by Zara Keane
We hung a right onto Gaol Road and passed Galway Cathedral. Another bridge linked us up to University Road and our destination. Julie’s estimate of a fifteen-minute walk proved to be accurate. When we reached the campus, Julie marched us past a series of buildings, barely giving me time to admire the mix of modern and old architecture.
“Before we reach the library, will you please tell me what’s going on?” my cousin begged. “Why was Melanie so keen to hire you of all people to help out at the hotel?”
“I guess it’ll come out soon enough. I’m working undercover at the hotel to try to find out who’s behind the ghost that keeps scaring away guests and employees.”
“I knew it.” My cousin grinned at me. “I didn’t buy the whole emergency shifts at the hotel business for a second, especially after Melanie waylaid you in the lobby after our massages. If it’s not too crass a question, how much are you making them pay?”
“Five and a half grand,” I said, “but I won’t get the second installment unless I solve the case before midnight tonight.”
“Yikes. You’re cutting it tight.”
“Tell me about it,” I said with a sigh. “That’s why I’m grateful for your help.”
“Okay, that’s the library.” Julie pointed at the modern building straight ahead of us. She made a beeline for the steps and I followed suit. At the entrance, my cousin whipped a pen and notebook from her bag. “What do you need me to look for?”
I rattled off the year and issue number of the archaeology journal. “I’m not sure if it’s even worth reading, but it’s all I’ve got to go on so far, so I figure it’s worth checking.”
“No worries. I’ll get through this in no time. Do you want to grab a coffee while you wait? There’s a coffee shop over there.” She pointed across the square to a building with tables outside and students relaxing with coffee cups and sandwiches.
“Sounds good. I’ll grab a latte and meet you back here.”
“Okay.” My cousin consulted her watch. “See you in thirty minutes. Sooner if I can swing it.”
“No rush. Take as long as you need.”
Julie disappeared into the library, and I made my way across a grassy verge to the café. Inside, the line to order was long, and I let my gaze drift over the groups of students while I ran through the information I had on the hotel hauntings one last time.
The next instant, my stomach leaped, and my breath froze in my lungs. Standing three people ahead of me in the line was the dreadlocked animal rights activist Liam Reynolds had arrested the night we found the dead man on the beach. And the girl he was locking lips with was none other than Zuzanna from the hotel.
20
When Zuzanna and her boyfriend broke their kiss, her adoring smile told me all I needed to know. Whether she’d staged the ghost business to prevent the archaeological site from being built over or the tree from being cut down, I neither knew nor cared. Every fiber of my being told me she was behind the hotel’s “hauntings.” A burning anger coursed through me. Although no one had been physically hurt during their war of terror at the Whisper Island Hotel, people had been scared. By putting the hotel’s finances in jeopardy, Zuzanna had placed her coworkers’ jobs at risk.
As if she sensed me glaring daggers into her neck, Zuzanna turned around and spotted me watching her. She sucked in a breath and paled to a chalky white before an angry red stained her cheeks.
I took a step toward her, blocking her exit. “Hey, Zuzanna. Have you got a moment? I’d like to talk to you about swapping shifts at the hotel.”
The girl’s mouth opened and shut. Her gaze flew to her boyfriend. Mr. Dreadlocks shifted his backpack to his other shoulder and gave me an insolent up and down. “Can’t it wait until she’s back on the island? It’s her day off, after all. She’s entitled to a break.”
My gaze was riveted on his backpack. Out of the top, a stray cable bulged, reminding me of Lenny’s various bags of tech goodies. My mind whirred, and the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place.
I smiled brightly at the young man, but he showed no sign of recognizing me from the night of his arrest. A self-absorbed sack of excrement like him wouldn’t notice anyone outside his orbit. “It’ll only take a minute,” I said in a soothing voice. “Zuzanna and I have already discussed changing days.”
The girl shot me a wide-eyed look and her mouth formed a pout. With a show of reluctance and a sulky expression that was a subconscious imitation of her boyfriend’s, Zuzanna followed me out of the café.
