The Unknown Woman (3 page)

Ah, the next-door neighbor. Hearing the person stumbling around, Kerry concluded the electricity must still be off.

The candles were getting low, so she blew them out. She didn’t want to risk falling asleep in the tub again. Quickly she climbed out and dried off, then pulled on her pajamas and went to bed. She placed the lamp and the matches on the side table, turned down the wick and fell asleep at once.

J
OHN
M
ATHIAS
A
NDERSON
III, called Matt by his family to distinguish him from his grandfather and uncle, nodded to the night clerk as he crossed the lobby of the elegant Hotel Marchand. Candles and lanterns cast a soft light over the elegant lobby, but not to create a romantic mood.

A major power outage had hit the city, or at least this portion of it. The cab driver had assured him the outage was temporary when he’d dropped him in front of the hotel and that all the hotels had generators, but that didn’t seem to be the case at the Hotel Marchand.

The lack of electricity obviously hadn’t interrupted the Twelfth Night celebration going on in the hotel and spilling into the courtyard. Dancers frolicked in his path as he tried to get to his patio suite.

He edged around the flagstone perimeter, which was dark enough to be spooky, tripped over an urn filled with flowers and got a mouthful of lilies as he muttered a curse.

The pleasure of an evening of wine tasting at a private club, followed by a fine dinner, wasn’t diminished
by the trek in the dark to his quarters. He closed the patio gate behind him and made his way to the door.

When he inserted the key into the lock, he found the door was ajar. Damn, but he would have to be more careful when he went out. New Orleans had its share of thieves, the same as any city in the country.

He pushed the door closed behind him, then checked the lock. It didn’t engage. Flicking the light switch to no avail, he felt around the lock and found the heavy brocade drapes of the window in the way. Holding the material aside, he pushed the door shut and heard the lock click into place.

Yawning hugely, he undressed in the dark, fumbled his way to the bathroom, brushed his teeth and headed for bed.

As he’d expected, the covers were turned back. By feeling around, he located the mint on the pillow, tossed it toward the bedside table and fell into bed.

“What the hell?” he said in a furious bellow.

Someone was in the bed!

He leaped from the mattress, hands raised in self-defense, and stumbled backward against the table. He and a vase hit the carpet. He heard it break.

“Hey, you,” he called, standing and peering through the inky blackness when the person didn’t say a word.

He cursed again and fumbled around the room until he found the matches he’d seen earlier in a crystal bowl next to a candle in a glass container. Striking a match, he bent over the bed.

A white-faced, black-haired Goldilocks slept peacefully, her arms thrown wide, her hair flowing around her like a dark river. Never in his thirty-seven years had he run into something as bizarre as this.

“Hey, wake up,” he said, louder this time.

Someone knocked at the adjoining door between the suites.

“Is everything okay?” a feminine voice called from the other side.

He heaved a sigh. “No, it isn’t. There’s somebody in my bed. A woman. She’s out cold.”

“You don’t know her?”

Matt glanced at the door in exasperation. “Hardly. I just arrived in town this morning. Ouch!”

He dropped the match as it burned his finger. It flickered out before it hit the carpet. The room went pitch-black again. He, who rarely cursed, muttered a few more choice words. A faint gleam of light appeared at the patio door. A knock followed.

He felt his way around the bed. A woman stood there. She was dressed in a robe of red Chinese silk with cotton pajama legs showing at the bottom.

She stood maybe five-two in her slippers. Her hair spiked out around her head in an impish halo and her eyes looked huge in her heart-shaped face. She carried an old-fashioned oil lamp, which gave off the scent of jasmine as it burned.

“May I help?” she asked.

“I hope so.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I think
I didn’t shut the door properly when I went out earlier. The curtain gets in the way so the lock doesn’t catch. This woman must have been partying pretty hard in the courtyard and stumbled in here to sleep it off.” He gestured toward the bed.

She glanced into the room then back at Matt. “I see.”

As Matt stepped aside to let her enter, he realized—and so did his guest, he was sure—that he wore nothing but the black briefs he’d left on when he’d undressed. A quick survey of the floor revealed his pants in a heap at the end of the bed. Hurriedly he pulled them on, then joined the woman at the side of the bed.

