“And the ginkgo tree?” I asked, startled.
She paused, her cup halfway to her lips. “Yes. Why?”
“John Rarig said he’d closed off all those rooms because of the smell.”
She laughed, something I now realized she did all the time, obviously to the delight of her young charges. “I have almost no sense of smell left. That’s about the only time it’s worked to my advantage. I told him I really wanted the sun through my window, so he made an exception. It had the fringe benefit of making my room very quiet as well.” She cocked her head toward the dorm. “Not that noise is a big problem with me.”
“On the night of the sixteenth, then,” I asked, “do you remember hearing anything unusual-voices maybe, a shout, the sound of a car very late?”
She paused to reflect. “There was a car. I don’t know what time it was when I heard it, but it was the middle of the night. I’m afraid I didn’t look out the window, though. I just rolled over and went back to sleep.”
“Was the sound familiar? Had you heard that particular car before?”
She shook her head. “No. It was just a car. I am sorry.”
“No. That’s all right,” I assured her. “We ask a lot of questions, but they’re not all important.” I handed her a picture of the rental car. “Was this car ever parked in the lot, or anywhere else that you noticed?”
She made a face, considering the photo. “I’m not doing very well here. It might have been, but I’m not big on cars. They all look like this to me.”
I passed her the retouched mug shot of Boris Malik. “How ’bout him?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Ooh. He doesn’t look very good. Is he dead?”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. The photographer tried to fix him up a little, but it’s hard to do well.”
She returned the pictures to me. “No, he doesn’t look familiar. I don’t suppose you could tell me what this is all about, could you?”
I sighed involuntarily. “Don’t I wish. It’s a bit of a mystery, and to be honest, the Windham Hill Inn may not play into it at all. We’re doing a lot of fishing right now, hoping to get lucky. Rumor has it you got friendly with several of the other guests.”
“Oh, yes,” she smiled, more comfortable now. “That’s partly why I take these trips. Every short vacation, I choose a different inn, usually in Vermont. Maybe it’s being surrounded by kids all the time, but to me a vacation means meeting other people, preferably from far-off places. And inns are good for that, especially if you can’t afford to travel far. The kinds of guests they get are often world travelers. They’re fun to trade stories with.”
I thought of our hoped-for Russian connection. “Did you meet any globe-trotters at the Windham Hill Inn?”
“Several. There were the Widmers, an elderly couple from New Jersey. They’d spent an enormous amount of time in Saudi Arabia. He used to be in the oil business-”
“How elderly?” I interrupted as gently as possible.
But she cocked an eye at me nevertheless. “Ah. I see what you mean. No geriatrics need apply. How strong a person are we talking about?”
It was my turn to smile. “Pretty strong. On the other hand, we’re not sure we’re just talking about one person, either.”
She nodded. “Okay. Well, in any case, better scratch the Widmers. They were both pretty feeble. Let’s see… There was Roger and Sheila Brockman. They were middle-aged, and in good shape, too. Played tennis all the time. Sheila had the eyes of a tiger, I thought. One of those professionally skinny women, complete with tummy tucks, face-lifts, and all the rest. Roger was the traveler there. Sheila mostly stayed home and shopped, from what I could tell. But he’d been to the Far East quite a bit-Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing. An investment banker. Not what I’d call a nice man, but an observant one. He noticed things, and he had a wonderful way of describing them.”
He mention Russia at all?”
She frowned. “No, not that I recall.”
“Anyone else?” I asked. She thought a moment. “There was another couple. I don’t think they were married, but they didn’t seem like sweethearts, either. I didn’t see much of her. She was either feeling poorly, or just not very social, but she kept to their room for the most part. Her name was Ann, I think. I never did catch a last name. His was Howard Richter, and he’d definitely been to Europe. We got into a long conversation about traveling the canals over there, and he was quite knowledgeable. Otherwise, he struck me as a little aloof. In fact, I kind of wondered why they were even there. They didn’t seem like the type.”
“Does the inn serve breakfast?” I asked suddenly.
“Yes.”
“The morning of the seventeenth, did you notice any of these people-or anyone else, for that matter-acting differently, or missing altogether?”
Marcia Luechauer had placed her cup on the table earlier and now steepled her fingers before her chin, her eyes fixed on some distant object out the window. “Let’s see, that would’ve been my last full day there. Ann didn’t show-no surprise there. The Brockmans were there, in tennis whites. Howard… Let’s see… He did come down-late-and I waved to him from across the room. He acted as though he hadn’t seen me. I remember thinking he and Ann must’ve had a fight, because he looked pretty ugly. But like I said, he was naturally a little moody.” Her eyes suddenly widened. “Actually, the one who struck me oddest of all that morning was Douglas, my waiter. He was French-Canadian, and normally as smooth-talking as a bad commercial-one of those God’s-gift-to-women types. He was downright cranky that morning and didn’t look as if he’d slept at all.”
I couldn’t suppress a small laugh. “You have a phenomenal memory. You should be a cop.”
Her eyes gleamed. “I think that would be fascinating. Has any of this helped?”
“Absolutely. We may have gotten a little sidetracked, though, when we focused on the world travelers. Was there anyone else who stood out, for any reason at all?”
“The Meades,” she said instantly. “They were from New York City. She was a lawyer, he was a doctor-Ed and Linda. They both had cell phones, briefcases, perpetual creases between their eyes. I’ve run into people like them, using the inn circuit to try to get back together-try a second honeymoon, I guess. I don’t think it works. It certainly didn’t in this case. They barely spoke to one another. He’d go hiking, she’d borrow a bike. Their dinners were almost totally silent. But there was an odd quality to them that really struck me. It wasn’t hostility. It was coldness. They treated everyone the way they did each other-no favorites. They gave me the creeps. They might have been robots.”
A brief silence settled between us as I continued scribbling notes in my pad. “Other than that,” she resumed, “it was a pretty typical group-couples making the fine foods tour, people just getting away for a few days, some old folks enjoying their retirement… and me,” she added brightly, “the spinsterish busybody.”
“Bless you for that,” I told her. “I wish everyone I interviewed was as observant.”
I rose to my feet and headed toward the hallway. “Are there any last thoughts before I go? Anything more about Douglas, for instance?”
She joined me, shaking her head. “No, I’m afraid not. Other than that one morning, he was his oily self from start to finish.”
“And no one else with overseas baggage?”
She laughed. “Not that I could tell, aside from John Rarig, of course. But him you know about.”
I tried to pause as nonchalantly as possible in the doorway. “How do you mean?”
She looked up at me, surprised. “That he’s been to Europe-speaks fluent German.”
“He told you that?” I asked.
“He didn’t have to. We were talking about wine one evening, and he pulled out a bottle of Gumpoldskirchen Veltliner. It’s Austrian, from the Wachau district, and he pronounced it like a native.”
“Sounds like you just did, too,” I commented.
She burst out laughing, “With a name like Luechauer? I should hope so. I was born over there, and I’m the German teacher here. Anyhow, there’s all sorts of German, I suppose, like anywhere else. His wasn’t the school-taught kind. It was regional. He could only have picked it up by living there.”