When he looked at me like that—like I’d disappointed him—I hated it. Turning away, I gazed at a tiny stream of rain as it rolled down the window and said quietly, “It’s not a big deal, Alex. I just wanted to hear what Steadman had to say before I told you what I came up with since it’s a little out in left field.”
He said nothing for a long time and then turned the car off. “Okay. Then let’s go.”
The flatness of his voice told me it was anything but okay. I hated the idea that my desire to not look foolish had caused a rift between us. That wasn’t what I’d wanted to happen.
I followed him into the hotel lobby and to the front desk wishing he hadn’t reacted like that to my keeping this one thing to myself. True, I’d never kept anything from him before, but it wasn’t like I had the solution to our case and I didn’t want to share it because I wanted to take all the credit. I just didn’t feel like looking silly for the second night in a row.
Joseph Steadman leaned against the front desk looking like he couldn’t be more bored if he tried. His stringy brown hair hung in front of his face, obscuring everything above the tip of his nose. Doodling on a piece of paper, he didn’t even hear us come in until Alex tapped his hand on the bell at the other end of the desk. I had a hard time believing this guy would have seen every person coming in and out on any given night.
Startled, he looked up, his dark eyes wide as he stared at us. “Officer Montero, how are you?”
“I’m good, but I’m surprised you didn’t hear the two of us come in. Makes me wonder if you told me the truth the last time I was here.”
Holding up his right hand, he said, “I swear to God I told the truth, sir. I wouldn’t lie. I swear.”
Alex pulled out a picture of Mary he’d found in the newspaper and placed it on the desk in front of the clerk. “I believe you, Joe. I do. I want you to take a look at this woman and tell me if you’ve ever seen her here.”
He looked down and then up at us. With a smile, he said, “I wouldn’t forget a woman this beautiful. I have seen her here. Just this week, in fact.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, disappointed to hear the possibility that Mary was even more involved with Canton Walters than I thought. It was getting harder and harder to believe in her innocence.
Nodding quickly, he said, “Yeah, I’m sure. She was here the night before the murder, and she may have been here the night of the murder. That second time I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I know she was here Monday night.”
“How do you know that?” Alex asked as he wrote down the words Mary—Hotel Piermont—Monday night in his notepad.
“Because my girlfriend stopped by to say hi that night and saw me check that woman out as she walked out through the lobby. I got an earful from her about not respecting her enough.”
“Was she a guest?” Alex asked.
“Nope. I know that.”
“Do you know what room she was visiting then?” I asked eagerly as Mary’s claim she didn’t know our victim slowly became next to impossible.
Joe Steadman shook his head, making his hair swing around like greasy fringes. “No. I’m sorry. We don’t stop people as they come in and out. If they don’t stop here to ask what room someone’s in, we don’t know who they’re here to see.”
Stubborn in my need to still believe in Mary, I asked him, “Were there any visitors for Canton Walters or anyone calling to speak to him while he was a guest?”
The clerk looked at Alex and then back at me. “I told Officer Montero the other night that I didn’t see any visitors. I’d have to check if anyone left a message for him. We don’t log who calls for guests.”
He waited for Alex to look up from his notes and asked, “Do you want me to check?”
Leveling his gaze on him, Alex said flatly, “It sounds like my partner wants you to.”
Flustered, the desk clerk scurried away to check the message log as he apologized to me for not knowing he had to listen to someone not in a police uniform. I elbowed Alex when he left and thanked him for backing me up, hoping things weren’t still awkward between us, and in return he just smiled.
Maybe we were okay again.
Joe Steadman returned with a tattered black three-ring binder filled with white message forms. Running his finger down the top sheet, he got to the middle of the page and stopped before he looked up at us.
“Room 307 got one phone call the day of the murder, Tuesday. A woman called looking for Mr. Walters and left a message. I remember that. I couldn’t understand what she was saying because she sounded like she was crying, so I figured I’d put it down in the log and tell Mr. Walters the next time I saw him. I thought he might know who she was.”
“Without a name or number?” I asked before Alex could speak up.
Joe looked at Alex like he hoped he wouldn’t arrest him at any moment. “She didn’t offer any name or number. As I said, I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but I thought he might know since he’d probably know who was calling him at a hotel, you know?”
“It’s okay. Thank you, Joe. Is there anything else you remember before we go?”
“I swear, Officer Montero, that’s it. I didn’t think of the call the last time because you didn’t ask if anyone called for him. I’m a pretty literal guy, or so my girlfriend says, so that’s why I only focused on whether or not anyone came to see Mr. Walters.”
“Thanks, Joe. If we need anything else, we know where to come.”
Alex and I left too-literal Joe the desk clerk at his post and walked out to the car. As we got in, he turned to me and said, “How much do you want to make a bet that the woman who called for Canton Walters was Mary?”
“I’ll take that bet, partner. I looked into that woman’s eyes. She’s not a murderer.”
“Well, when I get the hotel’s phone records, we’ll see. How’s twenty feel?”
Hoping I wouldn’t lose, I upped the ante. “Forget twenty. I say the loser has to buy dinner at Diamanti’s. Still feeling so sure of yourself?”
