Braking for Bodies (20 page)

Mother strolled back my way and ducked around the piano. “Room three fourteen. I could have gotten one of those signature rooms but I would have had to sell our home in Chicago to afford it. The room I got was expensive enough. There was some kind of surcharge that cost as much as the room because it's the Lilac Festival.”

I studied the two papers Mother had in her hand. “There are two separate charges.” I looked at one paper. “This receipt is from the Grand Hotel.” I flipped over to the second sheet. “This receipt is from the Grand Hotel Michigan and it has the last four digits of your credit card written by hand.”

Mother arched her left brow. “I got a feeling the Grand Hotel Michigan is Penelope and lover-boy's little nest egg. You got to give the devil his due; this is brilliant. One charge for the Grand Hotel and one for them. They run the second charge through on one of those mobile credit card readers and credit their own personal account. That's what the manager did when he walked off for a few seconds. He has preprinted receipts; that's why the credit card number is handwritten.”

“But what about the room? How do they get the extra rooms available? Like you said, the place is packed, probably has been for months.”

Mother studied her credit card for a second. “They double-book the people who make early reservations. When you reserve a room it's by name and credit card. Our two entrepreneurs book two rooms knowing they can sell the second one with that surcharge scheme later on when rooms are hard to get. They cancel the original credit card and the fake name that held the reservation and run through the new card and name and add their surcharge, explaining it's for the special weekend.”

“Or they peddle a room upgrade for an extra charge. Peep realized what they were doing when they suggested an upgrade to him for a lot more money.”

“It takes devious to catch devious.”

“There she is.” The maid drill sergeant pointed a bony finger at me and did her storm trooper march across the lobby. The gal from gift basket central marched beside her along with the guy off the loading dock, and there were two big guys in navy Polos looking more security guard than hotel guest.

“HR never hired her, I knew it right away,” the sergeant continued as she drew up next to me. “She's horrible at cleaning; she left a ring around the tub and ate the pillow mints. She's a fake.”

Penelope came over. She looked from me to Mother to the papers in our hands. She didn't recognize Mother but she knew me, that Fiona and I were friends and that I was involved with Peep. And there was the
dropped bagel incident in the employee room where she and the manager were talking. She knew that I knew the two of them were in cahoots over something. I could almost hear the little gears churning in her brain, her eyes slowly widening as she put it all together.

“And they're both dangerous,” Penelope said, pointing to Mother and me. “In fact, Officer Sutter was around here in the hotel looking for them. He asked at the desk if I'd seen either one, and here they are right in front of us. Evie was pretending to be a maid, so that proves she was up to something. You know, I think she's the one who killed that Peep guy; she's been involved in all this since the beginning. She was out in the gardens when they found his body.”

“Why would Evie kill Peep?” Mother asked. “She didn't even know him.”

“Says you.” Penelope folded her arms, looking smug. “I bet she knew him really well; she and that Fiona girl were in it together in knocking off Peep and maybe knocking off Zo too.”

The Corpse Crusaders hurried over; Gabi was shaking her head and pulling out her notebook. “Evie's not on my suspect list anywhere. This makes no sense. If Evie were the killer, I'd have notes, some evidence.”

She turned to Penelope. “In fact, you're the one who is on our who-done-it list. You're one of the top two murder suspects.”

Manager lover-boy came out and said to the security guard, “You can take these two in the back room until we find Officer Sutter.” He faced the crowd, held
up his hands winner style and smiled. “Isn't this murder mystery weekend fantastic, folks?”

Everyone applauded.

“This is ridiculous!” I waved the receipts at the security guards. “Penelope and this manager are the guilty ones, and they are guilty for real. They've been scamming the customers and the Grand. They're adding a surcharge that's bogus, and it goes to them and not the hotel.”

One security guard held my arm, and one grabbed Mother. Red flashed before my eyes, it really did. No one touched Mother. “You leave her alone!” I tried to wrench free, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed Penelope and the manager making a beeline for the front door.

“They're getting away! Do something,” I screamed at the guards.

“You're not getting anywhere,” the taller guard growled. “You're going to jail.”

“I had no idea,” one of the Murder Marauders said to me. “You're a much better actor than I thought. You might just get an SH after all. That's a Sherlock Holmes,” she explained to the growing crowd. “It's an award for the best actors in this murder mystery weekend.” She pointed to a board across the lobby. “You can cast your votes right over there. We're having trophies and everything.”

