Dearly Departed

by Hy Conrad

She gave the matter some thought. Yes, there was a reason Strunk would lie—if he didn’t want them casually mentioning his name in front of a tour member. Amy wondered if there was any way she could offer this information, more of a theory than information, without subtly implicating one of her own guests. No, there wasn’t, and she couldn’t.

  Besides, she had no proof that one of them was involved. And if she were to reveal her unfounded suspicions, Badlani would undoubtedly keep hold of their passports and interview everyone tomorrow and let it slip that she had named them all as suspects. That would make for a very awkward last few days. No, Amy would try to avoid any real police investigation, at least for now.

  “You are thinking long and hard.”

  The words startled her, and her shoulders twitched. “Sorry. No, I don’t know why Mr. Strunk would lie. We were just acquaintances, fellow Americans at a bar.”

  “You met by accident? With no friends in common? Did he tell you about his life?”

  “Peter talked to him more than me.” She was only three words into the sentence when she regretted it. “But they didn’t talk much. Can you arrange for our passports to be returned? That would be great.”

  Badlani responded by steepling his fingers on top of his belt buckle. He breathed in slowly through his nostrils and out through his mouth, reminding her of Danny, her middle-aged yoga instructor back home on Barrow Street. “Not yet, I am afraid. I will be needing to talk to Mr. Peter Borg again.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Peter was not going to make the afternoon train back to Delhi, and neither were the passports.

  Assistant Superintendent Badlani hadn’t told them not to leave Agra. That would have weakened his official line that the murder was a mugging. He just wanted to make things inconvenient.

  When her people gathered in the lobby late that afternoon, Amy smiled, embarrassed, and invented a teeny-tiny medical emergency for Peter. He would be joining them in Delhi, she said, in plenty of time for their morning flight. “Tourists are like wild animals,” Peter had once explained. “They can smell fear.” As for the passports, only Herb asked. Amy replied that it was simpler for her to hold on to them until tomorrow at the airport. She didn’t even want to think about tomorrow at the airport.

  On the train back to Delhi, Amy roamed the aisle, chatting amiably, laughing at everything, then ducked into the bathroom to spray herself lightly (Happy by Clinique) just as a precaution.

  At the Imperial New Delhi, the same suites were waiting for them, except for Amy, whose room had been upgraded to an Art Deco suite. “We would be privileged also to upgrade Mr. Borg to the other Art Deco suite,” the smiling desk clerk said with what was almost a bow. It always paid to be nice to travel agents.

  Amy thanked him. “But I’m not sure when Mr. Borg is arriving,” she said in a whisper. Her guests were out of earshot, following their luggage and bellmen toward the elevators. “It may be tonight. It may be in the morning.”

  The Art Deco suite, she discovered, wasn’t particularly Deco—less Astaire and more The Godfather Part II, it seemed, with burled-wood lamps and comfortable 1950s sofas and chairs. But the bar was free, and the selection surprisingly complete.

  Amy went with her favorite, Campari and soda, and made room for a chair on the little balcony overlooking the hotel’s Spice Route garden. Ever since her teenage years, she’d loved Campari, the deep red color and the combination of sweet and bitter. It had seemed so sophisticated and European for a girl who longed to be both. Campari was the only thing she’d ever filched from her parents’ liquor cabinet, gradually replacing it with water until it faded into a light pink. Every now and then, two or three times a year, the bottle would disappear and be replaced by a fresh one. She hadn’t thought it through at the time, but her mother had obviously known. Keeping track of the shade of the bottle and replacing it a few times a year had just been Fanny’s way of monitoring her daughter’s alcohol intake.

  She was on her second drink, enjoying the diminishing echoes, the jasmine, and the growing calm that filtered up from the garden. This was her first relaxing moment in two days, artificially enhanced though it was, and she wanted to enjoy it. She barely noticed when, across the suite, a mechanism whirred softly and a handle turned and the door opened.

  “Amy?” It was Peter, tiptoeing gently in and pulling his luggage behind him. “They gave away my room. They said they had upgraded me to a suite, and then they gave away my suite because I wasn’t coming till morning.”

