by Elaine Viets
“You’re trying to find the money, aren’t you?” Helen said. “That’s why you asked us where we’d hide it. You’re the dead robber’s accomplice. He was shot before he could give you the money.”
Craig slammed the sheets down on the floor. “Lady, I don’t know what I’ve done to you, but I don’t deserve this.”
Helen’s brain felt supercharged. She saw connections everywhere. “You wanted Rhonda to look for that money. That’s why you hooked up with her. It was easy, wasn’t it? She hung out at that bar and had a taste for lowlifes. You started taking her out. Don’t deny it. You took her to the diner down the road. A waitress saw you together.”
“You’re freaking stupid,” Craig said.
“I was. But I’ve smartened up,” Helen said. “I can see through you like a window. You gave poor Rhonda promises and cash—more cash than she ever saw in her life. You led her on. What happened then, Craig? Why did you kill her? Was she starting to get suspicious? Or were you too impatient? When she didn’t find anything, you killed her and took her place so you could search the hotel yourself. She told you nobody ever quit a job at the Full Moon, so you created a vacancy.”
“Helen, look at me. Do I look like a killer?” Craig looked like a minor movie star, golden, handsome, magnetic. His voice was soft and reasonable. His gloved hands were swift. They reached for the broom and swung it at Helen’s head.
“Crazy bitch,” he shrieked.
Helen saw his eyes flicker a fraction before he struck. She turned enough to catch the blow with her shoulder. The force knocked her into the wall. Craig swung viciously at her head with a black desk chair. She slid down the wall, and he barely missed her. The chair broke apart, leaving a dusty hole in the drywall.
My God, Helen thought. He’s trying to kill me. She was nearly blinded by the drywall dust. Helen felt along the floor and found a splintered chair leg and the bottle of alcohol.
Craig flung a lamp at her head. Helen ducked. The heavy brass base hit the wall, and the shade cartwheeled across the floor. The bulb shattered.
“Argggh!” Craig charged again, swinging the shattered chair back. The jagged edges made a weird and lethal weapon.
Helen slashed at Craig with the splintered chair leg, knocking the broken furniture out of his hands. She hit him so hard, the shock ran up her hand.
Craig yelped and crashed to the floor. Helen sprayed his eyes with alcohol, kicked the broken chair back away, and body slammed herself down on his chest.
“Oof!” he said as the air left his lungs. Craig’s eyes were squeezed shut and leaking tears. When he could talk again, he wheezed, “Ow, bitch. I can’t see. I’m blind.”
“Good,” Helen said. “You tried to kill me. Why did you kill Rhonda?”
“It was her fault. She made me do it. My eyes hurt.” Craig struggled to sit up. Helen clubbed him with the broken chair leg, and pointed the alcohol spray bottle at his red, watery eyes.
“Stay,” she said, as if he were an unruly dog. “Lie down and play dead.”
Craig stayed still as a corpse.
Her hand found a sharp shard of lightbulb, and she held it over his left eye. “How’d you like to be really blind?” she said.
Craig’s voice was a dry whisper. “We had a deal. Rhonda would search the hotel, and we’d split the money when she found it.”
“Some deal,” Helen said. “What did she get out of it?”
“I had the hotel plans,” he said. “I told her about good places to search—vents, ducts and unmarked storage areas. I gave her money for expenses.”
“Fake fifties,” Helen said.
“Hey, they spent just like real money. I told her to do anything, pay anyone, to find that cash. I’m a dead man if I don’t come up with it by next Thursday. I made a deal with some very bad people. The only reason I’m still alive is they knew the situation. Once I had Rhonda working for me at the hotel, they gave me a deadline to find it—or else. They said they’d cut my heart out and show it to me. I couldn’t run. They were watching me.”
“Did Rhonda know this?” Helen asked.
“She knew I was desperate. All she gave me was a bunch of excuses. Then I found that plane ticket in her purse. She was going to take my money and run.”
“No, that’s what you were going to do, Craig. You were going to abandon Rhonda as soon as she gave you the cash. Or did you always plan to kill her?”
