“In a perfect world, I’d not only have evidence bags and fancy gadgets, but also a whole crew of forensics experts to back me up. Plus a state-of-the-art lab to test things in. Haven’t you ever watched Bones?”
“Too gory,” Liss told her. “I’m more a Murder, She Wrote kind of gal.”
Liss was pleased when her wisecrack made Sherri smile. She had begun to worry about her friend. For all Sherri’s efficiency, her eyes were bloodshot and her color ashen. Lack of sleep combined with too much responsibility could do in even the healthiest, most capable individual.
When the tea arrived, Liss was glad to see that it had come in a large pot and that there were three cups with it. Satisfied, Margaret cleared out and Pete left to see if he could locate Phineas, since neither Joe nor Sam had returned. Somewhat to Liss’s surprise, Sherri did not insist that she go, too. When Sherri plunked herself down at the foot of Dilys’s bed, Liss grabbed the desk chair and moved it closer to the two of them.
When they’d first found her, Dilys’s face had been pasty white. Now a bit of color had returned to her cheeks and her breathing was steady. She’d stopped crying, although the tracks of tears still stained her cheeks. Considering what she’d been through, Liss was amazed that she was as calm as she was.
“Okay, Dilys,” Sherri said when all three of them had teacups in hand. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened to you. Was it Phineas MacMillan who tied you up?”
Dilys’s eyes immediately filled. “No.”
Liss and Sherri exchanged a startled look. If not Phineas, then who?
“Was there someone else in that closed-up wing?” Sherri asked. “Did Phineas have a confederate? Eunice, maybe?”
Dilys answered with a bleat of hysterical laughter. The hand holding the teacup shook visibly. She set it back in its saucer with a loud clatter. Before the hot liquid could spill all over her, Liss rescued it and set the cup on the bedside table next to her own. Dilys swiped at her streaming eyes with both hands. Sherri raided the bathroom for a handful of tissues. Dilys noisily blew her nose.
“All right, Dilys,” Sherri said with badly concealed exasperation. “Let’s try this from another angle. Who tied you up?”
Dilys sniffled, crumpled the tissues in her hand, and drew in a shaky breath. “Phil MacMillan.”
“Phil? Dilys, I think you’re confused. Phil—”
“No, you’re confused.” Dilys sat up straighter and glared at both Sherri and Liss. “Do you want to hear my side of this or not?”
“Yes, we do, Dilys,” Sherri said in a tight voice.
Liss studied Dilys’s face. Was the woman delusional? Had she been hit on the head?
“Let’s start at the beginning, okay?” Sherri suggested. “Keep everything in order?”
“Go all the way back, Dilys,” Liss said. “Back to when you and Phineas were engaged to be married.”
Dilys turned on her, eyes narrowed. “How do you know about that?”
“I saw an old picture in a newspaper. It showed you with the twins and Eunice. I also found the clipping about the Burns Night Supper in your room at Rhonda’s house. I know you only came to Moosetookalook because you wanted to be here that night. What did you plan to do, Dilys?”
Dilys wrapped the blankets more tightly around herself. “I’ll tell you everything, okay? I will. It’s just…hard.”
Sherri patted her arm consolingly, although Liss could tell she was running out of patience. “Take your time,” she said.
Just not too much of it, Liss thought. If this were a mystery novel instead of real life, she’d already have peeked at the ending.
It didn’t take Dan long to retrieve the length of thin, strong clothesline and the handkerchief. They were right where Sherri and Liss had let them fall when they’d freed Dilys—in front of the closet under the stairs. Dan tucked both into one of the capacious pockets in his jacket.
He’d stopped at a utility closet for supplies on his way back to the east wing. Armed with a sheet of heavy-duty plastic and a staple gun, he headed up the stairs to the fourth-floor tower room. One of the windowpanes had been broken by the storm. Struck by a flying branch, most likely. Sleet had been pouring into the room earlier, when he’d gone up there to search for Dilys. He’d plugged the hole with rags, but that wouldn’t keep the elements out for long.
