Chesapeake Crimes: This Job Is Murder!

MIKED FOR MURDER, by Cathy Wiley

Katie Hawkins stared in horror at the dead body on the meeting room floor. “This is definitely not on the agenda.”

She had come in mega early to check the room setup before The Client From Hell arrived. Everything had to be perfect, or Katie would never hear the end of it.

A dead body wasn’t perfect. And she knew the client would blame her for this. She shook her head in shame at that thought; she should be more concerned about this poor man.

Katie headed for the phone on the wall, then paused. The room was a potential crime scene, and she might contaminate it. She was a devotee of crime shows on television, so she knew the cops always complained when a civilian tromped all over their evidence.

Backing out quickly, she screamed as she bumped into something solid. She pivoted, risking breaking the heels on her fashionable but uncomfortable shoes. Relief flowed through her. The obstacle was Chad Bentley, her boss and general manager of the Two Palms Hotel.

She dropped her clipboard and gripped both of his shoulders. “Chad! There’s a body in there! I think he’s dead.”

Chad never panicked. Katie prided herself in her ability to remain calm when things were falling apart around her, but she could never reach the same level of unflappability as her boss.

Chad flicked placid hazel eyes toward the door of the Grand Ballroom. “A dead body? I know Baltimore has a high murder rate, but we’ve managed to avoid it here.”

“Why do you assume it’s murder?”

He glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s not even six o’clock, Katie. No one should be in that room this early other than Bobby. And you would have said if the body was Bobby’s.”

“No, it’s not Bobby.” Even with just a quick view, Katie knew the body wasn’t her banquet captain.

“Therefore anyone inside must be there for nefarious purposes. So if he or she is dead, I doubt it’s from natural causes.”

“He, I think. And yeah, he’s dead.” She shuddered remembering the sight…and smell.

Chad went to open the door, but Katie grabbed his arm. He stopped and glanced back, one dark eyebrow raised.

“Don’t you watch CSI? You shouldn’t touch the door. You could get fingerprints on it, or mess up the ones that are already there.”

Chad removed a turquoise handkerchief from his suit pocket and used it to push open the door. Perhaps the slightest bit of emotion passed over his face as he stared at the body. “Yes, Katie, I think you’re right. Definitely dead.” He wrinkled his nose. “Died badly too, by the smell of it. Got your cell phone on you?”

Katie smacked herself in the forehead. Why hadn’t she thought about using her cell phone? She pulled it out of her pocket and dialed 911.

She had just finished giving the details to the operator when the Client From Hell strode off the elevator and headed toward the registration table located just outside the ballroom door.

Katie ran over to intercept Mrs. Rudy halfway. “Mrs. Rudy, how good to see you! We still need to finalize the menu for tonight’s reception, I believe. Why don’t we go into my office and do that?” Katie gently gripped Mrs. Rudy’s arm and tried to steer her away.

“My word, Ms. Hawkins.” The bird-thin woman complained as she easily shrugged off Katie’s hand and headed for the table. “Let me put down my registration packets, at least. And what do you mean ‘finalize the menu’? We took care of that months ago.”

Katie looked desperately at Chad, but he just shrugged and left it up to her. She took a deep breath. “Well, that’s true. But the…the shrimp didn’t come in on time, so we need to substitute another appetizer.”

That got Mrs. Rudy’s attention. “What? You promised me that we’d have plenty of shrimp cocktail. We definitely need to discuss this. But first, there are handouts that need to be distributed to each seat. Plus I need to straighten out these name tags. Who moved them?”

“Let me take care of those for you, Mrs. Rudy,” Chad said smoothly, taking the box from the woman. “I assume the handouts are inside. I’ll get our banquet staff to see to that right away.” He quirked a brow at Katie.

It took Katie a moment to interpret his expression. Where was the banquet staff? Although the servers wouldn’t show up until seven, Bobby should already be there making certain all the audio-visual equipment was up and running. She knew he had worked the night before, flipping the room set-up from the previous meeting, but Bobby could be relied upon to be there bright and early. Hopefully Chad would find him.

Chad set the handouts down outside the door before walking to the main hallway. Katie could hear him paging Bobby on the radio.

Katie kept one ear open to hear if Bobby answered as she listened to Mrs. Rudy drone on about the day’s agenda. The same agenda they had gone over on the phone, on email, during the pre-con meeting, and again the night before when Mrs. Rudy came over to make certain the room was set up correctly.

