Alison Pollock sat at the ornate Georgian desk in her office at the Beverly Hills Hotel, trying to get a cup of tea down. She’d been able to think of little else but the heinous murder discovered that morning. Paul Farrento, the manager on duty last night, had called her at home at 6:15 after one of the room service waiters walked in on the body. Alison had dressed hurriedly and rushed to the hotel.
Farrento had already called the Beverly Hills police. They’d responded in minutes, and were at the bungalow when Alison got there. Investigators from the sheriff’s department had been called in, Detectives Cabello and Johnson. They talked to her at length—they wanted to know if she’d been aware of any unusual behavior by any of her staff.
In fact, most of her employees were in shock, from the head chef to the pool attendants to the chambermaids—they were operating under a cloud of gloom today. Even the guests seemed to her a bit subdued when Alison walked through the lobby and promenade areas—the murder was all over the news.
Alison thought about Janet Orson. She couldn’t shake the feeling there was something she was missing. They’d had a welcoming drink on Sunday afternoon, Janet, Alan Bronstein from Monogram, who’d helped Janet with her move that day, and Alison, along with her fifteen-year-old granddaughter Davina who was spending the weekend with her. They all sat in a booth in the Polo Lounge, and Janet had mentioned how proud Ali must be of this venerable old hotel.
“Oh, yes, I’m proud,” Alison had said. “These walls have seen the biggest and the best of Hollywood.” She’d told them that the hotel was the very first structure built in Beverly Hills, and how back then it was the only building on Sunset Boulevard between there and the Pacific Ocean. And what had Janet responded? Something that Alison had thought was odd at the time, but she couldn’t remember offhand.
The killer had clearly known exactly where to find Janet, so it had to be either someone she knew, or someone who had been able to find out what unit she was staying in. It weighed heavily on Alison’s mind that an employee might have thoughtlessly given the killer Janet Orson’s bungalow number.
She got up and went out to the switchboard. Treva Jones was working the day shift. The young woman looked up at Alison soberly, the murder on her mind, too. Alison asked her if she could remember anyone asking for Janet Orson’s room number.
“You know we would never give out that information, Mrs. Pollock,” Treva said.
“Of course I know you wouldn’t,” Alison assured her. “But by any chance, did anyone try to get the bungalow number from you? Can you remember?” she persisted.
Treva thought for a minute. “Yes,” she said then. “There was a woman who was especially insistent. She said she had an appointment with Ms. Orson on Wednesday, and she needed to know what room to go to. I told her to just come to the front desk, and we’d call Ms. Orson, then direct her.”
“Do you remember her name?” Alison asked.
“No, I’m sorry; we’re answering these phones all day long—”
Alison made her promise to tell her immediately if she remembered anything more about that caller. Also, she asked Treva to question the other two women on the board to find out whether they had taken any calls for Janet Orson that were at all out of the ordinary.
The woman had an appointment with Janet on Wednesday? Alison thought as she left the room. That’s today. The detectives had asked Alison to let them know if she thought of anything—she would tell them about that call that Treva took. In their search of the bungalow, they probably found Janet’s datebook. Maybe her Wednesday appointments would provide a clue.
She headed up the stairs to the lobby to see if things were under control at the front desk, and whether the murder had caused many cancellations. She was sure there would be some. Up on the street level, the media were swarming everywhere. They were set up all over the grounds, they were congregating in the lobby with tons of equipment, and they were camped out behind the yellow crime-scene tape around bungalow 16. Usually, Alison had an excellent rapport with the press. She dealt with them often because of the many celebrities who stayed at the hotel. Today, they were a nightmare. She had declined to grant any interviews; she was bent on just staying out of their way.
Suddenly it hit her. The media! That was what Janet’s reaction to Alison’s pride in the hotel had been about. Janet had responded that everyone loved the Beverly Hills Hotel, and she mentioned that a woman who was going to interview her this week had begged to do it here instead of at Janet’s office because she loved the Beverly Hills Hotel, she’d said. And now Alison remembered what had struck her as odd. The interview was to be for radio. Not television, where the setting mattered, not print, where there was a high priority on getting good photos. Radio! Where it would sound exactly the same, no matter where they did it. Yet she had insisted on doing the interview at the hotel, presumably in Janet Orson’s bungalow.
Alison couldn’t remember the woman’s name, but she did remember that when Janet mentioned it, Davina piped up that she and her friends listened to her show all the time. “She’s bad!” Davina had exclaimed. And when the adults looked at her for an explanation, she told them bad means good. “She disses everything,” Davina offered by way of clarification, and everybody laughed when the teenager had to explain what that meant.
Alison hurried back downstairs to her office. She called Maxi at Channel Six, and got her voice mail. Rather than leave a message, she called back and asked for producer Wendy Harris. Wendy always knew where Maxi was, even if she was on the other side of the world.
Wendy came on the line. “Maxi’s chasing around town trying to find out anything about Janet Orson’s murder,” she said. “She told me she was going to try to stop by and see you.”
“Yes, she was here,” Alison said. “And now I think I might have something for her. Will you tell her to call me as soon as she surfaces?”
“I sure will,” Wendy said. “Meantime, I’ll try her cell phone. If you don’t hear from her, she’ll be back here at the station at least by four for the Six O’clock News.”
It was almost 3:30. Alison picked up Detective Mike Cabello’s card on her desk and dialed the number.
“Cabello,” he barked into the phone. She told him about the woman who had tried to get Janet Orson’s room number from the hotel switchboard operator yesterday. And about Janet saying that a woman was going to interview her for a radio program today, and had insisted on doing it at the hotel instead of at Janet’s office. She suggested that they look carefully at Janet Orson’s appointment schedule for today. Maybe it was the same woman. And maybe the woman did find out which unit Janet was in. And waited for her to come back last night.