Death in Paradise (3 page)

Our little procession hurried out of the elevator and once again came to a halt outside her door. This time it was the assistant manager who raised his fist and knocked, announced himself, paused, and knocked again. Then there was a pause in the action. It seemed that he had fully expected Martina to appear at his official summons, as if our gentler or more meager female knocks hadn't been quite the thing. When the expected result didn't occur, he and the security man consulted briefly and then unlocked the door.

There was a short contretemps, while I waited for management and management waited for me. Then the assistant manager, a rounded, polished gentleman of Hawaiian descent with a broad, solemn face, stepped back and gestured for me to enter. "Perhaps, as you're her colleague, it would be best..."

I stepped past him and into the room, calling, "Martina? It's Thea. We had a meeting this..." Martina, being the VIP, had a suite. A big, beautiful sitting room with the obligatory cellophane-wrapped basket of fruit. The management greeting card was still flying from the top, like a flag, unopened. A table set for two sat before the open doors. Champagne in a bucket. Glasses. A plate of soggy caviar and toast. A bowl of strawberries. I hesitated. Why had she ordered this feast and left it untouched? Although her papers were spread all over the desk, this looked like provisions for a romantic rendezvous, not a late-night business meeting.

Moving more slowly now, I stepped into the dressing room and peered into the opulent bathroom, hoping, as my anxiety grew, that I might find she'd fallen and hit her head. It looked like she'd taken a bath—the tub was dirty, there were towels on the floor and a terry-cloth robe thrown over the edge of the tub—but no Martina. I stepped backward and bumped into Rory. She retreated with a squeak, like a startled mouse.

I stepped around her and went into the bedroom, calling Martina's name again. I called, waited, and called again as I stepped around the corner and the bed came into sight. I stopped as suddenly as if I'd run into an invisible screen. Stopped, stared, and turned my head away. I stopped so suddenly that Rory, hesitantly dogging my steps, ran right into me, gasped, apologized, and stepped back.

"Don't look," I said. "Turn around and go out. Now! You don't want to see this."

I tried to block the way but she wriggled past me, gave a bloodcurdling scream, and then, still screaming, turned and ran from the room.

Maybe it's because I'm an oldest child, but I'm a real take-charge type. I didn't scream or cry or faint. I turned to the assistant manager, who was staring bug-eyed at the woman on the bed and pointed in the direction Rory had gone. "Find her. Take her somewhere and shut her up before you have the whole hotel in an uproar. And you, security, call the police."

I took another step into the room, drawn reluctantly toward the figure on the bed. Martina Pullman, president of the National Association of Girls' Schools, was one of those tall, handsome, fashionably thin women who loved elegant clothes and wore them well. The outfit she had on would, under other circumstances, have been laughable. Under these circumstances, it was jarring. Embarrassing. Horrible.

She lay on her back across the bed in a scarlet lace bustier, red thong panties and lacy red garter belt. Her long, unnaturally dark hair, hair that was usually confined in a severe chignon, was spread out around her head, as though she awaited a lover. The garter belt still held up one sheer black stocking, that foot still sported a scarlet spike-heeled shoe. The other shoe was on the floor beside the bed; the other stocking was knotted tightly around her neck. Her eyes were open, protuberant, and staring from a grotesquely purple face.

In my shock, the absurd, awful thought raced through my head that the advice our mothers gave us about clean underwear ought to be expanded to include not wearing anything we wouldn't want to be caught dead in.

The security man stepped past me, reached out a cautious hand, and touched the bare leg. "Cold," he said. "She's dead."

I shuddered, glad I hadn't had to touch her. I closed my eyes but the image was just as vivid, just as grotesque, and I saw it just as clearly. The lingerie ad from hell. I had not liked this woman. That was no secret. But I had admired her. I wanted to remember her good qualities, her talents, her strengths, not this. Not this wrinkled, bony, middle-aged woman got up like a young vixen, sprawled indecently across the bed, legs spread, exposing graying pubic hair, old silvery stretch marks, and most of one small breast, strangled with her own stocking, her gaping mouth still slick with scarlet lipstick, lipstick on her teeth, a bit of swollen tongue protruding.

Please, God,
I thought.
Let me die in bed in my own flannel nightgown.
And then, because my nature is always to be moving on to the next task, the next chore, and because anything was better than thinking about this, I remembered the hundred and eighty people who were expecting Martina's speech at breakfast. "Oh, hell," I said aloud. "I guess it will have to be me."

The security guard was staring, his hand on the butt of his gun. Did he think I'd just confessed? "I'm sorry," I said quickly. "We're running a conference together. She is... was... supposed to give the breakfast speech... now I'll have to do it." His look said more plainly than words that he found my reaction almost as shocking as Martina's death. He clearly expected me to be more like Rory. To run and scream and fall apart. I can run, but screaming and falling apart aren't generally in my emotional vocabulary. I try to be open-minded, but I'm quite intolerant of people who fall apart. Still, I didn't want him to get the wrong impression. I was plenty shocked, I just wasn't given to hysterics. If he expected a fragile female, I would do my best to oblige. Just because I didn't scream and thrash didn't mean I wasn't shaken.

I closed my eyes, turned my head, and reached out a groping hand for his sleeve. "I think I'd better sit down," I said. "In the other room..." I wanted to run downstairs, pack my stuff, and get the hell out of there. By the time he'd escorted me to a chair, my distress was genuine. I couldn't run on these shaky legs and I'd begun to feel sick and dizzy. I buried my head in my hands. I couldn't pack up and leave anyway. Someone had to run the conference now. Damn Suzanne. Suzanne, my partner. The one who was supposed to be here schmoozing and speechifying instead of me. Suzanne was at home with pneumonia. I would have taken pneumonia over this any day, but when it comes to violent death and its violent consequences, we are rarely given any choice. I was going to be the Jill-on-the-spot for the National Association of Girls' Schools conference on death in paradise.

