A Cup of Holiday Fear, page 17
part #10 of Bakeshop Mystery Series
I felt like a kid again as I pressed holly leaf models into the green fondant. The leaves were so perfect that if I didn’t know better, I might have thought they were real. Once I had cut dozens of holly leaves, I turned my attention to the berries and ornaments. The berries didn’t take long, but I cut each of the ornaments by hand into balls and then piped an antique Victorian design with royal icing.
My timer dinged for my cakes after thirty minutes. Somehow over two hours had passed while the cakes cooled and I worked on trimming perfect edges on my ornaments. I arranged each of my fondant pieces on a cookie sheet to allow them to harden. Once the cakes had completely cooled, I cut them into eight layers, stacked them with cream cheese frosting and cranberry bits, and gave the tiers a crumb coat. Crumb coating is the process of applying a thin layer of frosting in order to seal any crumbs into the cake. Many bakers only use a crumb coat before covering a cake with fondant, but I added one last layer of cream cheese frosting. There’s no reason to skimp on frosting. Plus, I wanted my cake to have as much flavor as possible.
On the off-chance that Mom decided to go snooping in the walk-in, where I would store the cake until Christmas Eve, I hid it in a pastry box and marked it with a fake customer name.
I checked the clock. It was after nine. Tim should be done with the Dickens feast by now, so I grabbed my coat, hat, scarf, and gloves and headed out the basement door. The temp had plummeted. A bitter breeze hit my cheeks as I climbed the slippery basement steps up to the plaza. Most shops had closed for the night, but restaurants and pubs were packed with late-evening diners.
“Evening, Juliet!” the owner of Pucks Pub called as I passed by.
A band of tuba players dressed in Santa suits had taken over Pucks’ small stage.
“Whoa! Sounds like you have quite the party going tonight,” I noted.
He stuffed a finger in one ear. “Tell me about it. These guys have played for the past three years and it’s always a sellout, but my ears are ringing.”
“Tuba-playing Santas. That’s pretty unique.”
“They’re really good too. Do you want to come in and listen? I can squeeze you in behind the bar?”
“Thanks, but I’m off to the Winchester.”
“Next year. Mark your calendar. I mean, come on, Jules, tuba-playing Santas; if that doesn’t say holidays in Ashland, nothing does.” He waved as I crossed the street toward the Lithia bubblers. The fountains had been turned off for the season. I missed the comforting sound of the gurgling water but knew that the city had to shut them off for winter as otherwise they would freeze solid.
I stuffed my hands into my pockets. Frosty air poured from my mouth as I trudged up Main Street. Hopefully the receptionist had been correct, and Tim would still be at the Winchester.
I turned off Second Street and puffed my way up the steep hill. I hadn’t been back to the inn since Cami’s murder and the memory of the night sent a tingle up my arms.
Was this a good idea?
Thomas had said to be discreet, but maybe I was making a mistake.
I hesitated for a moment. Maybe I should turn around and sleep on it.
What could possibly happen? I gave myself a pep talk as I headed up the brick walkway. I was meeting Tim at a public place. It was hardly likely that he would attack me at the Winchester bar. And, as I had promised Thomas, I intended to be very subtle in my approach.
The grounds looked just as idyllic as they had the night of Cami’s murder. Had the McBeths added more lawn décor? In addition to the grapevine deer there were now two matching snowmen lighting the pathway to the bar. A dazzling display of miniature star-show lights rained down on the Victorian mansion.
I’d never seen anything quite like it before and stopped to take in the show.
Suddenly the sound of a woman screaming pierced through the quiet night sky. I looked up to the top floor of the historic inn to see the silhouette of a woman and someone in a dark mask holding what appeared to be a baseball bat above his head. Was he going to hit her? Without thinking I sprinted for the front entrance. If I couldn’t get there fast enough there was about to be a second murder.
Chapter Twenty-one
“Stop!” I screamed as I took the steps two at a time and tried the handle on the front door. It was locked.
“Help!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, pounding on the doorway. “Someone help!”
I wasn’t sure what to do. If I waited for someone to come open the front door, the woman’s assailant might have already knocked her out, but my other option was retracing my steps on the slippery path and then weaving through the icy garden to the bar entrance.
“Is anyone in there? Emma? Jon?” I banged on the door so hard that my knuckles ached.
“Help!”
I was about to turn around and head for the bar when the door clicked open. Nate stared at me like he was seeing a ghost.
“Juliet, what’s going on?” He looked behind me.
My expression must have matched his. “Nate? What are you doing here? I thought you had been arrested?”
“They let me go.”
There was no time to waste. “We have to get upstairs.” I didn’t wait for him to respond. I grabbed his arm and dragged him to the stairway.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I saw something in the window. A woman. She was about to get her head smashed.”
“What?” Nate stopped halfway up the stairs.
“I’m serious, Nate. There’s no time. We have to get up there.”
He finally seemed to pick up on my urgency and took the rest of the stairs in four long strides. When we crested the stairwell, Nate looked to the left then the right. “Which room?”
