by Nic Saint
He gave her a thoughtful look. “Do you think it was the killer?”
“Could be,” she said. “Whoever it was, they’re gone now, and…”
They’d returned to the room and suddenly she saw a white envelope on the floor. Someone must have slipped it under the door. So that was the movement she’d seen. With a frown, she picked it up. It was addressed ‘To Miss Poole, Reporter.’
“Well, open it,” said Chase.
She did, and found a note inside. On it, the words were written: ‘Please meet me at ten o’clock in the smoking room. It’s important. Shauna.’
“Who’s Shauna?” asked Chase.
“I have no idea,” said Odelia as she turned the small piece of paper over in her hands. She thought for a moment. “Maybe one of the maids?”
“Do you think she’s the one you heard talking just now?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think so. She probably came up, put this note under the door and disappeared again as fast as she could.”
“Tomorrow we’ll know more,” said Chase. “And now we better get some sleep.”
He was right. She felt frustrated, though, and had half a mind to go in search of this Shauna person right now, and ask her what she knew or thought she knew. Then again, she had no idea where to find her, and didn’t feel like waking up Emerald. For all she knew Emerald was the killer. At this point they couldn’t rule out anyone. Except maybe Verna.
The door next to their room opened, and Gran poked her head out. “What’s with all the whispering?” she complained. “A person can’t even get a good night’s sleep in this place for all the whispering.”
“I’m sorry, Gran,” said Odelia. “There’s been a development.”
Gran, who was dressed in funky fluorescent PJs, her tiny white curls covered with a hairnet, held out her hand as Odelia handed her the little note.
“Looks like your killer was seen by this Shauna person,” said Gran. “Which begs the question: why didn’t she tell the cops?”
“Maybe she doesn’t trust cops?” said Chase. “Some people don’t.”
“We also found a corridor that presumably connects all rooms,” said Odelia.
“So that’s how the killer did it,” said Gran. “I knew there had to be a logical explanation for that darned locked door.”
It appeared there was nothing more they could do, so they returned to their respective rooms and back to bed. It took a while for Odelia to find sleep again. And as she finally drifted off, she dreamed of secret corridors and secret rooms and silent killers who moved through the house like the wind.
Chapter 34
The next morning, Odelia was awakened when a hand shook her. She reluctantly opened her eyes and muttered, “Need. More. Sleep.”
When she saw Chase’s serious expression, all thought of sleep was immediately wiped from her mind. She sat up with a jerk. “What’s wrong?”
She saw Uncle Alec had also entered the room. He looked equally grave.
“There’s been an accident,” said Chase.
He gave her a look of significance and she instantly clapped a hand to her mouth. “Not…”
He nodded. “Shauna Shostak. You were right. She was one of the maids. She was found early this morning at the foot of the basement stairs, her neck broken.”
“Was she…”
“She could have fallen down the stairs,” said Uncle Alec, “or she could have been pushed. Too soon to tell.”
“We did find a brick next to her head with blood on it, and she has a nasty wound on the side of the head,” said Chase.
“So she could have been shoved down the stairs than finished off by smashing her head in with the brick,” said Odelia.
Uncle Alec nodded. “Which was unnecessary. Cause of death is a broken neck. Could be that she hit her head on the way down, of course. Like I said, it’s too soon to tell.”
Odelia had gotten up and quickly got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. A glance at her phone told her it was early. Seven o’clock.
“Who found her?”
“A cook,” said Uncle Alec. “Just after six. She called it in and I called Chase.”
The cats, seated at the foot of the bed, intently listening, were wide awake.
“What can we do?” asked Max seriously.
“Yeah, how can we help?” asked Dooley.
She thought for a moment. “Keep doing what you did yesterday. Put your ear to the ground. Listen to the chatter.” To Chase and her uncle, she added, “If Shauna saw something, maybe she told others—or maybe one of her colleagues saw the same thing and hasn’t come forward yet.”
