A Rose From the Dead (16 page)

Before I had a chance to press further, Grace switched the subject back so smoothly that it was as though I’d never opened my mouth. “I believe it’s not so much admiration that is causing Angelique’s distress as it is a sense of responsibility. After all, she did find Sybil’s body, didn’t she? Now, perhaps we should move on to a more pleasant topic. Will you be staying until five o’clock today, Walker?”

“I’ll be here,” he replied eagerly, “long after everyone else has packed up, no doubt, now that I’ve assumed the chairperson’s duties.”

“How very noble of you, Walker,” Grace said, giving him a smile. “Would you be available to have a cup of coffee with me sometime this afternoon?”

The colonel straightened his tie. “I’d be delighted to join you, Grace.”

“Shall we say Starbucks in fifteen minutes, then?”

My cell phone began to vibrate, so I checked the screen.
Rats!
Reilly again. “Excuse me,” I said to Grace and the colonel, and stepped away to answer it.

Trying my best to sound virtuous, I said, “Hey, Sarge. What’s up?”

“Abby, where are you?”

That is a question most often asked if the other person thinks you are somewhere you shouldn’t be, like near a suite that has been broken into. Quickly, I cupped my hand over the phone so he’d think I was in a quiet room. “At Sybil’s memorial service,” I whispered.

“Were you up on the fourth floor of the hotel about half an hour ago?”

I checked my watch. Whew. Saved by a technicality. Half an hour ago I was tearing down the stairs
from
the fourth floor. “Nope,” I whispered. “Wasn’t me. Why?”

“I’m on the fourth floor right now, looking into a matter for some hotel guests who say there was yellow crime-scene tape across their door, and now it’s back on the door next to theirs, which happens to be the vic’s suite. Any idea how that happened?”

“Um, right off the top of my head I’d want to know if they’d been drinking.”

“They haven’t been drinking,” he growled.

“Then I’m fresh out of ideas. Sorry.”

“Here’s the thing. I’ve got a witness from a room up the hallway who described you perfectly, down to your freckles. Seems she heard voices and looked out of the peephole on her hotel room door and saw a shoeless redhead talking to one of the housekeepers. And guess where they were standing? Right in front of the vic’s suite.”

“I hate to disappoint you, Reilly, but my feet are covered. Must be a case of mistaken identity.”

“Yeah, right, like there are other short, freckle-faced redheads running around here.”

“They say everyone has a double. What are the odds of my double turning up here at the same time as me? Listen, Reilly, the service is about to end, so I’ve got to hang up now.” I shut the phone and breathed a sigh of relief. It wouldn’t hold him off forever, but it would stall him for awhile.

I joined Grace just as the colonel said to her, “I’ll see you soon,” and wiggled his eyebrows as though she’d just set up a daring rendezvous.

“Shall we head back to our booth, then?” Grace said to me. “Lottie’s been by herself far too long. She’ll be wanting a little stretch now, won’t she? Who rang your mobile?”

“Sgt. Reilly. Not important. Why did you change the subject after I asked the colonel about Sybil?”

“I could see how uncomfortable the topic made him. And as long as we’re discussing the matter, why did you ask him if he knew whether Sybil had been involved in something illegal?”

“Because the colonel was close to Sybil’s husband. It was a long shot, but I figured if there was anything fishy going on in her life, her husband might have known about it and confided in his army buddy. I guess men just aren’t as chatty as women.”

“What gave you the idea she might be involved in something illegal in the first place?”

“In her phone message to Crawford she said she wanted him to take possession of certain belongings because she couldn’t go to the police. Doesn’t that sound like she had something illegal in her possession?”

Grace’s forehead wrinkled as she pondered the possibility. “I see.”

We entered the lobby and found it jammed with people checking out, so we had to pause our conversation as we wove through the crowd and headed up the corridor that connected the two buildings. We kept going until we reached the exhibition hall, but there our path was blocked by the huge crowd at Chet Sunday’s
Make It Easy
set.

