Murder's Last Resort (3 page)

Chapter 8

Back home alone, I wandered from the living room to the bedroom and back into the living room again. With French gone, I felt anxious, skittish. I was used to being alone—that was the cost of a beautiful life with an important man—but this was horrible. There was a constant chafing at my heart and in my brain. I padded into the kitchen, made myself a cup of tea and took it to the living room.

I sat on the sofa, facing the lake, sipping the hot tea, and tried to calm down. I wondered about French. Would he be in his own cell or in some kind of central holding tank, complete with hardened criminals, drunks and rowdy sailors who abused their town passes from Baldwin Park, the local Naval Training Center?

French was so proper and clean. The worst thing for him would be to stay in a cell with no change of underwear, no shower, no deodorant. And a toothbrush. Did they keep new toothbrushes for the prisoners and hand them out, one by one? If not, this alone could push a man like French over the edge.

French would tire of peanut butter sandwiches, never a favorite with him. Rick had told me this was standard fare in the Orange Avenue hoosegow. No grilled salmon or swordfish from Papa’s Place or La Croqueta, our fine dining establishments. Too bad I couldn’t bring him a picnic basket with goodies a` la Little Red Riding Hood.

The more I thought about French, the antsier I got. A new thought hit me like a karate chop between my shoulder blades—not Rick, not anybody was going to stop me from going to the jail to see French. I packed a basket of goodies, some fresh underwear and sundries for him, threw my boots back on and ran to my car. As I drove, I thought about French and how he would worry about his hotel. That was French—so dutiful. After that, he might spare a worried thought for me, though he sometimes said I was like a cat—I always landed on my feet.

Right now I was on four wheels, speeding toward my man. was on duty at the jail? Seemed like most of the police force was at our hotel. I hoped it might be someone I knew, someone who might cut me some slack.

Chapter 9

My little gambit was a bust, sort of. When I arrived at the jail, I ran into my friend, Brad Yaeger. Brad was the police hypnotist and had helped me overcome my fear of palmetto bugs and other Florida insects. He liked me and he liked French, but he didn't budge. He was in charge of the prisoners and took his assignment seriously.

He told me Rick could have his badge for insubordination if he let me in to see French. I couldn't have that happen, so I backed down. I gave Brad the basket for French.

“Don't you worry, Maya. I'll keep an eye out for him,” he said, giving my shoulder a protective pat as he walked me back to my car. “He'll be out in no time. This is all a big mix-up.”

I swiped at my eyes and hoped he didn't see. “Okay, Brad. I know I can count on you,” and gave him a quick hug before I opened my car door.

Chapter 10

Before I knew it, I was home again, my heart aching even more than it had before. The phone rang and it was Doug Reed. He had been to see French and reported that French was fine. It frustrated me that he had seen French and I had not, but I swallowed the lump in my throat. Hard as it was, I maintained silence.

We hung up and I thought about the receipt and the pantyhose container under my bathroom sink. Hiding those was surely illegal, tampering with evidence or some such thing. But what would have been the point of giving them to Rick? He would have crowed, and I would have been giving him a nail with which to crucify my innocent French. French, who picked up stray spiders in the house with tissues and then tossed them into the shrubbery, rather than kill them.

The phone rang again. This time it was Rick Wells, Orlando PD. He thought it best to keep to the scheduled Manager’s Conference events and activities. Tonight the gala dinner dance would happen, as planned.

“I’ll be honest with you, Maya,” Rick said, “I’m in an odd position here. You’re a person of interest but you’re also familiar with all the players who will be at this gala.”

“Thanks for calling me interesting.”

“You know what I mean,” he snapped. “Tom and I talked it over and we’d like you to keep your eyes and ears open at the party. You know these people. Try to figure out if any of them are acting out of character and then report back to us what you observed.”

“Will do,” I said. “I’m happy to help,” thinking this was a step in the right direction.

“The wait staff from the banquet department will be peppered with plainclothes officers,” he continued, “and the hotel security team will be beefed up with OPD guys.”

Rick believed that Torrey’s murder was an inside job and I agreed. The killer was probably someone within the upper circles of Sapphire Resorts, someone who would stand to benefit from the death of the president of the company.

Then again, it could have been some woman spurned by Torrey when someone younger and cuter tugged at his babe rader. Torrey had such a short attention span.

The ball would proceed tonight as planned and look like any other hotel gala. It would be in lock down mode but only a few of us would know it.

