“Do you think he likes the room?”

Seth shrugged. “I’m not sure what he’s trying to say.”

Tuffy joined Baxter and curled up next to him.

Seth and I went back out into the living room.

“The dogs seem to have picked that room,” I said. “I guess you two will have to take the other one.”

Dad lugged Mom’s suitcase into the second bedroom. “Wow, fancy.” His voice floated out into the living room.

“This place is great,” Dad said as he came out of the bedroom.

Vi sniffed. “It’s not as castle-y as the hotel. I’ll bet there aren’t any ghosts, either.”

“Most normal people would consider that a good thing, Vi,” Dad said.

“Well, normal people think they have to visit the dentist twice a year,” Vi said. “Doesn’t make them right.”

Vi had as much as declared war with that remark. She must have been really irked that Dad was getting so much attention. Dad was a mostly retired dentist and Vi had floated this theory that dentists were “in cahoots” with an unnamed dental overlord to whip up a frenzy of fear of gum disease. She trotted out the theory whenever she was feeling particularly prickly.

“We’ll let you get settled,” I said. I pulled Vi back outside and Mac followed, pushing her from behind as he swung the door shut before Dad could retaliate.

“Do you have to do that?” I asked.

Vi shrugged and grinned. “Keeps him on his toes.”

Kirk was outside again with his snowblower—we could see the plume of snow in the parking lot.

“I’m going to go talk to Kirk about taking a snowmobile down the road,” Mac said. “Your Dad gave me the keys.”

“We’ll come, too,” Vi said. “I need to talk to him about my yarn bombing. I really want those knitting needles.”

She hooked her arms through ours and dragged us toward the noisy parking lot.

We saw Kirk inside one of those drivable snow throwers slowly working his way along the sidewalk toward the parked cars. Vi waved her arms to attract Kirk’s attention. After a few minutes, Kirk finally noticed us and shut the engine off.

I took a moment to enjoy the silence and then followed Mac and Vi as they crunched through the snow to Kirk.

Mac raised a hand in greeting. “I have the keys to the snowmobiles.” Mac held them out to demonstrate. “I was hoping you and I could ride out to the road to see if we can move the tree—”

Kirk started shaking his head even before Mac finished explaining his plan.

“This is the biggest snowblower we have. It’s almost a mile down the road to the turnoff. It could take days to try to dig our way toward the road through this. I’m not even sure I can deal with the sidewalk. We have a truck service that comes to do the heavy plowing—now I know why he hasn’t shown up yet.”

“With the phones out and the tree down, we’re stuck here unless we can find some help,” Mac said. “We can at least go evaluate the situation.”

“Yeah, okay,” Kirk said. “Let me just finish up here.”

Vi stepped forward, heedless of Kirk’s put-upon attitude.

“I’ve got a doozy of a yarn bombing planned,” she said. “But I really need a ladder . . . and someone to climb on it.”

Kirk nodded. “When I’m done helping the detective clear the tree, I’d love to do some more yarn bombing.” The sarcastic tone was either too subtle for Vi or she chose to ignore it.

“You’re the best!” Vi slugged him in the arm.

Kirk cranked up the snowblower again and steered it toward the parking lot.

We turned and waded back through the snow toward the hotel.

Inside, we stomped our boots and hung our coats on the hooks.

“I’ll catch up with you later,” Mac said and dropped a kiss on my forehead. “I need to get my jeans back before we take the snowmobiles out.” He took the hallway that led toward the stairway to the basement.

I followed Vi up the wide staircase toward our room. She wanted to get her knitting organized for the next workshop and I felt like I needed my own notebook to keep track of all of the suspects in this murder. I hoped she would pack her bag and head down to the lounge.

“So, who should we interview while Mac is off riding around on snowmobiles?” Vi said.

I stopped and turned to look at her.

“We aren’t going to interview anyone. Mac will get the police involved and then it will be up to them to figure this out.”

Vi put her hands on her hips just like my mother always did when she was ready to dig in her heels.

“That’s exactly why we need to interrogate people now,” Vi said. “As soon as the police arrive, we won’t have any authority to ask questions.”

My mouth dropped open and I quickly closed it. “Vi, we don’t have any authority now.”

She grabbed my arm and began hustling me toward our room, shushing me the whole time. As we got to the turn in the hallway, she glanced around and said, “You and I know that, but the rest of them don’t. They’ll tell us their story because they think you and Mac are investigating. We don’t have much time.”

I followed her toward our room, and we both stopped when we saw the door was open. I held my finger to my lips and Vi nodded once. Someone was humming and banging around in there. We approached the room slowly and peeked around the corner of the door.

Holly Raeburn hummed to herself and pulled the sheets smooth on Vi’s bed.

“Oh, it’s you,” Vi said.

Holly whirled around, her hand to her neck, eyes wide.

“You startled me,” she said, and smoothed her skirt.

“Hi, Holly,” Vi said. “We didn’t mean to scare you. We just came up during the break between lunch and the next workshop.”

“I’m sorry, I should have finished with the rooms by now.” She began gathering her cleaning supplies. “I can get out of your way.”

“No, it’s fine, you should stay,” Vi said. She nudged me hard in the ribs. “I’m sure setting up the cottage has put you behind schedule. We don’t mind.”

I looked at Vi while rubbing my side.

She tilted her head toward Holly, who had turned back to the bed and was smoothing the bedspread.

Vi pushed me in Holly’s direction. “Holly, do you mind if I ask a few questions about last night?” I said while glowering at Vi.

Holly stopped fluffing the pillows but didn’t turn around.

“Sure, I heard you were asking people what they were doing when Ms. Carlisle . . . died.” She resumed her pillow fluffing with increased vigor.

“Come sit by the window, Holly,” Vi said. She gestured to the chairs.

Holly set the pillows down and crossed the room to where Vi had already taken the chair with its back to the window. I joined them and we sat in silence for a moment. Holly was quiet. But her eyes held an intensity that was hard to ignore.

Vi took a breath to speak and I held up my hand.

“Detective McKenzie and I are police officers. He works in homicide for Ottawa County and we’re investigating until we can reach the Kalamazoo Police. We’ve been asking everyone where they were last night between six thirty and nine,” I said.

“I’m their assistant,” Vi said. She hooked her thumb in my direction. “Kind of like a deputy.”

I sighed and closed my eyes for a moment. It wouldn’t help to argue in front of Holly so I let it slide.

Holly glanced at both of us and cleared her throat. “I finished up with my usual cleaning at around five thirty and went to the kitchen to grab some dinner.” She looked at the ceiling while talking as if trying to envision her movements from the night before. “Jessica—Ms. Garrett—had said I didn’t need to do the turndown service, so I was planning to go to my room for a little while after I ate and then check with Wallace to see if there was anything else I needed to do.”

Vi and I nodded to encourage her.

“On my way to my room, I ran into Ms. Carlisle. She wanted me to do the turndown service even though Ms. Garrett had said not to and the fact that I am the only housekeeping staff in the building. She had already yelled at me earlier in the day about her room not being tidied, so I didn’t argue with her and said I would start that at seven o’clock.”