CHAPTER THREE
Lacey and Jack sat in the small meeting room with Terry, recounting their morning. Paul, the hotel manager, had thoughtfully provided a service of ice water, coffee, and tea.
Terry looked tense. Lacey didn’t blame him. Ten days on the job and he had a dead bride at the local hotel. How much help did he have? She hadn’t seen any other police besides the two uniformed cops from this morning. In Portland, a murder scene would be crawling with official specialists and detectives. A town this size, all the work fell on the general police. The investigating and the evidence collection. If Terry felt they needed help, he could ask the county or state police. But so far, he seemed to feel things were manageable.
The boutique hotel stressed service and comfort for its guests. Lacey didn’t know if there was another of its type on the Oregon Coast. Its spa was supposed to be unparalleled in the Northwest. It was spendy, catering to urban Portlanders and Seattleites. The coastal towns of Oregon tended to be lower-income areas where people enjoyed a quieter life, but the towns struggled to offer any stable industry outside of the seasonal tourism.
The Oregon Coast lacked the warm water and gorgeous weather of the Southern California coast. The weather was frequently gray and stormy most of the year. Even in the summer, blue days and toasty temperatures weren’t reliable. Lacey had a friend whose husband was in pharmaceutical sales, and he claimed his company sold the most antidepressants at the Oregon Coast.
But this weekend had been gorgeous. The water was as blue as the sky. These were the days the tourism industry tried to capitalize on. No doubt the manager of The Pacific Inn was cursing the events of the morning. Murder wasn’t good for business.
“Was the cop correct that it’s Patty Marino? Did someone try to reach her family?” Lacey asked.
Terry nodded. “Yes, two hotel employees who know Patty backed up his identification. Patty Marino is divorced but still lives with her ex-husband, so I sent Mathews up there. There’s no other family close-by.”
“What?” Jack snorted. “Why the hell would someone live with an ex?”
“That’s what I asked,” sighed Terry. “Mathews says he heard neither of them could afford to move out. So they deal with it. Sounds like the ex-husband lost his job quite a while ago.”
Lacey knew she could never have shared a home with her ex-husband. Her sympathy for the dead woman rose several notches. “That’s a horrible situation. Was he home?”
“I haven’t heard yet.” Terry glanced at his watch. “Hopefully it won’t be too long. I need help interviewing the guests. I’ve only got Mathews and Garcia this weekend. I guess I should be thankful there were only fifteen rooms occupied.” He looked to Lacey. “You’ve never stayed here before?”
“No. I’d heard of it,” answered Lacey. “I’ve seen it written up a few times in the newspaper. But Jack’s sister, Melody, was the one who made our reservation and sent us out here. They do weddings up on the bluff from the hotel. There’s a gazebo there that’s a prime spot for wedding photos and the ceremony. And I want to say I heard the hotel went through a huge remodel a few years ago with a new owner. Paul Lott would know.”
“I’m going to talk to him next.”
“It’s an amazing place. They know what you want before you want it. It’s comparable to the exclusive boutique hotels in downtown Portland. Or even New York.”
“New York? Seriously?” Terry wrinkled his nose.
Lacey glanced at Jack. “I’d say it ranks with the last place we stayed in back East.”
“I agree,” said Jack. “Keurigs and fresh cookies in the room. Luxury mattresses and bedding. Whoever remodeled it used high-quality finishes and excellent craftsmen.”
“Now, you spotted the body at about six fifteen a.m., right?” Terry looked at his notepad.
“Yes,” Lacey answered. “I was on the deck, and Jack had just joined me when we spotted the body. We didn’t see anyone else up and around.”
“When I got down there, she was facedown in the water,” Jack added. “I grabbed her arm and pulled. I noticed then how stiff she was, but I didn’t care. I just wanted her out. She had no pulse and she wasn’t breathing. I administered chest compressions, hoping to get some of the water out of her lungs or get her heart started, but it wasn’t working.”
“There wouldn’t be any water in her lungs if she didn’t drown,” Lacey stated.
“It can’t just flow in?” Terry asked.
“No, she’d have to breathe it in. I was only a minute behind him and calling 911 on my cell. Once we realized there was no reviving her, I went to the front desk to notify hotel management.”
“Anyone else come out to the pool area?” Terry made a note on his pad.
Lacey looked at Jack, who shook his head. “We didn’t see anyone. I was surprised that no one even came out on their decks until they’d already loaded her onto the gurney. People were sleeping in, I guess. The rooms don’t let in much sound. I noticed we could barely hear the ocean last night.”
“How about wet footprints when you first got to the hot tub? Or water outside near the tub?”
Jack closed his eyes and thought. “I don’t remember. I was completely focused on her. At first I thought there were white towels in the hot tub with her, but then I realized it was her dress and veil.”
“Did you two hear anything overnight?” Terry asked hopefully.
Lacey figured he already knew the answer. “No. But we had our windows and door closed. It wasn’t warm enough overnight to have them open.”
There was a knock at the office door, and Paul Lott stuck his head in. “Can I get you anything else, Chief?”
“Actually, I’m ready to talk to you, Paul. Is this a good time?”
Paul stepped in the room. “Sure. I’ve got the desk manager to cover the front.”
“Jessica hasn’t left, has she?” Terry asked.
“No. I told her to wait until she was questioned.”
“Good,” said Terry. “We’ll talk to her next. Have a seat.”
Lacey and Jack stood up.
“Wait a minute, guys.” Terry turned to Paul. “You have any issues if they stick around for this? Jack used to be on the force with me in Lakeview, and Dr. Campbell is from the main branch of the medical examiner’s office. I wouldn’t mind having their insight on what happened this morning.”