Craig said nothing. Helen made a tiny cut in the tender skin under his eye with the broken lightbulb. Helen stared at the thin line of blood welling up in the cut. That scared her so much, the shard slipped from her fingers.
Craig was too terrified to notice. “Yes, no, I don’t know,” he shrieked.
“Did she know you were a drug dealer?”
“No. I said I was the son of the architect who built this hotel and I needed the money because I ran up some gambling debts, but there would be enough left over for us. I pretended I knew her from school. She was four years older than me. I said I’d always had a thing for older women.”
“You little shit,” Helen said. “You use that line on all the women.”
“Just the old ones,” Craig said.
Helen whacked him again with the chair leg.
“Ow! Fuck. What’s the matter with you?” he said.
“Shut up and keep talking,” she said.
He seemed to understand that command. “Rhonda took so long, I got suspicious. I was gonna die. When I saw that plane ticket, I lost it.”
“You killed her for nothing,” Helen said. “She loved you. She bought the ticket for her mother.”
He managed a shrug, even with Helen sitting on him. “It worked out. It got me at the hotel, in her job, so I could do the search myself.”
It worked out. Helen stared that the creature beneath her. She wanted to hit him again for what he’d done to Rhonda, but she was afraid she wouldn’t stop beating him. Time to change the subject. “Tell me why you killed Dean Stamples. Did he catch you searching his room?”
“I never killed him!” Craig screamed.
Helen noticed he didn’t deny killing Rhonda.
The room door slammed against the wall. “What’s going on here?” Denise, the head housekeeper, entered in a majestic rush, wielding a wet mop. “I heard the screaming two floors down. What happened to this room? Helen, what are you doing to Craig?”
“He killed Rhonda,” Helen said. “He was her mysterious dark lover—and the robber’s accomplice. He dyed his hair and wore gloves to hide his fingerprints. He’s here searching for the lost money.”
“So that’s what you were doing up on the third floor,” Denise said. “Helen told me how you fed her that line about dropping a spray can cap. I knew you were lying.”
“No!” Craig said. “She’s crazy. She attacked me because I wouldn’t screw her. She made up this weird shit about me killing Rhonda. She’s menopausal.”
Denise whacked him smartly with the mop. “I hate guys who say that,” she said.
“Me, too.” Helen thumped his arm with the chair leg.
“Ow!” Craig cowered like a hunchbacked Quasimodo, rubbing his stinging eyes and warding off their blows.
“How’d you figure out this lying piece of trash killed Rhonda?” Denise said.
“He said Rhonda complained about cleaning the Jacuzzi,” Helen said. “He could only know that if he talked with her when she was alive.”
Craig bucked like a bronco and threw Helen off his chest, but he couldn’t move fast enough. Denise slugged him with the mop, and he dropped to the floor again. She kicked him hard in the ribs. “That’s for Rhonda,” she said.
This time Craig didn’t move.
“He’s out cold,” Denise said. “Stand guard while I call the police.” She charged out of the room.
Craig lay motionless on the carpet. He had to be unconscious, Helen thought. No one who cleaned hotels would stretch out on that carpet. He knew what had been on it.
She leaned closer. Sh
e could barely hear him breathing. His eyes were closed. Sirens screamed in the parking lot. The police were at the Full Moon. That should have made Craig react. She poked his chest with the chair leg. Not a twitch.
It was over. All the police had to do was cuff the killer and haul him away.
“Ahgggg!” Craig butted his head against Helen’s. She fell back on the floor, stunned. The man had a skull like a sledgehammer. She lashed out at him with her fist, but he clubbed her head with the shattered chair leg. The blackness closed in on her. There was a buzzing like a thousand flies.
When her vision cleared, she heard Craig pounding down the hall.
Get up! she told herself. He’s getting away.
Helen struggled to her feet. The cleaning cart was jammed into the door frame with the mop stick. She tried to shove it out of the way, but she was too woozy.
Helen took a whiff from the ammonia bottle to clear her head. She gagged and coughed, but her head was a little clearer. She threw herself against the jammed cart, and the mop handle snapped. The cart rolled aside and she nearly fell into the hall. Her head ached. Each step shot pain up her neck.
