“Well, that’s a break.”
A C.S.I man wearing two pairs of rubber gloves, a surgical mask, goggles, and paper booties over his shoes was in the process of collecting blood samples, which he placed in separate bags labeled CAUTION: BIOHAZARD—May Be Contaminated. Another officer drew a chalk line around the body.
“Biohazard?” Jay asked Loweman.
“A precaution. All articles or evidence dealing with body fluids, especially blood, have to be flagged that way. HIV. Can’t be too careful these days.”
Kasey asked, “Detective, is that Inez Ramos?”
“We don’t have a positive yet, but it’s a good guess. The ID card found nearby says Ramos. Course, right now she doesn’t look anything like the woman in the picture. The victim is a maid and Hispanic, and we got a missing Hispanic maid. We also got a Hispanic dishwasher observed leaving the scene. It don’t come easier.”
Kasey looked back at the body, then at the people bustling around it to collect evidence, so cold and impersonal. Whoever she was she deserved better than this. Kasey wished she could go to the body and tenderly arrange it, cover the bare legs, give the woman a measure of dignity. Her final moments had been cruel and harsh. And it seemed it was not over for her yet.
“How was she killed?” Kasey asked.
“Can’t say for sure. The M.E. will have to make that determination. She died hard, I’ll say that. Face was pretty well pounded, bruises on her throat. Neck looks broken. The position of the body and the fact she has no underpants indicate sexual assault.”
Kasey thought of her visit in the bar with Paula Volger less than an hour ago. Paula and Inez had been best friends. Paula, tough, street-wise Paula, who only the day before had had the common sense to back away from a potentially dangerous situation in Room 603, would soon learn about the brutal death of her friend. Paula had said Inez Ramos was shy and gullible, looking for nothing more than a stable relationship with a decent man. Kasey looked away from the bloody corpse. That would never happen now.
It was cold in the basement. Kasey shivered, hugged herself, and rubbed at the rippled flesh on her arms. A moment later, she felt the weight of Jay’s suit jacket as he draped it over her shoulders. It was warm from the heat of his body and smelled lightly of his aftershave. She thanked him with a smile.
“Jay, my friend,” Loweman said ruefully, “you musta did something to piss off the hotel god, ‘cause you’re sure having some bad luck here. Two homicides in two weeks. I barely got started with the other investigation and now—Aw, shit, here comes the chief. Stick around.” Loweman went to meet a tall, thin Oriental man.
Kasey and Jay stood side by side, silently gazing at the murder scene. A uniformed policeman with a camcorder carefully moved around the scene, narrating as he filmed. Kasey focused on both the uniform and the camera.
“Jay, I want a list of all security officers. Names and shifts. Get me a schematic of the building. I want to know the location of every camera, two-way mirror, egress, and anything else that involves surveillance. Oh, and there’s this particular security guard—”
“Not here,” he said, putting his hand on her lower back and urging her forward. “Upstairs. We’ll go to the office and have something sent up. Are you hungry?”
Hungry? “Oh, God,” she glanced at her watch. 7:19. It was a ten-minute drive across Sparks to the Reno Y. She would scarcely have time to make it there before the class started. “No—can’t. I’m sorry, I have to be somewhere.”
She broke away, was halfway to the service elevator when she realized she still had Jay’s suit jacket over her shoulders. She turned. Jay was standing where she’d left him, watching her. She went back, handed him the jacket, and thanked him.
He folded it over his arm. “Where are you parked?”
“In the garage.”
“I’ll walk you.”
“No, that’s okay. I’ve got to run. I’m late already.” She was already hurrying away.
“Be careful. Hear?” he called after her.
*
Running as late as she was, she’d had no time to play her obligatory slot machine before leaving the club. It was times like this, rushing through town, squeaking through one yellow light after another, that Kasey wished she had a car phone. If there were one thing she hated, it was being late, making people wait on her. Kasey arrived at 7:31, in time to catch a pair of sweats Peggy tossed at her as they passed in the hallway.