 

 

 

Chapter 2

 

Eventually, the room filled up with people. First it was just a uniformed officer, there, as he told me, to "secure the scene." That evidently meant securing me, as well. He was followed by a crowd who didn't seem to want to have anything to do with me, but each time I tried to leave, a large, scowling man in a badly fitting jacket who hadn't bothered to introduce himself told me to sit down. I sat for a while, fretting about the passing time and longing for the coffee I'd left downstairs. Too bad the beverage of Martina's feast was Champagne. Had it been coffee, I would have drunk it hot or cold, evidence or not. These days I seemed to be having a lot of trouble keeping my eyes open—a strange and scary turn of events for a normally high-energy person. I entertained secret fears of some dread disease, but I was too busy, and the symptoms—exhaustion, nausea, and excessive thirst—too vague for a doctor's visit. Besides, I was afraid he'd diagnose mono and send me to bed for an extended rest. I never had time to rest.

I was sitting there, feeling a peculiar combination of numbness and high anxiety, when I remembered the speech. Breakfast would go a whole lot better if we had Martina's speech. Some quick study could read it. Probably me, since I'd written most of it. I went over to her desk and started pawing through her papers. Not on top, where it should have been. Not in the first stack, nor the second. My search grew frantic. There it was. I reached.

The hand that grabbed my arm was not gentle. "What in hell do you think you're doing?"

I shook off the hand and turned. He was a big block of a man, wide bodied, thick necked, with a big head. His round eyes had a steely, opaque sheen. "Step away from there, please," he said. It was not a request.

"I'm sorry," I said, "Detective..."

"Nihilani," he said.

"Martina is... was... Martina, the woman in there..." What was the matter with me? I was dithering like an idiot. "We're running this conference together. She's supposed to give the breakfast speech this morning... a speech about sexual harassment and teenage girls that we wrote together. And it looks like I'm going to have to give it instead. I was trying to find it so I could start preparing."

His face didn't change. There was no emotion as he said, "You can't touch her papers." A man of few words.

"Just the speech," I said. "Look, you can watch me. Or look for it yourself... or whatever you want. You can initial every page before I leave... anything... but I need that speech."

"No." He folded his arms and stepped back. "You already screwed around with the papers."

"What harm can it do?" I argued. "We've got close to two hundred people at this conference. We want to keep things as normal as possible. It won't help to start off the day disorganized and chaotic when it isn't necessary."

"No," he repeated.

"Do you have a boss I could talk to? Someone who could authorize me to borrow the speech? That's all I want to do—to borrow it—you can have it back after breakfast."

"I am the boss," he said.

Good going, Kozak,
I thought.
Now what do you do?
At that point, my body decided for me. The additional stress of having to beg for the speech on top of finding the body on top of the last two days. Jet lag, lack of food, too little sleep, too much work. Shock. "I think I'm going to be sick," I said. I headed for the bathroom but he blocked my path. "Now what?"

"Crime scene," he said.

My room was five floors down and my stomach suggested that it didn't want to wait five floors and two long corridors. "Can you at least get me a towel?"

Reluctantly, he went to get it and I yielded to a momentary criminal impulse. I had just time to grab the speech and shove it into a pocket before he returned and handed me the towel.

After seven years as a consultant, I've acquired a measure of poise in awkward situations, but there is no graceful way to be sick in front of strangers. Even alone and under the best of circumstances, it is not an aesthetic activity. The toughest among us can be reduced to a quivering mass with streaming eyes and heaving chest. Red faced, breathless, and depleted. I did my best. I was subtle, discreet, quiet, and wretched. A diner at the next table would hardly have been disturbed. And the steely-eyed bastard watched me the whole time as if it were an event being staged for his benefit. I wiped my face, wadded up the towel, and threw it in the trash. It was wasteful but I didn't care. I couldn't very well rinse it out in the sink, could I?

"Just a few questions," he said. They were not along the lines of "Was I feeling any better?" After he'd gotten my name, room number, and an account of how I came to be in Martina's room, he marched me back into the bedroom and asked me another bunch of questions. I have no idea what I said. The shock of seeing her a second time was worse than the first. I pride myself on being calm and maintaining my poise in tough situations, on being organized and articulate. I know I was neither. Seeing her there, surrounded by prying strangers, staring at her, photographing her, touching her, I wanted to protect her, to shelter her from all those eyes, all those men. I even—it's so stupid I can hardly believe I did it—asked if they could cover her up. That's when he told me I could go. "But don't leave the hotel," he cautioned. "I'll need to talk with you again."

Oh, lucky me,
I thought. More time in his icy company. As if I
could
leave the hotel. I was here on a job, just like he was. I got up and walked out, feeling like I'd been subjected to a bizarre form of torture. Just because I'd found her body didn't mean I wanted to stand and stare at it for an extended period of time. By the time I left, I was stunned and dizzy and desperate to lie down. I wanted to take a long hot shower and then leave the hotel. Get outside. Get some air. Put some distance between me and what I'd seen. I wanted to call Andre and cry on his shoulder. I wanted to go home.

I settled for a soothing glass of seltzer from my minibar and a toothbrush followed by a shot of mouthwash. I was gathering things for a shower—I'm a big believer in hydrotherapy—when the phone rang. Shannon Dukes, another member of the board. "Thea..." Her loud voice boomed out of the phone. "I just heard... isn't it terrible? We're all meeting in my room in ten minutes to decide what to do. They're going to send up coffee. Have you seen Rory?"

"Not since she ran out screaming. You might call the desk and see if they know. I sent the assistant manager after her so she wouldn't disrupt the whole hotel."