Owl Be Home for Christmas

by Donna Andrews

  “But how long does it take when it’s this cold?” I wanted to ask. How long did I have? I remembered Sami saying that in weather like this it could take as little as ten minutes to get frostbite. Wasn’t that bad enough? I had no desire to lose fingers or toes.

  I could take off walking along the edge of the hotel. Of course, it wouldn’t exactly be walking—it would be floundering through drifts four, sometimes five feet high. I wasn’t at all sure I could make it in time.

  Maybe staying near the door was smart. Grandfather would probably send someone to fetch Percival if I hadn’t yet shown up by the time his panel drew near. I could keep banging on the door and hope they came in time. Not an optimal plan. It could be an hour before anyone got here, and what if they were so focused on fetching Percival that they ignored the banging?

  Just then I noticed something. There were only a couple of inches of snow right outside the door. Someone had cleared the area. And I saw a small depression in the snow near the edge of the cleared area.

  I waded over to the depression and started scooping snow out.

  “Yes!” I exclaimed.

  I’d found the start of Josh and Jamie’s tunnel.

  I wriggled my way in, sternly repressing my claustrophobia, which kept urging me to wriggle out again and run away. It was a tight squeeze—I had to take off the quilted blanket to do it—but at least I fit. A few years ago, before the boys’ growth spurt had sent them shooting up to nearly my height, I wouldn’t have.

  I began crawling along the tunnel, pushing the blanket ahead of me, in case I needed it for warmth later.

  I hoped they’d found a pretty direct route from our cottage to the wing the storage room was in.

  And what if they’d started a new tunnel at the door I’d been locked out of, a tunnel that hadn’t yet met up with the one that led away from the cottage? What if I came to a dead end that marked the limit of their excavations before they’d gone off to shovel snow at the front of the hotel?

  “Then I’ll stand up and get my bearings,” I muttered. There couldn’t be more than a foot or two of snow overhead. I could dig through that, couldn’t I?

  I noticed that it seemed warmer inside the tunnel than it had outside. Was that possible? Or was I just getting used to the cold? That wasn’t a comforting thought. Wasn’t getting used to the cold a step along the journey to frostbite?

  And what if whoever had shoved me outside came back to look for me. To check on me, or more likely finish me off?

  “Then you’re no worse off here than you would be back there,” I told myself. I crawled on.

  I realized that the tunnel had been sloping up for some time. Well, that made sense. The short route from the cottage to the storage room led down a flight of stairs at the end of the terraced gardens that surrounded the cottages and overlooked the golf course. The long way was to make a detour into the golf course where the land sloped down more gently. I’d been rather hoping the boys’ tunnel had led to the stairs. Okay, evidently we were going through the golf course. I just needed to keep crawling.

  I had to choke back tears of relief when I spotted a literal light at the end of the tunnel. I started crawling faster, and in another couple of minutes I found myself in the cave right outside the French doors of the Madison Cottage.

  I tried the door handle with trembling hands and breathed a sigh of relief. It was open.

  I stepped inside, closed the door behind me, and shut my eyes for just a moment, savoring the warmth. Then my eyes flew open again.

  “No time for that,” I muttered. I raced out the front door, across the courtyard, and through the lobby. When I burst through the door of the Command Post, the chief and Horace looked up in surprise.

  “I think someone just tried to kill me,” I blurted out.

  “What?” The chief rose to his feet.

  Michael appeared in the Command Post doorway, with the boys pressing in behind him.

  “Meg, are you all right?” he asked. “We saw you running through the lobby.”

  “Someone threw this blanket over my head, stole my phone and my key card, and shoved me out in the snow when I was fetching Percival,” I said. “I might have frozen to death if I hadn’t been able to use the boys’ tunnels to get back to the cottage.”

  “Awesome!” “Go, Mom!” the boys exclaimed.

  “Who is Percival, and what are these tunnels?” the chief demanded.

