Chasing Ghosts (7 page)

She rode the elevator to the eleventh floor.
Alternatives played in her head. What if housekeeping was in the
cardinal’s suite now? What if security was posted outside the room?
What if the security guard insisted on joining Sara in the room?
What if a member of management, knowing that housekeeping shouldn’t
be working after six o’clock, pulled her aside?

As she wandered the hall, she heard music
coming from one of the rooms. Voices from a television set, the
news possibly. More voices arguing. Sometimes Sara wished she
didn’t have enhanced hearing. She concentrated on blocking out the
background sounds.

As she approached the supply room, she pulled
the master key card from her pocket and opened the door. Cleaning
carts lined one wall. Towels and bed linens were stacked on shelves
above the carts. Cleaning supplies were on the shelves on the
opposite wall. Sara grabbed the closest cart, pushed it out of the
room and over to the elevator. Once on the elevator she pushed the
button for the twelfth floor. The doors closed but the elevator
didn’t move. Sara held her breath. Now what? She pushed the button
again. Still nothing. Sara inserted the key card into a slot
labeled Suites. The elevator moved.

The lavish décor on the twelfth floor far
exceeded anything Sara had ever seen before. A rain forest of
plants surrounded a fountain in the middle of the atrium. She
checked the sign on the wall. Cardinal Esrey’s was the Cordova
Suite. Soft music was coming from one of the suites. Humming,
probably from refrigerators. Ice clinking. Someone was making a
drink in another suite.

Moving quickly down the hall, Sara located
the Cordova Suite. There wasn’t anyone standing guard. So far so
good. She parked the cleaning cart just outside the door, grabbed a
few towels, then shoved the master key card in the slot. A green
light flashed. Slowly she pushed the door open, waited and
listened. She heard her pulse pounding in her ears. She gently
closed the door, then bolted it so no one could enter.

She stepped into a living room with a vaulted
ceiling and dark wood furnishings, brocade sofas, and Oriental
carpeting. A fireplace was on the far wall with a large basket of
flowers set inside. Sara hadn’t seen anything this lavish since the
Tyler house. Floor to ceiling windows gave a magnificent view of
the Cedar Point Yacht Club in the distance. Lights from boats could
be seen offshore. A staircase to her right led to a second floor
loft, probably the bedrooms. Off to her left was a kitchen and bar
area. Further on was a dining room table large enough to seat
twelve, and beyond that a separate conference room. Hallways were
large enough to drive a car through.

Sara could spend hours admiring the suite but
reminded herself she had work to do. She had three surveillance
bugs and had to pick the best places to plant them. Dagger was
curious to find out more about Esrey that might be hidden from the
public. The conference room had an Oriental silk screen painting on
the wall. Sara placed one of the bugs on the back of the painting.
She stood in the living room and studied the surroundings. She
could always place a bug in one of the plants but all of the plants
were live and might be watered, repotted, or thrown out. She
couldn’t chance it. The fireplace had a marble mantel, a perfect
place for the second bug.

She headed for the second floor. The
staircase was marble with an Oriental runner and high-gloss wood
handrail. The upstairs furnishings proved even more extravagant.
The bed was on a platform with a velvet canopy. The bathroom had a
whirlpool large enough for six people in addition to a walk-in
shower. Gold fixtures were just a tad too much in Sara’s
opinion.

It didn’t feel appropriate to bug the
cardinal’s bedroom. But the loft did have a library and another
fireplace. Sara placed the last bug under an end table in the
library. A long conference table was in the middle of the room and
at one end of the table was an opened briefcase.

She was just about to search the case when
she heard a soft creaking, like someone stepping on a wood floor.
Sara lifted her head and focused her attention on the source of the
sound. It was coming from the cardinal’s bedroom. This was a bad
time to travel unarmed. She focused her senses on the room as she
entered. She didn’t hear anything other than her own pulse pounding
in her ears and her own breathing. Or was it hers? Was there
someone else inhaling? She stopped to listen closer. Creak. Her
attention riveted to a set of French doors which weren’t completely
closed. Sara breathed a sigh of relief. It was just the ceiling fan
causing a draft. She walked over to the French doors and pulled
them open.

