Murder Packs a Suitcase (25 page)

It was probably just a coincidence that she happened to know one of them…wasn't it?

Yet the uncomfortable gnawing in her stomach told her that this was more than a coincidence. Especially when she checked the date of the obituary. She did a quick calculation and realized that Courtney Conover could indeed be Hollinger's daughter.

Up to this point, it hadn't even occurred to Mallory to connect Courtney with Phil. And she certainly hadn't connected her to Huck Hollinger, Phil's business rival. The main reason, of course, was that Courtney had a different last name.

But she found herself remembering Courtney's endless prattling about her wedding that day they'd gone to the
Titanic
exhibit together. Which meant her married name could be Conover while her maiden name had been Hollinger….

Which would mean that her father was the man Phil Diamond had destroyed.

Mallory struggled to make sense of all the bits and pieces of information floating around in her head. If she understood this correctly, not only was Courtney one more person who had ties to Phil Diamond, those ties were very close…and very painful. Twenty years earlier, when she was just a little girl, Phil's damning review of the attraction that Courtney's father had sunk both his dreams and his life savings into had brought about its demise. As a result, her father had committed suicide.

And then Mallory had an even more chilling thought. It could also explain why the maid had thought Courtney was Mallory Marlowe. Courtney must have told the maid that it was her name in order to gain entrance to Mallory's hotel room, using the maid's master key so she could cut off the heads in the family photo next to the bed.

Which meant Courtney had murdered Phil and was trying to scare Mallory away from her attempts at finding the killer.

“Are you okay?” Patrice asked, interrupting her ruminations.

Mallory glanced up, blinking in confusion. “I—I had no idea Huck Hollinger had a daughter named Courtney.”

Patrice frowned. “I vaguely remember something about the daughter. It seems as if this all happened so long ago….”

I bet it doesn't seem that way to Courtney, Mallory thought. In fact, she remembered the young woman's extreme reaction at the
Titanic
exhibit. She'd actually begun to cry, saying, “It's so sad! Wives lost their husbands, children lost their fathers….”

Courtney's own personal experience, to a T.

“Patrice,” she asked in a low, even voice, “you said that Phil's business failed because he couldn't expand. I believe you mentioned that the person who owned the land next door refused to sell it to him.”

“That's right.”

“Why wouldn't he sell? Didn't Phil offer him a reasonable amount for it?”

“It had nothing to do with money. At least not in the immediate sense. In fact, the landowner was itching to sell his land to Phil. He even went so far as to shake hands on the deal. But then his lawyer talked him out of it.”

The word
lawyer
made Mallory's blood run cold. “Lawyer?” she repeated. The word came out as a hoarse whisper.

“That's right. Apparently the guy's lawyer advised him to hang on to his land, told him to think of it as a long-term investment, something whose value was guaranteed to skyrocket over the next few years. So in the end, Phil blamed the lawyer for Crypt Castle's failure.

“That lawyer was right, of course,” Patrice continued. “That was exactly what happened. Just a few years later, the landowner got ten times what Phil had offered him.” With a little laugh, she added, “Figures it would take a slick New York City attorney to see the writing on the wall.”

“Patrice,” Mallory asked hesitantly, “do you happen to remember the lawyer's name?”

“Sorry.” She shook her head. “My memory's not that good.”

“Would you at least recognize it if you heard it?”

“Try me.”

Mallory hesitated. “David Marlowe?”

Patrice was silent for a few seconds. And then she nodded. “That sounds right.”

Mallory felt as if someone had just punched her in the stomach. She now understood why Phil had been hoarding clippings about David for the past twenty years—and why he had gone to the trouble of looking her up on the Internet once he learned someone with the same last name who lived in the New York area would be joining the press trip.

It also explained the nasty-sounding comment he'd made on the very first day, the one about how the two of them would “definitely have the chance to get to know each other a lot better.”

