Shot Through the Hearth

by Kate Carlisle

  “Maybe.” I sighed. “Let’s go find out.”

  We walked through the side entry and a minute later we had reached the end of the west hall. Turning a corner, we followed signs for Room 230 at the far end of the hall.

  I glanced around. “I still have to wonder if Wesley had something to do with the pharmaceutical lab where Sherman worked.”

  “The lab where they kept Stephanie?”

  “Yeah.” I smiled. “You remembered.”

  He grimaced. “Hard to forget anything about Stephanie.”

  I batted my eyelashes. “She likes you.”

  “She—I mean, it—is a plant,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “And yet, she finds you very attractive.”

  “You are one sick puppy.”

  “I simply speak the truth,” I said, laughing. “And speaking of sick puppies, let’s go find Wesley.”

  The Inn was the largest and fanciest in town, with one hundred well-appointed rooms, two lovely restaurants, a fun bar, a beautiful pool, banquet rooms, and a decent-sized conference space. I couldn’t count the number of parties and weddings I’d attended here over the years, including my senior prom.

  The wide hallway was bright, thanks to big windows at each end of the hall. A deep scarlet carpet runner was stretched over the beautifully stained hardwood floors, muffling our footsteps.

  As we walked toward Room 230, Mac asked for more information about the guy.

  “I’ve mentioned that he’s weird, but he’s also annoying,” I said. “Oh, and Sherman was trying to set up a meeting with you and Wesley.”

  “Why?”

  “Sherman was elusive, although he did think you were a scholar.”

  “That’s a laugh,” he said easily.

  “Wesley also wanted a meeting with Julian, by the way, because he had issues with the Ecosphere.”

  “Issues?” Mac frowned. “Did he say what they were?”

  “No.”

  “I wonder if he has issues with me.”

  “He has issues with everyone, but I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Not worried. Just curious.”

  I told him that Wesley thought the other conference goers weren’t very smart.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does he even know who’s attending this conference?” Mac wondered. “There are three Nobel Prize–winning scientists here, two professors from MIT, one from Harvard, three from Princeton, and six or eight from Stanford. I lost track. And by the way, Rafe has an advanced law degree and a PhD in economics. And then there’s you and me,” he added.

  “Well, duh,” I said. “We’re brilliant.”

  He grinned and pulled me close. “That’s right, babe.”

  “Uh-oh,” I whispered, staring over his shoulder at the woman exiting one of the rooms we’d already passed. “Is that Midge?”

  “Yeah. Come here.” He began to nuzzle my neck, causing goose bumps to skitter across my shoulders and down my arms.

  “That feels so good.” I gave a happy sigh, then counted to five. “Is she gone?”

  He craned his neck to see farther down the hall. “She’s gone. Headed off in the other direction.”

  “Did she see us?”

  “She glanced this way,” Mac said, “but I don’t think she saw our faces.”

  “I wouldn’t think so. We were pretty well hidden.” I smiled at him. “You’re very good at this.”

  “Anything for the job.”

  “Right.” I looked over his shoulder. “I guess maybe it was dumb to hide. I want to talk to her, but not right here in the hall. She caught me by surprise.”

  “We’ll catch up to her in the bar,” Mac said.

  “Did you see which room she came out of?”

  “Yeah. Seven doors down on the right.” He glanced both ways down the long hall, then said, “Be right back.”

  “Not so fast,” I said. “I’m going with you.”

  “Okay. But be cool.”

  I grinned. “Always.”

  He grabbed my hand and we strolled down the hall, the picture of easy nonchalance. He stopped and stared at the door we’d seen Midge exit. “Room 212.”

  I gazed up at Mac. “That’s Dillon’s room.”

  * * *

  * * *

  We spent way too long standing in the hallway trying to figure out what Midge Andersen had been doing inside a dead guy’s room.

  “How did she get in there?” I asked.

  “And what was she doing in there?” Mac wondered. “I’m going to call Rafe.”

  “Why?”

  “He’ll be able to get us access to the room.”

  “It might take a while,” I said, considering our options. “Let me call Jane first.”

  He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t ask the question.

  “Jane,” I said, relieved that she had answered the phone. “Mac and I are at the Inn on Main Street. How can we get inside a room without having a key?”

  “Which room?”

  “Dillon Charles’s room. We have Rafe’s permission to get inside, but I’d rather avoid a hassle with the front desk.” And the police, too, I thought, but didn’t mention it.

  She was silent for a moment. “Let me make a phone call. I’ll get right back to you.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly, but she had already hung up.

  Six minutes later, the assistant manager jogged down the hall and said, “Hi, Shannon.”

  “Hi, Trina.”

  She gave Mac a sultry smile, but didn’t say anything. Her smile said it all. She pulled out a card key, swiped it in front of the door mechanism, waited for the green light, and then pushed the door open.

  “Thanks, Trina.”

  “You can thank Jane,” she said with a wink, and walked away, disappearing around the corner in seconds.