“Meet you on the floor,” Peggy said.
She changed from her skirt and blouse into the freshly laundered sweats. In bare feet she joined her friend and a group of about fifteen women of various ages who sat yoga-fashion on floor mats in the large room with basketball hoops and bleachers, the latter now folded against the walls.
After introducing Kasey to the class, Peggy continued to reiterate points from the previous class—the awareness session. Tonight was the second of two parts—the physical training and assertiveness session. Although Peggy, a fifth-degree black belt, was skilled in martial arts, she opted to instruct what she called the “crash course.” How many women in today’s hectic world had the time or the inclination to take an ongoing martial arts class? The main purpose of Peggy’s class was to give a woman, regardless of age, stature, and physical condition, the knowledge and self-assertiveness to avoid becoming a victim. Her women’s self-defense program was now the Y’s most popular class.
Thirty minutes later, in a room filled with screams and grunts, Peggy and Kasey, taking turns on each other, demonstrated various self-defense tactics. They used knees, elbows, hands and feet or whatever weapons were at hand—keys, pepper spray, the heel or toe of the shoe. Screams served a number of purposes. To scare off the attacker, to alert passersby, and to get the fight or flight adrenaline rushing through the would-be victim’s veins.
Well into the session Kasey was glad she had come. This was just what she needed. An outlet for the tension that had been building for the past couple of days. She found herself screaming a little louder, putting a little more thrust into her defense moves. She felt alive, exhilarated. It was over all too soon.
The room emptied quickly. Peggy and Kasey folded the mats and stacked them against the wall.
“Hungry?” Peggy asked.
“I could eat.”
“Clementine’s?”
“Not Clementine’s. I have a job to do there at the end of the week. If I go there tonight, I’ll wind up working. How ‘bout Keppy’s?”
“Perfect. Tonight’s potato leek.”
*
“It’s not like you to be late. What happened?” Peggy asked Kasey after they were seated at a wicker table in the garden room of Keppy’s, where plants and trees flourished everywhere in artificial humidity.
“A maid was murdered at the club today. Her body was found in the basement just before seven tonight.” Kasey pushed a palm frond away.
“Murdered?” Peggy leaned forward. “Did they catch the killer?”
“Maybe. A hotel dishwasher was seen running away.”
“So tell me.”
Kasey and Peggy shared everything. What was said never went beyond the two of them. Despite Peggy’s mixed heritage and a somewhat traumatic past, this petite woman with the soft brown eyes and caramel complexion was the most normal, most grounded, most compassionate friend Kasey had. Whenever Kasey needed a reality check, she called Peggy.
She told Peggy what had happened. They discussed it for several minutes, then the conversation turned to less gruesome news.
All through their identical meal of potato leek soup, spinach salad with hot bacon dressing, wine, and freshly baked sheep-herder bread—even their tastes ran alike—Kasey’s mind kept wandering. Peggy talked of Artie and their relationship, but Kasey listened with only half an ear, commenting when appropriate. Her mind was back at the club, on the latest chain of events. Two murdered women—one a guest and the other a maid—Paula Volger and the security guard, the threats, the burglaries, far too much to
be merely coincidental. Someone was out to make Jay King suffer, to punish him for some infraction—someone who knew Jay well enough to know just how important the club was to him. She wished she had the schematic and surveillance information she’d asked for. Was he still at the club, she wondered, or had he gone home—to Dianne?
The table was cleared, coffee and dessert ordered. Kasey glanced at her watch: 10:13.
“Am I keeping you from something,” Peggy asked sweetly.
“What? Oh, I’m sorry. Peg, no. I’m just a little distracted I guess.”
“A little? A cardboard cutout in your likeness would’ve been more sociable.”
Kasey grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. Next time I’ll be better company. Promise.”
While Peggy moaned ecstatically through a caramel custard flan, Kasey excused herself to use the rest room. A bank of telephones outside the ladies’ room caught her eye. She slowed. No, she told herself, I will not call him. It can wait until morning. He’s home with his wife, where he belongs.