The moment we were out of sight, I rounded on her. “It was you all along. You’re the hotel ghost. And I’d bet you’re a ghost with excellent English, too. You overdid the errors, by the way. You weren’t consistent in your mistakes. When you started talking about archaeology, your English magically improved.”
Her nostrils flared. “You can’t prove anything. It’ll be your word against mine. You won’t find my fingerprints on anything that could be used as evidence against me.”
“You’re wrong,” I lied. “You weren’t careful enough when you placed that speaker inside the suite’s wall. The police found a fingerprint.”
“That’s not possible. I wore—” She broke off and flushed a deeper red. Her hands balled into fists. “You’re trying to trick me.”
“Fingerprint or no, you’ll still need my help if you don’t want to get into a heck of a lot of trouble with the police.”
“You have nothing on me,” she said with a sneer. “And neither do they. Besides, why would you want to help me?”
“Because I want to cut a deal with you and your boyfriend.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What sort of deal? Why would we want to do anything for you? I know you’ve been nosing around the hotel asking questions. You’re that American who solved a murder a few weeks ago. I’ll bet the Greers hired you to catch whoever’s behind the ghost.”
“They did, and I have.” I pinned her in place with an intense stare. “Listen to me, Zuzanna. You and your boyfriend are going to be up to your scrawny necks in trouble when the police find out what you’ve done. Your boyfriend is already mired in legal issues. I saw him being arrested on Whisper Island.”
“Jason will be fine. He has a good lawyer. He has nothing to worry about.” Her chin jutted in a defiant gesture that didn’t match the fear in her eyes. Good. I’d play on that fear.
“Even the smartest lawyer will find keeping him out of jail a challenge if the charges keep mounting.”
“What charges?” she demanded scornfully. “He was attacked by a bull. Jason should be the one pressing charges against that stupid farmer.”
“Your idiot boyfriend caused the death of an innocent animal by trespassing on private land. What kind of fool barges into a bullpen and scares the animals? I don’t see how that’s compatible with his alleged endorsement of animal welfare.”
“Jason didn’t shoot the bull,” she whined. “It’s not his fault the farmer got trigger-happy.”
I gritted my teeth and tempered down my anger. “If the farmer hadn’t shot the bull, Jason would have died. The man didn’t shoot his own bull willingly. He did it because your fool of a boyfriend was about to get trampled to death.”
Zuzanna, breathing heavily, placed her hands on her hips. “This conversation is over. I have nothing more to say to you.”
“But I have plenty to say to you.” I took a step closer and she shrank back, her eyes darting from side to side in search of an escape route.
“You’re crazy. You’ve got nothing on Jason or me. You’re just bluffing.”
“Am I? I’ll bet your arrogant boyfriend is the brain behind the doctored surveillance tapes at the hotel.”
She shook her head, still walking backward. “You can’t prove that.”
I dogged her every step of the way. “I don’t need to prove your involvement with hard evidence. One word from me, and the Greers will fire you. If the hauntings stop once you’re gone, well, I’ll have done my duty.”
“D
o you think I care about a crummy job cleaning hotel toilets?” she demanded with a sneer. “I’m only there to help Jason.”
“If you want to help Jason, cut a deal with me now, before I call the Greers and the police.”
Zuzanna backed into a tree and winced when the bark scraped her hands. “What deal? You can’t offer us anything we’d want.”
“I bet your boyfriend still has the original surveillance footage saved somewhere. He’d have needed it to doctor it and upload the replacement to the hotel’s servers.” I was bluffing. I had only a vague idea of how this worked, but if there was even a slim chance that the original footage from the hotel’s security cameras revealed the person who’d stolen Carl Logan’s knife, it was worth pursuing.
“So what if he has?” She looked perplexed. “Why do you want to see the original footage?”
“For another case I’m working on.” At her stony expression, I added, “The man who went over the cliff.”
“The murdered man?” This elicited a reaction. “Do you think he’s on the surveillance footage?”
