Private: #1 Suspect

CHAPTER 14

The attractive woman sitting in a blue armchair made me think of old black-and-white gumshoe movies adapted from novels by Chandler, Hammett, Spillane.

Amelia Poole looked like Sam Spade’s new client: glamorous white female, late thirties, short brown hair, no bling on her ring finger.

In place of a cigarette holder and a fox fur around her neck, Ms. Poole gripped an iPhone and had a fine necklace of gold chains and diamonds at her throat.

“Looks like you pulled an all-nighter, Mr. Morgan,” Ms. Poole said with a quick grin, stashing her phone in her handbag. “I know because I just pulled an all-nighter myself.”

“I’m sure yours was more interesting than mine,” I said, flashing on Del Rio’s bedroom with its military mattress and plain white walls.

Amelia Poole had a pretty smile, but it was forced. Her eyes were somber.

Why had she come to see me? Was she being sued? Stalked? Did she need me to find a lost child?

I knew from her dossier that Amelia Poole had bought and renovated three old hotels in choice locations into first-rate, five-diamond Poole Hotels. I had been to the rooftop bar at the Sun, stayed a couple of times at the Constellation in San Francisco. I agreed with the ratings.

Also in her dossier was mention of some unsolved robbery-murders in her hotels and a couple others that had sent a shiver through the California Chamber of Commerce.

The cases were still open, but tourist slayings didn’t make the front page in the current political-economic climate.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Poole, but I wasn’t told why you wanted to see me.”

“Jinx,” she said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Call me Jinx. That’s the name I go by.”

“I’m Jack,” I said.

I poured coffee, and she told me that she had heard about Private and that she knew we were damned good. She continued to look nervous, as if she were trying to keep whatever was bothering her under wraps.

Ms. Poole played with her diamonds, took snapshots of me with her darting eyes.

I said, “So, what brings you to Private?”

And then she blurted it out. “A guest was killed in his room at the Sun last night. I haven’t told anyone. I haven’t even reported it to the police. I’m scared. This is the third guest who was killed in one of my hotels, and I don’t know what to do.”