The phone rings in another universe, but I don't wake up until Lucy climbs over me to answer. I feel her young, firm breasts on my chest before I hear her voice.
“Jim Barlowe P.I.” she says, and the phrase doesn't sound as nifty as it did fifteen years ago. “This is his secretary.”
The person on the other end of the line says something, and then Lucy says; “Alright, I'll tell him,” and hangs up.
She moves herself around until she's laying on top of me under the covers, with her knees on the bed on both sides of me and I can feel the heat from her pussy on the tip of my cock. I want to sleep more and so I pretend I'm not awake, but my cock betrays me and stiffens up.
“Well?” I say with my eyes still closed.
“It was Rowe. Some old lady got herself killed at the Darella Hotel,” she says into my neck. “He's waiting for you there.” She starts to rub against the tip.
I open my eyes, but the world is still spinning so I close them again.
“Rowe? At the Darella? But that's a two hour drive.”
“Mh-m.”
It slips inside her, and I let her ride me until we both come. It doesn't take long.
-
A shower and a cold cup of yesterdays coffee with the last drops of the brandy we had just a few hours earlier in it, and I'm somewhat able to drive. We reach the hotel as the sun peeks over the white tops of the mountains.
The Darella is part of a small ski resort, but it's springtime and the hotel is just below the snow line now. The grass seems even greener here than farther down. We walk in and a skinny bellboy, barely out of his teens, with dark brown hair hanging down and covering most of his face tells us his name is Aron, and takes us up the stairs to the second floor.
There are four doors there, two on each side of the hall. There's a No smoking sign on all of them, which doesn't go well with the smell of cigarette smoke in the air. Aron takes us to number 202. He just points to the door and walks away.
Detective Rowe is inside, with two police officers.
“You look like shit, Jim,” Rowe says when he sees me.
“Good morning to you too,” I say. “Who is this?” I nod my head at the dead body on the bed. It's a blonde woman, maybe in her early fifties. She's naked apart from a cast around her right wrist and a dark blue silk scarf around her neck.
“That, my friend,” he says, “is Diana Doll.”
I wait for him to continue, but then I realize that he obviously thinks the name should mean something to me.
“Who?”
“Diana Doll. She had a few hits in the eighties. One of those broads with a shitty voice but great tits. Probably wouldn't have sold one single if she wasn't half naked on the cover of them. Hey, Lucy.”
Lucy smiles and waves childishly to him.
She still has great tits, I deduce. And she had obviously been a beauty once. From a distance, like say the distance between an audience and an artist on a stage, she could still pass as a bombshell. Well, not anymore of course, her blue lips and the marks on her neck ruins that impression.
“Who strangled her?”
“That's why you're here, Jim.”
“Any suspects?”
“Three of them, actually. Her PA and two of the employees here at the hotel.”
“Why them?”
“Because they're the only ones who where up here before she died. There's a security camera down in the lobby, facing the stairs. Those three were the only ones going up here last night. There aren't any other guests here.”
“I see.”
“But that's all we have. No other evidence.”
“Fingerprints?”
“Tons. Nothing useful.”
“Time of death?”
“Some time between ten and midnight, I'd say. Give or take an hour.”
“Did you question the suspects?”
“Just a couple questions. It's all yours, Jim.”
“Do you mind?”
“Hey, the less I have to do, the better, right? Can they take her away now?”
“Give me a second.”
I turn to Lucy. “Need anything more?”
She looks around the room for a moment, and shakes her head.
“Then go and do your thing.” She spins around and walks away, a little too enthusiastic.
The curtains are pulled away, and through the window I can see the sun has already fully escaped from its cover behind the mountains.
On the bedside table, next to a digital clock that says 07:42, there's a plate with a typical hotel breakfast on it. A toast, a sliced, hard boiled egg, a glass of milk and a glass of orange juice. She's eaten most of the toast, and the glass of juice is half full with a distinct bright red lipstick mark on the rim of it.
On a desk by the south wall there's an open suitcase with clothes neatly folded inside. Beside it is an open and stuffed makeup bag.
“What's with the bandage?” I ask.
“She did a photo shoot yesterday morning. Some promotional thing. I may be old, and I can't sing to save my life, but I still look hot in a one piece ski suit! You know? But apparently she'd never skied before, and she fell and broke her wrist.”
“That's why she was here at the hotel? For the photo shoot?”
“No. She was suppose to do a concert down in the valley tonight. Guess she wanted to make a comeback, but I think they sold like twenty tickets or so.”
“Is there a room I can use, an office or something? For the interrogations?”
“Sure.”
We leave the hotel room together and let the two police officers finish up.
“And get me a pot of coffee, will you?” I say.
“And maybe a mint?”
I shrug. “We'll see what Lucy has, and then I'll start with the PA.”
-
We're in the hotel's conference room, a medium sized room with a table with four chairs around it in the middle, a coffee machine and a ceramic sink by the wall to my left and a two seater by the wall to my right, when Lucy enters. It's been almost an hour, but Rowe is still sipping on his first cup of coffee. I have already finished three cups and half a box of lemon tic tacs.
