Defensive Wounds (37 page)

Don frowned. “Killed his
wife
? I remember the case, but—”

“I know it was investigated out the wazoo, but I still can't see how she could have struck the steering wheel hard enough to crack her skull and not do more damage to the car. Dr. Banachek might have thought of that, but I don't think he ever looked at the car himself. I suspect they argued, Britton hit her in the head with a fireplace poker or one of his golf clubs—something thin and straight—then staged the accident. In his early days, he specialized in DUI accident-with-injury cases, so he not only knows all about cars, he knows all about car accidents. He'd know just what we would look for—the position of the driver's seat, lights on or off. Everything.”

“Can you prove that?” Oliver asked.

“About his wife? Not a word.”

“How's that going to work for you, then?”

“I think I can prove he killed Sonia and the others, though. I'll need samples from his household pets, his car. I've got spandex and leather on the two-by-four that killed Sonia, glove prints on her skin. Spandex is more often found in gloves made for sports, not warmth, and you can bet a man with such fancy cars probably has a pair of fancy driving gloves.”

“You might want to put off asking for search warrants,” Don said, holding up a sheet of paper. “Because you don't have two suspects. You have three.”

Twenty minutes later she stepped off the Ritz-Carlton's plush elevator, to the immensely comforting sight of Rachael wearily checking in a family of five dressed from head to toe in designer-initialed clothing. Rachael had decided that she would simply stay at the front desk until Theresa was ready to go home, not willing to deal with a bus, rapid transit, or any other form of transportation save for her mother's battered Tempo, which fell right in line with Theresa's way of thinking. Of course, it only illustrated how badly the teen had been shaken in the past week.
If this child makes it to adulthood without having to spend her college tuition on therapy sessions,
Theresa thought,
it will be no thanks to me
.

It had been a long couple of days. She would deliver her news to Neil Kelly and leave him to deal with it. That part of the job was not hers. Then she would take her child and go home.

Theresa started to cross the floor, but a clawlike grip closed around her arm. “Where is he?”

She turned to see Coral Simone, in her trusty pink twinset and pressed slacks, looking like a PTA president except for the irritated blood vessels in her eyes and the deep furrow between her brows. She must have come straight from work; an ID key card hung around her neck.

“I'm sorry, what?” Theresa asked.

“You said your daughter met him at work. The paper said your daughter worked here, and it said who you were.”

Don't look at Rachael. Don't look at Rachael.
“Coral, I'm sorry I didn't tell you—”

“I don't care about that. None of the staff here will say anything to anyone, of course—they can't have more bad publicity, and she won't tell me either. I've sat here all morning when I should be at my chemo treatment and haven't seen him. Get your daughter to tell me where he is.”

“You talked to Rachael?” This is not good. Not, not, not good.

The grip on her arm turned into a pat. “It said ‘Rachael' on her name tag. I asked if he worked here. She said she couldn't tell me, that's all. It's okay. I don't want to scare her—or let her warn him. But you can find out where he is, right now. I know he's here—I saw that fat little friend of his. The molly one.”

Theresa tried to keep up, to figure out how to handle this. “You know Ray?”

“Yeah. He was in my daughter's classes, too. Came to her funeral, cried like a baby. If that kid is here, then
he's
here also. Ray followed him like a puppy then, and I'm sure nothing's changed.”

“William probably went home. The hotel probably sent him home. Rachael's only still here because she's waiting for me.”

“Then can you get his home address for me? That might be even better.” Again the amicable pat, a show of comfort between friends. She gazed at Theresa as if they were alone in the busy lobby, intense and sincere, both to a frightening degree. “I can solve both our problems.”

Theresa couldn't help it; she pulled back. The fact that Coral Simone was a grieving suburban housewife did not reassure her in the least. The woman meant everything she said and had the brains to back it up. Theresa could not school the horror out of her expression, and Coral Simone's eyes narrowed.

“Isn't that what you want? To keep your daughter safe?” Coral said, keeping her voice down, her eyes full of madness but also pain, and bewildered grief. Her touch felt electric, as if it might crack open an alternate future, giving Theresa a glimpse of any parent's worst nightmare become reality. “Haven't you been through enough this week to get the tiniest, slightest inkling of what I've felt? Can't you guess now what it would feel like to lose her?”

“Yes,” Theresa confessed. “Yes. Coral, I understand. I
really
do, because you're right—I'm a mother, too, and I know exactly what that means. I have some more information for you. There are some things I've figured out about your daughter's murder.” That ought to grab her attention. “But I'm in the middle of the investigation about the lawyers, and there's something I have to take care of right now.”

The woman did not seem convinced. Rather the opposite. She stood back herself, appraising Theresa in a new and skeptical light.

Neil Kelly appeared, leaving the lounge, and Theresa saw an out. “A Homicide detective is heading our way. Let me take care of him, and then we'll talk, okay? You're going to want to hear this, especially before you … do anything.” Like attack William Rosedale in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton.

Coral, obviously dubious but curious as well, nodded, then either promised or threatened, “I won't be going anywhere.”

She disappeared into the restaurant, where Theresa hoped William would stay in the kitchen until she had time to tell Neil about the sweet-looking, possibly unbalanced time bomb haunting the place.

“How are you doing?” Neil asked her.

“Tired. Come with me.” She led the way, peeking into Marcus Dean's office. The security chief was not there, however, only an empty chair and a desk scattered with invoices: Wilson Electronics, Wowway cable, Parry Engineering. Theresa did not sit but faced Neil. “We have a major problem. The hair found on Bruce Raffel's body belongs to Marcus Dean.”

