I walked over to the living room thermostat and cranked it up. Then I turned on a portable electric fireplace I’d recently purchased. I had placed it against the wall next to the entry door more for atmosphere than anything, but today I found it helpful in reheating my chilled blood.
I kicked off my shoes, ditched the suit jacket and tie, unbuttoned my collar, and sat down in the living room sofa chair, still trying to thaw. After a giving myself a moment to recover, I picked up the phone on the end table beside me, dialed 9 to get a line outside the hotel, and then the number I wanted.
There wouldn’t be much open today. I knew that. Taking a page from A Christmas Story, I dialed our nearest Chinese restaurant and ordered egg rolls and the “Magic” fried rice, which incorporated a variety of meats – shrimp, beef, chicken, pork – into a deliciously oily fried rice.
15 minutes later, Steve, my regular Chinese food delivery man, was knocking at the door with my order. After thanking him, wishing him a merry Christmas, and offloading a hefty holiday tip on him, I popped a bottle of beer and settled back down to enjoy my Christmas feast in front of my faux fireplace. As I forked my first mouthfuls of deliciousness, I flipped the television on to a marathon run of A Christmas Story (imagine that), and slid farther down in my comfortable chair to enjoy a meal befitting the film.
Halfway through my feast, I stood from my comfy seat, headed over to my mini-fridge, grabbed another beer, and walked into the bedroom. Pulling the curtains aside from the window, I looked over the gray of the Chicago winter day that had rapidly disintegrated into a blur of white as the snow fell outside. The streets far below were slowly succumbing, growing gradually into a pallid blanket of white.
The layer of white that was quickly accumulating made me think back to the floor of linen left behind after we had busted the linen chute in the sorting room. This in turn had me harkening back to the murder that had occurred on our premises.
The thought troubled me.
I knew these types of things happened in major hotels, but I didn’t want our property developing a reputation as a ‘murder’ hotel. Right now, there was little I could do about it though. The case was in Detective Marino’s hands, and I’d done about as much as I could to assist him without interfering in the case, which I knew the detective wouldn’t like. If he needed my assistance, he’d ask.
And so, leaving the bedroom drapes open, I returned to my suite’s living room, settled back down in my chair, and continued my meal.
For all intensive purposes – and my particular tastes and personal preferences – I couldn’t have envisioned a better Christmas. To many, it might have seemed a sad and lonely way to spend the holiday. However, to someone like me, who works in a role where his main focus is serving the needs of others, taking a few hours just for myself was exactly what I needed. Best of all, my gift on this special day was nary a single M.O.D. call.
But I wasn’t taking my respite for granted, for I knew what was coming – New Year’s Eve.
CHAPTER 5
To: [email protected]
Subject: 12/28 MOD Report
THE LANIGAN HOTEL
CHICAGO, IL
MANAGER ON DUTY REPORT
Wednesday, December 28th
Weather: 27/18 Light snow
Occupancy: 28%
Arrivals: 153
Departures: 47
Event Resume:
6th Floor Meeting Rooms - Sycamore and Maple – (noon – 3 p.m.) – Biofarm Corp break-off meetings
Carlisle’s Whiskey Lounge (Open 6 p.m. – 1 a.m.)
Blue Velvet Room (10 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.) – Biofarm Corp sales and marketing presentations
The Polynesian – Goldberg birthday party (private event)
* * *
It was 11:58 a.m., and I sat waiting in the Boardwalk Café. The Boardwalk was the hotel’s oceanfront themed restaurant located just off the lobby. In fact, all our restaurants at the Lanigan were of an ocean motif. Why exactly the previous management had seen fit to go this route for the restaurants of a downtown Chicago hotel, I had no idea, but it seemed to work.
Each Sunday, the Boardwalk featured its famed “Sunday Brunch” that was accompanied by live piano music provided by our resident player, Francesco Rivali.
At 11:59, I saw Detective Marino making his way around and through the tables of other lunch patrons.
I rose from my chair. “Detective,” I nodded as we shook hands.
“Haze,” he nodded back before we seated ourselves.
A server was at our table almost instantly, handing us menus and taking our drink orders. I went with hot tea with lemon. The detective stuck with water.
We chatted about the weather, hotel occupancy levels, and our plans for New Year’s Eve while the server got our drinks and we waited to order.
“Man, I’m starving,” the detective said as our server set our drinks before us.
“No breakfast?” I asked.
“Donut and coffee,” I detective frowned.
“May I make a recommendation then?”
“Of course,” the detective gave a slight shrug. “You live here. I think I can trust your judgment on the food.”
“Since you’re hungry, rather than a salad to start, I would go with either the lobster meatballs, which come with lobster bisque, or try the Boardwalk Mac n’ Cheese, which by the way has a blend of five different cheeses and is topped with Italian-seasoned bread crumbs and crumbled bacon. It’s one of their specialties.”
“Mmm,” the detective rubbed his belly, “mac n’ cheese sounds like it’d hit the spot on a day like today.”
