“How?”
“Can’t answer that yet. We may not know until we get the results of her autopsy. We know very little right now, I’m sorry to say. Except we do know this: We know that no one can get in or out of this place. And we know that one of the people who we’re trapped with up here is a murderer.”
Mitch puffed out his cheeks, exhaling slowly. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I’ve seen this movie before,” he said grimly. “Except it took place on a remote island instead of a mountaintop. And everyone, not just Norma, had a British accent.”
“Mitch…?”
“And there was no such thing as cell phones back then, which changes the dynamics rather dramatically, don’t you think? Because they couldn’t call out and you can. You can call out, can’t you?”
“For as long as my charge lasts. So far, so good.”
“Plus you have the two-way radio in your cruiser.”
“True again,” she acknowledged patiently. “Only, Mitch…?”
“Yes, Des?”
“This is not a freakin’ movie!”
“Hey, I’m totally aware of that.”
“Good, because there’s no one else I can count on. There’s you and, well, there’s you.”
“I’m all yours, Des. But you do realize that this sort of thing never happened to me before you came into my life, don’t you?”
Right away Des Mitry stiffened and made with her Wary, Scary Look, those pale green almond-shaped eyes of hers searching his face, studying, probing. “Mitch, are you trying to tell me something?” she demanded.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re sorry that you met me.”
“Not in a million years, slimbo. Where would you get a crazy idea like that?”
“I just can’t imagine.”
“So where do we start?”
By Des grabbing Ada’s room key from the nightstand and heading briskly for the door. “I need to get witness statements from those people, one by one. You need to keep an eye on everyone else while I’m doing it, okay?”
“Let’s do it.”
They joined the others out in the corridor, Des locking Ada’s door behind her and pocketing the key. She glanced from one stricken face to the next, taking the measure of each of them. Mostly, there was a lot of fear. Aaron and Carly were holding hands so tightly that their knuckles were white. Jory and Jase were huddled together like a pair of wide-eyed schoolchildren. Spence and Hannah stood together, too, tight-lipped and tense. Teddy leaned against the wall next to them, looking overwhelmed. Les stood a bit apart from the rest of them with his hands in his pockets, watching Des expectantly. No one spoke. All eyes were fixed on Dorset’s resident trooper.
It was Aaron who finally broke the silence. “I demand to know what you are intending to do about this.”
“Everything I can. My very best.” Des turned to Hannah and said, “You’re the one who found her?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Hannah gulped, shuddering. “I… I was just in my room for a minute, putting on my face.”
Which she indeed had, Mitch observed. Eye makeup, lipstick, rouge, even those retro round glasses of hers. Mitch had actually preferred how Hannah had looked without all of that on-more serious, less like somebody in costume. But he’d never cared much for makeup on women. Des rarely wore any. Maisie never had.
“You were alone in your room?” Des asked her.
“Well, yeah. Why would anyone be with me?”
“Which one are you in?”
“I’m right here in four,” Hannah said, gesturing to the door across the hall from Ada’s. Teddy was next door to Hannah in two, directly across from Les and Norma. “I was starting my way back downstairs and I noticed that her door was part open, so I stopped to ask if she was ready to head back down.”
“How come you did that?”
“Well, I did work for the woman, in theory. Although she wouldn’t let me do a darned thing no matter how hard I tried to…” Hannah broke off, wringing her hands. “All I did was find her. She was there on the floor. Really, I have no idea what happened. And I’m sorry I screamed like that. I just couldn’t help myself. I mean, I’ve never seen anyone like that before.”
“That’s okay, Hannah,” Des assured her. “Not to worry. Did you hear any noises coming from her room before you found her?”
Hannah shook her head. “No, nothing.”
“These walls are very thick,” Les spoke up, his voice strained.
“How about out in the hallway?” Des asked her. “Do you remember hearing any doors open or close, footsteps, anything like that?”
“Well, yeah,” Hannah replied, nodding her head convulsively. “All of those things. Everybody was coming and going before breakfast, getting dressed or cleaned up or whatever. Well, not everybody, but lots of people.”
Des turned to Les now and said, “I need to seal off rooms one and three. No one goes in or out but me.”
“Of course, whatever you say.” Les’s face dropped. “Wait, what are you saying?”
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Teddy said. “She’s saying Norma was murdered, too.”
“Norma had a heart attack,” Les insisted. “Her heart gave out.”
“Les, we don’t know what happened,” Des said evenly. “And under these circumstances, Norma’s death now has to be considered suspicious. That makes her room a crime scene just as Ada’s is. This is not me passing judgment. It’s just me following standard procedure. I need to lock down those rooms, and you need to provide me with every key you have for them. Also your master keys. And Jory, could you please open up-let’s see-four more rooms for me?”
Jory had a big jangly key chain stuffed in the pocket of her down vest. She used her master key to unlock the two vacant rooms next to Mitch and Des’s, eight and ten. Aaron and Carly were across the hall in five, Spence in seven. Jory unlocked nine and eleven, then handed over her keys to Des. Jase forked over his own large key chain, although very reluctantly, as if he were giving up a piece of himself.
“I’ve already put Norma’s keys in the top drawer of the reception desk,” Les said as he gave Des his own set. “There’s one more master key down there, plus all of the room keys, of course. If you’d like, I can go fetch them.”
“That’s okay, I’ll take care of that myself in a minute. Right now, I want each of you to hold your hands out like this…” Des straightened her arms out before her, palms downward.
“What on earth for?” Carly asked.
Mitch knew what for. He’d seen the claw marks that Ada had made to her own neck when someone was choking the life out of her. It was very possible she’d left her mark on her killer’s hands, too.
“Please, just do what I ask,” Des said in response.
They all obliged.
Slowly, she went from person to person, studying each pair of hands closely, her own clasped behind her rather like a stern headmistress. “Now palms up, please,” she requested, repeating the drill. Des studied their faces and necks as well, making sure she looked each and every one of them right in the eye. Carly seemed to shrink under her steady gaze. Aaron bristled, defiant and twitchy. Hannah shook with fear. Spence acted curious more than anything else. Les responded with placid acceptance. So did Jory. Jase, meanwhile, seemed to have withdrawn inside of himself. His eyes never left the floor. His rough, red hands revealed no fresh scratches, however. Nor did Teddy’s hands, which seemed so slim and delicate next to Jase’s. Teddy’s gaze was that of a man who was hurting more than he could bear.
If Des had been hoping that Ada’s strangler would panic and blurt out a guilt-racked confession, well, that wasn’t about to happen. Whoever it was, this was not merely a ruthless murderer but a consummate actor. Someone who could stick to the script, play the part, bluff his or her way through.
And Des found no visible scratches on any of them. The killer must have worn gloves and ditched them
