Say No Moor

by Maddy Hunter

  “Too much information,” I cried as I clapped my hands over my ears. I was already getting heartburn thinking about having to strip-search August and Spencer to see if they were wearing Dick’s shorts.

  “dick!” I heard Helen’s voice explode through the hallway despite my attempt to render myself deaf. She brandished a white plastic garbage bag in the air at him. “I found your underwear! They’re in your dirty clothes bag.”

  “No kidding?” He rewarded her with a thumbs-up before turning back to me with a sheepish look. “Say, Emily, would you have a problem forgetting everything I just told—”

  “Already forgotten. Anything else you want to report stolen?”

  “Nope. Helen’s eyebrow pencils are all accounted for, so we’re good.”

  I peeked at my watch. “If you’re all done with your inventory, why don’t the two of you head out to the spa? You have loads of time before dinner.”

  “Leave the room when there’s a burglar on the loose? Pffft. I don’t think so. Helen’s laid down the law. She’s not letting her makeup out of her sight. That’d be like asking the president to ditch the briefcase with the nuclear codes for the evening.”

  I headed down to Kathryn’s room and knocked on the door.

  “Who is it?”

  “Emily.”

  “How do I know it’s Emily and not the burglar?”

  “Because I have her voice?”

  “You could be a voice impersonator.”

  “I’m not that gifted.” I could hear her shuffle closer to the door.

  “I want to see three forms of identification. You can slide them under the door.”

  “I just want to ask you a question.”

  “Three forms of ID.”

  “I’m not giving you three forms of ID, Kathryn. Look, I seem to be missing a pair of shoes. Canary-yellow flats. I think they might have gotten left behind when I moved out of this room the other night. Would you check around your bed and closet to see if they’re there?”

  “What if they are? I suppose you’d want me to open the door.”

  “That’s the idea. I’d like them back.”

  “Sorry. I’m a bit too smart to fall for a ruse like that.”

  Air streamed from my nose like fire from a blow torch. “Then would you at least look around your room, and if you find them, give them to me at dinner?”

  “I’m not planning to leave my suite,” she announced through the locked door. “So this evening I’m ordering room service. You can relay the message to Emily.”

  “I am Emily, and room service is not available.”

  “Well, if the real Emily has any hope of continuing this tour, she might want to rethink that option.”

  Why, when I tell people that their best defense against the thief would be to secure their valuables and lock their doors behind them, do they take that to mean they should burrow in their rooms like Old Testament hermits? Is it my choice of words? My inflection? My tendency to smile when I make suggestions?

  As I headed back to my room, Dick Stolee ran out of his. “You’re not going to believe what the thief stole.”

  “Lay it on me.”

  He lowered his voice. “My underwear.”

  “Check your laundry bag.”

  He stared at me, a ray of hope in his eyes. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “dick!” Grace called out through their open door. “They’re in your dirty clothes. I told you that no one would be desperate enough to steal your undies.”

  “Thanks, Emily. You’re a lifesaver. I was worried I’d have to go shopping to replace them.”

  As he turned back toward his room, I called after him, “You’ve got time to kill before dinner. Why don’t you and Grace have a soak in the hot tub?”

  “No can do. Not with this burglar striking at will. We’re sheltering in place.”

  Of course they were.

  He paused at his threshold. “By the way, Grace wanted me to ask you. What would we have to do to get room service tonight?”

  Feeling as if the whole tour were unraveling before my eyes, I struck out for the dining room to investigate the tray situation. It galled me to give in to frivolous demands, but I could see the handwriting on the wall, so I wanted to be prepared.

  As I passed through the lounge, I heard a knock on the front door, so I made a quick detour through the foyer to answer it.

  “Hi. Can I help you?”

  Two thirty-something couples stood on the front stoop, dressed in polo shirts and walking shorts, their finely gauged sweaters tied loosely around their necks like magicians’ capes. They looked as if they’d just stepped off a golf course in Palm Beach. “Is this the right Stand and Deliver Inn?” asked one of the men, giving away his American roots with his accent.

  I offered my best welcoming smile. “The right Stand and Deliver Inn for what?”

  “The food,” he replied. “We were touring in the area—we’re from Boston—so we thought we’d stop by to see if we could make last-minute dinner reservations for this evening.”

  “Uhhh…”

  The shorter of the two women held up her smartphone. “It’s on August Lugar’s blog. He’s been raving about the food so much that we didn’t want to miss out. No one can whet your appetite for fine cuisine more convincingly than Mr. Lugar.”

  “August’s blog,” I hedged. “Right.”

  “We never miss reading his posts,” attested the other man, who was painfully red-faced with sunburn. “He’s made some tremendous recommendations over the years. We’ve tried just about every restaurant he’s deemed a must visit, and we haven’t been disappointed yet.”

  I sucked in a breath, releasing it in slow motion. “So here’s the thing. We’re not accepting reservations.”

  “Can you put our names on your cancellation list?” asked the guy with the sunburn.

