Swan Song by Judith K Ivie Read Free Book Online

Cincinnati, working mostly homicide, and I learned to trust my gut over my eyes every time. I haven’t had that feeling since I started work at the hotel almost three years ago, but I had it today in Ms. Mulgrew’s hotel room. It just didn’t add up.”
    We were all riveted. May’s eyes never left Schenk’s face.
    “Tell me,” she said.
    Schenk looked around the room.
    “These people are my trusted associates. You can speak freely in front of them,” May assured him. She threw a don’t-let-me-down look at Becky and Duane, and they nodded an acknowledgment.
    “For one thing, everything was almost too neat, and yet it wasn’t.”
    “What do you mean?” Margo and I chorused, and May grinned outright. Even Schenk’s lips twitched.
    “Well, as I said, her suitcase was packed and open, ready for the toothbrush and things still out in the bathroom, but something didn’t look right. I mean, most people put the heaviest things, like shoes, on the bottom, but Ms. Mulgrew’s shoes were on top of her clothes as if someone had gone through her suitcase and put things back wrong.”
    “You’re right, Mr. Schenk,” Isabelle agreed. “A man might do that if he was in a tearing hurry, but a woman never would.”
    “Same thing with her handbag. The inside had a lot of zippered compartments and pockets, but they were all unzipped and empty. Everything was just piled into the middle of the bag. It doesn’t make sense to me that a lady would buy an expensive organizer bag and not make use of it.”
    “Maybe she did,” I threw in, beating Margo to the punch, “but somebody else in a hurry pulled everything out of the pockets and then dumped it back in the middle.”
    Schenk nodded. “Exactly. There was one more thing, but this might be kind of upsetting.” He paused as if assessing our ability to hear it.
    “Please go on, Mr. Schenk. We’re tougher than we look,” May prompted. The rest of us murmured assent, although Margo reached for her aunt’s hand.
    Schenk took a sip of his now cold coffee and cleared his throat. “It was the body, the way it was lying in the bed almost as if it had been arranged. I would have expected her to be on her side, maybe, with the pillows bunched up and the covers messy, but it wasn’t like that. She was flat on her back, pillow under her head, covers neatly pulled up to her chin and folded down. It looked to me like her hair had been combed. It was almost, what’s the word, ceremonial.” He frowned into his mug, remembering. “And then there was the letter.”
    “What about the letter, Mr. Schenk?” May prodded.
    He looked back at her. “You’d expect to find that on the desk or maybe in her purse, ready to mail. But after they … removed the body, a maid found it shoved under the guest pillow along with the Pilot pen Ms. Mulgrew must have been using to write it.”
    We were quiet for a minute before Duane put into words what every one of us was thinking. “It sounds like she was expecting someone to be looking for it, and she didn’t want them to find it.”
    “Which is why I brought it to you myself. Can you think of anyone who might have been looking for such a letter, Mrs. Farnsworth?”
    May tacitly checked with Margo and Isabelle, then me, before answering. “Not the letter, no. Nobody could have known about that, but a writers’ convention is a hotbed of rumors, Mr. Schenk. Everyone wants to be in the know. The liquor flows pretty freely, and tongues loosen up. Drama invariably ensues. More than one mystery novel has been set at a convention and for good reason. I can only imagine the rumors that will fly once news of Lizabeth’s death gets out.” She shook her head in disgust.
    “But that’s not what you asked, is it?” She produced the letter from the pocket of her sweater jacket and unfolded it carefully. “Becky, dear, would you be kind enough to make five good, clean copies of this, staple the pages together and number each copy at the top? And Duane,