A Rose From the Dead (14 page)

“But I saw you two leaving together after your show yesterday.”

“So?”

“So that’s why I thought you and she were—”

“Listen, Nikki’s roommate,” Chet said, “I’m flattered by your interest in me, but the only connection I had with Sybil was a business one. We went to the hotel’s lounge so she could give me a check for my appearance. She wanted to do that in private. Do you get it now?”

“She paid you to come here? I thought you did it as a personal favor.”

“Sybil preferred that everyone believe I came as a favor, so I played along. It was her moment of glory. As long as I get paid, what do I care? So, you see? No reason to be jealous.”

Jealous, ha! Clearly this minor television star had a major ego problem—and apparently no personal ties to Sybil. “You didn’t seem happy about getting your check, though.”

“She interrupted when I was signing autographs. My fans weren’t happy, either. But it all worked out.”

As Chet started to walk away, I had another question for him. “Doesn’t Habitation Station pay you to make appearances?”

He stopped again and turned with a sharp sigh. “Not that it’s any of your business, but my contract calls for me to make ten appearances a year. After that, I’m a free agent. I choose where and when. God only knows why I chose this one. It certainly won’t happen again.”

At that moment, his cell phone rang, playing the
Make It Easy
show’s theme song. Chet immediately pulled his phone from a holder clipped to his belt, checked the screen, and before answering, said sardonically to me, “Was there anyting else you wanted to know, or may I take this call now?”

Just to annoy him, I pretended to ponder my answer, making him wait several seconds longer than necessary. “If I have anything else, I’ll come back.”

I stopped at the Pretzel Station to pick up a six-pack with cheddar cheese sauce, then headed for my booth, where I found Lottie talking to several browsers. Across the aisle, Grace was seated on a chair beside Angelique, listening intently to something through headphones.

“Did you find the lawyer?” Lottie asked as soon as she was free.

“Found him, talked to him, and really appreciate your tipping us off. Have a pretzel and I’ll tell you all about our conversation.”

“No, thanks, sweetie. Gracie and I weren’t sure when you were coming back, so we ate about fifteen minutes ago. By the way, did you hear the announcement about the memorial service?”

“Yes, and I should probably attend. It’ll be interesting to see who shows up and who doesn’t.”

“Grace wants to go, too, so I’ll stay at the booth. It’s been pretty dead today anyway.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Lordy, I have to stop talking like that around here.”

“Why does Grace want to go to the service? She didn’t even know Sybil.”

“Maybe not, but she sure has been asking heaps of questions about her.” Watching the pair across the aisle, Lottie shook her head. “I don’t know how Grace can stand that music—if that’s what you want to call it.”

“Maybe she’s considering signing up for a soul recording. You know Grace. She isn’t afraid to try anything.”

“Nah. She’s just over there to win Jolly Roger’s trust.”

“Two questions. Why do you call Angelique
Jolly Roger
, and why does Grace need to win her trust?”

“I call her Jolly Roger after the pirate flag—you know, white skull and crossbones on a black background? And Grace is over there so she can find out why Angelique had her tape recorder with her in the storage room.”

“Why does she need to know that? You’d think she was conducting her own investigation.”

Lottie glanced at me askance. “You mean you just figured that out?”

“Grace is investigating? Doesn’t she trust Marco and me to do it?”

“Honey, you know Gracie better than that. This is just her way of helping Delilah. Now, why don’t you tell me what you learned from Ostrich Shoes?”

There was so little traffic in our aisle that after I’d filled Lottie in on our conversation with Crawford, she decided to take a stroll to stretch her legs. I stayed at the booth, munching on pretzels and waiting for Grace to finish schmoozing with Angelique so I could find out what she was planning. I still couldn’t decide whether I was grateful for the extra help or offended by it. Whichever it was, I wasn’t comfortable.