Mother leaned my way and whispered, “Run.”

“What?”

“They're getting away. On three. One, two, three.”

Mother fell to the floor like a sack of those potatoes I was warned about earlier, the guards lunged to catch her and I pulled free, darting into the surging crowd, something a big burly guard had no chance of doing.

I tore for the front door, yanking off my apron as I went. I could hear the guard bellowing for me to stop, but in true mystery weekend fun and excitement, more crowds cheered my escape across the front porch. I galloped down the red-carpeted steps, grabbed a bike from in front of Sadie's Ice Cream Parlor and pedaled as fast as I could down Cadotte, getting lost in the shadows of a lovely evening on Mackinac
Island.

C
adotte was downhill all the way, and I was flying like a bat out of hell. The bad news was I had no idea where I was going. How would Penelope and lover-boy escape off the island? A plane was not a quick exit; their own boat at night was playing Russian roulette with takers out there on the lake, but the ferries ran like clockwork, there were a lot of them and Penelope and the manager could have persuaded a Grand Hotel carriage to take them to the docks. Like Luka said, with enough money you can get anything you want.

One long blast came from Shepler's, meaning a ferry was headed out. That was it! Penelope and lover-boy were headed for the ferry and once they got to the mainland they'd disappear, I was sure of it. I skidded
around the corner onto Main, darted around carriages, bikes and pedestrians and fishtailed onto the docks, where riding bikes was strictly forbidden.

“Hey, you! Stop!” one of the dockhands yelled.

“Get out of my way!” I flew on past, heading down the dimly light concrete pier full tilt. There were just a few fudgies left to board, and the two right ahead of me were running. Penelope and the manager? I wasn't the police and the ferry wouldn't stay in port because I said so. I had to get them before they got on the boat.

Neck-and-neck I pulled beside Penelope and hit the brakes to knock her off balance except . . . except there were no brakes! I grabbed Penelope to slow down, then grabbed the next nearest person for the same reason, but nothing worked and Penelope, Nate Sutter and I sailed off the end of the pier into thin air and landed in Lake Huron.

Cold black water closed over me, my shoes and clothes weighing me down, down, down. I thrashed around like a wild woman to swim, as someone grabbed my shirt and dragged me to the surface.

“Take this!” a guy in an orange vest with a blinking light shouted, shoving a buoy ring under my right arm. I was instantly hauled onto the pier, Sutter sprawled out on one side of me like a landed fish, Penelope on the other and all three of us hacking and choking.

“Penelope. The manager,” I managed between coughs that sounded like I was bringing up a lung. “Bilking the hotel.”

Sutter pushed himself to a sitting position and wiped
water from his face. It started to sink in that Sutter was here on the dock at this time of night and that a dockhand of considerable proportion had the manager by the scruff. How? Why? “Mother called you?” I wheezed.

“I ran a check on Grand Hotel Michigan.” Someone tossed a blanket over my shoulders, then Sutter's. He took a deep breath. “If I put it together right, you and Carman were causing all kinds of hell up there at the Grand, and Penelope was on the run. The ferry is the best way out of town.”

A dockhand peered down at me. “Didn't we fish you out of the lake last year?”

“Not my fault, it's a black cloud thing.” I pulled my blanket tight over my shoulders and tried to stop shaking. Wobbling to my feet, I looked down at Penelope. “You two killed Peep so he wouldn't blackmail you, and then you got rid of Zo to make Fiona look guilty?”

Teeth chattering, Penelope shook her head, her wet hair slapping against her cheeks. “I didn't kill Peep;
we
didn't kill Peep. He was a dirty rotten louse and deserved what he got, but we didn't do him in, and I have no idea what happened to that Zo girl, I swear it. All of a sudden she was just gone.”

“Gone because she knew what you and your boyfriend here were up to. You stuffed her in the fridge out back of the hotel,” I insisted. “She knew what Peep knew, that you were double-charging people for rooms. You got rid of her and planted the turtle bracelet that you stole to frame Fiona for the deed. Getting into Zo's room was a snap with the manager passkey.”

“We didn't do any of that, and we didn't kill anyone,” the manager added. “We are not murderers. We were both working the night Peep was killed, but we didn't do it. If we did kill Peep, we'd have that blasted phone and be gone by now. You can search our condo; we don't have it.”

Sutter raked back his hair. “My guess is that Zo had the phone all along, threatened to blackmail you two, and you tossed Zo and the phone in the fridge.”

