A Bead in the Hand (Glass Bead Mystery Series Book 2) (12 page)

Now that was interesting. Luke from Australia. Would he be angry enough to kill Saundra because he’d lost at least a thousand dollars when she was a no-show? And the night of the blackout, the night Saundra died, he’d been drinking and was blitzed in the bar. Maybe getting drunk was his way of dealing with guilt after killing someone.

“I’ll need a list of all the vendors at this event, plus any other buyers you’re aware of,” the detective said.

“Yeah, yeah, I got that here somewhere…” Sal pushed aside a plastic keychain shaped like a giant bead that had the words Bead Fun pasted across it, a grubby cell phone, and some crumpled gum wrappers. He picked up a stack of papers.

“Oh, just one more thing. Do you have an address for Ms. Jameson?” asked Tiffany. “We’ve been attempting to contact her next of kin, and the phone number we’ve been calling has not been answered. I thought I’d send an officer out to the property. She’s local, isn’t she?”

“She told me once she lived somewhere out in the country near here with a brother. That’s probably who you’re trying to reach.” He flipped through the stack of papers in his hands and found the page he was looking for. “Here’s her contract,” Sal said, shoving it across the table. “You can have it. I don’t got a use for it now.”

I glimpsed Saundra’s address on the contract before Tiffany folded it into the cover of her iPad. That information might come in handy.

“And where were you during the Preview Night?” Tiffany asked Sal.

There was a pause long enough to drive a freight train through. Sal was looking straight at us, actually just above our heads so that he didn’t have to make eye contact, arms still crossed. He wasn’t talking any more.

Tiffany stood up abruptly and moved around the table toward Sal. As she moved past him, she snapped a business card next to his elbow on the table.

“We’ll just have to bring Mr. Salvatore downtown to do a more thorough interview,” she said.

Once we were out in the parking lot, Tiffany said, “Thanks for your help, Jax. We have some valuable new information that may help us find the killer.”

“But I’m wondering if this really is a murder. I mean, couldn’t Saundra have fallen and whacked her head?”

“Oh, Jax, you’ll just have to trust me on that one,” she said as we crossed the tarmac. “Now, that assistant of Ms. Jameson’s—where can I find him?”

The detective and I crossed the lobby and went back into the ballroom, where the bazaar was in full swing. Tessa was finishing up a sale as we arrived at my table.

“That’s Miles over there,” I said, pointing toward Minnie’s table, where he stood taking a credit card from a customer. “Do you want me—“

She cut me off.

“No, Jax. You’ve been quite helpful enough, for now. No packing up early and heading home. I’m sure I’ll need you again,” she said, diving into the crowd of bead-obsessed shoppers.

“You’re assisting the detective?” Tessa asked.

“She sort of strong-armed me into helping her. The sooner she finds the killer, the better. She’ll be off my back, and I can get back to what I’m here to do—sell some beads.”

“Well, I’ve sold quite a few while you’ve been gone.”

I peeked in the cash box. “Excellent job.”

The detective escorted Miles toward the lobby. He looked like he was going to throw up and was as pale as when I’d seen him standing in the doorway of Saundra’s room. As he passed my table, he dropped his messenger bag behind it. Without making eye contact with me—too embarrassed, no doubt, from me catching him so exposed—he asked, “Watch my bag for me?” He kept walking with the detective close behind him, without waiting for my response.

They were, no doubt, headed to the conference room to have a little chat.

I was quiet for a while. I knew what I wanted to do. I just didn’t know how to broach the subject with Tessa.

“I don’t like it when you’re this quiet. It almost always means you’re scheming.” Tessa gave me her most indulgent smile. “You’re going to Saundra’s room, aren’t you?”

“I heard the detective say that Saundra’s room hadn’t been sealed yesterday and ordered an officer to clear out her things and seal it,” I said. “I’ve got to get in there before it’s too late—before everything’s gone. And we know Miles and Minnie aren’t in there right now.” It was probably not the best idea to go snooping around Saundra’s room. My stealth skills were terrible. Ryan had slammed into me the night before when I was trying to be sneaky. Though, I had to admit, that had turned out all right.

I liked Ryan and wanted to help him. He seemed like my kind of guy—easy to talk with and kind. His broad shoulders and warm smile made me like him even more. If I could learn something about Saundra and what had happened to her, it might help Ryan with the investigation. And beyond that, it would be great if he didn’t think I was a murderer.

