by Dawn Eastman
Her jaunt down the hall had left her breathless, or maybe it was just Mac’s proximity, but she put a hand to her ample chest as she caught her breath.
“I need to speak to you,” she said. She glanced at me and added, “Alone.”
“Mrs. Poulson, if you have something to tell me about the investigation, you can speak to both of us. Ms. Fortune is a police officer as well.”
Mavis sniffed and her mouth pursed as if she’d been given a lemon to suck on. It became clear to me why she bothered Vi so much—they were exactly alike.
“Very well,” she said. She turned to me, “I hope your professionalism will override any family loyalty you may have.”
Mac gestured toward the stairs, but Mavis balked.
“This needs to be a very private conversation,” she said. “Selma is still downstairs; we can go in my room.”
She led us to her room and reapplied her key to the lock. Swinging the door wide, she waved us inside.
This room was obviously the pink fantasy room. The curtains were heavy velvet in a deep rose color. The dark wood of the furniture glowed pink in the misty light from the window. Mavis and Selma had evidently been working hard on their yarn-bombing project. Large swaths of knitting draped over the chairs and the couch.
Mavis gestured toward her sitting area, and Mac and I perched on the small loveseat and tried not to upset the rainbow of knitted items. Mavis pressed her lips together and took the wing-back chair.
“I need to confess,” she began. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth earlier when you asked me about my movements on the night of the . . . of poor Clarissa’s death.”
Mac leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. I noticed he hadn’t whipped out his notebook.
“When I came up to get my medicine, I saw Isabel coming back down from the turret room,” she said.
Mac and I exchanged a glance—the tilt of his head told me that this had piqued his interest.
Mavis held up her hand. “That’s only part of what I want to tell you,” she said. “I didn’t mention it before because I just know Isabel didn’t hurt Clarissa. I’ve known them both for many years and if anyone was going to turn into a murderer, it would have been Clarissa.”
“Did you speak to Isabel when she came back down?” Mac asked.
Mavis shook her head. “She didn’t see me. I had just opened my door and I heard someone coming down the stairs. She wasn’t very quiet.” Mavis took a deep breath and continued. “I popped into my room and cracked the door just enough to see who it was. Isabel came out of the doorway. She was rubbing her head like it really hurt and then she passed by my door and must have gone on to her own room around the corner.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” I asked, unable to hide my irritation.
Mavis had the decency to look ashamed. “I didn’t want to get Isabel in trouble, but now I know who really killed Clarissa.” She leaned forward in her chair and looked at each of us in turn. “Violet Greer is your killer, I’m sure of it.”
I stifled a snort and turned it into a cough. Mac put his hand on my leg to steady me and probably to keep from laughing himself. It took him a moment to speak.
“Why do you think that Violet is the killer?” Mac asked.
“I know it will be hard for you to hear.” She looked at me. “She’s your aunt, after all.” She turned to Mac. “And a good friend of your mother’s. But that woman is not to be trusted.” Mavis held her finger up in such a likeness to Vi, I wondered for a moment if these two were punking us.
“Okay, let’s stick to the evidence you have against her,” Mac said and this time he did pull out his notebook, I assumed for show.
“She’s been sneaking around the castle ever since Clarissa died, acting very suspicious if you ask me.” Mavis held up one finger. “She didn’t like Clarissa because Clarissa had made fun of her pet-psychic business and the knitters in general—which annoyed all of us, but only Vi had a murderous gleam in her eyes.”
“So, your evidence is that Vi had a murderous gleam and she’s been sneaking around?” Mac asked.
I thought that if that were enough to arrest Vi, we would have been visiting her in prison on a weekly basis.
“And I saw her steal that cable needle.” Mavis nodded and sat back in her chair, having given us the clincher.
“Cable needle?” Mac said.
“Jessica told us that Isabel’s fancy new cable needle was found at the crime scene—I saw Violet slip it into her bag on Thursday afternoon.”
I wondered what Vi would have to say for herself. The sad part is I didn’t doubt she had taken the needle. She probably wanted to sneak it up to her room to conduct some sort of knit-swatch experiment. She must have returned it at some point or someone took it from her.
“Tell me about seeing Isabel,” Mac said. He casually slipped his notebook back in his pocket as if the Isabel information wasn’t worth writing down.
Mavis flapped her hand as if waving away an annoying bug. “Oh, that was nothing. I talked to Isabel about it.” Mavis’s mouth pulled into a frown. “She wasn’t pleased when I told her I was going to discuss this with you, but you need all the facts, and not telling you was wearing me down. She accused me of being a traitor.” Mavis huffed and took a moment to breathe heavily in indignation.
Mac and I waited for her to continue.
“She said she made a mistake and went the wrong way. She never went up to the room—I just saw her coming back out. That’s what she told me and I believe her.”
“Mrs. Poulson,” Mac said, “this has been very helpful and I’m grateful you came forward with your information. I would just like to say, that if you are ever in a position to be questioned by the police in the future, it would be best to tell your whole story up front.”
