And I was going to start with the more congenial Dr. Craine. According to the list, she was in room 512. I headed for the elevator.
When I got off on the fifth floor I didn’t even need to glance at the direction arrows—by now I’d spent enough time at the Inn that I knew without thinking that room 512 would be to the right. I looked to the left and noted, with satisfaction, the hotel security guard sitting in a folding chair outside 504, which had been Dr. Frogmore’s room. Then I headed in the other direction.
The door of 512 was hanging open—rather odd. I hoped that meant Dr. Craine was there—just arriving, maybe, or getting ready to leave. Or filling her ice bucket.
But when I got to the door and peered in, I didn’t see her. I saw a slender figure in a gray-and-white uniform rushing about the room—I recognized Serafina, one of the newer members of the housekeeping staff. She seemed to be searching for something—frantically looking in drawers, behind furniture, under stray items, all the while murmuring something under her breath.
“Lost something?” I asked.
“¡Dios mio!” She shrieked, jumped back a foot from the dresser she’d been searching, and began saying something—quite a lot of something—in machine-gun Spanish. My Spanish was good enough—just barely—to help the boys with their homework, but it couldn’t even begin to cope with Serafina’s monologue.
Someone appeared in the doorway behind me—a very tall someone. I glanced behind me—behind me and up—to find that Chantal, an astonishingly tall African-born member of the housekeeping staff, was also staring at Serafina with a look of astonishment on her elegant brown face.
Serafina finished whatever she was saying, or at least took a long pause, and from her expression and gestures I was pretty sure she was asking—no, pleading for something.
“Did you understand what she just said?” I asked Chantal.
“Not a word of it. I’m from Burundi—we speak French, not Spanish. But I probably know what she was doing.”
“Searching Dr. Craine’s room, as far as I could see.”
“Yes. I heard earlier today that Serafina had lost her key card. She is hoping to find it, because if Ms. Ekaterina finds out she has lost it…” Chantal shrugged with graceful eloquence.
Serafina was looking back and forth between the two of us, with hope and anxiety flitting across her face in turns.
I searched my memory and came up with a few useful words.
“¿Tarjeta perdida?”
“Sí.” Serafina looked relieved. She also looked annoyed, as if she wanted to say a lot more on the subject, but had by now figured out how unlikely it was that I’d understand a word of it.
“Exactly what would this key card open?” I asked Chantal.
She gave me a curious look.
“Pretty much all the guest rooms in the hotel,” she said. “And also all the ‘staff only’ doors. As you can imagine, a malefactor who had this card could cause a great deal of mischief.”
Even stressed as I was, I couldn’t help relishing the word “malefactor.” I hadn’t yet figured out if Ekaterina hired a lot of students who were working their way through Caerphilly College or if she hired smart people and then nagged them until they enrolled. Clearly Chantal was one of her student employees. For all I knew, Serafina would be too in a few months when she’d polished up her English.
“Calm down,” I said. “Er … tranquilizate?” I hoped that meant what I thought it meant. Probably, since Serafina’s anxious face showed, just for a second, an expression that clearly said “Easy for you to say.”
Using my limited Spanish vocabulary, Chantal’s considerable skill at miming, and the calendar on my phone, we managed to learn that Serafina had last had her card sometime Friday evening.
“Which means it’s possible that someone has been running around the hotel with it for more than twenty-four hours,” I said.
“You think this could have something to do with the man who died?” Chantal asked. “The one they say may have been murdered?”
From the interested expression on Serafina’s face, I deduced that she understood more English than she spoke and was eager to hear my answer to the question.
“Maybe,” I said. “We should let the police know. Horace, that is. And we should tell Ekaterina that maybe it’s not Serafina’s fault she doesn’t have her card. Maybe it isn’t lost. Maybe it’s stolen.”
Chantal nodded.
“If only I could think of the Spanish word for stolen,” I muttered.
“Robada,” Serafina said. “Tarjeta robada.”
I made a vow to work harder at my Spanish.
“So let’s tell Ekaterina about the tarjeta robada,” I said. “Ekaterina and Horace.”
Serafina seemed much more resigned to telling Ekaterina now that we had defined her card as stolen instead of lost. But she balked at following me down to the Command Post, and I didn’t try to force her. I’d let the chief deal with bringing her in for an interview. Or Ekaterina.
It wasn’t as if there was anyplace else she could go.
Chapter 16
After wishing Serafina a Feliz Navidad and Chantal a Joyeux Noël, I texted Ekaterina and asked her to meet us in Horace’s Command Post. When I arrived there myself, I found Dr. Green and Dr. Lindquist sitting on the bench just outside the door, with fresh beers.
“Awaiting my turn in the hot seat.” Dr. Lindquist said, cheerfully. “Ben’s already been through the wringer.”
In the office, I found Horace conferring with the chief over the satellite phone—strategizing before they began the next interview. Not surprisingly, neither one of them was thrilled by the news of the stolen card.
“As if things weren’t complicated enough already.” Horace looked despondent. “If there’s someone running around the hotel with a card that gives them access to any place where they might find it useful to plant evidence—someone who’s probably our killer…” His voice trailed off and he slumped in his chair.
