Second Guessing

by K. J. Emrick

  I am not a professional hacker. In fact, I couldn’t program my way out of a paper bag. This device cost me six hundred dollars, purchased from a guy who promised to erase my identity from the internet if I ever told the authorities who he is. I’m positive he could do it, too.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t any room left over to hide my gun in the purse. I’ve got that strapped around my left thigh, under the skirt of this very tight dress. It’s the only place I can carry it without ruining the silhouette. A girl should be able to be protected and look good at the same time.

  After about sixty different frequencies the little light on top of the lock blinks from red to green and I quickly slip inside the room and close the door. I drop the device back into my clutch with a satisfied smile. That was easy. Looks like my luck is holding out.

  As long as I don’t get caught. I need to make this quick, and then get out again.

  The hotel room is absolutely huge. Not much smaller than my apartment. An open door on my right leads to a washroom with a full bathtub, separate from a stand-up shower, separate from a hot tub. Ahead of me is a sitting area with a couch and a loveseat and a television hung on the wall. Tall ferns stand in the corners. The white rug looks deep enough to lose your car keys in. The window is covered by a heavy red curtain, pulled aside thankfully so there’s enough light to see by without me turning on a light. There’s nothing like a light shining in a room that’s supposed to be empty to give away a hardworking private investigator.

  Ahead of me is the rest of the room. A closet, a full size refrigerator and counterspace, cabinets, and two dressers. Everything a travelling businessman might need for an extended stay. Or, everything a travelling Hollywood star might need to have an affair with her bodyguard.

  In the middle of it all is a California King-sized bed.

  The sheets are gone. The pillows are gone. It’s been stripped down to the mattress. Even though I had expected as much I can’t help a heavy sigh. All of that stuff would have been collected as evidence. Fibers. Hairs. Whatever the Detroit Police and Lieutenant Baker could collect to prove that Amelia Falconi killed Donnie… what did Chris say Donnie’s last name was? Oh, right. Sterling. If I’m going to solve his murder, I probably should remember that.

  I would have liked it better if everything was still here, but I can do my job without seeing the scene the way it was found. So. If the police have already taken everything of interest from the room, where does that leave me?

  I go through the motions anyway, opening the drawers in each of the dressers, then the cabinets one at a time. At least, I start to look in the cabinets, but before the door is open more than a crack my future-sense tells me they’re empty. It’s a handy little trick. No reason to actually look inside once I know there’s nothing there to see, so I close them up again and get down on all fours instead to look under the furniture—not an easy maneuver in a dress this tight.

  I’m not worried about leaving fingerprints. These fancy gloves of mine are for more than just looks, same as my purse.

  After all that, all I find is some clothes in the drawers, marked with yellow tags that list the date they were examined and the detective who did it. In the closet I find more clothes, dresses and skirts, and more yellow tags. So the police didn’t take everything. Just the stuff that might prove their case. Everything else that might be of interest is just tagged.

  That makes me wonder…

  I still need to search the bathroom but that can wait. It’s not going anywhere. While I’m here, I think I’ll check out the fridge.

  You can learn a lot about a person by what’s in their refrigerator. Take mine for instance. Leftover pizza. Two bottles of beer from what had been a six pack at the start of the week. An onion. A carton of milk that’s gone sour. A jar of pickles.

  I have no idea why the onion’s in there. I think I was going to make a salad once, before I changed my mind.

  Here in room three-oh-four, the refrigerator has…

  Huh.

  An unopened box of chocolate covered strawberries, marked with a yellow tag. A box of crackers, marked with a yellow tag. Two bottles of champagne, marked with separate yellow tags. And a navel orange. There’s no tag on the orange.

  Well, if the police don’t want the orange, and no one else is going to eat it, then I will. I’m kind of hungry.

  Stripping off my gloves now and stuffing them in the clutch next to my device and my phone, I slice into the skin of the orange with my fingernail and then peel it off in one long, curling strip. Where’s the garbage? Looking around I don’t find one in here. There’s probably one in the bathroom, I would guess. All right, I wanted to look in there anyway. This little breaking and entering stunt of mine is turning into a bust.

  It’s all Amelia’s clothes here, which is what I expected to find. I really didn’t think that Donnie would be keeping his things in her room. They were trying to keep their affair quiet. His underwear mixed in with hers would give then away for sure.

  I tear the orange in half, pulling sections off one at a time and popping them in my mouth, careful not to get the juice on my dress. This is the first time I’ve had this beauty out in a while. I don’t want to ruin the fabric with a careless splash of juice.

  So, clothes and strawberries and the champagne bottles in the fridge. Two unopened bottles.

  Wait.

  Amelia had said they were drinking champagne, her and Donnie. That would mean there was an open bottle, too. The police must have taken that one with them because it’s gone, too. Along with the glasses, and anything else that would have made this easy for me. You never know what you’re going to find at the scene of the crime. You go in looking for clues, and you take them as you find them. Here, I’m not finding anything.

  Except for this orange. Two more slices go into my mouth, and I chew them slowly while I think. This is a really good orange.

