The Perfect Suspect (29 page)

Then there was David Mathews. Call from a local businessman, Ericka at the agency told her. “Want to take it?” There was always danger in taking a local client. Embarrassing later when you ran into each other at a social event, and he could always spread the word: See that woman in the blue dress? Diamond ring? Pearl necklace? Very expensive hooker. Gossip like that could end her career. But she had said yes to David Mathews. She'd read about him in the paper—how his business partner had accused him of theft, how the complaint was withdrawn. Catherine McLeod had written the articles, and Kim had remembered the name.

They had met once at a hotel in Boulder where David wasn't likely to run into a client or friend. What a lonely man, she had thought, talking and talking, pouring out his heart over dinner at a café on the Pearl Street Mall. He and his partner had built a successful business together, plenty for both of them. Why would David Mathews need to cheat him? And his wife threatening to leave him. Not that he would mind, he'd said, but a divorce would be messy, played out in the newspaper and interfering with his long-range plans. He intended to be governor. After that first night, David had become a regular. He always called her cell and told her where and when to meet him. She was never to contact him; it was too risky, he said. They had formed a connection, no doubt about it, the kind of connection she had never allowed before. Trust no one, probably the only good advice Mama ever had.

David's calls were sporadic, but she always knew they would come. Then in the spring, the calls became fewer and fewer, and she'd gotten the sense there was another woman. Not David's wife. Someone more threatening. Two weeks ago, she had decided to send him the e-mail, asking if she would ever see him again, but she changed her mind. She never wrote the message. Somehow she must have pressed “Send” because he had called then. Blown up at her, the only time he had ever raised his voice. She was never to e-mail him! Finally, he had told her to come to the Denver house. They had made plans then for her to come back at midnight four nights ago.

She wasn't sure why the contents of her purse were strewn across the top of another dresser. She brushed the wallet, comb, lipsticks, appointment book, cell, wadded receipts, address book, lighter and cigarettes into the purse, remembering now. Arnold had wanted a cigarette, and she had gone looking in her bag. “Now!” he had bellowed. She had dumped out the contents, handed him the package and lighted the cigarette for him.

You are in danger.
She slung the purse over her shoulder, picked up the Louis Vuitton and glanced around the room. The agency would probably let her go: unacceptable to walk out on a client, especially a reliable client like Arnold, who always requested her. Business associates in Denver believed she was his fiancée. What a joke, she thought. What a joke her life was.

David murdered, his wife on her way to prison, the murderer a detective, and she, a whore nobody would believe.

She flung open the door, stepped into the corridor and stopped. The arrow above the elevator was moving. The elevator was two floors below and ascending. Arnold had gone to breakfast with clients this morning. He was due back at any moment. They would go to the Denver Art Museum, he'd said. She should get her hair and nails done this afternoon. Gala ball at the Hyatt tonight. He wanted her perfect.

She hurried down the corridor away from the elevator, darted around a corner and pressed herself against the wall. She held her breath. The elevator dinged, the doors swooshed open. She could hear Arnold's methodical, padding footsteps coming toward the room. Then the faint click of a plastic key, the pneumatic huff of the door opening and closing. She peeked around the corner, then hurried past the door to the elevator. It would take him a couple of minutes to realize she was gone; he wouldn't believe his eyes—her side of the closet empty, the cosmetics and jewelry cleared away. She pressed the button. A different elevator was on its way down, still five floors above. The first thing Arnold would do—oh, she knew the man—was charge out of the room down to the reception desk and demand to know when she had left. She huddled close to the door, willing the elevator to appear.

From behind, she heard the door open. Then the elevator dinged, the doors parted and she darted into the front corner and jammed her finger against the close-door button. She hit the lobby button. “Wait!” she heard Arnold's raspy shout, the sound of him pounding down the corridor. As the doors slid shut, she glimpsed a slice of his reddened face.

“She called!” Catherine shouted through the half-opened door to Marjorie's cubicle as she headed into the reception area. “I'm on my way to meet her.”

“Hey, hold on.” Marjorie must have flung herself from behind the desk because she was marching behind her. Catherine could hear the short, quick intakes of breath, the almost palpable excitement. She let herself out of the newsroom and plunged toward the elevators. Marjorie had caught up as Catherine pressed the down button.

“She called? Who is she? Did you get her name?”

Catherine shook her head. “She's at the Hotel Francaise. Let's hope she'll meet me in the lobby.”

“Let's hope?” The relief on Marjorie's face dissolved into a look of consternation. “You mean she didn't agree?”

“She's scared,” Catherine said. The elevator arrived, and she stepped inside. “I'm afraid she'll run,” she said past the closing doors. “I've got to get there before she does.”

She drove her car out of the garage into the noonday glare, the sporadic blare of horns and the acrid smells of gasoline and exhaust. Downtown traffic inched along, four lanes converging into one, an accident ahead, red and blue lights flashing. Sirens wailed in the distance. She should have walked, she thought. She could have covered the few blocks faster.

The caller would run. Catherine could feel the truth of it; she had heard it in the caller's voice: remorse, fright, the frantic plunge of her thoughts toward safety. Safety meant not getting involved. And yet, something had led her to call the
Journal
in the first place and to call back.

