Sami rushed over, and he and Horace began helping the new arrivals with their wraps. Several layers of wraps. They were both so bundled up that you couldn’t have told them apart if not for their dramatically different shapes. The tall lanky yeti had to be Randall—Shiffleys were almost invariably gifted not only with height but also the enviable ability to eat anything they wanted and still resemble beanpoles. The shorter, rounder yeti would be the chief.
“That was quite possibly the most miserable trip I’ve ever taken in this county,” the chief said, when he’d removed two scarves, a pair of goggles, a thick woolly ski mask, and a down coat. “No offense, Randall; I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you bringing me out here, but good Lord, what a journey!”
“What’re you complaining about?” Randall said, with a laugh. “Some people fly to resorts and pay good money to run around on snowmobiles.”
“Welcome, Chief. And Mr. Mayor.” Ekaterina arrived, carrying two hot coffees and followed by several staff members who took over the complicated process of extricating the travelers from their remaining wraps, and then hauled all the wet clothes off to be dried.
“Don’t take mine too far,” Randall called after them. “I’m only staying to thaw out a bit,” he went on, turning back to us. “Then I need to get back to town. Now that the snow’s finally ending, we’re organizing a shovel brigade. Got a lot to do. First we dig out the snowplows, then while Osgood and Beau get to work, we’re going to start digging our way to people’s houses that might need checking on. And then there’s the hospital parking lot, and rounding up a chainsaw crew for all the fallen trees. Chief, if you finish up here and decide you need to come back to town, just radio me.”
“Thanks,” the chief said. “I’ll do just that. Depends on how things go here. Horace, where are we?”
“I was just about to notify the folks whose rooms we’re going to search,” Horace said. “Meg, can you help me track them all down?”
I pulled out my phone and checked the time.
“They should all be going to lunch in a couple of minutes,” I said. “I’ll lead the way. Randall, why don’t you stay long enough to have a hot meal before you head back.”
“I won’t say no,” Randall said. Few people ever did to a meal at the Inn.
“And we need to rekey those rooms now,” the chief said. “Before anyone hears that we’re searching their rooms. Not that they haven’t had plenty of time to dispose of anything incriminating in the last twelve hours, but you never know.”
“If you give me a list of the rooms concerned, I will run new keys for them now and send a staff member around to activate them,” Sami said. “And then I can hold the new keys and release them to the occupants only when you give the okay.”
“Perfect,” the chief said.
“Shall we go find your suspects?” I asked.
“Persons of interest,” he corrected. “Yes, please.”
We made quite an impression when we entered, since the chief’s arrival doubled the number of uniformed law enforcement officers on site. And Randall’s bearing, along with the fact that he’d walked in shoulder to shoulder with the chief, would probably give rise to rumors that he was with the FBI or something. I sent Randall through the buffet line while I scouted out where the various persons of interest were sitting.
Smith, Belasco, and Whitmore, the three young men who’d had the bad luck to be sitting at Frogmore’s table, were sitting together. Had they arrived at the conference friends, or was their friendship a relatively new one, forged by their sufferings here—enduring Frogmore, witnessing his death, being stalked by Dr. Czerny, and finally having to undergo a police interrogation? I’d be curious to find out. Horace went to notify them, while I led the chief over to the table where Grandfather was sitting with several other persons of interest.
“A visitor from the outside world! Welcome!” Grandfather exclaimed when he saw the chief. “This is Chief Burke,” he said, turning to the rest of the table. “Chief, that’s Dr. Vera Craine.”
“Nice to put a face to the voice.” Dr. Craine offered her hand.
Grandfather proceeded to introduce Dr. Green and Dr. Lindquist, and then looked up at the chief with a twinkle in his eye.
“So, are you here to interrogate us in person?”
“First things first,” the chief said. “We have a warrant to search some of your rooms. Doctors Craine, Blake, Green, and Lindquist. I don’t have a physical copy of the warrant with me, but I can read you the text if you like, and I can provide you or your attorney with a written copy as soon as the weather permits. You’ll be notified when we’re finished, and at that time you’ll need to pick up a new key at the front desk.”
Grandfather and Dr. Craine nodded matter-of-factly. Dr. Green muttered, “Oh, dear,” and wiped his palms on his trouser leg. Dr. Lindquist beamed as if this were one of the more entertaining occurrences of the weekend. I was relieved that none of them asked for a formal reading of the search warrant, since I doubted it would be either a short document or an entertaining one.
“You’ll tell us what you find, I assume?” Grandfather said.
“If we take any items into custody as possible evidence, we’ll give you a search warrant return, which is basically an itemized receipt.”
