Be an opener of doors …
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1867: “The Preacher”)
Misty
What could Deputy Highcloud want to show me? Had she found the murder weapon? A clue? Something definitive that would put this horrid matter to rest right away? I hoped with every fiber of my being that it was the latter. The quicker Sasha’s mysterious death was solved, the quicker both she and the matter could be put to rest.
My heart pounded, sending blood rushing through my veins like roaring rapids as I followed the deputy down the east wing. Although I thought she was taking me to Sasha’s room at the end, she surprised me by stopping at Room 17, the one Kendall occupied. She used my master key to open the door and entered, motioning for me to follow her. She closed the door behind us and walked over to the door that adjoined Rooms 17 and 19. The door was designed with two deadbolts, one on each side, so that the parties in both rooms had to unlock it from their own side in order for it to open. On the side of the door opposite each deadbolt was a flat metal plate rather than a knob. The gold tone plate was shiny, Brynn having cleaned it to a gleam the preceding day. I noted that the deadbolt was locked on Kendall’s side. Is it locked on Sasha’s side as well?
“What do you know about these marks?” The deputy pointed to a spot on the trim about six inches above the deadbolt and immediately next to the flat plate marking the location of the deadbolt in Sasha’s room. Small gouge marks marred the trim with thin, light-colored scratches where the wood had been damaged through the stained top layer.
I stepped back as a horrifying thought hit me. Had Kendall been able to force Sasha’s deadbolt open from this side? Had she entered Sasha’s room and killed her? “I don’t believe those marks were there when Kendall checked in. Rocky went through all of the rooms and repaired any cosmetic damage before the yoga group arrived.”
“Are you certain?”
While the damage seemed obvious now that the deputy had pointed it out to me, the marks were thin and the gleam of the shiny circular plate could have helped to mask them from some angles. Would Rocky or I have necessarily noticed these gouges? “I’m not a hundred percent sure. Rocky might be able to give you a definitive answer.”
She opened the door to the hall. “Round him up for me, please.”
I went down the hall. Rocky looked up from his seat when I reached the lobby. I waved him over, and he followed me down the hall and into Room 17.
We gathered at the door adjoining Kendall’s and Sasha’s rooms, and the deputy pointed again to the gouge marks. “Do you know whether these marks were there before Kendall checked in?”
“I do know,” Rocky said, “and they weren’t. I checked all of the trim around the windows and doors to make sure none of it was loose, and I looked for any signs of damage. I buffed out the smaller scratches with sandpaper and used wood filler on the deeper nicks and scores. I filled in the marks with one of those handy stain pens.”
The deputy’s brows lifted. “You’re one hundred percent certain this damage wasn’t here?”
Rocky said, “To quote Voltaire, ‘Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.’”
The deputy grunted impatiently. “And?”
“It may be absurd, but yes, I’m one hundred percent certain.” He crouched and examined the lower trim for a moment before pointing at a spot. “See here? I sanded and stained this spot. I did my best to match the existing stain and it’s as close as I could get, but it’s not exact.” He pointed out another spot. “I sanded and stained this piece of trim, too.” He shifted his focus from the trim back to the deputy. “I looked all the rooms over carefully. I wanted to impress my new boss with my attention to detail.”
My cheeks warmed a little. If I hadn’t been so discombobulated by the morning’s events, I would’ve been even more flattered by his remark. “You did impress me,” I said. “You do solid work.”
The deputy glanced from Rocky, to me, and back again, a thoughtful expression on her face.
Rocky backed away to let the deputy take a closer look at the repaired trim. I bent down to look, too. Sure enough, on close inspection, it was clear that the spots on the trim lower down had been freshly sanded and stained.
If the scratches hadn’t been there before Kendall and Sasha checked in … “Does this mean Kendall killed Sasha?” I asked.
“Not necessarily,” the deputy said. “It only means someone might have tried to access Sasha’s room through this door.”
“Someone?” I repeated. “It would have had to be Kendall, right?” After all, nobody was bunking with her. She had the room to herself.
“Not necessarily,” the deputy said again. “You, Ms. O’Reilly, and Mr. Crowder here all have keys to this room. Maybe it was one of you. Or maybe it was someone Kendall invited into her room. Or maybe someone used Kendall’s keys, or the second set to this room. Or maybe someone scratched up that trim to implicate Kendall.”
“That’s a lot of uncertainty.” Rocky issued a mirthless chuckle. “No chance you’ll ever feel absurd, is there?”
