Death of a Batty Genius (Stormy Day Mystery #3) (17 page)

Even with our narrow, modern snowshoes, we staggered back to the trekking hut as bowlegged as first-time cowgirls, tired but smiling.

Benji had made it back already and returned his equipment. We wiped down our gear, returned everything to its right place in the hut, then went back to the lodge.

We stopped in the room to check on Jeffrey and freshen up. Christopher wasn’t in his adjoining room, so we went in search of him.

The recreation room was empty, but we heard people talking in the next room, the gym.

We stopped just outside the door, when we heard Dion and his sister fighting.

“You need to date someone your own age,” he said.

She yelled back, “So what if I prefer older men! I like someone who’ll take care of me. That’s not a crime. And I don’t appreciate you going around to Franco behind my back and poisoning him against me!”

“What?”

“You told him about me and Butch, didn’t you? I don’t even know how you found out, but you did, and you told Franco this morning, and you ruined everything.”

“What’s this about you and Butch? What are you talking about?”

“Franco was furious! You should see the damage he did to the room. I’m not paying for it, either. This whole thing, it’s all on you.”

“What are you even talking about?”

“Don’t lie to me!” she wailed. “I know what your liar face looks like. I know you better than you know yourself, and that’s your
liar face
.”

“Della, calm down. Start from the beginning. What happened this morning?”

Instead of calming down, she swore at him as she stomped her way toward the gym’s exit. “I’m leaving this stupid resort! You and Franco can get your own ride back into town! Don’t try to stop me, either, because I’ll punch anyone who gets in my way!”

Heeding her warning, Jessica and I dove toward a door across the hallway. On the verge of giggling, we let ourselves into a small room to hide from her. We waited, listening to the sound of Della’s stomping heels fade away as she left the wing.

Jessica started laughing. “Am I hallucinating, or are we actually hiding inside a utility closet?”

“By the look of all the fiber-optic cables and panels, we are definitely in a utility closet. Maybe we’re both hallucinating.”

She pinched my arm.

I pinched her arm.

We both giggled like teenagers.

“Stormy, I can see why you like detective work. This is fun.”

“Will it still be fun when you find out we’re locked in here?”

Her blue eyes widened, and she reached for the handle. The door opened and she breathed a sigh of relief.

I smiled, because I’d known the door wouldn’t be locked. It was against code to have doorhandles installed so people could accidentally lock themselves in supply rooms and janitorial closets, never mind what you see in comedy movies. Stairwells, however, were another story entirely. I’d found that out the hard way while working on a case for Logan, and since then I’d made it my business to become an expert on doors.

We let ourselves out and continued our search for Christopher. Our next stop was the lobby, where we found Dion and Butch standing by a stack of construction materials.

Butch rested against the pile of wood, his elbow propped up casually. He said to Dion, “I don’t know what you heard, but sometimes I sleepwalk. If someone saw me in a place I wasn’t supposed to be, I must have been sleepwalking.”

“Were you sleepwalking last night after midnight?” Dion asked, his baritone voice hard with aggression. “Or this morning, around five o’clock?”

Butch shrugged. “How would I know, if I was asleep?”

“You have keys to all the rooms, don’t you?”

“I do, plus there’s a full set over there at the check-in counter. Anyone could—” He turned to point at the reception desk and stopped talking when he saw us. “Hello, ladies. How did you find the snowshoe adventure?”

“Super.” I gave him two thumbs up.

Jessica said to Dion, “What’s going on with Della? She mentioned something about leaving the resort.”

“Good,” Butch said. “I mean, no, she can’t go. Did she say why?”

Dion stepped back and swayed from side to side. “Uh… maybe we should go check their room. Della said something about Franco making a mess.”

“A mess?” Butch straightened up from his casual pose. His nostrils flared and his shaved head flushed a shade of pink.

He moved toward the northeast wing, rolling his shirtsleeves up over his tattooed, muscular forearms.

I started to follow, sensing trouble, but Jessica stayed in the lobby.

“I’ll keep looking for Christopher,” she said.

I nodded as I left her. That was one big difference between us. She’d also sensed trouble, and had the opposite reaction.

I ran to catch up with Butch.

Chapter 18
 

Butch banged on
the door to Franco and Della’s room.

Della yelled through the door, “Go away!”

Her brother, who’d come with us, said, “Leave her alone for now. She’ll cool off.”

The door handle jiggled as she locked it from the inside.

Butch pulled a large ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door.

“I can’t be part of this,” Dion said. “I’ll go see if Marie needs help with lunch.”

He turned and left, but not before I noticed his eyes were open wider than usual. He’d struck me as a stoner from the moment we met, because of his droopy eyelids. They looked anything but sleepy now. I watched him as he walked away, glancing back at us every few paces.

Meanwhile, Della was trying to block the doorway with her body. “Don’t be mad.” She took off her sunglasses and batted her eyelashes at Butch as she shifted into a provocative pose within the doorframe. “I swear I didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Let me see him,” Butch said. “You wait in the hall with Stormy while I go in and deal with it.”

“He’s not in here,” Della said.

“Get out of the way.” His voice got gruffer. “Della, get out of the way, you little brat.”

She slapped him across the cheek. “How dare you talk to me like that! I can’t believe I thought you were cute.” She slapped him a second time.