Chapter 11

In my dressing area, I pulled together my outfit for the dance. Something nagged at me while I laid out my clothes. I called Detective Sergeant Tom Koenig.

“Tom, I’d like to invite two guests to tonight’s activities. One is my dear friend, Jake, who works right here on the property as the chief accountant, as you may know. The other is Lily Abbott, the wife of William Abbott, who represents the Norwegian owners. You’ve met both Lily and Jake on several occasions.”

“With all due respect to you, Mrs. French, I’m gonna have to say no. We’ll have enough people to watch tonight without two extra heads bobbin’ around the room.”

“Oh, Tom,” I fairly simpered, doing my best Blanche DuBois. My experience with Southern men in authority was that they did not like to be challenged by women. But they were so chivalrous—it was either inborn or fed them in their baby formula—that they would do almost anything for you if you knew how to fake that feminine helplessness with enough sincerity.

“I ask because I need their moral support and help. You and your men will be so busy catching the murderer, that you won’t have any time to look in on little old me,” I said, feeling just a little cheesy. But hey, I needed his okay.

“You’re right about that,” he answered, sounding proud. He was, no doubt, picturing himself in action later tonight, hunting down his prey like a country bloodhound.

I continued, “French won’t be there to be my partner and keep me company, so Jake and Lily will take his place, more or less. He’d be pleased to know it takes two people to make up for his absence, wouldn’t he?”

“Won’t that be one too many people at your table, ma’am?”

“Tom, you know what?” It was important I sound innocent and not contradictory here. It was all in the tone of voice.

I pretended I was Melanie Wilkes from Twelve Oaks and continued, “They’ll replace not only French, but Torrey, too. We’re going to invent a reason those two scamps have disappeared, aren’t we? What story have you made up, by the way?”

“Well, ma’am, I’m right glad you called when you did. You must have that ESP or somethin’. I was just fixin’ to call you.” He paused for a moment.

“What are we gonna tell ‘em?” he continued. I imagined him scratching the back of his head, deep in a perplexing tangle of non-thoughts.

I considered. “Let’s say that they’ve been called away on some sort of official Sapphire Resorts business. Let’s borrow another property here in Florida.”

“Good,” he said.

“Now, what would require they both leave, yet nothing so big that it would have been on the news?” I asked, more of myself than of him.

“You mean like the collapsin’ of the atrium bridge that crushed all those poor folks in your Dallas hotel a while back?”

“Right, right. It can’t be that big, but something serious—something that might jeopardize the reputation of the hotel—something that Red and French need to handle—” I paused. There was only silence on the other end of the line. I had not expected more.

“I’ve got it!” I said. “We’ll say the Sultan of Barwani was visiting the Coral Gables property, when some jewels belonging to one of his wives went missing from the room safe. Hotel security found the culprit on the engineering staff and returned the jewels. Because the sultan is such a heavy hitter, and he and his entourage mean so much to Sapphire Resorts here and internationally, both Torrey and French were dispatched to smooth things over. They took a chopper from our helipad earlier this evening and are expected back some time later tonight.”

“I was just thinkin’ somethin’ like that myself,” Tom said.

Good thing he could not see me rolling my eyes. I still needed his approval before I could invite my friends.

“Tom, what a great idea that was!” I gushed. How did Southern women do this all day? I was nearly dead from the effort. Yet, I continued, “Now, back to my friends... you’ll see that they not only keep me company, but also they’ll be additional eyes and ears. It’s always good to have a likable extra man at a party. Jake’s a good dancer; he makes the ladies feel beautiful and that may help him gather some interesting information.

“Lily knows a lot of the Sapphire execs and their spouses already,” I added. “She can pump a person for information faster than a sump pump removes sludge from the back of a mobile home.” I felt sure he would understand the rustic comparison.

“Well, ma’am. Seein’ as how we wouldn’t want you to be all alone this evenin’, I guess it might be all right,” he said.

Whew!
Mission accomplished.
My facial muscles required a splint, after all the phony smiling into the line, but victory was mine.

Chapter 12

My usual worries about my looks and my wardrobe were pre-empted by the number of thoughts and questions swirling in my head. I couldn’t get French off my mind. We had to find that killer tonight at the party. We just had to. So many important people were here for the conference, a strangler was on the prowl, and I was all alone and feeling vulnerable. Inside, I was mewling and insecure. Outside, I had ugly, red, itchy splotches all over my midriff; my usual response to stress.