  “We don’t have a cancellation list. We don’t have any list. The proprietor is off the premises at the moment, so the tour group I’m escorting is kind of running the show, and we don’t have the wherewithal to open the dining room up to the public. We barely have the capacity to feed ourselves.”

  The lady with the smartphone slipped into dog-with-bone mode. “What about takeout? Could we make a selection from your menu and have your chef prepare it to go?”

  I sighed. “We don’t actually have a menu. Every meal is what you’d call a surprise.”

  “That’s a pretty radical way to conduct business,” said the first man.

  “Radical?” said Mr. Sunburn. “I’d say it’s pretty damn stupid. No dinner reservations? No menu? No takeout?” He looked me in the eye. “You should consider yourself lucky if you’re not out of business by the end of the week.”

  I smiled stiffly. “With the way things are going, that’s a real possibility. But thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  Heads shaking, they retreated back down the path to their car. “Maybe you’d like to come back when there’s a real staff!” I called after them. “The rooms are quite lovely!”

  I was pretty sure I was wasting my breath, but it’d been worth a try. The unfortunate truth was that if Enyon didn’t take over the operations of his inn soon, his dream of being a premiere player in the travel accommodation industry was doomed to go bust.

  Quite spectacularly.

  Supper in the dining room turned out to be a quiet affair.

  Since the Iowa contingent had talked themselves into self-enforced lockdowns in their suites, Wally and I grudgingly capitulated and served their meals to them on trays, just like authentic hotel room service. The only guests who ventured out to sit at the table were the bloggers minus Kathryn, who received room service like the rest of the gang. I was too busy delivering meals to either engage in or overhear the conversation around the dinner table, but I suspected that with Car
oline present, the one thing the other four bloggers wouldn’t be discussing was their next hit.

  Nana knocked the ball out of the park with the meal she whipped up, serving individual pastry tarts filled with baby asparagus and garlic, and smothered in ricotta, gruyere, and parmesan cheeses. As a courtesy to those who detest asparagus, she also provided several variations with broccoli and spiffed up both vegetable selections by including bacon, ham, and prosciutto. She added color with a lettuce, orange, pecan, and crumbled goat cheese salad, then rounded off the presentation by heating up yummy store-bought rolls. Jackie wowed the troops with homemade apple pudding that combined fresh apples and cobbler batter with touches of cinnamon and lemon and was served warm with a scoop of ice cream.

  I ate my meal on the run, shoveling forkfuls into my mouth in between responding to text requests for additional condiments, drink refills, and seconds on dessert. In fact, I had to pop up from my chair so much that I sent out a text blast to the gang informing them that there would be no repeat room service at breakfast, so they had two choices: either show up at the dining table as usual or stay in their rooms and not eat at all, which started a war of words on their Twitter feeds.

  From Helen: Even TV game shows offer THREE choices. Door number one, door number two, or door number three.

  From Dick Stolee: We deserve another choice.

  From Lucille: We should stage a hunger strike if our demands aren’t met.

  From Margi: I must have missed a Tweet. What have we demanded?

  From Grace: Ask Lucille. She’s the one who brought it up.

  From Lucille: Don’t blame me. Helen started it.

  From Helen: Did not.

  From Lucille: Did so.

  From Dick Teig: Hey, is anyone carrying an extra eyebrow pencil that Helen can borrow in case hers gets stolen while we’re sleeping?

  From Osmond: Who would want to steal Helen’s eyebrow pencil?

  From Dick Teig: The thief, you lunkhead. Why do you think we’re locked in our rooms?

  From Osmond: Beats me. I was just going along with what the rest of you were doing.

  And so it went.

  By the time Wally and I collected all the trays, cleared the plates, and stacked the dishes in the dishwasher, I was so worn out from the emotional stress of the day that I didn’t even bother to take my shoes off when I flopped face-first onto my cot. I saved just enough energy to phone the police station one last time, only to be told that there was nothing new to report with either Bernice or Enyon.

  Jackie found me in the same prone position when she pirouetted through the door sometime later. “Ta-daaa! Before I forget, Mrs. S sent out a text blast. Breakfast at 7:30 tomorrow morning. We want to get it out of the way early so we can have first dibs on the spa.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” I mumbled. I angled my head on my pillow to stare at her through one eye. “You’re not tired? If you’re on something, would you please shoot me up with an extra-large dose?”

  “It’s called a natural high, Emily.” She danced over to my cot, twirling and stomping with moves that landed somewhere between boogie and ballet. “Did my apple pudding rock tonight or what?”

  “It rocked.”

  “I’m queen of the world!” She struck a pose with head high and arms thrown back, as if she were standing on the prow of the Titanic.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I’ve found my true calling, Emily. All because of you.”

  As tired as my brain was, it perked up enough to register the fact that this might be the first time in her life that Jackie Thum credited another person for aiding in her success. “Aww, that’s sweet, Jack, but I can’t really take credit.”

  “I know. It’s actually because of my superlative DNA. But you look so pathetic, I thought I should say something to make you feel better.”

  “Thanks. It’s not working.” Okay, a little premature on the kudos. She was still a work-in-progress.

