Chapter Twenty-Eight
It hadn’t done a particle of good and Hannah was depressed when Mike left. She’d told him she knew about Barbara’s attempted murder and Doctor Bev’s actual murder. Mike had been equally forthcoming, but they still hadn’t been able to narrow the suspect list. Actually, neither one of them even had a suspect list. The best they’d been able to come up with was that the attack on Barbara had been a random act of violence perpetrated by an unknown suspect. They had agreed that the attack against Barbara and Doctor Bev’s murder could be connected somehow, but they were unable to identify exactly what that connection was.
Hannah was still trying to fit the new information she’d learned from Mike into what she’d already discovered when her cell phone rang. She jumped up from her stool and hurried to the counter, where her cell phone was plugged into the charger. She unhooked it and answered, “Hello?”
“Hannah. This is Jenny from the hospital. Your mother gave me your cell phone number.”
“Hi, Jenny,” Hannah said, wondering why Jenny had called. “Barbara’s all right, isn’t she?”
“Barbara’s fine, now that Moishe chased away the monster and Freddy fixed her screen.”
“It’s good to know that Barbara was right about the monster. And it’s entirely understandable that she didn’t know what to call it since she’d never seen a weasel before. It makes me wonder about her other delusions, and whether there’s some sort of reasonable explanation for those, too.”
“I hope there is. Barbara and I have been working on her delusion about her father and we’ve had an interesting development. Do you remember when I told you about the name game and Barbara’s block about her father’s name?”
“I remember.”
“We just tried it again and we had the same block. She remembers that her dad’s name is Patrick, but she blocked when I asked her about her father’s name. That was when it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps the word father means another person to her, a person that isn’t her dad.”
“Like who?” Hannah asked.
“Like her priest. Barbara’s records show she’s Catholic. And many Catholic families refer to their priest as Father. That’s why I called you. Your mother said the Catholic priest’s name is Father Coultas. I tried that with Barbara and she knew who he was, but she still blocked when I asked her for her father’s name. I called you to see if you had any suggestions.”
Hannah thought about that for a moment. “Yes. We call the Lutheran minister Reverend Bob. Maybe Barbara’s parents called the Catholic priest by his first name.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“Yes, it’s Paul. Does she get any mental images when you ask her about her father?”
“I’ll find out. If it rhymes with Paul, we are on to something. I’ll call you as soon as I find out.”
After she hung up the phone, Hannah paged through her murder book again. There was something she was forgetting. She turned to the notes she’d made about their confrontation with Doctor Bev on the front porch of the Peterson house and one line jumped out at her. Said she’s already taken some things up to the penthouse. Mike’s detective team had already searched through Doctor Bev’s personal possessions at the Lake Eden Inn, but they hadn’t searched the things she’d taken up to the penthouse at the hotel. The baking was done for the day. She could leave now, if she chose. Hannah was about to call Andrea to see if her sister would let her into the penthouse to search when her cell phone rang again.
“Hello,” Hannah said, after she’d switched it on.
“Hi, Hannah. It’s Jenny again. I tried Paul as her father’s name, and Barbara said that wasn’t right. Then I asked her if she had a mental picture of her father and she told me that he was sitting underground in a cave or a cavern. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Not really, unless you can think of something that rhymes with spelunker.”
Jenny laughed. “Somehow I don’t think that’s it.”
“Neither do I. Any other ideas?”
“Not at the moment. I’ll think about it though.”
“How about Barbara’s brother? Does she have any mental pictures for him?”
“No. She says it’s just a blank in her mind.”
“Call me back if Barbara comes up with anything new. I’ll have my cell phone with me.”
“I really hate to bother you like this, Hannah.”
“You’re not bothering me. Barbara’s my friend and I want to help in any way I can.”
Once she’d ended the call, Hannah sat down on her stool again. Barbara pictured her father in a cave or a cavern. That was a new development and at least she had a mental image now. Perhaps it would become clearer as the swelling in her brain abated and then the mystery would be solved.
“Thanks, Andrea,” Hannah said as they parked in the reserved section for the penthouse. “I really appreciate this.”
“That’s okay. I’m curious, too. I want to find out what things Doctor Bev moved.”
Hannah got out of Andrea’s Volvo just as huge drops of rain began to fall. They hit the dusty pavement sending up little puffs of dust as she followed her sister into the lobby of the hotel. “Why do you want to see what Doctor Bev moved?” Hannah asked.
“Because the last time I moved, I took the most important things first. I’m just curious to see if she did the same thing.”
Hannah thought about that as they walked through the beautiful lobby to the penthouse elevator. “I’ll bet she did. I know I did. When I moved from Mother’s house to my condo, I brought my books and my boxes of recipes first.”