Mavis’s face fell from a broad smile to a contrite countenance. She nodded.
“So, will you arrest Violet?” Mavis asked. “It would be really nice if she wasn’t snooping around the castle the whole time we’re stuck here. Where will you keep her imprisoned while we wait for the police to arrive?”
“Unfortunately, we’ll need to gather some more information before we can make an arrest,” Mac said. “But you’ve given us something to think about.” He stuck out his hand and Mavis grasped it eagerly.
She showed us to the door and as I passed into the hall, she put a hand on my arm. “I’m so sorry to have to be the bearer of such distressing news. You have certainly shown grace and poise under these difficult circumstances.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Poulson,” I said. “I try to remain professional in these situations.”
36
“I think I should go talk to Kirk about this,” Mac said, and patted the notebook through his sweater.
“I’ll work on finding the key to the lockbox,” I said.
“How are you going to do that?” Mac asked. “Is this another pendulum thing? Are you going to get your aunt involved?”
“No! I’m not even going to tell her about the box,” I said. I didn’t add that I had to keep the information from her or risk losing a bet.
Mac lowered his voice and said, “Are you going to do that finding thing you do?”
I stopped in the middle of the hall. “What are you talking about?”
“I know you can find things.” Mac didn’t meet my eyes. “I’ve seen you do it.”
“You have?” I didn’t remember when I would have told him that I was tapping into that sense to find something. Ever since we had gotten back together after so many years apart, I had avoided discussing my . . . talents with him. When it came to talking about my psychic abilities I was a coward. Neila’s guidance had at least moved me in the direction of not outright denying them. But treating my “finding ability” the same way Mom treated the tarot deck or Vi relied on her messages from animals? I wasn’t t
here yet.
Mac put his hand to my cheek. “Of course I have. I think you’re incredible. Even though I don’t understand it, I recognize that you have a gift. You should use it.”
My heart started pounding. I couldn’t believe he was encouraging me to use a psychic method to help solve a case. He didn’t even have to write it in a note! Something had shifted between us and the relief I felt at not hiding that part of myself from him had me blinking back tears.
I swallowed hard. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He gave me a quick kiss and turned toward the back door to look for Kirk.
I wandered past the lounge, trying to focus on the key and where it might be. Not knowing exactly what it looked like made the process more difficult.
I glanced in the room and saw Isabel there with a small bundle of yarn in her arms. She smiled when she saw me.
“You caught me,” she said. “I’m glad you aren’t one of the knitters—I left them working on their projects to sneak down here and do my yarn bombing.” She held four or five furry knitted animals. I identified a fox, an elephant, and a monkey. She had already placed a small horse next to the horse statue.
“Wow,” I said. “That looks really complicated.” I reached out and she handed me the monkey.
“They can be a little fiddly, but it’s fun,” she said.
I gave the monkey back. “I’m having enough trouble with the scarf.”
Isabel looked around the room, presumably searching for a place to exhibit the animals.
I hated to do an interview without Mac, but this seemed like a perfect opportunity to ask her about Mavis’s accusation.
“Isabel, I need to ask you again about the night Clarissa was killed.”
Her smile faded and she nodded. “Should we sit?” She pointed at the couches by the fireplace.
She set her animals on the coffee table and sat back against the cushions. “How can I help?”
“A . . . witness has come forward reporting that you were seen leaving Clarissa’s room on the night she died.”
Isabel took a deep breath and let it out. She closed her eyes briefly. “I know who your witness is and I’ll tell you the same thing I told her. I did go up to Clarissa’s room that night, but I didn’t talk to her. She had made a remark about Teresa—that’s Mavis’s daughter—and how suicide was such a waste, and such a selfish act.” Isabel laced her fingers together on her lap and squeezed. “Mavis turned white as a sheet. I was furious, and on my way to my room to get my headache medicine I went to her room. However, halfway up the stairs I came to my senses. There was no reasoning with Clarissa and no way to appeal to her conscience because she didn’t have one. I went to my room to calm down and the rest is just as I told you before.”
“I’m sorry about your friend,” I said.
“Thank you.” Isabel relaxed her hands. “Mavis and I got into a bit of a tiff over this whole thing. She told me she had seen me and that she would ‘cover’ for me. I couldn’t believe she thought I had killed Clarissa—and that she would offer to cover it up!” She shook her head. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything earlier, but I just thought it would confuse the issue.”
And that she would be a suspect, I thought to myself. It was starting to look like the entire hotel had visited Clarissa that night and they all had a reason to want her dead.
“Thank you for telling me about it now,” I said.
Isabel gathered up her animals and I left her in the lounge to continue her surreptitious placement.
Back in the hall, I leaned against the wall for a moment to clear my head. I would have to fill Mac in on Isabel’s story, but first I needed to find that key. Usually, I can visualize the item and then “zoom out” and see where it is. Instead, I kept getting a picture of Seth.
