Some Like It Hawk (22 page)

“We’re actually doing some work along that line,” Doane replied.

“Maybe I’m picky,” I said, “but I’m not sure they’ll ever replace search and rescue dogs. If I get lost in the wilderness and a vulture shows up, I’m not going to be reassured.”

“If you’re merely lost, they won’t show up,” Doane said. “Not until you’re dead.”

“So how are you teaching them to prefer human remains?” Grandfather asked.

I decided this was not an explanation I needed to hear.

“I should probably get back to town,” I said.

“Much as I’d love to hear about the vultures, I’ll go with you,” Caroline said. “Remember, I’ve got another little errand you could help me with.”

Precisely the words I’d been dreading.

“We’ll leave you gentlemen to your discussions,” I said.

Caroline and I returned to the truck, and headed for the main road.

“So what’s your little errand?” I asked.

“We’re going by the Caerphilly Inn on our way back to town, aren’t we?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Great,” she said. “We’re going to burgle it.”

Chapter 25

“Please tell me you didn’t really say what I just thought I heard,” I said.

“Relax,” she said. “I have a plan.”

“Exactly what does your plan think we’re going to find at the Caerphilly Inn?”

“No idea,” she said. “But since the Evil Lender’s executives are staying there, stands to reason if we poke around enough we’ll find something interesting. Did you have a better plan for finding out what’s going on in what your dad’s calling Redcoat headquarters?”

“I was thinking maybe Grandfather could learn something from his new raptor and carrion bird specialist,” I said. “Or were you going to hire him?”

“We’ll sort that out once your grandfather has assessed his credentials and charmed him,” she said. “And the best plan would be to let him keep working for the Evil Lender for the time being. Sort of a mole in place. Moles are useful.”

I couldn’t argue with that. And maybe Caroline was just being dramatic when she used the word “burgle.” Unless she’d recently acquired the skills needed to circumvent a four-star hotel’s pricey security system, odds were we wouldn’t manage anything more than eavesdropping and skulking.

“We’re getting close to the Inn,” I said. “Where should I park the van?”

“The parking lot would be my suggestion,” Caroline said.

I looked at her in surprise. Knowing Caroline’s love of drama, I’d fully expected that she’d want us to park a mile or two away, cover the car with branches, hoof it over the pastures and the back nine of the golf course, and then scout the hotel with binoculars from the shrubbery for an hour or so before finally creeping toward our goal. Was she going normal on me?

Then again, if she was having a brief flirtation with normal, perhaps I shouldn’t complain.

“Do we really want to put the van in plain sight?” I asked. “Because we’re going to sneak around once we get there, right?”

“No, we’re not sneaking,” she said. “Once we get the key from Ekaterina, we’re going to do a little discreet investigation.”

“Ekaterina?”

“My mole inside the Inn,” she said. “She’s a supervisor in housekeeping. She’s lending us her master key. We need to be discreet, so we don’t get her in trouble. But there’s no need to sneak. And for that matter, there’s nothing more conspicuous in a four-star hotel than someone acting furtive. We march right in like people who have a perfectly good reason for being here.”

“And just in case anyone asks, what is our perfectly good reason?”

She pondered for a few moments. I hoped she came up with her good reason soon, because we were turning into the Inn’s driveway. Which meant we were still a mile or so from the front door, but I was nervously expecting to be stopped at any moment.

“I’m planning a fund-raiser,” she said finally. “I want to see if the Inn’s a suitable venue.”

“Wouldn’t they assume you already knew whether it was a suitable venue?” I asked. “You’ve only been here a couple of dozen times, visiting Grandfather.”

“But never when I was planning a fund-raiser,” she said. “You look at a place differently when you’re thinking about whether you can squeeze in four or five hundred well-heeled guests and how much trouble it will give your caterer. Don’t worry—if you don’t think you can carry it off, just leave it to me. You know nothing, you’re just being kind enough to give me a ride. Ah, here we are. Try for a shady spot near the door.”