Alex started the car and chuckled. “I’m in the mood for a good steak, so sure, I’ll take that bet.”
As we drove away from the Hotel Piermont, I had a feeling either way I’d win the bet, but I still wanted Mary to not be our killer. Part of it was I liked her, but mainly I wanted her to be innocent because my gut was riding on it and I wanted to think my instincts were that good.
Chapter Thirteen
Alex met me on the sidewalk outside The Grounds with my morning coffee. Handing it to me, he appeared particularly excited for eight o’clock in the morning. For a second, I had the terrible thought that he had just climbed out of bed after spending the night with Bethany and now he had a newfound lease on life, but no sooner had that crossed my mind, he began to speak and I knew what had made him so eager to get moving this morning.
“Can you take another road trip this morning? I got the LUDs on the Hotel Piermont and found out who our mystery caller for Canton Walters was the night of the murder. The grieving widow wasn’t exactly truthful with us, it seems.”
I gazed down the block toward The Eagle where I was supposed to be sitting behind my desk in just under an hour. My editor had agreed that I could be out of the office more since I’d taken on that new assignment, but I’d been absent a lot lately. Looking back at Alex, I saw the anticipation written all over his face and couldn’t deny I wanted to be there when he questioned Rose Walters again.
The hell with it! I’d just tell my boss I couldn’t be there because something juicy was happening in town. I’m sure there was something relatively benign I could use as gossip that he’d enjoy. I didn’t think he got out much, so it wouldn’t have to be anything really.
“What did you find out? And by the way, as the loser of our bet, you owe me a dinner at Diamanti’s.”
Alex grinned and nodded. “You’ll find no argument from me. You name the night and it’s a date.”
“I do like a man who can lose as graciously as he
can win,” I said with a satisfied smile, trying to ignore his use of the word date. “Okay, let’s go and you can tell me what you found out.”
As we walked to his squad car, he explained. “Seems that Mrs. Walters called the hotel that night. What’s even more interesting is that she called from a place she claimed not to be.”
I took a sip of my morning coffee, and as it slid down my throat, I worked to remember what Rose Walters had told us the last time we spoke to her. Then it dawned on me. “She called from her house, didn’t she?”
Alex grinned like someone who’d just found the final piece of a puzzle. “Yep. She told us she was at her mother’s house until that morning when her husband was found dead at the Hotel Piermont. She also claimed to not know he wasn’t home and didn’t even know where he was staying, yet those appear to be lies too.”
“Interesting. Now her I can see killing someone by stabbing them in the back. She has that hell hath no fury kind of vibe to her. I saw it right through her sobbing widow act she put on when we met her.”
He opened the driver’s side door and leaned against the side of the car. “This is just the break we’ve been looking for in this case. She knew where he was, and I think she decided to pay him a visit to let him know what she thought of what he was up to at that hotel.”
Excited from our first real break, I said, “Let’s go see how well she can play the grief-stricken widow now.”
Stopping the car in front of the Walters’ suburban home, Alex nudged my arm and pointed to the moving van in the driveway. “Looks like she’s decided to leave her life with poor Canton behind pretty quickly, don’t you think?”
I watched as two young men dressed in jeans and white tank tops walked in and out of the house carrying the Walters’ family belongings in their arms and wondered why she would be leaving so soon after her husband’s death. I understood wanting to start over, but fresh starts like this usually happened after a nasty breakup, not the death of a spouse.
Alex approached the taller man on one of his trips back to the van and asked, “Where are you going with all this?”
For a moment, the man said nothing, but I saw him scan the full length of Alex’s frame standing there in a police uniform and then the sneer that he’d worn at first softened into a tiny smile. “The lady of the house paid us a hundred each to load the van, but we’re not driving it, so I don’t know where she’s off to. I just know all of this stuff has to be out by today.”
Alex looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “Someone’s in a hurry.”
“I’m guessing she’s in the house. You know, saying her final goodbyes to the house she shared with our victim.”
We walked to the front door and knocked, even though it was wide open. Rose Walters saw us and waved us in. Squeezing past the moving men, we walked into an empty living room devoid of any furniture. Even that portrait of their three children had been taken off the wall above the fireplace. The whole place had a feeling of loss to it.
“Mrs. Walters, are you going somewhere?” Alex asked with no attempt at all at hiding that he considered her behavior suspicious.
“Obviously. They really do teach you guys well at the academy, don’t they?” she snapped at him.
Alex took her insult graciously and continued with his planned questioning. “We need to speak to you again about your husband’s murder.”
A look of rage came over her face, and she threw up her hands. “My wonderful husband! Canton Xavier Walters, the cheating bastard who couldn’t even bother to get a real job. My husband who didn’t pay the mortgage and now my children have to leave the only house they’ve ever known because the bank is foreclosing on us.”
Her anger surprised both of us, and Alex took a step back toward me as she screamed about her rotten husband. When she was finished, she sagged against the wall and hung her head. The stress of losing the man she’d married and then finding out that he wasn’t the man she thought she knew at all looked like it was about to smother her.
