Peril at Granite Peak (10 page)

“I'm sorry, Nate,” Mr. Gallagher was saying soothingly. “I'm sure your book will turn up. Maybe one of the other guests borrowed it without realizing it was yours.”

“You lost your book?” I asked.

Nate glanced at me and frowned. “I didn't lose it. I left it on the table over there while Cassie and I were taking a walk. When I came back to get it just now, it was gone!”

He sounded a lot like that little kid with the missing boots. Was this the same sort of situation? Was Nate so distracted by his beautiful new bride that he couldn't keep track of where he'd left things? Or had the book really disappeared?

“If someone found it, they might have returned it to the library,” Mr. Gallagher suggested. “Let's go take a look, shall we?”

“It's not that big of a deal,” Cassie spoke up, scurrying after Nate and Mr. Gallagher as they headed off across the lobby. “I'm sure it will turn up.”

“So something else has disappeared,” I said.

Joe shrugged. “Yeah, a book. Why would someone bother to steal something like that? It's not like they can sell it on the black market for big bucks.”

“Can't do that with a pair of little kid boots, either,” I
pointed out. “I'm thinking either the disappearances are a coincidence, or someone's just out to cause mischief.”

“Why?” Joe wondered.

Chet looked worried. “Maybe someone's trying to ruin the Gallaghers,” he said. “If things keep going wrong, I'm sure people will talk about it, and—”

He was cut off by a sudden loud hum that seemed to come from every direction at once.

A second later all the lights went off!

H
EY!” SOMEONE YELLED. IT SOUNDED
like Frank, but I couldn't be sure. With the lights off, it was pretty dark in the lobby despite the huge windows. The heavy snow still falling outside blocked most of the light. Only the eerie orange glow of the fireplace offered any real illumination.

“Calm down, everyone!” Mr. Gallagher's voice rang out over a chorus of shouts and murmurs of alarm, along with the wails of at least a few of the Richmond children. “We'll get this sorted out. In the meantime, everyone please stay where you are.”

The chaos soon subsided, at least somewhat. Mr. Gallagher hurried off to check on whether the rest of the
lodge had power. Meanwhile Mrs. Gallagher and the chef started digging up candles and flashlights and distributing them to everyone. When she reached us, Mrs. Gallagher handed me a fat candle in an old-fashioned cast-iron holder.

“Can you be trusted with fire, Joe?” she asked with a wink.

I grinned. “Sure thing, Mrs. G. I've only burned down a few minor landmarks.”

She snorted and moved on. “Careful with that,” Frank said as I lit the candle.

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks, Mom.” The candle sputtered and took, casting a tiny circle of cheerful yellow light. I held it up near my chin and made a monster face at Chet, who snickered. This was actually kind of fun—like camping.

Well, it would be fun if there wasn't a possible attempted murderer around, anyway. . . .

I forgot about that as the second maid came into the lobby, followed by Poppy, who was wielding a small flashlight. “So it's not just my room that went dark,” Poppy said to the room at large. “What happened?”

“Some kind of temporary outage,” Mrs. Gallagher told her. “We'll have it sorted out soon.”

“Oh.” Poppy looked mildly dismayed. “I'm glad I was just reading a book and not in the shower or something.”

As she wandered off to talk to the honeymooners, Mr. Gallagher returned. Rick was with him.

“Seems to be a general outage,” the lodge owner announced. “The generator must have cut off.”

“Why?” Mr. Richmond sounded nervous. “Does this mean we won't have any heat?”

“Please try not to worry,” Mrs. Gallagher said. “My husband and Rick will go out right now and get it running again.”

“I'll come too,” Chet volunteered, stepping forward. “I'm pretty good at tinkering around with mechanical stuff.”

“Yeah,” I muttered to Frank with a grin. “As long as the stuff in question isn't the engine of a certain creaky old jalopy.”

But Mr. Gallagher was nodding gratefully at Chet. “We can use an extra set of hands,” he said. “Come on.” He glanced at his wife. “Send Cody out to help us if you see him.”

“Should we go too?” Frank asked. “We're both pretty handy.”

