by Jessica Beck
“I can’t say for sure, but it seems that a pair of men’s boots might be missing,” Shelly said as she studied the pile of boots jammed into a closet by the back door.
“Can’t you say for sure by looking?” Jake asked.
Shelly looked a little embarrassed to admit, “Over the course of a season, you’d be amazed by how many people walk off with our things. On any given day, it’s tough to keep an inventory of everything we have on hand with my small staff. We had a guest one year who stole light bulbs, and not just from the room, either. It took me two hours to find all of the empty sockets in the place.”
“Then I need to go out and have a look around for myself,” Jake said.
I’d stopped long enough to grab Jake’s jacket from his room. “Here, take it. You’re going to need this.”
“And a hat might be in order, too,” Shelly said as she grabbed one from a peg on the closet door. “That might help keep you a little dry.”
Jake put on his jacket, and after a moment’s hesitation, he reluctantly took the hat as well. “If I’m not back in thirty minutes, lock the doors and wait for reinforcements. Somebody’s bound to come along sooner or later.”
“No,” I said. “Sorry, but that’s not going to happen.”
Jake was displeased with me; it was clear in the way he looked at me, but I wasn’t about to back down. “Suzanne, don’t forget. I’m the one who is in charge of this investigation.”
“I’m not denying it, but if you’re one minute late, I’m going to come looking for you, orders or not.”
Before Jake could comment, Grace said, “And I’ll be right behind her. Honestly, you can’t make demands on us if you’re not here to enforce them,” she said with a grin.
It was touch and go for a few seconds, but Jake finally shrugged. “Then I’ll be sure to come back in plenty of time.”
“We’ll be waiting for you,” I said as I kissed him good-bye. It was brief but effective.
“See you soon,” he said as he started to open the door.
“One way or another, you can count on it,” I answered.
We all watched him fade away into the downpour, his flashlight beam quickly being swallowed up by the gloomy day. The late afternoon was darker than it should have been even with the storm.
Shelly must have been thinking the same thing. “We’re perched between two mountains, so our sunlight doesn’t last a long time on a good day, and what’s going on out there is far from that. I need to grab those keys and check the other rooms. Are you two coming with me?”
When I didn’t answer, Grace said, “Suzanne, we’re going to drive ourselves crazy if just we stand here by the door waiting for him. That half an hour is going to seem like three days.”
“There’s only twenty-eight minutes left,” I said as I checked my watch.
“Still.”
“You’re right,” I replied. “Let’s get busy.”
After checking all of the empty guest rooms, we did a thorough search of the rest of the lodge, including the door that led to the storm shelter.
Shelly opened it and played the beam of her flashlight down the stairs, and Grace and I looked down as well.
“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Grace asked.
It was quite an understatement. I could see water already touching the bottom step, seeping in from the outside at an alarming rate. “Has it ever been that high before?” I asked Shelly.
She looked a little pale from the sight of it. “Not since I’ve owned the place. There’s a lot of water down there.”
“It won’t come up this high,” I said, though I wasn’t sure of that fact at all.
“I thought if I’d ignore it, it would be fine. Basically I haven’t had the money to seal the shelter off, so I’ve just been hoping that it wouldn’t ever come to this. What an idiot I was.”
“I’m sure that you did what you could with what you had,” I said, trying to be reassuring, but the rising water level worried me, too. What would happen if the rain continued at the pace it was falling now? Would we all be driven out by the rising floodwaters? And what about the stream outside? I was certain that it posed a risk to us as well.
It was a delayed risk, though. We had even more pressing issues now.
Where was Vince, and more importantly, what was keeping Jake? I glanced at my watch for the five thousandth time since he’d left, and I saw that he had only three minutes left before I was going after him.
That depended on if I was going to wait that long for him. I suddenly couldn’t stand the thought of Jake being out there somewhere, hurt and helpless, unable to come back. If I gave him the full amount of time that I’d promised to earlier, it might already be too late by the time I got to him. I decided that this time, it would be better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
“I’m grabbing my coat and I’m heading outside,” I said.
“But you promised Jake you would wait thirty minutes,” Shelly said as she glanced at her watch.
“I’ll apologize when I find him,” I replied.
“Wait for me, then,” Grace said. “I’m going, too.”
“You two don’t mind if I stay here, do you?” Shelly asked as Grace and I prepared ourselves to go outside.
“This is where you need to be. Somebody has to hold down the fort,” I said.
I found a pair of nondescript olive boots that didn’t fall off my feet, and Grace grabbed a pair of black boots dappled with daisies. Leave it to her to be stylish even when we were on what I hoped was not a rescue mission.
We never made it outside, though.
Just as we were about to leave, the outside door swung open, and I held my breath, waiting to see who was about to step through.
Chapter 19
“Jake, are you okay?” I asked with relief as I reached for the towel Shelly was holding. “Get out of those wet things.”
“I’m fine,” he said as he took off his jacket and boots. The hat was missing. “A breeze kicked up and blew that thing right off my head. I’ll be glad to replace it once this is all over.”
