Cold snap a hannah linkl.., p.20
Cold Snap: A Hannah Linklater Mystery, page 20
“No one else you can think of?” Hannah prodded again.
Julia balled her hands into fists. She didn’t seem to have heard Hannah. “I’d like to kill Frank. I don’t care that he’s a vet. You only get to use the ‘shell shock’ excuse for so long. He’s deranged and should be in the loony bin!”
Hannah quickly covered her shock at Julia’s words and thanked Julia for her time, then slid the rectangular tin over to Julia. A quiet moment passed between them, and then Hannah left the room and quietly closed the door behind her to leave Julia alone to grieve.
Hannah stepped into the library roughly ten minutes before two o’clock, expecting to see Ernie, but instead, she found it empty. Ernie had agreed to speak with Lilah, Ben, Alma, Walter, Hazel, and Edgar. Most of those people tended to talk extensively if you let them.
Her footsteps barely made a sound on the thick carpeting as she moved deeper into the library. Dim light filled the library, filtering through the open curtains on the windows.
She browsed the books on the first of the towering bookshelves, scanning the titles arranged in alphabetical order by author. She smiled ruefully at the well-worn paperback romance novels. They seemed so out of place on the ornate bookshelves. Judging by the wear of various books, she saw with disappointment that classics such as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers had barely been touched. A thin layer of dust rested on their tops.
Her index finger traced the titles of the books. As her gaze fell on “All Quiet on the Western Front”, her thoughts turned to Frank and his promise to bring help. The blizzard raged outside, its fury unrelenting, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that something had gone terribly wrong.
She crossed over to the large window where she had done the examinations. The blizzard was a living entity, a writhing force seeking to consume everything in its path. She couldn’t help but think of Frank navigating through that storm, and she hoped he would return with the police before anything else went wrong.
“Please be okay out there,” she whispered, as if her words could reach him through the wind and snow.
Her mind whizzed with possibilities, each one more frightening than the last. What if it ran out of gas? What if the snowmobile flipped or crashed? Could she really be sure he wasn’t the one who had killed Mr. Sturdivant and Dan?
The nagging thought that he had somehow deceived them all wanted to buzz around in her head like an annoying fly. He had motive for both Mr. Sturdivant and Dan’s murders, but was that enough to go outside in the dead of night to finish what he started with Dan? And why would Dan have even gone to the ice fishing shack in a blizzard?
“Enough,” she scolded herself. “There’s no evidence against him and he wouldn’t do that.”
She shook her head, forcing herself to focus on what was real and present. Speculating on ‘what-ifs’ wouldn’t help anyone now.
The wind’s howling outside intensified, with its eerie cries echoing through the empty library. It amplified her unease, making her feel as though unseen eyes were watching her every move. She tried to push aside her doubts, focusing instead on the task at hand. With a determined snap, she closed the curtains.
As she bent to look at the books on one of the lower shelves, a heavy book tumbled from the bookcase before her, striking her shoulder before crashing to the plush carpet.
Hannah’s eyes widened as the towering bookcase began to tilt precariously toward her. Time seemed to move slowly. Her hands flew to the sides of her head as she threw herself to the floor.
Twenty-Two
Hannah’s eyes fluttered open at the sight of faces hovering above her. A cacophony of panicked voices filled the air as Ben, Walter, Ernie, and Edgar worked together to lift the heavy bookcase that trapped her, crouched near the floor. She could feel the carpet against her cheek and the pressure on her right shoulder and neck.
“Careful now,” said Edgar through gritted teeth, his white hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. “On three...one, two, three!”
The men heaved in unison, their bodies laboring with the effort. As they lifted the bookcase, she felt a sudden release of pressure, followed by a sharp pain in her shoulder and neck. The rest of the room’s occupants—a small crowd comprised of Hazel, Julia, Margaret, Beth, Lilah, Sylvia, and Alma—watched with bated breath. The only person missing was the widow, Elaine.
