by Cassie Miles
“Are the three floor plans similar?”
“There’s a dumbwaiter that runs from the top to the bottom,” she said. “The placement of windows is the same. Bathrooms are in the same place. And all three floors have a fireplace.”
He didn’t understand the rationale for constructing the addition in a block but found it interesting. For over a hundred years, Whitman Castle had grown in fits and starts, mimicking the whims of the owners. “Let’s see some more of this place.”
She led him down a staircase and across the Grand Hall to the original part of the house. The use of chiseled stone and dark-stained wood created an atmosphere suitable for a medieval castle, as did the large proportions of the rooms and the heavy furniture. They crossed a sitting room with glass French doors that opened into an office with a massive desk.
Vanessa was an outstanding tour guide and kept up a narrative of interesting details. In the foyer outside the Grand Hall, she gestured toward a sweeping staircase with carved newel posts. “On the lower level is a movie-screening room with reclining seats and a popcorn machine. Upstairs are more bedrooms, including mine.” As she hiked up the staircase, her slender fingers glided along the polished wood bannister. “I probably should have picked a room closer to where I’ll be doing my research in the library.”
Though the Castle fascinated him, he was equally interested in her. “Research on the book you’re writing about Simon?”
“His memoir,” she said. “One of the reasons I took on this project was the opportunity to dig into my family’s heritage, my roots in Tremont County. I lived here with Mom and Dad until I was ten.”
She led the way across the second-floor landing where sliding glass doors opened onto an outdoor deck with a swimming pool and a view of distant peaks. He wouldn’t mind waking up every morning to this panorama.
An angular woman who dressed like an old-fashioned librarian stepped through the sliding doors and joined them. Her long gray braid hung halfway down her back. “Sheriff Coleman? Why are you here?”
He heard a tremble of fear in her voice and saw the streaks of tears on her cheeks. “Are you all right, Mrs. Ingram?”
“Fine, I’m fine. It’s nice to see you when you aren’t wearing your uniform. I mean, you have on other clothes, of course, but you’re not so sheriff-like.” She twisted her hands in a tortured knot. “You haven’t seen my husband, have you?”
“No, ma’am. Are you staying at the Castle tonight?”
A quick nod, and then she said, “I need a drink.”
She pivoted, crossed the landing and clomped down the staircase.
Vanessa frowned. “Did she just say that she’d like to see you without clothes?”
“Not exactly.”
“How do you know Martha Ingram?”
“Her husband, George, is a retired doctor, and we work together. He’s the county coroner. They’ve lived in these parts for a long time and are as much a part of the community as the yellow gazebo in the town square.”
His other connection with them was more personal. He’d arrested their teenaged grandson four or five times, which wasn’t information he was free to share with Vanesa.
Time for a change of subject. He pointed to a narrow staircase that led up to another floor. “Where does that go?”
“It’s a tower with Aunt Dorothy’s sewing room. Simon locked it on the day her remains were discovered and she was declared dead. As far as I know, nobody has been inside since then.”
Ty wasn’t surprised to learn that Simon kept his dead wife’s room locked and sealed. These people were eccentric. With Vanessa leading the way, they meandered through a labyrinth of twists and turns until he wasn’t sure whether they were in the original section or the 1968 addition. On the second floor, they entered a spacious high-ceilinged game room with a pool table, giant-screen TV, game tables, ping-pong and more. Through huge windows that dominated the other distractions, he saw the last rays of sunset.
A skinny man with oversize glasses paced the floor—apparently oblivious to their arrival or anything else. He clenched an unlit pipe in the corner of his mouth.
“That’s Bethany’s husband,” Vanessa whispered. “Lowell Burke. He’s a lawyer.”
With a start, Burke noticed them. He altered his pacing to aim in their direction. As he came closer, Ty admired his precision grooming. Burke’s linen jacket lacked wrinkles, and his jeans had a sharp crease. He removed the pipe, thrust his hand out and offered a quick introduction, including the detail that he and Bethany were from LA and thinking of moving to Colorado.
“We ran into Bethany earlier,” Vanessa said.
“Where is she?”
“She ducked into Simon’s bedroom and locked the door.”
Ty watched Burke for a reaction and saw only a slight furrowing of his brow. “Your wife seemed upset. She said something about millions of dollars.”
“There’s nothing wrong,” he said too quickly. “My wife is a passionate woman. She gets riled up over details.”
“What kind of details?” Ty asked.
“Nothing I wish to discuss, Sheriff.” Burke’s pleasant smile didn’t defuse his hostile tone. “Sorry, I’m a bit short-tempered. A misunderstanding with a client. You’ll have to excuse me.”
Actually, I don’t. Ty hadn’t been a cop for very long, but he could read Burke’s tension and his need to hide his problems. If anything went wrong tonight, Burke would be a suspect. Not that he was here to investigate. “How do you like the mountains?”
“Beautiful.” He gestured with his pipe. “Have you seen Keith Gable? I was supposed to meet him here.”
“He’s probably in the kitchen with Simon,” Vanessa said. “You know how those two are all about cooking.”
“You’re probably right. Bye now.”
