The Corpse Wore Tartan (17 page)

She led him to the elevator foyer, furnished with two chairs nobody ever seemed to sit in and a table topped with a vase of artificial flowers. Liss and Margaret hadn't moved. They stood by the exit, eyes glued on Sherri and Phineas. Sherri made a little shooing motion behind Phineas's back, hoping they'd take the hint and make themselves scarce. Liss and her aunt obligingly strode off down the hall, heading away from the elevators. But they stayed in sight.

Once Phineas was seated, Sherri didn't beat around the bush. “I'm relieved to see you safe and sound, Mr. MacMillan. I take it you didn't find Dilys Marcotte?”

Although the emergency lights along the corridor shed very little light, Sherri thought she saw Phineas tense.

“What are you talking about? I haven't seen Dilys in years.”

Sherri frowned. Richardson Bruce had told Phineas that she, Sherri, was looking for him. Hadn't he also said that he'd told Phineas she was also looking for Dilys? Yes, she was sure of it. Bruce had said Phineas had been “some startled” by this news. And that was when he'd taken off, presumably to hunt for Dilys.

“Where have you been for the last couple of hours?” she asked.

“Wandering. Exploring this lovely old hotel.”

Just like his brother, Sherri thought. And look what had happened to Phil! “And you didn't run into Dilys?”

“Do you mean to tell me that Dilys Marcotte is in this hotel?”

“No one told you she was here?”

“I should think I'd made that obvious. No, no one told me. And to tell you the truth, I'm having difficulty believing it. How could she be here without my noticing her? There aren't that many of us here, you know.”

“She works at The Spruces, Mr. MacMillan. As a housekeeper. She was also one of the waitstaff at the cocktail party before the Burns Night Supper.”

He shook his head in denial. “I can't believe this. Where is she? I—”

Sherri stopped him from rising by catching the sleeve of his sweater. “There's something you'd better know before you go looking for her. It's possible that Dilys is the one who killed your brother.”

“Nonsense!” But he appeared shaken by the suggestion. He made no further effort to leave.

“At the moment, we don't know where she is. That being the case, it might be a good idea if you stayed close to other people.”

She didn't need to say that he might be Dilys's next target. He got the message. Uncharacteristically meek, he agreed. “I'll go back down to the lobby. Or to the lounge,” he amended, making a weak attempt at humor. “I believe I could use a drink.”

Sherri walked him to the stairwell. MacMillan descended the first few steps, then turned back, frowning.

“Officer Willett, you say you don't know where Dilys is now?”

“That's right. We've been looking for her, but she's staying out of sight. She could be anywhere in the hotel.”

“Or out of it. I know this sounds mad, given the current weather conditions, but I could have sworn I saw someone setting out across the back lawn on snowshoes not twenty minutes ago.”

Sherri watched Phineas until he was out of sight at the bend in the stair before she pulled out her walkie-talkie and ordered everyone back to the conference room.

 

When they'd exchanged information and Liss had taken her scolding for talking to Eunice on her own, she voiced an objection to Sherri's report. “I don't buy that idea that Dilys took off cross-country. It's sleeting outside! In fact, I'm not sure I believe anything Phineas MacMillan said.”

“If Dilys did leave, there's no way we can go after her,” Dan said, “but I don't think we should jump to conclusions, either. We should finish searching the hotel.”

“I think I know where she is,” Margaret said. Liss's aunt was just full of surprises today. “After Sherri and Mr. MacMillan settled in for their little tête-à-tête by the elevators, I took a stroll down to the east end of the hall. I thought something looked a bit odd about the pocket doors, so I checked. They weren't just unlocked, they were open by a good inch.”

Liss wondered how she'd missed that. Probably, she decided, because she'd been brooding about Eunice, thinking that, after all, she probably was a better suspect than Dilys Marcotte.

They reconvened in a truncated section of hallway blocked by the wooden barrier of the pocket doors. The doors themselves were swallowed by shadows. At first even the beam of Sherri's powerful flashlight failed to provide enough illumination to tell if they were tightly closed or not. Liss had to advance all the way down the short corridor before she spotted the gap.

