by A. P. Eisen
“I know,” she said in a soft, trembling voice. “I didn’t do it.”
They’d already checked her whereabouts that day and knew she was at her work location the whole time. “We know,” he said soothingly. “We just need to ask you a few questions. You were working in the coffee bar on Tuesday the fifteenth, correct?”
“Y-yes.” She blinked, her fingers twisting in her lap. “I w-work here from three to ten at night when it closes.”
“By yourself?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Did you see Mr. Gregoria during your shift? Take your time.”
Her brow furrowed. “Jerry used to come by for a coffee before he started work, and he’d always kid with me.”
“So you saw him around five?” She nodded. “Any other time during your shift that night?”
She thought for a moment; then her face brightened. “Oh, yeah. Like around seven. He, um, met someone in the hallway. They kinda had a fight.”
“Oh?” That corroborated what Cliff told him. “Did you recognize the other person?”
A bit uncomfortable, she seemed to be weighing the possibilities before she answered.
“Please. Your name won’t be revealed. But this is a murder investigation. Did you see who Mr. Gregoria met?”
Pink spots appeared on her cheeks as she ducked her head. “Yeah. It was one of the authors here for the convention. Her name is Dana Dickerson. I have some of her books, so I recognized her from her author photo.” She chewed her bottom lip. “She was really mad at him.”
Nerves buzzing, Paul asked, “Did you manage to overhear what was said?”
“She was yelling at him that he had a lotta nerve standing her up the night before. That he was gonna be sorry if he thought he was gonna get away with it. He couldn’t dump her like that.”
He and Rob exchanged looks. The sooner they spoke to Ms. Dana Dickerson, the better.
“How well did you know Mr. Gregoria?” Rob asked.
She blinked. “We joked around a bit, like I said. Nothing else.”
“So you never dated?” Paul sat poised with his pen at the ready.
Her eyes widened to almost comic proportions. “Me and Jerry? No. I’m married. I don’t do that kind of stuff.” Her cheeks tinted pink. “I mean, I heard the stories about him, but he never acted like that with me.”
Guess there was at least one other person Jerry didn’t sleep with.
“Thank you, Mrs. Simpson. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Is that it?”
Paul could’ve sworn she was disappointed, and suppressed a smile. So often witnesses came in terrified, but after telling their story, found it hard to stop talking.
“We’ll be in touch if we need you again.”
“Oh, okay.” She gathered up her purse. “Jerry was a nice guy. He didn’t deserve this.”
Paul wanted to say few people deserved getting stabbed in the neck, but refrained, and both he and Rob remained silent until the door closed behind her.
“Well, score one for Jerry’s team,” Rob said. “That’s the first woman he hasn’t banged.”
“I’m assuming there will be others,” Paul said. “I imagine he had some discretion.”
A knock sounded on the door.
“That must be Ms. Dickerson.”
Rob stood to let her in, and when he opened the door, she burst through in an obvious huff.
“I can’t believe I have to sit here and talk to the police while I’m at a business convention. It’s ridiculous.”
“Ms. Dickerson, please have a seat.”
“How long will this take?” she demanded, setting her huge tote bag on the table they’d brought in, dangerously close to knocking down his coffee cup. Cliff, Paul noted with approval when he came to their assigned suite, had also provided them with some fruit and water bottles.
Ignoring her question, Paul moved his bottle and addressed her. “Good morning, Ms. Dickerson, I’m Detective Paul Monroe, and this is Detective Rob Gormley. We are investigating the murder of Jerry Gregoria, one of the bartenders here at the Starrywood Hotel. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to speak with us.”
“Yes, yes. I don’t understand why you’re speaking with me. I mean, yeah, I had a few drinks at the bar. That doesn’t mean I killed him.”
Dana Dickerson was an attractive woman, heavily made up and bedecked with gold bracelets jangling up and down her narrow arms and rings sparkling on her fingers. At eleven in the morning, she wore an expensive-looking dress and stilettos that could take a person’s eye out in a pinch if she was ever attacked. A red-tipped nail tapped with annoyance on the lacquered tabletop.