The blood drained from Neil Kelly's face. For a moment she thought he would burst into tears, so much so that she forgot all her prior irritation and put her arms around him.

“It can't be. That can't be,” he said.

“I'm sorry, honey. It's still very, very preliminary—Don cut all sorts of corners to get it done so fast, but it's probably correct. He'll do the full workup over the next day or two.”

“I don't believe he did it.”

She let go of him, stepped back. “I don't either.”

“But you just said—”

“Dean has worked here for years. There's a possibility—slim, but definite—that his hair could be found in several rooms in this hotel. It's a
hotel
—that's what I've been complaining of from the start. It suffers from an incredible amount of traffic. Dean is up and down the hallways of this building every day. The maids are up and down, in and out of the rooms every day, using the same vacuums all over. It's just possible that the hair was on that carpeting before Bruce Raffel's body fell on it. At least that's what a defense attorney will say. It's not a slam dunk.”

“Besides, why would he even kill Raffel? Marie
maybe,
but Raffel? Or—”

“Sonia. Even if he were somehow jealous enough over a one-night stand to murder, where on earth would Sonia come in? Why would he kill her?”

It seemed as if Neil could breathe again. “Yeah. Why?”

“The hair is damning, but I still don't think he did it.”

“Then who else is there?” Neil slumped into a chair. “We haven't found any other connection between the three attorneys. And we've looked, believe me we've looked.”

“Not hard enough,” Theresa said gently. “I think our more likely suspect is waiting in the lobby for me.” She told him what Ray had said, that Bruce had assisted Marie at William's trial. “Sonia said as much to me, and the PD director told Frank that Bruce and Marie continued to work as unofficial partners even when they worked for different law firms. Plus, Coral's been here, I saw her here the day Marie's body was found. She's here now.”

“That frail-looking lady you were just talking to in the lobby? You think
she
bludgeoned three attorneys to death?”

“She's skinny, but she's wiry. And that trophy over her kitchen sink had her name on it, not Jenna's. If she can swing a softball bat, I'm willing to bet she can swing a chair or a two-by-four just as effectively. The things that put me on to Dennis Britton—the fiberglass, the sports gloves—can apply to her as well.”

“Britton?”

She explained the few clues that could possibly implicate Dennis Britton. “But the fiberglass could be from a bat instead of a car and the spandex and leather from a batting glove instead of a driving glove. I have to have samples from their homes to get any further—and the wax. Coral waxes the furniture in Jenna's room obsessively. The cat hair I can't explain—it could just be another hotel artifact. And then there's this.” She held up one of the invoices from Marcus's desk.

“What is that?”

“Parry Engineering is billing Marcus for … let's see, four thousand blank key cards and a program update. Coral works for them. I just remembered when I saw the lanyard around her neck,” Theresa explained, jangling the keys around her own neck for emphasis. “Coral
programs
things for them. How much do you want to bet that their program would have a master code, so that they could always write a card to open any door in the hotel? They'd have to, in case the hotel's computer crashed. How did Marie and/or the killer get into the Presidential Suite? There's only one way: You have to have a key.”

“That's a leap. That's a jump wider than the Snake River Canyon.”

“But, unlike practically everything else about this case, easily verified.”

Neil hesitated, then said, “Dean has a key, too,” as if he had to physically drag the words from his throat.

“I know.”

Theresa's phone rang.

For the second time that day, her daughter's panicked voice came out of the tiny device.
“Why are you doing this?”

She ran from the room.

Barely controlled chaos ruled the lobby. Dinnertime on Friday. Weekend guests were checking in, with travel fatigue, hunger pangs, and too much net worth to be willing to wait in line. So lots of generalized snarkiness but no scenes of bloody murder. Also no William, no Rachael, no Coral Simone.

Theresa kept the phone pressed to one ear, holding the other ear closed with her left hand. She had said Rachael's name a few times, but the girl did not respond. Someone with Rachael spoke, but too softly for Theresa to identify the speaker or even the gender. Another murmur—the same person or maybe someone else. Theresa scanned the rest of the lobby, the lounge area, the elevator banks.

Rachael said, “Why are we going to the observation deck?”

Not again,
Theresa pleaded silently, pushing the “up” button before she'd even completed the thought.

Murmuring again. Rachael must have her phone on, open, maybe hidden in a pocket or held behind her back. Theresa covered the tiny mike in her own phone so her breath or the lobby noise would not give this away.

Then she heard William say, “Let her go.”

Definitely his voice, but who was “her”? Rachael? Or someone else?

“No! Leave her alone!”

No more sounds. Theresa moved the phone from her ear, glanced at the screen.
CALL DISCONNECTED
.

This couldn't be happening to her. Not again.

An elevator finally arrived. She pushed past the exiting guests, jabbed a button. Neil Kelly slid in just as the doors closed. “What the hell's going on?”

Theresa explained about the phone call. “Someone is taking my daughter to the top of the tower, and I think it's Coral Simone. Call somebody. Call Dean—he's got to be on the premises.”

“He's got no authority once off hotel property.” Neil's hand went to the butt of his gun as they circled the empty thirty-third floor to the tower elevator. “That Rosedale kid. He probably figures we're so busy with the dead lawyers that he can make his move now—”

“This may sound crazy, but I think William's the one in real danger.”

“Listen to me,” Neil said as if he hadn't heard her. He turned to face her, grasped both arms just below the shoulders, and looked into her eyes. “We'll get Rachael. Nothing will happen to her, okay? I promise.”