The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  “The old Terry wouldn’t have gotten involved in anything like that, but now…”

  He let out a long sigh and for once I wanted Dan to talk faster. “But now you don’t know?”

  “What do you want me to say, Shanahan? Do I think Terry McTavish would decide to take from the company what he thought he was owed to begin with? No. Would it surprise me to hear that he did? Not that much.”

  After I hung up, I sat down on the bed again and tried to figure out what to do next. I had a full day scheduled, meetings with people who saw or might have seen John while he was in Miami. But I should call Terry, I thought, and quiz him. I should give Mae an update. What would I tell her?

  My muscles twitched and ached from too little sleep. I was mighty annoyed at the turn events had taken, and deeply pissed off that I never saw it coming. The sun was beginning to show through the slats of the plantation shutters. I lay all the way back and closed my eyes against the bright intrusion. The next time I moved, it was to get up and answer the door. The maid wanted to know if she could clean my room before her shift ended. It was after eleven o’clock in the morning. I was already late for my first appointment. Probably not a good way to start off with the Miami-Dade Police Department.

  Chapter Seven

  Betty Boop stared down at the squad room from a high shelf. Her round button eyes and Kewpie doll lips gave her an expression of extreme surprise, not inappropriate given that she was staring down at a man handcuffed to a chair.

  Detective Patricia Spain leaned against the desk where I was sitting. Her white silk blouse gleamed against her dark skin, and her peach-colored linen suit hung on a frame that was all corners and angles—long legs, plank-straight shoulders, and flat stomach. With her ultrashort hair and unlined face, she could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty years old.

  “Spell your name, please.”

  She wrote down my name in her pad as I spelled it. She was a lefty, the kind that wrapped her arm around and pulled the pencil from the top—a difficult maneuver since she was leaning against a desk, trying to use her knee as a writing surface. Homicide detectives worked out of Miami-Dade Police Department headquarters. As such, she was a visitor herself to the Airport Station squad room. She had borrowed a desk, one of ten packed into a space as big as a small master bedroom, and given me the chair.

  “Tell me again about your relationship with the victim.”

  I didn’t like the word victim. I shifted in my chair and accidentally bumped a stack of manila file folders on the floor at my feet.

  “Don’t worry about those,” she said before I had a chance to lean over and straighten them. “They go up in that chair you’re sitting in. I’ll put them back when we’re done.”

  “John and I used to work together for Majestic Airlines in Boston. We became friends.”

  “Ummm-huh. And tell me again why you’re here.”

  It seemed like a simple question. And I had lots of answers. I could have told her how when I had needed help at Logan, John McTavish had been there. How he had helped me uncover a deep, dark secret that just about everyone had wanted to stay buried. How he had chosen to stand with me against his union brothers—men he had grown up with and worked with side by side—when doing so probably meant risking his life. I could have told her that John was a good man who had worked for everything he’d had in life and did not deserve to be labeled a drug runner.

  I looked at the detective. “Mae… John’s wife wanted someone down here who could be closer to the investigation. I’m between jobs right now, so I told her I’d come.”

  “Are you an investigator of some kind? Do you have a license?”

  “No.”

  Her eyes as she looked down at me were as dark as a couple of pitted black olives. It was hard to read them, but I felt as she stared down at me that she had decided something right then. “I’ve already told the family everything we know.” She had decided not to talk to me. “I don’t know what else we can do for you.”

  “With all due respect, Detective, they don’t feel that you’ve told them anything. Is that because you don’t know, or because you don’t want them to know what you know?”

  She closed her notebook, crossed her arms, and leaned back against the desk. “When we have something to tell them, we will.”

  “Does that mean you won’t tell me either?”

  “There isn’t much I could tell you that I haven’t told them. Maybe a few unpleasant details.”

  “I’ll take anything you’ve got.”

  She didn’t sigh. She didn’t roll her eyes. She just held eye contact for a moment longer than if she hadn’t wanted me to go away. Then she reopened the notebook, flipped back a few pages, and began to read. Rapidly. “Mr. McTavish was stabbed in the throat with a serrated blade, probably a knife, long enough to go in one side and out the other. He was killed somewhere other than where he was found, we don’t know where yet, but it wasn’t his hotel room. We haven’t found the murder weapon. He didn’t die right away. From the position of the body, it appeared he was trying to climb out. The ME says he bled to death.”

  “Climb out?”

  “The body was found early Wednesday morning in a Dumpster by a homeless man looking for breakfast.”

  “Oh.” That was a detail no one had shared with me, and I wasn’t sure I was better off for having learned it. Bleeding to death on a pile of garbage was a graceless exit for an honorable man. I thought about Mae wanting the details, wanting to know everything John had done from the moment he’d left her to the moment he’d died, and I wondered if that was something she would want to know. I was glad I had just given her an update. I had a day or two to figure out how to tell her.

  “When was he killed?”

  “Sometime early Tuesday morning. We know he called home around one a.m., so it was after that. There’s only one person down here we know for sure he made contact with, and he’s got an alibi.”

