“No, we’re not sneaking,” she said. “Once we get the key from Ekaterina, we’re going to do a little discreet investigation.”
“Ekaterina?”
“My mole inside the Inn,” she said. “She’s a supervisor in housekeeping. She’s lending us her master key. We need to be discreet, so we don’t get her in trouble. But there’s no need to sneak. And for that matter, there’s nothing more conspicuous in a four-star hotel than someone acting furtive. We march right in like people who have a perfectly good reason for being here.”
“And just in case anyone asks, what is our perfectly good reason?”
She pondered for a few moments. I hoped she came up with her good reason soon, because we were turning into the Inn’s driveway. Which meant we were still a mile or so from the front door, but I was nervously expecting to be stopped at any moment.
“I’m planning a fund-raiser,” she said finally. “I want to see if the Inn’s a suitable venue.”
“Wouldn’t they assume you already knew whether it was a suitable venue?” I asked. “You’ve only been here a couple of dozen times, visiting Grandfather.”
“But never when I was planning a fund-raiser,” she said. “You look at a place differently when you’re thinking about whether you can squeeze in four or five hundred well-heeled guests and how much trouble it will give your caterer. Don’t worry—if you don’t think you can carry it off, just leave it to me. You know nothing, you’re just being kind enough to give me a ride. Ah, here we are. Try for a shady spot near the door.”
Normally we’d be lucky to find even a sunbaked spot a quarter mile from the hotel, but to my surprise the lot was half empty. I actually could find a spot relatively close to the wisteria-framed door and shaded by the huge, raspberry-colored flowers of the crepe myrtles that dotted the parking lot. Not that the shade would help much—the car would still be an oven when we returned. The parking lot was paved with gleaming white gravel and the whole thing shimmered with heat in the July sun. I hadn’t even stepped out of the van and I was already eager to get inside where it was air-conditioned.
I parked, and Caroline helped me arrange the sun shields in both sides of the front windshield before we headed for the entrance. We were halfway across the parking lot when a voice rang out.
“Stop!”
Caroline and I both started guiltily, froze, and whirled to see a young man in the muted green uniform of the Inn’s landscaping staff running after us, waving his arms.
“Come back!” he shouted. “You can’t park there.”
“Get rid of him,” Caroline hissed. She strode on toward the front door, leaving me to deal with the groundskeeper who was so intent on spoiling our unobtrusive arrival.
“You can’t—” the groundskeeper began.
“Shh!” I said. And then I grabbed my head as if suffering from a hideous headache. “No yelling, please,” I whispered. “Do you know what it’s like when you have a migraine and someone keeps yelling?”
I was very proud of myself. I hadn’t actually lied and said I had a migraine.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “It’s just that you can’t park there right now. We’re about to regravel.”
Of course. The Caerphilly Inn prided itself on the perfection of its housekeeping and landscaping, and the pristine white gravel of the parking lot was marred here and there with spots of oil—no doubt from plebian vehicles like mine.
“Oh, right,” I whispered back. “I always wondered whether they regraveled or power washed the stones.”
“Power washing!” He snorted, and forgot to whisper. “Yeah, management thought that would be such a great idea, because labor’s so cheap. You know what happens when you power wash a gravel parking lot?”
I shook my head—gently, with one hand to my temple, to maintain the appearance of someone who shouldn’t be interrogated while bravely coping with a migraine.
“Neither did management,” he said, dropping back into a stage whisper. “You turn a power hose on this sucker and it’s going to send all that gravel flying. Could have graveled the parking lot a dozen times with what they paid out in paint jobs and new windows for all the Mercedes and Jaguars they didn’t move far enough away. And they fired the poor guys they ordered to do the power washing. Like it was their fault. No, we’re back to regraveling. And we make sure all the vehicles are well clear of the part we’re working on. Even the ones that look like that.”
I winced, and then realized he wasn’t pointing at my van but at an old and somewhat battered Chevy sedan at the far end of the lot.
