Murder Packs a Suitcase (9 page)

“This is a press trip,” she explained. “My first, actually. We're all here because we're writing travel articles about Orlando. I just started working for a magazine called
The Good Life,
which is based in New York. I came to Orlando to…to do a piece about tourist attractions in central Florida.”

“How long will you be staying?” Detective Martinez asked.

“Until Friday.”

“At this hotel? The whole time?”

“Yes, that's right.”

He paused to make a few notes. Then, abruptly, he said, “Tell me about what happened when you walked into the Bali Ballroom earlier this evening.”

“Well,” she began, choosing her words carefully, “we were all supposed to meet for a reception at seven. I got there a few minutes early. In fact, I was the first to arrive—”

“What prompted you to arrive at the ballroom early?” Detective Martinez interrupted.

“Uh…” His question threw her. “Nothing in particular.” She shrugged. “I was ready, and I figured there was no point hanging around my hotel room.”

“Go on.”

Mallory cleared her throat. “Anyway, I was the first one there. When I walked in, I noticed that one of the spears that had been hanging on the walls—you know, as part of the Polynesian decor—was lying on the floor. In fact, I nearly tripped over it. It was such a surprise that without even thinking, I leaned over and picked it up. Once I did, I noticed there was something that looked like blood at one end.

“Actually, I didn't realize it was blood at first,” she corrected herself. “I didn't know what it was. Everything happened so quickly after that—”

“Exactly what do you mean by
everything
?” Detective Martinez asked.

“I'd only been holding the spear for a few seconds when Mr. Farnaby walked in. As soon as he did, he let out a yell, which prompted me to look over at the waterfall, which seemed to be what he was staring at. That's when I spotted Phil.”

“You sound as if you immediately knew the victim's identity.”

She nodded. “It was his shirt. I remembered it from earlier today. You've got to admit, it's pretty distinctive.”

Detective Martinez didn't look as if he was about to admit anything.

Still, she seemed to have gotten through the worst of his interrogation, since he switched to easy questions, like her home address and her cell phone number.

Routine procedure, she told herself, feeling her anxiety level drop. Just like he'd said.

“Thank you, Ms. Marlowe.” The detective snapped his notebook closed. “Please go back and wait with the others. I'd like you to stick around until I've had a chance to speak with everyone.”

“Not a problem.” As if I have a choice, she thought.

“And would you please ask one of the others to come in?”

Desmond was back in the conference room, whining to Frieda about how difficult it was going to be to explain this to his boss. Courtney sat in the corner in silence. Mallory figured she was probably agonizing over how something like this had ever managed to slip into her carefully prepared schedule. Wade was also there, dressed in a dark-blue linen blazer that for some reason impressed her as something James Bond would wear.

“Detective Martinez is ready for his next victim,” she announced. “Who wants to go?”

“I will,” Annabelle volunteered, dragging herself to her feet. “Might as well get this over with.”

Mallory waited while the others went into the party room one by one, first Annabelle, then Frieda, then Desmond, then Courtney, and finally Wade. As the minutes passed, she slumped lower and lower in her chair, gradually becoming overwhelmed with exhaustion from her long day. She could scarcely believe she'd woken up in her own bed that morning, far, far away in New York. And now, more than twelve hours later, she found herself thinking longingly about the king-size bed that was waiting for her in her hotel room.

In fact, she was imagining the feeling of sliding between the starched white sheets when her reverie was interrupted by Detective Martinez's voice.

“Ms. Marlowe?” he said crisply. “Would you mind stepping next door again?”

She could feel all the blood running out of her face. “What for?” she asked, her voice about three octaves higher than usual.

Detective Martinez remained stone-faced. “I have a few more questions.”

Instantly her fatigue vanished. It was replaced by something that very closely resembled panic. In fact, she made a point of avoiding everyone else's eyes as she stood up from the table.