We've just gone through the recording from the security camera. As the time stamp on the screen shows 20:55 last night, there's a woman, Diana Doll's personal assistant, walking up the stairs. Just before half past nine she comes down the stairs again, passes the reception desk and seems to nod a hello to someone behind it, just out of sight of the camera view, and then she disappears to the right of the picture.
Less than an hour later someone who could only be Aron, the long haired kid we met when we got here, comes through the door marked Concierge behind the reception desk, leaves the desk and walks up the stairs. He's gone for about fifteen minutes, and as the timestamp shows 22:34 he comes back and sits down in front of the computer behind the desk.
Just before midnight a young girl in the hotel's uniform goes upstairs with a meal plate in her hands. And at 00:46 she comes back down the stairs and walks away.
Fast forward to this morning, at exactly 05:00, Aron is the one going up the stairs with a meal plate. Three minutes later he's running back down the stairs, the food on the plate bouncing, one glass has fallen over. He's carrying it with just one hand now, his other hand is covering his mouth as if he's trying to keep from throwing up or maybe wiping it as if he's already puked.
“He's the one who found her this morning,” Rowe explains.
Lucy can't hide her impatience, dancing from one foot to the other.
“What have you got?” I ask.
“Quite a few things,” she says. “No one can gossip like hotel kitchen staff.”
She opens her notebook, but doesn't even look at it when she speaks.
“So, the two hotel employees are Aron, the guy you've already met. He's a bellboy slash desk clerk on the night shift. Has an interesting history, got himself arrested over and over a few years ago for theft. Apparently, this guy was some kind of master pickpocket, could shake your hand while slipping your wrist watch off and you'd never know.
And he's a hardcore Diana Doll fan. According to the staff, after they learned about her coming here a few months ago, he wouldn't stop talking about her. Kept telling everyone that when she got here, he was going to ask her out and they would fall in love and get married and all. Then one of them told him; Don't you know she's a dyke? and he freaked out. Got really angry at first, then bawled his eyes out and didn't come to work for three days.”
“Wow.”
“I know, right? And then there's Bethany. Room service and housekeeping, really cute girl. Oh, and... those two, Aron and Bethany? They hate each other. Used to date, but broke up a year ago or so, and they've barely said a word to each other after that. In fact, everyone was shocked when he walked up to her and gave her a hug this morning, when the police showed up and rounded everyone up and all.
Anyway, the reason for the break up seems to be that she was too much for him to handle, or rather he wasn't enough for her. You know, in bed. Apparently, she's really kinky. Like's it rough.”
Rowe's eyebrows raise slightly.
“And get this,” Lucy continues. “The scarf around Diana Doll's neck, the scarf she was strangled with? It's part of the uniform that the girls in housekeeping wear.”
“I knew that,” Rowe says, but Lucy ignores him.
“The PA is Mona Sands. She's been working for Diana Doll for many years. She got divorced from her husband six years ago, right around the time when Diana Doll came out as a lesbian.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah. I found an article online.” She picks a folded piece of paper out of the back pocket of her jeans, and hands it to me. It's a printout of an article from a tabloid newspaper and the headline is; The secrets of Diana Doll. Under the headline I read; Diana Doll never goes to bed without her makeup on. But that is not the only bedroom secret this still sexy 80's pop-singer and glam model shares in this exclusive interview.
“So did Diana and this Mona Sands have an affair?”
“Don't know.”
“Anything else?”
“Nope. That's it.”
“Great. Good work, Lucy.” I turn to Rowe. “Could you send Mona Sands in first? And make sure we're not disturbed.” Rowe nods and leaves the room.
-
A few minutes later Mona Sands walks in.
“Lock the door, please,” I say and she does.
I stand up and shake her hand, giving her my usual “Barlowe. Jim Barlowe.”
She just introduces herself as Mona. She's blonde, with her long hair in a pony tail, and with red, puffy eyes behind red rimmed glasses. She sits down on the chair opposite me, and folds her arms nervously around herself. She's pretty. That's good.
She glances over at Lucy who's now sitting in the sofa.
“She's just here to take notes,” I say. “Tell me about your relationship with Miss Doll.”
“I'm her... I mean, I was her personal assistant. I've been with her for almost ten years.”
“And did you get along?”
“Yes, of course. We were friends.”
“Tell me why you were here at the Darella.”
“For a concert. She has a new album coming out, so... It was a PR gig for the release.”
“Is it any good?”
“Excuse me?”
“Her new album. Is it any good?”
She stares at me for a while, and then shakes her head. “Not really.”
“Where you and Miss Doll lovers, Mona?”
Her jaw drops.
“Excuse me??”
“Are you a lesbian, Miss Sands? Where you two lovers? Is that why your husband left you?”
“He didn't leave me, I left him. And no, I'm not. And she wasn't either, by the way.”
“She was in the news some years ago when she came out of the closet. Isn't that right?”
“Yeah, but it was all bullshit. She had someone leak,” she says, curling two fingers in the air at the word leak, “all kinds of stuff to the media. How she was a lesbian and a nympho, into weird shit like bondage and s and m and asphyxiation and stuff like that.