Ms. Dickerson didn’t act nervous about being interviewed by two detectives or that she might be a suspect in a murder. No, she was pissed.
“This isn’t fair. You’re taking me away from my loyal and devoted fans, who paid top dollar to see me.”
“We’re speaking with you, Ms. Dickerson, because according to several witnesses, you and the deceased were overheard arguing by the coffee bar.”
Her eyes widened, but Paul gave her credit for merely blinking before answering, “I don’t recall that.”
“No?”
In his usual deliberate manner, Rob thumbed through several pages of notes he had in his hands, taking his sweet time, although Paul would’ve bet a week’s salary he knew exactly what he was looking for and where it was.
“Ah. Bear with me a moment, please.” He adjusted his reading glasses, and Paul hid a grin behind his coffee cup. “Let me read this to you and see if it jogs your memory. It’s time-stamped eight p.m., Monday the fourteenth, two days before Jerry was murdered:
‘Hey, babe. How’s midnight? I can come to your room.’
‘Perfect. I’ll be waiting.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘Where are you? It’s twelve thirty. I’m not staying up.’ ”
Rob kept reading, and Paul, who hadn’t taken his eyes off Dana Dickerson, watched her nails dig into the palms of her hands.
“Tuesday morning, the fifteenth, at seven a.m.:
‘Sorry, babe, got held up and couldn’t make it.’
‘You have a f-ing lot of nerve. You think you can f me—’ ”
A strangled sound escaped Dana Dickerson.
Rob’s sharp blue gaze met Dickerson’s. “I’m censoring it a bit, but I’m sure you know what it says. ‘You think you can f me once and treat me like sh—’ ”
“Stop it.” Her hands flew up to cover her ears. “Okay, okay, so we had a fling. So what?” Dickerson’s eyes blazed. Defiant, and with her color restored, she said, “Just because I slept with him doesn’t mean I killed him.”
“According to a witness, you had a fight by the coffee bar, whereby you told him he was going to be sorry for dumping you.”
“He told me it didn’t mean anything. That it was just a fling and I should stop being clingy and get off his back. No woman wants to hear that.”
No man did either, but Paul remained silent, letting her vent.
“I was angry and hurt, okay? I met him the first night I got to the hotel, and he was friendly and we talked for hours at the bar. The second night we connected on a deeper level, and he came to my room.”
“Deeper level?” Paul asked. “Explain, please.”
“We talked about more personal things—what we wanted out of life, our dreams. Things like that.”
“And that second night, did you have sexual intercourse?” Rob asked. As someone who didn’t put his personal life on public display, Paul felt sorry for Dana Dickerson, watching her cheeks flame.
“Yes,” she whispered, her gaze firmly rooted in her lap.
“Ms. Dickerson. Please understand we’re only asking these questions to get the complete picture. We aren’t delving into your personal life for any other reason.”
“I’d had a few drinks and I’ve been traveling a lot lately. It gets lonely. He was sweet and funny, and like I s
aid, I felt connected to him. So what if I was stupid enough to fall for his line? We’re both single. Who was it hurting? I didn’t know he was a player.”
“How do you know he was a player? What makes you think that?”
Dickerson slumped in her chair. “Someone passed by and said they heard what he said to me and I shouldn’t get upset. That Jerry was like that with everyone.” A sigh escaped her. “I guess I was stupid to expect anything, honestly. And normally I don’t sleep around, but he made me feel special. It’s not nice to treat someone like they’re nothing more than a notch on the bedpost. Sex isn’t something I take lightly, but I wanted to be with someone. It isn’t easy to be alone all the time.”
Those words hit home for Paul, who’d never treated sex as anything more than a release.
“But I didn’t kill him.” A bit of her earlier flash returned. “I was angry and humiliated, but that doesn’t mean I killed him.”
“Can you tell us where you were between four thirty and five thirty on the afternoon of Wednesday the sixteenth?”
“Am I allowed to check my phone? I have my schedule on my Google Calendar.”