“Do we know precisely which rooms this key card would give someone access to?” the chief asked.
“Not yet.” I was hoping Chantal had been exaggerating when she said it could open any guest room. “But when Ekaterina gets here—”
“I have arrived.” Ekaterina stood in the doorway. “There is a problem?”
“Someone has stolen Serafina’s key card,” I said. “We don’t know if the killer has it, but even if that’s only a possibility, Horace and the chief would like to know what the card would give them access to.”
“All guest rooms,” Ekaterina said. “Including the cottages. All housekeeping closets. The laundry rooms. The trash rooms. The loading dock. All of the meeting spaces, in case they are called into service to help with speedy turnaround during conferences. All the ‘staff only’ doors.”
“Pretty much anywhere but your office and hotel safe,” I said.
“And the kitchen and food storage areas,” she added.
“So the housekeepers’ key cards aren’t restricted to a particular floor?” Horace sounded a little overwhelmed.
“In a much larger hotel, that might be the policy,” she said. “But here, it was not feasible. While staff have assigned floors, or sections of floors, we need to be able to reassign them dynamically in case of absences or emergencies. And of course, guests staying at a deluxe hotel like the Inn—especially those in the cottages—often come with greater expectations when it comes to the level of service we provide. Satisfying those expectations is easier when all of the relevant staff are empowered to do so.”
“In other words, you need to make sure that when your guests bellow out orders, any staff member within earshot can take care of them. Especially if they’re monumentally entitled and demanding cottage guests.”
“Not all cottage guests.” She smiled. But I noticed she didn’t contradict my translation.
“So someone is running around with a key that lets them into a whole lot of places where they could get up to mischief, and we
don’t know who’s doing it and we can’t do a thing about it,” Horace said. “Like we needed this case to get more complicated.”
“I can’t tell you who’s doing it,” Ekaterina said. “But unless you see a reason not to, I can reset the housekeeping-level key codes so they can’t do it anymore. Would that be acceptable?”
“Seems like a good idea to me,” the chief said. “Horace?”
“Ye-es.” Horace sounded hesitant. “Only—could you maybe tell us how the system works?”
“Of course.” Ekaterina almost purred. She enjoyed explaining things to people—especially explaining technical things to men. “The card readers on each door are stand-alone, battery-powered units—a good thing, because that means they will still work in the unlikely event of a power outage. And they come with several sets of codes programmed into them—sets of guest codes, housekeeping codes, and master codes. When you check in, the receptionist inserts a blank key card in a little machine connected to the system, and loads the next code for your room onto your card. When you insert the card, the card reader says, ‘Aha! New code!’ And after that any cards bearing the previous code will no longer work. They also have your checkout date and time encoded in, to help discourage guests from overstaying.”
“But I bet the housekeeping and master codes work differently,” I said.
“Yes. To change those, I must go around to each card reader with a small machine and tell it that I want it to move on to the next code. And then I must issue new cards to everyone—not just Serafina, in this case, but every member of the staff. That is why I am so stern when they are careless with the keys—changing all those locks and cards is a lot of work.”
“But worth it in this case,” I said. “Since there is a possibility that a killer is running around with way too much access to rooms we’d rather keep him out of.”
“Agreed,” said the chief.
“I will begin,” she said. “While I am resetting the codes, would you like me to run an audit of the key card readers?”
We all stared at her for a few seconds. At least Horace and I stared, and we heard nothing from the satellite phone.
If neither the chief nor Horace were going to ask …
“What would the audit tell us?” I asked.
“Which key cards had accessed that lock at what time.”
“Awesome,” Horace murmured.
“Of course, it will not tell us who was holding the card,” the chief said.
“Alas, no,” Ekaterina said. “If we had cameras above all the doors, we could, but I think our guests would find that level of security somewhat intrusive.”
“But assuming someone used the stolen card, we can at least figure out where they used it,” I said. “And if we compared that to when we know certain people were tied up—appearing on a panel, for example—we could narrow it down.”
“Let’s not get too excited,” the chief said. “We don’t know yet that the card’s been used. It could just have fallen into a wastebasket or something.”
“But perhaps it will tell us everything,” Ekaterina said. “I will begin the rekeying and auditing immediately.”
She pulled out her key ring, unlocked a small cabinet, and took out a small case with an attached tag that read KEY CARD EQUIPMENT. I was rather hoping she’d open the little case so I could see what the equipment looked like, but she only smiled enigmatically before walking briskly out.
“Well, that could be useful,” Horace said.
“Let’s hope so,” came the chief’s voice. “Meg, on your way out, send in Dr. Lindquist.”
I took the hint.
Dr. Green looked a little bereft when Dr. Lindquist went into the office.
“And I had such high hopes for this weekend,” he said.
“Anything in particular you were hoping for?”
“I thought we had a chance of reaching a more harmonious situation with regard to the position of the barred owl.”
“You were hoping to talk Dr. Frogmore out of wanting to kill them all?” Clearly my blunt question made Dr. Green uncomfortable.