  “That was probably my fault.” Amy felt a wave of relief. Under other circumstances she might have jumped up and run into his arms and hugged him and jabbered on with a hundred questions. But to sit on the balcony and smile and just feel the relief . . . This was better.

  “Can I sleep here?” Peter looked dead tired. “I’m not making this up, not like Paris. You can check with the front desk. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

  “I believe you. Did you get the passports?”

  “Of course I got the passports. That was the whole point.”

  It took Peter only a few minutes to settle in, grab a giant Kingfisher from the refrigerator, pour half of it into a pilsner glass, and pull a second chair to the edge of the French door balcony. Amy didn’t move, except to nurse the ice cubes of her second Campari and soda. She waited until after the foam had settled on the rim of his glass and he’d taken his first sip.

  “How did you get here?”

  “Car and driver. The roads are even worse than I remember.”

  Peter told his story. He had been in Badlani’s office for two hours, sitting in the metal chair and swatting bloody mosquitoes against the concrete wall, while the assistant superintendent was off dealing with some more pressing piece of business. “Two hours! I think he just wanted to unnerve me.”

  “Why would he want to unnerve you?”

  “I don’t know, but it worked. I wound up telling him everything.”

  Amy was ready for another Campari. “How much of everything? You didn’t tell him we suspected one of our own?”

  Peter almost coughed up his second sip. “I don’t believe that myself. No, I told him about the ashes and how Billy saved our butts and how we had drinks later that night. At this point he’s just trying to find out who Billy is.”

  “An American living in Istanbul with his Turkish wife and in-laws.”

  “That’s what Billy told us.”

  “And the whole deal about him showing up in Agra and following someone and being killed by a dagger from the wall of our hotel?”

  “The dagger came from our hotel?”

  Amy had forgotten to mention this. “Yeah. I found an empty spot on the wall. You know all those wall decorations?”

  Peter shook his head and chuckled. “I knew it looked familiar. So, wait. The killer . . .”

  “Pried it off the wall. And here’s the kicker. It was from the same hallway where all our people were staying.”

  “Wow.” Peter mulled over the information, then sipped again, taking more of a gulp than a sip. “I’d never seen a murdered person before,” he admitted softly. “I’m sorry if I was ever cavalier about it. I can see why you’d be skittish about going through it again.”

  “And I’m sorry for always thinking murder.”

  “Except this time you were right. Are they always that bloody?”

  “Except for poisonings and strangulations.” Amy had never seen a strangulation, but that didn’t stop her from being an expert. And it was kind of sweet to see Peter so thrown and vulnerable and out of his element. “Peace?” She toasted the air between them.

  “Peace. What did you tell everyone about me? Why I missed the train?”

  “You had diarrhea. Delhi belly. It was the first thing that popped into my head.”

  “Diarrhea? Now I have to talk about diarrhea all day tomorrow. Listen to their homemade cures. Thanks.”

  Amy got up and crossed to the bar, tired of sucking her ice cubes. Just half of one this time. “So it’s
just going to go unsolved?”

  “I suppose. Like most murders in the world.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?” How could it not bother him? She didn’t understand.

  “It doesn’t matter if it bothers me. It’s not my business. There’s nothing we can do, and I don’t see how it’s going to affect us, to be honest.”

  “But if one of our people is a killer?”

  “Unless he’s a serial killer with a bloodlust that’s going to need quenching in the next few days . . . Badlani wouldn’t be making this big a fuss, except that the victim was an unidentified American. He’s probably mad at us for saying he was American.”

  As she poured her Campari, she could feel Peter’s eyes on her. Did men suspect that women had this power to know when they were being watched? She didn’t even turn her head for confirmation. “The sofa looks pretty comfortable,” she said.

  “I was thinking just the opposite.” He followed this with a yawn, as loud and as exaggerated as a yawn in a cartoon. “Ah, Amy! I need my sleep. I can’t sleep on that thing.”

