Caught, she emitted a careless laugh.“Just, you know, saying hi.”
Chase produced a few cat sounds himself. They were gibberish, of course, but it endeared him to her further. He crouched down next to Max and Dooley and tickled their tummies.“Hey, buddies,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here. Are you lost? Are you poor babies lost? Don’t worry. Your friend Chase is here. He’ll take good care of you. Oh, yes, he will. Oh, yes, he will.” At this, he picked up both cats and tucked them into his massive arms.
Max and Dooley, not used to this treatment, stared at Odelia in alarm. She signaled that it was fine and just to go with it. This new, cat-friendly Chase was a true revelation.
“Let’s take them into the interview with us,” she suggested.
“Won’t they be a nui—I mean won’t they be bored?” he asked.
“I’m sure they’ll be on their best behavior,” she said, giving her cats a wink.
Knocking on the door to the Most Compelling Man’s room, Chase took a firmer grip on the cats, with Max and Dooley still looking stunned by this unexpected development.
“Um, Odelia?” asked Max.
She glanced over.
“Why is your boyfriend pawing us like this?”
She merely smiled. Maybe one day she’d tell Chase about her secret, but today wasn’t that day. She could tell him that some cats hate to be manhandled or picked up, though, but before she could, the door opened and a swarthy man dressed in a dressing gown appeared. His hair was pitch-black and gelled back, his face was the color of a mochaccino, and a smattering of dark chest hair came peeping from the top of his burgundy silk gown. He also looked slightly peeved. “Do you realize I ordered room service over half an hour ago? Standards at this hotel have seriously deteriorated since my last visit.” He glanced at the catsChase was holding. “Cats? I order bourbon and you bring me cats? Are you nuts?”
“We’re not from the hotel, Mr. Pigott,” Odelia said.
“Detective Chase Kingsley,” said Chase, dislodging Max and thrusting out a hand. “Hampton Cove Police. And this is Odelia Poole. Civilian consultant with the department. We’re here to ask you a couple of questions in regards to the murder of Burt Goldsmith.”
The man’s eyes went wide in consternation. “Murder? Police? Omigod!”
“May we step inside, sir? Easier to talk in the room than out here in the corridor.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” said the stricken actor. “Please come in, police people.” He led the way into the nicely decorated room, if you disregarded the items of clothing strewn about everywhere and covering every available surface. Judging from the quality of the garments the man was a fastidious dresser. Perhaps even a most compelling one.
“Don’t mind the mess,” he said, waving a distracted hand and tugging his dressing gown closer around his trim physique. “I was just trying to decide what to wear for our get-together.” When they stared at him, uncomprehending, he grimaced. “As you probably know, we’re holding a thing in town. The Seabreeze Music Center graciously accepted to host us for a three-day conference on all things interesting, fascinating, compelling, intriguing and I’m probably forgetting a few adjectives. But with this darned Burt-getting-blown-up thing we’re seriously considering calling the whole thing off. It really would be in awfully bad taste.”
Chase, still holding on to the cats, who were squirming in his grip, said,“I understand you sent a bottle of Dos Siglas up to Burt Goldsmith’s room just before he died?”
The man’s dark eyebrows wiggled. “No, sir, I did not. I never sent anything to Burt’s room. Oh, I know he kept accusing me of doing so—taunting him, as he called it. But I assured both him and your colleagues who were in here badgering me before that whoever sent those bottles, it wasn’t me. I disliked Burt intensely and the feeling was mutual. If I could avoid having anything to do with the man I did. The fact that we were in Hampton Cove together—at the same hotel, no less—was cause for serious discomfort on my part.”
“You didn’t choose this time and place to coincide with Burt’s shoot?” asked Odelia.
“No, I did not. None of us did. It was the other way around. We put on this conference and then Burt decided to drop by unannounced, no doubt trying to steal our thunder. The conference has attracted a lot of attention and Burt, who was a real attention whore if you pardon my French, couldn’t resist the temptation to bask in our limelight.”
A black cat had entered the room from the balcony and stood perfectly still, eyeing Max and Dooley with menace. Uh-oh.
“So you never sent up that bottle?” asked Chase, struggling to contain Odelia’s cats.
“No, detective, I didn’t,” said the Most Compelling Man in the World haughtily. “This hotel doesn’t even carry Tres Siglas, which goes to show how low standards have dropped. Furthermore, I don’t understand the significance of this bottle. Who cares what beer Burt drank? It certainly wasn’t Tres Siglas. It wasn’t even Dos Siglas, the brand he represented. Burt hated beer. Said it tasted like dishwater. He preferred his liquor strong and undiluted.”
Chase finally gave up the battle and dropped Max and Dooley to the floor. They stood poised, watching Curt’s cat intently, every muscle in their small bodies flexed.
“It would appear that the final bottle you sent up—or someone else sent up—contained the powerful explosive that ended Burt Goldsmith’s life,” said Chase. “Which is why it’s imperative we find out who sent that bottle.”
The man’s jaw dropped. “An exploding bottle of beer? Oh, my. Oh, dear me.” Suddenly his face twisted into an expression of peevishness. He stomped his foot. “That foul old bird! Can’t you see what’s going on here, detective? Can’t you read between the lines? He sent it to himself! Burt sent that bottle to himself! He wanted to go out with a bang and he did! Now every newspaper in the country will headline the story—people will be talking about this for days. He wanted to best us one final time. Oh, the horrible, nasty old bird!”
“You think he killed himself?” asked Odelia, surprised.
Curt Pigott swung his arms.“Of course he did! The man was pushing eighty. He didn’t have a lot of time left. And it wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t sick from some wasting disease, judging from the way he’d lost the pounds in recent years. He wanted to kick the bucket on his own terms and put in one last performance. A most fascinating death.”
It was a most interesting theory—one Chase seemed to consider credible, judging from the way he was rubbing his chin. “Room service staff said the order to bring up those bottles came from your room,” he said.
“I swear to you, detective—I had nothing to do with it! And how easy would it be to tell room service that I gave the commission. There are no papers to sign when you call down an order—simply a phone call and the mention of your room number. Anyone could have given my name and number—anyone at all.” He wagged a finger in their faces, his own face clouding. “Especially Burt Goldsmith, who was a cunning old coot right up until the very end. He knew he could get me into hot water with this stunt. One final blow. One final insult.”
“I take it the dislike between you two was mutual?” asked Odelia.
“Oh, it most assuredly was.” He tapped his hairy chest. “I was supposed to be the Most Fascinating Man in the World.Me!Dos Siglas asked me first. But Burt, who was a down-on-his-luck two-bit actor at the time, decided to improve his chances by sleeping with the casting lady. The rest is history. Fifteen years later he’s the star and I’m the also-ran. And ever since he’s been rubbing it in my face,” he added between gritted teeth.
The guy definitely had motive, Odelia decided. He seemed to hate Burt’s guts with a vengeance. But did he do it? Hard to prove. Unless they found trace evidence of the nitroglycerin on his person or this hotel room, they didn’t have a lot to go on.