The Case of the Linen Pressed Guest (The M.O.D. Files Book 2)

by K. W. Callahan

  “Why?” I asked. “If you don’t think she had anything to do with the murder, why check them?”

  “I said her story panned out,” the detective replied. “I didn’t say I thought she had nothing to do with the murder. Remember how eager she was to show us her train tickets, her doctor’s paperwork, even about asking her sister to corroborate her story when we spoke to her?”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “She seemed intent on proving her innocence.”

  “I know you’re not in my line of work, but these days, when people want to prove their innocence, they’ll often provide electronic data…phone records, text messages, emails, those sorts of things. And I can almost guarantee you that if Ms. Gonzalez was running late from her doctor appointment that she would have called her sister to let her know or at least have sent a text message alerting her to the fact that she’d be watching the kids for an extra half hour or so. But she never said a word about checking her phone or phone records to prove her story. Now maybe she just didn’t think of it. And yes, it’s a possibility that she didn’t send such a message, but it’s worth a shot to look into. If nothing turns up, well, nothing gained, nothing lost.”

  “True,” I agreed. “Guess you never know.”

  “I have to get going,” the detective said. “I’ve got to pick something up from the office. I’ll send some people over to check out the fire in the sorting room asap.”

  * * *

  True to his word, the detective had a team of investigators to the hotel and down in the linen sorting room within the hour.

  I stayed extremely busy for the rest of the day, mostly helping out with guest check-ins, only breaking away once to drop off the book I’d found down on 2B to Ken Prouce.

  Ken was an interesting character. He was in his early-60s, had a full head of curly black hair (dyed, I’m sure) that made him resemble former game show host Burt Convy. He kept this caricature to a minimum by wearing big round-lens glasses with thick black frames.

  “Where did you find this!” he asked, looking on in stunned amazement when I handed him the book.

  “Al Capone’s vault,” I smirked. “I bookmarked the most important page.”

  Ken opened the book, flipped to the page I’d marked, and looked in awe at the Stoddard family guest registry. “I can’t believe you found this! You know, as hotel historian, you should let me in on these secret spots of yours,” Ken grinned.

  “But you’d add them to your hotel history tour and they wouldn’t be secret anymore. And then where would I hide away when I want to be left alone?”

  “True, true,” Ken considered. “Kind of adds to the mystique of the hotel for me anyway knowing that there are still places here that I know nothing about. Keeps the fire burning within me so-to-speak…like searching for the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail.”

  “Maybe I’ll reveal all on your hundredth birthday, Ken.”

  “Now that’s a deal…if only I’m so lucky,” he said, patting the book. “I’m sure Mr. Stoddard will be thrilled with this. Thank you. And thank you on behalf of our honored guest. Will you be attending the party?”

  “Not sure,” I said. “I’m going to the Those Were the Years radio broadcast tonight. “But maybe afterward if the celebration is still going.”

  “Mr. Stoddard’s quite the party animal, even at a hundred years young,” Ken said. “I’m sure the party will just be getting started around the time the radio broadcast wraps up.”

  “Then maybe I’ll see you there,” I offered. And with that, I headed back to my office to start wrapping things up for the afternoon.

  * * *

  I was changed into my evening attire – a tuxedo I kept on hand for just such occasions – and back downstairs to await Detective Marino’s arrival at a little after 6 p.m.

  The show wasn’t scheduled to begin until seven, but the detective arrived half an hour early. He said he wanted to show me a couple things before dinner, so we decided to adjourn to my office for some privacy.

  “But first, how about we pop by Carlisle’s Whiskey Lounge and pick ourselves up some travelers?” I asked.

  “Sounds like a plan,” the detective smiled ever so slightly.

  We strolled across the lobby, now abuzz with activity as guests lounged in chairs, chatting and sipping cocktails from Carlisle’s, awaiting the evening’s entertainment.

  The detective and I found Marv working the whiskey lounge’s bar.

  “Mmmm,” he eyed the detective hungrily as we approached. “Haven’t seen you ’round these parts lately,” he flirted.

  The detective looked instantly uncomfortable. “Working a lot,” he replied stiffly.

  “Well ain’t that just too bad,” Marv smiled and turned to address me. “You two at it again?” he eyed me knowingly. “You sly dog you, Mr. Robert.”

  I took a deep breath and shook my head, feeling self-conscious. I normally didn’t mind this sort of silly banter with Marv, but the detective’s presence made me slightly uncomfortable.

  “Nothing like that, Marv. We’re just going to have dinner and take in the radio show.”

  “Mmm hmm,” he gave me a look, eyelids half closed to inform me that he wasn’t buying it. “You sing your song, Mr. Man. Let me give you just one piece of advice though hon’.” He leaned in close and whispered, “Keep him on a short leash, and don’t let him stray.”

  Suddenly and unexpectedly the detective put an arm around my shoulder and hugged me up close. “If you don’t stop hitting on my man, Marv, I might have to take you down to the station,” the detective grinned.

  “My, my,” Marv put a hand to his chest and withdrew. “Aren’t we touchy tonight. I just might like you interrogating me though.” Then he put a hand confidentially to one side of his mouth but saying loudly enough for the detective to overhear, “I think it might be her time of the month,” he gave a slight nod and a flicker of the eyes toward the detective.

