Review to a Kill Page 14

  I could feel Kate relax next to me. She pushed open the closet door and stepped out. “Let’s grab that envelope and get out of here before she comes back.”

  “Agreed.” I followed her out and straightened up.

  Kate crossed the room to the desk. “It’s gone.” She opened the desk drawers and looked around her. “The envelope is gone.”

  “She must have taken it with her,” I said, scanning the room and not seeing any place she could have stashed it in the short time we’d heard her inside the bedroom. “Maybe the person she’s meeting has something to do with the papers in the envelope.”

  Kate followed me out of the bedroom. “We were so close to seeing. Should we come back later to see if she returns it?”

  “No way. We should thank our lucky stars that she didn’t catch us this time.” I opened the front door and glanced up and down the empty hall before Kate and I stepped out of the suite and walked to the elevator. As I pressed the call button, I hoped that we wouldn’t run into the bride’s mother. “Where did you leave those flowers?”

  Kate slapped her forehead. “In the suite.”

  “It’s okay.” I pulled her into the elevator with me and pushed the button for the lobby. “It’s not like they had our name on them. I doubt she’ll notice.”

  Kate cringed. “She may notice. I left them on the floor of the closet.”

  I crossed my arms and tapped one foot on the elevator floor. “Your accents are great, but your overall spy skills could use some work.”

  The elevator doors pinged open, and I gave a cursory glance around the lobby to be sure there were no Weddies and no Mrs. Toker before walking quickly through it. I let out a breath of relief as we reached the outside of the hotel. Kate handed the doorman our valet tickets.

  “We did it.” I gave a subdued high five to Kate when the doorman looked away. “Mrs. Toker never saw us.”

  “Well done, Miss Archer,” Kate said, giving me a mock bow. “Shall we catch a cab?”

  Before I could answer her, a piercing scream came from above us. We both craned our necks to look up as a body came hurtling down from the hotel’s roof and landed with a vicious thud in the front bushes.

  Kate stumbled back a few feet, and I clapped a hand over my mouth as the uniformed doorman ran over to the body. He didn’t need to tell us that the woman was dead. No one survived a fall from almost ten stories like that. And he didn’t need to tell me who’d plummeted to her death. I recognized the distinctive green floral dress that Mrs. Toker had been wearing earlier.

  Chapter 28

  The wail of sirens grew louder as they approached. Guests of the hotel had drifted outside in response to the screams, and passersby from the street began to gather around the front bushes where Mrs. Toker’s lifeless body lay sprawled faceup. Thankfully, I couldn’t see her face, but I could see her feet protruding from the greenery, the toes of her beige heels pointing to the sky.

  As a sudden wave of nausea passed through me, I put a hand over my mouth, grateful that I didn’t have anything in my stomach but a banana and coffee. I turned and focused on the brightly colored flowers in the front beds on the opposite side of the hotel, trying to erase the vision in my mind of the mother of the bride hurtling to the ground. I gave an involuntary shudder. I hated heights and the thought of falling off a high balcony ranked right up there on my list of fears.

  “We should get out of here,” I said, pulling Kate with me as I backed away from the hotel’s entrance and down the sloped drive. “Before the Weddies start coming outside.”

  Kate tugged me back up a few steps. “Do you think we should leave the scene of a crime. We were one of the few eyewitnesses.”

  A feeling of panic replaced the nausea. “But we were just leaving the hotel. We can’t tell the police anything of value.”

  “People have already seen us.”

  I cast my eyes over the growing crowd, phones out to record the tragedy, and the hotel staff trying to keep them away from the body. I tried to keep my gaze away from the dead mother of the bride but my eyes continued to be drawn back to her shoes, one of which had slipped off the back of her heel. If I focused on the shoes and ignored the fact that the woman had plunged over one hundred feet to her death, I could keep the meager breakfast I’d had on the way to the hotel from coming back up. The bittersweetness of the Mocha Frappuccino churned in my stomach, so I leaned over and put my hands on my knees.

