Fowl Prey (7 page)

Judith looked at him unblinkingly. “I'd narrow that down to about forty. I think you can eliminate the first six floors of guests, and the staff.”

“I don't need any advice from American tourists who try to deceive the Canadian police.”

MacKenzie's ferocious glare would have intimidated anyone who hadn't been married to Dan McMonigle for over 18 years. But Judith stood her ground. “You'd save yourself a lot of trouble if you did.” She wavered, wondering if she should ask about Tootle. Or mention the photograph of Maria in Bob-o's apartment. But MacKenzie's men should have found both, unless they were bat-blind. And Judith felt she owed a certain amount of loyalty to
Maria. They had, after all, both danced the minuet at Our Lady, Star of the Sea Parochial School. “No early leads, I gather,” she finally ventured, aware that the more suspects MacKenzie considered, the longer it would take to find the killer. Gertrude's scrawny image materialized in a haze of black cigarette smoke and blue curses.

“We don't discuss our progress with the public,” MacKenzie replied, turning back to the desk. “Indeed, we don't have a coroner's report as yet.” His tone shifted slightly, as if his natural affability was resurfacing.

“Have you got a name?” Judith inquired, ignoring Renie's tug on her sleeve.

“A name?” MacKenzie's heavy dark brows came together under the brim of his hat. He hesitated. “Oh. Robin O'Rourke. Born in London, November 11, 1918.” His face broke into a sheepish grin. “You were right. According to his landlady, he's a widower. Wife died during the Blitz. One daughter, also deceased.”

Taking advantage of MacKenzie's softer side, Judith uttered a little sigh. “Poor man, all alone in the world. Except for Tootle, of course.” She lowered her lashes as if in sympathy, but kept one eye peeled on the detective.

“Well, yes. Rather.” MacKenzie shuffled some of the registration forms at Doris, whose fatigue was obvious. “Plane, as opposed to car or rail. Or bus, for that matter,” he said. “Get some help, ma'am. You looked tired.”

Judith took MacKenzie's ambiguous reaction to the parakeet as an acknowledgment of the bird's demise. He was now rifling the cardboard box, but stopped abruptly with an exclamation of satisfaction. “You're right, they were here in February 1989.”

Despite her weariness, Doris looked pleased. She was probably in her fifties, Judith surmised, a tall, angular woman who may have been accustomed to crises, but not to dead bodies in the hotel elevator. “We had that terrible winter, with all the snow. The Rothsides had to stay an extra two days because the airport was closed.”

Judith glanced at Renie. So they had found the photo
graph of Maria, too. Otherwise, Judith reasoned, why single out the Rothsides? The detective was going through the box again. Renie gave another yank on Judith's arm. “Let's head up,” she urged in a whisper. “He's not going to tell you anything.”

“That's true,” said MacKenzie in a genial voice, his keen ears picking up Renie's words. “What I will say is that I see you and Mr. Jones have visited the Clovia every October for the past ten years—until this one. Why is that?”

Renie gave Judith a helpless look. “Bill had a conference in mid-October in Salt Lake, and Judith's birthday fell on the first weekend, and the third one was our daughter's, and then Uncle Al gave a Halloween costume party. After that, my husband I had our birthdays—they all come at the end of the year, you see, it's such a hectic time—and I had a deadline on a presentation to the gas company, and my husband got bronchitis, and we'd given Judith a suitcase for her birthday, and she needed a rest, but we had to schedule our trip when she didn't have any guests, and now we have to go home Wednesday or Aunt Gertrude will kill us.” Renie ran out of breath and explanations at the same time.

“Indeed.” MacKenzie actually looked as if he'd taken everything in. “So you knew Bob-o from your previous visits, eh?”

“Of course,” Renie gulped.

“Ever talk to him before today?”

“No. You didn't talk
to
Bob-o, he talked
at
you. Like a broken record.” Renie's vocal pace slowed as she mounted onto firmer ground.

MacKenzie appeared satisfied, but he perused the Jones file once more. “Mr. Jones always asks for extra bath towels. You've complained six times about room service being slow with breakfast. Interesting.”

“I was hungry,” Renie said sulkily.

MacKenzie wore an expression of faint amusement.
“Which explains why you two exited the hotel via the fire escape.” The heavy eyebrows arched a bit.