Rob gave her his easygoing smile. “Of course.”
She scrolled through and squinted at the screen. “I had a panel from two to two thirty, a meet and greet from two thirty to three fifteen with Dana’s Darlings—”
“Dana’s Darlings?”
“It’s my author group…a group of my most devoted fans.”
“Ah, I see. Go ahead, please.”
“From three thirty to four I had coffee with the head of my fan club, Lenore Flicker.”
“And afterward?”
“I had no other events until dinner at six thirty, so I went to my room.”
“Alone?” Paul asked.
She glared at him. “Yes. Alone.”
“You didn’t make any phone calls, answer any emails, or speak to anyone during that time?”
“No. I was tired because I stayed up very late, so I took a nap. My God, this is crazy. I write romance books. Do I look like a murderer?” Her voice rose with each sentence until she was almost screaming.
Paul and Rob glanced at each other: no alibi for the time of the murder.
“Thank you for your time, Ms. Dickerson. We’ll be in touch.”
Dana Dickerson was breathing hard, face flushed, and her gaze swung wildly between Rob and him, but then she grabbed her huge tote bag and stormed out as fast as her heels would carry her.
The silence reverberated with the door slam.
“Well. There’s another viable suspect.” The chair squeaked against the floor when Rob pushed away from the table and stretched out his legs in front of him.
“Doesn’t look good, no,” Paul said, tapping his pen against his pad. “Jilted lover, feeling the fool. Even the knife as the murder weapon is a clue.”
“Yeah, and no one saw her during nap time. I’d say we need to keep an eye on Ms. Dana Dickerson.”
“How’s the forensics coming on his computer? Any other tidbits pop up?”
Rob grunted. “Nothing that jumps out at me. Our boy Jerry got more action than you and me put together, that’s for damn sure. Seems like every night he was dipping his wick somewhere, always with a different woman or man. That surprised me.”
“Why?”
He’d worked with Rob for five years and never had a whisper of an idea that Rob was homophobic. Paul fervently hoped he wasn’t about to now.
“Dude, the guy was hooking up with women and men at the hotel left and right, he had his steady chick on the side, plus he was a personal trainer and put the moves on the guys at the gym as well.” His eyes danced with amusement. “When did he give it a rest? If I get lucky and manage to go a few times a night with Annabel, I need a day to recover. Jerry was doing double duty and never took a night off. Damn.” Rob hooted with laughter, and Paul joined him. “I wish I could’ve met him before he got knocked off to find out his secret.”
To an outsider, it might have seemed bizarre, even macabre, the way they found humor in a murder investigation, but being surrounded by death all day long, you grabbed any bit of relief you could find.
After they caught their breaths, Paul stuck his memo pad in his suit jacket. “We have the cover model Jerry hooked up with coming in next, after lunch.”
“Yeah.” Rob consulted his own notes. “Troy Tremaine. I got it.” He checked his watch. “I’m gonna go meet Annabel for a bite. You wanna join us?”
While Paul liked Rob’s wife, he had someone else he hoped to eat with.
“Thanks, I’m gonna take a rain check. I got a few things to work through.”
“Okay, see you then.” Rob sauntered out of the room, leaving Paul to sit and think for a moment about his next step. What was he doing spending all this time with Cliff? A few bits and pieces from his high-school days had popped up the past several days, and he remembered seeing Harley with a skinny little Cliff at his side. Thinking about his brother hurt too much, so he forced himself to stop and concentrated on writing up his notes in a more coherent fashion.
“It isn’t easy to be alone all the time.”
Those words from Dana Dickerson struck him. The phone in the suite rang, and he answered it.
“Monroe.”
“It’s Cliff. I was wondering if you were interested in lunch? I have some papers to give you as well.”
“Be right over.”
He’d always been alone, and he wasn’t sure he knew how to be anything else. With a grunt and the beginnings of a headache throbbing behind his eyes, he left the interview room in search of Cliff.
