“When you said you knew Maxie was never going to leave Paradise again,” Jesse said, “what did you mean?”
But Jesse had lost him. Al Franzen had retreated into himself, his eyes as unseeing as Maxie’s. Jesse waited a few minutes to let Franzen collect himself before explaining to the old man that he would have to identify his wife’s body.
28
Rod Wiethop lived in a crappy two-room apartment above a deli in the Swap. He wasn’t happy about being woken up by the pounding at his door and he was even less thrilled when he pulled back the door to see who had been doing the pounding. He sneered at the badge on Jesse Stone’s jacket.
“Yeah, what?” he asked, a freshly lit cigarette dangling from his lips.
“I’m Jesse Stone, chief of the Paradise PD. Can I come in, Mr. Wiethop?” Jesse pronounced the th in Wiethop’s name like the th in Thursday.
“It’s Wiethop, like Wee-top,” he said, his voice all gravelly from smoke and sleep. “And no, you can’t come in. What’s this about?”
Jesse didn’t react, not immediately.
“You drive the six-to-six shift for Paradise Taxi?” he asked.
“What of it?”
Jesse gave Wiethop the cold stare and asked, “Is that yes or no in asshole-speak?”
Wiethop shook his head. “Jeez, cops. It’s too early for this crap. Come on in.”
Jesse stepped into what passed for the living room. It had all the charm of a holding cell. Jesse guessed Wiethop had probably spent a fair amount of time in holding cells.
“What can I do you for, Chief?”
“You had a fare last night. A blond woman wearing—”
“A fake fur coat. Yeah, I’m not likely to forget her. She was a pretty hot piece of skirt for an old working girl. Something to drink, Chief?” Wiethop asked, holding up a half-empty bottle of cheap vodka.
“No, thanks. Little early in the day for vodka.”
“You mind if I do? It’s the only thing I can drink.”
Jesse said, “Knock yourself out.”
Wiethop filled a dirty coffee mug and took a gulp, blowing cigarette smoke out his nose as he did.
“About this woman you’re not likely to forget.”
“What about her?”
“Where’d you pick her up and where’d you drop her off?”
“Easy.” He took another gulp followed by a deep drag on the cigarette. “Paradise Plaza at about eleven-thirty and dropped her at the Gray Gull maybe five minutes later.”
Jesse was already shaking his head before Wiethop was halfway done with his answer.
“Try again.”
“Check my trip sheet if you don’t believe me,” Wiethop said, lighting another cigarette with the one he was still smoking. Jesse had already rattled him.
“Did that. Checked your trip sheet. Been to the Gray Gull. You’re full of it.”
Jesse could see the wheels turning in the cabbie’s head. Wiethop poured himself some more vodka, took all of it at once, and winced.
“Okay, all right.” He crushed the second cigarette out without even taking a hit. “The old babe gave me fifty bucks on the arm if I said I took her to the Gull.”
“That’s a start. Where’d you really take her?”
“The Bluffs, over by the old Salter place. I told her she could wait in the car until her trick showed up. She didn’t like that too well. Threw the fifty and a ten at me and told me to shove it.”
“You thought she was a hooker?”
“C’mon, Chief. Made sense, right? Getting picked up at a hotel and then asking to get driven up to some deserted place on the Bluffs. Shit, you knew she was gonna get in somebody’s car after that. She’s wearing that big fake fur and she was all made up and smelled like a million bucks’ worth of perfume, too.”
“That was no fake fur, Wiethop, and she was no hooker.”
“You’re kidding me.” He shrugged. “I didn’t figure that. But I’m telling you she was meeting somebody. I’d stake my ass on it. She could hardly sit still in her seat. I thought she was going to make a big score.”
“You’re sure you left her by the Salter place and not further up the Bluffs?”
Wiethop held his hands out at Jesse. “Why would I lie to you about something as stupid as that?”
“All right. Thanks.” Jesse turned to go.
“Listen, Chief, you ain’t gonna tell my boss about—”
“About the extra fifty and lying on your trip sheet? Not unless I find out you were lying to me. I find that out and it won’t be your boss you’ll have to worry about answering to.”
“I wasn’t lying to you. I swear.”
Jesse wasn’t sure he believed him.
29
Connor Cavanaugh was an old football buddy of Suit’s. He was head of security at the Paradise Plaza, the one full-service hotel in Paradise. The rest of the accommodations in town were a patchwork quilt of quaint inns and fussy Victorians converted into B-and-Bs by overwrought Bostonians or New Yorkers with fantasies of simpler lives. Winter was the dead zone for any place with vacant rooms in Paradise. There was the regatta in summer, the changing foliage in autumn, and the antiques sales in spring to lure outsiders to town. Usually, there was no equivalent winter magnet to draw people to Paradise, but this year there was murder.
Cavanaugh perked up when Jesse strode into his basement office. He stood up and gave Jesse a big handshake. Though Cavanaugh had put on some weight since his playing days, his belly creeping over his beltline, he was strong. Jesse flexed his hand to get feeling back into it once Connor had let it go.
“How you doing, Jesse? All these bodies can’t be good for anyone but us. We got a run on rooms. A lot of the news crews are staying here.”
“I’m doing okay, but I need to get these cases solved.”
“I hear you,” Cavanaugh said. “You remember how to use the system?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ll go do my rounds, then. I got it all queued up for you.”
“How about incoming and outgoing calls?” Jesse asked.
“Right. I almost forgot about that.” Cavanaugh took a slip of message paper out of his back pocket. “There was one incoming call at ten-forty-seven and an outgoing call at eleven-twenty. Anything else?”
“Do you have the numbers?”
Cavanaugh hesitated. “Technically, we’re not supposed to keep track of this sort of thing. Our guests have a right to their privacy.”
“Tell it to the NSA. Do you have the numbers? It will be between the two of us.”
Cavanaugh handed the slip of paper to Jesse. “That’s the incoming number there. I don’t have the outgoing. Guests can dial out directly. It only comes up on our records as local, long-distance, or overseas.”
“That’s fine,” Jesse said. “I’ll take it from here.”
Jesse waited for Cavanaugh to leave. He looked at the number of the incoming call. He didn’t recognize it, though he didn’t have any expectation that he would. He was confident he already knew the outgoing number. That was Maxie calling Paradise Taxi for her cab. He had gotten the time of that incoming call when he’d been to the cab company’s offices earlier that morning. The times matched up. He called Suit, gave him the incoming number, and told him to trace it. He also told Suit to make an appointment for him with Lance Szarbo, the only viable witness to the girls’ disappearance.
Jesse got to work on the hotel’s video surveillance footage. He knew that there would be coverage in the hallway outside Maxie and Al Franzen’s room, in the elevator, all entrance and exit points, the lobby, and all other public areas of the hotel. He began with hallway footage, speeding through the video until he saw Suit accompanying Maxie back to her room. From that point on, he watched the footage at a slower rate, though he didn’t figure he would see Maxie appear again until after her phone call to Paradise Taxi. He was wrong.