Read Resort to Murder for Free Online

his face creased in concern. But it wasn’t Jennings’s expression that disturbed me. I could see Diana clearly. Her green eyes flashed; her lips curved in triumph. She gave her brother a swift, utterly satisfied glance, then moved quickly along the path. Neal frowned.
    Jasmine tugged at her sister’s arm. “Did you hear George? He said—”
    â€œHush, Jasmine.” Marlow’s voice was sharp.
    I was the last one off the headland. I followed the others slowly down the craggy path to the sand. We picked our way across the boulder-strewn beach to a gridded cement walkway, avoiding the mounds of sargassum seaweed that smelled of rot and drew tiny flies in whirling clouds. The walkway was steep. It led from the beach to a hard dirt path that sloped up toward the hotel beneath the interlocking branches of leathery-leaved bay grapes that created a tunnel of greenery. The pathway was always dim. Now the clouds had turned the sky pewter-gray, and the tunnel was almost dark.
    I stopped to rest midway up the long slope, perhaps a city block in length. I heard the others far ahead. I felt cut off from their cheerful holiday chatter. I wasn’t cheerful. I was disturbed. That picture-taking session on the headland had been planned by my granddaughter and I was afraid the object had been to distress Connor. When George claimed to have seen something white near the tower, Connor was startled. Perhaps even frightened. I wanted to know why. I wanted to know what George thought he saw. I wanted to know why Connor Bailey and Steve Jennings stared at the tower. And these questions reminded me of Steve’s refusal to tell me what he saw last night in the garden. The tower dominated the ridge beyond the garden. Most of all, I wanted to know whether my granddaughter had engineered a family photograph on the windswept headland solely because the tower loomed in the background.
    Â 
    I had the hotel hallway to myself. It didn’t matter, of course, whether anyone saw me, but I wanted to be alone to make a quiet survey. The others had scattered after the picture session. Lloyd, Connor, and Steve had taken a cab into the capital city of Hamilton to shop at Trimingham’s. The large old department store had the same fusty charm as Woodward and Lathrop’s in Washington, D.C., in the 1950s. The young people had sped off on their mopeds. I would try to find Diana upon their return. Jasmine had refused to go shopping, insisting she’d be fine at the hotel and wanted to play in the pool until the rain came. It rains often in Bermuda, sometimes with force and fury, more often a gentle, steady downpour that lasts a little while and then the day brightens again.
    I studied the silent corridor. There were entrances at either end of the hallway. This two-story building sat atop a ridge, separate from the smaller main house. Our rooms were on the second floor facing the ocean. I was in room 22, Neal in room 20, Diana in room 24, Steve Jennings in room 26, and the rest of the party on down the hall: Aaron in room 28, Marlow and Jasmine in room 30, Connor in room 32, Lloyd in room 34. I’d been a little surprised that Connor and Lloyd were in separate, although adjoining, rooms. I wondered who made that decision and thought it displayed remarkable delicacy, considering today’s mores. I guessed that the Drake-Bailey party were the only guests on this floor and that the opposite rooms were empty. There were perhaps a dozen or so other guests at the hotel and I thought most of them were in the main building. January was, of course, the off-season.
    Jennings said he’d dressed last night after the knock on his door awakened him, and hurried out to the upperterrace. I walked down the hall. A push bar opened the door. Outside, I stopped on the step and noted the small placard which informed that the doors were locked after 9 P.M. but would open to a room key. That indicated access to the building after 9 P.M.