She made understanding noises at Mrs. Rudy while noting that Bobby had not answered the radio call. Chad walked by her, heading toward the AV closet where Bobby had his office.

Katie was stuck. She wanted to get Mrs. Rudy out of the foyer, but she had to wait for the police. She crossed her fingers and hoped that Chad would come back to relieve her before the police arrived.

First, she needed to convince Mrs. Rudy to stop re-aligning the nametags. The woman shouldn’t be touching anything, Katie thought. Without getting closer-a thought Katie didn’t want to contemplate-there was no way to tell how the man on the ballroom floor had died, so anything could be evidence.

Katie considered the plastic name tags on the table. The plastic badge holder was made of flimsy plastic, definitely not strong or sharp enough to stab through skin, much less flesh, plus she hadn’t seen any blood around the body, just…bodily fluids. She supposed the lanyard could be used to strangle someone.

Glancing back toward the ballroom, she wondered who the victim was. She knew it wasn’t Bobby from the body’s light skin tone.

Chad came hurrying back. Katie felt relief that she’d be able to leave the ballroom and the police in his hands while she got Mrs. Rudy out of the way. When Chad crooked a finger at her, it was her turn to raise an eyebrow at him as she stepped away from the registration table.

“I found Bobby,” he whispered.

“And?”

“He was in the AV room. Tied up and gagged. After I untied him, I told him to stay put.”

“Oh, my God.”

“He said someone knocked him out last night,” Chad continued. “I assume it has something to do with our friend in the ballroom.”

Katie barely had time to digest that before Mrs. Rudy spoke up.

“There’s someone in the ballroom?” The woman straightened, smoothing the crease out of her stark black suit. “Your hotel promised that the ballroom would be locked up at all times. We have proprietary information in there that shouldn’t be seen by anyone not approved.”

“That’s not going to be a problem, Mrs. Rudy,” Katie said and breathed a sigh of both relief and resignation when two uniformed police officers stepped off the elevator. “The gentleman in the ballroom is in no position to divulge any classified material. Right this way, officers.”

She opened the door, attempting to let the police officers in without giving Mrs. Rudy a chance to see inside. No such luck.

“Who’s that? My God, is someone dead? How? What’s that smell?”

“We haven’t determined who the victim is yet, but yes, it appears that there has been a death in that room. We don’t know how the person got in or how he died,” Katie said in one breath. She didn’t bother answering the question about the smell.

“Mr. Cervantes promised he’d lock up yesterday after I left,” Mrs. Rudy protested, peeking around Katie, trying to get a closer view.

It took Katie a moment to remember that Mr. Cervantes was Bobby.

“Yes, well, I’m sure he meant to,” Chad said. “However, someone knocked him out before he had the chance.”

Before he could continue, Mrs. Rudy shoved past Chad, took several steps into the room, stopped short, and, much to Katie’s surprise, burst into tears. She hadn’t thought the woman was all that fond of Bobby, or anyone on their staff, for that matter. She’d never known Mrs. Rudy to show any emotion other than anger or condescension. But there she was, crying over one of the hotel’s employees. Katie put a comforting arm around the weeping woman and escorted her out of the room. For the first time, Katie felt a sense of connection with her client. Perhaps she had judged her too harshly before. Mrs. Rudy might even be-

“That’s my husband,” Mrs. Rudy sobbed as she accepted Chad’s handkerchief.

Katie gasped, comprehension dawning. “Your husband?” As she stared through the open door, she could see the police officers around the body. One of them was on his radio, the other crouched near the victim. “How can you tell?”

“That’s Lou’s toupee. I’d recognize it anywhere.” Mrs. Rudy collapsed into one of the chairs and laid her head on the table.

Katie stared at the body. Now that she focused on the hair, she could tell it was a toupee. Could you identify a body through its hairpiece, she wondered? “Excuse me, officers,” she called out.

One of them stepped out of the room to speak with her. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Two things. First of all, Mrs. Rudy believes she can identify your victim. And we have a potential witness waiting in the AV room.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” He gestured to the other officer to come join them. “We’ve contacted Homicide and the detectives should be here soon. I’ll go secure the potential witness. My partner can escort Mrs. Rudy to ID the victim.”

