“I’ll open the doors,” Mother said.
The first few people to enter the ballroom halted just inside and stood gazing at the buffet in amazement. Then they hurried to grab plates and another batch of awestruck diners took their place.
First in line was the Hanukkah table, all a-glitter with blue and silver tinsel and featuring a huge antique Art Deco menorah in sterling silver. There were platters of smoked salmon, trays of rugelach, babkas, and sufganiyot, and on small nearby steam tables, dishes of brisket and of latkes. The main table also held a large collection of side dishes or trimmings—cream cheese, applesauce, onions, pickles, horseradish, tomatoes, capers, and such—and was strewn with Hanukkah gelt and chocolate-marshmallow dreidels on pretzel sticks. I’d had the Inn’s brisket before, and planned to hit that table before it ran out if I had to trample a few scientists to do it.
Next up came Indian food: samosas, pakoras, dal, naan, poori, paratha, chicken tikka masala, butter chicken, tandoori chicken, rogan josh, lamb vindaloo, malai kofta, matar paneer, and biryani. Since Indian was one of my favorite cuisines, I was planning a stop there, too.
The soup kettles included oyster stew, chili, matzoh ball soup, tomato soup, vegetable beef soup, hot and sour soup, and miso soup. The main dish table featured turkey, Virginia ham, prime rib, standing rib roast, pork roast, roast goose, Peking duck, lasagna, pizza, burritos, tamales, macaroni and cheese, and, in direct defiance of Grandfather’s orders, grilled portobello mushrooms in red wine sauce.
Anyone who had an inch of space left on their plate by this time would have to choose between mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, collards, grits, black-eyed peas, okra, glazed carrots, green bean casserole, corn pudding, baked beans, stewed tomatoes, cranberry relish, cranberry gelatin mold … and I was probably overlooking a few things.
I planned to hit the four or five kinds of salad heavily and do what I could to ignore the dozen kinds of bread and rolls. But no power on earth could keep me away from the dessert table, though I hoped I could keep my foraging there to a crème brûlée cup or two and a chocolate chip cookie. Okay, Mother had conned someone into making the family pumpkin pie, so add that in. And there were blueberry, pecan, cherry, apple, and key lime pies. Chocolate, yellow, angel food, and carrot cake. Brownies, sugar cookies, M&M cookies, and more gingerbread people. Chocolate mousse. Plum pudding.
Beyond the desserts was a section I wasn’t sure I wanted to visit—though I was curious to see how Dr. Hirano and Dr. Arai would react to it. The two Japanese scientists were moving methodically down the buffet line, taking tiny samples of each dish on offer. Their politely smiling faces didn’t quite convince me that they were delighted with all this. More likely, they were taking detailed mental notes of the kind that would be useful when they got back home and wanted to regale their friends and family with stories about the peculiar foodstuffs the Americans tried to feed them.
But I kept my eyes on them, and even though their backs were to me I could tell the second they hit the part of the buffet Ekaterina had arranged with them in mind. I had no idea what dishes were there—a passing glance had revealed that the ingredients included rather more tentacles and seaweed than I wanted to think about, much less eat. But clearly Dr. Hirano and Dr. Arai were delighted. They took generous portions of everything in that section and hastened back to their table to dive in. I suspected they wouldn’t be disappointed. The Inn hosted enough Japanese tourists that Ekaterina had seen the wisdom of hiring a chef whose training had included a stint at the Tsuji Culinary Institute.
I took my seat with Michael and the boys, who had worked up enormous appetites while shoveling snow. I was delighted to see that the boys’ heavily laden plates included a wide variety of foods—including some of the seaweed and tentacle concoctions intended to delight the Japanese scientists.
“This is great, Mom,” Jamie exclaimed, through a mouth full of prime rib. “We should eat like this more often.”
Josh was too busy consuming some tentacles to comment, although he gave his brother’s suggestion a thumbs-up.
“We can have any of these foods whenever you like,” Michael said. “Just don’t expect all of them at once, since we don’t have a dozen staff members to cook them for us.”