On one end of the stage, Chet was seated behind a table autographing glossies of himself for a long line of women. On the other end of the stage, representatives from Habitation Station, wearing neon green vests and matching baseball caps, were handing out neon green tape measures to promote their casket kits to the men who had taken a pass on the autograph queue.

“I’m surprised Chet Sunday didn’t attend the memorial service,” Grace remarked as we tried to squeeze past. “I thought I heard that he came here as a favor to Sybil.”

“That’s what Sybil wanted people to think. I had a little chat with Chet earlier, and he set me straight. The truth is, she paid him to be here.”

“Really? Habitation Station didn’t pay him?”

“They pay him for ten appearances a year, and this isn’t one of them.”

“A busy television personality wouldn’t come cheaply, would he? How much do you think it took to buy his appearance for two days?”

“I don’t have any idea,” I said as we broke free of the crowd and started toward aisle two, which was wide open. Not a shopper or browser in sight. The convention seemed to be waning quickly. I had to hope the Urbans didn’t pack up and take off before I had a chance to prove their involvement in Sybil’s death.

“It seems odd that Sybil would pay for Chet to appear here,” Grace said. “Conventions are expensive to put on. Budgeting in a television personality would be costly, and from what I’ve learned about Sybil, she was remarkably frugal.”

“True, but scoring Chet’s appearance was a feather in Sybil’s cap. It made her look important, and she was all about looking important. Maybe she paid him out of her own pocket so his appearance fee wouldn’t show up in the convention’s records. Besides, Chet wouldn’t have done something as reckless as putting Sybil’s clothes on that dummy. As far as I’m concerned, Chet is off the list.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” Grace glanced at the watch pinned to her bodice and clucked her tongue. “Oh, dear. I should have made my coffee date in half an hour instead of fifteen minutes.”

“You realize the colonel has a crush on you, right?”

“I sincerely hope so. I’ve certainly tried my best to foster it.”

“Grace!”

“Heavens, dear, don’t look so shocked. It’s for our investigation.”

“
Our
investigation?”

“You don’t mind my poking around, do you? Two brains are better than one, as the saying goes—or three brains, in this case. And as I explained before, Delilah is my friend, too. I certainly don’t want to see her charged with murder.”

“I appreciate your help, Grace, but Marco and I are pretty good at finding killers. Remember Snuggles the Clown? Remember the Jack-in-the-Pulpit murder? Or the time you were attacked at your house in your Elvis room?”

“In other words,” Grace said with a wounded sniff, “you prefer to handle this investigation yourselves.”

“You know I love you, Grace, and always appreciate your help, but you have to admit we do have more experience.” Was I starting to sound like Marco?

“Have the two of you found anything to clear Delilah?”

“Well, no, not yet, but we haven’t opened the envelope.”

“Do you have any idea what’s inside?”

“Possibly a videotape.”

“I see. And if this videotape fails to deliver your suspect, the convention will be over in a few short hours and all your witnesses and suspects will be gone. What then?”

I scratched my nose. What then, indeed?

Grace studied me with a shrewd eye as we drew near our booth. “You’re not afraid I’ll find the killer before you, are you?”

“What? No! This isn’t a contest.”

“Then what is your problem, dear?”

What
was
my problem?

The best defense is a good offense,
my dad always told me. “Why don’t you tell me what
your
investigation has turned up so far, Grace.”

“I’m glad you asked. For beginners, after spending more than an hour with Angelique, I can earnestly say I don’t believe that young lady had anything to do with Sybil’s death other than discovering her body. Apparently Angelique had overheard Sybil arranging to meet someone there before the banquet, and when Sybil failed to show after a reasonable amount of time, Angelique ran straight to the storage room. The door was shut and no light showed beneath, but then she spied a red rose petal on the floor and thought she detected Sybil’s perfume, so she decided to investigate. She firmly believes that the rose Sybil wore yesterday is still in the killer’s possession.”

“Did you explain that whoever killed Sybil isn’t likely to keep the rose because it would be evidence?”

