Elisabeth Crabtree - Pink Flamingo Hotel 01 - Death by Pink Flamingo (19 page)

A man’s body lay face down on the ground. I only saw the body for a moment. I couldn’t tell who it was or whether they were alive or
dead, but I knew, I had to get help. I couldn’t wait any longer. The killer was here and I was next, if I didn’t act now. I dropped the curtain and reached for my cell phone.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

“
Anna?” Ryan called out in a panicked voice from the other side of the door. I pivoted around just as Ryan busted down the door. His eyes darted around the darkened room until they fell on me. Sighing in relief, he rushed up to me and took me in his arms. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, of course.”

He pulled back and held me at arm-length. “I was so afraid I wouldn’t get here in time.”

“Have you found Jesse
, yet?”

“No, not
yet, but we need to get out of here.” He motioned for me to follow him to the door. “I’m going to take you some place safe until we can catch him.” When I didn’t rush towards him, he turned back and asked, “What’s wrong, Anna?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. I grabbed the light yellow raincoat off the coat rack in the corner of my room.
I slipped my arms into the sleeves as I followed him out into the lobby and towards the front doors. Once there, I snapped my fingers before turning back around and heading for the elevators. “Oh no. Hang on, I’ll be right back. I just need to get something.”

He spun
around. “What is it?”

“
I … need to get the evidence. I found something on Barney Hudson’s body that I think you will want to see. Hopefully, it’ll be enough to put Jesse away for a long time.”

“
Never mind that,” he said impatiently. “I’ll come back once I have you someplace safe.”

“It’ll only take a second.
I’ll be right back.” When he started to follow, I turned and faced him. “Can you do me a favor? Can you go into my office and look up Lizzie’s home number. I want to call and check on her son. He was in an accident tonight.”

“Don’t worry about it. It was a prank call. The kid’s fine. It was probably Jesse
’s doing. Let’s go.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for
Blake?” I began slowly backing up as my words began gushing out of me. “He’s not safe here by himself. Jesse and he don’t really get along. I think it’s because Blake was the first one to suspect him. I should have listened to him. Maybe we could have stopped Jesse then.” When he started to follow me, I raised my hands up in a halting gesture. “I’m afraid of what Jesse might do if he finds Blake here. Why don’t you stay here in the lobby and wait for Blake, while I run upstairs? He’ll probably return in a few minutes.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

I froze. “What do you mean?”

He tilted his head to the side. “
What’s wrong, Anna?”

“N-n-nothing,” I said stutter
ing out the word. I took a deep breath and tried desperately to calm my nerves as my head began to pound.

“
How did you guess it was me?”

I scrunched up my face, trying to look confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He took a step forward.

I took a step back.

Smiling, he pointed out, “You’re afraid of me. You’ve never been afraid of me before.”

Unable to keep up the pretense any longer,
I sagged against the elevator door. “Why, Ryan? Why did you kill my Uncle Max?”

“I didn’t want to,
Anna. Really I didn’t. But after I killed that stupid PI that was bugging Danielle and Max found the body before I could hide it, I had no choice. Max just wouldn’t let it go. He kept calling Luke and I could tell Luke was starting to believe him no matter how many times I told him that Max was out of his mind. Once Max started talking about hiring some ghost hunter to spend the night in 405, I knew I had to kill him. I couldn’t chance someone finding the PI’s body.” He gave me a sad little smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Danielle and I aren’t really very good carpenters. The body was beginning to smell, so I had to do something. I swear, I didn’t want to kill Max. I liked him.”

“You’re a police officer,” I spat through my teeth. “You should have been the one arresting Danielle.”

“I did, three years ago. She was working for the Mayor. He threw a huge weekend party and several guests ended up losing some of their valuables. It didn’t take me long to discover Danielle was the culprit. I arrested her and she made me an offer. If I looked the other way, she’d cut me in on the proceeds,” he said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. “I am curious, as to how you found out.”

“I just started thinking about the night
Sylvia died. I figured that she must have caught Danielle stealing Victoria’s necklace.”

“She did.
Stupid Danielle didn’t bother waiting until Sylvia was asleep and then sneaking back in. She was such a greedy little fool. She grabbed it before you all even locked up. Sylvia caught her red-handed and called me.”

“
That’s what I figured. Once I realized that Sylvia was the one who discovered the thief, I knew exactly what she’d do. If she had a chance, she’d call the police. She’d call you. Just like I did when Victoria found her necklace and when I found Barney Hudson’s body. I called your cell phone.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out his business card. “It was so nice of you to give this to me and make sure I knew I could call you anytime at night. No matter what.” I tossed the card onto the floor.

“Well, I’m a nice guy.
” He bent down and picked the card up. “That’s why I never got angry when Sylvia called me in the middle of the night. I always worried Danielle would get caught. She wasn’t the brightest bulb. I figured if I trained Sylvia to call me no matter what that I could head off trouble if she caught Danielle stealing.”

“So,
Sylvia called you for help and you killed her. Then you tried to pin the crime on me.”

“That was
all Danielle’s idea. All I wanted was to get Sylvia’s body out to sea.” He winked. “Murders are harder to prosecute without a body.”

“If you were going to drop her into the ocean, why did you leave her outside?”

“After I killed her, I went to get a blanket from one of the rooms and move my car around the hotel. While I was gone, Danielle, in her infinite wisdom, decided to pile sand over the body and wait inside. She stuck the flamingo in the body to mark the place. Moron.” He shook his head in disgust. “You showed up a few minutes later and then Jesse appeared out of nowhere.” He chuckled. “I was so surprised when you two decided to hide the body. I guess I can thank Danielle for that. If she hadn’t planted all those little insinuations about you, you and Jesse may have called the police.”

