The Hidden

“Then you won’t care if we search your rooms, right?” Lieutenant Gray asked.

“Go ahead,” Charles said, his tone furious. “Knock yourselves out. You want a strip search, too?”

Angus grinned and looked over at Jane. “You can strip-search me—as long as it’s one of the pretty agents who does it.”

Gigi made a disgusted noise and shuddered.

“Sure as hell wouldn’t want it be you, you old prune,” Angus said.

“Enough!” Gwen said. “I’ll go up and get my purse for you. I assume you’d like to send someone with me to make sure I don’t take anything out of it first?”

“Thank you, Gwen,” Diego said. “Jane will go with you.” He addressed the room again. “People nearly died here tonight. I would think that anyone who’s innocent would want us tearing the place apart.”

“You go right ahead and tear our room apart,” Gwen said. “Because Charles and I are leaving.”

“Not before Gigi and I do,” Clark said.

“You’re not leaving until Lieutenant Gray says you’re leaving,” Diego said firmly.

“You’re not leaving,” Gray said.

“Arrest me, then,” Clark said, daring him.

“All right,” Gray said, “you’re under arrest for murder.”

“What?” Clark demanded.

“Let’s just sit down and wait,” Gigi begged him.

As if on cue, one of the crime-scene techs came in, his countenance grim. He walked straight over to Lieutenant Gray and whispered to him. Gray nodded toward Diego, who joined him for a quick sotto voce conference.

“Apparently,” Diego said to the group, “they’ve found something in Mr. Ballantree’s room.”

Terry leaped to his feet. “I didn’t put it there.”

“You didn’t put what there?” Diego asked.

“That key—that wretched key.”

“What makes you think they’ve found the key?” Diego asked.

“Well, I—I... We were talking about the key, so of course I assumed—”

Diego smiled. “Well, Terry, they did in fact find the key in your room.”

Terry exhaled in surrender. “Okay, I admit it. I did it. I moved the statue up the stairs and into Scarlet’s bedroom. But, that’s it! It was a joke, just a joke. I kind of had a thing for her, and I figured she’d freak out and maybe come to me for protection or something. But she didn’t. And then you guys showed up and I realized it was pointless anyway, she was never going to look at me twice. But I didn’t murder anyone. I was in town when the Parkers were killed, too, so I couldn’t have done it.”

“You will come down to the station, and we will talk further,” Lieutenant Gray said quietly.

“But it was just a joke. I didn’t mean any harm,” Terry said, his voice high with fear and his face ashen.

“And I guess you didn’t mean any harm tonight, either, right?” Linda demanded. “You might have killed all of us!”

“I had nothing to do with tonight. I swear it,” Terry said. “For God’s sake, I’m the only one who got hurt.” He turned back to Diego and Gray. “And you don’t understand. That key can’t be in my room. It’s impossible. I threw it in a stream. I’m not stupid. I got rid of the damned thing immediately. So if you found a key in my room, I’m telling you now, it’s not the key I had made.”

“Listen,” Clark Levin said. “You’ve got your man, so for the love of everything holy, can the rest of us go?”

“Oh, good God!” Linda suddenly announced. “Trust me, Terry didn’t kill the Parkers.”

“And how do you know that?” Brett asked her.

“Because he was my date that night,” Linda said, shaking her head.

“Why didn’t you tell us that earlier?” Diego asked her.

Linda shrugged and glanced at Ben. “There’s an unspoken rule here that we don’t date guests. I was afraid of losing my job.”

“I don’t understand why you’re wasting time with any of this,” Gigi complained. “This is Ben’s house. Obviously he’s the one who booby-trapped the moose.”