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“This is the direct line for the office of Daphne Miller, the director of our New York field office. She can confirm I am who I say I am, and have approval to work on any investigation that merits my special skill set.”
Bless his heart, he actually called.
After Daphne had assured him this wasn’t a very thorough con, the concierge took Shane and me to the elevator and rode with us to one of the top floors of the hotel.
A poorly kept secret in New York was that most of the poshest hotels in the city also had permanent apartments in them. Some people liked to have the amenities of a hotel while maintaining their own personal space. Lucas had lived on three floors of the hotel he had owned. Ingrid had been living at the Plaza for over fifty years.
I was more of an apartment gal, but I had also only recently been so rich I could consider doing something as bonkers as living in a hotel.
Being able to afford living in New York at all felt like something I deserved a merit badge for.
When we got to the private entrance for Ingrid’s apartment, I knocked and waited a full minute before trying the handle. I was surprised to find the door unlocked. Ingrid might have the security of hotel staff surrounding her at all times, but she was still too smart a woman to leave her front door unlocked in a city like this.
Any crazy motherfucker could just walk right in.
I proved that by stepping into her foyer.
“Ingrid?” The lights were blazing, and my nerves were immediately ajangle. This wasn’t right at all.
The concierge made a move to follow us, but out of instinct I said, “Please wait there, sir.”
“I’m not supposed to let anyone in unattended. Especially if the owner isn’t present.”
“I’m going to ask you for your own safety to stay where you are. Do you have a phone with you?”
He nodded. I don’t think he’d been expecting my question.
“Can you please have it ready?”
“For what?”
I rounded the corner out of his line of sight, and my heart dropped directly into my shoes.
In the bright overhead lights, the smears of blood that lined the walls and floor maintained a faintly red hue, though it was obvious at a glance that they’d been left to dry for quite some time.
“Fuck me running,” I said.
Shane came up behind me and stopped dead in his tracks. “Sweet Jesus.”
It was just so much blood. More than a person could lose and still go on living, I would imagine.
“Sir, I’m going to ask you to call the police now.”
“Aren’t you the police?” He had come farther into the room, enough to catch a glimpse of the apartment over my shoulder. His face was instantly rendered an ashen white. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
He scuttled out of the room, fumbling with the phone in his hands, and I could barely make out his stammered pleas to 911 when he got to the hall.
I sidestepped a dried smear of blood on the marble hallway floor and followed the trail farther back into the apartment. Blood was everywhere. It was such a grim scene of horror I had already steeled myself, expecting to find Ingrid’s exsanguinated body at the end of it, like a macabre pot of gold.
Only, Ingrid wasn’t here.
I checked the bathroom—the most likely place someone would leave a corpse this messy—but the tub might have been the only thing in the whole apartment not stained red.
There was no sign of her in the bedroom, the living room, her office, or kitchen.
Whatever had happened to Ingrid, her body wasn’t here.
