“Evidence?” René said.
“We didn’t want to further alarm Mrs. Garrett, but we think she was murdered,” Mac said.
Jessica gasped and René’s mouth dropped open. Jessica leaned toward him and he slipped an arm around her shaking shoulders.
*
We sent the knitters off to bed with promises of more information in the morning. Wally, René, Jessica, Mac, and I went back up to Clarissa’s room with a new shower curtain and the largest flashlights Wally could find.
The room felt still and silent when we entered, as if it held its breath. I had sensed this in other sudden-death cases. The vacuum left behind was palpable. Mac and I got to work quickly. We had both been trained in crime scene protocol but Mac had far more experience. He took the lead and photographed the body as best he could in the poor lighting conditions. René had provided us with plastic kitchen gloves and paper bags. We examined the area around her body carefully and bagged anything lying nearby. We found an earring that matched the one in her left ear not far from the body, a used bandage under the front foot of the large tub, and a few stray hairs that appeared to match Clarissa’s length and color.
The lack of electric light hampered our efforts. Mac and I did the best we could to collect items near the body with the idea that we would return during the daytime to better examine the rest of the room.
We laid the curtain on the floor next to Clarissa, and Mac and René carefully lifted her onto one edge. They gently rolled her in the shower curtain to protect any evidence that might remain on her body, under her fingernails, or anywhere else on her person. As they shifted her over, a metallic clang sounded just underneath her. Wally shined the light on the ground and a reflective glint winked at us. I bent down to examine the piece of metal.
I knew immediately what it was and fought the urge to touch it to get more information. It was an elongated U-shape with one end longer than the other. I had seen Vi use something like it to do her knitted cables.
“Jessica, was Clarissa a knitter?” I asked.
Jessica had been standing just outside the bathroom while we worked and she stepped inside. “No, not a chance. She mocked Isabel any chance she got.”
I pointed to the metal U without touching it. “Isn’t that a cable needle?”
Jessica bent down and looked. She took in a sharp breath. “Yes, it’s . . . it’s a cable needle.” She stood back quickly as if to put some distance between herself and the needle.
“Do you know who it belongs to?” Mac asked.
Jessica shook her head quickly and stepped back out into the bedroom.
Mac slid it carefully into a small paper bag and put it with the rest of our evidence bags. He directed Wally and René to lift Clarissa and we all trooped out of the bathroom and down the stairs after them.
I took up the rear and after we got down the stairway the guys moved ahead to bring the body out to the shed. I found Vi lurking in the shadows around the corner from the staircase.
“Vi, what are you doing here?” I hissed and hoped Mac was too busy to notice.
“I just wanted to see if I could help,” she said. “Where’s that cat? I saw her race out of the stairway when you guys went upstairs the first time. She might be able to tell us something about what happened.”
Vi had been known to interview dogs, cats, and even woodland creatures to try to solve a mystery.
“I didn’t see the cat upstairs,” I said. “Let’s get to bed and we can look for her in the morning.” I steered her back toward “our” room and pushed her through the doorway.
I told her I would be right back and used my own waggling finger to threaten. Mom began her interrogation of Vi as I swung the door closed.
I got to the back door just as the guys stepped outside with Clarissa’s plastic-wrapped corpse. Jessica stood in the doorway shivering. Her hands shook as she pulled her cardigan more tightly across her shoulders.
“They said we could wait here,” she said. “Kirk, our maintenance guy, has the keys and I didn’t want to . . . see her there. In a shed.” She scrubbed at her eyes, smearing her mascara into a raccoon mask.
“I’m so sorry, Jessica.”
She sniffled. “It’s not like we were close. Just the opposite, in fact.” She turned to me. “Who could have done this?”
“We’ll do our best to figure it out and the police will investigate as soon as we can get in touch with them.” I didn’t want to point out to her that as long as the storm continued, we would all be stuck in the hotel with a murderer; she had probably already concluded as much. I thought that Mac and I would have just as much work keeping everyone calm as we would investigating the murder.
9