The Murder of Twelve

by Jessica Fletcher

  “I’ve been checking all the numbers in search of some connection that will explain who’s behind all this. Along the way, I’ve found calls to and from a number with lots of zeros at the end.”

  “Government?” I asked him.

  “Department of Justice. Whatever this private detective found, he must have forwarded it to the Boston office of the FBI.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “Still there, Jess?” Harry asked, after I’d lapsed into silence.

  “Just trying to process that on top of everything else here that doesn’t add up. Any way of telling whether his client Mrs. Mulroy was aware of that?”

  “I can only tell you that there are no calls to a number I’ve identified as hers any time around when he spoke with the DOJ.”

  “What about other calls?”

  “Many of them, a few pretty long in duration.”

  “What about voice mails? Did you check those, too?”

  “You talk like I flunked out of detective school.”

  “I believe you told me once that you did, Harry.”

  “That was the police academy.”

  “They’re not the same thing?”

  “You know what you have to do to get your PI’s license?”

  “Apply online?”

  “Besides that. In New York, you go down to the Business Affairs office at City Hall and get a business license. That’s all you need to open for business. They just want to make sure you file your taxes and everything. Did I tell you I’m five years behind and the IRS has hit men after me? When they arrest me, I’m going to plead insanity from working with deadbeat clients like you.”

  “What if they ask to see copies of your invoices?”

  “I’ll tell them they’re in the same place as my tax returns. Anything else?”

  “You called me.”

  “I know. Anything else?”

  I thought back to what Seth Hazlitt had said about no records existing for infants Mark and Daniel Mulroy ever being discharged from St. Catherine’s Hospital, and I explained the anomaly to Harry.

  “Make any sense to you?”

  “You said there were originally triplets, until one was stillborn. Maybe the most fortunate of the three, as things turned out.”

  “Is it relevant that one of them was dead?”

  “Shouldn’t be. And I can’t think of any reason why record of the surviving twins’ discharge might have been conveniently lost.”

  “Neither can Seth. So far, anyway.”

  “See, Jess, even not-so-great minds think alike.”

  “Mrs. Fletcher,” Seamus interrupted. “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  And then I did hear it. A light thumping coming from somewhere, the sound akin to that of the beating heart in Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

  “I’ll call you back, Harry.”

  He started to say something, but I hung up. Seamus and I were looking at each other when the next series of thumps came.

  “The front door!” he realized, and burst toward it.

  I caught up with Seamus just as he was thrusting open the front door to reveal a snow-covered figure standing almost waist deep in the pile that had accumulated before the hotel entrance.

  The figure fell forward, dragging a hefty blanket of that snow over the threshold with him while shaking enough of it from himself to reveal a nearly frozen Mort Metzger practically buried in the cushion of white that had pushed into the lobby with him as he collapsed to the floor.

  * * *

  * * *

  I pictured Mort’s snowmobile having broken down or crashed as much as an hour or so before, pictured him trying to trudge the rest of the way on foot through the teeth of a killer blizzard at its peak. How far had he come? A mile? More? Whatever the case, he was shaking horribly, clearly in some stage of hypothermia.

  “Blankets!” I cried out to Seamus.

  He dashed off for the back office, where a fresh supply of bedcovers and linens was always available for any guest requiring an extra blanket, pillow, or even sheets at any hour too late for the modest housekeeping staff to respond. He did this while I moved to get the door closed.

  The collection of snow before it rendered my efforts futile, even before the powerful wind made its presence known. As I tried again to get the heavy front door closed, it felt like someone far stronger than I was pushing against it from the other side. Finally, I gave up and found the strength to drag Mort out of the snow pile, away from the door and the wind pushing through it.

  I managed to get him into a nesting of potted plants, the leaves of which had been speckled white by the intrusion of the storm into the lobby. I shifted Mort onto his back and was relieved to find he was breathing, rapidly but strongly, and gently tried to rouse him.

  “Mort? Mort, can you hear me? It’s Jessica—Mrs. F.,” I added, as if that might get more of a rise out of him.

  He didn’t stir.

  “Wake up, Mort. Come on—I know you’re in there,” I resumed, still shaking him mildly at the shoulder. “Wake up.”

  He was still unconscious and shivering when Seamus emerged from the back office with an armful of blankets. Together we covered Mort up in the first few, and he left me to finish the task on my own while he moved to try to get the big entry door closed. That task was complicated by the additional curtains of snow that had blown in while the door was open.

  I got Mort wrapped in all five of the thick woolen blankets made for king-sized beds, so that only his face was exposed. His shaking began to ebb and his breathing became less shallow. My will recharged by the slight improvement, I pushed myself over to his feet and raised the blanket wrapped there enough to strip off his lace-up boots and socks. Not surprisingly, both sets were soaked through to the gills and would certainly have negated much of our effort to warm him had I not removed them. I then proceeded to wrap the blankets more tightly around his exposed feet, as the body can shed a great measure of its heat through cold feet and Mort could afford to lose none now.

