Ghouls Just Haunt to Have Fun (16 page)

I looked down at Tracy’s purse still on the bar. “Heath, you go with Gopher. I’m going to take Tracy her stuff and I’ll join you in a minute.”

“Got it,” said Heath, and he, Gopher, and the other production assistant walked away.

I gathered up all Tracy’s belongings and told the bartender that I was going to check on her in the ladies’ room.

“Whoa,” he said. “I can’t let you leave without paying the tab.”

“We already paid you for the Coke and the coffee,” I reminded him before motioning to the clutter of shot glasses on the bar. “This was that other lady’s tab.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t seen her in the last ten minutes. I’ll need something like a credit card to hold on to before I can let you take her purse.”

I rolled my eyes and fished around in Tracy’s handbag, coming up with a wallet and a credit card. “I don’t feel right about digging through her stuff like this,” I muttered.

“I won’t charge the card unless she doesn’t come back,” the bartender reassured me. “Just let her know that I’m holding on to it, okay?”

I nodded and got up from the bar stool, carrying Tracy’s purse over to the ladies’ room. She’d seemed drunk enough to have either gotten sick or passed out, and I was hoping that I didn’t have to deal with a lot of that drama when I found her.

I pushed open the door to the ladies’ room and called out, “Tracy?” No one replied. I then went inside and looked around.

The powder room was a peach tile with mint green accents. There were four stall doors, and over the four sinks was another mirror with a golden frame and intricate carvings, a twin to the one I’d seen in the conference room. As I was turning to the stalls, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and glanced up at the reflection in the mirror. A woman was coming into the powder room, and I think she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She had long dark hair that fell in waves down her back, and her face was heart shaped, with full lips and large brown eyes. I smiled at her reflection and she nodded back.

I suddenly felt self-conscious about staring, so I turned to the stalls and bent down to check whether any of them were occupied. “Yoo-hoo,” I called again as I walked along the stalls. “Tracy, are you in here?”

In the last stall I spotted a pair of legs wearing the same high heels I’d seen on the production assistant, and I knocked softly on the door. “Tracy, are you okay in there?”

She didn’t answer, and I knocked a second time. “Tracy?” I said, pushing against the door to see if it would open. It was locked from the inside. “Come on, honey,” I encouraged. “Wakey, wakey!” Still no reply, so I bent down again and tried to peer under the door. And that was when I saw Tracy’s arm dangling at an odd position, and dripping down her arm and pooling in a small puddle was a thin line of red blood. “Ohmigod!” I shrieked, and stood up quickly.

Reflexively I turned toward the door to ask if the woman who had just come into the powder room could go for help . . . but there was no one else in the room. I then realized that I hadn’t heard the woman enter any of the other stalls. Pushing that out of my mind for the moment, I shoved my shoulder into the door as hard as I could. It hurt like a bitch, but the lock on the other side held. “Tracy!” I yelled, backing up from the door. “Honey, hang on!” I then karate-kicked the door and it banged open, revealing the dead body of the production assistant covered in blood, her lifeless eyes open and horrified as a knife handle stuck straight out of her chest.

I reeled away from her and my back hit the sink hard, but I didn’t feel it until later, when the police came. For the moment I was really finding it hard to breathe. I opened my mouth to scream, but the sound wouldn’t form. All that I seemed to be able to manage was to take in large gulps of air. I turned and fled the powder room, crashing through the door out to the mezzanine. I must have looked as terrified and panic-stricken as I felt, because people were openly gaping at me, and one of those people was Gilley.

“M.J.?” he said, looking at me in alarm. “What’s the matter?”

I pointed to the powder room and struggled to breathe. I knew in the back of my mind that I was hyperventilating, but I was powerless against it. Instinctively I doubled over, grabbing my knees and working to hold the intake of breath in my lungs for a few seconds before exhaling. In the background I heard Gilley shout, “Steven! Come quick! I think M.J.’s hurt!”

Gilley arrived at my side and bent down to peer up at my face. I shook my head and felt tears well and drop to the floor . . . just like Tracy’s blood when it ran down her arm. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the horrific image just continued to play out in my mind’s eye.

