by Blake Pierce
Karen had an idea.
“Maybe she freaked out after killing her friend, left in a panic, then realized that bailing would prove her guilt, so she hurried back.”
“That’s not crazy,” Jessie admitted, though it didn’t feel quite right to her.
Something she’d seen amid all the data in the last hour was tapping at the back of her brain, trying to get her attention, telling her she was missing a piece of the puzzle. She just couldn’t place it.
She looked at the sheet of paper again, trying to make the connection. The last time Lauren was seen leaving the suite was at 11:47 p.m. to steal a bottle of ketchup from the first floor café. She returned at 11:55, swiping her card as she reentered. The next time the card was used was in the lobby elevator at 2:03 in the morning.
Actually, that wasn’t true. The next time it was swiped was at 2:03. But another activity was registered in the system at 1:59 a.m.: Lauren Kiplinger’s keycard was activated. Jessie had ignored that data point earlier, assuming it was just some sort of standard operational activity, maybe resetting all keycards for the next day. But what if it wasn’t?
“Karen,” she said, looking up. “Can you check the video feed of the hotel’s check-in desk at one fifty-nine?”
Without asking why, Karen scrolled to the timestamp. Someone wearing a hooded sweatshirt was at the desk, talking to the desk clerk. Because the hood was up and the guest’s back was to the camera, the face wasn’t visible. But after a brief discussion, the clerk clearly handed the guest a keycard.
The two of them chatted for a minute more before the guest turned and headed toward the elevators. Jessie leaned into the monitor with anticipation, but before the doors opened to allow a lower angle view of the face under the hood, the hotel security system crashed, and along with it, the cameras.
Everyone exchanged frustrated looks. Karen broke the silence.
“I’m thinking maybe I should call the hotel and talk to that desk clerk,” she said.
“Do it,” Jessie said excitedly.
Karen dialed the number and put the phone on speaker. The operator answered and connected her to the front desk. Jessie and Jamil leaned in as they waited for the call to be transferred. The clerk’s name was Maisie and she sounded nervous.
“It’s okay,” Karen assured her over the speakerphone after giving her an initial explanation of what they needed. “You’re not in trouble. Just tell me why the guest requested a new key.”
“She told me she lost her key when she was out at a club earlier in the evening and forgot that it was gone when she went to get ice,” Maisie said. “She didn’t want to bang on the door at two in the morning and wake up the others in the room.”
“Did you have any doubts about her story?” Karen asked, trying not to sound accusatory.
“Not really. I was on shift earlier the evening, both when she and her friends left the hotel and when they came back. She was pretty ripped the whole time. On the way through the lobby when they got back, she tripped and fell. I was worried she broke something. So hearing she had lost her key wasn’t really a surprise.”
“Ask if she’s sure it was the same woman,” Jessie whispered.
Karen did. Maisie sounded mildly offended at the question.
“I mean, I wouldn’t bet my life on it, but yes, I’m pretty sure,” she answered, getting more animated as she went on. “She was wearing a hoodie and sunglasses but like I said, I saw her earlier that night and she looked like the same person. Truthfully, she still seemed drunk to me. But everything checked out. She gave me her name. She knew which suite it was. I asked if she wanted me to just call up to have someone let her in and she said that Ronnie would be pissed if she lost her beauty sleep. I remember that I was confused when she said a man’s name because they made a big deal of it being a girls’ night. But she said Ronnie was short for Veronica, who had booked the room. Compared to some of the stuff I’ve dealt with here, it didn’t seem that weird to me. So I didn’t ask her for ID.”
By the time she was done, Maisie’s nervousness had completely given way to indignation. Jessie indicated to Karen that she had no more questions.
“Okay, Maisie,” Karen said. “We’ll be sending someone down to get a formal statement from you about these details. Otherwise I think that’s it for now. Thanks for your help.”
When she hung up, she turned to Jessie with her eyes blazing. Jamil saw it too.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I think we’re down to just three options,” Karen said. “Either Maisie’s lying and is somehow involved in this, which I tend to doubt, or Lauren Kiplinger is our killer and has been giving an Oscar-worthy performance as an alcoholic party animal to throw us off, which I find almost as unlikely.”
“You said three options,” Jamil reminded her.
Karen looked over at Jessie, who provided the other one.
“Or we just got a brand new suspect,” she told him.
“Who?” he asked.
“I have no idea.”
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
It didn’t take long to explain why.
“I don’t know if the woman in that hoodie is our actual killer or if she just helped facilitate it,” Jessie admitted. “But she’s definitely involved.”
“How can you be sure?” Jamil asked.
Jessie could hear the desire to get it in his tone and wondered how much longer he’d be satisfied doing research before he finally admitted to himself that he wanted to be a detective.
“Because she was lying,” Karen said. “From the video you provided us earlier, we saw that Lauren Kiplinger went down to a first-floor café to steal a bottle of ketchup and use her key to get back in the room just before midnight. But ‘hoodie’ Lauren said she lost her key at the club.”
“Isn’t possible that she did lose her key and borrowed someone else’s to get the ketchup?” Jamil asked before his eyes lit up and he answered his own question. “But the hotel assigns dedicated keys to each guest and the keycard log says she used her own key, not someone else’s.”
