Thicker Than Blood (24 page)

“I’ll take it.” Rachel filled out the papers, paid with a credit card, and departed with the key.

“Another odd one,” the clerk remarked to the woman at the Hertz desk. “That’s the third weirdo today.”

Rachel drove to LAX, parked, and replayed the same script she’d used at Burbank, this time renting a Pathfinder the color of metallic mushrooms.

An hour and forty minutes later, she had checked into the stately old Biltmore in downtown LA using the name Katharine Chase and paying a three hundred dollar cash deposit. “I just don’t like leaving credit card numbers around all over the place,” she murmured blandly to the clerk, who nodded his understanding.

With a firm grip on her brown leather bag, Rachel studiously ignored the bellhop and took the elevator to the top floor. The Biltmore was not a place for rushing. The decor seemed to imply that if you could afford to stay within such hallowed walls, you could afford a leisurely wander through the high-ceilinged grandeur. By the time she reached the bank of elevators in the hotel’s opposite wing, she was wishing she hadn’t packed so many clothes.

Descending again to the ground floor, she slipped out a side door where a taxi was discharging a group of Japanese businessmen. When they had paid, the driver looked at her quizzically. “The Bonaventure,” she said, keeping her voice low. It was only a few blocks, but struggling with her luggage on foot would be slow and noticeable. She got into the back seat and sat, wishing the driver would hurry the job of stowing her suitcase in the trunk.

Registering at the Bonaventure as Melanie Whitaker, she again paid cash. She’d have to find another bank machine soon.

Having tipped the bellhop to take the suitcase to her room, she walked back to the Biltmore parking lot and moved the car to an underground city lot five blocks away.

Heading back to the Bonaventure on foot, she felt fatigue shoot through her legs. By the time Rachel reached her room, she was exhausted and the heel of one foot was blistered.

The carefully designed aura of a French boudoir had little appeal, but at last she could take off the damn shoes. She ordered dinner from room service, thinking that if no one were following her, this was costing an awful lot of time and money.

And what about the garage?

But Irene had agreed to look after things each morning, so Rachel could visit Marty in the hospital. The woman had proved amazingly conscientious, and something of a busybody, so she would probably take charge if Rachel wasn’t about.

333

Waking late the next morning, groggy and aching all over, Rachel couldn’t think where she was, or why. Then waves of anxiety descended on her.

Her mind fretted over every detail. For the first time she contemplated with horror the possibility that she might be wanted for Charlotte’s murder. Her fingerprints would have been all over the phone in the Riverside kitchen. And couldn’t they even take fingerprints from bodies now? She had tried to take Charlotte’s pulse. Maybe her name was on Charlotte’s calendar!

But by the time she finished a room-service cup of coffee and bran muffin, she had struck a balance between fear and triumph. At least she was safe.

When the maids came to clean the room, she went down to the lobby, bought a copy of the Times, found a back table in the coffee shop, and thumbed through the paper. On the eighth page a small photo of Charlotte smiled up at her under the headline: “Water Executive Commits Suicide.”

The short article reported that Charlotte Emerson, Chairman of the Board of InterUrban Water District had been discovered by a neighbor who telephoned for paramedics. “Suicide?”

The waitress delivering her tea frowned, “Excuse me?”

Rachel looked up at her numbly. “Nothing, sorry.”

She hadn’t seen a gun anywhere near Charlotte. The poor woman could hardly have shot herself in the head, then put the gun away. But was there a gun? In her fright had she missed it?

She had been certain Charlotte was murdered, and that the burglary of her own apartment was somehow part of the murderer’s plan.

But the car that killed Jason was checked out to Charlotte. Could Charlotte have been involved with Harry? The idea strained Rachel’s imagination. If that was the case, suicide might be believable. Still, why would the woman kill herself just before Rachel was to arrive? Did she want me to find her?

When the maids had finished cleaning her imitation boudoir, Rachel called County Hospital and talked with Marty.

“I’m fine,” he told her. “When are you going to spring me from this antiseptic prison?”

“Something has come up, Pop. It may be a few days before I can get over there again. Besides, the doctor told me yesterday that he wanted to send you over to rehab for a few days or so.” She dodged his questions about what was so important that she couldn’t visit.

