Slain in Schiaparelli (Vintage Clothing Mysteries Book 3) (17 page)

The Reverend, clad in a kimono and stocking cap, rushed to the window and yanked it open. “Joanna. You’re beet red. What happened to your boots?”
 

He pulled her inside to the glorious safety of the lodge.

Joanna leaned against the hearth. The elation of making it back inside had dissipated over the past hour as she warmed, to be replaced by frustration. The Reverend had led her to the fire, where Penny helped strip away her sodden outer layers and rubbed her feet. Her sweater and gloves now wafted the musty scent of wet wool. Joanna’s disappointment at not getting help seemed to have communicated itself to the rest of the lodge’s guests, who had given up board games and testy conversation and lay sprawled across the great room’s furniture staring into space. Only Marianne, a book in her lap, appeared content.

They were no closer to being rescued. They were no safer. They had barely been at Redd Lodge two full days, but every hour seemed to last years.

“Better now?” Penny asked Joanna. She sat on the floor, her back against the couch.

“I’m almost dry, thanks.” But better? No. Not as long as they were trapped together, with one of them a murderer. No one seemed willing to do anything about it, either. Sure, Daniel tried, and failed. But the rest of them…

Penny slumped further, laying her head on the couch. Her skin, already thin as chiffon, strained over her jaw and cheekbones, showing flushes of purple and pink.
 

Joanna touched Penny’s hand. “Never mind me. How are you?”

“Oh, I feel—” She rolled her head toward Joanna. “I can’t lie. I feel awful. I’m so out of it that I bump into stuff. I start to talk, then lose track of what I as going to say.”

A lump grew in Joanna’s throat. She wanted to say she was sorry, but the words fell so short.

“I guess I’m just not used to it yet, that’s all.” Penny’s voice was so quiet Joanna could hardly make it out. The fire cracked and popped.

“Hey,” Joanna said finally. “Will you come with me to my bedroom? I want to get another pair of socks. We have to stay together, remember.”

Penny rose silently and followed Joanna down the hall. The others in the great room didn’t even lift their heads.

The air in her room chilled Joanna’s face. She shut the door behind them. “Did you or anyone else go up to the tower room while I was out?”

Penny tilted her head. “No. We’re not supposed to go up there.”

“When I was outside in front of the lodge, I swear I saw a face in the window.” Someone who had seen her fall and didn’t go to help her. Someone in Wilson’s room, someone maybe hiding evidence, or worse.

“The ghost.” She said the words without inflection, as a statement of fact.

“Are you sure one of them didn’t leave the great room, even for a couple of minutes?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

Joanna turned to her suitcase to dig for socks worn the day before. As she sat on the bed to pull them on, she made a decision. Penny was the only one here she could trust. She was lying about visiting the Reverend the night of the chef’s death—had to be—but there was no way she was a murderer. Joanna had to trust her. At this point she didn’t have a choice. “I want you to do something with me.”

Penny sat on the bed next to her. “What?”

“The chef was killed because he knew something. He’d told us he had proof that he didn’t put clam dip in Wilson’s sandwich, remember?”

Penny shrank away.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry to bring it up,” Joanna whispered. “But we can’t sit here, helpless, waiting for someone to come find us. We need to figure out who killed Wilson and Chef Jules before another one of us dies.”

“Daniel said as long as we stay in pairs, we’ll be safe.”

Joanna shook her head. “The murderer has already set up one death to look like an accident. If I hadn’t got up in the middle of the night and seen that the dumbwaiter had been messed with, that one might have been made to look like an accident, too. Who’s to say another so-called accident won’t happen?”

Penny stared ahead without replying.

“Remember how Sylvia flipped out last night? It’s because we don’t know who to trust. Think of Marianne. Plus, I’m sure I saw a person in the tower room window. He’s not finished, whoever he is.”

 
Penny’s lips remained closed.

Joanna inhaled slowly to quell her rising frustration. “Look, I’m telling you this because I trust you. I don’t know where else to turn.”
 

“You can trust Reverend Tony,” she said immediately.
 

Not her mother, not her sister, but the Reverend, Joanna noted. “Right now I need your help.”

Penny sighed. “What?”

“I want to search the chef’s room.”

“But he’s in there.”

