2 Murder in the Winter Read online

  Lou and I climbed a few stairs, rested until we could breathe normally again, then climbed a few more.

  I leaned forward with both hands just above my knees. I stopped wheezing just as I was about to topple forward. I stood up and almost smiled as I saw my partner in a similar predicament.

  Once I could talk, I turned to my friend.

  “Hey, Lou, if we get out of here, do you think they’ll let us in one of those Lamaze classes so we can learn how to breathe while walking up steps?”

  “The way you sounded, I could’ve sworn that you’d already attended one of those classes.”

  “I don’t know how to break it to you, but you didn’t sound so great yourself.”

  “I’ll have you know I breathe just fine as long as you don’t make me exercise my body any more than God intended.”

  “So, it’s all my fault. Listen, buddy, I haven’t forgotten who pushed me off that cliff.”

  “I didn’t push you. I merely tapped you on your shoulder. I can’t help it if you’re a bit jumpy.”

  “We’ll see how jumpy you are. I’ll let you stand on the edge of the cliff next time. Now, are you ready to proceed?”

  As we continued our journey, I thought of my second favorite form of exercise. Riding an elevator up and down. At that moment, I would’ve taken my chances on an escalator.

  A few days later, we reached a wooden door. The door had a latch, but the latch wasn’t fastened. I put my finger to my lips to insure my partner’s silence, and rested my ear upon the door. I heard nothing from the other side. As far as I was concerned, the door could’ve led anywhere. I merely hoped that it didn’t open on the bottom of the swimming pool. I didn’t want to open the door only to encounter pouring water that would push us down the steps, out the cave entrance, and over the cliff.

  I cracked open the door. A sliver of light entered. No one yanked on the door from the other side. No gun barrel squeezed through the opening. I opened the door the rest of the way, and Lou and I found ourselves in one of the inn’s two garages, the one that housed Lightning. I looked around, noticed that we were alone. Alone with a few vehicles. Immediately, I noticed a difference in the garage from when I had parked Lightning there the day before. On Friday, I parked one space over from where someone had parked a truck. The truck was no longer in the garage. Someone had backed the truck out of the garage, driven down the driveway, and left the inn. Could it have been our murderer?

  Because Lou was inside when I parked Lightning, he hadn’t seen the truck, so I let him know that not all the inmates were still at the asylum. We stood there trying to make sense of the situation. As we did so, I spotted George and some other men combing the grounds. I motioned to Lou and we walked to George to tell him our findings, and see if he had anything to report. As we grew abreast of him, the front door of the inn opened and two men rushed toward us, two of the men who tackled one of the other staircases. Their staircase led to the library. There was a button at the top of their staircase. When they pushed the button, the wall opened just like a door and the two men stepped into a vacant library. After they moved through the entrance, the wall of books slid back into place.

  As they related their story, a third duo walked around the corner of the inn. We soon learned that halfway up the third staircase they encountered a panel and a button. They too pushed a button, and when they did so the wall slid away and they found themselves looking out at the footprints that led from the wall of the inn to the edge of a cliff. Realizing that their job was only half done, the twosome continued on up the stairway and found that it ended inside a second floor closet. Could it be the one that led to the roof? Regardless, it explained how someone could’ve sneaked down the second floor hallway, entered the closet, and walked down the staircase which exited at the corner of the building. From that point, it was merely a walk to the edge of the cliff, a drop of three feet, and then a walk up another flight of stairs. Then, someone could’ve entered the garage in the middle of the night, pushed the truck downhill, and refrained from starting it and making any noise until he or she had gained the bridge. But why go to all the trouble of walking out to the edge of the cliff, when it was easier to walk down one set of stairs and up another to the garage? Could it be that there were two people making tracks? Or was someone creating red herrings to make our jobs more difficult? At any rate, a morning check had revealed that everyone was accounted for except Mrs. Dukenfield. Could the old lady have flown the coop? Or did someone do away with her? Maybe someone sent her, truck and all, over the cliff. Eventually, we would find out.

  Another thing bothered me. How could the old lady have known about the closet? She was a guest. Longworth said he didn’t know her. Could someone who worked at the inn have made those footprints instead?

  +++

  Only Officer Davis and his companion were left to be heard from. Having had enough of the cold, a passel of policemen reentered the inn. I located Longworth.

  “Mr. Longworth, I want to ask you again, do you know any of the guests who have spent time here this week?”

  “None of their names or faces are familiar to me.”

  I wasn’t satisfied with that answer. I suspected he was lying, but I had no way to prove it. I pressed on.

  “Mr. Longworth, we are commandeering the library for an undisclosed amount of time. Two of our officers are out on the property. When they return, will you ask them to join us?”

