An Unconventional Murder (7 page)

"There was no other choice," Rena told him. "He wasn't originally scheduled to be on the
panel. Madeline Brogner was supposed to fly in last night, but her flight got cancelled. Since
Tuck was already here, I figured he was better than no one at all."

"Well, you figured wrong," Randy snorted. "I hope you used Lysol to clean the floor
where that skunk was standing."

Cameron studied Callahan with a professional eye. "You don't like Mr. Tuck?"

"No one likes Mr. Tuck," Upton observed. "At one time or another, he's had an agency
relationship with just about everyone on the executive board."

Cameron frowned. "So if no one likes him, why is he at the convention at all?"

Rena said. "One of the publishers insisted that we invite him. Unfortunately, he
accepted."

"And besides," Ashley asserted, "Some of us happen to think quite highly of him. I, for
one, think he's been treated unfairly." He told Upton, "He pulled me aside after the first session.
He wants to talk to me about a book proposal I submitted to him. I think he's interested in
me!"

"Congratulations," Upton said, "but be careful, Ash. A lot of us have gotten burned by
Tuck. You should have heard him this morning, telling everyone they were crazy if they thought
someone like him would ever stoop to representing any of them."

"So he's picky about who his clients are," Ashley returned. "What's wrong with that? I
screen my clients. The S.E.C. requires it."

"There's nothing wrong with it at all," Upton answered. "If he were even half as good as
he claims to be. But he isn't. He talks a good game, but he never produces. In my view, the
measure of a man is whether he makes good on his promises." He shifted his attention to
Cameron. "If Tuck had been the one killed, you'd have no end to your list of suspects."

"As it is," Cameron observed as he gestured toward the thick computer printout
containing the names of everyone who had registered for the convention, "it's only limited to
this?"

"And the hotel staff," Upton added with a sympathetic shrug. "And, come to think of it,
all of the guests who are staying here at the Marquis."

Cameron gestured toward the computer printout. "Ms. Oberhaus, is this everyone who's
registered for the convention?"

"It is," she assured him. "We updated it this morning."

"Where do I look to see who signed up for what session?"

"You can't. They don't sign up. People just sit in on whatever session interests them.
Some of them even switch from room to room during a session, trying to take in a little bit of
everything."

"So we have no way of knowing who was in this room this morning?"

"No. We can probably narrow it down, though. The current members could tell us which
other members they saw at the session."

"That's a good point," Upton said. "Royce and I could certainly put together a list of the
people we recognized." He asked Fontaine, "What do you think, twenty or thirty?"

"I would say so," the elder writer agreed.

Cameron said, "How many members does the CFWA have?"

"Well over two hundred," Upton told him. "Although most of them aren't active. The
group consists of everyone from unpublished wannabes who have never actually written a single
word to accomplished professionals with many years of experience. Obviously, the older
members tend to know each other better than they know the newcomers."

Randy said, "In short, it's gonna take a small army to figure out exactly who attended
which session."

"Maybe you don't need to know everyone who was there," Upton suggested. "Don't you
just need to identify the first few people who entered the room after the doors were unlocked?
Maybe one of them could even tell you who unlocked the doors. And when."

"Good point," Rena agreed. "And they would have been the first ones to see the dead
man."

Cameron reached for one of the legal pads and began making notes. Then, setting down
the pen, he opened the leather camera case. Inside, he found an Olympus digital camera and what
appeared to be a 2.0 gig memory card.

"This will work." A thought occurred to him, and he said to Rena, "I thought that other
woman went looking for cameras. What happened to her?"

"GP remembered she had a lunch date with one of the people who spoke this morning.
Suzanne's looking to change agents. She told me she wants to test the waters." She lowered her
voice. "Frankly, I think her career's in trouble. Rumor has it her publisher rejected her last two
manuscripts."

"I've heard the same thing," Upton agreed. There was an edge in his voice as he added, "I
thought it was a secret."