“Sweetheart,” said Gilley, “what’s happened to you?”

“Where does it hurt?” I heard Steven ask urgently.

I opened my eyes and looked up at my partner and pointed to the ladies’ room. I fought to have my lips form the word
murder
, but all that came out was a “Mah . . . Mah . . . Mah!” sound.

“Man?” said Gilley. “A man did this to you?”

I shook my head and sank to my knees. The world was closing in around me, and I was dizzy and close to fainting. Tears continued to leak out of my eyes, and I felt a sob forming in the base of my throat. “Tray . . .” I said. “Hurt!” I finally managed.

“Someone hurt you with a tray?” Gilley tried, and I felt like swatting him.

I shook my head again and pointed back to the ladies’ room. “Go . . . there!” I gasped just as Steven put something over my mouth and pushed my head forward.

“Breathe into this bag,” he said calmly. “You’re hyperventilating, M.J. Just slow down for a second, okay?”

I took several breaths, squeezing my eyes closed and trying to concentrate on the regular exchange of air. When I felt a little less light-headed I pulled the bag away and pointed yet again to the powder room, saying, “Go there!”

I saw Steven and Gilley look sharply at each other; then they each turned to the ladies’ room. Gilley got to his feet and quickly walked to the door, knocking loudly from outside. He looked over his shoulder at me, as if to ask permission to go in. I nodded vigorously.

Steven was rubbing my back gently and trying to get me to calm down. “It’s all right,” he said. “You’re okay now,
cariña
; just keep breathing into the bag.”

Steven didn’t have a chance to say anything more, because not a second later everyone in the vicinity heard a high-pitched squeal that sounded like a howler monkey screaming for its life.

In the next instant, Gilley came crashing out of the powder room, shrieking and flailing his arms. “Murder!” he shouted.
“She’s been murdered!”

 

For the next hour the scene around us would have been comical if it weren’t so tragic. The police arrived in short order, and my new friend Detective MacDonald was the first to take command of the situation. Crime-scene tape was set up in a large rectangle from the bar all the way to the ladies’ room, forcing the hotel guests to find other ways in and out of the building.

A line slowly formed at the front desk, where guests demanded their money back and a quick checkout as word spread that the second fatality in two days had taken place at the hotel. Murray Knollenberg had gone from pale to ashen, and a light sweat dampened his brow. He teeter-tottered back and forth between his harried staff at the counter and the police investigators taking over the lobby.

Heath and Gopher had joined us on the couch in the lobby, where we were all ordered to sit and wait to be interviewed, and to his credit Gopher looked intensely upset over Tracy’s tragic end. “She was such a good kid,” he blubbered as a few leaky tears ran down his cheeks. “Why would anyone want to hurt her?”

Gopher also got a call from Mike, who phoned him from the airport to say that he had heard some strange noises coming from the room he’d been left to guard, and decided to hightail it out of there. He apparently didn’t need the job that badly.

Gil was sitting next to me and not at all happy that I’d sent him into the powder room to discover the body. “You could have given me a little warning,” he snipped irritably.

“So sorry my hyperventilating, shivering, and crying weren’t big enough clues for you, Sherlock,” I snapped back.

“Hey, now, you two,” said Steven. “Let’s not argue.”

“I’m not arguing,” I insisted, my nerves still on edge. “But I would just like to state for the record that this entire fiasco could have been avoided if a certain
someone
hadn’t signed us up for a stay in Hotel Hell.”

“Oh, like it’s
my
fault,” Gilley squealed, and I rubbed my temples, remembering how his voice got very pitchy when he got indignant.

“I didn’t say it was your fault . . . per se. I was just commenting on the fact that
normally
on a Saturday afternoon I am home watching television, and not so concerned with being attacked by demons and finding dead bodies in bathroom stalls.”

Gilley crossed his arms and glared down at the floor. “Well, I am sorry!” he grumbled. “But you have been a real pill lately, and I thought a nice trip to fabulous San Francisco would do you some good. My apologies for trying to look out for you!”