Normally, French and I thought through big problems together. Often, his was the voice of measured logic, whereas my thoughts and feelings collided with one another.

My "aha" moments arrived by special delivery. There was an intuitive alchemy in my brain that threw facts and possibilities together into the hopper. Over time, they came out as a cohesive whole. That didn’t mean I wanted to do all the thinking alone. I liked to bounce my abstracts against French’s more traditional canvas for a new combo of shapes, colors and forms.

My tea sat next to me, getting cold, as I fiddled with my hair and makeup at the dressing table. First things first. Alana Torrey was due back from Atlanta, where her mom had been in surgery.

Good old Tom from the PD had just called me. He was becoming my new best friend. Pretty amazing, considering he didn’t like high teas, line dancing or chick flicks. Or even me, really. Outside of one little murder, we had nothing in common.

He told me something that seemed impossible. “Uh, ya know, Mrs. French, Alana doesn’t even know she’s a widow yet.”

“How could that be?” I couldn't believe it.

“We couldn’t find a number for her mom or dad. We don’t know what hospital the mom is in.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said, as undiplomatic as ever.

“It may be,” he said, sounding defensive, “but that’s the truth. We know her return flight number because your in-house limo was supposed to pick her up from the airport this afternoon.”

“I see.” I made an effort to be pleasant. “Is there something I can do to help?” I added, as sweet as Florida orange juice.

“As a matter of fact, yes. We’re meetin’ her at her gate at the airport and givin’ her the bad news. Would you come with us? It might be useful, havin’ a female there when we tell her.”

I got his meaning. He and Rick weren’t up to having an hysterical woman on their hands alone. “Sure, Tom,” I replied. “I’ll be happy to come along.”

Alana and I were not close but we had known one another a long time. I guess you could call us corporate acquaintances. She would most likely go into shock, Tom told me.

Unless she’s the murderer.

“Really? How could she be the murderer, when she left for Atlanta during the cocktail reception?” A voice piped up in my head.

Then another voice argued, “But she could have arranged the murder, couldn’t she? She didn’t have to be there personally to make it happen. She just needed an accomplice. What would motivate an accomplice?”

There were so many possibilities—the promise of position, the promise of power, the promise of prestige, the promise of Alana. My mind darted from Alana and the promises to what would likely happen next.

Alana would probably break down only a little, if at all, at the airport, being the disciplined lady that she was. She would ask to be excused from the evening’s festivities. We would have to make a plausible excuse for her. That would be odd. Now there would be three key people missing from the formal affair. Would the other guests buy our stories? Probably. We could easily say Alana had decided to stay on with her mother for another day.

My mind skipped back to French. Why did he have that pesky receipt and the pantyhose box on his desk? Could French have thrown a rod somewhere in that sleek Maserati brain of his? As soon as he got out of jail, would he turn on me like a rabid squirrel? Would he kill me, too? Who really knows another person?

* * *

Rick and Tom need not have worried about Alana making a scene or being hard to comfort. She almost walked past us as she deplaned but I called out to her. She looked surprised to see me and smiled at first. Then, alarm registered on her face. Rick delivered the bad news and she froze for a brief moment, then reached for his right forearm in the most delicate and proper manner. Looking down at his badge and then into his face with her china blue eyes, she blinked hard a few times and in her soft, Georgia peach drawl, said, “Thank you, Chief Wells, for your sensitivity. I feel like I’m in a bad dream.” I felt like I might have fainted, had I been given that news about my husband. She was taking this well.

She paused, staring into space, her voice small. “Thank you for bringing Maya along.”

With that, she turned to me and slipped her arm under mine. We walked to the baggage carousel in silence, her high heels clicking in a lonely sort of way down the highly polished, linoleum floors.

* * *

Once back on the hotel property, our sad little group pulled up to the private VIP underground entrance of the building. To protect her from prying eyes and to keep her safe, we walked Alana through the back corridors and service elevator to her new, two-story suite, different than the one she had shared with Red.

Rick and Tom did a quick sweep of the rooms before they left us there. Alana said she needed to go upstairs to think and to rest, but would I please stay in the living room downstairs so she didn’t feel quite so alone?

I agreed. No need to point out she was not really alone. Plain clothes guards were already in place outside the locked double doors of her suite.