Her body seemed to move independently from her brain. She stopped, took a quarter from her purse, dropped it in the slot, and dialed his private line at the club. As the phone rang, her heart pounded. What would she say if he answered?
The phone rang on and on. She hung up slowly, relieved that he wasn’t there to answer, wasn’t there to hear her lame excuse for calling, wasn’t there to indulge her.
As she approached the table where Peggy sat waiting for her, she coaxed her mouth into a pleasant smile.
Chapter Nineteen
At 8:00 A.M., her arms filled with magazines for Danny, Kasey opened the door of her bungalow to find Snickers sitting on the porch, front legs covered with fresh mud up to his chest, a young rosebush at his feet. He placed a paw on the bush as if it were a trophy kill and whined happily.
Kasey felt like a zombie. Everyone in the Atwood household had waited up to ask her about the recent murder at King’s Club. All the local stations on both the early and late night news programs had covered it. When finally she had climbed into bed, sleep had refused to come. She’d lain awake thinking about the recent events at the club, attempting ineffectually to piece it all together. At 5:30, she finally left her bed to tackle some overdue paperwork.
Tangling with a muddy dog the size of a small bear in her new off-white linen outfit was the last thing she wanted to do this morning. She closed the door and strode to the phone.
Across the yard she heard the ringing. “Ma,” she said when Marianne answered, “we gotta do something about that dog.”
While Marianne lured Snickers to the side of the house with a bowl of honey-laced ice cream, the dog’s favorite, Kasey managed to make it to the main house undetected.
On this already hot, and guaranteed to get hotter, Thursday morning, the Atwood kitchen bustled with activity. The noise level was acute. George sat at the table reading aloud the newspaper account of yesterday’s murder while Danny folded another section of it into the likeness of a cat. Sherry stood at the sink transferring honey from a half-gallon canister to the little bear-shaped honey dispenser; the blender at her elbow whirred furiously with a peach-colored concoction. The TV at Danny’s back was tuned to cartoons; the dishwasher chugged and hissed, and Artie pounded nails in the laundry area.
“Artie, hi, long time no see.”
“Hey, Kasey, how you doing?”
“So-so.”
“Nice duds. If you’re lookin’ to impress someone, you’re gonna do it?”
She felt heat rise to her face. The day before yesterday, after leaving her father at the racebook, Kasey had gone to the mall. She’d bought a few pieces she could interchange, telling herself she had nothing to wear. Each day on the job she found herself taking a little more care with her appearance, aware of what she was doing, yet unable to stop.
“Is this a visit or are you staying awhile?” she asked.
“That depends on Peggy, I guess.”
“Another fight?” Kasey poured coffee.
He grinned and went back to his hammering.
Sherry said over the noise, “He’s helping your mom put up shelves for all these honey containers. He and Peggy are getting along great. Right, Artie? What’s it been, a record three weeks now?”
Marianne entered, blocking the dog with a leg until she got the door closed. On the back of her blouse, a series of mud prints in the shape of giant paws stood out like a cartoon pattern.
“New magazines. Your favorite. National Geographic,” Kasey said to Danny. “I’ll put them away till you’re ready for them.”
“Have you driven a Ford lately?” Danny muttered.
Kasey pushed through the swinging door into the dining room. The room was dim and cool and blessedly quiet compared to the kitchen. She deposited the magazines in the knee-high stack in the corner between the hutch and the credenza.
Not ready to return to bedlam, she took a moment to sip coffee and browse through more of George’s tacked-up photos. This batch seemed to concentrate on women, show girls in all their jeweled and feathered regalia, bathing beauties in swim wear, debutantes in evening dresses, pretty women of all sorts—the cheesecake segment, no doubt. Kasey flagged the show girls and three more.
As she was about to leave the room, her gaze fell on a framed photograph on the credenza. A photograph that had been there for years, yet had gone unnoticed for so long. She lifted her wedding picture and carefully studied it as though for the first time.
