Private #1 Suspect (Private 2)

I poured coffee, and she told me that she had heard about Private and that she knew we were damned good. She continued to look nervous, as if she were trying to keep whatever was bothering her under wraps.

Ms. Poole played with her diamonds, took snapshots of me with her darting eyes.

I said, “So, what brings you to Private?”

And then she blurted it out. “A guest was killed in his room at the Sun last night. I haven’t told anyone. I haven’t even reported it to the police. I’m scared. This is the third guest who was killed in one of my hotels, and I don’t know what to do.”

CHAPTER 15

HOTEL ROBBERIES WEREN’T rare, but hotel murders were. Jinx Poole told me that all of the murder victims—three at her hotels, two at other California hotels—were businessmen, out-of-towners traveling alone.

“The police are worse tha

n hopeless,” she said. “The last time they came, they shut the place down, closed the bar for forty-eight hours. They interviewed every guest, freaked out my staff, and didn’t come up with a suspect, not one!

“Our bookings tanked. We’ve got empty rooms in high season—I mean, who’s going to stay in a hotel where someone was murdered?

“Jack, I’m desperate. People are being killed. I don’t know why. I don’t know who is doing this. But all I have are these hotels. I need your help.”

I wanted Jinx Poole to have the LAPD work the crime and hire Private to set up an airtight security system going forward—but the woman was getting to me.

She was vulnerable, but she was bravely working hard to solve her problem. I liked her. I understood her feelings. Completely.

Still, we didn’t have the manpower to take on a multi-victim crime spree on the wrong side of law enforcement. We were booked to the walls, and now our number one job was finding whoever killed Colleen Molloy.

I asked Jinx questions, hoping that her answers would help me decide what to do.

She told me that the dead guest at the Sun was Maurice Bingham, midforties, lived in New York, an advertising man who was in LA on business.

No sounds of a fight had been reported. The hotel staff knew Bingham. He paid his tab by credit card, didn’t make extraordinary demands. He wasn’t due to check out until tomorrow—which was promising news.

It meant that no one was looking for him yet in New York and that it was reasonable to assume that this early in the day, with the “Do Not Disturb” light on, housekeeping hadn’t yet found his body.

“Tell me about your security system.”

“Cameras are in the hallways, of course. And we have a few at the pool.”

“I need you to shut down the cameras on the murder floor for about an hour so we can get in and out. Can you do that?”

“Yes. So you’ll take the job?”

“I can’t make any promises, but we’ll check out the room and the body. Call it a consultation.”

“I understand.”

“I’ll need access to the room.”

Jinx Poole opened her handbag, took out a master key card, and handed it over.

“I need a place to stay for a couple of nights. I can check into the Sun,” I said.

“Great idea,” said Jinx Poole. “The Coppola Suite is empty. Be my guest.”

CHAPTER 16

WITH THE EXCEPTION of city dumps, hotel rooms are the worst places on earth for gathering forensic evidence. Even in five-diamond hotels, DNA, fibers, and fingerprints from a few hundred previous guests will all be present.

But it was worth a try.