“Can you move?” Edgar asked.
His sturdy frame had given him strength, but Hannah could tell that the ordeal had been taxing on him.
She nodded, her heart still pounding roughly in her chest. She rose unsteadily to her feet, wincing as she moved her right arm, feeling the soreness in her shoulder and neck. “I think I’m alright.”
“Thank God,” breathed Hazel, her hands shaking as she clutched her knitted shawl tighter around her shoulders. “The chair by the window stopped the bookcase from crushing you completely. You got very lucky!”
Hannah begged to differ. She didn’t exactly feel lucky at this particular moment. She would have preferred not to be nearly crushed to death by a seven-foot-tall bookcase.
Around her, the people exchanged glances as uneasy as a cat at a dog convention. It was obvious the bookcases couldn’t have fallen on their own.
“Someone had to have deliberately knocked them over,” Julia said, her arm sweeping across the five heavy bookcases lying on the floor like knocked-down dominoes.
“Who would do such a thing?” Alma wailed, her dark hair falling into her face.
Walter let out a heavy breath and shook his head. “This is just...so horrible.”
Margaret placed a friendly hand on the shoulder of her boarder. “I know. It’s awful.”
Hannah’s mind raced, her eyes darting from face to face in the room. The person who had tried to take her life was among them, but their expressions revealed no hint of guilt or malice.
She willed herself to inhale and exhale in deliberate, measured breaths, focusing on the throbbing pain in her shoulder and pushing aside the chilling truth that someone in the room harbored murderous intent. As she studied her surroundings, the weight of the situation pressed down on her. There was no telling who it might be—she was a mouse trapped in a room full of cats, unsure which one would strike first.
“I’m fine,” she said shakily. “Who found me?”
“I did,” Hazel said. “I screamed when I saw you. I thought you were dead. Then everyone came running.”
Hannah nodded.
After checking that she was alright, the others made a collective effort and managed to lift the toppled bookcases back into their upright positions. Beth and Margaret began picking up the books strewn across the floor and arranging them into stacks. After a brief pause, the others joined in, creating towering stacks of books on the floor. No one bothered to return them to their designated spots on the shelves. Alma had initially tried to set the books on the nearest large shelf—the one that had almost killed Hannah—but Margaret was aghast at the idea of the books not being alphabetized and insisted she simply make piles on the carpeted floor for now.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Edgar asked her again once the task was finished.
“Of course she’s not alright! Someone tried to kill her, Edgar!” Beth’s tone was one Hannah had never heard from the girl before.
“I’m aware of that, thank you,” Edgar replied, his tone mild rather than reproachful. “I just meant physically. Are you sure nothing is broken, Hannah?”
Hannah nodded stiffly. “Just sore, honestly.”
His shoulders loosened, as though releasing an unknown tension and finally feeling the strain of righting the bookcases. “Maybe we should start carrying weapons to protect ourselves,” Edgar said, his face sad but resolute as he looked at those around him.
“Absolutely. We’re obviously trapped in here with the killer. I’m getting a knife from the kitchen,” Julia said. She turned and left the library through the exit near the fireplace.
“Me too.” Hazel wrapped her shawl a little tighter around her shoulders and left the same way that Julia had.
“I have to admit,” Hannah said. “It’s not a bad idea if everyone has something to protect themselves. Someone in this inn has killed two people and just tried to kill me.” With that, she reached out and picked up the poker that stood near the fireplace.
Those who remained in the library seemed to agree, nodding to themselves before they began to disperse.
“Thank you all for your help,” Hannah called after them, hoping her voice sounded steadier than she felt.
As the last of them left the library, presumably to find weapons, Ernie approached her.
“Did you hear anything useful?” she asked him, hoping for some clue as to who might have wanted to harm her.
