Murder Across the Ocean
By Charlene Wexler
Copyright © 2014 Charlene Wexler
All rights reserved.
Cover Design by Ashley@ Redbird Designs
Formatted by Polgarus Studio
No Part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written consent from the publisher and author, except in the instance of quotes for reviews. No part of this book may be uploaded without the permission of the publisher and author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is originally published.
This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, actual events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters and names are products of the authors imagination and used fictitiously.
The publisher and author acknowledge the trademark status and trademark ownership of all trademarks, service marks and word marks mentioned in this book.
Books by Charlene Wexler
Murder On Skid Row
Winner of an International Apex Award
Milk and Oranges
Winner of a Grand Communications Concept Award
LORI
Web
Charlenewexler.com
Short stories, articles, poems.
Chapter 1
Lori stood in the shower feeling sensuous and alive as she enjoyed the spray of hot water cascading over her body. She ran the bar of floral scented soap over every part of her skin, appreciating the fullness of her breasts and the mature expanse of her hips. She lingered longer than usual; it had been a long flight to London yesterday, and a rather physically challenging, but wonderful, evening. Remembering how she’d spent the night, she blushed at the thought of the wild sex she’d enjoyed—too wild for her years—and of how his hands and mouth had tenderly caressed her whole body.
She shrugged off her momentary embarrassment and, humming happily to herself, turned off the water and stepped out of the shower into the bright morning sun shining through the small bathroom window. As she reached for her towel, she heard a sudden pounding noise coming from the adjacent bedroom. She dismissed it as nothing more than the sound of room service bringing breakfast.
Lori ran her tongue over her lips and smiled while saying aloud, “Josh.” Gazing at her reflection in the mirror, she realized she glowed. Yes, she thought, last night with Josh was almost as wonderful as the senior prom. At that moment, she felt like a teenager again instead of a seventy-year-old grandmother.
She toweled and then dabbed herself with Chanel No. 5, put on her expensive flowered silk dressing gown, slipped on her complimentary hotel slippers, and stepped out of the bathroom into their luxurious suite in the world-famous Palace Hotel.
Her eyes immediately stung from a smoky cloud hovering in the air; her nostrils twitched from the thick metallic scent of blood. Fear grasped her entire being. She slowly edged farther into the room while cautiously calling his name.
“Josh? Josh!
He didn’t answer
Slowly, she approached the bed, then stopped cold, gasping in disbelief. Bright red blood spattered the rich tan-colored wall and the mahogany headboard, continuing down to the unmade bed where Josh’s body hung over the side of the mattress. White bone and gray-red brain matter dripped from the side of his head, staining the white silk sheets and the lush beige carpet. A burst feather pillow, also besmirched with blood and gore, lay on the floor.
Lori fixated on Josh’s face; a shower of white feathers clung to his forehead and cheek. Where once was a beautiful blue eye, there now appeared a mangled, bloody hole. It took a few moments for her mind to gather this information, process it, and allow a scream to escape.
Once she began screaming, she was unable to stop.
Chapter 2
Lori ran out of the hotel room and through the hall, crying hysterically until she tripped on her flimsy slippers and ended up sprawled on the thick-carpeted floor in her dressing gown. Her horrific screams brought out everyone on the twenty-first floor.
“What happened? Why are you screaming? Are you hurt?" they shouted as they ran towards her.
All she could do was point in the direction of her room in between gasps for breath. Two women came to her aid. They helped her up, took her to a suite next door, and sat her on a soft, silk lounge chair, while the other occupants of the suites took off in the direction she had pointed.
Lori sat there, not sure for how long, numb and shocked, while chaos surrounded her. A dizzying sensation swept through her. She took a deep breath. The two women—one dressed in a plum-colored, ankle-length dress and the other clad in black all the way down to her black orthopedic shoes—hovered over her.
“I’m Mrs. Putnam,” the woman in plum said as an introduction, “and this is Mrs. Sweeney.”
The older woman smiled sadly at Lori while the woman in the plum-colored dress left the suite for a time to see what all the excitement was about. Lori was unsure of time actually passing.
“Are you hurt?” Mrs. Putnam asked upon her return. “Should we call an ambulance for you? My dear, we’ve been told that the two men who checked out your suite have declared the bloke next door quite beyond the help of an ambulance, I’m afraid.”
Lori starred at the women. They were either very calm or very English, considering the situation, though neither one had seen Josh’s body.
At the thought of Josh, Lori gasped for breath, “No, no doctor… Oh, no, no…” Lori sobbed into her hands, letting the tears flow freely.
“Poor dear,” the grandmotherly Mrs. Sweeney said as she patted Lori on the back in an attempt to comfort her. “To lose your husband in this manner is really…” At a loss for words, Mrs. Sweeney made a few sympathetic tsking noises.
Lori accepted the tissues handed to her by Mrs. Putnam and dried her eyes and cheeks before answering, “He wasn’t my husband!”
Chapter 3
“Well…” Mrs. Sweeney pursed her lips, stepped away from Lori, and in an icier tone said, “You've had a ghastly shock, whoever you are.”
