by Diana X Dunn
Blake led the group down a short corridor and stopped at the door to room 1205. A uniformed officer answered his knock and let them in without speaking. Obviously he had worked with Blake in the past and knew better than to offer any information before he’d been asked.
The room was part living room and part office space. It was smaller than Julia had expected, knowing the prices that the hotel charged. No one could complain about the quality of the furnishings, though. The couch and chairs were high quality leather and sat in a semi-circle in front of an enormous video screen built into the wall. The office area had a large desk with an old-fashioned leather office chair. On the desk was one of the latest in high-tech computer systems, along with a full printer set up, and all of the other amenities of a private home office. Julia wondered if any of the hotels guests ever helped themselves to a new computer system before they checked out. There were three doors opening off of the room, and all of the doors stood open.
“Which door?” Blake asked.
The young man gestured toward the door on the opposite wall.
“Everyone wait here for a minute,” Blake said.
Assuming that he wasn’t including her in that request, Julia followed him across the room, ignoring the flicker of annoyance that crossed Blake’s face. Together, they looked into the bedroom.
A king-sized bed dominated the room. The body lying on it seemed small in comparison. Julia ignored the body long enough to take in the large walk-in closet that stood open along the opposite wall. Also on that wall was a partially open door to an en-suite bathroom. Nothing in the room looked disturbed. There was a small, unopened suitcase on a stand in the corner.
Julia then focused her attention to the body. It was a man who appeared to have been in his thirties. Julia had studied images of the main players in the case. The man on the bed was Peter Henderson, and she was angry with herself for failing to interview him when she’d the chance. He was lying neatly on the bed, fully clothed with his shoes still on his feet. His arms were tidily by his sides. It looked like it might be suicide, which made Julia instantly suspicious.
Blake took a few steps into the room and scanned the space again before he spoke. “Looks like suicide, really.”
Julia snorted. “Yeah, too much like suicide for my liking. I’ll bet there is even a note.”
Blake grinned. “You are always so suspicious of everything,” he told her. She was sure he agreed with her assessment, though.
Julia turned slowly, studying the room from every angle before she looked at the body in greater detail.
“It’s Peter Henderson, isn’t it? I didn’t get to interview him.”
Blake confirmed the man’s identity and the two stared down at the body for a moment.
“We’d better let the crime scene guys have a go,” Blake said eventually.
Blake and Julia both peeked into the empty closet and the bathroom where expensive toiletries, presumably provided by the hotel, sat untouched in the spotless space. A wastepaper basket next to the bed contained an empty bottle. Both Blake and Julia instantly recognized it from the shape and color, without needing to see the label.
“Quick Release.” Blake frowned. “Supposedly only available on prescription with registered suicides. I would have been notified if Peter Henderson had applied for a suicide license.”
“I bet the Edge Clinic has supplies of the stuff.” Julia told him. “Someone needs to check to see if any is missing.”
“In the meantime, I need to find out what your new boyfriend was doing here.” Blake sounded annoyed.
Julia just ignored his tone. “Alex’s story could be very interesting,” she replied mildly.
Alex was waiting in the other bedroom that opened up from the opposite side of the suite’s living area. It felt slightly less luxurious, with a smaller closet and lacking the en-suite bathroom facilities that the larger bedroom included. He stood up from his perch on the edge of the bed as Julia and Blake came into the room.
“I hope I did…that is, I wasn’t sure who to call…I was so shocked…. Peter always seemed….” He shook his head to try to clear it and Blake smoothly took over.
“Have a seat,” he instructed Alex. “I’d like you to take a moment to gather your thoughts, and then I’m going to ask you to start at the very beginning of the day and work your way forward to this point.”
Alex nodded and sank back onto the bed. Blake pulled the desk chair and a small armchair into the room and he and Julia settled into them. Behind them Julia could hear the low buzz of the crime scene team as they got to work.
Alex took a deep breath and began. “Ah,” he looked sheepish, “well, you know I spent the night on Julia’s sofa, right?” Blake only nodded.
“Anyway, after I got up I went back to my apartment and had a shower and got dressed. You’ve been tracking me, so you can check the timings, but I’m pretty sure it was around ten when I finally sat down to work on my latest book. I had only just banged out a few words when I got a message from Peter.” Alex dug out his M-ped. “You might as well read it as have me tell you.”
I need to see you. Room 1205 at the Woodford. I need to understand a few things and you are the only one who can explain. Please. Don’t reply, just come.
The message was marked as having been replied to, so Blake hit the button to read what Alex had sent back.
I can be there in about an hour. Not sure what I can tell you, but we can certainly talk.
There had been no further messages from Peter. “I’ll need to take a copy.” Blake told Alex.
“Of course.”
Blake quickly copied the messages into his police issue M-ped, and then handed the device to Julia who took her own copy before handing it back to Alex.
“I won’t say I hurried over, but I didn’t take my time, either,” Alex continued. “My apartment is about forty-five minutes away, and then I had to walk from the transport station. I was eager to find out what Peter wanted.” Alex frowned. “If I’m honest, I was hoping he might tell me something that might shed some light on Cassie’s murder. I hate living with that hanging over my head.”
