Dreams of the Dead

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  Someone had opened up and must be down the hall. He remembered where Nina kept the espresso machine and went into the library-cum-conference-room. The walls were lined with law books, though they were mostly for effect, since almost everything was online these days, and she had the same old used conference table with the scratches on the surface. After making sure his initials remained etched under one corner of the table, he loaded the espresso machine and started it up. In a moment, hot fumes wafted his way and he gave himself up to the heavenly smell, closed his eyes, and breathed it in.

  “Good morning.” Nina looked better than ever, dressed in tall black boots and leather. He wrapped her in his arms and she pulled back, smiling broadly, not too quickly.

  “Wear jeans and your snow boots tonight.”

  “You came to tell me that?”

  No. He had come because he wanted to see her. “Are you free for a late breakfast of waffles and maple syrup? Or yogurt? Or oatmeal, even?” She looked so winsome and at the same time inaccessible, with her brown eyes and fluffy brown hair and tan leather jacket.

  “Sorry, no. I have a school thing with Bob. So you made it.”

  “Amazing coincidence. New clients. You know, the Ross-moors.” He explained about his double murder case. Nina said with her usual candor, “Did you take it to keep your eye on the situation at Paradise?”

  “Of course not. It just came up.”

  “Did Sandy have anything to do with it?”

  “Sandy is the soul of discretion. You know that.”

  He made his excuses and headed out.

  Entering the South Lake Tahoe Recreation and Swim Complex, he begged to be admitted as a visitor to save himself the price of admission and wandered toward the pool. The air reeked of chlorine, one of his favorite smells, and he wished he had brought swim trunks. The long drive the day before had cricked his back. He couldn’t be getting stiff at forty-two.

  A dozen people swam laps, splashes flying. He calculated four were in perfect shape, and the other eight more like him, wannabes or former jocks a hair from making it all work again someday.

  In the fourth lane from the left he spotted Michelle Rossmoor. Her platinum hair fanned out behind her. She wore a black bikini, an affront to the ladies beside her in their modest Speedos.

  She took a breath every two strokes, not optimum, Paul thought, but fair enough for an amateur. Watching her chug through the water, he remembered Nina describing her a few years ago as a Barbie doll, one of the doctor ones maybe, smart and pretty the way fantasy girls always were.

  The next time Michelle’s head popped out of the water for a breath, he caught her eye. “Hey, there, Mrs. Rossmoor,” he called out.

  She crawled to his side of the pool, coughed, and pushed water off her forehead. “You’re early, Paul, I have another half mile to go.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “Screw my good health.” She climbed out of the pool, wiped off her toned body while Paul watched, and encircled it with a towel. Her blue eyes twinkled toward his hazel ones.

  “I called your office several times to say I would be early. You have people.”

  She laughed, picked up a fresh towel near the door, and rubbed her hair. “They help me avoid the likes of you.”

  “Nah, they make me creative. I’ll wait for you in the lounge.”

  “Meet you in ten minutes. Make that fifteen. Have a protein shake or something.”

  Paul waited at a table outside the juice bar/coffee shop, sparsely populated at this hour. He sifted through the previous day’s Tahoe Mirror. Nothing new had turned up about the death of Cyndi Amore, at least nothing the Mirror could publish. The police, Sergeant Cheney prominently quoted, had no new information.

  That wasn’t true. Fred Cheney knew it. Paul knew it. There was a connection with a much loved woman who had died violently thirty miles away and down the mountain, in a small Nevada town.

  Brenda Bee, Paul mused. She arrived on time most days, he knew from chatting with the lady on the phone at Prize’s reception an hour before. The lady, whose name was Shanti, had known her. She said that, as far as she knew, Brenda had been close to her husband, Ronnie, who often came up the hill from Minden to pick her up. Ronnie was having a hard time getting over the death of his wife, Shanti said, and had visited Prize’s to talk to Steve Rossmoor and Brenda’s friends on the housekeeping staff. He had wanted to see the Classic Room where Brenda had found the body of Cyndi Amore.

