Chapter 18
Jaki spread the word of our discovery to Detective Bonelli. Meanwhile, I called my mother. She wasn’t picking up, which concerned me a little. I left her a message.
“Mom, please don’t hang around the hotel tonight. Go straight home with Harry and Looli, right now. And on your way out, if you see that hotel staffer, Steve? Don’t talk to him. Avoid him completely if you can. As they say on the cop shows, he’s a ‘person of interest’ in this whole mess. Call me when you’re on your way home, okay?”
Bonelli showed up at my elbow. “You talked to this guy, Cassie. He was dressed like Bradburne staff? With an ID tag?”
“I noticed today that the security guard at the theater door had a laminated tag. Steve’s is in one of these plastic sleeves on a lanyard”—I held up my own volunteer tag—“which you can get in any office supply store. It looked like the others, though, and even had his photo. . . .”
“The Bradburne hired a bunch of extra guys a couple of weeks before the expo. Who knows how well they vetted them.... He’s going by the name Steve Rickert? We’ll see if he’s actually on their roster.”
I had a troubling thought. “This might explain how the stalker knew I had a parent involved in the expo. I wonder, though, how he found out I was helping Jaki. Unless Mom or Harry let it slip, or he overheard them talking about it.”
Bonelli nodded. “Or there’s another possibility. If he’s been able to switch off some of the security cameras, maybe he also can hack into some of them. He might be able to monitor the hall outside Jaki’s suite to see who’s coming and going.”
I hoped in vain that she might be kidding, but her troubled expression told me she was dead serious. No wonder this guy always seemed to keep one step ahead of us!
Jaki started her rehearsal then, a bit later than scheduled. Accompanied by just a keyboard player, a guitarist, and a drummer, she launched into another of her hits, “Shady Lady.” I’d heard the sassy pop-rock number before, on the radio. By comparison, Jaki’s performance tonight sounded a little anemic, and not just because of the spare accompaniment. Big surprise, though. I couldn’t imagine how she would keep it together during a ballad, much less a high-energy dance number, with all she had hanging over her head. If there was even the slightest chance that crazy Stefan might be somewhere out there in the audience, waiting to take a shot at her . . .
Time for me to quit the edge of the stage for a more appropriate seat in the mostly vacant front row. The things I’d learned that afternoon left my mind spinning. I couldn’t believe that the seemingly nice, helpful, self-effacing guy who’d called Harry “sir” could possibly be the monster behind this scheme. But no one else fit the profile so well.
Unless . . . could both Jaki and Mira possibly have misidentified him as Dumas?
With a start, I remembered that we’d first run in to Steve when we were scoping out the convention center in advance. And so was he! He’d been wandering in and out of doors, some of which probably led to stairwells, and making notes on his iPad. He could have been planning how to hack the computer that afternoon, right in front of us, and we’d never have suspected.
As far as I could remember, he’d been dressed like a worker but not wearing an ID tag that day. Other staffers already were wearing them, though. How hard would it have been for him to notice how they were designed and what information they included, then print a facsimile for himself? Who was likely to examine it really closely unless they had reason to suspect a problem?
And low-key, boring Steve Rickert didn’t look like a guy who’d be a problem.
My stomach rumbled, and I checked my watch. Five of six. Ages ago, it seemed, I’d promised to meet Mark at the restaurant at six for dinner. Before the rest of us knew . . . what we at least thought we knew now.
No reason I shouldn’t go meet him. Bonelli and her cops are on the case. Jaki’s got protection around her, and nothing dangerous should happen until after she performs.
Besides, it worried me that Mom hadn’t returned my last call. On the way to the restaurant, I’d stop by the cat show, which ought to be breaking up by now. Look in on her and Harry and make sure they were planning to head home, as I’d told them to.
Would Steve be there? If he was the stalker, probably not. He had a big reunion planned with Jaki later on, and was probably off somewhere getting ready for it.
I saw no sign of Mom or Harry on the cat show floor, and many of the competitors and their animals already had cleared out. On a hunch, I moved on to The Grove and found the two of them seated at a table, sharing a plate of hors d’oeuvres.
When I asked Mom why she hadn’t answered her phone, she apologized. “It’s so noisy in here, I guess I didn’t hear the ringer.”
“Where’s our prizewinning ‘pearl’?” I asked Harry.