“Anyway,” Patrice continued, not noticing how strongly Mallory was reacting to her casual recounting of what to her probably seemed like ancient history, “around that same time, Phil also lost his column. Shortly after Hollinger opened Monster Mansion, Phil wrote a scathing article about it. After Hollinger killed himself, a reporter at the
Sentinel
found out that Phil was the owner of Crypt Castle. At that point, his true motive behind bashing the competition in the
Observer
became clear.

“Of course, Phil was immediately fired for using his column in such an unethical way. It would have been bad enough if people had figured out he'd used his visibility to hurt his business competitor, but the fact that the result was that his competitor killed himself over his business's failure was too much for people to swallow.

“Word traveled to a lot of other newspapers about what he'd done. Suddenly Phil couldn't get a job writing menus.” With a wry smile, Patrice added, “And to think it was all a misunderstanding.”

Mallory's stomach lurched. She felt as if she was falling in slow motion, and that each time she thought she'd reached the bottom, it turned out there was even farther to fall. “What kind of misunderstanding?”

“About the real reason Hollinger's business failed.”

“What do you mean?”

“It had nothing to do with Phil's column. I mean, my ex had a following, but he wasn't exactly Oprah. Besides, most of his audience lived locally. They weren't the people who were going to make or break a tourist attraction.”

“So you're saying it wasn't Phil's fault that Huck Hollinger's haunted house failed?”

“Nope. It was Huck's accountant.”

Mallory shook her head fast, as if that might help break up some of the cloudiness that had settled around her brain. “I'm not following this.”

“The accountant was embezzling funds. Basically, he took the money and ran. Disappeared. I don't think anybody ever heard from him again. There were all kinds of rumors about him moving to some Caribbean island and changing his name, but it was nothing but speculation. But that's the real reason Huck Hollinger lost everything.”

Would Courtney have known that? Mallory wondered. After all, when all this happened, she was just a little girl….

“Tell me more about this lawyer,” Mallory suddenly blurted out. “David Marlowe.”

“Why are you so interested in him?” Patrice asked. And then her expression turned into one of horror. “Oh, my God. Didn't you say on the phone that your last name is Marlowe? Don't tell me you're—”

“That's right,” Mallory said somberly. “David Marlowe is—was—my husband.”

“Divorced?”

She shook her head. “David died six months ago.”

“Sorry,” Patrice said, sounding sincere. “What was it, a heart attack?”

“Actually, everyone thought it was an accident,” Mallory replied, trying to keep her voice light. “Including me. That is, until the cops found twenty years' worth of newspaper clippings about David in Phil's hotel room.”

“Oh, no,” Patrice said breathlessly.

Mallory searched her face for some sign that this conversation wasn't going where she thought it was going. “Please don't tell me you agree there could have been something else going on between Phil and my husband.”

Patrice held out her hands helplessly. “Look, I don't know what really happened. I mean, it's not as if I have a crystal ball or anything….”

“Just tell me what you think,” Mallory said evenly. “You knew Phil Diamond better than practically anybody.”

Patrice drew in her breath sharply. “The haunted house wasn't the only business Phil ever invested in. Even though he liked writing—and he loved traveling—he always figured that sooner or later he'd find a way to make it big. He always had one get-rich scheme or another going. In fact, he had two other major business failures after the Crypt Castle fiasco.”

“Go on,” Mallory prompted, anxious to see where Patrice was going with this and dreading the moment she'd find out.

“Look,” Patrice said, “it's possible none of this had anything to do with your husband. But a few months ago, I heard through the grapevine that Phil had come up with another idea for a business, one he was sure was going to make him wealthy.” She swallowed hard. “But according to what I was told, it turned out the same lawyer he was so sure ruined everything for him the first time happened to get involved again. For the second time, Phil thought the guy was getting in his way.” She hesitated. “I heard he even went up to New York to try to talk to him.”

“No!” Mallory gasped.

“Phil was a blamer,” Patrice said, shrugging. “Whenever anything went wrong, he had a million reasons why it wasn't his fault. It was always somebody else's doing. In this case, that somebody happened to be this New York lawyer.”

“Can you tell me more precisely when all this happened?” Mallory asked, her heart in her throat.

