Dust to Dust

by Audrey Keown

  “Oh, I thought you had just talked the other day.”

  “Yeah, she called the other day too. Can’t say what she wanted, really. We just talked about Clyde’s daughter some.”

  “What about her?”

  “Oh, just how she was doing, the kinds of things she was struggling with.”

  Her struggles? This Naomi was looking for another weak spot to get to Clyde. That had to be it. “Thank you. Thank you so much,” I said. “You’ve helped a lot.”

  I hung up the phone and ran downstairs to get the newspaper clipping out of my bag in the changing room.

  There she was, Naomi Hagel, sitting on Clyde’s lap.

  That was the connection. She’d worked at the hotel during Mr. Fig’s time here, and she knew Clyde.

  When I got back upstairs, I examined her little face but couldn’t connect her to anyone I’d seen at the hotel or anywhere else. Of course, it had been decades since this photo was taken.

  I wondered if one of the hotel guests had changed their name to disguise their identity. But none of the women were even the right age. Naomi would be, like Clyde, in her early sixties now. Autumn was closest but still probably ten years too young.

  I pulled out my phone and Googled Naomi Hagel. Unsurprisingly, nothing relevant came up. She’d likely been married and changed her name, maybe more than once in the last few decades.

  I stared at my screen, but there was nothing else to look up, nothing I could think to do to help, nothing that could remove the fear of not being able to save Mr. Fig.

  The next two hours were uneventful, which made them excruciating. All I could do was stand behind the front desk and fret over Mr. Fig. Somewhere in the courthouse, he was awaiting arraignment.

  I was so angry with myself, with the legal system, and especially with whoever had really murdered Renee.

  Between ten fifteen and ten thirty, all the remaining gravestone guests came down for checkout.

  Autumn and Tom were the first.

  I smirked as Doyle followed them down the stairs, lugging Tom’s heavy suitcase. He had been roped into helping with the busy checkout day in Mr. Fig’s stead.

  The Trumans turned in their keys, paid for incidentals, and sat down to wait for an Uber to the airport.

  Next were Furnell and Parker, who were supposed to ride back to Pittsburgh in Deena’s Porsche. They absconded into the library to kill time until the ladies came down.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Wollstone flew out of the morning room like a hornet released from a jar. “I’ve been waiting for a coffee refill for fifteen minutes!”

  I managed to answer him without gritting my teeth. “I’ll bring it to you myself as soon as I finish this checkout.”

  As I was speaking, the elevator dinged and the doors opened, revealing Velvet and Deena, both wearing sunglasses on the tops of their heads. Behind them, Doyle looked like a pack mule—albeit a well-dressed one.

  The two women shuffled to the desk, and Doyle continued to the garage with their luggage.

  Velvet looked the room over. “Well, I guess we beat them down.”

  “That’s awfully violent. Who did we beat?” Deena said.

  Mr. Wollstone tapped his fingers on one side of the desk, completely ignoring their conversation.

  “I mean, we beat Furnell and Packer getting downstairs,” Velvet said.

  “You’ll find them in the library,” I said.

  Velvet followed my direction while Deena stepped up to the desk, her head just clearing the raised ledge. “What do I owe ya, sweetheart? I know there were a couple lunches and dinners.”

  “I’ll just go see.” It occurred to me as I slid into the office to pull up her charges on the computer that this was a near-perfect setup for the kind of big reveal that always marked the end of classic murder mysteries. Everyone present on the night of Renee’s death was here together, with the exception of Clyde and my dear Mr. Fig.

  As I wrote up the itemized receipt, I heard Deena say, “Shoot. My credit card’s expired.”

  “Here, use mine,” said a voice far enough away that I couldn’t identify it.

  I returned to the desk and exchanged the written receipt for the credit card in Deena’s hand.

  The first name embossed on its shiny plastic stopped me midbreath. I was certain now who had killed Renee.

  Naomi—the maid who’d worked here so many years ago, the old classmate of Clyde’s—stood in front of the fireplace with her back to me.