“I couldn’t bring her in here, of course,” he said, but with a proud smile. “She’s tucked away safely in a friend’s hotel room, having her own supper.”
That put me on alert. “What friend?”
“Nancy, the woman down our row who had the Maine Coons. She’s staying over another night, and said she’d be glad to keep an eye on Looli until Barbara and I had some dinner.”
Mom must have noticed me eyeing the hors d’oeuvres they were sharing, stuffed mushroom caps the size of cupcakes. “Won’t you join us, Cassie? Pull up another chair—there’s an extra at that table.”
I glanced around the crowded restaurant. “I’ll probably get flack if I do that. Actually, I was supposed to meet Mark here. . . .”
“Oh, yes, he stopped by a few minutes ago. Said to tell you there was a problem at the clinic, some dog had a setback.” Mom’s temporarily unfocused gaze told me she was trying to remember his message exactly. “He hopes to make it back later for Jaki’s show, though, and he’ll call you.”
By now I was starving, so I meekly asked the party of three at the next table if I could grab their extra chair. They gestured for me to take it, and I joined Mom and Harry.
Half of the mushroom caps were stuffed with Parmesan cheese, the others with sausage. Combined with the hearty Italian bread in the basket, I hardly needed anything more. Which was just as well, I thought, because I might need to stay on my toes tonight.
Mom told me, “I did listen to that very agitated message you left on my phone about half an hour ago. What was all that, about Steve—?”
I cut her off with a wave of my hand. This noisy environment, where we had to raise our voices just to be heard by each other, was no place to discuss police business. “Not here, Mom. I’ll explain later. But do me a favor, both of you. As soon as you finish dinner, get Looli from Nancy, head for your car, and get out of here.”
“Yes, you said that, but why—”
I needed a creative fib. “There have been some more security issues because of that actor showing up, and they might affect the concert tonight. If there’s another blackout or alarm malfunction while Jaki’s performing, things could get dicey. Detective Bonelli herself told me that you two would be better off away from the hotel.”
“And what about you?” Harry asked.
I appreciated his concern; he wasn’t so bad, after all. “I’m going to stick close to Bonelli and her people, who are prepared to deal with whatever happens. Anyhow, I don’t have a prizewinning cat to worry about, and you do! If there is trouble, I may call Mark and also warn him off.”
Harry sipped his white wine, then shook his head. “I don’t understand how this place could still be having so many electronic and security problems. The hotel has been in business for a year, so any bugs should have been worked out by now. Unless the new convention center has put more stress on the system. That did add another hundred thousand square feet . . . if you count the catering kitchen, though that isn’t even functional yet.”
The catering kitchen, right!
Did the cops think to search there? Did they even know about it?
Trying to sound casual, I asked Harry, “Where’s that supposed to be located, anyway?”
“I believe it’s somewhere at the south end of the convention center.” He chuckled. “I studied the layout of this whole place before we came, but since then I’ve spent most of my time at the cat show. You’ve probably seen more of the convention center and the concourse than I ever have.”
It wasn’t possible, was it, that Bonelli’s crew had missed the unfinished area? If the complex was completely wired, wouldn’t some blip in the network let guards know if anyone unauthorized was going in and out of a space?
Unless “Steve” figured out how to bypass those security cameras, too.
Trying to be subtle, I glanced at my phone. No new messages, but it was nearly six-thirty. Just half an hour until Jaki would go onstage. I patted my lips with the sage green cloth napkin and pushed back my chair.
“Thanks so much for sharing your appetizers with me, folks,” I said. “I need to get back and see if everything’s still on for tonight. Please do as I said, okay, and leave soon? I’ll explain everything tomorrow.”
“You be careful, too, Cassie,” my mother called after me. “Don’t take any of your crazy chances!”
I waved my hand as if this were nonsense, but had to admit that she knew me too well.
Starting to feel a bit footsore in my dress shoes, even though they were flats, I crossed the hotel lobby, passed through the tall, automatic glass doors, and hoofed it back down the long concourse. Aside from the fund-raising concert, the cat expo had pretty much ended and most of the concessioners had cleared out. They and their customers had left behind just enough debris to make work for the maintenance staff, who efficiently pushed brooms and emptied trash cans. I thought it seemed a little early, but they probably had orders to make the concourse look clean and welcoming for the concert crowd.
