Shakeup

2

Viv walked over to the woman and felt for her pulse. “Nonresponsive,” she said, “and she’s cool to the touch.”

Stone walked to the desk and picked up the telephone.

“Stop!!!” Dino yelled. “Don’t touch that!”

“I was going to call 911.”

“Do you want the place flooded with EMTs and cops, or do want this handled discretely, so you won’t have to answer a lot of questions at each inaugural ball?”

“Your way,” Stone said.

Dino looked up a number on his iPhone and called it. “This is Dino Bacchetti,” he said. “Urgent.” He tapped his foot impatiently while he waited. “Deb, Dino. Fine, you? Good. I’m at the scene of a high-profile apparent homicide that needs to be handled discretely. At the Hay-Adams. In my suite, which Viv and I share with Stone Barrington. None of us. We returned from the inauguration to find her on the floor of our living room. Unknown to any of us. Undetermined, pending the arrival of the ME.” He gave her the suite number. “Send them up no more than two at a time, a minute or two apart. Have the gurney brought up on the service elevator; it’s a few steps away. You don’t have to, but it couldn’t hurt. See you shortly.” He hung up. “That was Deborah Myers, chief of the Washington, D.C., police department. She’s coming herself with others. Viv, will you stand by the door and admit people with the proper IDs? No maids or other hotel employees. Stone, you come with me.”

They went into Stone’s bedroom and Dino closed the door. “Tell me what you didn’t tell me when we walked in.”

“Nothing,” Stone replied.

“If there’s anything else I should know, tell me now.”

“I’d be happy to do that, Dino, if there were anything. This isn’t my first homicide, remember?” They had worked more than a hundred together on the NYPD.

They heard the doorbell ring and went back into the living room. A woman in civvies was hugging Viv, while a police sergeant, about six feet five, built like a pro linebacker, and very handsome, stood there and looked around the room for threats.

Stone and Myers were introduced, and he was impressed.

“Okay,” she said to Stone, conversationally, “tell me your story.”

“I don’t have a story, so I’ll just give you the facts.” He did so.

“Have you ever fucked her?” Myers asked.

“I’d have to see her naked, to tell you that.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass, Stone. Have you ever fucked her?”

“Not that I recall,” he said.

“Have you ever so much as met her?”

“Not that I recall. It’s been a long time since I’ve met a lot of people lying dead in hotel suites.”

“Stone and I were partners two hundred years ago,” Dino said. “We worked homicide.”

Another knock at the door, and Viv admitted two men: an impossibly youthful man, carrying a satchel, and a middle-aged one wearing a ski parka over surgical scrubs.

“I assume the victim is the horizontal one,” the man said.

Deb Myers smirked at him. “Dr. Steinberg, Dino Bacchetti, commissioner NYPD, his wife, Vivian, and Stone Barrington, who tripped over the body.”

“Not quite,” Stone said, shaking the man’s hand.

Steinberg knelt beside the body, felt for a pulse at throat and wrist, listened to her chest, then held a small mirror under her nose, to see if it fogged. He produced an anal thermometer and did his work, then he produced a small recorder. “Victim is a white female, aged forty to fifty, expensively dressed with corresponding jewelry. She’s unresponsive and presumed deceased. Preliminary cause of death, strangulation. Time of death between one PM and three PM.”

Another knock at the door. This time it was two detectives, both thirtyish.

“Just in time, gentlemen,” Steinberg said. “She’s dead. Do your thing.”

Forty minutes later, the detectives had questioned everybody and made way for a crime scene investigator, who worked the scene. “Preliminary observation,” he said, “she entered the suite either by admission or with a key, walked across the living room and met the assailant, who strangled her to death. She probably knew him, since her blouse was pulled out of her skirt and a couple of buttons were undone.”

He left, right behind the corpse, and so did everybody else, but Stone, the Bacchettis, Deb Myers, and Valentino, which was how Stone had come to think of the large policeman.

“Shall I wait outside the door, Chief?” Valentino asked her.

“No, Rocco, you’d just attract too much attention,” Myers replied. “Just sit down over there, while these nice people buy me a drink.” She collapsed on a sofa. “Scotch, please,” she said to nobody in particular. “I’m officially off duty now, if anybody cares.”

Stone dealt with booze for everybody, then sat down himself. “Man oh man,” Myers said, taking a swig. “As if I didn’t have enough to do today. Now I have to go home and dress for four balls.”

“I’m going to four, too,” Stone said, “but I’m only dressing for one.”

“Lucky you.”

“Question, Chief,” Stone said. “Do you know the victim?”

She looked at him sharply. “How did you know that?”

“Something in the way you dealt with her. Dino taught me that.”

“She’s Patricia Clark, Pat. Her husband is Donald — Don — big business guy, who’s about to be the new secretary of commerce.”

“I hope you won’t need to tell that to our new president before tomorrow morning. It might ruin her evening.”

“Well, I’m going to have to tell the victim’s husband, and he might want to tell the boss. I’ll suggest he call in sick.”

“Is he a suspect?” Stone asked.

“They were planning a divorce, just as soon as he was confirmed by the Senate. That is conveniently unnecessary, now.”

“Oops.”

“Does anybody here know Don Clark?” Deb asked. Heads were shaken.

“Then what was his wife doing in your hotel suite? Who has keys?”

“The three of us. Ah, one other,” Stone said. “I think you can exclude her from your investigation, since I left her to come here, and she couldn’t have gotten here first.”

“Name?” Myers asked.

“For the present, unavailable,” Stone said.

“Where were you, Stone, between one and three?”

“Having tea at the White House with the Lees, then at the inauguration.”

She picked up her large handbag, rummaged through it and came out with an envelope, which held a photograph. She handed it to him. “See anybody you know?” She asked.

Stone looked at the photograph of Holly at the podium, delivering her address. Over her shoulder, he could see himself. He held it up. “That’s me.”

“How about the two people right behind you?”

Stone looked at them. “I don’t know them, so this is just a guess: Donald and Patricia Clark?”

“Bingo.”

“I was never introduced to them, and I didn’t see them at the luncheon for, among others, the new cabinet, at the White House.”

“You expect me to believe that?” Deb asked.

“I expect you to, once you’ve run down the speech and figured out the exact time this was taken.”

“Okay, Stone. You’re no longer a suspect. Still, there’s something you’re not telling me.”

Dino spoke. “You’re right. The name he has refused to speak is that of our new president. He’s her date for today and tonight.”

“Oh,” Deb said, and polished off her drink.

“Well, Deb,” Stone said. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll have a nap. I’d be grateful if you’d try not to ruin the president’s evening.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Deb said, rising. In a moment, she was gone, followed closely by Valentino.