Authors: Wendy Roberts
Dead Suite
Also by Wendy Roberts
The Remains of the Dead
Devil May Ride
Dead and Kicking
This book is for all the Ghost Dusters fans that asked for more. You rock!
Thanks to Sandra Harding and Melissa Jeglinski for making it happen.
INTERMIX BOOKS
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is
entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have control over and does not have
any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
DEAD SUITE
An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author
PUBLISHING HISTORY
InterMix eBook edition / February 2013
Copyright © 2013 by Wendy Roberts.
Excerpt from
Drop Dead Beauty
copyright © 2013 by Wendy Roberts.
All rights reserved.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ISBN: 978-1-101-59512-1
INTERMIX
InterMix Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group
and New American Library, divisions of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Chapter 1
For most people, checking into a five-star hotel meant luxury and pillow mints. For
Sadie Novak, luxurious accommodation meant blood spatter, maggots, and the occasional
ghost. But it paid the bills.
Sadie was dressed in a skirt and heels as she rode the elevator up to the tenth floor
of the prestigious Bay Eminence Hotel. She smiled sweetly at the businessman who got
off at the convention level, and when the doors slid open on the tenth floor Sadie
made her way down the hall and slid her key card into the door. Her sweet smile was
long gone and she was all business.
Inside the room, Sadie sighed with brief longing as she took in the lavishly appointed
space with the stunning view of Seattle’s Puget Sound bay. She could totally imagine
the room being rented by a famous actress or a rock ’n’ roller wanting to trash its
lusciousness just for fun. Sadie glanced hungrily at the bed and wished she could
sink into its tempting fluffiness. Too bad the room wasn’t Sadie’s for rest, relaxation,
or rolling around in the king-sized bed. Instead the space served only as a safe room
that she used to don and doff disposable coveralls and where she would be storing
supplies. Marring the elegant surroundings were large biohazard bins and containers
holding all she needed to do crime scene cleanup.
Sadie slipped out of her fancy skirt and blouse and into sweatpants and a T-shirt.
Next she promptly covered up in a hazmat suit, including booties and a respirator.
With an armload of specialized cleaning solutions, she made her way to the door that
connected this hotel room, which she used as a safe room, to another that had turned
out to be not so safe for its previous lodger. Sadie opened the door and stepped inside
the second room. It was equally prestigious and opulently appointed; or at least it
would have been if it wasn’t for the blood-streaked, naked hooker sitting on the edge
of the cushiony king-sized bed.
“Ah geez,” Sadie muttered from behind her respirator.
The job just went from normal mess and gore to an entirely more complicated and paranormal
level.
Yesterday she’d been hired by the manager of the Bay Eminence to clean up an “unfortunate
incident” in one of their rooms. Sadie had already read about it in the papers over
the last few days. She didn’t need the hotel manager to tell her the little event
that occurred at this plush hotel involved the brutal butchering of a prostitute.
That kind of thing tended to knock a star or two off the five-star rating.
The Seattle Police Department had done its job removing the body and collecting evidence,
but somebody had to tidy up the remaining ghoulish disaster of blood spatter. It was
definitely far beyond housekeeping’s usual job requirement. Sadie had promised the
hotel manager, Herbert Sylvane, that she would be discreet. Management had done its
best to minimize the appearance of the hotel name in local papers, impressively having
it buried on page four instead of headlining the
Seattle Times
. Nobody wanted Sadie’s cleanup to cause Seattle tourists and convention goers to
question their choice of accommodation.
Sadie had already arranged for hotel staff to bring up her supplies from the loading
area, including heavy-duty air purifiers, and transport them into the adjoining room.
They used linen carts and the freight elevators to make the delivery, and Sadie could
hear them dropping off more gear in the other room while she took photos of the crime
scene for the purpose of billing the insurance company. When she’d checked out the
scene yesterday she’d thought the job would be easy-peasy—at least as uncomplicated
as it ever was mopping up the dead—but there’d been no dead prostitute welcoming her
last night.
Sadie went to work around the naked woman, which was not as simple as it might sound.
Whenever Sadie attempted to wipe away blood spatter or tried to spray emulsifiers
on sloughed dried skin, the nudie-patootie working girl would leap in front of her,
trying to get her attention. Considering the victim had slashes that made her previously
model-like body look like bloody Swiss cheese, it was distracting to say the least.
