When the Day of Evil Comes

by Melanie Wells

  She pulled out a pen and an order pad from behind the counter and set them on the table.

  “Just hold the phone up to your ear, as if you’re receiving a call.”

  She picked up the phone with her left hand and held it to her left ear.

  “Okay,” I said. “Now believe it or not, we haven’t gotten to the weird part yet.”

  She raised her eyebrows at me, but didn’t say anything. I had to hand it to old Eloise. She was a sport.

  “Try looking up and a little to the left,” I said.

  She cocked her head up and moved her eyes to the left.

  “Now just try to clear your head for a second while I ask you some questions.”

  “Okay.”

  “You said it was a Wednesday. This was three weeks ago now.” I read the date off the receipt. “Do you remember anything about that day at all? Were you having an ordinary week? Are you normally in on Wednesdays?”

  “I was planning a trip for the weekend, I believe. So I had a short workweek. I left Thursday morning.”

  “Great. Do you remember what you wore that day, by chance?”

  She thought for a minute. “Now that you mention it, I do. A black skirt and a lavender silk blouse. I remember because I wore something I knew I wouldn’t need to pack.”

  “And what time did you come to work?”

  “Noon.”

  “Was it a busy day?”

  “Not terribly. Much like today. Mornings can be busy, but the afternoon was slow, I think.”

  “What time did the call come in?”

  “Shortly after I arrived.” She lowered her head and looked at me, startled. “I guess I do remember something, don’t I?”

  “You’re doing great,” I said. “Look up and to the left again while I read you the list of items.” I read them off one by one, leaving the prices off.

  She dropped her chin and looked at me. “It was a man’s voice. I remember that now. What was the name on the order again?”

  “Dylan Foster,” I said.

  “I guess I didn’t catch the fraudulent use of the card because Dylan could be either a man’s or a woman’s name.”

  “Did he list the items specifically? Or did he have you shop for him?”

  “He had me choose the items,” she said. “He told me he was buying gifts for his girlfriend’s family.”

  “Which gift was for the girlfriend?”

  “The necklace.” She met my eyes. “The one you’re wearing.”

  I felt my skin crawl.

  “How did you choose the items? Did he tell you anything about the recipients of the gifts?”

  “He described each person in detail.”

  “What did he say about the girlfriend?”

  She’d been looking at me while she answered my questions. Now she went into a natural posture for a right-handed person trying to summon a memory, her head cocked up and to the left.

  “Creative, free-spirited, smart. Auburn hair, green eyes.” She looked at me. “He described you. Where did you get the necklace?”

  “It was an anonymous gift,” I said. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Maybe you do now.”

  “If I do, he’s guilty of credit card fraud. Doesn’t sound like boyfriend material to me.”

  “So you received the gift and then the bill?”

  I nodded. “Weird, huh?”

  “I remember something else,” she said. “He mentioned a room number.” She reached for the ticket, which I handed her. “There.” She pointed to a handwritten number on the bottom corner of the ticket. 1220.

  “Is that a room here at the hotel?”

  “I assume so,” she said.

  “Twelfth floor?” I could feel my heart quickening. “Do you recognize the room number? Have you heard anything about that room recently?”

  Her eyes widened the tiniest bit. “I believe there might have been an accident in that room.”

  “A suicide. Not an accident.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “It was a suicide, wasn’t it?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Is there any way we could find out if it’s the same room?”

  “Did you know him?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She picked up the phone and dialed an extension. “Mr. Molina, if you have a moment. I’m trying to clear up some bookkeeping. I’ve got a charge in front of me.” She read the date and the room number. “Can you tell me who was registered in that room on that date?” She waited a minute. “A little after noon,” she said. “I see. And isn’t that the room …? I thought so. But no one checked into that room until evening. Thank you very much, Mr. Molina. Must be my mistake.” She hung up the phone.