Lori’s tear stained eyes followed Mrs. Putnam as she walked over to a table near the window and picked up a cup and saucer. She turned back to Lori and handed it to her.
“I’ve made you a nice cup of tea. This should help calm your nerves.”
Lori suddenly came to life. She looked in disbelief at these two English women with their polite and proper English accents. A cup of tea! A bottle of whiskey and a handful of tranquilizers would be more appropriate.
Mrs. Putnam and Mrs. Sweeney both busied themselves with the preparation of refreshments while a burly security guard and two Italian men from the suite across the hall entered the room. Color flooded the men’s faces and they quickly turned their eyes away from Lori.
Mrs. Sweeney and Mrs. Putnam looked at the poor, disheveled woman sitting on the sofa half undressed. They quickly set off to look for a throw blanket and, locating one, covered her with it. Neither woman could loan her any clothes. Lori was a petite little thing, barely five feet tall and no more than one hundred pounds. The two British women were both hardy and large-boned, of stout Manchester stock from the north of England.
They asked the security guard to take them next door so they could get the poor woman some clothes.
“Absolutely not,” he responded. “No one can go into a crime scene room.”
Finally, the elder Mrs. Sweeney overpowered the guard with her five-foot-eight, one-hundred-eighty-pound frame, taking him by the arm, and leading him out of the suite and into the hall.
“Lis
ten, you young bloke. You need to help me get the lady some clothes. She’s obviously absolutely gutted. Go in there and get her suitcase or some clothes from the closet, anything. I’ll keep an eye out for the constables. That’s a good lad. Ta, darling.”
The guard quickly grabbed the suitcase from the bedroom closet, avoiding looking at Josh’s dead body still sprawled on the bed. Mrs. Sweeney took the suitcase, pulled out panties, a bra, and a pair of trousers, a sleeveless blouse, and some shoes for Lori. The guard managed to return the suitcase right as other guards from the hotel, along with a crew of Scotland Yard police and forensic workers, descended upon the room, sealing it off from everyone.
Lori took the clothes to Mrs. Sweeney’s loo. She tried to dress there, but at the thought of Josh’s bloody body, she felt dizzy and nauseated. She quickly turned towards the toilet and heaved up the contents of her stomach.
Over the flush of the toilet, she heard Mrs. Sweeney knocking on the door. “Are you all right, love?”
“Yes,” Lori answered weakly, though she was far from being all right. She leaned into the sink and washed her face with cold water, wiped it, rinsed out her mouth, and took a deep breath. She looked around the restroom. Mrs. Putnam had left her nylon stockings over the shower bar to dry. She smiled a little. What an old-fashioned thing to have, individual stockings instead of pantyhose. Lori frowned and wiped away a fresh batch of tears. She wanted so badly to be home, in bed. Maybe this was just a nightmare and she would soon wake up. She threw on some clothes and returned to the women in the suite.
A constable stood there waiting for her. “Mrs. Brill, the MIT would like to speak with you at the station.”
“The what?”
The constable answered, “The murder investigation team.”
Like a zombie, Lori obediently followed the constable down the hall until Mrs. Sweeney stopped her.
“Love, your blouse is all wonky.”
Lori, shoulders slumped down, just stared straight ahead and stood very still as Mrs. Sweeney turned her away from the men and re-buttoned her blouse.
Before continuing on, Lori paused, her eyebrows knit in an attempt to focus. She turned to the constable. “Where is my purse, my passport, my makeup case with my pills?”
“Sorry, missus, I have them, plus your suitcase, but I can’t be handing them to you now, as they may be evidence.”
Turning away from the suite where Josh’s body lay, and where a host of policemen and other people had gathered, Lori seemed to move by rote. She found it hard to keep the tears from streaming down her face or to concentrate on anything. Still in shock, she was not about to argue with anyone.
“Could you at least give me a hanky?”
The policeman smiled kindly as he handed her some tissues. Lori saw sympathy in his eyes before he turned to lead the way down the hall. In order to avoid the crowd already gathering around the hotel, the two of them took the service lifts down to the waiting police car.
***
Mrs. Sweeney made her way into the Putnam suite and plopped down in an overstuffed, gold brocade chair.
“Margaret, I just can’t believe the events of this morning. What was a woman that age doing in that man’s suite? She surely wasn’t a tart. Shameful! Do you think she knocked him off?"
Margaret Putnam raised her cup of tea to her lips and gazed away from her friend. “A bloke like Wheeler has a way of charming the best of women. Help yourself to some tea, dear.”
“How do you know anything about him? What is his name again?”
“I overheard the men talking. He’s someone famous. Well known, at the very least. I read all about him in the paper earlier. Some bank scandal or other. They said his name is—was—Josh Wheeler.”
A knock at the door interrupted their conversation. Upon opening the door, they were met by a police officer.
“Ladies, we will need a statement from everyone on this floor, so please stay put. The hotel manager has been kind enough to arrange for a complimentary breakfast for each room while we detain you. You will be knocked up shortly.”
