The Dancing Girls Read online

  “What’m I supposed to do, Karl? It’s my job. You know that.” Her eyes pleaded with him.

  “A phone call, maybe, rather than a text. Or take a half-hour break to touch base with me, I’ll come to you. You have to eat one way or the other.”

  She crossed the living room to his side and tried an apologetic smile. “I haven’t eaten, actually, and you know how rare that is for me. But you’re right. I should have called you.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Her smile faltered. The truth wasn’t going to help, but she was too burned out to come up with a way to finesse. “Honestly, because I knew you’d be upset and I was avoiding it for the moment.”

  “We’ve been waiting on those reservations for three months, Josette. Three months.” The words jerked out.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” She slid her hand onto his arm.

  He remained motionless and silent.

  The fatigue washed over her again, bleaching out her normally abundant tact and good sense. She turned and crossed back through the living room to the kitchen. “I know, I know, you’ve heard it before. I’ll see if I can’t convince the next killer to pick a better night.” She registered his shocked silence, followed by his footsteps back to bed.

  She sighed. There was such a thing as too much truth, and she knew better. She’d apologize in the morning.

  She started some soft jazz playing through her Bluetooth speakers and turned to pour herself a drink. She grimaced—the counter was covered in coffee grounds. As she wiped it down and pushed the coffee maker back into its place against the wall, her therapist’s voice echoed through her head, reminding her not everybody felt the need to be as freakishly clean and orderly as she did.

  She reached into the cabinet and pulled down a bottle of calvados and a snifter. She worked too hard, she was never home, she always disappointed him. And despite all that, she was struggling to get a handle on work too, even after two months as lieutenant. Maybe she wasn’t the right person for it. The saying claimed you rose to the level of your incompetence, promoted until you sat forever in a job you weren’t good enough to be promoted out of. She used to laugh at the cynicism of that; now she wondered. She’d been a damned good detective, by every measure. She’d made detective faster than anyone in the history of the Oakhurst County State Police Detective Unit, had the highest rate of solved homicides in each of her eleven years as detective, and had received three commendations over her fifteen years of service. Not just because she loved what she did, but because it was what she had to do. She shook her head to clear the painful memories, one in particular, from her visits back to New Orleans as a teenager. She hadn’t been able to get justice for Marc’s death, and she’d never allow another criminal to go free on her watch.

  So she’d hesitated when Assistant District Attorney Rockney came to her, and only considered the promotion to lieutenant because he’d assured her she’d be allowed a hand in investigations. But until today, that hadn’t happened, and her anchor to the work she loved slipped further and further away. And while she’d always been good at managing a team, this was different. Her choices now affected people’s careers, and someone’s nose was always out of joint. She’d believed a moral person who always tried to do the right thing for the right reason would ultimately be respected for her choices. She was wrong.

  And more and more, a voice whispered to her that maybe the promotion had been a mistake, that it wasn’t what she was meant to do. Maybe she should just quit, go back to detective. Make everyone happier.

  Her phone rang. Arnett.

  “Do you have a minute for me to catch you up on the hotel strangling?”

  She poured two fingers into the glass. “I’m at the house. Fill me in over a drink?”

  “You know me, never turn down free booze.”

  Five minutes later, Arnett’s brisk knock broke the silence. Jo motioned him into the living room where a gin and tonic waited. Arnett settled in and leaned back on the sofa, drink in hand.

  “How’s everything coming with Laura?” Jo asked.

  He took a long sip. “She moved back home, but she’s sleeping in the guest bedroom for now. We’re walking on eggshells, trying to figure it out.”

  Jo studied the mix of emotions on his face. “That’s a step in the right direction.”

  “Yeah, funny how it works. She cheats, and I’m the one that’s hard to forgive.”

  “Nobody ever said marriage was easy.”

  He raised his glass in a toast. “Truth.”

  Jo clinked with her snifter. “So, what’s the news with the case?”

  “Information’s coming quickly about Jeanine Hammond. She’s married alright, not divorced or separated, and her husband was expecting her back at the end of the week. With her wedding ring. No kids. She was here for a management training retreat. You know, motivation and team-building skills. She worked for Gelarking & Scribes Inc., a paper goods company specializing in high-end stationery. Oversaw her own small department. I contacted the company and they confirmed the purpose of her trip. So did the company heading the retreat.”

  “Anybody else missing?”

  “Nope, otherwise all present and accounted for.”

  “How was the relationship with the husband?”

  “Here’s the thing. They informed him and got the basics, took the computers, all that. But I don’t want to probe too much until we can talk to him in person, and I’d like to do it myself. I’d prefer you to come if you can break away. The missing wedding ring is bothering me—seems significant, with no other theft. We can do some digging while we’re there.”

  “Why not Lopez?”

  “Her mother’s in the hospital, had a nasty fall. Stable for now, but Lopez doesn’t want to leave town. So, I thought you and I could put the band back together for a day.” Arnett met her eye over his drink. He knew her well enough to read her restlessness.

