Slain in Schiaparelli (Vintage Clothing Mysteries Book 3) (26 page)

The second square was finished now. She put another log on the fire. Only a few logs remained. She glanced toward the door once again. Beyond the shape of Wilson’s body, the door was closed. She couldn’t keep looking behind herself like that. She set down her sewing and rested the candelabra in front of the door so it would topple and alert her if the door opened.
 

Over the late night hours, the house moaned a few times in the wind, causing Joanna to glance up and grab her shears. But it was just the sound of heavy wood relaxing and tightening with the night.
 

At last, exhausted, she placed the thirteenth square on top of the pile. Now, after arching her back to stretch, she reached into her sewing kit for thirteen plastic spools of silk thread plus another spool of thick white coat thread. Using the coat thread, she cut four foot-long lengths and tied one to each corner of a silk square. She gathered the threads together and drew them through one of the smaller spools to make a parachute. Using the same method, she assembled twelve more S O S parachutes.
 

Now for the final test. Joanna fastened her robe tightly and went to the tower room’s window facing the valley. She drew open the heavy curtains and shielded her eyes from the cold. The snow had stopped. A dazzling combination of bright moonlight and the pinky wisps of dawn on the horizon reflected off the snow and flooded the room. For a moment she stood, transfixed.

Then she pushed the casement window open and shivered against the icy breeze. She reached out, holding a parachute by its spool, and released it. The wind complied, lifting the silk and hurtling it down the valley, where Joanna prayed it wouldn’t simply be caught in a tree or lie camouflaged in the snow. Heartened by her success, she released the next parachute, then the next, until they were all gone.
 

Her last step was to affix the veil to the outside of the window where it might alert someone approaching by ski. She carefully secured its top into the window frame and pulled the casement shut. The bride’s veil caught the wind and fluttered, a lonely flag in a field of snow.

“What are you doing?” a voice asked from behind her.

Joanna whirled around. Standing by the fireplace was someone she had never seen before.

The figure by the fireplace could have stepped from another era. It wore high-waisted gray wool trousers and the long suit jacket of the 1930s. A hulking black fur draped its shoulders. Only its head was bare. Bald. Like Penny’s ghost. Skinny and bald, just like the man Marianne said she saw in the hidden staircase.

This was Redd Lodge’s ghost.

“Who are you?” At least that’s what Joanna intended to ask, but no words came out above the fierce pounding of her heart.

The figure watched her, its white, gray-stubbled face a pale spot in the dark room. It lifted its hands to the fireplace to warm them. But ghosts didn’t need to warm their hands. This was no apparition. It was a man.

Joanna remained frozen next to the window. If she had to, she could scramble outside, although she’d probably meet the same fate as Chef Jules. “Who are you?” she tried again. This time the words formed.

“Never mind that,” the man said. “Who’s the stiff?” He jerked a thumb toward Wilson’s body.

The stranger seemed relaxed, at home. He didn’t appear to have a weapon—at least nothing Joanna could see—and he was older, perhaps in his seventies. Still, his coat was bulky enough to hide a machine gun, and she wouldn’t know it.
 

“Why don’t you come over here and sit down? It’s got to be cold over there, especially in your nightclothes,” he said.
 

Refusing to move, Joanna shook her head.

“I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten my manners.” He took a few steps forward and extended a hand. “My name is—”

“Back off!” Joanna yanked the sewing shears from her robe pocket and wielded them like a knife.

He put his hands up in surrender and retreated toward the fireplace. “All right, lady. I’m not up to anything. I swear. I just had to get warm.”

“Turn out your pockets. And take off that coat.”

He complied. A wad of kleenex fell from one. He took off his coat and shook it upside down. The coat—it was the monkey fur cape from the attic. The rest of his clothes were from the attic’s trunk, too.

“Your pant legs. Show me your socks.” She’d seen movies where people had hidden switchblades in their socks.
 

The man lifted his pants, revealing yellowed long johns and limp rag wool socks above hiking boots. No knife, no switchblade. With his white flannel pockets turned out and flapping at his side, he looked like a forlorn second-grader after a mean trick by the class bully. “Can I put my coat on again? It’s cold.”

