The Bone House (7 page)

    When
he went back inside the hotel room, he noticed that both suitcases were now
closed. Hilary Bradley waited with her arms folded over her chest. She made a
point of not sitting down and not suggesting that he sit down. She wasn't
interested in prolonging his visit.

    'The
guests in this wing are all potential witnesses,' Cab told her. 'We're
interviewing everyone.'

    'I'm
afraid I didn't see anything.'

    'Nothing
at all?'

    'No,
I didn't look out overnight.'

    'Did
you hear anything?'

    'I was
asleep.'

    'Did
you get up at all during the night? Did you go to the bathroom?'

    'No,
I didn't.'

    Cab
nodded and let the polite dance play out between them. He wanted to put her at
ease and not imply that there was anything special about his visit. She and her
husband were two of many guests looking out on the beach, not suspects with a
connection to the victim. Even so, he had little doubt that she'd already seen
through him and was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

    He
studied the woman in front of him. Hilary Bradley was smart, and she was
pretty, too, in a mature, self-confident way. He figured she was a few years
older than he was, maybe forty, or maybe knocking on the door. Her face was
rounded, with blue eyes and thin black glasses, and dangly earrings that looked
like red sour balls. She wore a simple burgundy top, tan slacks that emphasized
her long legs, and sandals. Despite her shoulder-length blond hair, she wasn't
a classic bombshell, and he didn't imagine she ever had been one, even when she
was younger. Nonetheless, she had the sexiness of a woman who knew she was two
steps ahead of you in just about everything.

    She
looked up at Cab. Based on his height, almost everyone did. He could feel her
taking his measure, even as he did the same to her. Most people underestimated
him. They thought he was a spoiled beach bum; he didn't look like a man who'd
graduated from UCLA in three years. They saw the pomade in his hair, the
exfoliated complexion, the earring, the suit, all of it on top of a lean body
that made the ceilings look low, and they wrote him off as a shallow
metrosexual. He didn't care. He also didn't think Hilary Bradley was the kind
of woman who would make that mistake about him. Her face was a mask as she
stared at him, revealing nothing, but she had the look of someone who didn't
misjudge an enemy.

    Cab
glanced at the hotel roster in his hand. 'You're not here alone, are you, Mrs
Bradley? Your husband is with you?'

    Her
voice was cool. 'That's right.'

    'His
name is Mark?'

    'Yes.'

    'Is
that him I hear in the shower?'

    'Of
course.'

    'I'd
like to talk to him, too,' Cab told her.

    'I
doubt he saw anything either.'

    'How
do you know? You said you were sleeping.'

    Hilary
got a little frown on her face, as if she was annoyed at being outfoxed by his
question, if my husband saw anything overnight, he would have told me.'

    'I
still need to speak to him myself.'

    'We'll
try to find you before we leave, Detective,' she said, with a glance at the door
to the room. Her meaning was clear: she wanted the interview to be over.

    Cab
stroked the point of his protruding chin and stayed where he was. 'Do you mind
if I ask what you two are doing in Naples?'

    'We're
on vacation. I'm a high school teacher, and it's spring break. We had some
hotel points on our credit card, so we used them to get a free week here.'

    'Nice.
How did you happen to choose this hotel?'

    He
watched her think through her response, as if she was trying to understand his
motives in asking. Or maybe she was trying to assess how little she could say
without lying. 'In addition to my academic teaching, I've been a dance coach
for many years,' she explained finally. 'Some of my former students were
performing in a college competition at the hotel this week.'

    'So
when you're not coaching dance, what do you teach?'

    'Math.'

    'Math
was never my subject,' Cab said, which was a lie. He'd aced every class in school.
Except geography. His brain didn't process directions. He needed a map to find
his own bathroom.

    'Where
do you teach?' he continued.

    'It's
a high school in Door County, Wisconsin.'

    'Where
exactly is that?' he asked.

    'If
you look at a map of Wisconsin, Door County is like the state's pinky finger.
The peninsula juts out into the water between Green Bay and Lake Michigan.'

    'Sounds
like a pretty spot.' 'It is.'

    'Do
you know a family named Fischer living in that area?'

    Hilary's
blue eyes turned cold. Cab figured that Lake Michigan was probably cold, but it
would have felt as balmy as the Gulf compared to this woman's eyes.

    'Do
you think I'm stupid, Detective?'

    'I'm
sorry?'

    'I
know you're not here because we happen to have a room that overlooks the beach.
I don't imagine the lead detective on a murder investigation does the grunt
work of interviewing hundreds of potential witnesses.'

    Cab
smiled. 'There's a lot more grunt work than you might imagine.'

    'Someone
already told me that the dead girl is Glory Fischer, and someone obviously told
you
about me and my husband.'

    'Yes,
your husband's name did come up.'

    'Mark
had nothing to do with this.'

    'Maybe
not, but you can understand my concern, given his relationship with the
Fischers. Particularly the dead girl's sister.'

    'There
was no relationship,' Hilary insisted. 'The accusations against him were
false.'

    'I
don't really care,' Cab told her. it raises suspicions about him cither way.'

    'My husband
didn't kill Glory Fischer.'