“It would have been a waste of time. Angelique’s mind is made up, and I think we can agree that she’s rather eccentric.”

“Is that how you explain those weird musical terms she uses?”

“Angelique thinks in those terms, dear. She sees people as a collection of notes, each person giving out different vibrations—some gentle, some fierce, some dull, some lively.”

“Some short and disconnected.”

“Yes, well,
que será, será.
”

What will be, will be. That was Grace’s way of telling me to get over it.

“Angelique was absolutely fascinated by Sybil’s aura,” Grace continued. “She said Sybil was a unique individual with a dark, narcissistic dissonance the likes of which she’d never encountered before. Angelique had no desire to hasten her death. Quite the contrary. She felt compelled to study Sybil and truly wanted to get to know her better.”

“Did you ask why she had her tape recorder out if it was evident that Sybil was dead?”

“First, you must understand that the portable tape recorder goes wherever Angelique goes. It’s always in her bag, charged and ready to record. She gave me the name of a woman in her employ who can verify that. When Angelique opened the lid and saw Sybil’s blue lips, she pulled out her mobile phone to call for a medic, then removed her tape recorder in the hope that Sybil’s soul hadn’t yet left the body. Unfortunately, it was too late, and poor Angelique was so distraught by the thought that if she’d been there sooner she might have prevented Sybil’s death that she collapsed onto the floor in a state of shock. Having lost many that were dear to me, I can distinguish genuine grief from a phony act in a second, and I say with absolute sincerity that Angelique is genuinely grief stricken. I think we can safely rule her out as a suspect.”

“So Angelique is out, and Chet is out. That leaves us with the Urbans—who, by the way, were my original suspects. I’m glad you agree with me on that, Grace.”

“Actually, there’s someone else I’d like to investigate.”

“Please don’t say Eli Cotton.”

“Goodness no, the man’s a flake. His beef is with the morticians’ association, not with any one individual.”

Grace had certainly been thinking a lot about this case. “Who, then?”

“Will you look at that?” She pointed to our booth, where we could see Lottie sitting in a folding chair with her feet propped up on the table, her head drooped to one side, and her mouth open. She was snoring loudly.

“Good thing we have no customers,” Grace said, hurrying up to our table.

She started to reach across to wake Lottie, but I caught her sleeve. “You didn’t tell me who you’re going to investigate.”

“Didn’t I? It’s Walker Billingsworth, of course.”

I gaped at her. “The colonel?”

Lottie woke with a snort, and her head snapped up. “I’ll have some chicken.” She glanced at us in confusion. “What? Didn’t one of you just say you were going to order Kentucky Fried Chicken?”

Grace sighed. “I’ll be at Starbucks if you need me.”

“I’ll be right back,” I said to Lottie, and hurried after Grace. “You think the colonel is involved in Sybil’s death?”

She motioned for me to follow her. We stood against the back wall, well away from people heading toward the food court. “Let me ask you something, dear. These premonitions you get—you call them gut feelings—do they hit you right here?” She put the tip of her finger against her abdomen, just below her rib cage.

“That’s the spot.”

“Yes, I thought so.”

“But, Grace, the
colonel
? The Vietnam war hero?”

“Walker is not a colonel, Abby. He’s an impostor.”

“W
hat are you saying, Grace? The colonel—er, Walker—lied about Vietnam?”

“He didn’t lie about serving in Vietnam. You see, this all came about because of my, well,
gut
feeling, so I stopped at the Internet café to do some research and discovered that he never went above the rank of captain.”

“It’s not unheard of for former military men to call themselves colonels. You can’t accuse a man of murder because of that.”

“I’m not accusing, only questioning. There’s a big difference. We cannot dismiss the fact that Walker lied about his rank. If he lied about that, he could well have lied about other things, such as where he was at the time of the murder. As Aristotle once said, ‘Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.’”

“But I saw the colonel—er, Walker—oh, hell, the colonel—at the banquet. He gave the opening remarks. And he arrived at the storage room
after
Marco and I did.”