I shrugged, not really in the mood to plunge out into the storm. “Let them handle it,” I said. “Chet will come get us if he thinks we can be useful.”

Glancing around the room, I realized that almost everyone was gathered in one room. It reminded me of those old-school mysteries where the detective gathers everyone together and announces the identity of the murderer. Too bad Frank and I hadn't solved our mystery.

“Where's Stanley?” Frank broke into my thoughts. “I'm surprised he hasn't turned up to complain about this yet.”

I realized he was right. “Who knows? With his luck, he probably was in the shower when it happened.”

As if on cue, Stanley burst into the lobby. “What's going on?” he exclaimed loudly. His hair looked damp in the dim, flickering light, and I grinned and elbowed Frank.

“Looks like I called it, dude,” I whispered as Stanley bustled over to complain to Mrs. Gallagher.

A few minutes later Chet walked in, breathless and pink-cheeked and shaking off the snow. He stopped in the middle of the room.

“They sent me in to say the power will be back on in a few minutes,” he announced loudly to murmurs of relief and one irritated-sounding “About time!” from Stanley.

Then Chet hurried over. “They kick you out when they heard about the Queen?” I joked.

Chet didn't seem to hear me. He glanced around to make sure nobody was close enough to eavesdrop.

“This is bad,” he whispered, running a hand through his snow-dampened hair. “The generator going out was no accident. The wires were cut!”

“What?” Frank and I said in one voice.

Chet nodded grimly. “No question about it. Somebody did it on purpose.”

“But why?” I almost immediately realized the answer to my own question. “Unless it's to make this place look bad.”

“Again,” Frank added with a nod. “Are they really going to be able to get it up and running again?”

“Yeah, sounds like it,” Chet replied. “That Rick guy is really handy. Cody, too—he and Blizz turned up a minute ago.”

“I wonder . . . ,” Frank began.

I elbowed him when I saw Poppy heading our way. “Never a dull moment around here, huh?” she said cheerfully.

“Right.” I decided it couldn't hurt to do a little investigating while we waited for the power to come on. “Um, so you were upstairs in your room when it happened, huh?”

She nodded. “What were you guys doing? Have you gone to any of the extra activities today?”

“No, we've pretty much been entertaining ourselves,” Frank said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the chef hand Stanley a plate with several cookies on it. “Excuse me a sec.”

Leaving Poppy talking to Frank and Chet, I hurried over to intercept the chef as she left Stanley with his food. She'd been willing to talk to Chet earlier. Maybe I could get the answer to a question I'd been wondering about.

“Can I ask you something?” I said. “How do you all put up with that guy?” I gestured at Stanley, who had his back to us as he wolfed down his cookies.

“Who, Mr. Wright?” The chef glanced at him, then shrugged. “Just part of the job.”

“Okay,” I said. “But the guy is seriously obnoxious. It's not like anyone would blame you if you didn't wait on him hand and foot, you know?”

The chef hesitated, glancing in Stanley's direction again. Then she winked. “Okay, I admit it. The cash helps.”

“Cash?” I echoed.

She nodded. “Mr. Wright likes to play the big spender,” she whispered. “He's been waving cash around at all of us since he arrived.” She shot me a slightly suspicious look. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason. Just curious.” I gave her my most winning smile, then wandered off. So Stanley had been flashing money at the staff to get better service. That explained a lot—like why Josie had been so worried about him after his near miss out in the storm.

Wanting to confirm that, I glanced around. But Josie was nowhere in sight. And I didn't quite dare go up to Mrs. Gallagher and ask if that was why they were being so nice to Stanley—because he was bringing a lot of extra cash into their struggling business.

Did it mean anything? I wasn't sure. But I went over to fill in Frank and Chet just in case.

•  •  •

By bedtime the storm was still going strong, though power had been back on for long enough that most of the guests seemed to have forgotten about the outage. Frank, Chet, and I were definitely not among those guests, however.

“There must be a way to figure out who could have sneaked outside long enough to cut those generator wires,” I said as I watched Frank kick off his slippers and flop onto his bed.