He was halfway out the door when he popped back in. “Beg your pardon, ladies, we will also need statements from your husbands, and anyone else who has been in your suite or on the floor this morning."
Mrs. Sweeney picked herself up from the chair and straightened out her black ankle-length skirt by pressing her palms along the front of it, smoothing out some wrinkles. “We better go find the men. Can’t pass up a free breakfast from the Palace Hotel.”
“Peter is in the bedroom, resting, and I believe your Stanley is in the hall, chatting up the other men,” Mrs. Putnam said.
“How fortunate, Peter slept through the entire thing.”
“Yes, he didn’t sleep well at all last night, so he slept all through morning. Since we haven’t anything planned until the afternoon, I figured why not let the dear man be.”
Mrs. Sweeney smiled and nodded. “Good heavens, they’re all out there, playing at Sherlock Holmes, I imagine. I must have walked right past him. I didn’t notice. My nerves are a jumble, Margaret. I believe this holiday has gone wrong.”
***
Lori sat in the back of the police car, wrapping her thin arms tightly around herself in an attempt to warm up. The sleeveless blouse was a bad idea, but what choice did she really have? She wasn’t prepared for the chilling, damp, below-normal temperatures, and she hadn’t exactly picked out this ensemble herself. Somehow, she had believed it would be warmer in London in late April. The hot temperatures in Arizona had thinned out her blood and changed her thinking.
Oh, God. Oh my God, she mumbled to herself. How did this happen?
The whole trip had started so innocently. Two days prior, when she had left Arizona on a pleasure trip to visit her granddaughter in London, she had been so full of hope. Life had begun getting quiet and boring, and she felt excited about going abroad.
The flight from Phoenix, Arizona, to her connecting flight in Chicago to London had gone without a hitch. Then she spotted him. And chaos set in.
She had been standing in line at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, waiting to board her plane, when she saw tanned skin peeking through an open polo shirt, radiating up a dimpled face to those sparkling blue eyes she remembered so well. Excited, Lori pushed her way through the line until she finally reached him.
“Josh!” she said breathlessly.
He turned around, smiled, and briskly walked towards her. His strong arms engulfed her. She could feel her heart speed up, her face blushing. Releasing her, he held her at bay while slowly moving his gaze over her entire body.
“Lori, you look marvelous, so thin, and young looking. Don’t ever dye those shinning silver locks,” he said, nodding his approval. “My God, it’s been years.” He gave her a seductive smile.
“Yes, at least twenty.” Lori knew the exact date she had last seen him. In fact, she knew every date going back to that first day when, as a fourteen-year-old high school freshman, she fell in love with a sixteen-year-old junior.
“Are you on the British Airways flight to London?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m visiting my granddaughter.”
“Give me your ticket,” Josh said, holding out his hand. “I’ll see if we can get seated together.”
By the time the plane left the airport, Lori was sitting in first class beside Josh, sipping wine and reminiscing about old times. By the time the plane landed at Heathrow Airport, she was following him, like a puppy, through immigration and security, into a big black London taxicab, and then through the lobby of the luxurious, world-famous Palace Hotel to a grand suite with a large canopy bed.
Josh Wheeler, at seventy-two, still looked the model of the heartbreak male living off his charm, and Lori, at seventy, had fallen for it again, hook, line, and sinker.
And again, it had led to disaster.
***
As the police car moved along the Strand towards New Scotland Yard, Lori’s mind wandered to the first day
Josh came into her life. Nervous to be going to a new high school, she had been walking down the sidewalk on her way to the bus stop when someone bounded out of a house and literally knocked her down.
The arm that extended to help her belonged to a tall, slender, blond boy with gorgeous peacock-blue eyes.
“Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry. Here, let me help you up. Are you hurt?”
Surprisingly, she was not angry, just startled and a little embarrassed.
After getting back on her feet, smoothing out her dress, and wiping the dirt off her hands, she looked up into those blue, blue eyes, and responded nervously, “No, just a little scrape. I’ll be fine.” She felt her face blush. “Hi, I’m Lori. I just moved here.”
“Ah, so we’re neighbors. Great way for me to welcome you to the neighborhood. I’m Josh.” He extended his hand, this time for a greeting, and smiled a million-watt smile. “I’m so sorry. Did I ruin your pretty dress?”
Josh, a mere two years older, was already a man of the world. For the next three years, he took Lori to places and activities she would never have gone to on her own—some not so Kosher, like the day he picked her up in a stolen white Cadillac and they drove seventy-five miles north to a beach on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin and then abandoned the car and took a train home, where, ignited by their adventure, they kissed passionately throughout the entire ride.
When her mother ignored her, which was most of the time, and her father was gone on business, Josh was there for her. He was her Peter Pan, and she was his Wendy. Those were their pet names for one another, a name he would often call her when pleading with her to take him back time and time again. Now Peter Pan was dead, and seventy-year-old Wendy was going to jail. Unable to help herself, she started laughing.
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