“Maybe he thought you killed Cassie and he wanted to get revenge.” Blake suggested.
Alex looked surprised and then upset. “I never thought of that. I supposed I should have.” He sighed. “I’m not used to being a murder suspect. I suppose I should start thinking like one. It never occurred to me that Peter might want to get me here to accuse me of anything.”
Alex’s voice trailed off and he looked away. Clearly the suggestion was painful to him. After a moment he cleared his throat and continued, speaking fast to get the story told, as if that would allow him to forget it.
“Whatever Peter’s motives were, when I arrived the suite door was ajar. I pushed it open and shouted his name. When he didn’t answer I stuck my head in to look for him. When he wasn’t obviously in the living room, I peeked into the bedroom and saw him lying on the bed. It was obvious that something had happened so I went straight back out of the room and called the police from the hallway.”
“Didn’t you think it was strange that the door was open?” Blake asked.
“Yeah.” Alex frowned and rested his head in his hands briefly before continuing. “It was very strange and it worried me. I’d have thought that hotel security would have checked, though, if it had been open for very long. I also felt horrible déjà vu as I looked around for him. I kept flashing back to looking for Cassie. But you know what? This isn’t how my life is normally. Before this week I’d never even seen a dead body, let alone found two. Before this week, if a friend had asked me to meet him here, and the door was ajar when I arrived, I wouldn’t have thought twice. I would have just barged in, shouting his name and crashed open doors until I found him. I can’t call the police every time something seems slightly out of the ordinary just because my life is suddenly completely screwed up.”
Blake nodded. “I understand what you are saying. However, right now y
ou are in the middle of at least one, possibly two, homicide investigations. I would suggest that for the foreseeable future you make all arrangements to meet people in public places where you will have multiple witnesses. You do realize that you are the prime suspect if it turns out that Peter was murdered.”
Alex shook his head. “What possible motive would I have had for murdering Peter?”
“Obviously he knew something that could tie you to Cassie’s murder,” Blake answered.
Alex looked surprised again, and Julia found herself wondering if he could really be that naïve. His life was so unlike hers that she found it hard to imagine what could be going through his head as his life got stranger and stranger.
After a moment, he voiced her thoughts almost exactly. “I suppose I should be getting used to being a murder suspect.” His voice was bitter and hard now. “Forgive me for not seeing the world the same way you two do.”
Julia was hurt that he had included her in the statement, but she knew he was absolutely correct. Through no fault of her own, she could never have the same trusting view of the world that Alex appeared to possess.
A technician from the crime scene team interrupted before the conversation could continue. “Boss, you might want to check this out.”
Blake and Julia both rose and followed the man back into the other bedroom.
“We were moving the body,” the technician explained. “This was underneath him.”
“This” turned out to be the note that Julia was expecting. She was surprised to see that it was hand written, but its content was totally predictable.
I simply cannot go on. I miss Cassie too much. Life it pointless. Death will reunite us.
Julia grinned. “Almost too perfect, isn’t it?”
Blake shook his head. “No one has suggested that Peter was religious,” he remarked. “The ‘death will reunite us’ line suggests that he believed in heaven or something else after death. I’ll need to check further into that.
“It has a lovely melodramatic ring to it, though, doesn’t it? Whoever wrote it was striving for poetic effect, rather than anything else,” Julia gave her opinion.
“So you don’t think Peter wrote it?
“Nope. And neither do you.” Julia’s remark was a challenge.
“Whatever I think, you never even met the man, so how can you be so sure? We need to have the handwriting analyzed, see if the paper is a special type, check the ink, find out about his beliefs on what happens after death….” Blake trailed off because Julia was just shaking her head at him.
“You go ahead and do all of that,” she told him. “Shall I tell you what I think you will find? The writing is his, or at least so close as to be indistinguishable from his. The paper will be from his house or his office and so will the ink. Cassie’s clinic will be missing the exact same bottle of Quick Release but I bet they haven’t even noticed yet. No one will be able to be sure about his religious beliefs because no one ever cared enough to talk with him about them, with the possible exception of the first murder victim and she isn’t talking. The whole thing will look so exactly like suicide that there can be no other possible conclusion, which is why I’m so suspicious.”
“Want to bet on any of that?” Blake growled at her.
“I’ll bet on all of it,” Julia told him, just the tiniest bit smugly. “If I’m wrong on any one point, you’ll win. But I won’t be.”
“What is the prize?” Blake challenged her.
Julia flushed as she remembered a similar situation and a similar bet the last time they had worked together. The prize had been a decadent weekend away where ninety percent of their time has been spent in bed. Blake had footed the bill when Julia won that one, but obviously the prize needed to be different on this occasion.
“We can worry about that later.” Julia said, waving a hand. “For now, want me to include the time of death as well? I bet he died within minutes of sending that message to Alex.”
