Fatal as a Fallen Woman (12 page)

"Now a usual Wednesday night, we'd have had some free time," Maybelle said. She had a nasal voice that grated on the nerves. "Even be bored sometimes."

"How do you pass the time when you have no customers waiting?"

"The professor plays tunes for us," Red Katie said. "Piano. Harmonica. And he whistles some, too."

"Where is he this morning? Does he live elsewhere?" It occurred to Diana that she didn't even know his real name.

"This is his day to get a haircut," Jane said.

"And we play games," Maybelle interrupted, answering Diana's original question about pastimes. "Pigs in Clover. Pan."

Diana knew the first. The object of Pigs in Clover was to manipulate five little lead pellets into the center cavity of a round, glass-covered box, a trick more difficult than it sounded. "What's pan?" she asked.

"Panguingui," Jane said. "It's a card game."

"An excellent card game." Katie twirled a lock of her bright red hair around one finger as she explained. "It uses twelve decks of cards and is nicely complicated, but the best part is that a player can leave at any time and return again later to take up where she left off."

"No pan that night," Big Nose Nellie said, "but I did see Elmira come in. Must have been around midnight."

Diana's heart rate speeded up. Had that been before or after the murder? She wasn't sure. Her father's body hadn't been discovered until the next morning. She'd have to find out when he'd last been seen alive the night before.

"You saw her come in?" Jane echoed. "You never said so to the police."

"Why should I? Besides, no one asked me till now."

"What else did you see?" Diana bent forward, perching on the very edge of her seat, eyes riveted to Nellie, who sat across the table from her. "Was she acting oddly? Did she look strange in any way?"

"Was blood dripping off her hands?" Maryam's sarcastic tone was like a blast of frigid air blowing through the room. Once again, incongruously, she was dressed entirely in a soft shade of pink.

Nellie made a childish face at her. "She looked just like she always does." Then her brow furrowed as if in bewilderment. "She was wearing those pretty gloves of hers, the ones with the lace trim, but that wasn't what the police took away."

"What did the glove the police found look like?" Diana scarcely dared breathe while she waited for an answer.

"It was kid," said Red Katie. "The bloodstained glove was plain cream color kid, same as everybody owns."

"Then I could be right. Someone might have put that glove in Mother's suite to incriminate her. And it needn't have been the night Father was killed. It could have been the next day. Any time before the police arrived."

Maryam's snort cut short Diana's musings. "All the world was here that morning. Soon as word got around that he was dead. Condolence calls." She laughed.

Thoughtful, Diana took a sip of her coffee, found it had gone cold, and set the cup aside. "You exaggerate, I am sure. What visitors called? And where did Mother receive them?"

"In her suite," Red Katie said, regarding Diana with new respect. "You're right. Someone could have framed her. But why would they?"

"You think it was one of us," Maryam said in a flat voice. "Blame a whore. Why not?"

"I'd rather blame the person who actually did it."

"Mattie Silks came," Katie said. "And Pearl Adams. Ed Leeves."

"Not Miranda Torrence?"

"Not likely she'd set foot in here," Jane said.

"No, I suppose not. But now we have a place to start. Nellie, you must come with me to the police. We will tell them what you saw and you can explain about Mother's visitors, too. That should persuade them to look at other suspects."

After a stark moment of silence, during which Nellie simply goggled at her, Jane coughed delicately. "I'm sorry, Diana, but neither what Nellie saw or our speculations will help Elmira."

"Why not?"

"Because the police won't take my word for anything," Nellie told her. "I'm a whore, remember?"

"They wouldn't believe Elmira when she denied being at the Windsor Hotel, or when she said that glove wasn't hers. Why should they believe one of us?" The question came from Honeycomb, who punctuated her comment by popping a last piece of toast into her mouth. Her hair was down this morning and was long enough for her to sit on.

Were they right? Diana hoped not, but wasn't that why Elmira had felt she only had two choices—allow herself to be arrested or run away?

"We're soiled doves," Long Tall Linda said. "Dishonest, dirty, and beyond redemption."