No one had any other questions, so I led the chief over to where Melissa McKendrick was sitting. She, like the crew at Grandfather’s table, took it calmly.
Horace had finished notifying the three lost lambs, as I called them, and had moved on to Dr. Czerny. Who didn’t seem at all calm about the prospect of being searched. But you couldn’t exactly say that he was resisting the idea—more that it appeared to have triggered an anxiety attack. We hurried over to rescue Horace.
“You’ll notice we’re searching the rooms of everyone who was at Dr. Frogmore’s table,” the chief pointed out. “Purely a matter of procedure in some cases, of course.” Eventually he managed to calm Czerny down. We headed back to the Command Post to arrange the logistics for our search.
Actually, their search, I reminded myself. While my help had saved them time on what I assumed amounted to serving the search warrants, they could probably do just fine without me during the search itself.
Ekaterina was waiting for us in the Command Post, with a fresh laundry cart and a carton of gold-embossed lunch bags.
“Did Michael tell you what he and your sons are doing?” she asked.
“Nothing too destructive, I hope,” I said, warily.
“Nothing of the kind!” she exclaimed. “They are helping the staff with snow removal. That is most helpful. Now that it has stopped snowing, some of our guests will be eager to leave, and I wish to ensure that when the roads are ready, they will find no impediment on the grounds of the Inn.”
“Amen,” I said.
I was about to head back to the conference when Horace spoke up.
“Chief,” he asked. “Since there’s only the two of us—can we bring someone along to help with the logistics?”
Which was how I ended up pushing the laundry cart and toting a clipboard that held a supply of blank search warrant return forms.
We started out on the fifth floor. Ekaterina walked briskly up to each door, knocked, and then opened the door with her master key card. Then she and I watched with interest as Horace and the chief quickly and methodically searched each room.
I rather enjoyed watching them search Dr. Green’s room. He had at least a dozen crystals of various sizes and shapes strewn about in what appeared to be a random fashion, although I suspected they had been carefully placed according to the principles of feng shui, vastu shastra, or some idiosyncratic energy flow system of Green’s own invention. A collection of reeds in a hotel water glass made an improvised stick diffuser, and the air positively reeked of lavender. A yoga mat was unrolled on the floor between the bed and the window, and a bamboo flute lay on the dresser.
“It’s as if he and Rose Noire were twins separated at birth,” I murmured to Ekaterina.
And had he really brought along all of this new age paraphernalia to the conference or had Rose Noire supplied some of it? I could easily imagine her taking pity on a kindred spirit, stranded on the wrong coast without an adequate supply of crystals and essential oils. And had Rose Noire lent him her treasured unicorn-shaped incense burner or did he own an identical one? Food for thought in either case.
The only feature of interest to the chief and Horace, though, was the bathroom where—in addition to marveling at the large number of vitamins, supplements, and both alternative and conventional over-the-counter medicines—they studied the spot where the black widow spider had been found. They eventually decided that it was theoretically possible for her to have traveled through the opening around the sink’s drain pipe into the wall. And Dr. Frogmore’s bathroom was on the other side of the wall, so it was remotely possible that the spider could have traveled from one to the other. But not all that probable.
“And Dr. Langslow doesn’t think there’s any chance he died of a spider bite,” the chief added. “So it’s not all that relevant anyway.”
Since I was the one tasked with writing out the search warrant return forms for Horace’s signature, I was relieved that they only confiscated a few items from Dr. Green’s vast health arsenal—although I could already foresee that he’d declare some or all of the missing items vital to his continued survival and pitch a fit. And unfortunately for Horace, the chief wanted a list of any and all medicines found during their search. Dr. Green took up three pages.
Dr. Craine’s room wasn’t nearly as interesting. Only a modest collection of medicines, to Horace’s relief, and none of them of sufficient interest to be taken as evidence. We moved on to Dr. Lindquist’s room.
Ekaterina and I were watching from the doorway with diminished interest, since the first two rooms had produced nothing of interest. And at first it looked as if the search of Lindquist’s room would be similarly uneventful.
Then while the chief was finishing up a methodical examination of the contents of the suitcase, Horace, who had been inspecting the contents of Lindquist’s conference tote bag, said something under his breath. Then he held up an object in one gloved hand and called out to the chief.
“Check this out.”
Ekaterina and I forgot about trying to be nonchalant as we peered into the room, trying to see what he’d found.
A wadded-up piece of paper?
I took out my phone and surreptitiously used its camera’s zoom function to get a closer look. Definitely paper, but not wadded up—folded up.
Horace unfolded it slightly and showed it to the chief, who nodded solemnly. Horace looked up, saw Ekaterina and me gawking, and couldn’t repress a quick smile.
“Is that what I think it is?” the chief asked Horace.