Текст книги "Thread of Suspicion"
Автор книги: Jeff Shelby
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 13 страниц)
TWO
We took the underground trains to the transportation area and then were shuttled out to the rental car lot on the west side of the sprawling airport. While Lauren had slept on the plane, I’d hooked my phone to the inflight Wi-Fi and pulled up the address of the hotel that had come through on the credit card alert. I punched it into the GPS in the rental car which told us it would take thirty minutes to get to an area called Lakewood over in the foothills.
Lauren drove as I stared out the window. It took seemingly forever to actually get out of the airport and hit Interstate 70. Sunlight glinted off the fresh layer of snow covering the trees and ground. Industrial buildings littered the highway, giving way to an old Purina factory and the stockyards. The GPS swung us southward on Interstate 25 and we passed the massive Invesco Field, a glittering expensive shrine to the city’s football team. We turned west again, venturing out into the foothill suburbs, the tires of the rental car crunching against the layer of gravel and sand that coated the highway. My stomach started to tighten as we got closer.
“What are we going to do when we get there?” Lauren asked, her eyes glued to the road.
“I’m working on that.”
“Good to know. GPS says you have ten minutes.”
It actually took nine for us to exit the highway, head south over the rolling hills and pull into the parking lot of a small chain hotel on the corner of a busy intersection. Lauren shut off the engine and we sat in the parking lot for a long moment.
“You figure it out?” she asked.
“Not really,” I said.
“Well, we’re here.”
“I can see that.”
The hotel was a gray, four-story rectangle. A business hotel, most likely, that housed salespeople in town for the week and sat empty on the weekends. The parking lot was filled with rental cars.
I pulled out my phone, punched the hotel into my browser and waited for it to bring up a phone number. I touched the number and held the phone to my ear.
“We aren’t just going in?” Lauren asked, annoyed. “Why can’t we just go in?”
I held up my finger to silence her.
A friendly voice answered, asking how to direct my call.
“I’m trying to reach a guest,” I said. “Bryce Ponder?”
“Do you have the room number, sir?”
“Ah, yeah, somewhere,” I lied. “Hang on. I have it written down here.” I glanced at the hotel again. “I think it was the third floor. Sorry. My car is a mess, but I know I have it here somewhere. I apologize. My son called me when he checked in last night and I scribbled it down in a hurry when he called me.”
Lauren looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
The girl on the other end laughed. “Close. Fourth floor. Four-thirty-two.”
“I knew there was a three in there somewhere,” I said.
“I’ll connect you now.”
“Thank you.”
I waited for the line to go quiet, then covered the phone with my hand. “Remember four-thirty-two.”
She nodded.
The line buzzed and my stomach jumped.
So close.
After five rings, the girl came back on the line. “Sir, I’m sorry. There’s no answer on that line. Can I connect you to the voicemail for that room?”
“Sure, that would be fine,” I said.
“One moment.”
I waited until the automated voice came on, then hung up.
“What the hell was that all about?” Lauren demanded.
I held out my hand in warning, telling her to chill out. “Easy. We go marching in there without any info and just start asking for names, it would go nowhere in a hurry. It doesn’t look good and the desk is trained to protect their guests’ privacy. They won’t give us the time of day.”
Lauren didn’t say anything.
“The phone is easier,” I explained. “They’re supposed to get the room number from you so they can verify you know who you’re calling, but it’s an easy bluff. Most desk clerks just want to transfer the phone call and if you’re nice to them, they’ll put you through.” I nodded at the phone. “And sometimes you get lucky and they give you the room number without thinking because you sound like a confused dad.”
She nodded slowly. “Why did you say the third floor?”
“The hotel only has four floors,” I said. “Look at the windows.”
She did.
“I had a twenty-five-percent chance of getting it right and an even better chance of there being a three in the number,” I said. “It’s like those TV psychics. I made her think I had more information than I actually had.”
“How’d you know she’d do that?”
“I didn’t,” I said. “She could’ve stonewalled me and not connected me. But I’ve done it enough times to know it usually works. It was a bonus that she said the number without thinking. People want to help. I was nice to her. She gave it to me without even thinking.” I shrugged. “We caught a break.”
“Okay,” Lauren said. “So now what?”
“Now I want to walk the lot,” I said, opening my door. “Look for Minnesota plates.”
The morning air was cold and dry and my nostrils tingled when I breathed in. The snow had been shoveled from the parking lot and pushed to the sides, dirty mounds surrounding the lot. I walked slowly between the aisles of cars, checking the plates of each one. Lots of Colorados, a bunch of Nebraskas, a few from Kansas and a couple from Florida. I did not see any blue and white Minnesota plates.
I glanced at Lauren, who was walking the aisle next to me.
She shook her head. “I don’t see any from Minnesota.”
Which meant one of two things. They’d driven a car with plates from a different state or they weren’t there.