  No wonder I hadn’t recognized her. She was nothing like the young woman in the photo, and she was nothing like what she appeared to be.

  The vague bitterness I’d been carrying around for days condensed now that I really saw her, and I stared as if I could bore a hole into the back of her skull.

  I hated her for sending Mr. Fig to that stinking jail. I hated her for letting an old man, and a good one, take her place.

  But how could I prove she was Renee’s killer? If Bennett couldn’t find her DNA on that swatch from the dumbwaiter, I had nothing.

  Either way, I couldn’t let her walk out of this hotel thinking she’d gotten away with it.

  I thought of Clarista’s gun under the desk. I’d taken a safety course with my dad years ago and been to the shooting range a few times, but that didn’t mean I was ready to fire at a real person, even a murderer. Not to mention that I’d only been told about this particular gun. I didn’t know if it would be easy to handle, if the safety was on, or if it was already loaded.

  There was thunder in my chest, but I tried to hold my hand—and my voice—steady. “Here’s your card back, Naomi.”

  Several guests swung their heads around—at the tone in my voice, I imagined.

  Naomi turned around too, and I searched her face. Obviously, hair color was going to change over nearly forty years, but this woman looked twenty years older than she should.

  Clearly, she had aged herself on purpose so that Clyde wouldn’t recognize her. But how?

  Naomi Velvet Reed stepped up to the desk and snatched the credit card from me. “I go by my middle name.”

  “You do now,” I said.

  Velvet. Velvet had arrived early enough on Wednesday to cause the leak. Velvet had been able to slip away from the tour unnoticed while Deena went to the restroom. Velvet knew enough about literature to stage the murder and frame Clyde.

  Her artificially wizened face widened with the realization that I was onto her, eyes darting from side to side as if checking to see if anyone else had caught on.

  Deena looked back and forth between us, confused.

  “Parker,” I said.

  The boy shifted his head a little. He was listening.

  “Who was it that suggested Clyde and Renee stay in the Achilles suite?” I asked.

  Without speaking, Parker raised his pointer finger from his side until his arm was parallel with the floor, then aimed it straight at Velvet.

  “That’s not true.” Velvet took a step back.

  “Deena brought pierogies,” Parker said. “It was the January meeting. I wore my gray-striped shirt.”

  Furnell backed up his son both literally and metaphorically. “I remember the pierogies. Potato, right?”

  “Cheese.” Parker angled his head toward Velvet. “Her ankles are too young.”

  I sucked in a breath. I remembered her young ankles peeking out from her caftan at the pool.

  “You remarked yourself how observant the boy is,” I said to Velvet.

  “Well, even if I did make the room suggestion, that has nothing to do with anything. I was just being thoughtful, I’m sure. Anyone would agree the president of the club should have the master suite.”

  “When you were able to name the mountains so easily, I should have wondered if you’d been to the area before.” My mind was running a thousand watts an hour now. “Whoever killed Renee understood the hotel’s blueprint and planned the murder well in advance. You used to work for the family here. You understood that the dumbwaiter would give you a
ccess to Renee.”

  “What’s going on, Velvet?” Deena said, then rounded on me, employing her spiked hair and fierce eyes to go from sweet to intimidating in two seconds. “You’ve always been a nebby little Debbie! You’ve been sticking your nose into our business since the day we got here.”

  I was genuinely sad for her. “Your friend isn’t who you think she is, Ms. Nixon.”

  “What in the world could you mean by that?” She gripped her eyeglasses emphatically. “I just got my prescription updated. I can see clear as day who she is.”

  “The two of you act like sisters, so I assumed you’d been friends forever, but you haven’t, have you?”

  Deena’s frown turned to interest. “Six months.”

  “I should’ve known,” I said. “There’s no trace of Pittsburgh in your accent, Velvet. You moved to the city for Clyde, didn’t you?”

  “Now, wait a minute,” Velvet said.

  “Tom, open her suitcase,” I said. “You won’t find any pills, but you should find some stage makeup and, with any luck, a torn piece of plaid clothing.”

