By Familiar Means (35 page)

37

“You did not just say that.” Christine grabbed her brother's shoulders, and I swear, she actually shook him. “Dale did not just fire Kelly!”

But Rich was looking over my shoulder, and whatever he saw made his eyes pop open. Of course I looked, too, and so did Christine. We both saw Dale striding down the corridor, slicking back his hair with one hand.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did fire her,” he said as he stopped in front of us. “And I'd fire you both if I could. But as it is, we'll have to wait until Mother gets back to tell her the whole sorry story.” He glowered at me. “And you, Miss Britton, can leave, right now.”

“Dale, Chrissy.” Rich held up both hands. “We don't have to do this.”

“No, we really do,” said Dale coldly. “
Chrissy
hasn't left us any choice.”

“
Not
here,” announced Christine. “My office, both of you.
Now.
”

That was the last I heard before I stepped through the doorway and into the lobby.

I slid sideways until I was out of the line of sight for the hallway. The lobby was empty, except for Miss Boots lounging on one of the benches. I couldn't see either of the McNallys behind the bar.

What should I do now? Head for home? Dale would never let me back in. Try to find Kelly Pierce? Who did I know who would know where she lived? I dug my hand into my purse, reflexively reaching for my wand to try to help focus my thoughts. But my wand wasn't there. I was alone.

On her bench, Miss Boots rolled over onto her back and gave me a long, unblinking look.

“Right,” I whispered. Of course I wasn't alone. I was on my own for the moment, but there was a difference.

I knew what I had to do, and thanks to my previous visit, I knew how to do it.

*   *   *

The staff locker room, with its time clock, was right at the bottom of the service stairs. When I got down there, the place was deserted. All the staff was already at work, and it was hours until shift change. I walked in and looked around quickly. It took only a minute to see what I was looking for. There was a new, computerized time card on the far wall, and hanging on a hook next to it was a clipboard.

Bingo.

I slipped my portfolio into the narrow space between the bank of lockers and the wall and helped myself to the board. I fished a pen out of my purse.

I might not have worked in a hotel, but I'd done my share of service-industry jobs, and there was one thing I'd learned. No one ever asks questions of the person with the clipboard. That person is always making notes about something, and you probably do not want it to be you.

With pen in hand and my best determined look on my face, I strode out into the streaming, bustling basement of the Harbor's Rest.

Val had it one hundred percent right. The place was huge. I'd gotten only a hint of that when I'd been down here before.
It was also full to the brim with staff. The kitchen was a madhouse of shouts and activity and smells and steam. It was nearly as hot as the laundry with its racks of clothes and the monster machines you could have washed my entire wardrobe in and had room left over for all the bedsheets and towels I'd ever owned.

I didn't find any sign of the tunnel door. I didn't really expect to. I might not trust Blanchard to know his posterior from his highly muscled elbow, but Pete definitely did. If he hadn't been able to find it, I wasn't going to—at least, not this easily.

But I also didn't find that extra-special Vibe that indicates that a murder had happened here. Not that I was actively breaking my magical apprenticeship oath. I kept my mental shields in place the entire time. Pinkie-promise. But I knew from painful experience that the feeling left behind from someone being killed is especially strong, because not only is there the echo of the dying person; there's the rage and remorse and fear of the person who committed the act.

I did not have a lot of faith in my own ability to block all that out, at least not entirely. I should have felt something, somewhere. But I didn't, and that really did worry me. Because if Jimmy Upton wasn't killed down here, where there were more different sinks and washtubs than you could shake a stick at, and he wasn't killed in the old drugstore, where had he been killed?

I kept walking and I kept making fake notes and I kept looking. Nobody stopped me. Nobody asked if they could help me. I was somebody else's problem and they all had work to do. Time stretched out. I wondered where the Hildes were and if any of them was about to come down here. I wondered what they were saying to one another upstairs. Probably it was loud. I remembered the sketch of Christine shouting at both her brothers. Maybe that hadn't been the past I was drawing. Maybe that scene was happening right overhead.

I found the room full of wires and circuit breakers that must have been the power plant. I found the furnaces. I
found storerooms for dirty laundry (you do not want to know about the smell), another for Dumpsters (ditto), and another full of workbenches where two guys in jeans and leather aprons were busy repairing chairs and lamps. I found the break room with the vending machines and the room for the carpet-cleaning equipment and the clean linens.

And, finally, just as I was beginning to lose hope and nerve, and, worse, realizing I'd made a full circuit and was heading back toward the locker room, I found a scuffed white door with some badly chipped black lettering:

F I     E S

“Fos and fums.” I breathed. I also tried the knob. Of course it was locked.

