Sinister Sudoku (6 page)

“Silly,” she scolded herself. “By the time Kevin gets here—if he gets here—you’ll probably be snoring so loud, you’ll drown out the sound of his knock.”

But her eyes didn’t shut, and she didn’t drift off. She lay carefully listening for anything over the screaming of the wind. Suppose Kevin came in to make a grand gesture? Liza imagined him walking in, wreathed with snow, a thermos of Rocco’s wonderful coffee in one hand and a bottle of brandy in the other.

Or maybe . . . she’d always teased him about the big bearskin rug on the floor of his office, a relic of his grand-father’s hunting prowess. Suppose he came in with a bottle of brandy and
that
?

Liza giggled. They could spread it out right over the bed . . .

She reached out with a smoothing gesture, and that’s when she felt the hand. Liza poked around, realizing she was right at the junction of the two mattresses. The hand was under the bottom sheet on the bed. She poked again. It was under the mattress pad.

“Of all the silly . . .” she muttered. Was this the reason for the holdup in getting her out here? Trying to pop out of the bed didn’t seem like much of a grand gesture to her. More like the kind of stunt a high school sophomore might pull to scare his girlfriend.

“I know you’re in there,” Liza said, prodding at Kevin’s hand.

It didn’t move.

“Come on!” Liza’s anger slowly turned to concern. Burying himself under all this stuff, had Kevin smothered himself?

She jumped off the mattress, tearing at the bedclothes. Comforter, blanket, top sheet, all went flying. The fitted sheet at the bottom was more of struggle, as was the mattress pad. Finally Liza managed to pull them loose. Now she could see the hand sticking up between the mattresses.

“Kevin, come
on
!” she grunted, hauling at the side of a mattress. “If this was ever funny, it stopped being that a long time ago.” The mattress finally shifted, nearly sending Liza back on her behind. She set off crawling across the yielding surface, debating whether she should throttle Kevin or start CPR.

Liza finally reached the gap she’d created . . . and suddenly found it very hard to breathe. Kevin wasn’t down there, tucked into the bed.

Instead, she found herself staring into the lifeless eyes of Chris Dalen.

“Holy jumping Judas Priest!” Liza didn’t remember crossing the expanse of mattress. All of a sudden she was standing on the plush carpeting, one big mass of gooseflesh—and not just from the chill air.

First she had to think past her brain’s reflexive chattering of “Dead body! Dead body!” Okay. There was a dead body. Somebody had created it and put it there. Was this person still around? The logic was pretty grim. If the killer was in the cabin, it was a little late to try playing dumb. Not after tearing the bed apart and screaming like a banshee while she rocketed out of the covers.

For a second, Liza shot a yearning look at her clothes neatly arrayed on the dresser. Of all the outfits she’d prefer to wear while dealing with a hiding murderer, her birthday suit was not at the top of the list. Of course, she’d prefer not to be in this situation at all. Not that anyone had ever asked her opinion about it.

She ran the mental image of the late Chris Dalen through her memory, stifling another shudder.

No blood.

That realization sent her sprinting to the cabin’s kitchenette. It wasn’t up to Rocco’s feast production center, but it did have lots of cooking tools—and she would feel a lot better holding a carving knife right now.

Liza grabbed the biggest blade she could and turned to face the room. As far as she could see, there were no knives missing. She leaned back against the under-counter fridge— too small for someone to hide in—and promptly jumped as the cold metal goosed her bare bottom.

She glared into the far corners of the cabin. The white glow of the LED lantern didn’t reach very far, and the flickering firelight made shadows leap and jitter at the edges of the room. With the lantern in one hand (ready to throw) and the knife in the other (ready to stab), Liza ensured that they were just shadows, not murderers.

Next stop, the bathroom—nobody there, either, not even in the shower.

Liza grabbed the first thing her hand landed on—a towel—and headed straight for the telephone.

“C’mon, C’mon, work,” she muttered as she picked up the handset. She’d seen this scene in too many horror movies . . . Liza sighed with relief when she got a dial tone. She glanced at the card around the phone’s keypad and stabbed down on the buttons that contacted the reception desk.

“Killamook Inn,” a familiar voice answered—the bartender?