A call to the garage brought a sprightly answer from Irene, who cackled loudly when Rachel asked if she could run the place for a few days. “Course I can, dear girl,” Irene shouted. “Got yourself a fine gentleman, eh?” Rachel didn’t deny it. She gave Irene a list of instructions, then added, “Do me a favor and put out some cat food. Clancy, my cat, is missing.”

She dialed Hank’s office. His voice buzzed in her ear. “Hank?” she faltered. The voice stopped, followed by a beep. Speaking slowly, knowing she sounded evasive, she told the machine she would be out of town a few days, would get in touch when she returned.

Did Charlotte commit suicide?

Rachel decided it didn’t matter. Suicide or no, someone had torn her own apartment to shreds.

In the bathroom, she studied the hollow-eyed face in the mirror. Taking a pair of scissors from her cosmetic case, she began to chop at her hair.

She had to read the instructions on the hair-color package four times. The smell was beyond bad. Rachel dabbed the solution onto her hair, covered her head with the plastic cap, and sat fidgeting on the edge of the tub.

Restless, Rachel tried to read the newspaper, then went to the phone and dialed Goldie’s number. There was no answer, and, not wanting to trust another machine, she hung up. Glancing at her watch, she leapt up and raced back to the bathroom, ten minutes overtime with the bleach.

The result was brassy, orange hair. No matter how many times she rinsed it, she looked more like an exhibitionist than someone who wanted to fade into the woodwork. The hair dryer turned it even brassier, and the eyeglasses from Lenscrafters made the whole effect even more comical.

She would have to dye that mess on her head back to some believable color.

She wrapped her head in a scarf and locked the door behind her.

A man was dawdling near the hotel entrance: dark, wiry, black jeans, black leather jacket with a pattern of chrome studs. Can’t be a killer on every street corner, Rachel told herself as she traipsed the blocks to the pharmacy the room clerk had recommended.

With a box of auburn tint in a brown paper bag clutched in one hand, the other hand clenching the scarf, which wouldn’t quite cover the brassy orange hair, Rachel was making her way back through the hotel lobby, when she saw the short, stocky man in a yellow knit shirt and black pants turning toward her from the hotel desk. She tried to turn away, but he saw her.

“Rachel, honey.”

“Bruno!” She almost gasped his name.

He didn’t seem to notice her consternation or her ridiculous appearance. “Big meeting called at InterUrban and I gotta see some people, so I came down early.”

“Well, good to see you,” she said blithely. “Sorry to rush off, but I’m in a hurry.” She dashed back toward the elevator, then turned and called, “I’ll phone you, soon. Promise.”

His back was to her, so she hardly noticed the small man with reedy limbs waiting at the elevator. Then he turned, and she saw the black jeans and black leather jacket with chrome studs.

Whirling, she dashed back through the lobby. Bruno had disappeared. In the gift shop, without taking her eyes from the shop’s doorway, she bought a pack of gum. Then she found a stairway and walked up ten flights.

The odds were ninety to ten that guy in the leather jacket was just some delivery guy, a repair man, or even a tourist, but Rachel decided she couldn’t risk the ten. Yanking together her belongings, she stuffed them into the suitcase.

Hair uncovered and feeling about as inconspicuous as a bolt of lightning, she left the key on the dresser, and was relieved to find the elevator empty. On the street, a panhandler angled toward her. A rather pathetic chin, sporting a somewhat unsuccessful attempt at a beard, jutted above a dirty tee shirt.

“You really want some money?” she asked boldly.

His black eyes flashed. “My sister, she is very sick,” he mumbled, dark eyes boring anxiously into hers.

“Carry this bag to the Biltmore for me and I’ll pay you ten dollars.” He gaped at her, and without another word, lunged for the suitcase. She paid him when they reached the hotel. He was staring at the bill so hard as he walked away that he almost fell off the curb.

Rachel reached the tenth floor only to realize she’d forgotten the room number. Dropping the bag she had carried from the drugstore, she dug through her purse for the key. Forcing a calmness she didn’t feel, she walked down three flights of stairs and put her key in that door.