My cell phone rang. It was Marco sharing good news and bad news. On the good side, the hotel had backup security tapes of the bar, the elevators, the exits, and the convention hall, and the security manager had agreed to let him view them during his lunch hour from one to two o’clock. The bad news was that there was no camera in the storage room, and hence no tape of Sybil’s final rendezvous.

“At least we’ll be able to verify Jess’s alibi,” I told him.

“I’ve got forty-five minutes before I can view the tapes, and there’s no sense wasting that time, so I’m heading up to the fourth floor right now to see if I can get into Sybil’s suite. Why don’t you meet me there? With any luck I’ll be inside by the time you arrive, so make sure you don’t draw any attention to yourself on your way in.”

Don’t draw
attention
to myself? “So the pom-poms and noisemakers are out?” I asked, but the line was already dead.

Grace came back to the table just then, but there was no time to quiz her. I explained our plan, then dashed through the convention hall toward the hotel. As I passed the phony phone booth and thought of the Urbans, I crossed my fingers and wished really hard that whatever Sybil had left for her attorney would serve as a big neon sign pointing directly at them.

I stepped off the elevator onto the fourth floor and looked both ways, trying to remember which way we’d turned before. The hallway stretched way down to the left and was empty except for a cleaning cart at the far end. To the right the hallway wasn’t as long, and turned a corner. I finally gave up, checked the big brass sign, and headed right.

When I rounded the corner I was surprised to see Marco striding toward me. Behind him, a cleaning cart filled with towels, sheets, and other supplies stood in front of an open door directly across from the door marked with yellow police tape. Marco motioned for me to back up, and in my haste to comply, I nearly tripped over a room-service tray someone had placed on the floor against the wall. Nothing like almost drawing attention to myself.

“Why aren’t you in Sybil’s suite?” I whispered as we moved back into the main hallway.

“There’s been a hitch.”

“What happened?”

“I couldn’t get inside.” He didn’t elaborate, but by the frustrated frown on his face I had a feeling his Salvare charm had failed to work its magic.

He said close to my ear, “There’s a housekeeper cleaning at the other end. Let’s head that way. Maybe I’ll have more luck with her.”

At the far end of the hall we stopped beside the cleaning cart. “What’s the plan?” I whispered. “A little Salvare magic or something more mundane, like picking her pocket?”

“Watch and learn, Sunshine.”

That phrase was really getting on my nerves.

Pausing outside the door to give me a thumbs-up, he strode into the room. I crept as close as I dared, trying to hear what Marco was saying, but I could make out only his low murmurs, then a high voice speaking some very rapid Spanish, followed by more low murmurs followed by faster, and now angrier, Spanish.

A moment later Marco came striding out of the room, passed me by, and kept going, so I hurried after him. He didn’t stop until he had gone past the elevator bank to the corner before the short hallway, where he began to pace back and forth, glowering.

“That magic just ain’t happening today, is it, Houdini?” I said, trying to keep a serious face. He cast me a look that said,
Not funny.

I studied my fingernails. “You might actually have to steal a master key card.”

“Can’t. The cards are kept on chains hooked onto their belts.”

No Salvare charm and no key card? No good. How the heck were we going to get into the suite? I peered around the corner and noticed that the cleaning cart was now farther down the hallway. The maid had moved on to the next room.

Marco sighed in frustration. “Let’s go. We’re going to have to wait until Crawford can get Sybil’s belongings.”

“That could take days, Marco. We’ve got to know what those belongings are now.”

“What do you want me to do? Scale the building and break a window? I wasn’t able to talk my way in or bribe my way in, and I can’t get the key card off the chain unless I bring a pair of bolt cutters, and the maid might catch on if I tried that. There’s nothing left to do other than break down the door, and I think someone might notice that, too. So we’ll have to wait.”

“So you’re just going to give up?”

“We. Can’t. Get. Into. The. Room,” he said slowly, as though I just wasn’t getting it, a sure sign he was
mega-
frustrated. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait a minute.” I peered around the corner again, thinking hard. Was there any way to convince the maid to let me into a room that wasn’t mine? What if it
was
my room? What if I’d locked myself out?