“We’re interviewing all of them,” said Uncle Alec.
“So you’re not treating this as a suicide anymore?”
Uncle Alec hesitated. “The thing is, so far all we have to go on is the word of Kimberlee’s dog. Not enough to open an official investigation, I’m afraid.”
“So we’ll keep on digging,” said Odelia determinedly. “Shauna gave her life trying to tell me what she knew. We owe it to her to stop this killer.”
“So you think Shauna was killed by the same person who killed Kimberlee?” asked Uncle Alec.
“I do. Shauna must have seen something or heard something and was going to reveal it to me. The killer must have found out and couldn’t let her go through with it. Doing the right thing cost the poor woman her life.”
“Why don’t we let Odelia talk to some of Shauna’s colleagues?” Chase suggested. “They might open up to her. Like I told your mom last night, some people don’t like talking to cops.”
“Good idea,” said Alec.
Together, they made their way down the stairs. On the way, they met a distraught-looking Abbey. “So it’s true? Someone else died?”
“It’s true,” Odelia confirmed.
“This place is quickly turning into the castle of doom!” said Abbey, though she had the excited air of a person eager to be in the thick of things. She joined Odelia as she descended the stairs. “So what happened?”
“One of the maids fell down the stairs and broke her neck.”
“A maid?” Abbey seemed mildly disappointed. When Odelia nodded affirmatively, she said, “You know what? I think I left something in my room.”
She’d clearly hoped for a more juicy story than a maid falling down the stairs. Odelia watched her leave with mixed feelings. Even though she kinda liked Abbey, she was one of her suspects. Shaking her head, she quickly hurried to catch up with her uncle and Chase.
She followed them into the kitchen, and then to the smoker’s room where Shauna had asked her to meet. Seated there, smoking and looking distraught, was a woman with a white cook’s uniform, her eyes red and puffy.
“This is Sylvia,” said Uncle Alec. “She’s the one who found Shauna. And this is Odelia,” he introduced Odelia. “She’s my niece and she’ll ask you a couple of questions if that’s okay with you.”
The woman glanced up at Odelia. “Of course. Anything to help.”
Odelia took a seat across the table from Sylvia and Chase and Alec left, closing the door behind them. The room smelled to cigarettes, and Odelia wondered why Emerald would keep a smoker’s room in the house.
“Poor Shauna,” said Sylvia. “She was just the sweetest little thing.”
“You knew her well?”
“I did.” She took a cigarette from a pack on the table. “Want one?”
“No, thanks,” she said. “I don’t smoke.”
“Neither did Shauna. She spent an awful lot of time in here, though.”
“Why was that?”
“I guess she liked to hang out with us. There’s only three of us that smoke in the whole house, and when she was on her break Shauna always came down here and joined us. I once asked if she wasn’t afraid of second-hand smoke but she didn’t care. She was a sweet girl but she didn’t get along with some of the others—especially Helen. She’s the housekeeper. A real hellcat.”
“I had no idea this pla
ce had a smoker’s room,” said Odelia.
“Emerald didn’t like it, but if she wanted to keep Chef happy, she had to keep it. She wanted us to smoke outside, but Chef doesn’t like freezing his rocks off just because he’s a smoker. So he told Emerald either she organized a smoker’s room or he was going to walk. She organized the room.”
“So Shauna slipped this note under my door last night,” said Odelia, deciding to tackle this thing head-on.
She placed the note in front of the cook, who read it eagerly. “Oh, that poor, stupid girl.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She must have seen something, and instead of coming right out and telling the police she must have been chewing on it all day yesterday, only to finally decide to come forward in this roundabout way. And it got her killed.”
“Did she tell you what it was that she saw, or heard?”
Sylvia bit her lip and shook her head. “If she’d told me I’d have advised her to go straight to the police.”
“Why didn’t she?”
