“Damn,” he said again. “I hope you’re right.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” I said tensely.
In the business listings of the telephone directory was a hotel called Harbor Court, bor Co, bor C. I kept seeing the miniature black letters on the wisps of burned paper. The hotel was one of the most luxurious in the city, and it was directly across the street from Harbor Place.
“I tell you what I can’t figure,” Marino went on as another taxi passed us by. “Why all the bother?
So Miss Harper kills herself, right? Why go to all the trouble to do it in such a mysterious way?
Make any sense to you?”
“She was a proud woman. Suicide was probably a shameful act to her. She may not have wanted anyone to figure it out, and she may have chosen to take her life while I was inside her house.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps because she didn’t want her body found a week later.”
Traffic was terrible, and I was beginning to wonder if we were going to have to walk to the harbor.
“And you really think she knew about this isomer business?”
“I think she did,” I said.
“How come?”
“Because she would wish for death with dignity, Marino. It’s possible she’d premeditated suicide for quite a long time, in the event her leukemia became acute and she didn’t want to suffer or make others suffer any longer. Levomethorphan was a perfect choice. In most instances, it never would
have been detected–providing a cough suppressant containing dextromethorphan was found inside her house.”
“No shit?” he marveled as a taxi, thank God, pulled out of traffic and headed our way. “I’m impressed. You know, I really am.”
“It’s tragic.”
“I don’t know.”
He peeled open a stick of gum and began to chew with vigor. “Me, I wouldn’t want to be tied down to no hospital bed with tubes in my nose. Maybe I would’ve thought like she did.”
“She didn’t kill herself because of her cancer.”
“I know,” he said as we ventured off the curb. “But it’s related. Gotta be. She’s not long for this world anyway. Then Beryl gets whacked. Next, her brother gets whacked.”
He shrugged. “Why hang around?”
We got into the taxi and I gave the driver the address. For ten minutes we rode in silence. Then the taxi crept almost to a stop and threaded through a narrow arch leading into a brick courtyard bright with beds of ornamental cabbages and small trees. A doorman dressed in tails and a top hat was immediately at my elbow, and I found myself escorted inside a splendid light-filled lobby of rose and cream. Everything was new and clean and highly polished, with fresh flowers arranged on fine furniture, and crisp members of the hotel staff alighting where needed but not obtrusive.
We were shown to a well-appointed office, where the well-dressed manager was talking on the telephone. T. M. Bland, according to the brass nameplate on his desk, glanced up at us and quickly completed his call. Marino wasted no time telling him what we wanted.
“The list of our guests is confidential,” Mr. Bland replied, smiling benignly.
Marino helped himself to a leather chair and lit a cigarette, despite the THANK YOU FOR NOT
SMOKING sign in plain view on the wall, then reached for his wallet and flashed his badge.
“Name’s Pete Marino,” he said laconically. “Richmond P.O., Homicide. This here’s Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia. We sure as hell understand your insistence on confidentiality, and respect your hotel for that, Mr. Bland. But you see, Sterling Harper’s dead. Her brother Gary Harper’s dead. And Beryl Madison’s dead, too. Gary Harper and Beryl was murdered.
We’re not too sure yet what happened to Miss Harper. That’s what we’re here for.”
“I read the newspapers, Detective Marino,” Mr. Bland said, his composure beginning to waver.
“Certainly the hotel will cooperate with the authorities in any way possible.”
“Then you’re telling me they was guests here,” Marino said.
“Gary Harper was never a guest here.”
“But his sister and Beryl Madison was.”
“That is correct,” Mr. Bland said.
“How often, and when was the last time?”