“Well, if we’re not going to make a getaway, shouldn’t we try to search some more rooms?” she asked quietly.
“In a few minutes the whole place will be crawling with cops,” I said. “I think we should postpone doing anything illegal or even suspicious-looking until they’re gone.”
“But they’re all our cops,” she protested. “Chief Burke and his men.”
“Not anymore,” I said. “They already borrowed a bunch of officers from Clay County yesterday, and the chief said last night he was going to ask for help from his friend, the sheriff of Goochland County. And for all we know, the State Bureau of Investigation may have shown up by now. Maybe even the FBI.”
She nodded.
“I’ll be in the bar,” she said. “I need another martini.”
I turned to follow her inside.
“Ma’am? You can’t leave that van here!”
I contemplated the long walk back from the south parking lot and turned to the bellman.
“Unfortunately, my van is now part of the crime scene,” I said. “Chief Burke would be very displeased if I moved it before he got here. Come on, Osgood.”
I grabbed Osgood’s arm and steered him inside. No use adding heatstroke on top of shell shock.
We joined Caroline in the bar. The notion of a martini sounded tempting, but I decided to stay optimistic and assume I’d be driving us home soon. So I ordered an iced tea for myself and one for Osgood.
Caroline looked as if she had something on her mind. When the waiter left with our orders, she looked at Osgood and frowned.
“Do you have the dingus?” she asked me.
“The dingus?” I repeated.
“The borrowed dingus,” she elaborated.
“Oh, that dingus,” I said. “Yes, it’s in my pocket.”
“Its owner called,” she said. “She wants it back, ASAP. Can you put it back where we got it?”
“I’m not sure I remember exactly where we got it,” I said. “And I think that’s a place both she and we should be staying away from right now. But I have an idea. Tell the owner to go down to the loading dock in fifteen minutes. I will leave the dingus in a dead drop there. Don’t worry—she’ll recognize it immediately.”
Caroline frowned, and clearly wanted to ask more questions, but Osgood’s presence inhibited her.
I went to the hotel gift shop, which I knew from previous experience contained an uncannily large selection of plush toys, at least a dozen of which had made their way into Josh’s and Jamie’s cribs, courtesy of my doting grandfather.
I picked out a plush mouse with a long pink tail. I stopped off in the ladies room, where I used a pair of nail scissors to unpick a few stitches and make a hole large enough to contain the key card.
I sat the mouse down at one edge of the loading dock with a fallen petunia blossom between his paws and made it back to the lobby in well under fifteen minutes.
Back in the bar, Osgood had begun to recover from the worst of his shock.
“It was a Vulcan,” he was saying. “Brand-new this May.”
“Was your insurance current?” Caroline asked.
“Of course,” Osgood said. “But what a terrible thing to do to such a beautiful piece of machinery. A Vulcan.”
He took a gulp of his iced tea and then stared at it with displeasure.
“I could use something a lot stronger than that,” he said.
“So you could,” Caroline said. “But not until after you talk to the chief. When you’re finished with that, the first round’s on me. And what luck! There he is now.”
The chief was standing in the lobby, looking around. When he spotted us, he frowned.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“Do we come clean about what we were doing here?” Caroline asked.
“I think we have to,” I said. “But I’m not looking forward to it.”
But the chief left us to cool our heels while he interrogated first the groundskeeper who’d called the Shiffley Towing Company, and then Osgood.
Finally it was my turn. A deputy led me to the conference room the chief was using as his temporary office. Not, I noted, a Caerphilly deputy—I knew them all, at least by sight.
The chief was sitting near one end of a mahogany conference table only slightly smaller than my first apartment. He indicated a seat diagonally across from him, probably because if I sat directly across the table he’d need binoculars to see my expression. When I was seated, he fixed me with a look of stern disappointment, but he didn’t say anything until the borrowed deputy left the room.
“And I’m sure there’s a good reason why you and Caroline were here today,” he said at last.