by Maddy Hunter
I stared into space as the gridlock in my brain shifted ever so slightly.
This was making more sense now. If Delpha’s killer had stolen her phone, the timeline for her death could be altered drastically. She could have died long before I texted her, and her killer could have rejoined the rest of the group at the restaurant, set her phone on vibrate, and responded to my unexpected text right from the dinner table. Who would have noticed? They all texted relentlessly.
So under this new paradigm, no one escaped suspicion. Was my theory solid enough to present to Lieutenant Kitchen?
But what if the police did have Delpha’s phone? What if they’d had it from the start?
Then I’d look like a complete fool with egg all over my face.
Unless…
I slanted a look at the shelf perched above the clothing rod of our exposed closet. At Etienne’s soft-sided messenger bag.
I’d look like a fool…unless I could prove that Delpha’s responses to me had been written by someone else.
Energized by a sudden surge of adrenaline, I pulled the messenger bag off the shelf and fished out the file folder that contained our guests’ handwritten medical history forms. “Spillum…Spillum…” I muttered as I riffled through the wad of papers. It would have been easier to check the document online, but I needed to use my phone to check out something else. Finding Delpha’s form, I set it on the bed, then accessed my text messages from two days ago, rereading the questions I’d asked and her responses.
In answer to my question “Where are you?” she’d told me she was hiking back to the resort.
A random killer wouldn’t have known where she was staying, especially since the resort’s name wasn’t printed on our key cards, but it would have been an easy question for anyone else on the tour to answer.
I’d asked her about the fog and she’d replied that it was clearing farther down, which revealed absolutely nothing and could easily have been a lie.
I’d suggested she select an entrée that I could bring back to the resort to her and she’d nixed the lamb, salmon, beef, and duck in favor of the crab.
Nuts. I wished I could find something surreptitious about that, but I couldn’t. Salmon and crab were Alaskan specialties that all tourists were encouraged to sample.
It seemed there was no “there” there.
With my adrenaline flagging, I scanned the first page of Delpha’s medical history form, taking note of her name, address, occupation, doctor’s name, and emergency contact. Page two listed her medications, over-the-counter supplements, disabilities, dietary restrictions, and—
My heart started racing as I read the last line on the form.
Omigod. Omigod, omigod, omigod!
I grabbed my phone to skim the readout screen again.
I reread the last line on the medical form.
Eureka!
With phone and medical form in hand, I grabbed my shoulder bag and ran outside, banging through the front door of the guest lodge like a charging bull. “Delpha never sent me those texts,” I announced in a breathless rush to the handful of people in the room.
Lieutenant Kitchen and Sergeant Quinn, their Dudley Do-Right hats still sitting atop their heads, glanced across the floor at me.
“It couldn’t have been Delpha.” I waved my phone at them. “She ordered the crab. Delpha never would have ordered crab.” I brandished her medical form in my fist. “She was allergic to shellfish.”
twenty
They stared back at me, speechless—Kitchen and Quinn, Goldie and Grover, Florence and Etienne, Ennis, Orphie, and Alison.
“Delpha must have died before we went into dinner,” I blurted out, “because when I texted her, it had to have been her killer who responded. He must have stolen her phone and thought he’d be clever by jerking me around. But he gave himself away because he didn’t know about her allergy. Do you know what this means?” I searched the faces in the room with barely contained excitement. “It means that anyone at dinner in the restaurant that night could have killed her.”
I paused as I listened to my own voice, wondering if I should be quite this euphoric about casting shade on every member of the group.
“A phantom text from the killer?” questioned Lieutenant Kitchen. “An intriguing suggestion, Mrs. Miceli, but highly improbable if Ms. Spillum’s phone was locked.”
“Delpha never locked her phone,” Ennis spoke up.
“None of us do,” revealed Goldie. “It’s a precautionary measure.”
“Against what?” asked Sergeant Quinn.
Silence ensued as the group shot awkward glances at each other.