His speedy exit made Ty think that he was running away from something. Was there a chance that Burke was involved with the drug dealing at Simplicity? The next time Ty talked to the agent he knew at the DEA, he’d suggest checking into the background of Lowell Burke.
“And now,” Vanessa said, “here’s something most guests don’t get to see.”
She crossed the room to a row of four pinball machines. The one at the end had a Star Wars theme and featured a bright graphic of the princess in a gold bikini. Ty grinned. “My favorite scene.”
“Not surprising. All guys love Leia in her gold bra.” She paused at the edge of the pinball machine, reached down and twisted a red plastic bar. In response, a section of wall swung open on silent hinges.
He watched as she reached inside and flicked a light switch, illuminating a wrought iron spiral staircase. A secret passageway! He felt like he’d been transported back in time to when he was an eight-year-old kid with a tree house.
“It goes down two stories to the wine cellar,” she said.
“We’d better explore.”
“You first,” she said.
He didn’t need a second invite. His boot heels clunked on the metal stairs. The space from one wall to the other was only as wide as the span of his arms. The interior of the secret passage was cedar on the upper part with the staircase firmly bolted in place. When he descended below the first floor, the walls were granite, cool to the touch.
At the bottom of the staircase, she reached over and pulled a dangling chain. A small door swung open, and they were in a basement with rows and rows of wine bottles, properly stored on slanted shelves. He picked up a bottle of dark red burgundy and rolled it around in his hands. A beer drinker, he didn’t know much about wine. “Is this a good one?”
“I have no idea.” She turned off the light in the secret passage and closed the door.
“When you were a kid, did you sneak through the passage, come down here and steal a bottle of wine?”
“Alcohol didn’t interest me, but I loved being able to disapp
ear into the secret passage. I searched all over the house for another one. There was the dumbwaiter in the library, but it wasn’t big enough to hide inside. A couple of the closets have panels in the back where you can hide.” She chuckled. “Might come in handy if you’re having an affair.”
“That makes me think there are a lot of secrets in this house.”
“And in this family,” she said. “People always talk about the valuable artwork and the worth of the property, but that’s not why I love this house. Living here felt like an adventure. It was fun.”
“And your family?”
“Well, Simon isn’t a real fun guy, but my father was.” Her eyes turned misty as she remembered. “John Joseph Whitman was so irresponsible that he drove me crazy, but he could always make me laugh.”
He followed her through the rows of wine bottles to a heavy oak door. They both reached for the handle at the same time, and he was glad when their hands touched. Her gaze lifted and she looked up at him. A connection was growing between them. He asked, “Do you have anything else you want to show me?”
“This is enough for one day,” she said. “We should go to the patio and have a drink. Dinner is at eight, and Simon is picky about starting on time with all the guests in their assigned seats.”
“Sounds like a control freak.”
“His house.” She shrugged. “His rules.”
The flagstone patio behind the house was landscaped with yellow potentilla shrubs and other indigenous flowers and herbs. Fairy lights twinkled on the surrounding pine trees, and Chloe the Ice Princess added her own personal sparkle as she introduced Yuri and Macy Kirov, a well-known couple from Vermont who had been working with Bethany’s husband to purchase a local ski lodge. For some reason, Macy—a broad-shouldered, large woman—was dressed like an Amazon with a skimpy outfit, tights with stars and a cape. Ty didn’t ask for an explanation, didn’t really want to know about her costume.
She gave him a nod and pounced on Vanessa with a voracious grin. “Your father was John. Whitman, right?”
“Yes,” Vanessa said.
“I knew him. He was a great skier.”
“My wife,” Yuri said, “almost qualified for the Olympics.”
Ty tapped into a memory from long ago. He’d heard of Macy but her last name wasn’t Kirov. “Sanderson, you’re Macy Sanderson.”
“Good guess, Sheriff. Have we met before?”
“I would have remembered.” He recalled a vivid image from a televised downhill race with big, strong Macy dominating the slope. “It’s an honor.”
Gloria Gable joined them. A former model, she was superchic with thick curly black hair tumbling down her back. Though she’d been married to Keith since before he started the Simple Simon’s franchises over ten years ago, she never missed a chance to flirt. She rubbed against Ty’s arm like a mountain lioness in heat.
“Sheriff Coleman,” she growled in a breathy voice, “I haven’t seen you in ages. Miss me?”
“You and your husband,” he said. “Where is Keith?”
“In the kitchen with Simon. Of course. The only thing those two get excited about is a new recipe for bouillabaisse.”
Keith was another guy he wanted to talk to about the possible drug dealing at Simplicity. Maybe over dinner.
When it was almost 8:00 p.m., Chloe began ushering them toward the Grand Hall. When they were inside, she did a head count. “Where’s Bethany?”
She sounded genuinely concerned. Not having the entire crew ready for dinner on time was going to be a big problem. As if he’d been waiting for his cue, Simon marched to the head of the table, greeted his guests and checked his wristwatch.
“There are supposed to be twelve for dinner,” he said.
“We’re missing Bethany,” Mona piped up. “She was upstairs. I’ll find her.”
