Дэвид Балдаччи - A Gambling Man

“Now, just calm down, Mabel,” said Dash soothingly. “And tell us what you know as we head on up there.”

“I can’t see that body. I can’t see it again. The cops made me identify her. Oh my God, I’ve never—”

“You won’t have to. So tell me about last night, okay?”

“Like I told Archer here, Ruby didn’t show up to do her act. I had his friend Liberty Callahan sing in her stead. We had looked everywhere for the girl. I mean everywhere, and then—”

“Yeah, so just slow down right there,” said Dash. “Because this is important. When did you last see Ruby yesterday?”

“Cops asked me that. It was around eight o’clock. She came to get dinner. We have a separate room for the staff to eat their meals.”

“Did you talk to her then?”

“No. I was just finishing up my meal with somebody.”

“Pretty late for dinner,” noted Archer.

“This place gets rocking later. We’re usually not even a quarter full until nine. It is called Midnight Moods, after all.”

“What time do you close?” asked Archer.

“We don’t officially, but most people are gone by three a.m.”

“Jeez, don’t people sleep around here?” said Archer.

Dash interjected, “Did she seem upset? Was she alone?”

“No and yes.”

They headed up the stairs.

“When did you know something was wrong?”

“When the cops showed up after midnight. They came tearing in here saying they got a phone call about a dead woman, Ruby Fraser.”

Dash didn’t look at Archer when she said this, and Archer kept his eyes on a spot on the ceiling.

“Then what?”

“They asked me where the body was. Hell, I didn’t know anything about a body. So I took them up to her room. That’s when they found her, and then made me take a look.” She shuddered. “I know there are evil people in this world and maybe I’ve run into more than my share of them. But what they did to that poor girl... that takes the cake.”

“Funny way to say it, but I get your meaning,” said Dash. “Then what?”

“Then all hell broke loose. People running around, cops everywhere. And then, like the chief said, the coroner showed up a bit ago to tell us what we already knew about poor Ruby.”

“I understand Sawyer Armstrong was here last night with two of his boys.”

Dawson shot a glance at Archer and his injuries. “He might’ve been, yeah.”

“He was,” said Archer.

“Okay, he was.”

“Why was he here other than to paint Archer’s face purple and yellow?” Dash asked.

“He owns the place. He can come and go when he damn well likes.”

“You ever see him with Ruby?”

“No, never,” she said quickly.

“So you saw Ruby at eight. Have any idea where she went after that?” asked Dash.

“No. She was supposed to be on at ten. She normally comes backstage about a half hour or so early to warm up. But she didn’t show, and the stage manager came and told me. I went up to her room thinking she might have overslept or something, but she wasn’t there.”

“So at twenty or quarter to ten, she was not in her room?”

“That’s right,” replied Dawson.

“Then you and the cops found her a little after midnight. So in four hours or so she went from breathing to dead. And in two hours or so she went from wherever she was killed to her room?”

“That’s right,” Dawson said again.

“You talk to anyone who might have seen her?”

She shook her head. “After I saw her... like that, I went to my room and killed half a bottle of bourbon. It felt like I was drinking water.”

“I thought you said you didn’t touch the stuff,” said Archer.

“I was talking about rum , Archer. Bourbon and gin are just fine, thank you very much.”

“And what sorts of questions did Pickett ask?” said Dash.

“Same as you.”

“Funny, he has junior detectives to do that for him. Why is he here, then?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?”

“Thought you knew everything that went on here.”

She shot Archer and his injuries a glance. “Not everything.”

They reached the room where a young uniformed cop stood guard.

Dash took out his license. “Chief Pickett sent us up here to have a look.”

The cop looked startled but stepped back. “Okay.”

Dash turned to Dawson. “Take a load off, Mabel, you look like you could use it.”

She sat in a chair just inside the door while Archer headed into the kitchen to see a dead woman all over again.

It was tougher the second time around, concluded Archer. He had seen violent death in the war, and while in prison. After a while, you didn’t exactly get used to it, but it took you a shorter time to get over it. Until the next time came.

But this was different. This was a kitchen with a small refrigerator, a cooktop, a rug on the floor, and a cuckoo clock on the wall that he hadn’t noticed before.

And a nearly decapitated young woman sitting in a chair. And now the body had started to decompose and smell and turn a color that no one would want to look at for long when it was stuck on a human being. And the smell was as bad as one would expect. Thankfully, someone had opened the window.

“Hello, Ern,” Dash said to the small man in his late thirties standing in front of Fraser with his fingers tucked into his vest. The man’s suit was blue serge, the tie partially undone, the hair, grizzled and unkempt, sticking out from under his brown fedora. But the green eyes were intense and searching.

Ern looked over, poked a cigarette into his mouth, and lit it.

With a grin he said, “Willie, how’d you get past the chief? Don’t tell me he had a stroke when he saw your puss.”

“Archer, this here is Ernie Prettyman, the best homicide detective north of San Luis Obispo. Ernie, this is Archer.”

Prettyman came over to them and they all shook hands. Prettyman said, “That’s a mixed compliment on any day. What are you doing here?”

“We were talking to this poor woman yesterday in connection with a case.”

“Who’s the client?”

“Someone prominent and with some problems.”

“No more than that you can tell me?”

“I could, and then I’d lose my ticket, and what would be the point of that?”

“Still,” said Prettyman. “Whatever you can dish out.”

“It was a confidential client matter,” said Dash, “that we’re following up. But if we find something that will help lead to her killer, I’ll make the call to you.”

“I guess that’s the best I can do, then.”

“Of course, Pickett would just send in Big Steve and club it out of me.”

Prettyman frowned. “We don’t do that anymore, Willie. At least on my watch.”

“You’re not always on watch, Ern. But to answer your question, Pickett told me to come up here and look around.”

“Must be growing soft in his old age.”

Dash said, “I knew just how to ask. What can you tell us?”

“As you can see, somebody nearly cut her head off. No blood here. She was killed somewhere else. How the hell she got in here, who knows?”

Dash looked skeptical. “Nobody saw anything? Place is pretty big, with lots of people coming and going.” He glanced at the window. “And I doubt someone carried her in through the window over their shoulder.”

“Right, but there’s this. She was last seen around eight having dinner. Body was discovered after midnight. But whoever called it in did so at about nine or ten minutes before twelve. So the window is narrowed. Only at that time of night all the girls are out of their rooms and doing their things downstairs. And this is the top floor and Mabel Dawson told me there are only six gals up here, and those gals were all working last night from six o’clock on. They hand out the smokes and the whiskey and help run the card club and let the guys grab their asses as they go by for tips later. Fraser was the only song-and-dance performer up here. So her being alone on this floor before her act started wasn’t unusual.”