“That one.” I pointed to the first door on the left.
Nate motioned for me to stay back. I watched as he knocked on the door. “Hello, Francine? It’s Nate.”
This was Francine’s room?
No one answered.
Nate cupped his hand over his ear and placed it on the door. He listened for a moment. Then he turned to me.
“Can you hear anything?”
He shrugged and shook his head.
“Maybe you should knock again.”
He followed my advice and knocked on the door, announcing himself as management and that he was doing a well-guest check.
Again, no one answered.
“What should we do? You have a key, right?”
Nate nodded. “Yes, but I can’t enter a guest room without cause.”
“We have cause. I swear, Nate. I saw a woman, probably Francine, in the window. A man, or I guess it could have been a tall woman, was standing behind her with a baseball bat. It looked like they were about to smack her head.”
Nate sighed. “Francine, are you in there? Are you okay? We have a report that you might be in danger. If you don’t answer, I’m going to enter the room, understood?”
He waited.
I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.
“Let’s go,” I said with urgency. “She could be hurt.”
Nate fumbled with a large key ring clipped to his belt. He sorted through keys for what felt like an eternity. When he finally found the right key, he knocked one final time. “Francine, I have reason to believe that you could be in danger. I’m coming in.” With that, he turned the key and stepped inside.
The room was pitch-black. Nate flipped on the lights.
I almost didn’t want to look. What if we were too late? What if Francine was dead?
“There’s no one here, Juliet.” Nate surveyed the room.
“That can’t be. I just saw them.” I followed Nate’s eyes. Sure enough the room looked vacant. Victorian caroling costumes were piled on the bed. The desk had a collection of throat remedies, including honey and essential oils, along with a teapot and fresh lemons.
“What about the bathroom or closet?” I whispered.
Nate nodded. He cleared his throat. “Francine, it’s Nate. I’m here to do a well-check. Are you okay?” He walked to the closet first. Another round of fear pulsed through me. He flung the closet door open. The closet was more like a wardrobe. Victorian houses had been built long before the walk-in-closet trend. Nate shook his head. “Nothing. Just a couple coats.”
We moved toward the bathroom. Once again, he repeated his statement. This time, I expected him to find Francine with her assailant forcing her to keep quiet, but the bathroom was empty too.
“Are you sure you saw someone in the window?” Nate asked, opening every drawer in the bathroom cabinet.
“I’m positive.” I rubbed my eyes. Was I? Maybe the stress of the holiday season was finally making me crack.
“Could your eyes have played a trick on you? We have thousands of lights strung along the roofline. Maybe you saw the lights flickering and accidentally mistook them for a silhouette.”
“Maybe.” Mom had always teased me about my active imagination, but what I had seen felt so real.
Nate pointed to the door. “Let’s go downstairs and check. Francine told me earlier that she was going to ask Tim for something strong to help soothe her throat. It had been giving her trouble during the performance tonight.”
“Okay.” We started toward the door, but something shiny caught my eye. “Wait, what’s that?” I pointed to the floor in front of the window. The four-paneled window was angled to create an alcove with a view of the Winchester’s grounds.
This was the exact spot where I had seen Francine in the window.
Nate squinted.
We both inched toward the alcove. Lying on the carpet was a two-foot-tall candelabra. It was made of pewter and looked quite heavy.
Nate started to reach down to pick it up.
I stopped him. “Don’t. You shouldn’t touch that, just in case it’s evidence.”
“Evidence?” He frowned.
“Yes. What if that’s what I saw? It wasn’t a baseball bat. Whoever was about to hit Francine over the head was going to do it with that candelabra.”
Nate went white. He crouched down to get a closer look at the candleholder.
“Don’t touch it, Nate. I’m serious. If anything happened to Francine, that could be evidence.”
“Trust me, Juliet, I’m not going to touch it. I spent hours in police custody. I don’t want my fingerprints on anything. I just wanted to see what this is.” He pointed to something on the carpet.
I knelt next to him.
“Juliet, is that what I think it is?”
“What?”
He pointed to tiny bright red dots on the cream carpet. “That.”
My eyes focused in on the small spots.
Nate looked at me. “Could that be blood?”
Chapter Twenty-two
I blinked. There were tiny blotches of something red staining the carpet near the window. Nate studied the candlestick. “I can’t tell if there’s blood on it. Can you?”
I shook my head. The pewter was too dark.
“What do we do next?” Nate asked.
At least he believed me now. “I think we should go check the bar and see if Francine is there or if anyone has seen her.” I stood up too fast, making little flashing lights go off in my head.
Nate caught my arm. “Are you okay?”
“Just stood too quickly. Blood rush to the head.”
“Yeah, that happens to me all the time.” Nate ushered me toward the door. I stopped him.
“You know, on second thought, one of us should probably stay here. Do you want to go check and see if Francine is somewhere on the premises and I’ll stay here until you get back? That way if this is a crime scene it will be protected until we call the Professor.”
“Good idea. I’ll be back in a flash.” Nate left with a purpose.
