* * * * *
We hit the spa and shed our clothes in the dressing room, then slid into robes and slippers. They’d placed two spa tubs in the same room, so we could chat while we were having hydro treatment. The water bubbled around me, smelling of lavender and something else I couldn’t put my finger on. Lemon, maybe? I relaxed into the cushioned surface of the tub, sliding lower and lower in the water.
"Trying to drown your troubles?" Meg asked me. I had submerged myself so that only the top half of my head was visible.
"Yes." I raised my head out of the water. "Don’t interrupt me. If I can deprive my brain of just enough oxygen, then maybe I will forget this whole crazy mess I'm in. I slept in the damn barracks the other night. The only reason I wasn't in a cell is that your husband took pity on me. This has gotten so far out of control that I can’t cope.” I sank back under the water.
"Yes, but…" started Meg.
"Don’t you ‘yes, but’ me," I rose out of the water again. "I’m sacred shitless that I’m never going to recover from this mess."
"Yes, but," Meg shot me a smile. "We are going to scope things out while we’re here, aren’t we? I’ll bet we can find something that will get you off the hook."
“What you think we are going to find is beyond me. Brian and I already checked out the housekeeping closet. I’m sure Dotty knows something, but she won’t talk. Brooks has this thing about putting me in cuffs.”
“I can’t help but think there has to be some evidence of what happened. Some clue. If Tom were running this investigation, I wouldn’t worry about them missing anything. But he’s not. Brooks seems so focused on you that he’s blind to anything else.” Meg shook her head, sending droplets of water through the air.
“Don’t most investigators believe that the simplest explanation is usually the right one? I found her, therefore I killed her. Can we stop talking about this now? It’s giving me a headache.”
The new treatments were developed from local products: maple and honey scrubs, milk baths, and fresh cream moisturizers. After our lavender soak, our attendants showed Meg and me into separate rooms. I shed my robe again and climbed up onto the massage table. I lay on my front and pulled up the flannel sheet. Mimi, one of the spa attendants, came in with small granite bricks that were mined and cut in central Vermont. She heated them with steam and set them down my spine. The air smelled of Maple Syrup. An image of maple cookies floated in my head.
“You’re going to have to feed people.” My voice was muffled by towel around my face. “The smell of maple is making me hungry. I can’t stop thinking about food. Maple cookies, maple candy, maple sausage, maple pancakes.”
Mimi laughed. “I’ll tell Nancy you said that. I’m about to use an astringent on your back. You might feel some tingling. Then I’m going to use one of our new moisturizers on you. After that, I’ll you roll over and do your face. Okay?”
“Sounds good.” The heat of the stones was making me sleepy. They were heavy and pushed me into the table. I’m a human pancake, I thought. A maple pancake. I was thinking of food again. I had to get my mind off eating. I thought of Beau instead, but he was gone now. I couldn’t decide if it had been a good idea or a bad idea to sleep with him. Lord, my brain was hurting.
Mimi removed the stones, flipped me over, and went to work on my face. My eyes watered from the astringent. When she used the scrub, I wondered how many layers of skin were coming off. Mimi applied the moisturizer, and the tingling stopped. She ran the silky stuff down my neck and arms. She pulled a towel out of a cabinet and placed it across my eyes. It was damp and warm.
“Nice.”
“I’m done. Let’s get you turned back over. Your masseur will be in shortly. Just relax until he gets here.”
After my massage, I dozed for a while with cucumbers on my eyes until Nancy came in to wake me up and guide me back to the changing room, where I found Meg. I was as relaxed as I’d ever been. Devon had pummeled me into a mass of custard pudding. I could barely even walk. Meg was already in the dressing room, sitting on an upholstered bench with a bemused look on her face.
"I don't feel like looking for clues now," she said. "I’m so relaxed, you could pour me into a glass and drink me." "That’s okay. We probably wouldn’t find anything, anyway.” I sat next to her on the bench. "Let’s go home. I don’t want to ruin this feeling."
We dressed and meandered out into the reception area. Gunnar Ericson was talking with the receptionist. "I just couldn't believe it," Janine was saying. She looked up and saw us. "Oh!” She stopped in mid-sentence.
Gunnar turned to look at us. "Well, hello ladies." He smiled his million-dollar smile. "Ms. MacGowan, won’t you introduce me to your friend?"
Meg was standing there open-mouthed, eyes wide. I wished he would stop it with the smile already.