“What time did Walker give his remarks?”

I had to think back. “Maybe seven twenty? Okay, I see where you’re going with this. He could have killed Sybil before the banquet. But why? He had to have a motive. And what about her clothes being on the dummy? That prank was definitely not the colonel’s style.”

“Didn’t you tell me that Walker barely tolerates the Urban twins? And that he’d love nothing more than to have them banned from future conventions? What better way to get rid of them once and for all than to manipulate events so that they’re charged with a crime? It’s possible Angelique wasn’t the only one who heard Sybil setting up her tryst. Perhaps Walker saw an opportunity to make those two young men appear to be culprits, and he took it.”

“But to murder someone just to get the Urbans banned from conventions? That’s pretty extreme, Grace. Plus, it would take very careful planning.”

“He was a leader in Vietnam, dear. Battle strategies, and all that. Believe me, Abby, I am hoping for nothing more than to find out that Walker is perfectly innocent, but until I know, I can’t rule him out.”

“I still don’t buy it. Sybil’s husband was the colonel’s friend. Do you honestly think he would kill his friend’s wife as revenge against two young jerks who liked to pull pranks? Remember how he praised Sybil in his eulogy?”

“‘False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.’ Those were Plato’s thoughts on the subject, and that’s all I have to say until I know more.”

My phone began to ring, so Grace said, “You get that, and I’ll be off, then.”

“Wait a minute, Grace.” I checked the screen to make sure it wasn’t Reilly calling again, then flipped it open and heard Marco grumble, “One hour of scanning a whole day’s worth of videotapes and my eyes are killing me. I’m just leaving the security manager’s office now.”

“Hold on a minute.” I held my hand over the phone and said to Grace, “Be careful. Don’t let the colonel know what you’re up to. And remember not to—”

“I’m not a fool, dear, but thank you for your concern.”

I watched her go, then remembered Marco on the line. “Sorry. I was trying to talk Grace out of playing detective.”

“Why do you want to talk her out of it?”

“Because
we’re
working on the murder.”

“Sunshine, at this stage of the game, the more the merrier.”

“But she doesn’t have our experience.”

“You don’t have
my
experience. Has that ever stopped you?”

“Oh, sure, like you’ve never tried to talk me out of it.”

Marco didn’t like to argue with me—or debate, as I preferred to call it. Unlike me, who could debate for hours. So he simply changed the subject. “Do you want to hear what was on the security video?”

“Sure. Is it anything that will help Delilah?”

“We’ll talk about that afterward.”

That didn’t sound good.

“The videotape of the lounge area showed one of the Urbans seated at the bar from six oh-three p.m. until six forty-seven p.m. He was dressed in a dark suit and tie with neatly combed hair, but there’s no way to tell which twin it was. If you’ll remember back to the banquet, both of them wore dark suits.”

“That would be the one time this entire weekend that Jess’s hair was combed. His tongue stud would be a dead giveaway, but I don’t suppose he opened his mouth wide enough for a view of that.”

“There are no close-ups of his mouth at all. The angle is wrong, and the tape wasn’t that clear anyway. But here’s the bigger problem. I just got off the phone with my source at the police station and found out that Ross claimed
he
was at the bar during that time. He swears that’s him on the videotape, not Jess.”

“They’re both using the same alibi?”

“You’ve got it. And since the cops can’t tell which one of them was actually there, without hard evidence to prove otherwise, they’re both off the hook.”

“No way.”

“I’m afraid so. Using the same alibi is clever—almost too clever for Ross and Jess. I’m betting their father’s lawyer has been advising them.”

“Great. Now, how are we going to find out which one is telling the truth?”

“Get one of them to point the finger at the other.”

“I tried that with Jess, but he wouldn’t crack. If their lawyer is advising them, I’ll bet Ross has been told not to talk, too.”

“Then we better hope that whatever is in the envelope does the finger-pointing for us.”

“What if it doesn’t, Marco? What if all we find inside is a watch?”

