As I thought about it, I realized that this murder would likely be different than our other cases. In those instances, we’d looked at the friends and family of the deceased because they were the ones who likely had motives to kill. Now we had a pool of suspects, and we would have to learn their motives and alibis to see who was guilty.
I didn’t hold out much hope for alibis, since the resort was small enough that traversing the entire building would take less than ten minutes. The window of opportunity only needed to be two to three minutes at the minimum, less time than it took to use the restroom. I would immediately suspect anyone who had an iron-clad alibi for the entire window of opportunity.
The men returned from the room. Sabine and I had moved away from the doorway and were now talking to Carletta again. She had little else to add except that she’d be finding a new job once the weather broke.
Sabine didn’t bother with the pretense that she hadn’t been listening in. “There’s a shed to the side of the resort. If you lock it up, then the body will likely be secure until the police can arrive.”
Danvers shot her a glance. Apparently, the idea did not appeal to him. He looked to the manager. “Can you tell me the man’s name?” Danvers asked.
The manager nodded. “His name was Danny Gardner. We have copies of his driver’s license and credit card on file at the front desk. I can make copies of them for you when we get done here.”
“Do you know the names of all your guests every week?” Danvers asked, eyeing the man. It did seem like customer service on steroids to remember that many names and faces.
“No, but he was an odd guest. He came alone, when most of our guests are paired off, and he had a ridiculously small amount of luggage.” Wayne was sweating now. If he thought that this was an interrogation, he was in for a surprise if he had had anything to do with the murder.
I looked around the room, but only saw two bags. That didn’t seem like overkill to me. That made me wonder what had become of the other luggage. Had Gardner decided to hide it somewhere, or had someone taken the luggage when they killed him? It would be simplicity itself to walk around the hotel with a suitcase. No one would suspect a thing.
I couldn’t tell if Danvers missed the implication there, or if he had more pressing matters on his mind.
“Do you have a storage facility or a refrigerator that could be used to store the body?”
Jonathan Wayne looked aghast. “We’re full up with food in our refrigerated units. We always keep an extra store of supplies during the winter months. You can never tell when you’re going to need additional food for guests.”
“Does this happen often? I mean, being snowed in?” Danvers asked.
“Not frequently,” the man replied, “but it does happen from time to time.”
“So do you have any places to put the body?” Danvers continued. “He can’t be left out and I’d prefer him not be outside.”
The manager looked pained. “Why not?” he asked. “Your wife is quite right that there are sheds available.”
I was surprised that Danvers did not correct the man, even though he wasn’t wearing a wedding band on his finger. “If the body freezes, ice crystals can form, which can destroy the cells. We could end up losing evidence.”
Wayne looked pained again. I knew this experience would not leave Danvers a happy man. “It’s the best we can do, sir.”
Danvers sighed and then requested several men with strong stomachs to help move the body to the shed that Sabine had suggested. It was the only one visible from their guest room, and Danvers obviously felt that some level of police protection was in order.
Danvers went off to round up the men. The manager was told to retrieve a key to give to Danvers so that the crime scene could be preserved, while he was at it. Sabine said that she would take Carletta to the employee’s building to recover. She slipped an arm around the shaking young girl, who leaned on her as they walked away from the scene.
Land stayed behind with me, watching the corpse and keeping any potential curiosity seekers out of the room.
“Did you find a room key on him?” I asked as soon as Danvers and the manager were gone.
Land shook his head. “I’m not sure what Danvers hopes to accomplish with locking the door. Someone out there has a key to the room and could use it at any time.” The resort was old-fashioned enough to have thick metal keys. They were bulky and awkward, but at the same time, they would be easier to find than the keycards used at most of the more contemporary hotels.
I sighed. “He has to do something here. He’s the only lawman around.”
Land looked at me. “But there’s a lady sleuth in residence,” he said with a grin.
I honestly had not thought to question Danvers about this case. There was no reason for me to get involved at this point. Danvers was in charge until the local police arrived. Then they would be responsible for the mess. While Danvers might want to take credit for the solution, I doubted that closing this case would give him any kudos on his current job.
However, he did keep assigning tasks to my husband, so I knew that I would be involved on the case in some manner.
With the entire crime centered on a snowed-in a resort, there was little chance that I’d get the time or the space to ask questions of anyone. That meant that I would be under Jax Danvers’ watchful eye the entire time. I didn’t want constant lectures from him on staying out of open police cases.
“Did you check the safe?” I asked, looking into the room, but not venturing inside.
Land shook his head. “The manager is getting the combination now.”
I heard several sets of steps echoing down the hallway. Three men followed Danvers back to the room. Either Land or Danvers had wrapped a blanket around the body, so none of the men had to see the corpse or actually touch the corpse.
Danvers gave them specific instructions, and the team lifted the corpse. They trundled down the hallway, but did not head back to the common area. Instead, they took a side door out into the driving snow.
