by Duffy Brown
“She’d dead, all right, and don’t even mention Idle as a suspect in all this. The only other person who could have killed Peep and Zo is that desk clerk, Penelope. She and one of the hotel managers are awfully chummy, and they’ve got some kind of operation going on, but I can’t figure out what and I think Peep knew about it.”
I held Fiona’s hand tighter. “Someone locked me and Madonna in one of the back rooms of the Grand and threatened to catnap Bambino and Cleveland. I thought it might be Zo; I actually thought she might be the killer. She has that alibi, but she could have paid someone off to give old Peep the heave-ho over the side. I think being trapped in the room was a threat to get me to stop looking for the killer. We’re close, really close. We just need to live long enough to figure it all out. Meet me at the Good Stuff at midnight. You can spend the night in my attic. You’ll be safe there.” I gave her a hug. “I cleaned.”
The Grand was packed. It was always that way, but tonight it was elbow to elbow with guests all decked out to see and be seen.
“Finally,” Penelope grumped as she rushed up to me. “That policewoman said you were on your way. This place is going to the dogs. Zo’s missing, Madonna is having a meltdown and someone broke into Annex 1 and tore it apart for God only knows what reason.”
“No!” I stage-whispered.
“Yes!” Penelope stage-whispered back. “Nothing was taken, far as we know, and someone crashed the Fallers’ wedding reception and now they want a full refund.”
“Hey, congratulations were offered along with sage advice.”
Penelope gave me a wide-eyed look and I quickly added, “So I heard.”
“I want this over with. Zo’s disappeared and if Madonna would too, then all these L.A. la-la people are out of our lives.” She nodded as if agreeing with herself. “We need them gone. Everything was fine until they showed up with their sneaky phone and threats. Why can’t they mind their own business? That’s what we do around here; this is not Hollywood.”
“What threats?”
Penelope jumped up, smoothed back her hair and pointed to the steps. “You should go on up. The mystery groupies are outside looking for Zo now. It won’t be long before they want to see her room, and I have to let them so they think it’s part of the game. I swear, some people are so gullible you can get them to believe anything.”
I took the stairs to the second floor and made for the back of the hotel. Penelope seemed genuinely surprised over Annex 1. If she’d been the one to trap Madonna and me, she probably wouldn’t have brought it up. But she did. Unless she brought it up to cover her tracks.
I knocked and Molly answered the door. “Whoa,” I said as I walked in to see all the bedding torn off, drawers overturned, the dresser and nightstand and even the bed pulled away from the wall and toppled. “Trashed is an understatement. If the phone was here, whoever did this found it.”
“If the phone was here at all. And if it was, I bet they got rid of the phone and Zo as a package deal. All of Zo’s stuff is still here and no one’s seen her since last night. There was a do not disturb sign on the door handle and housekeeping came back twice. When no one answered this evening and Madonna asked about Zo at the desk, managers checked her room and found this. Madonna screamed and fainted dead away.”
“I’m sure housekeeping did too; they’ll have to clean this up. Okay, so if Zo isn’t here, where is she? If there’s no body here, where is it?”
“I hate this body stuff; I hate the word.” Molly swallowed and made a little whiny sound.
I put my arm around her. “Why did you go into police work? Bodies and—”
Molly made another whiny sound.
“Criminal things are part of this. You had to know that just from watching TV. Why take the job?”
“It’s a good job. Nate’s really sweet and the chief before him was too. I look hot in the uniform and the pay’s not bad. All my friends bring me strawberry smoothies and we chat and this is Mackinac Island, so people behave; rich families hate scandal and the b-o-d-y thing never happened around here . . . until you showed up.”
“Sorry about that.”
“It’s the cloud. You won’t tell Luka about the b-o-d-y thing, will you? He thinks I’m badass.”
I looked at Molly’s sparkling blue eyes, slender build, freckles across the bridge of her nose and unicorn hair clip holding back her blonde hair. “Totally badass.”