“You better be back here in fifteen minutes, or else.”

“Or else what?” I asked.

“Or else I’m calling the cops!”

“You’re not going to do that, Tessa, you love me too much,” I said, heading out the door.

• • •

Armed with the key card to Saundra’s room, which I’d easily located in Miles’s messenger bag, I slowly climbed the stairs, hoping to slide in the side door undetected. I had a stitch in my side by the time I got to the fifth floor and promised myself I’d start doing more cardio when I got home. I crept out the stairwell door. Several room doors were open, and a yellow housekeeping cart was at my end of the hall. A Spanish-language radio station was playing, and the vacuum roared in lucky room 513, nearest the stairway. I needed to pass by that room to get to room 511. This wasn’t going to be easy.

Just like Wile E. Coyote carrying around a bush as his own portable camouflage while stalking the Roadrunner, I was going to use the maid’s cart and roll it along past the open door where the housekeeper was Hoovering. She was probably so far inside the room that she wouldn’t see the towel cart rolling by, as if guided by mysterious forces. She probably wouldn’t remember where she left the cart and become suspicious when she found it in a new location. She probably wouldn’t even care if she found me in the room. Probably.

I crouched down behind the cart and started rolling it down the hall, the cart shielding me from the door of 513. As I duck-walked beside the cart, I hoped no one would open another door. Not only would they be astonished to find a middle-aged (well, pre-middle-aged) woman hiding in the hallway behind a stack of towels on wheels, but they’d scare the crap out of me. The cart’s wheels made a
squee-squee-squee
sound as I sidled along. Fortunately, you couldn’t hear anything above the sound of the radio and the vacuum. When I finally reached my destination—it was only about twenty feet, but it felt like a mile—I slipped around the end of the cart. Room 511 had been sealed with crime scene tape. Dammit! I was too late. The police had already been here. I tried to figure out how hard it would be to peel off the tape, gently tugging at a corner of it. This was not a good plan. I needed to get out of there before anyone saw me trying to break in.

The hallway was quiet. The silence was deafening. The vacuum was off and the radio was, too. As I slowly turned, I saw the maid, hands on her hips, her black hair pulled into a tight bun, her eyebrows pulled into a single V above her dark beady eyes.

I gave her my most winning smile, the one my mom always told me I should use when I wanted to make new friends.

“Hola,” I said, as confidently as possible.

She ripped into me with the fastest and most aggressive Spanish I’d ever heard. I’d been caught. And my Spanish was basic at best—even with three years of high school Spanish and my whole life in Miami, about all I could do was order margaritas. Which sounded pretty good right now.

I raised my hands in surrender, but mostly to show her I wasn’t holding anything. She glowered at me. We were in a stand-off, and she wasn’t moving until… what, I didn’t know.

Lowering my hands, I pulled Miles’s key card out of my pocket.

“See, I’m okay. I’m a guest at this hotel. Here’s my key.” I hoped she understood what I was saying because there was no way I could manage to say it in Spanish. “I was confused and came to the wrong room,” I fibbed and flashed another smile. She wasn’t buying it.

She pointed toward the elevator and shouted a single English word.

“Go!”

I walked as quickly as possible to the elevator door, trying to be speedy but also nonchalant, in that
I didn’t just try and break into a crime scene
way. I hoped the maid wasn’t going to call security, because I wasn’t looking forward to explaining this escapade to Ryan or one of the other security guards.

SIXTEEN

BACK IN THE LOBBY
, I dropped into a slick vinyl chair, glad I’d escaped from that catastrophe. Once again, I found myself looking down at my Chucks. They rested on fancy carpeting that looked like it could use a good steam cleaning, or better yet, replacement—some of the stains looked like they might never come out.

For the second time this weekend, a shiny pair of high-heeled sandals entered my field of vision. Oh geez. Tiffany had finished her chat with Miles and was back to make her next demand. The feet in front of me had the same pink toenails I’d seen last night. Earlier, when we were together, I hadn’t noticed Tiffany’s feet. With the rest of her practical clothes, she must have felt she could let loose a little with cute sandals.

I followed the legs up. These were not Tiffany’s legs, skirt, blouse, or face. I nearly fell over.