"Well, excuse me," she said. "Nobody told me it was confidential."

"Rumors never are," Cameron observed, deliberately intervening on Rena's behalf.
"That's how they spread." He glanced at his wrist watch. Twelve forty-five. Lunch would have to
wait. There were things he needed to do first. "I'm going to ask all of you to leave the room now.
I need to take a look at my crime scene. Needless to say, please don't leave the hotel."

Cameron let out a sigh as he thought about the chain of events that had left him alone in
an auditorium at the Marquis Hotel with a dead body: a record-breaking Halloween blizzard, a
deadly hostage situation unlike anything that had ever happened before in Lakewood, Colorado,
and a bizarre murder committed with a weapon owned by the Lakewood PD.

Then he set out to do his job.

The first thing to do was to set priorities. Of course, the crime scene had been
completely contaminated. Literally dozens of people had come and gone since the murder
occurred. He shrugged.

He would just do the best he could. The task of questioning everyone who had attended
one or both of the sessions in the Aspen Room would have to wait for another day--and for the
street officers. If Cameron was going to figure this one out, he would have to come up with
something on his own. This wasn't
CSI
, and he couldn't just make information magically
appear on some computer screen.

He began taking pictures with the digital camera. With each shot, he noted on the legal
pad precisely where he was standing, what he was trying to depict and the time when he took the
picture. He removed the sunglasses from the corpse, careful not to obliterate any possible
fingerprints. Reaching into the battered old Crime Lab briefcase, he pulled out a medium sized
plastic bag and dropped the glasses inside. Even though he also had the fingerprint kit with him,
he gave no thought to trying to test the glasses himself. His past efforts to lift prints had yielded
less than spectacular results.

Leave the technical stuff to the technicians, he decided. Use your brain, Mitch. There's
some sort of twisted scheme behind all of this. Figure out what it is. Then figure out who did it.
He shot four close-ups of the dead man's face. If he could get those printed out , he could
circulate them around the hotel. That was something the CFWA board members might be able to
handle. With a little luck, they might find someone who had seen or heard something significant.
He snapped several shots of the woolen scarf and then carefully unwrapped it from the dead
man's neck, exposing the garrotte.

He clenched his teeth as he photographed the murder weapon. The sheer gall of stealing
the garrotte from the display case and then using it to kill a man, that said something in and of
itself.

Someone was going to pay for this.

He decided to leave the garrotte in place. There was nothing to gain by removing it; and
the scientists might be able to draw some useful conclusions, such as whether the killer was
left-handed, taller or shorter than the victim, or had approached his quarry from behind.

He stood up, taking time to study the body. There was something peculiar about the way
it was arranged.
Arranged.
He wrote the word on the legal pad. The body hadn't fallen
randomly. Someone had carefully placed it in that corner of the room.

The corpse was sitting upright.

Why hadn't it simply slumped over onto the carpet?

He leaned over the cadaver and discovered that something was protruding from the
collar of Randy Callahan's overcoat. Cameron shot several more pictures. Then he began probing
behind the collar with his fingers. Someone had placed a pair of two-by-four boards side by side,
inside the back of the overcoat. Moving the collar farther back, he could see that the protruding
ends of the wood were stained dark brown and had been carved out to form angled slots about
three inches long and half an inch wide.

A search of the man's pants revealed what Cameron had expected he would find: the
pockets were empty. No wallet, no credit cards, no keys. There was nothing that might help him
identify the corpse.

Cameron stared at the dead man. Why would someone would go to all the trouble to
dress him up in other people's clothing? And why one item from each of the board members? It
would have taken time and effort--not to mention significant risk of being caught--to steal things
belonging to five different people.

Did someone have a grudge against the CFWA? Or maybe just the board members? Was
using the garotte an act of opportunity, or was this murder also directed at the Lakewood
PD?

Or, even worse, was it directed at Cameron? Had his carelessness in handling the
weapons display exposed innocent people to danger?

