The Woman Who Fell From Grace (23 page)

I tipped my cap. “It’ll do, Mike. It’ll do.” I left before he started shrinking again.

Cookie Jahr would know. She had been there in the sitting room when Fern freaked. She knew who was in Vangie’s room with Sterling Sloan. Whoever it was had shot him that night in his hotel room. That’s why those pages had been torn from Alma’s diary. Cookie knew. She was the one outsider who did.

Her room was down the hall from Mike’s. Her door was open a few inches. I called out her name. There was no answer. I tugged at my ear, not liking this. People don’t generally go out and leave their motel-room doors open. Not unless they’ve gone for some ice. I was standing ten feet from the ice machine. Cookie wasn’t getting any ice.

Lulu was already heading straight for the car. She wanted no part of it. I called after her. I told her that after everything I’d done for her these past nights the least she could do was stay by my side when I needed her. Reluctantly, she returned to me. We went in.

Cookie was stretched out on the bed looking right at me. She had a cigarette going in the ashtray on the nightstand next to her. She was a frail, birdlike woman with bright yellow hair. She wore a floral-print blouse, white slacks, and a bright pink silk scarf. Whoever strangled her had used the scarf.

P
OLK FOUR REACHED OVER
and turned off his radio when it started squawking. We were sitting in his cruiser out in the parking lot of The Shenandoan, Lulu between us on the front seat sniffing gleefully at the tools of his trade on the dash. She likes sitting in police cars. Polk kept watching her. I don’t think he liked her sniffing at his things. He certainly hadn’t liked what I’d had to tell him — that his granddad had covered up a shooting. Cookie’s body had been taken away. Polk had told the swarm of entertainment press she’d died of natural causes.

“No one saw anything?” I asked.

“Not a chance,” he replied grimly. “Not with so many people coming and going. Plus the door at the end of the hall by her room opens directly onto the parking lot. She’d only been dead a few minutes when you got to her, too. So darned close. Now we may never know what happened.”

“We’ll know. We’ll just have to work a little harder. You find out anything?”

“I might have.” He glanced at me. “Except it goes no further than this car.”

“Agreed.”

“Your friend Pam was right. Frederick Glaze does have a rather serious … ”

“Pain in the assets?”

He nodded. “In fact, the U.S. attorney’s office has been quietly preparing to indict him.”

“For?”

“Defrauding the Internal Revenue Service. Operating an illegal tax-shelter scheme involving some fifty-eight million dollars in bogus securities trades over the past three years. The way I had it explained to me, he claimed to be trading in government securities, only there were no actual transactions. Just fictitious pieces of paper. And hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal tax benefits for his grateful, and unwitting, investors. It seems he’s now scrambling to make good on what he owes the IRS and keep his name out of the papers and his butt out of jail. That accounts for where all of his money is going. Of course, the investors will have to pay back what they owe, too.”

“Did he drag Shenandoah’s holdings into this?”

“Some of them.”

“Did Mavis find out?”

“She found out.” The sheriff cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact, she was actively cooperating with the investigation.”

“She was willing to testify against her own brother?”

“She was indeed.”

“Hmm. Interesting, Sheriff. Who’s Frederick’s lawyer?”

Polk straightened the cuffs of his khaki shirt, not that they needed straightening. “His brother, Edward.”

“Is Edward involved in the swindle, too?”

“No, he’s clean. A conservative investor, Edward is. Just puts it in the bank. While we’re on him … ” Polk pulled a small notebook out of his shirt pocket and opened it. “He married one Danielle Giraud on August twenty-eighth, 1952 in Washington, D.C. She was attached to the French consulate. Marriage was annulled one month later. She married in ’55, had two kids. Died in ’84. Husband is still alive. A law professor, lives in Alexandria.”

“Have a phone number for him?”

“Why?”

“I happen to be a very thorough ghost,” I replied, writing it down. “Ask anyone I’ve ever worked for — if you can find one living.”

Polk leafed through his notebook. “I also rechecked the medical examiner’s report on Franklin Neene. It still turns up suicide. There was no sign of a struggle — he wasn’t conked on the head or anything. No trace of drugs in his bloodstream — other than alcohol, but not so much that he might have been unconscious at the time of his death. The amount was consistent with what he’d consumed the night before. There’s nothing to suggest it was anything other than what it appeared to be — suicide brought on by severe depression. Consequently … ”

“Agreed. We focus elsewhere.”