  We all laughed.

  “You sure are in a good mood tonight,” I said to the detective. “What changed all of a sudden? Makes me wonder what you’ve got to show me.” I caught myself as Marv’s mouth fell open. “Relating to the case,” I added, giving Marv a tilted-head deadpan stare.

  “Mmm hmm,” Marv nodded, giving me his unconvinced stare right back.

  That was Marv. Always just one thing on his mind.

  “So what’ll it be?” Marv leaned back, all business now and giving the bar top a wipe with a white rag he pulled from where it was slung over his shoulder.

  “Whiskey?” I eyed the detective.

  “Sure,” he nodded back.

  “Two double shots of your best,” I said to Marv.

  “Straight or on the rocks?” Marv gave an almost imperceptible smirk.

  The detective and I looked at one another.

  “Straight!” we answered in unison, both breaking out into laughter.

  “Celebrating?” Marv asked.

  “Hopefully,” the detective replied as Marv set two tumblers on the bar and poured our drinks.

  “Really?” I said to the detective, wide-eyed and somewhat shocked.

  “I got some good news today. May have just broken the case.”

  I grabbed my drink. “Well let’s go then,” I said, excited to see what the detective had discovered.

  * * *

  Back in my office, the detective and I both took seats, me sipping my drink while he fished a few documents from the leather attaché case he’d brought along.

  “To start, there are these,” he handed me two large glossy photos. “I’m not sure exactly what to make of them. Maybe they’re nothing, but I thought you might be able to come up with something.”

  I held one photo in each hand and looked back and forth between the two. At first glance, they appeared identical. They were taken from the same angle and of the same location, one of our upstairs linen closets. But upon closer inspection, I could tell that they were two different linen closets. The photo in my left hand was de
noted with a small “#1” written in black marker in the upper left hand corner. The photo in my right hand had a small “#2” also written in black marker in the same area.

  “Photo number one is of your fifteenth floor linen closet taken the day of the murder. The second photo is of a randomly selected linen closet on the same day. We took several shots of linen closets on other floors so that we had examples to compare to what we thought at the time was the scene of our crime.” The detective paused, letting me look at the two shots. “Notice anything different about the two?” he asked.

  I kept looking back and forth, not seeing much if any difference. “Some of the carts are arranged differently, but I wouldn’t see how that would tell us much. Different levels of linen on the shelves?” I asked.

  The detective shook his head, “Nope.” Keep looking.

  I scanned back and forth, not getting what he was after. Then I saw it. “The houseperson cart on the fifteenth floor closet shot!” I said. “It’s from the thirteenth floor!”

  A “13-2” was stenciled on the side of one of the multiple houseperson carts lined up in the room. It was snuggled in between carts “15-1” and “15-4” and the difference between the carts would have been negligible had it not been for the stenciled numbers.

  “But what does it mean?” I asked.

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” the detective said. “I did the heavy lifting on this one, finding the difference, now it’s time for you to fill in the blank as to why it’s there.”

  I gave a shrug, “Could be as simple as someone taking the wrong cart or borrowing an extra for something.”

  “Why wouldn’t the housepersons on those floors have mentioned their carts being swapped when I interviewed them then?” the detective looked at me.

  “They may not have thought it important,” I shrugged. “Plus, 13-2, that’s Torez’s cart, the houseperson who lost his key. He was in so much trouble over that, he might have been afraid to report his cart missing too. Carts aren’t supposed to be left out in the public spaces, so if someone swiped it, reporting it lost could have gotten him in more trouble…it could possibly even have cost him his job. And if he’d mentioned it to you, he was probably afraid you’d use it as evidence to pursue a case against him.”

  “He might have been right,” the detective frowned. “But not now. You know why?”

  I paused thinking. “Because whoever killed Mr. Statler must have used this cart to transport his body…”

  “And?” the detective prodded.

  “And they didn’t know enough about housekeeping to realize that when he…or she dumped the body down on the thirteenth floor that they had grabbed the wrong cart when they returned it to the closet.”

  “And if that’s the case, then who does that point to?” Not waiting for me to answer, he continued, “Someone who knows enough about crimes and criminals to try to throw us off track by using a lost key. Someone who can use a knife without making a complete mess of the crime scene. Someone who knows enough to transport and dispose of the victim’s body on a different floor from where the crime occurred. And someone who knows enough to use a murder weapon with someone else’s initials on it. But someone who doesn’t know enough to cover all their bases when it came to details like this.”

  “Someone in security,” I breathed.

  “Now for the kicker,” the detective looked at me with a grin the likes of which the Cheshire Cat would have been envious.

  “You’ve got more!” I exclaimed. “You have been busy.”

  He just nodded and took a drink before pulling more paperwork from his leather bag. “Phone records from Ms. Felicia Gonzalez,” he said as he handed them to me.

  I looked down at several pages with printed times, dates, and phone numbers on them. A good quarter of the records were highlighted in yellow. Another quarter were highlighted in light blue.