  9

  I pushed open the library door and stepped inside. The others followed. The two officers who climbed the staircase that led to the library pointed to the section of the bookcase which had parted a few minutes before and allowed them to enter the library. We walked over and searched for a button, a spring, some mechanism that would open the wall from this side. I didn’t think it was relevant to what had happened. Possibly it was the only staircase that hadn’t been used in the middle of the night. I wondered what all of the cloak and dagger stuff meant. Why did someone use the underground passageways? Why did someone leave a note on my windshield to lure me to a soon-to-be-committed murder? Someone liked playing games. Someone liked jerking my chain.

  After a few minutes of trying to find out how someone could leave the library without using the door, we found a recessed button under the table. When we pushed it, one section of the bookcase swung open into the room, just as if someone had opened a door. With that problem solved, we sat down at the table to see if our collective thoughts revealed anything else.

  “Anyone have any ideas as to what has happened here, who did it, and how it occurred?” I asked to open proceedings.

  “Only the obvious,” George replied. “Somehow, a woman posing as Mrs. Dukenfield poisoned a couple of other guests, hid for a while, and sneaked out in the middle of the night after all of us were asleep or searching rooms in the back of the inn.”

  “And what if we find Mrs. Dukenfield dead?” I asked.

  “Then it’s up to you to find out which of these other people did her in.”

  “Did any of you men on guard duty hear a vehicle running in the middle of the night?”

  As I expected, no one had. All but one of the guardsmen were present at that moment. I would put the question to Officer Davis when he returned. Somehow, I didn’t expect him to tell me that the little old lady knocked on the door before she left, asked if anyone needed anything from town, and told him she’d be back sometime the next day.

  Further rambles got us no closer to solving the case. Maybe we’d know more after Frank finished the autopsy report.

  +++

  I looked at my watch. We had been in the library almost an hour. Officer Davis and the other officer had not returned. I was concerned. I contemplated asking for volunteers to locate the two men. As I was about to ask, a noise startled us. Most everyone at the table jumped when the bookcase swung open to reveal the two missing policemen.

  “Where in the world have you two been?” I exclaimed, much like an outraged parent whose children had stay
ed out past curfew.

  “Following the ledge, just like you asked,” Officer Davis replied. “Lieutenant, that ledge spiraled around the mountain much like the markings on a corkscrew. The footprints ended after twenty or thirty steps, but we traipsed on through the snow in order to see where the ledge led. Eventually, it touched down on the ground way below the top of the cliff. There’s a stream down there. Actually, wider and deeper than a stream. We walked around to see if anyone could’ve crossed it, but we found no evidence that anyone had. Satisfied, we reclimbed the hill, only climbing that snowy hill is a lot harder than walking down it. I’m afraid to say that we stopped, out of breath a few times before we arrived at the place where we began. Because of the wet snow, neither of us was able to grab hold of something and pull ourselves back up the cliff. We had no choice but to check out the cave. I don’t mean any offense, Lieutenant, but there’s no way I figured you could’ve climbed back up. I figured you must’ve found a way out in that cave. We found the staircases, and decided to try one of them. This was the first one we tried. I don’t know who was more shocked when that bookcase opened, the two of us or all of you.”

  Everyone laughed at Officer Davis’s remark.

  “Officer Davis, I assume you didn’t see a truck anywhere in your exploits? Like at the bottom of the cliff?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you by any chance hear someone leaving in a truck in the middle of the night, or early this morning?”

  “No, Lieutenant. Things were relatively quiet during my shift. Once all of you settled down for the night, the only time I saw another human being was when Officer Downs came to relieve me so I could get some sleep.”

  +++

  We left the conference room and returned to the lobby. I could think of no reason to detain the other officers any longer, so I told George that Lou and I could handle things until further notice. As George and I stood talking I could see Longworth trying to get my attention. I excused myself and went to see what Longworth wanted.

  “I don’t know if this interests you, or not, Lieutenant, but one of yesterday’s expected guests has arrived.”

  “Oh, and who might that be?”

  “A Mr. Claude Williams from Peoria, Illinois. Mr. Williams manages a motel in Peoria. He told me he had left the stress of running a motel behind for a few days, plus he plans to see how we run things here.”

  “And did Mr. Williams give any reason for arriving late?”

  “The weather delayed him.”

  I asked for Williams’s room number. After I bid goodbye to my compatriots, I would pay him a visit.

  I informed Sidney Longworth that the other policemen were leaving, and as far as he was concerned, it would be business as usual. He asked how long Sgt. Murdock and I would be staying. I told him I didn’t know, but I wanted to retain the conference room for further questioning. He looked nervous and displeased, but said nothing.

  +++

  After the uniformed officers left, George asked me if I’d walk out with him. I knew something was on his mind, but not sure what.

  We wrapped up and I opened the door and felt the cold air smack us in the face. We stepped out onto the front steps, and I turned to close the door. As I turned back to George, I noticed the smile on his face. I knew I was in for it.

  “Cy, I know you know what you’re doing, but I have some advice for you, from one friend to another.”

  “Okay, George, get it over with.”

