RESORT TO MURDER (17 page)

Maggie noticed Holly's expression changing
gradually from polite boredom to interested involvement as the tour
progressed.

"Why'd they just march up to each other like
that? They were getting shot like crazy," she said at one point,
after hearing about the battle in the Miller cornfield where, in
the words of General Hooker, "... the slain lay in rows precisely
as they had stood in their ranks a few moments before."

"I read somewhere,” Maggie said, “that they
still followed outmoded battle tactics that had been used for
centuries when men fought with swords or bare hands."

"Well Jeez! You'd think when they saw half
their armies done in during the first few minutes they'd think,
hey, maybe we should try something different."

"I agree."

They drove past the Mumma farm, some of whose
buildings had been burned during the battle, and to the sunken
road, also called Bloody Lane because of the large number of
casualties - five thousand - that had resulted there.

"My gosh, I never knew that!" Holly said,
astonished. "How come they never told us that when I was here?"

"Maybe they did, but you were busy batting
your eyes at some twelve-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio," Maggie
teased.

Holly grinned. "Yeah, I probably was. How'd
you know that?"

Maggie smiled back. "Just a guess."

They went to the remaining stops, ending
with the Antietam National cemetery. Holly gazed with round eyes at
the endless rows of white crosses. "Gosh. All that from one
battle?"

Maggie nodded. "And these are only the Union
soldiers buried here. And not all of them, either. Some, I suppose,
were returned to their families."

Holly looked at the rows upon rows of
graves, shading her eyes with her hand. She spun around suddenly
and started walking back to the car. "C'mon, let's go, huh? This is
depressing."

They returned the recorder, then got back in
the car. Maggie checked the map, then glanced at her watch as Holly
looked quietly out her window.

"We still have some time, I think, before
you have to get back. I've noticed that the John Brown farm house
isn’t far from here. There're no graves there, I promise. Like to
see it?"

Holly looked over, shrugged and smiled.
"Sure, why not."

As they drove, she said to Maggie, "You
know, there's so much I don't know, and it's stupid because I
should. You were right about me probably fooling around instead of
paying attention. That's how I went through all those years - just
not paying attention. You know, I never finished high school."

"That's too bad."

"Yeah, well, it seemed like a good idea at
the time, to drop out. I mean, my grades were the pits, and it just
all seemed a waste of time. I sometimes wish, though, that I could
go back and do it all over."

Maggie had loads of teacherly advice she
could have offered, but she sensed that Holly wasn't looking for
advice just then. She had the feeling Holly had to figure a few
things out for herself. She was about to make a neutral comment
when Holly abruptly changed the subject.

"By the way, remember I told you I'd ask
around about Rob? See if he had any connection with that girl who
died from an overdose at the hotel?"

Maggie's mind quickly switched gears to keep
up with Holly, and she remembered their conversation when Holly
brought her Lori's journal. She nodded.

"Well, nobody remembered anything between
them. And if you want my personal opinion, you're on the wrong
track if you think Rob had anything to do with Lori's murder."

"Oh? Why do you say that?"

"It's just he's an okay guy. There's no way
he could do anything like that."

Maggie glanced over at Holly, who met her
eyes with wide open ones of her own. "I remember you describing
Eric Semple as an okay guy when I first asked you about him. Now
you seem to have a different opinion. You said during lunch that
you try to keep your distance from him. Did something happen in the
last two days? A problem, I mean, with Eric?"

"No,” Holly answered shortly, looking away,
and Maggie felt the curtain come down again. She decided not to
push it.

The John Brown farm house was a simple frame,
clapboard house. Brown had rented it the summer of 1859, just
before his famous raid on Harper's Ferry, a friendly, white haired
female guide told Maggie and Holly as they strolled through the old
rooms.

"It was here Brown and his followers,
including two of his sons, planned their raid on the U.S. Arsenal,
a raid conducted with thirteen white and five black men."