From the window, I could see the cold hit the men with ferocious force as they stumbled and slid in the accumulating snow.
Land and I waited inside. The manager had yet to come back. The hallway was desolate and unearthly still. I could hear the sounds of the snow falling as it built up around the resort. I heard the men grunting as they made it out to the shed.
The procession returned much faster it had had left. Each man had a layer of ice and snow on him, and Danvers looked like he was auditioning for the Ice Capades. We stood at the scene with my legs tiring and Danvers’ coat dripping melting snow.
Finally, we heard another set of steps coming towards us. The manager was holding up what appeared to be the key to the room. The thick piece of metal was clutched between his fingers.
“Sorry, had some trouble finding it,” he said as he squeezed past us to the door.
“Did you get the combination to the safe?” I asked. I had meant to stay out of this affair, but my personality was not shy and retiring.
“Sorry, I’m a bit out of sorts,” he said as he handed me a scrap of paper with some numbers scribbled on it.
I took the paper and quickly committed the numbers to memory. I did that because, in the next second, Danvers snatched the paper from my hand and stuffed it into his pocket.
He strode back into the room, found the safe, and opened it. He let out a long whistle that I knew wasn’t police protocol. I assumed that the sound was a reason for us to come in and see what had elicited that response.
I whistled too. The safe was stuffed with stacks of $20 bills.
Chapter 2
“How much is there?” I asked, wanting to pick up a stack, but knowing better than to contaminate evidence.
“More than enough to pay for this trip,” Danvers said simply.
Land, who was always more practical, asked, “What are you going to do with this? It can’t stay here. If I had a guess, this is what the killer was after
. It’s a damned good motive.”
Danvers bit his lip. “I’m not sure. This room has been compromised. If the killer had a key, then he or she could get back into the room. If they find the safe, they could open it—or just steal the whole thing.”
Danvers was right about that. The safe was attached to the wall of the closet by a series of screws, but it wouldn’t take much to dislodge the entire container. The size of the compartment was small enough that it would be portable for most people.
“I’m not putting it in our room either,” he continued. “If the killer is after this, then I don’t want to expose Sabine to any type of danger.”
Land nodded, and I wondered if Danvers’ statement was mainly to appease Land. We certainly didn’t offer, because if it was too dangerous for Detective Danvers, I knew that Land would never hear of us keeping the safe.
The manager cleared his throat. “We have a larger safe at the front desk. From time to time, we have guests who need more space that these safes can provide. So we keep their possessions for them.”
“How many people have access to the safe?” Danvers asked.
“Four?” he said, with a definite question mark at the end. I wasn’t sure why he didn’t know the answers to these questions, which seemed like they should have been simple to a resort manager.
“Who would those people be?” Danvers asked quickly.
“Myself, Angela, the night clerk, Lindsey, and Yuri, the head of housekeeping. However, I can assure you that we’ve had far more expensive things in our safe without issue.”
Danvers rubbed at his temples. “I guess we don’t have much choice. Maeve, will you remove the money and count it?”
I had not been expecting any role in this investigation. I had predicted the normal lecture on staying away from police business, but he was right in asking me. I counted money for a living, and I tended to be a numbers person. The totaling of cash was second-nature to me. I would give them an accurate count and do it rapidly.
I took out several bundles of cash and looked at the bills. “Do you want me to count each bundle, or should I assume that the bundle is complete.”
Danvers thought for a second. “Let’s assume they’re complete.”
“I can stack the bundles next to each other to see if they look about the same height,” I suggested. Even though that was imprecise, the shortcut would expedite the process. I didn’t like handing this much money in cash. It always made me nervous. A thief could steal a $20 or two from some of the stacks without it being missed, but it hardly seemed worth the few hundred dollars that could be gained by such measures. I just didn’t want to be blamed if the sum of the stacks was not equal to the number I arrived at.
Danvers nodded and started looking around the room again. He went into the bathroom, and I could hear the sounds of him going through the medicine chest and drawers. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but I forgot about him as I counted cash.
Each bundle contained 100 bills and was done up in a currency strap in a lovely violet color. Of course, I would have found any color beautiful so long as it held $2000 within the wrapper.
There were fifty bundles in the safe, which gave me a grand total of $100,000. Not enough to retire forever, but still a fantastic nest egg.
I shouted to Danvers, who quickly returned to my side. I gave him the number of bundles and the grand total. He whistled again.
He left the room and returned with a garbage bag. I assumed he’d filched one from the maid’s cart. When Sabine had taken her away from the scene, she’d left her cart behind.
, Danvers motioned to the manager. “I’m going to personally put the money in the safe. I need to secure the chain of evidence here.”
The manager nodded, and they tramped off together. Land was still in the doorway, while I sat uncomfortably on the floor. “A hand would be nice,” I said, holding out my arm. I was not quite as limber as I’d been a few months ago.
He helped me up, and I gave him a smile. “We’re all alone at a crime scene,” I pointed out to him.
