by Sandra Brown
He made eye contact with each man. Then he said, “Okay, let’s go.” As they filed into the room they pulled on plastic gloves. Each man had a specific task; each went to it, treading lightly, touching nothing that they weren’t supposed to.
Smilow approached the two officers who had been first on the scene. Without preamble, he asked, “Did you touch him?”
“No, sir.”
“Touch anything?”
“No, sir.”
“The doorknob?”
“The door was standing open when we got here. The maid who found him had left it open. The hotel security guard might have touched it. We asked, he said no, but…” He raised his shoulders in a shrug.
“Telephone?” Smilow asked.
“No, sir. I used my cellular. But again, the security guy might have used it before we got here.”
“Who have you talked to so far?”
“Only him. He’s the one who called us.”
“And what did he say?”
“That a chambermaid found the body.” He indicated the corpse. “Just like this. Face down, two gunshot wounds in his back beneath the left shoulder blade.”
“Have you questioned the maid?”
“Tried. She’s carryin’ on so bad we didn’t get much out of her. Besides, she’s foreign. Don’t know where she’s from,” the cop replied to Smilow’s inquiring raised eyebrow. “Can’t tell by the accent. She just keeps saying over and over, ‘Dead man,’ and boo-hooing into her hankie. Scared her shitless.”
“Did you feel for a pulse?”
The officer glanced at his partner, who spoke for the first time. “I did. Just to make sure he was dead.”
“So you did touch him.”
“Well, yeah. But only for that.”
“I take it you didn’t feel one.”
“A pulse?” The cop shook his head. “No. He was dead. No doubt.”
Up to this point, Smilow had ignored the body. Now he moved toward it. “Anybody heard from the M.E.?”
“On his way.”
The answer registered with Smilow, but he was intently gazing at the dead man. Until he saw it with his own eyes, he had been unable to believe that the reported murder victim was none other than Lute Pettijohn. A local celebrity of sorts, a man of renown, Pettijohn was, among other things, CEO of the development company that had converted the derelict cotton warehouse into the spectacular new Charles Towne Plaza.
He had also been Rory Smilow’s brother-in-law.
Chapter 2
She said, “Thank you.”
Hammond replied, “You’re welcome.”
“It was becoming a sticky situation.”
“I’m just glad that my ruse worked. If it hadn’t, I’d have three of the few and the proud after me.”
“I commend your bravery.”
“Or stupidity. They could have whipped my ass.”
She smiled at that, and when she did, Hammond was doubly glad he had acted on his idiotic, chivalrous impulse to rescue her. He had been attracted to her the moment he spotted her, but seeing her from across the dance floor was nothing compared to the up-close and unrestricted view. She averted her eyes from his intense stare to gaze at a nonspecific point beyond his shoulder. She was cool under pressure. No doubt of that.
“What about your friend?” she asked.
“My friend?”
“Mr. Blanchard. Norm, wasn’t it?”
“Oh,” he said, laughing softly. “Never heard of him.”
“You made him up?”
“Yep, and I have no idea where the name came from. It just popped into my head.”
“Very creative.”
“I had to say something plausible. Something to make it look like we were together. Familiar. Something that would, at the very least, get you out on the dance floor with me.”
“You could have simply asked me to dance.”
“Yeah, but that would have been boring. It also would have left an opening for you to turn me down.”
“Well, thank you again.”
“You’re welcome again.” He shuffled her around another couple. “Are you from around here?”
“Not originally.”
“Southern accent.”
“I grew up in Tennessee,” she said. “Near Nashville.”
“Nice area.”
“Yes.”
“Pretty terrain.”
“Hmm.”
“Good music, too.”
Brilliant conversation, Cross, he thought. Scintillating.
She didn’t even honor the last inane statement with a response, and he didn’t blame her. If he kept this up, she’d be out of here before the song ended. He maneuvered them around another couple who were executing an intricate turn, then, in a deadpan voice, he asked the lamest of all lame pick-up lines. “Do you come here often?”
She caught the joke and smiled the smile that might reduce him to a total fool if he wasn’t careful. “Actually, I haven’t been to a fair like this since I was a teenager.”
“Me, too. I remember going to one with some buddies. We must’ve been about fifteen and were on a quest to buy beer.”
“Any success?”
“None.”
“That was your last one?”
“No. I went to another with a date. I took her into the House of Fright specifically for the purpose of making out.”
“And how successful was that?”
“It went about like the attempt to buy beer. God knows I tried. But I always seemed to be with the one girl who…” His voice trailed off when he felt her tense up.
“They don’t give up easily, do they?”
Sure enough, the trio of troopers were standing just beyond the edge of the dance floor, nursing fresh beers and glowering at them.
“Well, if they were quick to surrender, our national security would be at risk.” Giving the young men a smug smile, he tightened his arm around her waist and waltzed past them.
“You don’t have to protect me,” she said. “I could have handled the situation myself.”
“I’m sure you could have. Fending off unwanted male attention is a skill every attractive woman must acquire. But you’re also a lady who was reluctant to cause a scene.”
