The Perfect Impression by Blake Pierce

CHAPTER NINE

Peters was already rushing to Tommy when Jessie started moving in that direction. By the time she reached the two of them, Peters had his finger on the kid’s neck to check his pulse.

“He’s alive,” he told her when Jessie bent down beside him.

“Let’s get him on his back,” she said.

As they unfurled his limbs, Jessie looked over at Barksdale, who was standing above them with a worried look on his face.

“Do you have a nurse on site?” she asked.

“No. But one of our front desk clerks, Leena, is training as an EMT.”

Tommy moaned as his eyelids fluttered. Dooley emerged from the Wrigley Ballroom, his eyes filled with concern and frustration.

“He mentioned that he hadn’t had anything to eat since before his shift started at six last night,” he offered with trepidation. “He said he felt a little weak.”

“Hopefully he just passed out then,” Jessie said, turning her attention back to Barksdale. “I need to use your jacket as a pillow. And please radio for Leena to come up.”

“That will leave the front desk unmanned,” he said.

“Bigger issues here, Vin,” she said, trying not to lose her patience. “Go trade places with her. That will give you a chance to call your security guys and get those rooms released. Please go now.”

Barksdale left, already barking on the radio as he rushed back to the stairs. Peters slid the night manager’s jacket under Tommy’s head. Deputy Heck appeared out of nowhere with a glass of water.

“How are you doing, Tommy?” Jessie asked softly.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “Got dizzy all of a sudden.”

“That’s what happens when you don’t eat and remain standing for eight hours,” Peters said. “I think it’s time for your mandated, involuntary break.”

He put the glass to Tommy’s lips. The kid made a feeble attempt to sip.

“Do you think we can try to pull you up to a seated position?” Jessie asked.

Tommy nodded weakly. Peters and Heck each grabbed him under the arm and delicately lifted him so that his back rested against the wall.

“Is he okay?” Stone, who had just stepped out of the Catalina Ballroom, asked.

“We’re getting there,” Jessie told him.

“Good, because people in here are getting restless again. They thought the interviews would get started right away. The mother with that baby is crying to herself at a corner table.”

Jessie heard footsteps coming up the stairs and turned around. Leena was running toward them with a small medical kit in her hand. When she arrived, she knelt down beside Tommy and pulled out a blood pressure cuff. While she worked, Jessie stood up and addressed the others.

“It looks like Leena has this under control,” she said crisply. “And we’ve still got work to do. Stone and Dooley, please return to your respective ballrooms. Deputy Heck can help Leena out with anything she needs. Detective Peters and I are going to resume the interviews. Sound okay to everyone?”

No one argued, though Dooley looked hesitant to abandon Tommy.

“I’ve got him, Will,” Leena said gently, finally verifying that Dooley was the guy’s last name.

The guard nodded and returned to his assigned ballroom. Stone did the same. Deputy Heck remained by Tommy, keeping a steady hand on his shoulder while the aspiring EMT did her thing.

“You cool starting with the new mom?” Jessie asked Peters. “I’ll take the Landers and move on from there.”

“Works for me,” he said.

With both Tommy and Deputy Heck indisposed, they had to collect their own interviewees. While Peters approached the mother, Jessie looked at her notes, then up at the group.

“Can Barry and Marin Lander raise their hands please?”

To her chagrin, a couple seated together lifted their arms in the air. After all her efforts to keep witnesses separated, they were right next to each other, seemingly without a care in the world.

She had originally planned to determine who to interview first based on who appeared more likely to cave under questioning. But there didn’t seem to be a point to that now. In the time they’d been in here, they’d almost certainly discussed what happened multiple times. By now, their memories of the evening had likely merged inextricably.

“Come with me, please,” she sighed, unable to hide her disappointment.

They got up and walked toward her, both apparently oblivious to how they’d undermined the investigation. As they approached, Jessie tried to set aside her frustration and study them. If she could get a sense of them before the questioning began, it might help her shake them off their predetermined stories.

Barry Lander was a pleasantly bland guy. Shortish, with light brown hair that was just starting to recede, he looked to be about thirty-five. He was trim and looked like he worked hard to put a layer of muscle on his slight frame.

Marin Lander was his inverse. She was as tall as Jessie and extremely skinny, which gave her face an elegant, if slightly severe appearance. She looked like a European runway model who existed on rice cakes and vodka. Jessie suspected she was younger than her husband, but she looked older than him. Her hair was tied back in a tight bun that didn’t do anything to alter the perception.

Both were dressed in jogging suits, his blue and hers pink, like Melissa Ferro’s. Apparently that was a thing with this group. Neither of them had the fatigued aura of so many of the other guests. They looked alert and borderline cheery. Jessie led them to the end of the hall, where she found that Detective Peters was already in the Harbor Room with the weepy mom and her baby.

That left her the larger, less claustrophobic Bison Room. She assumed it was named after the animals which now roamed Catalina after their descendants were brought to the island for a film shoot in the 1920s.

She opened the door for the Landers, who took seats next to each other at the large, rectangular table intended for as many as twenty people. Jessie sat across from them and remained silent for a moment, still debating how best to approach the interview. She finally decided to just let them tell their story, listen for inconsistencies, and watch their body language. Maybe if they got comfortable enough, they’d let something slip.

“So I understand that you came to the island as part of a group?” Jessie began, leaving the question as open-ended as possible.

The couple looked at each other, initially uncertain who should go first. But after that brief hesitation, Marin Lander took the initiative.

“That’s right,” she said. “We’ve been coming here with Gabby and Steve and Melissa and Rich for about three years. This was the first time that Theo and Ari joined us for an outing. We usually come twice a year, summer and winter. It’s a chance to get away from the kids for a weekend without getting too far away, you know?”