Since Ty knew exactly where Bethany was, he fell into step beside Mona. “I’ll come with.”
“Me, too,” Vanessa said.
“Seriously?” Simon barked an angry laugh. “Do we really need three people to find one little blond ditz?”
Vanessa slammed on the brakes. Her fingers pinched into fists. “I thought you might know where she is, Uncle. We saw her run into your bedroom and lock the door.”
“My bedroom? What the hell!”
He joined their parade, climbing the staircase at the end of the balcony.
At the locked bedroom door on the second floor, Mona tapped and called Bethany’s name. When she got no response, she turned to Ty. “Maybe she doesn’t hear me. You can knock louder.”
“Sure.” He hammered on the door. “Bethany, are you in there?”
Still nothing.
Was there cause for worry? Ty made the transition from polite dinner guest to sheriff. Someone—very likely Bethany—was locked in that room, either afraid or unable to come out. “It’s your call, Mona. What should we do?”
“You should kick down the door,” she said with an evil little smirk.
“Hell, no,” Simon said. “Mona, I’m sure you have a key.”
With an annoyed sigh, the housekeeper pulled a huge ring of keys from her pocket and started sorting through them. “You can see why I didn’t want to look for the key. This is going to take forever.”
“There has to be more than one key,” Simon said.
“There are other sets, but they’re all the way downstairs in the kitchen.”
“Damn it,” Simon muttered. He stepped up to the door and pounded on it. “Open up, Bethany. This isn’t funny.”
Ty couldn’t have agreed more. If locking herself in Simon’s bedroom had started as a joke—which he doubted very much—the humor was played out. He had a bad feeling about what he’d find behind the locked door.
After an interminable moment, Mona fitted the correct key into the lock. Before anyone could object, Ty moved forward and stood in the open door, blocking access to the bedroom. “I’ll take care of this.”
“The hell you will.” Simon shoved against his chest. “This is my house. Nobody tells me what to do.”
“Let’s make this easy,” Ty said in a low voice. “I won’t charge you with obstruction and assaulting an officer, if you step back.”
Simon did as he said.
Ty closed the door and locked it behind him. The atmosphere in the master suite felt like empty silence. On the far side of the king-size bed, Bethany was sprawled facedown on the floor. The back of her head was matted and bloody.
Even before Ty failed to find a pulse, he knew she was dead.
Chapter Four
This wasn’t the first time Ty was witness to violent death. During the years he worked in Search and Rescue operations, he and his crew had discovered the bodies of rock climbers who fell from great heights and shattered their bones. They found lost hikers, drained of life by hypothermia. Once, they discovered the remains of a man who had been mauled by a mountain lion. A whole family killed in a forest fire. There were occasional hunting accidents, but most of those victims survived. The real danger came when humans pitted themselves against the elements and went one step too far. Nature usually won.
Bethany’s death was different. Not an accident. She lay on her belly beside the bed with one arm reaching up and her fingers clutching the silky blue-and-beige spread. She’d been hit at least twice in the back of her skull. Blunt force trauma; there was a heavy loss of blood. When he leaned down for a closer inspection, he saw white bone shards and brain tissue smeared in her blond hair.
Ty went through the standard procedures, checking for a pulse and shining the light from his cell phone into her eye to see if the pupil constricted. She hadn’t been deceased long enough for her body temperature to drop significantly, but her flesh had lost elasticity. Grasped in her fist, he found a gold chain necklace with a locket. The photo inside looked a lot like Vanessa... Curious. He
dropped the necklace into the pocket of his blazer, which wasn’t protocol but felt like the right move.
If he’d known more about forensics, he might have a better idea of how Bethany was murdered. There were classes on blood spatter that he should have taken, and he could have studied the detailed measurements that showed the amount of force and momentum of the blows. The only conclusions he could draw were obvious. A blood trail on the carpet indicated that she’d dragged herself about ten feet from the center of the room to the bed, maybe trying to reach the telephone on the bedside table. On the floor beside the sofa was a heavy vase, about eighteen inches tall. The white marble base was bloodstained. Murder weapon?
Slowly, Ty stood upright and stepped away from her body. Given the evidence, he knew that Bethany hadn’t killed herself.
Her death was a homicide.
And it was his job to find the person who killed her and bring him or her to justice. Clearly, he was going to need help. George Ingram, the local coroner, was out in the Grand Hall, but Ty had seen the old man drinking aperitif wines like water, and wasn’t sure how useful the retired doc would be.
Using his cell phone, he connected with Gert, the dispatcher at the station house. Before he could get a word in edgewise, she blurted, “What the heck have you gotten yourself into, Sheriff? I had a call from Mona at Whitman Castle saying something terrible happened. And another call from Special Agent Morris at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, if you please. I sent you his private number.”
“What does the CBI want?”
“No details, but their call was about the Castle. What did you do?”
“Not a damn thing.” He knew better than to give Gert too much information. She wasn’t great at keeping secrets. “I can’t talk about this, and I don’t want you to say anything, either. If anyone asks, just tell them that it’s an ongoing investigation.”