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“Don’t tell me this shit, Dallas.” He turned back, basset hound eyes pleading. “Don’t put this business in my brain. Isn’t it bad enough I know they’re, you know, getting naked together?”
“Nobody listens to me about this.” She nodded, pleased to have found a like mind. “Roarke thinks it’s sweet.”
“He doesn’t have to work with them, does he?” Feeney said, firing up. “He doesn’t have to do the job knowing there’s winking and tickling and Jesus Christ in heaven knows what going on. I thought she had her sights on that slick-faced LC, Monroe.”
“She’s juggling them.”
Feeney peeled back his lips, sat again, offered Dallas the bag of nuts. “Women.”
“Yeah, what is with them?” Feeling considerably better, she ate a handful. “So, I’ve got Peabody running the boyfriend. I don’t think we’re going to find anything, but once we have his data I’ll swing over and interview him. Right now, I’m dodging the media. That’s for Roarke to deal with. I’m going back to the crime scene, do some poking around the hotel. I expect the tox report on French within an hour. I figure it’s going to be clean, but you never know about people.”
“Especially female people,” he muttered, still brooding.
“Yeah. French’s parents divorced about eight years back. He’s Harry D. French, currently living in the Bronx with his second wife. You got time to snip off that thread and take a look at his data? If it was a professional hit, maybe it was payback to him for something.”
“I’ll run him now. The mother?”
“Sherry Tides French. I ran her last night. Manages a damn candy store at the Newark Transpo Center. Whistle clean. I can’t see it coming down through her.”
She tossed him back his nuts, rose, and plucked her jacket from its hook. “Since you’ve got McNab, how about having him run the wire? Let’s see if we can find out where he buys it. The lab analysis should be coming through before midday.”
“Yeah, I’ll put him on it, keep him busy. Keep his mind out of his pants.”
“There you go.” Eve shrugged into her jacket and headed out.
Eve’s first stop was the hotel manager. She requested disc copies of guest records, records of current hotel personnel, and any employee who’d been terminated or had quit in the past year.
Before she could begin her song and dance about aiding the police in a homicide investigation, the possibility of a warrant, she was handed a sealed file containing everything she’d asked for.
She was told that the staff had been instructed by Roarke to give her full cooperation and any data she requested.
“That was easy,” Peabody commented as they took the elevator to the forty-sixth floor.
“Yeah, he’s been busy.” Eve tapped the file on her open hand, then passed the file to Peabody.
She uncoded the police seal on the door, stepped in.
“How do you pass a few hours in a hotel while you’re waiting to kill someone? Enjoy the view, watch a little screen, have some dinner. He doesn’t make or receive any transmission from the room link or fax or computer. Maybe he does on his personal,” she mused, wandering the parlor. “Checks in, verifies he’s here.”
She turned into the kitchen, studied the counter, grimy now with the sweepers’ dust. In the sink was a neat stack of dishes.
“He uses the AutoChef at six. Plenty of time before turndown. A good hour before the earliest start. Probably he knows the routine, that this particular room gets done around eight most nights. He’d have checked the hotel events calendar, so he’d know a big deal party’s going on, a convention’s coming in, another’s midswing. Hotel’s near capacity, so housekeeping’s not going to come by early. Hey, let’s have a steak.”
She moved closer to the sink. “He probably ate in front of the screen, on the sofa, or at the dining table. You wouldn’t waste a hotshot place like this by eating standing up in the kitchen. Then he has dessert and coffee, pats his belly. He brings his dishes into the kitchen, puts them tidily into the sink. He’s used to taking care of himself, picking up for himself. Doesn’t like messy dishes in view.”
She looked at the way the knife and fork were lined up beside the plate, how the dessert plate, the cup, and saucer were stacked on top. A little pyramid.
“He probably lives alone. Might not even go for a server droid. He doesn’t live in hotels, not all the time. You live with maids around, you don’t clear your plates from the table.”
Peabody nodded. “I noticed something last night. Forgot to mention it.”
“What?”
“You know all the goodies hotels like this have for guests. The bathroom stuff—fancy soaps and shampoos, creams, bath bubbles? He took them.” She smiled at Eve’s speculative look. “Lots of people do, but most of them aren’t waiting to kill somebody, or haven’t just finished killing somebody.”
“Good eye. So he’s either frugal or he likes souvenirs. How about towels, the robes, those little slippers they put beside the bed at night?”
“They put slippers beside the bed at night? I’ve never stayed in a place that—the robes are there,” she finished, catching herself before Eve could. “Two of them, bedroom closet, unused. I don’t know how many towels you get in a place like this, but there’s enough for a family of six in the bathroom. They’re unused, too.”
