“Something like a passport?” Kendra asked.
“Dare to dream, Dr. Michaels. Let’s go to the front door.”
Kendra, Lynch, Brantley, and two uniformed officers walked around front, where another officer was standing with a middle-aged woman who could only have been the property manager. She wore a pink ski jacket and matching boots over a pair of flannel pajamas. An old lift ticket on the jacket identified her as Stacie Liston.
“Thank you for coming so quickly,” Brantley said to the woman. “But you really could have taken the time to have gotten dressed.”
“I kinda freaked when I got the call.” Her hand trembled as she handed him the key. “We had someone O.D. in one of our properties once, but never anything like this.”
“Did you ever meet the victim?” Kendra asked.
Stacie shook her head. “No. He arranged the rental a few weeks ago. He paid a month’s rent and a security deposit up front with a cashier’s check.”
“From where?”
“Some English bank…” She thought for a moment. “Barclays. He picked up the key at our after-hours lockbox.”
Brantley unlocked the door and handed the key back to her. “We’ll be here at least until midmorning. We’ll give your office a call when we’re about to leave.”
Stacie made a face. “You don’t think there’s anybody else in there, do you? I mean… like him?”
“You mean dead?”
She nodded.
“Probably not.” Brantley patted her arm. “Go on home. We’ll take care of things here.”
She nodded uncertainly and headed back up the front walk.
Brantley opened the door, and Kendra took a deep whiff. Pinecones, wood varnish, and mint. Nothing that would indicate another corpse inside.
Thank goodness for small favors.
Or perhaps a gigantic favor. She’d been afraid if they found another corpse, it might be Waldridge.
They moved into the front hallway and looked around. Inside, it looked less like a fairy tale and more like a standard-issue ski lodge with an abundance of wood, shag rugs, and more wood. The furniture was heavy and dark, and ski equipment adorned the walls in such a fashion that Kendra couldn’t tell if it was there for storage or decoration.
Lynch glanced around. “There are no personal items here. None.”
Kendra nodded. “You’re right. The only sign that anyone was even here is that half-empty coffee cup on the end table.”
Brantley shrugged. “Maybe upstairs.”
They mounted the stairs, which featured twin banister posts carved in the shape of boy and girl skiers. The steps creaked as they made their way up to the second floor. Kendra looked each way as they reached the top. It was basically a long hallway with doors to three bedrooms and a single bathroom. Small prints of snow scenes hung on the hallway walls, punctuating the gaps between rooms.
Kendra opened the door of the first room they passed and paused, staring into the darkness. “Dr. Waldridge stayed in here.”
Brantley turned on the wall switch and peered inside at the room. “How do you know?”
“Arlington.”
“As in the national cemetery?”
“As in the British-made cologne. Waldridge is the only man I’ve met who uses it. I’m also smelling a spray-on deodorant he uses. It’s called Fogg.” She turned toward Lynch. “I saw both bottles in Waldridge’s hotel room this morning. He sprayed both in this room recently before he went to Santa Monica.”
Brantley stared at her. “How can you possibly-?”
“Long story,” Lynch said. “Let’s look at the other rooms.”
They walked down the hallway to a brightly-colored bedroom with bunk beds.
Brantley turned to Kendra. “Let me guess. The aroma of Play-Doh?”
She shook her head. “Just Ortho Home Defense Max insect spray. I don’t think anyone’s been in here recently.”
The sergeant smiled. “Certainly not any roaches. One room to go.”
The master bedroom at the end of the hallway was more than double the size of the others, and it featured a canopy bed that appeared to have been hand-carved. A flat-screen television was mounted to the opposite wall suspended over a rustic set of dresser drawers. An open suitcase was next to it stuffed with wrinkled clothing.
“Someone has gone through this suitcase,” Kendra said.
Lynch looked at it. “Are you sure? You should see my bags after I’ve been out of town for a few weeks.”
“It looks like it’s been turned upside down onto the floor, and all the contents shoved back in here a piece at a time. It’s possible he did it himself, but the rest of the place is so immaculate that it doesn’t seem consistent with his fastidious nature.”
Lynch looked around. “No computer.”
“No computer, no phone. Although he did have an Acer laptop and an iPhone in here. And a computer bag, too. They were taken.”
Brantley’s brow wrinkled. “How do you figure that?”
“There are two power adapters still plugged in under the table. One’s for an Acer laptop, the other has an Apple iPhone connector.” She turned back to the open suitcase. “In that jumble of clothes, there’s a leather computer-bag carry strap. With a good look and a bit of research, we’ll probably even be able to identify the maker and style of the computer bag it goes with.”
“You can’t tell us off the top of your head?” Brantley joked.
“Don’t even say that,” Lynch said. “I have a hunch she’ll soon know more about laptop-bag carry straps than we ever knew existed.”
“Only if it’s necessary,” Kendra said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t waste my time right now.”
Brantley stared at her. “I’m starting to get an idea why the FBI and all those police departments like you so much.”
“That’s not at all accurate. I don’t think any of them will admit to actually liking me.” She continued her scan of the room until she spotted his toiletries next to the sink in the connected bathroom. She stepped inside and looked them over. “Nothing unusual here. Though it does help to confirm that he was English. Maclean’s toothpaste is a British brand.”
Lynch had already begun opening the drawers and closet door. “Nothing here,” he said. “Just a jacket in the closet, nothing in the pockets.”
Kendra shook her head in frustration. “Unbelievable. Not a thing to let us know who he really was or what he was doing with Waldridge.”
“We’ll take the whole place apart to make sure there’s nothing hidden someplace,” Brantley said. “And, of course, we’ll photograph and fingerprint the body in the next few hours.”
“Good,” Lynch said. “We’d appreciate it if you could forward your docs to the FBI field office in San Diego. It might help to find the man we’re looking for.”
“We can do that.”
Kendra stepped back into the hallway. Damn. The trail to Waldridge had come to an abrupt halt, right to that man lying dead in the snow. A man without a name or even a-
She stopped.
What in the hell?
The work lights outside bathed the shadowy hallway in a dim glow, just enough that she could see that something was out of whack in the wood-paneled hallway.
“I know that look of yours,” Lynch said quietly from behind her. “What do you see?”
“The pictures in this hallway… Can you see it?”
Lynch studied the nature scenes. “Other than they wouldn’t be out of place in a cheap hotel room? No.”
“It’s not the pictures themselves… It’s the walls. They’re slightly faded from the sunlight that streams in here. It’s darker where the pictures have been hanging. But it looks like they’ve been rearranged.”
Lynch nodded slowly. “I see what you mean. The walls are slightly darker where the pictures have been, but they don’t quite match now.”
She stepped closer to the picture nearest to her. “It looks like these have been taken down for some reason, then put up in different places. And it happened recently.” She pulled the picture off the wall and stared at the backside.