Polk bristled. “Who’s
we
?”

“You’re right, Sheriff. It’s your investigation.”

“Thank you,” he said crisply.

We sat there in silence a moment.

“Have you spoken to Polk Two?” I asked him.

He stared straight ahead out the windshield. “I’m waiting until I have more facts.”

I tugged at my ear. “Want me to do it?”

“I’ll do it,” he snapped in reply. “It’s my job and he’s my granddad. Just give me some time.”

“Okay, fine. But you’d better hurry up, Sheriff. We’re starting to run out of live bodies.”

“Darn it, Hoagy, this isn’t easy for me!” he raged. “I’m out here all alone on a shaky limb investigating people I’ve known and loved my entire life! One thing I don’t need right now is your cheap sarcasm!”

“You’re right again. Sorry, I don’t mean to be hard on you. Seeing dead people just does strange things to me. Always has. I appreciate the effort you’re making. I really do. And if Mercy survives this in one piece, I’m sure she’ll thank you, too.” I glanced over at him. He was staring grimly out at the parking lot. “Was that any better?” I asked gently.

“I’m trying, Hoagy,” he said miserably. “I’m trying real hard to like you. For Mercy’s sake. She thinks so highly of you. But it’s no use. I just plain don’t.”

“It’s okay, don’t take it so hard.” I patted him on the shoulder. “I’m used to it, pardner.”

“And
don’t
call me pardner!”

Polk Two had told me the Hotel Woodrow Wilson was once a fine place. It wasn’t anymore. Now it was where Staunton stashed whatever it didn’t want to look at. Its old geezers scraping by on social security. Its single mothers on welfare. Its discharged mental patients. Now it was one step up from the street, and a snort one at that. The lobby had all the ambiance and charm of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. It certainly smelled just like it. Two musty old guys were dozing on a torn, green vinyl sofa. A gaunt, toothless black woman was screaming at her three dirty kids at the elevator. Signs were taped up all over the wall behind the reception desk. No credit. No overnight guests. No pets. No loitering.

The clerk was a thirtyish weasel with slicked-back black hair, sallow skin, and sneaky eyes. He looked down at Lulu, then up at me. “Can’t you read?” he sneered. “No animals.”

“They let you in here, didn’t they?” I said pleasantly.

He curled his lip at me. “What are you — some kind of bad dude?”

“I like to think I am,” I replied. “But no one else seems to.”

“Well, what do you want?” he demanded coldly.

“Some information.”

“This ain’t the tourist information bureau.”

“Tell me, does it wear you down being such an asshole or does it come easily to you?”

The weasel reached under the desk and came up with a nightstick. I reached in my pocket and came up with a twenty-dollar bill. I won.

“What do you want to know about?” he asked, the bill disappearing in his palm.

“The old days. Fifty years ago.”

He yawned. “What about ’em?”

“Who worked here.”

“How should I know?”

“Are there any employment records that go back that far?”

“All gone. Place has been under different ownership for years.”

“I see. Any chance someone’s still around who might remember those days?”

“Could be,” he said vaguely. He was angling for another bill.

“I already gave you twenty,” I pointed out. “And I can be back here in five minutes with Sheriff LaFoon.”

“Okay, okay,” he said quickly. “No sense being that way. I’m trying to think … ”

“Yeah, I can see that. It’s kind of like watching a Lego toy.”

“Try old Gus,” he growled. “He’s always talking about how ritzy this shithole was back before the war. He worked here, I think.”

“And where would I find Gus?”

“That’s him over there,” he said, indicating the two old guys nodding on the sofa.

One had a walker parked in front of him, the other a runny nose that was dripping freely onto his legs. “Which one?” I asked.

“The one without the walker.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

I pulled a battered old armchair up in front of Gus and sat down. He stirred slightly but didn’t waken. He was a burly old man in denim overalls, a faded flannel shirt torn at the elbows, and work boots. He needed a shave. Old men don’t look hip when they’re unshaven. They look like bums.

“How’s it going, Gus?” I asked him.

He shifted on the sofa and grunted. Slowly, he opened one rheumy eye, swiped at his nose with the back of his hand. The other eye opened. I offered him my linen handkerchief. He took it and wiped his nose and his eyes with it, then carefully wadded it up and offered it back to me.