Ha. I had it. I turned back to Marco. “I can get in.”

He crossed his arms and gazed at me skeptically. “How?”

I drew a square in the air and pretended to hand it to him. “Here’s a box. Think outside it. And I’ll need five bucks. I left my purse at the booth.” I held out my palm.

“I already tried bribery,” he said, reaching for his wallet.

“I’m not going to bribe her.”

He handed me a five-dollar bill. “Then, what’s the plan?”

Boy, was I hoping he’d ask that. With a sly smile I tucked the bill into my pants pocket. “Watch and learn, Houdini.”

I
took off my boots and shoved them into Marco’s arms, then took the clip out of my hair, bent over at the waist, and ran my fingers through my blunt bob, shaking my head until my locks looked like a pile of red straw. I stood up to brush the hair from my eyes and said to Marco, “You’ll need to stay out of sight. Oh, and make sure you don’t draw attention to yourself.”

He glowered at me, but I merely smiled sweetly and stepped around the corner. Good thing he couldn’t see me now, because I was sporting quite the smug grin. It felt glorious to be the one giving the orders for a change.

I picked up the room-service tray and walked up the hallway, placing it to the side of Sybil’s door. Next, I carefully pulled off a strip of yellow police tape and placed it in the same position across the door of the room next to hers. I did the same with the second strip, crossing my fingers that the busy housekeeping staff hadn’t paid close attention to which room had been sealed off. I was also hoping that the occupant of the other suite wouldn’t return to find his door sealed.

Okay, Abby, you’re on.

I took a few quick breaths, put on a worried expression, then hurried to the open doorway, where I saw a thirtysomething Hispanic woman in a gray dress and white apron vacuuming beside the bed. “Hello?” I called frantically, knocking on the door. “Excuse me?”

The woman glanced over her shoulder, saw me, and shut off her vacuum. “Jes? May I help jou?”

“Oh, I truly hope so. I came outside to set my food tray in the hallway, and the door shut behind me. I feel like such an idiot. My key card is in the room, and look at me. I haven’t fixed my hair yet, and I don’t even have my shoes on—and I’m supposed to be at a business meeting in ten minutes. I haven’t even started to dress for it. I really don’t want to go down to the lobby looking like this. Would you mind letting me in? There’s a five-dollar tip in it for you as soon as I can get to my purse.”

The maid glanced at my hair, then at my feet, then left her vacuum cleaner so she could walk over to the doorway to peer down the hall. I followed close behind, watching as a perplexed look flashed across her face when she spotted the tray on the floor outside Sybil’s room. What if she had a better memory than I thought? What if my ruse didn’t work?

I tapped the face of my watch, hoping to put some pressure on her. “Twelve twenty? There’s no way I’ll make the meeting on time now. I can’t believe my door shut behind me. That will teach me to order room service on a busy day. You know, they really should make these doors with some kind of safety on them. I’ll bet this happens a lot, doesn’t it?”

At that the maid relented. She pulled the chained key card from her pocket, walked to Sybil’s door, ran the card into the slot, and turned the handle. “There jou go.”

“Thank you so much!” I gushed, stepping inside. “I’ll be right back with your tip.”

I made sure she heard me open the closet door just inside the short hallway so she’d think I was retrieving my purse. But when I glanced up, two human heads were staring down at me from the closet shelf overhead.

I clapped a hand over my mouth to squelch a yelp of surprise. Once my heart started beating again, I realized that they weren’t human at all, but dummy heads in wigs and makeup. Sybil must have kept them as spares for her cosmetics display.

Quickly, I shut the closet, pulled Marco’s five out of my pocket, then stepped back outside and handed it to the maid. “Thank you again. You’re so kind.”

“Jou’re welcome,” she said with a big smile, and went back to finish her vacuuming.

I held the door open and a minute later Marco slipped inside. I shut and locked it, then turned to give him a curtsy. “Hold your applause, please.”