He probably just forgot to ask for your zip code, Mallory told herself as she walked back to the party room. Besides, you're innocent. Innocent people have nothing to worry about. It's just that all this is such a strange experience. That's why you're finding this so nerve-wracking….

She had barely sat down at the same table before the detective said, “Ms. Marlowe, one of the other people I spoke with mentioned that you had quite an argument with Mr. Diamond shortly before he was murdered. You want to tell me what that was about?”

She blinked a few times. “It…it wasn't exactly an argument,” she stuttered. “I just…gave him some advice. All the travel writers met for lunch, and Phil immediately started making embarrassing comments to our tour guide. I simply told him we'd all feel more comfortable if he'd stop.”

“Would you describe the nature of your interaction as angry?”

Was this a trick question? She was tempted to point out that what one person perceived as anger could actually be frustration or simply strong feeling. But she decided to keep her answers simple.

“Yes, I suppose I was angry.”

“Exactly what did you say to Mr. Diamond?”

“I—I'm not sure.” Mallory struggled to replay the scene in her mind. But the truth was that she had been so upset and so caught up in the moment that she hadn't bothered to think through her tirade. The words just came out, completely on their own.

“Something about how we were all professionals and the hotel was temporarily our workplace, so sexist comments and jokes that were in bad taste weren't appreciated.”

“But you said it angrily,” Detective Martinez repeated.

“It's possible I was a little hard on him,” she admitted. “But I was probably still upset about the argument we'd had on the plane.”

She'd barely gotten the words out before she realized she had just made a major tactical error.

“I see,” he said without a flicker of emotion. “Tell me about what happened on the plane.”

“It was nothing,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “Not even worth mentioning. It was just some confusion about who belonged in which seat.”

“Yet you just said a second ago that you were still angry about it.”

That word again. “Not angry, exactly. More like frustrated.”

“Frustrated,” Detective Martinez repeated.

“I didn't kill Phil Diamond,” she cried. “I barely knew him! I never laid eyes on the man until today!”

“I'm going to ask that you remain in Florida until you hear otherwise,” Detective Martinez said icily. “And that you continue to stay at this hotel. I'll be getting in touch with you again. For now, you're free to go.”

As Mallory left the room, she felt like someone had slipped her a very powerful drug, one that had engulfed her entire brain in fog. She bypassed the conference room, not wanting to see anyone, not wanting anything except the solitude of her room. She certainly didn't want to deal with the swarms of reporters Desmond Farnaby was expecting.

Once she was alone, however, she didn't feel the least bit better.

She sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the photograph of her family without really seeing it.

Someone obviously told Detective Martinez about the way I lit into Phil at lunch, she thought. It could have been anyone on the press trip who told him. It could even have been
everyone
on the press trip.

But at least one person had made it sound as if Mallory had been more than a little irritated with Phil.

It could even have been the real murderer.

She swallowed hard, suddenly aware of how dry her mouth had become. Up until this point, she'd simply assumed that Detective Martinez had questioned each one of the writers simply because they'd all been in the hotel around the time Phil Diamond was murdered. But she realized with a jolt it was possible that someone in the group was the killer.

The thought sent a chill through her that was even colder than the iceberg at the
Titanic
exhibit.

I don't even know these people, she thought, fighting off a wave of panic. Yet here I am, stuck in a hotel with them, eleven hundred miles from home….

She focused on the photograph, hoping that somehow the faces of her children and the man who had been her husband for more than two decades would give her strength. Instead, she thought, This was supposed to be a dream job. Instead, I suddenly find myself living in a nightmare.

Detective Martinez's final words kept echoing through her head.
For now, you're free to go.

The implication was that at some later date, she might not be.

Mallory couldn't imagine how she would ever manage to concentrate on writing a lighthearted article about Florida's whimsical tourist attractions. Not when the mere thought that she was a suspect in a murder sent her into a tailspin.

And then, through the fog that encompassed her brain, an idea occurred to her: Maybe I can figure out who murdered Phil.

