After Hours Read online

  Looking over at Alex standing with the dead man’s suit in his hand, I said, “I don’t think he was planning on leaving just yet. The killer seemed to have different plans, of course.”

  As I closed the top dresser drawer, I heard him make a noise like something had surprised him and turned to see him holding up something sparkling between his thumb and forefinger. “This was in his suit coat pocket.”

  He walked toward me, and as he got closer, I saw what he held was a large diamond earring. “I didn’t see that his ears were pierced, though, Alex. I would have noticed a rock that size, I think. That’s got to be at least a carat.”

  “More evidence to support your claim that this involved a woman,” he said under his breath as he dropped the earring into a clear plastic bag.

  I looked around the room for anything else that could tell us what had happened to make someone kill Canton Walters as I made my usual excuses for why I liked to jump to conclusions, which was the complete opposite of how Alex preferred to work.

  “I know you don’t like when I do things like that, but it’s how I am.”

  “You mean how you throw out unsubstantiated ideas?”

  I looked up from searching under the bed and saw him smiling at me. “Yes, that.”

  “I don’t dislike it at all, Poppy. I keep saying you have great instincts. I might not immediately jump to the conclusion that a woman killed Canton, but what you said does have a ring of truth to it, so I’ll keep it in mind as we move along in this investigation.”

  Smiling at how he’d come to accept how I worked, I said, “I’m happy to hear that. I was afraid all my jumping to conclusions muddled your thinking or something like that.”

  Alex shrugged. “Oh, it used to, but I’ve gotten used to it.”

  Running my hand over the carpet beneath the bed, I found nothing, so I stood up and began searching the nightstand while Alex looked over what our victim had been doing when someone jammed a knife between his shoulder blades. The single drawer in the stand next to the full size bed had a copy of the King James Bible and an out-of-date telephone book. I flipped through the pages of both but saw nothing that would indicate our victim had even opened either book during his stay.

  “Mr. Walters was filling out expense forms when he was murdered.”

  I looked up to see Alex leaning over the desk. “Poor working sap. Just trying to do his job and he gets stabbed in the back? Seems pretty unfair.”

  “It looks like Canton Walters was a traveling salesman, if I’m reading his notes right.”

  “What did he sell?” I asked as I walked over to take a look at his notes for myself.

  Alex lifted the papers to show me. “I have no idea. These forms are generic and have no business name on them to indicate what company he worked for.”

  I took the papers from his hold and flipped them over. There on the back of the bottom form was a series of numbers. Too many to be someone’s phone number, I instantly saw another clue that a woman had been involved.

  “See this?” I asked as I pointed to what had been written on the bottom sheet of paper. “A woman wrote this.”

  “More proof of your conclusion,” he said with a smile. “And why do you think a female wrote those numbers?”

  “I’m going to make you a believer in my ideas about handwriting yet. The loops and swirls are quintessentially female. Haven’t you ever seen a teenage girl’s handwriting? It’s like looking at a drawing of a roller coaster. Loopdy-loop and all hearts to dot the I’s. Yep, a female wrote these numbers.”

  He chuckled at my description and shrugged. “I’ll have to take your word on this point.”

  Handing him the papers, I triumphantly announced, “This is a love affair gone bad. That’s my theory of the case. Everything points to that.”

  I didn’t really know if that was what had happened, but I liked to see the look on Alex’s face when I said those kinds of things not an hour after getting to the scene of the crime. Like always, he shook his head and smiled.

  “Do you think we could hold off a little while before deciding what happened? Maybe ask some questions, poke around, and see if anything else comes up? You know, investigate.”

  I smiled at his making fun of me and nodded my agreement. “Of course, but I just want it known I’m calling this one a love affair gone horribly wrong.”

  Stuffing the victim’s papers into another baggie, he turned toward the door to leave. “I’ll be sure to make a note of that. We need to make sure the hotel knows this room is off limits until our investigation is over, and I want to know everything they can tell us about what he was doing here. Ready to get to work?”

  “I’m ready. Something tells me this case is going to get down and dirty really quickly. I hope you’re prepared for that.”

  Alex rolled his eyes at me, but I saw he was thinking the same thing I was. Murder at a hook-up hotel? That screamed sex. Maybe my editor was right. Maybe Sunset Ridge did have a seedy underbelly.

  Chapter Two

  We headed down to the front desk to find the clerk to ask them about Canton Walters’ stay at the Piermont. Alex said nothing as we walked down the threadbare carpeted stairs, so I let my mind wander to who our victim may have been meeting with. I didn’t recognize him, so I guessed he was likely from out-of-town. He was a traveling salesman, but what was he peddling here in Sunset Ridge? And was he here for any extracurricular activities? Most businessmen wouldn’t have stayed in the Hotel Piermont while on a sales trip.

  Lost in thought about what our victim had been up to, I didn’t hear Alex when he asked me a question, so he nudged my shoulder and said, “Did you hear me? Where were you there?”

  I shook my head. “No, sorry. What did you say?”

  “I asked you if you’d ever seen our victim before.”

  Thinking about what he looked like, I couldn’t remember ever seeing him in town. “No. Not that he was extraordinary looking so he’d be noticeable, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen him before this morning. Why?”