"Mr. Ericson, this is Meg Maverick. Meg, meet Mr. Ericson."
"Call me Gunnar." He took Meg’s hand and kissed it.
Meg visibly swooned. "Pleased to meet you," she squeaked.
I did a mental eye roll. "Well, we’d better be going. I’ve got to get Meg home to her husband. He’s a police captain. Tom get’s very upset when I keep Meg out too long. He’s possessive."
"Oh, he is not!” Meg gave me the eye. "I was wondering, Mr. Ericson …"
"Gunnar.” He interrupted her firmly.
"Gunnar. I was wondering if I could have an autograph?” She reached for a slip of paper in her purse.
"Oh, I can do better than that. Come back to my room, and I’ll give you an autographed photo of myself. How would you like that?"
Meg gave me a pleading look. Then she narrowed her eyes at me, and I could almost hear her begging me not to ruin this for her.
“Do you mind if I talk to Bree for a moment?” Meg asked Gunnar.
“Take all the time you like.”
Meg dragged me back into the dressing room. “Bree, please. This could be our chance to see if something is wrong in his room. We might find something. And I really want a picture. Please, Bree, you meet celebrities all the time, but this might be my one chance.”
“First of all, that room has already been searched by Brook’s team, and I was in the closet with Brian, so I’m not sure what kind of clues we’d find now. If Gunnar was involved, there might be something in his room, I guess, but I have my doubts. I can’t imagine Vera being a threat to Gunnar Ericson. Secondly, if I get caught socializing with a guest, I’ll get fired. So maybe it would be better if you went by yourself.”
“I can’t go by myself,” Meg wailed. “What would I say? And Tom would have a fit. I can’t be in a strange man’s hotel room by myself. What if he tries something? Please, Bree. I need you to go with me.”
I puffed out a huge breath of air. I didn’t think Gunnar would try anything, but then again, he’d been chasing me around since he’d been here, and he could just as easily come on to Meg. “Okay. If it will make you happy, I’ll go with you.” Yeah, why should I stop doing stupid stuff now? I’d done worse things than this with less forethought. We walked back out to the reception area.
"I guess that would be okay.” I said to Gunnar. "I’m not technically working today. But just for a minute, I really can’t afford to get fired.”
"Oh, I won’t let Brian fire you. That would be too unfair. Well, then." He gestured for us to precede him out the door. "Come with me."
We followed him out of the spa and up the stairs next to the pub. He had his Mercedes parked in the no-parking zone directly in front of the path from the road to the spa. Not that that was unusual. Most of the wealthy people who came to Whispering Birches felt they could do whatever they liked. They paid enough to be here, so maybe they were right.
Gunnar opened the front passenger door for Meg, and she slid into the big leather seat. Then he opened the rear door, and I ducked into the car. I was way out of my comfort zone. Not only was I totally unaccustomed to this kind of treatment, I could lose my job for this. I smiled
Mercedes here, but Lexus on next page?
grimly at Gunnar as he shut the door, while Meg gushed about the car from the front seat.
“Is this a Mercedes?” she asked. “I’ve never been in a car with leather seats.”
I groaned to myself. We were sitting in a Lexus.
“Wow, look at all these knobs,” Meg was gesturing to the dash.
“That’s just the stereo,” said Gunnar. “It’s like a home entertainment center. Are you girls buckled in?”
Gunnar was staying in the Spring Meadows Room, a small cabin that sat in a small depression between two hillocks, out of sight of any of the other cottages. He pulled into the covered carport, opened the doors, and escorted us to the door. I’d forgotten he’d been moved out of the room where Vera died. We wouldn’t be finding any clues in this room.
Gunnar ushered us into the room ahead of him. Meg started at the sight of a bronze, life-sized statue of a moose in the entry of the cottage. The hotel was full of stuff like that, but I’d forgotten Meg hadn’t been in many of the rooms.
“It hides the wood for the fireplace,” I told her. “It rolls forward when you push on its hind leg.”
Gunnar tossed his jacket on the moose and motioned us into the living area.
Opulent couches and overstuffed chairs sat artfully on one side of the room. They had been set so that you could see both the fireplace and the hidden, flat-screen TV from one seating area, and out the window overlooking a meadow with a stream running through it from the other. Gunnar motioned us to take a seat, but I walked over to look out the floor-to-ceiling window. I didn’t like being in this room.
