“It’ll mean my weekend’s shot to hell.”
“So’s mine,” Smilow said unapologetically. “I want toxicology, everything.”
“You always do,” Madison said with a good-natured smile. “I’ll do my best.”
“You always do.”
After the body had been removed, Smilow addressed one of the CSU techs. “How is it?”
“It’s in our favor that the hotel is new. Not that many fingerprints, so most of them will probably be Pettijohn’s.”
“Or the perp’s.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” the technician said, frowning. “It’s as clean a site as I’ve ever seen.”
When the suite was empty, Smilow walked through it himself. He personally checked everything, opening every drawer, checking the closet and the built-in safe, looking between the mattresses, underneath the bed, inside the bathroom medicine cabinet, the tank of the toilet, looking for anything that Lute Pettijohn might have left behind that hinted at his killer’s identity.
The sum total of Smilow’s find was a Gideon Bible and the Charleston telephone directory. He found nothing personal belonging to Lute Pettijohn, no date book, receipts, tickets, scribbled notes, food wrappers, nothing.
Smilow counted two bottles of scotch missing from the minibar, but only one glass had been used, unless the murderer had been smart enough to take the one he’d used with him when he left. But Smilow learned after checking with housekeeping that the standard number of highball glasses stocked in a suite was four, and three clean ones remained.
As crime scenes go, it was virtually sterile—except for the bloodstain on the sitting room carpet.
“Detective?”
Smilow, who’d been thoughtfully staring at the blood-soaked carpet, raised his head.
The officer standing in the open doorway hitched his thumb toward the corridor. “She insisted on coming in.”
“She?”
“Me.” A woman nudged aside the patrol officer as though he were of no significance whatsoever, removed the crime scene tape from the doorway, and stepped inside. Quick, dark eyes swept the room. When she saw the dark bloodstain, she expelled a breath of disappointment and disgust. “Madison has already got the body? Damn!”
Smilow, crooking his arm in order to read the face of his wristwatch, said, “Congratulations, Steffi. You’ve broken your own speed record.”
Chapter 3
“I thought you might be waiting on the husband and kids.”
“When?”
“When you came into the pavilion.”
“Oh.”
She didn’t take Hammond’s bait, but only continued licking her ice-cream bar. Not until the wooden stick was clean did she say, “Is that your way of asking if I’m married?”
He made a pained face. “And here I thought I was being so subtle.”
“Thanks for the chocolate nut bar.”
“Is that your way of avoiding an answer?”
Laughing, they approached a set of uneven wooden steps leading down to a pier. The platform stood about three feet above the surface of the water and was about ten yards square. Water lapped gently against the pilings beneath the weathered planks. Wooden benches formed the perimeter, their backs serving as a safety railing. Hammond took her ice-cream stick and wrapper and discarded them along with his in a trash can, then motioned her toward one of the benches.
At each corner of the deck was a light pole, but the bulbs were dim and unobtrusive. Clear Christmas lights like those on the ceiling of the pavilion had been strung between the light poles. They softened the rusticity, making the ordinary, unattractive pier a romantic setting.
The breeze was soft, but strong enough to give one a fighting chance against mosquitoes. Frogs croaked in the dense undergrowth lining the riverbank. Cicadas sang from the low-hanging, moss-strewn branches of the sheltering live oak trees.