Grandfather either hadn’t noticed the presence of mushrooms on the buffet or was taking a mellow holiday attitude toward them. I worried a little when I saw Dr. Czerny bustle up to him holding a conference tote bag full of … something. A whole lot of paper, by the look of it. But to my relief, it seemed to be something Grandfather wanted, or at least wasn’t entirely displeased at receiving. Not that Grandfather wasn’t perfectly capable of telling Dr. Czerny to go to hell if the occasion warranted. But it had been a long and tiring weekend and I wanted to spare him stress. I felt slightly easier when I saw that Dr. Czerny had only stayed long enough to drop off whatever it was. He then filled a plate at the buffet and slipped out. And I cheered up even more when, a few minutes later, Grandfather handed over the tote bag and his key card to Rose Noire, who dashed off with them. Good. Whatever Dr. Czerny had been entrusting to Grandfather, it was out of his hands—and, I hoped, off his mind.
He seemed to be having a wonderful time, sitting with the two Japanese scientists on one side of him and Dr. Craine on the other, with Dr. Green and Rose Noire nearby. Although I did notice that whenever the door opened for another attendee to enter, most of them looked up. And when Dr. Lindquist arrived, a little later than most, he got a round of applause and cheers. He still looked slightly shaky—was it the close call with jail or the aftermath of his migraine? But he also looked happy as he took his seat at Grandfather’s table.
When the traffic at the buffet had died down a bit, I noticed that the staff were taking turns slipping out of the kitchen and filling plates at the buffet—although they went down the back of the tables instead of the front, and seemed more than a little anxious.
“I gave them permission.” Apparently Ekaterina had noticed my glance. “And the Inn will, of course, be picking up the tab for that portion of the meal consumed by the staff.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “Grandfather will insist on treating them. Between the weather and the murder, they’ve all had to do much more than is in any of their job descriptions. And when are you having your dinner?”
“I will fill a plate and join you in a bit,” she said with a smile. “As soon as I check on one or two more things. And I’m going to take a plate up to Mrs. Ackley. It’s not her fault her husband turned out to be a homicidal maniac.”
Her tone somehow suggested that she had had extensive experience comforting unfortunate women to whom this had happened.
“How is she taking it—do you know?”
“Not well,” she admitted. Then her face darkened. “But she can’t not eat.” With that she slipped into the kitchen.
I saw the chief and Horace sitting nearby, deep in conversation. I stopped by to see them.
“This dinner almost makes up for the walk here.” Horace hoisted a forkful of mashed potatoes as if giving a toast.
“Horace and I were just discussing the fact that Mr. Ackley was probably responsible for the attack on you,” the chief said. “We found two key cards on him, one of which appears to have the same kind of access as the one that was taken from you. We’ll figure out for sure when Ekaterina has time to do some digging in her card system.”
“I should have told you that I’d found Ackley wandering around in the basement Saturday afternoon,” I said. “He claimed he’d gotten there through a propped-open door and then got lost in the maze, and it sounded perfectly plausible to me. He even pointed out the doorstop he claimed had been used to prop open the door he used to get into the staff-only parts of the hotel. He played me.”
“Even if you had told us, I’m not sure we would have found it suspicious,” the chief said. “Since we were unaware that he had any connection to Dr. Frogmore.”
“And we knew whoever stole Serafin
a’s key card had accessed the freight elevator,” Horace said. “We just didn’t know why.”
“Do we now?”
“We have an idea,” the chief said. “Apparently his original plan was to burn down the Inn with as many ornithologists as possible trapped inside.”
“Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“No.” The chief shook his head.
“For someone who supposedly wants to exercise his right to remain silent until he gets a lawyer, he’s sure been pretty verbose,” Horace said through a mouthful of burrito. “His original plan was to check out, put his wife on a plane for home, telling her he had a business meeting somewhere, come back here and set the Inn on fire, and then shoot anyone who tried to escape. He used Serafina’s stolen key card to scout out the staff-only parts of the hotel for a likely place to set his fire. And then to plant evidence in Dr. Lindquist’s and Dr. Blake’s rooms.”