  “Bobby Avidor?”

  “Ummm-huh. Do you know him?”

  “I met him for the first time last night. I’ve heard rumors that he’s running dope out of the airport here.”

  The information did not bowl her over. She didn’t even blink. “Where did you hear that?”

  “His former colleagues on the ramp in Boston. They’re usually right.”

  “Well”—she flipped her notebook closed for a second time—“I’ve talked to the detectives who work here at the airport and they’ve got nothing like that on him. They’re usually right.”

  Touché, Detective. “Do you have a motive?”

  “Nothing we’re ready to talk about.”

  “John’s wife told me you suspect he was involved in a drug deal gone bad.”

  “This is Miami. We assume everything is drug related until we can prove otherwise.”

  “John McTavish would not be involved in any transaction related to drugs.”

  Detective Spain looked skeptical, and I didn’t blame her. She probably heard the same thing about everyone’s murdered friends and relatives. She responded with her own question. “Why do you think Mr. McTavish was in Miami?”

  “It’s possible he heard the rumors about Avidor and he came down here to tell him to stop doing what he was doing.”

  “Why wouldn’t he have called us? Or the FBI?”

  “John didn’t trust authority, and he was comfortable handling these kinds of problems on his own. He probably felt he had created it by bringing Bobby into the company. It would have been like him to try to solve it himself.”

  She’d asked the question, but seemed only half interested in the answer, and not at all interested in continuing the discussion. She tapped the end of her pencil on her pad. I sat in my allotted space and felt the weight of the logbook in my lap. It was inside my backpack, and the time had come for me to do what I’d come to do, what I’d told Mae I would do, which was turn over the book and the ring to the authorities.

  Detective Spain was now sliding the pencil in
and out of the little spiral at the top of her pad. When she got it stuck there, I stood up, which wasn’t a good idea because wherever you stood in that squad room, you were standing in someone’s way. Another detective almost tripped over me.

  “Thank you for your time, Detective.” I pulled one of the personal business cards I’d had printed out of my backpack, wrote the number for the hotel on it, and offered it to her. “I hope you won’t mind if I stay in touch with you while I’m down here.” She took the card and slipped it into her notebook.

  I waited. She stared at me. “Detective, could I have one of yours?”

  She offered a card and I took it, thankful that I had gotten at least one thing I’d asked for from the good detective. I threw the backpack over my shoulder and walked out.

  Chapter Eight

  The Harmony House Suites was different from the place I had pictured when Mae had shown me the receipt. The lobby looked more like a sparsely visited shopping mall from the 1970s than the serene atrium it aspired to be. The indoor-outdoor carpet was too orange, the decorative goldfish pond in the middle of the lobby was too blue, and there was far too much glass, brass, and faux wood trim in evidence.

  “Miss Shanahan?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Felix Melendez Jr. You asked to speak to me?” He wore a beige and brown broad-striped tie and a tan polyester jacket with too wide sleeves. His Adam’s apple was pointy, his spiky black hair had dyed-white tips that reminded me of cake frosting, and if he was a day over sixteen, I would have been shocked. “You’re the manager?”

  “I’m the acting general manager.”

  “What are you when you’re not acting?”

  “I’m one of the assistant managers. How can I help you?” His dark eyes conveyed a calm intelligence that was in high contrast to his eager, loose-hinged posture.

  “I’d like to talk to you about one of your guests… a former guest. He stayed here a couple of weeks ago. His name is—”

  “John McTavish.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because the police have already been here. He’s the dead guy, right?”

  He stood with his hands behind him, head tilted attentively, waiting for confirmation or correction. He wasn’t being a smart-ass. He wasn’t even betraying a callous streak. He was just being young. “That’s right,” I said. “He’s the dead guy. And I’m trying to find out what happened to him.”

  “Are you police?”

  “I’m a friend of his.” He continued to blink at me as if that explanation wasn’t enough. “You don’t have to talk to me,” I said, “but if you can help me, I hope you will.”

  “That’s no problem. I’ll give you whatever you need. I was just wondering, is it true he worked for an airline?”

  “Yes. In Boston.”

  “Cool.”

  “Is it?”

  “Let’s go back to my office.”

  The back offices of The Harmony House Suites were like back offices everywhere—drab and textureless, scuffed and cluttered with the accumulated detritus of an ongoing business. But Felix’s office was a striking contrast. He slipped behind his desk, a veritable oasis of working space interrupted by only a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse on a pad that said Limp Bizkit. He made up for the absence of windows with lots of framed posters—travel posters, including my all-time favorite from Majestic, Sacre Coeur at night—and his question about John’s occupation made more sense. He must have noticed me looking.

  “I’m trying to get into the travel business. An airport hotel is as close as I’ve come so far, but I’m thinking of going to school to become a travel agent.”

  “Why don’t you apply to the airlines?”

  “I have. Every one. They either rejected me or put my application on file.”

  He didn’t seem dejected. He seemed cheerful about the whole thing, which made me think he was the kind of person who would not waste time worrying about the obstacles thrown up in his path. He’d find another way.