I opened the door to study the hall and literally ran into Sutter, still in his gray suit, white shirt open at the neck, tie trailing out of his pocket, lilac boutonnière still in place. A man in a good suit . . . was there anything sexier? Except maybe taking that good suit off piece by piece and dropping it on the floor as—
“Any sign of Zo?” Sutter asked, snapping me back to the hotel hallway, and that was a real shame.
“How’d you find out about this?” Molly asked Sutter. “We wanted you to enjoy your mom’s wedding.”
“Irma and Rudy have a whole town to celebrate with, and there’s no place better for gossip than a wedding. Zo missing is top billing.”
“There you are, you,” Abigail purred, drawing up next to Sutter, hooking her arm through his. “My room’s back the other way; why don’t you stop in? There’s this drink called Sex on the Beach; I do great Sex on the Beach. I do great sex anywhere.”
“I’m kind of busy here,” Sutter said, looking in Zo’s room.
“Of course you are.” Abigail paused and blinked a few times. “Evie? I didn’t even notice you standing there. Nice dress, so last year but nice. Were you at the wedding?” Abigail did the dismissive hand gesture and turned back to Sutter. “I nearly lost you in that crowd in the lobby, sweet thing. The elevators here are so slow. This afternoon one of the maids coming out of this very room took me down on the back service elevator. She had a laundry cart and it was hard to get through the crowd, and I might have been misbehaving just a teeny bit because I just hate waiting on things, so she suggested I come with her.”
“This room?” I asked, feeling a little sick.
Sutter pulled out his iPhone and punched up a picture of Zo.
“No, not her.”
Sutter flipped to Fiona.
“That’s her,” Abigail said. “She was nice, but her hair needed product and her nails weren’t done.” Abigail batted her eyes at Sutter. “I’m in the deluxe rooms. I had to pay a holiday surcharge, but it was worth it. Room three fourteen, don’t forget.” Abigail pressed her voluptuous self up against Sutter and kissed him full on the mouth, adding a little tongue. She strutted down the hall, waving over her shoulder. “Ta now.”
“You worked for her?” Molly asked, shaking her head. “No wonder you have a dark cloud.”
I looked up at Sutter, with Abigail’s lipstick on his mouth. I could strangle her, but we had a surplus of dead bodies at the moment. “There’s an explanation for this,” I told Sutter. “Fiona didn’t do anything to Zo. She was here at the hotel looking for her just like we are.”
“Then where is Zo, and where the heck is Fiona? Maybe Fiona found Zo and she wouldn’t give up the phone.” Sutter strode off toward a waiter in a white coat pushing a room service cart draped in a white tablecloth with dishes, silver serving bowls and a rose centerpiece. The waiter stopped in front of a wide unmarked door as Sutter pulled up behind him. “Guest elevators are around the corner,” the waiter said to Sutter.
Sutter flashed his badge. “We’re taking this one down with you.”
“Hey, you’re the boss.”
Sutter cut his eyes my way. “Something I don’t hear nearly enough around here.”
We all crowded into the elevator and chugged our way to the lower level, where the door slid open to a hallway. We could see the kitchen off to the right. “What’s down there?” Sutter asked, nodding in the other direction.
“A ramp out to the loading area so
we can roll in supplies and take out trash.” The waiter pointed in the other direction. “Laundry room’s over there to the left. The late crew’s back there now. It’s been a heck of a week around here for everyone.”
“See,” I said to Sutter. “The laundry is right here and that’s what Fiona was pushing. Probably trying to help out the overworked staff; she knows a lot of the girls.”
“And they won’t rat her out. My guess is she’s been hiding out here with Idle and living off room service.” Sutter headed outside, with Molly and me following. The parking area was lit; night crew bikes jammed the racks and Shakespeare was parked off to the side snoozing.
“Hey,” Gabi called out, as the Corpse Crusaders rushed up to Sutter. “Look what we found, the gold turtle bracelet. Isn’t that great?” Gabi held it up, as the shiny gold caught the fluorescent light. “We heard about Zo missing, so we started looking around for clues, and there it was over by the side of the hotel. This is so exciting, another body, and with this bracelet the clues are pointing to Fiona being the killer all along. This is her bracelet and Zo said she stole it, and I think she was right. My guess is Fiona wanted to shut her up once and for all.”
