Authors: Donna Andrews
“Ahhh.” Caroline took a large sip of her martini—actually more like a gulp—and sat back in her chair.
“I think he overheard you,” I said. “And took you seriously about dunking yourself.”
“I may yet,” she said. “You’re probably right—burgling anyone else would be useless as well. Denton was our best chance of learning something, and that was a complete bust.”
“What do you mean a bust?” I asked. “We may not have found any interesting papers, but we did learn something. Or were you too busy hanging on to eavesdrop on Fisher?”
“I might have been a little distracted,” she said. “Remind me.”
I glanced over at Fisher. It seemed doubly odd to be sitting across the bar from him, discussing a conversation we’d overheard because his burglary coincided with ours. I repeated what he’d said.
“So they were looking for something they thought Denton might have,” she said. “Same as we were.”
“Only ours was a random fishing expedition,” I pointed out. “And they seemed to have something very specific in mind. They’re looking for the original of some document that would cause them problems if we showed up in court with it.”
“Doesn’t help us much, does it,” she said. She poured a little of the water from her pitcher onto the washcloth and began patting her face and the back of her neck with it. “Should we tell the chief?”
“It might be a little hard to explain how we happened to hear it,” I said. “Besides, all we know is that they’re looking for the original of a document. We have no idea what document.”
“We could call your cousin,” Caroline said. “Festus,” she added, before I pointed out that I had enough cousins to populate a small city. “Isn’t he still handling all of Caerphilly’s battles with the Evil Lender?”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you want to ask him to represent us when we’re arrested for burglary?”
“We could ask him what kind of document would totally upset their applecart if we produced it in court.”
I nodded, already pulling out my cell phone.
I got Festus’s voice mail. At least a dozen times, Festus had reminded me and everyone else who would listen to him never to say anything in a voice mail or an e-mail that we wouldn’t want to see on the front page of
The Washington Post
. So I left a cryptic message suggesting that we had some new thoughts on the case, and could he call me as soon as he got a chance.
“We should be going,” I said, as I pocketed my phone again.
“Fine,” she said, taking another strong pull on the martini. Another swallow and she’d have it finished. “I’ll settle the bill if you bring the van around. I’m not sure I can walk with all this heat.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said.
Outside I saw that the truck from Shiffley Towing had arrived, and Osgood Shiffley was hooking it up to Denton’s old Chevy. I waved at him as I plodded toward the south parking lot.
As I expected, my van was an oven. I started it, rolled down all the windows, turned the fan on full blast, and then set the parking brake so I could step out and wait for the fan to blow out the worst of the hot air. I pulled out my cell phone to call Michael, then decided to wait a little while. If I called now, the shakiness in my voice might worry him.
A car drove up to the front door of the Inn and one of the bellhops stepped out. Leonard Fisher strode out of the hotel’s front door, pressed a tip into the bellhop’s hand, and drove off.
I watched him go with narrowed eyes. Just because he was the friendliest of the lender’s minions didn’t actually mean he was a good guy. Maybe he was just the designated good cop to the Flying Monkeys’ bad cops.
Over at the far end of the lot, Osgood had finished hooking Denton’s Chevy up to the tow truck and had stopped to take a long pull on a plastic water bottle.
Water. I’d finished most of my pitcher in the hotel, but I already felt parched again. I could get a bottle at the hotel gift shop. Or poach some from Caroline’s pitcher. I stepped into the van and drove up to replace Fisher at the front door.
Fisher drove out at a faster pace than I’d have taken, spraying little bits of superheated white gravel behind him. Osgood Shiffley was lumbering across the parking lot at a more stately pace, so Fisher beat him to the exit and gunned his car on the asphalt driveway.
Caroline met me at the curb.
“Damn,” she said. “They’re towing Denton’s car. I was hoping we could search it before we left.”
“I doubt if he left anything interesting in it,” I said. “And if he did, what are the odds the Flying Monkeys didn’t already get it?”
“Not good,” she admitted.
“I’m going to run in to get some water,” I said. “I’ll leave the car running so you’ll have the air conditioning.”
“I don’t suppose you want to run over and ask Osgood to stop and let us have a look at the car?” she asked.