  “1220 was empty until nine o’clock p.m. on the date this charge was called in. But it is the same room the Zocci boy stayed in.” A hint of suspicion crept across her face. “How did you know him? He was too young to have been—”

  “No, he wasn’t my boyfriend.” I took a breath and violated Erik Zocci’s confidentiality. “He was a patient.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m telling you this because I’m trying to figure out what happened to him, Eloise. I think these gifts must be related somehow to his death. It can’t be a coincidence. I’ve never been to the Vendome before in my life.”

  “His family stays here often,” she said. “They’re always very courteous. Very generous with the staff.”

  “Is there any way I could see the room?”

  She looked at me. Deciding whether or not to go out on a limb for me, probably. She picked up the phone again. “Mr. Molina, could you step into the gift shop for a moment, please?”

  We waited together for a few minutes, neither of us saying anything. A man stepped into the store, wearing a well-cut black suit and a brass name tag.

  “Sam Molina,” Eloise said. “I’d like you to meet Dylan Foster.”

  I offered my hand. He looked as if he had just been offered a salamander.

  “Mr. Molina is the manager of the hotel,” she said to me. I tried to look impressed.

  “She’d like to see the Zocci boy’s room,” she said to him. “She was his psychologist.”

  Sam Molina didn’t say anything. I could read nothing from his face. The man could make a fortune at poker.

  “I treated him briefly, a year ago,” I said. “I didn’t know him well. I came to Chicago at my own expense. I’m trying to piece together what happened to him. For my own information.”

  “I don’t see any harm in showing you the room,” he said at last. “No photographs, of course. And you must agree not to publicize anything you discover. The Zoccis are longtime customers of the hotel. We’re very protective of the privacy of our guests.”

  “Understood,” I said. “I’m here for my own information only.”

  “Call the bell stand,” he said to Eloise. “Have Carlos show her upstairs.”

  He turned and walked away without saying anything to me.

  I turned to Eloise. “Thank you.”

  She dialed the bellman’s stand and called for Carlos, who arrived a moment later with a master key.

  “I do appreciate your help, Eloise. You have a good memory.”

  “Good luck,” she said. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  The twelfth floor was tomb-like. A long vast hallway greeted me as I stepped out of the elevator. More sprays of flowers punctuated the tunnel of carpeted space, walls muted with tasteful wallpaper and gilt-framed mirrors.

  Carlos led me to 1220 and clicked the lock open with his key. He swung the door open for me and I stepped inside.

  The room was enormous. Bigger than any hotel room I’d ever been in. It actually had a hallway. I stepped around the corner and into the suite’s living room. The sitting area had two chairs, a fireplace in the corner, an inlaid wood desk, and a round table with upholstered chairs encircling it. The doors to the balcony were curtained and closed. I s
at down on the edge of a couch for a few minutes, taking in the details of the room. Trying to imagine Erik Zocci’s last hours on this earth.

  He’d probably sat on this couch to tie his shoes before he went down to the fitness center the morning he died.

  The bedroom was to the left. I got up and walked through the doorway to find a king-size bed flanked by inlaid wood bedside tables and brass lamps. There was an armchair and reading lamp, and a second fireplace.

  I walked over to the bathroom and flipped on the light. The bathroom was almost the size of my entire hotel room at the Downtown Chicago Best Mid-Western, bathroom and all. My shoes echoed loudly, intrusively, on the tile as I walked over to peek in the huge whirlpool tub and separate, walk-in shower. I turned around. Twin vanities. Marble everything.

  Stepping back out of the bathroom, I walked past the bed to the balcony doors, pulling back the drape and unlocking the latch.

  The sounds of the city below rose up to meet me as I pushed open the doors. Traffic noise, car horns. A siren in the distance. The air up here on twelve was different from the air on the street. It was warm and soft. With enough of a breeze to take the edge off the heat. I stepped forward to the rail and felt the wind on my face, my eyes taking in the view of Lake Michigan to my right. No wonder the Zoccis always requested this room.

