A Rose From the Dead (18 page)

“Then why does he think it was you?”

“Some fourth-floor guest reported seeing a shoeless redhead in the hallway talking to one of the maids. But don’t worry. The snitch didn’t see you, and I have an alibi. Okay, we have steam now. Bring on the envelope.”

He held the flap end of the envelope over the huffing iron. “Are you sure no one can ID you?”

“Positive. I just don’t want Reilly to start quizzing me on it because I don’t like to lie, and I can only stretch the truth so far. That’s why I’m avoiding his phone calls.”

“So Reilly’s still in the hotel?”

“He was an hour ago.”

“I wonder if he came back for another look at the crime scene.”

“Would that be bad or good?”

“If it means he’s having doubts about the direction of the investigation, it’s good. Hey!” He jerked his hand back and examined his wrist. “That steam is hot.”

“Sorry.” I slanted him a coy glance. “Want me to kiss it and make it all better?”

That sexy grin flickered at one corner of his mouth. “Later, baby. “

It took two more minutes for the gummed flap to loosen; then Marco took the envelope into the bedroom, sat on the bed, and reached inside. I stood at his shoulder, crossing my fingers in the hope that whatever was in there was Delilah’s ticket to freedom.

“Let’s see what we have here. This looks like a bankbook.” Marco placed a small, thin blue book on the bed. “A homemade CD or DVD.” He put a clear plastic case containing a generic disc beside the bankbook and reached inside again. “And one black plastic videocassette tape.” He checked inside the envelope. “That’s it.”

I picked up the cassette and read the label on the front. “
Chester Cheater
. Running time sixty minutes. And get this. It stars Sugar Shackup and Chester ‘Chest-hair’ Domingo. Oh, man, that’s bad. It has to be a porn movie of some kind. I wonder if it’s a takeoff of Chester
Cheetah
from the Cheetos commercials.”

“So it’s a
corny
porn flick,” Marco said as he examined the bankbook.

“Why would Sybil want to keep a porn video safe?”

“Maybe she’s in it.”

“You think? Maybe she’s Sugar Shackup.”

Marco mumbled something about that being preferable to Chest-hair Domingo, but his attention was on the bankbook, so I took the cassette and headed for the television. “I’ll check this out and tell you about it afterward. Keep your eyes averted.”

“Abby, take a look at this.”

I walked back to see Sybil’s bankbook, where Marco pointed out two deposits in the amount of ten thousand dollars each that had been entered on the first of every month. There were no other entries listed on the pages.

“Wow. Twenty thousand dollars a month. That’s a lot of money for a product line that wasn’t doing well. I wish I could make that much selling flowers.”

“This can’t be income from her business. She wouldn’t deposit it in two separate amounts on the same date every month, even if her business was a success.”

I waved the cassette in front of him. “Maybe she produced this kind of movie.”

“Why would she keep just one of them?” Marco flipped back a few pages, studying the entries. “One of these deposits started last March, the month after her husband died.”

“Could she have received payments from his life insurance policy?”

“That would have been paid out in a lump sum. Besides, she wouldn’t have needed to keep it in a secret account.”

I picked up the round case and opened it. The top side of the disk was blank, but on the back someone had written a name in the center in tiny black letters. “This has
Walker
written on it, Marco. Could this be about Colonel Billingsworth?”

“I don’t know any other Walkers. Put it in the player, and let’s find out.”

I
turned on the TV and the video player, inserted the disk, and hit
PLAY
. We sat on the edge of the bed watching as an emaciated man appeared on the screen. He was propped against pillows in a bed, obviously in a bedroom by the look of the ornate headboard behind him. He had an IV line in one arm and an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, with a stand holding the oxygen tank beside the bed. Clearly, the man wasn’t the Walker we knew.

From somewhere out of camera range, we heard Sybil’s grating voice say, “Go ahead, Thad. The camera is rolling.”

“That has to be Sybil’s husband,” I said as the sickly man removed his mask and began to speak.

“My name is Thaddeus Blount,” he said in a weak, shaky voice, “and I am making this recording for my business partner and lifelong friend, Walker Billingsworth, at the urging of my wife, in the hopes that Walker will join me in atoning for the shameful way in which we conducted our business.”

“A confessional?” I asked as the ailing man stopped to breathe into his mask.

“Sounds like it,” Marco said. “Did you catch that he was doing it at Sybil’s urging?”

“Walker, old friend,” Blount continued, “I couldn’t live with our ugly secret any longer. It consumed my life, and I refused to go to my grave with it, too, so I’ve made my confession to my maker and to my wife, and I beg you to do likewise. Cleanse your soul before it’s too late.”

“Cleanse his soul?” Marco muttered. “What the hell did they do?”

“When you and I first started our business,” Blount continued, “we were young men fresh from ’Nam, with no income, desperate for customers, so we made what we thought was a shrewd business decision. But what we did to the families of our fellow soldiers was—unconscionable and”—Blount’s breathing became labored—“has been—a terrible weight—on my conscience—ever since.”