“Against wanting to use our phone and suddenly forgetting what our password or code is,” confessed Florence. “It’s happened to all of us. Senior moments. They make you feel so stupid. But if we don’t lock our phones, we avoid the problem. Crisis averted. It’s so much less stressful.”
“What Florence said,” commended Orphie.
Nods of assent. Scattered applause.
Lieutenant Kitchen regarded me soberly as he motioned me farther into the room. “Would you care to have a seat and join us, Mrs. Miceli?”
“Do you want to see Delpha’s medical history form?” I hurried toward him, handing him the pages. “It didn’t occur to me until a few minutes ago to check her medical forms. I should have thought of it before.”
Kitchen studied the information. “This could be significant, Mrs. Miceli. Thank you.”
His approval gave me confidence to offer more advice. “So it should be easy from here. All you have to do is find the person who has Delpha’s phone. And it’s pretty easy to spot because it has a custom-ordered black-and-white newspaper print case.”
The two troopers exchanged wary looks before Kitchen nodded toward an unoccupied chair. “While you’re taking a seat, Mrs. Miceli, Sergeant Quinn and I need to step outside. We won’t be long.”
“What do you suppose that’s all about?” asked Goldie as we watched the two men kibitzing outside the window.
“Has anyone noticed that every time we mention Delpha’s phone, Lieutenant Kitchen gets a little twitchy?” questioned Ennis. “He didn’t want to discuss the phone issue in Girdwood either.”
“I expect he has his reasons,” said Etienne, who was seated beside Florence. “Probably none of which are for public consumption at the moment.”
I made eye contact with Florence as I sat down. “I’m sorry you have to sit through more questioning, but if it becomes completely unbearable, you just raise the alarm and I’ll get you out of here, whether the police like it or not.”
She forced a half smile. “I’ll be okay, Emily. I want to find out who killed Delpha as much as the rest of you.”
Alison caught my attention. “Etienne just told me about the change in our itinerary. Are we really going to have to stay in Denali longer?”
“According to Sergeant Quinn we are.” I heaved a sigh before regarding her in confusion. “How come you’re at this meeting? Didn’t you already attend the earlier one?”
“Yeah. But since my alibi is intimately connected with all the guys who visited the museum, he asked me to come back when he questioned them. So here I am.” Her ponytail bounced as she bobbed her head with the inconvenience of it all.
As Kitchen and Quinn stepped back into the room, Etienne tossed out a question. “Before you begin your questioning, officers, my wife has informed me that you’ve requested we remain in Denali for longer than we’d scheduled.”
“That’s right,” Quinn spoke up. “You got a problem with that?”
“I do: lodging. Where do you suggest twenty-three tourists find last-minute accommodations in an area where No Vacancy signs are posted a year in advance? I appreciate your request, I simply question our ability to implement it.”
Kitchen threw a long look at Quinn. �
�You told them they couldn’t leave?”
“A man fell to his death at the zipline site and I haven’t even scratched the surface yet of why it happened, so yeah. I told them they couldn’t leave.”
Kitchen nodded. “Good.” Then, to Etienne, “I might have a lead for you, Mr. Miceli. I got an alert about an hour ago that one of the Majestic cruise ships has reported an outbreak of the norovirus and is returning to Vancouver immediately. So you might want to contact their resort here because, according to the press release, Majestic was supposed to be bussing a whole slew of folks from the ship to Denali tomorrow. Might be the resort would be willing to rent those rooms out to another group rather them leave ’em vacant. Just a suggestion.”
Etienne removed his cell phone from his pocket and stood up. “Thanks. I’ll see what I can do. Would you excuse me?” And out the door he went.
Kitchen removed his hat and set it on the jigsaw puzzle table before returning to the center of the room and plucking his notepad and pen from his shirt pocket. “So folks, here’s what we’ve decided to do. I’m dispatching Sergeant Quinn to search all your rooms for Ms. Spillum’s cell phone.”
