A Hell of a Dog (24 page)

“It's not what you think,” he said. “I call to say good night to the kids, not to speak to Ellen.”

“I didn't say a word.”

“Well, I just thought—”

“You think too much.” I put that page in the back and we looked at the calls from Martyn's room. There were two calls to England.

“I guess he called to say good night to his kids, too,” Chip said. “Twenty-seven bucks for one call. Eleven ninety-five for the other. I hope that's cool with Sam.”

“That's not our concern,” I said. “It's Sam's. We're looking for missing pieces, for something that might tie these deaths together.”

“Like if we found out that it was all the same woman, sleeping with each of them and then killing them afterward. Are the room-to-room calls listed as well as the outside calls?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“What's that local call that Martyn made? Were you able to check that?”

“Read it to me,” I said, pulling my cell phone out of my pocket I punched in the number and waited for someone to pick up, smiling when they finally did. “Oh, sorry. Wrong number,” I said into the phone. “It's the gift shop at the zoo,” I told Chip. “He bought some puppets for his kids there. But he didn't buy them when he said he did. See, the call was made on Sunday, check-in day. He must have been calling to see if they were open. If he used his credit card or saved the receipt, I'd bet it was dated Sunday as well. Later, when I sat with him at breakfast and he showed me the puppets, he said he'd bought them for the children the afternoon before, which is the afternoon he spent with Cathy.”

“Sounds like a man who's used to covering his tracks.”

“It does indeed.”

“Maybe the calls to England weren't to his kids, Rachel. They're young, aren't they?”

“Young enough to still get a kick out of hand puppets.”

“Well, how long can you stay on the phone with a little kid? Maybe he's got a girlfriend back in England, too.”

“Could be he said good night to the kids and then talked to his wife.”

“Twenty-seven bucks' worth? Given his track record, I somehow doubt it. Unless that's how he expiates his guilt?”

“Let's find out right now. Let's boot up Sam's computer and see if that's his home number.”

“Do you have access to her computer?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

“I'm a detective, aren't I?”

“You're going to break into Sam's room?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

“By a stroke of good fortune, a friend of mine, well, this thief I happen to know, stole a passkey for me.”

“Was that the other room you were referring to earlier? You said not to return the key because there was at least one more room you had to get into.”

I nodded.

“Rachel, you're working for Sam. Why do this behind her back? Why not just ask her for access?”

“She's already lied to me once. At least, I'm pretty sure she has. I'd rather be able to check this out myself without Sam breathing down my neck. There's a conflict of interests here. She needs to keep this thing going, because she's spent a fortune on it. I need to find out all I can, no matter where it leads. Or to whom. It doesn't matter who's paying me. The truth is all that counts. Because that's the only thing that's going to stop this.”

I folded the phone records and put them back in that inside pocket. “Come on. If we go now, we still have time to do this while Sam's at lunch.”

We put the dogs on leash and headed out of the park. Waiting for the light to change, we stood next to a boy with a white rat hanging halfway out of his shirt pocket, its nose vibrating a mile a minute—like there aren't enough rats in the city already, you have to go out and buy one.

Once inside, we rang for Jimmy, then waited for the elevator with a woman who had blue hair and who exhaled in disgust when either of the dogs looked at her. Dashiell, who thought she was trying to play one of his favorite games, began to sneeze.

“Four,” she told Jimmy when the gate opened.

“Five, please,” I said.

“She's not there,” he said. “She's at lunch. All of them are.”

“I know. We have to pick up something from her room.”

He nodded and closed the gate.

We knocked first. You never know. Then I took the passkey out of my pocket and unlocked Sam's door. She had a suite. We walked into what looked like a living room. The door to the bedroom was off to the left. Her laptop and printer were sitting on the large desk that was against the wall to our right.

I sat at the desk and turned on the computer, waiting for it to boot up before I could search for her seminar records. Chip walked over to the window to check the view from a higher floor, whistled softly, and then came back to the desk, pulling a chair from next to it around to the front so that he could see the screen too.

