Ekaterina’s office—as opposed to the lush public office right behind the front desk—was hidden away off a side corridor lined with cleaning equipment, supply cabinets, and storage rooms, so people were unlikely to find it by accident. You’d never expect, from the outside, what a cool, serene, modern space she’d created out of an old supply room.
I found her there, sharing a plate of Christmas cookies with Grandfather.
“What is wrong?” She indicated a chair and shoved the cookie plate in my direction.
“One of our conference attendees found this in his bathroom.” I plunked the jar down on her sleek, almost bare desk. She recoiled. Grandfather’s face lit up.
“Latrodectus mactans!” His face it up with enthusiasm. “And a remarkably large, healthy specimen.”
“Is it not a spider?” Ekaterina looked a little wild-eyed.
“A black widow spider!” Grandfather was tapping gently on the side of the jar. “Where did you find it?”
“Dr. Green found it in his bathroom.”
“In one of my bathrooms!” I was relieved to see that Ekaterina didn’t look freaked out anymore. She looked furious. “Which room?”
“I don’t know the number, but look for Dr. Benjamin Green.”
I spelled the last name and her fingers rattled over her computer keyboard.
“Room 506. I suppose we should also treat the adjacent rooms.” She was already pressing buttons on her walkie-talkie.
“I told Dr. Green that you’d find someone to take care of her,” I said to Grandfather. “Until we can deliver her to the insect pavilion at your zoo.”
“We don’t really need any more black widows at the moment,” he said.
“Humor him,” I said. “He’s one of the well-behaved ones. And it’s not as if she’ll take up much room.”
“If you like.” He shrugged. “She can eat a few of the crickets I brought as owl food. First let’s make sure she’s all alone.” He turned to Ekaterina. “I’ll go along with your staff and see if there are any signs that the spiders have established themselves.”
“Heads will roll if they have,” she muttered. “But yes. I would be grateful for your assistance. What if she’s laid eggs?”
“Unlikely,” Grandfather said. “They mate in the late spring and summer.”
“That relieves the mind a little.” Her fingers were flying over the keyboard again. “Meg, the occupants of those rooms—Dr. Frogmore in 504, Dr. Green in 506, and Dr. and Mrs. Voss in 508—are they likely to be in their rooms in the next hour or so?”
I checked the conference schedule.
“It’s ten forty-five.” I almost said “only ten forty-five”—the day already felt as if it had been going on for much longer. “Both Voss and Frogmore are on eleven o’clock panels, so by the time your crew gets up to their rooms they’ll be down in the conference area. No idea where Mrs. Voss will be, but I’d be astonished if she objected to having her room de-spidered. And Dr. Green seems to think he has a panel, so he’s probably lurking down there, already. Total space cadet, so if he turns up at the room before you’re finished, look at your watch and tell him to run to the Hamilton Room before he misses his panel.”
She nodded and dashed out. Grandfather rose to follow her.
“Grandfather.”
“I know,” he said over his shoulder. “I only have fifteen minutes to get to my panel. This won’t take long.”
“I have a quick question.”
He paused in the doorway.
“I think someone on the hotel staff would have noticed before now if the south wing were infested with black widow spiders. Where did this one come from?”
“Who knows?” He shrugged. “Maybe she came in on Ben’s suitcase. If he keeps it in a dark corner of his basement, attic, or storage shed, she could have hitched a ride.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe someone brought her deliberately.”
“You’re sounding like your father now.” He was referring to Dad’s insatiable love of mystery books. “If you’re thinking someone was trying to knock off Green, remember—”
“Black widows aren’t that lethal,” I said. “I’m not thinking murder—but what if someone wanted to disrupt your conference?”
He frowned at that.
“Are any of your ornithologists also keen on entomology?” I asked.
“Undoubtedly. I’ll try to remember which ones.”
With that he vanished.
I studied the spider for another minute or so. She wasn’t moving much. Maybe that was a bad sign. Or maybe black widow spiders hibernated in the winter. I decided they probably did, although maybe entomologists called it something else. When reptiles did it, the herpetologists called it “brumation,” so perhaps the entomologists also demanded a word of their own.