When Blount’s head fell back weakly and his chest shuddered beneath the thin material of his pajama top, Sybil instantly appeared on the edge of the screen, adjusting his breathing apparatus, patting his shoulder, whispering into his ear.

Marco sat forward, watching the screen intently. “Come on,” he said tersely, as though he could will the man to speak. “Tell us what you did.”

His agitation puzzled me until I remembered that his uncle had been one of the soldiers whose remains had been handled by Billingsworth and Blount.

After a few moments, Blount gathered the strength to continue, but his voice was fainter than before and he had to pause every few seconds for more air. “This hideous secret—has affected my entire life, including—my relationship with my wife. How could I bring myself to be—completely open and honest with her—when I’ve been lying to myself, denying that—what we did was wrong? Worst of all, though, was the guilt I felt—each time I thought of how we deceived—those grieving families—”

He stopped, gasping for another breath, his eyes bulging, his scrawny hand clawing for his mask, until he was able to clap it over his face and drag in more oxygen.

“You can do it, Thad,” Sybil urged from offscreen.

Blount shook his head. “I’m too weak.”

“Come on. You’re doing this for Walker, remember?”

Blount nodded, then drew in several long mouthfuls of air, raised the mask away from his mouth, and struggled to lift his head from the pillow. “If you have a shred of dignity left, Walker, I beg you to do the right thing. Be brave, man. It’s too late for me to make reparations, but you can do it.”

He fell back against the bed and closed his eyes. “No more,” he wheezed; then the video went black.

Marco punched the
STOP
button and removed the disc from the machine. I could tell from his choppy movements that his anger was simmering just below the surface.

“Wow,” I said softly. “They must have done something terrible. I wonder what it was?”

“I don’t know, but I sure as hell intend to corner Billingsworth about it.” He put the disk into its plastic case, then picked up the black cassette and walked over to the television. “Let’s see what surprises this has in store.”

Marco tried to insert the cassette into the VCR side of the player, but it wouldn’t fit into the slot. He examined the case again. “This is old. It must be in Beta format. I’ll have to dig up an old Beta player somewhere.”

“If it’s old, maybe it’s a porn movie starring Sybil in her younger years. Or maybe her husband is on it. Wait. I know! Her husband and the colonel are in it, and
that’s
their ugly secret.”

“It wouldn’t have affected the families of the soldiers they cremated. I’ll have to dig up a machine somewhere, so we can find out. The security manager might have one stowed away in the hotel’s basement. I’m supposed to be back down there at five, but I’ll go early so I can talk to him—” Marco stopped midsentence and reached for the bankbook again, a look of sudden comprehension on his face. “Of course.”

“Of course what?”

“You know what this is about?” He slapped the book against his knee, shaking his head in disbelief. “Damn. That Sybil was one gutsy woman.”

“Wait. You lost me, Marco. Are you talking about the bankbook now?”

“The bankbook, the confessional, the porn movie…it’s blackmail evidence.” He reached for the plastic case containing the DVD. “This so-called confessional is where she got her husband to incriminate the colonel so she could blackmail him.”

“Are you serious?”

“It all makes sense now. After Blount made his deathbed confession to her, Sybil must have leapt at the opportunity to use the information against Billingsworth. All she had to do was record it before her husband died.”

“So that’s why she kept urging him to go on.”

Marco flipped through the pages of the bankbook. “It’s all documented right here. One deposit started just after her husband passed away. That must have been Billingsworth’s first payment. The other deposits started earlier, which means that by the time she began blackmailing Billingsworth, she was an old hand at it.”

I sat on the bed staring at the evidence of Sybil’s crime. Given what I’d heard about her, it wasn’t hard to believe that she would resort to something as contemptible as blackmail. Still, how could she have betrayed the man whom her husband considered his dear friend?

“
Now
it makes sense why she couldn’t go to the police with this,” Marco said, tapping the envelope. “Blackmail is a felony. Mandatory jail time. No way would she want these things to fall into police hands.” He picked up the
Chester Cheater
videocassette. “If my guess is right, Sybil’s other victim is on this. Someone made an X-rated movie and is living to regret it.”

“I’m still shocked that Sybil would blackmail her husband’s longtime friend. You’d think if she cared at all about her husband, she wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

“Let me spell it out for you, Abby,” Marco said as he put everything back into the envelope. “It’s about
M-O-N-E-Y.
”

“True. Crawford did tell us that she was almost paranoid about having enough money to retire on. Still, ten thousand dollars a month from each victim? That’s a hundred and twenty thousand dollars per year just from the colonel. How could he afford it?”

“He did what he had to do to keep his secret safe.”

“I’m amazed that the colonel could bring himself to say anything good about Sybil in his eulogy. You’d think he would have hated her.”

“Are you kidding? Billingsworth must have been ecstatic when he found out she was dead. No more Sybil, no more payments, no more worries about that secret.”