Sadie had hoped to get the job done quickly and deal with any possible ghosts after
the cleaning, or at least in the latter stages when she didn’t have to make herself
heard through a respirator, but the apparition before her obviously had other ideas.
“I really didn’t want to do this right now,” Sadie shouted through her respirator
as she turned to face the attention-seeking spirit. In addition to the respirator
muffling her voice, the ozone generator air purifier created a noise of its own. She
didn’t want to turn them off even for a second because the ozone helped destroy odor
molecules and also killed airborne bacteria. “What would you like to tell me?”
The lithe twentysomething redhead faced Sadie with a look of surprise and pointed
to herself as if to say, “Who, me?”
“No. The twelve other ghosts in the room,” Sadie responded sarcastically.
It would’ve been funny, except Sadie knew that for the dearly departed, this wasn’t
a humorous moment at all. Sadie took a step forward to punctuate her point with a
tap on the ghost’s shoulder. “Yes, dear, I’m talking to you.”
When Sadie’s fingers touched the apparition she was filled with the revulsion that
always flooded her if she physically touched the dead. She shuddered, made a sour
face, then shook off the wave of nausea that followed.
The woman blinked at Sadie with a look of uncertain confusion.
“Okay, I’ll start,” Sadie shouted, but her voice was muffled by the apparatus over
her face. “I’m so sorry to tell you this, but you’re dead. You were killed here in
this room by some crazy guy. This might be news to you. My friend with Seattle police,
Detective Petrovich, told me you were most likely drugged, so there’s a very good
chance that you don’t remember being killed.” Sadie glanced over the woman, taking
in the multiple stab wounds, and slowly shook her head. “If that’s true, you should
be grateful for that one small comfort.”
The woman looked down as if seeing her mutilated body for the first time. She shrieked
in horror before vanishing into thin air.
“She’ll be back,” Sadie mumbled to herself.
With a scrub brush in hand, Sadie turned and tackled the blood-spattered wall. It
had been a few days since the Seattle PD investigators had gotten what they needed
from the room and left the rest. Maggots were having a social gathering in the sludgy
congealed blood puddles on the floor. Unfazed, Sadie tackled the job in systematic
stages. She worked like a frenzied machine of clean, using emulsifiers to soften dried
tissue and blood and then scrubbing and wiping them away. What couldn’t be cleaned—such
as sections of carpeting, underlay, and mattress—she cut away and placed into medical
waste containers. Blood was cleaned, maggots were swept up and flushed away, and Sadie
tackled it all hour upon hour until every muscle in her body screamed from the exertion.
In fact, it was nearly six hours later when Sadie surveyed the room and pronounced
it reasonably ungory, unbloody, and, generally, unmaggoty. The first stage of the
cleaning was always the toughest because of the amount of gear required. Beneath her
hazmat gear she was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Slipping into the adjoining
safe room, Sadie doffed her gear, stripped to her bra and panties, and stood in front
of the air-conditioning vent for a couple minutes.
It was after midnight but Sadie was positive that she could complete the second stage
of cleaning before morning. This confidence came from the fact that the manager of
the swanky Bay Eminence was paying her triple her usual going rate to accomplish the
task within twenty-four hours. Things had been slow for Sadie’s trauma-clean company,
Scene-2-Clean, so she didn’t mind sacrificing sleep to get the job done. She might
even be able to make her mortgage payment this month.
Herbert Sylvane told her she could order whatever she wanted from room service for
as long as it took her to get the job done. That was one of the better perks she’d
ever been given. Her stomach growled as she picked up a leather binder and flipped
through to peruse the room-service menu. Normally Sadie would’ve grabbed a sub or
burger on the way home from a job. The Bay Eminence menu was a tad more refined. She
went with the lobster bisque to start and the fennel-crusted salmon as the main course.
Instead of dessert she decided to order lots and lots of coffee. The cost of the meal
was about how much she usually earned on a job, so it was no small bonus. She called
the order into room service and asked them to bring it directly into the room since
she’d be in the bath.
She filled the tub with hot water laced with the girly-scented bath products provided.
She stripped off her undies and slid blissfully beneath the bubbles, then picked up
her cell phone from the edge of the tub and called her on-again-off-again boyfriend,
Zack Bowman.
“Hey, how’s it going at the Eminence?” he asked, answering on the first ring.