Seth couldn’t have the key, but I had been down this road enough times to just go with it. If I was seeing Seth, then I should go find Seth. Just like that tug to look in the wardrobe, I had to follow this hint.
I found him rather quickly in the front reception area. He sat on the couch staring out at the snow. I almost hated to disturb him. I was shocked he wasn’t already in the dining room since it was close to lunchtime, and it had been at least three hours since he’d last eaten.
As I got closer, I saw that he was petting the demon cat. I heard its purring across the room.
“If you sit down really slow, you won’t disturb her,” Seth said quietly.
I hated to disturb the crazy cat, so I sat down slowly on the chair across from Seth. The cat opened one eye and stopped purring. Seth scratched her head and she closed her eye and resumed her little motor noises.
“How did you catch her?” I asked. “It seems like everyone in the hotel has been trying to find her.”
“I just sat out here to listen to my music and watch the snow and she found me.” He smiled at the pile of fur in his lap. She rubbed her head against his hand.
“Maybe there are two cats, because that doesn’t look like the streaking, yowling, scratching cat I’ve seen before.”
Seth grinned. “It’s the same cat.” His smile faded. “She’s really scared.”
I didn’t realize Seth had the same affinity for cats as he did for dogs.
“What’s she afraid of?”
Seth shook his head. “It’s kind of strange—she’s just showing me pictures of things. Yarn, a room with yellow walls and flowers . . . tile with a pool of blood.” Seth looked at me.
“It sounds like the turret room—have you been up there?”
He didn’t answer right away. “No. Is it really bright during the daytime? She’s showing me a big patch of sunlight.”
“The windows face east and there are a lot of them, so it probably is bright.”
“She likes that room, but she’s afraid of it now.”
“Seth, did she see who killed Clarissa?”
Seth’s big brown eyes took on a faraway look. “She might have, but I’m not sure she realizes it. She keeps showing me yarn, balls of yarn in a basket, and a hand putting food down for her.”
He stroked the cat some more.
“I don’t know what it means,” he said.
I didn’t know what it meant, either. Maybe nothing. Maybe Duchess thought about yarn the way Tuffy thought about food—all the time.
Duchess continued to purr with her eyes closed. I continued to not see the key in my mind’s eye.
“Are you hungry?” I asked after a few minutes of listening to the purring.
His eyes lit up. He shifted position. Duchess hopped off his lap and stretched her back legs before jumping onto the windowsill. She sat looking out the window, tail twitching slowly.
“I did find this,” Seth said and held out his hand, palm up.
A small silver key glinted in his hand.
“Where did you find it?” I took it from him and looked for numbers or markings on it. It had to be the key to the lockbox.
“It was taped to the inside of her collar,” he said. “It was bugging her because it kept pulling her hair.”
I glanced at the cat. She kept her gold eyes trained on me while her tail slowly swept back and forth.
I wondered who else knew that she had the key the whole time. And knew what it was for. I tucked it into my pocket.
“Let’s go see if this key works,” I said.
“What about lunch?”
I grinned at him. “Soon.” I slung an arm over his shoulder and we headed upstairs.
37
We entered my room and I was relieved to see that Vi was absent and Seth wasn’t going to have to divert her and drag her down the hall. I hadn’t seen her since our encounter in the turret room and I didn’t want her rummaging in the lockbox. I asked Seth to guard the door and warn me if anyone approached the room.
I too
k the box down from the shelf by carefully covering it with a T-shirt to protect any fingerprints that might be on it. I doubted it would ever be necessary and recognized that much of our evidence had been tainted at this point. But, just in case.
I set the box on the coffee table, and Seth watched as I inserted the key in the lock. It turned easily and the lid popped up about half an inch. I opened the lid and peered inside. It was filled with cash. Most of it was twenties but there was one thick stack of hundreds. She probably had ten thousand dollars stashed in the box. I took the money out and stacked it next to the box.
“Wow,” Seth said from the doorway. He was alternately watching me and peering through the peephole.
A handwritten list of furnishings, statues, paintings, and art sat underneath the money. In the next column were numbers that I assumed were prices or estimates of value. I recognized some of the items as artwork and furniture from the lounge. I glanced at Seth.
“She was keeping track of how much the antiques were worth,” I said. “I wonder if this money is from previous sales, or the cell phones, or blackmail.”
“Blackmail?” Seth asked.
“She liked to collect secrets,” I said.
“It looks like she liked to collect money,” Seth said.
“I wonder if she was selling off some of the antiques in the castle?”
I flipped the pages to see if there was a list of “sold” items. There wasn’t. Just more numbers and items. I wondered if Jessica and Linda knew that Clarissa had assessed the entire contents of the castle.
“Someone’s coming,” Seth whispered.
I quickly repacked the box and I set it up on the shelf. I went to the door and listened with Seth. Mavis was talking to someone—probably Selma—and she stopped at her room and unlocked the door.
I went to the closet and pushed the box to the back where it had been.
Something was bothering me about the list and the money but I couldn’t quite pin it down. The back of my neck prickled and I struggled to make the connection.