  Next, I moved my hands under the sections of soft woolen fabric to tighten it around his head, another prime conduit for heat loss. I could feel the melting snow already warming under my touch, the soak of it dampening my fingers from tip to base, and I took this as another good sign.

  “Mort?” I repeated. “Mort, can you hear me?”

  I needed to call Seth Hazlitt, needed to be coached on exactly what to do from this point. I eased my left hand from beneath the blankets, drawing my phone out with it, and pressed Seth’s number.

  Nothing.

  I pressed SETH again when the call didn’t go through.

  Still nothing.

  Then I saw the dreaded NO SERVICE icon in the upper-left-hand corner of my iPhone, along with something else.

  Blood, the fingers of my left hand covered with a thin coat of it. I jerked my right hand from beneath the blanket wrapped tightly around Mort’s head to find the same thing there and remembered the feeling of what I had taken for melting snow when it hadn’t been that at all.

  Because Mort hadn’t merely gotten waylaid atop his snowmobile somewhere in the area. He’d been attacked.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I realized the cold bursts of air carrying sheets of snow had ceased and I looked up to see Seamus returning to my side after somehow managing to get the front door closed.

  “Are you hurt, Mrs. Fletcher? What happened?”

  “Not me. It’s Mort.”

  Seamus’s eyes bored into me. “You try the good doctor Hazlitt?”

  I flashed my phone. “Cell service is down.”

  He nodded, processing the information. “We’ll need to get the sheriff upstairs, under covers, with the heat turned up as much as the blowers will allow.”

  I nodded. “My suite, wh
ere we need to gather everyone to ride out the rest of the night.”

  He looked at me grimly. I said no more, because I didn’t have to, because Seamus had come to the same conclusion I had: Unless our murderer had somehow made his or her way out of Hill House to attack Mort on his approach, that killer wasn’t among the surviving members of the wedding party.

  He or she was someone else entirely.

  * * *

  * * *

  “I’ll stay with Sheriff Metzger while you and Eugene get everyone into my suite,” I continued.

  I wanted to ask him about Eugene, his credentials and references, anything that might assuage my fears that he was the man Hank Weathers had mistaken for Bigfoot. And how could we be certain he’d remained at his post this whole time through the long hours of this night? Might he have overheard us discussing the sheriff’s imminent arrival? Might he have ventured outside long enough to ambush Mort and leave him outside to freeze to death in an apparent accident?

  Seamus narrowed his gaze on me, clearly reluctant to leave me on my own.

  “I’ll be fine,” I assured him, brushing some stubborn stray snow from my hair. “And the wheelchair—we’ll need the wheelchair as well.”

  “It must still be in Mrs. Mulroy’s room. I’ll bring it down here straightaway, once the guests are collected in your suite, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  I found myself amazed by Seamus’s composure in the face of the worst snowstorm in Maine history on top of being confronted by a mass murderer, perhaps even a serial mass murderer. I’ve seldom known even professional law enforcement types capable of remaining so calm and collected under such dire circumstances, and I began to wonder seriously whether his constable duties back home in Ireland might have indeed extended beyond traffic detail.

  “We’re going to get through this, Seamus.”

  He forced an uneasy smile. “I have no doubt of that, ma’am, no doubt at all,” he said, not sounding very convincing.

  * * *

  * * *

  I remained seated on the lobby carpet, sodden with puddles from the melting snow. Mort’s head was still cradled in my lap so I could apply pressure to the gash that was the source of his blood loss in order to stanch it as best I could. His shaking had subsided even more, down to barely a quiver now, and I was confident we’d managed to get his body temperature up despite the loss of cell service preventing me from reaching Seth for medical advice. I imagine he would have described the treatment for hypothermia as pretty much what instinct dictated and what Seamus and I had already done.

  “Mort,” I said, trying to coax him awake through force of will as much as my voice. “Wake up, Mort. I need you. I need you to wake up and help me figure this all out before anyone else is murdered.”

  I heard a chime and the brief whisk of the elevator door sliding open. Except for that, the only sound was that of the howling wind continuing to hammer away at the windows.

  I turned to find Seamus McGilray wheeling the same chair we’d used to ferry Constance Mulroy up to her room after she’d suffered a seizure in the Sea Captains Room. And it took the concerted efforts of both of us to get Mort raised into its seat, and the now-damp blankets tucked tight around him anew.

  Seamus made the pushing efforts from there.

  “Any objections from the guests about being resettled?”

  “They were too scared to object.”

  “So am I, Seamus,” I confessed.

  “Oh, and I instructed Eugene to carry Mrs. Mulroy into your suite, then take his post outside the door while the staff member who’s been tending to the woman resumes her duties.”

  “Who is she?” I asked suspiciously, still unable to chase away the potential resemblance in a drunken man’s eyes of Eugene to Bigfoot. “Another temp?”

  “No, Janey from the front desk,” he said, referring to the clerk who’d been berated by Doyle Castavette the previous afternoon.

  “I can’t remember how long she’s been working here.”

  “Since around the time you moved in, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  “You checked her references?”