Ernie shook his head slowly. “No, nothing concrete. Lilah and Ben said they were together all night. They could be alibi-ing each other, but I just can’t see them murdering anyone. I spoke to Alma, Julia, and Hazel individually and they all said that they went to bed right after the fight and slept the whole night through. Didn’t hear or see anything. Which, you know, naturally they would be asleep in their beds in the wee hours of the morning.” He paused. “But there was one thing I noticed. I talked to Walter and Edgar at the same time and Walter said he went to bed at two thirty last night, but Edgar said he had knocked on Walter’s door at two o’clock to ask for some Tums, and there was no answer. Walter said he must have fallen asleep reading and gotten the wrong time, but he seemed pretty nervous.”
“Hmm,” Hannah murmured, her mind turning over the implications of this new information. She couldn’t think of any reason Walter would have to kill Mr. Sturdivant or Dan, but the discrepancy in his story was something to keep in mind. “Do you think he was lying? Or maybe he just lost track of time while reading?”
“Could mean nothing. Walter’s no spring chicken. These older folks, you just kind of let them slide on the small things. It’s not nice to point out every time they’ve forgotten something.”
Hannah rubbed her aching shoulder. “Definitely possible.”
“How sore are you really?”
She let out a small breath of air. Even the smallest movement made it feel as though her shoulder was being slowly ripped from the socket.
“As good as can be expected. Someone tried to kill me.”
“And they almost did. Maybe we should just stay armed and wait it out until Frank gets here. Maybe hole up in our rooms. This person is very dangerous.”
“I know, but I just don’t think I can sit here and hope that the cavalry arrives. We have no idea how long it might take to get through all this snow. What if it’s days?” She didn’t add her worry that Frank might not have made it into town on the snowmobile.
Ernie nodded, saying nothing.
“Oh, I meant to ask you—I saw a small puddle of water below some boots by the front door,” she said. “The soles were all dry, so I don’t know which ones left melted snow below it, but one was a woman’s pair in a light purple.”
“Those are Lilah’s, for sure.”
She mulled that over briefly. During her entire stay at The Wildwood, she couldn’t remember a time that she hadn’t seen Lilah wearing anything but those hotel slippers. The woman had never ventured outside the whole time. Or so Hannah had thought.
It was hard to reconcile the idea of Lilah attacking Dan. As far as she knew, the two had never really even interacted. Of course, she couldn’t be sure Lilah’s boots had been the ones dripping snow into a puddle by the front door.
She couldn’t ignore the other boots that may have been taken out last night.
“The other two were men’s duck boots,” Hannah said.
“Everyone around these parts has a pair of those.”
“Well, one pair was brown and yellow, and the other was blue and white.”
“That narrows it down. The brown ones are Edgar’s, and the blue ones are Walter’s.”
“You’re sure?”
That was another ding against Walter, if indeed he had lied to Ernie about when he went to sleep. Of course, why would Walter say he went to bed at two in the morning when she had already stated to everyone that the time of death was between two and five in the morning? He wasn’t doing himself any favors by not claiming he went to sleep after the fight like some of the others.
“It might not mean anything, Hannah,” Ernie cautioned.
“True, but we don’t have a lot to go on.”
“Sure, but I just can’t picture any of them sneaking out in the night to the ice fishing shack to kill Dan. And what was he even doing out there last night?”
His question mimicked one that she had thought of herself earlier. It just didn’t make any sense for him to have gone out there in the middle of the night.
Her thoughts were interrupted as she winced. Pain traveled from her shoulder down to her arm. She imagined she could feel the sensation flowing down along the nerves in her arm. “Do you know where I can find some aspirin?”
“Sure, there’s a first aid kit in the bathrooms on the second and third floors and one in Margaret’s office on this floor.”
“Thanks.”
She said her goodbyes to Ernie and added, “Stay safe. And arm up.”
She didn’t feel like climbing the stairs, so she decided to head for Margaret’s office.
As she pushed open the heavy oak door and entered the room, the scent of lingering pipe tobacco greeted her. Margaret’s office was always impeccably clean and organized, a reflection of its owner’s fastidious personality.