I gripped my pen. A woman with deep brown skin wearing a gray housekeeper's dress was pushing a laundry cart down the hall toward the elevators. “Excuse me,” I said. “Can you open this for me?”

She gave me the once-over with her tired eyes. She saw my professional outfit and my clipboard. “Sure thing,” she said in a lilting Jamaican accent.

I smiled and she pulled the key ring on its stretchy cord off her belt and unlocked the door. “There you go.”

“Thank you.” I made a note on my clipboard and walked inside without looking back.

The smell of dust and damp paper engulfed me. I found the switch on the wall and flipped it. The fluorescent lights buzzed as they came on and I saw Christine had not been exaggerating.

The room really was little more than a closet. It was also stuffed to the brim. There were eight full-sized filing cabinets. All of them had cardboard boxes piled on top. Above those was a battered shelf filled with yet more boxes. Not one of them was labeled that I could see.

I turned in place. The portion of me that got an A in art history cried out at the horrible state of all these precious documents. The part of me that wanted to find out who
killed Jimmy just growled in the extremes of frustration. How was I supposed to go through more than a hundred years' worth of accumulated paper by myself?

Fortunately, I knew just whom to call for help.

I shut the door and twisted the knob lock. I faced the room again. I took a deep breath and tried to focus my mind. Julia was probably not going to be happy when she found out about this, but at this point I was willing to take a chance.

“Alistair,” I said to the empty, dusty air. “Here, kitty, kitty.”

Nothing happened.

“Come on, Alistair,” I said. “Please?”

Still nothing. I sighed. We really were going to do this, weren't we?

“I'll buy more tuna,” I said. “I promise.”

“Merow.”

I blinked. Alistair, who was now sitting on the edge of the high shelf, blinked back.

“Yes, well, thank you,” I told him. But then I hesitated. I'd successfully summoned my familiar (go, Team Anna!), but now what? I wasn't even sure what I was looking for. Blueprints? Photos? News clippings? The clues I needed could be in any of those, or all of them.

“Mer-oow,” grumbled Alistair. He jumped off the shelf onto one of the stacks of boxes, and from there all the long way down to the floor.

Behind him, the top box slipped and teetered. Without thinking, I dropped pen and clipboard and lunged forward. Of course I missed. Of course the box hit the floor and burst, sending a cascade of papers sliding across the floor.

I stood there, hand pressed across my mouth, waiting for the sound of shouts and running feet. But no one called out or rattled the knob, and slowly I was able to start breathing again.

“Meow?” Alistair picked his way delicately across the grimy floor. There was a distinct
what is your problem, human?
tone to his complaint.

“I wonder where Julia adopted Max and Leo from,” I
muttered as I crouched down to start scooping papers up. “They don't seem to have to make a mess to find something.”

Alistair glowered at me and vanished.

I sighed. “Yes, right, fine. Sorry.”

I really was. But I was also scared. I needed to be out of here. I needed to know what was happening with Kelly and with Gretchen. And Jake and Miranda. I needed not to get caught by the wrong Hilde leafing as quickly as I could through the spilled papers and brittle newspaper clippings.

“Come on, come on, come on,” I whispered to myself. “There's something. There must be.”

But there wasn't. I had handfuls of receipts, and newspaper clippings dating from the sixties and seventies. I clenched my teeth around a whole set of curses and set the papers as carefully as I could in the remains of the box. I straightened up, looking around for someplace I could safely stash the whole mess. And I froze.

Because there, on top of the filing cabinet, where it had been hidden by the box, was a long, black cardboard tube. I set the box down on the floor, since there was nowhere else to put it, and with my heart in my mouth, I reached the tube down. It was battered and dented and the white cap on the end was held in place with ancient elastic. Somebody had written a date on the cap:
1920
.

I eased the elastic back and pulled the cap off. Inside was a roll of blue-and-white paper.

“Well, well. Hello, you beautiful little Prohibition-era blueprints,” I murmured. “And just where have you been all my life?”

38

“Martine, I need to borrow your bartender.”

Since I had not actually been planning on stealing a large roll of documents from the hotel, I hadn't driven to the appointment this morning. Now I was jogging toward the bus stop, trying to juggle my portfolio and the tube of blueprints, while keeping the phone jammed between my shoulder and my ear.

In heels. Yes. Bad plan. I know. At least I hadn't had to try to smuggle myself and my illicit acquisition out across the lobby. On the list of things I'd found in the hotel basement was the service bay and it's lovely door open to the driveway outside.

“And just what is it you need my bartender for?” demanded Martine. I didn't blame her for being short with me. I was a little surprised she'd picked up at all. I could hear the sounds of her kitchen going full tilt in the background. “And I'm assuming you mean Sean and not Wanda.”