He didn’t flinch any more than a man carved from granite would.

“Slap me all you want.” He reached under her armpits and lifted her out of the way, then went into the room.

Della glared at me and spat, “Don’t make that face. I don’t need your pity.”

Inside the room, Butch called out, “Where is he? Where’s Franco?”

I walked in, Della close behind me. The room was breezy and cold. Clothes lay everywhere, the pictures on the walls were askew, and the formerly-crisp lampshades looked as though they’d lost a fight.

I commented, “Someone’s been redecorating.”

Butch surveyed the mess, then started yanking the covers off the bed. Next, he pulled off the entire mattress. If the room hadn’t been a mess before, it certainly was now.

“Where’s Franco?” Butch demanded.

“Did you look out there?” Della pointed to the patio. The room was near freezing because it had no door. Pebbles of broken safety glass lay along the patio door’s track.

Butch tossed the bare mattress back on the bed frame and walked with me, over the glass and onto the patio.

I pointed to the empty door frame. “This was the bang we heard at breakfast. It was this huge pane of glass breaking.”

“Couldn’t have been,” Butch said. “That crack sounded like a shotgun blast.”

“A big panel of safety glass can make an awfully loud noise,” I said. “That’s why skilled thieves don’t break them if they can avoid it.”

Della stepped out to join us. She tucked a stray tendril of glossy black hair into her loose bun and gave me a wary look. “You’re doing that detective thing again, aren’t you? Do you think he was fighting with someone in here?”

“If he was fighting, it wasn’t with one of the eight people who were in the dining room. Franco’s the only one of us who wasn’t there when we heard the bang.”

She watched me out of the sides of her eyes. Her voice high, she said, “But someone could have broken in. See how all the glass is inside the room?”

I crouched over the track frame. The pattern of the broken glass, sprayed largely across the interior, did suggest the patio door had been broken from the outside. What roused my suspicion, though, was Della’s transition from spitting venom at me in the hallway to being the helpful Watson to my Sherlock Holmes.

“Hold that thought,” I said. Their eyes were on me as I walked back into the room and went to the bedside table. Like the one in my room, the nightstand held an alarm clock that resembled a block of wood, and a heavy lamp with a stone base. The shade of the lamp had been crushed badly. Using my fingers, I located something embedded along the seam.

I held up a bead of safety glass. “Whoever broke the patio door did so with this lamp, which means, unless these lamps grow on trees in the surrounding forest, the glass was broken from the inside.” I locked my eyes on Della. “Either there was a vacuum inside this room, or someone swept up that glass and sprinkled it inside. Any idea why someone would do that?”

She stepped into the room and crossed her arms. “Franco’s stupid. He might have a genius IQ, but when he gets mad, he’s like a caveman. I’m always having to clean up his messes around the house. One time, he threw the toaster at the smoke detector.”

Butch went to the stone lamp and picked it up. “These are heavy,” he said. “Did Franco happen to let on what he was upset about?”

Della sat on the corner of the bare mattress and made eye contact with Butch. In a sultry tone, she said, “He might not have been sleeping after all, when you wandered into my room at about half past four this morning.”

“I was sleepwalking,” he said.

She smirked. “You did more than
walk
.”

He turned to me and repeated, “I was sleepwalking.”

I raised my eyebrows and said nothing.

Butch stuttered at me, “Are y-y-you calling me a liar? Hook me up to a lie d-d-detector, if you’re so sure. In fact, it’s about that time of the year, give me a free c-c-colonoscopy while you’re at it. I can drop my trousers right now. Grab a flashlight and have a good look. You might even find a dollar or two that hasn’t gone into this stinkin’ money pit.”

I held my hand up, palm out. “Butch Fairchild, I don’t care what sum of money you keep in your dark recesses, and I can assure you, I have neither the tools nor the inclination to search for it.”

After leaving Butch and Della alone to sort out the mess, I returned to my room to find it had also been redecorated—in shades of white. Toilet paper white.

Without his outdoor access, Jeffrey had been hit by cabin fever. His search for entertainment had resulted in the destruction of several rolls of toilet paper. I picked up shreds of white fluff while he watched with curiosity.

I told him that despite the mess, he was actually one of the better-behaved guests at the lodge.

Jessica returned to let me know she’d located Christopher.

I asked, “Does he have buckshot in his rump from the turkey hunters?”

“Actually, thanks to his bright green jacket, he made it back unscathed.” She surveyed the room’s confetti. “You had a party without me?”

I flung a handful of shredded toilet paper over our heads. “I needed to amuse myself somehow. I was going to start a torrid affair with the owner of the lodge, but it looks like Della beat me to it.”

She gasped. “Della is having an affair with Marie? Sort of a love-hate thing?”

“I meant with Butch.” While she picked the flecks of toilet paper out of her red hair, I told her about the trashed room and broken glass door, how Franco had gone missing, and how I was ready to pack up my things and leave immediately.

She gave me a pleading look. “But I’m just starting to have fun.”

“We’ll stay for now, but I swear, if one more weird thing happens, I’m out of here.”

“Sure. One more weird thing and we’re gone.” She leaned over to check the time on the room’s clock. “Oops. I’m supposed to be in a yoga class right now. Christopher is teaching.”

“Christopher is teaching a yoga class? Pack your bags! I said
one more weird thing
, and I meant it.”