I began my own meal with the honey-glazed pear salad that had a base of organic baby lettuce topped with blue cheese, walnuts, bits of apple wood smoked ham, and was accompanied by a honey pomegranate vinaigrette.
For our entrees, the detective ordered The Lanigan, our world-renowned burger. It was a massive 11-ounce grilled Angus chuck patty, topped with smoked Gouda, bacon, port wine shallots, and served on a toasted croissant roll. Meanwhile, I went with a bit lighter fare, choosing the shrimp scampi sautéed in a lemon oil, drizzled with garlic butter sauce, and served with jasmine rice.
As we enjoyed our meals, we discussed the case.
“Remember, all this is highly confidential,” the detective prefaced our discussion.
“I think you know me well enough by now not to worry,” I took a bite of my mouth-wateringly delicious scampi.
“I know,” the detective nodded. “I just like to remind you.”
“So what about your staff interviews, have you made any progress with them so far?” I inquired, wanting to move past the fact that even though I’d been instrumental in helping to solve the last murder that had occurred at our property, the detective still had some apparent misgivings about my ability to keep my mouth shut. It’d been a while since I’d last worked with him on this type of endeavor, and I knew detectives could be touchy about someone infringing on the work that they often took quite personally. Therefore, I let it go.
The detective shrugged. “Haven’t got much. None of the staff seem to recall much about Mr. Statler.”
“The room attendant that cleaned his room didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary the day he was killed?”
“Not according to her,” the detective said.
“Which attendant was it?” I asked.
The detective pulled a notepad from his coat pocket and flipped it open. “It was a…” he paused scanning, “…Felecia Gonzalez.”
I sorted through the mental list of employees with whom I was familiar, a list that was quite extensive. With nearly 200 room attendants in the housekeeping department though – a department in which turnover was relatively high – I found myself drawing a blank.
“Been here about a year,” the detective continued. “Hispanic female, age thirty-one, divorced, two kids, worked at several other area hotels over the past five years. Nothing particularly special about her.”
“Doesn’t remember anything odd about the guest or the room…like maybe the luggage had been gone through or…anything?” I fished.
“Nope…just another room. She said it wasn’t particularly dirty. From what she recalled, she mostly just made up the bed, did a quick vacuum, replaced some of the coffee supplies, cleaned the bathroom, took out the old towels, replaced them with new, and that was about it. Was in and out in around fifteen minutes on the day of the murder. Said Mr. Statler wasn’t even in the room.”
“Sounds about right for cleaning a stay over room,” I nodded.
“I did find out that one of your housepersons,” he consulted his notepad again, “a Rodrigo Torez, said he lost his key to the fifteenth floor linen closet that day,” the detective added.
“Oh great,” I muttered. “You think he had something to do with this?” I asked.
The detective shook his head slightly and finished a bite of his humongous burger, “Not sure. He reported the key loss to security…not something I think he would have done if he wanted to secretly murder someone, but you never know.” He took a drink of water. “Speaking of security, you know you have a one-handed security guard? I had to interview him since he was the roaming guard for the fifteenth floor that day.”
I nodded, “Yeah, Elon Hernandez. He’s an Iraq vet.”
“Kind of strange having a security guard missing a hand isn’t it?” the detective asked.
“He has a good prosthetic. You’d never know the hand wasn’t there if you weren’t aware of it ahead of time,” I replied.
“Glad to see your hotel is helping out disabled war vets,” the detective said. “Lost a good friend of mine over there,” he frowned sadly.
“Sorry to hear that,” I took another bite.
The detective took a deep breath. I could tell the loss meant something to him.
“What about the floor manager?” I asked. “Did she see or remember anything about the linen closet from that day?”
The detective shook his head again. “Nothing much. She remembers the houseperson reporting his key missing. Said the room attendant that cleaned the room does a pretty good job. That’s about it. Nothing of use.”
“Other room attendants on the floor that day?”
“Two. A Sarah…Perkins,” he consulted his notepad, “and a Cecelia Sumova.” The detective paused. “Hmph,” he eyed his notepad and smiled.
“What?” I asked.
“Neither of them had much to contribute, but I sure wouldn’t mind taking that Cecelia gal down to the station for a little further interrogating if you get my drift. Tidy little piece of work that gal was. From Lithuania.”
“Ooohh,” I drawled, suddenly remembering Cece – the leggy Lithuanian brunette – from the night of the holiday party. “I know who you’re talking about.”
“I’ll bet you do,” he gave me an incriminating half-smile. “I envy you sometimes, Haze. We don’t have women like that in the department. Can’t say we’d be getting much work done if we did.”
“Neither of them remember anything about Statler?” I tried to stay on topic.
“Ziltch,” the detective shook his head.
“You have to remember, these people do the same jobs in the same areas day in and day out. A particular day, a particular room, they all just blend together ninety-nine percent of the time,” I tried to explain. “It can be pretty monotonous work. Any luck matching up the initials on the murder weapon with someone in house at the time of the murder?”