Normally we’d be lucky to find even a sunbaked spot a quarter mile from the hotel, but to my surprise the lot was half empty. I actually could find a spot relatively close to the wisteria-framed door and shaded by the huge, raspberry-colored flowers of the crepe myrtles that dotted the parking lot. Not that the shade would help much—the car would still be an oven when we returned. The parking lot was paved with gleaming white gravel and the whole thing shimmered with heat in the July sun. I hadn’t even stepped out of the van and I was already eager to get inside where it was air-conditioned.

I parked, and Caroline helped me arrange the sun shields in both sides of the front windshield before we headed for the entrance. We were halfway across the parking lot when a voice rang out.

“Stop!”

Caroline and I both started guiltily, froze, and whirled to see a young man in the muted green uniform of the Inn’s landscaping staff running after us, waving his arms.

“Come back!” he shouted. “You can’t park there.”

“Get rid of him,” Caroline hissed. She strode on toward the front door, leaving me to deal with the groundskeeper who was so intent on spoiling our unobtrusive arrival.

“You can’t—” the groundskeeper began.

“Shh!” I said. And then I grabbed my head as if suffering from a hideous headache. “No yelling, please,” I whispered. “Do you know what it’s like when you have a migraine and someone keeps yelling?”

I was very proud of myself. I hadn’t actually lied and said I had a migraine.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “It’s just that you can’t park there right now. We’re about to regravel.”

Of course. The Caerphilly Inn prided itself on the perfection of its housekeeping and landscaping, and the pristine white gravel of the parking lot was marred here and there with spots of oil—no doubt from plebian vehicles like mine.

“Oh, right,” I whispered back. “I always wondered whether they regraveled or power washed the stones.”

“Power washing!” He snorted, and forgot to whisper. “Yeah, management thought that would be such a great idea, because labor’s so cheap. You know what happens when you power wash a gravel parking lot?”

I shook my head—gently, with one hand to my temple, to maintain the appearance of someone who shouldn’t be interrogated while bravely coping with a migraine.

“Neither did management,” he said, dropping back into a stage whisper. “You turn a power hose on this sucker and it’s going to send all that gravel flying. Could have graveled the parking lot a dozen times with what they paid out in paint jobs and new windows for all the Mercedes and Jaguars they didn’t move far enough away. And they fired the poor guys they ordered to do the power washing. Like it was their fault. No, we’re back to regraveling. And we make sure all the vehicles are well clear of the part we’re working on. Even the ones that look like that.”

I winced, and then realized he wasn’t pointing at my van but at an old and somewhat battered Chevy sedan at the far end of the lot.

“You don’t happen to know where he is, do you?” he asked.

“He?”

“Belongs to that PI fellow,” the groundskeeper said. “Didn’t I hear that you know him?”

My, how rumors got around in Caerphilly. I shook my head.

“Not well,” I said. “Though as it happens, I’ve been looking for him myself. I take it you’ve checked his room?”

“Called three times this morning, and knocked once. But apparently he never came back to his room last night.” From his tone, I gathered that this was unacceptable behavior for a guest. Or was it Denton’s profession that put him beyond the pale? “His car hasn’t been moved since last night. And we sent out notices yesterday afternoon and again this morning about moving all vehicles to the south lot. So if you find him, you might tell him to come and move it. The tow truck’s on its way. If he hurries up and moves it in the next half hour or so, he can save himself the cost of the tow.”

“If I see him I’ll tell him. You do realize that he works for some of your more distinguished guests.”

“Yeah, but they don’t know where he is either,” he said. “And from the sound of it, they’re not too pleased with him at the moment. You could tell him that, too.”

I nodded and returned to my van. Now that I was looking for it, I spotted the small tasteful sign, printed in the sort of frilly, elegant cursive typeface normally reserved for wedding invitations. Once you got close enough to decipher it, you could see that it read

Please park in the south parking lot today due to construction.

Management apologizes for the inconvenience.

Probably more of an inconvenience for the valet parking staff than anyone else. Odds were at least half the guests couldn’t care less where their cars were parked as long as someone fetched them quickly enough when they wanted them. I found a space at the far end of the south parking lot, and trudged back to the Inn.

I cringed inwardly when I reached the front door and the uniformed attendant scrambled to hold it open for me, bowing deeply.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Langslow,” he said. So much for anonymity.

Caroline was waiting inside, tapping her foot impatiently.

“Don’t skulk,” she said to me. “You have just as much a right to be here as any of them.”

