Lieutenant Henbit seemed gratified by my candor, but mystified by my disclosure that the murder had most likely occurred in the kitchen and someone had gone to the trouble of removing the body to a dumpster and tidying up. I added that the cases of Krazy KoKo-Nut had also taken a trip, although they'd been returned some time between four and ten o'clock.
"Just what is this KoKo crap?" Henbit asked, scribbling a note.
"That pretty well describes it," said Durmond. "A perverse sign of progress, I suppose. No doubt there's a scientist out there who's devising a scheme in which someday everything that passes our lips will be synthetic."
"Yeah, maybe." Henbit read through his notes for a moment. "What's puzzling me is why your mother went to the kitchen."
"You'll have to ask her."
"She have any kind of relationship with Appleton?" he continued ever so craftily. "They ever go off by themselves for a time, or have cozy conversations in the corner?"
I finished my coffee and stood up. "I really couldn't say, but I'd be surprised if they've so much as exchanged nods since they arrived. He wasn't polite to any of us, including his wife." I thought about how he'd looked in the dumpster and shook my head. "Even so, it was a damn nasty trick to dispose of him like that. How was he killed?"
"Bullet in the neck," Henbit said. "It destroyed the carotid artery, which was why it was so messy."
"And the weapon?" Durmond asked quietly.
"We haven't come up with it yet, but there're some unhappy men out back sifting through garbage. We won't see the ballistics report for a couple of weeks, much less the results of the autopsy. We pulled a stiff out of the river more than a week ago, and we're still waiting to hear something on that, not that it's gonna be any big surprise. Not that this one will, either. As for Lisbon, he was shot in the back of the head with enough caliber to take off his face. Real nasty, according to the first officer on the scene."
I wished him luck with Ruby Bee and Estelle and went into the lobby. Mr. Cambria was back on duty, but I didn't feel overly safe and secure in the hotel, even with cops in the kitchen and cops in the dining room and cops in the alley out back. Hell's bells, I was a cop, and I sure wouldn't have depended on me for anything more than a neatly written parking ticket.
I was under orders not to leave the hotel, which was fine with me. I lingered in the lobby, trying to overhear the conversation between Henbit and Durmond in the dining room, but one or the other had closed the doors. Thinking about my room upstairs was enough to give me claustrophobia, and I was reduced to sitting on a sofa in the lobby when Kyle and Geri came out of the office.
Her blotchy face and swollen eyes reminded me of Brenda's grand exit from her bathroom. "This entire debacle is your fault, you know," she said to him. "Right this minute I could be in the chaise lounge on the deck, but instead I'm going to have to deal with negative press. I hate negative press!"
"Speaking of the press," I inserted politely, "did you confirm the credentials of those people at the reception?"
"Why would they lie?" she countered, making it clear they were likely to be the only unimpeachable souls in the entire city, if not the state.
"Ruby Bee and Estelle were interrupted in the middle of a conversation about how someone in the room resembled a plumber."
"And I should know what a plumber looks like?" Geri said, then turned on Kyle. "I find it reprehensible that one of your contestants not only killed her husband, but also went to some seedy nightclub and killed the manager. If I'd had the slightest inkling that you were including homicidal maniacs on your list of finalists, I never would have set foot in this place."
"I told you the names came from Interspace Investments," he said sulkily.
"Which ones?" I asked.
"What difference does it make?" Geri said, but put her clipboard on the counter and flipped through the pages.
"The two contestants from the original list are Ruby Bee and Catherine. We were supposed to have a cab driver from Brooklyn, a taxidermist from Boise, Idaho, and some hack mystery writer from Hansville, Washington. Instead, we get a hooker, a professor, and a homicidal maniac. It's rather obvious that this sort of decision process should be left to professionals, isn't it?"
She had a point. I thought for a minute (an increasingly alien activity), and said, "Why did the original three decline?"
"Ask him," Geri said as she let the pages flutter down.
Kyle stared at the floor. "They all called the same morning. The cab driver fell and broke his leg, and the taxidermist accidentally severed a finger. The writer said he'd decided to take a three-month cruise to Alaska. Someone from Interspace called that afternoon and said they'd found alternates."
"Lucky us. We got a hooker, a professor, and a homicidal maniac," Geri added with a sneer.
"They didn't phrase it quite that way," he said. "I'd better call my father with the news that the contest is off. He'll be pissed, but there's nothing we can do about it-except pray they find Brenda and arrest her without giving the media all the details about the purpose of her stay here."
He started for the office. Geri stared for a minute, slammed down the clipboard, and took off after him. "Just a minute, buddy boy. If your father calls my boss again and tries to blame this mess on me, I'll personally swim to the Cayman islands and bury him up to his neck in the sand so the crabs can chew off his face!"
They continued their discussion in the office. Beyond the closed doors of the dining room, Lieutenant Henbit and Durmond sat with their backs toward me, intent on their conversation. On the counter not ten feet away, the clipboard lay abandoned on the counter, just begging to be given some attention and a few kind words.
Soft-hearted kid that I was, I sauntered over to the alcove, ducked beneath the counter, and removed the clipboard and myself to a shadowy corner. There were a lot of lists, some scratched into illegibility and others fresh with ill-fated optimism. I finally found the list of contestants and jotted down the addresses of the three replacements.
As I returned the clipboard, I glanced up. Mr. Cambria was regarding me from the sidewalk, not with his usual twinkly smile but with a cold impassivity that caused the hairs to rise on my arms and a lump to settle in my stomach. I felt like an animal on a stainless steel table in a laboratory.
The smile reappeared as he turned to speak to someone, and seconds later Gaylene came into view, laden with shopping bags, her purse, and yet another suitcase. I ducked back under the counter and hurried toward the stairs, not sure I'd interpreted his expression correctly but no longer in the mood to linger in the lobby. Nobody ever died of claustrophobia, for pete's sake.
Once I was in my room with the door locked, I sat down on the bed and looked over what I had scribbled. Unsurprisingly, Gaylene had a local address. Brenda lived in Peabody, New York, which I seemed to remember was on Long Island. I called information and got her number, then took a deep breath and dialed it. A male voice answered.
"Is Brenda home?" I asked.
"Who's calling?"
"Just one of the girls. I wanted to know if she wants to play bridge tomorrow at her house or at the club."
"Who is this?"
"I'll call back later," I said and hung up, aware I'd been chatting with a cop. Brenda hadn't gone home, apparently. If she'd murdered her husband and/or the nightclub owner, she might well have chosen a less obvious haven. But it was equally possible that she had no idea that either murder had taken place and was shopping at Saks or having a three-martini lunch in honor of Jerome's departure (albeit for a destination noticeably farther than Rio).