Sturdier repairs weren’t difficult to make, but the job required all his concentration. He was working by the dim light of a lantern placed on the floor. It hadn’t seemed worth the effort to go down to the basement and throw the breaker switch to turn power back on in this wing, not for a simple job like this one.
He was careful not to damage the window frame as he fastened the plastic securely in place. The biggest challenge came from random gusts of wind and the cold. It was so intense that his fingers felt like icicles even with gloves on. In spite of the adverse conditions, he finished up a quarter of an hour later and stood back to examine his handiwork. The small flashlight he’d had in his pocket confirmed that the result wasn’t pretty, but it would do.
The octagonal tower had large windows in all eight sides. They looked out over the surrounding mountains. If the sky had been clear and it had been daylight, Dan would have been able to see halfway to Mt. Washington in neighboring New Hampshire. Even on a wretched night like that one, his memory provided a picture of that view on a bright summer’s day. Once work was finished in this room and its twin in the west wing, they would be a real draw for guests, just as the other two tower rooms and the suites in the central tower already were.
Dan wasn’t sure how long he stood there, contemplating the hotel’s future, before he was jerked back to his surroundings by a squawk from his walkie-talkie. Pete’s voice filled the room. “Dan? You still in the east wing?”
He depressed the TALK button. “I’m just finishing up repairs on a bit of storm damage in the tower room. Tell Sherri to hold her horses. I’ll be there in a minute with her evidence.”
“You see anything of MacMillan?”
Dan frowned. In the east wing? “Not a trace. Did you lose him again? That’s getting to be a bad habit.”
“He isn’t where he said he’d be,” Pete replied. “I’m headed back to the second floor to see if Sherri has finished taking Dilys’s statement. Meanwhile, you’d best get down here.”
“On my way.”
Dan hooked the walkie-talkie back onto his belt and looked around for his staple gun. He’d put it down on the floor and it had promptly been swallowed up by shadows. He’d just spotted it when he heard a faint sound behind him. He turned, aiming the flashlight toward the door. The beam revealed nothing but bare floor and empty space.
“Is someone there? Liss?” It wouldn’t surprise him if she’d come looking for him. That was Liss all over—too impatient to wait for anything.
But the silhouette that shifted out of the greater darkness near the bath was far too bulky to be Liss MacCrimmon. Dan swung his light over and up. For an instant, teeth gleamed white in the flashlight beam. Then something flew in Dan’s direction.
He tried to duck, but his reaction time was slowed by disbelief. His brain had registered that the object was another flashlight—one of those high-powered, long-handled ones that were way too heavy for ordinary household use—but he didn’t have time to get out of the way before it struck him, hard, on the side of his head.
He felt a moment of pain. Then everything went black.
Chapter Eighteen
“I did come to Moosetookalook because of the Burns Night Supper,” Dilys confessed. “I knew Rhonda had a job at the hotel and I figured she could get me in. I wanted to see Phineas again.” She sighed deeply.
“What were you planning to do?” Sherri asked.
“I didn’t have a plan. Not really. I just hoped I’d have a chance to talk to him without Phil around. I…I wanted him to know that Phil lied about me. Phineas wouldn’t listen at the time, and I didn’t have any proof anyway.”
“Do you n
ow?” Liss asked.
“Yeah. A couple of months ago, I ran into the photographer Phil hired to fake those photos of me coming out of a motel with some guy. He told me the whole story, but I figured it was too late to do anything about it. Then, just after my cousin had been telling me about this great new job she had, I saw that item in the newspaper. It seemed like fate.” Dilys swabbed at her eyes. “A chance for a little payback, maybe, but mostly I just wanted to set the record straight. I wasn’t after Phineas MacMillan’s money. I really thought I loved him back then. And I wasn’t some cheap little tramp who cheated on him!”
“Whew,” Sherri said, scribbling notes to herself. “Okay, Dilys, let’s fast-forward a bit. You’re at the hotel. Working. All three of the MacMillans had checked in by around three. You didn’t get off till four. Did you see Phineas that afternoon?”