“All right,” Joanna said, keeping the scissors pointed at him. He was right—it
was
cold. She moved closer to the fire, but she wasn’t letting down her guard.
 

“Nice fire you got here,” he said. “Good job. City folk usually make a mess of it.”

“Who are you, anyway?” Joanna asked.
 

The man extended his hand again. It was thin and dry, and closer she could smell the funk of a few days without a shower. Joanna stared at his hand until he dropped it.

“Name is Reggie. Reggie Redd,” he said. “I own the place.”

Joanna looked at him a moment. It all began to come together. The specter in the tower room’s window. The man in the secret staircase. The footprints in the attic. The missing food. It was this man all along.

“You’ve been here since we arrived.”

The man nodded.

“How—I mean, where have you been hiding?”

“In the garage. There’s a secret room upstairs. Dad was a bootlegger. He built in a spot to hide his liquor. It was my hideout when I was a kid, before me and Mom quit this place and moved into town.” He looked at his hands, clasped together in his lap. “I didn’t want you to know I was here. And you wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for this storm. I had a little kerosene heater, but it ran out of fuel. It was so cold out there.”

“You ate our food, too.”

He looked at the floor. “I only brought two sandwiches. Didn’t think I’d need more.” He raised his eyes. “You had so many leftovers. Figured you wouldn’t miss them. They were delicious.” He smiled as if the compliment would smooth over his theft. “Well, except for the wedding cake. A little gummy.”
 

The gluten-free cake. He was right about that. “Why were you here? Bette said the only staff who came with the place was the maid. And she left the first night.”

“I didn’t trust you. She’d told me the singer from the Jackals was getting married here, and I know how rock stars are on hotels, setting their guitars on fire and destroying things. Redd Lodge might be a little crazy, but it’s my only link to my father. Besides, I haven’t been here for years. Wanted to be in the place a while, for old time’s sake. I thought I’d stay in the garage, keep an eye on things. You’d never know.” He sighed. “It was only supposed to be for a night.”

Just a night. One night turned to three, counting tonight. Three nights in a murderous funhouse. God, she was exhausted. “As you can see, we haven’t wrecked anything.”

“No. The place looks better than ever. Turns out that wasn’t what I’d have to worry about at all.” He glanced back at Wilson’s body. “Plus, there’s that guy who keeps roaming around at odd times. The husky one. I even saw him digging under the couch’s cushions. What’s his deal?”

Tony. Had to be. “He’s some kind of minister,” Joanna said as if it explained everything. “And an ex-forger.”

“It’s something else, isn’t it, Redd Lodge?” Reggie said. “I never did get Dad’s fascination with surrealism. Mom hated it, couldn’t wait to get back to town. I can’t say I understand the lodge, but I know there’s something special here. Special and crazy.”

“Crazy is right,” Joanna agreed.
 

“I barely remember him, but everything he did was a little off. Even my name, Reggie. You’d think it was short for Reginald, but no, he had to name me Regalo. Means ‘gift’ in Spanish. Told me I was his little gift.” A smile illuminated his face, then melted away. “Of course, he left us.”

“He didn’t die?”
 

“Oh, I’m sure he died. I just don’t know where. Or how.” He glanced at Wilson’s sheet-draped body a few feet away, then back to Joanna. “Speaking of dead—”

Joanna flopped her head back against the headrest. “That’s your rock star. You don’t have to worry about him wrecking anything.”

“I wondered if it might be him.” He seemed unsurprised, even comfortable sharing the room with a corpse. “Those famous ones always seem to come to bad ends.”

Another thought occurred to her. “Reggie?”

“Hmm?” He brought his wandering gaze back to her.

“Did you see a little girl in the hidden staircase in the library earlier today?”

“Yes. I did.” He looked away and fumbled with a piece of monkey fur. Joanna waited for him to continue. “The staircase was warmer than the attic or out in the garage, so I used the attic entrance to the secret staircase to sit for a while.” His face colored slightly in the firelight. “I cracked it open just a bit, you know, to get a little more heat. All the voices were in the great room. I figured I’d be safe. But that little girl was standing right there, right by the staircase, and she pulled it open.”
 

“So you locked her in?”