“It’s a real hardship.” Sadie sighed as she slid deeper into the bubbles. “I’m soaking
in a Jacuzzi filled with rosemary-mint bubbles while I wait for room service to deliver
my lobster bisque and salmon. I may never come home.” She added, “By the way, I’m
naked.”
“You are?”
Sadie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that’s how I usually take my baths.”
“You’re killing me.” But he laughed and sounded distracted when he said it. “Guess
I could hop in my car and be there in a couple hours.”
Sadie’s heart jackhammered in her chest. She wished he meant it. He’d spent a number
of weeks at Whispering Groves Rehab Center but had been home for months now and they’d
been living like roommates, not lovers. With business slow, she’d been channeling
all her pent-up sexual energy into jogging. If she didn’t have sex soon she was going
to have to seriously consider entering the Seattle marathon.
“Do it. Climb in your car and drive up for the night,” Sadie said and hated that it
sounded like she was begging. “Take your time so I can get the job done. You’d be
breaking every speed limit to get to Seattle from Portland in two hours.”
“It would so be worth it.”
“I wish you meant that.” Sadie’s annoyance peaked. She wanted to tell him to act like
a boyfriend and make love to her. Instead she muttered, “I’m working through the night
in Seattle and you’re working the rest of the week almost two hundred miles away,
so stop teasing.”
“Guess we’ll have to stick to the weekend.”
Since the economy had gone south and Sadie’s trauma-clean company had it tough, Zack
had taken a job as a rent-a-cop in Portland. It helped out financially, but it was
doing nothing to add spark to their diminishing love life.
“How about we go out for dinner and a movie when you’re back?” she suggested.
“Maybe . . .”
“You were the one who said we should start going out on dates once you were out of
rehab.”
“I know. We will . . . eventually.”
Sadie’s heart tightened in her chest. She wanted to snap and tell him she was sick
of his lack of commitment, but she was afraid it would make things worse. She heard
the door to the room open up and a male voice announced he was leaving the tray on
the table. She shouted “Thanks” in return.
“I guess I should finish up before my food gets cold,” Sadie told Zack.
“Okay. Talk to you later,” he replied, sounding all too okay with ending the call.
“You know, if you do decide to drive up for a visit you could head right up to the
room, and by the time you got here I’d be done cleaning so we could . . . spend some
quality time together.” She hoped her voice sounded soft and sexy and not as desperate
as she felt.
“That’s tempting, but . . . it’s not such a good idea,” Zack said haltingly. “We’d
agreed I’d find my own place after rehab and take things slow.”
“Like the dinner and a show I suggested?”
He didn’t reply. Sadie bit her lower lip. He was the one who’d insisted on finding
his own place but he’d delayed that move only because of her money situation. She
knew Zack would’ve moved out immediately if she hadn’t needed the help financially.
“Right,” she replied, all business now. “Well, I should get back to work. Make hay
while the sun shines or, in this case, wash blood while there’s blood to mop.”
They ended the call with uncomfortable chuckles, and Sadie dropped her cell phone
onto a stack of towels next to the tub. She sunk down until her face was submerged
beneath the water and then screamed until all the air exploded from her lungs in a
blast of bubbles.
After lathering and rinsing away the smell of body decomp from her hair and skin,
Sadie reluctantly removed her pruning body from the Jacuzzi jets. She sat with a plush
hotel housecoat wrapped around her damp body as she devoured the gourmet meal. It
was delicious, but she had to admit that it still fell short of a burger and shake
from Dick’s Drive-In.
Sadie redressed in clean, casual clothes and washed the meal down with excellent coffee
poured from a fancy carafe. Looking out the hotel window, she admired the startling
beauty of Puget Sound. All in all, this job was one sweet ride. If you didn’t mind
ghosts and gore. Her gaze slid sideways to the connecting door and the room beyond.
There was still work to be done.
Sadie didn’t need the respirator for this next phase of cleaning and she was more
than a little grateful. She still suited up in disposable Tyvek coveralls, gloves,
and booties before passing through the connecting door, but the respirator stayed
behind. She brought with her an additional waste bin. She’d already removed large
sections of carpet and underlay and placed them into rubber bins for proper disposal
later.
It was in the wee hours in the morning when the redhead ghost reappeared, perching
herself so that she hovered just a few inches above the edge of the bed. She watched
Sadie for some time before saying anything.