  “Well, I figured since you’d been here to the Hotel Piermont before you might have met him. You know, maybe you passed him in the hall on the way to your room.”

  Alex’s wide grin took the edge off his teasing, but not by much. Irked that he was acting so childish, I put on a fake grimace and said, “Oh, I see. You’ve chosen to act like a teenage boy today. I’m not sure it’s a good look on you, though, partner.”

  “I have to keep you on your toes. I don’t want you to get lax in this partnership.”

  “I think I miss the old Alex who rarely talked,” I joked while I pushed his shoulder.

  We reached the first floor and saw an attractive brunette standing behind the counter at the opposite end of the front desk. Alex took his notebook and pen out of his pocket to get ready to ask her questions.

  “Why do you get to do the asking? Is it because she’s a female? Because I think I could handle it.”

  Pointing to the silver badge he wore on his shirt, he smiled. “I get to ask her because I’m the cop.”

  “I keep forgetting that,” I said as my shoulders sagged from disappointment that I wouldn’t get to interrogate the girl. “I don’t know why. You’d think the uniform would be a dead giveaway.”

  The fact that when I sometimes looked at Alex I saw one of those sexy male strippers who came to bachelorette parties dressed as cops was likely why his new job still hadn’t sunk in three months since he started. I could never admit it to another living soul, but there were days that I had a hard time concentrating when he was standing next to me in that uniform looking so incredibly masculine and powerful. I’d never felt anything like that before for any man, so I’d brushed it off as silliness the first few times after he joined the police force, but now months later, I wasn’t sure how to handle the reality that I liked him more than just a partner or a friend.

  I felt my cheeks grow warm and knew I was blushing from my thoughts about him, so I turned away and pretended t
o thumb through some travel brochures that sat on the desk. Thankfully, he didn’t appear to notice since he was busy looking over his notes.

  “Can I help you, sir?” the young woman asked from the opposite end of the front desk.

  “Yes. I’m Officer Alex Montero and this is my partner Poppy McGuire. I need to speak to the desk clerk who was on duty last night. Was that you?”

  I watched as she walked toward us with a bounce in her step. Barely in her early twenties, if she was lucky, she had dark brown hair and big blue eyes with eyelashes that were so long and thick they had to fake. Only men had eyelashes like that in real life. She reminded me of a doll I had as a child.

  “No, I came on this morning. The night clerk will be back tonight if you want to come back then to talk to them. I don’t have the schedule so I don’t know who it was, though.”

  Alex wrote down the details he judged important and after a lull in the conversation, he looked up from his notes and asked, “And your name is?”

  “Elizabeth Freely. I work as the desk clerk here during the day.”

  “What time did you start your shift this morning, Elizabeth?”

  “I start every day at seven AM sharp.”

  Alex continued to write in his little notebook, so I followed up his question with one of my own. “Did you see anything strange when you came to work today?”

  He shot me a glance and then returned to writing as Elizabeth began to explain what she’d seen that morning.

  “No. I don’t think so, at least. I got here at about quarter to seven and clocked in at seven exactly. They don’t like me to begin work early because I was getting overtime for a while and they didn’t like that.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The owners and my boss.”

  Alex stopped writing and set his notebook and pen on the counter. “As you were saying, Elizabeth.”

  Her big blue eyes showed her confusion for a moment, but then she continued with a rundown of her day so far. “Oh, yeah. I clocked in and then immediately began setting out the continental breakfast. After I set out the coffee, danishes, and muffins over there in the corner of the lobby, I returned to my post and I’ve been right here ever since.”

  “And you saw nothing odd?” Alex asked as he turned to look in the direction where the breakfast had been laid out. Seeing nothing there, he looked back at her and asked, “Who cleaned up after breakfast was over?”

  Elizabeth looked confused again and then giggled in a way that made me think I might have been too generous to guess she was in her early twenties. “Oh, well, that was me, of course. I’m sorry. I guess I’m just not very good at this, am I?”

  I instantly realized the giggle and her response were flirting. She was flirting with Alex. Curious to see his reaction, I turned to look at him and saw him doing exactly what he’d done with Shelley Steadman that day. I didn’t think it could bother me more than it had then, but as I stood there feeling like some kind of unwanted third wheel with him and doll-faced Elizabeth, all I wanted to do was smack him and push her face in.

  “You’re doing fine, Elizabeth,” he said in a low voice that told me he thought he had to manipulate this one like he had with Shelley. Personally, I didn’t think a girl this young needed that much effort, but who was I to say?

  “I wish I could help more…” She leaned forward over the counter and read Alex’s name tag pinned to his shirt pocket. “Officer Montero, I really do.”

  “Well, if you tell me everything you know about Canton Walters, that would be a great help.”

  Her eyes lit up with excitement. “Give me a second. I just have to go into the office to get that. I’ll be right back.”

  Elizabeth scurried away into the office behind the front desk while Alex returned to writing things in his notebook. Crossing my arms, I stared at him in disgust and waited until he noticed. When he didn’t, or intentionally avoided my gaze, I said, “I know you can see me standing here.”