Maybe if I put the spider in a dark place she’d go back to sleep. I tucked the jar back in the coffee shop bag, put the bag right in the center of Ekaterina’s enviably tidy desk. And then worried—did the bag look too much as if it might contain some treat worth swiping? Well, if anyone tried, I suspected we’d hear about it before long.
I took a couple of calming deep breaths before heading back down to see what else was going wrong at Owl Fest. And to make those changes to the banquet program. I’d left my laptop in the closet-sized cubbyhole behind the registration desk that currently served as the convention office. With any luck, Rose Noire would be staffing the desk, and I could guilt-trip her into doing the revisions.
I strode across the lobby, noticing that the Ackleys were back, sitting near the fireplace, glaring from time to time at Sami. They really did look like the Grinch and his wife, sitting among the evergreens and poinsettias with such sour faces.
Suddenly the Inn’s front door opened and a snow-covered figure staggered in.
Chapter 5
“Who in the world would be out in this weather?” Sami exclaimed.
For just a moment, I found myself imagining Santa, struggling through the storm with his present sack. Although surely even in this weather the reindeer and sleigh could cope.
After staring for a few moments, Sami dashed over to greet the newcomer. Normally there would have been a doorman on duty—two at busy times of the day—but when it had become obvious that the roads were impassable, Ekaterina had reassigned the doorman to snow removal duty. New arrivals were the last thing any of us expected.
I followed Sami, eager to see who had been brave or foolhardy enough to make the trip to the Inn in the middle of a blizzard.
“Let me help you … er…” The figure was so bundled up that Sami couldn’t immediately tell whether to use “sir” or “ma’am.” He settled for easing him or her onto the bench just inside the door and started to brush off some of the snow.
“I didn’t think I’d make it,” croaked the new arrival. The voice was male—and familiar.
“Horace?” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here?” My cousin Horace Hollingsworth was an officer in Caerphilly’s consolidated town police force and county sheriff’s department, so normally I wouldn’t have questioned his appearing anywhere at any time. But according to Sami, who had been monitoring both the NOAA weather and the Caerphilly police radio systems, it had been over an hour since the chief had told his troops that conditions were so bad he was suspending operations until further notice. “Didn’t you get word from the chief to either go home or shelter in place?”
“Looks like I’ll be sheltering in place here,” he said. “I was out near the county line when the chief gave the word. Thought I could make it back to town. Thought wrong. Car got stuck just outside the Inn’s driveway.”
“And you walked all this way!” Sami exclaimed. The Inn’s driveway was about a mile long.
I had already pulled out my walkie-talkie and was calling Dad.
“Meg, you’re missing a fabulous panel on owl pellets,” he said in lieu of hello.
“I hate to tear you away from it, but we could use your medical skills in the lobby,
” I said. “Horace just staggered through the front door after walking the whole way from the road.”
“I’m fine, really,” Horace murmured.
“You could have frostbite and not even know it,” I said—to Horace, but audible to Dad. “Right, Dad?”
“The temperature’s in the twenties,” Sami said. “You can get frostbite in as little as half an hour when it’s that cold.”
“Oh, dear,” Dad said. “On my way.”
“As little as ten minutes if there’s a strong wind on top of the subfreezing temperature,” Sami went on.
“Drink this.” Ekaterina appeared holding a steaming mug of coffee. “I will make arrangements for a room.” From the slight frown on her face, I deduced that finding a room wouldn’t be easy—Grandfather’s conference had filled up most of the guest rooms, and I suspected the rest were filled with the various staff members who’d agreed to sleep on site to be available to work through the storm. Housing Horace would almost certainly mean ousting at least two staff members to less comfortable quarters.
“Horace can stay with us in the Madison Cottage,” I said. “There’s plenty of room. He can choose between one of the Murphy beds in the study and one of the sofas in the living room.”