Penelope sniffed. “We're thieves, not killers.”

“That's what they all say.” Sutter stood beside me and tweaked my nose. He brushed hair from my face. “Nice job, Chicago. Except for the header in the lake. Thought you had better bikes. No brakes is bad for business.”

I looked over the edge of the pier down into the water. “It's not a Rudy's Rides bike, and that part is good for business.”

Sutter laughed, then gave me one of his lopsided grins. “I got a ton of paperwork, we're still waiting to see where that fridge is and I got to get these two locked up.”

“But not in the good cell.”

“Nope, not in the good cell.”

“I'm off to find Fiona. She can actually sleep in her own bed tonight. She's a free woman, finally.” I took a deep breath. “I can't believe this is actually over.” I glanced back at Penelope and the manager. “I . . . I should have figured out what they were up to before this, and then maybe Zo would still be alive. I feel
bad about that. She wasn't my favorite person, but she deserved better than a refrigerator coffin in a recycle yard.”

Chilled to the bone, I walked home. I took a hot shower, then swore to do laundry as I hunted for a pair of not-so-dirty jeans and pilfered Mother's yellow fleece. I grabbed Nancy Drew and a KitKat from the blue shoebox under the workbench with
Rudy only, stay out, this means you
scrawled on the top. I headed for the Grand. I was dead tired, and every pedal of the bike was pure torture. As soon as I told Fiona that her troubles were over, I could go to bed and sleep for a week, or at least until ten when the cannon blasted and the bike shop opened.

With my fleece not exactly fitting in with the after-dinner fancy crowd at the hotel, I parked around back. I darted up the back steps and slunk behind potted palms and wingback chairs to avoid staff and guests still talking about Penelope and the manager. I blended in with a family trotting up the main stairway and headed for the second floor. Idle and Fiona would be busting out the champagne about now or . . . or maybe not. We still hadn't found the blasted phone, and that meant that anyone who had it could start the blackmail thing up again.

The phone could be in the fridge with Zo like Sutter said, but when I was trapped under the desk in the
Employees Only
room, Penelope told her manager lover-boy they had to find the phone. That meant neither of them had it then, and tonight on the pier neither
of them knew where it was. It sure would be nice if I could find the phone and drop it in the lake, and then Idle and Fiona's troubles would be over for sure.

I took the service elevator to the second floor and headed down the hall to the cheap seats. A maid's cart sat off at the far end, and since I'd been a maid—a free maid—I knew some of the maids stored their master cards on their carts instead of having them on a tether that got tangled or got in their way. I hunted for a few minutes and retrieved the card. I'd replace it when I was done, but now I took off for Zo's room.

Yellow crime scene tape crisscrossed the entrance. I reached around, slid in the card, and opened the door to the total mess I'd seen before. Actually it looked even worse than before, if that was possible. And the window was—open? And . . . and holy cow, someone was lying on the floor.

“Fiona!” I gently turned her over.

“Like, don't worry,” came a voice from above me. “She's, like, still alive.”

“Just not for long,” Madonna added. “And the same goes for you.”

I stood and looked from Zo to Madonna, just a few feet away. “Together . . . you're in this together?” I did a mental head-slap. “Of course you are.
You
both killed Peep. You pushed him over the railing,” I said to Madonna. “And you clobbered him with the olive oil bottle you found where Fiona lost it,” I said to Zo.

“That was a bonus,” Madonna said with a chuckle. “We hadn't counted on Fiona being in such a state that
she'd leave her yellow bag behind, but there it was right in the lobby. I handed it off to Zo, and she used the olive oil bottle, the perfect frame for Fiona. We planned on using a rock and leaving Fiona's hat behind. We had one from her L.A. days, but the green olive oil bottle was a much better idea.”

“But why kill Peep at all? I mean, he's a no-good jerk, but the wife and the mistress teaming up to do him in?”

“Peep had chickie number three lined up and he was planning on ditching me and Zo. When I told Zo what was going on, we decided to ditch Peep first and frame Fiona for it. All we had to do was get Peep out here to Mackinac.”

“That was, like, my idea,” Zo said, holding up her hand. “I, like, sent him threatening notes, and he thought someone was after him, the poor baby. I knew he wanted Fiona back as editor on the paper, and I talked him into running off to this place.”

“And then you framed Fiona.”