Guess he’s doing extra duty while he stays over,
Liza thought.

“This is Liza Kelly in cabin one,” she said. “There’s a dead body here. I need the cops and Kevin—er, not necessarily in that order.”

“Well, the cops are on the way—they rescued a guy walking along the highway, and they’re coming here to try warming him up.”

“Then get them over here—and Kevin, too,” Liza added. She shook out the towel, wrapped it around herself, and stared downward in dismay. It didn’t quite wrap.

“I don’t believe this,” she muttered. The Killamook Inn boasted the world’s largest, most luxurious towels. You could make a damned tent from one of them. So what had she gotten? A hand towel? A washcloth?

Liza had started back to the bathroom when heavy hands began knocking on the cabin door. She whipped around, pulling the towelette up in front of her. If she clamped it under her arms, the terry cloth just covered her front—with maybe a few inches to spare. She didn’t want to think what the rear view looked like as she walked to the door and unlocked it.

Sheriff Clements and Deputy Curt Walters came in, hands on their gun butts. Their eyebrows rose pretty precipitately when they saw Liza.

“He’s in the bed,” she said.

“Looks like you were—” Curt began.

“I was on it. He was in it. Under it. In the middle.” Liza took a long breath, realizing her voice kept getting louder and shriller with each sentence. “He’s—he was Chris Dalen, a member of my prison sudoku class. He just got out today, and he was here to celebrate—”

The eyebrows, if possible, rose even higher. “I mean,” Liza said, trying to start again, “he was here at the inn to celebrate. I got stuck here because of the snow, and I found him stuck here between the mattresses in the bed.” She sidled over and pointed carefully, still keeping the towel clamped in place, toward the disarranged bed.

As Sheriff Clements and Curt headed that way, the door swung open again, spraying wind-driven snow and a third person into the room. Liza didn’t recognize him. From the meltwater stains up to the knees of his trousers, his sodden dress shoes, and the trench coat clutched around him, the stranger hadn’t come out prepared for tonight’s weather.

“Liza Kelly, this is Detective Ted Everard of the state police Criminal Investigation Division.” A small glint of malice showed in the sheriff’s eyes. “I guess you two would have been meeting anyway—the CID sent him out here to look into the sudden rise in major crime statistics here-abouts.”

“Forgive me for not shaking hands,” Liza said a bit tartly. She had both hands holding down her towel, which showed a distressing tendency to whip in the sudden breeze.

Everard barely glanced at her, occupied as he was in shutting the door. He slung his coat on one of the hooks, revealing an outfit seemingly designed to make people wince—a gray-green suit over a royal blue shirt and a red power tie. The detective moved directly to the bed, where Sheriff Clements was standing.

“Did you know the deceased?” The state cop finally turned to Liza and did a double take. “I guess I can take that as a yes.”

“He was my student,” Liza protested. A bit belatedly, she remembered all the sniggering jokes about student-teacher relationships on the late-night TV shows. “Come on—he was old enough to be my father, and he had a bad heart.”

She realized she was only digging herself in deeper when she heart Curt mutter. “What a way to go.”

“Try to think with something north of your belt buckle,” Sheriff Clements reproved. “And use your eyes a bit more constructively, too. There’s a ligature mark around his neck. He was strangled.”

“Look at the wrists.” Everard pointed but carefully kept from touching the arm that stuck up. “See the abrasion? He was restrained.”

“Kinky,” Curt muttered.

“Right,” Liza burst out. “We had a wild ride, him completely clothed, and me not. I tied him up, strangled him, and then called the cops dressed only in a little towel. Makes lots of sense, right?”

“Uh . . .” Curt said. “When you put it that way . . .”

“Right,” Liza said again. “So could I just get dressed now?”

“I’m afraid this is all part of the crime scene right now,” Sheriff Clements told her.

“And I suppose so is the complimentary bathrobe, the other towels, and the slicker hanging by the door.” If Liza didn’t watch it, her voice was going to start getting loud and shrill again.

“Essentially, yes,” the sheriff said.

“Great. Just great.” Liza would have liked to start tearing her hair at this point. But then she’d probably lose the towel—and whatever was left of her sanity—altogether.