  “Percival is an owl that we’ve been keeping in a storage room at the far end of the hotel,” I said. “Grandfather needs him for his panel in—yikes! Fifteen minutes. I should go get him.”

  “I’ll get Percival.” Michael gently pushed me back into a nearby chair. “Josh, can you fetch your grandfather so he can make sure Mom is okay? And Jamie, please tell Great that Percival might be a little late.”

  “Michael, while you’re fetching Percival, you can show Horace where all this occurred,” the chief said. “And meanwhile Meg can give me a more complete account of what happened.”

  Everyone but the chief and I dashed out.

  “Okay, tell me about it,” the chief said.

  I gave him the blow-by-blow account. When I’d finished, he looked thoughtful.

  “You seriously think the person who did this was trying to kill you?”

  I took a deep breath and considered the question.

  “Good point,” I said. “If their goal was to kill me, they could have just hit me over the head. More accurate to say that whoever did it didn’t care if I lived or died. So what was their goal? Not birdnapping, I expect. Percival’s an interesting specimen, but I can’t imagine why anyone would steal him.”

  Actually, I could imagine a scenario in which someone wanted to steal Percival—what if they’d needed to hide something small and valuable? They could get Percival to swallow it—maybe by taping it to a mouse they were feeding him—and then retrieve it when Percival puked it up in a pellet that would also contain the indigestible parts of the mouse. In which case, seeing me about to haul Percival away and not knowing where I was taking him, they might well want to stop me and preserve their access to Percival, at least until the sought-after pellet appeared.

  But just because I could imagine such a scenario didn’t mean I believed in it. I suspected even Dad, if faced with such a sequence of events in one of his beloved mystery books, would—well, not toss it across the room. Not his style. But he would gently suggest to anyone who asked him what he thought of the book in question that he’d found the plot a trifle far-fetched.

  “We’ll find out in a few minutes if the owl is safe,” the chief said.

  “And it’s more likely they were after something I was carrying,” I said. “Maybe my phone. More likely my key card. Ekaterina gave me one with pretty broad access privileges.”

  “That seems more likely,” the chief said. “It’s also possible that whoever did this wanted to prevent you from seeing him there in the storage area. It would be interesting to find out why—when Horace calls in, I’ll tell him to start a search. Did you notice anything about your assailant?”

  “Not really.” I closed my eyes and replayed the incident in my mind—what there was of it. It had happened so fast. “Except that whoever did it wasn’t tiny. He wasn’t reaching up to throw the blanket over me. He was more or less my height. And strong enough that he didn’t have too much trouble shoving me out the door. I was too surprised to fight much but still, I’m no lightweight. And I’m saying he, but I can’t remember anything to disprove the idea that it was a tall woman.”

  “We should go and check to see who’s been safely ensconced in a panel for the last hour.” The chief glanced at his watch, and then at a copy of the conference program that I’d given Horace. “And then—”

  “Chief?” Horace opened the door and peered in.

  “What’s up?”

  “The owl’s fine. Dr. Blake has him now. And I have Meg’s phone and her tote bag.” He stepped into the Command Post and handed them to me.
“I came back to get my kit—I figured I should process the scene. Could be attempted murder.”

  “Assault and battery, at the very least,” the chief said. “And reckless endangerment. So yes; process the scene, and then I’ll come help you search the area. What if Meg interrupted something the perpetrator didn’t want anyone to see?”

  Horace nodded and went to pick up his kit.

  Someone else knocked on the door.

  “It never rains,” the chief murmured. “Come in!” he called, more loudly.

  Dr. Craine opened the door and stood in the doorway for a moment. Then she strode in and took the vacant chair that I’d come to think of as the hot seat, since it was where Horace and the chief tended to put the people they were interviewing.

  “Chief Burke.” She fixed a steely gaze on him.

  “You remember Dr. Vera Craine,” I said. Apart from their brief meeting when the chief was notifying his persons of interest, all their interaction had been over the phone, so I wasn’t positive he’d remember who she was.