  Looking down, I could see the atrium roof directly under the room. It was a long, long way down. Erik must have landed on the narrow concrete ledge between the stones of the building wall and the glass roof. I tried to picture his body sprawled on that ledge below me. As the image crystallized in my head, I caught a glimpse of little Joseph Michael Jr. in my mind’s eye. I could see his body there as well, crumpled next to his brother’s.

  I felt myself getting dizzy. Standing in this spot made both boys’ deaths so graphic to me. I hadn’t anticipated being thrust so vividly into the scene. My hands were shaking, clammy.

  I raised my eyes to the blue sky, dotted as it was with white puffy clouds, and took some deep breaths until I felt myself calm down. I closed my eyes and offered yet another silent prayer for the Zocci family.

  I don’t know what I’d hoped to find in that room. Somehow it had just seemed important to see it. But I’d been there long enough. I was ready to go.

  I pulled myself together and stepped back into the room, locking the door behind me and drawing the drapes against the light, leaving myself in muted afternoon shadows.

  I stopped in the bathroom and yanked a tissue out of the box, wiping away a tear and blowing my nose.

  Carlos was waiting stiffly by the door, an odd, uncomfortable look on his face.

  I drew my eyebrows together. Something was wrong.

  As I approached the door, Carlos stepped aside to let Sam Molina in through the doorway. A hotel security guard followed him. The two men met me in the center of the living room.

  “Dr. Foster,” Molina said, “I’ll have to ask you to come downstairs.”

  “Why, is there something wrong? I was just leaving.”

  “Please come with me.”

  “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “I’d like to have a word with you. It will only take a minute.”

  I thought about it. I hadn’t broken any laws. Could hotel security guards arrest people? Surely they couldn’t throw me in the pokey or anything. Maybe the man had something he wanted to tell me about the Zocci suicide.

  I agreed, and the three of us walked out of the room and into the elevator, which Carlos was holding for us.

  A long silent ride to the first floor, and then a long walk down yet another elegant Vendome hallway, down an elevator, and through double doors that read “Hotel Staff Only.”

  I trailed obediently behind Molina, following him down a maze of industrial-looking back halls. At last he stopped in front of a suite of offices, slid a security card through a slot, and led me past a mug-shot gallery of somber-looking men, one of them Sam Molina. We stopped at an office in the back corner of the suite. The guard turned and left.

  As I followed Molina into the room, I saw that someone was there waiting for us.

  The man stood up. I recognized him immediately.

  “Dr. Foster,” Molina said, “I’d like you to meet Joseph Zocci.”

  21

  I WISH I COULD SAY that I succumbed to Christian charity and concern at that moment. That I was swept away by compassion for Joseph Zocci, who had lost two sons on the twelfth floor of this building. But I wasn’t. I loathed him instantly and thoroughly.

  I had been ambushed, obviously. Which surely accounted for at least a portion of my hostility. But it was more than that. Something about this man was just off.

  We stood there, the two of us, staring at each other wordlessly, sizing each other up.

  He was a handsome man, dressed expensively in a gray suit, blinding white starched shirt, and silk tie. Salt and pepper hair, olive skin. Slim, athletic build. He seemed coiled and taut, his body and mind tuned for combat. He’d been a naval fighter pilot in Vietnam, I knew. He still had that look about him. The alert, forward look of a predator.

  He put his hands in his pockets and stood there wordlessly. Not at all uncomfortable with the silence.

  Molina was the one that spoke up. “Sit down, Dr. Foster. May I offer you a refreshment? Something to drink, perhaps?”

  I downshifted into defiance mode. One advantage to having such a blustery, threatening father is that I am not easily intimidated. Clearly both men had expected more fear out of me than I intended to give them. I continued standing, continued staring into the eyes of Joseph Zocci.

  “No, thank you,” I answered, without looking at Molina.

  Another moment of silence passed as Zocci waited for me to sit. This was a man accustomed to compliance. I sensed his unease and knew I’d found a small edge.

  I finally looked at Sam Molina, who stood stiffly a few feet away, watching the tense scene. “What can I do for you, Sam?” I said.