    'Except
we've already established that you were sleeping, Mrs Bradley, so you really
don't know what he was doing.'

    'I
know Mark.'

    'Nobody
knows anybody,' Cab said.

    'Maybe
you don't, but I do. I'm not going to see my husband subjected to another
witch-hunt, Detective.'

    'I
don't do witch-hunts. I don't believe what anyone tells me, good or bad, until
I can prove it one way or another. So right now, what I'd really like is for
your husband to stop hiding behind the bathroom door pretending he's in the
shower, and instead have him come out and talk to me.'

    'I'll
let him know you stopped by,' Hilary said.

    'If
your husband has nothing to hide, let him answer a few questions.'

    'You've
already lied about your reasons for coming here, Detective,' she snapped. 'So
spare me the "nothing to hide" speech. Mark and I don't trust people
any more than you do. We've learned that we can only trust each other.'

    'I've
seen a lot of wives who think that,' Cab told her. 'Most of them wind up
disappointed.'

    'Do I
look like a naive twenty-five year old to you?'

    'No,
you don't,' he said.

    'Then
don't treat me like one.'

    Cab dug
in his pocket. 'Your husband is going to have to answer questions sooner or
later. Here's my card. Have him call me. Don't bother leaving town today,
because you'll just have to fly back here again.'

    'Are
you finished?'

    'No,
if your husband won't answer questions, then I'll ask you. Did you know Glory
Fischer and her sister were here at this hotel?'

    'I've
said all I plan to say for now,' Hilary told him.

    'You're
painting a target on your husband's back. You're both acting guilty.'

    'You've
already said you won't believe me, so why should I say anything at all?'

    Before
he could answer, Cab heard his phone ringing in the inner pocket of his suit
coat. It was Lala on the other end of the line. He listened to her, and he knew
that the Cuban cop's voice was loud enough to be heard throughout the room. He
didn't care. When he hung up, he noticed the changed expression in Hilary
Bradley's eyes. She'd followed the thread of his conversation, and she was
uncomfortable now. And worried.

    'I
don't think you were sleeping, Mrs Bradley,' he told her. 'I think you woke up,
and your husband was gone.'

    'Goodbye,
Detective.'

    'That
was one of my investigators on the phone. You heard what she said. We have a
witness. A hotel employee who saw Glory Fischer going out to the beach. The
question is, what else did he see?'

    Hilary
said nothing.

    Cab
rapped his foot against one of the suitcases on the floor, which had been open
when he first arrived. 'I saw the yellow tank top. Is that what your husband
was wearing? That's hard to miss, even at night.'

    She
folded her arms again and was quiet. Her face grew flushed.

    Cab
walked past her toward the hotel room door. As he passed the closed door to the
bathroom, he pounded on it loudly. 'Don't think you can hide behind your wife
forever, Mr Bradley. The sooner you talk to me, the easier this will be.'

    When
there was no answer, he left the room.

    Mark
waited until he heard the hotel room door slam shut. He emerged from the bathroom,
fully dressed, and found his wife sitting on the end of the bed. Her face was
tired and stressed. He'd seen that look for weeks last year, as they'd both
faced his accusers at the school.

    'You
heard?' she asked.

    Mark
nodded. His frustration bubbled over, and he felt like punching the wall. 'He's
right. I should have come out and talked to him. I don't like to hide, Hil.
That's not me.'

    She
shook her head. 'He was just pushing your buttons. He was trying to goad us
into saying something stupid. Look, I'll call my father and get the name of a
defense attorney here in Naples. There are probably Chicago snowbirds all over
the place down here. We'll talk to him and then decide what to do next.'

    'Guilty
people hire lawyers.'

    'No,
smart people do,' she told him. 'This is about protecting ourselves.'

    Mark
glanced at the suitcases on the floor. 'We can't leave.'

    'I'll
call the desk and see if we can stay another night.'

    'Does
he really have a witness? Or was that just a mind game?'

    'I
don't know. I heard the person on the phone say that someone at the hotel saw
Glory, but they could have staged the call.' if someone saw me with her ...'
Mark's voice trailed off. if someone saw you with her, maybe they saw you leave,
too. Maybe they saw who really did this.'

    Lala
Mosqueda had added black sunglasses to her all-black outfit as the sun got
higher over the resort. Her skin had a glistening sheen of sweat. It was
Florida, and there was nothing you could do to escape the humidity. Cab had
assumed he would get used to it over time, but in two years, he never had. By
the time he was done shaving every morning, his skin was already damp. Every
surface he touched felt moist and swollen. When he left his high-rise,
beachfront condo, his clothes stuck to his body, and he felt the thick air
draining his energy. The only creatures that thrived in the damp climate were
the cockroaches and spiders, which grew like mutants.

    Lala
leaned against the trunk of a palm tree near a wide, tiled walkway that led
toward the water. The sky overhead was postcard blue. On the hotel terrace, Cab
saw a goateed hotel employee with greased black hair sitting alone at a patio
table, nervously pushing around the floral centerpiece and swigging water from
a plastic Aquafina bottle. The man shifted and crossed his legs uncomfortably
in the deckchair. White cuffs jutted out from the sleeves of his red hotel
jacket, and he wore black slacks. He was in his early twenties.