The tall Crusader nodded and added, “I’d say Fiona whacked Zo and stuffed her in a garbage can.”
“Or poison,” the other girl Crusader added. “Rolled her up in a carpet first and then lugged her down in a laundry cart or maybe a room service cart and put her in the trash. They do it in the movies all the time.”
The band of Murder Marauders hurried up; a lady in a Sherlock hat was shaking her head. “You all are the worst detectives ever. You need something bigger than a trash can to hold a body.”
Gabi gasped, her eyes rounding. “The refrigerator! What about the refrigerator?!” She jumped up and down. “I saw an old one back here yesterday all taped up so some kid or animal couldn’t get in. I never thought of it being a clue; it’s like a coffin just sitting out here all along. I’m getting so good at this mystery-solving stuff, I scare myself. We need to see Zo’s room and look for more clues to where the body is. Then we find Fiona and we win the free weekend.” Gabi waved her hands in the air and did a little happy dance right there in the parking lot.
“You mean we win the free weekend,” the Sherlock lady insisted, a scowl creeping across her face. “It was our idea about hauling the body off.”
Gabi put her hands on her hips and straightened her spine. “But you didn’t know about the refrigerator; that was all us, the Crusaders, and it’s the most important part of the mystery. The only thing is we still have to consider that Penelope person at the front desk. I just know she’s up to something. The other day she had a Louis Vuitton purse. Do you know what those things go for and on a clerk’s salary? Like that’s going to happen. It’s got to be a clue of some kind.”
“I bet the purse was a knockoff,” one of the Marauders offered. “It’s meant to look like she’s guilty of something and she’s really not. I’m putting her in my red herring column. She’s just there to throw us off.”
Sutter held up his hands. “All of you go to bed and forget about purses and herrings and about getting into Zo’s room. The mystery party is over for tonight.”
“You don’t make the rules around here,” Gabi insisted, glaring up at Sutter.
Sutter snarled, flashed his badge and snapped into scary Detroit cop mode. “Wanna bet?”
“Party pooper,” Gabi groused as the groupies trooped off into the night. “Let’s go to the Gate House Bar and strategize about what to do next.”
Sutter went over to where the refrigerator sat. He studied the ground, uttered some colorful Detroitisms that turned the air a little blue, then kicked the side of the hotel. He turned to me. “Where’s Fiona, and I want to know now.”
“Oh come on, you don’t really think she stuffed Zo in a refrigerator. That’s diabolical and totally icky. Fiona wears a purple sequined hat, on her better days, and matching nail polish. She is not the icky type.”
“She’s the smart type.” Sutter looked serious. “Fiona finds the phone and gets rid of it and Zo. Peep’s already history, so whatever he was blackmailing her with is gone. Yeah, there might be a computer back in L.A., but it’ll require passwords, have firewalls and who knows what else to break into, and the thing is probably hidden. If someone found it, they wouldn’t know what to do with it. Fiona’s problems are over.” Sutter turned to Molly. “Where’s the refrigerator now? How does this recycle thing work around here?”
“Drays haul it out at British Landing to get hauled off the island. The trash scow might have already picked it up. They don’t keep eyesores sitting around on the island; it’s bad for business. If the fridge is gone, it’s halfway across the lake headed to some recycle facility. The Captain runs the landing. If the fridge isn’t there, he knows who took it, but I doubt if he’ll know where it’s going. The island contracts with hauling companies, not the recycle companies.”
Sutter and I stared at Molly in wonder.
“Hey, it’s all right there in the Crier; they print the town council minutes every month.”
“And Fiona would know all this,” Sutter huffed.
“Ya think?” Molly did the mommy-to-little-boy eye roll.
“Go back to the office in case Zo turns up on her own.” Sutter turned to me. “Find Fiona.”
I folded my arms and didn’t budge. “I’m not turning in my best friend when we don’t even know if there is a body. Do you realize how hard it would be for Fiona to lift a body into a refrigerator?”
“If Idle helped her, it would be a piece of cake.”
“Did you save me any?”