Before Katie could direct him to the AV room, a scream rent the air. Katie winced as Isadora Amaya, one of her banquet servers, ran out the door toward her, screeching. Katie gathered the hysterical young woman in her arms.

“How the hell did she get in there? I thought we secured these doors,” the first officer complained.

“Back door to the server’s hallway,” Katie explained. “So they can get in and out to serve during functions.” She turned her focus to the woman. “I’m so sorry, Isa. Easy, just breathe deeply. Come with me, and let’s get some tea.”

She escorted Isa to the break area, fetched her a cup of hot, generously sugared tea, then flagged down another server to escort Isa to the meeting office. Then Katie headed back to the ballroom to find out if the victim was, in fact, Mrs. Rudy’s husband. If it was, she felt sorry for him. She felt sorry for any man married to that-

Katie bit her lip and chastised herself for being so harsh. Mrs. Rudy was a widow now, after all. Additional wails coming from inside the ballroom seemed to confirm that fact.

Mrs. Rudy staggered back out, being supported by a police officer. She plopped into a chair by the sign-in table and wiped away her tears with Chad’s handkerchief. “Yes, that’s Lou,” she said. “I’m sorry. I usually don’t lose control like this. It’s just, it’s been a bad time for Lou and me. In fact, we’re in the process of getting a divorce.” She sniffled. “Well, we were in the process.”

Katie felt a surge of sympathy for the woman. Perhaps this was the reason she had been so hard to work with.

Mrs. Rudy turned to Katie. “I hope you’re not charging me for the tea you gave that waitress, Ms. Hawkins.”

The sympathy dried up. “You won’t be charged.” And it’s a banquet server, not a waitress.

“I can’t imagine why Lou was here,” Mrs. Rudy continued. “He doesn’t normally attend my meetings. That’s one reason we’re getting divorced. He refuses to support me in the projects that are so important to me.”

Katie waited to see if the police officer was going to ask more questions, but he seemed to be just guarding the door, waiting for Homicide. That didn’t mean she couldn’t ask questions.

“So.” Katie tried to sound more sympathetic than interrogative. “What did Lou…Mr. Rudy…your husband do?”

“He was an artist,” she sniffled. “A talented leather worker. Made purses, belts, vests.”

Katie nodded, wondering how an artist ended up married to such a demanding, anal person. She heard the elevator ding and looked over to see two men walking down the hallway toward them. Both men were striking. The shorter man was burly and deeply tanned and the other…well, Greek god came to Katie’s mind. Blond hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders. She noticed Chad checking out the hottie as well. She sighed. She and her boss had such similar taste in men. Even worse, from Katie’s point of view, Chad was four for five out of the men they’d both been attracted to. But what could she expect when she took a job in Mount Vernon, the Greenwich Village of Baltimore?

The blond held up his badge. “Detective Wertz.” Nodding to the man next to him, he continued. “And this is Detective Garcia.”

Katie caught Detective Garcia leering at her. Well, she reasoned, at least he’d be available, since he was ogling her and not Chad. Not that Katie was interested. Garcia’s leer repulsed her.

Katie offered a hand to Detective Wertz. “I’m Katie Hawkins, director of the hotel’s executive meeting center. This is Chad Bentley, the hotel’s general manager, and Mrs. Glenda Rudy, my client.” She panicked when she wondered if she should have introduced her client first. “Mrs. Rudy is also the wife of the victim.”

Neither detective seemed to react to that, so she decided to press on. “I’m the one who found the body this morning, at about 5:45. Chad came in about two minutes later. Mrs. Rudy showed up about ten minutes after that. We also discovered that someone attacked our banquet captain, Bobby, sorry, Roberto Cervantes, last night. Chad found him bound and gagged in the AV room.”

“Have either of you touched the body or altered anything?” Detective Wertz asked.

“Well, we tried to keep everyone out. I only had taken two or three steps inside when I first spotted the body, and I quickly backed out of the room. But then Mrs. Rudy thought she recognized her husband and walked in a few feet. And one of our banquet servers came in the back door and ran screaming through the room. I’m not sure if she, um, we…contaminated the scene.”

“Do you have surveillance cameras for this area?” the detective asked, scanning the room.

“Only at the elevators,” Chad answered. “Downstairs in our lobby and restaurant we have more cameras, but not on the other floors. Our customers prefer more privacy.”