A man, mouth twisted in a grimace, tumbled
toward her. Sara screamed and stepped to one side. The man fell to
the floor with a thud. Sara stumbled away and nearly collided with
the bed. Her heart pounded against her rib cage as she stared in
shock at what lay before her. Blue face, bulging eyes. The man had
been strangled. Thoughts fired through her brain. She had on latex
gloves, hadn’t left prints anywhere. The bugs were planted. Time to
leave.

She ran out of the bedroom, through the
library, and right into Paul Demko.

“
What?!” Sara’s mouth gaped in shock.
This can’t be. He was dead. But here he was. Same face, same
receding hairline, same suit. Demko lunged at her but Sara called
on her unusual strength and flung him aside like a rag doll. She
dodged his second attempt and tore off for the staircase. A figure
appeared in her peripheral vision dropping from the second floor
like a suicide jumper. Demko had leaped from the loft and landed at
the bottom of the curved staircase. Sara came at him feet first,
landing a blow to his head. Something dropped from his hand and
scuttled across the floor. He shook off the shock to his body and
studied her with renewed interest, cocking his head as though
calculating his next move against a 120 pound woman with unusual
strength.

Demko took a swing at her but she ducked,
flung her feet out and kicked at his kneecap. Bone crunched and he
went down with a howl. Sara ran for the door but he hobbled right
after her, grabbed a handful of her uniform and dragged her back.
He pulled her into a headlock. Sara clawed for his eyes but his
other arm held down her hands. She kicked backward, aiming toward
his injured kneecap. She turned, moving them in a bizarre circular
dance while lights sparkled behind her eyes. She heard pottery
breaking and furniture tumbling. Finally her heel connected with
Demko’s injured kneecap and he folded like a broken chair. Sara
stepped away and took in gulps of air. Her vision started to clear
as she saw Demko grope for a pen then stumble to his feet, wobbling
in front of the tall windows.

“
Don’t you ever quit?” Sara said. She
took a deep breath then ran straight at him, leaped in the air and
caught him in the chest with both feet. Her momentum carried them
both into the window. Glass shattered as they tumbled out of the
twelfth floor. She expected his hands and feet to claw for purchase
but instead he was clinging to the pen with both hands. The parking
lot below was small and poorly lit. Demko was headed right for the
hood of a truck, a vehicle which, even in the dark, Sara
recognized. She pushed away from him, then shifted. Demko’s eyes
grew wide as he witnessed her clothing and wig fall away and the
human form change to a hawk. It flew up and landed on the seventh
floor window ledge.

Demko’s body hit the vehicle with a loud
crash. Several seconds later the truck exploded. In succession,
several surrounding cars exploded sending up a ball of fire and
fumes into the night sky. The hawk used its beak to pull a latex
glove from one talon. The glove drifted in the direction of the
fire only to be sucked into the flames. The hawk checked the
grounds for witnesses. It scanned nearby cars, the back entrance to
the hotel, the street beyond. Assured it hadn’t been seen, the hawk
took flight.

CHAPTER 9

Dagger barely listened to Sheila’s ramblings
about a story she was investigating which had something to do with
a refinery dumping waste into Lake Michigan. He was too busy
studying the cardinal seated across from him. Esrey had looked
familiar in the picture on Demko’s computer but up close and
personal he was just another priest dressed casually in white
collar and black cassock. After spending the last few hours with
the man, Dagger was now certain that he had never seen him before
in his life. So why had he believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that
he had killed him?

“
Are you listening to me?”

Dagger shifted his gaze to the exquisite
blonde seated next to him. Her silk suit looked as though it were
woven with the fine platinum strands of her hair. At least she had
the good sense to wear something that didn’t expose the breast
implants her father had purchased when she graduated from college.
Her green eyes blazed with irritation and she pursed her
collagen-injected lips into a pout.

“
Barely,” he replied as he lifted her
hand from his thigh. “I’m trying to stay focused here.” Dinner
dishes had been cleared away and replaced with some type of
chocolate mousse and cream puffs shaped like swans. Three platters
of desserts had been placed at strategic points on the table.
Dagger was sure if he used a yardstick each platter would be of
equal distance apart.