“It’s not going to be a watch. Remember, whatever it is, Sybil couldn’t go to the police with it.”

“Maybe it’s a stolen watch, then. You know what I mean. What are we going to do if what we find inside is totally useless?”

“Let’s just take it one step at a time. Hold on a minute. I’m cutting through a crowd by Chet Sunday’s set.”

I glanced down the back of the hall, where I could see round tables and chairs set up for Starbucks’s customers. Grace and the colonel were seated at one.

“Okay, I can talk now,” Marco said. “And by the way, the security video confirmed that Chet was with Sybil in the lounge area at a little past noon, which is approximately the time we saw them leave his set together.”

“That matches what he told me.”

“Did he also tell you he and Sybil took the elevator to the fourth floor of the hotel afterward?”

“No way. Were they caught on camera?”

“They sure were. The elevator ride could be a coincidence, but I wouldn’t cross him off the list yet.”

“Still, I can’t see him putting Sybil’s clothes on the dummy. It’s too childish. And honestly, Marco, would a popular, good-looking TV personality who plays up his wholesome image really take a chance of being seen going into Sybil’s suite?”

“Maybe she paid him for that appearance, too.”

“If he came for the money and the exposure, that would cover both, wouldn’t it?” I had a sudden picture of Sybil and Chet getting horizontal in her bedroom and couldn’t help but snicker. “I wonder if Chet keeps his tool belt on?”

“Abby, stick to the subject.”

I started to giggle. “Tape measure, anyone?”

“Will you stop that?” he asked, trying not to laugh himself.

“Sorry. I think it’s stress related. But seriously, Marco, if Sybil paid Chet for his, well, appearances, then what’s his motive?”

Marco was stumped, and whenever that happened, he didn’t waste time pondering. He simply moved on. “I picked up a few other details from my source. The preliminary autopsy report showed that Sybil died between six and seven o’clock, most likely around six thirty. The cause was asphyxiation, and the only identifiable fingerprints were Angelique’s, which were found on the outside doorknob and the casket lid. The detectives are attributing that to her opening it. All of the other surfaces they tested either had been wiped clean or were smudged with too many prints to get clear impressions.”

“Someone wiped the surfaces? That doesn’t sound like a prank that went wrong. I hate to sound supportive of my main suspects, but if the Urbans had shut Sybil inside as a joke, they wouldn’t have bothered to wipe off the fingerprints.”

“Unless they wanted her to die.”

“Premeditated murder? I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe the prank they pulled on me was for practice.”

“At any rate,” Marco said dryly, not buying my theory, “the police investigators are still combing through the evidence, hoping to find a hair or something to get some DNA. It doesn’t appear that whoever met Sybil in the storage room stayed long enough for a tryst. No evidence was found on or inside her body.”

“So no rockets went off for the mystery man?”

“If one lifted off, it didn’t touch down; otherwise, the cops would have found DNA. There were also bruise marks in the shape of hands on Sybil’s chest, most likely male, probably made when the killer pushed her down inside the casket to shut the lid.”

“That would definitely eliminate Angelique, with her tiny hands.” Which meant that Grace had figured that one correctly. Score one for Grace.

“That’s what the detectives have decided. She’s out of the running. But here’s the bad news. They won’t rule out Delilah.”

“But you said the handprints were male.”

“
Most likely.
Delilah is a strong woman, with strong hands. The cops have photographed the marks and are going to try to match them to her handprints.”

“That’s still pretty flimsy as far as evidence goes. I mean, no fingerprints, no DNA—”

“Maybe DNA.”

I had a sudden flutter of anxiety. “Maybe?”

“The cops recovered a smock that Delilah identified as the one she’d used to protect her dress when she went to the storage room to fix her contest entry.”

“But Delilah freely admitted she was there. So big deal if her smock was there, too.”

“That’s the tricky part. She stated that she folded the smock and left it on a shelf by the door. But the cops found it in a trash can outside the building near the back exit.”

“So it ended up in a trash can. That’s not so bad.”

“There was a red rose rolled up inside it.”