“Exactly,” Jessie said. “But there’s more. She claimed that she left to get ice and didn’t have a key to get back in. She said that to Maisie the desk clerk at one fifty-nine a.m., a couple of minutes before the security system crashed, which means she would have gone on the ice run just prior to that. But we have working video of the twentieth-floor hallway from the time when she would have theoretically left the room and there’s no sign of her walking to the ice machine alcove or walking back to the suite. That’s two lies in one conversation.”
“Then why aren’t you sure she killed Claudia Wender?” Jamil asked.
“We don’t see her do it, for one thing,” Karen replied. “Clearly she’s part of this but she might have handed the keycard off to someone else, like Claudia’s potential lover, assuming she was cheating. It’s possible he paid a lookalike to get him the key.”
“Couldn’t this woman have been who Claudia was cheating with?” Jamil asked.
“Absolutely,” Jessie said. “That’s why we don’t want to jump to any conclusions. And that’s why it would be helpful to look at the video footage from those Orange County hotel bars.”
“I actually have that,” he said.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
He shrugged.
“You were so excited about the whole keycard thing, I didn’t want to interrupt you,” he told her.
“Well, I’m ready now,” she said. “What have you got?”
He swiveled in his chair and pulled up several screen boxes on one of his monitors.
“So this isn’t comprehensive—I only have footage from two hotels so far—but it may be enough. I found three clips of Claudia Wender at the bar at the Grand Reserve Hotel in Costa Mesa and two more at the bar at Beach Tower Hotel in Huntington Beach.”
He hit play on the first box and they all watched a woman who was clearly Wender sitting at the bar, sipping something from a tall, frost
ed glass. After a few seconds, she waved at someone off-camera, closed out her bar tab, and walked out of frame.
“Do we have footage from other parts of the hotel?” Karen asked.
“No,” Jamil told her. “We only asked for video from the bars at these places. But I don’t think we need more.”
“Why is that?” Jessie asked. She could tell he was enjoying being the person with the answers now and was happy to let him have his moment.
“Because of this,” he said, playing the footage from the second box.
In it, Claudia was again drinking alone, but this time she was joined after a minute by a well-built blond man in a suit, who looked to be about the same age as her. Jamil froze that image and played the footage from the third, fourth, and fifth boxes. In each, the same man joined her for a drink.
“Tell me you know who that guy is,” Jessie pleaded.
“I was about to do a search that might tell us. When I saw this footage, I asked the bars for their transaction records from those dates in that window of time. Unfortunately, some are so old that they have to do their own database searches and that might take a day or two.”
Jessie’s heart started to sink until she saw the half-grin on Jamil’s face.
“But…” she said expectantly.
“But this last clip I showed you is more recent, from only two weeks ago, and the bar still has hard copies of those receipts,” he said, fast-forwarding the clip to a moment about five minutes after the man arrived.
As they all watched, the guy offered his credit card to the bartender. As it was returned, Jamil stopped the clip.
“The timestamp is for two eighteen p.m. I e-mailed the bar manager and asked her for copies of any credit card receipts from two fifteen to two twenty.”
“And what did you get?” Karen asked, less patiently than Jessie. She didn’t need the drama, just the answer.
“She e-mailed me back just before your whole desk clerk thing went down,” he said, pulling up his inbox with the e-mail in question at the top. “I haven’t had a chance to open it yet. Should I do that now?”
Both women gave him their best “it’s time to get serious” look and he immediately clicked on the e-mail. It included screenshots of the bar receipts from that block of time. There were only two. One was for Claudia Wender. The other was for someone named Leif Stoller.
Without being asked, Jamil immediately started typing.
“What are you doing?” Jessie asked.
“I hoped we’d get a name and asked both hotels if I could get temporary access to their past reservation records. They agreed. I’m pulling up Stoller’s name now.”
He wasn’t even done explaining before a list of reservations appeared on the screen. Jessie didn’t have to scrutinize them too closely to see that they regularly matched the dates when Claudia visited the bars in those hotels.
“I’m checking her call and text records,” Karen said, grabbing a folder with hard copies of her cell phone information.
While she did that, Jessie punched Stoller’s name into the DMV database.
“Leif’s house is five minutes from Claudia’s,” she said, “just one neighborhood over.”
Jamil waved his hand excitedly to get their attention.
“Every single Claudia Wender hotel bar receipt matches a hotel check-in by Leif Stoller, usually either just a few minutes before or after she closed out her tab.”
“There’s more,” Karen said excitedly. “There’s no reason we would have noticed this before, because it didn’t seem to have any connection to what happened on Friday night, but some of Claudia’s calls and texts have a pattern.”
“What is it?” Jessie asked.
“She was in regular contact with someone listed in her contact list as ‘Mary.’ There are very few calls but a lot of texts. None of them are salacious or even personal, but they’re almost all the same. Stuff like meeting confirmed, 2:15 at Grand Reserve Hotel and verification needed for 1:30 appointment at Beach Tower Hotel. There are dozens along the same lines, all professional sounding. Others say simply on site or in attendance. You won’t be surprised to learn that those texts match times she was at the hotel bars.”