Her dark hair had been long, flowing over her shoulders, turned slightly under at the ends. She had worn more makeup then, which made her hazel eyes seem larger, brighter, more defined. Her face was fuller, too—thirteen years had melted away the baby fat. The bride and groom had had a traditional wedding among the roses in Idlewild Park. Kevin in a white tux and she in a full-length white dress, veil, bridal bouquet, complete with something borrowed, something blue.
When she finally allowed herself to look at Kevin, a sad tugging worked at her stomach. Kevin looked so very young. Had he really looked that young on their wedding day? Now, to her, he would stay young forever. His features had faded with each passing year until even his likeness in the photograph became little more than that of a gentle, attractive stranger linked to her by entwined fingers wearing matching wedding bands.
Kevin Mason had been her childhood sweetheart. His mother had cleaned rooms at the Atwood’s river resort while he had bussed tables. From the eighth grade on, Kasey and Kevin had been practically inseparable. When Kevin entered high school, his mother began to come and go with the frequency of a merchant marine, staying away for weeks at a time, leaving her son to fend for himself. Marianne Atwood, humanitarian that she was, took him under her wing, made certain he was fed, clothed, sheltered, and even given the emotional support his mother had failed to provide. In return for that kindness, he continued to work at the resort after school and during summer vacations for little or no wages. Nothing in the world could have made Marianne happier than to see her daughter marry Kevin. His death was as much a blow to Marianne as it was to Kasey.
Oblivious to the racket in the other room, Kasey lightly touched the face of her dead husband. “I love you,” she whispered. “Take care, huh?”
Kasey had scarcely stepped back into the kitchen when her mother waved the newspaper and began to read the daily horoscope.
“Ma, skip it for today. I can’t hear a thing you’re saying with all this noise.”
Marianne raced around the room silencing first the blender, TV, and dishwasher. “Artie! Cool it for a minute. Take a break, will ya? I wanna read Kasey’s horoscope.”
The room quieted. All eyes turned to Kasey, waiting.
“For godsake, Ma.”
“Hush.” Marianne cleared her throat. “It says here, ‘A trusted friend can provide you with a second set of eyes today.’”
“Oh, that reminds me,” Kasey said, turning to Sherry. “Can you do Clemetine’s tonight? I have a feeling I’m going to be pretty w
rapped up at the club for the next couple of weeks.”
“Sure,” Sherry said. “Tonight’s good.”
“There! How much more proof do you need?” Marianne flapped the newspaper in the air.
Kasey shrugged, winked at Sherry.
“There’s more. It says, ‘Someone is watching you. Stay alert!’” She looked at her daughter. “There’s an exclamation point after ‘alert.’”
“What, no romance today?” George asked.
“I bet that ‘someone’ who’s watching her is a secret admirer,” Sherry said.
George tapped the newspaper. “The murder’s front page, Kasey. Must be real exciting being right in the thick of it.”
“I’m not sure ‘exciting’ is the right word.”
Marianne folded the newspaper. “Kase, we have a room to rent out. Would you mind checking around to see if anyone you know might be interested?”
“Grandma’s room?”
“No, I don’t think I’m ready to let strangers in there yet. If ever.”
“Then who’s leaving?” Kasey looked at each boarder.
“Me,” Artie said from the laundry room. “Peggy and I are getting married. Finally.”
“What?! I just had dinner with her last night,” Kasey said incredulously. “She didn’t say a word.”
“Yeah, she did. She tried, anyway. She said you were comatose.”
Kasey vaguely remembered Peggy talking about Artie and some special event. “Artie, that’s great! Congratulations. When?”
“Maybe next month or the month after. If we don’t tear into each other before then.”
“Work out your aggressions on the mat, both of you.”
“She’d beat the tar outta me,” Artie said grinning. “That’s one mean woman when she’s riled.”
“When are you moving out?” Kasey asked.
“I guess I’m sorta out now. Most of my stuff is already at the condo.”
“We’re gonna miss you.”
“Maybe not. Your ma said I could crash on the living room couch whenever Peggy—well, y’know, needs time to herself.”
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