Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

29

Connor Cavanaugh was an old football buddy of Suit’s. He was head of security at the Paradise Plaza, the one full-service hotel in Paradise. The rest of the accommodations in town were a patchwork quilt of quaint inns and fussy Victorians converted into B-and-Bs by overwrought Bostonians or New Yorkers with fantasies of simpler lives. Winter was the dead zone for any place with vacant rooms in Paradise. There was the regatta in summer, the changing foliage in autumn, and the antiques sales in spring to lure outsiders to town. Usually, there was no equivalent winter magnet to draw people to Paradise, but this year there was murder.

Cavanaugh perked up when Jesse strode into his basement office. He stood up and gave Jesse a big handshake. Though Cavanaugh had put on some weight since his playing days, his belly creeping over his beltline, he was strong. Jesse flexed his hand to get feeling back into it once Connor had let it go.

“How you doing, Jesse? All these bodies can’t be good for anyone but us. We got a run on rooms. A lot of the news crews are staying here.”

“I’m doing okay, but I need to get these cases solved.”

“I hear you,” Cavanaugh said. “You remember how to use the system?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ll go do my rounds, then. I got it all queued up for you.”

“How about incoming and outgoing calls?” Jesse asked.

“Right. I almost forgot about that.” Cavanaugh took a slip of message paper out of his back pocket. “There was one incoming call at ten-forty-seven and an outgoing call at eleven-twenty. Anything else?”

“Do you have the numbers?”

Cavanaugh hesitated. “Technically, we’re not supposed to keep track of this sort of thing. Our guests have a right to their privacy.”

“Tell it to the NSA. Do you have the numbers? It will be between the two of us.”

Cavanaugh handed the slip of paper to Jesse. “That’s the incoming number there. I don’t have the outgoing. Guests can dial out directly. It only comes up on our records as local, long-distance, or overseas.”

“That’s fine,” Jesse said. “I’ll take it from here.”

Jesse waited for Cavanaugh to leave. He looked at the number of the incoming call. He didn’t recognize it, though he didn’t have any expectation that he would. He was confident he already knew the outgoing number. That was Maxie calling Paradise Taxi for her cab. He had gotten the time of that incoming call when he’d been to the cab company’s offices earlier that morning. The times matched up. He called Suit, gave him the incoming number, and told him to trace it. He also told Suit to make an appointment for him with Lance Szarbo, the only viable witness to the girls’ disappearance.

Jesse got to work on the hotel’s video surveillance footage. He knew that there would be coverage in the hallway outside Maxie and Al Franzen’s room, in the elevator, all entrance and exit points, the lobby, and all other public areas of the hotel. He began with hallway footage, speeding through the video until he saw Suit accompanying Maxie back to her room. From that point on, he watched the footage at a slower rate, though he didn’t figure he would see Maxie appear again until after her phone call to Paradise Taxi. He was wrong.

Maxie came out of her room at nine-twenty-three p.m. She wasn’t wearing her full-length mink, or any other coat, for that matter. And without the coat on it was easier to see what men had seen and still saw in her. At sixty-plus years of age, she had the body of a forty-year-old. And she carried herself with a kind of ferocious sexuality that some men found irresistible. Jesse marveled at it because there was no one there to watch her. She might have had some work done, but so what? She was wearing a satiny silver blouse, a not-too-short black skirt, and black stilettos. She went directly to the elevator. Exiting the elevator, she went to the Whaler Lounge. She ordered a drink at the bar. It wasn’t two minutes before several men approached her. Though it was difficult to see her facial expressions, it wasn’t difficult to see Maxie Connolly was in her comfort zone.

It went on like that for about a half hour: men coming, toasting, flirting, and going. Then at ten-oh-nine another man approached her, but unlike the other men, Jesse recognized this one. It was Alexio Dragoa, the fisherman. Although Jesse had spotted the fisherman at the bar, he hadn’t had any reason to connect him to Maxie Connolly. He wasn’t sure he had one now. That was until he enlarged the images and saw that Maxie was less than pleased to see Dragoa. She tried standing, moving away, but he grabbed her by her arm, pushing her back down onto the bar stool. That wouldn’t have been difficult for Alexio. He was a powerfully built man with incredibly strong forearms, wrists, and hands. Still, Alexio didn’t appear to be assaultive. It was almost as if he was pleading with Maxie, gesturing with his arms and hands. After a few minutes of that, Alexio backed off. Maxie stood and walked by Dragoa. She headed for the elevator. Alexio remained in the bar, had three drinks in short order, then left. Maxie went straight back to her room and didn’t reappear until eleven-twenty-two, this time in her fur coat. She seemed in a hurry. But for what? Jesse wondered. For what?