  “Are you okay?” Kate leaned her head over next to mine.

  I nodded without speaking and took a deep breath, concentrating on the coolness of the midmorning air and not the dead woman merely feet away from me. From my upside-down vantage point, I saw the ambulance stop in the street with its lights flashing, and a trio of paramedics leaped out. I felt like telling them not to rush, that no medical training could save Mrs. Toker at this point. I closed my eyes to block out the lights.

  “I wish I could say this is a surprise.”

  I opened my eyes to see a pair of khaki pant legs. I didn’t need to look up to know who they belonged to. I straightened to standing. “Good to see you, Detective.”

  The detective didn’t look pleased to see me. In fact, he looked angry, his hazel eyes flashing as he glared at me. “What in the name of God are you doing at another crime scene? Please tell me you two just happened to be walking by when the lady fell off the roof.”

  Kate put her hands on her hips. “If you must know, Annabelle and I were attending a networking event here.”

  As long as he didn’t confirm our alibi with the Weddies and mention our names, we were golden.

  Reese’s shoulders relaxed a bit, and he had the good sense to look apologetic. “Sorry I jumped to conclusions.”

  I didn’t meet Kate’s eyes. She knew as well as I did that he’d be singing a different tune as soon as he discovered the name of the victim. “No problem.”

  “Were you witnesses to what happened?” Reese asked, looking between Kate and me.

  “We’d just walked outside when she fell from the roof,” I said, trying to keep my eyes from shifting over the detective’s shoulder to the body and the paramedics now hunched over it.

  “You knew she fell from the roof?” Reese asked, pulling a notepad from his inside blazer pocket.

  “Well, I think I saw her coming from the roof.” I looked at Kate who nodded her agreement. “Plus, I’m pretty sure the windows to the guest rooms don’t open, but the roof has an open-air balcony with just a railing.”

  Reese scratched a few words in his notebook. “And that was all you saw?”

  “Aside from the scream,” Kate added. “We heard her scream all the way down.”

  The detective looked up. “Really? Interesting.”

  I didn’t know why that would be interesting. Most people I knew would scream if they were falling over a hundred feet.

  Reese flipped his notepad closed. “I’m going to need you two to stay a little longer.”

  “Are we suspects?” Kate asked.

  Reese gave her a half smile. “No. Why would you be?”

  “We’ve been suspects before when we were innocent,” Kate called after him as he walked away from us and toward his colleagues who had clustered around the victim.

  I let myself breathe normally again. “I guess that wasn’t so bad.”

  “Don’t you think it’s rude to keep us here?” Kate asked. “I might have a lunch date, you know.”

  “When do you not have a date?” I asked.

  Kate winked at me. “A single girl’s got to eat.”

  “A single girl can also get takeout,” I said.

  “Takeout Chinese food every night is not my idea of a good time,” she muttered, turning her head away from me.

  Truth be told, it wasn’t my idea of a great social life either, but I’d never had the ability to date for sustenance as Kate could.

  I took in the bustling scene around me. Several uniformed officers had set up a barricade to keep people farther away from
the crime scene, and a police photographer knelt in the bushes taking shots of the body. News crews had decamped to the sidewalk in front of the hotel, and some of the cameras already had bright lights pointing at unrealistically attractive reporters. Detective Reese seemed deep in conversation with a pair of uniformed policemen and another plainclothes detective.

  I nibbled on my lower lip. It was only a matter of minutes before Reese discovered the name of the woman who lay dead in the bushes and had some serious questions for us. And it couldn’t be long before brides from the Weddies event began to come outside. If Brianna spotted us here she would know it was us who spread the call-girl rumors.

  My phone vibrated, and I pulled it out of my pocket, looking at the name on the display. Richard. I pressed the talk button. “What’s up?” I tried to sound casual. No use working him up if I didn’t have to.