“I will have hot food and some dry clothing sent there.” Ekaterina, looking relieved, stepped briskly across the lobby, already speaking into her walkie-talkie.
“Even Osgood and Beau have given up.” Horace was referring to Osgood and Beau Shiffley, who owned and operated the county’s two snowplows.
“Given up?” I said. “I thought they were stuck.”
“That too. But now they’ve given up trying to dig themselves out. Their cousin Randall had to rescue them with his snowmobile.”
News to me that Randall Shiffley, Caerphilly’s mayor, had a snowmobile. Potentially useful news if it took a while for Osgood and Beau to dig their plows out.
Sami and I peeled Horace out of his outer layers of wraps. The Ackleys had left their place by the fire and were watching with horror-struck expressions. Good—maybe getting an idea of exactly how bad it was out there would convince them to stop giving Sami such a hard time.
Dad arrived with his black medical bag in hand, and he and Sami helped Horace through the lobby, with Ekaterina trailing along to carry the discarded wraps and open up the cottage door.
Almost as soon as they left the lobby, a uniformed staff member appeared with mop and pail and erased all traces of snow, ice, and water. By the time Sami returned, the lobby was back to normal.
“Horace will be fine,” Sami said. “Your father says he does have a touch of frostbite, but with proper treatment he should have no lasting ill effects. A good thing Dr. Langslow was here this weekend.”
I nodded. Having Dad here was good. He’d be able to handle any minor medical emergencies. But somehow Horace’s arrival brought home how isolated we were until the storm was over. What if someone had a heart attack? Or slipped on the icy cobblestones and cracked his skull? Or—
At least having Horace here would take care of one what-if that had been bothering me—what if the squabbling among the ornithologists escalated beyond shouting and the odd shoving match? At least for the time being, we had a duly sworn law enforcement officer on the premises to arrest anyone who crossed the line.
And maybe when Horace had recovered from his journey I’d sic him on finding out who had put the black widow spider in Dr. Green’s room. Yes, and I’d recruit Dad, too. After all, didn’t planting a dangerous spider in someone’s bathroom count as some kind of crime? Probably not attempted murder, but maybe reckless endangerment?
Or had I been watching too many crime shows lately?
I could ask Horace later. Meanwhile, I made my way through the lobby and reentered the conference area. Unfortunately Rose Noire wasn’t at the reception table. In her place sat a young black woman with long, elaborately beaded braids. She looked vaguely familiar—but only vaguely, even though she was wearing a yellow volunteer ribbon on her badge. Probably one of the grad student volunteers from Caerphilly’s biology department. She was folding a stack of the bags we’d been giving away to all registrants—a rather attractive black canvas tote bag with a snowy owl screen-printed on it, along with the conference name: OWL FEST 2019. For some reason the 2019 part always reminded me of the daunting prospect that there might be more Owl Fests in our future. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind, stopped in front of the desk, and cast a surreptitious glance at the young woman’s name tag. Melissa McKendrick.
“Hi, Meg,” she said. “Can I help you?”
“I was looking for Rose Noire,” I said. “But I bet she went to Grandfather’s owl pellet panel.” I glanced over at the door to the Hamilton Room, from which gales of laughter were emerging.
“Actually, she’s giving Dr. Green a tarot reading.” Melissa nodded toward the far corner of the Gathering Area. Rose Noire had spread out her cards on one of the tables and she and Dr. Green were bent over them, heads almost touching. Perhaps they needed to be close to hear each other over the frequent bursts of merriment from the Hamilton Room. Still, given the way he was hanging on her every word …
“I hate to disturb them,” I said.
“Anything I can do?” Melissa asked.
“Dr. Blake gave me a bunch of changes to the printed program for the banquet,” I said. “And I keep getting interrupted every time I remember I have to do them.”
“Let me do them, then,” she said. “I’m just sitting here anyway. Unless you’re using some exotic program I haven’t learned yet. I could fetch my laptop from the room unless you have a computer here.”
“My laptop’s back there.” I pointed to the doorway of the conference office. “And the program’s just done in Microsoft Word.”
