Todd.
Bedford hung a card on the outside doorknob after making checkmarks indicating that a Continental breakfast should be delivered to her room between 9:15 and 9:30 the following morning. She left a wake-up call for 6:45.
***
Most of those who’d attended the conference were booked on one of two mid-morning flights back to D.C. The hotel’s corridors were bustling from an early hour, and the police interviews permitted a thorough reconstruction of the busy Sunday morning outside Bedford’s room.
Marciniak came by at 7:45. He knocked on Bedford’s door, was admitted, and stayed inside for about twenty minutes. A lobbyist noticed his entrance, and a Senate Finance Committee staffer who was eager to check out in time to catch the 8:30 airport shuttle and was hustling down the hallway between 8:05 and 8:10 remembered Marciniak greeting him by name as Marciniak came out of Bedford’s room.
At 8:15 Bedford called the kitchen and canceled her Continental breakfast order.
Jeffrey Quentin dropped by Bedford’s room at 8:30 or slightly before. He was closeted with her for twenty minutes plus or minus a couple, making two calls from her room in response to messages on his beeper. By 9:05, Quentin was in the lobby with his attaché case and Samsonite soft-side suit carrier, checking out.
At 8:55 a maid noticed a card hanging on Bedford’s doorknob, turned to expose the side reading maid service please. The maid noted the request.
Bedford herself must have left her room around nine o’clock, because she’d already bought a Washington Post from the hotel’s gift and magazine shop when she appeared in the Almost Heaven Cafe just before 9:10. At the café she ordered scrambled eggs, link sausage, white toast with grape jam, hash brown potatoes, black coffee, and a large glass of orange juice. Unlike the other, rather Spartan meals she’d eaten at the hotel since her arrival Friday evening, she paid for this rich and pricey repast with a hotel voucher. No one on the hotel staff could have said why Bedford was entitled to a voucher, but it didn’t occur to anyone to ask.
She lingered with the Post over what, for her, was close to a banquet. When she finally presented the voucher, the café’s cash register time-stamped it 10:02 a.m.
Around 10:15 or 10:20, a bellhop hustling a cartful of bags down the corridor noticed Scott Pilkington knock at Bedford’s door. He didn’t go in immediately, according to the bellhop. Instead, Bedford came out into the hallway, folded her arms across her chest, and conducted a brief and apparently rather frosty conversation with him. Only then did they both step inside and close the door. Within a couple of minutes Pilkington came out again and left.
There matters stayed until 11:40 a.m., when Todd Gallagher showed up.
Gallagher was conspicuous. He was six feet, three inches tall and weighed well over two hundred pounds. His forty-nine years had added only a speck or two of gray to dark brown hair that he wore short but combable. He had the quick, easy smile and bluff manner that makes savvy Southerners count their fingers after a handshake. His loden green cashmere sport coat fit over his muscular shoulders and broad chest with a perfection that bespoke custom tailoring. His khaki chinos might have come off the rack at JCPenney’s. Noticing this, the experienced bellhop concluded correctly that Gallagher had lots of money and no wife.
Standing at the house phone in the lobby, Gallagher frowned through twenty rings on what the operator assured him was the phone in Bedford’s room. After an unproductive tour of the lobby, bar, and the Almost Heaven Cafe, he tried again ten minutes later with the same result.
“She checked out yet?” he asked when the operator cut back in the second time.
“No, sir,” the operator said crisply.
There are fifty ways to get a room number from a desk clerk and Gallagher used them all, passing a single bill with a portrait of President Grant on it. Taking the stairs to the second floor two at a time, he wasn’t breathing hard when he swung to a stop outside Bedford’s room.
If Bedford wasn’t answering her phone, the odds were she wouldn’t be responding to knocks on her door, either. Though he would have been wrong in this particular case, however, Gallagher might have been excused for believing that the average hotel room lock wouldn’t be much of a challenge for the chief executive officer of SafeHome Security’s most successful South Atlantic region franchisee. Which Gallagher happened to be.
He was destined, however, never to find out. After raising his right hand for a first, perfunctory rap, he froze with his knuckles an inch from the door. He realized that there was water leaking onto his tooled snakeskin boots from underneath the door.
Chapter Five
Sharon Bedford lay in the bathtub, naked, in water that had filled the tub and overflowed it long enough for an oozing puddle to seep way all the way to the hallway door. A thick white towel sat bunched against the wall on the back of the tub, where she could have rested her head had she still been alive. In death—or perhaps shortly before—she had slipped along the tub’s bottom, submerging her head and shoulders. More than an hour’s worth of hot, running water had fogged the bathroom’s several mirrors and accounted for the steamy, humid odor pervading the room.
To get into the room, once Gallagher had alerted him, the hotel security officer had used a universal key-card on the hallway door’s principal lock. Then he’d had to jimmy the night-bolt with a pry bar and cut through the chain lock with bolt cutters. Neither the night-bolt nor the chain lock could be fastened from outside the room.