  “I’m already thinking about tomorrow’s dessert, Em. And since we’re confined to quarters, I’ll have all day to prepare. I can create a real gourmet masterpiece—my day four at the Stand and Deliver extravaganza. The pastry chef at the Godolphin Arms offered a few suggestions about recipes today. Wasn’t that upstanding? The restaurant had an extensive dessert menu, so I said to myself, Jackie, I bet this pastry chef would be thrilled to meet a descendant of the family who once cooked for kings, so…”

  Jackie’s voice was the last thing I remember hearing before an insistent pounding on the door woke me from a sound sleep.

  “Hold on!” I rolled out of bed fully dressed and squinted into the daylight. Jackie was gone. It couldn’t be time to cook breakfast already, could it? I darted a look at my wristwatch. Seven o’clock? Zowie! I’d been conked out all night.

  More pounding.

  I threw the door open.

  “I just found Heather in the hot tub,” Caroline cried hysterically. “She’s dead!”

  sixteen

  “So I called 999 immediately, and when I hung up I ran out to the spa and found Heather facedown in the hot tub with her hair feathering outward like”—I made a wavy motion with my fingers to mimic the way her long strands of hair had undulated in the water—“like seaweed.” I shivered involuntarily. “I’m sorry. I’ve never seen a drowning victim before.”

  “May you have the good fortune never to see one again, Mrs. Miceli.”

  I sat opposite Constable Tredinnick in Enyon’s office, recounting my actions as best as I could remember.

  A steady stream of police and emergency vehicles had pulled into the parking lot throughout the morning. Fire truck. Ambulance. Official-looking SUV carrying men with cases that resembled tool boxes. Coroner’s van. The fire truck and ambulance had left within a half hour of their arrival, and three hours later the coroner’s van had departed with Heather’s body. But the SUV remained in the parking lot, which was a good indication that the scene was still being processed.

  When Tredinnick arrived he had warned us that he’d be taking statements from all the guests, so he’d cautioned us to remain in the inn and not wander off. When he began the interview process he questioned Caroline first, but she remained so visibly shaken by her discovery that he offered to have the paramedics return to administer a sedative. She’d declined medical treatment in favor of returning to her room to take one of her “fear of flying” pills, but I doubted that any anti-anxiety drug would be powerful enough to erase the image of Heather’s lifeless body from her memory.

  Tredinnick tapped the point of his pen on his mini notepad. “What did you do after you verified that Ms. Holloway was dead?”

  “I called Wally to tell him that Heather had drowned, that help was on the way, and that he should keep everyone away from the spa. And then I sat down on the bench along the wall and just kinda stared at the hot tub. I wasn’t sure what else to do, but I…I didn’t feel as if I should leave her alone.” I blinked to clear away the moisture that was glazing my vision.

  “How long did you remain in the spa?”

  “Until the ambulance arrived. I met them in the parking lot and let them take over from there.”

  He made a notation on the page. “Did you notice anything out of place in the immediate vicinity of the spa while you were waiting for the ambulance? Anything overturned or broken? Any signs that would indicate a struggle?”

  I shook my head. “I…everything looked pretty much in order to me…other than Heather’s body.”

  “She apparently suffered a nasty gash on her forehead, Mrs. Miceli, so we’re thinking her injury might have contributed to her death.”

  “When would she have sustained a head injury? When she was climbing out of the tub?”

  “There was no trace of blood on the decking, no wet footprints anywhere to indicate she’d actually emerged from the tub. There was a pu
ddle of water on the floor, but it was from the same leak I noticed two days ago. And she was expecting Ms. Goodfriend to join her, so I doubt she would have entertained leaving before her friend even arrived. You ladies are rather courteous about such things. And yet another curiosity: she’d set no towel on the decking for herself. Do you find it curious that a woman would have no towel available to dry herself off?”

  “I’d probably have one, but if she was waiting for Caroline to arrive, maybe she figured Caroline could grab one off the pile for her.”

  “There was no pile, Mrs. Miceli. There were no towels in the building at all.”

  “None? But there was a whole stack on the bench by the dressing rooms when you interviewed us the other day.”

  “Have your guests been indulging themselves in the spa experience?”

  I shook my head. “Our tour director used it once, but as far as I know, Heather was the first actual guest to try it out.”

  “The first, and the last. Per my official order, the spa will remain closed until further notice.”

  I searched his face, clinging onto one last glimmer of hope. “This could simply be a freak accident, right?”

  Tredinnick drew his brows together over his nose. “Port Jacob recorded its very first murder the day your tour group arrived, Mrs. Miceli, and three days later we’re recording what is possibly our second. My instincts tell me her death was no accident, but I’ll be having to wait for the postmortem to confirm it.”

  So. No spa. No optional tours. No wandering. No nothing.

  On the upside, at least there was no way this trip could get any worse.

  “I want to interview your bloggers on an individual basis, but seeing as how the members of your Iowa contingent were together when the crime was perpetrated, I’d like to interview them as a group.”