She punched a four-digit code into her phone. Seconds later, it bleeped a digitalized “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” and she picked up. “Police are here for you.”
She clicked off. “He said he’d be down when he’s done. But no sense you guys wasting time. He’s checking out a room on Floor Three.”
—
The elevator stopped on Floor Two but no one got on and we got a brief view of beige walls, doors, and gray carpeting plus an earful of silence. The setup on Floor Three was identical.
One door, wide open. Before we got to it, Kurt DeGraw stepped out.
“I told Alicia I’d come down.”
Milo said, “Thought we’d save you the trouble. How’re we doing on that employee list?”
“Oh,” said DeGraw. “Soon as I can, you have my word.”
“We also need the names of anyone terminated during the last couple of years.”
“Really? You’re not thinking—oh, no, I can’t see anyone taking out an employment issue on a defenseless old woman.”
“Being thorough, Mr. DeGraw.”
I’d sidled closer to the doorway. The room was the same bland hue as the corridor, probably the result of market research. A hospital bed was propped up forty-five degrees. Used bandages, mattress pads, and paper towels littered the floor, along with rubber tubing that looked like hormonally enhanced pasta. Much of the paper was splotched with blood and other body fluids. Human leakage worthy of a crime scene.
Nothing like that in the pristine room where Thalia had been murdered.
Kurt DeGraw saw me looking. “Another successful recuperation. This will be perfectly sterile within a couple of hours.”
Years ago, I’d seen germ counts taken from “clean” hospital rooms. No such thing.
He got on a phone and told someone to have “three sixteen processed,” then cocked his head toward the elevator.
Milo said, “We also need to speak to the family in Bungalow Cinco.”
DeGraw said, “Pff. Good luck with that.”
“What’s the problem?”
“They’re gone, Lieutenant.”
“Since when?”
“As far as I can tell, yesterday.”
“You’re not sure?”
“People are free to come and go. What they’re not entitled to is a free room.” He pushed the elevator button. “An outrageous example of Penal Code Five Thirty-Seven.”
“Defrauding an innkeeper,” said Milo. “How’d they do it?”
“False passports and credit cards,” said DeGraw. “This day and age, anyone can get anything. Our medical guests are prepaid and they are sterling, I keep telling them we should stop trying to attract anyone else.”
“ ‘Them’ being the folks in Dubai.”
DeGraw’s tongue glided between his lips before tucking back in and swelling one cheek. “I wouldn’t call them folks. They’re nobility.”
“What name did the defrauders give?”
“I don’t remember—Birken-something.”
“Where were the passports from?”
“Austria. No doubt to look respectable.”
“Austrian people are respectable.”
“Isn’t that the Teutonic image, Lieutenant?” He smiled. Small teeth, big gums. “I’m from Switzerland, everyone in Switzerland believes they have inherited respectability. My father was a tax collector, he knew otherwise.”
“How long did the Birken-whatevers stay here?”
“Are you saying you will help me recover the money? Excellent! How long were they here? Three nights.”
The elevator arrived. DeGraw held the door open as we boarded.
Milo said, “Did they ask to be put in The Numbers?”
DeGraw’s eyebrows arched unevenly, the right climbing higher than the left. “You can’t seriously be thinking there’s a connection. Really, Lieutenant, what a dreadful thought. An illogical thought. If someone was up to no good, why would they call attention to themselves by defrauding me?”
“If they gave you real I.D. and we wanted to talk to them, what would be happening now, Mr. DeGraw?”
“Ah, I see. But no, I don’t see it. What connection could there be?”
“Maybe none,” said Milo. “But I’ll need copies of the passports and the credit cards.”
“We don’t make copies, we list numbers.”
“Why’s that?”
“Security of our guests.”
“Why would copies get in the way of security?”
“It’s our policy,” said DeGraw. “The less information we have on our guests, the happier they are.”
“I can see that working for patients but it’s kind of sloppy, no?”