As soon as he’d turned off the water and confirmed that Bedford was dead, the security officer had called the police. While he did that, Gallagher had paced in agitated distraction around the small part of the room between the foot of the bed and the opposite wall. His eyes dull with shock, his pale lips moving in unheard mutterings, grief splashed with vivid eloquence across his features, he opened and closed massive fists and periodically snapped his head in a spasmodic shake.
During the intervals when he could concentrate at all, he sought refuge from his pain by meticulously cataloging what he saw in the small room. Pausing occasionally, he examined the adjoining door leading to the hospitality suite. The tongue-and-groove sliding latch on Bedford’s side was shut. Gallagher, who knew something about the subject, couldn’t see any sign that the latch or any part of the door frame had been forced. He saw instantly that the latch couldn’t be closed from outside the room.
The windows were all shut and latched from the inside. Even if they hadn’t been, it was clear that none of them could be opened wide enough for a human being to get in.
Bedford’s suitcase lay open on the bed and looked about two-thirds packed. White cotton underpants and brassiere lay on the pillows. Two outfits were spread out on the bed, one on each side of the suitcase, as if Bedford had planned to decide after bathing which one to put on and which one to pack. Both were simple: white linen slacks and a round-necked cotton pullover on one side, a denim skirt and a short-sleeved blue blouse on the other. A pair of Adidas court shoes lay on the floor beside the bed.
A large purse of pearl gray vinyl sat on top of the low dresser that extended from the television cabinet. Beside it, trailing a power cord that dropped toward an outlet near the floor, a laptop computer nestled inside an open, black zipper case.
“This is a smoking room,” Gallagher muttered, a suggestion of bafflement coloring the comment. “She didn’t smoke.”
The security officer, who’d been eyeing Gallagher warily since completing his phone call, nodded understandingly at the remark. His name was Harvey Barnstable. Out in the hallway, while Gallagher was explaining with considerable agitation why he should break the door down, Barnstable had learned that Gallagher had come to the hotel expecting to pick Bedford up, and that Bedford was very close to him. From a guy like Gallagher in a situation like this you expected shock or rage. Barnstable was relieved that it was going to be shock. He took two quick strides to where Gallagher
was standing, trying to show his sympathy by physical closeness without actually touching Gallagher or doing anything else that might make him uncomfortable.
“Wife?” he asked.
“She was gonna be,” Gallagher said. “She didn’t know it yet, but she was gonna be.”
“Were you coming up to ask her? God, that’s tough.”
“No, she had to get some things out of her system. I’d asked her twice and she’d said yes twice and then got cold feet twice. I figured on making the third one stick.”
“Maybe we better step outside till the police get here?” Barnstable said, inflecting his voice at the end to make the sentence a strongly suggestive question.
“Huh? Oh, sure. Right.”
***
The police hadn’t arrived yet when Michaelson lugged his copies of the Sunday New York Times and Washington Post through the lobby at 12:10, but he knew something was wrong. His job for more than three decades had included picking up subtle cues in edgy body language and nervously elaborate speech that signaled some tense departure from routine. The tension might arise from something as oblique as an interior minister going into the hospital, or as dramatic as a bloody riot being planned. Whichever, when you were four thousand miles from home and the marines at the embassy were out-numbered a thousand to one by street thugs, it was a good idea to stay ahead of the curve.
The hair-trigger nervousness in the lobby seemed palpable to him. A senior assistant manager was staffing one of the slots at the registration desk, scanning the lobby with preoccupied glances as she dealt mechanically with the paperwork that came her way. The concierge offered an automatic smile to anyone venturing within two yards of his Louis Quinze table, but his ear stayed pinned to a telephone receiver, and when he spoke into it he resorted to whispered monosyllables. The bell captain stood his post, but he repeatedly adjusted the silver braid on his maroon cuffs and he looked like someone who very much wanted to find a bathroom.
Seating himself in a well-stuffed armchair that faced the registration desk, Michaelson pulled the Week in Review section from the Times. He read it with one eye while he watched the desk and the front door with the other.
From the corner of the reading eye he picked up a splash of royal blue. He looked up from the paper to see Scott Pilkington approach, wearing the casual shirt Michaelson had just glimpsed and a pair of brown slacks. The leisure wear was elegant enough, certainly, but without his worsted pinstripes Pilkington seemed for a moment jarringly out of his element, like MacArthur in mufti or Joe DiMaggio in hunting pinks.
“Checked out and waiting for a cab to the airport, I hope?” Pilkington asked quietly as without invitation he seated himself opposite Michaelson.
“No. I’m staying over another night, as a matter of fact.”
Pilkington didn’t try to hide his surprise at this revelation.
“West Virginia must have charms I hadn’t fully appreciated.”
“Two that come to mind are distance from Washington and distance from Washingtonians.”
“Just a thought, but you may want to reconsider,” Pilkington said.
“Why?”
“A couple of minutes ago I couldn’t help noticing a rent-a-cop breaking into a room next door to last night’s hospitality suite. He wasn’t being shy about it, and from the urgency he brought to the operation, I surmised that he feared something pretty serious on the other side. I’m betting police, tedious questions, long delays, and other things that might very quickly take the bloom off West Virginia’s placid rose. Almost everyone who came for the conference is gone, and any participant who’s still around risks being seized on with avidity by cops who want information fast.”