  “Of course,” the chief said. “What can we do for you?”

  “I came to face the music,” Dr. Craine said.

  Chapter 27

  Face the music?

  Dr. Craine sat with her feet planted on the floor, arms resting on the arms of the chair, leaning forward in what came across as an ever-so-slightly tense and anxious posture, only moving her head as she shifted her gaze from the chief, to Horace, to me, and then back to the chief again.

  “Face what music?” the chief asked.

  “To come clean. I knocked off Frogmore. I can’t let Monty take the fall for something I did.”

  Face the music. Come clean. Knock off. Take the fall. What was it about a murder investigation that compelled people to pepper their speech with clichés out of a thirties gangster movie?

  Her confession didn’t completely surprise me—after all, she’d been on the list of suspects I’d pointed out to the chief. But still, I wasn’t sure I believed her. Or maybe I just didn’t want to.

  The chief studied her for a few moments. Was he running over what he remembered from her interview? Sizing up the probability that she’d thrown the quilted blanket over my head? She was tall enough.

  “Why don’t you tell us all about it?” he said finally.

  “Glad to.” She leaned back, crossed her legs, and launched into an account of how Frogmore had tried to ruin her career.

  A lengthy account. In much more detail than she’d given me Saturday morning in the bar. She’d told me Frogmore had accused her of falsifying her research—now she gave chapter and verse of every accusation, every refutation. After twenty minutes she’d only just begun to touch on the charges of plagiarism. Horace was scribbling in his notebook as fast as he could but the chief just sat and listened. I knew he often liked to let his witnesses talk freely—give them enough rope to hang themselves, if they were guilty. But I was a little puzzled that he hadn’t made at least some attempt to move her along from motive to means and opportunity.

  Or maybe he’d decided she was talking so fast that he didn’t fancy his chances of getting a word in edgewise. Eventually she unscrewed the top of the water bottle she was carrying and took a long pull. The chief used that brief pause to take back the conversation.

  “I think we can understand your motive, Dr. Craine,” he said. “And I’m sure your defense attorney will be able to make constructive use of this information. But perhaps we could move forward to the actual crime. As I’m sure you’re aware, due to the extreme weather conditions, we haven’t yet been able to pursue our investigations in quite the way we usually would. Limited technical capabilities. But perhaps you can help us out—just how did you kill Dr. Frogmore?”

  “I poisoned him, of course.”

  She beamed at us as if very pleased with herself.

  “Yes. Precisely what did you use?”

  She frowned.

  “You mean you haven’t figured that out yet?”

  “We haven’t yet been able to get any samples off the grounds of the Inn,” the chief said. “Much less down to Richmond for toxicology testing. And to be perfectly frank, those tests cost an arm and a leg—and we’re a very small county. If we can tell them what to look for and they just have to confirm it, the bill will be a lot lower than if they have to test for every poison in creation.”

  Odd. I’d never heard the chief say that before. Of course, we were in the last few weeks of the budget year, but still …

  “Dr. Langslow hasn’t figured it out yet?” Dr. Craine said.

  “He’s still working on his theories. So you could help us out here.…”

  Now I knew the chief was up to something.

  “I’m not sure I should say any more,” Dr. Craine said. “I don’t want to get anyone else in trouble.”

  “So you had an accomplice?” the chief asked.

  “No! I did it all myself. But I don’t want to get anyone else in trouble for unwittingly helping me.”

  “And I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what you put this unknown poison in.”

  She paused as if considering, then shook her head.

  The chief was silent for a few moments. Then he chuckled slightly.

  “Dr. Craine, I’m perfectly willing to believe you have the strongest possible motive for killing Dr. Frogmore. But unless you can tell me how you did it, you’re not going to convince me that you killed him.”

  She frowned at him.

  “Ironic,” she said finally. “I bet if I were denying that I’d done it you’d be trying to prove I did. But now…”

  She shrugged, sat back in her chair, and took another swig from her water bottle.

