by Chris Ewan
‘Gotcha. But how do I know what’s important?’
‘You’ll just know.’
She kicked at her heel and clenched her hands. ‘Can I search in here?’
‘Sure.’
‘I’m just a bit uncomfortable about being near the bathroom.’
‘I’ll handle it.’
‘And you don’t think anyone will turn up?’
‘Hope not.’
‘What do we do if somebody does?’
I tried not to sound too irritable as I said, ‘I wouldn’t recommend going out through the window. We are forty floors up.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘Me too. It’d be one hell of a drop.’
‘Charlie.’
‘Just focus on the search,’ I told her. ‘If you start worrying about anything else, you’ll freak yourself out.’
‘I’m already freaked out. I’m no good at this sort of thing.’
‘It’s your first time, Vic. Cut yourself some slack. I was a complete wreck on my first break-in.’
‘I’m hardly planning on making a career out of it.’
‘Funny. I used to say the same thing myself.’
I left her to gawp at that one, and duped myself into returning to the bedroom. The bathroom door was still closed and the closet doors and the safe were still open, just as I’d left them. Victoria was right – other than his neatly arranged clothes, Masters really didn’t have many possessions. It made me wonder if he had a more permanent home elsewhere in the city, and whether his suite was simply a base between shows. It was certainly something to bear in mind.
I began with the closet, searching to the back of every drawer and beneath every T-shirt, sock and pair of underpants. I felt inside the pockets of the trousers and leather jackets hanging from the rail, but all I found was stale air. It was the same with the bedside cabinet nearest to me. The alarm clock, the spiral notepad and pen, the covered water glass and the paperback book hadn’t moved in the slightest, and when I opened the drawer of the cabinet all I found was a red Gideon Bible. The only thing inside the Bible was the Scriptures.
I crawled across the bed and pulled open the drawer of the other bedside cabinet. The first thing I found was a small wooden box containing a man’s antique wristwatch. The watch had a brown leather strap, gold-plated casing and a white analogue face. The glass was worn and scratched, so that it was almost opaque in places, and the gold casing was discoloured with age. The hands weren’t moving. I wound the tiny mechanism and watched the second hand twitch into life. On balance, I doubted that it was worth the kind of money that could get the Fisher Twins off our backs, but it was certainly not to be sniffed at. I checked over my shoulder to be sure that Victoria wasn’t watching, and then I slipped the watch on to my right wrist. It felt a good deal heavier than the cheap digital watch I wore on my left arm, though I believed I could get used to the sensation.
The drawer was also filled with scores of loose business cards. There were cards from television executives, agents and promotion scouts; entertainment lawyers, corporate attorneys and tax advisers; limo drivers, call girls and casino hosts. But if any of the cards were significant, I had no way of telling.
Beneath the cards I found a small velvet bag filled with sponge balls of the kind that magicians can make appear as if from nowhere. I also found a tube of Superglue, pinched in the middle, and a hobby craft set containing several very fine paintbrushes and a whole spectrum of miniature acrylic paint pots.
I got off the bed and hunted beneath the bed box. Nothing doing. I was just about to get up off my knees and check how Victoria was getting on when I heard the mattress springs compress and found that she’d sat down next to the cabinet with the Bible inside it.
‘Any luck?’ she asked.
‘Not so far. You?’
She showed me her gloved hand and began to count off her findings on her fingers and thumb.
‘One hotel stationery set and pen – nothing out of the ordinary. One hotel guest information folder – no markings. One answer machine – no messages. One fax machine and printer – nada. Two decks of Fifty-Fifty casino cards – all cards present and correct. One deck of MGM Grand Casino cards – ditto.’
‘You counted all of the playing cards?’
‘I was being thorough.’
‘No kidding. Go on.’
She drew an audible breath. ‘The kitchen cupboards and drawers contain the usual crockery and cutlery. The fridge is stocked just like the mini-bar in our rooms and everything matches the contents card, except that he has six bottles of Mountain Dew and all of the bottle caps are missing.’
‘Aha,’ I said, and tossed the hobby craft set onto the bedcovers. ‘I think it’s safe to assume that Ricks was right and Josh really did make that dummy chip-holder.’
Victoria reached for the craft set. She opened the cardboard flap at one end and eased out the plastic tray containing the paints and brushes.
‘There are a couple of pots missing,’ she told me.
‘Purple and lilac, by any chance?’
‘There’s no purple or lilac here.’ She put the craft set back together again and resealed the box. ‘Did you find anything else?’
‘Nothing of use.’
‘Terrific.’
Victoria transferred her attention to the bedside cabinet and picked up the paperback book beside the water glass. Now that I gave the book my attention, I could see that it was a biography of Harry Houdini. The jacket featured a bold image of a young Houdini wearing a hospital straitjacket, suspended upside down from a high crane, with the upturned faces of a huge crowd focused upon him. His name blazed out from above his feet in a stylised yellow font, like an old vaudeville show poster. Victoria turned the book in her hands and read the flap copy.
‘There is another room we could check,’ she said, trying to act casual.
I glanced towards the bathroom door and a shudder ran through me.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘It didn’t sound to me as though you spent very long in there.’