She gazed up at him. “Very perceptive.”
“So, since it’s a done deal, we had just as well enjoy the dance, hadn’t we?”
“I suppose.”
But agreeing to continue the dance didn’t reduce her tension. She wasn’t exactly taking hasty glances over her shoulder, but Hammond sensed that she wanted to.
Which left him wondering what she would do when this dance ended. He expected a brush-off. A polite one, but a brush-off just the same. Fortunately the band was playing a sad, syrupy ballad. The singer’s voice was unrefined and tinny, but he knew the words to all the verses. As far as Hammond was concerned, the longer the dance lasted, the better.
His partner fit him well. The top of her head was even with his chin. He hadn’t breached the imaginary boundary she had set between them the moment he pulled her into his arms, although the thought of holding her flush against him was tantalizing.
For the time being he was okay with this, with having the inside of his forearm resting on the narrow small of her back, her hand—absent a wedding ring—resting on his shoulder, their feet staggered as they moved in time to the slow dance.
Occasionally their thighs made glancing contact and he experienced a fluttering of lust, but it was controllable. He had a bird’s-eye view down the scooped neckline of her top but was gentleman enough not to look. His imagination, however, was running rampant, flitting here and there, ricocheting off the walls of his mind like a horsefly made crazy by the heat.
“They’re gone.”
Her voice drew Hammond from his daze. When he realized what she had said, he looked around and saw that the marines were no longer there. In fact, the song had ended, the musicians were laying down their instruments, and the bandleader was askin
g everybody to “stay right where you’re at” and promising they would return with more music after taking a short break. Other couples were making their way back to tables or heading for the bar.
She had lowered her arms to her sides. Hammond, realizing that his arm was still around her, had no choice but to release her. When he did, she stepped back, away from him. “Well… never let it be said that chivalry is dead.”
He grinned. “But if dragon-slaying ever comes back into vogue, forget it.”
Smiling, she stuck out her hand. “I appreciate what you did.”
“My pleasure. Thanks for the dance.” He shook her hand. She turned to go. “Uh…” Hammond plunged through the crowd behind her.
When they reached the perimeter of the raised pavilion, he stepped to the ground, then took her hand to assist her down, an unnecessary and courtly gesture since it was no more than a foot and a half below. He fell into step with her. “Can I buy you a beer?”
“No, thank you.”
“The corn on the cob smells good.”
She smiled, but shook her head no.
“A ride on the Ferris wheel?”
She didn’t slow down, but she shot him a wounded look. “Not the House of Fright?”
“Don’t want to press my luck,” he said, grinning now because he sensed a thaw. But his optimism was short-lived.
“Thanks, but I really need to go now.”
“You just got here.”
She stopped abruptly and turned to him. Tilting her head back, she looked at him sharply. The setting sun shot streaks of light through green irises. She squinted slightly, screening her eyes with lashes much darker than her hair. Wonderful eyes, he thought. Direct and candid, but sexy. And right now, piercingly inquisitive, wanting to know how he had known when she arrived.
“I noticed you as soon as you entered the pavilion,” he confessed.
She held his gaze for several beats, then self-consciously lowered her head. The crowd eddied around them. A group of young boys ran past, dodging them by inches and kicking up a cloud of choking dust that swirled around them. A toddler set up a howl when her helium-filled balloon escaped her tiny fist and floated toward the treetops. A pair of tattooed teenage girls making a big production of lighting their cigarettes sauntered past talking loudly and profanely.
They reacted to none of it. The cacophony of the fair seemed not to penetrate a private silence.
“I thought you noticed me, too.”
Miraculously she had no difficulty hearing Hammond’s softly spoken words above the carnival noise. She didn’t look at him, but he saw her smile, heard her light laugh of embarrassment.
“So you did? Notice me?”
She raised one shoulder in a small shrug of concession.
“Well, good,” he said on a gust of breath that overstated his relief. “In that case I don’t see why we’re limiting our entire county fair experience to a single dance. Not that it wasn’t great. It was. It’s been ages since I enjoyed a dance that much.”
She raised her head and gave him a retiring look.
“Hmm,” he said. “I’m dorking out, right?”
“Totally.”
He broke a wide grin just because she was so goddamn attractive and because it was okay with her that he was flirting like he hadn’t flirted in twenty years. “Then how’s this? I’m sorta footloose this evening, and I haven’t been this unscheduled—”
“Is that a word?”
“It suffices.”
“That’s a fifty-cent word.”
“All this to say that unless you have dinner plans…?”
She indicated with a shake of her head that she didn’t.
“Why don’t we enjoy the rest of the fair together?”
* * *
Rory Smilow, staring into Lute Pettijohn’s dead eyes, asked, “What killed him?”
The coroner, a slightly built, thoughtful man with a sensitive face and soft-spoken manner, had earned something extremely hard to come by—Smilow’s respect.