  With a vaguely concerned expression, Tom set the open bag of pork rinds he’d been eating on the desk and turned toward Velvet.

  Instinctively, she grabbed the handle of her rolling bag, but Tom wrenched it away from her, laid it on the floor, and unzipped it.

  “This is ridiculous. This is a violation of privacy,” Velvet yelled as if to the whole room, then said to me, “You tell him to stop, or I’ll have you fired for this.”

  Tom, who’d been digging around in her makeup case, made a sickened face, said, “Ugh,” and held up a piece of wrinkled skin.

  “What the …?” Furnell peered at the thing and then leaned back as if he didn’t want it to touch him.

  “Prosthetic wrinkles,” I said. “For her face.” I could see into the suitcase now. There was a piece of plaid that matched the swatch I’d found, line for line.

  “There’s a few more in here. And this.” Tom held up a bottle of liquid latex.

  Velvet’s anger had overwhelmed her now. She held her head so tightly it seemed to vibrate.

  “Velvet?” Deena was starting to put things together. She shook her head and stared at Velvet’s skin. “You always wear your makeup. Always ready before me in the morning n’at. Is this why you wouldn’t skinny-dip with me?”

  Under the counter, I entered the code Clarista had given me on the safe keypad.

  It beeped, and I flinched.

  But no one seemed to notice.

  “I don’t understand,” Autumn said, as if coming alive to the scene for the first time. “What did you have against my sister?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “It was Clyde she wanted to destroy. He stole something from her a long time ago, and for some reason she decided now was the moment to get her revenge.”

  That did it. Velvet had to step up and defend herself.

  “You don’t understand.” Her lips almost snarled. “He committed a crime, and he was rewarded for it!”

  “The great thesis idea he had?” I said.

  “The great thesis idea he stole!” She chopped the air with her hand. “He was a little ahead of me in grad school. He pretended to be my friend and stole my entire concept before I could present it to my committee. He simply took it from me. And then he was handed a career!”

  “But why now?”

  “I lost everything a few months ago—well, every piece of the measly life I’d managed to create for myself. I was fired. My husband left me.”

  “And you thought everything would be different if you had written the thesis that Clyde wrote?”

  “Yes. You see, don’t you? That was the beginning of everything that went wrong for me.” She waved her arms wildly.

  I opened the safe and laid my hand on the gun. The safe beeped again.

  Velvet’s eyes narrowed. She threw her weight forward, leveraging against the desk to reach me.

  I leaned out of reach, but she shoved my sore arm.

  I fell back a few steps. In the moment it took to regain my balance, Velvet felt under the counter and snatched the pistol from the safe.

  She swung it in an arc across the room. “Everybody back.”

  XIX

  Southbound and Down

  A chorus of screams rang out in the hall. My own voice felt disembodied.

  Deena, God bless her, reached up for the gun.

  But Velvet, no longer pretending, was obviously younger and stronger. She threw a hard elbow into Deena.

  The old woman flew backward.

  I darted forward as if I could catch her, but I was stuck behind the desk.

  Deena’s small body smashed onto the thin rug.

  The group let loose another round of screams.

  Leonard stepped toward Deena.

  “Stop!” Velvet showed him the end of the pistol. “Nobody move.”

  Did this kind of thing really happen? I wished I hadn’t brought the gun into this at all. I’d only given Velvet the leg up she needed to overpower us.

  Her hands shook slightly.

  Maybe there was room here to stop her before she did something terrible. Something else terrible.

  Tom stepped in front of his wife.

  But Autumn wasn’t afraid. Her gray eyes glowed with hatred. If she had her hammer and chisel now, this whole scene would look different.

  Maybe Tom wasn’t protecting her—maybe he was preventing her going for the gun.

  Propped on one elbow, Deena sneered. “How could you, Velvet?”

  Velvet’s attention was drawn to her erstwhile friend.

  “Now, Tom,” said Deena, monotone.

  Tom shifted two steps to the right and lunged at Velvet from the side.

