In Between (10 page)

“Royce saw him,” Lori said slowly. “And Royce, who also didn't hear a shot, ended up with the manuscript.” She picked a blade of grass and began to chew on it. A moment later she threw it away with a frown. “What I really want is some bacon and sausage.”

“Listen up,” Sam said after a prolonged silence. He caught her hand and held it. “You said try it from a different angle. I've been doing that. Royce sees Alex going to the parking lot. You want to relax, you take off a suit, shoes, tie, but not necessarily your shirt. So there he was in a white shirt, jeans that would have looked black. Royce has stashed the rifle somewhere and gets it, then goes hunting. He goes to the corner of the walkway, turns, heading for the main stairs down, the closest stairs to his suite. Just before he turns the corner, Vicente goes out through the main door, and heads for the far end. Stuffy inside, too warm. He'd taken off his suit jacket. Royce sees the white shirt and black pants walking toward the end of the walkway and he thinks he has his chance. Dim light, white shirt, black pants, dark hair. Bingo. Alex. He follows a few more steps, passes the hotel entrance, sees that his target has stopped walking, a perfect and easy shot, and he fires. The victim goes down. Royce doesn't have to make sure of anything. He's a crack shot. Wipe the rifle, dump it in the bushes, go inside and across the lobby to the office, maybe to tell Vicente their problem is solved. The office is empty. He assumes, exactly as Alex did, that Vicente has gone to bed and left the manuscript, but he knows there will be a hubbub in the morning and someone else might get to the manuscript first, and he can't risk that. He takes it and goes back to his own room.”

Lori stared at him, wide-eyed. “No way to prove or disprove any of that,” she said.

“I know. But tell me again what that woman said about how Royce acted when he realized that it was Vicente who was shot.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, then said, “She said Alex was unnatural, that he turned white and froze. And she said Marilyn did the same thing, just froze. Royce was crazy. He even turned Vicente over, and nearly passed out on the spot. When he saw Alex, he jumped at him yelling it was his fault, that he should be dead. Two of the guys had to hold him back. She thought it was an accusation. They all thought that.”

“Not an accusation at all,” Sam said. “He really believed that Alex should be dead. Maybe he thought he was seeing a ghost. Actually, you gave me the idea yourself. Remember? When we got here you said maybe Vicente was like us, hanging around. I began to think, like us, the wrong victim.”

Lori's eyes seemed to unfocus as if she were viewing something either very close or very distant. She shook her head a time or two, then began to nod. She turned toward Sam with a definite nod. “That's the only thing that makes any sense. I kept thinking that no one acted as if getting rid of Vicente was anything but a catastrophe. They seemed genuinely panicked. But get rid of Alex? Yes. Absolutely.”

“It's all speculation,” Sam said, troubled. “What if this or that, maybe, could have, might have.”

“But it makes sense. How do we prove it? Make someone else see it.”

“No idea,” Sam said. “How about you?”

“No. Let's think about it. Spitball ideas.”

For several minutes it was as if they both had developed dust-dry mouths. No spitballs. Finally Lori said, “How much do you know about Royce?”

“Nothing. Nada. No more than Alex mentioned. To more or less quote him, he's a brown-nose, apple-polishing, back-stabbing prick. Smart enough to get around the rules, clever enough to keep on the right side of Vicente. Mendacious, salacious, hypocritical, sanctimonious, superstitious, dominionist, misogynist…”

Lori put her finger on his lips. “I get the picture,” she said. “The question before the board is what would it take to make him blow it himself?”

“No idea. So we observe him. Meanwhile, I want to squirrel that manuscript to a safe place and skim through it. How damning is it, and who's implicated in whatever it is that can't be made public? Even getting it to a place with some privacy is going to be a bitch of a job.”

“I know. We can't carry it in the halls or through the lobby, anything like that. Remember how hard it was with only a few people on the scene. Here we have dozens.”

They both turned their attention to the sprawling complex, with detectives here and there, housekeepers and their carts in the corridors, Alex sitting in a chair outside his room, apparently talking on his cell phone, detectives with metal detectors searching the lawn…

For a long time neither spoke again. A limousine was waved down on the long driveway to the access road, then motioned on. It rolled forward and came to a stop near a state police car. A tall man with a briefcase emerged.