They both stared at the figure lying there. The white makeup on her face and black kohl outlining her eyes made her look ghostly. Her lipstick was dark, too, like dried blood.

His neighbor took the limp wrist that lay on the coverlet and pressed her fingers against the inside to check the woman’s pulse. After a moment, she placed the lamp on the night table and sat on the side of the bed. She felt for a pulse in the woman’s neck.

At the anxious expression on her face, Matt felt himself tensing up, too. He had a feeling that the situation wasn’t a simple matter of a drunk in his bed.

At last she raised luminous eyes to him. “I think…I think she’s… She doesn’t seem to be breathing.”

“Judas Priest,” he said, an expression he hadn’t used since college days, some fifteen years ago.

“Well, see if you can find a pulse,” she invited rising from the bed with a frown as if he’d disputed her word.

He, too, checked the woman’s wrist and then her neck. “My God,” he muttered, realizing his neighbor was right.

“Call the police,” she said. “I’ve been trained in CPR. I don’t know if it’ll help…”

She quickly leaned over the woman in the bed and began treatment.

Matt found the phone and dialed. He got the night clerk first and explained the situation.

“Wait a minute,” the clerk said. “I’ll get the boss.”

Matt waited a couple of minutes before a woman’s voice came on the line. She asked him to explain exactly what the problem was. He demanded to know who she was.

“Charlotte Marchand, general manager,” she told him. “The night clerk says there’s a strange woman in your room?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll contact the police and be there in a minute. Don’t touch anything.”

Matt hung up. “The manager’s on her way over.”

She nodded and began pumping the heart again. “This doesn’t seem to be working.”

“Is there an obstruction?”

After checking, she shook her head. “Not that I can see.” She tried the breathing routine again. There was no lifting of the chest as she tried to force air in.

She rose and shook her head. “We need help.” She stood at the end of the bed beside him, her face reflecting the sense of worry and shock that affected them both.

After a few seconds, she said, “I’m Kerry Johnston. From Minnesota.”

“I’m Matt Anderson. Glad to meet you.” He realized how inane that sounded in view of the circumstances. “New York’s my home, but I travel a lot,” he added to bridge the awkward moment.

He pulled a T-shirt from a drawer and yanked it over his head, then put on socks and shoes. Now that he was dressed, he felt slightly more in control.

“Have a seat,” he suggested to Kerry. “I think it’s going to be a long night.”

She nodded her thanks when he pulled out a side chair for her. He sat in the matching one while they waited for the manager and the police to arrive.

“Oh, my God,” his guest said suddenly, getting to her feet and striding to the bed in two bounds. “I know who she is. I just realized—I know her.”

She sounded so distressed that Matt stood, too, and instinctively placed his arm around her narrow shoulders.

“Who is she?” he asked.

“Patti. Dear God, it’s Patti. She was my waitress at lunch today. And the docent at the voodoo museum.”

Matt’s scalp prickled. “I was at one of the voodoo museums this afternoon.” He studied the still face on
his pillow. “She could have been the clerk who sold me a book on the history of voodoo in New Orleans for my mother—”

A knock at the patio door interrupted them.

Matt went to open it. A woman stood there, holding a battery-powered lantern.

“Charlotte Marchand?” he asked. Like Kerry, this woman was petite, with auburn hair and almond-shaped green eyes.

“Yes.”

“Matt Anderson,” he introduced himself. “Kerry…”

“Johnston,” she supplied.

“What happened?” Charlotte wanted to know, going to the bed and bending over the figure.

She held her lantern close to the gaudily painted face on the pillow. Charlotte checked the pulse as Kerry had done.
“Mon Dieu,”
she muttered. “She
is
dead.”

“I tried CPR, but it didn’t seem to help,” Kerry told her. “Her lungs won’t inflate.”

Matt felt a complete sense of unreality. “Have you called the police?”

“Security is taking care of it, but the police are overtaxed with the blackout. I wanted to make sure this wasn’t some kind of joke.”

“A joke,” Kerry echoed in disbelief.

“It’s the beginning of Mardi Gras,” the manager said as if this explained everything. She removed a cell phone from her waist and punched in a number. After a short conversation, she turned back to them.