She couldn’t let Rhonda’s killer escape.
The hall was empty, but she heard the fire door slam, and ran to it. The stairs seemed to sway and twist as she started down, clinging to the rail. Craig was getting away. She couldn’t run fast enough to catch him.
Police were pouring into the lobby when Helen staggered to the second-floor balcony and yelled, “Help! The killer’s running out the fire stairs on the first floor.”
Her shout pierced her brain like glass shards. She looked down and saw Craig race around the corner, holding the black chair leg like a handgun.
“There!” Sondra shouted, and pointed toward the door.
“In the hall,” Denise screamed. “He killed Rhonda. He’s got a—”
“Police! Stop! Police!” a muscular young officer said, his gun drawn. “Drop the weapon! Drop the weapon! Police!”
Craig was five feet from freedom. He stopped, turned toward the officer, and raised the chair leg like a loaded weapon.
The officer fired.
Craig dropped as if the rug were pulled out from under him. A long splash of red darkened the hall floor.
CHAPTER 28
Rhonda’s killer was dead.
His blood made a dark lake, where Helen could drown her anger. She waited for the hot surge of triumph.
Helen had kept her promise to Rhonda. Her colleague’s killer had been brought to justice. The man who’d used her, deceived her and beaten her was shot down like a rabid animal.
Instead she saw Craig, with his hunky body and boy-band hair. Heard him laughing while he cleaned the hotel rooms. Felt the electric zing! when he kissed her. His flirtation had been lies, but Helen had still enjoyed it. He wasn’t the first man who’d lied to her.
Someone was crying softly. Helen wished it were her. But it was Cheryl, weeping in the lobby. Helen felt only numb. Craig was dead—but so was Rhonda. Her revenge felt empty. She’d helped no one and solved nothing.
Helen had so many unanswered questions: Why did Craig kill Dean Stamples? Did he know the guest in 322? Or had Dean surprised the cleaner in his room?
Helen had no doubt Craig had murdered Rhonda. She saw the fear in his eyes when he denied knowing the maid. She heard his desperate lies after his fatal slip of the tongue. Helen had beaten the confession out of him, but she thought he’d been telling the truth, at least about Rhonda: He’d met her, seduced her, used her and killed her in a hot fury when he thought she’d betrayed him. Maybe he’d intended to murder her all along. But why kill Dean?
She thought she’d pieced together most of the story, but she couldn’t be sure. Now she would never know. Craig took those answers with him into the lake of blood.
Time froze. Cheryl’s weeping was the only sound. The young cop was standing in the lobby, his face blank with shock. Helen leaned over the balcony and said, “Thank you, Officer. That man beat Rhonda to death. He tried to kill me. You saved me.”
Craig tried to kill me, she repeated to herself. Why? Why didn’t he shove me aside and run? He could have escaped.
Because he could never come back here again and look for the money. He could run away, but he couldn’t escape. He owed that money to the wrong people. He’d die horribly if he didn’t find it. He died for it, anyway.
I almost died for it. I would have been beaten to death, like Rhonda and Dean. The Full Moon would have died, too. No one would stay at a hotel where a serial killer stalked the halls.
Once again Helen saw Craig turn and point the chair leg like a loaded weapon at the police officer. Was his death suicide by cop? It was certainly a quicker, easier end than the drug dealers promised him.
“Thank you, Officer,” Helen said again.
The cop stared straight ahead. He didn’t—or couldn’t—hear her.
I wanted to ease his guilt, Helen thought. He’s going to suffer, too. Craig has left a trail of pain through this hotel.
Her words seemed to bring the lobby back to life. Now people were shouting, screaming, yelling orders and talking into cell phones. Outside, there were more sirens. The lobby pulsed red from the emergency-vehicle lights, like some weird daylight disco.
Blood dripped on the cream-painted balcony rail—Helen’s own blood. It was redder and brighter than Craig’s, because she was alive and he was dead. She felt the balcony tilt. She sat down fast on the carpet before she tumbled over the rail.