Brown, she said, had had a lifelong
opposition to slavery. His own father had tried to forcibly free
slaves in Connecticut in 1798. Some felt Brown's opposition was an
obsession, causing him to follow such a foolhardy scheme that ended
up in death for ten of the raiders, including his sons, and
ultimately his own death by hanging.

A drawing of Brown depicting him leading his
men hung on the wall. His arm was raised and his long hair and
beard flew out wildly. But what caught Maggie's attention most were
his eyes which almost glowed with zeal in the black and white
depiction. Apparently it caught Holly's attention also.

"Do you think he was, you know, a little
crazy?" Holly asked.

"He was certainly a fanatic," the guide
answered. "But the mood of the times added plenty of pull to his
own leanings. Perhaps a few decades from now someone will ask if
the Vietnam war protestors and flag burners were a little
crazy."

"Huh?" Holly said.

"I'll explain in the car," Maggie murmured.
She thanked the guide, then said to Holly, "I think we'd better
head back. It looks like a storm coming."

"See what I mean," Holly complained, as she
buckled herself in. "There's so much I don't know. You went to
college. You knew what the guide was talking about. I bet there's
nothing you'd ever have to say `huh' to."

Maggie laughed. "At seventeen I thought I
knew just about everything. Four years of college taught me just
how much I still had to learn."

One thing she still had to learn was who
killed Lori Basker. Was she getting any closer, she wondered? Holly
thought she was on the wrong track suspecting Rob. Was she? Should
she be looking at Eric Semple more? But why was Holly so evasive
about him? Then there was the waiter, Chuck. Had his teen-aged
obsession for Lori grown obsessive? Did he decide if he couldn't
have her, no one would?

Something else nagged at the back of her
mind. If I was so smart I'd figure out what that was too. She
sighed. If only I could translate it all into an equation. This
person equals x plus two. That one equals y minus five. Add it up,
multiply and divide, and there you are! The murderer!

***

CHAPTER 18

Maggie glanced at her watch and stepped on
the gas a little harder. Holly needed to change to her uniform and
be ready to work in fifteen minutes. They pulled onto the steep,
winding road, and as Maggie came to the spot of her near-accident
she looked over at the scraped and dented guard rail. Her muscles
tensed, and Maggie felt her heart beating faster. She began biting
at her lip. Holly, noticing, asked, "Hey, what's the matter?"

"I almost went through that rail yesterday.
Someone in a blue van - a Highview van, I believe - tried to slam
me through it and down the mountain."

"Holy crap! You could have been killed!"

Maggie turned to her. "Yes, I could have.
That's why this person has to be stopped. He's killed before, and
will try to kill again."

Holly said nothing, her face troubled. They
rode the rest of the way in silence, until Maggie finally pulled up
to a side entrance of the hotel to let her out. Holly wriggled out,
then, holding the door open, leaned back in.

"Thanks for everything," she said and,
before Maggie could answer, closed the door and dashed off as
quickly as her high heels would let her.

Maggie watched her for a moment, then drove
on to park her car. She had to brake suddenly to avoid running into
Tyler and Travis, the tow-headed twins she had seen twice before
with Rob. They were kicking a soccer ball around on the gravel -
did they ever sit still? - and had dashed out from between two
parked cars. Maggie waved them across, then looked around
automatically for Rob. No sign of him.

She had parked and climbed out of her car
when the soccer ball came skidding towards her. She quickly blocked
it with her foot to keep it from disappearing under the car.

"Thanks," called Tyler. Or was it Travis? He
ran up and deftly repossessed the ball with a sideways scoop of his
foot, then kicked it over to his brother.

Maggie watched them thoughtfully for a
moment, then leaned back against her car, waiting for them to take
a break. Their flushed cheeks showed they had been playing
vigorously for some time, and she didn't have long to wait. They
soon slowed to a stop and sank down to rest under a nearby tree.
Maggie strolled over.

"You two are pretty good at sports," she
said with a smile, and they both grinned and nodded enthusiastic
agreement. "Which do you like better, soccer or tennis?"

It was no contest. "Soccer!" they both
shouted out together, then laughed.