“Security was alerted when I was. The police and an ambulance should be here as soon as possible. You’ll have to stay until the police arrive, then we can move you to another room.”

“Miss Johnston is next door,” Matt explained. “She heard me stumble into the table when I discovered there was another person in my bed and came over to help.”

This whole situation was like a scene out of some diabolical play. And he didn’t know his part. Neither did Kerry. He was sorry he’d involved her in the awful incident.

“When I dialed 9-1-1,” he continued, anger now invading his voice, “I got the front desk.”

“You must not have dialed 9 to get an outside line,” the manager explained.

A man appeared at the door of the suite. “Tyrell said there was a problem.” His gaze took in the dead woman and the room in one sweeping glance.

Charlotte explained all they knew.

“You don’t know who she is?” the man asked Matt.

“Who are you?” Matt demanded.

“He’s head of security here,” Charlotte told him. “Mac Jensen. This is Mr. Anderson’s room, Mac. He doesn’t know how the…this person came to be in here.”

Matt spoke to the security guy. “I realized when I came in tonight that the lock doesn’t engage because the curtain gets in the way. It’s too close to the door.”

“I’ll have that taken care of. Right now we have to keep everything the same for the police,” Charlotte said grimly. “This is all we need—a death in addition to the power outage and the generator not working—”

She stopped abruptly as if she’d given too much away.

Matt felt rather sorry for the manager and her team, who would have to deal with the repercussions of the tragedy.

The security chief checked for a pulse. Kerry told him about administering CPR and said there seemed to be a blockage in the airway. He glanced toward the courtyard. “I think we’d better tell the band to bring the evening to a close.” He glanced at the manager.

“Would you do that?” she requested. “That would be one less thing to worry about.”

“Unless someone in the crowd is involved in this.”

Matt waved a hand toward the bed.

They stared at the still form.

“I don’t see any signs of struggle,” Jensen said.

“No blood or bruising on her.” He glanced around the room again and frowned. “The vase is broken—”

“I did that,” Matt admitted. “I jumped from the bed when I realized there was someone else here.”

“Could it be an overdose?” Charlotte said to the security man. “You know there are people on the street selling everything one can imagine.”

Matt observed the manner in which the security
chief checked the room and relaxed a bit. The man was sharp-eyed and intelligent, his mind focused.

“Anyone connected with the victim would have fled long ago,” Jensen said. “I’ll go out front and direct the cops in here. They can decide if we should send the partygoers home and call it a night.”

When he left, the silence stretched to the four corners of the room.

“This is most unfortunate,” Charlotte said to Matt and Kerry. “I’m so sorry you’ve been pulled into such a bad situation.”

Matt shrugged. “That’s life,” he said, trying not to be judgmental and accuse her and the staff of not doing their jobs properly. He thought about changing hotels. With a glance at Kerry’s pale face, he wondered if she would like to move, too.

Charlotte nodded and managed a grim smile. “A guest has left unexpectedly, so there’s another patio suite available, number three, on the other side of Miss Johnston’s. We’ll move you there after the police give their approval.”

Kerry gave him a smile as if urging him to accept.

He nodded, then wondered why she should have any influence on his decisions.

Because she’d come when he’d needed her.

That was an odd thought. At thirty-seven, he’d made it a rule to never let himself rely on anyone else for emotional or financial support. He’d worked through high school and college to support himself,
separating himself from his father in all the ways he could. If it weren’t for his mother, he doubted he’d ever bother to speak to the man.

But that was the past.

After writing for the college paper, he’d chosen journalism as his field, rather than the law profession, as his father and grandfather had demanded. Youthful defiance maybe, but he’d worked his way into a career he enjoyed—wine critic for a slick and expensive magazine headquartered in New York.

He traveled the world looking for the best wines and restaurants with the best-stocked cellars. He’d written three books, all still in print, one of them a nonfiction bestseller on living the good life.

He’d worked his butt off to show his family he had chosen the
best
life for him.

“Did anyone check for identification on the body?” Jensen asked.

“Patti.” Kerry suddenly spoke up. “Her name is Patti. I met her earlier today. At the voodoo museum, she called herself Queen Patrice, but she was Patti, the waitress, at the restaurant where I had lunch.”