CHAPTER SIX
The Grand Regency Hotel rose like a limestone colossus among Chicago’s glass and steel towers, its Art Deco facade speaking of another era when luxury meant more than digital convenience.
Riley guided their sedan to the curb, her eyes scanning the ornate entrance where doormen in burgundy uniforms ushered guests through revolving doors.
Somewhere in this temple to wealth and discretion, Margaret Thornfield had taken her last breath, poisoned by the same distinctive method as Victoria Ashworth.
Riley couldn’t shake the feeling that time was working against them—that each hour that passed brought another potential victim closer to their appointment with arsenic-laced wine.
“It’s beautiful,” Ann Marie said as they stepped from the car, her gaze traveling up the building’s tiered exterior. “Hard to imagine something so terrible happening in a place like this.”
“Luxury has never been a barrier to violence,” Riley replied, handing the keys to a valet. “Sometimes it’s the very thing that attracts it.”
They crossed the threshold into a lobby that breathed old money.
Marble columns supported a ceiling adorned with gold leaf details and crystal chandeliers.
The air carried notes of fresh flowers and expensive perfume, underscored by the quiet hum of wealth in motion—discreet conversations, the soft clicks of designer heels on polished floors, the subdued chime of an elevator arriving.
Detective Callahan waited for them near a fountain in the center of the lobby, his practical gray suit a stark contrast to the hotel’s opulence. He raised a hand in acknowledgment as they approached.
“Agents, we’ll start with the security center” he said. “The head of security has been cooperative—they’re as eager to close this case as we are. Bad for business, having a murder in your five-star establishment.”
He led them across the lobby toward a discreet door marked “Staff Only.” Behind it lay a utilitarian corridor, the hotel’s carefully cultivated glamour giving way to the practical reality of service areas. The transition was jarring—like stepping from a theater stage into the backstage machinery.
They descended a flight of stairs and arrived at a door with a keycard reader.
Callahan swiped a temporary access card, and they entered the hotel’s security nerve center.
The room was dominated by a wall of monitors displaying feeds from cameras positioned throughout the hotel.
Three security staff members monitored the screens, while a fourth—a man with a military bearing—rose to greet them.
“This is Morgan Hayes, head of security,” Callahan introduced them. “He’s pulled all the relevant footage from the night of Margaret Thornfield’s murder.”
Hayes added crisply. “We’ve set up a timeline for you using our best angles. Unfortunately, our system doesn’t capture every inch of the hotel, and our killer seemed aware of our blind spots.”
He gestured to a separate workstation where a monitor was already queued up with footage. They gathered around as Hayes took the seat and began navigating through the timeline.
“Mrs. Thornfield lived in Chicago until she moved to Boston two years ago. But she sometimes came back to Chicago to attend charity events and see old friends. She checked into Grand Regency three days ago for what was supposed to be a week-long stay,” Hayes explained, bringing up footage of an elegant woman entering the lobby.
“We knew her well. She was a regular guest.”
Margaret Thornfield moved with the confidence of someone accustomed to wealth, her designer clothes and carefully styled hair marking her as a woman who invested in appearances.
Riley studied her, noting the similarities to Victoria Ashworth—not in physical appearance, but in the way she carried herself, the invisible armor of privilege.
“A housekeeper found her body the next morning,” Hayes said, his voice clipped and efficient. “We reviewed the security footage and spotted this man entering her room that evening at 9:17 PM, while she was out.”
The footage revealed a man with a mustache who wore an overcoat, large-lensed glasses, and a fedora, which partially masked his face.
“Did you get any clearer footage of what he looked like?” Ann Marie asked eagerly.
Hayes shook his head. “No,” he replied. “For the most part, he avoided looking directly at any cameras.”
The screen showed the suspect approaching Margaret Thornfield’s suite on the twenty-third floor. He glanced both ways, then swiped a keycard and slipped inside.
“The keycard was stolen,” Hayes said. “I’ll explain how that happened shortly.”
“No cameras inside the rooms, I assume?” Riley asked.
“Correct,” Hayes confirmed. “Privacy is a major selling point for our clientele.”
Callahan added. “No usable prints. He wore gloves the entire time.”
Riley watched the time stamp on the footage as it continued to run. The suspect entered the room at 9:17 PM. Margaret Thornfield didn’t return until 9:42 PM, twenty-five minutes during which the killer waited, just as Victoria Ashworth’s killer had waited in the wine cellar.
“There she is,” Ann Marie said softly as Margaret appeared on screen, walking down the corridor toward her room, completely unaware of what awaited her inside.
The footage captured her entering her suite, the door closing behind her. Then nothing—just the empty hallway, the closed door, the silent passage of minutes on the time stamp.
“How long?” Riley asked, her voice tight.
“Seventeen minutes,” Hayes answered, advancing the footage. “Then this.”
The door opened, and the man emerged. His movements were unhurried, controlled. There was nothing in his demeanor to suggest he had just committed murder.
“The mustache is probably fake,” Riley murmured, leaning closer. “He may also have been wearing a hairpiece.”
Hayes agreed. “We think so too. But the card was authentic,” he said. “It didn’t raise any alarms. When we finally went back through the footage the next day looking for him, of course, he was long gone.”
Hayes shifted to an earlier time stamp with a view of the hotel lobby.
“This is our camera’s first glimpse of the suspect,” Hayes said. “Approximately 7:14 PM.”
The man moved through the hotel, keeping his face turned away from direct camera views. Whenever his face turned fleetingly toward the camera, the glasses, mustache, and the brim of the fedora obscured his features enough to make identification difficult.
“He knew where the cameras were,” Ann Marie observed. “He’d done his homework.”