“It was last summer, in late June. I remember because it was right around the time of our wedding anniversary. Not that I still celebrated. In fact, I usually tried to do something nice for myself every year to make up for the huge mistake I'd made marrying Phil in the first place.”

Mallory's head was spinning so hard she barely listened to what Patrice was saying.

My God, she thought. Phil was in New York around the same time David fell from that balcony. It's possible it wasn't an accident. If events unfolded the way Patrice is saying they did…

“Are you all right?” Patrice asked a second time, interrupting her thoughts.

“Not really,” Mallory said.

And from the way she felt, she suspected she never would be again.

20

“The journey not the arrival matters.”

—T. S. Eliot

M
allory's head was swimming as she drove out of the McDonald's parking lot. She didn't know what shocked her more: the possibility that Phil Diamond had murdered David or her newfound conviction that the person who had killed Phil was the sweet young newlywed she hadn't even considered a serious suspect.

At the moment, making sure Phil's murderer was caught was her highest priority. But she couldn't simply go running to Detective Martinez, claiming that she'd magically morphed into Jessica Fletcher of
Murder She Wrote
fame and, using her superhuman investigative skills, had solved a crime that had even been beyond the capabilities of the Orlando Police Department.

But I have no other choice, she told herself. Maybe if I can get him to just sit down and hear me out…

Besides, she didn't know what else to try.

When she stopped at a red light, she pulled her cell phone out of her purse and punched in Martinez's number.

“Come on,” she muttered. “Answer the phone. Answer the—”

“This is Detective Martinez of Orlando Homicide,” his robotic voice droned. “Please leave your message at the tone.”

Mallory let out a frustrated sigh. But as soon as she heard the beep, she began babbling. “Detective Martinez, this is Mallory Marlowe. I've come across some interesting information that's related to Phil Diamond's murder.
Important
information. I believe it even points to his killer. Please call me back as soon as you get this message. Thanks. Oh, my cell phone number is nine-one-seven…”

What now? she thought as the light turned green.

But she already knew that at this point, there was nothing else she could do. As she continued along International Drive, she decided to proceed as if nothing had changed. She would go back to the hotel, shower and change, and go to the reception.

Even though she was now convinced that her hostess for the evening was a cold-blooded killer.

Very frightening, Mallory thought as she pulled up in front of Horror House later that evening.

From the outside, the attraction looked like an abandoned house with a sagging front porch, peeling paint, and dark windows bordered by crooked shutters. A small cemetery was conveniently located along the side, and the only landscaping consisted of tall, leafless trees with spindly branches. In short, it looked like the perfect place for tourists with strong hearts and good imaginations to have the living daylights scared out of them.

Yet not another soul appeared around. In fact, as Mallory pulled her PT Cruiser into the parking lot, she puzzled over the fact that hers was the only car in sight.

There must be some other place to park, maybe in back, she thought. I guess I missed the sign.

Deciding that one parking spot was as good as another, she pulled up right in front, then headed toward the house. But the fact that there were still no signs of life made her wonder if somehow she'd gotten the time wrong.

I'm nearly positive Courtney said to come at seven, Mallory thought as she pulled open the heavy wooden door, noticing the brass knocker was in the shape of a skull. In that case, I'm not really that early. It's only ten minutes to—

“Hoh-hoh-hoh-hoh-hoh!”
A deep throaty laugh that sounded decidedly evil interrupted her thoughts. It also made her jump.

Okay, special effects, she thought, steadying herself. This
is
a haunted house, after all.

She stepped inside and found herself in a dark hallway. Even though a tremendous crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, its hundreds of tiny bulbs emitted only the dimmest light. Looming up in front of her was a grand staircase, its dark red carpeting badly faded. The elegant wooden banister that ran up along both sides had more than a few broken balusters, and cobwebs were draped everywhere.

They're
fake
cobwebs, Mallory reminded herself, nervously clutching her purse against her side. Everything in this place is fake. It was created for tourists. It's
supposed
to look creepy.