  “Poor boy.” Amy smiled as she added an ice cube. She was almost tempted to let him have the bed and take the living room sofa herself. Peter deserved a bed after what he’d been through. So what if they disagreed? Peter could be a selfish wuss, but this time he was right. Outside of rooting for justice, there was little they could do. An unknown man had died in a country they were leaving—with any luck, tomorrow morning.

  “Shoot. I had one, after all.”

  “What?” Amy turned and saw Peter checking his phone.

  “Nothing.”

  There was something furtive about his “Nothing” and the way his eyes darted as he set his phone on the arm of the chair. “It’s not nothing.”

  “Um . . .” He looked too tired to lie. “Badlani asked if I had any pictures of Billy, and I didn’t think I did.”

  “Wait. You took Billy’s picture?” Amy forgot about her Campari and crossed back to the balcony. “That night at the bar?”

  “I honestly didn’t remember. God, I must’ve been drunk.” Peter focused on the phone again, and something told Amy what he was planning to do.

  “You’re not going to erase it,” she said and grabbed it out of his hand.

  “Why not? Then I won’t be a liar.”

  “But it’s evidence.”

  “No it’s not. The cops know what he looks like. They have his corpse. Badlani just wanted a picture with his eyes open.”

  Amy nodded and shrugged reluctantly. “I guess you’re not wrong.”

  “You mean, I’m right?”

  “You’re not wrong.” She examined the image on the screen. Billy Strunk, sure enough, was on a bar stool, his bleary, drunken face illuminated by the flash. His right hand was reaching forward. “Did Billy try to stop you from taking it?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Either he did or he didn’t.”

  “He did, okay? He said he was self-conscious about his weight. Boy, we’re full of semantics tonight. What are you doing?”

  It was an iPhone like her own, which made things easy. Amy pressed a few buttons. “I’m sending it to my phone.”

  “You’re not sending it to Badlani, are you? That would be stupid.”

  Amy hadn’t considered this, but now she did, just for a second. “No, not until we’re out of Indian airspace.”

  “Good. Because the last thing you need is to get mixed up in another murder.”

  “You’re not wrong,” Amy said. Murders, she knew, happened every day and got solved or not, without her being involved. This was probably the best thing for her, for Peter and their business, and for MacGregor and all her guests. “But you’re not right.”

  “Amy, sweetie. Don’t be naive.”

  “Naïve? I am not naïve. And you are not getting the bed.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Under normal circumstances, Marcus found it easy to text and talk at the same time. “Very good, sir,” he told his hotel guest, glancing up and smiling warmly. Then he went back to texting Amy, his phone and hands hidden under the antique concierge desk.

  Amy had just gotten off the plane in Beijing, the fourth of their five memorial stops—Paris, Istanbul, Agra, and now Beijing. Last night she had called, filling him in about Billy Strunk’s death and adding, almost as an afterthought, how much she missed him. Marcus had reacted with more than a twinge of jealousy—not about her platonic night with Peter Borg, but about the murder. It should have been him with her in India, not that clueless jerk, who wouldn’t know an alibi from a hole in the ground. Murder was their thing, his and Amy’s, the thing that had brought them together in the first place. And now she was involved in another one. With another man.

  Amy texted that she loved him. Marcus texted the same thing back, along with a heart-shaped emoji. But then something that his guest said caught his ear. He repeated the man’s last phrase, just to make sure. “You want to propose to her on top of the Empire State Building?” Marcus was beaming on the outside, frowning inside. “Very romantic. That should be quite a moment.” What will the request be? he wondered. Closing the observation deck to the public? Special lighting on the building’s spire, spelling out the woman’s name?

  So far, his job as concierge at the Ritz-Carlton had been a piece of cake: the usual tickets to sold-out musicals, a new puppy waiting in the suite for a ten-year-old’s birthday party, a rather intimate item of clothing purchased for an anniversary. He had been forced to guess the recipient’s size from across the lobby and had been right on the money. Reportedly. But this guy standing in front of his desk—midforties, rich as hell, sky-high sense of entitlement—was going to be trouble; he could tell.

  “I want you to get Michael Bublé to sing for us. Can you do that?”