“Bet it's the lawyer for the widow,” Lori said without much interest.

“I'll check him out,” Sam said. He rose and flitted to the hotel lobby where he waited for the tall man, who had been stopped by Captain Conkling. While he waited, Sam dropped in on the table of associates huddled in their corner booth. Royce was speaking.

“It's a great honor,” he said. “I know I can't do him justice, no one could, but I'll do my best. I'll have to rewrite much of it, of course, since it's his first-person greeting, his personal congratulatory remarks for a remarkable year, and his personal rallying cry to meet and exceed all expectations for the coming year. He put many, many hours into his speech, and it is heartfelt and moving, inspiring…”

Sam left to check on the lawyer. He had entered the hotel, and was heading for Marilyn's suite. Sam tagged along, examining him. Tall, thin, pale as if he lived in a cave he seldom left, not much hair, dyed brown, droopy eyelids, crepelike skin. His suit was grey silk, and his brilliantly shined shoes had to be patent leather or cheap plastic. Sam didn't think they were plastic.

Louise opened the door at his tap. She drew him inside quickly and closed the door, holding his arm. In a low voice, speaking fast, she said, “Harmon, Alex killed him. We all know he did it. Even the police know it, but so far there's not enough evidence for an arrest. They told him he can't leave yet, no one can, but how long can they hold him, us? We can't stay here indefinitely. Mother needs to go home, see to things, make arrangements. I'll go with her, of course. She's devastated. What can we do to make the police act? What would it take?”

He pulled his arm free, frowning, his lips pursed. “Hard evidence,” he said in a clipped voice.

“What kind of evidence?”

At that moment Marilyn appeared in the doorway to the bedroom. “Harmon! Thank God, you're here! That policeman wants to ask me questions and I don't know what to say to him.”

The lawyer hurried to her and air kissed her. With his arm around her shoulders, he led her to a chair. “Sit down, Marilyn. Tell me about it and we'll decide what you should say. I met the captain and he's anxious to talk to you, you understand. He'll ask if Malcolm had enemies, if anyone wanted to harm him, things like that. He'll want to know about the relationship between Malcolm and Alex, of course. And he'll ask about your movements, and Malcolm's, after dinner last night. That's really all he wants from you at this time. I'll be right there, of course.”

Marilyn moaned and shook her head. “They said I can't talk about last night,” she said, nodding toward Louise. “I went looking for him and he wasn't in the office where he said he'd be. That's all I know about last night. Harmon, I want to leave the country just as soon as the funeral is over. The day after. When can we have the funeral? You have to take care of that, and put the condo up for sale, decide about the stock options, how much is involved. There's so much to do. I can't cope with it all. And insurance. Someone has to take care of that, too.”

Harmon patted her arm. “Don't worry about it, Marilyn. I'll handle everything. Now, tell me about last night.”

Sam flitted back to Lori under the pine tree. He seated himself next to her and said, “They're deciding on what Marilyn should tell the police, and Harmon will handle all the messy details of closing down Malcolm's sorry life. Louise wants to know what kind of evidence the cops need to make an arrest. Royce will rewrite Malcolm's opening speech and give it himself.”

“He'll probably work in the suite,” Lori said. “We'll grab the manuscript when they go to dinner. Unless they have room service, which they probably will. Room service in Marilyn's room again, you know, to protect the sensibilities of the grieving widow. Do you think Cruella will plant evidence if the lawyer tells her what would work?”

“Do I think the sun will shine, the rain will fall, the wind will blow?”

“Right. We'll have to work fast.” She stared off into the distance for a short time, then said, “Sam, I don't see any way to break Royce without physical evidence of our own. And even if we had it, how would we give it to the cops? I mean, they have the gun already. What else is there?”

Uneasily he said, “You realize we're just speculating about his guilt. We don't know it for certain.”

“If he doesn't have a guilty conscience, haunting won't bother him.” She plucked another piece of grass and began to chew on it, scowling. “What I really want is a portobello mushroom wrapped in prosciutto.”

