31906844db5c02010017a90f3f2ca805

“I guess she liked to hang out with us. There’s only three of us that smoke in the whole house, and when she was on her break Shauna always came down here and joined us. I once asked if she wasn’t afraid of second-hand smoke but she didn’t care. She was a sweet girl but she didn’t get along with some of the others—especially Helen. She’s the housekeeper. A real hellcat.”

“I had no idea this place had a smoker’s room,” said Odelia.

“Emerald didn’t like it, but if she wanted to keep Chef happy, she had to keep it. She wanted us to smoke outside, but Chef doesn’t like freezing his rocks off just because he’s a smoker. So he told Emerald either she organized a smoker’s room or he was going to walk. She organized the room.”

“So Shauna slipped this note under my door last night,” said Odelia, deciding to tackle this thing head-on.

She placed the note in front of the cook, who read it eagerly.“Oh, that poor, stupid girl.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She must have seen something, and instead of coming right out and telling the police she must have been chewing on it all day yesterday, only to finally decide to come forward in this roundabout way. And it got her killed.”

“Did she tell you what it was that she saw, or heard?”

Sylvia bit her lip and shook her head.“If she’d told me I’d have advised her to go straight to the police.”

“Why didn’t she?”

The woman stubbed out her cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.“It’s a big step to talk to the police—especially when you’re a small cog in a big machine. My guess is she wasn’t sure of what she saw, and didn’t want to get in trouble with Helen or Emerald. So she decided to talk to you first.”

“You don’t think she fell, do you?”

Sylvia slowly shook her head.“No, I don’t.”

“This is very important,” said Odelia, leaning forward. “Do you have any idea who might have done this to her?”

Sylvia stared at Odelia for a moment, then lit up another cigarette and directed a plume of smoke at the ceiling.“No, I don’t, unfortunately.”

“If you knew, you would tell me, right? I’m not a cop, Sylvia. Whatever you tell me stays between us. I promise you.”

Sylvia flashed a quick smile.“I know. Shauna talked a lot about you. She was a big fan. Read all of your articles. And if I had any idea what happened I would happily tell you, but unfortunately I don’t. All because Shauna didn’t trust me enough to tell me what was going on.” She hung her head. “And for that I’ll always blame myself.”

Odelia took the woman’s hand. “Please don’t. This is not your fault.”

Sylvia looked up, and there were tears in her eyes.“If only she’d confided in me, I would have gone straight to the cops and she’d still be alive.” They sat for a few moments in silence, then Sylvia said, in a throaty voice, “Please get whoever did this to my friend, Miss Poole. Promise me. For Shauna.”

“I promise,” said Odelia, touched. “I will leave no stone unturned.”

Chapter 35

Odelia was right: the secret passageway we’d discovered connected all of the rooms on our floor. Dooley and I had set out to explore them, and before long we’d discovered we could go literally anywhere and not be detected. Of course the rooms were all deserted now, with their inhabitants either having breakfast or being interviewed by Chief Alec’s people, or even walking their dogs outside. Suddenly we heard voices, though, and so we followed them to the source. They were all male voices, so I was curious to say the least.

“Do you think we’ve hit upon a secret gathering within the secret passageways?” asked Dooley excitedly.

“No idea, Dooley.”

“There could be a secret cult living within these walls, studying the people in the rooms, and murdering with absolute impunity,” he said, his imagination taking sudden flight. Dooley is prone to such flights of fancy.

“Or it could be the cleaners taking a break,” I said.

“That doesn’t sound as exciting as my idea.”

No, it certainly did not.

The voices appeared to originate from inside the room that had been awarded to Kimberlee’s boyfriend upon Kimberlee’s tragic demise. From what I could tell there were at least five occupants in there, yapping away.

Dooley and I positioned ourselves near the cracks in the wall so we had a perfect vantage point to spy on these humans without them knowing. I saw Kimberlee’s boyfriend Zoltan, Emerald’s husband Pete, Abbey’s husband Seger, Verna’s husband Thaw, and Alina’s husband Reinhart. Even the director, Odo Hardy, was there. They were seated in the apartment’s salon, drinking hard liquor and smoking something that smelled extremely… pungent.

“Weed,” I told Dooley. “They’re smoking weed.”

“Why would they smoke weeds?” asked Dooley.

“Not weeds. Weed. It’s a drug.”

“A drug!”

“Humans like it. A lot of them seem to smoke it.”

“So weird,” was Dooley’s determination. “Why would anyone want to fill their lungs with smoke? That just seems like a very irrational thing to do.”

“I know, right?”