  “I should be asking you that question,” he said, his voice shrill. “Do you want to tell me why I’m watching you and Kate on the news right now?”

  Chapter 29

  “Hurry, get in,” Richard called out through his open car window only twenty minutes after I’d hung up the phone with him. He wore a blue baseball cap pulled down low and, if I hadn’t recognized his silver Mercedes convertible with its hard top up and Hermès perched on the console next to the driver’s seat, I might not have known it was him. Baseball caps were not a part of Richard’s fashion repertoire.

  Kate and I stood on the sidewalk in front of the Hay-Adams Hotel where H and Sixteenths streets met, behind the police barricade but still within a few yards of the crime scene. The paramedics had given up their futile attempts to save the victim, and now the medical examiner crouched over the body with a cluster of uniformed officers nearby. Detective Reese had disappeared into the hotel, and I had a feeling he would soon know the identity of the victim. Then things would get sticky for us.

  “What are you doing?” I asked as I hurried over to the car. Richard had pulled up in the far left-hand lane of the one-way street, and other cars now had to go around him.

  He glanced behind him as a car honked. “I’m your getaway car. Now hop in before I get a ticket.”

  I motioned Kate over, and she leaned in to look at Richard, resting her elbows on the open window of his car. “What’s going on? Is that a dog?”

  “It’s P.J.’s dog.” I gave Kate a meaningful look. “His name is Butterscotch, but Richard calls him Hermès.”

  Kate shrugged. “Makes sense.”

  Richard gave an exasperated sigh. “Now do you want to get out of here or not?”

  I scanned behind me. I didn’t see Reese, but I knew he’d come out of the hotel any minute looking for us. Technically, we’d given our statements, but that was before he knew the name of the victim and made the connection to the other murder and to us.

  “Come on, Annie,” Kate said from inside the car where she and Hermès now shared the back seat.

  I decided I’d rather deal with the detective once he’d had a chance to cool off a bit. Anything was better than getting busted by Brianna and dozens of Weddies. I opened the front passenger door and got in. “Hit it.”

  Richard stepped on the gas before I’d fully shut my car door, and we flew through the green light and down H Street until we came to a stop at the intersection with Fifteenth.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?” Richard twisted in his seat to look at me, and Hermès jumped up to sit on the console between us.

  “You saw the news, right? A woman fell off the roof of the hotel.”

  Richard cocked his head at me, and Hermès copied him. “Come on. Do I look like a rube?”

  “Well, with that hat . . .” Kate began but let her words fade away when Richard gave her a withering glance.

  “Fine,” I said. “But let me first say that Kate and I were at the hotel for a completely legitimate reason.”

  “One hundred percent unrelated to any murder,” Kate added.

  Richard drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I’m listening.”

  “We crashed a Weddies tribute to Tricia,” I said.

  Richard held up a hand to stop me. “A what?”

  “The Weddies,” Kate said. “You know. Those girls from the Wed Boards. They had a get-together as a tribute to Tricia since she was so active on the forums. I thought it would be the perfect time to combat the negative press we’ve been getting by planting some positive press.”

  “Did it work?” Richard asked, and I knew he was considering it as a possible marketing strategy to adopt.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said. “You have to be a bride.”

  “That’s discrimination,” Richard said with a huff. “But you’re not brides.”

  Kate waved her sunglasses at him. “We were in disguise.”

  “And that worked?”

  “Shockingly, yes,” I said. “Kate was able to spread some positive PR about us and combat some of the negative rumors being passed around.”

  Kate leaned forward. “Did you know that bimbo Brianna was telling brides that our clients get killed on a regular basis?”

  Richard made a clucking noise. “You’ve only had two clients murdered. I wouldn’t call that a regular basis.”

  “That’s what we said.” Kate flopped back against the car seat. “So we told everyone that she’d had her business shut down because it was a front for a prostitution ring.”

  Richard’s mouth fell open. “You didn’t.”

