With shaking hands, she pulled her personal cell from her purse and dialed 9-1-1. She could be sick later.
2
BAX HATED CELEBRITIES. He hated the paparazzi. He hated movie people in general.
Who was he kidding, he hated pretty much everyone and everything in this town, particularly in this precinct.
His pain was somewhat mitigated by the fact that he’d pulled Grunwald as his partner on this. He was a good detective, hungry, and a fiend for detail. Which meant that Grunwald would be doing the paperwork on this baby, while Bax would focus on the footwork. If only Grunwald’s breath didn’t always smell like an especially foul combination of stale cigarettes and some acid reflux.
They had already been briefed by the first officer on scene, and now it was time for Bax to interview the first witness on scene. He glanced over to where she stood in the corner near all the cameras, lights, director’s chairs and cable. Her name was Mia Traverse and she worked at the hotel. It didn’t surprise him that she was pretty. One of those tiny girls, barely five feet, who looked as if a strong wind could carry them across the street. She hugged herself as she snuck glances at the body.
Bax was anxious to talk to her before the swarm that always surrounded murder descended. As he got closer he saw she wasn’t exactly as delicate as he’d first imagined. She looked upset all right, but her back was straight, her eyes serious and focused. He nodded. “Detective Milligan. You found the body?”
She nodded back. “I came down to see if they were still filming. I hadn’t been to the club since they’d rented it.”
“You always here at two in the morning?”
“I’m a concierge for Hush. My shift ended at five, but I had dinner and drinks here with some friends. They were hoping to meet Danny Austen.”
“And?”
“There’s not much else to say. The club was empty. I was trying to be careful, not to touch anything. I tripped over—”
Her voice had cracked. So she wasn’t quite as in control as she’d like.
A big light came on behind him, and he wondered if they’d used one that was already here, or if the newly arrived CSI guys had brought their own. He kept his eyes on the woman.
Flipping a page in his notebook, he moved a little closer to her. “You’re Mia Traverse?”
“That’s right.”
“Concierge. And you got here…?”
“You mean, to Exhibit A?”
“Yes.”
“Ten after two. I remember looking at my watch as I got out of the elevator.”
“You came down here by yourself.”
She nodded.
“Did you know the deceased?”
“Only to chase him out of the hotel. He was here all the time, always trying to sneak in. Everyone was always on Geiger alert.”
“What do you mean, everyone?”
“All the staff of course, but the movie people, too. No one could stand him. He had no boundaries.”
“What boundary did he cross tonight?”
“He tried to get into the restaurant earlier today. Uh, yesterday. I saw the security guys kick him out. But that was nothing unusual. We’ve found him in guest rooms, in the supply closet. One day he wore a disguise and tried to blend in with the movie crew but they caught him right away.”
“So nothing unusual. No fights, no threats.”
“I wouldn’t swear to no threats. But I personally didn’t see anything you would call unusual.”
Bax jotted down a few things, then looked up. Her face had changed, brightened.
He said nothing. Just waited.
She cleared her throat, her eyes shifted to the right. “I think that’s everything.”
“Do you?”
“I—”
She was interrupted by the “Ride of the Valkyries.” It wasn’t a full orchestra and it was tinny as hell, but there was no mistaking the music. Mia turned sharply and grabbed her purse from the bar top behind her and a few seconds later the music stopped as she answered her phone.
He fought a smile at her choice of ring tones. His phone rang. Just rang. But this slip of a girl, uh, woman had picked Wagner. As she told her caller that she couldn’t talk and would explain things later, he perused his notes. She didn’t seem to know much about what had happened, at least not about the murder, but she knew something. He’d have to watch her, find a way to get her to talk.
He knew a couple of concierges and they were notoriously close-mouthed. He had no doubt Mia Traverse was the same. But he also knew that the concierge of a hotel could be a font of information. A central clearing house for juicy tidbits about the staff and the guests.
He’d find out what she knew. She might believe that discretion was the better part of valor, but there was no valor in a slit throat.
“Is that all, Detective?”
He looked at her once more. At her wispy haircut with the short bangs, at the artfully applied makeup that highlighted her big eyes. He wondered briefly if they’d hired her just for her looks, then dismissed the thought. This was one hell of a famous hotel, owned by the one celebrity heiress who seemed to have gotten her act together, but still, Hush was known as the sex hotel. Someone had told him each room came equipped with sex toys. Not only that, but video cameras. “Interesting.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Nothing. Just…”
The way she looked at him, her big eyes wide, her lips slightly parted… Her skin looked soft and sweet and he wondered how old she was. For her job at this kind of hotel he’d have guessed she would have to be around his age, but she didn’t have that jaded New Yorker look.
“Detective?”
“You just focus on taking care of the paying guests,” he said, his tone gruffer than he’d intended. “We’ve got this covered, you understand?”
The surprise on her face wasn’t nearly as revealing as the pink blush that covered her cheeks. He’d hit the nail on the head. She could be useful, if he played her just the right way. This was going to be a high-profile case, hitting the papers with a roar. He was the lead on this, and it was going to be one of his last. No way he was leaving without solving this one. Whatever it took.
MIA PICKED HER WAY OUT of Exhibit A, careful not to disturb anything. She even managed not to look at Geiger’s body. At the thought she shivered again, something that had been happening a lot. It surprised her that she’d been clearheaded at all as she talked to that detective.
Two things niggled at her as she headed for the employee lounge and her locker. The first was that last thing the detective had said. As if he’d known somehow that she planned on doing a bit of investigating on her own. After all, this was her hotel, and if she could use her sources to get to the bottom of things, all the better. But still, how had he…?
She nodded at a couple of graveyard-shift folks sitting at the tables in the cafeteria, sipping coffee. Casual, as if a murder on the premises didn’t faze them. Or maybe they didn’t know yet. She expected that to change within the hour. One thing about Hush—gossip was a constant, mostly to do with the employees themselves, but sometimes about the guests. She had every reason to believe that the murder would stir up all kinds of information and she intended to be smack dab in the middle of that.
She pushed through the door that led to the lockers and as she reached for her lock, she remembered