Sherri reached for the knobs on either side and gave a start of surprise when the doors slid apart at her merest touch. “If Dilys used her passkey to open these doors, she may have been in the east wing all along.”

“Hiding out?” Liss asked.

“Could be. Although, if that's so, I'm surprised she didn't take the precaution of locking up again after herself.”

“And what is she hiding
from
?” Margaret asked. “She has no reason to think you suspect her of anything, does she?”

“Maybe she overheard Richardson Bruce tell Phineas that I was looking for them both.” Sherri peered into the icy darkness of the closed-up wing.

Liss ran through the hotel's floor plan in her mind. The kitchen and one section of the restaurant were on the first floor in this wing. She'd been in both rooms and didn't remember seeing any stairs. If Dilys was in this part of the building, she was cornered. All they had to do was flush her out.

“We need more light,” Sherri said.

While they'd been searching, the sun had set. That happened far too early at that time of year. It wasn't even five o'clock yet.

“And I need my coat.” Liss shivered in her woolly sweater. “It's almost as cold in there as it is outdoors.”

“I'll go get it, dear,” Margaret offered, and slipped away from the group.

Sherri was already bundled up in her dark blue police-issue jacket, but now she took the gloves out of her pockets and put them on.

“We have everything shut off in that section,” Joe said. “No water. No power. No heat.”

“No other exit?” Sherri asked.

“There's a stairwell at the far end of this hallway, just outside the tower room. It goes straight to an outside door on the first-floor level.”

“That could be how Dilys left,” Pete speculated, “assuming Phineas is right about seeing a person fleeing from the hotel on snowshoes.”

Liss cocked an ear. The ice storm was still raging. Periodically, over the course of the last hour, she had heard the ominous crack of breaking branches.

Joe scratched his head. “There's no access from that stairwell to the mezzanine or the basement, but someone could come out on the second floor by way of the pocket doors right below us.”

Sherri promptly dispatched Joe and Sam to guard them. “Use your walkie-talkies to alert me if you hear any sound at all coming from the other side,” she instructed, “and don't get in the way if someone comes out.”

“Maybe I should be down there,” Pete suggested after the two civilians were on their way.

“I need you here.” Sherri contemplated the length of the corridor.

Liss followed the direction of her gaze. There were a lot of rooms. A lot of places to hide.

“Are you sure all this is necessary?” Margaret asked, returning with Liss's coat, an extra sweater for Sherri, and more flashlights. “I mean, you don't actually know that Dilys has done anything wrong. And surely she's not the only suspect.”

“Even if she hasn't, she's gone missing. That's cause enough for concern when there's already been one murder on the premises.”

Sherri removed her jacket, put on the sweater, and shrugged back into the outer garment. Then she sent Margaret down to join Joe and Sam at the pocket doors. When the older woman had gone, Sherri drew in a deep breath, made a megaphone of her hands, and shouted through the open pocket doors. “Dilys Marcotte. If you're in there, please come out now.”

No one answered.

“Is anyone in there?” Sherri called.

Silence.

With a sigh, Sherri turned to her remaining searchers—Liss, Dan, and Pete. “I guess we have to do this the hard way. Check every possible hiding place. Every room. Every closet.”

“Wait a sec,” Liss objected. “If Dilys did kill Phil and is hiding in here to avoid arrest, then she's not likely to calmly turn herself in if we find her.”

“That's why I told Joe and Sam not to try and stop her if she bolts.”

“Is she dangerous?” Dan's brows knit together in concern. “I don't like the idea that she might hurt one of us, or my father or brother.”

“Or my aunt,” Liss added.

Sherri took a deep breath. “I do not believe anyone is in any danger from an overweight, out-of-condition, middle-aged woman, but it pays to be cautious. If you don't want to help search, just say so.”

“You can't get rid of us that easily,” Liss said.

S
nug in warm outerwear, armed with extra flashlights, Liss followed Pete and Dan into the east wing of The Spruces. Sherri came last, locking the pocket doors behind her.

