Irish Alibi (8 page)

The task of the housekeeper was complicated by the fact that guests left throughout the morning. On the corridor assigned to her and Rosita, they moved like checkers from emptied room to emptied room, coming back to those whose occupants remained almost to the noon checkout time. That Monday, twelve o'clock came and went, and still there was no answer to their knock on the door of room 320. Rosita grew impatient. She wanted a smoke. Maria Concepción told her to go outside and have her cigarette. Meanwhile, she called the desk and was assured again that the guests in 320 were scheduled to leave that day.

“Two?”

“Two. Mr. and Mrs. Kelly.”

“They don't answer my knock.”

Was it possible that they had already left and this delay was pointless? Maria Concepción became as impatient as Rosita had been. She marched down to 320, unlocked the door, pushed it ajar, and called, “Housekeeper.”

She cocked her head, but there was no answer. She pushed her way into the suite.

“Housekeeper.”

She kept saying that as she moved around the sitting room. The bedroom door was closed. Maria tapped on it, calling out. She waited, listening, but there was no sound from the other side of the door. Should she open the bedroom door as she had opened the door to the hall? She wished Rosita would get back. You could count on Rosita to do the daring thing. Maria's hand closed on the knob of the door. She turned it and pushed.

“Housekeeper.”

There was a sound behind her, and she turned. She breathed again. It was Rosita.

“What's going on?”

“I think they must have left already.”

Rosita brushed past her and sauntered into the room as if she were the manager. Maria was about to follow when Rosita screamed.

She rushed out of the bedroom, still screaming, her eyes wide with fright.

If Rosita had daring, Maria Concepción had calmness. She leaned into the bedroom and looked around.

The woman lay on the bed, more undressed than dressed, and she stared at Maria with wide unblinking eyes, the eyes of the dead.

PART THREE

1

Mike Beatty, the Tranquil Motel manager, gave the excited jabber of the cleaning women only half an ear, but he heard them. A dead body in 302,
nombre de Cristo
! But it was important to him to retain the hierarchical gap between himself and Maria Concepción and Rosita and all the rest of them who reminded him of how far he himself had come, and how easily he could be tugged back down to their status. Of course, new employees couldn't put together his name and the fact that he looked like one of them. He had picked up the name when going through Texas.

“Excuse me?” he said to Rosita.

She repeated the message in English.

“How do you know she's dead?”

“How do I know you're a dumb sonofabitch?” She said that in Spanish, which Beatty pretended not to understand.

He fluttered a ringed hand at the women. “I'll check it out in a minute.”

They withdrew across the lobby, whispering fiercely to one another. Rosita went right on outside and lit a cigarette. Beatty was aware of her glaring eyes upon him as he feigned work at the counter. It was in such small ways that one established and then retained authority. Then he went down the hall to Kitty Callendar's office. Kitty, the bookkeeper, had in her own mind fallen on evil days and regarded the Tranquil Motel as little better than a brothel. She took obvious delight when they raised the rates during Notre Dame home game weekends. She could hear the raucous celebrating in the bar and restaurant; she was kept informed by the housekeepers of what went on in the rooms.

“You speak Spanish?” Michael had asked her.

Kitty Callendar opened a gap between thumb and forefinger.

Now she swung away from her computer when he entered her office, her brows lifting imperiously. She wore her dyed hair in a kind of bird's nest atop her narrow head, which seemed put on display by the scrawny neck that emerged from her fluffy blouse.

“What is it, Miguel?”

He ignored that. His secret was their little secret, that's what calling him Miguel implied.

“There's a dead body in 302.”

“My God.” But her eyes lit up as if all her theories of the motel were suddenly realized.

“At least that's what the housekeepers say. Of course they're hysterical. I want you to come with me while I check it out.”

“Me?” Her facade cracked and threatened to crumble, but then she straightened her bony shoulders and stood. The gleam was back in her eyes.