  The bathroom does have a trashcan, which of course is empty. Even the bag’s gone. I drop the peel in there anyway, after I scrape out some of the tender white pith from the underside of the skin. I’ve done this since I was a kid and yes, lots of people look at me funny. I don’t care. This stuff is delicious.

  Chocolate covered strawberries are delicious, too, and Amelia and Donnie had a whole box in the fridge. That’s a sweet treat for lovers to share, when they can be all coy with each other in a hotel room during an illicit rendezvous. Champagne is for lovers, too. So that tracks with what Amelia told me.

  We screwed each other into oblivion, we drank some wine, we fell asleep.

  There’s only three slices of my orange left. Oh. This one has a seed in it. That happens sometimes, even in seedless varieties like this one.

  The toiletries on the sink top are all marked with evidence tags, too. All of it is Amelia’s, none of it is Donnie’s. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing helpful. Nothing to prove Amelia’s story, nothing to disprove it.

  She and Donnie spent an amazing night in bed—her words, not mine—and they drank some champagne, they fell asleep, and when she woke up, he’d been choked to death, right there in the bed with her.

  I chew up the second to last orange slice while I think about that.

  No matter how deeply asleep someone is, I have to believe they would notice someone being killed right next to them. Especially if they were being strangled. Donnie should have been kicking and thrashing in bed while his murderer did him in. Assuming Amelia didn’t kill him after all, then she had to have noticed something because Donnie would have been fighting for his life.

  Wouldn’t he?

  Unless…

  The last orange slice tasted really sweet as a thought began to take shape. Maybe Amelia really didn’t notice anything. Maybe she was more than deeply asleep. Maybe, just maybe, she was drugged.

  If that was the case, then this was a premeditated murder. Someone would have to know that Amelia and Donnie were sleeping together to know where to find him. The killer would have had to
be prepared for Amelia to be there, with a drug to put her to sleep while they killed Donnie.

  Except, Donnie was a big dude, as I remember. No matter how little pressure it takes to strangle someone to death, Donnie could have fought them off if he wanted. Rolled out of bed. Kicked Amelia awake. Everybody facing death fights to stay alive.

  Unless… he was drugged too.

  I swallow the last of the orange. Damn, that was good.

  Now we’re getting somewhere. So the two of them were drugged. That would explain why Amelia didn’t know anything about what happened, and why Donnie didn’t fight back. Yeah. That explains a lot, actually. But how did someone drug them both? According to Amelia it was just the two of them in the room, no one else, and they sure didn’t drug each other. So how did they…

  I can still taste the orange in my mouth. The peel is there in the empty garbage can, mocking me.

  Oh, no. Oh no, oh no, oh no. Did I just drug myself? Did someone send them a basket of drugged fruit? I’m such an idiot! It’s possible to inject liquid drugs into fruits like an orange by simply poking a syringe through the peel. It doesn’t leave a mark. The puncture’s too small to see with the naked eye. Zookeepers and vets use that trick to get tranquilizers into large animals like gorillas and elephants all the time. And here I just reach into a fridge and pull out an orange and now I might be drugged…!

  I stood there in the bathroom, one arm out in case in case I passed out and needed to catch myself with the edge of the sink. I waited. I waited some more. I looked into the future three seconds ahead of this moment, and the next moment, and the next. Not that three seconds of warning would give me a lot of time, but I could maybe call 911 and at least tell them where to find me.

  Three seconds.

  Three seconds more.

  Nothing. I’m still fine. No dizziness, no weakness in my legs, no dark spots in front of my eyes. I wasn’t drugged. Thank God, because I really do like oranges and I’d hate to be put off of them for life.

  So back to the mystery at hand, then. If I’m right, and Amelia and Donnie were drugged before the murder, it had to get into their system some other way. Not the orange. The chocolate strawberries? No. The box was full and unopened. Nobody ate any of those. So what was left?

  Oh. Of course!

  When the answer comes to me, I race back out to the refrigerator. Inside I find them, right where I left them. Two bottles of champagne. Both of them unopened.

  Amelia said they drank champagne the night of Donnie’s death. I’ve already figured out there must have been a third bottle, an open bottle, that the police took away. Three bottles of champagne. That’s a problem.

  You must see the problem, right?

  If there were three bottles of champagne, then how could the murderer be sure that his victims would drink from the drugged bottle?

  There’s only one way he could have been sure. The killer had to drug all three of them.

  Champagne comes in bottles that are fitted with cork stoppers. Cork is a fibrous, woody substance that keeps the liquid inside airtight. That’s why they make that distinctive pop when you pull the cork out. The thing is, cork is a spongy kind of material, and just like you can insert a needle through the flesh of an orange and leave barely a mark, you can do the same thing with a champagne cork.

  There were three bottles in the refrigerator to begin with. The killer had to be sure that Amelia and Donnie took whatever drug he gave them. He—or she, I suppose—couldn’t know which bottle they would drink from so the only solution would be to drug every one of them. The two that are still here will be able to prove that. Of course, that’s if the bottles don’t disappear before the police come to the same conclusion I just did. The hotel staff might steal them. A clerical error might release this room and all the contents in it, and Amelia’s agent or some gopher from the movie studio might come over and take it all. My evidence would be gone.

