Maggie Shayne - Thicker Than Water

“What the hell was I thinking?” she asked her reflection, while her hands moved to automatically and expertly return her face to a state of near perfection. “I’m not some little nobody. I’m Julie Fucking Jones.”

The doorknob of the hotel’s bathroom jiggled. She sent it a burning glance. “Keep your pants on, Harry. I’ll be out by the time room service gets here with your goddamn celebratory champagne.”

Footsteps moved rapidly away from the bathroom door.

She paused, glanced down at the mascara she’d just pulled out of the handbag, and grimaced at it. “Waterproof, my ass.” She flung it at the wastebasket, then snapped the bag shut and turned on her heel to return to the other room—to end this thing, as she should have done six months ago.

She flung open the door and stepped through it. “I don’t know why it took so long,” she said, her voice as firm and strong as it was when she was on the air. “But you’ve finally pushed me too far. It’s finished, Harry. You’re not getting another nickel from me. You can drop this now, or I’m going to go to your brother and tell him everything.”

He sat in the small armchair, right where he’d been when she’d excused herself to go to the bathroom and gather her courage. As if he’d never moved. His back was to her. She could only see the top of his head. The little pink patch where his black hair was starting to thin. He said nothing, probably too surprised. She couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t been expecting this. Did he really think she would let him keep pushing?

“You can do whatever you want with the evidence, I don’t care,” she lied. She did care. “If it goes public, Harry, you’ll go to prison. I’ll see to it, even it means losing everything. Nobody wrongs me like this, much less threatens my daughter, and gets away with it. Nobody.”

She strode straight past him to the nightstand, wondering at the metallic smell in the air. He always brought copies of the damning evidence to these meetings. Always promised they were the last copies in existence as he sold them to her for large amounts of cash. Always insisted on closing the deal with a glass of champagne. And a month later, he always showed up with another set of demands. She looked down at the table. But the envelope was gone.

She turned slowly to face Harry. “All right, what did you do with the…”

Her voice tripped over a heartbeat when she faced him fully. He sat in the chair, just as he had before. Only now he was dead. The white dress shirt he wore was completely soaked in blood. So were his hands, and the chair itself, his shoes and the beige carpet underneath them.

Her gaze slid to his face again. The slightly open mouth. The wide, sightless eyes. The dark, gaping, bloody crescent in his long, skinny neck. Her body began to shake. A tremor formed somewhere down deep and worked its way outward to her hands and knees and even her head, lips, eyes. Fear gripped her heart like an icy fist as her gaze danced around the room. But no one else was there. Not now. She checked the tiny closet just to be sure, but it was empty. She was alone in the room, and Harry Blackwood was dead.

A wave of nausea rose up in her stomach as she lunged toward the door to turn the dead bolt. She barely got it done before she had to run for the bathroom again, and while she leaned over the toilet, she got so dizzy she nearly fell in.

When she could finally stop retching, she braced one hand on the tank to hold herself upright, knocked the lid down, flushed. Then she turned weakly to the sink to rinse her mouth.

It was as she turned the taps off again that she found herself blinking down at her hands on the knobs. And slowly a line of news copy printed itself across her mind.

Respected News Anchor Sole Suspect in Brutal Murder. Fingerprints Found at Scene. Blackmail Plot and Scandalous Past Uncovered.

“Details at eleven,” she whispered softly. She was swimming in motive. And standing in the middle of a visit that spelled opportunity in 30-point type. She closed her eyes. “No. No, goddammit.” Yanking tissues again, she used them to wipe the faucet and valves, the toilet tank, its handle and anything else she had touched in the bathroom. She tossed the used tissues into the wastebasket, and then grabbed a washcloth from the stack, wet it and wiped down the counter, the doorknob, everything. She removed the plastic bag from the wastebasket and carried it with her back into the main part of the hotel room. When she bent to wipe off the nightstand she had touched moments ago, an icy chill whispered along her spine. The envelope. Where was the envelope? What if the killer had taken it?

“Jesus. What is this? How could anyone know what was in that envelope? And why would they take it if they didn’t know, and…”

No time, not now, her mind whispered, and she found herself nodding in agreement. She had to move; she had to be smart, eliminate any hint of her presence and get the hell out of here, all unseen. She could not afford to panic.

Moving silently and quickly, her entire body still trembling, she wiped down the dead bolt, the doorknob, every surface and door frame in the room, anything she had even been close to, just in case she had rested her hand on any surface. She was careful, and she was thorough. She searched as she wiped. Every cupboard and drawer. She found a stack of self-help books by self-proclaimed psychics on the nightstand: John Andrews and Sylvia Brown and Nathan Z. But the envelope wasn’t there. It wasn’t under the bed. It wasn’t in Harry’s coat pockets or his shaving kit, and those were the only things in the entire room that belonged to him.

When she finished her search and her wiping, she dropped the washcloth into the wastepaper bag and looked around the room. There were two glasses on the table.

Her eyes were drawn back to the dead man in the chair. Her shaking intensified, and her breath began to rush in and out too quickly.

“Focus, dammit!” She barked the words aloud, forcing her attention to the job at hand, told herself to hurry before room service brought the champagne. She focused again on the two glasses. One nearly empty, one half full of whiskey. She picked up the fuller one, which had been hers. It had her prints on it, and maybe her lipstick. She downed the whiskey fast, grating her teeth against the burn and welcoming the warmth that spread outward from her belly when it landed. Then she added the glass to her bag of rubbish and backed toward the door. She yanked her tan trenchcoat from the back of the desk chair where she’d left it, hurriedly put it on, and used the sleeve to wipe off the back of the chair, where it had been hanging. Then, on the edge of panic again, she checked the large inside pocket. But the bundle of cash was still there. A sigh of relief tumbled from her lungs. She took the scarf and oversize sunglasses from another of the deep pockets and put them on. No one had recognized her coming in. She’d always done her best not to be noticed or recognized when meeting with her blackmailer to pay him off. She had become adept at that over the last six months. Thanks to Harry.

She took her small handbag, then pulled her coat sleeve over her hand to open the door and close it behind her, wiping the outer knob clean. At the elevator, she used that same coat sleeve to push the button. The car came to a stop. She tucked her little bag of rubbish underneath her coat as the doors slid open.

A short, round woman of Hispanic descent, wearing a teal designer knockoff dress, glanced at her, then looked away. At all, thin man with skin so pale he seemed colorless stood beside her in a cheap suit. He didn’t make eye contact at all. Julie stepped into the elevator, then went stiff from head to toe when a loud rattling sound came along the hall. As the elevator doors slid closed, she saw the young man, pushing the room service cart along the hall. Along for the ride were a champagne bottle in an ice bucket and two glasses. He stopped in front of Harry’s room.