His unease increased. “Haunting him? Meaning?”

“You know,” she said. “Meaningfully. Can I say that meaningfully?”

“You just did.”

She grinned and motioned toward the hotel. “Let's do it.”

They put themselves in the corridor. At the far end a housekeeping cart was parked with its neatly stacked towels, sheets, toiletries. No one was in sight. Lori entered Royce's suite and Sam flitted to the cart. He pushed it close to the door of the suite, then entered to find Lori stuffing clean shirts into a laundry bag stamped with the room number. She added socks, went to the door and looked out into the corridor, then opened the door and hung the bag on the handle of the cart. Sam had wrapped the manuscript in a towel by then and he put it on the cart also. He had started to push the cart toward the end of the corridor when Lori called out, “Park it!”

At the lobby end of the corridor Royce and the state police captain had appeared. Royce was carrying a laptop. Sam pushed the cart as close to the wall as he could before he and Lori turned into air. Then he waited. Neither of the approaching men glanced his way.

“I'll download the speech onto a thumb drive,” Royce was saying. “Will you want the laptop back afterward?”

“No. We're done with it. Mr. Sharon said he wanted it. Notes, schedules, other material regarding the coming meetings. Are you coming in with me?” They had reached Marilyn's door.

“I'll join you in a minute, after I put this in my room,” Royce said, hefting the laptop. He continued to his own door as the captain knocked and was admitted to Marilyn's suite.

“Great!” Lori said, almost gloating, when Royce entered, carrying the laptop. Sam waited until Royce closed the door, then rolled the cart the rest of the way to the end room of the corridor. He let himself into the room, opened the door from the inside and removed the manuscript from the cart, deposited it on a desk, and returned to the corridor. He hesitated only a moment, then rolled the cart back to Royce's room and this time left it almost blocking the door. When he entered the room, he saw Lori examining the laptop.

“No password,” she said, sounding very happy. “I'll wait until he puts the stuff on the thumb drive. Meanwhile, let's program the television remote.” She was smiling as she examined it. “What do you know, adult movies are available. It's a neat remote, let's you program up to twenty-four hours at a time. Isn't that cool!”

“You do it,” Sam said with a shudder. He had never gone beyond on/off, volume up/down and occasionally changing a station successfully. He took a bucket of ice cubes to the bathroom and dumped them into the tub, then closed the stopper and turned on the water. He closed the stoppers in twin sinks and turned on that water in a slow stream.

“Sam, look what I found,” Lori called from the other room. When he entered, she was tossing a golf ball from hand to hand. “Let's play catch,” she said and tossed a ball to him. It was initialed RS.

“I think Royce is on his way,” she said, tossing a second ball to him. “Let's see how many balls we can keep in the air at the same time. She let loose with another one and he tossed one back to her.

A moment later Royce opened the sliding door to the walkway. Two balls were in the air going in opposite directions. One hit the wall near the bedroom door, the other smacked into the drape at the sliding door very close to him. Royce reeled, staggered and caught himself by the doorframe. He sucked in a long breath and looked around wildly, then slowly advanced into the room.

“Alex? What are you up to? Knock it off!” Royce yelled as he inched toward the sofa, casting glances at the d rapes, the desk, the bedroom door. When he reached the sofa he darted to the side of it and looked down, as if expecting to see someone crouching there. “Come on out, Alex!” he snapped. “This isn't funny.” He edged back closer to the wall and looked behind one of the easy chairs, then the other.

“This is going to be harder than I thought,” Lori said, watching Royce, who was making his way to the windows. When he reached them, he yanked the drapes, nearly pulling them off the rod.

There was nowhere else in the room where anyone could hide. Moving with the same slow caution Royce made his way to the bedroom door and peered inside. “Come on out, Alex. Game's over. You want to talk. Let's talk.” He sidled into the bedroom, pounced to the side of the nearest bed, dropped to his knees and lifted the bedspread to look under the bed. He did the same to the other bed, then examined the drapes. Moving much more slowly, he drew near the closet. He took a long breath, then yanked open the door and shoved garments aside.