  “Well, Cy, I know I’m more of an outdoorsman than you are, so I wanted to help you shore up the areas where you don’t have a clue. The next time you decide to go rappelling off the side of a cliff, would you please use ropes instead of a tree? For a minute I thought we were going to have to send a team down to the bottom to carry your body up.”

  “You mean you thought I didn’t know the ledge was there?”

  “Cy, that look on your face was real. The last time I saw you that scared was when someone else got the last piece of pie at the policemen’s Christmas dinner a couple of years ago. And if you thought you were scared, you should’ve seen Lou.”

  “Do you mean when I fell or when I asked him to join me?”

  “Both.”

  The two of us laughed, shook hands, and George told me to call him the next time I found myself in a jam. Then, he walked off to that tank he drives, and I turned to go back inside.

  +++

  I informed Lou about our new guest and told him that I wanted to question Williams before we reconvened in the library.

  I mounted the steps, walked down the hall until I came to Williams’s room. I knocked, and shortly a man opened the door. He seemed to recognize me, but caught himself and assumed an aloof persona. I introduced myself and asked for a minute of his time. He seemed frightened, but relented, and opened the door for me to enter. Five minutes later I had no more information than I had gathered from Longworth. This one needed watching, but I could think of no reason to detain him any longer, so I excused myself. Maybe I would question him further at lunch.

  I walked out. Lou told me he would meet me in the conference room, so I ambled down the hall to see how we could muddle the case more than we had up to that point. We hunkered down and started to work. Well, as much as one can hunker down in a conference room.

  “Any comments before we start?”

  “No, Cy, you start.”

  “Okay, let’s look at what we have so far. We have two guests, Miles Mycroft and Arthur Plankton, dead. We don’t know why someone wished to eliminate them. We have another guest, Isabel Dukenfield, missing. It’s possible that she fell over the cliff, and when I check with Longworth to see what kind of vehicle she was driving, we might know whether or not she escaped. We have a third guest, Claude Williams, who came to the inn a day later than he had planned. We have a fourth guest, whose name I do not yet know, who didn’t arrive. Or did he? We have the inns two owners and five employees. Somewhere in this mess we have a murderer. Unless you have something more urgent, I plan to talk to Longworth, get the addresses of each of the guests, and call Sam Schumann to see what he can tell us about them. Also, when I have learned what mode of transportation Mrs. Dukenfield used to get to the inn, I’ll check the garage to see if her vehicle is still there. While she didn’t look like someone who would drive a truck, no other vehicle is missing. Maybe she stole someone else’s transportation. Anything I’m neglecting?”

  “The only thing I can think of, Cy, is to find out if Longworth knows who used the room in the back wing that was supposed to be vacant.”

  “I had planned to do that. I want to bring Longworth back in here to see what else he’ll tell us. We might learn something more. We might not. But, I want to get him in here and see if additional questions make him nervous. Anything else, Lou?”

  “Just that I figured the old lady left either because she is our murderer, or she knows who the murderer is and figured she might be next. Do you reckon Longworth knew all these people and invited them out so he could butcher them?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call these victims butchered. But to answer your question, no, I don’t think Longworth got them here to murder them. I’d think if he were the killer, he would have lured them somewhere where he has no ties.”

  “Any possibility that one of the victims was killed by accident? After all, if Frank’s guess is right, the men were poisoned. Could it be that one or the other of them drank or ate something intended for someone else?”

  “Maybe we can better answer that question after Frank gets back to us and lets us know how the victims were murdered. It’s possible that both weren’t murdered in the same way. Maybe, Plankton drowned in that pool.”

  “Maybe, but somehow I don’t think so.”

  “Me either.”

  “Oh, one other thing, Cy. Why was Mycroft wearing a disguise, so to speak? Was he afraid of someone here? Was it important for him to be here, but also important that no one recognized him? And is it possible that he and someone else
chose this place to have it out, and the other person spotted his disguise and won out?”

  “Another good point, Lou, and of course, I don’t know the answer. Let’s go back to the note I received on my car. That person was so sure he or she would get the best of me, but how could he be sure, and which of the people we’ve met best fits the description of someone who’s so sure that he or she will win? Could it be Longworth, who sits here in his castle unafraid of me, or someone else? Or could it be McArthur, who might be playing dumb when he acted like he thought this whole thing was part of a play, or a tryout for one?”

  We weren’t getting anywhere sitting on our keisters, so it was time to get to work. I left Lou to question Longworth, but returned after spotting the morning snacks had been set out for the few guests who were left. Even though there was only a few different kinds of unrecognizable cheese squares, healthy-looking crackers, and grapes, I told Lou to grab some so we would have something to eat before tackling our candy. He set out to do that while I cornered Longworth. When we were finished talking, Longworth gave me a list of all the guests and employees of the inn. All the employees lived at the inn. He provided the guests’ addresses. I also had him write down the time that each guest registered. The inn didn’t ask for car license numbers, and he had no idea what Isabel Dukenfield drove. I thanked him. I would question him more later, as well as each of his employees. Maybe I would learn something new.