Murder Takes the High Road(57)
“Who does?”
“Event planning companies. Granted, I’ve never seen one that lasted for more than a few hours. It would be hard as hell to keep up the illusion. But I bet they have them.”
John absently stroked my back. “Let me see if I have this right. You think Tours to Die For is secretly hosting a make-believe whodunit?”
“Yes! Well...yes. I think so.” Hearing John put into words, the idea sounded farfetched. But the notion that Rose Lane had been murdered in her sleep and Sally...what? Thrown down a well? Was equally—or maybe even more—farfetched.
“What would be the point of hosting such an event if no one knew it was going on?” John asked, reasonably.
I thought it over. “Nearly everyone on this tour is a rabid mystery buff. The possibility of being caught up in a real-life mystery is guaranteed to entertain most of us, even if we don’t take it seriously.”
John’s mouth twitched like something funny had occurred to him.
“What?”
“Some of you would be bound to take it more seriously than others.”
I knew just as surely as if he had a thought bubble over his head that he was remembering me sneaking out of Rose’s hotel room the night before. I cleared my throat.
“Er, yeah. Probably.”
He grinned.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “You don’t have to say it.”
“Your expression when you saw me standing there—”
“You can shut up now.”
“No, but really, you make a very cute burglar. You can come burgle me any time.”
He bumped encouragingly against me, clearly not intending his words to act like an ice bucket, but they had that effect. My excitement faded. “Damn. You’re right.”
“I...am?”
“Our room being searched doesn’t fit. Shoving me down the stairs couldn’t be part of any planned murder-mystery weekend because I could have broken my neck.”
The good humor faded from John’s face. In fact, he looked unexpectedly bleak. “Yes. I know.”
I sighed. “It was a nice theory, and I’d prefer to think there’s nothing potentially dangerous going on, but the break-in messes up my whole thesis. No insurance company in the world would cover an enterprise that included shoving people down stairs.”
“True.” John said neutrally, “But maybe our room being searched wasn’t part of the rest of it.”
His eyes met mine apologetically.
“No?”
“I don’t think so,” John said. “In fact, I’d bet money on it.”
I started to answer but was cut off by a second loud and resounding reverberation of the dinner gong. We were about to miss having drinks in the drawing room with Vanessa.
“Maybe we could skip dinner, Sherlock,” John murmured, running a suggestive hand over my ass cheek. “We could continue to discuss the case. What do you say?”
“Regretfully, I say no way. If I’m right about this, the next couple of days are going to be so much fun.”
He sighed and gave me a light swat. “Okay. I’ll see you down there. Don’t fall through any trapdoors.”
“It’s the secret panels you have to watch out for,” I said. “Those are the ones that get you in the end.”
He cocked an eyebrow, opened his mouth, and I laughed. “Hold that thought, Watson.”
Chapter Nineteen
By the time I finished my shower, shaved, dressed and hurried downstairs I had completely convinced myself we were at the start of a Mystery Weekend to end all Mystery Weekends, so it was frankly a little disappointing when I walked into the drawing room and the first person I spotted was Rose.
She wore a yellow sequined dress and stood at the center of a circle of my fellow tour members, beaming and preening. Holding up her drink, she chortled, “As if I’d be so stupid as to let anyone see I suspected them of murder!”
John came up on my left and pushed a glass into my unresisting hand. “Surprise,” he said softly.
“Damn. It’s over?” I can’t pretend I didn’t feel deflated. Not only was the game finished, I’d missed the grand reveal.
“They always fall for it,” Hamish said sardonically, reaching for one of the hot morsels on the circulating trays of hors d’oeuvres. He had removed his alarming corrective glasses—and his hair piece and, it turned out, an impressive set of prosthodontics. He was probably twenty years younger than I’d ever suspected. So much for my sleuthing skills. So much for all our sleuthing skills. Hamish had sat under our noses for three days in that ridiculous get-up and we’d never suspected a thing.
Chagrined, I looked at John. He laughed. “It’s even worse in my case.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but didn’t get a chance to question him because Sally, in a brown silk dress decorated with smiling Cheshire cats, reached us and threw her arms around me. “Surprise!” She was laughing. “Or is it? I thought you were going to ruin everything this afternoon.”
“So, it was you down by the beach?” Not that there was much doubt now.
“I thought you guys would never go away! Of course, I didn’t know at the time the mystery weekend was going to be wound up tonight.” She made a face. “That was a letdown. I was really looking forward to my appearance at the séance.”