"Let me just get a photo for you," he said to Meg. "It’s in the other room.” The minute he left, Meg started rifling through the papers on the coffee table.
“Meg!” I hissed at her. “Stop that. You’ll get caught.”
“He’ll just think I’m nosey,” she whispered back. She moved over to look through the items on his bar.
“Meg!” I glared at her. “This isn’t the cottage Vera died in. We moved Gunnar out of there. You’re aren’t going to find anything.”
“Unless he was involved.” Meg was looking for another spot to search. I shook my head at her. “Stop,” I said. “He’s coming.”
Gunnar returned with a briefcase and made a big show of extracting a photo and signing it for her. She took it from him and smiled.
"Thank you so much,” she said, simpering at him. "It’s very kind of you to go out of your way."
"On the contrary," Gunnar turned around and reached into his briefcase again. "You have saved me a great deal of trouble.” He turned back and pointed a gun at her.
Shit. All of a sudden, I didn’t care so much about getting fired. It was way better than getting dead. I must be the queen of getting into stupid situations. Only this time, I’d dragged Meg into it with me.
"You," Gunnar said to me. "Get over here and sit next to her. And don’t do anything stupid, or I’ll shoot your friend. Her husband could be the king of Siam, and I wouldn’t give a shit, so don’t start going on about him being a cop.”
I looked at him intently. Gunnar’s European accent had disappeared. He sounded vaguely like he came from … Chicago? Despite that, I still couldn’t see him as Vera’s killer. Why? What could Vera have done, seen, or heard that would make it necessary for a man like Gunnar to kill her? Why was he threatening us, for that matter? What could have we done or seen? It would be much easier just to pay any of us off. Or threaten us. My head was hurting again.
"Move," he said and rotated the gun in my direction.
I moved. I sat next to Meg on the couch while Gunnar paced for a few minutes. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and scowled at it. I would put money on his not getting service in this cottage. I never had service anywhere on Whispering Birches property.
"Okay, change of plan," he said. "Both of you into the bedroom."
We scooted into the bedroom. A huge bed dominated the room. The top of the mattress was probably four feet off the ground. A footstool sat on the floor beside the bed so you could climb up. The headboard was huge, running from the mattress top to the ceiling. It was solid wood, engraved with intricate designs in florals and swirls. Delicately detailed cutouts had been carved out of the wood so that we could see the fabulous gold wallpaper behind the headboard.
Besides the fabulous bed, there was a dresser carved in the same motif, with cut-outs along the bottom. A fireplace faced the bed with a flat screen TV hanging above the mantel. The floor-to-ceiling windows faced the meadow. Through the door to the bathroom, we could see a stone shower stall, and out the door to the main living area, I could see that stupid metal moose.
“Take off your shoes.” He shook the gun at us. “Now.” Meg looked shell-shocked. Her hands were shaking, and she had trouble getting her shoes untied. I was wearing my favorite cowboy boots, soft black leather. If Gunnar damaged my boots, I was going to kill him. They cost me two weeks’ pay. I slid them off my feet.
“Give me your bags, coats, shoes, belts, everything.” Gunnar looked at Meg, who had started shaking her head. “I’m not taking my clothes off,” she said. She shot him a defiant look.
His smile was creepy. “You can keep your shirt and pants,” he said. Meg and I handed our stuff to Gunnar. He stowed them in a duffle and then pulled out what turned out to be a bunch of large zip ties.
“If you move I’ll kill your friend,” he said to Meg. He tossed one of the ties at me. “It’s handcuffs,” he said. “Put that on your left wrist.” I looked at the cuff and looped the plastic around my wrist and threaded the end through the ‘lock.’ Gunnar stuck his gun in the back of his pants and grabbed my left arm. He tightened the cuff on my wrist and slid a second tie around the bedpost through one of the decorative cutouts. Then he looped it through the cuff on my wrist.
Meg was staring at me, horrified. She looked ready to run, but I knew she wouldn’t put me at risk. I wanted to yell at her to get out, but I didn’t. She couldn’t outrun Gunnar in the snow without shoes.
Gunnar approached her. “Same thing,” he said to her. “You move, she dies.” He handcuffed her to the footboard. “You make any noise, I’ll kill you. Do anything to attract attention, and I’ll kill you. I think I’d enjoy that.” He showed us his teeth and left the room.
