Chapter 16 #2
Rosa frowned, pocketing the phone and moving around the box truck, deeper into the alley. She crept along the narrow space between the passenger side and the brick wall of the next building, all the way to the back. It was dark and the air was wet, aching to rain but not quite there.
The driver was inside the back of the truck, moving cargo around, stacking it maybe.
She couldn’t see him from her angle. Then he came down a ramp, steering a dolly stacked to his chin with crates.
He went a few yards farther into the alley and used a keycard to open a door there, then wheeled the dolly through it.
Rosa took a deep breath then blew it out hard and jogged to that door, every step jarring her busted ribs. She kept going past the door, ducking amid the trash cans just beyond it. Something scurried and she clenched her jaw, refusing to make a sound.
And then she waited, pain pulsing off her in red waves. It seemed like forever. Traffic passed back and forth on the roads on either end of the alley. A few people walked by on the sidewalks, but nobody saw her.
The large metal door opened and the man pushed his now-empty dolly back to his truck as the door swung slowly closed behind him.
His back was toward her. Now was the moment.
She lunged forward, caught the door just before it closed, then quickly ducked through, and let it fall closed behind her.
The freight elevator was right there, to her left.
She pushed the button, praying the doors would open on an empty car.
They didn’t. They opened on a pretty, raven haired girl who sent her a friendly smile as she exited. No question, no suspicion. Rosa went into the elevator and pushed the button marked Roof.
Moments later, she emerged onto the rooftop, where Bonnie was waiting to greet her with the same round, frightened eyes she’d had that first night. The scent of bleach clung to her.
“This way,” Bonnie whispered, leading her across the rooftop to a door that had been propped open. She closed it behind them, though. It led to a flight of stairs that spilled into a mini-foyer. She used a keycard to open the door to the penthouse suite. “Brace yourself, Rosa.”
Then she led the way through a living room with furniture worth more than her entire apartment, if you included the pretentious baby grand. Then through a propped-open door and into a bedroom.
A blanket lay over a large body just a few feet past the threshold. Diane was tapping a phone like her life depended on it—the burner. Christine was wiping every surface in the bedroom with Clorox wipes. Bonnie headed into the bathroom, with a handful of the crime-scene cleaners.
“Fill me in,” Rosa said. “What can I do?”
Christine said, “We have a party of men arriving in… Diane?”
“Found it!” She looked at the clock. “Fifteen minutes ago.”
Everyone froze looking toward the door. The room-phone rang, and they let it go to voicemail and listened, holding their breath.
“Mr. Fitzpatrick, this is the front desk. Your guests are here. As always, we’ll serve them drinks in the lobby bar until you give us the okay to send them up, but I am becoming concerned since you haven’t responded.”
Christine muttered. “They must’ve called while we were on the roof,” she said. “What a nice hotel, to care so very much about the well-being of its richest guest, right? Bonnie, what about those keys?”
“I have them,” Diane said. “There’s nothing in this room they fit. I haven’t checked the rest of the place.”
Rosa said, “I’ll take them and check the rest of the suite.”
Diane handed her the keys and an extra pair of latex gloves, then returned to her cleaning.
Rosa searched the entire place. Neither key fit the mini fridge, nor any of the cabinets.
It didn’t fit the room door. The closets didn’t have locks.
Then she found a small safe in the living room closet.
It didn’t look like a garden variety hotel safe.
This was a replica of a safe from the 1800s.
Its combination dial was only for its look. It had a keyhole in the center.
The phone rang as she was putting the key into the lock. “Sir, the police are here to question you about a missing person or something? I’m very sorry, but I have to let them come up. Also, your guests have left the building.”
Rosa gasped and it seemed to instigate a sharper pain in her head. She sucked air through her teeth, pressed a hand to her head, unlocked the safe and opened it.
“We have to go,” Diane said, emerging from the bedroom. “There’s no more time.” She was heading for the door.
“But the body—” Bonnie came running, dropping the box of wipes into her tote bag as she did. Christine came, too, and they dashed through the penthouse, not even glancing back at the body under the hotel comforter.
“Photo albums, in the safe,” Rosa said. “The old-fashioned kind.”
“Leave them for the police. We have to go.” Bonnie grabbed her by her good arm.
“What if there’s a shot of you from that night, Bonnie? They were streaming, they could—”
“And what if there’s enough evidence to bring down the other nine?” Bonnie asked.
