Ink Flamingos

Chapter 46

No body? I craned my neck to see between Flanigan and one of the uniforms. Flanigan noticed and stepped aside, waving his hand and giving permission for me to enter. Jeff was right behind me.

The bed was made. The pillows plumped. At least as much as they could be. There were no clothes scattered on the floor. The room was tidy. A glance in the bathroom told me the wet towels were gone.

Jeff and I looked like the boy who cried wolf.

“He was here,” I insisted.

Jeff was nodding. “We both saw him.”

We heard a squeaking sound in the hall and turned to see a maid’s cart making its way past the room. Jeff sidled past me and asked the maid pushing the cart: “Did you just make up this room?”

The little Hispanic woman in the ill-fitting white uniform got a deer-in-the-headlights look about her.

Flanigan stepped forward, flashing his badge. “It’s all right, ma’am,” he said politely. “Did you just make up the room?”

Not sure the badge was a good idea, because she looked even more scared. She probably thought she was going to get deported.

“Did you see anyone in the room?” I asked softly.

A quick shake of her head and then, “The sign was gone.” She indicated the doorknob.

The DO NOT DISTURB Sign. It had been there when Jeff and I left. Someone had taken Sherman Potter out of here, taken the sign, and the maid had cleaned up. All while we were downstairs in the business center checking out that blog and then talking to Melanie, who had taken my picture. A great distraction.

If Melanie were the one behind all this, then she would have to have an accomplice.

Ann Wainwright.

It seemed as though it was all falling into place.

I told Flanigan about Ann and how the woman Melanie claimed had asked her to take my picture fit her description. Jeff added that he’d seen a woman with red hair go into Sherman Potter’s room with him. Flanigan listened, to his credit, and then folded his arms across his chest and stood with his feet apart. He wasn’t sold.

“Do you think a woman could carry a big guy like Sherman Potter out of here undetected?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “She’s tall, too, like me, and bigger than me. Maybe she lifts weights or something. Lots of women do.” I didn’t, but I did hike and swim. He probably didn’t care about that, though.

“What about cameras?” Jeff asked, his voice piercing the long silence as Flanigan thought about what I’d said.

The hotel manager’s face turned red. He was obviously embarrassed. “No cameras in the halls here,” he said apologetically. “This isn’t the Bellagio.”

No kidding.

“Is there a back stairway?” Flanigan asked.

Good thinking. I mean, whoever pulled Sherman Potter out of here couldn’t very well have taken him in the elevator to dispose of him.

The hotel manager pointed down the hall, a little farther from where we were standing. If the stairway was back in that direction and there were no cameras, then it might figure that whoever was carrying a body might not be detected. Except maybe by the maid. She didn’t look as though she was following what was going on, though. I wondered if anyone in Flanigan’s entourage spoke Spanish.

Flanigan indicated that one of the CSIs should go into the hotel room to see if there were any clues left after the cleaning up. It was possible, since we hadn’t been downstairs all that long, and it should take more time to clean a hotel room than that. Another strike against that poor maid. I hoped she’d still have a job after this.

Flanigan brought the other CSI and the hotel manager with him to check out the stairway. He didn’t say where Jeff and I should go, so we stayed put outside the hotel room with the maid.

Jeff turned to her and started talking to her in Spanish. Really. He was just full of surprises these days. The maid’s face brightened as their conversation went on, then darkened, looking pointedly at me, then abruptly away; then her face lightened again.

Finally, Jeff turned to me. “She says she was coming down the hall and saw a woman go in there. A redhaired woman, like you.”

Great.

“That’s when the DO NOT DISTURB Sign went on the door.”

Exactly what Jeff had said, but then he came downstairs to meet up with me and Sylvia. Between then and the time we went upstairs, the mysterious woman-who I was convinced was Ann-had killed Sherman Potter. She was likely hiding out, waiting for us to leave, before she dragged him down the stairs.

I thought about that picture text. She may have sent it in the hopes that it would lure us away. It worked. Once we were gone, she got down to business.

Like I said, I had it all figured out.

We heard a door open somewhere, and Flanigan appeared. He was alone. His forehead was knit in a frown, his hands clenched at his sides as he strode toward us, looking as though it were my fault that Sherman Potter and his abductor had disappeared.

I worried that he thought it really was my fault.

“Besides that room, were you anywhere else?” he demanded.

My heart began pounding as the panic set in. What was he looking for?

I shrugged. “We were on the elevator,” I tried.

“But you were in that room,” he said, and there was something in his tone that made me wonder if he thought I was lying. This was so not good. And then I remembered.

“Jeff has the room key. It was on the desk.”

Jeff totally did not want me to give that one up. I could tell from the glare he shot me, but to his credit, he produced the key and handed it to Flanigan.

“We wanted to get into the business center, and we couldn’t if we didn’t have a room key,” I explained.

Flanigan studied the key card a second, then gave me a long stare. “Why did you need to get into the business center?”

“There’s a picture on that Ink Flamingos blog. Of Sherman Potter.” Uh-oh. It really wasn’t of Sherman at all, but the tattoo on his arm. I quickly explained what we had seen and what was in the picture.

“You didn’t give Mr. Potter that tattoo?” Flanigan asked.

“I never saw Sherman Potter before the other day. He certainly had never been in my shop. The tattoo, though, was older,” I said, trying to offer up something useful and looking at Jeff for backup. He nodded, but didn’t say anything. So much for us having a thing. If we were really having a thing, he’d pipe up right about now and get us both off the hook.

From Flanigan’s expression, though, I knew I wasn’t off the hook. Something was up, but before I could ask, he spoke.

“We found strands of red hair in the stairwell.”