The hotel was still a couple of blocks ahead. Catherine slid into a no-parking zone, got out and started running, brushing past the lawyers and stockbrokers in wrinkled suits, careening through a group of young secretaries in cotton skirts that wrapped around their legs, sipping on Diet Cokes and munching burritos. The stop light ahead turned yellow. She kept running even when the light flicked to red, weaving past the traffic that growled and screeched around her. She passed the wide concrete steps to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, the glass-enclosed roof shimmering in the sunshine, and crossed another street on the yellow light. Another block, and she spotted the tan brick building with curlicue embellishments and awnings at the windows.

She was out of breath, her chest on fire, when she hurried past the doorman who had jumped forward to hold the door. The lobby was small and intimate, with cream-colored tiles on the floor and overstuffed chairs arranged around marble-topped tables. She stopped a few feet inside the door and glanced around the seating area. The chairs were vacant. Apart from two clerks in navy blazers behind the reception desk, no one was around. She heard her heart pounding as she walked over to the desk; she could be too late.

“May I help you?” The woman smiling at her might have been anywhere between thirty and fifty, with shoulder-length, black hair and the stretched-drum look of too many cosmetic surgeries.

Catherine launched into explanation: Twenty minutes ago, she had received a call from a guest. The call had been cut off, and the hotel had tried to ring the guest, but the guest hadn't answered. She pushed her business card toward the clerk. “It's very important I speak with her,” she said.

The woman fingered the card a moment. “You're from the
Journal?”

“The woman who called me is in danger,” Catherine said, and the woman's eyebrows shot up. “This has nothing to do with the hotel, I assure you. I do need to speak with her. Would you be good enough to ring the room?”

The hesitation was so long that Catherine was certain the woman would refuse. Her heart was leaping around now, knocking against her ribs. Finally, the clerk said, “I don't know if it's possible. One moment.” She picked up the card and disappeared around a wood paneled wall behind her.

It was a couple of minutes before she returned. “Mr. Winston suggests you come upstairs,” she said. “Room 814. Elevators on the right.”

Catherine made her way to the elevators and rode to the eighth floor, not sure of what had happened. It was possible she was on her way to another room where a telephone call had been cut off, except that the call hadn't been cut off. The caller had hung up.

The red patterned carpeting grabbed at her heels as she walked down the corridor. She stopped in front of the door with the brass numerals “814” above the peephole, held her breath, and knocked. From the other side came a shuffle of footsteps, then the door swung open. The man in front of her was in his fifties, bald with a maze of tiny blue veins across his nose and cheeks, lips parted in a smile that registered somewhere between anger and acceptance. He had bright, intelligent blue eyes. She could feel the heat of his gaze running over her.

28

“So you're the replacement,” the man said. “Not bad, not bad at all. I like the ethnic look. What are you? Indian? Hispanic. Hell, it doesn't matter. Bellman bringing up your bags? You'd better come in.” He stepped sideways.

“Mr. Winston,” she began.

“Can't stand around talking in the corridor.” He rolled his shoulders to motion her inside. “Don't need a bunch of busybodies listening in on my business.”

“I believe there's a mistake.” Catherine remained in the doorway. “I'm looking for the woman who called me a short time ago. I was told she had called from this room, but the receptionist must have made a mistake.”

He was still craning his neck and looking up and down the corridor. “Step inside now,” he said, his tone low and proprietary, as if she were one of his servants. “I'm not a monster. I won't bite you.”

Catherine took another moment before she stepped past him into a suite that looked larger than her house. A living room that resembled the lobby, similar overstuffed chairs with decorative fringe, luxuriouslooking sofa, marble tables arranged here and there with bouquets of fresh roses that spilled from crystal vases, a flat-paneled TV against one wall. A wall of windows framed the Daniels and Fisher Tower on the Sixteenth Street Mall. Beyond the double doors on the far wall, she could see the large poster bed, tangled blankets and sheets dropping onto the floor. The door snapped shut behind her. She swallowed hard. Thank God, he didn't throw the lock.

“So Kim called you,” he said. “Complaining about what? I was too generous, too many gowns and fancy events for trailer trash like her?”

Kim. The caller's name was Kim. “Is she here?” Catherine said, glancing at the double doors and the closed door across from the bed that most likely led to the bathroom.

“Don't pretend you don't know she ran out on me, the ungrateful bitch. You wouldn't be here if the agency didn't send in a pinch hitter. Or is that why Kim called you? You and she good buddies? You doing her a big favor? Don't even think you're gonna get what I said I'd pay her. I'm cutting way back for the inconvenience. I don't have time to get to know a new girl. What do you like, what don't you like? What do you want to order for dinner? Spare me the hassle. Just keep your mouth shut and do your job. I'll have to look at what you brought, make sure you have the right kind of gown for tonight. Otherwise I suppose we'll have to go shopping. I told you, I don't need the hassle. Where the hell's the bellman with your bags?”

Catherine stared at the man. The whole scenario was starting to make sense. Kim was a call girl on her way to David Mathews's house the night he was murdered. No wonder she refused to give her name and didn't want to get involved. A call girl would be the perfect murder suspect.

“What? You want to check things out first, look me over, see if I'm the type that beats the crap out of girls like you? That the idea? Get the lay of the land before the bellman brings up your bags? Well, spill it out. You staying or you gonna run? I would appreciate knowing before I lay out any more money. I need a companion for an event at the Hyatt tonight. Front row tickets at the Buell Theater tomorrow night. Afterward, little intimate dinner with business associates. You'll look beautiful and keep your mouth shut. You're not in, I want to know now.”

“Look, there's been a misunderstanding,” Catherine began. “I'm Catherine McLeod . . .”