Katie admired Chad’s clever explanation. He made the lack of cameras sound like a benefit, rather than the hotel’s reluctance to shell out money for additional security cameras.

“Mr. Bentley, we’ll need copies of the visuals from all the cameras in the vicinity,” Wertz said. “Now, we’d appreciate it if you could take Detective Garcia to speak with the banquet captain.”

After the two men left, Wertz turned to Mrs. Rudy. “Ma’am, if you could wait here for a moment, I’ll need to talk to you.”

After her nod, he walked over to the police officer on guard. “What do we have?”

Katie strained to hear and caught the words “vomiting, poison, nasty.” She had to agree with the latter. The body appeared to have voided itself completely, which had accounted for the smell.

The detective started to close the ballroom door. She hurried forward. “Excuse me, Detective?”

“Yes, Ms. Hawkins?”

“I was thinking. I was here last night, and know what the room looked like when I left it. Should I come in and tell you if there is something unusual about the scene?” Besides a dead body, of course. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to take up her offer, but the executive meeting center was her responsibility and Mrs. Rudy was her client.

The detective stared at her for what seemed like a solid minute, but was probably only five or six seconds. She struggled to meet his steady gaze, then took a deep breath when he nodded.

Katie tried to hold that breath as she approached the stage. The raised platform held a head table with four chairs and a central podium. It was draped with white tablecloths and gold skirting rented especially for this particular meeting. Mrs. Rudy had insisted upon it; she felt the gold added a distinguished touch.

The body, or Mr. Rudy, Katie quickly corrected herself, was lying face down in the middle aisle directly in front of the podium. From the direction he was facing, he must have fallen off the stage. She carefully avoided the pool of vomit and other bodily fluids and climbed the stairs on the stage’s side.

Nothing looked out of place on the table, so she turned toward the podium. And stared in surprise.

Wertz jumped directly up on the stage. “What’s wrong?”

She gazed into his eyes, blue as the Mediterranean Sea, and almost forgot what had bothered her. When she came to her senses, she turned back to the podium and pointed. “It’s the mike.”

“Don’t touch it,” he admonished.

“I wasn’t going to touch it. But it’s odd. See, we label our microphones, so that we can keep track of everything and to make sure that outside rental companies don’t take our stuff.”

“Did you use a rental company this time?”

She shook her head. “Not for any AV equipment. Just for the skirts.”

“Skirts?”

She picked at the fabric wrapped around the base of the table, then remembered she wasn’t supposed to be touching anything. “Skirts. But in case you were wondering, they didn’t deliver these yesterday. We had them three days ago and Bobby set the tables up himself last night.”

“Last night?”

“Yes, last night he worked late setting up the room. We had another group that left at five, so he had to change the setup for Mrs. Rudy’s organization.”

“And was Mrs. Rudy here as well?” Wertz asked.

“Yes, she was. As was I, until about eight.”

“You worked until eight and then came back at 5:45 this morning?”

“You don’t keep nine-to-five hours in this job. You probably understand that.” She glanced over, pleased when he smiled.

“Perfectly.”

“Anyway, Bobby worked until about eleven, then would have come back at six a.m. But, well, I guess he ended up spending the night. He can’t have been comfortable, tied up all night.”

“Probably not.” He nodded his head in agreement then turned back to the scene. “So what’s up with the microphone?”

“It’s broken,” she said simply.

He tilted his head. “And you know this how?”

“Because the last AV report listed that microphone number six was broken. It’s been in storage in the AV closet and isn’t being used.” She waited to see if the detective would react to that revelation, but he was fixated on the trash can under the podium.

He called over one of the crime-scene techs to inspect the trash. The tech reached in with tongs and picked up two thick latex gloves.

Katie considered the gloves and shook her head. “That’s not good.”

The detective moved past her to take a closer look. “What’s not good?”

“We learned in first aid class-all managers have to take the training yearly-anyway, we learned how to safely take off medical gloves. You know, where you partially remove one glove with the other gloved hand, then carefully use it to remove the remaining glove.”

Detective Wertz looked at the gloves, then back at her. “And?”

“Paul, the EMT who teaches the course, would flunk whoever took those gloves off. Look. That one glove is inside out. That means whoever took it off would have touched the outside of the other glove with his bare skin. That’s a good way to contaminate your skin with bodily fluids.”

