Read Online Body Blows by Marc Strange - Free Book Online Page B

elevator doors open.
    The two women wheel their service carts aboard and I join them.
    â€œNine,” Tricia says. “In back.” She presses 9. Christine stares at the numbers climbing. Tricia looks directly at me. “Can you be trusted?” she asks.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI don’t mean as a human being,” she says. “That would be asking too much. I mean can you be trusted that as far as Vera Dineen is concerned, this meeting never took place?”
    â€œScout’s honour,” I say.
    â€œI’d prefer something a bit more binding,” she says. “My brother was a scout. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could toss him.”
    â€œRaquel was my friend,” I say. “I liked her.”
    I hear a sudden sob from Christine and see her burying her face in both hands. The rear doors of the car open and Tricia ushers us into an empty corridor. “This way,” she says.
    A cul de sac around the corner, a small window facing the parking garage across the street, a table and a pair of plastic chairs, and an ashtray, hidden (poorly) behind a sad, potted cactus on the sill. Christine sits in one of the chairs. She is wiping her eyes with a wadded Kleenex. Tricia remains standing, facing me.
    â€œTell us what happened, first,” she says. She lights a menthol cigarette in defiance of at least three of Mrs. Dineen’s edicts. I take it as an affirmation that she’s decided to trust me.
    â€œLeo and I went to the award dinner at eight last night, got back to the penthouse around two a.m. Raquel was dead, in the kitchen. It looked like she’d been stabbed. Things were broken. The police said she put up a fight.”
    Christine sobs again.
    â€œThat’s all?” Tricia asks.
    â€œThere was evidence that people were on the terrace, and someone ran down the fire stairs, but we don’t know who that was, or if they had anything to do with anything. And there was a body at the bottom of the Warburton excavation. It could have fallen from the terrace. I don’t know that for a fact. The police haven’t released any details.”
    â€œDid they do anything to her?” Christine asks.
    â€œDo anything?”
    â€œWas she … molested?”
    â€œNo. I don’t think so,” I say. “No, I’m sure not. It looked like a break-in. Maybe she surprised some burglars.”
    â€œThat’s good,” says Christine. “Not good , but good. She was a very moral person.”
    â€œShe was living with him,” Tricia says.
    â€œI know,” says Christine, “but she really loved him, and it was the best she could get.”
    â€œI’m not judging her,” says Tricia. She exhales a plume of smoke. “I don’t blame her. She’s not the first maid got invited to the penthouse.”
    â€œShe’s the first one who moved in,” says Christine firmly. “Five years. More. It was serious, not like the other ones.”
    â€œSo,” I say. “What’s the gossip?”
    â€œHer husband murdered her.”
    â€œHer husband?”
    â€œShe was married. He’s an American, he was never around, but he wrote letters here, he made phone calls. He was after money.”
    â€œShe was giving him money?”
    â€œMaybe. He’d stop harassing her for a while, then it’d start up again. Once she moved upstairs the letters didn’t come to Housekeeping any more, so I don’t know. They might have been delivered straight up, if there were any.”
    â€œDo you know his name?”
    â€œRamon or something,” says Christine.
    â€œIt was Ramon.” Tricia is certain. “Ramon Mendez. The postmarks were California.”
    â€œThe gossip is that her husband came here and killed her?”
    â€œHe went up there to kill her and Leo. Catch them in bed together. The Unwritten Law. Very Spanish,” says Tricia. “A question of honour.”
    â€œHave