Once inside, she tossed the suitcase on the bed and picked up the phone. “This is Katherine Chase, Room 707,” she said, trying to breathe slowly. “I’d like to stay over another night. I’ll be down to pay shortly.”

It wasn’t until she had downed an entire can of Coke from the room’s self-serve bar that she glanced out the window.

A man was leaning against the building across the street reading a newspaper. At that distance, she couldn’t see him clearly, but he was dressed in black.

Chapter Thirty-nine

The man in black hung around on the sidewalk below for most of an hour, then disappeared.

Attracting stares like an electromagnet, Rachel ventured to the lobby to pay another night’s lodging. The Biltmore room favored nouveau Victorian, with deep red carpets, drapes of maroon velvet, and a king-size bedspread of creamy satin. In her lighter moments, Rachel wondered if there was a buxom middle-aged woman with platinum hair and dangling earrings in the lounge whispering room numbers in the ears of lonely business travelers.

In her worse moments she would have welcomed a chance to exchange that scenario for reality. Her present hair color might serve her well in that context.

Then she realized she must have left the package of hair dye where she had searched for her key. What floor was that? The tenth?

She took the elevator up. But there was no abandoned bag of hair dye. Could it have been another floor? She checked every floor above seven. Nothing.

She would have to make yet another trek to a pharmacy to fix the dreadful orange hair. Rachel nearly groaned out loud. It would have to wait till morning.

Back in her room, she dragged the plush loveseat across the room and propped it against the door.

At two a.m., she awoke remembering something.

With a pair of chrome-rimmed mirror sunglasses, the man in the black jacket would be a dead ringer for the driver of the white van that had been circling the parking garage.

Rachel reached for a magazine, afraid she’d never get back to sleep. But obviously she did go back to sleep, because it was out of blankness that she snapped to full-blown alarm.

Something had pushed against the settee. She couldn’t see it from the bed, but that something could only be the door to her room. She turned on the light. Immediately, there was a soft click as the door closed.

She grabbed the phone, punched the zero, and spoke loudly into it without waiting for the clerk at the front desk to answer. “This is…Katharine Chase, Room 707. Someone is trying to get into my room.” She had to repeat it when the clerk answered, but two security guards quickly arrived.

The night manager followed with apologies and the offer of another room in a wing where the doors were unlocked by cards and reprogrammed after each guest. She took the offer.

An hour later, with an identical settee propped against the door of the new room, Rachel sat sleepless in an uncomfortable straight-backed chair, staring at the wall with unfocused eyes.

At five o’clock, she carried her suitcase down the back exit stairs. Every step she took echoed.

333

Annoyed, Dr. Paula Greenfeld slammed down the phone in the medical staff lounge. She had figured that a resident’s life could not be nearly as bad as an intern’s.

This was her thirtieth birthday, but her work had devoured the last pitiful fragments of her personal life, so nobody cared except her parents.

The nursing staff was getting surly due to some screw-up in scheduling and she herself had worked thirty-one hours out of the last forty-two. And now some idiot patient was claiming someone tried to kill him. He wanted to talk with the police. He probably wanted a guard.

Dr. Greenfeld’s shoes squeaked on the imitation-marble linoleum. She thought she remembered the case, but she was too tired to be sure. Apparently he’d had a drink too many or was hopped up or had fallen asleep behind the wheel. At any rate, he had collided with a guardrail on the Long Beach. Her first guess was that he was probably trying to dodge a DUI by claiming someone was trying to kill him.

The nurse at the U-shaped desk gave her a terse smile. The doctor flipped through the patient files. There it was. Room 408. Martin Chavez, age fifty-seven. Blood alcohol level hadn’t been all that much. A nasty concussion. Possible spleen contusions, a cracked shoulder. He was one lucky guy. Not fully alert until a few days ago and a real nuisance ever since. Well, the concussion could account for agitation and paranoid delusions.

She dodged a steel tray caddy that held breakfast remains and pushed open the door to Room 408, stopped short, and with thinly veiled irritation checked the file again. Had someone written the wrong room number on the file?

All four beds in 408 were empty. The bathroom door was closed.

She knocked. “Mr. Chavez?” It wasn’t locked. The bathroom was empty.