“You keep it,” I insisted. “All yours.”

His eyes focused on me for the first time. After a moment he said, “I know you. Sure I do.”

“Sure you do,” I agreed. “I used to play Smitty on the
Donna Reed Show
.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Okay, you got me. I didn’t.”

“You’re Bob Dilfer’s boy,” he said, pointing a bent finger at me.

“I am not.”

“Are too. Went down to Lauderdale to work construction.”

“I did not.”

“Got married.”

“Well, that’s another story, and an ugly one.”

“How’s your pappy?”

“We don’t talk much anymore,” I replied.

Gus nodded. “Know jus’ what you mean. He can get ornery. Specially when he got liquor in him.”

I glanced over at his dozing pal with the walker to see if we were disturbing him. We weren’t. “There was a fellow who used to work here before the war, Gus.”

His face lit up. “Billy.”

I leaned forward. “Billy?”

“That’s your name — Billy. Knew I’d get it.”

“I never lost faith. A bellhop, Gus.”

“Lots of bellhops here in those days, sure. Fine ladies and gents coming and going. They all stayed here. Roosevelt, Dewey. Harry S. Truman. I once fetched Harry a fifth of bourbon. A fine gent. Tipped me ten bucks, he did.”

“How about the movie folk?” I asked.

“Them had deep pockets all right,” he sniffed, “but short arms.”

“There was one guy who did real well by them though, wasn’t there?”

“Weren’t me.”

“Who was it, Gus?”

His bleary eyes got a faraway look. “Hit the jackpot, he did. Got hisself a fancy new car. Fancy new job.”

“Here at the hotel?”

“Naw, he got hisself into the easy pickings.”

“Where did he go, Gus?”

Gus yawned, scratched his stubbly cheek and didn’t answer me. I took out a twenty and laid it on his knee.

“I don’t want your money, Billy,” he said, staring at it.

“I know. It’s a gift. Buy yourself something.”

“Like what?”

“Like a handkerchief. Where did he go, Gus?”

Gus took the money and folded it carefully and stuffed it in the pocket of his overalls. Then he scratched his cheek again and told me where the lucky bellhop went.

I found him mowing the grass.

I brought Polk Four with me. I knew I’d get nowhere without him.

“Have a word with you, Roy?” I called to him.

He looked at me, then at Polk. Then he spat some tobacco juice and climbed down from the tractor mower and waited silently for one of us to say something.

“When did you come to work here, Roy?” I asked.

He stared at me blankly.

“About fifty years ago, wasn’t it? You were working at the Hotel Woodrow Wilson when they offered it to you. Good pay, room and board. Glazes sure have taken fine care of you, haven’t they?”

He kept on staring, jaw working on his tobacco.

“Fern wondered why they kept you around all these years,” I went on. “Now we know why — to keep you from talking about Sterling Sloan’s murder, right?”

He froze. Then his pale, deep-set eyes shot over to Polk Four. “Polk Two know ’bout you being here?” His voice was thin and reedy, almost a whisper.

“Let’s leave my granddad out of this,” Polk replied calmly.

“I’d call him, if I was you,” Roy warned.

“I’d sit down and have a talk with Hoagy and myself, if I were you,” Polk countered. “How would that be?”

Reluctantly, Roy said, “If you say so, Sheriff.”

“I say so, Roy. I do indeed.”

Roy shut off the mower. We sat on the low stone wall that edged the vegetable garden. The peacocks strutted around us, watching us. Lulu growled at them from next to me and got honked at for her trouble. She burrowed into the ground at my feet and kept quiet after that.

Polk took off his broad-brimmed hat and placed it on his knee. “Want to tell us about that night, Roy? The night Sloan died?”

Roy watched the peacocks a moment, shifted his bony rump, spat some juice. “Manager, he sent me up there from the front desk,” he began slowly. “Said to get ’em whatever they needed. Said something funny had gone on up there. He looked real nervous about it.”

“Why did he send you?” Polk asked.

“Thought I know’d how to keep my mouth shut,” Roy replied.

“Evidently a keen judge of character,” I observed. “What did they need up there, Roy?”

“Towels. For the blood. Blood everywhere. Him on the floor with his brains spilling out. She were screeching her head off. Rex Ransom were there, only him went back to his room to be sick.”