He rolled his eyes in mock exasperation as he handed me my boots. “I suppose I’ll have to live with this for the next hundred years.”

“At least that long. Okay, what should we do first?”

“Set your cell phone to vibrate.”

While I did that, Marco pulled two sets of latex gloves out of his jacket pocket and handed me a pair. “We don’t want to leave fingerprints.”

“You carry gloves with you?”

His expression said,
I’m a PI. Do you really need to ask?

“What are we going to do about my fingerprints on the yellow tape and the closet door—and the door lock?”

“We’ll have to remember to smudge them all when we leave.”

“So?” I said as I tugged the stretchy material over my hands. “Did I do good? I’m not feeling the love yet.”

“You did great, Sunshine. Smart thinking.”

It wasn’t as satisfying as a really hot kiss, but it would do for now.

Marco turned to give the suite a visual scan. From where we stood we could see the sitting room, a small space furnished with a beige tweed love seat and matching chair, end tables and a tall armoire in cherry wood, and a table and four chairs in front of a window that looked out on the woods behind the hotel.

“Okay, let’s do this quickly and get out of here,” Marco said. “I’ll take the closet and sitting room. You check the bedroom and bathroom.”

“Gotcha.” As I started for the bedroom, I called, “I wish I knew what we were looking for.”

“Probably an envelope or a wrapped package.”

I heard him open the closet door and suddenly remembered the dummy heads. “Wait, Marco! There are—”

“Shit!”

Too late. I peered around the corner at him. “I see you found the heads.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

While he pulled out two large, rolling garment bags, I headed for the bedroom, where I paused to take stock. There was a king-size bed covered by a floral-patterned bedspread, two cherry nightstands, another cherry armoire opposite the bed, and a doorway leading to a bathroom. On the bed was a large leather purse, which I immediately opened, but all that was inside was a wallet with credit cards and money intact, lipstick, a pack of tissues, breath spray, and a lint-covered cough drop.

I looked under and behind each piece of furniture, then opened the drawer of the nearest nightstand and found the usual writing tablet, spare pen, hotel brochure, Yellow Pages phone book, and green Gideon Bible. The other nightstand held a similar selection. The armoire contained a television, a keypad, a game controller, a VCR/DVD player, and three drawers. I pulled the television out far enough to look behind it, then lifted the electronic equipment to glance beneath.

In the first drawer I found a bunch of brochures advertising Sybil’s cosmetic line and a number of small shiny black cardboard boxes imprinted with her red rose logo, all scattered across the bottom. Because I wasn’t certain what I was looking for, I opened each box, but all they held were various types of makeup, and I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be giving that to Crawford.

The second drawer contained at least a dozen pairs of black lace panties, black push-up bras, garter belts, several black teddies, and a stack of unopened packages of fishnet stockings, all jumbled as though she had been rooting through them. I doubted any of those items were for Crawford, either. The third drawer was also in disarray, holding what appeared to be workout clothes, exercise bands, and a purple yoga mat.

“Nothing in the garment bags,” Marco called.

“Nothing in the bedroom, either.”

Next I headed to the bathroom and felt inside for a light switch, turning on a row of bright bulbs over the mirrored wall above the sink and marble countertop. I looked over the items on the counter—the usual assortment of lotions and mouthwash—and spotted a perfume bottle with a Gucci label. Unable to resist a sniff, I uncapped it, then sprayed a little on my left wrist. Wow. Very tart. That was Sybil’s scent, all right. I checked the label to see what it was.

“Envy Me,” I read aloud. That figured.

“Are you talking to me?” Marco called.

“No,” I called back, catching sight of the messy-haired, freckle-nosed redhead in the mirror. Boy, were those light-bulbs unkind.

I ran my fingers through my tousled strands, trying to tame them into some semblance of a bob, then leaned closer to the mirror to examine my face. Why was I cursed with freckles? It didn’t matter how many people told me they were cute, I had never yet met a woman who didn’t try to hide them.