  We stepped inside the room and closed the door quickly.

  “Do you want to tell me what that was all about?” Mac asked.

  “Jane was the general manager here for five years before she opened the Hennessey Inn.” I shrugged. “She has connections.”

  He grinned. “Jane is quickly becoming my hero.”

  I smiled. “She’s always been mine. But let’s not mention this to Eric, okay?”

  “Good plan.”

  I glanced around. The room was a junior suite and it looked as if it had been kept in exactly the same condition as it had been before Dillon was killed. His suitcase sat open on the luggage rack. Some of his shirts were still folded while others were rumpled. I imagined that the police had searched through the suitcase, but had anyone else? Like maybe Midge?

  “Speaking of Eric,” I said, “why wasn’t this room taped off by the police? Hallie said that all of Dillon’s stuff is still here. Seems like they’d want to safeguard against having it stolen.”

  Mac considered. “Maybe the hotel itself removed the crime scene tape. Didn’t want the other guests freaking out.”

  He opened the door to the closet and began to go through the pockets of Dillon’s pants and jackets. I wandered over to the desk, where a thick, three-ring binder sat open. The rings were unclasped and I wondered if someone—Midge?—had removed something.

  Since the binder was just sitting there, I began to browse through some of the papers. Frowning, I said, “These must be some of the company documents Hallie was talking about. They’re mostly employment agreements. I suppose they’re confidential.”

  “They probably are. You shouldn’t look at them.”

  I stared at him. “Are you kidding?”

  “Of course I’m kidding,” he said, straight-faced. “Check them out.”

  I riffled through one section of documents, then checked out the tabs for each section. “The notebook is bro
ken down into sections. So there’s your basic employment agreements, nondisclosure agreements, noncompete agreements, patent applications.”

  “The noncompete agreements make perfect sense,” Mac said. “A company that invents stuff would want their employees to sign a noncompete agreement so they couldn’t take those ideas to another company. But as far as the nondisclosure one goes, hmm. That’s a little trickier. I mean, I guess they’d want to guarantee confidentiality when it comes to their intellectual property and work product. But it gets tricky when the scope is too broad.”

  “You’re sounding like a lawyer.”

  “I read a lot of contracts,” he said with a shrug.

  “I imagine you do,” I said, staring at the next set of documents. “Okay, this could be what Midge was looking for.”

  Mac crossed the room and glanced over my shoulder. “What is it?”

  “Patent applications,” I said. “They’re just forms, not the actual application for the Patent Office. I guess they gather all the information from the applicant and then send in the actual form. Or type it up online.” I kept turning pages, reading the handwritten information. “They ask all kinds of questions, but some of the answers probably don’t get transferred to the actual application.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, like how long you’ve worked on the item and what the commercial potential might be. And whether you’ve done a patent search. I guess in case it’s already been invented, right?”

  “Right.”

  I flipped another page. “So here’s a form that mentions sandcastle worms. But Midge’s name isn’t on it. Just Dillon’s.” I skipped a few pages. “And here’s some kind of plant monitor that I’ll bet Julian Reedy came up with. But his name isn’t mentioned, either.”

  “Just Dillon’s,” Mac guessed.

  My eyes narrowed. “Yeah.” I found applications for gadgets related to smart mice. Turning the page, I blinked. “Uh-oh. Here’s Wesley’s Scoop-Monster.”

  “But let me guess. His name isn’t listed.”

  “You’re sensing a pattern.”

  “Sure am.” He joined me at the desk and looked over my shoulder.

  “This could be proof that Dillon was ripping off all of them.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “No. I think he was totally ripping them off. I think he was a really bad guy. And now he’s dead. Somebody found out what he was doing.”

  “I hope Rafe didn’t know about this.”

  “He’s about to find out.”

  “Yeah.” He stared at the pages. “Why wouldn’t Midge take her forms with her?”

  “The binder was open to a completely different section,” I said, “so maybe she didn’t get this far. She might’ve been worried that she would be caught in here, so she didn’t take the time to search through the entire binder.”

  “Maybe.” Mac returned to his examination of the clothes in Dillon’s closet, then studied the lock mechanism on the room safe. Turning, he said, “So an inventor comes to Rafe’s company to get a loan or some kind of backing for an invention they’ve come up with. They fill out one of these forms and then, in theory, one of the company employees takes that information and applies for a patent through the U.S. Patent Office database. On behalf of the inventor.”

  I gazed up at him. “But they don’t submit the application with the actual inventor’s name. They submit it with Dillon Charles’s name. Would you call that a problem?”

  “No.” Mac’s eyes narrowed in on the form I was pointing to. “I would call that a crime.”

  I scanned a half dozen more patent application forms, and sure enough, Dillon’s name was listed on every page. “I would call it grounds for murder.”

  Chapter Nine

  I thumbed through more pages and made a quick calculation. There had to be at least a hundred patent application forms in Dillon’s huge three-ring binder. But the binder had been left open in the employment agreement section, so I wondered if Midge had even seen all the patent applications with Dillon’s name as owner/inventor. There was no way of knowing the answer, unless we tracked her down and simply asked her.

