Private #1 Suspect (Private 2)

I buzzed her in, and when she came to the door, I took the tray and put it on the hall table.

Her face was sunny and beautiful, and her glasses were cute, the lenses a girly shade of pink. She was wearing jeans and a blue polo shirt.

Same color blue as her eyes.

Same color blue as the shirt I was wearing.

She said, “Hey, look at you.”

I said, “If you don’t mind, I’d rather look at you.”

“Okay,” she said.

We laughed and I wrapped her in my arms, gave her a long hug.

As I hugged her, she told me what she’d brought for dinner, heirloom tomato salad and crab cakes with mango salsa. She was excited, talking very fast.

I had already had dinner at Cody’s farewell banquet, but Jinx didn’t know, and she wasn’t going to hear it from me.

“I made the salsa myself,” she said, still holding on to me. “Specialty of the house.”

“I have a bottle of Pinot Grigio on ice.”

“I hoped you would,” she said, grinning up at me. She had a very pretty smile.

I got the wine and we took dinner out to the deck, settled into chairs, took a few breaths, and relaxed.

We toasted the setting sun as it did a fan dance with a bank of fat gray clouds. It was all special: the view, the salsa, the wine, and Jinx, who was turning out to be very good company.

She kicked off her sandals, hugged her knees, and asked me to tell her more about myself, something that wasn’t on my corporate bio.

I could give a pretty good tour of my life using the map of scars on my body, but no. Not right now. I was thinking of a football story, something funny, when a musical ringtone came from the living room. Jinx’s phone.

She said, “I’m not answering that.”

“Good.”

When her phone rang the second time, it broke the mood for real. I closed the sliding glass doors, but we could still hear the phone when it called out again.

Jinx said, “It might be…Let me just get it. I’ll be right back.”

I stared out at the surf as Jinx opened the doors. I liked Jinx, was enjoying whatever this was, a date or just getting to know her.

I thought about telling her that I could make her cell phone disappear, that I could demonstrate my famous forward pass and send it into the ocean.

I thought she would laugh.

But then I heard her say in the next room, “Please. Just tell me.” And then, “Oh, no. No. I’ll be right there. Don’t touch anything.”

Jinx returned to the deck, a look of panic on her face.

“Someone else was killed in my hotel, Jack. Another man is dead.”

CHAPTER 108

I STOOD WITH Jinx just outside the Fellini Room on the second floor at the front of the hotel. It wasn’t the best location or the priciest room, but there was easy access by way of the stairs from the lobby.

The distraught young guy standing with us in the hallway was the manager, “Mr. Knowles.” His face was red, his lower lip quivered, and his eyes were swollen.