“Oh, I saw him all right. He and his brother and Eunice walked right past me in the hall and none of them gave me a second glance.” She looked ready to turn into a fountain again.
“On the third floor?” Liss asked. “On their way down to meet me?”
“I don’t know where they were going, but they all came out of three-twelve just as I was coming down from cleaning the fifth-floor tower room. I…I was caught off guard. I backed up into the alcove where the ice and snack machines are, but Phineas…he looked right at me.” Her voice rose to a wail. “He used to swear he’d love me forever and he didn’t even recognize me!”
Sherri looked sympathetic, but that didn’t stop her from pressing for more information. “Did you see Harvey MacMillan?”
Liss sent a startled glance her way. What did Harvey have to do with anything?
“I didn’t see anyone else,” Dilys said.
Sherri gave a dismissive little wave. “No, I guess you wouldn’t have. Forget I mentioned it. Harvey was people-watching through the peephole in his door and all he saw was an unidentifiable shadow, but that must have been you. What happened next, Dilys? Did you by chance go into Phil and Eunice MacMillan’s suite?”
Dilys hung her head. Her answer was barely audible. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Since all three of them came out of that door, I thought maybe it was Phineas’s room. I don’t know exactly what I had in mind to do. I was upset that he didn’t recognize me, but I guess I was a little bit relieved, too, because his brother was with him, and I didn’t want anything to do with Phil. I thought if three-twelve was Phineas’s room, I could wait in there until he came back. Then I could talk to him alone. But as soon as I got inside the suite, I saw Eunice’s things scattered around and I knew I’d made a mistake.”
“But you didn’t leave right away, did you?” Liss asked.
Dilys was silent for so long that she thought the housekeeper might not answer, but at last she took another deep breath and resumed her story. She kept her head down, as if ashamed, and fixed her eyes on her hands, which she held tightly clasped in her lap. She’d discarded the blankets. The room was now comfortably warm.
“I don’t know what came over me. But, like I just told you, it was Phil who sabotaged my engagement to Phineas. And suddenly I just felt so angry with him. I pulled the cushions off the sofa and threw them across the room. Then I went into the bedroom and grabbed the pillows from the bed and tossed them on the floor, too. I know that sounds pretty lame, but I was just so frustrated. I had to do something.”
“So a few pillows? That’s it?” Pencil poised over notebook, Sherri waited.
Dilys shook her head. “When I looked around, I saw how neatly Phil MacMillan had all his things arranged. Just so. All very orderly and organized. Suddenly I wanted to do something that would really piss him off. I thought about smashing his laptop, but somehow that didn’t seem personal enough.”
“You could have stolen his laptop, or other valuables,” Liss suggested. “Stashed them in your housekeeping cart.”
Dilys looked offended. “I’m not a thief. And I didn’t appreciate being questioned about some stupid missing property when I came back to the hotel later that evening. If someone stole something from Phil MacMillan or from anyone else in this hotel, it wasn’t me.”
Liss kept silent. Both she and Sherri knew very well that Dilys hadn’t taken the brooch, but Sherri said only, “Will you tell me what else you did do while you were in the MacMillans’ suite?”
Dilys worried her lower lip. “There were some papers stacked on the desk. I tossed them onto the floor, too. And I pulled some clothes out of the closet and stomped on them—Phil’s good plaid and a spare kilt. And then I dumped that fancy after-shave of his right down the drain.”
“Okay. And then?” Sherri seemed certain there was more.
Liss suspected there was, too, since she’d watched Dilys become steadily more agitated as she made her confession. She’d never before seen anyone literally wring her hands, but Dilys was.
“It was the papers,” Dilys whispered. “I didn’t notice until I was on my way out, but the pile of papers I’d knocked over had been stacked on top of a passport. Hiding it. And there was another paper beneath the passport. The paper had Phin’s name written all over it. His signature, I mean. That stopped me dead. I couldn’t think why such a thing would be there in Phil’s room.”
“Please go on, Dilys,” Sherri said when the older woman abruptly stopped speaking. “Liss, give her a fresh cup of that tea.”