  I nudged him as the light turned green. “Oh, she did.”

  “I take back every snarky thing I ever said about you, Kate.” Richard looked at her in his rearview mirror. “You’re a genius.”

  Kate blew him a kiss.

  Richard gunned it through the light as it turned red. “So you hung out with the Weddies and accused a colleague of being a madam. And then?”

  I paused as I considered whether to tell him everything or dole it out in need-to-know morsels. I decided to tell him enough without admitting to full-fledgde meddling. “I happened to see Mrs. Toker, the mother of our recently deceased bride, and overhear her make an exchange with some man.”

  “Happened to see?” Richard shot me a side-eye look.

  I held up three fingers and hoped I’d remembered the Girl Scouts salute correctly. “Honest. It was completely random. She must not have checked out of the hotel after the wedding.”

  Kate leaned forward between the seats. “We had no idea she’d still be there.”

  “And what do you mean ‘an exchange?’” Richard asked as he gunned it to make a yellow light.

  “A man give her something in a manila envelope.”

  Richard didn’t take his eyes off the road. “But you don’t know what it was?”

  “Nope.” If I admitted that we’d almost seen what was in the envelope then I’d have to tell him how we’d managed to sneak into the room, and I wasn’t ready to get a scolding from Richard.

  “No clue,” Kate added with more vehemence than necessary.

  “That certainly makes the mother of the bride seem suspicious. Do you think she was getting info to protect herself or to find out who killed her daughter?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” I said and meant it. I didn’t know what proof she’d been so desperate to get her hands on. It could just as easily have been something to protect herself if she’d indeed killed her husband and daughter or something related to her daughter’s killer if she didn’t.

  Richard paused at the intersection with Constitution Avenue before turning right. “So then how did you get caught up in the roof-jumper drama?”

  “Oh, she didn’t jump,” Kate said, inserting her head between us again.

  Richard sneaked a look at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Jumpers don’t usually scream bloody murder all the way down.” Kate sat back, and Hermès leaped into her lap.

  I shuddered, remembering the sounds Mrs. Toker made as she plummeted to the earth. Kate was right. They wer
en’t the noises someone resigned to suicide would make.

  “You think someone was pushed off the hotel’s roof?” Richard gaped at Kate in the rearview mirror.

  “Maybe it had to do with the exchange,” I said.

  Richard slammed on his brakes, and we all jerked forward, Hermès yelping as Kate caught him from flying into the front seat. “The woman who died was the mother of the bride?”

  “Didn’t we mention that?” I asked, lowering my arms from where I’d braced myself against the dashboard.

  Richard sucked in air. “Are you telling me that I just aided and abetted two witnesses to a second related murder?”

  Kate patted Richard on the shoulder. “I think this technically makes you our wheelman.”

  Richard spun around to face Kate as cars honked and swerved around him. “You’d better hope that if I get sent off to prison it’s to one of those Martha Stewart-style setups where I can teach inmates how to make frittatas in their toaster ovens.”

  “They’d be lucky to have you,” Kate said as Hermès yipped in apparent agreement.

  Richard sniffed. “Damn right they would.” He turned to me. “They don’t make you wear jumpsuits in those prisons, do they? Jumpsuits don’t work on me.”

  “You’re not going to prison,” I said. “None of us are.”

  “Is that a yes or a no on the jumpsuits?” Richard asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m going to say no.”

  Richard let out a long breath and took his foot off the brake so the car began moving again. “I feel much better. Now tell me more about this mother of the bride getting murdered.”

  Chapter 30

  “Where’s Leatrice?” Kate asked as I pushed open the door to my apartment. “I’m used to her greeting us at the door to the building or waiting for us inside your living room.”

  “She’s on a stakeout.”

  Kate sat my couch, dropping her black tote on the floor and setting our brown Chopt take-out bag on the coffee table. “Another one of her neighbor surveillance projects?”