Paul set a notebook on the table and took a seat, looking from Lacey to Jack. “I have no problem with that. I just want to help find out who did that to the poor woman.”
Lacey met Jack’s gaze. What Terry was asking was unusual, but not out of line. Jack shrugged and they both sat.
Lacey liked Paul Lott. The fiftyish man had sincerely greeted them when they checked in yesterday. He didn’t use the overenthusiastic-you’re-my-new-best-friend attitude that she couldn’t stand from some service industries. She and Jack had an appointment for later today to go over wedding possibilities with him.
There was no use keeping that appointment now. There was no way Lacey was getting married here.
Terry focused on Paul. “How long have you worked here?”
Paul crossed his legs. “Three years. We’ve been open for almost two years and spent the year before that in an extensive remodel. I was hired away from a hotel in Seattle. The new owner of The Pacific Inn was a regular guest of ours up there, and he liked how I ran things. He asked me to commit for three years to his first venture into boutique hoteling and promised to make it worth my while.”
“Your time here is up?”
Paul smiled. “My contract is being renegotiated. I have to admit, I didn’t expect to like this sort of remoteness, but it’s grown on me. If they want me to stay, I’ll consider it.”
“The hotel is doing well?”
“Better than well. This place was a disaster when the owner bought it. The old hotel couldn’t keep a twenty-five percent occupancy rate during the prime summer months. That’s crazy. We could see that the bare bones of the hotel had something to offer. We tore it down to the studs and redesigned everything. Thirty rooms became twenty suites. We added a spa and luxury in-room dining. Our goal was to make it a place for destination weddings. And you can’t find a better view of the ocean than from our bluff.”
Lacey silently agreed. The hotel’s perch along the craggy cliff was storybook.
“We overhauled the grounds and the staff. Brought in master gardeners to create stunning landscaping and stole exceptional employees from other hotels. You should have seen the previous staff. They could care less about providing service. They were here to get a paycheck for doing as little work as possible. I tried to keep them on, but when I laid out how things were going to be different around here, half left and the other half I had to eventually let go.”
“All your staff is new?” Lacey asked in surprise. The recession was still in full force on the coast. She found it hard to believe the staff didn’t wise up and work hard to keep their jobs.
Paul looked at her. “I think one of the maids is original. The rest I brought on.”
“Jessica from the front desk called you this morning, correct?” Terry asked.
“Yes. She woke me. I could barely understand her, but she said that someone had died on the hotel grounds. At the time, I thought she meant a guest. But Patty Marino wasn’t registered as a guest.”
“Could she have been a friend of a guest?” Terry asked.
Paul flipped open the notebook he’d brought with him. He removed a printout and ran his finger down the list, stopping occasionally. “I see two suites that are registered to single male guests. All the other pairs of guests share the same last name.” He looked up with a grin at Lacey and Jack. “Except for suite eleven.”
Their room. Lacey tried not to roll her eyes.
Jack gave a wry smile. “That doesn’t mean someone couldn’t have registered with the same last name while they weren’t married. I’m sure that happens occasionally.”
“Of course. You can review the front-desk video to see if Patty Marino checked in with someone.” Paul handed the printout to Terry. “This also indicates the date and time people checked in. As for the two single male names, I know one of them. Kenneth Johns comes out from Lake Oswego at least once a month for a long weekend. He’s a writer. I can’t say I’ve ever seen him with a woman while he’s here. Usually his only companion is his laptop. Or a book.”
Terry nodded and took the piece of paper. “Did you bring the hotel map? Me and my two guys have been over every square inch outside, but we haven’t looked around much inside.”
Lacey did a mental head-slap. She’d assumed that Patty Marino had been brought in from somewhere else, not possibly killed on the grounds of the hotel and then dumped in the hot tub. Why had her thinking gone that way without considering the obvious? Because a smart killer wouldn’t dump the body so close to the scene of the crime, she decided. Then again, they couldn’t assume the killer was smart.
Terry’s cell phone rang, and he glanced at the screen. “It’s Mathews.” He held the phone to his ear. “What’d you find out?”
Lacey and the two other men listened to the one-sided conversation, which involved a lot of uh-huhs.
“What’s the word on their relationship?” Terry asked. After another minute, he hung up and scribbled some quick notes.
“Mathews says the home was locked up tight,” Terry stated. “The ex-husband and his truck are nowhere to be found. As far as the ex’s relationship with Patty, the general consensus is surprise that they were able to live together without killing each other.”
Terry shook his head. “It’s driving me crazy that I don’t know these people or know every little thing about this town like I did in Lakeview. Back home, I knew where the high-school kids like to go shoot cans and where Old Man Lewis could be found every time he went on a bender.” He thumped a fist on the table. “I’m feeling useless here.”
“You need to rely on your staff for that sort of stuff,” Jack said. “Your expertise is that you know the right questions to ask and how to put the evidence together. That’s the part that comes with experience. Don’t beat yourself up about it.” Jack pointed at him. “It’ll interfere with your thinking.”
“You’re right. I know you’re right.” Terry shuffled his papers. “Where’s that map?”
Paul slid it across the table. Terry grabbed the paper and scowled.
“I’m surprised you don’t have outdoor cameras,” Jack said. “I would have thought that’d be a crucial part of providing security to your guests. In fact, I assumed there were cameras.”
Paul nodded. “We’ve talked about it several times. But it’s been such a quiet location, we hadn’t seen the need for the added expense.”
“It’s possible your killer knows you don’t have cameras. Otherwise, I can’t imagine why someone would risk placing a body in such a public area. Even if the cameras weren’t obvious, most people would assume they were out of sight.” Jack looked at Terry. “Either you’ve got a really stupid killer who doesn’t care about cameras or one who knew ahead of time there were none around.”
Terry nodded slowly. “Exactly.”