Folding the unfinished newspaper section resignedly on top of the pile on his lap, Michaelson gazed for several seconds at Pilkington.
“There must be more,” he said at last. “What is it?”
“This is strictly a professional courtesy,” Pilkington said briskly. “Favor for an alumnus, old times’ sake, no strings attached, no ulterior motive. That sort of thing.”
“Who was registered to the room in question?”
“A young woman named Bedburg or Bedford or something had it Friday and Saturday night. She may well have checked out by now. By great good luck she wasn’t actually part of the conference, though I gather that she crashed several of the events.”
Bedford. Michaelson closed his eyes and allowed himself a brief sigh.
“Thank you for the advice,” he said then.
“Which you intend to ignore, I take it?”
“Which I intend to disregard. I don’t think a sudden and conspicuous change of plans on my part is likely to reduce the interest of the local authorities in me. Quite the contrary. I have it on good authority that the guilty flee where no man pursueth.”
Michaelson glanced over Pilkington’s right shoulder and nodded briefly. Pilkington cranked his head around to look in the same direction. He saw a dark-haired woman who looked to be in her mid-forties and was in fact in her early fifties stroll with patrician serenity through the lobby and stop at the registration desk. A bellhop straining under the burden of two suitcases, an overnight case, and a canvas carryall staggered behind her. His face was a shade darker than the maroon trim on his uniform.
“Oh,” Pilkington said. “I see.”
“That verges on indiscretion,” Michaelson said.
“What in the world does she have in the larger suitcase? An Olympic-class weight set?”
“Marjorie always takes her rock collection along for good luck.”
“Still—all that for an overnight stay in Charleston?”
“You have just officially gone beyond verging. Actually, Marjorie is on her way back to Washington from the better part of a week at a booksellers’ convention in Las Vegas. By the way, I want you to feel perfectly free to run along if you’re anxious to avoid tedious questions and constabulary entanglements. If you can get through the next fifteen minutes without another subtly suggestive comment, I might even drop by after I get back to D.C. and give you a rundown on any informational tidbits that fall into my lap.”
Two uniformed police officers and two men in civilian clothes hustled through the front door. One of the uniformed officers peeled off toward the registration counter. The rest of the group, directed with frantically discreet little waves by the concierge, hurried toward the stairs.
“Yes,” Pilkington said. “I think I will be pushing off at that.”
Chapter Six
“I’m betting you’re intrigued in spite of yourself by that young woman’s death,” Marjorie said as she strolled with Michaelson along the Kanawha River toward the Radisson on the back leg of a relaxed evening walk.
“Almost the opposite of intrigued,” Michaelson answered. “Except for your stimulating presence, I’d be feeling the way Gatsby did after Miss Buchanan left.”
“Lackadaisical?”
“You know me too well.”
With powerful bongs a carillion somewhere was punctuating the arrival of five in the evening. Marjorie and Michaelson had had several hours to learn in more detail than Pilkington had offered exactly what had brought the police hustling past Marjorie as she registered, for secrets are hard to keep in a hotel. They knew by now that Sharon Bedford had died in her room under circumstances that were at least puzzling and possibly suspicious.
“Would your enervation have something to do with the little chat you and Scott Pilkington were having when I arrived?”
“Yes. He was giving me advice.”
“Which must have been tedious.”
“And the advice was correct.”
“Which must have been aggravating.”
“Right on both counts,” Michaelson said. Without further prompting, he told her what the advice was.
“Why do you think Pilkington’s approa
ch is the right one?” Marjorie asked.
“Charleston is a state capital that I’m sure has a perfectly competent police force. If Sharon Bedford’s death involved anything more sinister than a pathetic suicide or an imprudent combination of drugs and alcohol, the best chance of finding that out is to let the local authorities investigate it as they would any other suspicious demise. Should reporters start tying her death to the conference or someone associated with it—even someone as little known as I am—then it certainly won’t do that unfortunate person any good at all. More important, the murder turns into show business overnight, and any hopes of a serious investigation drastically diminish.”
“You’re right,” Marjorie said deliberately, as if she was reluctant to accept the conclusion. “Or, rather, Pilkington’s right. If Sharon Bedford’s death becomes a national political issue instead of a local law-enforcement question, the detectives will spend more time answering questions from tabloid reporters than they will interviewing witnesses. It’d make the Vince Foster fiasco look like a model of professional police work.”
Rounding a gentle curve, they spotted the gilded dome of West Virginia’s capitol. They were less than a block from the hotel.
“I should probably be past worrying about the effect of political fallout on my own prospects but I’m not,” Michaelson said. “Even if I were, there’s Wendy to think about.”
They walked in silence for the last hundred feet or so. The afternoon and the evening thus far had precisely met the modest expectations they’d had when they’d planned their meeting here. Lazy hours passed working acrostics and crosswords, eating a room-service meal, strolling through a pleasant slice of an America that was about as real to most people in Washington as Mark Twain’s Missouri—this was exactly what they’d been hoping for.
Worst Case Scenario Page 4