“So much for our life of crime,” murmured Judith. She saw the detective's eyebrows still raised, and let out a little sigh. “Or maybe not.”

But MacKenzie was finishing up with the hotel records. “My men will check these out in the morning, after you've sorted through them,” he said to Doris. Bidding all three women good night, he doffed his battered hat and went out through the Hepburn Street exit.

Doris drooped on the desk. “I can't get anyone reliable to help me this late,” she complained, her pinched face about the same color as her olive-green blouse. “That's the trouble these days, we have so many foreigners who can't speak—let alone read—English.”

“We'll help,” volunteered Judith over a groan of protest from Renie. “What does he want, how people arrived at the hotel?”

Doris looked skeptical. “For starters. But I can't ask guests to—”

“Of course you can,” cut in Judith, nimbly stepping behind the desk. “I'm in the same business myself. Let's sort these into three stacks. It won't take that long.”

It didn't, since each registration card was clearly marked as to what mode of transportation that particular party had used. In the case of automobiles, even the make, year, and license plate were given. With fewer than one hundred rooms, it took Doris and the cousins less than fifteen minutes to sort through the cards. In the wake of Doris's speech of gratitude, Judith and Renie headed up to the eighth floor, not in the passenger elevator, but in the car usually reserved for freight. The scene of Bob-o's murder was still off limits, according to Doris.

“So,” said Judith, as the cousins undressed and prepared for bed, “Max and Maria flew in from London, arriving Saturday. Spud and Evelyn flew in from New York, arriving yesterday. Desiree and Alabama have been here for over a week, taking the plane from Los Angles.”
She paused, tying her blue terrycloth robe in place and consulting the hastily scribbled notes she'd made on the back of a Hotel Clovia postcard. “Doris said Desiree was here to do a play at the King Charles II Theatre. An all-star
Christmas Carol
gala, she thought. As for Birdwell, he came yesterday on the train, hates to fly. And Mildred,” she continued, trying to decipher her own handwriting, “drove in, apparently with a rental car, Oregon plates. Her home address is given as New York City.”

“All of which tells us nothing,” noted Renie. She was zipped into a voluminous deep purple velour bathrobe, her face smeared with something that looked to Judith like bear grease.

“Not so,” countered Judith. She smirked at her cousin. “It tells us that only Mildred and Birdwell could have brought a gun along.”

Enlightenment dawned on Renie. “Of course! The airlines people would have found any guns with those metal detector things.”

“Right.” Judith put a check next to Mildred and Birdwell's names. “But in a car or on a train, you could take a chance and sneak a gun in. Just like Cuban cigars.” She gave Renie a cunning look. “And if, as you say, the gun laws up here are so tough, I doubt that any of the others could have brought one. At least not the Frobishers or even the Rothsides, since they just got here over the weekend.”

Renie sat down on the sofa, going over the notes she'd made on the back of a hotel message slip. “I'm not sure I got everybody on the seventh floor. Frankly, they're an innocuous bunch. An entire family of ten who drove in from Calgary, occupying three rooms, a pair of honeymooners from San Mateo, a doctor and his wife from Saskatchewan, two priests from Quebec, a couple of young women from home who live on the other side of the lake, and three couples on a senior citizens' bus tour out of Edmonton.”

“Innocuous is right,” agreed Judith, still studying her
own scribbles. “Birdwell. Mildred. I can see somebody shooting either of them, but not the other way 'round.”

“I can't see either of them packing a gun. Of course they both live in New York, don't they?”

Judith rechecked her notation for Birdwell's address. “True. I suppose that's reason enough.” She glanced at her watch. “Damn, we missed the eleven o'clock news. It's going on midnight.”

“I'm going on to bed,” announced Renie, getting up and heading for her separate bedroom. “Do you think they've left police on duty?”

Judith went to the window. The ships still rested at anchor, their light showing amber in the night. The sweep of the bay curved almost as far as the eye could see, with the dark stands of timber in Empress Park faintly outlined against the sky. Down in the street, traffic had let up, with only the occasional car passing by. But just across from the hotel, in a No Parking zone where Bob-o's popcorn wagon used to stand, Judith saw the sedan with its telltale rack.