“We'll split up,” she said, “and meet in the tower room at the end of the hall. Don't take any foolish chances. And…thanks.” She disappeared into the first room on the right-hand side. Pete entered the one just beyond.

Liss started to unlock the first door on the left, then glanced over her shoulder at Dan. “All of a sudden I'm a little nervous.” True, as Sherri had said, they were looking for an overweight, out-of-condition, middle-aged woman. But she had left out one adjective—desperate.

“Fine with me if we do the first few together. You can watch my back.”

Feeling foolish and relieved at the same time, Liss nodded. She even let Dan go into the room ahead of her. It was a perfectly ordinary room, with doors leading to a bath and a closet. It was also unfurnished.

“Are you still renovating in here?”

“We have a couple of things left to do. This is the oldest part of the hotel.” Dan stood in the center of the empty room, shining his flashlight at the walls and contemplating…something.

“What are you looking at?” Liss asked.

“I never fail to be impressed by the sheer mastery of nineteenth-century craftsmen. My brother and I replaced every window in the hotel to make the place more energy efficient, but we took pains to save the interior woodwork. You just don't see molding like that anymore.”

Liss made an appreciative murmur, but her knowledge of architectural features was minimal.

“The wood in some of these rooms, including this one, still needs to be stripped and refinished. The old wallpaper has to come off, too.” He shone the flashlight at his feet. “The hardwood floorboards are just begging for attention. It's a real pity that we'll end up covering them with wall-to-wall carpeting.”

“Even in historic hotels, guests expect some modern amenities,” Liss said. “I've got to admit I'm not fond of a cold, bare floor first thing in the morning. So, this section of the hotel dates from 1910?” She ran one hand over the cabbage roses in the wallpaper, wondering if it, too, could possibly be a century old.

“Actually, this wing of the hotel predates that. The first incarnation of The Spruces was up and running by 1890, but it was a pretty small operation. It was 1910 when the owners took a stab at becoming a ‘grand hotel' like the Poland Spring House or the Mount Washington Hotel over in New Hampshire. In its heyday, The Spruces had two hundred guest rooms. We reduced that number to a hundred and forty by combining some of them to make suites and by adding private bathrooms to the ones that didn't already have them. But I guess this isn't really the time for a tour-guide spiel.”

Liss smiled in the semidarkness. In spite of all the craziness going on around them, she'd never felt more connected to Dan Ruskin than she did right now. Hearing him talk about a topic he loved had calmed her as nothing else could have.

“I don't mind the history lesson. You don't usually say much about the hotel, unless it's to tell me what kind of wood was used in the wainscotting.”

“I don't want to bore you. Besides, The Spruces is Dad's baby, not mine.”

Liss let that pass. She knew how much of himself Dan had invested in the renovations. He was a fine craftsman. That was evident everywhere there was wood. And there was a lot of wood at The Spruces.

“We need to search the closets and the bath,” he reminded her.

No one was hiding in either, but someone had opened up the clothesline strung across the 1980s-style bathtub. Several rags had been draped over it.

“Laundry day?” she asked.

“Those probably got wet cleaning something,” Dan said, “but they shouldn't have been left here. Nor should that,” he added, pointing to a stepladder that had been folded and propped against the wall. Liss suspected that a Ruskin Construction employee was going to catch hell the next time Dan saw him.

They moved on to the next room. It was the twin of the first, and even emptier. When Liss inspected the bath, she couldn't help but glance at the small metal fitting from which the over-bath clothesline unrolled. This one was empty. The line had been removed.

“I think it's okay to split up now,” Liss said after she came out. “I'm over the jitters.”

“You sure?”

She nodded. “I'll be fine.” She patted her pocket, where the walkie-talkie Sherri had given her resided. “And I'm not exactly out of contact.” No one would have any difficulty hearing a good scream, either.

Dan went into the third room on the left. Liss went ahead to number four. She shone her heavy-duty flashlight into every corner and sighed. Nothing. Not even any furniture. Not even drapes or a carpet.

