The Case of the Guest Who Stayed Over (The M.O.D. Files Book 1)

by K. W. Callahan

  “You don’t think taking it was wrong, do you?” Linda asked when I didn’t respond.

  “Oh no, nothing like that. I was thinking of something else…something totally unrelated…yet somehow related,” I said absently.

  I could tell by her silence that she didn’t understand. How could she? I didn’t even understand.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, shaking it off.

  It did matter. I just wasn’t sure how. And I didn’t need to burden Linda with it. But something she had said about the dead man’s suit had rung a tiny bell in the back of my mind regarding the guest who had so recently been killed – the Lanigan’s most recent victim – Mr. Doddsman.

  I thanked Linda for her insight to the past, promising to track her down in the near future to let her regale me with more tales of how it used to be.

  It was the perfect start to Halloween, and I could feel the ghosts of the Lanigan Hotel swirling thick around me. I had some new and fantastic (not to mention real) phantasmagoric fodder, and I was looking forward to using it later tonight.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I popped back upstairs to my room for a little catnap after my lengthy detour. It wasn’t that I was that tired, but I wanted all the energy I could muster for the ethereal tour I had planned for the evening. I wanted it to be more than just a chance for the staff to dodge a little work. I wanted it to be memorable, interesting, a little creepy, and maybe more importantly, provide them with some history and insight regarding the celebrated landmark in which they toiled.

  The phone jarred me awake at a little after three. I’d been dreaming that I was the manager of the Triton Club during its heyday. Linda was there, but as a much younger version, clad in her skimpy waitressing outfit and beckoning me to come back with her into the secret room. If, in her prime, she had looked anything like she had appeared to me in my dream, I really can’t blame the former club manager for going after her.

  “This is Robert,” I answered.

  “Hi Robert, this is Sharron at the front desk. There’s a Detective Marino here to see you.”

  “I’ll be right down,” I said, hanging up the phone and sitting up in the bed. I hadn’t felt like undressing when I came up, so I had just taken off my jacket and slept on top of the sheets so as not to wrinkle my suit.

  I donned my shoes, grabbed my suit jacket off the side of the sofa upon which I’d draped it, and walked over to the full-length mirror.

  I ran a hand through my rumpled hair, buttoned my top shirt button, put my tie back on, and slid into my jacket.

  “Presentable enough,” I said to myself, straightening my tie and adjusting the triangle-tip of the white handkerchief that adorned my suit jacket’s front pocket.

  Finished with my grooming, I walked back over to the bedside table, picked up my M.O.D. key ring, cell phone, and wallet, and headed downstairs.

  Things were often quiet around this time on most weekdays, as many guests were still in meetings. But with the gamers in house, the place was abuzz. The lobby was crammed full of them. The mezzanine doors overlooking the space were almost all open, packed with people taking pictures of our famed lobby or having their pictures taken. The doors to the Lake Ballroom were open as well and gamers that had been in their meeting sessions had begun spilling outside or were lingering in conversation, sporadically interspersed along the marbled steps that led from the ballroom’s entrance half a flight down to the lobby.

  I couldn’t decide whether having the gamers here made it seem more or less like Halloween. Since most of them were adorned in full gamer costume anyway, it almost seemed as though it had been Halloween since their arrival.

  I wove my way past several clusters of gamer-guests and around a family of new arrivals. They were standing with their luggage, staring wide-eyed around them at the groups of trolls, action heroes, wizards, and brightly colored Japanimation-style costumed characters.

  I’m sure the family was wondering what exactly they’d gotten themselves into by booking here. The adolescent son was ogling a scantily clad warrior-princess, while the father hemmed and hawed, making excuses as he fumbled for his wallet while at the same time attempting to do a little ogling of his own.

  The mother stood glaring, hands on hips, and the young daughter giggled and pointed as two fully-suited galactic warriors feigned battle with their space-sabers before her.

  I walked around the front desk to the back office door where I punched in an access code and headed for my office. On the way, I grabbed the jumble of paperwork from my crammed mailbox.

  Detective Marino was sitting in a chair beside my desk, waiting. He looked more relaxed than I’d seen him on previous occasions. He was leaning back comfortably in the chair, his suit jacket unbuttoned, revealing a police badge clipped to his belt and the leather straps of a shoulder holster, which gave me a peak at his side arm. I had to admit, had I not known him, he would have made for an intimidating presence.

  I tossed the pile of paperwork on my desk and reached out a hand in greeting to the detective. He stood and gave me a firm handshake.

  “Good to see you again, detective.”

  He nodded toward my mailbox contents, “Looks like the inbox on my desk.”

  “You too, huh?”

  “They love to pile it on when they find a pack mule that can handle the load,” he frowned.

  “No kidding,” I smiled.

  He sat back down and I pulled out my wheeled desk chair and turned it to face him, taking a seat myself.

  “Anything to drink,” I offered.

  “No thanks,” he shook his head.

  “So what’s new?” I asked. “Come up with anything yet?”

  Suddenly the detective stood.

  “Mind if we take a walk?” he asked. “I need a smoke.”