"But I like tennis too," one added. "It's
just that I'm not so good at it yet.” The other nodded.

"Rob's a pretty good teacher, don't you
think?” Maggie asked.

"Yeah, he's fun. Not like a teacher in
school, or anything."

Maggie winced inwardly at that but managed
to keep smiling. "Yes, I noticed you were having a pretty good time
with him yesterday morning. Remember, you ran through the tables on
the patio, and nearly knocked me down?"

The boys studied her cautiously, clearly
wondering if she was working up to a scolding. When they decided
from her smile that she wasn't, they grinned, remembering the
incident.

"What was going on? Were you playing
tag?"

"Nah.” They dismissed that thought instantly
with a look that said tag was much too childish for them. "We were
coming back with Rob after our lesson, and he stopped to get a
stone or something out of his shoe."

"Where was this?" Maggie asked. "Next to the
hedge?"

"Yeah. The other side of the tables, you
know?

Maggie nodded.

"Anyway, Tyler here," Travis started
giggling, "grabs Rob's hat and starts running with it."

"And then
you
grabbed it from me,"
his brother chimed in.

"Yeah, and you almost fell over that other
guy, trying to get it back."

"What other guy?" Maggie asked.

"A guy that works here. He was pulling weeds
or something next to the hedge. He's the guy Rob got so mad at that
time, over in the sports building. Boy, was he yelling!"

Eric Semple! Eric had been
behind the hedge too.
He
could have heard her talking to Dyna about Lori's
diary.

The twins had forgotten about Maggie and
were now trying to top each other by remembering some of the words
Rob had used, and how many times he had used them. Maggie left
without their noticing and walked slowly toward the hotel,
thinking.

So Rob had stopped on the other side of the
hedge, supposedly to get something out of his shoe. He could have
heard her talking with Dyna. But Eric had been there too, perhaps
for a much longer time. Which one had overheard her, and to which
one did it matter?

Maggie left the graveled parking lot and
walked onto the grass. A crew of maintenance workers came towards
her, carrying buckets and tools, and she stepped out of their way.
They nodded to her as they passed.

Maggie suddenly got an idea, and she headed
in the direction the workers had just come from. Searching through
rhododendron and mountain laurel, it only took her a minute or two
to find who she was looking for: Jack was pushing a wheelbarrow
through the shrubbery in the other direction, away from her.

She picked up her pace and followed. She
wasn't sure how to question him, but she was convinced he could
tell her something, if he only would.

Jack came to an isolated circle of holly
trees, unaware that he was being trailed, and Maggie called out to
him. He stopped and turned around, and winced as he recognized her.
But he waited while she caught up to him.

"Jack, I wonder if we could talk a
minute?"

He sighed, and with a look of resignation
put down his wheelbarrow. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his
shirt.

"I'm really sorry to keep bothering you, but
this is important."

"Miss, I don't see...." he started to
protest, then gave up. Maggie quickly explained.

"I heard about an incident concerning Eric
Semple. I believe he got into some trouble about his work here, and
when you called him on it, his mother, Burnelle, rushed to his
defense and put the blame on you. Is that right?"

"Why do you want to know?"

Maggie chose her words carefully. "There's
someone at this hotel who is very dangerous. I need your help in
finding out who it is."

Jack looked at her. "Do I think Eric is
dangerous? Isn't that what you're asking? You're wondering if he's
the one killed that little waitress? I don't know. I don't like the
guy, but I don't know if he could kill someone. I sure as heck
wouldn't want him dating my daughter, if I had one, but for a whole
lot of other reasons. I've never seen him or heard of him being
violent, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't be. Some folks hide
their dark side real well, you know?"

Maggie nodded. She knew. How many students
had she had, or heard about from other teachers, who seemed like
the perfect teen until evidence of their cheating, or other
nastiness, came out. She sank down onto the grass next to a small
holly tree, hoping Jack would follow suit. He did, pushing his
barrow out of the way, and settling down not far from her. He
stretched his arms over his raised knees and looked at her, his
expression resigned.