“Are you OK, miss?” A blond paramedic, who looked like she bench-pressed Buicks, was talking from far away. Helen tried to follow her words, but the hall was blurry and dark around the edges.
“Just dizzy.” Helen said every word as if she would be billed for it.
“Are you hurt? Where do you hurt?” the blond paramedic prodded her with questions.
“Head. Shoulder. He hit me.”
“We’re going to take you to the hospital to check you out,” the paramedic said.
Helen didn’t resist when two more paramedics loaded her onto a gurney. She couldn’t have if she’d wanted to. She’d have to fight three incredible hulks. They slid her into the ambulance and it tore off to the emergency room.
“Do I get a siren?” Helen said.
“You only rate flashing lights, I’m afraid.” The fit blond paramedic smiled for the first time. Her teeth were very white.
In the chaos of the emergency room, Helen didn’t pass out, but she drifted away to someplace safe. She felt wrapped in thick cotton, instead of the thin hospital blanket. She was far away from Craig and that drowning lake of blood.
It was hours before Helen saw anything sane. She heard the moans of two teenagers who’d been riding in the back of a pickup truck when they bounced out on the highway. A homeless man shuffled through the gurneys and wheelchairs, panhandling.
She heard the wails of a woman who’d been beaten so badly by her lover that her eye was swollen shut. The woman cop who brought her in was not sympathetic. “What did she expect?” the cop said. “She took up with a known felon.”
For a moment the dark lake appeared, and Helen stared at some frightening questions. Why was Rhonda fatally attracted to the wrong men? Did she expect every man who walked into that bar would be trouble? Did Rhonda play date roulette—or even suicide by dating?
Then a doctor was in the ER cubicle, bringing her back to the present with his brisk, cheerful talk. Helen would not drown in the blood lake. Not this time.
The doctor shone a light in her eyes and asked what day it was.
“I’ve been here so long, I’m not sure anymore,” she said.
“You sound oriented to this place,” the doctor said.
Helen laughed. She felt like she’d awakened from a bad dream.
The doctor had a round, rosy face, a round bald spot, and a clean white coat. He told Helen his name and she instantly forgot it. “You have a nice crop of bruises on your shoulder,” he sa
id. “That cut on your scalp will need stitches. What happened?”
“I ran into a chair,” Helen said.
“I want to X-ray that shoulder and order a CT scan for your head,” the doctor said.
“She should have her head examined,” a raucous voice said. The cubicle curtain was shoved aside, and Margery stomped in wearing outrageous purple ruffles and high-heeled suede sandals. Hospital security was no match for Super Landlady.
“You look like a year’s worth of bad news,” Margery said. “Who’s picking up this bill? You don’t have any money.”
“Sybil at the hotel,” Helen said. “I got clobbered in the line of duty.”
“I hope he knocked some sense into you.”
The dark lake of blood opened up before Helen. “He—he’s dead,” she said, and burst into tears. Damn, Helen hated when she cried. It was so girlie. Margery stood there as if she were watching some painful but necessary procedure.
“Head injuries make you emotional sometimes,” the doctor said.
Helen couldn’t stop crying. “He’s dead,” she wailed. “I don’t know who’s going to clean up after him.”
“You don’t always make a lot of sense with a head injury,” the doctor said.
“She sounds like that all the time,” Margery said.
“Where’s Phil?” Helen asked.
“He’s on a job in Miami, and I wanted to get a look at you before I called him. You’re fine. I’m not telling him until he gets home later tonight. Otherwise he’ll come racing up I-95 and get in an accident, and I’ll have to deal with two people in the hospital.”
It was nearly seven o’clock when Helen gave a statement to the police at the hospital. She had three stitches in her scalp. Her head was pounding, her stomach was queasy, her shoulder ached, and that deadly gunshot still rang in her ears. The lake of blood shimmered in the distance, but at least she didn’t feel like she’d drown in it. She dutifully swallowed the pain pills, but they didn’t help. This hurt was much deeper.
“No broken bones in your shoulder,” the doctor said, “and no sign of stroke, bleeding or skull fracture. There’s a tiny bit of brain edema. I think it’s a slight concussion. I’d like to keep you overnight for observation.”