At a brisk pace, I passed the closed doors of the theater and kept going. Harry said the catering kitchen was to the south. How the heck can anyone figure out south when they’re inside a complex this big? But he did make it sound like it was away from the busier areas.
I headed for the most remote corner, where it seemed no one would have any good reason to go.
There, I passed one solid single door marked UTILITY CLOSET , then another labeled STORAGE, each with keypads below their latches. This looked like some type of service corridor, which might make a sensible location for the kitchen.
At the very end stood a double-door entrance with no identification. The passage looked wide enough to roll out, say, a large rack or serving cart. Each door had a square window near the top, but both were covered from the inside with what looked like cardboard. The entrance had been blocked off by a sawhorse that bore a sign lettered in bold black on orange:
WARNING
CONSTRUCTION SITE
NO ADMITTANCE
Bingo.
The tiled floor just in front of the door wore a fine covering of dust, as if the cleaning crew didn’t bother to sweep behind the sawhorse. This let me know a couple of things:
There probably hadn’t been a lot of construction workers tromping through there in a few days. But someone had come through, more stealthily, because the sawhorse had been shifted and replaced.
A keypad on the wall to the right of the double doors nearly discouraged me. If it took a numerical code to enter, I wouldn’t know it, and I didn’t dare spend too much time trying various combinations. As I got closer, though, I saw that luck was still in my favor. Someone had stuck a rubber wedge in between the two doors to defeat the security system.
I hesitated, knowing I might blunder into a dangerous situation. The covered windows prevented me from seeing if anyone was inside the space, and through the slim gap between the doors I glimpsed a dull glow. On the other hand, if the killer cat thief were already inside, he wouldn’t have had to prop the doors open. He would probably only do that if he’d stepped out and wanted get back in quickly. . . .
Or if he’s expecting someone else who doesn’t know the combination. Someone like Jaki.
I pulled out my phone but didn’t want to make a call that might be overheard. Instead I texted Bonelli; I told her I’d been passing by the kitchen-under-construction and wondered if her guys had checked it, because the door was jammed open. I waited a minute but got no response. She probably was busy tracking down some other lead.
Maybe she’d already caught up with Steven/Stefan and was questioning him. That idea boosted my nerve.
Holding my breath, I pushed one door inward just a little. The space that yawned beyond it was faintly lit by ceiling panels—probably some type of energy-saving, off-hours lighting. In its unfinished state, the area resembled a state-of-the-art hospital emergency room as much as a kitchen.
Stainless steel gleamed on all sides. The long central worktable looked scrubbed for surgery. Mammoth industrial sinks lined the right wall, their tall sprayers curved downward at rest, like the necks of robotic swans. The professional-grade appliances arrayed on the left still bore neon-red or acid-green labels from the factory. Even the gray porcelain tile of the floor threw off a hard, reflective shine, except in a few areas probably scuffed up by the workers.
I did not see or hear any sign of another person in this space, so I dared to keep exploring. Farther toward the back of the main room, the ceiling panels still gaped in some places, and capped-off electrical wires dangled from the openings like jungle snakes. A tall ladder slanted against one wall bore a thin film of dust that again showed it hadn’t seen much use recently. Nearby, a rolling rack of open shelves, the kind that could move many trays of hot meals at once, stood empty.
Behind the rack, I glimpsed a low, white-draped form, and crept nearer. A round, room service–type table stood shoved up oddly against a closed, windowless door. In sharp contrast to the rest of the sterile, lifeless environment, the table had been spread with a neat linen cloth and set with two of the hotel’s dessert plates. An unopened bottle of red wine stood between two stemmed glasses, near a small, unopened Valentine box of “assorted chocolates.” Across the center of the table lay a florist’s bouquet of red roses mixed with baby’s breath and tied with a white ribbon.
For a second, I tried to rationalize all this. The tableau looked so carefully assembled—could it be a genuine room service delivery that had been parked here for some reason? But my sixth sense didn’t buy that explanation. I remembered the tidy presentation of Gordie’s heart-shaped silver tag nestled in the small white gift box, which had been tied shut with the cat’s plaid collar.
My flesh prickled.
I would have backed away that instant, except for the faint scratching noise that came from the other side of the half-hidden door.
That could have sent my mind to all kinds of lurid places if it hadn’t been so familiar to me. It soon was followed by another sound that I’d both hoped and dreaded to hear.
A long-drawn, mournful meow.