DeGraw drew himself up. “I’m sorry you don’t approve of our protocol, Lieutenant. We have never had this problem before.”
“When did you discover you’d been ripped off?”
“The maid went to clean this morning and saw the room had been vacated. Vacated rooms require a different protocol than daily freshening. The maid notified the front desk and they pulled the bill. There was no reason to worry at first, guests often leave without a formal checkout, we simply charge their cards. But when the front desk tried that, they learned the Amex on file was invalid. I was then notified and of course my next step was verifying the passport number with the Austrian consulate.” DeGraw threw up his hands. “I should’ve followed my father’s advice and become a civil servant.”
“How many Birkens are we talking about?”
“Hmm,” said DeGraw, “I believe three.”
“Parents and child.”
“Three adults. A woman and two men. One of the men was a personal assistant who slept on the living room foldout. His name we never got. The assumption was that his employers were footing the bill.”
The elevator landed on the ground floor.
DeGraw said, “No more guests in The Numbers. As soon as you allow me, her unit will be put out of commission.”
He exited, striding ahead of us.
Milo said, “Are any of the front-desk people who checked in the Birkens on-shift?”
DeGraw stopped and studied the two men behind the front desk. Neither was among the clerks I’d seen with Alicia Bogomil. On the left, black hair, brown skin, and a luxuriant ponytail, on the right, a colleague whose head was all skin. I imagined a corporate rule book. In cases of insufficient follicular supply, employees may opt for total shaving of the cranial region.
DeGraw said, “That’s Malone, no, he wasn’t here—Bretter…maybe.”
He wagged a finger at the bald clerk. “The police have questions for you regarding the situation in Number Cinco.”
The clerk said, “Okay,” as if that was the last thing he meant.
Milo said, “Mr. DeGraw, thanks for your time, we’ll take it from here.”
“Good luck, Lieutenant. I have a cousin in Zurich, a police officer. Extremely unhappy man.”
He walked away. The bald clerk stood there, tapping a foot.
Milo motioned him to a seating area in a corner of the lobby. Out came Milo’s pad. The bald clerk’s Adam’s apple jutted.
“Full name please.”
“Max Edward Bretter. Is he blaming it on me? I followed regulations.”
“No one’s blaming anyone.”
“They make the rules,” said Bretter. “We do what we’re told.”
“Rules like not holding on to passports.”
“Stupid,” said Bretter. “He’s like, Privacy is what we sell.”
“But you do copy down numbers.”
“What’s that going to do if they’re scamming? Same with keeping the damn things, for that matter.”
“What name did the scammers give?”
“Birkenhaar. Two a’s.”
“Was there any sort of bad vibe when they checked in?”
“If there was,” said Bretter, “don’t you think I’d call DeGraw?”
“I understand—”
“I barely remem
ber, we’re also instructed not to make a lot of eye contact. Because of the softballs—” He faltered. “The patients. We’re not supposed to make them feel self-conscious.”
“What do you remember about the Birkenhaars?”
Bretter rubbed his head. “They had the accent. Had an assistant to carry the bags. I was ready to put them in The Can but they wanted The Numbers.”
“They requested The Numbers.”
“They called them bungalows. I told them no A.C., it was far from the lot, service could take longer. They didn’t care.”
“Who did the talking, the man or the woman?”
“Hmm,” said Bretter. “Him I guess—yeah, him, I didn’t hear her at all. She just stood there looking…” He colored. “Nice-looking woman.”
He’d made enough eye contact for that judgment. Milo said, “Blond, brunette?”
“Brunette.”
“What else?”
Bretter shrugged. “Good body.”
“How old?”
“Hmm…I’m gonna say forty? I really wasn’t looking.”
“How about him?”
“Didn’t notice him, much,” said Bretter. “Or the pudgy one with the bags.”
“Hair color?”
“No idea.”
“What were they wearing?”