“No. Uh uh.” He shook his head for emphasis. “I signaled for her to be quiet, and I skedaddled up and out the attic door. The suction from opening the attic door—you know, all that wind up there—must have pulled the bottom door shut.”

“You had to have heard all the yelling.”

“Sure I did. And I got the heck out.”

As Joanna was lost in thought, her scissors slipped from her hand and tumbled to the rug. Reggie leapt forward and grabbed them. She gasped and pressed herself against the back of the armchair.

“Ma’am,” he said and handed her the shears, handle side toward her. He returned to his chair and settled in again.

“Thank you.” When her pulse calmed, she caught his gaze. “There’s something else you should know.”

“Ma’am?”

“There’s another body downstairs. The chef.”

“The chef who made the roast boar and those potato tartlets?” He scratched his chest. “Hot damn. You’re joking. That man was an artist.”

“Put that last log on the fire. I have a story to tell you.”

***

Tap. Tap. Tap
. Joanna lifted her head from the cushions she’d laid out in front of the tower room’s fireplace. Reggie? No, he’d returned to the garage as they’d decided. She laid her head down again. Her eyes burned and body ached. Frankly, she was surprised she’d slept at all, but nature must have taken over.

Tap. Tap.
Silence. Joanna shot to her feet. It was the window. Someone had come.

She blinked against the brilliant sun pouring in. The snow had stopped, and daylight streamed around the silhouette of head and shoulders disappearing toward the horizon. She pushed the casement open, tossing the veil inside. “Come back,” she yelled. He wasn’t far. He must hear her.

The figure stopped, turned on his skis, and returned. Thank God. The cold breeze ruffled Joanna’s hair, and a thin sheet of ice crystals whisked onto the window sill from the snow just a few feet below. The man, in a head-to-toe ski suit with the Timberline Lodge logo stitched on its chest, pulled down the mask covering his mouth and nose.

“Ski patrol,” he said. “I found this this morning.” He pulled one of her parachutes from a zippered chest pocket. “Is there trouble here?”

“Yes. Yes. We’re out of power and food, and—well—there have been two murders.”

Even with goggles obscuring half his face, Joanna could tell the ski patrol man didn’t believe her. He pulled back his head and lifted his goggles. The skin they had protected was white next to his ruddy cheeks. “Say that again?”

“Stay there,” she said. She ran back to Wilson’s body, drew a breath, and lifted the sheet.

The ski patroller came as close to the window as his skis permitted and leaned in. “That’s not—? I’d heard he was up here getting married, but—”

Joanna was back at the window. “Listen. Did anyone see you arrive?”

“No. I came from the valley side.”

“Do you have a pen and paper?” Thank God, thank God he’d come. With the hint of their ordeal being over, emotion washed over Joanna. She swallowed the urge to cry.

“No.” He tilted his head.

“Then you’ll just have to remember this.” Her voice trembled. “It’s very, very important. When you get back to Timberline, you need to call the police in town and ask for Detective Foster Crisp. Got that? Foster, like to take care of something, and Crisp, like the weather.”

Wide-eyed, the ski patroller nodded.
 

“And that’s not all.” Joanna leaned forward and gave him instructions, emphasizing speed and detail.

After a few minutes, he pulled up his mask and adjusted his goggles and swished down the hill, snow flying behind him.

There was no way around it. She had to do it. She had to go downstairs and pretend everything was normal. No spiders, no Reggie, no ski patrol. Her plan depended upon it.

Joanna looked down at her disheveled robe. She smoothed her hair and tried to work out a few of its knots with her fingers but gave up. There was no way she was going back to her room for a change of clothes. She’d have to wing it.
 

In the ice-cold tower bathroom, she splashed water on her face, patting her skin dry with Wilson’s hand towel. Then she went downstairs.

Where the tower room’s stairs met the hall to the bedrooms, she turned sharply to make it look like she’d been in her room. Everyone except Daniel and Tony, on the ground level, of course, were in the great room. Clarke was trying to build a fire while Bette looked on. Sylvia and Marianne curled up on the couch with a blanket over them. Portia examined her fingernails.
 

Penny lounged on the couch opposite, eyes half shut. Seeing Joanna, she sat up. “What’s wrong? You look awful.”