“Nothing lines up,” the detective shook his head. “No employees, current or over the last two years, and none of the guests in the hotel at or around the time of the murder had the initials D.E.P. A few had D and P initials, but when we investigated further, the middle initials didn’t match. I mean, when you think about it, it makes sense. Who’s going to toss a murder weapon with their initials on it down the chute along with their victim?”
“You never know,” I shrugged. “It could have slipped out of the killer’s hand or been dropped accidently.”
“I only wish my job was that simple,” the detective shook his head, “Doesn’t appear to have happened that way though. I think the initials were a red herring. The killer probably thought their being on the knife would throw us off track.” The detective took a deep breath and sighed, “Which it appears to have done.”
“What about the lock reads?” I forged ahead. “You get anything interesting from them?”
“We did,” said the detective. “It’s kind of weird actually. We show the last lock entry on the closet door where the linen chute is located at 3:33 p.m. was made by one of the room attendants. But we have Mr. Statler entering his room at 3:37 p.m., four minutes after the last entry into the linen room where his body was deposited. That was the last recorded entry on that particular linen closet for the day. And there were no further readings on Statler’s room door until you discovered his body the next day when he was set to check out and we came up to investigate his room at around 11:30 that morning.”
I took a minute to process what the detective was telling me.
“The killer could have killed him, dumped him in the chute and then used Statler’s key to re-enter his room later either to rob him or just to throw us off track,” I offered.
“I thought that too at first,” said the detective, but Statler’s room key was on him when we found the body…and there was no second key made for that room,” he pre-empted my follow up question. “And I doubt the murderer climbed inside the linen chute to replace the key in Mr. Statler’s wallet after he was killed.”
“So how did they get him into the linen closet without a key?” I pondered aloud. “I guess someone could have propped the linen room door open,” I offered after a moment.
The detective huffed and frowned. “That means our potential suspect pool suddenly deepens substantially. Without a key being necessary to get inside the linen closet, it means that anyone could have deposited the body there.”
“Did you ask the houseperson? If he lost his key, he might have asked a room attendant to let him inside the linen closet and then propped the door open so he could re-enter later. A lot of times when there is a lost key, an employee will wait to file a report, even though they’re not supposed to, so that they don’t lose time coming down to security.”
“We asked him about it, but he said he reported the missing key as soon as he realized it was gone. Problem is, he didn’t realize it was gone until his shift was about to end at 4:30 p.m. The last time he used it was a 2:34 p.m. on the fifteenth floor linen closet door, at which time Mr. Statler was apparently still alive based upon his entering his room. The houseperson said the door to the linen closet closed securely behind him when he left. Several room attendants were in and out of the linen room after him and reported the door being secured at those times as well.”
I nodded and frowned, momentarily forgetting about my food while I chewed the side of my check in thought. I decided to again redirect my line of questioning to the detective.
“Was there any cash in Statler’s wallet when you found the body?”
“You think he might have been robbed?” the detective asked.
“I guess I’d prefer it over other possibilities, since it would likely point away from one of our employees being involved.”
“No cash, but that doesn’t mean much in this day and age of people using credit cards to buy anything and everything.”
“True,” I agreed. “Cash is trash and credit is king.” I thought more about the event, envisioning our hotel hallways, the linen closet, and the room type in which Mr. Statler was staying – a small room with a king bed. “Did you find out any more about why he was staying with us?” I asked, deciding to switch gears away from the actual events surrounding the murder to see if we could pin down a broader motive.
“I talked to Statler’s boss. He told me that it wasn’t unusual for Statler to stay at the Lanigan. He did a lot of work downtown, consulting with
various companies, and his boss said he often liked to stay here overnight on trips into town so that he didn’t have to make the perilous drive back to Merrillville at night, especially in the winter.”
“Can’t say I blame him there,” I nodded.
“There weird thing is, his boss said Statler was currently on vacation and didn’t know of any work-related project he might be working on downtown,” the detective added.
“Hmm,” I frowned, “so possibly a private meeting…maybe a little lover’s rendezvous?”
“Could be,” the detective said. “But no one at his work knew of Statler being in a relationship.”
“Doesn’t mean he wasn’t,” I gave the detective a grim grin.
“Doesn’t mean he was in a committed one, if he was,” the detective returned my countenance.
“Sort term tryst?” I tried to put it politely.
“Hooker,” the detective tore my efforts asunder.
“Mmm hmm,” I took a nervous glance at the hotel guests eating around us, hoping they hadn’t overheard. “Okay,” I nodded, speaking more quietly now, “you’ve requested my discreetness in this situation, now I’ll ask the same from you.” The detective eyed me warily. I took another glance around me to ensure none of the other guests were paying attention, and then said, “Check with the bell captain.” The detective nodded as though he understood, but I clarified just in case. “The bellmen often direct arriving…” I looked for the right phrasing, “working girls to the proper rooms when they arrive. It’s not something our management looks favorably upon, but we can’t really discriminate. Plus, we’re talking about high-class call girls here, and frankly, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. Turning away a paying hotel guest because we think she’s a lady of the night wouldn’t exactly make for the best kind of guest relations.”
The Case of the Linen Pressed Guest (The M.O.D. Files Book 2) Page 6