“This could get monotonous,” she muttered and stepped inside to check the bath and the closet. “Ah, clothesline intact!” Perhaps if she made a game of the search, she wouldn't have to think too hard about the fact that they were looking for a suspected murderer.

Slowly, the four of them worked their way along the hall until they reached the octagonal room at the back corner. A stairwell was situated just to one side of its door. While Dan went up to inspect the tower room, Liss, Sherri, and Pete headed down. They would follow the same pattern to check the rooms on the second floor, working their way back to the pocket doors where Joe, Sam, and Margaret waited.

Somehow, this level seemed even darker. And colder. All three of them went into the octagonal guest room first. Like its twin upstairs, it yielded nothing of interest, although it was furnished. When Sherri and Pete turned left out of the door, Liss went right.

Her footsteps echoed as she moved along the wood-floored corridor. In spite of her warm coat, she felt chilled to the bone. She tried to shake off the feeling of impending doom as she went through the first door. Obviously, she'd seen one too many promos for bad horror movies. This room was much like all the others she'd searched, except that on this level the renovations were complete and carpet, drapes, and furniture had been installed. Everything looked perfectly normal. But when a faint scraping sound reached her from the hall outside, Liss almost jumped out of her skin.

“Get a grip,” she muttered. That had to have been Dan, leapfrogging to the next room. “Dan?” she called softly.

Apparently he was already inside and couldn't hear her.

Although she'd already searched dozens of unoccupied rooms without incident, that single odd sound set Liss's nerves jangling. She couldn't seem to stop thinking up worst-case scenarios. If she was right about Dilys, the four of them were playing cat and mouse with a killer. Since this was the oldest section of the hotel, it probably contained any number of nooks and crannies where a person could hide, places that weren't readily apparent to the searchers, especially when those searchers were hampered by poor visibility.

Cautiously, half expecting Dilys to spring out and bash her over the head as she had struck down poor Phil MacMillan, Liss stepped back out into the hall. The heck with this, she thought. She headed for the room next door instead of the one beyond. She'd hook up with Dan again. They'd search the rest of the rooms together. Safety in numbers was not a cliché. It was a truism.

But Dan was not in the room she entered, nor was he in either of the next two. Liss beat a hasty retreat and shone her flashlight up and down the deserted hallway. The beam of light raked over an unbroken line of closed guestroom doors before it touched, briefly, on the wall next to the stairwell. No Dan.

But there had been something odd about one section of paneling.

Frowning, Liss brought her light back to the anomaly. Curiosity outweighed fear as she moved cautiously closer, sweeping the beam over the area that enclosed the underside of the staircase.

A scene from the first Harry Potter movie played in her head as she examined the wall. Poor Harry's bedroom in his aunt and uncle's house had been a cabinet—or was it called a cupboard?—under the stairs. Could there be a similar storage space tucked into this area? Liss crouched down until she was sitting on her heels. She ran one gloved hand over the wood. If there was a seam or a latch or a knob, she ought to be able to feel it.

A moment later, her searching fingers encountered a rough spot. Her excitement grew as she explored more carefully. There
was
some sort of latch. It was set right into the wall, so that it was nearly invisible, but she could just make out the shape of it if she squinted. She fumbled a moment longer and was rewarded with a sharp clicking sound. A triangular section of paneling creaked loudly as it swung toward her.

Liss scrambled out of the way, grinning as she retreated. This was so classic—the secret passage. Well, secret closet. But still—

Such giddy thoughts came to an abrupt end as the beam of Liss's flashlight revealed what lay inside the space under the stairs. Liss's eyes widened and she gasped. Then she lost her balance and landed on her backside. At floor-level, she was face-to-face with Dilys Marcotte.

Dilys wasn't hiding. She'd been hidden. Bound and gagged, she'd been wedged into the hidden closet.

She didn't respond in any way to the sound of the door opening or Liss's exclamation of shock and surprise. Liss stared at her, unable to tell if she was still breathing. Dilys's knees were tucked up under her chin and her hair had fallen forward to hide her face.