“I gotta go with Voltaire right now.” She rocked forward onto her toes. “It’s my job to consider all of the possibilities, not just the obvious ones. Like you, I want to impress my boss with my attention to detail.”
He gave her a respectful nod. “Point taken.”
The three of us returned to the lobby, where the deputy took the second set of Kendall’s keys into evidence before summoning the woman. “Ms. McFadden, come to your room, please.” She motioned for Officer Hardy to accompany them. My guess was she thought things could get ugly, maybe even physical, if Kendall were indeed the killer and didn’t comply when confronted.
We all waited in hushed silence for them to return. I wondered if Kendall would be in handcuffs when they did. I also wondered if she’d confess, or if we’d hear some sort of scuffle, or if Kendall would simply surrender silently and let her defense lawyer work things out later.
After a few minutes, the three came back up the hall. Kendall was unshackled, though her terrified expression said the interaction had not exonerated her. While Kendall joined the others in the great room, the deputy asked to take a look in the crawl space and attic.
I had no objection to her taking a look at those spaces, but it seemed a waste of time given that there was no access to the attic or crawl space from the guest rooms. When I inquired, she said, “Just being thorough. Sometimes you find something surprising in the place you least expect it.”
It was true. I’d expected to find serenity and solitude here in the mountains, but I’d also found a new friend and, just maybe, some male companionship.
Rocky stood from the bench. “I can help you with that.” He rounded up a hammer from his toolbox and led the deputy down the east wing.
I left Brynn at the desk and went with them. Rocky reached up and used the claw hook on his hammer to grab the handle on the pull-down door in the corridor’s ceiling. The door led to the east wing attic. Once the door had dropped down, he extended the fold-up ladder attached to it. The deputy climbed the ladder, pulled the dirty string attached to the bare bulb in the ceiling, and disappeared into the attic. She must have turned on her flashlight for extra illumination, because we could see its beam bouncing around. Her voice was muffled and echoed in the large space. “Nothing looks out of order up here.” She stepped to the opening and looked down at Rocky and me. “Tell me if you think different.”
Once she’d climbed down, she handed Rocky her flashlight. He ascended the ladder and looked about, too. “I haven’t been up here before, but I can’t say anything looks out of the ordinary.” He climbed down the rungs.
The deputy turned to me, her head cocked in question.
“I’ve been up there,” I said. “I had the place looked at before I bought it, and the inspector took me up there to point out places where the roof had been patched in the past.” He’d also told me that the repairs had been done properly, and the leaks appeared to have been fixed. “Same with the attic on the east wing. Brynn and I cleaned them before the guests arrived, too.”
The deputy swung a finger. “Up you go, then. Tell me if anything’s changed.”
I took her flashlight, climbed the ladder, and poked my head up through the opening, glancing about. There was little to see. The lodge had both an indoor storage closet and an outdoor storage shed that were spacious and much easier to access, so nothing was stored in the attic. Because the ceilings were coffered—supported from underneath by the decorative rustic beams—there were no ceiling joists dividing the expansive, flat floor. There was no ductwork, either. Air conditioning wasn’t needed on the mountain, where summer temperatures rarely exceeded the low seventies, and heat was supplied by electric baseboard heaters in each room.
As far as I could tell, everything looked the same. The same wooden panels that formed the ceilings of the guest rooms formed the attic floor, this side of the wood left rough and unfinished. The same red pipes ran in parallel lines on either side of the attic opening, ready to douse the lodge with water in the event of a fire. The same dusty pink insulation lay along the perimeter. The same slivers of light slanted through the air vents under the eaves, and the same slightly musty smell met my nose, courtesy of the damp mountain climate. There were no telltale footprints that I could see, but that wasn’t a surprise. Brynn had suggested we sweep out the attics before the guests arrived, so there was no dust in which a footprint could be left.
I tugged the string and the light turned off with a click-click. I climbed down the ladder and handed the flashlight to the detective. “Nothing caught my eye.”
Rocky folded the ladder back up into place and pushed the hinged door up until it closed.
We returned to the great room, where Deputy Highcloud addressed the guests. “I’m going to ask all of you to wait out on the deck while Officer Hardy and I wrap things up. That includes you two, Rocky and Brynn. We’ll let you know when we’re done.”
The guests and my staff complied, shuffling en masse to the French doors and onto the deck. Kendall, the last one out, cast a tearful, anxious glance back at the deputy as she shut the doors behind them.
Once the door closed, Deputy Highcloud turned to me. “It’s the moment of truth. Let’s take a look at that camera footage and see who lied to me.”