Bretter shook his head.
“The assistant was pudgy.”
“Shorter, kind of heavy.”
“Age?”
“No idea, maybe the same as them,” said Bretter. “Don’t hold me to any of this.”
“Routine check-in.”
“Totally. Name, passport, and card numbers for copying.”
“What time of day?”
“Night. That I remember because it’s dark, hard to find. I offered to have someone show them to the room.”
“Who showed them to the room?”
“No one,” said Bretter. “They said they’d find it their-self.”
“Did they arrive in their own vehicle?”
“Couldn’t tell you.”
“No driver came to the desk with them.”
“Nope. You think they hurt Miss Mars?”
“We’re just starting out.”
“Maybe they did,” said Bretter. “Asking for The Numbers? Never happens. And then they scam? This tops it for me, soon as I find something, I’m outta here.” He glanced in the direction of DeGraw’s exit. “I’m sure they’re going to sell it anyway, let all of us go.”
“Why do you say that?”
“They keep shutting down services—no restaurants anymore. It’s a feeling, you can just tell.”
“Good luck,” said Milo. “You told DeGraw they had German accents.”
“German-ish,” said Bretter. “One of my grandmothers came from Germany, what I said to DeGraw when he started questioning me is he sounded like that. But I’m no language doctor.”
Milo scanned his pad. “He’s got an accent, she’s a looker, assistant’s a chub.”
“That about covers it,” said Bretter. His mouth formed an O. “Sorry, I was wrong about something, I did hear the assistant. He said something to her, the woman. I didn’t hear most of it but I did hear ‘Frau.’ So they have to be German, right?”
CHAPTER
10
Milo and I walked through the old wing and into the loggia. At the end of the passageway, Alicia Bogomil smoked and harassed a potted palm with ash-flicks.
He asked her about the Birkenhaars.
She said, “No idea, never met them.”
“You have a key to the bungalows?”
She dipped into a pocket. “Got a master. Something off about these people?”
“They requested The Numbers, presented false passports, and paid with a bogus credit card.”
“That’s pretty criminal,” said Bogomil. “You think they could’ve been stalking Miss Mars? Was there a burglary?”
“So far we can’t verify anything was taken. The front-desk guy who checked them in didn’t seem to know much about them, either.”
“Who’s that?”
“Max Bretter.”
“Max,” she said, “is an okay guy but a drooling green chimp could walk right by and he wouldn’t notice. I’ll find out who he was working with that day and let you know if it’s an improvement.”
“Thanks, Alicia. Could I borrow that key?”
“Sure.”
“Where’ll you be so I can return it?”
“Don’t bother, keep it,” she said. “There’s a drawerful of masters in the security office. Which is basically a closet on the first floor of The Can.”
“Really,” said Milo. “Tight system.”
“Worse than that, Loo, you probably won’t even need a key, the bungalows have crappy old locks, a hairpin’ll do the trick.”
“Wonderful,” said Milo.
“Yeah, we ain’t Fort Knox, I told DeGraw he should beef up.” She made angular motions with one hand, spoke like a robot: “Words. Hit. Wall. Bounce. Off. These suspects, they bring their own wheels?”
“Bretter didn’t know.”
“I’m asking because if they used one of the drivers who hangs around, there’s a specific guy who might be able to help you. Leon Creech, he did MP work in the military back in the day, likes to think he’s sharp-eyed.”
“He’s not?”
“Well you know,” she said. “He’s kind of old. He used to drive Miss Mars back when she wanted to be driven, so that could be a bonus.”
“Any idea where he took her?”
“Never saw any shopping bags but she’d bring dessert back for the staff, so dinner. Sweet woman, whoever did this should be strung up by the you-know-whats.”
I said, “Why’d she stop going out?”
“She didn’t look depressed if that’s what you mean,” said Bogomil. “Maybe she just got tired, you know? Anyway, Leon liked Miss Mars so if he saw something hinky about your suspects he’ll tell you.”