Blake turned on his heel and stepped away for a short conversation with the closest technician. The look he shot at Julia when he turned back told her that she was exactly right. Which meant that Alex was off the hook for this one because the police-monitored tracking device could prove he was at least forty-five minutes away when Peter died.
Fifteen
Once Blake had confirmed Alex’s version of events with the monitoring unit he still wore, he had little cause to keep him there. Julia decided to leave with Alex rather than stay and watch the crime scene team as they meticulously stripped the room for clues. Blake didn’t look happy when Julia said her good-byes, but Julia wasn’t in the business of making Blake happy. Alex, on the other hand, looked very pleased as she followed him out of the room.
“Sorry to keep dragging you into these things,” he told Julia in the elevator.
“Next time someone wants to set up a mysterious meeting, why don’t you call me before you go and find the body?” Julia suggested.
Alex answered with a disgusted grunt. The pair exited into the glamorous lobby and Julia was again struck by how expensive it looked. Peter Henderson hadn’t seemed the type to spend money on a room in a hotel this expensive.
“Peter couldn’t have afforded a room in this place.” Alex’s words echoed Julia’s thoughts perfectly. “What was he doing here?”
“Maybe we can get some answers to that,” Julia headed straight to the snooty clerk. “Who paid the charge for room 1205?” she asked, before he had a chance to speak.
“We offer our clientele complete privacy and anonymity. I couldn’t possibly tell you.”
Julia had been expecting both the answer and the tone, but she was still annoyed that the man sounded so happy when refusing to reply to her request. Of course she didn’t let her anger show.
“Who owns the hotel, exactly?”
The clerk seemed surprised by the change in direction. “The Woodford Group,” he replied cautiously.
Julia searched for them on her M-ped, looking for a list of owners and directors. Instead a single name popped up on screen. It seemed the Woodford Group wasn’t a group at all. The corporation was owned entirely by Maximilian Hart. Julia raised a brow. She hadn’t realized that he’d moved into New York real estate.
She took a fresh look around the elegant lobby and certain things fell into place in her mind. She knew Hart well. He was one of the mega rich men that her agency sometimes kept under covert surveillance. He’d dropped off her radar in recent months, and their paths hadn’t crossed. Clearly she needed to look at this further, but for now she had a more pressing concern.
She punched some numbers into her device and waited for the connection. “Maximilian Hart please, it’s Suzanna Barr calling.”
Julia ignored Alex’s surprised look. He knew who she was calling, of course, everyone on the planet knew who Max Hart was.
“Max, darling,” Julia purred down her M-ped. “I know I have been terribly remiss about coming to see you lately, and now I’m in the awkward position of needing a favor from you.”
Within minutes the obnoxious desk clerk had received strict instructions from corporate headquarters that he was to assist in any way possible the young woman in front of him. Julia grinned as he stumbled all over himself, suddenly groveling and toadying in the worst possible manner. After a few amused seconds, she shut him up and started asking questions.
“I need you to tell me everything you can about the man who rented room 1205.”
The clerk typed a few things into the hotel’s computer system.
“A man identifying himself as Peter Henderson checked in this morning about nine. He paid using a credit card in that name. He made the reservation and all payment arrangements electronically and the door code was sent to him to the same device he’d used for payment. He never stopped at information and I never saw him. According to the computer, someone entered the room at 9:03. I can only assume that it was Peter Henderson. The door was opened again at 10:35 and remained open until 10:41. Secu
rity was dispatched at 10:40, but by the time they arrived the door had been closed and they are not expected to intervene if the situation is resolved. At 10:42 the police were called to the room.”
Julia shook her head impatiently. “Where are the security cameras? Does the computer show how many people entered the room? There must be more information in there.”
The man frowned at her. “We do not have security cameras in the building. We cater to a very elite clientele and for the most part they prefer to live their lives discreetly. Security cameras are always capable of being hacked and we prefer to shield our clients from any possibility of that happening by simply not installing any in our building.”
“What about the lobby?”
“There are no security cameras within the building or even outside the door.”
“What is to stop someone from just waltzing in and stealing all the expensive junk that is all around the place?” Alex asked.
“Every single item in the hotel is security tagged and cannot be removed from the premises. That extends from the couches in the lobby and the rooms all the way down to the towels and washcloths.”
“The towels are security tagged?” Julia asked incredulously.
“Not just tagged.” The man behind the desk grinned. “Wait here,” he told them.
He returned a moment later with a washcloth made in the hotel’s signature gold color and lavishly embroidered in white silk thread with the hotel’s crest.
“Here,” he handed the cloth to Alex. “Walk out the front door with it.”
Alex looked from the man to Julia and back again, and then turned and slowly walked toward the front door, shoving the washcloth into a pocket as he went. He took a hesitant step into the lazily revolving glass doors. A moment later the doors stopped their revolution, neatly trapping Alex as an alarm blasted. Several security men, with stun guns drawn, swarmed the doors and one entered a code that made the door slowly revolve in the opposite direction, depositing Alex once more into the hotel lobby. He quickly returned to the desk and handed the washcloth back to the clerk.