“Oh.” Andrea gave a little sigh.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m embarrassed.”
“Why?”
“Because the first things I moved were my nail polish collection and my makeup. Do you think I’m terrible?”
“No, I think you’re Andrea. Don’t ever change. I love you just the way you are.”
Andrea smiled the most beautiful smile Hannah had ever seen. “Thank you, Hannah. I hope you never change either.”
As the two sisters approached the elevator, there was a loud crack of thunder that made both of them jump, and the lights flickered several times. A bright flash of lightning lit the lobby with an almost iridescent white light, and Hannah blinked several times in response to the brightness. When she could see normally again, she noticed that the lights had dimmed to pale amber. A moment later they were back to full luminescence.
“Uh-oh,” Andrea said, pulling Hannah back from the elevator doors. “No way we’re taking the elevator. The power might go out.”
Hannah agreed wholeheartedly. The last thing she wanted to do was get stuck in the penthouse elevator while an electrical storm raged overhead. “I guess we’ll have to wait until tomorrow,” she said.
“Wrong. Follow me.” Andrea led Hannah to a door several feet from the elevator. “We’ll take the stairs.” She unlocked the door, switched on the lights, and beckoned Hannah inside. “Don’t worry. I’ve got the flashlight on my phone if the lights go out and the emergency generator doesn’t work.”
“They installed the new one?” Hannah asked, remembering that Andrea had mentioned replacing the old generator.
“Yes. Roger told me they put it in yesterday, but I’m not sure it’s hooked up yet. And I don’t want to go down there to look because it’s scary down there.”
“How is it scary?”
“It’s a full basement, but you have to know which hallway to take to get where you want to go. They’re really narrow hallways, almost like tunnels, and I’m always afraid I’ll get lost and I’ll never be able to find the stairway to get out. You almost have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs like Hansel and Gretel, you know?”
“I understand. I’m not fond of old basements myself.”
“It’s just that it smells damp and musty, and you know that you’re under the ground. Every time you come around a corner, you expect to see a mole, or a rabbit, or a groundhog.” Andrea reached out for the railing. “Come on, Hannah. Let’s go. This staircase goes up to the third floor.”
Up to the third floor? Hannah repeated her sister’s words in her mind and added a question mark. Perhaps climbing up to the third floor would be easy for Andrea, but she wasn’t looking forward to the climb. “Is this the servant’s staircase you told me about?”
“Yes. It was really a single-person staircase when it was built, but Roger had the contractors widen it and it’s a lot better now. Now it’s big enough for two to climb up together.”
“Two what?” Hannah asked, dropping behind her sister after the first few steps. “Two anorexic toddlers?”
Andrea laughed. “I know it’s not very wide even now, but you should have seen it before the contractors enlarged it. Remember Barbara’s mother?”
“Theresa Donnelly? Yes, of course I do.”
“When she worked at the Albion in her senior year at Jordan High, she must have been a whole lot thinner than she was when we knew her. I saw a photo of her on the third floor landing and there was barely enough room for her to carry up a breakfast tray.”
Hannah didn’t say anything. She was too busy trying to breathe as they crossing the second floor landing. Andrea was like a gazelle leading the way, and she felt like an elephant lumbering up the stairs.
“Almost there,” Andrea said, taking the last five steps in staccato rhythm and crossing the third floor landing to the door at the top of the stairs. “Just wait a second and I’ll unlock it.”
Just wait a second? Hannah might have laughed if she’d had the breath for it. Of course she’d wait a second. She wasn’t going to move until she stopped panting.
Luckily, Andrea had trouble with the key and it took at least a minute before the tumblers rolled back and the door opened. “Here we are, Hannah,” she announced.
“Great,” Hannah said, finding her voice for one word at least.
Andrea stepped in and flicked on the lights. “Where do you want to start?” she asked.
“Let’s look around and see if we can spot the things that Doctor Bev moved in.”
“I know there’s nothing of hers in here,” Andrea said, glancing around the kitchen. “It was perfectly bare when they delivered the furniture. There was nothing in the living room either. I would have noticed. Let’s try the master bedroom. She might have put something in one of the closets.”
“That sounds . . .” Hannah’s comment was interrupted by another boom of thunder and a near-blinding flash of lightning. “Does this place have lightning rods?” she asked.
“You don’t need them on the roof anymore. They have built-ins now. Come on, Hannah. Let’s go check the closets.”
Hannah followed her sister into the master bedroom. The master closet had double doors and Andrea opened them. “I thought so!” she said, spying several matching suitcases on the floor. “This wasn’t here the night of the party. I showed several people the closets.”