  As if nothing was wrong, he turned to look at me with a look of innocence I knew was forced. “Something up, Poppy?”

  “I think I might need a shot of insulin after that little exchange.”

  He tried to keep a straight face, but he couldn’t, and a slow smile spread across his mouth. “You know how I work. I figured she’d respond better if I acted a little friendlier.”

  “Trust me. You didn’t have to with this one. She’s more than eager to please. It’s written all over her kewpie doll face.”

  Alex arched one dark eyebrow. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Elizabeth returned with a handful of papers and set them down on the desk. With a quick smile for Alex, she said, “Canton Walters stayed in Room 307 the entire time he was here. He checked in on July 3 and paid for a week in advance in cash. He wasn’t scheduled to check out until July 9. You know, I think I remember seeing him this morning at breakfast.”

  I put my hand down on her stack of papers to stop her. “Are you saying you think you saw him sometime after seven this morning down here in the lobby?”

  She blinked a few times like she’d just noticed I was standing there and nodded at me. “Yes.”

  Alex said nothing, but I saw him write something in his notes and then draw a big question mark next to it. Looking up, he asked her, “Can you tell me where Mr. Walters was from? Did he give an address?”

  Shaking her head, she didn’t even look down toward the information on the papers in front of her. “No, he didn’t.”

  Before Alex could respond, I quickly asked, “You aren’t even going to look at any of those sheets of paper to check?”

  Elizabeth looked at me for a moment and then focused on Alex. “I don’t have to. We aren’t that type of hotel. The people who come here usually aren’t interested in giving out too much personal information, if you know what I mean.”

  By the time she finished, her gaze was firmly on Alex’s face, and I had the feeling she was trying to throw a hint out to him. Although my partner was more than adept at using sexuality to get the answers he wanted out of people, he was also able to turn the charm off as easily as he turned it on and even though Elizabeth clearly liked him, he didn’t seem to have much interest in her after drawing his question mark in his notes.

  “Thank you, Elizabeth. If we need to speak to you again, we can find you here working during the day?” he asked flatly without a hint of what he’d been just a minute ago.

  “Yes. I’m here every day but Sunday.”

  And with just as little emotion as when he asked his last question, he thanked her and turned to walk back up the stairs. Elizabeth looked at me with a thoroughly confused expression as if I could tell her how he’d slipped away so suddenly, but I just gave her a forced smile and hurried away to follow him back upstairs.

  I caught up with him just as he hit the second floor. “You know that kind of hot one minute cold the next thing you do could confuse a poor girl like her.”

  He stopped walking and turned to face me. “So it’s a problem when I turn it on, and it’s a problem when I turn it off. I don’t think you can have it both ways, Poppy.”

  “It’s not a problem for me either way. I’m just saying poor Elizabeth down there thought you two were on the same wavelength and then you went ice cold on her and walked away. That’s all. You don’t act that way toward me, so it’s not an issue for me personally.”

  “Good. Now what do you say we talk to housekeeping and see if they can tell us anything more about Mr. Walters?”

  As we walked down the hallway looking for someone to talk to, I asked, “What do you think of her claim that she saw the victim at breakfast this morning?”

  He turned and smiled. “I think she lied. I called Donny on my way up here and he says rigor mortis had begun to set in by the time we got to the victim, so there’s no way he could have been able to show up at breakfast after seven.”

  “The question is why then.”

  “Exactly. Why would innocent Elizabeth Freely
lie to us about seeing a dead man at breakfast?”

  I couldn’t hold back commenting on how he’d characterized the desk clerk and mumbled under my breath, “Innocent my ass.”

  He chuckled but said nothing, instead waving at a member of the housekeeping staff at the end of the hallway. She stopped and instantly looked terrified to see a policeman coming toward her.

  “Is something wrong, officer?” she asked in a shaky voice.

  Alex gently touched her arm to calm her, and that’s all it took to bring a smile to her face. “We’re just hoping to speak to the housekeepers who handled Room 307.”

  She pointed toward the ceiling. “We each have our assigned floors, and I only do this one, but there are two of us who handle the third floor. Penny and Marilyn have the top floor. I don’t think you’ll find them up there right now since it’s break time, but I can take you down to the basement where we all take our breaks.”

  “Thank you. If you’ll lead the way, we’ll follow you,” he said sweetly.

  She took us down a back staircase to the basement where five other women dressed in light blue housekeeping uniforms sat around a card table with a single light above their heads and surrounded by concrete walls. Each of them looked terrified when we walked into their break room, but Alex quickly turned on the charm to calm them, although it seemed far more genuine with them than it had with the desk clerk a few minutes earlier.

  “Please don’t worry. I’m not here to accuse anyone of anything. I’m Officer Alex Montero and this is Poppy and we’re investigating the murder in Room 307. We just want to ask some questions about the room and the man who was staying there for the last few days.”

  A pretty blonde looked up at us and I saw sadness in her eyes. “You mean Mr. Walters? I can’t believe anyone would murder him. He was just the sweetest man.”

  “Did you have occasion to speak to him? What is your name?” Alex asked as he leaned against a stack of boxes full of toilet paper rolls.