Christine and Diane were at the door, gazing back at them. “It’s the right thing to do,” Diane said.
Bonnie tugged her arm again, Rosa closed the safe but didn’t lock it. She took the keys, the bigger gold one still a mystery.
Diane yanked open the door. The four of them lurched across the little foyer, and into the private stairwell at the very moment the elevator right beside it pinged.
Bonnie was the last one into the stairwell, pushing Rosa ahead of her. Then she stood, peering through the stair door, which she had not closed all the way. She drew back with a soft gasp, pulling it closed ever so softly, and looked up at Rosa. “It’s Sam,” she whispered. “And Jenna.”
“Jeez!” Rosa said. “He was going to question someone about Mr. Terrence, offered to let her ride along. She’s covering the story.”
Rosa reached down and grabbed Bonnie’s hand, tugging her up the stairs, and then they ran across the roof.
Christine and Diane were already in the freight elevator, making hurry-up hand motions and practically jumping up and down.
Rosa and Bonnie got in, the doors closed, and the elevator started down.
Diane handed around hospital masks, and they all put them on.
Diane had a hat, Christine sunglasses, Bonnie a hood.
Rosa spotted a dirty red baseball cap on the floor of the elevator as it rattled downward.
She grabbed it and put it on, shoving her curls up underneath, raising her hospital mask a little higher, too.
When the doors opened, she went first, leading them directly to the back door, shifting her gaze left. She spotted that same young worker, looking at her oddly, her head tipped to one side. She was probably wondering why a fellow employee was leading three fancy ladies out the back door.
Rosa put a finger to her lips in the universal sign for hush.
The girl grinned and nodded. For now. That might change when she found out a guest’s brains were all over the penthouse suite.
They ducked out the back door. The delivery truck was gone.
“Where are you all parked?” she asked, because the alley seemed a bad place to linger.
“My car’s in the pharmacy parking lot, three blocks up,” Christine said. “Diane’s crossover is there, too.”
“I’ll drive you,” Rosa said. “I’m right out front. Red pickup.” They trooped out of the alley to the sound of sirens screaming closer.
“Run!” Rosa said, and then she sprinted across the street, her ribs screaming all the way to the big red pickup truck. She opened the driver’s door and said, “Get in, get in, get in!” praying no one would notice their rush.
Diane and Bonnie ran around to the passenger side. Christine got in the driver’s side, and then Rosa, behind the wheel. With four of them crammed into the front seat, she started it up, pulled away from the curb, and into the flow of traffic just as police vehicles came screaming around the corner.
Rosa adjusted the rearview mirror and saw Detective Sam Tucker come out the Excelsior Hotel’s front entrance, looking up and down the road.
In the back seat Bonnie ducked low as her son looked directly at them.
“Shit shit shit, you just a ran a red light.” Christine said. “Turn in case he noticed, before he gets the plate!”
Rosa changed lanes, then turned, putting the tail end of the truck out of Sam’s sight. “I shouldn’t’ve parked there. What was I thinking?”
“If you hadn’t parked there,” Christine said, “Sam would’ve seen the four of us running from the scene, instead of glimpsing an unfamiliar pickup. And by the way, whose truck is this anyway?”
“It’s Alberto’s.” She lowered her head. “Jenna knows I have it. If she noticed it…” She closed her eyes, pressing a hand to her forehead. “He loaned it to her to get me home from the hospital. And then uh, Sam called.”
Bonnie said, “There’ve gotta be a hundred red trucks like this one around.
Maybe Jenna didn’t notice. But Christine was right, Rosa.
It was perfect where you parked. Saved our butts.
I don’t know what we’d do without you.” Then as if realizing what she’d said, she added, “I don’t want to ever find out. ”
“Aw, hon.” Rosa would have hugged Bonnie but none of them had room to move.
“I shut off my real phone and dropped it in Jenna’s bag,” Rosa told them. “She can’t track me, or text me, and she’s going to lose her mind when she tries.”
Diane shrugged. “My phone’s in my car. I’ll text her for you if you want, tell her you’ll be home later and that your phone’s dead or misplaced or whatever. I’ll say we took you for, I don’t know, cheesecake, to celebrate getting sprung from the hospital. Okay?”
Rosa shook her head. “Why did you bring your phone this close to a crime scene, Diane?”
“I wasn’t planning for it to be a crime scene, Rosa.” Diane shrugged. “It just…happened.”
“Exactly!” Bonnie said. “Same with me.”