  Seamus nodded. “Sterling.”

  “Interviews?”

  “Sterling as well. Janey Ryland answered every question in textbook fashion.”

  “I was talking about interviews with others who knew her and had perhaps worked with her, maybe someone from her school.”

  Seamus hedged, then shook his head. “It didn’t seem necessary, though in hindsight . . .”

  “I think in hindsight,” I started, intending to relieve him of any burden of guilt, “all of us would have done plenty of things different. The wedding party, for example, would have set their celebration in a warmer climate. When was Florida last hammered by a blizzard?”

  “When was the last hurricane or tropical storm to hammer Maine, Mrs. Fletcher?”

  “Good point.”

  “I should also mention that Janey Ryland has been an exemplary employee through all the fall and winter months.”

  “I still need to talk to her,” I told him. “We probably should have already. If Janey Ryland was the killer on board that plane and at that wilderness lodge, it could be that she’d waited in both cases for the right opportunity to come along, with the planning and preparation already laid.”

  Seamus looked at me questioningly. “But you don’t believe it’s the same killer we’re facing here tonight, do you?”

  I ran my gaze along the windows yet again, nothing to see beyond those floodlights fighting to cut through the muck of the storm. “I didn’t. I’m not so sure anymore.”

  Seamus sighed. “We can’t be sure of anything really, can we, Mrs. Fletcher?”

  “We can be sure of one thing, Seamus: that whoever the killer is, he or she isn’t finished yet.”

  * * *

  * * *

  The blanket slipped off Mort’s head while Seamus wheeled him across the lobby, revealing a patch of matted hair around the wound he’d suffered. At least I’d succeeded in getting the bleeding stopped, and I checked my phone again in the forlorn hope cell service might have been magically restored. But this was no night for miracles.

  I stayed close to Mort to keep him from sliding out of the chair while Seamus wheeled him toward the elevator. The wrapping of blankets had held over his waist, hiding the presence of his nine-millimeter pistol. Once we got him safely settled on the couch, with Constance Mulroy settled in my bedroom, I resolved to remove it from Mort’s holster and give it to Seamus for safekeeping. He was the only one I was absolutely certain I could trust here.

  As the elevator wound upward to the third floor, I felt a thick wave of fatigue wash over me and suddenly felt unsteady on my feet, the way drivers describe feeling themselves dozing off behind the wheel. I had a coffee maker in my suite and intended to make good use of it as soon as I was inside. It was the one-cup variety and I had stockpiled enough of those K-Cups to keep all of those still alive caffeinated through what remained of the night.

  It was just past three thirty a.m., leaving another several hours before sunrise—what we might be able to see of it, anyway. And how did I know that daylight would bring any solace to our situation? We’d still be alone and isolated, no one able to get to us any sooner in the light than in the dark. Perhaps the murderer was toying with us even now, intending to complete his twisted game when we lapsed into the false security of the promised dawn.

  On the third floor I emerged from the elevator, after Seamus and the wheelchair bearing Mort, to find Eugene standing at his post before the entrance to my suite.

  “Anything to report?” Seamus asked him, handing me his pass key card to save me the bother of fishing my own key card from my pocket.

  “One thing I think you’ll find interesting,” Eugene said as the green light flashed.

  When Eugene eased the door open he was angl
ed in such a way that something on the side of his head, near his ear, grabbed my attention.

  “Jessica, thank the stars,” I heard, before I could question him on what I’d noticed; I recognized the voice immediately.

  Constance Mulroy was seated in an armchair positioned just beyond the living room’s coffee table, fully awake now.

  * * *

  * * *

  “Connie!” I beamed.

  She looked groggy, her eyes narrowed and dull, but she was free of the coma I feared she’d slipped into forever.

  “Thank the stars!” she repeated, her voice raspy and dry. “It’s him—I’m sure of it! You’ve got to stop him, Jessica—you must stop him!”

  “Stop who?” I asked, heading toward her.

  “My husband, Heath Mulroy. He’s the one behind all this!”

  * * *

  * * *

  The young woman Janey Ryland, who normally worked the now-vacated front desk, stood vigil by Constance Mulroy’s side, likely the person who’d informed Connie of what was going on once she awoke.

  “You don’t believe he’s dead,” I heard myself say, as if it were someone else speaking the words.

  “Only in the eyes of the world. It was a ruse, a fabrication, so he could avoid prison.”

  I glanced toward Lois Mulroy-Dodge, who’d voiced the very same theory to me. Her expression was empty, a blank canvas waiting to be filled in.

  “I can’t be sure of that,” Connie conceded, “but I am sure he was plotting something. I’m sure his investment scheme must have included a contingency escape plan.” She hesitated, tried to swallow and seemed to fail. “And I know he had help.”

  “From who?”

  “My son Daniel,” she said, a combination of embarrassment and misery ringing in her voice.

  * * *

  * * *

  “He wasn’t duped by his father, Jessica,” Constance Mulroy continued. “He was a willing participant, a coconspirator in the eyes of the law.”