The woman stubbed out her cigarette in an overflowing ashtray. “It’s a big step to talk to the police—especially when you’re a small cog in a big machine. My guess is she wasn’t sure of what she saw, and didn’t want to get in trouble with Helen or Emerald. So she decided to talk to you first.”
“You don’t think she fell, do you?”
Sylvia slowly shook her head. “No, I don’t.”
“This is very important,” said Odelia, leaning forward. “Do you have any idea who might have done this to her?”
Sylvia stared at Odelia for a moment, then lit up another cigarette and directed a plume of smoke at the ceiling. “No, I don’t, unfortunately.”
“If you knew, you would tell me, right? I’m not a cop, Sylvia. Whatever you tell me stays between us. I promise you.”
Sylvia flashed a quick smile. “I know. Shauna talked a lot about you. She was a big fan. Read all of your articles. And if I had any idea what happened I would happily tell you, but unfortunately I don’t. All because Shauna didn’t trust me enough to tell me what was going on.” She hung her head. “And for that I’ll always blame myself.”
Odelia took the woman’s hand. “Please don’t. This is not your fault.”
Sylvia looked up, and there were tears in her eyes. “If only she’d confided in me, I would have gone straight to the cops and she’d still be alive.” They sat for a few moments in silence, then Sylvia said, in a throaty voice, “Please get whoever did this to my friend, Miss Poole. Promise me. For Shauna.”
“I promise,” said Odelia, touched. “I will leave no stone unturned.”
Chapter 35
Odelia was right: the secret passageway we’d discovered connected all of the rooms on our floor. Dooley and I had set out to explore them, and before long we’d discovered we could go literally anywhere and not be detected. Of course the rooms were all deserted now, with their inhabitants either having breakfast or being interviewed by Chief Alec’s people, or even walking their dogs outside. Suddenly we heard voices, though, and so we followed them to the source. They were all male voices, so I was curious to say the least.
“Do you think we’ve hit upon a secret gathering within the secret passageways?” asked Dooley excitedly.
“No idea, Dooley.”
“There could be a secret cult living within these walls, studying the people in the rooms, and murdering with absolute impunity,” he said, his imagination taking sudden flight. Dooley is prone to such flights of fancy.
“Or it could be the cleaners taking a break,” I said.
“That doesn’t sound as exciting as my idea.”
No, it certainly did not.
The voices appeared to originate from inside the room that had been awarded to Kimberlee’s boyfriend upon Kimberlee’s tragic demise. From what I could tell there were at least five occupants in there, yapping away.
Dooley and I positioned ourselves near the cracks in the wall so we had a perfect vantage point to spy on these humans without them knowing. I saw Kimberlee’s boyfriend Zoltan, Emerald’s husband Pete, Abbey’s husband Seger, Verna’s husband Thaw, and Alina’s husband Reinhart. Even the director, Odo Hardy, was there. They were seated in the apartment’s salon, drinking hard liquor and smoking something that smelled extremely… pungent.
“Weed,” I told Dooley. “They’re smoking weed.”
“Why would they smoke weeds?” asked Dooley.
“Not weeds. Weed. It’s a drug.”
“A drug!”
“Humans like it. A lot of them seem to smoke it.”
“So weird,” was Dooley’s determination. “Why would anyone want to fill their lungs with smoke? That just seems like a very irrational thing to do.”
“I know, right?”
“I’m just saying, we gotta get out of this place,” said Thaw. “No offense to you, Pete, or your lovely wife and your fabled hospitality, which is amazing, to be honest.”
“Amazing,” echoed Zoltan.
“And the food. Oh, my God.” He kissed his fingers for some reason. “To die for, man. But there’s cops crawling all over. And now with this maid that tumbled down the stairs…”
“Bad luck,” Pete said. “First Kimberlee, now this. Why does this keep happening to us?”
“It’s like that story from the bible,” said Seger. “You get seven good years followed by seven lean years. Your luck will turn, buddy.” He clapped a dejected-looking Pete on the shoulder. “Soon you’ll prosper again.”
