“Of course he does,” she told Irene. “Detective Muldare always welcomes a chance to talk to an attractive woman.”
Irene preened visibly at the endorsement, although she never took her eyes off Jackson. “What’s your name, honey?” she asked Jackson.
“Detective Muldare,” he told her, even though Brianna had just identified him.
“No, your first name, honey,” Irene emphasized, looking for all the world like a cat waiting to pounce.
“It’s Jackson, ma’am.”
Irene beamed as if he had just shared a precious secret. “Like the president.”
“Right,” he agreed. “Like the president.”
“You can ask me anything you want, Jackson,” the woman told him, sounding almost breathless as she practically devoured Jackson with her eyes.
Tamping down her amusement, Brianna mouthed, “Go for it,” and crossed her fingers that this was going to be the break they were hoping for.
Irene reached over and took Jackson’s hand in hers. For a woman in her eighties, she had a remarkably strong grip.
“I’m waiting, Jackson,” Irene coaxed.
Jackson got started.
* * *
Irene Jessop talked for close to two hours, giving her visitors the impression that she very possibly could go on talking forever. But as she continued talking, it was becoming painfully apparent that none of what she was telling them was leading to anything substantial.
As the second hour elapsed, Brianna decided that it was time to save her partner and wrap the interview up. The aide had brought her a chair to sit on, and she rose to her feet.
Relieved, Jackson quickly took the cue and did the same. Irene’s hand had slackened, so he took the opportunity to free himself of her hold.
Irene appeared distressed. “Oh, but you’re not leaving, are you?” Her question was directed at Jackson.
Coming to his rescue, Brianna told the woman, “We’ve taken enough of your time.”
“No, no, you haven’t,” the woman protested. As she reached for Jackson, he heard the sound of a lawn mower revving up somewhere on the property. Irene jumped, her hand flying over her heart.
The lawn-mower noise made carrying on a normal conversation impossible. About to use the noise as an excuse to leave, Brianna saw the old woman’s growing agitation.
Jackson bent over the old woman. “Are you all right?” he asked her.
She seemed clearly distressed as she said to him, “Can’t get away from it anywhere, can I?”
“Get away from what?” Jackson asked her. “The noise?”
The woman bobbed her silver-gray head up and down. “Yes, noise. Always noise. Just like at the hotel,” she complained.
Brianna and Jackson exchanged looks.
“There was noise at the hotel?” she asked the woman. “What kind of noise?”
“Noise,” she insisted, frowning. The memory obviously agitated her. “They were always building, building, building. Just when you thought they were finally finished, they’d start up again. Adding more rooms, putting in more walls.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Brianna asked.
But Irene appeared oblivious, not hearing the question. Her attention was still focused completely on Jackson.
“Who’s the ‘they’ you’re talking about, Irene?” Jackson asked her.
Irene lifted her thin shoulders up and then let them drop in a hapless shrug. “I don’t know. People. Builders building.”
Jackson tried again. “Did you recognize any of them?” he pressed.
Irene’s eyes seemed to lose their focus. “Faces. Lot of faces,” she told him, then repeated, “Lot of faces. I finally had to move. A person can’t sleep with all that noise going on. Hardly anyone left at the hotel,” she told her visitors. “Didn’t make sense to keep building. But I couldn’t take it. I had to move,” she mumbled. “I miss it,” she lamented. “Miss the hotel.”
And then, midword, the old woman stopped talking and her head fell forward.
Alarmed, Brianna crossed over closer to Irene. Jackson was checking her pulse. “She’s not—”
“No, she’s not dead,” Jackson reassured her. “She’s just asleep.”
He looked at Irene Jessop thoughtfully. As he gently placed her hand back down, Irene began to snore quietly. Jackson took the throw that was on the end of her bed and spread it out over her lap and shoulders to cover her.
When he saw Brianna watching him, he murmured self-consciously, “Old people get cold faster than we do.”
You do have a heart in there, Jackson Muldare, Brianna thought, pleased. It took effort not to grin at him. She knew that would set him off.
* * *
“Do you think any of what she told us was real?” he asked as they left the residential facility.
“I do,” Brianna told him with conviction, getting into his car. “It’s undoubtedly mixed in with things she imagined, but I’m willing to bet that what she said has more than an element of truth in it.” She buckled up, her mind whirling as she made plans. “We need to dig into the Old Aurora Hotel’s history, find out the names of the contractors who worked on the place, did renovations, things like that. They would have had to file any upgrades they did with the city.”
“If they were honest and not working off the books,” Jackson pointed out.
She sighed. He was right. “There is that,” she agreed.
Jackson switched lanes. “Might not be a bad idea to check out if there were ever any police reports filed about wild parties, people being arrested in or around the hotel,” he suggested.
Brianna nodded. “Good point.”
“Oh, like you wouldn’t have thought of doing that,” Jackson said.
She was patronizing him, Jackson thought. Probably to get him to drop his guard—and then she’d pounce, ready to convince him to come to that damn gathering she kept pushing.
“I would have,” she readily agreed. “But you thought of it first and saved us some time.” He had to be the hardest person to compliment, Brianna thought. He seemed to suspect everything. The man must have had one hell of a crummy childhood, she thought, sympathy stirring in her. She switched subjects. “See, I told you this wasn’t going to be a waste of time.”
“No, you hoped this wasn’t going to be a waste of time,” he pointed out. “There’s a difference.”
“Do you have to
