Emmett shoved his hands in his pockets and lowered his voice even more.
“I think he and Jessica had a fight about it. And I think the meeting itself was a bit of a knock-down, drag-out kind of thing.”
“What do you mean?” Mac said.
“I saw Jessica and Mrs. Garrett storm out of the meeting and then a few minutes later Clarissa strolled out like she didn’t have a problem in the world.”
Emmett shrugged. “I got a little nervous because the last time they had a meeting like that a bunch of people lost their jobs. I don’t know who they could lose at this point, we’re at bare bones as it is, but nothing has come of it so far.”
“We’ll look into it, Emmett, thank you,” Mac said.
Emmett turned to look over his shoulder, and lowered his voice.
“There’s something else,” he said. “I saw Jessica coming out of the door that leads to the back stairway of the turret room.”
Mac had become very still. We exchanged a quick glance of surprise.
“What time was this?” I asked.
“Maybe ten minutes or so before the lights went out,” Emmett said. He held his hands out. “I can’t say for sure that she was in the room, just that she came out of the stairway door.”
We heard a door close down the hall and footsteps heading our way. Emmett waved and melted into the back hallway.
“That was weird,” I whispered. “Why didn’t he tell us that yesterday?”
“Maybe he really didn’t think the meeting mattered, or maybe he didn’t want René to hear him.”
Kirk rounded the corner carrying the ladder again. He nodded as he passed and went into the lounge.
“Did you get in touch with the police?” I asked.
“No, the road is blocked and the snowmobiles are low on gas, so we didn’t want to go looking for a phone. It’s almost a mile to the turnoff.” Mac leaned against the wall.
“It’s too bad Dad and Seth didn’t tell the police they were looking for us,” I said. “They didn’t realize there would be a murder to deal with.”
“It’s likely anywhere nearby is dealing with the same outages as we are,” Mac said. He pushed away from the wall and paced. “The police know the hotel is here. If the phones don’t come back on, they’ll eventually try to get up here. We’ll have to keep working the case in the meantime.”
“Vi will be so pleased,” I said. “She’s identifying herself as one of our deputies now.”
Mac rocked back on his heels and looked at the ceiling.
“While you were away she and I spoke with Holly.”
“Let me guess, she wasn’t much of a Clarissa fan, either.”
I nodded. “Holly doesn’t even think the cat liked her. She did say she saw Tina come out of the stairwell sometime after seven thirty.”
Mac pressed his lips together. “I thought Tina was in the dining room the whole time.”
I held my hands out. “I guess not. She also didn’t volunteer the information when we were talking to them in the workshop room.”
“We’ll need to confront her,” Mac said. “It also means her friends covered for her. They must have known she left the room.”
“I don’t like this, Mac,” I said. I wrapped my arms around myself to ward off a sudden chill that I suspected had nothing to do with the temperature. “Everyone is hiding something.”
The corner of Mac’s mouth twitched up in a rueful smile. “It does seem that way. Including the building itself. Which reminds me, I wanted to talk to the Garretts again after finding the secret stairway. With Emmett’s news, we have even more reason to question them,” Mac said.
“Let’s wait to confront them about the hidden stairway until they’re together—I want to see how they react,” I said. “I think the offices are back here by the kitchen.” I pointed down the hallway where Emmett had disappeared.
Mac and I followed the hall until we were almost to the kitchen door. We heard drawers slamming and papers rustling in one of the rooms.
We peered around the doorjamb and saw Jessica rummaging through a desk. She looked up, startled, when we walked in.
“Hello, can I help?” she said as she quietly slid one of the drawers closed.
“We were hoping to talk to you and your mom again,” I said.
“Oh, I see.” Jessica straightened the pens on the desktop. “She’s really not doing very well today. Clarissa’s death has hit her much harder than I would have expected.”
“Why do you say that?” Mac asked.
“It’s just . . . they never got along that well and they had been arguing over how best to run the hotel.” Jessica turned away from us and looked out the window. “Honestly, I thought on some level she might be relieved, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. If anything, she’s spending a lot of time talking about how wonderful Clarissa was.” She turned back toward us. “I finally had to walk away.”
Jessica sat in the desk chair and gestured for us to take seats.