The Bone House Part 4

'Did you get up at all during the night? Did you go to the bathroom?'

'No, I didn't.'

Cab nodded and let the polite dance play out between them. He wanted to put her at ease and not imply that there was anything special about his visit. She and her husband were two of many guests looking out on the beach, not suspects with a connection to the victim. Even so, he had little doubt that she'd already seen through him and was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He studied the woman in front of him. Hilary Bradley was smart, and she was pretty, too, in a mature, self-confident way. He figured she was a few years older than he was, maybe forty, or maybe knocking on the door. Her face was rounded, with blue eyes and thin black gla.s.ses, and dangly earrings that looked like red sour b.a.l.l.s. She wore a simple burgundy top, tan slacks that emphasized her long legs, and sandals. Despite her shoulder-length blond hair, she wasn't a cla.s.sic bombsh.e.l.l, and he didn't imagine she ever had been one, even when she was younger. Nonetheless, she had the s.e.xiness of a woman who knew she was two steps ahead of you in just about everything.

She looked up at Cab. Based on his height, almost everyone did. He could feel her taking his measure, even as he did the same to her. Most people underestimated him. They thought he was a spoiled beach b.u.m; he didn't look like a man who'd graduated from UCLA in three years. They saw the pomade in his hair, the exfoliated complexion, the earring, the suit, all of it on top of a lean body that made the ceilings look low, and they wrote him off as a shallow metros.e.xual. He didn't care. He also didn't think Hilary Bradley was the kind of woman who would make that mistake about him. Her face was a mask as she stared at him, revealing nothing, but she had the look of someone who didn't misjudge an enemy.

Cab glanced at the hotel roster in his hand. 'You're not here alone, are you, Mrs Bradley? Your husband is with you?'

Her voice was cool. 'That's right.'

'His name is Mark?'

'Yes.'

'Is that him I hear in the shower?'

'Of course.'

'I'd like to talk to him, too,' Cab told her.

'I doubt he saw anything either.'

'How do you know? You said you were sleeping.'

Hilary got a little frown on her face, as if she was annoyed at being outfoxed by his question, if my husband saw anything overnight, he would have told me.'

'I still need to speak to him myself.'

'We'll try to find you before we leave, Detective,' she said, with a glance at the door to the room. Her meaning was clear: she wanted the interview to be over.

Cab stroked the point of his protruding chin and stayed where he was. 'Do you mind if I ask what you two are doing in Naples?'

'We're on vacation. I'm a high school teacher, and it's spring break. We had some hotel points on our credit card, so we used them to get a free week here.'

'Nice. How did you happen to choose this hotel?'

He watched her think through her response, as if she was trying to understand his motives in asking. Or maybe she was trying to a.s.sess how little she could say without lying. 'In addition to my academic teaching, I've been a dance coach for many years,' she explained finally. 'Some of my former students were performing in a college compet.i.tion at the hotel this week.'

'So when you're not coaching dance, what do you teach?'

'Math.'

'Math was never my subject,' Cab said, which was a lie. He'd aced every cla.s.s in school. Except geography. His brain didn't process directions. He needed a map to find his own bathroom.

'Where do you teach?' he continued.

'It's a high school in Door County, Wisconsin.'

'Where exactly is that?' he asked.

'If you look at a map of Wisconsin, Door County is like the state's pinky finger. The peninsula juts out into the water between Green Bay and Lake Michigan.'

'Sounds like a pretty spot.' 'It is.'

'Do you know a family named Fischer living in that area?'

Hilary's blue eyes turned cold. Cab figured that Lake Michigan was probably cold, but it would have felt as balmy as the Gulf compared to this woman's eyes.

'Do you think I'm stupid, Detective?'

'I'm sorry?'

'I know you're not here because we happen to have a room that overlooks the beach. I don't imagine the lead detective on a murder investigation does the grunt work of interviewing hundreds of potential witnesses.'

Cab smiled. 'There's a lot more grunt work than you might imagine.'

'Someone already told me that the dead girl is Glory Fischer, and someone obviously told you you about me and my husband.' about me and my husband.'

'Yes, your husband's name did come up.'

'Mark had nothing to do with this.'

'Maybe not, but you can understand my concern, given his relations.h.i.+p with the Fischers. Particularly the dead girl's sister.'

'There was no relations.h.i.+p,' Hilary insisted. 'The accusations against him were false.'

'I don't really care,' Cab told her. it raises suspicions about him cither way.'

'My husband didn't kill Glory Fischer.'

'Except we've already established that you were sleeping, Mrs Bradley, so you really don't know what he was doing.'

'I know Mark.'

'n.o.body knows anybody,' Cab said.

'Maybe you don't, but I do. I'm not going to see my husband subjected to another witch-hunt, Detective.'

'I don't do witch-hunts. I don't believe what anyone tells me, good or bad, until I can prove it one way or another. So right now, what I'd really like is for your husband to stop hiding behind the bathroom door pretending he's in the shower, and instead have him come out and talk to me.'

'I'll let him know you stopped by,' Hilary said.

'If your husband has nothing to hide, let him answer a few questions.'

'You've already lied about your reasons for coming here, Detective,' she snapped. 'So spare me the "nothing to hide" speech. Mark and I don't trust people any more than you do. We've learned that we can only trust each other.'

'I've seen a lot of wives who think that,' Cab told her. 'Most of them wind up disappointed.'

'Do I look like a naive twenty-five year old to you?'

'No, you don't,' he said.

