by Sara Rosett
“And that’s when you discovered she was an impostor.”
“Yes. Officer Donnelly will be able to verify that part of my story.”
“Hmm,” Homes murmured, and Zoe got the impression that it wasn’t that part of her story that he was concerned with.
He put the folder on his crossed leg and made a few notes, then he twisted the pen and flipped the folder closed. “Justine Price is in the hospital. She’s unconscious. She was found today at the foot of a set of interior stairs at the Pinnacle Hotel in central Edinburgh. Your phone message to her, stating—and I quote, ‘I’m on my way now,’ end quote—is the last message on her phone. The doctors tell me her injuries occurred shortly after she received your message.”
Sergeant Malone, who had observed the conversation between Homes and Mrs. Andrews through the one-way glass, went to his desk and began looking up phone numbers. By the time Homes returned from escorting Mrs. Andrews out of the station, Sergeant Malone had his phone tucked under his chin. He said to Homes, “I’m on hold for Harrington Throckmorton—” He broke off and raised the receiver to his mouth while swiveling his computer monitor toward Homes.
“Yes, that’s right,” Sergeant Malone said into the phone, “Zoe Andrews…so you confirm it. She is working for your company in Edinburgh?”
While Sergeant Malone continued his conversation, Homes scanned the webpage on the computer, the home page of Throckmorton’s business.
“Yes, thank you.” Malone hung up the phone and turned to Homes. “That was Mr. Throckmorton himself. He confirms Zoe Andrews is here in Edinburgh on assignment for his company, looking for the stolen painting. A Victorian landscape”
“Hmm.” Homes had been leaning over the monitor, but now reached for the mouse and clicked to another page.
Sergeant Malone slid his chair to the right, making room for Homes to step closer to the monitor as he clicked through a few more pages of the website. Sergeant Malone didn’t say anything else to Homes. Instead, he made a few notes from his phone conversation. He had worked with Homes a long time. There was no rushing him. He would speak when he was ready.
Finally, Homes stood up, his gaze still fixed on the monitor. “No photo,” he murmured, “but I think I’ve met him.”
“Throckmorton?” Sergeant Malone asked.
“Yes,” Homes said. “The name sounded familiar when the woman mentioned it in the interview.” Homes gestured to the monitor. “From the description of the man’s history, I think I’ve met him. If he is who I think he is, he gave a keynote at an international crime prevention conference a few years ago in Geneva. See if you can dig up a photo of him. It may be difficult. He likes to keep a low profile. He made sure all cameras were banned from the lecture hall before he spoke so that his picture wouldn’t get out. Understandable, since he often goes undercover to meet with criminals. Wouldn’t be smart to do that, if his face was known. If it is the man I remember, then he’s legitimate. He’s facilitated hundreds of recoveries.”
“So maybe the red-headed woman was telling the truth,” Sergeant Malone said with a shake of his head. “I thought we would be able to punch a few holes in her story straight away. It’s not every day that we get a yarn about stolen paintings and impostors. I quite enjoyed it, actually. Very twisty. It would be even better if she was an impostor, too.” Sergeant Malone reached for a worn spiral notebook with fragments of paper flaking out of the binder. “Better write down that one.” Sergeant Malone planned to write a thriller when he retired in three years.
“One impostor is possible. Two impostors might stretch the believability of the story, I think,” Homes said. “All the same, verify her whereabouts today. Perhaps she is an impostor, and she’s taking advantage of Justine Price’s inability to communicate with us. Perhaps she is the thief, and Justine is the victim.” One corner of Homes’s mouth quirked down, the only outward sign of his internal thoughts, but Sergeant Malone recognized the tick.
“Don’t like the situation?”
“I never like it when I have a possible suspect, but not enough to hold her. Where are we on the interviews from the hotel guests? Have we identified the mystery man spotted outside Price’s room?”
“No. Could be that the girl who told us about him just wanted attention. Teenagers are like that. Believe me, I know.”
