called blue laws, when women weren’t allowed to drink at the bar, or—for all he knew—occupy hotel rooms with men who weren’t their husbands.
“Could you check your records for a woman with the first name Carrie?” he asked. “Who also might have been here last weekend.”
“That…might be difficult,” Morgan said.
“This is a homicide,” Carella said.
“Let me see if the computer can do a find.”
The computer did, in fact, “do a find”—but it found nothing for anyone named Carrie.
“How about the initials JSH?” Carella said.
“Really, I don’t see how…”
“Do a find for last names beginning with the letter ‘H,’” Carella said. “Then narrow it to first names beginning with ‘J,’ and if you get lucky, close in on the ‘S.’ This would’ve been a woman, too.”
“JSH,” Morgan said.
“Please.”
Three women whose last names began with the letter “H” had checked in last Saturday. All three worked for IBM. Only one of them had a first name beginning with the letter “J.” She had signed in as Miss Jacqueline Held, no middle initial, and had given an address in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“How old was she, would you know?” Carella asked.
“Our records would not show that,” Morgan said.
“How about the room clerk who checked her in? Would he remember?”
“She,” Morgan corrected. “Everyone behind the registration desk is a woman.”
“Would the same room clerk be working today?”
“Usually we have the same people on weekends, yes.”
“Can we find out which one of them checked in Miss Held?”
“Nothing is impossible,” Morgan said, and then added—somewhat sarcastically, Carella thought—“This is a homicide, you know.” But he was smiling.
The clerk who’d checked in Miss Jacqueline Held recalled her as a dark-haired woman in her forties with a distinct Southern accent.
“What room was Henderson in?” Carella asked.
“We’ll have to go back to the Business Office,” Morgan said, and briskly led the way down the corridor. Carella got the impression that he was beginning to enjoy himself. Well, it had been a long hard winter.
The computer showed that Henderson had stayed in room 1215, which was occupied at the moment.
“How about the maid who cleaned that room?” Carella asked. “Is she working today.”
“Well, let’s see if we can find her, shall we?” Morgan said, sounding positively ebullient now.
Two maids had worked the twelfth floor that weekend. Both of them were from Brazil. One of them was short, the other very tall. The short one spoke only Portuguese. The tall one’s English was halting at best. She told Carella that she vaguely remembered the people who had occupied—
“People?” he said.
“Man and girl,” she said, and nodded.
“Can you describe them for me?”
“Man short, eyeglasses, maybe forty-five. Girl blond, maybe eighteen, nineteen. Maybe was daughter, no?”
The short maid suddenly began shaking her head and speaking in rapid Portuguese.
“What is it?” Carella asked.
“She says wasn’t daughter. The girl.”
“She saw her, too?”
“Voce tambem a viu?”
“Claro que vi ela. Eles estavam esperando o elevador.”
“She says, Yes, she saw her. They were waiting for the elevator.”
“What makes her think this wasn’t his daughter?”
“Por que voce acha que ela nao era filha dele?”the tall one asked.
“Porque eles estavam se beijando,”the short one said.
The tall one turned back to them and shrugged.
“Because they were kissing,” she said.
The Business Office showed no room service charges for Henderson on Saturday night. Neither had he charged anything to the hotel restaurant that night. The records did reveal, however, that he had charged his stay to an American Express card. Carella copied down the number and expiration date of his card, and then asked if he could use a telephone.
He stopped in the coffee shop first, found Teddy sitting alone at a table near the window, sneaked up behind her, kissed her on top of the head, and then came around to sit opposite her at the table.
“You okay?” he asked.
Her hands flying, she told him it was very nice sitting here in the window, watching all the comings and goings outside, somewhat like seeing a foreign movie with actors she didn’t recognize. She kept making up stories about them in her head. Which of them were married, which of them were having affairs, which of them were businessmen or spies…
I think I saw one who was positively a detective,she said.
He watched her hands, watched her lips mouthing the words.
“How do you know he was a detective?” he asked.
First off, he was very handsome…
“I don’t know any detectives who are handsome,” he said.
I know one,she said.
He took her hands, kissed first one, and then the other.
“I have to make one phone call,” he said. “Then we can have some lunch and start home. Will you be okay here?”
If I have any more coffee, I won’t beableto eat lunch,she said.
“This’ll take maybe ten, fifteen minutes,” he said.
Morgan found him a phone in a private little office, and provided him with an 800 number to call for American Express. The woman at the other end wanted to know how she could tell for sure he was a police detective. He gave her his shield number, gave her the number at the precinct, gave her his lieutenant’s name, even gave her the name of the Chief of Detectives and the number to call at Headquarters to verify that he was for real. She asked him to hold while she talked to her supervisor.
Carella waited.
The woman came back some five minutes later.
“Sorry, Detective Carella,” she said, “we have to check. What can I do for you?”
He explained what she could do for him.
AT LUNCH, he told Teddy what he had learned today.
“He was definitely here with the girl. One of the maids saw him kissing her while they were waiting for an elevator.”
Romantic,Teddy signed.
“Very. Unless you’re married to someone else.”
You’d better never,she said.
“My guess is she checked into a separate room, snuck down the hall each night to sleep with him.”
Like the English do,Teddy said.At country houses on weekends down from London.
“Yes, exactly like the English do,” he said. “How do you know what the English do in country houses on weekends?”
Movies,she said, and shrugged.
“His Sunday morning room service charge was fortwobreakfasts. Bit careless, huh?”
Not if you don’t think anyone’ll come around checking.
“American Express gave me two restaurant charges for him. One for dinner on Saturday night, the other for