“You don’t happen to know where he is, do you?” he asked.
“He?”
“Belongs to that PI fellow,” the groundskeeper said. “Didn’t I hear that you know him?”
My, how rumors got around in Caerphilly. I shook my head.
“Not well,” I said. “Though as it happens, I’ve been looking for him myself. I take it you’ve checked his room?”
“Called three times this morning, and knocked once. But apparently he never came back to his room last night.” From his tone, I gathered that this was unacceptable behavior for a guest. Or was it Denton’s profession that put him beyond the pale? “His car hasn’t been moved since last night. And we sent out notices yesterday afternoon and again this morning about moving all vehicles to the south lot. So if you find him, you might tell him to come and move it. The tow truck’s on its way. If he hurries up and moves it in the next half hour or so, he can save himself the cost of the tow.”
“If I see him I’ll tell him. You do realize that he works for some of your more distinguished guests.”
“Yeah, but they don’t know where he is either,” he said. “And from the sound of it, they’re not too pleased with him at the moment. You could tell him that, too.”
I nodded and returned to my van. Now that I was looking for it, I spotted the small tasteful sign, printed in the sort of frilly, elegant cursive typeface normally reserved for wedding invitations. Once you got close enough to decipher it, you could see that it read
Please park in the south parking lot today due to construction.
Management apologizes for the inconvenience.
Probably more of an inconvenience for the valet parking staff than anyone else. Odds were at least half the guests couldn’t care less where their cars were parked as long as someone fetched them quickly enough when they wanted them. I found a space at the far end of the south parking lot, and trudged back to the Inn.
I cringed inwardly when I reached the front door and the uniformed attendant scrambled to hold it open for me, bowing deeply.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Langslow,” he said. So much for anonymity.
Caroline was waiting inside, tapping her foot impatiently.
“Don’t skulk,” she said to me. “You have just as much a right to be here as any of them.”
She waved her arm as if the lobby were filled with haughty plutocrats sneering at us. Actually, it was empty, except for two bored-looking businessmen seated by the fireplace reading copies of The Wall Street Journal and looking at their watches every few seconds.
“They’re paying to be here,” I murmured.
“So has your grandfather, plenty of times over the years,” Caroline said.
“Are you sure we can’t help you, madame?”
We both started slightly at finding the bell captain at our elbows.
“No, no,” Caroline said. “For now, I just need to visualize.”
She held up both hands to create a frame in a gesture I’d seen painters and photographers make to assess the pictureworthiness of some bit of scenery. Then she nodded approvingly.
“Very nice,” she muttered. “Meg—follow me!”
She began striding briskly through the lobby. I had been trying to study the two businessmen out of the corner of my eye, wondering if they worked for the Evil Lender, and she caught me by surprise. I had to hurry to catch up with her.
“So whose room are we
burgling first?” I asked, sotto voce.
“Inspecting,” she said. “And I think we’ll do the PI first.”
“Not that way, then,” I said, grabbing her arm. “That leads to the cottages. I doubt if they put the PI in the cottages.”
“Oh, right,” Caroline said. “Force of habit.”
I understood. I’d almost taken the same route myself.
Nowadays, Grandfather had his own suite at the farm that Mother and Dad used as their summer cottage. But back when he had first begun coming to Caerphilly, he’d frequently stayed in one of the Inn’s three cottages. The Washington Cottage was a miniature replica of Mount Vernon, the Jefferson Cottage resembled Monticello, and the Madison Cottage was loosely inspired by Montpelier. All three were decorated with acres of chintz and a mixture of real antiques and pricey reproductions. And given their inflated price tags, even the Evil Lender hadn’t rented the cottages for their minions—although they had been known to house visiting senior vice presidents there.
A pity we didn’t have any senior vice presidents to burgle. All three cottages had multiple French doors opening out onto the terraces with their panoramic view of the golf course. They’d have been relatively easy to break into, even without Ekaterina’s help.