Homes shook his head. “I know you’ve raised three daughters, and I haven’t, but I don’t think that was what was going on there. Has the CCTV footage come in?”
“No. Should be here later today.”
“Then stay on this Andrews woman. I’m not sure about her yet. Contact Poppy Foley and Officer Donnelly. Follow up on those details then send out an alert with Zoe Andrews’ passport details. I want to know if she tries to leave the country.”
Zoe settled into the seat of the cab and worked on calming her breathing. Apparently, the police would drive you to their station, but getting back to wherever you were before they interrupted your life was up to you. Zoe wouldn’t have accepted a ride in a police car anyway, even if it had been offered. She’d wanted to get out of the dingy mint-toned room as fast as she could. How could they think she’d had something to do with the injuries to Justine?
Was it less than an hour ago that she had been arguing with Jack about how she didn’t want to leave Edinburgh until she knew the full story about Justine and the painting? And now she couldn’t leave. Inspector Homes’s parting words had been, “Please do not leave Edinburgh without getting in touch with me first.”
Not exactly the classic, Don’t leave town line, but close enough to worry her.
At least they hadn’t taken her passport.
Justine Price was in the hospital, severely injured. Zoe rubbed her forehead. Why had she left that message about the painting for Justine? Why hadn’t she just called back later? Realistically, Zoe knew it wouldn’t have made any difference. Her call still would have been in the log of Justine’s incoming calls. The police would have tracked her down eventually, but Zoe would prefer not to be in the number one position on their go-to suspect list, which is where she was at the moment. Inspector Homes had been polite and mild-mannered, but the way he’d watched her—she shifted in the seat of the cab. She’d felt like he believed she was already guilty and was just waiting for her to admit it. But then again, maybe that was his approach with all his interviews.
Zoe’s phone rang. It was Jack. “Zoe, where are you? I called, but your phone just went to voicemail.”
“I’m fine. I’m on my way back to the hotel.” She caught him up on what had happened. “So I can’t leave now, at least not until they figure out I didn’t hurt Justine.”
“That probably won’t take them long,” Jack said. “What time did it happen…the attack on Justine?”
“I don’t know, exactly. It must have been close to eleven-thirty because my call was the last one she received, and they were pretty interested in that. The inspector didn’t give away much information, but he seemed to think that I called her and went directly to see her when she didn’t answer.”
“Which is what happened, but you went to Staircase House. Since Justine wasn’t there, and one of the people who was there was a police officer, I think you’ll be okay.”
“Right,” Zoe said. “I know that, but I don’t like the whole situation. I hate that I’m mixed up in this. And I certainly didn’t want Harrington to have to vouch for me to the police on my first job for him.”
“Zoe, it’s not your fault that Justine lied to you.”
“But I shouldn’t have taken her at her word.”
“Harrington did.”
“Okay, that does make me feel marginally better.”
“It should. Harrington can’t blame you for doing the same thing he did. And if he does, then he’s not the sort of person you want to work for.”
“You’re right,” Zoe said. She knew his words were true, but inside, she still felt like a failure.
“Have you talked to Harrington?” Jack as
ked.
“Briefly. Just a few minutes ago. He says the police have already contacted him to confirm my story. He was extremely nice, said I wasn’t to worry about anything, that it would be fine. He seemed to think it wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“He works with the police all the time.”
“Right, but working with them and being questioned by them are two different things. At least he wasn’t upset.”
“Harrington strikes me as the type of person who has a long fuse. It would take more than you being questioned by the police to get him worked up. On another subject, I’m on the flight that arrives tomorrow at nine.”
“That’s good,” Zoe said, knowing that their budget would take the hit for a last-minute trans-Atlantic airfare, but she would be glad when Jack arrived. “Maybe by then I’ll be in the clear about the attack on Justine, and we can concentrate on figuring out what’s going on with the painting.”
“One thing at a time,” Jack said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Sounds good. And, Jack, thanks for not saying you told me so.”