“Did Claudia Wender have a job that required lots of meetings?” Jamil asked.
“No,” Jessie said. “But she was on school committees and fundraising boards. She was busy enough that it probably wouldn’t have piqued the suspicion of an oblivious husband, which Joe Wender seemed to be for a long time. Karen, are you able to definitively determine if Leif Stoller is the ‘Mary’ that she was texting all the time?”
Karen shook her head.
“No. The cell number for ‘Mary’ is for a burner phone. In fact, the number changed three times over the last nine months, suggesting ‘Mary’ replaced phones regularly. The current number is no longer active. I guess ‘Mary’ got spooked after Claudia’s murder and dumped it.”
Another thought occurred to Jessie.
“And the nature of the texts didn’t change in recent weeks? No more personal language? Nothing threatening?”
Karen scanned the documents again.
“Nope,” she said. “The last text from Claudia was from nine days ago at two thirty-three in the afternoon. All it says is Ready for review. There’s a reply from ‘Mary’ saying Parking. Five minutes. That’s it.”
Jessie sighed quietly to herself but Jamil noticed.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Just that there’s no indication that the affair stopped recently,” she answered. “It doesn’t seem like either one of them broke it off, which means one less motive for Stoller to want to hurt her.”
“Not necessarily,” he countered. “If she mentioned this girls’ night thing to him, maybe he figured he’d surprise her and show up to seduce her in Hollywood for a change of pace. If he did that and she reacted badly—if she was worried her friends would find out—he might have lashed out. Or maybe he was going to surprise her, saw the stripper leaving, and got jealous. If he was following them all night and saw her friends, it would be easy for him to find a nearby prostitute who looked like Lauren Kiplinger. He could hire her to get a keycard from the front desk so he could sneak up to the suite.”
“That’s a lot of maybes,” Karen told him.
“Are you saying it’s not possible?” he asked.
“No, I’m not,” Karen replied.
“No one’s going to dismiss your theory, Jamil,” Jessie assured him. “Remember, Detective Bray and I met on a case where one film actress dressed up like a serial killer from a movie series to kill another actress. We’re open to pretty much anything. But I may have an idea that will help us get some clarity on all of this.”
“What’s that?” Jamil asked.
“We’re going to go talk to the guy.”
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
By the time they pulled up near Stoller’s house, it was just past 8 p.m.
Jessie sat in the passenger seat as Karen rolled down her window to speak to the deputy in the unmarked OC Sheriff’s vehicle. He’d been assigned to the house after they asked for someone to do a drive by and sit on the place.
“Detective Karen Bray, Hollywood Station,” she said. “This is Jessie Hunt. How’s it going in there?”
“I’m Deputy Harlan Carroll,” he said amiably before launching in. “They got back from what I assume was dinner about an hour ago. I saw the mom carrying a couple of doggy bags inside. Stoller hasn’t gone anywhere since they arrived.”
“I didn’t realize he was married with kids,” Karen said. “This guy gets classier every second. So what’s the situation now?”
“Best as I can tell, they’ve been putting the kids to bed. I saw a few upstairs lights go off about twenty minutes ago. There’s been some movement downstairs since but I can’t tell who it is.”
“Thanks,” Karen said. “You mind sticking around a little longer as backup? We might need a little assistance if this gets hairy.”
&nbs
p; “Sure,” he said, seemingly excited by the prospect. “Should I come in with you?”
“No,” Jessie said. “We don’t want to put him any more on edge than he already is. Just keep an eye out and have a line open to your station in case things go south.”
Carroll nodded.
“How old are the kids?” Karen asked, posing a question that Jessie was embarrassed to admit she hadn’t thought of. Of course, it made sense that the working mom of a young son would want to consider the well-being of the kids in the home. But Jessie chided herself that one shouldn’t have to be a parent to remember such things.
“I’m not great with ages but I’m guessing the boy was five or six,” Deputy Carroll said. “The little girl was probably closer to three.”
“Okay, thanks,” Karen said as she made a U-turn and returned to the Stoller home.
She parked across the street to attract less attention from anyone in the house who might be looking outside. Once out of the car, both women checked their weapons. Jessie was tempted to zip up her jacket to protect against the sharp coastal wind. But that would make accessing her gun harder so she left it open and suffered.
They jogged up the path to the front door. At first glance, the house was as impressive as all the others they’d visited. But upon closer inspection, even in the dark, Jessie noticed that it had seen better days. The paint was worn and chipped, a couple of shingles were missing, and the porch light lantern was cracked, leaving an unsightly gap.
The sound of what Jessie thought was a sitcom laugh track was audible on the television. They looked at each other silently, checking that their partner was ready to go. Karen’s eyes were steely.
Jessie hadn’t been in this intense a situation in months and felt a hint of nervousness. But it was nothing she hadn’t dealt with before. As was her custom, she took the feeling, set it aside in an imaginary compartment deep in her gut, and took a long deep breath. Then she nodded at Karen, who knocked politely but firmly on the door.