“Well, no,” he admitted. “I didn’t really see much chance of that happening. But I was hoping that a few calm discussions with some of the more reasonable people on the other side of the issue might be fruitful. People like Dr. Lindquist, for example.”
“Might such discussions be more fruitful now that Dr. Frogmore is out of the picture?” I asked.
“Are you asking me if I have a motive for murder?” He shuddered. “The idea of taking a life is absolutely abhorrent to me.”
“Especially a human life.”
“No.” He looked thoughtful. “Not especially a human life. That’s a very narrow-minded, anthropocentric notion, that a human life is worth more than other lives. We need to start looking beyond that kind of speciesism.” He lifted his chin and his face took on the look of noble resignation I was used to seeing on Rose Noire, on those occasions when she felt obliged to utter some New Age pronouncement even though she knew we’d all find it funny or weird.
So if Dr. Green held all lives as equally valuable—even that of a black widow spider—did this mean that he’d willingly sacrifice Frogmore if he thought it would save thousands of innocent barred owls? Or did he hold the equally if not more extreme position that killing any creature for any reason—even, say, to save the entire planet—was morally indefensible? Figuring that out might tell us whether he was a valid suspect or just another witness.
“Is something wrong?” He looked alarmed, and I realized that I’d been studying him as I pondered.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was trying to visualize something. And I just realized that you might be able to help me—you were at Frogmore’s table at dinner. Do you know the names of those three young men who were sitting there—apart from you, Czerny, and Lindquist?”
“Yes,” he said. “And I looked them up in the program to see where they were from. I was going to try to engage them in conversation. Make them feel welcome. Unfortunately, Dr. Frogmore wasn’t in the mood to let anyone else get a word in edgewise.”
“Can you tell me their names?”
“I already gave them to the detective.”
“Who is probably going to ask me to hunt them down when he finishes with Dr. Lindquist. Help me get a head start.”
He sighed, pulled out his phone, and began tapping on it. Eventually he nodded—evidently he’d found what he was looking for. “Smith, Whitmore, and Belasco.”
I checked them against my lists.
“Belasco’s the only one registered at the hotel.” I hadn’t noticed that when I was taking registrations, and even if I had, I’d merely have assumed they were planning to find a cheaper place to stay. Now … “I suspect they’re sharing a room with someone.”
“Grad students, so I expect so.” Dr. Green smiled rather wistfully, as if remembering his own impoverished youth. “Although junior faculty would be almost as poverty-stricken. Nice to have those days behind me,” he added quickly.
Was there some reason he’d brought up his greater financial stability? I reminded myself to delegate checking out Dr. Green to Mother. I’d have my hands full helping Horace. I also made a mental note to give Horace a copy of my conference registration list. I already knew what he’d say. “Not more suspects!”
“I can find Belasco and see if he knows where the other two are,” I said aloud. “Thanks.”
“Good luck.” Dr. Green sighed, got up, and headed for the elevators.
Chapter 17
I wavered outside the Command Post door for a minute or two. It was getting late. Near midnight. Murder or no murder, at some point we’d need to stop knocking on the doors of people, most of whom would turn out to be completely innocent.
But the sooner Horace did his interviews the better. I braced myself for what I assumed would be the inevitable complaints and trudged toward the elevator myself.
No one answered Belasco’s door. Or Dr. Craine’s. I decided
to take a turn through the conference area to see if I spotted any of them. And then, when Horace was finished with Dr. Lindquist—or whoever else I could find for him after Dr. Lindquist—I’d suggest that we knock off till morning. Most of the potential witnesses would turn up for the complimentary continental breakfast—especially any grad students so broke that they were sharing a room—so that would be a good time to nab them.
When I stepped into the conference area I heard sounds of laughter and conversation coming from the Hamilton Room, so I strolled over to see what was going on.
Dr. Craine was perched on the edge of the table at the far end of the room, the one where the panelists would sit if a panel were happening. She was holding a tissue box. A tissue box that had been festively decorated with scraps of red, green, and gold metallic paper but, thanks to the slot at the top, was still recognizably a tissue box.
“Okay—George Voss. You’re in, right?”
“Sure.” A burly fiftyish redheaded man strode to the front of the room. Dr. Craine held out the box to him and shook it slightly. He stuck his fingers into the slot at the top of the box and pulled them out again, not holding a tissue but a small folded slip of paper.
He opened it up and chuckled.
“No telling!” Dr. Craine warned. “Next. Jeff Whitmore—you in?”
A slight man in oversized glasses with heavy black frames dashed up, pulled a slip of paper out of the box, looked at it, nodded, and went back to his seat. I made a note of where he’d gone—and could that be Smith and Belasco sitting with him?
“And finally—Ethan Zander.”
A tousle-haired blond young man whom I recognized as another of Grandfather’s student volunteers dashed forward, rummaged in the box for a few moments, and finally emerged with a slip of paper.
Dr. Craine looked up and saw me.
“You’re too late,” she called.
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I asked. “You’re holding a lottery of some kind? You all ganged up to off Dr. Frogmore, like a remake of Murder on the Orient Express, and now you’re drawing lots to see who’s going to take the fall for the rest of you.”
Owl Be Home for Christmas Page 13