“Shut up, Uncle Teddy,” Aaron snarled at him. “I’m sick of your sarcasm.”
“There are… couple of deer rifles in the kitchen,” Jase murmured. “The gun case.”
“Gee, I don’t know about that, sweetie,” Jory said doubtfully.
“No, no, he’s right.” Aaron pounced eagerly on the news. “Let’s go get them. We can take turns standing guard until the authorities arrive. We must protect ourselves.”
“I’m with Aaron,” said Spence. “Let’s arm ourselves.”
“Hold on, guys, this is getting way out of hand,” warned Mitch, his head throbbing. “What we need to do is relax.”
“I’m with Mitch,” said Teddy.
“Please, everybody just take it easy,” Hannah agreed.
“Yes, kindly cool it with this vigilante business,” Carly said. “And no offense, Acky, but when did you suddenly turn into Ollie North?”
“You know, I’ve had just about enough of your cutting little remarks, too,” Aaron huffed at her, his nose twitching.
“How’s that for a happy coincidence,” she retorted sharply. “I’ve had just about enough of you.”
Mitch glanced at Des, surprised that she’d let this situation flare up so badly. “What do you say, Master Sergeant?”
In response, Des pulled her SIG out of her coat pocket and showed it to all of them. “I say no one is touching those rifles. I say there is one gun and it’s in my hand. Anyone who is not on board with that plan, kindly speak up right now, and I will be happy to bind and gag you for the duration. Anyone? How about you, Aaron?”
Aaron lowered his eyes and shook his head, reddening.
“Does anyone else have anything they’d like to say?” Des asked.
Jase cleared his throat and said, “Did Les get around to stoking the fires before he…”
“I’m afraid not, Jase,” Mitch told him.
“Would it be okay if I…?”
“Now is not a good time, Jase,” Des said to him. “Please return to your rooms now, okay? All of you.”
They obeyed her, grumbling and mumbling. And double-locking their doors behind them, each and every one of them.
Mitch and Des remained out in the hall, her hand still clamped around his arm.
“Why didn’t you just shut that jerk up?” he asked her. “You practically had a mutiny on your hands.”
“It’s much better if you let people vent,” she explained patiently. “That way, they get it out of their systems, and are less likely to actually do anything.”
He smiled at her fondly. “Pretty smart, aren’t you?”
“Not feeling very smart right now,” she confessed, steering him over to the two chairs at the top of the stairs, where they sat. “On a rare positive note, the pilot of SP-One said he may be able to take off within the hour. You wouldn’t know it to look outside, but the storm’s tapering off. We’ll need to plow a section of the parking lot so he can touch down.”
“Sure, we can use Jase’s truck. So you updated Soave?”
“From the woodshed,” she replied, nodding.
“What did you tell him?”
“That I was wrong.”
“About what?”
“I don’t have this situation under control.”
Mitch reached for her slender hand and squeezed it. “That’s not true. You’ve done everything you could do.”
“Les died on my watch,” she said miserably. “That means I screwed the pooch. Aaron’s not totally wrong.”
“He is, too. There’s no way you could have anticipated what happened to Les. How could you? From where I’m sitting it defies any form of logical explanation. It couldn’t possibly have happened. And yet it did happen. All we have to do now is figure out how, and we will.”
“Mitch, I never took my eyes off this hallway,” she said as those pale green eyes of hers scanned the corridor. “They were all in their rooms, I swear. How did someone slip out on me, kill Les and then sneak right back in without me so much as catching a glimpse? How did someone do that? Who is he, the Invisible Man?”
“There’s Teddy to consider. He was by himself in the Sunset Lounge.”
“But I could hear the piano that whole time,” Des countered. “Not once did he stop playing. I don’t see any possible way he could have gone outside, bopped you on the head and-” She broke off, her eyes flickering.
“Did you just think of something?” Mitch asked her.
“No, not really,” she said quietly. “How does your head feel?”
He glanced at the compress he’d been holding against it. Clean. The bleeding had definitely stopped. “Well enough.”
“Can you remember how it all went down?”
“Very fast is how it all went down. We were loading up the wheelbarrow. I turned my back for one second and, wham, I was out. Honestly, I thought it was Les who’d hit me. Until I realized he was dead, that is.”
“Somebody lost their breakfast out there.”
“That was me, after I came to,” Mitch said, shuddering. He was back there again, seeing Les lying facedown in the dirt. “Then I came straight in to get you. I didn’t see any footprints leading anywhere else in the snow. Did you?”
“I followed two sets back to the kitchen door. I assume one is yours, the other belongs to… whoever.”
“Can you tell anything from them? What kind of shoe the killer wore, the size?”
“The snow’s way too mushy. I can’t even tell whether a man or a woman made them.”
“Do you think a woman could have done that?”
“Buried a hatchet in Les’s head? No problem. I did notice that the kitchen floor was all wet.”
“That was me, too. The floor was completely dry when I came in.”
“You sure about that?”
“Positive. Whoever did it must have taken off their wet shoes before they came back in and tossed them in the snow or hidden them somewhere. Changed their pants, too, I’m figuring. Look at mine, Des. My cuffs are soaked. So are my gloves and my hat.”
“I found one jacket in the coatroom that was plenty damp.”
“Spence’s, am I right?”
“You are.”
“That’s from when we were working outside before. Mine was still damp, too.”
“And Jase’s wool overshirt in the mudroom is damp.”
“Same story. Did you find anything else?”
“No wet boots or pants, that’s for damned sure. We’ll find them eventually, but we can’t afford to take the time right now. There are a million hiding places in this castle. Plus they could be out in the snow, like you said.” Des stared intently down the hall, shaking her head. “I cannot fathom how someone got past me.”
“Could somebody have gone out their window? The sills are pretty wide. Maybe they made it to the observation deck by climbing from window to window, then downstairs from there.”
“Mitch, those sills have six solid inches of ice on them. And the windows are frozen shut.” On second thought, she got to her feet and said, “I’m not taking anything for granted. Are you up for checking out the observation deck?”
“I sure am”.
Des examined everyone’s windows while Mitch headed to the end of the hall and pushed open the outside door. The snow was still coming down pretty hard out there. The sky did seem to be brightening a little, but that may just have been wishful thinking on his part. Or his head wound. He studied the snow carefully for fresh footprints, then came back and sat down and waited for Des to return.
“Anything?” he asked her when she did.
She shook her head. “You?”
He started to shake his head, but that only made it throb worse. “Bupkes.”