“Either him, his murderer, or both. You staged a haunting the night of the murder, remember?”
She gave the barest of nods.
“My friend looked at the hotel’s copies of the surveillance tapes, and he said the tapes were doctored. Thirty minutes worth was replaced with footage from the previous day. I need to know who went in and out of the hotel on that night, and I’m willing to negotiate on your behalf with the Greers and the police in order to get it.”
“No.” The word came in a staccato burst. “I want nothing to do with this. It’s not my problem if some stupid man got himself murdered.”
The girl twisted her rings and looked about her with a frantic expression. She was afraid of me, and I intended to play on that fear. After what she’d done, she deserved nothing less.
I shrugged and schooled my features into an impassive expression. “Suit yourself. If I were in your position, I wouldn’t want word to get out that I had the missing footage. It could prove dangerous.”
Zuzanna paled under her heavy makeup. “We’ll erase it.”
“Deleting it won’t help you if the killer thinks you had access to it. For all he knows, you watched it before getting rid of it.”
She sucked in a breath and bit her lip. “Okay,” she said after a long pause. “I’ll talk to Jason, but no police. They can’t know. If you tell them, we don’t have a deal.”
“Okay. No police—for now. But I need that footage. Do you want to be responsible for letting a killer escape justice?”
The girl shook her head slowly. “I’ll talk to Jason and meet you here in a few minutes.”
“No way. I’m not letting you out of my sight. I’ll talk to Jason with you and I’m not leaving until I have that footage.” I took my phone out of my pocket. “I have Sergeant Reynolds’s number on speed dial. Do you want me to press it?”
Muttering, the girl stomped back to the café where her irritated boyfriend was waiting outside with their coffees. He glared at me. “That was way more than a minute.”
“Shut up and listen to me before I report you to the police for breaking and entering and causing a whole lot of people a bunch of grief,” I said. “Given your previous arrest, along with whatever else is on your record, I doubt you want me to do that.”
The guy shot Zuzanna an alarmed look.
The girl shrugged. “She knows everything. But apparently we have something she wants.”
“What could we possibly have that you’d want?” he asked me with a sneer. “Are you looking for a threesome?”
Ugh. The idea of that dreadlocked reptile touching me made my skin crawl, and Zuzanna, pretty though she was, was the wrong gender to appeal to me. “No, you fool. I want the original surveillance footage from the Whisper Island Hotel from the dates and times you and your partner in crime staged hauntings.”
A nervous tick twitched in his cheek. “Why? There’s nothing special on it.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But it just might help catch a killer.”
An hour later, Julie, Lenny, and I squashed into Jason’s one-room student apartment. As I’d guessed, Jason turned out to be a vegan computer nerd who took an instant liking to Lenny, especially when he realized Lenny’s tech savvy trumped his own. While the guys huddled around Jason’s computer, Zuzanna, Julie, and I sat on the sofa bed. Zuzanna twisted her rings with such force that I was afraid she’d pull her fingers off.
Lenny looked over his shoulder, an animated expression on his face. “Hey, Maggie. I need you for this part.”
I stood and joined my friend at the computer. After a moment’s hesitation, and a sharp look from Lenny, Jason deigned to give me his chair.
I peered at the blurry picture on the screen. “What am I looking at?”
“This is footage from the kitchen.” Lenny pressed fast-forward and then hit pause. “Know the guy next to Carl’s knives?”
I snorted at the sight of the grainy footage. “Hard to tell. The Greers opted for a bargain-basement security system.”
“Did you expect anything else?” Lenny inquired. “Anyone who hires Pat Inglis as their security guard is doing it on the cheap.”
“Can you zoom in? I’d like to get a better look at the guy standing next to Carl’s workstation.”
Lenny obliged, and a familiar face came into view. I sucked in a breath.
“Do you recognize him?” Lenny asked.
Before I could comment, we both gasped. The man in the video looked around the empty kitchen before picking up Carl’s knife and hiding it in his jacket.