  Frustration stabbed through Jo. She didn’t just want to conduct these interviews, she needed to. Needed to sink her teeth into something, feel herself making a difference the way she had when she was a detective—and glossing over official business with the hotel manager hadn’t been enough. She glanced toward the bedroom and tried to shut out the thousand responsibilities sitting on her desk at the station. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

  “From what I can tell, we should be able to handle it in a day. The husband’s the main thing, maybe the boss.”

  Karl was pissed anyway—maybe space for a day or two would help. And dammit, the only promise she’d made to herself when she took the job was that she’d stay hands-on with cases.

  Screw it.

  “Rockney can keep the wheels on for a day. Make the arrangements. Anything else come back yet?” She sipped the calvados.

  “I talked to the ME. He confirmed there was no sexual assault of any kind. Cause of death was asphyxiation; she was strangled with some sort of cloth. The marks on the neck suggest that something was wrapped around and twisted at the right front side to tighten it. No fibers left in the wound that they can see, but they’ll take a closer look. Some bruising on the arms around the elbows. Their guess is that she was held in place by someone standing behind her while she was strangled. And, while he agreed that the positioning of the limbs and head was odd, he couldn’t rule out it could have happened just from her falling.”

  She nodded, but remained unconvinced. “Any clues from the room?”

  “They’re still working on it, but it doesn’t look good. Plenty of fingerprints—don’t get me started on how bad the maids clean—so we’re eliminating those that have a reason to be there. But even then, any good defense attorney can make a good case for why a print’s in that room unless we come up with something else to go along with it, and we got nothing so far. It doesn’t look like she spent any real time in the room before she was murdered, hadn’t unpacked, nothing. She used the toilet, and there are a few hairs in the bathroom; we’re waiting for the tests, but they looked like a match for the ones in her brush. I don’t see us getting much unless we get extremely lucky.”

  “What about the surveillance tapes?”

  “Good news is, camera caught her coming in the north side entrance with a male companion in a fedora. He came back out the same entrance, alone, seventeen minutes later. Bad news is, camera’s angled up so high, we can’t see his face. I’m having Renny take a look at it, see if he can do some enhancement to pick up anything useful.” Arnett’s index finger tapped the side of his glass.

  Jo registered the tapping. Something was on Arnett’s mind. He was an excellent detective, with good skills and good instincts; if he was bothered, there was a reason. “Want to throw some ideas out?”

  “Not yet. Let’s talk to the husband and take it from there.”

  Chapter Three

  As Roger Hammond led them into his living room the next day, Jo glanced around, soaking in Jeanine’s personality. The subtle mint greens and pale blues didn’t match Roger or his careless appearance; his brown shirt and black pants were clean but ill-fitting, and his chosen haircut accented the receding middle-aged hairline. The furniture wasn’t new, but it was well kept and strategic. The larger pieces were neutral shades while less expensive touches, mostly in the form of throw pillows, brought color and style to the room. A single framed wedding picture sat in the middle of the mantle.

  When Roger sat on one end of the couch, Arnett claimed the matching love seat at the other end. Jo smiled to herself—old habits were hard to break, and without a word they’d slipped back into their old dynamic. She’d take the lead, and for the most part he’d observe—because, he claimed, she was far more intuitive when it came to reading and connecting with people. And without a doubt, he was near computer-like in his abi
lity to store information for later retrieval, at least when he was allowed to observe the conversation rather than guide it. So, she perched on the armchair kitty-corner to Roger, closer to him, searching his face as she settled. Dark circles under his blue eyes paired with the rumpled clothes to give an air of despondence, of a man getting through the day as best he could.

  Roger lurched halfway back up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think to ask. Can I offer you a cup of coffee?”

  “No, thank you. We drank a pot between us on the plane.” Jo smiled as Arnett took out his notebook. “We’ll be fast, I know this must be a hard time for you.”

  Roger sat back down. “I just want to know what happened. You always see these senseless killings on the news, but you never think—” He choked and broke off, staring down.

  A vision of Jo’s uncle Michel flashed through her mind—he’d never recovered from the death of his wife, and the neighbors found him six months later, dead in his RV, where he’d been sleeping outside the house he’d shared with her. A wave of compassion flooded her, and she placed a gentle hand on his arm. “We’re going to do everything we can to get you some answers, Mr. Hammond.”

  He nodded, then turned back with teary eyes. “What can I tell you?”

  She withdrew her hand. “Why was your wife in Oakhurst?”

  “She went for a company retreat. A team-building workshop that was supposed to help her motivate people or be a better leader. Hopefully get her a promotion.”

  “Was she excited about the trip?”

  “Sure. She was enthusiastic about learning new techniques for work. And we don’t travel much, so she was looking forward to seeing fall in New England. That’s why she went early, on Saturday.”

  “Why weren’t you with her?”

  “I would’ve had to take off work. I’m an air-traffic controller, and it’s not easy to arrange time off outside of our pre-set bids. Fine if it had been a vacation, but it wasn’t. She was going to be busy during most of the days, and probably would have been invited to dinner with colleagues. Why waste the vacation days and the money for that?”

  Arnett’s eyebrows lifted. “Are you having troubles with money?”

  “I wouldn’t say troubles, exactly.”

  “What would you say?” he asked.