  “You mean at your proposal? On top of the Empire State?” Marcus didn’t flinch.

  “Yeah. Calista loves this Bublé guy. Oh, and he’s probably going to need a band. Piano and a small band. Whatever it costs.”

  “It might be hard getting a piano up on the observation deck.”

  “It can be a keyboard,” the man said magnanimously. “Maybe a couple violins and a drum set. Make it sound good.”

  “Do you have a date for this proposal?” Marcus glanced across the beige wainscoting of the Ritz-Carlton lobby and saw his boss, Gavin, head concierge, eyeing them with what, even from a distance, looked like a smirk. “I’ll need a few days.”

  “You got a week. Then we’re back to Columbus and my second choice—Ohio Stadium, midfield. It’s all the same to me, but Calista has this notion about the Empire State Building.... Sunset, by the way. It’s gotta be sunset. And private. No tourists gumming things up.”

  “I’m sure we can make it happen.” Marcus had no idea which continent Michael Bublé was on at the moment, or if he was previously engaged or averse to performing at proposals, or even if the singer had a fear of heights. “Any particular song?”

  “Bublé can choose. You sure you call pull this off?” The man looked doubtful. “’Cause I don’t want you calling me up at the last minute, saying, ‘Sorry. It’s the Rainbow Room, and all I could get was Tony Bennett.’”

  “Bublé with a band on top of the Empire State. I don’t foresee a problem.”

  “Good.” The man finally looked impressed. “Gavin said you’d be the guy to handle this.”

  “I’ll get right on it.” Marcus was almost tempted to laugh. He knew Gavin regarded him as a threat, so it might just be his version of a practical joke. But Marcus was a fine connoisseur of smirks and could tell, even across the lobby, that Gavin’s smirk was deadly serious.

  As the Buckeye billionaire lumbered away toward the elevators, Marcus caught Gavin’s eye, returned his smirk, then reached up and fingered the crossed golden keys on his lapels.

  By morning’s end, he’d done a few Internet searches, made a few phone calls, and had a few ideas fomenting in his mind. He looked forward to reviewing them with Fanny.
She was the one person he knew who thought the way he did. Amy was pretty good, but he always found himself wasting time discussing morality or what could go wrong, whereas Fanny was always right there.

  He had just walked into the Astro on Sixth Avenue. Fanny was waiting for him, looking tiny and oddly vulnerable on a blue leatherette banquette in a booth toward the back of the diner. She was always early for these lunches. By the time Marcus recognized the man in the gray suit sitting across from her, it was too late. Not that he would have turned and run. He just would have liked to be a little more prepared.

  Rawlings saw him approaching in the mirror and got to his feet. He was a deceptively friendly man, Midwestern and boyish, with wide features and sandy hair, now growing out just a bit. Despite the conservative suit and tie, he looked even younger than he had last year, when he’d thrown Marcus in jail for murder.

  “Sergeant.” If only he’d had an extra second to put on his game face.

  “It’s Lieutenant now.” The officer had a self-deprecating smile, which helped to disguise the fact that he was pretty much a jerk. He extended a hand. “Marcus, buddy, how’s it going?”

  “The lieutenant pulled up just as I left the house,” Fanny apologized.

  “She said she was meeting you, so I gave her a lift.” Marcus had only half extended his hand. But Rawlings grabbed it and used the handshake to draw him into the banquette, next to Fanny. “Turns out I want to speak to you both. Together. The timing was perfect.”

  Together? Marcus tried to settle in, squeezing in next to Fanny. “Congratulations on the promotion.”

  “Well, I had a big case six months ago. Guess I’m the flavor of the month.”

  You mean the big case that Amy and I solved for you? Marcus wanted to say it but didn’t.

  “By the way, how’s Amy?”

  “She’s away,” Marcus said, keeping a casual tone. “I think in China.”

  “No longer in India. That’s what I hear.” Rawlings’s smile maintained its shape but lost its warmth. “There’s an inspector over there who’s pretty mad.” He spoke as if he already knew everything. “Amy called you both, so don’t act innocent. The Indian police have her phone records.”