  Horace looked completely puzzled. Anyone who knew him would think the chief’s face was impassive. I could tell he was slight puzzled and more than slightly annoyed—probably because he shared my suspicion that Dr. Craine’s confession was taking time from more urgent things.

  “Dr. Craine was telling me about all this yesterday.” I kept my eyes on her. “About how Dr. Frogmore did his best to ruin her career. She also told me about how Grandfather saved it. Dr. Craine, would it ease your mind at all to know that the chief doesn’t seriously suspect Grandfather?”

  She frowned and appeared to be choosing her words carefully.

  “That would be good to know,” she said finally. “I had heard rumors. Including one that incriminating evidence had been found in his room. Which I knew was nonsense, of course, since I did it. The murder, I mean. If incriminating evidence was found in Monty’s cottage, someone else must have planted it.”

  “And anyone could have done it.” Horace had obviously picked up on what I was suggesting. “The SPOOR members were rehearsing there, Dr. Blake let a whole bunch of people use it for meetings if they couldn’t find a room someplace else. Finding something in his room would be about as incriminating as finding it in the lobby.”

  “Dr. Craine, where were you for the last forty-five minutes?”

  “In a panel. Appearing on it, I should say. The panel started at one.”

  “And you were in it all the time?”

  She frowned, then nodded.

  “Who else was with you?”

  “Ben Green and George Voss. And Ned Czerny, of course, but Monty sort of added him in as a sop, since he’d canceled the panel he and Dr. Frogmore were going to give at two thirty.”

  “Were you together the whole time?” the chief asked.

  “Hard to give a panel from separate rooms,” she said.

  “I meant, did any of you come in late, leave early, or skip out in the middle for any reason?”

  “Oh, I see. No. Even Ned Czerny stuck it out till the bitter end, even though it was clear the poor man was out of his depth.”

  The chief nodded.

  “Dr. Craine,” he said. “If you want to continue confessing, you’re welcome to, but unless you’re prepared to give a few more specific details about how you did in Dr. Frogmore, it�
�s a little hard to take you seriously.”

  “Okay,” she said. “It was a stupid idea, anyway. I was worried about Monty—Dr. Blake. I’m sure all this has taken it out of him, and the idea that he might end up in jail, even temporarily…”

  “You heard rumors,” I said. “Exactly what were they?”

  “Word around the conference is that they’d had a knock-down-drag-out quarrel about something Frogmore did that made Monty completely lose it,” she said. “And that Chief Burke snowmobiled over specially to arrest Monty. And worst of all, that when you searched his cottage you’d found the package from whatever poison was used to kill Frogmore. I heard that part from George Voss. No idea where he got it.”

  The chief nodded thoughtfully. Horace was frowning. So was I. The rumor wasn’t entirely accurate—we’d found the package insert, not the package, in Dr. Lindquist’s room, not Grandfather’s. But still, how had anyone known?

  “I’ll stop interfering with your work, then.” Dr. Craine rose.

  She opened the door just as Dr. Lindquist was about to knock on it.

  “You missed a good panel,” Dr. Craine said to him on her way out.

  “So I heard.” Lindquist looked perfectly cheerful. “With any luck I can catch most of the next panel—after the chief asks me whatever he wants to ask?” He didn’t look worried. But he did look a little sweaty and disheveled.

  He raised an eyebrow and stood in the doorway as if expecting he could answer a quick question and then catch up with Dr. Craine and rejoin the conference.

  “Come in, Dr. Lindquist. Horace, if you wouldn’t mind getting started on that new search. Meg, you look as if you could use a rest.”

  In other words, the chief wanted to be alone with Dr. Lindquist.

  Horace picked up his forensic kit and left. I grabbed my tote bag and followed him out.

  I went straight to the Mount Vernon Grill and begged Eduardo to put a rush on a chicken Caesar salad.

  “Are you sure?” he said. “Because the combination Hanukkah, winter solstice, end of the conference dinner is going to be fabulous. You don’t want to spoil your appetite for that.”