“No problem, then,” she said. “Well, with the possible exception of trying to decipher Dr. Blake’s handwriting if he wrote them himself.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. “I had my cyber-savvy nephew install some dictation software on his phone. Figured it would be much easier for everyone. Now all we have to do is talk him into using it.”
“Well, I’ve had some experience decoding his scribbles,” Melissa said. “I volunteer in the aviary out at the zoo.”
“You’re perfect for the job, then.” I fetched my computer from the tiny office and she booted it up while I rummaged in my own tote bag for the marked-up program copy.
More laughter from the Hamilton Room. Mostly silence from the Lafayette Room.
“Who’s unlucky enough to be competing with the owl pellet panel?” I asked.
“Dr. Frogmore presenting some kind of research project that next to nobody wants to hear about.”
“Damn.” I winced. “I’m sure he’ll be in a foul mood by lunchtime.”
“Is he ever in a good mood?” she asked. “And to think I almost ended up studying under him.”
“What made you change your mind?” I asked.
“Not getting accepted.” She laughed, a little sardonically. “I thought I was a shoo-in. B.S. in biology from Duke, summa cum laude, tons of relevant work experience. And if you’re looking to punch your diversity ticket, which most places are these days, I’m a double threat. But apparently I didn’t quite have what it takes to make the grade at Buckthorn.”
“I hear it takes a Y chromosome,” I said.
“Pretty much.” She smiled. “Also helps having a lot less melanin than I have. Took me a while to realize what a narrow escape I’d had. I’d have been such a fish out of water at Buckthorn. Sometimes life has a way of looking out for you. I moped for a few months, kicked myself back into motion, and applied here at Caerphilly. Best decision ever—especially once I got past being scared of Dr. Blake and started volunteering at the zoo.” When she said Grandfather’s name, her face lit up in a way I’d so often seen when his students or colleagues talked about him.
“Yeah, he can be scary till you get used to him,” I said. “But he’s no
t a misogynist—just an all-purpose misanthrope.”
“About the only thing he’s prejudiced against is stupidity,” she said. “I like that in a person.”
I nodded.
“Seeing Dr. Frogmore this weekend has made me realize all over again what a lucky escape I had.” She glanced toward the door of the Lafayette Room. “I could have ended up like poor Ned Czerny.”
“Somehow I doubt it,” I said. “You seem to have a backbone.”
“He wasn’t a bad guy before Frogmore got hold of him,” she said.
“You know him?”
“Knew him,” she said. “Slightly. Not that he’d remember me. He was a teaching assistant at Duke when I was an undergrad there. Nice enough guy back then. Too easily influenced, maybe. It was turning into Frogmore’s acolyte that ruined him. Speak of the devil.”
Frogmore emerged from the Lafayette Room with Czerny on his heels. Frogmore cast a malignant glance across the room at the Hamilton Room—from which more laughter erupted—and stormed across the Gathering Area to disappear into the lobby. Czerny stood irresolute for a few moments, then departed in the opposite direction—down the hallway toward the ballroom.
To my surprise, a third person came out through the door of the Lafayette Room.
“He had an audience after all,” Melissa said, under her breath. “Will wonders never cease?”
Not, however, a very appreciative one.
The man strode over to where we were sitting and I managed to read his name tag: Dr. Nils Lindquist. He was fiftyish, tall, lanky, and fit, with sharp cheekbones and hair of such a pale blond shade that any gray hairs were hardly noticeable.
“I’m going to file a complaint,” he announced. But instead of launching into his complaint, he stormed through the Gathering Area, jerked opened the door to the lobby, and left without looking back.
“I should probably see what he’s so upset about.” I stood to follow.
“No problem,” Melissa said. “I’ll hold down the fort here while I’m making those changes to the program.”
I glanced again at Rose Noire and Dr. Green, who were now sitting with their eyes closed, presumably meditating together about whatever the outspread cards had revealed. Truly birds of a feather. Then I headed for the door to the lobby.
Owl Be Home for Christmas Page 4