Caroline had been fumbling in her purse and emerged, triumphant, with a slip of paper.
“Here it is,” she said. “The Annex, room 212.”
“That makes sense. This way.” I turned away from the elevator and led the way to a long and much more modest corridor tucked away nearby.
“What is this Annex place, anyway?” Caroline asked. “Is it new?”
“No, it’s fairly old, although they’ve renovated it nicely,” I said. “It’s the servants’ quarters. If someone brings along their personal maid, or their nanny, or their private secretary, the Annex is where the Inn puts them.”
“Rather insulting for poor Mr. Denton,” Caroline said, with a sniff.
“I expect he’s seen worse.” I stopped by a smaller elevator. “This leads to the Annex. Shouldn’t we get the key before we go up? Where is Ekaterina meeting us?”
“She doesn’t want to be seen with us,” Caroline said, as she punched the elevator button. “She’s hidden the key in a dead drop near Mr. Denton’s room.”
“A dead drop?”
“Her idea,” Caroline said. “Her father used to spy for the CIA in Moscow back in the Cold War days. Or so she says. Don’t worry—she gave me instructions.”
When we stepped out onto the second floor of the Annex, I decided that the maids and nannies weren’t too badly treated. We were walking on lush wall-to-wall carpet instead of an oriental rug, and there was far less marble and gilding than in the other wings, but I felt a lot more at home.
Caroline was slowly walking up and down the hallway, studying each of the paintings. I’d never known her to be particularly obsessive about art, so I deduced she was looking for the key.
When she reached the far end of the hall she stopped and turned around with a puzzled look on her face.
“That’s odd,” she said. “I don’t see it.”
“Don’t see what?”
“The dead drop. Ekaterina was going to tuck her master key—actually it’s one of those electronic key cards—behind a bit of loose baseboard beneath the painting of a policeman.”
I walked back down the hall. None of the paintings contained a policeman. They were all landscapes. Landscapes or seascapes. Some of them had tiny figures, but they appeared to be peasants waving scythes, or sailors pulling oars. Some of the paintings looked vaguely familiar, so I suspected they were expensive reproductions of works by well-known landscape painters.
“Very odd,” Caroline said. “Look more closely to see if any of the landscapes have policemen in them.”
Looking closely took a while. I’d peered at every tiny little human figure in half a dozen paintings before enlightenment dawned. I straightened up.
“This,” I announced. “Is a Turner. I remember it from art appreciation class. I didn’t quite sleep through the whole lecture on eighteenth-century English painters.”
“Does it have a policeman in it?” Caroline asked. She scurried over and began peering at the Turner.
“No, it’s a landscape,” I said. “Turner was noted for his landscapes.”
“If he doesn’t paint policemen, I don’t care what he’s noted for,” she said. “Find me a policeman.”
“Noted for his landscapes,” I repeated. “So was Constable. John Constable, Turner’s fellow landscape artist.”
Caroline straightened up and frowned at me.
“Come to think of it, Ekaterina probably did say constable,” she said. “She learned her English from the BBC before she moved here. Uses a lot of Anglicisms. I just thought this was another of them. So which one is the Constable?”
“Damned if I know,” I said. “All those eighteenth-century British landscapes look alike to me. And none of them seemed to have signed their work. Ekaterina must be an unusually literate maid.”
“She’s working her way through grad school,” Caroline said. “I suppose we’ll have to check under all the paintings.”
“You take the left side,” I said. “I’ll take the right.”
It took another ten minutes and another rush to hide, this time in the ice/vending room.
“In the unlikely event that we ever burgle the Inn again,” I said, as I fumbled at yet another spot on the baseboard, “let’s ask Ekaterina for a better dead drop.”
“This was a better dead drop than her first idea,” Caroline said. “She wanted to leave the key card inside a rat.”
“A rat? Like a dead rat?”