“What evidence?”
“Matchbooks from some restaurant or other,” the chief said. “That would be identical to the matchbook he was going to leave at the scene of the crime. At least that’s what he’s claiming now.”
“Do many restaurants still give out matchbooks?” I asked.
“Evidently,” the chief said. “But since we found no matchbooks of any kind in either room, we’re not sure whether to believe him.”
“It’s a little worrisome,” Horace said. “What if he actually planted something else? Something more dangerous.”
“Something directly related to the poisoning,” the chief added.
“If Mr. Ackley planted matches in their rooms, the housekeeping staff would have confiscated them,” I said. “Ekaterina’s orders. She’s a little paranoid about guests setting the hotel on fire. She’d have kept the matchbooks, of course, so she could give them back at checkout if their owners cared enough to complain.”
“That would explain it,” the chief said.
“I’ll go and ask her.” Horace stood.
“Finish your dinner,” the chief said. “It will keep. At any rate, he’d already planted the matchbooks before the snowstorm came along to derail his arson scheme.”
“So when he realized burning down the hotel would incinerate him and his wife along with the rest of us, he changed his plan and decided to kill Frogmore instead?” I asked.
“He’s not talking about that,” the chief said. “And we can’t interrogate him until we get a lawyer here for him. I expect he assumes it’s perfectly safe to talk about the arson plan, since it never came off, but he’s wary of getting into the things he actually did, like attacking you and killing Frogmore.”
“My theory is that he didn’t necessarily target Frogmore at all,” Horace said. “He used his illicit access to the staff-only areas to poison something he knew was headed for the banquet, and it was pure luck that he got one of his biggest enemies.”
“Doesn’t sound all that plausible to me.” The chief shook his head. “Too big a coincidence. At the very least, I think we’ll find he put the poison in something that had a good chance of getting to Frogmore.”
“We’ll know more once we get him back to town and hook him up with a lawyer,” Horace said.
The chief nodded.
“So are you going to get Randall to take you back to town?” I asked him. “Or did Ekaterina find you a room for the night?”
“Actually, your grandfather offered me the study in his cottage,” the chief said. “He assures me that the Inn’s Murphy beds are actually quite luxurious.”
I was relieved. Not that I’d have hesitated to offer the chief space in our cottage, but things were already a little chaotic with Horace and the boys in residence.
“Let me know if you need me for anything,” I said.
The chief nodded, and they went back to police talk.
Chapter 31
I decided to go back for … thirds? Fourths? I’d lost count. On my way to the buffet, I stopped by Grandfather’s table to speak to Dr. Lindquist, who was now happily eating his way through a plate piled high with various tentacled delights from the Japanese section.
“Glad you were able to make it,” I said.
“Yeah, I could be eating bread and water in solitary,” he said.
“Now, now,” I said. “The meals at the Caerphilly jail are catered by Muriel’s Diner, and the only complaint we’ve ever heard is that the portions are so large it gives the prisoners indigestion.”
“Okay, that almost makes me sorry I didn’t get to eat there,” he said. “Still, I guess I owe a debt of thanks to this Ackley guy.”
“For what?” I asked. “Terrorizing the whole conference and threatening to shoot Grandfather?”
“Well, no.” He grimaced. “That must have been pretty awful, no question. But you have to admit, things were looking pretty grim for me until he had his meltdown. Incriminating evidence found in my room, my own confession about borrowing the housekeeper’s key card, plus your police chief found out about the time Frogmore claimed I’d tried to strangle him at a conference last year.”
“Tried to strangle him?”
“Actually, I only threatened, but for some reason Frogmore managed to convince people I’d actually tried it. So if Ackley had decided that having killed Frogmore he could declare victory and go home, I’d still be up the creek.”
He had a point.
“I’m surprised no one recognized Ackley,” I said. “If he was a major figure on the lumber industry side of the whole spotted owl thing.”