“Don’t worry about it, Jake, a guest left it three seasons ago. What’s it like out there?”
“It’s pretty brutal,” he admitted. “It’s as bad as we thought. The road’s completely gone.”
“Do you mean that it’s under water?” Grace asked.
“No, I mean that it’s gone. The stream took it completely out.” He turned to Shelly. “It’s not going to be easy to fix it, from the look of it. I’ve got a hunch that your season is over.”
Shelly slumped down a little. “Then so is the lodge.”
“Come on. You can always start from scratch next season,” I said encouragingly.
“Not without the paying guests I’ll have to turn away the rest of this one. I was on the edge of bankruptcy before the storm hit. This storm just drove the last nail in my coffin.” She looked around at the old place. “You know what? The bank is welcome to it. I’ve struggled to make it work for years, but most folks just don’t seem to care about the isolation we offer anymore. My sister has been after me to retire to the Outer Banks and come live with her, and I think I’m going to take her up on it when we get out of here.”
“Maybe you should sleep on it,” I said. “I know that things look bleak right now, but in the morning light, there might be a way out for you.”
“Suzanne, it’s okay, really. In a way, it’s kind of a relief.”
I decided to keep my mouth shut. After all, I knew better than anyone what a thin profit margin most small businesses worked with. If I lost a month’s worth of sales, I’d have to shutter Donut Hearts myself.
“That begs one question, though, doesn’t it?” Grace asked. “Where’s Vince Dade?”
“Well, he didn’t walk out of here,” Jake said. “I know that for a fact. From the look of it, that road’s been gone a while. I suspect it washed out just after he and Kevin made it across.”
“So that means that he’
s somewhere inside the lodge,” Shelly said. “I honestly don’t know where he might be hiding, though.”
“Who says that he’s hiding?” Jake asked as he toweled off his hair. “We need to round everybody up and inspect their rooms whether they like it or not.”
“What do you expect to find?” Shelly asked, clearly concerned with whatever Jake’s answer might be.
“I try not to expect anything,” he said. “I deal with facts, not guesses and suppositions. Come on, let’s go.”
“You three go on. I think I’ll hang back and get started on dinner,” Shelly said.
I didn’t expect Jake to offer any resistance to the idea, but yet again, he surprised me. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather you come with us, at least for now.”
Shelly looked surprised by his suggestion. “I can assure you that I’m perfectly safe in my own kitchen, Jake.”
“You’re probably right, but what is it going to hurt to indulge me?”
She shrugged. “Fine. I suppose that it can wait.”
Jake smiled. “Then let’s go. Until you hear from me, no one should leave the group.”
“Do you think that we’re all really in danger?” Shelly asked.
“We’d be fools not to entertain the possibility,” Grace replied, and then she looked at me. “What? It’s true, isn’t it?”
“I never denied it,” I said.
“Good,” she replied.
“Ladies, if we’re finished here, let’s get started on the rest of our search,” Jake said.
“We’re right behind you,” I said as Jake headed for Nathan and Maggie Hoff’s room first.
I wondered what we might find there, given the way the couple had been interacting since they’d arrived. A murder/suicide wasn’t out of the question in my mind, a dark thought indeed.
At least we didn’t have to break their door down.
“What can we do for you?” Nathan asked as he opened the door partway.
“Is your wife here with you?” Jake asked him.
“Of course she is. Where else would she be?” A frown crossed his lips. “Why do you ask?”
“We need everyone in the main area by the fireplace right now,” Jake ordered.
“Who is it?” we heard Maggie call out from inside the room. “What do they want?” As she got closer to the door, she added, “What is this, a lynch mob?”
“Nobody’s going to lynch anyone. We’re here for your safety,” Jake said.
“Why should I believe you?”
I could see my boyfriend tense a little at her jibe. Like most people, he wasn’t all that keen on having his orders challenged. I decided to step in before things escalated. “Maggie, the road is gone, and it’s hard to say when we’ll ever get out of here. We’re trying to figure things out.”
“Are you telling me that we’re trapped?” Her voice was shrill, and Jake glanced back at me. I was expecting some sort of reprimand, but instead, he just smiled.
“I wouldn’t put it quite that way,” Jake told her.
“How else could you possibly see this situation?” she asked him.
Jake replied, “I’m sure that it’s only temporary, but for the time being, we’re all sticking together.”
“Where are Vince and Kevin, then?” Nathan asked Jake as he looked at us all milling about in the hallway.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Grace said. “This is Kevin’s door, right?” she asked.
“It is,” Shelly replied.
Before Jake could say anything, she knocked loudly on it.
Kevin opened the door after a full minute, and from his disheveled appearance, if I had to guess, I’d say that he’d been napping when Grace had knocked. “What’s going on?”
“There’s a meeting in the lobby by the big fireplace,” she said. “Come on.”
“Not interested,” he said as he tried to close the door.
Jake reached out from beyond Kevin’s line of sight and grabbed the door before it could close. “That wasn’t a request.”