'Then don't treat me like one.'

Cab dug in his pocket. 'Your husband is going to have to answer questions sooner or later. Here's my card. Have him call me. Don't bother leaving town today, because you'll just have to fly back here again.'

'Are you finished?'

'No, if your husband won't answer questions, then I'll ask you. Did you know Glory Fischer and her sister were here at this hotel?'

'I've said all I plan to say for now,' Hilary told him.

'You're painting a target on your husband's back. You're both acting guilty.'

'You've already said you won't believe me, so why should I say anything at all?'

Before he could answer, Cab heard his phone ringing in the inner pocket of his suit coat. It was Lala on the other end of the line. He listened to her, and he knew that the Cuban cop's voice was loud enough to be heard throughout the room. He didn't care. When he hung up, he noticed the changed expression in Hilary Bradley's eyes. She'd followed the thread of his conversation, and she was uncomfortable now. And worried.

'I don't think you were sleeping, Mrs Bradley,' he told her. 'I think you woke up, and your husband was gone.'

'Goodbye, Detective.'

'That was one of my investigators on the phone. You heard what she said. We have a witness. A hotel employee who saw Glory Fischer going out to the beach. The question is, what else did he see?'

Hilary said nothing.

Cab rapped his foot against one of the suitcases on the floor, which had been open when he first arrived. 'I saw the yellow tank top. Is that what your husband was wearing? That's hard to miss, even at night.'

She folded her arms again and was quiet. Her face grew flushed.

Cab walked past her toward the hotel room door. As he pa.s.sed the closed door to the bathroom, he pounded on it loudly. 'Don't think you can hide behind your wife forever, Mr Bradley. The sooner you talk to me, the easier this will be.'

When there was no answer, he left the room.

Mark waited until he heard the hotel room door slam shut. He emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed, and found his wife sitting on the end of the bed. Her face was tired and stressed. He'd seen that look for weeks last year, as they'd both faced his accusers at the school.

'You heard?' she asked.

Mark nodded. His frustration bubbled over, and he felt like punching the wall. 'He's right. I should have come out and talked to him. I don't like to hide, Hil. That's not me.'

She shook her head. 'He was just pus.h.i.+ng your b.u.t.tons. He was trying to goad us into saying something stupid. Look, I'll call my father and get the name of a defense attorney here in Naples. There are probably Chicago s...o...b..rds all over the place down here. We'll talk to him and then decide what to do next.'

'Guilty people hire lawyers.'

'No, smart people do,' she told him. 'This is about protecting ourselves.'

Mark glanced at the suitcases on the floor. 'We can't leave.'

'I'll call the desk and see if we can stay another night.'

'Does he really have a witness? Or was that just a mind game?'

'I don't know. I heard the person on the phone say that someone at the hotel saw Glory, but they could have staged the call.' if someone saw me with her ...' Mark's voice trailed off. if someone saw you with her, maybe they saw you leave, too. Maybe they saw who really did this.'

Chapter Six.

Lala Mosqueda had added black sungla.s.ses to her all-black outfit as the sun got higher over the resort. Her skin had a glistening sheen of sweat. It was Florida, and there was nothing you could do to escape the humidity. Cab had a.s.sumed he would get used to it over time, but in two years, he never had. By the time he was done shaving every morning, his skin was already damp. Every surface he touched felt moist and swollen. When he left his high-rise, beachfront condo, his clothes stuck to his body, and he felt the thick air draining his energy. The only creatures that thrived in the damp climate were the c.o.c.kroaches and spiders, which grew like mutants.

Lala leaned against the trunk of a palm tree near a wide, tiled walkway that led toward the water. The sky overhead was postcard blue. On the hotel terrace, Cab saw a goateed hotel employee with greased black hair sitting alone at a patio table, nervously pus.h.i.+ng around the floral centerpiece and swigging water from a plastic Aquafina bottle. The man s.h.i.+fted and crossed his legs uncomfortably in the deckchair. White cuffs jutted out from the sleeves of his red hotel jacket, and he wore black slacks. He was in his early twenties.

Cab met Lala, who was texting on her phone. 'That our witness?' he asked.

'Yeah, his name's Ronnie Trask. He's a bartender at the pool bar.'

'He looks ready to pee his pants. Is he feeling guilty about something?'

Lala holstered her phone and pushed up her sungla.s.ses, which were slipping on her sweaty face. 'The other employees tell me he's a smooth operator with girls who like to party too much. The younger the better. But if he was involved in what happened to Glory, I think he would have kept his mouth shut rather than stick himself in the middle of our investigation.'

'Have we found anyone else who saw anything?'

'Not yet.'

'What about cameras? Don't they have any cameras out here?'

'Not too many spring breakers want hotels with eyes in the sky, you know? What happens on the beach stays on the beach. The only place they've got a camera is the lobby. We're looking at the tape.' She added, 'What about Mark Bradley? You get anything from him?

Cab tugged the b.u.t.tons of his dress s.h.i.+rt away from his sticky chest and adjusted the gold chain on his neck. He smelled chlorine from the nearby hotel pool. 'He ducked me. I talked to the wife.'

'And?'

'And they're not crazy about answering questions. Let's dig up whatever we can about this incident in Door County last year. Call the sheriff up there. I want to know more about it before I talk to the sister and the boyfriend, OK?'

'Sure,' Lala said. Cab turned away toward Ronnie Trask, but Lala called after him. 'Hey, Cab?'

'What?