“No, I don’t,” I said. Osgood had reached the asphalt of the driveway now. “I plan to call Randall to see if we can ransack it once it gets to the impound lot.”
“Good thinking,” Caroline said. “Do you suppose—”
Just then Osgood accelerated and Denton’s car exploded.
Chapter 29
“Call 911!” I shouted to Caroline as I dashed across the lot. “And stay back!”
“You stay back, too!” she shouted.
“Someone needs to check on Osgood.”
We’d both been frozen for the first few moments, as bits of glass and metal rained down on the parking lot. Denton’s car—what was left of it—was burning now, and since it was between me and the tow truck, I couldn’t see what had happened to Osgood.
The explosion had set off the alarms in four or five of the cars in the south parking lot, but so far Caroline and I were the only people visible on the scene.
I made a wide circle around the burning car. To my relief, the tow truck wasn’t totaled. The towing end of it was pretty badly damaged, but the cab was intact, and Osgood was sitting in it, blinking, looking stunned.
“Are you okay?” I had to shout to be heard over the car alarms and the roaring noise of the fire.
“What?”
Oh, great. I suspected he was temporarily deafened by the explosion. At least I hoped it would be temporary. But I figured it would be a good idea for both of us to get away from the car and the truck, in case the truck was about to explode, too. I opened the driver’s side door and jerked my thumb over my shoulder in what I hoped was a pretty obvious “move it!” gesture. Osgood got it. He scrambled down from the cab and began half-walking, half-staggering away from the tow truck. He kept stopping to look back at the wreckage, and every time he did it, I’d tug at his arm again.
By the time we reached the hotel entrance, several guests and hotel staffers were standing on the sidewalk, gawking at the fire.
“Police, fire, and ambulance are on their way,” Caroline said. “Osgood, are you okay?”
“My truck,” Osgood said. “My truck.” Knowing how he felt about his tow truck, I wasn’t sure this was a non sequitur.
“Is the driveway completely blocked?” Caroline asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “Were you about to suggest that we try to sneak away before the chief gets here?”
She sighed.
“Well, if we’re not going to make a getaway, shouldn’t we try to search some more rooms?” she asked quietly.
“In a few minutes the whole place will be crawling with cops,” I said. “I think we should postpone doing anything illegal or even suspicious-looking until they’re gone.”
“But they’re all our cops,” she protested. “Chief Burke and his men.”
“Not anymore,” I said. “They already borrowed a bunch of officers from Clay County yesterday, and the chief said last night he was going to ask for help from his friend, the sheriff of Goochland County. And for all we know, the State Bureau of Investigation may have shown up by now. Maybe even the FBI.”
She nodded.
“I’ll be in the bar,” she said. “I need another martini.”
I turned to follow her inside.
“Ma’am? You can’t leave that van here!”
I contemplated the long walk back from the south parking lot and turned to the bellman.
“Unfortunately, my van is now part of the crime scene,” I said. “Chief Burke would be very displeased if I moved it before he got here. Come on, Osgood.”
I grabbed Osgood’s arm and steered him inside. No use adding heatstroke on top of shell shock.
We joined Caroline in the bar. The notion of a martini sounded tempting, but I decided to stay optimistic and assume I’d be driving us home soon. So I ordered an iced tea for myself and one for Osgood.
Caroline looked as if she had something on her mind. When the waiter left with our orders, she looked at Osgood and frowned.
“Do you have the dingus?” she asked me.
“The dingus?” I repeated.
“The borrowed dingus,” she elaborated.
“Oh, that dingus,” I said. “Yes, it’s in my pocket.”
“Its owner called,” she said. “She wants it back, ASAP. Can you put it back where we got it?”
“I’m not sure I remember exactly where we got it,” I said. “And I think that’s a place both she and we should be staying away from right now. But I have an idea. Tell the owner to go down to the loading dock in fifteen minutes. I will leave the dingus in a dead drop there. Don’t worry—she’ll recognize it immediately.”
Caroline frowned, and clearly wanted to ask more questions, but Osgood’s presence inhibited her.
I went to the hotel gift shop, which I knew from previous experience contained an uncannily large selection of plush toys, at least a dozen of which had made their way into Josh’s and Jamie’s cribs, courtesy of my doting grandfather.
