Читать книгу Body Blows - Marc Strange - Страница 14

chapter seven

Rachel gives me a sad smile when I come into the office. She looks likes she wants to give me a hug. I’m not in a huggy mood but I open my arms enough for her to get close, accept a quick squeeze.

“You okay, slugger?” she asks.

“Oh, sure,” I say.

She steps back and checks me out. “We had the same name you know,” she says. “Raquel, Rachel. It’s an ancient name.”

“You should hear it in Hebrew,” Gritch says. He’s sitting in his corner. “How’s the old bugger doing?” he asks.

“He’s okay I guess. His doctor came by, checked him over, gave him something to help him sleep tonight.”

“Hit him hard,” Rachel says.

“He kept saying how we should have gone straight up, that she was waiting for him to come home, that he shouldn’t have been downstairs listening to music.”

“Wouldn’t have made any difference,” Gritch says.

“Maybe not.”

“Seriously,” he says. “I was talking to one of the uniforms. The pretty one?”

“Chinese?”

“That’s the one. Melody Chan. Nice kid. Wants to be a detective.”

“What did she have to say?”

“Says it probably happened between midnight and one.”

“She tell you anything else?”

“Well, I had to chin for a while, bits and pieces, she’s pretty sharp, had her eyes open. She says there were at least two intruders, maybe three.”

“She knows this how?”

“She doesn’t know it, she thinks it. Maybe. Says she saw footprints from the terrace, dirt tracked in, and a different set with no dirt. Maybe. She was just spitballing. Cop talk.”

“Regular Chatty Cathy,” says Rachel. “You must’ve turned on the old Gritchfield charm.”

“Hey, she was stuck guarding an empty hallway. We were comparing notes. Technically, I was first on the scene.”

“What the hell were they after?”

“Beats me,” Gritch says. “If they were looking for something, they either found it in a hurry or quit looking. They didn’t go down the hall.”

“Maybe they were after her,” says Rachel. “Lot of talk this morning. The general opinion is she was more than his housekeeper.”

“She was,” I say.

“Ahh,” says Rachel.

“Do me a favour,” I ask them both, “check out where the brothers were. They both had invitations to the dinner, neither one showed up.”

“Not a lot of togetherness,” Rachel says. “We had twenty-seven at our last family gathering, and not everyone could make it.”

“They all get along?” Gritch asks.

“Heck no,” she says, “but they came. It’s family.”

Housekeeping is located on the third floor, east side, close to the service elevators — supplies, equipment, lockers and dressing rooms for the maids and cleaning staff, and Mrs. Dineen’s office, from which she rules every aspect of the Lord Douglas’s domestic management. It isn’t a part of the hotel I have need to visit often.

Two women in uniform are emerging from their cloister at the end of a corridor. The murmured conversation can only be about one subject.

“Hi,” I say. “Is Mrs. Dineen in?”

“She’s there,” says a woman whose name is, I think, Christine.

“It’s Christine, right?”

“Mr. Grundy,” she says in reply. “Yes. We’ve met. Twice.”

“Better than my average,” I say. “Usually takes me four meetings to put a name to a face. I’m not all that quick on the uptake. I’m sorry, I don’t know your friend’s name.”

The other woman has more important things to attend to than loitering in the hall with an interloper. She’s already headed for the service elevators.

“That’s Tricia,” says Christine, who is moving past me. She looks over her shoulder toward Mrs. Dineen’s closed door and I know that the last thing on earth she wants is for that door to open.

I follow her to the elevators where Tricia (I’m repeating the name in my head in a conscious effort to memorize it) is checking supplies and consulting a list of room numbers with notations of checkouts and special requests — extra towels, more coffee filters.

“Hi, Tricia,” I say. “I’m Joe Grundy, you’ve probably seen me prowling the halls. You know what happened last night, I guess.”

Tricia’s hair is cut short and square across the front; she keeps her voice down but speaks clearly. “We don’t know anything, for sure. Raquel was killed up in the penthouse. That’s all.”

“Must be a hundred rumours going around,” I say.

“Just gossip,” says Christine.

“Mrs. Dineen doesn’t encourage gossip,” says Tricia.

“I’m investigating a murder,” I say, although I’m certain Mooney and Pazzano would characterize my intrusion otherwise. “What sounds like gossip right now could be helpful later on. May I talk to you for a minute?”

“Get on,” Tricia says, as the elevator doors open.

The two women wheel their service carts aboard and I join them.

“Nine,” Tricia says. “In back.” She presses 9. Christine stares at the numbers climbing. Tricia looks directly at me. “Can you be trusted?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“I don’t mean as a human being,” she says. “That would be asking too much. I mean can you be trusted that as far as Vera Dineen is concerned, this meeting never took place?”

“Scout’s honour,” I say.

“I’d prefer something a bit more binding,” she says. “My brother was a scout. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could toss him.”

“Raquel was my friend,” I say. “I liked her.”