“Oh my goodness.” My hand flew to my mouth. “Marcus took Carl’s knife?”
“What?” Julie exclaimed in horror. “No way.”
Zuzanna gasped. “Not Marcus.”
I swiveled in my chair. “You both know Marcus. Back me up here. That’s him, isn’t it?”
The two women leaped to their feet and peered over my shoulder at the laptop screen.
Julie inhaled sharply. “Yeah, that’s him.”
I turned to Zuzanna.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s Marcus. I can’t believe he’d kill someone.”
“I don’t know that he’s the killer,” I cautioned, “but he’s got to be involved if he stole the knife used to frame Carl.” I regarded Zuzanna’s horrified expression with interest. “Is there something you’d like to tell us about Marcus?”
The girl slumped back onto the sofa bed and fiddled with her rings. “He gives the best massages,” she offered lamely.
Lenny looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
“Who is this Marcus guy?” Jason demanded. “Some gigolo?”
“He’s a massage therapist at the hotel,” I said, watching Zuzanna’s face as I spoke. “I don’t know what else he does.” Or what he knows. Günter’s words about Marcus’s fake accent played on repeat in my head.
“It’s not what you think,” Zuzanna said, addressing her boyfriend. “Marcus…caught me installing a mini speaker in the ballroom. He guessed I was behind the wailing banshee noises and the poltergeist activities.”
Jason swore fluently. “I told you to be careful.”
“Says the man who caused a bull to be shot,” she retorted.
“Back up a sec,” I interjected. “Marcus knew you were behind the fake hauntings?”
Zuzanna nodded. “Yes. He promised me he wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“And in return,” I guessed, “you were to stage a haunting on the night of the murder.”
She hung her head, two red spots appearing on her cheeks. “I didn’t know anyone would die, I swear it. Marcus told me he wanted to play a prank on Sven. Those two are always joking around. I assumed he was telling the truth.”
“Didn’t you guess when the dead man was found?” Lenny demanded. “Didn’t you think it was a weird coincidence?”
“Well, no. At first, everyone assumed the dead man was the Whisper Island postman. I knew Ed
die Ward was friends with Marcus, but when Carl was arrested, I thought the case was closed.”
“What did you think when you found out the dead man was a stranger?” I asked. “Did you ask Marcus about it?”
She shook her head. “Why would I? If a stranger was murdered, that made it even more unlikely that Marcus was involved. I honestly thought he was telling the truth about pranking Sven.”
“Did he ask you how you and Jason managed to fake the surveillance footage?” Lenny asked. “He must have been aware that the times he appeared on the saved recordings would be replaced with innocent footage.”
The girl scrunched up her forehead. “Yeah, he asked me, but I was vague. I mean, that’s Jason’s area. All Marcus wanted to know was that the original footage would be erased. I said it would.” She looked from her boyfriend to Lenny and added in a defensive tone, “I didn’t know Jason had the original. I thought it was gone forever.”
Thank goodness for Jason’s lack of tech savvy. I turned to Lenny. “Please copy the footage. We’ll need to show it to Reynolds.”
“Hang on a sec.” My friend’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “There’s a working camera I haven’t checked yet. It’s the one near the staff entrance.”
My heart leaped. “Awesome. Maybe we’ll see Marcus leaving.”
A few clicks later, Lenny found what he was looking for. “Okay, this is it.”
He hit play, and we leaned forward to watch the action unfold. According to the time on the recording, two minutes after Marcus picked up Carl’s knife in the kitchen, he walked out the staff entrance. A couple of seconds later, two other men came into view. One wore a red baseball cap pulled low enough to obscure his face. The other was a handsome, dark-haired man dressed in a summer postal uniform.
“Whoa,” Lenny exclaimed. “It’s the dead dude. And he still has his face.” Without waiting for me to ask, he zoomed in on the stranger in the postal uniform. We hunkered closer to the screen. “Dude looked better with a face,” he said.
“Most people do,” I added dryly.