She waved her arm as if the lobby were filled with haughty plutocrats sneering at us. Actually, it was empty, except for two bored-looking businessmen seated by the fireplace reading copies of
The Wall Street Journal
and looking at their watches every few seconds.

“They’re paying to be here,” I murmured.

“So has your grandfather, plenty of times over the years,” Caroline said.

“Are you sure we can’t help you, madame?”

We both started slightly at finding the bell captain at our elbows.

“No, no,” Caroline said. “For now, I just need to visualize.”

She held up both hands to create a frame in a gesture I’d seen painters and photographers make to assess the pictureworthiness of some bit of scenery. Then she nodded approvingly.

“Very nice,” she muttered. “Meg—follow me!”

She began striding briskly through the lobby. I had been trying to study the two businessmen out of the corner of my eye, wondering if they worked for the Evil Lender, and she caught me by surprise. I had to hurry to catch up with her.

“So whose room are we burgling first?” I asked, sotto voce.

“Inspecting,” she said. “And I think we’ll do the PI first.”

“Not that way, then,” I said, grabbing her arm. “That leads to the cottages. I doubt if they put the PI in the cottages.”

“Oh, right,” Caroline said. “Force of habit.”

I understood. I’d almost taken the same route myself.

Nowadays, Grandfather had his own suite at the farm that Mother and Dad used as their summer cottage. But back when he had first begun coming to Caerphilly, he’d frequently stayed in one of the Inn’s three cottages. The Washington Cottage was a miniature replica of Mount Vernon, the Jefferson Cottage resembled Monticello, and the Madison Cottage was loosely inspired by Montpelier. All three were decorated with acres of chintz and a mixture of real antiques and pricey reproductions. And given their inflated price tags, even the Evil Lender hadn’t rented the cottages for their minions—although they had been known to house visiting senior vice presidents there.

A pity we didn’t have any senior vice presidents to burgle. All three cottages had multiple French doors opening out onto the terraces with their panoramic view of the golf course. They’d have been relatively easy to break into, even without Ekaterina’s help.

Caroline had been fumbling in her purse and emerged, triumphant, with a slip of paper.

“Here it is,” she said. “The Annex, room 212.”

“That makes sense. This way.” I turned away from the elevator and led the way to a long and much more modest corridor tucked away nearby.

“What is this Annex place, anyway?” Caroline asked. “Is it new?”

“No, it’s fairly old, although they’ve renovated it nicely,” I said. “It’s the servants’ quarters. If someone brings along their personal maid, or their nanny, or their private secretary, the Annex is where the Inn puts them.”

“Rather insulting for poor Mr. Denton,” Caroline said, with a sniff.

“I expect he’s seen worse.” I stopped by a smaller elevator. “This leads to the Annex. Shouldn’t we get the key before we go up? Where is Ekaterina meeting us?”

“She doesn’t want to be seen with us,” Caroline said, as she punched the elevator button. “She’s hidden the key in a dead drop near Mr. Denton’s room.”

“A dead drop?”

“Her idea,” Caroline said. “Her father used to spy for the CIA in Moscow back in the Cold War days. Or so she says. Don’t worry—she gave me instructions.”

When we stepped out onto the second floor of the Annex, I decided that the maids and nannies weren’t too badly treated. We were walking on lush wall-to-wall carpet instead of an oriental rug, and there was far less marble and gilding than in the other wings, but I felt a lot more at home.

Caroline was slowly walking up and down the hallway, studying each of the paintings. I’d never known her to be particularly obsessive about art, so I deduced she was looking for the key.

When she reached the far end of the hall she stopped and turned around with a puzzled look on her face.

“That’s odd,” she said. “I don’t see it.”

“Don’t see what?”

“The dead drop. Ekaterina was going to tuck her master key—actually it’s one of those electronic key cards—behind a bit of loose baseboard beneath the painting of a policeman.”

I walked back down the hall. None of the paintings contained a policeman. They were all landscapes. Landscapes or seascapes. Some of them had tiny figures, but they appeared to be peasants waving scythes, or sailors pulling oars. Some of the paintings looked vaguely familiar, so I suspected they were expensive reproductions of works by well-known landscape painters.