“Maybe we should just sell the house,” said Pete now. “After what happened it just doesn’t feel the same.”
“Don’t do that!” said Reinhart. “If you sell now you’ll get shafted.”
“And if we stay we’re screwed. We’ll be social outcasts. And I’m not blaming you, Thaw. I wouldn’t want to stay in a place where a woman just killed herself and another died in a freak accident.”
“Yeah, that was pretty weird,” said Seger. “What are the odds?”
They all sat in silence for a moment, then Odo Hardy held up his glass. “A toast. To Kimberlee. An amazing woman. And a once-in-a-lifetime talent.”
“A toast,” Pete said, holding up his glass.
The others all joined in. “To Kimberlee,” said Zoltan sadly.
“To Kimberlee,” the others echoed, and clinked their glasses.
“Looks like they all loved Kimberlee,” said Dooley.
“Appearances can be deceiving,” I told him. “One of these men may have killed two women in the last twenty-four hours.”
“Pity we can’t look inside their heads. Like a mind reader?”
“Yeah, wouldn’t that be something?”
“Do you hear that?” suddenly asked Pete.
“What?” said Reinhart.
“Sounds like a cat. It’s coming from over there.”
“Uh-oh,” I said. “Looks like we’re busted, Dooley.”
“Run, Max, run!” Dooley cried, and set the example by breaking into a run himself.
I quickly followed suit. I did not want to be caught by these people. Spies are notoriously shy, and hate to be interrupted when they’re spying on people, and cats are no different.
“There’s nothing there, you guys!” we could hear Seger say. “Probably just the wind in the pipes!”
We hurried back to the room, flying like the wind—without the pipes—and popped out to safety, panting heavily, then laughing at our crazy adventure.
“That was fun,” I said.
“Where did you guys go off to?” asked Harriet, who was perched on the bed, reading on Odelia’s tablet computer.
“Exploring these secret passageways,” said Dooley. “They run all over this floor.”
“It’s how the killer got into Kimberlee’s room,” I added. “Unseen and unheard.”
“Except by the maid,” said Dooley.
“So what are you up to?” I asked, hopping onto the bed. Or at least I tried to hop. The beds
were pretty high, but I finally managed at my third attempt.
“Oh, just going through the pictures Odelia took of the crime scene,” said Harriet, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
“And? Have you found anything?”
Brutus, lying next to Harriet, was licking his fur. “Nothing so far,” he said.
“Odelia asked us to take a look, just in case she missed something,” said Harriet. She deftly flicked though the pictures with her paw pads.
Thank God for Steve Jobs. He’s the one who made it possible for cats to use tablet computers and smartphones. Our pink pads are simply perfect for the purpose of scrolling through pictures or operating a touchscreen.
“That’s the stack of Coke Emeralds,” I said when a picture popped up depicting a pyramid of Coke cans.
“That’s not the crime scene, though, right?” asked Dooley.
“No, just random pictures Odelia took when she and Chase first arrived here yesterday.” Harriet suddenly narrowed her eyes, then expanded the picture for a closer look. “Now isn’t that the weirdest thing?” she muttered.
“What is?” I asked.
Instead of responding, she quickly flicked through the pictures until she got to one of the can of Coke Kimberlee had drunk from. It was on the floor, next to the poor unfortunate woman’s body.
Once again, Harriet zoomed in on the can. “You guys,” she said finally, “I-I think I found something. I-I think I found—I’ve found a clue—an actual clue!”
Chapter 36
When Odelia finally returned to her room, she hadn’t learned much. She’d talked to some more people on staff, but no one had any idea about what Shauna could possibly have seen. Most of them simply held that the girl was delusional, and thought she was just trying to make herself look important by professing to hold some important piece of information.
So Odelia decided to take a break and check up on her cats and Gran, and when she entered her room wasn’t disappointed. Four cats looked extremely excited, and so did her grandmother.
“They found something!” Gran said. “They found an important clue—or at least I think it is.”