Kevin looked as though he wanted to protest further, but something about Jake’s tone of voice must have told him that would be fruitless. “Fine. Give me a second.”
“Take all the time you need,” Jake said. “We’ll wait.”
Kevin shrugged, and as he tried to close his door, Jake kept his grip on it firmly. “Do whatever you need to, but this stays open.”
“I have to take a leak, okay?” Kevin asked, letting some of his irritation slip through.
“I don’t care what you do, but this door isn’t closing,” Jake said.
“Oh, forget it,” Kevin said angrily. “I’ll do it later.”
Jake just shrugged, clearly not caring one way or the other.
“That just leaves our original missing guest,” Shelly said. “And honestly, I can’t imagine where Vince might be.”
“Are you telling us that he still hasn’t shown up?” Maggie asked.
“Do you see him anywhere?” Kevin asked, openly sassing her. Was that a smile that crossed Nathan’s lips for a moment? I doubted that he’d ever had the guts to respond to his wife that way, but it appeared that he enjoyed it when someone else did.
“He’s probably out there somewhere,” Maggie said as she waved a hand toward a window. I glanced out and saw that the rain was still pounding down, and I wondered what the water level in the storm shelter was doing. In a way, I was almost afraid to think about it.
“He’s not, though,” Jake said.
“How can you possibly know that, Inspector?” Maggie demanded to know.
“It’s Chief,” Jake said, “and I know because we’re on our own little island now with the way the stream has cut us off. It didn’t take that long to check; trust me.”
“Then logic demands that he’s in here somewhere,” Kevin said.
“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Jake said, “but where?” He turned to Shelly and asked, “Are you absolutely certain that you’ve checked every place in the lodge where someone might be hiding?”
“I assure you, we’ve searched it all.” Almost as an afterthought, she added, “Everywhere but my bedroom, of course, and I can assure you that he’s not in there.”
“Let’s go look anyway,” Jake said. “Where exactly is it?”
“I was teasing,” Shelly said. “Surely you don’t think that Vince is holed up in my room.”
“Well, he has to be somewhere. Just indulge me, okay?”
“Are we all going?” Grace asked.
“Why not?” I replied. “The more the merrier.”
There were a few grumbles, but everyone knew that arguing with Jake was going to be pointless, so we all followed Shelly as she led the way through the kitchen and around the far hallway to a small set of stairs. I’d missed them completely before. Once we were all upstairs, I saw that a small door had been tucked into one eave.
Shelly unlocked her door and swung it open. “See? There’s no one here.”
She was about to close it again when I thought I saw something—or someone—move on the floor.
Chapter 20
“Hang on,” I said as I hurried past Shelly to verify what I thought I’d just seen.
Lying on the floor beside the bed and away from the line of sight through the doorway, I found Vince Dade.
He was tied up, there was duct tape across his mouth, and he appeared to be as mad as a wet cat, but at least he was still alive.
Chapter 21
“I’m not going to lie to you. This is going to sting a little,” Jake said as he reached down and ripped the duct tape off Vince’s mouth in one swift motion.
“Oww!” Vince shouted. The ropes holding him were fairly loose, and it appeared that he’d nearly worked his way free by the time we’d found him. I finished untying them for him, and his first action was to rub his mouth carefully. “I’m going to kill whoever did this to me.”
“Does that mean that you didn’t see who tied you up?” I asked. If
Jake minded me butting in, he didn’t say anything. Clearly he was just as curious about the answer to my question himself.
“I didn’t see a thing. Whoever did it hit me from behind,” Vince said with disgust as he felt the back of his head and tried to stand. He didn’t make it all the way, and ended up sitting down hard on Shelly’s bed.
Jake tenderly probed the spot himself, and Vince winced a little as he did. “Hey, take it easy.”
“Sorry,” Jake said, but there was no sincerity in the apology. “What were you doing up here in the first place? Nobody attacked you and then dragged you up the stairs, I’m pretty sure of that.”
Vince looked a little guilty as he finally managed to stand up and explained, “I thought Shelly might have a two-way radio or something up here. I wanted out of here, and I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You could have just asked me instead of breaking into my room,” Shelly said with a frown.
“He didn’t have to break in,” I said, and then I stared hard at the man. “Come on. Hand it over, Vince.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said glumly.
“The master key,” I insisted as I held out my hand.
“Fine. You can have it, for all of the good that it did me,” he said, but as he reached into his pocket, he suddenly frowned. “You’re kidding me.”
“You don’t have it?” Jake asked.
“Oh, I admit that I had it at one time, but whoever clobbered me must have taken it when I was out cold.”
“This is not good,” Grace said softly. Her words had more impact than if she’d shouted them, but it wasn’t anything that the rest of us weren’t feeling as well.
“What are we supposed to do now?” Maggie asked gently. There was softness, a real sense of vulnerability in her voice that I hadn’t heard before. The woman was clearly frightened, and why wouldn’t she be? We were stranded out in the wilderness with a killer, and there looked to be little hope that we’d manage to get away before something else very bad happened to at least one of us.