“I’m sorry for what has happened, Mrs. Walters.”
Rose Walters nodded her thanks for Alex’s expression of sympathy and stood up straight. “Thank you, Officer Montero. I appreciate that.”
“As much as I understand how much it hurts to lose someone you loved, I need to ask you some questions about the case.”
She sighed deeply and pointed toward the chairs still left in the dining room. “We can talk in there. They’ve taken the table, but we can at least sit down.”
The chairs were still in the positions they’d been in around the large mahogany dining table, so we dragged ours toward Mrs. Walters’ and Alex took out his notepad and pen.
He didn’t waste any time getting to the heart of the matter. “You didn’t tell us you called your husband at the Hotel Piermont in Sunset Ridge the night of the murder.”
She sighed again and nodded. “Yeah, I did that.”
“Why didn’t you tell us that the last time we were here?”
“Because I knew you’d think I had something to do with his murder. I didn’t. I swear.”
Alex leaned forward toward her and rested his elbows on his knees. “You lied about being at your mother’s, Rose. You lied about knowing what your husband was up to. You lied about your husband working for Naughty and Spice. You haven’t exactly been truthful about anything with us. So let’s try this again. Where were you Tuesday night?”
The moving men came into the dining room and looked around in confusion like they didn’t know what to do since they couldn’t take the chairs next. Alex looked up at the two of them and pointed toward the kitchen. “I’m sure there’s something in there you can grab, gentlemen. The chairs here will go when we’re done.”
They trotted off to grab pots and pans while we waited for Rose Walters to explain where exactly she was on the night of her husband’s murder. She hesitated so long I thought she might tell us she wanted her attorney present, but finally she answered his question.
“I was right here. I didn’t lie when I told you I’d been at my mother’s all week, but I came home earlier than expected because my daughter got sick from too many hot dogs at a cookout we had at my mother’s.”
Leaning back in his chair, Alex jotted down the details. “What time did you get home?”
Rose looked up toward the ceiling as she thought about his question and then looked back at us. “I think we were home by seven. The kids were in bed before eight, at any rate.”
“Did you leave at any time that night?” he asked with that sharpness to his voice that told me he thought she was still lying.
“And who would watch my sick daughter and her brothers, Officer Montero? You’re barking up the wrong tree here. I didn’t kill my husband.”
I noticed how adamant she was when she denied any involvement with her husband’s murder. I didn’t know if she was innocent, but I had to wonder if what she said was true. Maybe we were on the wrong track with her.
Alex didn’t show any uncertainty in what he thought of Rose Walters, though. Pressing her for more answers, he asked, “How did you know your husband was at the Hotel Piermont that night?”
“I found a folded up piece of paper with the hotel’s name and number on it in the back of his underwear drawer when I was putting away his wash. I had suspected he was having an affair for a while, and that night after I had a few too many glasses of wine, I called the hotel to see if he was there.”
As Alex wrote in his notepad, I jumped in to ask her a few questions. “Mrs. Walters, how long had you suspected he was having an affair?”
“Last year he began to disappear for long stretches of time. He claimed he had to help out some of this students at school. I believed him at first, but then I began to think he was up to no good. Canton always had a wandering eye, but with the birth of our daughter I thought that was all in the past.”
“Did you ever find any evidence he’d had any affairs?”
“Yes and no. I found a Naughty and Spic
e Toy Company flier in his briefcase and when I asked him about it, he said he’d taken on a job selling their products. It was stupid, but I wanted to believe him, so I did. But when I told someone about him working for them, they told me the company didn’t hire men to give parties. God, I was so gullible!”
“It happens. I’m sorry. We always want to think the best of the people we love, so we give them the benefit of the doubt. Did you ever confront him about his lies about working for Naughty and Spice?”
“Yeah, and he told me he didn’t want to tell the truth about what he was really doing for money to pay our bills. Male dancer. He wasn’t exactly Chippendale material, you know? Who was paying him to dance for them? I mean, Canton had an okay body, but even I wouldn’t have paid him to see it.”
I thought about the man hunched over that desk in Room 307 and had to admit I had a hard time imagining him dancing too, but I hadn’t seen him alive so maybe he looked different without that knife sticking out of his back.
“Did you ever find out if he was actually cheating on you with someone? Did you find out a name?”
Rose Walters frowned and looked away, obviously embarrassed at having to answer such personal questions. “No. I never found any evidence, but I knew.” She turned back to look at me and continued. “The wife always knows. Even if she doesn’t want to admit it, she knows. I gave up thinking about it after a while, though. The bills were being paid and we all were taken care of, so I guess I just accepted the reality of my life.”
I knew all too well what she said was the truth. No matter how much a woman wanted to deny it, she knew when the man she loved had strayed.
The movers came into the dining room again to ask her about some items from one of the upstairs bedrooms, and Rose excused herself for a moment to talk to them, leaving Alex and me alone to discuss what we’d heard. He looked up from his notes he’d taken and smiled at me.
“I’m not sure where you’re going with all those questions, Poppy. The woman has a penchant for lying, so I’m not really inclined to believe much of what she has to say.”
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