‘I guess I was a little distracted by the corpse doing breaststroke in the Jacuzzi tub.’
‘There could be something in there, though. Imagine if she was a suicide. There might be a note.’
‘Unlikely.’
‘But possible.’ She turned to the front of the Houdini biography and fanned the first few pages.
‘Take it,’ I told her.
‘Excuse me?’
‘The book. If you like it, you should take it.’
Victoria set the book down onto the bedside cabinet. She raised her nose in the air, looking very prim all of a sudden. ‘No, thank you.’
‘But it’s something you’d like to read?’ I pressed. ‘It interests you?’
‘Perhaps if I saw it in a bookshop.’
‘So take it.’
‘I’m not going to just take it, Charlie.’
I propped my elbows on the bed and my chin on my fingers. ‘Why not?’
‘Because.’
‘Because it’s stealing? Look, it doesn’t seem as if Josh will be returning for it in a hurry. And unless it happens to be overdue from the Nevada State Library, I’d say it’s a win-win situation for you.’
‘It’s not mine.’
I frowned. ‘You do remember we accessed this room illegally?’
‘For good reason.’
‘Listen, breaking in somewhere and not taking something, it’s kind of pointless. And it’s just a book, Vic. You could try selling it second-hand and you wouldn’t get anything for it.’
Victoria showed me a lot of eyeball. ‘Are you going into that bathroom?’
‘I’d rather not.’
‘Because of the dead body?’
‘Don’t make out like it’s a minor thing. Trust me, I’ve seen people who’ve been killed, and it’s a long way from pleasant.’
She smiled glumly. ‘You do have a rather unfortunate talent for stumbling acr
oss corpses.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of your Faulks novels have fewer killings in them than you’ve experienced in the last couple of years.’
‘Well, it’s an interesting point. And something I’ll give a good deal of thought to. Assuming we’re still alive by this time tomorrow night.’
Getting up from my knees, I moved around to Victoria’s side of the bed, picked up the Houdini biography and scanned the flap copy for myself. Victoria looked from me, to the bathroom door, and back again.
‘What if I go in there?’ she asked.
‘I’d advise against it.’
‘But would you let me?’
‘Be my guest. Just don’t expect me to watch.’
After a moment’s hesitation, Victoria removed a strand of hair from her eyes, rose to her feet and walked around to the bathroom door. She circled her head on her shoulders, cleared her throat, and reached for the handle. It seemed as though she was all set to go through with it when she lowered her hand.
‘Shouldn’t there be a smell?’
‘You mean from the body?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘I imagine it depends how long it’s been there. I didn’t notice one earlier, but maybe when you open the door . . .’
She swallowed. ‘I see.’
‘Sure you want to go through with it?’
She closed her eyes and squeezed her fists tight shut.
‘Come on, Victoria,’ she said, in a quiet voice. ‘You can do this, girl.’
I suppose I should have been mesmerised by her little pep talk, and to some extent I was, because it did make me wonder if she would do something similar before calling my editor to plead for a slightly less measly advance. But the truth was I’d long since learned to seize upon an opportunity when it presented itself, and so while her eyes were shut I stuffed the Houdini biography down under the waistband of my trousers. I just had it secured and happened to be jerking my hand away from my groin when Victoria’s eyes snapped open. She gave me a somewhat perturbed look, then faced the door, pushed down on the handle and stepped briskly into the bathroom.
I covered my eyes with my hand, afraid of her reaction when she saw the dead woman for the first time.
‘Oh God,’ she gasped.
I braced myself, wondering if she might faint and whether I’d be able to spring across the bed to catch her before her head struck the floor.
‘Charlie.’ She gulped. ‘I really think you’d better see this.’
‘Nuh uh. I’m through looking at corpses.’
‘But that’s exactly my point. The bath’s empty, Charlie. There’s nobody here.’
TWELVE
Victoria was absolutely right. The bath was empty. No water. No floating corpse. Not even a ring of bath scum or a wayward hair caught up in the plughole.
I checked behind the bathroom door. The robe and the pink leotard were no longer hung up on the floor. They weren’t on the hook behind the door, either. They’d vanished along with the body.
I returned to the bath and stared down into it, looking, I imagine, altogether gormless. There was nothing to suggest that the redhead had ever been there. Perhaps she never had. Perhaps all those years of writing mystery novels had finally caught up with me and I’d invented the entire episode. I’d been aware for some time that my imagination could play tricks on me when I was writing a book. When I was sleeping, say, characters would fill my dreams and behave in ways that contradicted everything I’d written. And sometimes it could feel as though I was in danger of falling over a mental precipice into a world where I’d be incapable of telling fact from fiction. Is that what had happened? No, surely not. For one thing, I hadn’t written a word in over a fortnight, and the Faulks novel I’d been working on didn’t feature a single redhead. And I’d stuck my fingers in the cold bathwater. All right, I hadn’t actually touched the dead woman, but she’d definitely been there. And now she no longer was.
‘This is spooky,’ Victoria said, from over my shoulder.
‘You’re telling me.’
‘I don’t like it.’
‘I’m not crazy about it myself.’
‘Josh must have taken her.’