Leyton Monroe excused himself, but not before
stabbing Dagger with one final glare as a reminder that he was in
his crosshairs. Standing up the daughter of one of the richest men
in Cedar Point hadn’t won Dagger any soft spots in his heart.
Monroe had managed to only lose the security deposit with the
reception hall. He had had the foresight to add a clause in the
contract to his benefit knowing that somehow the wedding of his
daughter to a hooligan like Dagger was never going to take
place.

“
Sweetheart, come over here and talk to
mummy.” Anna Monroe patted the chair next to her. She was a short,
frumpy version of Sheila. Dagger imagined Sheila would look the
same when she reached her fifties. Frumpy for the wealthy was quite
a bit different from frumpy for the middle class. Anna’s hair was
in a fashionable swirl of curls in the same shade as Sheila’s hair.
Dagger figured they got a two-for-one discount at the salon. Her
dress was tailored to hide the middle age spread.

“
Oh, jeez,” Sheila said under her
breath but forced a smile and moved five chairs down.

The dinner guest list consisted of the
Monroes, Robert Tyler, Cardinal Esrey, several area bishops, Mayor
James Brookins and his wife, Bobbie, who had left early because of
a nanny problem at home. The cardinal’s private secretary, Donald
Thomas, was a fidgety priest who made even Dagger nervous. He was a
few pounds shy of pudgy with a patch of baldness on the top of his
head. Skin as smooth as a baby’s bottom, it was difficult to tell
the priest’s age. If there had been less hair, if it had ringed the
bottom half of his head, he would almost look at home in a
monastery. He had sat at the cardinal’s elbow all night with
notepad in hand should the cardinal make a request. Whether bending
over his plate or the notepad, Father Thomas was obsessively
focused on whatever he was doing. His voice was soft, almost timid
and he had waited patiently for the cardinal to finish speaking
before interrupting.

Dagger didn’t remember Thomas mumbling more
than one complete sentence and wondered in what monastery Esrey
found this guy. After Thomas left to do God knows what with his
notes, some of the guests retreated to the veranda with brandy in
hand, leaving the women at one end of the table and Esrey and
Dagger seated across from each other at the other end of the
table.

Cardinal Esrey studied Dagger over the rim of
his brandy glass. Dagger had stuck to coffee through dinner. “You
look like a man who might have a lot to confess,” Esrey said.

Dagger should have worn a white suit instead
of a black suit and shirt with a granite-colored tie. At least he
would have looked less like a hit man. He had found the cardinal’s
dry sense of humor rather engaging.

“
My conscience is clear,” Dagger said
with a smile.

“
You have a certain dangerous aura
about you.”

“
It’s the suit. I think anyone who
dresses in all black makes people cautious.”

Esrey chuckled at that comment. “Of
course.”

Dagger had found the cardinal to be quite
knowledgeable on many subjects and able to hold his own when it
came to discussing politics with the mayor. When the subject came
to the Bible, Dagger had just sat back and listened. It wasn’t one
of his favorite subjects, seeing that he was an agnostic. His only
contribution to the discussion was to say the Bible was a nice
behavioral tool but it was too bad not enough people practiced it.
This had warranted him a burying of Sheila’s nails into his
thigh.

“
Do you believe in divine intervention,
Mr. Dagger?” Esrey asked.

“
Would have helped if your quarterback
had steered those planes away from the Twin Towers.”

Esrey smiled. “I love a challenge, Mr.
Dagger, and you are quite a challenge.”

“
It’s just Dagger.”

“
Dagger.” The cardinal took a sip of
brandy, then set the glass down and studied the contents of the
glass for several minutes. “Haven’t you ever seen anything that
made you question your lack of belief? That made you think, ‘this
is the most miraculous thing I have ever witnessed.’ You have never
felt like that?”

Dagger couldn’t help but think of Sara. He
couldn’t explain her abilities but were they really divine? If he
hadn’t witnessed them firsthand he would have never believed it.
Then he thought of Demco. Demco’s abilities, though, were all
manmade, he was sure of it.