“Freeze-dried, actually,” Caroline said, with a grimace. Rats, apparently, were one of the few inhabitants of the animal kingdom that hadn’t won her heart. “Standard CIA issue, according to her. Her father and his handler used to exchange messages that way all the time.”
“What do you do with it once you’ve put the message in it?” I asked.
“Leave it on a street corner, I suppose.” Caroline shrugged. “The idea is that no one but the intended recipient would pick up a dead rat.”
“Wouldn’t that make the spies rather conspicuous, then?” I suggested. “Going around picking up dead rats all the time. ‘Oh, look, Boris! That man over there is picking up the dead rat! Must be another CIA operative!’”
“It’s no stranger than the exploding cigar story,” Caroline said. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. Ekaterina believes it. The only way I could talk her out of the idea was to point out that neither of us happened to have a dead rat available for freeze-drying, and as an animal lover I could never condone killing one on purpose. Aha! This must be it!”
She waved the key card in triumph.
We returned to room 212. There was a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. I grabbed Caroline’s arm as she was about to use the key card.
“What if he’s here?” I pointed at the sign.
“I asked Ekaterina to do that.” She gently shook off my hand and reached to insert the card in the reader. “I thought it would be better if we could see the room just as he left it.”
I had a sudden, vivid image of Denton’s body sprawled on the floor of the room in the same awkward pose in which we’d found Colleen Brown.
“Let me go first,” I said.
Maybe Caroline had the same vision, because she made no protest as I took the key card out of her hand.
I stepped up to the door and knocked.
“Mr. Denton?” I kept both voice and knock low, designed to be heard inside the room, not up and down the hall by any fellow guests who happened to be in their rooms. I knocked a second time, then, after listening at the door for a few more moments, I dipped the key card in the slot, opened the door, and stepped inside the room.
Chapter 26
The room was empty. Empty, at least, of humans, living or dead. Apparently I wasn’t developing psychic
powers after all, just an overactive imagination.
It wasn’t my imagination that Caroline also breathed a sigh of relief.
“Well,” she said, as she looked around. “It’s certainly not the Washington Cottage.”
Actually, Denton’s room in the Annex wasn’t bad at all. The ceilings were normal height; the furniture was nice but didn’t look as if it belonged in a museum; and best of all, there wasn’t a scrap of chintz in sight. Lots of tweed. The huge reproductions of landscapes had given way to reproductions of antique botanical prints. I had the feeling if I were one of the maids or nannies I’d probably breathe a sigh of relief when the end of the day arrived and I could flee the expensive, impeccable, and overwhelming halls of the main wings for the more plebian yet cozier comfort of the Annex. I shut the door behind us, and Caroline and I both relaxed slightly at having put a barrier between us and any onlookers. Well, I did. Caroline was looking around in her sharp, birdlike way.
“Not too bad,” she said. “Now what are we looking for?”
“You’re the one who arranged the key,” I said. “What did you plan on looking for?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “That’s why I also arranged you. Use that brain Monty keeps bragging you inherited from him and figure out what we need to find.”
“Like pornography, I will know it when I see it,” I said.
I was looking out the window. Carefully, at first, since the curtains were open, and I had no idea if there was anyone outside to see me.
Clearly Denton had not found favor with the management. His room looked down on the loading dock and its concrete apron lined with Dumpsters. Though if you kept your eyes elevated, you could gaze out at a small copse of trees that shielded the loading dock from the view of any golfers on the course. You could even catch a glimpse of one of the greens.
A lesser hotel might have advertised this as a room with a balcony, since the window was actually a sliding glass door—clearly added during a modern remodel—with a foot-wide ledge outside. The ledge was fitted with a nice, sturdy waist-high railing to keep the guests from plunging down to the concrete if they had any momentary lapses of memory and thought they were in a room classy enough to have a full-sized balcony. The ledge extended beyond the window on either side, and each end was decorated with a large clay pot containing bright purple petunias.
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