“Yes, Sean.” I wobbled to a stop at the bus stop and sat down on the bench. “I need him and maybe his dad to help me read some very old blueprints.” A blueprint is not like
any other kind of drawing. It's a highly technical, information-packed document with all the specifications written in a special combination of jargon and shorthand. The McNallys both did construction and repair work to supplement their bartending, and they'd have more experience with blueprints than I did. If I was really lucky, Old Sean might even have seen some prints of the same vintage I had currently tucked under my arm. There were, after all, a lot of old buildings in Portsmouth.

“And this is so urgent because . . . ?” prompted Martine.

“Because I might be able to find out where the tunnel where Jimmy Upton's body was dumped comes out at the Harbor's Rest, and if I can do that I might be able to prove who really killed him, and if I can do that—”

“You get Jake and Miranda off the hook. Got it.”

“Jake and Miranda and Chuck,” I said. “You told me to call you about this stuff,” I reminded her.

“Yeah, but I didn't tell you to steal my staff during lunch rush.” She paused. “There's something you should maybe know.”

“What?”
Talk fast.
The bus was turning the corner. I stood up.

“Kelly Pierce was in here earlier, and she was meeting somebody.”

I found I was not at all surprised. “Tall woman? Dark hair? Serious cheekbones?

“That's her.”

“That's Shelly Kinsdale, Jimmy Upton's sister.” The bus crept down the hill. “Was Christine Hilde there, too?”

“Didn't see her.”

“I don't suppose you heard what they were talking about?”

“Do I have time to stand around eavesdropping on the job?” she snapped.

“No, Chef.”

“Too right. But let me tell you, it's amazing what people will say in front of their servers.” I heard the grin in her voice and felt an answering smile spread across my own. The bus was almost here. I grabbed my portfolio and the
blueprint tube. “According to Victor, Kelly told this other woman not to worry. She said as far as she was concerned, the deal was still on. She had nothing left to lose now, and she said she was looking forward to giving the old lady a small taste of her own medicine.”

“Somehow I'm guessing that's not a direct quote.”

“You do not need the direct quote.”

“Thank you, Martine. I owe you and your whole staff . . . something.”

“Too right,” she said again. “I'll let Sean know you need him.”

I wanted to tell her she didn't need to put it exactly like that, but the bus pulled up and the door opened, letting off a couple with three kids of varying sizes. I hung up the phone and juggled my stuff so I could shove it back into my purse. At the same time I thought Christine must be breathing a sigh of relief. She'd told me Kelly was essential to her plans.

I wondered if those plans were why Dale had fired Kelly. I wondered if the termination had been his idea or somebody else's. I dug in my wallet for the fare so I could continue my getaway.

I also wondered where Gretchen Hilde was right now.

*   *   *

That last one, it turned out, was easy to answer. I knew something was up even before I walked in my front door or, rather, ran, because somewhere between the bus stop and the cottage, it had started to rain.

Alistair was sitting on the porch as I came running up the walk with my portfolio held over my head and the tube of blueprints clutched to my chest.

“Merow,” he tried to tell me.

“Yeah, there's visitors,” I said as I shouldered the door open. “Got it, big guy, thanks.”

“Merp,” he acknowledged, and vanished, probably headed for someplace drier.

The door was unlocked. “Grandma B.B.?” I called as I
pushed it open. The rain outside filled the room with an early autumn twilight and all the lamps were on, making the house feel snug and warm. I shook off my portfolio and the ends of my hair. “I'm home!”

“Hello, dear. We're in the living room.”

“We” were Grandma B.B., Julia (with wiener-dog entourage under the wing-backed chair), and Gretchen Hilde.

I froze in place, hotel blueprints clutched in front of me.

“Erm. Hi, Julia. Hello, Mrs. Hilde.” I set the blueprint tube down next to the hall table, along with my portfolio. All casual-like. I made myself smile. I made myself walk over and kiss Grandma B.B. on the cheek. “Sorry if I'm interrupting. But . . .”

“But you're just a little surprised?” suggested Grandma, leading the witness like the expert she was. “Particularly since we're sitting in your living room drinking your tea?”

“And as lovely as it's been, I was just leaving.” Gretchen set her cup down on my Arts and Crafts–style coffee table. She looked very different from the immaculate and confidant woman I'd seen at the Harbor's Rest. Her copper-colored hair was hanging loose around her shoulders, and instead of a pants suit, she wore a loose button-down blouse over a pair of rumpled black slacks. “Thank you for inviting me, Annabelle, Julia. It's always good to . . . talk.”

“I'm sure Anna doesn't mean to chase you out, Gretchen,” Julia told her.