  He shifted uncomfortably. I could tell it bothered him that I called him by his first name. Like Zocci, he too seemed accustomed to deference, perhaps even servitude from the people around him.

  “Mr. Zocci has some questions for you,” Molina said.

  “He does? I would have appreciated your letting me know that before you herded me downstairs.” I reached into my wallet for the Ice Queen’s card and handed it to Sam. “If Mr. Zocci has some questions for me, I suggest he give—” I glanced down at the card—“Ms. Montgomery a call.” I turned to leave.

  Zocci spoke at last. “Dr. Foster.”

  I stopped and turned. “Yes?”

  “I apologize if Mr. Molina offended you. I asked him to invite you downstairs. Clearly, I should have specified that he mention the purpose for our meeting.”

  “Why don’t you mention it, then? Somebody ought to, don’t you think?”

  “I’d like to speak to you about my son,” he said coldly. “I think I have the right.”

  “You’re suing me, Mr. Zocci. I can’t talk to you about your son. Why don’t you give my attorney a jingle? I’m sure she’d be happy to talk to you about your son,”

  “I don’t appreciate your disrespect, Dr. Foster.”

  “Nor I yours, Mr. Zocci.”

  We stared at each other.

  “I do not appreciate your intrusion into matters personal to my family,” he said.

  “What matters would those be?”

  “The death of my son, Dr. Foster.”

  “Which son, Mr. Zocci? Erik or Michael?”

  Zocci flinched, almost imperceptibly. I’d scored a hit. A below-the-belt, dirty, nasty, unfair hit, for which I felt instantly ashamed. I would deal with myself later. For now, I sensed I was in a fight that needed to be won. No matter what the cost.

  I glanced aside at Molina, catching a brief glimpse of surprise on his face. I suspected he knew nothing about little Joseph Michael’s death.

  “My attorneys have issued a subpoena f
or your records,” Zocci was saying. “You are not to spend time alone, professionally or personally, with any student between now and the time this matter is resolved. You are not to breach the premises of the Vendome under any circumstances. And you are not to approach any member of my family, in proximity or via any avenue of communication.”

  “This is America, Mr. Zocci. I don’t recall electing you to run my life.”

  “I strongly recommend you do not test me.”

  “Thank you for the advice. I appreciate your concern for my well-being. Truly I do.”

  I shot my eyes over at Sam Molina, who looked as if all the blood had drained out of his head. “Sam, you’ve been a big help. See you soon.”

  I turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind me.

  I stood still for a moment, gathering myself and looking around the empty suite of offices. My legs were shaking. So much for not being easily intimidated.

  The adjoining office door was open an inch or two, so I slipped inside and closed the door, leaving it cracked slightly. I seated myself on the floor behind the desk, hugging my knees, my back to the shared wall between the two offices, and strained to hear their conversation.

  It was muffled, but from what I could make out, Zocci was chewing Molina out for letting me into the twelfth-floor suite. I caught a few phrases. “Unconscionable,” “breach of privacy” “unprofessional.” Molina was obsequious. Apologizing. Practicing the fine art of kissing up.

  I heard the door open and the two men stepped out of the office. Zocci was still talking “—in a timely manner,” he was saying. “Alert hotel security. I leave for New York in an hour. I’ll leave the number with my secretary.”

  The two men closed the suite door behind them as they left. I winced, hoping I wouldn’t hear the door lock, just my luck to get locked down here in the dungeon. I’d probably get myself arrested. Trespassing. Breaking and entering. My mind reeled with dreadful possibilities.

  No click, though. I waited until I could no longer hear their footsteps in the hallway and then lunged for the door.

  My plan for a quick exit was thwarted by the fact that I’d paid absolutely no attention while Sam Molina had led me into the catacombs of the Vendome. I could not find my way out. I trotted down several different hallways, dead-ending myself each time. I finally stepped into the women’s bathroom, locked myself in a stall, and tried to settle down.