I didn’t think they’d driven a car with different plates. They were probably in Ponder’s. But if they’d checked out, the desk clerk would’ve told me.
We needed to go inside.
Or, rather, Lauren did.
“You need to go knock on the door,” I said.
“What about you?” she asked.
“I don’t want to go in yet, in case they aren’t there,” I said.
“Why?”
“Just trust me.”
She sighed, exasperated. The tension was wearing on her.
“What do I do?” she asked.
“Call me,” I said. “When you get to the fourth floor, call me and leave your phone on. Just hold it in your hand so I can hear. Knock on the door. If someone answers, just stand there.”
“Just stand there? Like a mute?”
“You can do whatever you want. Act like you got the wrong room. Start yelling at him. Whatever. But it’ll take me less than two minutes to get up there if I hear someone answer. If no one answers, just come back outside.”
“Okay,” she said. “But I still don’t understand why…”
“I know,” I said, cutting her off. “Just trust me.”
She was still shaking her head when the glass sliding doors opened and she disappeared into the hotel.
I blew on my hands, the cold starting to do its thing on my fingers. I pulled my phone from my pocket and held it so I wouldn’t miss Lauren’s call. I walked quickly toward the front door and sat on the stone bench a few feet from the entrance, making sure whoever was at the front desk couldn’t see me. My heart rate was accelerating and I kept reminding myself to settle down, to stay in control, to keep thinking logically.
The phone buzzed in my hand and I held it to my ear. “Hey.”
“I’m on the floor,” she said, quietly, breathing a little harder than normal.
“Okay. Just get to the door and hold the phone in your hand at your side,” I said. “I’ll be able to hear you.”
“Almost there,” she said. “Hang on.”
There was a rustling over the line and I listened closely.
A moment later, Lauren’s fist knocking on the door echoed through the phone.
I held my breath and listened.
She knocked again.
I exhaled and listened.
The rustling crackled through the line again.
“No answer,” Lauren said.
“Put your ear to the door,” I said. “See if you hear anything. TV, hair dryer, whatever.”
After a moment, she said, “I don’t hear anything.”
I exhaled again. The parking lot was right. They weren’t there.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m going in to talk to the front desk. When you come down, ignore me. Just walk out. I’ll meet you outside at the car.”
“Joe, I don’t…”
“I know,” I said, standing. “I know you don’t understand. I’ll explain when I come out. I’m trying not to waste time, alright? You need to trust me.”
The line buzzed for a moment.
“I do,” she said. “I’ll meet you outside.”
THREAD OF BETRAYAL is now available at ALL ebook retailers!
Here’s a description and excerpt from THE MURDER PIT, the first book in a brand new humorous cozy mystery series by Jeff Shelby.
THE MURDER PIT
Daisy Savage finally has everything she wants. A new husband. A bunch of kids. A charming old house.
What she doesn’t want is a dead body.
When a frozen pipe in the basement of her century-old home leads her and her husband downstairs into a newly discovered crawl space, they find a coal chute they didn’t know they had. And a corpse inside of it.
Things become complicated when Daisy realizes she knew the victim. And things get even worse when it becomes increasingly clear that the body was placed there to make Daisy look like the killer.
Against her husband’s advice and her own common sense, Daisy makes it her mission to prove to the denizens of Moose River that she is innocent. But doing so may be more dangerous than she planned.
ONE
I wanted an old house.
I did not want an old house with a dead body in it.
“Move the light a little,” Jake said.
It actually seemed more like his butt said it because at the moment, he was on his hands and knees, trying to fit into an elevated, three-and-a-half foot crawlspace that appeared to not have been entered in close to 150 years. Given that he was a little over six feet and two hundred pounds, he was…struggling.
And being stubborn.
“Why don’t you just let me get up there?” I said, trying to move the light to wherever he wanted it. “I’m half your size.”
“More to the left,” his butt said. “Because we have no idea what the hell is up here.”
“Well, we know there’s a frozen pipe up there,” I said.
He grunted, which I knew was his way of telling me that he didn’t think I was funny.
I got that a lot.
My husband of six months was in the crawlspace of our 150 year old home for a couple of reasons:
The aforementioned frozen pipe, which is more or less a regular thing when you have to deal with Minnesota winters.
And because we owned a 150 year old home.
When I got divorced, I also divorced myself of the 5,000 square foot modern monstrosity that had been forced upon me by first husband. I’d made mistakes in both husband and house choosing. So when we finally cut the cord, I decided I wanted a house with character. It took me two years to find the right house and during that time, I’d also found the right husband. Jake, the one boy I’d truly loved in high school had found his way back into my life and we’d picked up right where we’d left off twenty years earlier. And right before our wedding and merging our families, I’d found my house with character.
A century and a half old. (Have I mentioned that already?) Right next to the railroad tracks. One bathroom. A dilapidated garage. Doors that didn’t close properly. A hole in the roof. Bats in the attic. A much-rumored ghost.