I spotted an aluminum fold-out makeup case next to the sink, so I opened it and found an assortment of Sybil’s Select cosmetics inside, including bottles of thick, shiny base makeup, containers of loose powder, several shades of creamy blush, tubes of dark lipsticks and lip liners, and various makeup sponges and brushes—but no envelope or package. The only surprise in the kit was how untidy the contents were, as though she had rooted through them, too. I was beginning to see a theme.

I uncapped a jar of loose powder, and dipped my finger inside to dab some on my nose. “Envy
that,
” I told my doppelgänger.

I looked behind the shower curtain and inside the toilet tank, then headed back to the sitting room. “Find anything?” I asked Marco as he checked the armoire.

“No. Were you talking to yourself in the bathroom?”

“Maybe.” I sat down on the love seat and gave him a smile.

“I just wanted to be sure it was you and not those heads in the closet.”

“Creepy, aren’t they?”

“How about checking under the sofa cushions?”

I got onto my knees and lifted the cushions, then dropped down to feel underneath. I even crawled around behind the love seat to see whether the backing was loose. I checked the chairs next, then stood with a sigh. “Nothing.”

Marco closed the doors of the armoire and turned to look at me. “Well, this was a bust.”

We plunked down on the love seat and sat there gazing around the room, wondering whether we’d missed anything. Suddenly, Marco sniffed the air. “What’s that odor?”

“What kind of odor?”

“Like musky lemon oil.” He leaned over to sniff my hair.

“It’s not my hair.” I held my wrist under his nose. “Is this it?”

He took a whiff and immediately pulled his head back. “What the hell did you put on?”

“Sybil’s perfume. Envy Me.”

He rubbed his nose as if it burned. “No envy here. And no envelope or package either, unless we overlooked it.”

“Was there a safe in the closet?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Anything other than those heads on the shelf?”

“A steam iron.”

“Did you check the pockets of the clothes hanging in the closet?”

“Yep. Did you look under the bed?”

“Sure did. And her drawers and makeup kit and a purse.” I paused, thinking about the drawers and makeup kit. “Did Sybil strike you as a sloppy person?”

“I haven’t really thought that much about Sybil.”

“Well, think about her now. Wrap dress, perfect hair, clipboard, schedules. I see her as extremely well organized, yet her things were all jumbled together in the drawers. Even her makeup kit was messy. That raises a red flag in my mind.”

“The police went through everything. They’re notorious for leaving a mess.”

It was plausible. I ran my heel over a stain in the rug. “Could there be anything hidden under the carpets? Any loose corners that could have been pulled up?”

“I didn’t see any telltale bubble in the carpet.”

I hurried back to the bedroom to check there, even dropping onto all fours to peer beneath the bed. “Nothing,” I said, returning to sit beside Marco.

“That’s it, then,” he said, slapping his knees. “Sybil didn’t leave Rex’s package here.”

“Where else would it be? At her booth? She wouldn’t leave anything there that she wanted to protect. She didn’t give them to the hotel for safekeeping, either, so they have to be here. We’re just not looking in the right place.”

Marco rubbed his eyes. “Could she have taken it with her to the storage room?”

“For her rendezvous with one of the Urbans? Not on your life.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Women know these things, Marco.”

He glanced at me but didn’t argue. “What about her car? If she drove here, the package could be in the trunk.”

“I don’t think she’d take that risk. A thief could break into her car.”

Marco got up and pulled out his phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“Someone who’ll know.” He walked over to the window to talk.

Marco had never revealed the name of his police source to me, and I never asked because I knew it would be pointless. He wouldn’t dream of putting his source in jeopardy. A few minutes later, he shut the phone and came back. “No car. She hired a limo.”

I rubbed my temples, trying to stimulate some thought. “Okay, if I were Sybil, where would I hide important items?”

Marco drew a square with his fingers and pretended to hand it to me. “Here’s your box back if you want to think outside it.”

Funny man.

I got up and opened the closet for another look, craning my neck to see the shelf above the clothes rod. “Marco, would you get those heads down for me?”