Andrea carried the suitcase to the bed and opened it as Hannah watched. The clothes inside were clearly new. Their tags were still attached.
“Wow!” Andrea said, pulling out a pair of white leather pants and a matching vest. “I’d kill for something like this.”
Maybe someone did, Hannah thought, not eliminating jealousy as a motive. Did Roger have any serious girlfriends in Minneapolis who might be inclined to get rid of his new fianc ée so that they could try to take her place?
“Jewelry,” Andrea breathed, opening a cleverly constructed velvet folder that contained pockets and slots for rings, necklaces and bracelets. “Oh, Hannah! Just look at this one!”
Hannah looked and knew just enough about jewelry to echo Andrea’s gasp. The necklace Andrea was regarding with an emotion bordering on reverence glittered with diamonds and rubies. “Is it real?” she asked, hardly daring to believe that it was.
“Oh, yes. And it’s probably worth twice the price of this expensive penthouse.”
“Enough,” Hannah said, reaching out to close the velvet jewelry folder. “Let’s see what else is here.”
Five minutes passed as they went through the contents of a second suitcase, and another five or six minutes were taken up with a third. They were about to open the fourth matching leather suitcase when Andrea’s cell phone rang.
“Hello?” she answered. As Hannah watched, worry lines furrowed her forehead. “But I thought Mrs. Dunwright was coming to pick you up from dance class.”
That was enough to tell Hannah that her niece Tracey was calling. She waited as Andrea gripped the phone a bit tighter.
“Of course I will,” Andrea said. “Don’t worry about a thing, Tracey. Just tell Florence I’m on my way. There’s lightning outside, so stay inside the Red Owl with Karen until I get there.”
“Sorry, Hannah,” Andrea said, as she ended the call. “Tracey and Karen Dunwright are stuck at the Red Owl and I have to go pick them up. I’ll take them to the house and be back here in ten minutes, okay?”
“That’s fine,” Hannah said. “I’ll go through the fourth suitcase and look around for anything else.”
It didn’t take long to go through the fourth suitcase. When she was finished, Hannah put it back in the walk-in closet and shut the door. As she went back into the living room, she heard her cell phone ringing in her purse.
“Coming!” she called out, even though there was no one to hear her. And for once she was lucky, locating her cell phone almost immediately and answering it before the caller hung up. “Hello?” she said quickly.
“Thank goodness you answered!” Jenny said, sounding relieved. “Barbara asked me to call you. She remembered something else about her father. She said he was underground in a cave or a cavern and there were lots of rabbits down there with him. What’s that, Barbara?” There was a pause and then Jenny came back on the line. “Barbara says it’s not a silly rhyme like Stormin’ Norman, or Berry and Terry. It’s just where he is.”
“Okay,” Hannah said, already going through the possibilities. “Tell Barbara thank you. And please call me if she thinks of anything else.”
“I’m only here for another ten minutes or so. Then another nurse comes on.”
“Okay. Ask Barbara to call me if she thinks of anything else. Write down my cell phone number for her before you leave.”
“All right, but I’m not sure. . . .”
Jenny’s voice trailed off and Hannah knew she didn’t want to express any doubts about Barbara’s ability to call while Barbara was listening to their conversation. “I understand,” Hannah said, “but it’s worth a shot. She called me before and she might be able to call me again.”
“I’ll give Barbara your cell phone number before I leave,” Jenny promised. “Have a good night, Hannah.”
“I will if Andrea ever comes back here,” Hannah said, watching as rain began to pepper the penthouse windows.
“Where are you?”
“At the penthouse in the hotel.”
“The penthouse? What are you doing up there?”
“Andrea and I needed to check something out, but she got called away.”
“You must be investigating.”
“You’re right, but it didn’t work out the way I hoped. Have a nice night, Jenny. I’ll talk to you soon. And don’t forget to give Barbara my number.”
As Hannah hung up, another flash of lightning streaked across the sky. Almost immediately, rain began to hit the windows, harder and harder until it formed sheets of water. The lights flickered again, and Hannah fervently wished that Andrea would hurry so that she could go home to her familiar condo and Moishe. And just as she wished it, the lights flickered one more time and went out.
“Oh, great!” Hannah groaned, hoping against hope that the emergency generator would kick in. She waited a full minute, but nothing happened. It was apparent that the new generator in the bowels of the basement wasn’t yet operational.
Hannah stuffed her cell phone into the pocket of her summer-weight jacket and sat down on one of the expensive leather couches that Doctor Bev and Roger had ordered. The power was out and there was nothing to do but watch the summer storm rage outside the windows.
