Murder Takes the High Road(34)

“And they call themselves mystery fans!” she muttered.

“I know.” After a moment of bleak reflection, I sighed. “The thing is, they’re probably right. John said the same thing this morning. Life is full of coincidence. He ought to know. He works in insurance.”

Her brows arched in polite disbelief. “Coincidence? I see. Like you winding up on a bus tour with your ex?”

“That’s not a coincidence.”

“No. Of course it isn’t. And I’m guessing neither is this.” She gave me a sideways look. “What if Rose hid her journal?”

I can’t deny that my heart skipped a beat. “Hid it where? In the hotel?”

“Yes. In her room. What if it’s still there?”

Reality asserted itself. “That seems pretty unlikely. Her belongings will have been packed up and the room cleaned.”

“But if she hid it...”

“Hid it where? It’s a hotel room. It’s not like there are a lot of places she could hide something the size of a journal that it wouldn’t be discovered.”

Sally argued with surprising energy. “No. Think about it. It’s an old building. There are a lot of places something like that could be hidden. All these rooms have armoires, and if Rose’s is anything like mine, it hasn’t had a proper dusting in years. She could have put the journal on top of the armoire and pushed it way to the back. No one would be able to see it from below.”

I had to give her that one. “But why would she hide her journal? At most it would be full of speculation and guessing, which would be rude but not proof.”

“You don’t know that.”

“And what would finding it prove anyway?”

She gave me a look of exasperation. “Carter! How will we know until we find it?”

Until we find it? I gave a disbelieving laugh and shook my head. Sally opened her mouth to argue, but we had reached our destination.

The Pump Room at Strathpeffer turned out to be a quaint brown stone Victorian building surrounded by ancient trees. Nearby was a green and white bandstand and the much larger pavilion. Our driver hopped out to slide open the side panel of the van, telling us he’d return at one o’clock for anyone who wanted a lift back to the hotel.

Sally nimbly leapt out, waiting for me to unfold and climb out after her.

“You could look for Rose’s journal, Carter.” Sally spoke under her breath as we watched the others clamber out of the van.

I gave her a look of horror. “I could what?”

“Your room is right next to Rose’s. They’re not going to rent it out right away, I guarantee you. They’ll wait till all the current guests are gone, so that nobody accidentally spills the beans to the room’s next tenants. It’s a quiet part of the hotel. The rest of us are in the other wing. You could slip in there this evening and have a look around. If you don’t find anything...” She shrugged.

“Even if I was crazy enough to consider the idea, not finding the journal means nothing. You can’t prove a negative.”

She shrugged. “Maybe yes. Maybe no. But finding the journal could change everything. Rose believed she knew something. Believed she had figured out part of the puzzle. Maybe she paid the price for that knowledge.”

I stared at her in disbelief. I mean, I love mysteries too, but come on. “Listen, if you really believe that, you search Rose’s room.”

“It’s not practical for me to try. My room isn’t anywhere near hers. Plus, we spent a lot of time together. Someone might be watching me.”

Someone might be watching me?

“It’s not practical for me to try either.”

Sally’s face fell. “I was sure you’d have more spirit of adventure.”

“That hurts. I was sure you’d have more commonsense.” I turned to follow my fellow tourists into the Pump Room.

I don’t want to take anything away from the Pump Room because it was actually a nice little museum, complete with Madame Tussaud–style dummies in Victorian costume (or out of Victorian costume, depending on which stage of “taking the waters” they were enacting). There were all kinds of vintage photos depicting Strathpeffer’s glory days—and they were glory days, no question—as well as a short, informative video. While we were unable to sample the therapeutic waters, there was a cute little sweet shop with a wide variety of old-fashioned sweeties.

It was interesting and amusing. The problem was, I couldn’t stop thinking about everything Sally had said. I wanted to dismiss it as nonsense. I was pretty sure it was nonsense. That’s the thing about murder—all violence, really—it feels unbelievable, unimaginable. Until it happens.

And it did happen. Even if the FBI’s latest figures were correct and homicides in the US were at their lowest rate in over fifty years—a forty-nine percent decline—it didn’t change the fact that thousands of people managed to get themselves bumped off every year. Murdered by family, friends, coworkers...and maybe occasionally fellow tourists.

So, while I wanted to believe Sally was being over-imaginative, there was always the possibility her suspicions were correct.

The other problem was—and this is embarrassing to admit even to myself—her suggestion that I search for Rose’s journal triggered a lot of my not-so-latent amateur sleuthing instincts. Long before I’d started reading Vanessa, I’d read the Hardy Boys and the Three Investigators.