  He grabbed the gun with one hand, breaking it from her grasp in two easy seconds.

  Velvet screamed in frustration and swiveled toward the elevator.

  “You’re going nowhere.” Tom pointed the gun at her as if he did it every day.

  “Neither are you.”

  All heads turned to the front entrance. The voice was Clyde’s.

  With our attention fixed on Velvet, none of us had noticed him come in.

  “What?” Tom said.

  “How dare you give my daughter drugs!” Clyde marched to Tom and socked the big man in the jaw.

  Several people gasped again.

  Tom’s head snapped back and forward, but he held on to his footing and the gun, as if one eye were on Clyde and the other on Velvet.

  “Drugs?” Realization washed over Autumn’s face. “That’s it. That’s why you’ve been so strange.” She narrowed her eyes and widened her mouth. “How were you paying for them? Tom … tell me you weren’t the one stealing from me.”

  “No. It wasn’t me … not really,” Tom said.

  I took the chance to pick up the phone and dial 911.

  Autumn had been simmering, and now she boiled over. She lifted a hand and struck Tom across the face.

  “Hello,” said the 911 operator.

  Clyde’s assault hadn’t fazed the big man, but Autumn’s left him raw. Tom stared and reached for her.

  He had taken his eyes off Velvet.

  I opened my mouth to answer the operator. “Hi. I’m at Hotel 1911—Tom!”

  I was too late.

  Velvet wrenched the pistol from Tom’s hand.

  And aimed it right at me.

  “Hang it up!” she yelled.

  “What the …?” Clyde said.

  I obeyed. At least I’d given the operator a location.

  Clyde held up his hands innocently like a hostage negotiator. “Velvet, what are you doing, dear?”

  Thankfully, there was no hostage.

  She smirked at him, and I half expected her to rip off her prosthetics like a thriller movie villain. Instead, she pushed the elevator button.

  “Where are you going, Velvet? You don’t have a car,” Furnell said.

  “Good point,” she said. “Tom. Keys.” />
  “You’ll have to shoot me.” Tom stuck out his chin.

  Velvet steered the gun in Autumn’s direction.

  Tom grunted and tossed the key fob with its little rental tag toward her.

  It landed short.

  “Ivy, bring me that,” Velvet said.

  She sure knew how to give orders. Her hand wasn’t shaking anymore.

  I bent down, snatched up the fob, and approached her from the side, arm extended as far as possible. I didn’t want to be anywhere near the end of that pistol.

  The elevator slid open behind her. She stepped aside, holding the door with one hand. “Get in.”

  “No, Velvet,” said Deena.

  I continued to stare at the gun, uncomprehending.

  “You. Ivy. Get in,” Velvet repeated.

  “Me?” So this was a hostage situation.

  Silently, I did as she said. Better me than Deena.

  Several guests muttered.

  “For God’s sake, you don’t need a hostage, Velvet,” Clyde said.

  “I’ll decide what I need. Thanks very much,” Velvet fired back, and jabbed the basement button on the control panel.

  The elevator doors slid toward each other.

  Deena shouted to the room, “Yinz, get down to the garage!”

  I tossed Tom’s key fob out through the narrowing crack.

  Velvet groaned and slapped me across the face with the barrel of the gun.

  Pain seared up the side of my head, and I fell against the elevator wall. But I stood up again. She hit like the frail person she’d pretended to be.

  “I guess we’ll take your car,” she said.

  We got out on the lower level, and Velvet prodded me into the staff dressing room.

  I’d never been at the wrong end of a gun before. The tension was unbearable. I knew she didn’t want to kill me yet, but what if she accidentally fired?

  I could taste blood in my mouth as I grabbed my bag and felt for George’s car keys. Why hadn’t I just told her I didn’t have a car? “Where do you think you can hide? Everyone knows who you are now.”

  “Shut up or I’ll shoot you in your good arm.” She was finding her groove, working that gun as if she’d memorized her part from some hard-boiled detective film. She directed me back into the narrow hall. “Out.”