“You’re welcome, and don’t look so worried, Casey. Marcus is fine.”
“Good to know.” Theo hadn’t exaggerated about the woman living in her own little fantasy world. She picked up the blueprints and headed out the door.
While she walked down the sidewalk she wondered how truthful Gislinde had been. Reid had implied there’d been problems between Dad and Gislinde, so how much had she known about what really had gone on with Theo, the business, and Dad’s Vancouver life? And Mother framing Dad sound pretty farfetched. If Mother and Theo were lovers, though, was Mother lying for Theo, or had he fooled her too? Was the boarding pass and plane ticket Theo had shown Casey fake?
Casey stewed on this all the way to her hotel. By the time she was crossing the lobby, the trepidation she’d felt about meeting Mother began to magnify. She trudged up creaking steps and then entered her room.
Something felt different. Standing in the middle of the small, plain room, she turned full circle. Someone had been here. Her hairbrush and cosmetics bag had been moved from her bed to the night table. Casey’s gaze moved around the room. There was no closet and bathroom. The only place one could hide was under the bed. Keeping her distance, she bent down and saw only dust.
She went through her luggage. Nothing was missing. The door’s lock looked undamaged. Cheap hotels didn’t have maid service, making it easy for intruders to break into rooms. The building’s main entrance was unlocked and the senior manning the front desk was more interested in TV than the comings and goings of visitors. Or did he snoop through rooms on commercial breaks?
That the intruder hadn’t returned her things to the same spot unnerved Casey. Had he wanted her to know he’d been there? Were Mexican clients actually following her? Or maybe Theo didn’t believe her story about the notebook. Had he managed to find her and follow her here? Had he, or someone else, hired the American kid to steal her purse?
Casey opened the door and stepped into the empty hall.
The hallway was still empty when she stomped back to her room five minutes later. The senior at the desk had no other available rooms, and insisted that every hotel in the city would be full at this time of year. She’d have to barricade herself in here, because she didn’t want to sit in a train station all night.
Casey rubbed her temples. She should phone Lou. It’d be great to hear his voice. Rhonda would be waiting for a call too, but a migraine was blossoming, the second one this month. Not good.
After taking medication, Casey made sure the window latch was secure, then propped a chair under the doorknob. She wasn’t sure if this would work, but she’d seen it on TV a hundred times, and it was better than nothing.
She removed the notebook from her handbag. Mr. Helpful-At-The-Desk didn’t have a safe, nor would he keep the book for her. She slipped the notebook in the pillow case then sat on the pillow. She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around her legs.
When she got to Paris she’d try and locate Gustaf Osterman to see what he had to say about Theo’s business. Should have asked Theo what Osterman looked like. For all she knew, he’d lied about the guy quitting and Osterman was the one following her all over Amsterdam. Worse, he could have been in this room earlier tonight. Casey watched the door and waited.
Fifteen
CASEY STOOD IN a musty hotel lobby and yawned as raindrops pelted the window. It had rained most of the forty hours she’d been in Paris and she wasn’t impressed with the grimy, soot-streaked buildings. Her shoes were still wet from being jostled off crowded sidewalks into overflowing gutters.
Through the window, Casey studied what she could see of this narrow road in the Latin Quarter. Although the intruder hadn’t reappeared in her Amsterdam hotel room last night, she still watched for Theo and suspicious-looking strangers. She longed for the day she could stop watching, when she could fall asleep without obsessing about the past and brooding over the present, and she wanted to go home.
Enough with the quest to find contacts; the only person she’d managed to locate was Gustaf Osterman’s ex-wife, who’d herself given up trying to track him over money he’d borrowed six years ago. Equally fruitless had been Casey’s attempts to contact hospital staff who’d treated Dad for botulism. Unfortunately, Detective Lalonde had been right about vanished staff from Alvin’s All-Canadian Café. Not one person she’d spoken with claimed to have worked there back then, no one admitted knowing anyone who had and she’d discovered that one employee had committed suicide.
To Casey’s relief and frustration, Mother had canceled their meeting because Theo had shown up in Geneva and begged her to deliver several things that Dad was supposed to have handled. TZ Inc. was apparently so far behind schedule that clients were threatening to either take their business elsewhere or sue. Mother had kept repeating how deeply she regretted having to postpone their “reunion,” and she’d seemed adamant that based on her research in Geneva, Theo hadn’t killed Dad. So, questions about the legality of Dad’s activities and whether his murder had anything to do with the import/export business or not wouldn’t be answered right away. Was the cancellation Theo’s doing? Given Mother’s relationship to him, Casey wondered if she would have revealed much anyway.
What with the traveling, the dreary hotel rooms, and the many dead ends, Casey longed to hear a trusted, friendly voice. She hadn’t called Rhonda for five days because Rhonda would want to know how things were going, and Casey didn’t know how to tell her about Gislinde Van Akker.
She approached the guest phone near the reception desk that had closed at eleven. She regretted not bringing her cell phone. Expensive as the calls would have been, it was a lot more convenient than trying to find a public phone. Casey placed the call and waited for what felt like a long time before Rhonda finally answered.
“I thought you would have phoned by now,” she said. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Amsterdam and Paris. How are things?”
“Okay, under the circumstances. Darcy says hi.”
“He’s with you now?”
“Yep, I’m getting a fabulous rub-down. He’s been fantastic through everything that’s happened lately.”
“Lately? What do you mean?”
She sighed. “Someone beat up Lou three nights ago.”
“Oh no! Is he all right?”
“He was in the hospital but he’s recovering at his mom’s now. There’s no broken bones, thank god, just cuts and bruises. He’ll be okay, hon.”
“I tried calling him yesterday.” She swallowed hard. “Who would do that?”
“No clue. The cops didn’t catch the guy. Lou came for dinner that night and he was hoping you’d call because he had news about the Marine Drive house. Anyway, just as he left, Lillian phoned.”
“What did she want?”
“To know how I was coping with the murder. While I was telling her to mind her own business, some guy grabbed Lou and dragged him into the garage.”
“Oh god.” Casey pictured the old garage at the back of Rhonda’s property, used for storing a cord of wood and gardening tools.
“After I hung up, I saw Lou’s truck was still here, so I went outside and found the garage door open.” Rhonda’s voice trembled. “He was half buried in the woodpile.”
Tears filled Casey’s eyes. “Why Lou?”
“That’s the other scary part. Lou said that the guy wanted to know who you were meeting in Europe, and he warned Lou to stay away from Marcus’s place or he’d kill his family and friends.”
The hair on Casey’s arm and neck stood up.
“Shit, Casey, what if the psycho finds out I was at the house too?”