“You can stand outside, in the hall.”

“Why do you want to go in the chef’s room, anyway?”

“Chef Jules said he had evidence. Maybe it will tell us who killed him.” She turned to Penny. “Look at me.”

Penny reluctantly lifted her eyes.

“We can go down the service staircase at the end of the hall. We’ll take a candle. You stand in the hall while I look around Chef Jules’s room. If you see anyone, pretend like you were passing by the room on your way to the kitchen.”

“But what do I tell them?”

“Say you were getting an extra candle or a sandwich or something for me. It’s dark down there. Chances are no one would see you, anyway, if you stand near the wall. I won’t be in the room long.”

A spark seemed to appear in Penny’s eyes. She always did like adventure.
 

“Okay.” Penny stood up and took the candlestick from the nightstand. “I guess I can do that.”

Madame Eye glared in disapproval.

***

Only once inside the chef’s room with the door closed did Joanna light her candle. She held it up and took in the room’s few items: the bed, with Chef Jules lying on it—she quickly averted her eyes—a desk with a chair pulled slightly out, a nightstand covered in graphic novels, a bureau with a suitcase slouched on top, a closet, and a fireplace. A bag of mustard-flavored potato chips—a French brand—lay open on the nightstand.

She gingerly slid out the empty bureau drawers and felt around their outside edges, including the back, where blackmailers in movies always taped their evidence. Nothing. In the closet, two sets of crisp chef’s whites hung above a pair of clogs. Otherwise, that was empty, too. The desk drawer held nothing but a stubby pencil, probably left by a former occupant. She slid the drawer from its runners and patted its back and sides.
 

Joanna reluctantly turned toward the bed. Now thawed, the chef looked as if he might open his eyes any moment and sit up. Poor Jules. He’d never smile that wide-lipped smile again. She forced herself to stand near him and thumb through the graphic novels only a few feet from where he lay. Most of them featured buxom women and angry men with guns. Nothing but a boarding pass fell from their pages.

A shuffle in the hall drew Joanna’s attention. Holding her breath, she crept to the door and rested her ear against the crack. Except the pounding of blood in her ears, all was quiet. She let out her breath slowly and opened the door a crack.

“Penny?” she asked.

“Is everything okay in there?”
 

“I thought I heard something, that’s all.”

“Well, hurry up,” Penny said. “I’m nervous Mom will come down for more booze or something.”

“Two more seconds.”

Joanna shut the door and turned toward the room again. Only one more place to look. “Sorry, Jules,” she whispered and set the candle on the nightstand. She wedged her hands between the mattress and box spring, starting at the head of the bed. Her palms caught grit as they slid over the ticking. Bette might have paid for an overhaul of the lodge, but the cleaners didn’t bother to move the mattresses. Partway down the mattress her fingers touched something plastic with sharp edges. Success. She gingerly caught the item between her second and third fingers and slid it out.
 

She held it up to the candle. “Lady Luck Clam Dip,” the plastic read. It was a clam dip container, cleaned and cut so it could be flattened. Chef Jules would no more spread mass-market clam dip on a sandwich than he would dress a salad with Chicken McNuggets, and everyone knew it. With a few pounds of clams, making fresh clam dip would be child’s play for him. That is, if he were foolish enough to put it on a roast beef sandwich to start with.
 

This was the chef’s “proof” he was innocent. She bit her lip. This was why he died. What the empty container didn’t show was who had brought it to the lodge with the intent to kill Wilson.
 

She turned the flattened container in her hands. Should she take it? Hide it somewhere else? No. It was safest where it was. She slid the container under the mattress.

She’d better get back upstairs before anyone noticed she was missing. After a quick glance around the room to make sure everything was as she’d found it, she blew out her candle and closed the chef’s door behind her.
 

“Did you find anything?” Penny whispered.

Joanna’s lips parted, then closed. Telling Penny would put her at risk. She’d keep this a secret for now. “No. Nothing.”

“We’ll need more wood brought in. Ow.” Daniel flinched as Sylvia tightened the scarf around his ankle and tied it off.

Joanna looked up from her book.

“Sorry, Danny. I had to do that.” Sylvia and Daniel exchanged looks a second too long. Sylvia blushed and turned toward the fire.