“I’ll survey the crime scene,” Everard volunteered. No matter where Liza kept stepping to get out of the way, somehow Everard’s survey kept taking him somewhere behind her. She finally planted herself with her back firmly against a blank wall, glaring at the state cop.

Liza was just about to say something when the door opened again. This time Kevin appeared in a waxed coat rimed with snow. After one look and a few words with Clements, he left to reappear with a large trash bag in his hand. It contained a thick terry cloth bathrobe scavenged from another cabin and another one of those slickers the maids used.

“I couldn’t find any more galoshes,” he said, holding up the slicker while she slipped into the robe. “Guess I’ll have to carry you.”

That made her fumble as she tried to put on the slicker. “Just don’t drop me,” she told him as they walked to the door. “Or if you do, try to fix it so I land on my head. I think amnesia would be a good thing about now.”

“We will never talk of this,” Kevin assured her.

Curt Walters was at least nice enough to open the door for them as Kevin swept her up in his arms and staggered back to the main building. There was one treacherous moment where his foot skidded in snow, but he managed to keep his feet and his hold on Liza.

They entered through the kitchen door. Kevin set Liza down, and she found herself staring as Deputy Brenna Ross and John the assistant manager tended to a shivering figure wrapped up in towels and blankets. A sopping wet brown polyester suit lay on the floor. Brenna and John had the man’s hands and feet in pots, carefully letting some water out, then pouring more in.

“Standard procedure to stave off frostbite,” Kevin whispered to her. “You’ve got to bring the temperature in the extremities up slowly to get the blood flowing again.” Liza could see what he was talking about when Brenna raised the guy’s left hand to put it in a new pot. The skin looked strangely pale—almost waxy.

The stranded motorist winced as his hand went in, even though Liza saw no steam rising from the water. “Compared to how cold he was, that water feels hot,” Kevin explained. Liza nodded, looking at the man’s face. That was very pale, too, strain pulling the flesh into tight folds.

“Do you recognize him?” she suddenly asked Kevin.

Kevin looked from her to the guy. “Should I?”

“He was at the prison today, in the parking lot.”

“The guy from the insurance company?” Kevin obviously had a hard time matching this pale little man with the aggressive figure rapping on his SUV window.

“Howard Frost,” Liza said.

Brenna looked up. “That’s what his ID says. Apparently he swerved off the road trying to avoid a falling tree about a mile from here. The tree still did a number on his car, and he tried to walk. It’s a lucky thing we were coming along behind a road-clearing crew. I don’t think he’d have made it.”

Liza shuddered, suddenly glad that Kevin’s arm was around her. You read about stories like this after every big storm, people found dead in their stranded cars—or outside them. Seeing someone she knew in that situation, even if she didn’t like him, made it somehow strike closer to home.

One dead, and one almost,
she thought.
That’s enough for one night.
All she wanted now was a warm bed and quiet, dreamless sleep.

That’s not what she got, though. Sheriff Clements and Detective Everard finished their initial examination of the murder scene, then came to her for a statement. Liza found herself sitting in the guest seat in Kevin’s office, glaring at Everard as he paced back and forth over the bearskin rug.
Stupid rug,
she thought.
Stupid cop.

Clements established himself in the more comfortable chair behind the desk, leaning back and generally saying little. He had mentioned Liza’s help in other cases, but that only seemed to inflame Everard’s suspicions. “Oh, so this is the ‘amateur sleuth’ who helped you,” he asked.

“That’s what the newspapers said,” Sheriff Clements replied.

“I don’t pay much attention to that nonsense.” Everard glanced over at the sheriff. “I also think that professional investigations tend to suffer when amateurs insert themselves. They’re either meddlesome idiots who’ve read too many mystery novels, or publicity hounds.”

He paused, turning back to Liza. “I understand you work in the publicity field, Ms. Kelly.”

Liza did her best to channel her partner Michelle at her iciest. “I wasn’t aware that was something illegal, Detective.”

“The fact remains that you were found with the deceased in a state of undress—”

“People usually get undressed when they go to bed. When I did that, I wasn’t thinking about playing hostess to a bunch of police—whom, by the way, I had called to the scene.”
Note to self,
Liza thought.
Next time you find a dead body in the nude, take the time to get your clothes back on before phoning the cops.