  “I’ll save you some time since it’s almost seven,” the detective looked at his watch. The excitement and anticipation he was feeling at his big reveal was evident in his voice. “See those highlighted numbers?”

  “Uh huh,” I took a sip of whiskey, its smooth burn trickling down my throat.

  The yellow calls are between Felicia Gonzalez and Derrick Statler over the past three months. The blue calls are between Felicia Gonzalez and…” knowing he had me hanging, he paused for emphasis and to heighten the suspense of the moment, “…Elon Hernandez.”

  “The one-handed security guard!” I nearly shouted.

  “Shhh…” the detective pushed his hands down toward the floor, indicating that I should lower my voice. “No one else knows, and I definitely don’t want anyone around here spreading the word back to Hernandez. We don’t have enough evidence to arrest him just yet, and I still can’t fully prove a case against him.”

  “Wow,” I breathed softly. “A love triangle.” I thought about the situation for a moment. “So do you think Felicia was in on it?” I asked.

  “Don’t know yet,” the detective shrugged. “My theory at this point would be that Elon likely found out about Felicia cheating on him with Statler, got jealous, and confronted Statler. He might have just wanted to scare him and things got out of hand…or maybe he had murder in mind. Either way, I think he’s the one who probably did the deed. I checked with security, and he was present when the houseperson, Rodrigo Torez, came down to security to report his key missing. He could have gone upstairs, found the key, lured Mr. Statler from his room, and hit him over the head. It wouldn’t have taken but a few seconds to have grabbed the houseperson cart that Torez left just outside the service elevator landing when he went downstairs to report his lost key, tossed Statler’s body in it, thrown some soiled linen over top him and hauled him down to the thirteenth floor linen closet in an effort to throw us off. Once he dumped him there, he returned the wrong houseperson cart to the fifteenth floor in his haste to get out of there.”

  “Two things though,” I said. “First off, how did he get back and forth between the floors without cameras seeing him? They’re trained on all the elevators.”

  “But they’re not in the stairwells,” the detective noted. “It would have been easy enough to get Statler downstairs in one of those carts. The wheels are widely space and the low center of gravity would have kept it steady as he took it down the stairs. It also would have given him the privacy needed to stab Statler. And without Statler’s body inside, the cart would have been much lighter getting it back up the stairs.”

  “True,” I nodded. “But what about Hernandez’s disability?”

  “Just because he lost a hand doesn’t mean he can’t kill someone. He was a trained soldier, and the injury wasn’t to his dominant hand.”

  “I know, but it would have made it extremely difficult to get the body inside the linen chute. With the door latches and self-closing doors, you pretty much have to open and hold the chute door with one hand while using the other to load the body. It would have been hard for someone with two good hands. I mean, I know they make good prosthetics these days, but that would be a tough point to press in a court of law. I’m sure you could find plenty of good defense attorneys and medical experts to testify that Hernandez would have been incapable of such a feat…an ‘If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,’ type scenario,” I made reference to the OJ Simpson case.

  “I know,” the detective frowned. “I want to do a test tomorrow. If you’d help me, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “In the meantime, all this stays on the down low…not a word to anyone…okay? The real problem is that we have no direct evidence tying Hernandez to the murder. There’s plenty of circumstantial stuff, but as for blood traces, finger prints, DNA…nada. I don’t want Hernandez getting wise. I have a good feeling he’s the one who tried to torch the linen sorting room which means he probably forgot something and that we probably overlooked something.”

  “Yeah…but what?” I took another drink. “Speaking of the sorting room, di
d your people turn up anything new down there among those burned sheets?”

  “Nothing new, and certainly nothing of use to help us with this case,” the detective sighed.

  I could tell he was starting to feel down again about his progress, but I wasn’t about to let this ruin our night.

  “You made some real progress today. Now that we’ve got a new suspect, we can…” – and here I stole an old Tom term – “…really start drilling down on this thing.”

  I raised my glass and said jovially, “Here’s to drilling down!”

  “And to catching a murderer,” the detective added as we clinked glasses and slugged back our last mouthfuls of fine whiskey.

  CHAPTER 14

  To: allstaff.lanigan@sharedresorts.com

  Subject: 1/7 MOD Report

  THE LANIGAN HOTEL

  CHICAGO, IL

  MANAGER ON DUTY REPORT

  Saturday, January 7th

  Weather: 34/28 Light rain/freezing drizzle

  Occupancy: 68%

  Arrivals: 538

  Departures: 336

  Event Resume:

  Sky Ballroom (8 p.m. - midnight) – Johnson/Lawson wedding & reception

  Triton Club (Open 4 p.m. – 1 a.m.)

  Carlisle’s Whiskey Lounge (Open 6 p.m. – 1 a.m.)

  Blue Velvet Room (7 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.) – Harold Francis Chicago Swing Band

  * * *

  We thoroughly enjoyed the radio broadcast from the Lake Ballroom, and I began to hope that this sort of event caught on at the hotel, regularly bringing back the ambiance and historical relevance of our famed property. The ballroom was packed for the performance. The champagne flowed freely, and it was nice to relax and listen to programs that harkened back to the days of yore.