  “Sure,” I shrugged. “Didn’t realize you smoked.”

  “I don’t…typically. Sometimes I get a craving.”

  He followed me as I led him out through the lobby, down the stairs, and outside through one of the revolving doors of the hotel’s main entrance. The sky outside was overcast and gray; the usual for this time of year.

  “Looks like you’ve got some interesting characters staying here this week,” the detective smiled, nodding to a group of gnomes, imps, and hobgoblins standing just outside the main entrance, waiting for cabs.

  “Certainly keeps things interesting,” I agreed.

  We hooked a right and headed toward Wabash Street.

  I figured we’d walk the perimeter of the hotel. It’d allow the detective time to smoke while I multitasked, checking out the exterior of the hotel for any issues.

  Traffic was thick, almost at a standstill in certain areas. Around us there were honks, shouts, the roaring clatter of an L-train overhead, and the occasional rattle of a loose manhole cover as a vehicle hit it just right.

  “From your smoking, I’ll assume that things aren’t exactly going well with the case,” I said as the detective lit his cigarette.

  “You could say that,” he replied casually as he took a suck of the cigarette and exhaled in a cloud of smoke that intermingled with vaporous puffs of our chill-laden breaths.

  “We got the coroner’s report,” he went on. “Turns out, the estimated time of death took place even earlier than we initially thought. It appears that our victim died from asphyxiation sometime early Friday, not Saturday. Seems that the murderer used one of Doddsman’s own ties to strangle him.”

  “Friday?” I pondered. “Huh.”

  “Sometime Friday morning,” the detective continued, “not to put too fine a point on it. That’s as close as the coroner could come to nailing down a time since it’d already been several days before the body was discovered.”

  I nodded, noticing several trash receptacles that needed to be emptied as we passed. I made a mental note to call housekeeping after Detective Marino left.

  “Add to that,” the detective continued, “I can’t keep these R & T VIPs here much longer, I don
’t really have any suspects other than them, and I haven’t stumbled onto any good motives or any other evidence to point me in another direction. This case is turning into a real pain in the butt.”

  “Yeah, the VIPs were downstairs this morning complaining about their room charges.”

  “You didn’t give them anything, did you?”

  “I threw ‘em a bone, but it wasn’t much. Just a night off each of their stays.”

  “That’s enough,” the detective nodded. “They’re real jerks.”

  “Believe me, I know,” I agreed. “You’ve interviewed all of them?”

  “Yes,” the detective nodded.

  “Didn’t get anything?”

  He shook his head and took another long puff off his cigarette that was quickly dwindling as we rounded the corner. I noticed that the sidewalk was heavily covered in old gum and that several drinks had been spilled. People were stepping around what appeared once to have been a coffee drink of some sort and another area that was slathered in some sort of gelatinous red goo – possibly a former juice drink. I made another mental note for housekeeping to have the third-shift bring the power-washer out and hit these areas.

  “All of them had alibis,” the detective said. “Paul Gerhardt, the vice president of R & D, met with Doddsman in a private meeting early Friday morning at around seven to discuss the new budget proposal. But we have Doddsman back in his room at 8:17 a.m. according to the one and only room key swipe on the lock read for that day. Witnesses confirmed that Gerhardt was in meetings the rest of the day, so that it tells us that the murder must have taken place some time after that.”

  “Do you think this Gerhardt character might have had something to do with it? Maybe Gerhardt entered the room with Doddsman at 8:17, killed him, and then went back down to him meetings.”

  “I guess anything is possible, but we know that Gerhardt was in his room by a telephone call he made to the front desk at 8:18 a.m., so unless he murdered Doddsman, ran back down to his room, and called the front desk in just a minute, I find it highly unlikely. And he was confirmed by two co-workers as being with them from 8:20 a.m. on since they met him at his room at that time to go to their meetings downstairs. They sat next to him from the start of their meeting at 8:30 until they broke for lunch at 11:30, went to lunch together, and then went back to their meetings for the rest of the day.”

  “Is it possible that he could have killed Gerhardt at 8:17, run back to his room to make the call at 8:18, and then met up with his buddies at 8:20?”

  The detective shrugged. “You ever try to strangle someone with a tie, get back down three flights of stairs, into your room, and make a phone call in less than two minutes?”

  “Not yet,” I grinned at him.

  My attempt at humor fell flat.

  “It’s not like the movies where you just squeeze their necks for a few seconds and they go limp and die. It can often take several minutes to kill someone by way of strangulation, especially if you want to make sure the job is done right and you haven’t just caused them to loose consciousness. And for older geezers like these guys, it could take even longer.”

  We rounded the final corner back onto Monroe Street.

  I saw Charlie – my homeless friend – across the street and gave him a friendly wave. He was leaning against the interior of a building doorway, looking forlorn. As he saw me, he perked up and waved back. He held up a hand, as if he wanted me to stop, then bent and picked something up off the ground and came running over to us.

  As he approached, I noticed Detective Marino’s pace slow and he tensed slightly.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I know him.”

  Charlie had the cafeteria tray from the dinner I had brought him the other night.