"No, no," Red Katie said. "Frail sisters." Under cover of the general laughter, she leaned close to Diana's ear and whispered, "Those are the terms the do-gooders use, the ones trying to reform us."

"How do you refer to yourselves?"

"I like brides of the multitude," Katie said after thinking about it for a moment.

"Ladies of the Line is better," said Maryam.

"No. Sporting women," Sue chimed in with her infectious grin.

"Boarders." Jane's disapproving tone and stern expression put an end to the banter. "You know how Elmira feels about the subject. Young women who live in the Elmira Hotel are boarders."

* * * *

"The hotel has 300 rooms on five floors, all with fireplaces," boasted Diana's guide, an assistant manager at the Windsor who'd told her to call him Charlie. His jowly face perched on a thick neck tightly contained by a starched collar and a four-in-hand tie. "Amenities include a swimming pool and steam baths, three elevators, gas lighting, steam heat, two artesian wells to provide water, and mercurial alarms set in the ceiling of each room to notify the desk if the temperature rises above 120 degrees." He used one thick finger to indicate a small device some twelve feet above their heads.

Diana poked her head into the bathroom, and saw that her father had taken a suite with its own tub.

"One of sixty in the hotel," Charlie said in a cheerful voice when he noted the object of her interest.

He should sound pleased with himself, Diana thought. He was making a nice profit giving fifteen-minute tours of the murder scene at a dollar a head. It was an outrageous fee, considering that four bits more paid for an entire night's lodging at that other Windsor Hotel, the one in Bangor, Maine.

Diana sighed. The strangest things made her think of Ben. She missed him terribly and wished he were here to help her question Charlie, but there was no sense in crying for the moon. She was on her own and must make the best of it.

"Was the man who was murdered a visitor to Denver?" she asked Charlie, feigning ignorance and a trying to convey a hint of nervousness at the same time.

"Oh, no, madam. He had a house here. But Mr. Torrence used the Windsor for business meetings, since he didn't keep an office in Denver. He had a silver mine and other interests in a little town in the mountains, place he named Torrence after himself. I'm told he was planning to conduct interviews here the next day."

How long would it be, she wondered, before the owners of the hotel heard about Charlie's activities and sent him packing? Still, his greed served her purpose. She smiled, prepared to get her money's worth. "What post did he have open?"

For a moment Charlie looked annoyed, though whether at her for asking or himself for not knowing the answer, Diana could not say. "What does it matter? When word got out he'd been killed, no one showed up."

"A pity there were no papers lying about for you to examine. Surely he'd made notes on the subject."

Charlie fiddled with his tie. "None I saw."

"What happened to the things the police took away?"

"Widow got 'em all, I expect." Nervous fingers shifted to his collar and he ran one under the edge, as if he wished he could loosen it. His face shone with sweat.

Outside, the temperature had been climbing towards eighty degrees when Diana arrived at the hotel, though a light breeze had kept the day comfortable. In this unused, closed-up room, however, where the sun had been pouring in all morning through large east-facing windows, it was decidedly stuffy. Uncomfortable enough to explain Charlie's obvious fidgeting? Diana didn't think so.

"Where exactly was the body found?" she asked.

"I'll show you." Charlie mopped his brow with a handkerchief and, recovering his aplomb, strutted up to the oversized bed. He pointed to a spot beside it. "You can still see a few bloodstains on the Brussels carpet if you look close."

Since his suggestion made her queasy, Diana stayed put. She had hoped to be able to examine this crime scene with the same detachment she'd maintained on assignment for the
Independent Intelligencer
in Manhattan.

In a strained voice, she forced out her next question. "At what time was he found and by whom?"

"One of the maids discovered the body when she came to clean the room at around ten the next morning."

"Newly stabbed?" Diana asked. If that were the case, then her mother hadn't done it.

But Charlie shook his head. "He'd been dead awhile. Police think twelve hours or more."

Before midnight, then. That was not good for Elmira's case. "So, a maid found him. Poor creature. What a shock that must have been for her."