  “I used to work for Majestic, too,” I said.

  He smiled and shook his head. “That is too cool. What do you need, Miss Shanahan?”

  “When did you talk to the police?”

  “I didn’t. The other assistant manager talked to a detective the week it happened. But she told me about it.”

  “Did the detective leave a name?”

  “She left a business card.” In what seemed like a conditioned response, Felix’s hand moved to the mouse and his index finger went to work. When he found the screen he was looking for, he turned the monitor and showed it to me. “I scanned it in. I had to put it in our activity report for the home office. Do you need a copy?”

  I looked at the information on the screen. Detective Patricia Spain.

  “I already have one of—”

  Too late. He’d pointed and clicked and somewhere a page began to print. In keeping with the austere look of Felix’s office, the printer was hidden from sight.

  “Did you ever see John?”

  “I never saw him. I worked nights that week, and he checked in during the afternoon before I got here. But one of our room service waiters took dinner up to him. The detective showed him a picture of Mr. McTavish, and Emilio said that was him.”

  “Can I have Emilio’s full name?” I started to go for a pen in my backpack.

  “Sure. It’s Emilio Serra. He’ll be back in at”—Felix turned in his chair and with his eyes fixed on the monitor, clicked the mouse—“five this afternoon.”

  “And when is his shift over?”

  “One o’clock in the morning. After the kitchen shuts down. You don’t have to write any of this down. I can print it all out for you.”

  I found the pen anyway, and a piece of scratch paper, and put them on the desk in front of me on the off chance there was a bit of information floating about in the world he couldn’t access with his mouse.

  “When did John check out?”

  “He checked in Monday night and checked out on Tuesday.” He was reading again from the monitor.

  “And he left nothing in the room?”

  “No. The police checked, but there have been four different guests in there since he was. If he’d left anything, we would have known by now. Or else it would be gone.”

  “How about phone records, a copy of his credit card receipt, or anything he may have signed at check-in?”

  “The police took all of the originals. But I can print copies for you. I can tell you right now he had one phone call from his room, which the detective said was to his house in Boston.”

  “What time was that?”

  “One in the morning on Tuesday.” It was the call he’d made to Terry, the one warning him to watch the family. Had to be. I reached for the pen.

  “I can print all of this out for you.”

  “Somehow it sticks in my head better if I write it down myself.” I recorded the time of the phone call, which had been, as far as I knew, the last communication from John to anyone.

  “Incoming calls?”

  “We don’t track those.”

  “Does the hotel have a voice mail system?”

  “Yeah. It’s called the front desk. No one there remembered taking any calls for him. If you want…” He paused, tapping his finger on the side of the keyboard. Right there on his face, I could see Felix’s internal struggle playing out. His lips pursed and unpursed and his thick, dark eyebrows danced up and down as his expression teetered between cautious and excited. Excited won out. “I can give you his whole schedule while he was on our property.”

  “How can you do that?”

  “When you check in, you get a unique card key, and every time you use it, the activity gets recorded. All that information goes into the system as a stream of data. I can tell you everything he did that required a card key. And what time he did it, too.”

  “Like coming and going from his room?”

  He gave his head a quick shake. “Only coming. He wouldn’t us
e it to go out. Do you want it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I took my scratch paper, walked around, and stood behind Felix’s chair to watch him work. He was already clicking on a desktop icon that looked suspiciously like Felix the Cat. A menu came up, one that seemed navigable and well designed. He typed John’s name into one of the blanks, hit enter, and leaned back. “We’ll have to wait. The hotel system sucks. It takes forever to compile the data. Oh, and you can’t, like, tell anyone where you got it.”

  “Why not?”

  “The data belongs to the hotel. I wrote my own program to access it.”

  “You hacked into your own company’s system?”

  “I had to. We have a lot of repeat business, and I like to know if a guest likes to use the health club, or always orders the same thing from room service. I tried to get our systems people to do it. My request has been sitting in some programmer’s in-box for eighteen months. I’m like, ‘Dude, it will take you an hour to write the code,’ and he’s like, ‘Write it yourself. Just don’t tell anyone.’ So I did.” He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Why collect the data if you’re not going to use it?”

  The boy manager looked up at me as if I could explain why big corporations can be bureaucratic, territorial, insular, and at times downright prehistoric when it comes to embracing available technology. I couldn’t.

  “Felix… do you mind if I call you Felix?” “Mr. Melendez” didn’t seem to fit and he didn’t object. “You’d be perfect in the airline business.”

  That drew a big grin, a loopy, high school marching band grin. I liked this kid. I liked how he was smart without being cynical or ironic. And I liked that he had a mass of perforations in his right ear, though sans earrings for the moment. He was, after all, at work.

  “Here it is. Mr. McTavish checked in at four o’clock in the afternoon on Monday.” He glanced over as I wrote down that time. “He booked for one night, and… that’s weird.” His fingers flew over the keys. “He specifically stated when he checked in that he wanted to pay cash, but he ended up charging the stay to his card.”