A collective gasp from the others. An elated smile from me.
“Don’t you need a warrant to do that?” questioned Ennis.
“Sure do…unless you folks give the sergeant permission to perform his search without it. It’d save us loads of time. If you’ve got nothing to hide, I don’t see any reason why you’d insist on a warrant. But we’re gonna end up searching your rooms one way or the other, so you decide. It’s just that this way will be a lot quicker.”
“You can search my room,” Orphie spoke up. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Kitchen flipped back through the pages of his notepad. “We don’t need to search your cabin, Mrs. Arnesen. I’ve already documented your whereabouts during the time in question.”
“Does that mean you don’t need to search my cabin either?” asked Goldie. “I was with Orphie and Florence at the glacier.”
“We’ll need to search your cabin because of your husband, Mrs. Kristiansen.” He referred to his notes. “The Kristiansen cabin, Ennis Iversen’s cabin, Alison Pickles’s cabin, and Florence Thorsen’s cabin.”
As he rattled off names, Quinn scribbled notes on his own notepad.
“Why do you need to search my cabin?” asked Florence. “I was with Orphie and Goldie. Besides which…my husband is dead.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Thorsen, but I don’t have an accurate account of where your husband went after he left the museum, so it’s necessary.” Kitchen directed a questioning look at his audience. “So what’s the verdict?”
“You can search Thor’s things and mine,” Florence relented in a tired voice, “but I can guarantee you won’t find Delpha’s phone. Thor might have been a louse, but he wasn’t a killer.”
“I won’t force you to apply for a warrant,” said Ennis. “Go ahead and search my stuff. I’m not hiding anything.”
“Me either,” said Alison. “Knock yourselves out.”
Kitchen leveled a look on Grover. “That leaves only you, Mr. Kristiansen.”
Grover shifted uncomfortably in his chair, eyes downcast, tongue drifting out of his mouth to wet his lips. Goldie thwacked his thigh. “Tell him it’s okay, Grover. What are you waiting for?”
Grover hesitated before giving his head a reluctant nod. “You have my permission. But my suitcase is arranged in very specific order so I’d appreciate your not messing things up. I have a system.”
“You hear that, Sergeant?” needled Kitchen. “Make an effort to be neat.”
Quinn looked less than amused as he addressed the room. “If you’re carrying your cell phone with you, please hold it up. All of you, not just the guests whose cabins I’m going to search.”
We pulled them out of pockets and handbags and held them in the air.
“Do any of you have more than one cell phone with you?”
Head shaking. Scattered nopes.
“So I shouldn’t find any extra cell phones in your rooms, right?”
Nods all around.
“All right, then, I need to collect your room keys, please.”
“Even if you’re not going to search our cabin?” asked Orphie.
Quinn read off his notepad. “I need four keys: Kristiansen, Iversen, Pickles, and Thorsen.”
He made a quick pass around the room to gather the old-fashioned metal keys with their attached cabin number tags. He paused in front of Alison. “You’re not part of the zipline contingent.”
“There were three groups of zipliners. I was in the one that escaped any fatalities.”
“And you’re here why?”
“I asked her to be here,” Kitchen replied for her. “I need her to corroborate the alibis in the Spillum investigation.”
Quinn took the key from her hand, but he lingered as she smiled up at him, acting as if his feet were suddenly buried in concrete.
“How long are you gonna keep us locked up in here?” Grover snapped, his gaze fixed on Quinn.
“I’d like to know that too,” complained Ennis. “I’ve got ongoing problems of my own to take care of back home. I need to be making phone calls.”
“You’ll be here as long as it takes,” warned Kitchen as Quinn wrenched himself away from Alison and headed out the door. “Longer if you don’t lose the attitude. So”—he grabbed a folding chair and sat down—“don’t spare me any details, gentlemen. I’ll start with Mr. Kristiansen. Where did you go and what did you do after leaving the Roundhouse Museum on the evening Ms. Spillum was killed?”