Liss stretched out one trembling hand to feel for a pulse. Dilys jerked when Liss touched her. Liss yelped. Then she yelled for Sherri and Pete. Dan burst through the stairwell door a moment later.

Dilys was more hindrance than help as Sherri and Liss attempted to free her from her prison. She squirmed and grunted and, when she finally tumbled out into the hallway, she glared at them balefully over the top of the handkerchief that had been stuffed into her mouth.

She wasn't hurt, Liss realized. She was madder than a wet hen. Well, why shouldn't she be? Someone had bound and gagged her and rammed her bodily into a storage space barely big enough for a child, let alone a grown woman. Liss removed the gag. She dropped it on the floor and hastily scrambled out of the way when Dilys began to sputter and cough.

Sherri, meanwhile, still struggled to undo the ropes that bound Dilys's hands and feet. “Hold still, Dilys,” she muttered. Finally, exasperated, she extracted a folding knife from her utility belt and sliced through the bonds. “What
is
this stuff?”

“Clothesline,” Liss said, belatedly recognizing it. “From one of the bathrooms.”

Dilys flailed at Sherri and Liss as they tried to help her to her feet.

“Are you injured?” Sherri asked.

“Do you need a doctor?” Liss added.

“What I need is that son of a bitch's head on a platter,” Dilys croaked.

“Phineas did this to you?” Sherri asked.

Of course he did, Liss thought, suddenly aware that the handkerchief that had been used to muffle Dilys's cries for help was one of the tartan ones from the hotel gift shop, probably the same one she'd sold to Phineas MacMillan on the day after the murder.

“Phil,” Dilys managed to say between paroxysms of coughing. “Phil.”

“Don't try to talk just yet, Dilys,” Sherri said in a soothing voice. “I know this has all been a terrible shock to you. Don't worry. We'll sort it all out.”

Dilys shook her head violently. “It's horrible. Unnatural. How could one twin kill the other?” Then she burst into tears.

“We need to get her someplace warm,” Sherri said, exchanging a worried look with Liss over Dilys's head.

Pete, who had been on the walkie-talkie, tucked it away. “Good news,” he said as he scooped Dilys up into his arms. “The power just now came back on in the main part of the hotel. Which room was Dilys using? I'll take her straight there.”

Liss told him, and by the time they reached the pocket doors at the end of the hall, Joe had them unlocked. Dilys's room was just down the hall.

Liss caught Sherri's arm to hold her back while Pete went on ahead. “Where's Phineas?” she asked. “If Dilys was tied up—”

“He must be the one who left her here?” Sherri grimaced. “I should have twigged to this possibility sooner. When I talked to him, he claimed he didn't even know Dilys was in the hotel, but Richardson Bruce had told him she was here. I knew he was lying. I just never thought—” She broke off, shaking her head. “The thing is, people lie to the police all the time, and it's usually for some stupid but perfectly harmless reason.”

“Are you going to arrest him?” Liss asked. Phineas's guilt seemed pretty cut and dried to her.

“I'm going to talk to Dilys first. See if she can fill in some gaps for me.”

“Isn't it obvious? He left her there because he needed to put in an appearance, to stop our search. Once we gave up looking for her, he meant to come back and kill her, too. Why else would he have made up that preposterous story about seeing someone leave the hotel on snowshoes?”

Her expression grim, Sherri gestured toward the open door to Dilys's room. “Let's ask Dilys, shall we?”

“No one's doing anything until poor Dilys has a chance to catch her breath,” Margaret said, blocking their way. Bustling around the room, she fussed over the thermostat, complained when the heat didn't come up fast enough and, as a temporary measure, bundled Dilys into no fewer than three warm blankets. Then she sent down to the kitchen for a pot of tea.

With an efficiency that impressed Liss, Sherri yielded Dilys's care to Margaret but took charge of everyone else herself. She handed her cell phone to Pete, instructing him to get hold of the state police and bring them up to speed. She sent Joe and Sam back down to the first floor of the hotel.

“Find Phineas,” she instructed, “but don't do anything. One of you should keep an eye on him while the other comes back here to tell me exactly where he is.”