“A pill?” I snapped, sitting up to stare hard at him. “
I’ve
been a pill? What the hell do you mean by
that
?”

“I mean that if I didn’t know better I’d think you weren’t getting laid,” Gil said, and I heard more than one gasp from the people sitting around us. “But clearly that’s not the case, so maybe it’s an early case of perimenopause! Maybe you should think about having those hormones checked, hmmmm?”

“Oh . . . no . . . you . . .
didn’t
!” I yelled, standing up, ready to literally swat my partner, when I heard the sound of someone loudly clearing his throat.

I whirled around, ready to tell whomever was trying to interject some reason into the conversation where to stuff it, when I realized that Detective MacDonald was looking at me with raised eyebrows and the smallest of smirks. “Mind if I interrupt this little love fest?” he asked casually.

I felt my cheeks burn as I plastered a rather strained smile onto my face while kicking Gilley in the shin with my foot. “Of course, Detective,” I said. “Please join us.”

MacDonald took a seat on the couch on the other side of Heath, who looked as though he wanted to be anywhere but here, and I knew exactly how he felt. “So,” MacDonald said, flipping to a blank page in his notebook. “Tell me who found the body.”

“I did,” I said. And then I told him everything, from the last time I’d seen Tracy at the bar to finding her in the bathroom.

“And before you went into the restroom, did you see anyone else come out?”

“No.”

“Did you see anyone else in there before you found Tracy?”

“No . . .” I said before remembering the woman I’d seen in the mirror. “Except there was a lady who came in right after me.”

“And where is she now?” asked MacDonald, glancing around at those of us on the couch.

I stared blankly at him. “I have no idea,” I admitted.

“Did she come out after you exited?” he probed.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so, but I’ll admit that I wasn’t thinking very clearly right after seeing Tracy.”

MacDonald’s lips pursed as he looked over what he’d written. “What did this mystery woman look like?” he asked me.

I described her to him and noticed that as I did, Heath sat up straight and leaned forward, as if he were very interested in my description. “Okay, we’ll interview the guests and see if we can spot her,” he said. “Now tell me about this knife—the murder weapon. The general manager of the hotel says that you guys had it as part of the television show and that it’s haunted by a demon or some sort of baloney?”

I looked at Heath and then over at Gopher. They were wearing the same shocked expressions. “The knife we’ve been looking for was the one used to murder Tracy?” Gopher asked me.

I was just as taken aback by the detective’s question. It hadn’t occurred to me that it was the same knife Heath and I were trying to find. “That I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I mean, Knollenberg is probably jumping to conclusions, although he was right to tell you that during our television shoot there was a knife that seemed to have some sort of unnatural power, but I hadn’t considered it was the one used to kill Tracy.”

MacDonald reached into his blazer and pulled out a small digital camera. Flipping through several shots, he arrived at one and showed it to me. “That the knife from your television show?”

I stared in horror at the viewfinder as the bloody blade with the intricate carvings was captured in the image. “Ohmigod,” I whispered, showing the picture to Heath, Gilley, Steven, and Gopher, who all nodded grimly. “That
is
the same knife, Detective!”

MacDonald scribbled in his notebook before taking the camera back. “Talk to me about this unnatural power,” he said. “What do you mean by that?”

Heath leaned forward and lifted up his shirtsleeve, showing the detective the three claw marks on the top of his shoulder. “M.J. has the same pattern on her back,” he told the detective. “Only the cuts on her back are a lot deeper and longer.”

MacDonald’s brows furrowed, and he looked from Heath’s arm to me, as if he were missing something. “Come again?” he demanded.

“That silver knife was introduced into the production,” I explained. “We don’t know who brought it in or laid it down on the table where we were sitting—I mean, we were both distracted and tired, and no one from the shoot remembers seeing who delivered it, but right after it was set in front of us Heath and I were both attacked and cut up by some sort of . . .” I paused, because I didn’t know how to describe what it was that had clawed us.
Demon
just seemed ridiculous.

“Poltergeist,” Heath filled in, obviously thinking the same thing.

MacDonald peered closely at Heath’s wounds before asking me, “Can I see the ones on your back?”