The Dark Room(71)

Cain thought about the leads he’d gotten from Matt Redding.

In one of the first photographs, there’d been a dozen Thrallinex tablets, a lipstick-marked glass, a whiskey flask, and a set of keys, all sitting on a nightstand. One of the keys fit a 1980s model Cadillac Eldorado. Lester Fennimore died in a 1997 Eldorado. Some people were like that with cars. They’d find a model and stick with it, get a new one every few years.

Cain took out the blackmailer’s photograph and looked at the man on top of the girl. He was holding her ankles out, pushing against her as he arched his back and flexed his muscles. He was showing off, performing for the camera. Was that Castelli, or Fennimore? And how many of the men who’d died in the Grizzly Peak house had ΠKK tattooed on their shoulder? Maybe they’d all been there. Taking turns with her, snapping shots of each other. And ever since, Castelli had been trying to bury it.





25


HE STEPPED OUT of the elevator and onto the Palace Hotel’s top floor. Officer Combs had angled one of the overstuffed chairs so that in one glance he could keep tabs on the stairs, the elevator doors, and the hall that led to Room 8064. When he saw Cain, the young cop stood up and gestured down the hall.

“She’s in there?” Cain asked.

“With the daughter, who got here two hours ago,” Combs said. “I recognized her from the paper.”

“Alexa,” Cain said, and Combs nodded. “Have they come out at all?”

“No, sir—not since they’ve been together. But Mrs. Castelli left the room on her own before that, at two o’clock.”

“She talk to you?”

“Just whispered hello—I could barely hear her. Then she called the elevator and went down. I took the stairs and beat her to the lobby. She didn’t see me when she got out.”

“Where’d she go?”

“The bar in the lobby,” Combs said. “The Pied Piper. She sat at the end and had a martini.”

“Anyone talk to her, recognize her?”

“Place was empty. She had her drink alone and got another. I watched her from outside, in the lobby. In the bar, they have a big painting. She stared at that awhile, and drank, and asked for a third. She must’ve brought a plastic cup in her purse. She poured the last drink into it and took it upstairs.”

Cain looked down the hall. He could see the wide double doors of her corner suite, light spilling through the thin gap above the threshold. A room like that must have had a bar. Or Alexa could have brought something from her apartment. It was hard to imagine that she’d gotten all the way through the day on no more than three drinks. He looked back at Combs.

“Did anyone else come to see her?”

“Earlier,” Combs said. He took a notepad from his back pocket and looked at what he’d written. “Right after my shift started. Charles Lum—her estate lawyer. He was on the list.”

“What list?”

“Last night, she gave us a list, people we could let in.”

“Who was on it?”

“The daughter, Melissa Montgomery, and this guy Lum.”

Mona either suspected or knew that her husband slept with his campaign manager. She could barely get herself to say the other woman’s name. But now that Castelli was in the morgue, Melissa was one of three people allowed in Mona’s room. Maybe she wanted Melissa for the same reason Cain did. She’d known Castelli the best. She had all the answers, right down to the combination that opened his office safe.

“How long was Lum with her?” Cain asked.

“An hour.”

“And then she went straight to the bar?”

“Yes, sir.”



Fischer stepped from the elevator at eight o’clock, the briefcase in her right hand. She nodded a greeting at Combs, then walked with Cain to the suite.

Alexa opened the door, and Cain had never seen her so thoroughly clothed. She wore a long-sleeved black dress, with tiny pearls sewn onto the pale collar. Black tights and patent leather heels. Her hair, still wet from a recent shower, was held back with a simple velvet headband. On her right wrist, she wore the Imogene Bass bracelet her father had given her. She looked like a prim fifth-grader on her way to a funeral, except that she was holding a glass of bourbon.

She looked at Cain for what seemed like a long time, and then turned to speak over her shoulder.

“Mom—it’s Inspector Cain and his friend,” she said. She whispered carefully, as though something behind her was cracked and her voice alone might shatter it. “That woman, Agent Fischer. Should I let them in?”

There was a murmur from inside the room, audible but incomprehensible. Alexa stepped back and opened the door. She brought up her glass and sipped the bourbon, wrinkling her nose when she swallowed.

Cain and Fischer stepped into the room and Alexa closed the door behind them. They were in the sitting room of a two-bedroom suite. A deep blue couch and two matching chairs were arranged to face a fireplace that probably hadn’t seen a burning log since the Harding administration. Mona Castelli lay on the couch, eyes closed, the back of her wrist resting on her forehead. On the coffee table next to her was a bottle of Maker’s Mark and an empty glass.

“I’m sorry to bother you so late,” Fischer said.

“Can’t this wait till morning?” Mona asked. She didn’t open her eyes to speak.