  “Just that there always seems to be less money than things you need to spend it on.”

  “Like what?” Jo took back over.

  “Well, we could use a new refrigerator. The one we have is ten years old. And we need to replace our pipes. The water pressure in the house can be almost nonexistent if we have several things running at once.”

  “And you don’t have money to replace them?”

  “Well, technically, we have the money. But if we spend it on that, it’ll cut our savings in half, and then where will we be? That’s one of the reasons I was glad she was going to this retreat. I was hoping it would light a fire under her to get that promotion, so we wouldn’t have to worry so much.”

  Jo ran the numbers in her head. If pipe repair and a new fridge only cut their savings in half, they were sitting far prettier than most families. “She wasn’t enthusiastic about a promotion?”

  “She loved what she did and didn’t want to go to the next step. Which was frustrating. She was very cavalier about money.”

  Jo shifted in her chair. As nice a man as Roger seemed to be, how could he not understand that there were more important things than money?

  Arnett’s radar zoomed in. “Racking up debt? Credit card issues?”

  “Not exactly. We always paid our bills, balances in full every month. But we should have been saving more than we were. I told her time and again, but she would just brush it off, say we were saving plenty. So I figured, if she got promoted, there’d be more money coming in. And she was finally making a move, and then this happens.” His face crumpled.

  Jo exchanged a look with Arnett. No debt, plenty of savings, no children to plan for—where was the problem, exactly? “Was there anyone at work who might have resented her for any reason?”

  “No, she got along well with the people she worked with. Sure, sometimes someone would get ruffled about something, but that happened to everyone.”

  Jo made a note. “Did she have any close friends there? Or favorites among the employees, maybe?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. She felt managers had an obligation to keep work and personal life separate.”

  “So, nobody there we should talk to?”

  Roger leaned forward. “Why? Do you think someone from her work killed her? What makes you think that?”

  “We have to check all the possibilities, that’s all. Eliminate what we can. Speaking of, for the record, I need to know what you were doing that day and evening.” Jo watched Roger’s face.

  His voice flattened. “A group of us got together to barbeque and watch the Blue Jackets game. We do it all the time, with two couples we know. I can give you their information, they live about ten minutes away.”

  “I’d appreciate that.” She paused for a moment, but it had to be done. “Were there any problems in your marriage?”

  His eyes flicked to Arnett, then back to Jo. “Absolutely not. We had a great marriage. Sure, there were issues we fought about, mostly money, but all couples fight about those things. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “No big fights recently?”

  “None.”

  She put a drop of honey into her voice to give it a soothing edge. “Any affairs, now or in the past?”

  “Never. I would never do something like that to her.” His throat seized again. “I would never have done anything like that to her. I loved her. She was my entire life. I don’t know how I’m going to…” He trailed off, gesturing around the room, words evaporated.

  “And what about her? Would she have done something like that?” Jo’s voice stayed gentle.

  “No, I don’t believe that. There’s no way.”

  “Why do you say that?” Jo studied him.

  “I don’t see how. She never did anything even remotely suspicious. She never worked late or on weekends. She was a loyal employee, but always said nobody ever wished on their deathbed that they’d worked more overtime. She hardly went out without me, only once a week with her friends Paola and Lorraine. Even her hobbies were home-based.”

  “What were her hobbies?” Arnett asked, face blank.

  “She loved to read. She loved to draw. She played a lot of computer games and we watched a fair amount of TV, although she’s been watching less lately. That’s it, really.”

  “And what about her mood? Any unusual changes, good or bad?” Arnett asked.

  “Nothing unusual… well, I guess she was a little happier recently. She got depressed a lot, it runs in her family. It always passed sooner or later.” His eyes darted between them, and his face tightened. “No. I’m sorry, Detectives. I don’t believe she was cheating on me, not for one second.”

  Jo met his eyes with a well-practiced, reassuring smile. “We have to ask, that’s all. Cover the bases. I’m sure your wife loved you very much.”

  Roger looked at her for a moment, then nodded and looked down into his lap.

  “Her family, any issues there?”

  “She didn’t really have any family. Her mother and father are both gone, and she didn’t have any siblings. She doesn’t have much extended family either, and what she has, they aren’t close. They live on the west coast and weren’t in contact. I don’t even know any names.”

  Jo closed her notepad, and stood up, Arnett following suit. “Thank you, Mr. Hammond. I know this wasn’t an easy conversation.”

  “I want you to find who did this to her. Please. If there’s anything else I can tell you, let me know. It’s just so—I mean—she was staying in a good hotel, with good security—I don’t understand how this happened.”

  Uncle Michel flashed through her mind again. She put her hand on the man’s shoulder. “We’ll do everything we can to get answers for you, Mr. Hammond.”

  Arnett automatically headed for the passenger side, giving Jo her turn to drive. “That brought home Laura’s point about passive neglect. Might be a good idea to bring her some flowers when I get home.” He tapped a dour reminder into his phone while Jo started the car and programmed the address for their meeting with Paola Lowell, one of Jeanine’s two close friends, into the GPS unit. Paola had agreed to meet with them between client appointments at a Starbucks about a mile away.