"Had hysterics over it." Charlie rocked back onto his heels and flashed a grin at Diana over his shoulder. "An elevator operator heard her screaming and came to investigate. Then he called me."

"So you saw the body before it was taken away?"

"Oh, yes." Warming to his topic, his earlier uneasiness apparently vanquished, he rubbed his pudgy hands together. "Lying on his back, he was, eyes open and staring at the ceiling. He'd been stabbed two or three times and still had the blade stuck in his chest."

Diana's stomach churned at the graphic picture he painted, but she forced away the knowledge that they were talking about her father. She was a reporter. This was just another crime. She must maintain her composure until she had the whole story.

To give herself time to regain control of her seesawing emotions, Diana returned to the parlor of the suite. Why had her father been killed in the bedroom if he'd used the suite for business meetings? Were the madams right? Had these rooms at the Windsor really been a love nest?

She turned on Charlie. "Did he have a . . . companion living here?"

"Certainly not! This is a respectable hotel."

Diana had deliberately let good old Charlie think she was a wealthy hotel guest with a ghoulish interest in murder. Since the crime, several others of that ilk, and a few local society women, as well as numerous curious gentlemen and at least one bordello keeper, had taken advantage of the "tour" he offered. Diana had no doubt there would be more, especially if her mother were caught and brought to trial.

"The maid who first found him—does she have a name?"

"Name? What do you want to know that for?" Suddenly wary, Charlie's deep set brown eyes hardened into a suspicious stare.

"I'd like to talk to her."

"Why?"

"Maybe she knows more about what went on in this suite than you do."

"That's it!" Face flushed, he made little shooing motions at her. "Nobody knows anything else. You've seen all there is to see. Time to go."

"I don't think so." Evading him, she ensconced herself on the sofa and sent a glittering smile in his direction. "Why don't you sit down, Charlie, and make yourself comfortable while you answer the rest of my questions?"

"What? What?" Dancing in agitation, his face rapidly turning puce, he cast a nervous look towards the door to the corridor.

"Sit down." She pointed to the chair opposite her. The school marm tone and the jabbing finger had him scurrying to obey.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

"Information, Charlie. That's all."

"Hell's bells! You're one of those female newspaper reporters, aren't you?"

"I have had a few things published." It was a relief to tell part of the truth, and better still that her profession seemed to scare him.

"Don't tell me you're from the Pinky?"

She smiled slightly as she realized he meant the pink-paged
National Police Gazette
. "All right. I won't tell you that." She reached into a pocket, pulled out a cloth-covered notebook, and flipped it open to a blank page.

"Doomed. I'm doomed."

"Not if you cooperate. There's no need for anyone to know about your lucrative little sideline so long as you answer my questions honestly. Now, you were about to tell me the name of the maid who found the body, and where I can find her."

He didn't even offer token resistance before providing the names of the maid and the elevator operator and the location of their lodgings. Both had rooms in the "Little Windsor."

"It's just across the alley," he said, "a three-story building connected to the hotel by a tunnel. We keep it just for hotel staff. Many of them live there. Very convenient."

"Very." Diana tapped one end of her pencil against her chin and looked Charlie right in the eyes. "Just as a mistress living in these rooms would have been very convenient for Mr. Torrence."

"Why won't you believe me? The Windsor is a respectable hotel!" She maintained eye contact until he grew flustered and looked away, once more running a finger under his too-tight collar and swallowing hard. "I
told
you. Mr. Torrence hired the suite for business meetings. He had no office in Denver."

"He had a house. He could have met colleagues there."

"Home is for the family!" Charlie sounded so sincerely affronted that she almost believed him.

"Most influential men aren't averse to inviting business acquaintances to dinner. Are you implying he had unsavory associates? I delight in scandal, Charlie. And," she added in a sly voice, "I can make a story out of an assistant manager who gives tours of murder scenes if I have nothing better to write about."

"Scandalous enough what did happen," he shot back. "Mr. Torrence, a highly respected member of this community, a pillar of society, was killed by the faithless female he'd divorced for adultery." He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "She keeps a bawdy house."