She had no idea how she could ever accomplish something like that. She didn't know a soul in this town, aside from the people who were involved in the press trip. She didn't know how to make her way around Orlando, either, aside from driving from the airport to the hotel. For that matter, she hardly knew anything about the victim.

Yet she couldn't simply assume that Detective Martinez would clear her name by tracking down the real perpetrator. True, it was possible. But at the moment, she was feeling anything but optimistic—and the stakes were too high to sit back and hope that just because this was Orlando, the story in which she suddenly found herself a character would have a happy ending.

6

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”

—Martin Buber

W
hat a way to start a press trip!” Annabelle declared over breakfast the next morning as she emptied three packets of sugar into her coffee. “This is worse than the time my flight to Cancún was canceled because of snow and I had to spend the entire night sleeping with my head on a Ziploc bag full of pennies.”

She makes it sound as if Phil got himself murdered just to be rude, Mallory thought crossly, hiding her scowl behind her mug. She's acting if he was simply indulging in another one of his annoying habits, like chain-smoking or making obnoxious comments.

Still, she couldn't help paying close attention to Annabelle's behavior, along with everyone else's. The odds were good that one of the people sitting at this table this morning—Annabelle, Frieda, Wade, or Desmond—was responsible for Phil Diamond's murder. Of course, she knew perfectly well that they all thought
she
could be the killer. All in all, the bountiful serving of suspicion on the breakfast menu hardly made for a festive mood.

“I mean, how creepy is that?” Annabelle continued. “The way he just up and died—at the foot of a tacky fake waterfall, no less!”

Desmond and the other journalists watched in silence as she helped herself to at least a dozen more sugar packets and dropped them into her purse.

“You're right, Annabelle,” Frieda finally agreed. Despite the somber mood that hovered overhead like a rain cloud, she looked anything but funereal. She'd arrived at the Tiki Tiki Teahouse dressed in a white T-shirt emblazoned with
Party Girl!
in rhinestones, and electric pink hot pants that revealed some remarkably wrinkled knees. “Somehow, murder just doesn't fit in with the ambience of the Polynesian Princess Hotel.”

Glancing around, she added, “Just look at this place. Everything is perfect. There's not a speck of dust on any of the tiki gods, not a single weed among the tropical flowers…even the waterfalls are designed not to splash any of the guests!”

“But all of Florida is that way,” Wade interjected. “It's as if the entire state is dedicated to enabling people to escape from their real lives and anything bad that may be part of them—which is why when something terrible happens, it seems so out of place.”

“That's not true!” Desmond protested. “Florida is
filled
with creepy things.” He sounded offended by the notion that the state in which he lived was close to perfect, even if only from a tourist's point of view. It was an interesting contrast to the Desmond Farnaby of the night before, the one who'd scrubbed the bloodstained carpet at the scene of the crime to keep from having points taken off his next job evaluation form.

“You mean like the long lines at every attraction and that ridiculous sun that doesn't quit?” Annabelle asked archly, meanwhile eyeing the stack of jellies in tiny plastic tubs as if calculating how many of those to add to her stash.

“I happen to know about some
truly
creepy things here in Florida,” Desmond said. He paused dramatically before lowering his voice and asking, “Have any of you ever heard of the Skunk Ape?”

When no one responded with a hearty “Yes,” he continued, “It lives in the Ocala National Forest, although there have been sightings in other places.” He sounded like a twelve-year-old boy who was having a blast scaring the bejeezus out of the other kids sitting around the campfire. “Back in the 1950s, three terrified Boy Scouts on a camping trip came running out of the woods, claiming they'd just seen a giant creature with the body of an ape and the face of a man. They said it smelled terrible.”

Are you sure it wasn't the Cub Master? Mallory was tempted to ask.

“Then,” Desmond continued, his eyes growing big and round, “in the early 1970s, five archeologists came up with an identical story about Skunk Ape. They reported that a white hairy creature destroyed their campsite and then ran into a swamp. They said it was eight feet tall and weighed around seven hundred pounds. Over the years, there have been a number of sightings, including one by a police officer. Some people have taken photographs of the beast, and some have made castings of its footprints.”