“Any what?”
“Cake. I didn’t get any wedding cake. Did you save me a piece? You better have saved me a piece.”
“And you better have saved me a piece,” Molly chimed in. “I didn’t even get to go to the wedding. I was busy doing your job.” She glared at Sutter.
Sutter looked pained and pointed to me, then Molly. “If Miss Marple and Mamma Mia hadn’t run off, you two would have your cake. As for needing to find Fiona, I have the olive oil bottle at the scene of the crime, and her in Zo’s room once before snooping around and with a laundry cart this time around. We know she and Idle are hiding something. Who knows what the heck that’s all about, but it seems to have everyone’s attention, and if you think Penelope’s a suspect, all I’ve heard is that she gets people good rooms. That’s what hotel clerks do.”
“I overheard her talking to someone about Zo and the missing phone and paying Peep off,” I offered. “She knows stuff.”
“This whole blasted island is talking about nothing else. There’s a mystery weekend centered on it, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Fiona didn’t lock me in that storage room; what about that?”
“Idle did. She got tired of you butting in, and on that particular subject we are in complete agreement.” Sutter hitched himself up into the saddle and took the reins. “Find Fiona before I do, got it? I mean it, Evie. I need to know where she is.”
How could things go from kissing on steps to this? I considered throwing something at Sutter except I’d probably hit Shakespeare, and I liked Shakespeare. “I’m going to wring his neck one of these days. He never listens to me.”
“Guess that means whoever had tonight in the Evie-Nate getting-it-on pool lost. Try to patch things up by Monday, will you? I could really do with a vacation to Arizona this winter. Oh, and by the way, we’re missing a key to the jail cell; we had two. You don’t know where it is, by any chance?”
“When I was a guest at your lovely establishment, I left the key in the police station.” And I did, it just happened to be stuffed down in the Pottery Barn chair in case I faced incarceration round two. “My guess is one of the Crusaders took it as a souvenir.” I nodded to the group heading down Cadotte. “They were actually in th
e station poking around. Can you imagine? Of all the nerve.”
“Well, thank heavens you’re above all that.” Molly laughed and climbed on her official black police bike that had flashers but no sirens. I promised her I’d save cake if there was any left, then started off for the bike shop, thankful I’d brought flats. All this in heels would have been killer. I winced at the comment. So who was the killer? Idle? Penelope? I had no idea.
It was after midnight and I wanted to go out to British Landing and see if the refrigerator was there, but I needed to talk to Fiona more. Or maybe I was just plain chicken about the refrigerator thing. What if Zo was there and I opened the door and she fell out! Chills shot up my back. Molly wasn’t the only one freaked out about the possibility, and I had a terrific track record of going toe-to-toe with dead people lately. This never happened in Chicago. No toe-to-toe, no dead people in the fridge. Maybe I did bring some kind of bad juju with me. Was there a way of getting rid of bad juju? A potion or ritual or chant. Maybe I could Google it. Then again, Fiona had tried extra virgin olive oil and garlic and we all saw how great that worked out.
Lights were on in Rudy’s Rides, even though Irma and Rudy had left on their honeymoon by now. My guess was friends were cleaning up or drinking up or both, and felines one and two were safely tucked away under the covers.
I cut up the path alongside the bike shop to the back deck, now deserted, quiet, lovely. Moonlight sliced a golden path across the lake, the baskets of pink lilacs that Sutter arranged still lining the edge. A gentle breeze ruffled through the wedding arch Sutter had fashioned from tree branches, tulle and more lilacs; fallen blossoms somersaulted across the wood planks and drifted out to sea.
Most of the food and drink were cleared away, but a slice of half-eaten wedding cake sat on a table off to the side. How anyone could leave even a smidgen of cake was a mystery to me. I was a cake-aholic, no cake left behind ever. I pinched off a section, plopped it in my mouth and licked my fingers, savoring the moment. It was the perfect wedding with family and friends gathered together, just like Irma wanted . . . just like every girl wanted . . . just like I wanted. Heck, considering my last personal encounter of a wedding kind, a groom who showed up would be a big improvement.