  According to Niall, though, Midge had known that Dillon had cheated her on at least one patent. She had accused him that night on the patio when Niall overheard them arguing. We just didn’t know if she had seen all of these other different patents he had applied for that rightfully belonged to her, as well as all the other inventors at the conference.

  Midge was a brilliant woman and probably could’ve applied for her own patents. But she must have gone to Rafe and Dillon for funding, and Dillon had offered to help her with the patent applications.

  I looked around the suite. What else could Midge have been looking for in here? There was always the possibility that she hadn’t even seen the binder. Maybe she’d been scrounging for money, although I couldn’t picture Dillon Charles leaving even a dime lying around. And I couldn’t picture Midge having to break into a hotel room in search of loose change.

  Another weird thought occurred to me. Had she and Dillon been having an affair? Maybe he had taken something personal that belonged to her and she had been looking for that.

  She was certainly having an affair with Sketch Horn. Why not Dillon as well?

  I was grasping at straws again. I needed to apply Occam’s razor to this dilemma: the simplest solution tended to be the best one.

  On the other hand, who said that Occam’s razor was always the way to go?

  I shook my head. Why was I complicating things? We had seen Midge sneaking out of Dillon’s room with our own eyes just a few minutes ago. And now here was this open binder. Chances were pretty good that Midge had gone through it and removed a document or two.

  But how had Midge known that these documents would be in Dillon’s hotel room? Had someone told her that the binder was here? Someone who had snuck in here before Midge? The binder shouldn’t have been in here. That much was for sure. It should have been kept in a locked file drawer in Dillon’s office somewhere in Silicon Valley.

  Had others been sneaking into Dillon’s room to find their documents? Why not? I was perfectly willing to think the worst of Dillon, so I would bet that there was more than one set of fingerprints in here that didn’t belong to that man. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there were at least a dozen conference attendees who had a darn good motive for revenge, if not cold-blooded murder.

  My mind was starting to take off on yet another tangent so I forced myself to shut it down and turned to Mac. “I think we should give Rafe a call.”

  “Maybe we should call Eric, too.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed. “But Rafe needs to know that Dillon had these confidential documents in his hotel room and that some people are managing to get inside here without benefit of a key.”

  “People like us, you mean?”

  “Well, yes,” I said with a smile. “And others.”

  “Like Midge,” he added. “Who else might be tempted to break in?”

  “Dr. Larsson, Julian Reedy, Wesley Mycroft, and anyone else whose name is in here.” I let the notebook pages flutter down. “You know, I’ll bet if we cross-checked the inventions on these patent applications with the names of the conference attendees who’re applying for grants, we’d find a heck of a lot more names that match up.”

  “I’m not about to take that bet,” Mac said. “Because I think you’re right. And that’s unfortunate for Rafe.”

  “Yeah.” I pressed the rings together and closed the notebook. “The number of people who might be trying to sabotage the conference is growing by the minute. And one of those people took it even further and killed Dillon.”

  “Don’t forget that Rafe is a target, too,” he said. “That is, if you believe that the shooter in the tower
was aiming at him.”

  “But what if they were aiming at Marigold?”

  Mac scowled. “If they shot Marigold, they would be hurting Rafe on a whole different level.”

  Just for a moment, I considered what might have happened if Marigold hadn’t chosen just the right second to get up and go to the kitchen. She could have been killed. And that thought sent a shudder up my spine that had me pushing the whole idea out of my mind completely. I couldn’t even fathom a world without Marigold in it.

  “That would be awful,” I murmured. “On any level.”

  “We should get out of here,” Mac said. “We’ll take the binder with us and give it to Rafe—and tell him he should hand it over to Eric.”

  “Right. Because even though it contains confidential company documents, it also contains some big fat motives for murder, which the police may not have realized when they searched the room before. They probably didn’t know who truly came up with these inventions. As far as they knew, these patent applications were legit.”

  “Right. That binder shouldn’t be sitting here in this room where anyone and their mother could sneak in.”

  “We’re not anyone,” I said defensively.

  He smiled. “I wasn’t talking about us. But I’m wondering if someone else could get in by, you know, bribing the housekeeping staff.”

  I frowned. “The hotel staff here is probably a lot more honest than some of the guests.”

  “No doubt about that.”

  I picked up the unwieldy binder. “This thing is heavy.”

  “I’ll carry it.” He took it easily. “Let’s go.”

  I started for the door.

  “Are we going to Wesley’s room now?” he asked.

  I stopped. “Shoot. I forgot all about him. But yeah. Let’s go find him.”

  “We can’t go to his room holding this huge binder.”

  “You’re right.” I stared at the notebook. “Especially since some of those patent forms should have his name on them.”

  “Okay, we’ll lock it up in the car. And then let’s check out the bar before we try his hotel room.”