“Yes, please, stay,” I said. I shot for cheerful and missed. I did manage polite, though. “Grandma B.B.'s friends are welcome here and she knows it. It's just that if you're going to keep inviting people over, Gran, I'm going to need to dry some more mint.” I tried another smile. I also settled myself on the window seat.

Gretchen looked at us, one after another.

“Just tell me one thing,” she said evenly. “Would you even have invited me here if the three of you weren't still trying to clear Jake and Miranda Luce for Jimmy's murder?”

I had absolutely no answer for that. Fortunately, I didn't need one.

“Of course we would,” said Grandma B.B.

“We're friends,” added Julia.

“We
were
friends,” Gretchen corrected her firmly. “At least I thought we were until Annabelle stole my boyfriend and you got us mixed up in that disastrous nightclub scheme . . .”

Julia turned a truly incredible shade of pink.

“Yip?” Leo scrabbled to his feet.

“Yap.” Max had evidently heard it all before, and he just tucked his nose under his forepaws.

“You will recall I paid back every penny,” said Julia. “With interest.”

“And walked out on the deal,” snapped Gretchen. “Leaving me with egg on my face.”

“I'm sure—” began Grandma.

“Listen, Mrs. Hilde,” I interrupted. I'd already had a long day. I could not shake the feeling that things were closing in on us all, one way or another. “I know you're tired of this, and you're worried because nobody's got any real answers about what happened to Jimmy—”

“Yes, they do,” Gretchen cut me off sharply. “Lieutenant Blanchard has been very clear—”

But Grandma B.B. shook her head. “You know he's wrong, Gretchen. You have from the beginning.”

“I have absolute faith that the lieutenant is on the right track.”

“Because if he isn't, people might start looking at your family for who killed Jimmy.” I said, even though I couldn't seem to raise my voice above a whisper. “And maybe even you.”

“Anna,” said Julia. “That's eno—”

“You have no idea what you're talking about,” Gretchen snapped. “Any of you.”

“Then tell us, Gretchen,” said Grandma, quietly but firmly. “Make us understand.”

For a moment, I thought Mrs. Hilde was just going to grab her purse and walk out. I could tell at least part of her wanted to, but pride won out. Whatever else had happened,
she was still Gretchen Hilde, and she was not going to let anyone see her run away.

Yes, I did pick up on some of this right away. Grandma B.B. explained the rest later.

“It's bad enough that Christine was going to leave the business, and you,” I said, and the ideas were falling into place almost as quickly as the words were coming out of my mouth. “The bad publicity around the family being investigated for murder would be too much. Did you use your influence with Blanchard to get him to go after Jake?”

“I have done what I had to do to keep my home and my family together,” she answered, each word as hard as stone. “Nothing more and certainly nothing less. What earthly reason could I have had to kill Jimmy?”

“Only one reason,” I said. “Because he was walking out on you.”

Gretchen froze.

“We found Jimmy's sister,” I said. “She works for Dreame Royale. She told us Jimmy came around to sweet-talk her into not opening a new hotel in Portsmouth.” The Hildes were ready to fight dirty to keep out even a little bit of competition. This might not even be Gretchen's first bribe. “Did he get the five thousand from you as a bribe for her?”

Grandma B.B. reached for Gretchen's hand.

“Oh, Gretchen, you didn't—”

“I didn't do anything!” She yanked her hand away. “And if I had, I would never have tried to bribe Dreame Royale with a measly five thousand dollars! Really! I'm not that much of an old fool!

Her anger had turned Gretchen pale, and I was sure she wished she were a thousand miles away, talking about anything but this. I could see it in her sad, tired face, just like I could see her resemblance to her daughter and her sons. What I couldn't see was any furtiveness or guilt.

“Yip,” Leo agreed, and his tail went
thup-thup
against the floor.

Which settled it. Gretchen Hilde was telling the truth,
about the money at least. I'd think about how I was starting to trust the judgment of a mini-dachshund later. Right now I was too busy wondering about that money and about the sketch I'd made of it changing hands.

“Jimmy might have scraped it together himself,” Gretchen told us. “He had a great deal to lose if Harbor's Rest went under.”

“And how much was a great deal?” asked Julia.

“Despite what some people seem to think, I am fully aware that Harbor's Rest is in trouble,” replied Gretchen coolly. “Since I will not sell out, something else has to be done. Food tourism is becoming increasingly popular. I'd been thinking for a while that even if the hotel itself is a little old-fashioned, we could still turn the restaurant into a destination. We could put together packages for exclusive dinners, wine tours, cooking classes, all sorts of things. Perhaps we could even partner with one of the river-tour companies and sponsor seacoast tasting tours. We'd fill rooms as well as tables. But to do that we'd need a brilliant chef in charge. A real headliner.”