actor, and being able to tell a good story was a given.
Sheila was at the last table. I felt for her when I saw the way her eyebrows were knit together. Being the host was not her kind of activity. But then this weekend had turned out to be a lot different than she’d expected. It was supposed to be a change from her busy life. But rooming with Adele and now helping her with the workshops were all pressure. Hesitantly, she showed off the scarf in shades of blues and lavender she was wearing. I knew right away it was one she’d made. The dreamy look similar to an Impressionist painting was as good as a trademark. It was no wonder she sold so many. Each one was different and exquisite. Miss Lavender Pants looked over from Bennett’s table and almost drooled over the scarf.
I leaned against the partition that separated the entrance area from the dining room after I passed Commander Blaine’s table. He was demonstrating how to make a swan out of one of the cloth napkins while talking about his workshop and how much fun it was going to be. He had everyone at the table abandoning their food and following along. I watched as he bustled around the table, coaching the napkin folders.
I was distracted by a ruckus at Adele’s table and went over to investigate. “I thought Izabelle Landers was supposed to be here,” a woman said to me as I approached.
I sighed and tried to explain in a concerned, hushed voice, but I’d said the same thing so many times it was impossible not to make it come out like a recording. The woman’s eyes widened with distress.
“What about her world premiere workshop? I love her Subtle Touch of Crochet and I was so looking forward to her new fusion craft. What with the fog delaying everything, this weekend just isn’t like the other years.”
“Trust me, you’re not missing a thing,” Adele interjected. I gave her a sharp look and took over.
“What Adele means is that the workshops she and Sheila are going to put on will be so exceptional you won’t feel like you missed anything.” The woman accepted the comment and Adele stared at me with her mouth open.
“Pink, thanks for the vote of confidence. You really mean it, right?”
I muttered a positive answer as I glanced up and looked out the window. I noticed the housekeeping crew pushing their cart down the walkway. I might be only an amateur sleuth, but I wasn’t giving up investigating. What was it Sergeant French had said when he was trying to convince me that the shadow in Izabelle’s room had been a crow? After the alleged bird had knocked the manuscript pages under the bed, he thought the cleaning crew had found them when they were doing the room and put them in an orderly stack on the night table.
Well, now was my chance to check it out. I left the dining hall and caught up with the crew down the walkway.
“Excuse me, but which of you did the rooms in Lodge?” I said. The group eyed me warily before two women put up their hands in acknowledgment. I suppose they were expecting me to complain or accuse them of something.
I did my best to short-circuit that fear by thanking them for the nice job on my room. The tension left their faces and they smiled.
“I wanted to ask you about another room. It had a stack of plastic containers with a lot of yarn.”
One of the women nodded. “The one with the already made bed. Yes.”
I didn’t want to tell her it was more accurately not slept in, because the resident was dead, so I just nodded as an answer.
“Did you find a lot of papers under the bed and put them on the night table?”
One of the women nodded. “Papers? You mean like a stack about this big?” She held her thumb and forefinger out in a space that would hold maybe one hundred sheets, in the ballpark of what I was asking about.
I attempted to keep the surprise out of my face. Maybe I was going to owe Sergeant French a mental apology. “You found them under the bed?”
And maybe not.
She shook her head. “I didn’t find them anywhere. I get it. This is a setup. You’re trying to get me to incriminate myself. I didn’t let that man in the room even though he said he just wanted to drop something off. I took the pile of papers from him. I’d already picked some off the floor and put them on the night table. I just added the ones he gave me to them.”
“Some guy brought the papers?”
“Okay, I know it’s against the rules. We’re not supposed to let anyone in without having them show us their key. And I didn’t let him in,” the housekeeper said. The rest of her group had started to move on, and she looked like she was planning to join them.
I had to come up with something to get more details. Think fast, I ordered myself, mentally running through the table of contents of the Average Joe book. What it said was that sometimes the basic truth worked best.
“Wait,” I said as she turned to join the rest of the crew. “The room I’m talking about. Well, that woman is dead. She died on the beach yesterday.”
The girl’s face fell and she seemed in more of a hurry to leave, so I started to talk faster. “Everybody thinks it was an accident, that she was allergic to the peanut butter in the gourmet s’mores.”
“Peanut butter in s’mores? I’ve never heard of that. There is a lot of s’more business up here. Every group seems to make them in the fire circle, but they just go the usual way. So, she got sick from the campfire treats and-” She shrugged.
“I think she might have had help eating them and I’m investigating. So finding out who the man with the papers is is important.”
The girl’s mouth quivered. “You mean like in that old TV show where that woman who lived in Vermont or somewhere always was smarter than the cops?”
“Sort of like that.” As I watched the quiver turn into a giggle, I got annoyed. “I’ll have you know I have successfully investigated a number of murders.”
“Okay, sure,” she said in a patronizing tone. “I got to go. I don’t know who the guy was. I don’t keep track of guests’ names.
I took her arm and eased her up the path toward the dining hall. “If you could just have a look inside and tell me if you see him.”
“No way,” she said, pulling away from me. It occurred to me that sometimes you had to pay for information, so I offered to give her the tip that Izabelle might have left. The girl snatched the ten-dollar bill.
“I’m not going in, but I’ll look through the window.” She leaned toward the windowed wall and I pointed toward our group and asked if she saw the man. She just kept shaking her head, and I suddenly had the feeling that was all she was going to do even if she saw him. There was nothing in it for her to give him up.
I was about to let her go when the door to the dining hall opened and some people walked out. The movement drew her eyes to the group. The Average Joe’s Guide to Criminal Investigation had a whole section on observing people’s responses. Some were involuntary, like your pupils got bigger when you liked something, whether you wanted to admit it or not. And some were under your control, but still automatic, like the way the housekeeper straightened suddenly as she looked at one of the exiters.
“That’s him, isn’t it?” I said softly.
What was Spenser Futterman doing with Izabelle’s manuscript?
CHAPTER 14
THE FIRST SESSIONS OF THE WORKSHOPS WERE scheduled to start right after lunch. No time to talk to Spenser Futterman and no chance to tell Dinah that he was the crow. Dinah walked out surrounded by people from her table who were taking her workshop. She appeared happy and excited, and I didn’t want to ruin it for her by interrupting. I was discovering it’s lonely at the top.
The workshops were all meeting simultaneously except for Mason’s. But then his wasn’t really a workshop and more of an activity, and we’d scheduled several time slots so the whole group could attend the tai chi sessions if they wanted to.
Mason caught up with me as I walked up the pathway past Lodge. I was clutching the rhinestone clipboard, ready to make my rounds. Mason had changed out of the tai chi clothes into well-fitting jeans and a blue oxford cloth shirt. The color of the shirt brought out the color in his face, and as usual a tousle of hair had fallen free and