“I think we're safe,” she said. “At least from the Clovia's libertine revelers trying to break down the front door.”

Only partially reassured, Renie bade her cousin good night. Silence settled in over the hotel, but for Judith it brought no peace. She lay on her back in the comfortable bed with its fluted headboard and polished mahogany, staring at the ceiling. Renie, that Queen of the Creature Comforts, was probably already asleep. Judith mentally cursed her cousin and rolled over onto her side. Of course anyone could have killed Bob-o. The man was simply an admirer of theater people, filling his lonely life with famous faces. By some strange coincidence, one of them had shown up in Port Royal. For all Judith knew, any of them—Gielgud, Olivier, Burton—could have visited the city over the years. It was, after all, the hub of Canada's West Coast. And Bob-o, widowed and childless, had formed a fixation for these splendid performers. It often happened; it was a cliché.

It was ridiculous of Judith to think that she could solve the riddle of Bob-o. If she and Renie wanted to leave Port Royal by Wednesday, it was more important to prove that they had nothing to do with his death. Surely Angus MacKenzie didn't really believe that she and Renie could be implicated. The only thing they were guilty of was taking tea with Bob-o in his squalid apartment. Unfortunately, they were probably the only two people who had visited the dead man in a long time.

Except, perhaps, for the murderer.

The problem was trying to prove that neither Judith nor Renie was the killer. For on the face of it, the cousins had as little—and therefore as much—of a motive as anyone else. Judith turned over onto her other side.

She was trying to reassure herself that without any evidence the police couldn't possibly keep her and Renie in Canada, when she heard a strange noise. Judith tensed, then pulled herself up into a sitting position. Someone was knocking at the outer door. It was a timorous knock to begin with, but now it grew bolder, more insistent. Judith slipped out of bed and threw her robe over her flannel nightgown. She glanced in at Renie, but her cousin was sleeping like a log.

The Clovia had been built in an era when peepholes were superfluous. Judith slipped the deadbolt, but kept the chain on, opening the door enough to see who was calling after midnight.

“Mildred?” Judith gaped, then removed the chain. It was hard to tell which woman was more surprised.

“Oh!” Mildred squeaked and squinted. “Mrs. McDoodle! Excuse me, I…oh, dear…” She was all at sea, twittering away in a pale pink wrapper with fuzzy white slippers on her feet.

“Can I help you?” Judith asked for want of anything better to say.

“No, no,” insisted Mildred. “I was…I made a mistake. I was looking for my Epilady.”

“I may have a Bic,” Judith offered.

Distractedly, Mildred scanned the deserted hallway. “Never mind. But thank you.” She peered at the number on the door. “Oh! Of course! This is 804! I meant to go to 803, Desiree and Alabama's room! I'm a bit upset, I'm afraid. That poor old man in the elevator, coming right on top of the troubles with my mother. She's eighty-five and lives alone in Sweet Home, Oregon, and can you believe someone broke into her house last month? In Sweet Home? Bikers, I think. She's very frail and so delicate. It's a wonder she didn't have a stroke.”

“Poor thing,” commiserated Judith, trying to imagine Gertrude confronting a gang of bikers. Visions of long-haired, drug-crazed hoodlums shaking in their biking boots danced before her eyes. “Was anything taken?”

Mildred was still darting nervous glances in every direction. “No. Yes, the heirloom silver. We think. Mother can't remember where she put it.” With an uncertain smile, Mildred waved both hands. “I must get to bed. I'm so sorry I disturbed you. I'm such a silly fool!” On fuzzy feet, she hurried off down the hall.

A disheveled, sleepy-eyed Renie was hanging on the door to her bedroom. “Whazzit?” she muttered.

Judith replaced the chain and turned to Renie. “Mildred, with fuzzy feet and furry legs. Or so she'd have you believe.”

“Huh?” Renie staggered slightly as she came into the sitting room.

Judith switched on a light, dazzling Renie. “She claimed to be looking for her Epilady. She claimed to be looking for Desiree, who, if memory serves, borrowed it. She also claimed to have a mother in Sweet Home, Oregon.”

“Mmm?”

“Go back to bed. You're already back to sleep.” Judith sat down on the sofa, picking up the glitz-'n'-glamour novel she'd brought along. “I'm going to read myself into unconsciousness.”