“You are always the charmer,” Land said. “What do you want to look at?”
“I’m not sure. I just expected some sort of clue. I can’t even figure out if he was coming or going,” I said plaintively. While the body and the glove were now in the shed, I looked down to the floor where they had been. I tried to visualize the scene, but at the moment, I was too wound up.
“Does it make a difference?” Land asked, pushing me to get involved, if only in a small way. He knew as well as I did that the timetable for leaving the resort would be important.
“Yes. Either he was going somewhere, and he could have been meeting a blackmailer. Or he could have been returning with all that cash, which would mean that he was the blackmailer.”
I walked again around the place where the body had rested n. Too much time had gone by to see if the carpet was still wet, and the boots that the victim had worn would have been dry now too. At least six hours had passed from the time he was killed and the time that the maid screamed.
I looked out of the window in his cabin. The snow outside was pristine. That led me to believe that he had not gone out already. However, I had no good reason for a killer to murder someone who was going to give him $100,000 and leave it at the scene of the crime. In most cases, the killer would make sure that he (or she) had the money in hand before doing away with the person who knew where it was.
“No luck?” Land asked.
I shook my head. “I need to think about how I get ready to go outside and then come back again. I’m missing something. I just know it.”
“You’ll get it,” Land said. “Let’s lock up and get back to breakfast.”
Land was right. I’d only made it through about half of my meal before we were interrupted, and I was eating for two now. By my tally, that was only one-fourth of what I needed to subsist.
We went back to the table, but a busboy had cleaned our previous breakfast off already. I was miffed that the waiters had taken my food while I was working on their problem. Land shrugged and ordered for us again.
The Laskeys were long gone as well. “Too bad they left,” Land said, looking around the dining room. Two other couples were eating a late breakfast, but we didn’t know either pair. “We’re going to have to figure out who knew the victim here. This appeared to be an arranged meeting, which means that the motive came from wherever these people lived, not just during this weekend.”
“Yes, if I was part of a couple who was conducting business in that manner, I’d stay far away from Gardner during my stay here so that no one would suspect I had any idea who he was.”
Land looked out the window. “I think we’re going to be rather old-fashioned investigating this case. We won’t have access to the Internet or the phones soon.”
I followed his gaze. Indeed, some of the phone and electric lines had started to sag already from the weight of the wet snow and ice. I feared that he was right. This would be a murder case like no other we’d dealt with. The lack of police in the case and the lack of online searches and instant information would put us in an unusual position.
The waiter delivered my plate of food as one of the other couples got up to leave. They were apparently having a disagreement, and since I was filling my mouth with forkfuls of egg, I had a chance to listen in on their conversation. Perhaps eavesdropping would have to be my major source of information in this murder case. As they left, they were arguing over the amount of alcohol the wife had consumed the night before. While that admission left the husband without an alibi, this type of eavesdropping was not going to get me far in the investigation. I would need to ask direct questions.
We finished the second breakfast and lingered over the coffee. While it wasn’t as good as the blend that Land made, it was adequate. Land signed the bill with our room number, and we headed back to the room via the murdered man’s hallway.
I saw no signs of Jax or Sabine in the hallway, and so we went
directly to our room. I was anxious to use the Internet before the lines went down. “What do you think they use for heat if the lines go down?” I asked with a shiver. I eyed the tiny fireplace, but I suspected that the gas fireplace had electrical components involved.
“I’m sure they have a generator, but that would be for lights, heat and cooking. I doubt that they’d allow you to fire up the Wi-Fi router on the generator.”
I nodded. It made sense to stick to the vital functions of the hotel. I was hurriedly Googling information about Danny Gardner, but not having much luck. The name was much too common for me to get detailed information about the corpse we’d just left. I needed to know far more if I was going to make any sense of the murder.
“Do you think we could get the driver’s license information from Danvers?” I asked. “I’m having trouble narrowing down my search on this.”
Land gave me a grin, and then leaned over for a kiss. “I’ll go to the front desk and ask to see it. The manager saw me working with Danvers, so there should be no questions from him.”
Before I could speak, he was up and out the door. I tried a few more searches, but gave up and opted to pace the floor instead. I was feeling a bit claustrophobic. The irony was that I hadn’t planned on going anywhere all day, but now that I couldn’t go anywhere, I felt trapped.
I wondered why the killer had removed all the identifying information from the body when the front desk kept his details on file. Had the killer expected Danny to use a fake name here? Had the killer not known of the resort’s policy on identification? That would limit the suspects to spouses who had not participated in the check-in process.
The door opened, and Land came back in. He rattled off an address in Capital City. I didn’t recognize the street, so I did a quick Google map on it.
The site was a warehouse. Not the trendy type of warehouse that had been converted into lofts, but a storage warehouse. I called Land over to look at my tablet.
“This is where Danny Gardner lived,” I said, tilting the screen so he could see.
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 148