CHAPTER SIX
All morning Cliff had debated whether he should call Paul Monroe and invite him to lunch. This wouldn’t be a chance encounter like at the Italian restaurant the night before, or at the Light Bulb, where the supercharged atmosphere lent itself to every word being sexualized. Stepping onto this path was a deliberate action on his part.
But the chance to act on a decades-old fantasy was proving too hard to walk away from. He’d spent the better part of his teenage years in lust with Paul Monroe, and seeing him now as a grown man hadn’t cooled his desire. If anything, Paul’s strong and gruff nature only made Cliff want him more.
When Paul agreed to lunch, Cliff ignored his own previous warnings not to get involved with a closet case. A fling, however, he could deal with, and he knew Paul would be nothing more than that. The reality of crushes was that they never turned out as wonderful as one imagined. If it got to the point where he and Paul did actually hook up, Cliff would be able to enjoy it free of doubts.
Cliff straightened up his desk and set aside the files he’d compiled on the employees who worked with Jerry in the bar and their shifts. His phone rang.
“Cliff Baxter.”
“Paul Monroe is at the front.”
“Thank you. Send him back to me, please.” He hung up and pulled out the restaurant menu from his top drawer. At the knock, he called out, “Come on in.”
Paul appeared in the doorway, his white shirt a bit rumpled and his striped tie loosened. Cliff had to admit he preferred him in a T-shirt and pair of shorts, with morning stubble rough on his jaw.
“Hi.”
Ignoring how Paul’s eyes crinkled with his smile, Cliff waved him into the office. “Hey, come in and sit down. I’ve got the restaurant menu right here.”
With a grunt, Paul dropped into the chair in front of the desk. “Okay.” He only gave it a cursory glance before making his choice. “Turkey on a roll. Lettuce, onion, tomato, and mustard.”
“You want fries? The chef makes some killer sweet-potato ones, and they’re less fattening than regular.” Cliff rubbed his stomach. “I’d hate to negate our morning workout.”
“Sure, sounds good.” Paul tossed the menu back onto the desk, rolled his neck, and let out a sigh.
He placed the call for their food, then hung up the phone. “Rough morning?” Cliff asked sympathetically. “How many peo
ple have you interviewed so far?”
“Two.” Paul chewed his bottom lip, gazing off to the side. “It was definitely interesting.”
“I might’ve heard a bit of the commotion,” Cliff said, unable to keep the amusement from his voice, and Paul unclenched his jaw long enough to smile.
“That would be Ms. Dickerson. She wasn’t pleased at having to speak with us, and even less so when we questioned her about her one-night stand with the deceased.”
Cliff winced. “Ouch. That would be a bit rough to take. Especially from strangers, and two men at that.”
“We tried to be polite, but this is a murder investigation. We can’t go easy on her with the facts staring us in the face.” His expression darkened. “Everyone is a suspect until the murderer is caught.”
Cliff shivered, a corresponding zing of attraction shooting through him at Paul’s intensity.
“I’m sure,” Cliff said soothingly. “I can’t imagine the stress you’re under. But I can see it from her point of view too. She thought she had a night of pleasure, and now she’s caught up in a murder investigation. It can’t be easy.”
Paul’s blue-eyed gaze rested on him. “You’re right. It’s hard for me to separate myself sometimes from detective to simple human being. I become so focused, I tend to forget everything else.”
“It’s understandable. I’m an outsider and not a cop, so I’m looking at it through a different lens.”
At the knock on the door, Paul rolled his chair back and opened it. A white-coated young man stood at the entrance with a tray.
“Come on in, Marlon.”
Paul moved away from the door, and Marlon entered, placed the tray on the desk, and departed swiftly.
“This smells good. Here’s your food.” Cliff pushed Paul’s plate to him while he unwrapped his roast beef and Swiss sandwich. “We can share the fries.”
The next several minutes were spent eating. Paul grabbed a few fries, and after tasting them, pronounced them delicious. He finished half his sandwich before letting out a comfortable sigh.
“I’ve always been hyperfocused during my investigations, so it’s interesting and helpful to hear an outsider’s point of view.”