Think about something else, her mind told her and Hannah did. She thought about Barbara’s father, underground in a cave or cavern, surrounded by rabbits. Andrea had mentioned something about rabbits when she was describing the basement. Accompanied by the booming of thunder, the startling flashes of lightning, and the drumming of rain against the windows, Hannah thought back to what her sister had said. Every time you come around a corner, you expect to see a mole, or a rabbit, or a groundhog.
Hannah let her mind roam freely. Hallways like narrow tunnels. Interconnected. Moles. Groundhogs. Rabbits. Barbara had said that her father was surrounded by rabbits in a . . .
“Warren!” Hannah shouted, startling herself. “It was a rabbit warren! Her father’s name is Warren!”
How many men named Warren did she know? Hannah thought about that for a moment. There was Warren Strand-berg, the minister of the Bible Church in Lake Eden, but he’d only been here for ten years or so. She wasn’t sure where he’d lived before he came to Lake Eden, but unless he was from one of the neighboring towns, it was unlikely that he could be Barbara’s father.
There was Warren Frank, the son of the man who owned the bait shop at Eden Lake. He was in his mid-thirties and couldn’t possibly be Barbara’s father.
Warren Drevlow was a possibility. He was the right age. But Hannah wasn’t sure how long he’d been in . . .
Her cell phone rang, interrupting her train of thought. She retrieved it and answered, “Hello?”
“Hannah! It’s Barbara!”
“Hi, Barbara.” Hannah was pleasantly surprised. Barbara had managed to punch in the correct numbers for her cell phone. “Is Jenny still there?”
“No, she left. I’m all alone and my brother tried to kill me again!”
“What?!”
“You’ve got to believe me, Hannah. This time I’ve got proof. He put something in my bag.”
“Your bag,” Hannah repeated and then she gasped. “Do you mean your IV drip bag?”
“That’s right, but don’t worry. I pretended I was sleeping and I had my arms under the sheet. The minute he touched the bag I pinched off the tube.”
“That was quick thinking!”
“Thank you. I knew what he was going to do because he said, Say goodbye, Sis. Now I’ll be rid of you for good. And then he put something in the bag. And then, when he left, I pulled out the needle.”
Hannah swallowed hard. What she’d just heard was truly frightening. “Ring for the nurse, Barbara. And if there’s an emergency button, hit it! Don’t let anyone hook you back up to that IV drip.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t. And I won’t let them throw out the bag, either. I want Doc to test it to see what my monster brother put in there.”
“That’s smart, Barbara.” Hannah was impressed with Barbara’s presence of mind. “Did you see your brother’s face? Can you describe it for me?”
“I can’t describe him, Hannah. I only had my eyes open a tiny bit. And I can’t remember his name, but I remembered my silly picture for him.”
“What is it?” Hannah asked, feeling her heart begin to race in excitement.
“He’s standing at home plate with a bat. He’s in the World Series and he’s wearing a blue and white uniform. I know it’s a silly rhyme, but I can’t remember the names of the teams.”
Hannah thought fast. It had to be a pro team that wore blue and white uniforms. “The Toronto Blue Jays.”
There was a pause while Barbara considered it. “No, not them.”
“How about the Kansas City Royals?”
“No. I don’t think that’s it, either.”
“I wish I could think of more teams, but . . . wait! How about the Dodgers?”
“That’s it. He’s Roger the Dodger. Do you believe me, Hannah?”
All the pieces of information in her head rose up into a whirlwind and snapped into place. Barbara was Warren Dalworth’s daughter. And Roger was her half-brother. And unless she was way off base, Warren had called in a lawyer to change his will to include Barbara. He’d done the decent thing by telling Roger about it and Roger had decided to kill his half-sister so that he could have Dalworth Enterprises and its millions all to himself.
“Do you believe me?” Barbara asked again.
“Yes, I believe you,” Hannah told her. “I know you’re right, Barbara.”
“Then you have to believe this. I think Roger was standing outside my room when Jenny called you and told you about the rabbits. And he knows where you are because he must have heard Jenny ask you if you were in the penthouse investigating. You have to get out of there, Hannah! I think he’s going to come looking for you next!”
“Barbara. Listen to me!” Hannah went into near-panic mode. “Ring for the nurse, hit the emergency button, and then call Mike at the sheriff’s station. Tell him I’m up in the penthouse and Roger is coming here to kill me like he killed Doctor Bev. I’ll give you the number of the sheriff’s station. It’s . . .”
“Stop,” Barbara interrupted. “I worked there almost all of my life, Hannah. I know the number. I’ll call Mike’s cell, too. Just get out of the penthouse. And if you can’t get out fast enough, find a good place to hide until Mike gets there.”