Well, here I was on Gunnar Ericson’s bed. There wasn’t a woman in America who hadn’t dreamed of this. Of course, most of them would have left the handcuffs out of the fantasy. The reality wasn’t nearly as fun. I couldn’t get comfortable with my arm cuffed to the headboard, and I wasn’t really sure why we were cuffed to the bed. I could be wrong, but it didn’t seem to be a sexual thing. Did Gunnar kill Vera?
I could hear Gunnar moving around in the other room. There was a knock at the door. My heart leapt, and I strained to hear what was going on. The door opened, and a husky, male voice spoke in an undertone. I couldn’t understand what he was saying.
“I think they know.” Gunnar’s voice was clear.
“Well, if they didn’t before, they do now.” The husky voice was audible now. “I don’t see what the big deal is, Gunnar. It hurts me that you date women and keep me hidden away. It’s not like it’s the 1950s anymore.”
“That’s not the half of it, and you know it, Joseph. My fans are all female. If my little habit comes out, my popularity will come crashing down. Do you want to end up on the street? You wouldn’t be nearly as attractive without my credit card.”
“I think he’s gay,” Meg said in a stage whisper.
“You think?” I rolled my eyes.
“These women are nothing to worry about, Joseph,” said Gunnar in the other room. “Nothing at all. I’ve asked that no one enter my room. Now it’s time to go to dinner.” The door clicked shut and the cottage fell silent.
I slumped against the headboard, my head leaning against the scrollwork. Meg climbed up and lay across the foot of the bed, her arms angled out so she could rest her head on the mattress.
How in the world was I going to get Meg out of this?
Think. What do I know about this cabin, this room, this bed? This bed.
I closed my eyes and pictured how they had gotten the huge headboard into the room. I hadn’t been there, but Brian had told me about it. It was designed to come apart so that it would fit in the door. It was brought into the room in two pieces, assembled on the floor, and then raised and attached to the rest of the frame.
I opened my eyes and examined the wood. The carving was intricate, and the join wasn’t obvious. My arm was shackled a couple of feet above the mattress. It was just possible that I was attached to the connecting point of the post. I swiveled around, stretching my arm as far as it would go, and braced my feet in a couple of the holes.
I slid my butt closer to the head of the bed, my legs bent. The cuff cut into my wrist, making me suck in my breath. I anchored my feet in the cutouts, and then I pushed upward with everything I had. Nothing. My wrist was bleeding, but the bed hadn’t moved. I shoved upward again with everything I had, pushing my back down into the mattress, the cuff slicing into me. The headboard didn’t move.
“Crap, crap, crap!” I said.
“What are you doing?” Meg asked.
I looked down the bed to see Meg staring at me. “I think this headboard came in two pieces,” I said. “I’m trying to pry them apart.”
She shimmied up the bed, extending her arm above her head. Gunnar had left a lot more slack in her cuff than in mine, but she was still stretched way out. “I’m not tall enough. I don’t have a lot of leverage, but I can help.” Meg slotted her heels into the wood. There was hardly any bend in her knees at all.
“Get ready,” I said, “on three. One, two, three!” We both pressed upwards with our feet. There was a creaking sound but no movement.
“Wait,” I said. “Maybe we need to loosen the glue or whatever is holding the two pieces together. Try shoving against it like this.” I put my feet flat on the surface of the headboard above where I thought the join was and pushed it back and forth with all the strength in my legs. Meg did the same. There was a splintering noise, and we shifted our feet back into the slots where I thought the join must be. We shoved upwards again. The headboard came loose and crashed down on top of us.
“Ow,” cried Meg. “I think my kneecap just shattered.”
I was seeing stars from the headboard bashing me in the head. “That wasn’t the smartest idea I ever had,” I said. I slid the zip tie up over the broken end of the headboard and wiggled out from underneath it. I pushed the broken wood off Meg and let it crash to the floor. I rubbed my head where the newel post had clobbered me.
“My wrist is bleeding,” I said. “I’m going to rinse it off in the bathroom.” In the bathroom, I held my hand under the cold water until it was numb. Then I dried off on one of the pristine towels. I looked at the bloodstained towel and sighed. With my luck, I’d be the one to have to clean it.
I came back to Meg and sat on the bed. Something Gunnar said hit me. “He’s got a secret. Not that he’s gay, something more.”
“What do you mean?” asked Meg.
“Do you remember what he said before they left? Something about a habit?” I scrunched my face up, trying to remember. “I’m going to search the room.”