I tried to piece together how much time had passed since I had walked up the pathway and seen motion in the window. How long had it taken me to run to the front door and for Nate to answer? A couple of minutes? If someone had injured—or worse, killed—Francine would they have had time to move her, and where? There were no other signs of a struggle in the hotel room. There also weren’t any other guests around. Or if there were guests they had already turned in for the night.
How could someone have hit Francine on the head, knocked her out, and hidden the body in five minutes?
My mind briefly looped back to the theory that I had imagined everything. I hadn’t been sleeping well. Not that I ever slept much anyway, but with the holiday crush I had been up late and awake early. Maybe this was all in my head.
But that didn’t account for the red spots and the candelabra.
I paced back and forth between the desk and closet. Francine had been complaining about her voice. Maybe she had come up here to change and take some medicine. Then she planned to get a drink in the bar. Could the killer have been waiting for her? Could he or she have taken Francine by surprise?
What if they whacked her on the head from behind and then dragged her somewhere else? The question was, where could a killer hide a body in the Winchester?
I studied the room with a better eye. There was a four-poster bed with matching pewter bedposts. The bed frame came within a few inches of the floor. There was no possible way a killer could have forced Francine’s body underneath the bed. I returned to the bathroom. It was more of the same. Short of hiding the body in the bathtub, the antique basin sink and Victorian cabinet were much too small. Could the killer have pushed the body out of one of the windows?
I tugged at the bathroom window. It didn’t budge. From the thick layer of caulking and paint around the trim, I would guess it hadn’t been opened in decades. The same was true for the bigger windows in the bedroom. Plus, everyone in the bar would have seen a body falling from the third floor.
I moved to the closet next. As Nate had mentioned there were two coats hanging from the rack. Otherwise the closet was bare, except for an extra blanket, pillow, and sheet set resting on the top shelf. I was about to shut the closet door, when I noticed a second, half door near the very back.
I had to duck to open it, but unlike the windows, this door wasn’t locked.
My heart rate spiked as I pushed it open.
Did it lead to extra storage or maybe the eaves of the antique inn?
It was too dark to see anything, so I went to check the nightstands to see if either of them had a flashlight stashed away. Emma had mentioned that they kept flashlights in the guest rooms.
Jackpot! I found a flashlight in the nightstand and returned to the secret closet door.
A voice in the back of my head cautioned me to wait for Nate’s return, but I pushed the warning voice away and ventured deeper into the hidden space.
I scanned the area with the flashlight. No sign of a body. That was good.
The secret door led to a secret passageway. The ceiling opened up about five feet inside so that I didn’t have to crouch down too much.
This could be dangerous, Jules, I told myself.
Is this how Francine’s killer made his escape?
If I followed the narrow passageway, what if I came face-to-face with the killer? I didn’t have a weapon, and no one knew that I was here.
Not smart, Jules.
I sighed.
Should I return and wait for Nate?
But what if the killer was getting away now? I could feel my rational and emotional brains warring. It was like my head was being pulled in two directions.
Finally, I decided to risk it. I had left the closet door open. Nate would figure it out.
That gave me a new thought. Who would have known that this secret chamber existed? Nate and his parents. Anyone else?
Could the killer have used this secret passage the night that Cami was killed?
I continued on, guided by the dim glow of my flashlight. There were dusty cobwebs, a few old cardboard boxes, and some empty bottles of whiskey and wine. I watched my footing.
After about fifty feet the passage stopped at another door.
This is the moment of truth.
I twisted the handle, but the door didn’t open. I tried again and put my weight into my hip to try and force it open, but nothing worked.
Voices echoed nearby.
Where was I?
I had no sense of my bearings in the dark tunnel.
If I couldn’t get the door open, I might as well go back and wait for Nate. He would know where the passageway went and probably had a key to the other door. I crept back through the corridor, using the flashlight to illuminate the way. From the mass of cobwebs sweeping across my face and the piles of dust on the floor, I assumed that the passageway rarely got used. I knew that the practice of constructing hidden rooms or secret passageways wasn’t unheard of in homes built at the turn of the last century. Could the Winchester’s history as a hospital have anything to do with its secret passages?
I made it back to Francine’s room, but when I went to open the hatch in the back of her closet, it was locked.
Uh-oh.
I banged on the door. “Hello! It’s Juliet! I’m in here!”
Had Nate returned and intentionally locked me in the secret passageway? Or had the door shut on its own? I hadn’t paid attention. Nor had I thought to make sure to prop the door open.
Smart, Juliet.
I pounded on the door again and again.
My attempts were futile. As were my screams. The chamber was well insulated and unless someone was very nearby I had a sinking feeling that I wouldn’t be heard.
The night had gone from bad to worse.
I couldn’t stay here forever. No one knew that I had come to the Winchester tonight, except for Nate.
What if the Professor had mistakenly let him go? If Nate was the killer, had he come back finish the job? Maybe Francine had witnessed him killing Cami. He could keep me locked in the narrow passageway forever.