A small laugh came over the line. “What do you think I am, a novice husband? I’ve been doing this for going on three years now. I know that being married means never saying I told you so.”
Zoe hung up and realized she was actually smiling. After the day she’d had, that was pretty amazing. Jack had that effect on her—being with him, just talking on the phone with him, somehow seemed to smooth the bumps in life.
The taxi had been making its way slowly through the streets toward her hotel while she’d been on the phone. She had barely noticed the surroundings, but as the driver made a turn, a sign caught Zoe’s eye, The Pinnacle Hotel.
She leaned forward. “Excuse me, was that the Pinnacle Hotel in the city center?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll get out here.”
9
INSPECTOR HOMES HADN’T GIVEN UP much info about the attack on Justine, but Zoe knew one thing about it—the location. The sliding glass doors of the Pinnacle Hotel swished open as she neared them. She walked into the noisy lobby filled with groups of people clustered around piles of suitcases. The cheap furnishings and barely existent decorating scheme reminded Zoe of budget hotels in the States. She figured this was the European equivalent of a super discounted hotel chain.
Zoe wasn’t quite sure what she hoped to accomplish. She was acting more on instinct, which was how she liked to roll, so when she surveyed the lobby and spotted a uniformed police officer waiting for an elevator, she headed in that direction. Two other people stepped into the elevator with her and the police officer. Zoe waited until the police officer punched the button for the fourth floor then she said, “Six, please.” He pushed it for her and gave everyone a nod as he stepped out on the fourth floor.
When the elevator reached the sixth floor, Zoe waved the couple out of the elevator in front of her and trailed along behind them, digging in her messenger bag as if she were searching for a keycard until they disappeared into a room. Once they were out of sight, Zoe strode along the corridor. It bent in an L-shape, and she found a door marked STAIRS at the end of the shorter leg of the corridor.
Zoe tried the handle. It turned easily and silently. She pulled the door open a few inches. The landing was empty. She poked her head in and listened. Below, a door clanged, and voices floated up from a landing several floors down.
“All right, that’s the last of the evidence techs. I’ll tell the manager we’re done here. He’ll have to get someone in here to clean. You get the tape.”
“We’re not leaving the tape up?” a voice asked in reply.
“Can’t. It’s the fire escape route, the only one for this side of the building. It has to be open.”
“Right,” said the first man. “I’ll meet you in the lobby.” Zoe heard what sounded like paper or plastic crumpling.
The crumpling sound went on for a few seconds, accompanied by a few heavy footfalls, then the door thudded closed, its echo booming up and down the concrete of the stairs. With a last glance over her shoulder to make sure no one was behind her, Zoe slipped through the door and closed it quietly behind her. She tiptoed down the stairs to a landing at the halfway point between floors where the stairs folded back on themselves. She looked over the railing and saw a dark pool that made her swallow hard. The last few stairs and a lower portion of the wall were smeared with streaks of dried blood.
Zoe crept down a few steps and looked around. Black powder covered the handrail and the door. Zoe tucked her hands in her pockets. They wouldn’t find a record of her fingerprints here, a point in her favor. The only other things on the staircase that Zoe could see were dust and a few blobs of dried gum. The crime scene technicians had probably bagged any stray bits of paper, gum wrappers, or frayed threads that had been on the stairs. She checked the sign by the door—this was the fourth floor—then scurried back up to the fifth floor. She looked out the window and saw an officer moving away from her down the hallway. He’d come from a room where the door was propped open. A flash of light from inside the room brightened the hallway for a second. Two more rapid bursts of light followed. The crime scene technicians must have moved on to what had been Justine’s room.
Zoe retraced her steps to the landing of the sixth floor then took the elevator down again. She would have liked a glimpse at Justine’s hotel room, but she wasn’t foolish enough to try to accomplish that with police officers moving around the hotel. The lobby area was still packed with people. Zoe worked through the crowd and settled onto a thinly padded couch then smiled at a woman seated on the other end. “So crowded.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “We’ve been here three days, and it’s always like this. Every day it’s a new tour bus arriving.”