“Why didn’t you just arrest us then? You could have said you found us with the body.”

“Then I would have had to explain to my overly curious partner why I was there in the middle of the night and there was the chance he might find out about Danielle. Danielle would’ve given me up in a heartbeat. All Luke would have had to do is look at her and she would have spilled her guts. I made sure that I was the one who questioned her in the sunroom the other day. I convinced Luke that someone needed to watch you and Jesse, just in case one of you ran. No, it was safer to pretend to be in my bed across town, sound asleep and let you two get rid of the body for me. Unfortunately, you didn’t do a very good job.”

“That wasn’t me,” I pointed out
quickly. “Jesse’s the one who decided on the old pier.”

“
That would have been okay, if the Preservation Society hadn’t decided to rebuild the pier.”

“
Yeah, there’s something about that I don’t understand. I assumed you gave me the heads up about the society’s plans because you wanted us to move the body, right?”

He nodded.

“But we didn’t move the body. It was already gone when Jesse went to dig it up.”

“Yeah. I
found out from Beatrix that someone had told her that Sylvia was dead and where she was buried. I knew it had to have been Danielle. She was so desperate to prove you were guilty.”

“Why?”

“She was kind of insecure and she saw you as a threat. I made the mistake of telling her all about you and Jesse and how crazy you two were about each other when I found out he was hanging around her. She was out to get you from that moment on. I knew she had it bad for him but I had no idea how bad. I couldn’t believe she could be so stupid as to practically lead a reporter to the body. I had to move fast. I had just moved Sylvia’s body to the garden shed when Beatrix showed up with Luke and the other officers. Stupid idiot.”

“So, that’s when you decided to kill Danielle. I’m surprised
. Wasn’t she the goose that laid the golden egg? Now what are you going to do for money?”

“Don’t worry. I have a nice savings. She was too much of a liability
, so I had to kill her.”

“What were you going to do with
her and Sylvia’s bodies before I interrupted you last night? Surely, you weren’t going to leave them there.”

“
I considered dragging them upstairs and putting them with the PI but decided against that. If you started hearing noises and bumps in the night like your uncle did when I rebuilt the closet in 405, I figured Luke might get even more suspicious and start looking too closely at that room. He almost found the PI’s body the night your uncle called us. Luckily, I was there to steer him in a different direction.” He rubbed a hand across his neck. “I really wish you hadn’t showed up when you did last night. You really messed things up for me. I would have hid them in the shed until nightfall and then just dragged them out of there and out into the ocean. No one would have ever known. I could have even blamed Sylvia’s disappearance on Danielle and then convinced everyone that Danielle ran away because she was guilty. Luke may not have bought it, but I bet everyone else would have.”

“So sorry, I messed up your plans,” I said sarcastically.

“Yeah, well, I’m more upset about what you did tonight.”
He made a face. “I really wish I had gotten your message about the necklace before Victoria left. That necklace alone is worth more than my yearly salary. More than five years of salary and you just let it walk out tonight.”

“
Why didn’t you take it with you when you killed Danielle?”

“
I didn’t know where it was. Danielle was supposed to have it on her when I arranged to meet her at the pool. I thought it was in her purse. Unfortunately, there was nothing in there but a few dollars and her phone.”

“Ah, of course, you’re the one who
swiped the phone.”

“
Naturally. I took the phone and then neatly laid her dress back down on her purse,” he said with an amused smirk.

“You took a chance. What if you had been seen?”

“The other officers were too busy with the bodies to notice,” he said with a sneer. “Besides, I couldn’t let Luke get his hands on it. The first thing he would have done was to check who she was calling. He would have recognized my number.”

“
So, you lied to me about where the call came from. What will happen when Luke requests her phone records?”

“
He’s not going to. Don’t worry, Anna, I’m not stupid and I’m pretty good at covering my tracks.” He shook his head. “It’s a shame. If you had just minded your own business and not gone looking for Barney Hudson, everything would have been fine. I could have pinned all of this on Jesse and you could have gone back to running this hotel.”

I crossed my arms. “Why Jesse? What did he ever do to you?”

“Nothing really. It just so happens that his background made him the perfect candidate. I couldn’t believe it when I saw his juvenile record.” He laughed. “It’s ironic.”

“What is?”

“Danielle and her father were the real thieves. Her old man was the one stealing from all those people years ago. Barney Hudson suspected he was involved but couldn’t prove it. I have no idea how Jesse got mixed up in the thefts. I didn’t even realize that he had been charged for the crimes until you asked me to check on his background. That’s when I realized that he was the perfect person to pin the thefts at the hotel and the murders on. I would have arrested him last night but,” he said with an annoyed look, “I couldn’t convince Luke.” He brightened. “Luckily, I got some help a few hours ago.”

“The pictures?”

He grinned. “Once Luke saw that picture of Jesse carrying Sylvia’s body, he had no choice but to agree with me. We just got the arrest warrant.”

“
Where’s Jesse?”

“Hopefully, dead,” he said simply.

My heart constricted painfully in my chest. I seized on the word hopefully. “You don’t know for sure?” I asked over a lump that began to form in my throat.

“Luke’s chasing him down as we speak.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “
Actually, no, I’m wrong. It should all be over by now. Luke should have arrived at the fishery across town fifteen minutes ago. Jesse was hiding out there. If all went according to plan, Jesse resisted when Luke attempted to arrest him. I radioed Luke thirty minutes ago and told him that Jesse took a shot at me. That way he’d go in there expecting a fight.”