“She hated him, everyone knew that. Peep threatened to tell her parents what scummy things she did to get the stories she did, but when Idle came on the scene and they bonded over her brat kid and Idle turning her life around to start fresh, Fiona left and got Idle here too. Blackmailing Penelope and that manager was just a bonus for Peep. He was always playing the angles.”

“And this time we, like, played him. Madonna would inherit the paper and I, like, knew how to run it. It was our turn to cash in and make a bundle.”

“So you two staged all the fights, and Madonna and I trapped in Annex 1 was a warning?”

“I wasn't supposed to be in on that,” Madonna said. “But if I didn't go, you weren't going to go. You needed to be scared and back off. You were snooping around all the time. When I faxed my legal stuff to L.A., I saw the fuse box, so killing the lights was easy enough and added to the drama. You got to have drama. When you mentioned that Penelope and the manager could have done the murder together, Zo and I were afraid you'd start putting us together. So we got rid of one of us, and Zo got the short straw.”

“I've been, like, hiding out in Madonna's room forever. But we had to come here and find that cell phone. It has stuff on us that we don't want out there, just like everyone else. And where else could Peep hide the thing but here?”

“You came back for one more look, and so did Fiona, and so did I.”

“We were going to have Fiona take a flying leap to her death, making it look like she was guilty all along.” Madonna took a pink lipstick from the top of the dresser, pulled off the cap and scrawled
I'm sorry
across the mirror. “Hard to do handwriting analysis on a mirror with lipstick. Fiona's body on the service road far below will certainly smack of suicide. It has to be done. Fiona saw Zo here, she put it all together, she has to go.”

“And, like, so do you.”

“Over my dead body!”

“Like, that can be arranged.”

“Arrange what?” Fiona garbled, pushing herself up. “Are there more wedding plans?”

Zo pulled a gun from her pocket and aimed it at me.

“Like, now we shoot you, make it look like Fiona did it and toss her out the window. One of those murder-suicide things. Murder 'cause you knew too much and suicide because poor Fiona here couldn't live with herself. Madonna and I don't live in Hollywood for nothing.” Zo flashed Madonna a big toothy smile, and they did a high five. Zo aimed the gun and—

“Jeez Louise!” Gabi yelped as she and the Corpse Crusaders barged into the room, crime scene tape draped over them as they tried to brush it off. “I tell you that phone has got to be in here and . . .”

The Crusaders stared, mouths open, eyes bugged. “You're . . . you're alive?” Gabi gasped.

“Like, you bet I am,” Zo said, a big smile plastered on her face. “And Fiona here was the killer all along. Just look at her and . . . and now Madonna and I are going to go get the police and you all win! You stay right here with Fiona and—”

“No way!” I yelled. I'd had enough of the Zo/Madonna production of
The Mystery Hour
. I lunged for Zo and the gun.

Well, dang. This looked so easy in the movies, but Zo was scrappy and a lot stronger than she looked. I grabbed her hand as she backed me toward the open window, inch by inch getting closer. I tripped over a pillow, Zo gave a final shove and I tumbled out the
window, catching a chunk of red geranium drape as I dangled over the service road below . . . far below. I could feel the material tearing under my weight. It was all those Nutty Buddies and KitKats, not to mention wedding cake. I was fat and I was going to die and it was all my fault and a hand grabbed my wrist as Sutter peered over the windowsill at me.

“I got you.” He reached down, grabbing my other wrist, and pulled me up, with my gut balanced on the sill and my butt sticking up in the air. Sutter tugged on my jeans and we both tumbled into the room. Gasping for air, I rested my head on his chest; his heart was pounding.

“I thought I was a goner.”

“Ditto.”

“Zo? Madonna? We got to—”

“They already have.” I looked over to Zo and Madonna in handcuffs at Molly's side, surrounded by the Crusaders. The Murder Marauders in purple shirts streamed in the door with the Body Baggers right behind them.

“They still think . . .”

“Yeah, they do, and no matter what the papers say or the courts do, it will always play as a murder weekend at the Grand. I think I'm up for an SH.”

“What about when they go to prison?”

“They'll get fan mail.”

“How did you know?”

“They found the fridge and there was no body or phone. Peep had his life on that phone; he wouldn't
have let it out of his sight. If it wasn't in this room, it would be on him.” Sutter pulled the silver phone from his pocket and made it do a little dance in the air. “He hid it in his three-inch lifts. The man was smart, sleazy but smart.”