“Maybe the history of who Sam booked where will explain some of this,” I said, and we started calling up the seminar lists from the last two years.

“It looks as if, until this week, she never booked any of the men together,” Chip said.

“Still, they all knew each other. Or at least, they knew of each other.”

I pulled a small pad out of my pocket and began to make notes, dates and speakers, who was where when, and then I checked the list of names of attendees, just to see if something looked like a connection we hadn't thought of.

“Look at this,” I said. “Audrey and Alan worked together late last year. After that, she attended two of his seminars.”

“Really? Audrey and Alan?”

“Maybe Audrey was the one who gave Alan his big send-off.”

“Which send-off do you mean?” he asked.

I looked away from the screen and into his eyes. “Maybe both, for all we know.”

I kept scrolling through her records.

“I wonder if Cathy and Martyn ever met before.”

“It looks like Sam almost always booked Martyn alone. He's probably a big enough draw.”

“I think you're right. He does so much lecturing here, he's probably got”—I stopped in mid-sentence—“he probably had a really strong following. Sam was talking about people who follow their heroes from talk to talk, from state to state.”

I scrolled down the lists of people in the audience for Martyn's talks.

“Cathy's name doesn't show. Looks like she'd never attended any of his talks. But when he finally met her, it was lust at first sight.”

“How the hell did you—”

“I was sitting a row behind them. I couldn't have missed it. I saw Cupid flying around over Cathy's head, and then, whomp, the arrow hit her right in the chest.”

“I wonder who else he's hit on?”

I began to scroll down the list again. “You said he sounded like a man who was used to covering his tracks, didn't you? We have no reason to think that the dalliance with Cathy was a first for him. Look, the number he called in England
isn't
his home number.”

“Big surprise.”

“It gets better. Check this out. Tina Darling worked with Martyn at the beginning of this last tour, three months ago.”

“Isn't she the speaker who canceled out, the one I filled in for with today's talk?”

I nodded. “After she was on the program with Martyn in Minneapolis, she went to seven out of ten of his next talks. That means hearing the same lecture seven times—eight actually, if you count the time they worked together.”

“Sounds like she was a really motivated student.”

“Sounds like something else to me.”

“So you think what? He dumped her after only seven seminars. And so she snuck into the hotel last night and—”

“I just thought it was interesting, that's all. She probably didn't show because they had a thing.”

“A dalliance?” He was grinning.

“Yes. Wouldn't it be totally embarrassing to be on a program with someone who'd just dumped you?”

“I wouldn't know,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah,” I told him. “It must be hell being perfect.”

“I wouldn't know that either.” Betty came over for a head scratch, and Chip moved his chair back to make room for her. “So what else is on there?”

“How much she's paying you.”

“More than you, I trust.”

I flashed him the Kaminsky grin.

“What else?”

“I don't see anything in the files that would tie it all together. I mean, we could go back to the black widow spider thing. But wouldn't that mean that three different spiders, so to speak, killed their mates? I can't buy that. It's too far-fetched. I could see it happening once, but not three times.”

“So we're back to the men.”

“If the shoe fits.”

“Men are no good,” he said. “We're an easily corrupted gender. Take me, for example. I've only been helping you out for half a day, and I've already stolen, violated a crime scene, broken into someone else's room and surfed their computer files, and lied to the police.”

“And your point is?”

“No point, Kaminsky. Just hoping for a big raise when my review comes up.” He stopped scratching Betty's head and leaned toward me. “How much time do we have before the panel?” He looked toward Sam's bedroom.

“Not long enough.”

“I'm very quick.”

“I don't want to hear that.”

There must have been something in the air. Betty began teasing Dash, play-bowing, smiling, wiggling her cute behind. Mistaking flirtatiousness for serious intent, he went aft and climbed aboard. A split second later he was pinned against the side of the bed, his eyes looking anywhere but into Betty's.