He yawned. “At least we can rule out a few people,” he said. “Starting with everyone who was in the lobby with us when the lights cut off.”

“And Poppy, who was up in her room,” I added.

To be honest, I was feeling frustrated by our lack of progress on the case. How hard could it be to pick a troublemaker out of a couple of dozen people? There had to be clues we were missing.

I crawled into bed and turned off the light. Could Frank and I be off our game? I was really starting to wonder. . . .

•  •  •

The next morning I woke up early, not feeling particularly well rested. It had taken longer than usual to fall asleep. And my dreams had been restless, filled with barking dogs and shouting, though I couldn't remember many details.

The snow was still coming down outside, but it had definitely slowed. The wind had died down too.

“Looks like the storm's almost over,” Chet said hopefully.

I yawned. “About time. Let's get downstairs—I'm in serious need of coffee.”

But when we entered the dining room, we got a caffeine-free wakeup call that jolted me to full attention. The place was a mess!

Well, not the entire place. But several tables were overturned near the kitchen door, and food wrappers and shredded napkins were scattered here and there.

“What happened?” I called to Cody, who was rushing past with a bucket in his hand and Blizz at his heels.

He stopped and looked at us, his face weary. “Raccoons,” he said grimly. “Somehow a window in the kitchen got broken, and they came in last night. Took a while to chase them all out. Luckily, Blizz smelled them before they had a chance to get any farther into the lodge. Woke me up by barking and scratching at the door.”

I nodded, my weird dog dreams suddenly making a lot more sense. “Good girl,” I said, giving Blizz a pat.

“Cody!” Mr. Gallagher shouted from across the room. “A little help over here?”

Cody hurried off. “Raccoons?” Frank said. “I thought they hibernated in the winter.”

The honeymooners walked into the room just in time to hear him. “Actually, they don't,” Nate said. “We learned all about it at the wildlife lecture yesterday. They're less active at this time of year, but they're not true hibernators, and . . .”
His voice trailed off as he got a look around. “What happened here?”

By the time we finished explaining what Cody had just told us, the staff had most of the tables back in place. As Rick swept up the rest of the trash, Mrs. Gallagher clapped her hands.

“Attention, guests,” she called out. “Sorry for the disruption. We'll have it cleaned up soon, but in the meantime, please enjoy your breakfast.” She gestured at the buffet table, where Josie and the other waitress were busy setting out food.

“Excellent,” Chet said, patting his belly. “Let's go.”

We headed over, ending up at the head of the line. “How do you think that window got broken?” I asked Frank in a low voice as Chet grabbed a plate and moved forward.

Frank shrugged. “Maybe our culprit,” he replied quietly. “Maybe the storm. Or the raccoons. We should try to get a look at it if we can.”

I nodded, reaching for a plate. Chet was already helping himself to a large stack of waffles.

“Hey, is that a chocolate chip one back there?” he asked eagerly, grabbing a waffle sitting on a plate behind the others.

“Wait!” Josie exclaimed. “That's Mr. Wright's special order. He'll freak out if someone else eats it!”

“Too late,” I said with a grin.

Chet's eyes widened with alarm as he bit down on the waffle. For a second I thought he felt guilty because of what Josie had said.

Then I gasped as he spit the half-chewed waffle into his hand—along with a mouthful of blood!

I
HEARD JOE'S GASP AND
turned to see blood dripping out of Chet's mouth. “Ow!” he mumbled.

“Chet! What happened?” I cried, leaping toward him.

By now others had noticed the blood as well. There were screams and cries of alarm. Mrs. Gallagher rushed over and started fussing over Chet, ordering him to open his mouth so she could see inside.

“Stand back, please!” the older waitress said, gesturing to the other guests, who were gathering around looking shocked and worried. “Give them some room.”

The waffle had fallen to the floor. I grabbed it just before it got trampled by Joe, who was leaping around, telling Chet to hold still.

I punched him lightly in the shoulder to get his attention.
“Check it out,” I said grimly, holding up the waffle. Several shards of glass were poking out of the ragged edge where Chet had bitten!