He shook off those disturbing thoughts and began collecting every sample that might
prove useful, including carpet fibers and some stray hairs he discovered on the overcoat and
hat.

Then he sat cross-legged on the floor and tried to visualize how the murder had
occurred. When and where was the victim killed? Was he already dressed in the stolen clothes
when the killer struck? And what was the significance of those boards, especially the grooved
ends? Wasn't that an indication that this thing was planned in advance?

After a few minutes, Cameron decided he was wasting his time. At this point in the
investigation, his efforts should be directed at gathering all the information he could. There
would be plenty of time for the scientists to analyze what he had found.

And, like the vague flash of light Arthur Upton had described, Cameron was struck by
the feeling that something was vaguely out of place.

If only he could figure out what it was...

* * * *

While Cameron was conducting his crime scene investigation, Upton, Rena and the
other board members were huddled in the hallway outside the swimming pool entrance.

"We need somewhere private where we can conduct an
ad hoc
board meeting,"
Upton said.

"You can use my room," Suzanne GP offered.

Royce murmured stiffly, "No, thank you, I don't--"

"I won't bite," she assured him, adding with a suggestive wriggle of her brows, "at least,
not unless you want me to."

The white-haired man bristled. "I most certainly do not."

Upton was amused by Fontaine's discomfiture, but made no comment. "Let's go talk to
the hotel manager. I'm sure he can arrange something for us. Rena, you said his name is
Forrest?"

"That's right. John Forrest."

They marched
en masse
down the hallway toward the convention area and rode
the escalator down to the first floor. Rena led the way along a deserted corridor. The last office in
line was marked,
Manager.

Upton tapped gently on the door.

A weary voice called out, "Come in." A portly man in a wrinkled white shirt with a red
tie loosened at the neck was seated behind a cluttered desk. "May I help you? I-- Oh, Ms.
Oberhaus. How are you doing?"

"I've done better," Rena said. "I assume you've heard about the man in the Aspen
Room?"

"I have. A terrible thing. Terrible! To my knowledge, this is the first time anyone has
ever died in this hotel."

"He didn't merely die," Royce pointed out, gesturing dramatically. "He was
murdered
."

The manager jerked in his chair as though it were suddenly electrified. "Murdered? Are
you sure?"

"Of course, we're sure," Royce answered in the same theatrical tone. "The poor man was
found--"

Upton stepped forward. "Mr. Forrest, I'm Art Upton, President of the CFWA. A police
detective named Cameron is present in the hotel, and he's got everything under control. He'll
want to talk to you in a little while. He'll want you to keep this as quiet as possible." He glared
fiercely at Royce. "We don't want to alarm anybody."

Forrest leaned back onto his chair. "Of course. The Marquis will cooperate to the
fullest." He cocked his head. "Is there something else?"

"Actually, there are several things. We need to find a place to hold the sessions that were
scheduled for the Aspen Room. It's off limits to everyone for the immediate future."

"I'm sure we can accommodate you. If you'll speak with Jimmy, he can make the
arrangements."

Upton exchanged glances with Rena, but neither of them said anything. The last thing he
wanted to do was deal with Jimmy, but he decided not to press the issue.

"We'll talk to him. The second thing we need is a place where our board can meet.
Somewhere private."

Forrest thought for a moment and then said, "Well, there's the honeymoon suite. It
happens to be vacant at the moment."

GP stepped forward. "The honeymoon suite? That would be perfect!"

"Is that too much of an imposition?" Upton said.

Forrest said, "It's the least I can do. The CFWA has held its annual convention at the
Marquis the past eleven years." He pressed a button and said into the intercom, "Andrew, please
bring me a key to room 1210." He turned to Upton. "Will one key be enough?"

"Actually, five would be better, if you don't mind. We can make it our temporary
headquarters. I've got a feeling we're going to be spending a lot of time there."