Jake stood outside with the realtor the first time he saw it and said, “This might have…too much character, Daisy.”
But it didn’t. I’d fallen in love with the original wood floors and the narrow staircase and the small rooms and the stories that were lurking in the walls. I wanted it and when he saw how much I wanted it, he relented with a smile and a shake of his head.
And now he was trying to get a hairdryer close enough to a frozen pipe to thaw it out. I couldn’t see his face, but I was fairly certain there was no smile.
“I can’t reach it,” he said.
“Which is why I should be up there,” I reminded him.
He muttered something and slid himself backwards, his feet coming out first. He lowered himself down to the ground, easing his way over the concrete ledge that made up the floor of the crawl space. I tightened the elastic wrapped in my hair, tugging the pony tail to make sure it was tight.
“You look like one of those people,” I said to him.
He surveyed his dirt and dust covered body. “A coal miner?”
“No, one of those people in Pompeii. The ancient massive volcano?”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“I know,” I said, taking the hair dryer from him. “But I still love you. Now boost me up.”
He lifted me up and I slithered into the dirty, concrete space. Spider webs clogged the wooden beams above my head and the dust lifted up into my eyes and mouth. I coughed and wiped at my eyes.
“Having fun yet?” Jake asked.
Pretty sure he was smiling now.
I ignored him and crawled forward on my elbows, trying to get to the back wall where the offending pipe from the kitchen was located. He angled the flashlight for me and I saw the pipe up above me and next to the brick wall. I reached out to touch it and was glad my fingers weren’t wet. Because it was so icy cold, I was certain my flesh would have stuck permanently to the frozen metal. And there wasn’t enough room for Jake to come up and help me. I looked down, squinting in the darkened space, trying to locate the hairdryer. I saw it, the pearly gray barrel blending in seamlessly with the layer of dust and dirt.
But I saw something else, too.
“Did you see this?” I asked, my eyes zeroing in on the floor.
“See what?” he said. “My eyes were full of dirt.”
“This door. Did you see it?”
“Nooo. I was looking for the pipe.”
“There’s a door,” I told him. “Like, a wooden door. That opens up.”
“Excellent. Can you get the hair dryer up there now so the pipe doesn’t burst?”
But I was enamored with the door. It was about three feet by three feet, made of several two by fours. I used my hand to clear the dust from it. A splinter sliced into my palm and I winced but even that couldn’t deter me.
“There’s a hole,” I said. “To pull it up and open it.”
“Daisy,” he said sternly. “The pipe.”
“Just a second,” I said. I stuck my fingers into the hole and tried to lift it out, but it was too heavy. “Do you have a screwdriver?”
“No.”
“Liar. There’s one right there on the table.”
He sighed and a moment later, slid the screwdriver into the space. I reached back with my hand, grabbed it and brought it over to the door.
“If that pipe bursts…”
“Oh, please,” I said. “It’ll be fine. It’s been frozen for hours; a few more minutes isn’t going to hurt. Did you know there was a door here? Where would it go?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “To someplace beneath the crawl space?”
I’d never even thought about the crawl space actually being above something. It was just sort of…there, this elevated concrete space in our basement that, after studying for about half a second, I’d decided would be good for storing things. To me, it was like a bonus shelf, four feet off the basement floor. I’d already thought of putting valuables up there, off the floor that I’d been warned by our home inspector might be susceptible to flooding.
But the area underneath, the concrete tomb that the crawl space created? My mind was already spinning. I was thinking of secret tunnels and buried treasure and mementos left by previous residents. I didn’t want to see what was down there; I needed to see.
I wedged the screwdriver into the hole, set my elbow against the concrete and lifted the door up out of the ground. It lifted easily and I used my other hand to get it out of the square and slid it to the side.
“I got it!” I yelled. “It’s off!”
“Do not fall in, Daisy,” Jake said.
“Throw me the flashlight,” I said.
“You have one minute,” Jake said, rolling the flashlight toward me. “And then I want that hair dryer on the pipe before this basement fills with water and drains our bank account. Well, what’s left of our bank account.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, grabbing the light.
I propped myself up on my elbows and angled the light down into the now-open door. The drop down was about twelve feet and the walls were made entirely of metal. I felt a twinge of disappointment. It looked like an old coal chute. I did not see a tunnel. I did not see treasure.
“Daisy?” Jake asked. “What do you see?”
I angled the light again, searching every crevice of the space. The light flickered over something and my hand stilled before it began to tremble. I tried to steady the beam of light, to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. I swallowed hard and wiped at the cobwebs clinging to my face.
“I see…a pair of shoes,” I said.
“Shoes?” Jake asked.
“Yeah.” I swallowed again. “And someone’s in them.”
THE MURDER PIT by Jeff Shelby is now available at all ebook retailers!
Table of Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY-ONE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Excerpts