I nodded. ‘Maybe he worked out some way of disposing of the body. It’s tough enough to run from casino debts, let alone a murder rap.’
‘You really think he killed her?’
‘It’s beginning to make complete sense.’ I sat down on the toilet and idly pinched my bottom lip. ‘I was having trouble understanding why he fled in the middle of his act if he was only worried about the chips he’d stolen. I mean, yes, it’s a lot of money, and the Fisher Twins were bound to be pretty steamed up about it, but I bet he makes a small fortune from his act. I wouldn’t be surprised if they pay him close to what he stole every month – maybe even every week. So they could have straightened things out. There’s no way they would have wanted him to disappear on them like he did, because now they have a stage that’s completely out of commission, plus a heap of rumours swirling around the hotel.’
Victoria rested her head against the doorframe and crossed her legs at the ankle.
‘Charlie, do you think the scam he pulled on the roulette table could have been a cover? What I mean is, if he could make people think he went on the run because of the chips he stole, they might never ask themselves what happened to his assistant.’
I dropped my hands into my lap. ‘They’d probably just assume she ran with him.’
‘That’s what I was thinking.’
‘But didn’t Ricks say he pulled the same scam last night as well?’
‘He did mention something along those lines.’
‘So the girl could have been in the bath for over a day,’ I said. ‘Which means he might not have even drowned her. It could be he just dumped her in the water to stop the smell getting too bad.’
‘That’s disgusting.’
‘You’re telling me.’
Victoria folded her arms across her chest and contemplated the bath. ‘Although, I suppose the other possibility is that he planned the murder ahead of time. It could be he killed her today, but that he stole some chips last night to lay the groundwork for a smokescreen.’
I reached for the toilet roll dispenser and tugged off a few strips of paper, scrunching them in my hand as I considered the theory, turning my thoughts to the chips I’d found in his room safe.
‘You could be onto something. He’s a magician, after all. His whole act is based on diverting people’s attention from what he’s up to.’
Victoria peered at me. ‘Should we go to the Fisher Twins with this?’
I tossed the balled-up toilet paper into the wastepaper bin.
‘With what? We don’t have a body.’ I shook my head. ‘Listen, there might be some security camera footage of him carrying the girl away. He can’t have hidden her here because we’ve been right through this suite and we haven’t seen her. I’m guessing he might have used the service stairs to avoid the concierge, just like we did on the way up. But even if he’s been caught on camera, there might be no way of telling from the footage that she’s dead. And the twins have no reason to believe me.’
Victoria pressed her lips together and made a humming noise. ‘And even if they did believe you, it places you at the scene of a murder.’
‘Yup. And I don’t like that at all. If the redhead’s body is ever found, it might be possible to prove that she was killed before we arrived in Vegas.’
‘But if she was killed not long before you broke in . . .’
‘Then I could be in real trouble.’
‘Quite the predicament.’ She sighed. ‘So what’s next?’
I was about to offer Victoria my considered response to her question, when we were interrupted by a noise I really didn’t welcome – a fast knocking on the front door of the suite.
I froze, and gawped at Victoria, and she did much the same thing to me. The atmosphere i
n the bathroom became charged all of a sudden and my scalp prickled, as though a fork of lightning was about to strike. We waited in silence for what was beginning to feel like an unbearable amount of time, and then the knock sounded again.
Victoria paled and shook her head at me. I didn’t know what she was shaking her head for, but it didn’t seem good. Meanwhile, I was thinking how dumb we’d been not to hang a Do Not Disturb sign on the outside of the door. At least that way, if our visitor was a maid aiming to carry out the turn-down service, she’d be deterred. But what kind of hotel offers a turn-down service at a quarter to eleven at night?
I didn’t have long to pursue the thought before the knocking came again, much louder this time. It was accompanied by a male voice. The voice was high in tone, and kind of squeaky, almost as though our visitor had been sucking on helium.
‘Josh? Josh – open up!’ the voice piped. ‘We need to talk.’
At long last, I sprang into action and jumped up from the toilet seat, grabbing Victoria by the hand and dragging her out through the bedroom.
‘Josh? Caitlin?’ The squeaky voice and the knocking came again. ‘Open up already.’
‘What do we do?’ Victoria hissed.
‘Wait here,’ I mouthed, and hurried to the door on my toes.
Very carefully, I set my eye to the peephole and peeped outside. But I couldn’t see anything other than a fish-bowl view of the door to Suite G across the way.
Bang – bang – bang.
Somebody was definitely knocking, and the force of it damn near broke my nose. I didn’t think it could be hotel staff, or else they’d be standing directly in front of the door and they’d be a lot more polite.
And right then a nasty thought occurred to me and I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. How many movies had I seen over the years where pairs of crooks, or even cops, stand with their backs against a corridor wall, pistols drawn, waiting for a hapless homeowner to snap back a door latch?
The knocking came again, and I still couldn’t see them. It seemed to me that my guess had to be right. Whoever was out there was flanking the door. The Hispanic security guards had done the same thing down in the basement, but I’d be truly astonished if the squeaky voice belonged to either of them. I was just debating what on earth I should do when I heard a second voice.