“Sounds like Big Foot,” Frieda observed, nodding as if she actually believed the tall tale.

“It's Florida's own version of Big Foot,” Desmond replied proudly. “In fact, in the late seventies, the Florida legislature introduced a bill to protect Skunk Ape.”

These are the people who decide how to spend tax-payers' money? Mallory thought, trying to keep a straight face. Wade caught her eye and grinned, as if he'd had similar thoughts.

“We've also got our own ghosts,” Desmond continued in the same dramatic voice. He was clearly enjoying being the center of attention. “There's a haunted road in a town called Lady Lake. A glowing lady dressed in white has been seen crossing the street. According to legend, she was murdered by her jealous lover after she told him she was marrying someone else. Some people have also reported seeing a second ghost: a man dressed in black.”

“Maybe that's the undertaker,” Wade suggested. Dryly he added, “According to legend, he never got paid.”

Desmond ignored him. “There's another haunted road in Wauchula, with a bridge that's known as Bloody Bucket Bridge. According to legend—”

“Another legend,” Mallory noted. This time, she caught Wade's eye and smiled.

“A former slave from Georgia once lived around there,” Desmond insisted enthusiastically. “She delivered hundreds of babies. But after a while, people suspected she'd started smothering some of the newborns, especially when the parents already had more children than they could manage to feed. She buried them by the bridge, in the woods near the river. The townspeople eventually caught on, and that put an end to her midwifery career. She went crazy, and from then on spent her days sitting next to a bucket that was filled with blood—blood she claimed was from the babies she'd murdered. Of course, nobody else besides her ever saw any blood. To them, the bucket looked empty. But she kept emptying it into the river, then claiming it would fill up again. Finally, she fell into the river and drowned.”

Mallory wished she'd stayed in her room and ordered room service. She was finding Desmond's gory folktales disturbing, no doubt because of the horrific events of the night before. Dead people, even legendary dead people, just didn't strike her as very amusing.

“Then we have Magnolia Creek Lane in Montverde,” he said dramatically, “where two hundred people died in a train crash in the late 1800s. Late at night, you can hear their screams—”

“It's all very creepy, Desmond,” Annabelle interrupted, “just as you promised. But I don't see what any of it has to do with Phil's murder. Which, I seem to remember, is how we got onto this tasteless topic in the first place.”

Desmond shrugged. “Nothing, aside from the fact that people think of Florida as either a fantasy world for kids or a place for senior citizens to retire. I was simply pointing out that it also has a dark side.”

“I think we all found that out in the 2000 election,” Frieda commented.

Desmond ignored her. “Of course, Florida has other notable sights that are much more cheerful,” he continued. “Like America's Smallest Post Office, in Ochopee. Would you believe it's only eight feet by seven feet and only ten and a half feet high? Then in Carrabelle there's the World's Smallest Police Station, which is no bigger than a phone booth. As a matter of fact, that's what it originally was.”

“I'll take the bloody bucket over the tiny post office any day,” Wade said. “It's not that strange a concept, given how high Florida real estate prices are these days.” He leaned across the table and, in a voice soft enough that no one else could hear, asked Mallory, “Speaking of horror stories, how are you holding up after last night?”

“Fine.” She forced a smile. “At least, as well as can be expected.”

“I don't blame you,” he said. “The whole situation is horrendous. What you need is to get away from all this.”

“Away from the hotel—or away from the company I've been keeping?”

“Both. In fact, I'm starting to feel as if I need to get away myself.”

“Me, too,” she agreed. That was the very conclusion she'd come up with herself after spending a sleepless night in her huge, king-size bed. She'd scarcely been able to believe the contrast between her arrival at the hotel, which had seemed like the beginning of an exciting adventure, and how she felt about being in Florida now that she was considered a suspect in the murder of a man she barely knew.