  According to Shanti, Brenda had two exes, one deceased and one in Virginia who hadn’t spoken to her for years.

  Paul had tried to get Shanti to open up regarding any information that might be floating around among the employees about Cyndi Amore, but on that topic, all Shanti would say was that the staff was freaked-out and had asked for extra security in the halls.

  How strange, to be taking on a red-hot investigation like this when his real focus was an entirely different and unrelated matter. He had thought of this as a subterfuge really, but was quickly being drawn in.

  Several women came in, but not Michelle. It had been a half hour. Paul’s mind drifted. Michelle finally appeared, dressed in gladiator heels and skinny jeans, wet-coiffed and pink-lipped. The last time he had seen her she had been pregnant. She seemed to have grown up with marriage and motherhood. Her expression was serious.

  She sat down next to him on a chair at the empty table.

  “So, yeah,” she said. “Boy, am I glad to see you, Paul. Steve and I have discussed this. We want to hire you to look into this situation at the hotel. We trust you.”

  “Glad to hear that. I’ll do what I can, although it’s a police investigation. But first, I’m curious. You and your husband own a casino-hotel, among other properties. Why do you swim here, among the plebs?”

  “Oh, no big thing. I do have access to some pools, including one that’s just ours at home. But those pools are recreational. I work when I swim. Need the twenty-five meters to stretch out.”

  Remembering her fast crawl, he nodded.

  “How are you, Paul?”

  “Same old, same old. You?”

  “Completely different.” She laughed. “When you last saw me, I was an outlaw girl with issues, not the least of which was a murder charge hanging over me.”

  “Now you’re free to swim and meet up with old cronies. Things appear to have worked out.”

  She nodded, eyes down, her hair hiding her face, as if her smile were so powerful she didn’t want to blast him with it. “They have.”

  “Good.”

  “How’s Nina? Apart from the fact that I owe her, I miss her. I guess our lives are so different now—”

  “She’d love to hear from you. Invite her for lunch. Ladies love that.”

  “So you and Nina didn’t end up together?”

  “No, I’ve been seeing someone else.” He didn’t add, But as usual it didn’t work out.

  “Paul, you have to stop falling in love at the drop of a bra.”

  “Nice talk.”

  She glanced at the clock on a wall above the bar. “Well, as I’m sure you know, I’ve got two kids, a challenging husband, and a hell of a work schedule. So let’s get to it.”

  In the background, people had appeared at the café. Some sat expectantly at tables. The newly arrived banged around cups. The smell of coffee wafted through the air.

  “Mmm,” they both said simultaneously.

  “Want something?”

  “English breakfast tea,” she said.

  Paul got up and ordered two cups. He brought back the mugs. “Are you folks looking for a lawyer, too?”

  She shook her head. “Not at the moment. We have our business lawyer, and he’s dealing with some staff issues.”

  “So no Nina?”

  “Not right now, anyway. I called her about something else.”

  He told her his fee.

  She handed him a check for five thousand dollars. “Cheers.”

  Paul tucked it away, got out his recorder, a
nd clicked it on. “You mind?”

  “No, I can see why it would be important to record witness statements. I’m witness to more than I told the police.”

  Paul’s eyebrows went up. “You were at the hotel the day Brenda discovered the corpse?”

  She nodded. “Yes, we’re blessed with lots of help with our kids, so I can help out at the business. I do some of the VIP meeting and greeting and take over quite a bit in Steve’s absence. He was at a gaming convention in Vegas when all this happened.”

  “Who watched the little ones?”

  “My parents and I, well, we reunited, I guess you’d say. They retired to Tahoe. They don’t push their religion on us, and in return they get to dote on our kids. They’re fine grandparents, Paul. My mother comes over all the time to watch them.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “I am.”

  “So you got a phone call?”

