She took off one of her plastic gloves, glanced cautiously about, and had a restorative bite from the glazed cinnamon bun she'd been hauling around on her cart. She stuffed it all the way in with a pinky, then washed it down with a couple of swallows of heavily sweetened tea from a pint-sized insulated cup, while having another prudent look around. Mr. Granle didn't care for them snacking on the job, and she was in no mood to stir him up, especially after the snit he'd gotten into yesterday when she couldn't find her passkey at the end of her shift.
And all over nothing. Hadn't the key turned up this morning in the bottom of the linen cart? Really, it could have happened to anyone.
She put her glove back on and pushed the cart along the wooden walkway to Room 50, chewing reflectively. The extra four hundred dollars she was earning this week was going to come in handy. For the dozenth time she cast luxuriously about in her mind for spending alternatives. Maybe a trip to visit Flo in Victoria next February when she couldn't stand the gray days anymore. Maybe even a shopping trip to Seattle, if she could find somebody to share expenses with. But not with Nadine again. No, that was more than a soul could be expected to bear.
She knocked briskly at the door to Room 50. “Service!” she shouted, but she was already inserting the key in the lock. M. Audley Tremaine would be long gone, having breakfast with his group. Just once, she thought wishfully, it'd be nice if he wasn't gone, just so she could say she'd gotten to meet him, maybe even get his autograph. Of course she'd tell Nadine she'd met him anyway, but that wasn't the same thing. And it wasn't the same thing just peeking at him from a distance, the way she'd managed to do a few times; not that it wasn't exciting. She turned the key.
As she was to tell it for the rest of her life, it was her sixth sense, which she'd inherited directly from her Grandmother Strankman-a mysterious tingling across her cheeks, just below her eyes-that told her something was wrong even before she got the door all the way open. This, Doris ardently believed. Actually it was a combination of things, none of them consciously noticed at first, and none of them mysterious, but all of them different from the way things had been on previous mornings.
First, the drapes were still closed, the room dim. Second, the bed had been made up. Now why would he do that? And third, there was the smell. God knows, she had encountered plenty of peculiar smells after two decades of opening hotel-room doors first thing in the morning, but this was different; not a smell so much as a thickness in the air, cloying and gamy.
She stood in the doorway for a few seconds. “Professor Tremaine?” she called uncertainly.
No answer. Now she noticed the pint bottle of brandy on the near nightstand, and the empty glass next to it, caught in the shaft of light from the open door. Next to it was another glass with-my Lord, with a set of dentures soaking in pale blue liquid. M. Audley Tremaine with false teeth? She stared at it, shocked and embarrassed. The morning light illuminated rows of bright bubbles, clinging like beads of quicksilver to the crevices between the teeth.
"Professor Tremaine?” she called again.
She entered tentatively. From the partially open bathroom door light flooded onto the burlap-covered partition between bathroom and bedroom. She walked slowly toward the door, breathing shallowly through her mouth, her heart sinking with each step. Her ears hummed.
"Professor?"
Trembling and ready to bolt, she pushed the bathroom door all the way open. Her teeth were bared, her breath stopped in her throat. There were used towels tossed all over the shower door, paper wrappers from the drinking glasses crumpled and dropped onto the counter, a blow dryer with its cord neatly coiled. The hum was coming from the ceiling fan.
No M. Audley Tremaine.
She exhaled sharply, dizzy with relief, and switched off the fan. Just what had she expected to find, for God's sake? M. Audley Tremaine, crumpled in a heap on the floor in front of the toilet, the way Sheila had once found that poor old man when she was working at the Prospector in Ketchikan? Heart attack while at his stool was the official verdict. What a thing.
"Well, now, let's just get a little light in here,” she said aloud, pert and businesslike. She rubbed her plastic-gloved hands together to prove she was herself again. “And air."
She rounded the burlap-covered partition, heading for the windows. Doris Boileau was a hefty woman, and when she moved forcefully she built up considerable momentum. By the time she realized that the shadowed, hanging mass she was about to brush against was not a bundle of clothes draped over the partition, it was too late to stop. Her right shoulder plowed into it, sending it swinging slowly away from her. Her eyes clamped themselves shut, but not before she had seen those dangling, naked feet, white and horrible. She stood paralyzed and empty-minded, her flesh crawling. Noiselessly the body swung back with nightmare slowness to bump against her, weirdly heavy, its silk bathrobe smooth and cool. She began to edge backwards, her eyes still pressed shut, the skin of her scalp cold and jumping. Don't look. Don't think. Just A man's voice sounded behind her. “What's-"
Doris screamed. Her eyes popped open. The eyeballs rolled up out of sight. She lifted her heavy arms with unlikely grace and fainted.
Luckily for Elliott Fisk, he was able to leap nimbly out of the way at the last moment.
"Listen to this,” Gideon said as the car pulled into the lodge parking area. -National Monument officials have now confirmed reports that the fragmentary human remains recently discovered at the terminus of Tirku Glacier are those of members of a botanical research party killed in a 1960 avalanche.’ And then-'A skeletal-identification expert has subsequently identified the bones as those of Fisk and James Pratt.’”
"When was this?” Owen said, turning the car onto the lodge driveway.
Gideon looked at the photocopy again. “September 8, 1964. You didn't know about it?"
"Nope, way before my time."
"Well, I need to find out more about this, Owen. I'd love to see what this guy came up with, match my findings to his. And I'd like to see the bones themselves, if they're still available. Maybe they'd help us figure out which of the new fragments are Fisk's and which are Pratt's."
"What would that do for us?” Owen pulled the car to a stop in the small parking space to the left of the main building and turned to face Gideon, one elbow over the back of the seat.
"For starters, it would tell us who got murdered."
John stirred and stretched. “Doc,” he said sleepily, “those remains would have gone to the next of kin a long time ago. You have any idea what it takes to get an exhumation order? Assuming they weren't cremated."
Gideon sagged. “That's right. Damn. John, don't you have any more information on this? The name of the expert?"
John shook his head. “Just what's in the article. Hey, Owen, which way's the dining room?"
They climbed out of the car and headed toward the main building. The sky was the same sullen gray it had been over Gustavus, but the air of Bartlett Cove was softer, milder; rich with the clean, damp-earth smell of ferns.
"What about you, Owen?” Gideon said. “There must be a record of this somewhere in your files. Photographs of the bones, maybe, or measurements."
"Which files would those be?"
"I don't know; the official park files, I guess."
The ranger put his head back and laughed. “I wouldn't count on it. In 1964 this place wasn't even a national park, just a monument and preserve. Hell, Alaska was barely a state. I don't think they were too big on files at the time. But let me ask Arthur. If anybody knows about files, Arthur's the man."