He led the way down the long corridor, the muffled clump of Kitty's heels assuring him that she was following. He held the master key before him as if they were engaged in some sort of ceremonial procession. Before turning the corner, he looked back. Kitty's expression was one of eager dread. Maria Concepción was watching them from a distance. Michael made an ambiguous gesture in her direction and then resumed the march to 302.

The door was wide open. He put the master key in his pocket and put his head inside the door.

“Manager.”

Kitty went past him into the suite and stood in the middle of the sitting room, looking about her with disgust. The glasses and bottles and overflowing ashtray spelled mindless riot to her, and she was pleased.

Michael went on into the bedroom and immediately withdrew. “There is a body.” He was so shaken he spoke Spanish.

Kitty went in and stood beside the bed, looking at the woman sprawled there. She took a corner of the bedspread and pulled it over the body.

“Is she dead?”

“Of course she's dead.”

“I'll call a doctor.”

She made a face. “Call the police.”

He picked up the phone beside the bed, trying to ignore the sightless eyes of the dead woman. He could remember when she checked in, the Kellys, Mr. and Mrs. Where was Mr. Kelly? Several other guests had called the desk to complain about 302. He put down the phone before dialing and crossed to the bathroom, half expecting to find another body in there. The place was a mess, towels hanging everywhere, a nightgown on the hook behind the door, cosmetics and all the mysterious contents of a woman's purse scattered about the marble surface in which the basin was sunk. With an unsteady hand he pulled back the shower curtain and felt a flood of relief to find the shower unoccupied. He went back into the bedroom. Kitty was staring down at the dead woman like the angel of judgment.

Michael Beatty picked up the phone again and dialed 302. What was he doing? He depressed the cradle and hit 9 and then 911.

2

Jimmy Stewart of South Bend homicide was notified of the dead body found in the Tranquil Motel out on 31 and suggested they let Roseland know. Roseland commanded several miles of the highway and supported itself on traffic tickets issued with the random selectivity of the state lottery.

“They don't do homicide.”

“How do you know it's homicide?” Jimmy asked.

“That's what you're going to find out.”

He hung up, hungover. He had watched the Notre Dame game Saturday in a sports bar and stayed on, closing the place. When he got back to his apartment, he had what he called a nightcap but what might have been a ten-gallon Stetson. On Sunday, he had caught the noon Mass on television and spent the rest of the day watching pro games and sipping restorative cans of light beer. Sunday night he drove to a roadhouse just across the Michigan state line and had a huge hamburger with raw onions and more beer. Half a dozen television sets plus a huge screen brought in more football. He could learn to hate football. When he drove home, aiming his headlights through a softly falling rain, he had been filled with self-pity. There were times when he actually missed his wife, who had called it quits a couple of years ago and flown to Vegas, where she ran up a huge number on a credit card before he canceled it. She was now living with her sister in Encino.

Now, on Monday morning, it occurred to him that he must have driven past the motel where the body of a woman had been reported. After a cup of coffee and a tasteless Pop-Tart, he headed for the Tranquil Motel.

The woman was definitely dead. He called downtown to summon the medical examiner and sealed off the room. Then he talked to employees.

“You the manager?” he asked the stick figure with the funny hairdo.

She told him coldly that she was Kitty Callendar, the bookkeeper. Kitty. The name suggested someone warm and cuddly. The name didn't fit her. Neither did the name Michael Beatty fit the manager.

“She check in alone?”

“No. With her husband.”

“Where's he?”

“I don't know.”

Jimmy looked at the credit card record that had been made when the couple checked in.

“There were complaints about her,” Kitty said, her eyebrows lifting significantly.

“What kind of complaints?”

“Other guests. There was a lot of traffic to 302. Arguments in the hallway.”

“Between the Kellys?”

“Not just them.”

“They had visitors?”

“I'm only telling you what I heard. From guests who complained.”

“They complained about noise on a football weekend?”