Not surprisingly, Grover launched into the same explanation he’d given me earlier in the day, saying he’d left the building shortly after Alison because his diuretic had kicked in and he needed to find a restroom. But he still couldn’t recall which of the two facilities he’d used.
“And afterward?” asked Kitchen.
“I just wandered around. But I’m remembering now that I spent a lot of time watching the gondola go up and down the mountain. That’s quite the operation, but noisy as all get-out.”
“Ms. Pickles, did you run into Mr. Kristiansen again after you left the museum?”
“Not until I left the ladies’ room and saw him standing near the hostess podium in the restaurant. Like I told you earlier, I needed to spend a lot more time in the restroom than I would have liked.”
“Did you run into any other tour guests after you left the museum, Mr. Kristiansen?”
“Not a one. Not until I stepped into the restaurant foyer.”
Kitchen flipped a page on his notepad. “Did you harbor any animosity toward the victim? Grudges left festering? Scores you wanted to settle?”
“No! Delpha was a friend. Her reading tastes were different from mine, but we never let that affect our friendship. She got along with everyone in book club, except maybe…Well, let me put it this way: the only person I ever saw her have words with was Thor.”
Kitchen nodded. “Mr. Iversen.” He redirected his questioning. “Would you please repeat your alibi, including any added details you remember?”
Ennis offered the same version of his whereabouts that he’d given me. He’d left the museum at about the same time as Thor, wandered the grounds, hung around the deck, and watched the fog roll in.
“You didn’t see Mr. Kristiansen in your travels?”
Ennis shook his head. “I saw a lot of tourists milling around, but I didn’t see Grover, no.”
“And you didn’t see Ms. Pickles?”
“She was in the ladies’ room,” Orphie said helpfully. “Didn’t you hear what she said?”
“I didn’t see anyone I knew,” Ennis confirmed. “Including Alison.”
“Do you agree with that, Ms. Pickles?” asked Kitchen.
“I couldn’t
see anything from my stall in the ladies’ room, especially our male guests, so yeah, I agree.”
Lieutenant Kitchen narrowed his eyes at Ennis. “Do you have any reason to want Ms. Spillum dead, Mr. Iversen?”
“Delpha and I were good friends, Lieutenant. We shared similar intellectual pursuits, had the same political leanings, enjoyed the same movies. A conversation with Delpha was always a lively one. She pushed you to think. I’m going to miss that. So no, I certainly had no reason to want her dead.”
“What about Thor?” Goldie spoke up. “How are you planning to find out where he was? He’s the one you should be focusing on. It ticked him off that Delpha wouldn’t kowtow to him, so he had it in for her. You could tell just from the way he treated her. Never any respect. Always mouthing off to her. Trust me, if anyone killed her, it was him.”
“Thank you for your opinion, Mrs. Kristiansen.” He eyed the rest of us. “Anyone else?”
I raised a tentative hand, uneasy about poking a hornet’s nest, but uncomfortable about what might get swept under the carpet if I didn’t speak up. “I have a comment…for whatever it’s worth. Maybe someone can explain it to me. When our group was gathered in the hotel lobby our first night in Girdwood, I saw Delpha glare at Grover, Goldie, and Ennis when they stepped off the elevator. And it wasn’t just a passing look. It was intense and filled with loathing and disgust. When I asked Delpha if she and Goldie had had a falling out, she told me that the two of them were the best of friends and that Goldie had been like a sister to her ever since kindergarten. But when I spoke to Goldie, she told me that she and Delpha shared a cordial but basically superficial relationship. So you can see my confusion. If Delpha was such good friends with everyone, what was up with the hateful look? And if that look mirrored the true depth of her feelings, did it also factor into why she died?”
Kitchen studied me for a long moment. “Intriguing questions, Mrs. Miceli.” He ranged a look at Goldie. “Do you know of any reason why Ms. Spillum would have regarded you with animosity?”