  “No. I was working in Steve’s office when one of the cleaning staff ran in. She said the police were coming, and that one of the staff had found a dead body in one of our Classic Rooms in the Annex, on the first floor. I ran back there with her and found one of the cleaning staff, Brenda, sitting outside the room, the police already there. Brenda looked like she was in shock, like she was about to fall off her chair.”

  Paul got the room number and a description of the layout. “Stop by the hotel this afternoon and I’ll show you the room,” Michelle said. “It’s been thoroughly cleaned after the police took away the yellow flagging, but we’ve decided not to put anybody in there for at least six months. You know how it is with gamblers. They’re superstitious, and if somebody took a big loss, then found out about the murder, well, who knows what they might do. Anyway, I hugged Brenda and said hang on a sec, then I introduced myself to the El Dorado County homicide detective who seemed to be in charge. They let me in and I saw the body of a woman.”

  “Describe her for me.”

  Michelle thrummed manicured fingernails on the table. “It wasn’t that she had been maimed or there was a lot of blood around. In fact, she looked—well, you’re gonna think this is funny, but she looked stiff and dignified, lying on her back on the bed. It reminded me of National Geographic photos of funeral practices in ancient Egypt. She was wearing a blue bra, and she was lying on top of the bed. Her hands were folded—Paul, the killer must have done this—her chest and her legs were staged, pulled together. I suppose you’ll get all the police reports and photos?”

  “Plan to,” Paul said.

  “There was something, maybe a stocking, black and bulky and long. It had been loosened by the medics or detectives, I think, removed from her neck. Poor Cyndi. They had already pronounced her dead.”

  “You knew who it was?”

  “I knew her right away. Her name was Cyndi Backus. She was a receptionist at the main hotel desk, a very pretty gal who I know did some, uh, lounge work at a Reno club on the weekends to make a few extra bucks under a stage name. She was on lunch break from desk duty, one hour between twelve and one. That hour, and whatever escapade she was involved in, killed her. She was only twenty-eight.”

  About Michelle’s age. “Any idea who did it?” Paul said.

  “None.” But her mouth tightened as if she were trying to zip it. Somehow they had entered a sensitive area. Paul’s interest quickened, but he didn’t let it show.

  “Notice anything else about the room that seemed out of place?”

  “Her slacks and shirt were on the floor by the bed, and her Prize’s jacket was laid across the chair. Nice pair of boots. Her purse was on the floor, too. Not a big mess, no obvious signs of a struggle. The door entry card was on the table. I do know the rooms and I didn’t notice anything missing. But the room was in a strange condition. There was an empty half-pint bottle of Martell’s, the cognac, you know—”

  “I do know.”

  “Well,” Michelle said, “we found that in the sink, rinsed. And in the bathroom the toilet paper was all used up. That told me something. Later, after I went back to the lobby, I checked with Housekeeping and found out that room had been occupied the night before. Reception records showed the guests were a retired couple from Cádiz, Spain, who checked out right before eleven, and Housekeeping said it would be about one p.m. before the cleaners would get to that room normally.”

  Paul said, “Nice work. Couldn’t have done it better myself. Would Cyndi have known about the gap in time with nobody in the room?”

  “Housekeeping said she called them at eleven fifteen and asked about the schedule. But—”

  “Who in Housekeeping?” Paul noted the name.

  Michelle went on, “One of the girls called in sick, Brenda’s partner Rosalinda Hernandez, so Brenda was working alone. Behind. Trying to catch up. She was worried she wouldn’t finish the rooms, so she was rushing. She actually got ahead of schedule as a result.”

  Paul said, “The best-laid plans. Cyndi had it all figured out. Made sure she had time for the dude, and—”

  “Brenda got there at one fifteen.”

  “Cyndi was married, right?”

  “She was always on her mobile with her husband. I met him once or twice. I thought they seemed very close. I hate to think she was having an affair.”

  “What else could it be?”

  “Hard for me to imagine.”