  He came up to us, slightly out of breath.

  “Thank you, sir…for the dinner. I surely appreciate it.”

  He handed me the tray, “Wanted to give this back to you.”

  “Oh…” I said. “Sure thing, Charlie. I hope you enjoyed it.”

  “I certainly did, sir. Thank you again.”

  He stepped back, gave a little bow, and then turned and hustled back across the street.

  Detective Marino looked at me.

  “The Lanigan feeding the homeless now?”

  I shrugged, “He’s a good guy…plus, he helped me out buying something the other night.”

  The detective eyeballed me from head to toe, obviously reconsidering just where I might have come across the fine attire in which I was clad if I was taking out loans from the homeless.

  “Helped you, did he? Lanigan not paying too well these days?”

  I laughed. “No, no. Nothing like that. Just a little short, that’s all.”

  “Whatever,” the detective shrugged. “I’ve had to deal with more than my fair share of those guys, and I can’t say they’re always the most helpful of sorts.”

  “Well, this one is,” I said pleasantly.

  “As I was saying,” the detective continued, “if it was any of the old coots from R & T, I’d put my money on Polaski…their marketing vice president. Some of the others I interviewed mentioned that he and Doddsman had some problems in the past over budget issues. Doddsman wanted to cut the department’s budget and Polaski wasn’t too keen on the idea.” He flicked some ash off the end of his cigarette and continued, “But I’m thinking this killing may have been unrelated to any of Doddsman’s co-workers. In fact, I’m thinking it might have been unrelated to anything.”

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “Could be that neither the killer nor the victim had anything to do with one another or even knew one another for that matter.”

  “You mean it was completely random?”

  “Quite possibly. Not every murder has to have a motive.”

  “Huh,” I breathed.

  “What?” the detective gave me a curious look.

  “Why would Doddsman have opened his door to a stranger then?”

  The detective laughed.

  “Any number of reasons. The killer could have been dressed like a hotel employee…or maybe it was a hotel employee. Who knows, maybe the killer was a prostitute, there for sexual purposes at the request of the victim himself.”

  “I don’t see a woman having strangled him even if Doddsman was an older gentleman,” I scoffed.

  “Who said anything about it being a woman,” the detective gave me a sidelong glance. “Doddsman was single, didn’t have any family, and wasn’t known to have done any dating during his 20-year term with the company.”

  “Doesn’t prove he was gay though,” I said.

  “Doesn’t disprove it either,” the detective looked at me.

  He took the last puff of his cigarette and flicked away the butt onto the sidewalk.

  “Don’t do that,” I said, walking over and picking it up. “We have to maintain these outside areas as well. Do you know how many cigarette butts we sweep up each day?”

  The detective looked at me like I was crazy.

  “Has to be in the hundreds,” I went on, ignoring his glare. “Shouldn’t litter anyway,” I mumbled. “A detective ought to know better.”

  “Sorry,” he said like a scolded child as he waited for me to dispose of the butt in a nearby garbage can. “No offense meant. Never really gave it much thought.”

  “Most people don’t,” I said as a doorman opened one of the hotel’s main entry doors for us. “That’s the problem.”

  We stepped aside for a group of guests dressed as skeleton warriors, complete with battle-axes and shields, to exit before making our way back inside the hotel.

  ***

  Back in my office, we took our respective seats.

  “So when are the VIPs leaving?” I asked.

  “I plan on cutting them loose tomorrow,” the detective said, fiddling with his tie, working on a wrinkle that had somehow found its way onto its right side. “They’ve been giving the boss hell, which means the boss has been giving me hell about the
ir being ‘held captive’ as they put it. Rough life being stuck at an elegant hotel for a couple extra days just because their cohort was killed,” he said sarcastically. “Especially when one of those nights is being comped by the hotel’s overly-sympathetic manager.”

  “Hey, I’m just trying to make the best of a tough situation and keep some of the heat off your department.”

  “I know,” he gave in, “and don’t think we don’t appreciate it.”

  “No problem,” I nodded.

  “These guys have some big international conference in South America to attend in a couple of days, so they’re itching to be on their way. And in all honesty, I really don’t have any reason to keep them around. It’s starting to look less likely that one of them was the killer.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I certainly appreciate you taking time to keep me in the loop,” I said. “I wish there was something more I could do to help.”

  The detective stood and held out a hand to shake, “You’ve done plenty and have been quite generous with you’re time. I really just wanted to stop in and see if you’d thought of anything or had any new ideas regarding the case. I can see that you’re a busy man, and I appreciate you taking time out of your day to meet with me.”

  He turned to leave.

  “Hey detective,” I said.

  “Yeah?” he said, stopping and putting an arm up to lean on my office door frame.

  “What happened to Doddsman’s stuff…I mean, since he didn’t have a family or anything?”

  “Goes in an evidence locker,” he paused. “Why, you need a new suit or something,” he laughed. “Doddsman wasn’t your cut, I can tell you that much.”

  I wasn’t about to go into how strange it was that he had said that after my earlier conversation with Linda.