It was a tough time for the menfolk. Neither of the bitches in Sam's room was in the mood for a quickie.

“It's getting late. We better finish up and get out of here.”

“Leave it,” he told Betty. Then he turned back to me. “Print the stuff. Print everything you think we might need. We can look at it in my room after the panel.” He reached over and turned on the printer.

I began printing the seminar files, lists of who spoke where, lists of who was in the audience, files of all the speakers Sam had booked in the last two years, their phone numbers, addresses, fees, and special requirements.

Dashiell came over and dumped his big head onto my lap, stressed and depressed by his own foolishly high hopes and Betty's clear refusal.

“Let's get back,” I said, shutting down everything and stuffing the papers I'd printed into the pocket with the phone records. “It's nearly show time.”

Walking down the stairs, I watched Dashiell running on ahead with Betty. Like most dogs, given a minute, he could rewrite history. His tail was wagging, and he seemed to be smiling. When I turned to look at Chip, he wasn't, and neither was I.

“I was just thinking, if you are in danger,” I said, “it's my fault. It was me who insisted on coming into your room, remember? You didn't exactly hit me on the head and drag me there. So no matter what happens, for the rest of this week, there's no way I'm going to let you out of my sight.”

“Don't be ridiculous, Rachel. I know it's obvious we've been together. For one thing, you're wearing my shirt. But even if you weren't, Boris, Woody, Bucky, and Sam knew we were alone in my room. And no one would imagine that you would have been able to resist me.”

I opened my mouth, but he put one finger over my lips.

“That actually worked to our advantage with the cops. Since they think we were multiplying like fruit flies last night, they don't think either of us pushed Martyn off the roof.”

“But—”

He nodded. “Exactly my point. Why would someone want to kill us for spending the night together? We're both adults. Whose business would it be but ours?”

The dogs waited for us at each landing, bounding on ahead just before we caught up to them.

“Wait a minute,” I said, taking Chip's arm. It was quiet below. The dogs had stopped too.

“What's up?”

“What if it's not business?”

“We're back to the black widow spider? I still don't see how that puts me in danger, Rachel. I haven't been with anyone but you.”

“What if it's a man, someone who's
not
getting lucky, someone who's so envious he could kill?”

“You mean Boris?”

“Or Bucky?”

“But, Rachel, how could you find out something like that, that one of them was trying to join the party, so to speak, and failing?”

“I don't know.”

But that wasn't true. I did know. Because given half a chance, people talk.

But if that was how I was going to find out who had gone over the edge at this symposium, someone had better start talking soon, before another of the men ended up dead.

25

SHE WAS NODDING

Our abbreviated panel sat behind a long table covered with a white cloth on the stage of the auditorium. I was on the left side of the table, with Chip to my right; then there was Cathy, her eyes still red; Tracy, her face strangely hostile; Bucky, who always had to sit in the middle of things; Beryl, in her tweed jacket and plaid woolen hat; Woody, who kept looking at Sam in the front row; Boris, looking red-faced and ready to pop; and on the far end, Audrey, who appeared as small as if she were a child sitting on a grown-up's chair. Magic, of course, was on her lap. The other dogs were lying in front of the table on down-stays, a visible show of our consummate skills. In fact, Sasha was asleep and snoring, the best testimony on earth to his master's talent. It meant the dog understood he wasn't going anywhere without a word from Boris, so there was no compelling reason to stay awake.

I was as tired as he was, but unlike Sasha, I had work to do. Having been to panels before and knowing as well as Bucky did that the best-known trainers would be asked most of the questions, I had the printouts from Sam's computer and the phone records, all tucked inside a copy of
Modern Maturity
I'd pilfered off the lap of an old geezer who was asleep on one of the chairs in the lobby. I held it on my lap so that I could study the material while the panel went on. I told Chip to poke me if I missed my name or on those occasions where we were all expected to give an opinion on the same topic. Or if I just needed to look up and smile.