  Michelle loved her husband, Paul got that, which meant insight went out the window in this case. “Any signs of a sexual encounter happening or about to happen?” Paul said.

  “The underwear was expensive and made to get heavy breathing going.”

  Paul raised his eyebrows at that. “Good observation,” he said. “Anybody you talked to at Reception or Housekeeping have a clue?”

  Michelle shook her head. “Everybody’s appalled. She would have been fired for using the rooms like that if Steve had found out.”

  “So you went back out into the hall?”

  “Yes, the room was full of people and I was in the way, so I went back to Brenda and put my arm around her. She didn’t cry; she had that shell-shocked look in her eyes.”

  “Tell me about Brenda,” Paul said. “How well did you know her?”

  “Well, she has—oh, shit, she had—an eight-year-old son who didn’t live with her, and we’d talk about kids when we met in the hall or the coffee shop. She had a little bit of a Southern accent, I thought. She was a warm person and had a sort of raucous sense of humor. Maybe raunchy is a better word. She was in her fifties, but you’d never know it. She had long hair and smiled all the time.”

  “A fifty-five-year-old woman with a child eight years old?”

  “I know,” Michelle said. “Brenda told me she started going back to church when she got pregnant. She never dreamed it could happen. But then—she and her husband split up. Not the current husband, Ronnie Bee, the old husband, and he moved back to Virginia where his family was. The little boy went, too, I don’t know why. She missed him terribly.”

  “Hmm.”

  “The little boy came to her funeral with his dad,” Michelle went on. “I couldn’t stand to see him cry. I had to leave. Paul, it’s not business or Prize’s reputation Steve and I feel so bad about. We just hate what happened on our watch, and we want to put it right. We feel hurt by it, you know? The hotel feels, I don’t know—”

  “Sullied?”

  “Good word, yeah.” She drank from her cup. “I told Brenda how sorry I was that she had discovered the dead woman in the bed.”

  There it was again, the quick look away.

  “I asked if she needed anything. She said she needed her husband and that she wanted to go home.”

  “She said something else, though, something that put you on edge.”

  “No, nothing.”

  “What happened that you’re not telling me, then?”

  “Nothing!”

  “You can keep saying that,” Paul said mildly. “But when you don’t tell somebody else, it festers and creeps under your covers at night and bite
s you. You know all that. About secrets.”

  Now she was frankly disturbed. She was the metaphorical type, always had been, symbols became symptoms with her. Shame about the lip she was testing with her teeth, though. Paul sat there like a neutral, harmless, receptive lump, a stubborn lump that wouldn’t move on without an answer.

  Eventually, Michelle covered her mouth with her hand and said through the hand, “Paul—can you help me with something?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Do you think Brenda’s murder is connected to the corpse she found on the bed?”

  Paul nodded. “Can’t prove it yet, though.”

  “Hell.” The hand went down and Michelle licked her fantabulous lips. She was ready to speak.

  “You can trust me with it, honey,” Paul said.

  Her exquisitely sculpted shoulders slumped. “I’m that obvious? Ugh. Brenda’s dead and I have two little kids and he may have seen her, but he didn’t see me, and I don’t want to put them at risk.”

  “Who didn’t see you?”

  She looked around. “I went out back to the parking lot to get something from a friend’s car. This was right before I went to Steve’s office, at about ten past one. I stopped by the ice machine to adjust the package I was carrying and saw Brenda ahead of me at the corner of the building, looking away from me. I’m sure she had no idea I was there. I stepped back into a doorway. I don’t know why. I stopped to watch her and see what she was watching.”

  Paul folded his arms. “At one ten? Well, I’ll be. You’re a witness.”

  “Just my luck.”

  “She didn’t see you?”

  “She never looked back. She was looking so intently down the walkway. You know, people’s body language says things. She was busy watching for something. If I made a noise, even dropped a vase, I don’t think she would have noticed. I watched her for a couple of minutes.”