Dr. John Madison was a southern black who had earned authority and position in a consummately southern city. Smilow held in high regard anyone who accomplished that kind of personal achievement in the face of adversity.
Meticulously Madison had studied the corpse as it had been found, face down. It had been outlined, then photographed from various angles. He had inspected the victim’s hands and fingers, particularly beneath the nails. He had tested the wrists for rigidity. He had used a tweezers to pull an unidentifiable particle from Pettijohn’s coat sleeve, then carefully placed the speck in an evidence bag.
It wasn’t until he had completed the initial examination and asked assistance in turning the victim over that they uncovered their first surprise—a nasty wound on Pettijohn’s temple at the hairline.
“Did the perp hit him, you think?” Smilow asked, squatting down for a better look at the wound. “Or was he shot first, and this happened when he fell?”
Madison adjusted his eyeglasses and said uneasily, “If it’s difficult for you to talk about this, we can discuss it in detail later.”
“You mean because he was once my brother-in-law?” When the medical examiner gave a small nod, Smilow said, “I never let my private life cross over into my professional life, and vice versa. Tell me what you think, John, and don’t spare me any of the gory details.”
“I’ll have to examine the wound more closely, of course,” Madison said, without further comment on the relationship between the victim and the detective. “However, my first guess would be that he sustained this head wound before he died, not postmortem. Although it’s certainly ugly. It could have caused brain trauma of several sorts, any one of which could have been fatal.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“Truly, Rory, I don’t. It doesn’t appear that traumatic. The swelling is on the outside, which usually indicates that there’s little or none on the inside. Sometimes I’m surprised, though.”
Smilow could appreciate the coroner’s hesitancy to commit to one theory or another before an autopsy. “At this point, is it safe to say that he died of the gunshots?”
Madison nodded. “But that’s only a first guess. Looks to me like he fell, or was pushed or struck before he died.”
“How long before?”
“The timing will be harder to determine.”
“Hmm.”
Smilow gave the surrounding area a quick survey. Carpet. Sofa. Easy chairs. Soft surfaces except for the glass top on the coffee table. He duckwalked over to the table and angled his head down until he was eye-level with the surface. A drinking glass and bottle from the minibar had been found on the table. They had already been collected and bagged by the CSU.
From this perspective, Smilow could see several moisture rings, now dried, where Pettijohn had set down his drinking glass without a coaster beneath it. His eyes moved slowly across the glass surface, taking it an inch at a time. The fingerprint tech had discovered what appeared to be a handprint on the edge of the table.
Smilow came to his feet and tried to mentally reconstruct what could have happened. He backed up to the far side of the table, then moved toward it. “Let’s suppose Lute was about to pick up his drink,” he said, surmising out loud, “and pitched forward.”
“Accidentally?” one of the detectives asked. Smilow was feared, generally disliked, but no one in the Criminal Investigation Division quarreled with his talent for re-creating a crime. Everyone in the room paused to listen attentively.
“Not necessarily,” Smilow answered thoughtfully. “Somebody could have pushed him from behind, caused him to lose his balance. He went over.”
He acted it out, being careful not to touch anything, especially the body. “He tried to break his fall by catching the edge of the table, but maybe his head struck the floor so hard he was knocked unconscious.” He glanced up at Madison, his eyebrows raised inquisitively.
“Possibly,” the medical examiner replied.
“It’s fair to say he was at least dazed, right? He would have landed right here.” He spread his hands to indicate the outline on the floor that traced the position in which the body had been found.
“Then whoever pushed him popped him with two bullets in the back,” said one of the detectives.
“He was definitely shot in the back while lying face down,” Smilow said, then looked to Madison for confirmation.
“It appears so,” the M.E. said.
Detective Mike Collins whistled softly. “That’s cold, man. To shoot a guy in the back when he’s already down. Somebody was pissed.”
“That’s what Lute was most famous for—pissing off people,” Smilow said. “All we’ve got to do is narrow it down to one.”
“It was somebody he knew.”
He looked at the detective who had spoken and indicated for him to continue. The detective said, “No sign of forced entry. No indication that the door lock was jimmied. So either the perp had a key or Pettijohn opened the door for him.”
“Pettijohn’s room key was in his pocket,” one of the others reported. “Robbery wasn’t a motive, unless it was thwarted. His wallet was found in a front pocket, beneath the body, and it appears intact. Nothing missing.”
“Okay, so we’ve got something to work with here,” Smilow said, “but we’ve still got a long way to go. What we don’t have are a weapon and a suspect. This complex is crawling with people, employees as well as guests. Somebody saw something. Let’s get started with the questioning. Round them up.”
As he trudged toward the door, one of the detectives grumbled, “We’re headed toward suppertime. They ain’t going to like it.”
To which Smilow retorted, “I don’t care.” And no one who had worked with him doubted that. “What about the security cameras?” he asked. Everything in Charles Towne Plaza was touted as state of the art. “Where’s the videotape?”
“There seems to be some confusion with that.”
He turned to the detective who had been dispatched earlier to check out the hotel security system. “What kind of confusion?”