“Then how about having dinner with me tonight?” he asked. “It'll be good for both of us. Not to mention a lot of fun.”

Mallory froze. Dinner? she thought, her mind racing. As in a
date
?

She told herself she must have misunderstood. That she was reading way too much into Wade's casual suggestion that two journalists who were far from home—and suddenly found themselves in the midst of a murder investigation—grab a bite to eat someplace other than the hotel that had begun to feel confining to them both.

Then again, it certainly
sounded
as if he'd just asked her out on a date.

Yet
Mallory
and
date
struck her as two words that definitely did not belong in the same sentence. After all, decades had passed since she'd thought about herself that way
—that way
meaning someone who could ever be considered even remotely attractive to a member of the opposite sex.

Much less someone who went out on dates.

Which is why she was absolutely dumbstruck when she heard a voice that sounded very much like hers saying, “Sure. Dinner sounds great.”

A wave of relief suddenly rushed over her as she remembered she had a perfectly valid excuse not to follow through on the plan she'd just made so cavalierly.

“Wait—I can't,” she said. “I'm sorry, Wade. I totally forgot that I already have plans for tonight.”

Wade looked crestfallen. “Don't tell me I have competition.”

“As a matter of fact, you do,” she replied, considerably more relaxed now that she knew she wouldn't actually have to go through with something as nerve-wracking as a date. “Some handsome, swarthy men who can really impress a girl by swinging from the mast of a schooner and…and showering her with gifts of gold dubloons.”

Wade blinked. “You're having dinner with pirates?”

Mallory laughed. “Courtney even got them to comp me. See that? They're not nearly as bad as most people think. Besides, they love to have a good time, especially if rum is involved.”

Wade looked amused. “I had no idea you were such a party animal.”

“I can be,” she assured him, cocking her head to one side. “In fact, maybe I should be wearing Frieda's T-shirt instead of her.”

She suddenly clamped her mouth shut. I'm
flirting
! she thought, alarmed. I'm one step away from batting my eyelashes at this guy. I've been away from home a little more than twenty-four hours and I'm already turning into Betty Boop!

Folding her hands primly in her lap, she said, “What I mean is, I'm supposed to go to the Pirates Adventure theme dinner tonight. I'm hoping to include it in my article.”

He leaned even closer, as if he was about to share a secret. “Don't tell anyone,” he said in a conspiratorial tone, “but back home in Toronto, I'm considered quite the swashbuckler. How about some company when that pirate ship of yours sails tonight?”

She cast him a surprised look. “You mean you'd actually come along to something like that?”

“Sure. It sounds like fun. Besides, you'd be there, right?”

Mallory could feel her cheeks growing warm as she said, “Okay. I'll ask Courtney if she can get a second voucher.”

“Shiver me timbers,” Wade said with a grin. “I've got me a dinner date.”

“I need a drink,” Frieda announced after Wade, Annabelle, and finally Desmond had excused themselves one by one, each claiming to have something to rush off to.

Mallory, who had remained at the table to finish her second cup of coffee, gave a startled laugh. “Don't we all.”

“Just a little something to take the edge off,” Frieda said earnestly. “Care to join me at the Bora Bora Bar? I'd enjoy the company. Besides, it's never a good idea to drink alone.”

And here I thought she was joking, Mallory marveled. “I'd be happy to join you,” she said, suddenly a lot less interested in increasing the amount of caffeine in her veins than she was in picking Frieda's brain.

She was curious about whether the hotel bar would actually be open at this hour. Much to her amazement, it turned out Frieda wasn't the only tourist who needed a little extra something in her morning glass of juice in order to get going. A surprising number of people had bellied up to the bar, which looked like an island hut, complete with a straw-covered roof. Most of them were working on what looked like traditional brunch drinks, screwdrivers and Bloody Marys and mimosas. But a few were hitting the harder stuff, slurping clear brown liquid out of highball glasses, looks of desperation in their eyes.