“Val?”

“Bruno, he came over, and I was with Rudy—”

“Val, what are you doing here?” I asked.

“Bruno was so angry, I thought he was going to punch Rudy, even though he and I are just friends!”

“Val, what are you doing here?” I asked again.

“I slammed the door in Bruno’s face and got out of town—”

“Val, who’s taking care of Stanley?” I hoped that asking a different question might derail her from the frantic telling of her story.

“I dropped him off at Tessa’s. I just had to get out of there.”

Craig had his hands full with the kids, without adding a high-maintenance dog to the mix. I hoped Tessa’s house would still be standing when we got back on Monday.

“And Gumdrop? Where’s Gumdrop?” I asked.

“Do you know if they allow pets at this hotel?”

“Do not tell me you brought Gumdrop with you.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you.”

An oversized neon pink tote was sitting at Val’s feet. It had a strange boxy shape. I knelt down and listened. A deep purr vibrated from inside the bag.

“You brought Gumdrop with you?”

“I couldn’t leave him at home. He’d get lonely.”

“Actually, Val, Gumdrop doesn’t understand about lonely. He really wouldn’t have cared. In fact, he might have been glad to have all of us out of his house for a while.” Gumdrop thought of the house as his own, and that I was merely his servant, feeding him twice a day, and supplying him with the occasional cube of frozen catnip.

“I was worried about him, and I didn’t want to leave him at home in case Bruno came back.”

“How did you manage to drive down here without going insane from Gummie’s howling?” The cat and I had driven from Miami to Seattle a few years ago. For the first couple of hours, all he did was howl, “Yelloooo. Yellllllooooo. YeLLOOO.” I finally had to drug him with a kitty Ambien before I lost my mind.

“I gave him a double dose of catnip,” Val told me. “Can a cat overdose on catnip? Because he seemed pretty limp after the second cube.” Gumdrop was addicted to the tiny catnip-infused ice cubes that I make for him. I wished I’d never introduced him to the stuff. He had become a little drug addict.

“I don’t know, Val, but he’s alive, because I can hear him purring. Next time, though, only one cube at a time.”

“Oh, and the other thing is that I played him some classical music on the ride down, and he seemed to really like that.”

“Classical?” I’d never thought to try that.

“Oh yes, he especially liked Taco Bell’s ‘Canon in D,’” Val said.

“Do you mean Pachelbel’s ‘Canon in D?’”

“It made me so hungry we had to stop for tacos.”

Time to change directions here before Val had anything more to say about classical music and Mexican food.

“We’d better get out of the lobby before someone realizes you’re smuggling a cat. And before Gummie comes out of his catnip-daze and starts yowling,” I said.

Val grabbed her giant pink tote with my cat inside. I walked her toward the elevator. She looked nervous.

“Jax, you know that thing I said about this hotel? You know about the g-h-o-s-t-s,” Val said. I couldn’t understand why she felt she needed to spell, because if any ghosts were listening, it’s likely they’d know how to spell.

“I haven’t seen a single ghost,” I said, reassuring her. I realized she didn’t know about Saundra. “Look, Val, I’m going to need your help. We’ve had a murder—”

“Oh honey, you didn’t kill someone, did you?” asked Val.

“No. Seriously, Val, concentrate.”

“What can I do to help?” asked Val.

I gave Val the Readers’ Digest version of the weekend’s events. “Here’s my key card for room 611. Go on up, let Gumdrop out of the tote, and put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door,” I said. “Tessa and I are sharing a room. We’ll get a roll-away bed for you. There will be plenty of space. Did you bring anything other than Gumdrop?”

“Oh, yes, I’ve got an overnight bag in my car for occasions such as these.”

“Occasions in which a deranged boyfriend causes you to flee your house with a neighbor’s cat to come to a bead bazaar?”

“In general, any emergency situation.”

“Val, I’m going to have trouble doing much snooping around because all of the vendors already know me and Tessa. But they don’t know you.”

“Got it. You want me to interrogate everyone.”

“No. No, I don’t want that.”

Val looked at me with a pout, her glossy bottom lip sticking out.

“What I want you to do is go shopping.” Val seemed to perk up immediately. “I want you to go through the ballroom and shop at several of the booths to see if you can overhear anything the other vendors have to say about Saundra, or anything that seems suspicious.”