“You mean why didn’t I recognize him, right?” He chuckled at the idea. “Frankly, I never heard of him, so maybe he wasn’t all that major a figure. Or maybe he was, but before I got involved. The whole controversy started thirty or thirty-five years ago, remember. I may look like an old fogey, but the spotted owl thing, as you call it, was already well underway by the time I hit grad school. And I’ve done some reading about how it all started, but the name Ackley never showed up.”
“Or Ackwood Lumber?”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “Although frankly, even if he was still involved in some way—most of us on the conservation side of the issue don’t meet the high muckety-mucks of the timber industry. Just their lawyers. And another thing—it’s a Pacific Northwest battle, remember. Only four of us here are from that part of the world—Frogmore, Czerny, Green, and me. And Green and Czerny are younger than I am.”
“Which leaves Frogmore”
“Yeah. Frogmore.” He popped another small tentacle in his mouth, chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed before answering. “Okay, say Ackley was active on the lumber side twenty-five or thirty years ago—it only makes sense that Frogmore would have heard of him. Might even recognize him. But if he did, why didn’t he out him to the rest of us? I mean, why wouldn’t he?”
“No reason,” I said. “Unless he and Frogmore were really on the same side.”
“Bingo!” I tried not to look at the odd bit of seafood he waved to underscore his point. “And it would be very interesting to find out exactly why Ackley was here in the first place. No offense, because I really like Caerphilly—at least what I got to see of it before the snowstorm. I wouldn’t mind having more of a chance to look around—and I’d definitely come back to the Inn in a heartbeat. But it’s not all that well-known a tourist destination.”
“Please don’t let Mayor Shiffley hear you say that,” I said.
“How about not nearly as well-known as it deserves to be?” he said, with a laugh. “So you’ve got to admit, it’d be a pretty odd coincidence if Ackley just happened to show up here the same weekend as the Owl Fest.”
“You think he came to kill Frogmore?”
“Could be. Or maybe he came to meet with Frogmore, got mad at him, and knocked him off.”
“And instead of just letting an innocent bystander take the fall, he stages a highly dramatic hostage situation?”
“He probably lost it.” Lindquist shrugged. “He was unbalanced to start with. We may never know
. Just as we may never know for sure whether Frogmore was in bed with the lumber industry.”
“Don’t despair,” I said. “There’s going to be a murder trial, remember? Which means that both the defense and the prosecution will be digging into the connection between Frogmore and Ackley.”
“You think they’ll find anything?”
“Ackley may have lost his lumber company, but I get the impression he’s still got enough money to hire a good defense attorney,” I said. “And Caerphilly may be a sleepy little town, but Chief Burke spent over a decade as a homicide detective with the Baltimore PD. If there’s dirt, one side or the other will find it.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” He grabbed his wineglass. “Here’s to the chief finding all the dirt!”
I clinked my glass with his, and left him to wallow in his tentacle feast.
I headed for the buffet again. Heavenly—they’d just brought out another batch of brisket. I took a little of that—okay, a decent portion—and added a Christmas tamale and a slice of country ham.
“Whose idea was this, anyway?” Grandfather appeared beside me, holding a half-filled plate. “Much as I’d like to claim credit for it, I know I didn’t think this up.”
“Ekaterina,” I said.
“Smart lady.” He speared a slice of the ham. “She’s saving a couple of possible weekends for Owl Fest 2020. Weekends that are earlier in the year and don’t conflict with anything she can think of. Talk to her, see which one you think works best, then book it and tell me what I should put on my calendar.”
“I can do that,” I said. “What—”
“Aha! That’s good to see.” He pointed back at his table where Dr. Craine and Melissa McKendrick were absorbed in a conversation. “Vera Craine would make an outstanding external advisor for Melissa’s doctoral committee. And I think she’ll agree to do it if she sees what a sharp cookie Melissa is.”
He beamed at seeing the progress his academic matchmaking was having.
“And now I should go let Ben Green tell me about his new project. He’s suggesting that we drive the barred owls out of the spotted owls’ territory by setting up thousands of loudspeakers out in the woods to broadcast barred owl cries of pain and distress.”
Owl Be Home for Christmas Page 23