I smacked my forehead. “That’s why he was so relieved when he came down to the storage room yesterday evening. Remember what he said after Reilly told him about Sybil?
‘Thank God!’
I’ll bet it just slipped out before he caught himself.”

“Think about it, Sunshine. Billingsworth’s entire life is based on his upstanding reputation—Purple Heart medal, Vietnam War record, a leader in the morticians’ society, and even his phony military rank. Whatever he and Blount did, if it got out, he’d be ruined. It makes sense that he would have done everything in his power to keep it quiet. And you notice that Sybil’s blackmail video only hinted at what that secret was. Without Sybil to provide the details, the video is useless.” He paused a moment for me to absorb it. “Do you see where I’m going?”

“I see that you agree with Grace that the colonel should be a suspect.”

“Don’t you? He obviously had a motive.”

I got up to put the iron away. “I’m not sold on the idea of him being a killer, Marco. He’s a gentleman.”

“And a liar. And think about Blount’s confession. Blount felt compelled to clear his conscience, but Billingsworth didn’t. Blount was begging him to set it to rights. That says something about Billingsworth’s character, doesn’t it?”

“I’ll give you that, but really, Marco, can you imagine any reason why Sybil would undress for him? And then climb into a casket?”

“Billingsworth could have threatened her, or used force against her.”

“If Sybil met the colonel in the storage room, she must not have been worried about her safety. And would he have put her clothes on the dummy? That’s much too juvenile for him. That’s something only the Urbans would do.”

“Or something the killer might do to point a finger at the Urbans. Billingsworth did have the opportunity, Abby. Remember, Sybil died around six thirty, by best estimates. We didn’t see Billingsworth until he went up to the podium. What time was that, around seven fifteen, seven twenty? So where was he from six o’clock to seven twenty? Does anyone know?”

“I guess we’ll need to check it out,” I said reluctantly.

“You bet we will. And I need to have a talk with him about what he did to those veterans.” Marco tucked the flap into the envelope. “Now that I think about that phone call Sybil made to Crawford, her concern was for her belongings, not for her own safety. She must have believed someone was going to try to take them from her.”

“But only her blackmail targets would have a reason to do that.”

“You got it.”

“It sure would help to know who that other person was, and if he, she, or they are here this weekend. Hey, maybe Chester Cheater is one of the Urbans.”

“This is a Beta tape, Abby. The Beta format was phased out in the eighties. The Urbans probably weren’t even two years old when this was made.”

Damn. There went that theory. I wasn’t ready to give up on the Urbans yet, however. Only they would have even thought about putting Sybil’s clothes on that mannequin.

While Marco smoothed out the bedspread, I walked over to the window to think. There was something about gazing at the outdoors that cleared the cobwebs from my brain. All that blue sky and bright sunshine, plush green grass, flowery shrubs, and the reds, golds, and oranges of autumn leaves seemed to…Oops. This room had a view of the back parking lot.

“Ready to go?”

“Not yet. I’m working on a thought.”

“In that case, I’d better take my shoes off and make myself comfortable.”

“Sardonic remarks will only make my thought process take longer.”

Marco pretended to snore.

“Okay, fine, you’ll have to settle for an unfinished idea.” I was about to turn away when I caught a sudden movement in the parking lot below. There among the rows of cars was a man in a long brown robe darting swiftly from one vehicle to the next, as though trying to stay hidden.

“What is it?” Marco asked, coming to stand beside me.

I pointed to the last row of parked cars. “I thought I saw Eli Cotton over there.”

“That wack job is back?”

“I keep telling you, he’s not a wack job, Marco. He’s eccentric.”

“Splitting hairs.”

“Look. There he is by that silver Lexus. I wonder what he’s doing.”

“Probably trying to steal a car.”

“Be serious. He seems to be watching the back of the hotel.”

“He’s probably looking for a way to get inside.” Marco glanced at his watch. “It’s two forty, Abby. We really need to get moving.”

“Can I tell you my idea on our way?”

“I can’t wait.” He tucked the envelope inside his jacket, then we headed toward the door. Out of habit, Marco opened it just a crack and looked up and down the hallway before we stepped outside. “Let’s take the stairs. It’s faster.”

“Okay, here’s what I was thinking,” I said as he pulled the door shut behind us. My cell phone vibrated again, but I ignored it. “We still don’t know what triggered Sybil’s call to Crawford, so what if one of her blackmail victims got into her suite to hunt for the envelope; then when Sybil returned to her room later that afternoon, she saw the mess, realized someone had been there, and that’s why she panicked and placed that call?”

He paused at the stairway exit. “I still think the police caused the mess. Besides, look how hard it was for us to get inside her suite.”

“Harder for some of us than for others.”

“Don’t start.” Marco pushed the stairwell door open and we headed down the steps toward the lobby. “Think about it, Sunshine. If your theory is correct, that would mean at least one of Sybil’s victims knew she had the blackmail evidence with her, and the only way that would be possible is if she had told him—or them—and why would she do that?”