I picked out a plush mouse with a long pink tail. I stopped off in the ladies room, where I used a pair of nail scissors to unpick a few stitches and make a hole large enough to contain the key card.
I sat the mouse down at one edge of the loading dock with a fallen petunia blossom between his paws and made it back to the lobby in well under fifteen minutes.
Back in the bar, Osgood had begun to recover from the worst of his shock.
“It was a Vulcan,” he was saying. “Brand-new this May.”
“Was your insurance current?” Caroline asked.
“Of course,” Osgood said. “But what a terrible thing to do to such a beautiful piece of machinery. A Vulcan.”
He took a gulp of his iced tea and then stared at it with displeasure.
“I could use something a lot stronger than that,” he said.
“So you could,” Caroline said. “But not until after you talk to the chief. When you’re finished with that, the first round’s on me. And what luck! There he is now.”
The chief was standing in the lobby, looking around. When he spotted us, he frowned.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“Do we come clean about what we were doing here?” Caroline asked.
“I think we have to,” I said. “But I’m not looking forward to it.”
But the chief left us to cool our heels while he interrogated first the groundskeeper who’d called the Shiffley Towing Company, and then Osgood.
Finally it was my turn. A deputy led me to the conference room the chief was using as his temporary office. Not, I noted, a Caerphilly deputy—I knew them all, at least by sight.
The chief was sitting near one end of a mahogany conference table only slightly smaller than my first apartment. He indicated a seat diagonally across from him, probably because if I sat directly across the table he’d need binoculars to see my expression. When I was seated, he fixed me with a look of stern disappointment, but he didn’t say anything until the borrowed deputy left the room.
“And I’m sure there’s a good reason why you and Caroline were here today,” he said at last.
“No,” I said. “Not a good reason—at least I don’t expect you’d find it good. Caroline and I were … searching Mr. Denton’s room.”
The chief nodded. I reminded myself that just because he wasn’t chewing me out for breaking and entering and, worse, interfering with his investigation, didn’t mean we were off the hook. He could be saving up to do it later when he had time to do a really good job of it.
“I presume you’d finished by the time the car exploded,” he said. “Did you find anything interesting?”
“Yes,” I said. “Burglars. Other burglars,” I clarified.
I could see his jaw clench, but he didn’t immediately start chewing me out. Not necessarily a good sign.
“Are you sure these other people were not there with Mr. Denton’s permission?” he asked.
“They ransacked the room,” I said. “And took his laptop. They were wearing Flying Monkey uniforms. Leonard Fisher was with them, and he told them to leave the curtains closed so they wouldn’t be spotted.”
The chief nodded.
“And after the guards left, we overheard Mr. Fisher’s side of a very interesting cell phone conversation.”
I gave him a detailed account of our afternoon, including Leonard Fisher’s hasty departure just ahead of the tow truck. When I’d finished, he sat, frowning for a few moments.
“Before you arrest me,” I said, “or at least chew me out, may I ask a question?”
He raised one eyebrow in what I recognized as grudging permission.
“Do we know for sure that Stanley Denton wasn’t in the car when it blew up?”
“No sign of human remains in the wreckage,” he said.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“We don’t know he’s all right,” the chief said.
“But at least we know he’s not blown to bits.”
“Not here, anyway,” he said. “If you hear from him before my officers find him, encourage him to drop by the police barn for a chat.”
“Will do.”
“And try a little harder to stay out of trouble.”
He looked down at his notebook and I realized I was being dismissed.
I thought of half a dozen other questions I wanted to ask, and I was opening my mouth to start asking them, and then thought better of it. I seem to have survived the interview without ticking him off. Maybe I should keep it that way.
I tripped over my own feet in my haste to leave while I was ahead.
Chapter 30
Of course, once I had made my own escape, I had to wait while the chief interviewed Caroline. But within half an hour, we were ready to depart. The wreckage was still blocking the driveway, but one of the bellmen directed us to a service road—after apologizing profusely for the inconvenience, giving the impression that he considered the explosion an unforgivable departure from the hotel’s normally impeccable customer service.