read but rather something to be listened to. There was a time and date stamp from years ago when all of us had been students. It became obvious that it was a voice-mail message from Blair to Vanessa. Blair sounded distraught and was saying something about wanting her to call her back as soon as she got the message, no matter how late. Then Vanessa picked up the call but didn’t turn off the voice mail, so the rest of the call was recorded.
“Vanessa, I’m in trouble,” Blair began in a shaking voice. “The admin wants to look at the books for student government. There’s money missing from the treasury. What am I going to do?”
“Blair, you didn’t. I thought you were clean. What is it now? Pills?”
“Heroin,” Blair said, choking on the word. “I thought I wouldn’t get addicted.”
“So you took the money from the treasury to pay for it?” Vanessa asked.
“Yes,” Blair whispered. “I’ll be ruined if the admin finds out. And I’ll probably be arrested. There goes my future. Being on drugs is bad enough, but embezzling money to pay for them . . .” Her voice trailed off and it sounded like she was crying.
There was a pause before Vanessa spoke. “How much are we talking about? Hundreds, thousands?”
“Thousands,” Blair choked out. “It’s five thousand dollars and I need it by tomorrow.”
Vanessa made some annoyed sounds and then agreed to give her the money. “But you have to go to rehab,” she admonished. There were a lot of profuse thank-yous from Blair and promises to pay it back with interest before she signed off.
“Now I understand,” I said. I told the lieutenant about the zoning change Vanessa had demanded. “And I bet the deal was that unless Blair came through, Vanessa was going to go public with the phone message. It would kill Blair’s chances of running for Congress and anything beyond. She wouldn’t even be able to finish out her term as mayor.” And there was something else I now understood. Why Vanessa had invited Zak. Blair had said this weekend was the deadline for her getting the zoning change. If Vanessa had lived, I bet she would have played the recording for Zak and the big story would have had a headline like Political Rising Star’s Hopes Destroyed by Her Past.
I looked at the lieutenant panic-stricken. “You didn’t already let her go, did you?”
“Ms. Feldstein, I am an experienced police officer. No, I didn’t let her go.” He pushed his chair back and announced that he was going back to have another little talk with her. He grabbed the flash drive and muttered a thank-you to me.
His second conversation was a lot different from the first. Once she saw he had the flash drive she crumpled and asked for a lawyer.
• • •
I was now free to go. Just as I was wondering how I was going to get home, Dane came into the station having just ended his shift. He did a double take seeing me there, and before I could even ask for a ride Lieutenant Borgnine did it for me.
“I bet you have something interesting to tell me,” Dane said as he opened the door to his red Ford 150 truck.
“You can say that again,” I said, climbing in. I’d managed to give him the bare details by the time he pulled into my driveway a few minutes later.
“I can’t believe my mother was right. It was somebody who was familiar with needles because of drugs,” I said, unlocking my back door. He followed me inside and I heard him chuckle. When I turned he was gazing out the kitchen window.
“What are you looking for?”
“You just said your mother was right. Something I never expected to hear. I was looking to see if there were any pigs flying by.” His face broke into a grin and I gave him a friendly nudge. “But seriously, you seem a little wired. I think some hot chocolate is in order.”
I didn’t argue when he poked through the cabinets and found some instant hot chocolate, which he made a thousand times better by adding milk instead of water and tossing in some marshmallows.
He asked me to tell him the whole story from start to finish again, and by the end I was beginning to feel more relaxed. I drank the last of the hot chocolate, which by now was lukewarm, and thanked him.
“Hey, it was almost like a date.” He ruffled my hair affectionately. “You better get some sleep now. You have a big day ahead of you.”
Wasn’t that the truth?
Chapter Twenty-six
I was already at the table when everyone came in for breakfast. I waited until they’d all gotten their food and Lucinda had filled their coffee cups. And then I broke the news about Blair. They were shocked and confused.
“I don’t understand,” Elizabeth said. “I thought Vanessa died of a heart attack.”
“About that—I’m afraid I didn’t tell you the whole story.” And then I explained what had caused it and why I’d left out that detail.
“You mean, you thought we were all suspects?” Lauren said, and I reluctantly nodded.
“I want all the details,” Zak said. “How did Blair pull it off and why exactly did she do it?”
I explained that Blair had really arrived before them, but in disguise. “With the baggy clothes and baseball cap along with a subdued manner, I didn’t recognize her. She gave her name as Barbara Henderson.” I mentioned that people often seemed to use the same initials when they gave a fake name. “She rigged the fake bomb and put it in a recycled plastic shopping bag and had it sitting in the Lodge waiting for her to set it off. She had some sort of remote that would open the lid of the pet food bowl and let the dry ice fall in and begin to s
moke.
“She knew that Vanessa would be having wine and she also knew that Vanessa drank white zinfandel, which was easy to pick out because of its pink color. The wineglasses were on the table next to the couch and easily accessible from behind. Blair, dressed as Barbara, just came by and dropped some tranquilizers in Vanessa’s glass without any of us noticing. Then she waited until Vanessa was getting woozy. She made the call about the bomb to Vista Del Mar from one of the phone booths, just as she used the remote to have the dry ice drop in the bowl of water. While everyone ran out in a panic, she stayed behind.
“By then Vanessa was out cold. Then Blair pumped a large amount of air into the unconscious Vanessa’s arm. She was out of the building by the time the bomb squad arrived.
“That covers the how, but what about the why?” Zak asked.
“I bet Vanessa had something on Blair,” Courtney said, finding her voice, and I nodded.
I told them about the taped phone call that showed Blair had been addicted to heroin and embezzled money to pay for it. “And if that came to light it would kill Blair’s political aspirations,” Lauren said, shaking her head with regret. “And to think I offered to work on her campaign.”
I told them what Vanessa wanted from Blair to keep it quiet about her past. They all agreed that even if Blair had gotten the zoning change, Vanessa would have kept making demands.
“And Zak,” I said, turning to him. “I’m pretty sure that big story you were promised was either going to be about Vanessa and the expansion of the Legace dealership or about Blair’s past. Or at least Vanessa used the threat of telling you about Blair’s past. She probably told Blair she was going to play the recording of that incriminating phone call for you if Blair didn’t come through.”
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