“I’ll bring up more wood,” Reverend Tony said.

“You can’t go alone. I’ll come, too.” Clarke rose from the hearth.

“No. Joanna will come.”

“Me?” Remembering the possibility of the Reverend’s criminal record, she turned to Clarke.

“Yes,” the Reverend insisted. “There’s something I want to show you.”

Joanna hesitated. “I guess.”
 

Clarke cast a meaningful glance at Tony. “Don’t worry, Joanna. I’ll check on you.” He handed her a two-armed candelabra. “Take this.”

Tony stepped aside to let her lead the way down the steps to the darkened first floor. “We need to talk,” he said once they were out of earshot of the great room. They paused in the hall. Tony was bigger, meatier up close, and his voice lost some of its New Age refinement. “I’m trusting you because you’re a friend of Penny’s, and we’re both, like, servants here.” He snorted. “Even hauling wood.”

“Clarke would have helped you bring it upstairs. You heard him.”

“I know, but that’s not the point.”

“What is the point, then?”
 

“They knocked off the chef.”

“Knocked off?” Joanna stopped. Now he had gone straight from hippie guru to old-time mobster.

 
“Yeah. He was the other one who was help. Who’s next?” He continued down the hall, Joanna on his heels.

“What about Wilson? You think his death was murder, too?”

“No. An accident. But not Jules. You saw how someone monkeyed with the dumbwaiter.”

Joanna couldn’t argue with him. “I know you two didn’t always see eye to eye.”

“He was a slave to those cigarettes. I didn’t care so much, but I didn’t want Penny breathing that poison.” Speaking freely, Tony’s accent took on part New Jersey and part something else Joanna couldn’t quite place. “He made a big mistake last night when he told everyone he knew who killed Wilson. Should have kept his trap shut. You don’t call fancy people with fat pocketbooks murderers and live to talk about it.” They’d reached the end of the hall. “Plus, come here.” He pushed open the storage room to reveal the jumble of skis. “Daniel didn’t trip by accident. You remember. This room was tidy as an army barracks before this morning.”

“Okay, I admit I had the same thought. But what does someone gain from keeping us here?”

“The time to kill off someone else.”

Listening to Tony’s blunt words, her blood ran cold. “I agree, Daniel’s accident was no accident. But you seem to think that means we’re in danger—you and I.”

“You’ll see,” he said. “Clarke has got it out for me, I feel it. And you, you’re a little too interested in finding out who did it. I just wanted to warn you to watch your back. Plus, I thought I could show you a few tricks to protect yourself.”

Joanna examined his expression by candlelight. It was hard to tell if he was more angry or scared. “Why should I trust you?”

“Why shouldn’t you?”

“Since we’re being honest here, you have an unusual interest in the lodge. You roam around at night poking into everything. I’m not the only one who’s seen it, either. Plus, you haven’t shared much about your background.”

“And you have?” The Reverend replied. “I noticed you’ve appointed yourself detective-in-chief. I might be asking you the same questions. I mean, have I given you any reason not to trust me?”

Joanna didn’t know what to say. She understood why Penny attached herself to him. He watched her diet, kept tabs on her stress levels, and was always on hand with a special tea or broth to strengthen her. He was always looking out for Penny. Still, she could trust no one here, except Penny. “Thanks, Reverend. I appreciate your warning. We’d better clear a spot for the wood.”

She set down the candelabra and bent to pick up a pair of leather work gloves, when all at once her hand was twisted behind her back, hard. Tony’s hand pressed over her mouth. Heart pounding, she tried to scream for help.
 

“Quiet,” Tony said. “I’m going to let you go, but shut up.”
 

He released her. She bolted toward the door. He filled the space between her and the hall. “Let me go.” Gasping, she grabbed a ski pole and pointed its sharp end at him. “Move.”

Tony held up a hand in the “stop” position. “Hush up. I’m not trying to attack you. They can’t hear you upstairs, anyway. I just wanted to show you how easy it would be for someone to grab you if you aren’t careful.”

Joanna held the ski pole ready to stab.

“Calm down. I’d tell you to drink a cup of valerian root tea, but I think Penny had the last of it.” He shuffled foot to foot like a boxer getting ready for the ring. “Do you want to learn how to protect yourself or not?”