  Can’t have that.

  I could always call Christian and have him send an officer to secure one of the bottles. Of course, if I did that, I’d have to admit that I was here in the room, where I’m not supposed to be. That would raise questions about how I got in, and what illegal devices I may or may not have in my possession that allowed me to get past the lock, and I’d rather not explain any of that. I’m trying to not get arrested here, as you’ll recall.

  So. There’s only one solution. I better take one. Just to be sure.

  I take a few more minutes to make sure there’s nothing else in the hotel room that might help me. There isn’t, which means it’s time for me to leave. I think I’ve pushed my luck just about as far I can for one day.

  On my way out, I’m holding a bottle of champagne tightly between my thighs. Can’t let anyone see me with it in my hands, so this was my brilliant plan. It’s cold, in all the wrong places, and it sure makes getting from the elevator to the lobby’s front door interesting.

  Ah, the glorious life of a private investigators.

  The concierge is watching me again on my way out. There’s a real good chance he’ll remember me now.

  Even if he’s got the wrong idea about why I’m walking funny.

  Chapter Seven

  The police have resources to allow them to examine evidence. Latent prints. DNA. Spectral analysis of liquid substances to determine their chemical makeup and what drugs may or may not be present. It’s what our tax dollars pay for.

  Since I don’t have access to the latest scientific resources, I’m stuck holding the bottle up to the living room light in my apartment. Looking through the green glass, all I can see are bubbles.

  “A bottle of 2002 Krug Clos du Mesnil,” I say, reading off the label. “Considered one of the best champagnes available for around five hundred dollars a bottle. She had three of these, that’s fifteen hundred bucks. Must be nice. I could pay off my mechanic with that.”

  “You could get another used car instead,” Harry suggests. “One that, perhaps, would not cost you so much to repair at a mechanic’s shop.”

  “Hey, be nice to Roxy,” I warn him. “She carries your rug all over the place, doesn’t she? It’s not her fault that parts to a 1968 Mustang are getting hard to come by.”

  Laying across the couch, one foot up on the armrest at this end, one arm hanging over the back, he looks down at his rug spread out in the middle of the floor. “Yes. Your car transports my rug when we need it to, for all the good it does us. I go with you places, but I still can not go with you, because I can only go so far from my rug. It is both my home, and my prison. Even when I’m with you I am still confined to the car. To Roxy, in all of her regal glory.”

  “Thank you. That sounds much better.”

  I know he’s upset, but I’m choosing not to address the problem of his limited mobility because frankly, I don’t know what to do about it. He’s a genie, stuck in a rug, and I don’t see any way around that. So rather than dwell on what he can’t do, I’m ignoring the problem. I know, I know, that’s not the way to handle it, but it’s all I’ve got for right now. I’m glad Harry’s in my life. I’d love to be able to take him to the Shake Shack and sit at a table with him and discuss local politics and the most recent M. Night Shyamalan movie, but we just can’t. His rug is this really nice, woven anchor that’s holding him down and I just can’t drag it with me everywhere I go. Nothing I can do will change that.

  At least, nothing I can think of right now. So I’m choosing to examine the champagne bottle instead, and focus on helping Amelia instead.

  “Well,” he says, obviously changing the subject. “Tell me how you know so much about the price of champagne. You’re more of a beer woman. How do you know about this bottle?”

  “Honestly? I Googled it.” I hold it up to the light one more time, and then set it down on the coffee table. I’ve been home long enough to change out of that dress and into a pair of capris and a tank top, and now I’m examining my only clue. “This is stuff that rich people buy for playdates.”

&nb
sp; “Hmm. Rather expensive playdates, I’d say.”

  “Exactly. What I’ve got to figure out is if this bottle is laced with any kind of drug, and if so what kind, and where those drugs would have come from. Which is a great idea except I’ve got no way of doing that unless I want to drink a few glasses myself and see what happens.”

  Harry clears his throat. “I would not recommend that course of action.”

  “Heh. Neither would I, big guy.”

  He sits up taller, and with a boyish grin he lifts his right hand, holding his fingers pressed together, ready to snap.

  I drop down onto the couch next to him, snuggling up to his side, laying my head down on his chest. I really like my friend. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “You have to say it as a wish,” he reminds me. “That’s the rule.”

  “Oh, you and your rules,” I groan dramatically. “Fine, I wish—”

  “Hold on, my lady. Remember, we have a deal. We work five stories together, me helping you with your investigations with three wishes each time, and then you must set me free.” He holds his fingers closer, ready to make my wish a reality. “This would be our second story together. That means you will only have three left after this.”

  “I remember, Harry. And they’re called ‘cases,’ not ‘stories.’”

  He winks with one mascara-outlined eye. “As you say, my lady. Well then. Go ahead. Make your wish.”

  “Harry, I wish that I had a detailed lab report from a recognized company that told me exactly what was in that champagne.”

  And Harry takes a breath and snaps his fingers.

  In the air above the coffee table, three pages of paper appeared, stapled together in the corner. They fluttered like an ungainly bird and dropped, settling down perfectly right next to the bottle.