“I’m okay.” But Dilys took the cup Liss handed her and drank half of it in one gulp.
“Whose passport was it?” Liss asked.
“Phineas’s. And tucked inside was Phineas’s driver’s license.”
Liss felt her eyebrows lift. “Why would Phil have his brother’s documents?”
“That’s what I wondered. It kinda spooked me, finding them. That’s when I got out of there. Fast. It was time for me to go off shift anyway. I was supposed to meet Rhonda and Sadie. I…I just left. I decided to forget I’d ever gone into three-twelve.”
“But you left the pillows and papers and clothes all scattered around,” Sherri pointed out. “That was enough to betray the fact that someone had been there.”
“I wasn’t thinking.”
“Why did finding the passport and driver’s license upset you?” Liss asked.
“I…I don’t know, exactly. But it stood to reason that Phil was probably up to no good.” Dilys gave a short, humorless laugh. “He was always up to something. I thought about it after I got back to Rhonda’s place. I decided maybe he had Phineas’s papers because he was trying to set his brother up to take the blame for something he’d done. Phil, I mean. So, by the time I came back to the hotel that evening, I’d made my mind up to talk to Phineas, no matter what, and tell him what his brother did to us all those years ago and tell him about the passport, too. I figured if I stuck around after the cocktail party, I could maybe take him aside and talk to him. But then we got hauled in for questioning.” She sent a resentful look Sherri’s way.
“So you never got the chance to talk to Phineas, after all?” Sherri asked.
“Not then. But after the power went out, everyone was in the lobby, at least for a little bit, and when Phineas went off on his own, I followed him. I caught up with him near the stairs by the freight elevator and persuaded him to come and sit with me on that padded bench in the vestibule outside the restaurant. I had to tell him who I was.” Bitterness underscored her words. “And then, of course, he didn’t want to listen to a word I said. He started to leave, so I just blurted out what I’d seen in Phil’s suite. That got his attention!”
“So he didn’t know that his brother had his passport and driver’s license?” Liss was starting to have difficulty keeping all the details straight. Her fingers itched for a yellow lined pad and a felt-tip pen so she could make a “who knew what when” list.
“He said Phil couldn’t have them. He even pulled the wallet out of his sporran to show me his real driver’s license.”
“So the one you saw in Phil’s s
uite was a fake,” Sherri murmured, still scribbling.
“It must have been, and that’s what Phineas thought. He got really ticked off about it, too.”
“How long were you and Phineas together in the vestibule?” Sherri asked.
“Not long. No more than ten minutes. Phineas was finally willing to listen, so I told him what Phil had done with hiring that photographer and all. But he said the past didn’t matter. And he told me that he’d prefer it if I didn’t bother him again. He said that he certainly didn’t intend to acknowledge that he knew me.” She looked down at the white blouse and black slacks she’d been wearing ever since the cocktail party. “I suppose he could tell by my clothes that I worked at the hotel. It was pretty clear he thought I was beneath his notice.”
“Did anyone see you together?” Sherri asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you know what time it was when you talked to him?”
Dilys shook her head.
“Which of you left first?” Sherri asked.
“I did,” Dilys said. “I came here, to my room, and stayed here.”
“And which way was Phineas going when you last saw him?”
“He was just standing there, in the middle of the vestibule, looking like he wanted to strangle his brother.”
Liss and Sherri exchanged a speaking glance. Phineas could have told Sherri the truth. He could have been heading for his room and gone there directly after he talked to Dilys. The stairs by the freight elevator led to the second floor.
They also led to the basement, where his brother had later been found murdered.
Phineas’s conversation with Dilys had given him reason to be angry with his brother. Add to that the lie he’d told Sherri about not knowing that Dilys was in the hotel, and Liss was convinced they’d found Phil’s murder.
“Near as I can figure,” Sherri said, “Phil must have been at the gift shop at about the same time you were talking to Phineas. Very soon afterward, Phil was dead.”
“No,” Dilys said. “You’ve got it wrong.”
The Corpse Wore Tartan Page 22