Hanging on the walls were half a dozen huge portraits, imposing oil paintings of stern-looking men and women. They were all dressed in severe Victorian garb with high necklines and somber colors. She took a few steps into the room and discovered that as she moved, their eyes moved, too, as if the subjects of the portraits were watching her.

Clever, she thought, hoping that taking an analytical approach would diminish her uneasiness.

She was beginning to wonder where everybody else was—or if the others had already arrived and were gathering in some other part of the building.

“Hello?” Mallory called. “Is anybody
—e-e-ek!
”

She let out the screech as a female cadaver with long, wild gray hair suddenly careened toward her from out of the darkness. The dead woman's clothes had rotted to tatters that flew from side to side. The ersatz corpse came to a standstill inches from where Mallory stood, so that its decaying face was right in front of her. Its crooked grin revealed brown, uneven teeth and its dark, unseeing eyes bulged out of their sockets.

“Ugh!” Mallory cried, jumping backward.

It's not real, she reminded herself, pushing it out of her way. The only reason you got scared is that it came flying out of nowhere.

You'd think that at least they'd turn off the special effects until we all get inside, she thought, taking a few deep breaths to calm the jackhammer pounding of her heart.

Through the silence of the house, she heard the sound of a woman weeping.

So there
is
somebody else in here, she thought.

She listened more closely, trying to figure out who it could be. Annabelle? Frieda? Maybe even Courtney?

She followed the sound, wandering down a long corridor, toward the partially open door at the end.

“Frieda?” she called. “Is that you?”

As she neared the end of the hallway, she saw that the room up ahead was furnished with Victorian-style furniture. A gold brocade couch stood in the center and an ornate writing table with carved legs was pushed into one corner. Heavy dark green velvet drapes smothered the windows, preventing even the faintest ray of light from penetrating the darkness. An elaborately decorated tiered wedding cake sat on a small round table covered in white linen.

She stepped inside the room, then froze when she saw where the sound was coming from. It was a woman, all right. The hologram of a woman, to be more precise, dressed in a lace wedding gown that was splattered with red. Lying on the ground beside her was a man wearing a tuxedo, presumably the groom. A huge knife was stuck in his chest, and what looked like real blood gushed from the wound.

“Agh-h-h!” Mallory cried involuntarily.

It's
fake,
she told herself again. Everything in this place is fake.

She knew that reminding herself of that simple fact should have gone a long way in calming her down. But for some reason, taking a commonsense approach wasn't helping as much as it should have.

She backtracked, wanting to get away from the macabre scene. This time, she tried a different route, still hoping to stumble upon a cheerful party room where she'd find Wade and the other travel writers sipping champagne.

Heading in the other direction required going up a wooden staircase.

At least this one doesn't have cobwebs all over it, she thought.

Instead, right in front was a big sign that read
HOLD ON TO THE HANDRAIL! THESE STEPS ARE ALIVE!

What on earth could that mean? she wondered.

Still, she did as she was told. Clutching the wooden handrail, she began to climb, surprised by how creaky the stairs were.

Special effects, she reminded herself once again. The creepy noise must be what the sign refers to.

Yet she'd gone up only two steps when they all started to move, the right side of each step moving backward, the left side moving forward, as if they were all split in half.

“Yikes!” she cried, grasping the handrail more tightly to keep from falling.

They've got to be kidding! Mallory thought, struggling to keep her balance. Who ever came up with this idea? Aren't there any lawyers in this state?

She was getting tired of navigating her way through a house whose special effects were not only getting irritating but had also started to get downright dangerous.

Besides, she still hadn't seen any other signs of life.

The uneasy feeling that had first crept up on her when she'd driven into the parking lot had escalated.

Something is very wrong, she thought.

She turned, planning to backtrack out of the house, when a sudden movement caught her eye. Glancing to the right, she saw that someone had lurched into the doorway.

Courtney.

Mallory's first reaction was relief. So there
was
someone else here in the house with her.

But her relief faded fast when she saw that Courtney was holding a gun. Unlike the other frightening effects in this haunted house, it looked very, very real.

And it was pointed right at her.