The detective glanced at the gloves, then over at the body, before turning back to her with a satisfied smile. “Bodily fluids, and maybe something much worse than that.”

“Like what?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Let’s just wait for the medical examiner.”

Katie spent the rest of the morning tracking down an alternative meeting space for Mrs. Rudy’s event. The woman was impossible. Katie couldn’t believe she hadn’t chosen to reschedule.

She spent the rest of the week wondering if the detectives had managed to figure out who had killed Mr. Rudy. Occasionally, she’d wonder if her client had done the deed. Ha! It was easier to picture someone wanting to kill Mrs. Rudy rather than her husband.

On the Friday following the murder, Katie was overseeing the last of the clean-up crew who were steam-cleaning the carpets in the ballroom. Although they managed to remove all traces of poor Mr. Rudy, she didn’t think she’d ever forget anything about the event.

Including Detective Wertz. She shook her head as her mind drifted-as it often did-to the handsome police officer. And speak of the devil, she thought, as the man himself strode through the door. She left the cleaners to their task and rushed over to him.

“Is everything okay?” she asked. “We got the approval to clean up yesterday, and we need the ballroom for a wedding this weekend. I hope-”

He raised a hand to stop her. “Everything is fine, Ms. Hawkins. I just, well, I wanted to let you know how it worked out and to thank you for your help.”

“My help?”

“Well, you provided the most important clue.”

Blinking in surprise, she tried to remember what she had said or done. “I did?”

“I had already noted how the victim had died, so I suspected poison. I was trying to figure out who might have wanted to poison Mr. Rudy.”

Katie immediately thought of her client. She wondered if the detective was going to tell her that Glenda Rudy was on her way to central booking and a fitting for an orange jumpsuit.

“But when you mentioned the fact about the gloves and that they hadn’t been taken off properly, it made me view the scene in a totally different way. That and the fact that you said that the microphone was broken, and that your staff would have known that.”

Katie frowned. Even with all the medical and crime shows she watched, she suspected she was missing something. “So?”

“So, I don’t think someone was trying to poison Mr. Rudy.” Wertz paused dramatically. “I think Mr. Rudy was trying to poison someone else.”

She sucked in a breath. “Mrs. Rudy!”

“Bingo! She admitted the divorce was going very poorly, especially for her husband. She was about to get a huge settlement.”

Katie shook her head. “So he tried to kill her. He knocked out Bobby, stole a microphone, put poison on it.” She stopped and waited to see if they had determined the poison already.

“Ricin. Nasty stuff. Made from castor beans, which also happen to be used in leather making.”

Katie nodded, remembering that Mr. Rudy was a leather artist. “So he put poison on the microphone, knowing that Mrs. Rudy would be using the microphone first. But when he took off the gloves…”

“He got the ricin on himself,” Wertz continued. “And since he’d added some DMSO solvent to the mix, it was quickly absorbed in the skin.”

She shook her head. “So Mr. Rudy poisoned himself.”

“Looks that way. The medical examiner agrees, based on the residue on the gloves and on the victim’s hands. Right where there’d be residue if you took the gloves off incorrectly.” He smiled down at her. “So, like I said, you provided the important clue.”

She felt herself blush at his compliment. “Did you tell Mrs. Rudy?”

“I just did. Can’t say she was terribly grateful. There’s a chance this could affect the settlement from the life insurance company since the victim was committing a crime at the time of his death.”

“The woman almost gets killed and she’s worried about life insurance? She should be relieved she avoided being poisoned.” Katie shook her head. She supposed it was as good as they were going to get: a killer brought to justice, the case solved and closed. Too bad the victim in this case wasn’t terribly innocent or his intended victim terribly grateful. She shrugged. Not all murder mysteries had happy endings.

Wertz grinned. “Well, let me just say that I’m grateful you figured the bit out about the gloves. And I was wondering if it would be okay if I call you some time. When I’m off-duty, of course.”

Katie smiled as she handed over her business card. Now that was a happy ending.

Cathy Wiley achieved her lifetime goal of being an author with the publication of Dead to Writes, the first in the Cassandra Ellis mysteries. The second novel, Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Write, continues the series and her dream. She draws upon her experience in the hospitality business to show the lighter, quirkier side of people, and upon her own morbid mind to show the darker side. In her free time, she enjoys scuba diving, dancing, wine, food, and reading. She lives near Baltimore, Maryland, with two very spoiled cats.