“What is going on with the police?” Zoe said, raising her chin in the direction of an officer slipping out a side exit.
The woman twisted around. “The police? I have no idea. Frank, did you see that, the police are here.”
Frank hadn’t seen and wasn’t interested. After a few moments of chitchat about Edinburgh’s sites, Zoe moved on to the next group. She’d worked her way through three clusters of tourists, striking up what she hoped people took as a casual conversation as they waited for a harried tour guide to distribute keycards. Finally, a petite teen with heavily made-up eyes looked up from her cell phone after her mother heard the name “Summerby” called and hurried off to get their keys. The girl dipped a shoulder and flicked her long brown hair over her shoulder as she looked toward Zoe. “You want to know what the police are doing here?” she asked in an American accent.
Under all the make-up, Zoe could see that she was young, probably thirteen or fourteen. “Yes.”
“A woman was pushed down the stairs,” she said with a relish that brought back memories of high school, where drama was practically a currency. “She was in the room next to ours. That’s why we’re down here.” The girl sighed. “Mom insisted on moving. Says we can’t stay on that floor. It’s too dangerous.”
“Well, if a woman was hurt…” Zoe said.
“It wasn’t some random thing. They knew each other.”
“They?”
“The woman and the guy who pounded on her door.”
“You saw him?”
“Yeah. I was on my way back from looking for an ice machine. Did you know they don’t have them here? Weird, huh? Anyway, he was banging on her door. She yelled through the door and told him to go away, but he didn’t.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I went in our room. She let him in, I think, because I could still hear them, but the sounds were different, closer.”
“Could you hear what they said?” Zoe asked with a quick glance over her shoulder. There must be some problem because the mom wasn’t on her way back. She was arguing with a hotel employee.
“Nah, just that he was mad. At first, it was him yelling, then she got louder. Finally, the door slammed. I
figured he’d left, but then a few seconds later, I heard screaming and went to see what was going on. It was a maid—a whole floor below us,” the teen said, visibly impressed at the maid’s carrying voice. “I couldn’t see anything, and of course, my mom dragged me away as soon as she could. I didn’t know it was the lady next to us until the police came and talked to us.”
“So they know all this? You told them?”
“Sure,” she said, giving a one-shouldered shrug.
The mom returned, flushed, but clutching a small envelope with keycards. “Come on, Haley. Our new rooms are finally ready.”
“See you,” Haley said, popping her earbuds in and grabbing a suitcase handle to follow her mom.
“Wait, Haley,” Zoe said, hurrying after the teen.
Haley’s mom had paused to talk to another woman, a conversation that involved lots of hand gestures and head nods. She didn’t notice Zoe approach her daughter. Haley took out an earbud. “Yeah?”
“This is important. What did the guy look like?”
“Umm, I mostly saw his back, but he glanced at me as I walked by. He was kind of old, but not really old…probably about my mom’s age.”
Zoe ran a quick glance over Haley’s mom and guessed she was somewhere in her mid-thirties. “Anything else?” Zoe asked, turning back to Haley.
“I suppose you’d call his hair red, but it was kind of orange. It was the first thing I noticed about him. It wasn’t long exactly, but it was shaggy… kind of all over the place. And he was tall.”
Considering her petite stature, Zoe thought that most people were probably taller than Haley, but she kept that thought to herself. “Anything else? What was he wearing?”
“A long coat. It was dark, too. Black or brown or something like that. And he had a scarf,” she added suddenly. “I’d forgotten about that, but as I walked by, he was tucking it into the collar of his coat. He had on gloves. Leather ones.”
A pulse of excitement ran through Zoe. “Okay. That’s great. You’re sure about the scarf?” It might not mean anything, Zoe thought, but the description was similar to the description of the guy who sold the painting to Nancy’s daughter.