“Where can we find him?”
“He used to be here regularly,” she said. “Lately, he comes and goes because there isn’t much business. But I did see him a couple days ago. That’s why I’m thinking maybe he drove your suspects.”
“Does he work for a company?”
“Uh-uh, independent, drives an old-school Town Car, got to be thirty years old but he keeps it up nice. I’ll go see if I can find a number for him.”
“Big help, Alicia. You want that recommendation, it’s yours.”
She grinned. “Who knows, maybe I’ll take you up on it, Loo.”
—
As we approached Cinco, Milo gloved up. No hairpin required, the door was unlocked.
“Hundred-year-old woman with doors that can be opened by a kid,” he said. “For all we know she left hers open. Guess she felt safe.”
I followed him inside. The layout was similar to Thalia’s but on a smaller scale, with half a chipped Formica counter in lieu of a kitchenette, no fireplace, cheap-looking furniture from the seventies, and a low, dim bedroom barely able to accommodate a queen bed.
The feel of a budget summer rental gone stale. But the smell was anything but stale: acetone after-bite augmented by fake pine essence.
Some whiz-bang, industrial-strength deodorizer/cleanser favored by the hospitality industry, who knew what toxins were bouncing around.
The bed was stripped. The toilet was banded with one of those paper things that’s meant to imply hygiene. Milo opened the pull-out sofa; nothing inside. He searched drawers and cabinets. “Nada. No prints other than Thalia’s and Refugia’s in her room and they zapped this place, but let’s see if anything comes up.”
He made the call to the lab. No availability until later today.
“What a dump,” he said. “My eyes are watering, let’s get outta here.”
—
The walk to Uno was brief and I said so.
He said, “The better to stalk, murder, and rob you, Red Riding Hood? Let’s say she was the target.
How would these alleged Austrians know her?”
I said, “One or all of them could’ve had a personal connection to Thalia.”
“That’s what I’m thinking, except she said she had no family.”
“She might not have wanted to acknowledge a black-sheep relative. And if one or more showed up, that could’ve worried her enough to call me.”
“You, not us, because we’da told her to get a security system and a noisy dog or just move the hell out.”
“Or,” I said, “she wanted reassurance that there was nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, she was wrong.”
“Nasty kin,” he said. “If it’s the Birkens, could be one, two, or three of them.”
“Teamwork would’ve made it easy,” I said. “Whoever wasn’t smothering her could look for the money.”
“Someone that frail, not a chance in hell she could defend herself. Too bad she didn’t put a name on whoever worried her.”
“She probably intended to,” I said. “We were just beginning.”
—
No uniform stood guard at Uno but the yellow tape hadn’t been disturbed. Milo yanked it free, tried the door to the screen porch, found it locked and used the master key. Ungraced by Thalia, the peacock chair looked shabby, the cane splintering and stained.
Milo unlocked the bungalow door and stood on the threshold. Thalia’s furniture and lamps were wrapped in thick plastic tarps secured by duct tape.
I said, “If there’s time, we could check her reading material.”
“Why?”
“It could tell us something about her.”
“Sure, do it. I’m gonna start here, with a recheck of the cabinets, her fridge, all that good stuff.”
Thalia’s taste in reading was mostly nonfiction. Travel, fashion, landscaping, food and wine, music, biographies of historical figures with an emphasis on presidents and notable women.
Several additional shelves were given over to city accounting and zoning manuals, volumes on real estate law, curling copies of a magazine aimed at landlords called Apartment Age. Below that was a small fiction section. Several of the classics but mostly a collection of crime novels from the forties and fifties. Not just Chandler and the other usual suspects. The authors Thalia had read—Horace McCoy, David Goodis, Jonathan Latimer, Fredric Brown—suggested a depth of interest in the genre.
Or memories rooted in that period?
Heartbreak Hotel Page 8