Jankowski, the medical examiner, arrived, along with the crew from the lab to take prints and photos of the scene. Jimmy gave them half an hour and then went to 302.

Jankowski rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. He still wore rubber gloves. “No marks on the body.”

“She was only half dressed.”

“Asphyxiation. That's my present guess.”

“Smothered?”

Jankowski grew cautious. “I'll be in a better position to say when I've taken her in.”

Jimmy took another look at the body. A good-looking woman, for whatever good it did her now. He checked with the lab crew.

“Any signs of a male occupant?”

“Like what?”

“She checked in with a husband.”

There were two razors in the bathroom, one a man's. Jimmy watched them bag it, wondering if they were sealing the fate of the absent Mr. Kelly along with his razor. He went into the lobby to get a phone number for the address on the credit card. Athens, Georgia. He told the operator to dial the number.

“Did you write it down?”

He rattled the number back to her. From far off in Athens, Georgia, he got a busy signal. Jankowski was passing through the lobby, and Jimmy hailed him. The body had been taken out through a service entrance in back.

“Check for sexual activity.”

Jankowski just looked at him. “I'll check for everything.”

“Just telling you how to do your job.”

“How's yours going?”

“Nowhere.”

In the bar a chubby little waitress with
PHYLLIS
on her name tag brought him a beer.

“You work on Saturday?”

She looked at him as if this were an overture. “Which Saturday?” A cute smile.

“Last Saturday.”

“Don't talk to me about last Saturday.” She looked around the room as if visions of Saturday's customers were forming in her memory.

“Tell me about it.”

Phyllis told him about it. Every table taken, people standing, which was against the law, except at the bar, but this was football Saturday so anything went.

“So what? Half the employees are illegals.”

“Underage?”

Nice laugh to go with the smile. She explained. Phyllis was all for building a mile-high fence along the Mexican border. All the cleaning staff were immigrants, as well as the busboys.

“Did you talk with Green Card at the desk?”

“Beatty?”

“You think that's his real name?”

“You don't.”

“Take a good look at him.”

She was probably right. But as Phyllis said, so what? It's a nation of immigrants.

“We found a dead body in 302.”

“Come on.”

“What do you think I'm doing here?”

She stepped back and squinted at him. “You a cop?”

“Detective Jimmy Stewart.”

“You mean that about a dead body?”

“A woman named Kelly.” He described her.

Phyllis's eyes lifted. “The Southern belle? She watched the game in here. Picked up some guy, and then they went off together.”

“To her room?”

“How would I know a thing like that?”

“I just want an educated guess.”

“It was a football Saturday.”

“If it comes to that, could you recognize him again?”

“Now just a minute. I don't want to get involved.”

“We hardly know one another.”

A nice intimate chortling laugh. Her name should be Kitty. He asked her about the bookkeeper.

“She never drinks in here.”

“She looks like a teetotaler.”

“Ha. Green Card brings her a manhattan after lunch and another before she goes home. He sits with her while she drinks it.”

“You can see all that from here?”

“Rosita told me. I got curious as to where the manhattans were going. Green Card doesn't drink. He gets mad when I offer him tequila.”

“Give me another of these.”

He used the bar phone to call the number in Athens, Georgia, again, and this time he got an answer.

“Juniper Press.”

Jimmy was surprised. “Mr. Kelly, please.”

“Mr. Kelly is out of town.”

“South Bend?”

“How did you know that?”

He identified himself.

“Has something happened to Mr. Kelly?”

“Do you have a number for Mrs. Kelly?”

“Mrs. Kelly? There's no Mrs. Kelly.” The woman sounded indignant.

Jimmy thanked her.

“But you have to tell me. Is something wrong?”

“I'll be in touch. Tell Mr. Kelly I called.”

“Then he's all right.”

“As far as I know.”

Phyllis had moved down the bar while he made his call and was leafing through the paper. She let out a little cry and hurried to Jimmy, turning the page so he could see it.