“Or he’d been here before,” Riley added. “Maybe as a guest, maybe as staff. But probably looking nothing like he does in these images.”
“This is where we think he acquired the keycard,” Callahan said as Hayes brought up footage of a housekeeper and her cart emerging into a hallway from a storeroom door. The suspect walked up to the woman and spoke to her, smiling.
Hayes said, “When we questioned the housekeeper, she said the encounter was so brief she barely remembered it. She couldn’t even remember what it was about. But watch this.”
The man stood with his back to the door, in a quick, apparently pleasant exchange with the housekeeper.
“So this was when he got the card?” Ann Marie asked, leaning closer.
“That’s what we think,” Callahan replied. “Watch.”
The maid pushed her cart away, her attention never straying to the door behind the man.
“Is that door actually closed?” Riley asked.
Hayes paused the video. “No. He must have slipped something into the latch to stop it from closing completely.”
“Like what?” Ann Marie asked.
“Probably just a folded piece of cardboard,” Callahan said. “Look.”
He pointed to the screen, where the man ducked into the storeroom, the door propped open now for a quick escape.
“Deft,” Riley murmured.
“He knew what he was doing,” Callahan said. “Picked up an extra master keycard from the storeroom and took off. Nobody noticed him.”
“Crafty bastard,” Ann Marie muttered, shaking her head.
“Where was Mrs. Thornfield during all this?” Ann Marie asked.
“Having drinks with friends in the hotel bar,” Callahan replied. “We’ve interviewed them. Nothing unusual about the evening from their perspective. They parted ways around 9:30 PM.”
“And later he just walked out the front door,” Hayes concluded, showing the final clip of the suspect exiting through the lobby, blending seamlessly with the evening crowd of diners and theater-goers returning to the hotel.
Riley sat back, processing what she’d seen. “You’ve tried facial recognition?”
“Of course,” Callahan said. “But with the angle of his head, the hat, the glasses, the mustache—we don’t have enough to work with. We’ve enhanced what we can, but so far, no matches in any database.”
Riley stood, restless energy propelling her to her feet. “I need to see the room.”
Callahan understood her need to connect with the physical space where the murder had occurred. “It’s been preserved exactly as we found it, minus the body and the wine evidence, of course.”
Riley thanked Hayes, and she, Ann Marie, and Callahan left the security center.
They took a service elevator to the twenty-third floor.
The contrast between the service areas and the guest corridors was stark—plush carpet replacing utilitarian tile, subtle lighting creating an atmosphere of exclusive tranquility.
“It’s strange,” Ann Marie observed as they walked down the hallway. “In the security footage, this all looked smaller somehow.”
“Wide-angle lenses,” Callahan explained. “They distort perspective.”
They stopped in front of a door marked with crime scene tape.
Callahan used a key card to unlock it, pushing it open to reveal a suite that epitomized high-end hotel accommodations.
A sitting area with elegant furniture opened onto a bedroom visible through double doors.
Large windows offered a panoramic view of Chicago’s skyline.
“Mrs. Thornfield was found here,” Callahan said, gesturing to a small dining table positioned near the windows.
Two chairs faced each other across the table’s polished surface.
“She was seated here,” Callahan continued, indicating one of the chairs.
“The wine bottle and glass were on the table in front of her.”
Riley approached the table slowly, taking in every detail. She circled the table, her mind trying to reconstruct the scene.
“Could you give us another look at those crime scene photos?”
Callahan pulled out his phone and brought up the images Meredith had shown them earlier that day.
Riley studied them carefully—Margaret Thornfield slumped in the chair, her face contorted in final agony, holding the wine glass.
The positioning was deliberate, staged—like Victoria Ashworth, she had been arranged to be found.
“If my theory about the plastic bag is correct,” Riley said, “he would have subdued her first. Disoriented her with oxygen deprivation, then forced the wine on her when she was gasping for air.”
“The ME is checking both victims for the signs you mentioned,” Callahan confirmed. “We should know by tomorrow.”
Riley handed the phone back to Callahan, then closed her eyes, trying to sense the killer as she had in Victoria’s wine cellar.
The hotel room felt different—less personal than Victoria’s sanctuary, but the killer had brought the same meticulous planning, the same patience, the same intimate knowledge of his victim’s habits.
She opened her eyes, turning to face the room. “He knew at least approximately when she would return to her room. Knew she would be alone. This wasn’t opportunistic. He studied her, learned her patterns.”
“Just like with Victoria Ashworth,” Ann Marie added.
“Yes, but the environments were different,” Riley remarked, contemplating the implications. “Victoria was in her own supposedly safe home, but he knew about the old entrance to the wine cellar.”
She paused to think for a moment.
“By contrast, Margaret was in a hotel, a more exposed setting. But he didn’t just knock on her door.
He went to great lengths to gain entry and make sure he arrived before she did.
He’s adaptable and self-assured. The challenges don’t discourage him.
The possibility of being caught might even excite him. ”
As Riley spoke, movement at the open door caught her attention. A man stood in the doorway—tall, distinguished, in his early fifties with the unmistakable look of wealth in his tailored suit. His expression was grave.
Callahan stepped forward immediately. “Sir, this is an active crime scene. You can’t be here.”
The man held up a hand, his composure unshaken. “I’m aware, Detective. But I believe you’ll want to speak with me.” His voice carried the smooth confidence of someone accustomed to being listened to. “I’m Nathaniel Thornfield, Margaret Thornfield’s ex-husband. I just flew in from San Francisco.”
Riley and Ann Marie exchanged glances, both considering the significance of his appearance.
“And I believe,” Nathaniel continued, his eyes meeting Riley’s with unsettling directness, “that I know who killed her.”