Hannah spotted the first aid kit on the large bookcase behind the desk, white with bright red lettering. She hesitated.
You seriously aren’t going to be afraid of bookcases from now on, are you? she admonished herself.
Determined, she strode over to the bookcase and opened the latch on the first aid kit. After removing a small packet of aspirin, she turned to leave and get some water to wash the pills down with.
Her gaze caught on the desk’s drawer—a black smudge marred its otherwise pristine surface. Curiosity piqued, she placed the fire poker on the flat surface of the desk, then pulled it open to reveal its contents. There was nothing of note—just pens, pencils, paperclips, and other such office items.
The smudge was incongruous and out of place in the tidy little office.
As she pondered the mysterious smudge, the door creaked open. She must not have shut the door completely when she had come in. Elsie and Klaus raced into the room and immediately began pawing at the basement door inside the office. She grabbed the poker once more, then crossed the room to stand in front of the basement door.
Hannah endeavored to shoo them out of the office—Klaus with a determined desire to descend into the basement and Elsie simply happy to join him on an adventure.
A similar black smudge on the doorknob to the basement seized her gaze.
“Alright, you two,” she murmured, keeping the dogs at bay as she opened the door. “Stay here.” She tried to make it a forceful command, but they didn’t take it as one.
She slipped through the door, being careful to lock out the dogs before they could try to race through. She could hear their soft, plaintive whines fade as she descended the squeaky staircase, feeling the cool air envelop her.
With the reality of her brush with death still fresh in her mind, a chill ran through her body. She gripped the fire poker in her right hand and the wooden handrail tightly in her left. She peered into the darkness below. She took each step of the narrow stairwell cautiously. Every heavy beat of her heart reverberated in her ears. The only other sound was the creak and groan of the steps beneath the soles of her Hush Puppies.
It would be so easy to simply retreat back up the stairs. Every step she took down the stairwell seemed to pull her further from safety. Yet, there was something that compelled her to continue on. The musty smell of the basement filled her nostrils. The mixture of fear and curiosity gripped her as she descended deeper into the abyss.
Twenty-Three
Hannah’s heart pulsed in her ears like a drumbeat as she descended the staircase, feeling her way through the darkness. Her eyes strained to see as each step took her deeper into the inky blackness. She hated basements—always had—they reminded her of the hospital morgue. Attics and basements seemed to become their own sort of morgues—people’s memories, relics, and mementos from dead parts of their lives.
She drew in a sharp breath at a brief moment of pain in her hand. The railing felt rough and splintered against her palm. As if the pain in her shoulder and arm weren’t bad enough. This was adding insult to injury now. Just the same, it was dark, and she didn’t want to risk a fall down the stairs, so she refused to let go of the wooden railing.
She continued on until she ran out of steps. She let out a heavy breath, relief lightening her shoulders instantly. She hadn’t even noticed how tense she was until she felt the rigidity leave her.
A sudden light touch on her cheek caused her to gasp, her entire body tensing up again. She flailed wildly in the dark, desperately swatting away whatever had landed on her.
It took her an embarrassingly long moment to realize that it was only a pullstring hanging from the ceiling. She reached blindly in the dark. Her shaky hand caught the string, and she yanked on it, flooding the basement with dull, yellow light.
“Okay, calm down,” she whispered to herself, taking deep breaths. “You’re acting ridiculous, Hannah.”
The whining of Klaus and Elsie reached her from upstairs. She could imagine their noses pressed against the closed door, scratching at it. They would alert someone that she was down here snooping if she didn’t hurry.
The basement seemed a forgotten world, a stark contrast to the warmth and coziness of The Wildwood’s main floor. Chilled air nipped at her skin, and goosebumps raised along her arms. Shivering, she took in her surroundings: holiday decorations stacked neatly, an old refrigerator humming softly, a large trunk-style freezer, various bicycles, a pile of bathroom tiles, and industrial shelves laden with non-perishable food items.