“Sure,” Jessie said. “And you always stay here?”

“Yep,” Barry volunteered. “The staff is great. It’s close to the heart of town. And you can’t tell right now in the dark, but the hotel sits right next to the only golf course on the island. Staying here affords us preferential tee times, which we take full advantage of.”

“So what do you do here when you’re not golfing?” Jessie asked, still trying to loosen them up enough to reveal something unintended. “I visited once a few years ago. I liked it but it doesn’t seem like the sort of place with endless options to keep you occupied.”

The Landers gave each other one of those secret couple’s smiles that confounded outsiders.

“We find ways to keep busy,” Marin said. “Right, honey?”

Barry nodded devilishly.

“When we come here, we like to chill more than load up on activities,” he said, not specifically addressing his wife’s more provocative comment.

“So it’s kind of a romantic getaway?” Jessie pressed, trying to get a clearer picture.

“You could call it that,” Barry answered noncommittally.

Jessie found it odd that he was being so cagey about the nature of the trip but decided to move on for now.

“You said this other couple was joining you for the first time. How did they end up coming along?”

“Gabby introduced us to Ari about two months ago,” Marin Lander told her. “I think they took the same meditation class. Then we met Ari’s husband, Theo. Everyone vibed so we started spending time together. We felt comfortable enough to invite them along and they jumped at the chance.”

“And how did that go?” Jessie asked.

The couple again exchanged a look that Jessie couldn’t decipher, reminding her why she preferred to conduct these interviews individually.

“I think it might have been a little overwhelming for them,” Marin eventually conceded.

“What does that mean?”

“You know, you might do better to address that to them directly,” Barry said, the first time either of them had been outright unresponsive.

Jessie couldn’t get a bead on these people. They clearly weren’t being totally forthright. But they didn’t have that familiar, sweaty nervousness that suggested their deception was related to feelings of guilt. They were hiding something but it wasn’t something they were ashamed of.

“My understanding is that you all went to dinner and then hung out in the hotel bar?” she asked, hoping to verify the timeline established by her other interviews.

“That all sounds right,” Barry said, “though we can’t really speak to anything after about ten. We went up to bed around then.”

“Do you remember who in your group was left in the bar when you went up?”

“I think the Ferros and the Crewes stayed,” Marin offered. “Theo left around the same time we did.”

“And his wife, Ariana—when did she go up?”

“You haven’t talked to Theo yet?” Marin replied.

“No. Why?”

“I think he’s better equipped to answer that question,” the woman said.

“You can’t tell me directly whether she was there when you went upstairs?” Jessie asked, getting annoyed.

The Landers traded uncertain looks. Jessie was about to escalate the intensity of the questioning when Barry answered.

“I can tell you she definitely wasn’t in the bar. Beyond that, Theo would be the person to talk to.”

Jessie knew that pursuing this line of questioning would get her outright angry, which was never good when trying to profile people. It clouded the judgment. So despite her desire to hone in, she switched topics.

“Did you see Gabby get into any disagreements over the course of the weekend?” she asked.

Both Landers shook their heads.

“Did she seem upset about anything?” Jessie pressed. “More so than usual?”

“She did seem a little more tense than normal,” Marin answered. “But I know her mother’s been sick and their little one, Ellis, just got over a bad ear infection. She almost backed out of the trip altogether. I think it was the general stress of all that more than any one thing in particular.”

Jessie sat with that for a moment. She felt like she was starting to see the shadow of Gabrielle Crewe, if not her true image. She was nice but less so to her husband; full of moral righteousness but not to the point of alienation; stressed enough for others to notice while vacationing but not so much that she skipped the vacation altogether. She was forming a picture of the woman but nothing she’d gleaned so far offered any insight into why she was murdered in her hotel suite with a steak knife.

“So you were in your room when Gabby’s death was discovered?” she asked, getting back to basic facts.

“Yes,” Marin said definitively. “We were in bed enjoying a romantic moment, when we heard Melissa screaming. By the time we got dressed and came out into the hall, everyone was there with us—Steve, Rich, and all the other guests on the floor. It was wild.”

“What time was that?”

“I don’t recall exactly,” Barry said. “But it was definitely before midnight.”

“That sounds right,” Marin agreed.

Jessie was glad she wasn’t dependent on them for the timeline as their estimate was far less specific than others. She couldn’t think of anything else to ask them, at least not until she’d had a chance to talk to the Aldridges. There was something funny about that couple but the Landers weren’t going to be the ones to reveal what it was.

“You know,” she observed drily, “you don’t seem all that broken up over Gabby’s death.”

Barry Lander nodded, not as upset as one might have expected at the charge.

“I think we’re both just in shock,” he said. “And since we never saw her body, it doesn’t quite feel real to me.”

“Also,” Marin added, “I tend to bottle up my emotions in traumatic situations. My therapist has been working on it with me.”

Jessie decided she’d had enough of these two for now.

“I think you need a little more work,” she noted, unable to stop the dig from slipping out.

“I agree,” Marin said sincerely.

“We’re done for now, but be sure not to leave the hotel without permission,” she warned them before stepping out into the hall to stretch. Peters was already there, talking to Deputy Heck. She ambled over to join them.

“How are your interviews going?” she asked the detective, who gave Heck a nod he didn’t explain before turning to her. The deputy nodded back and headed into the Catalina Ballroom.

“Pretty quick once I got rolling,” he said. “It turns out that a lot of these people were already asleep at eleven thirty at night. I’ve already gone through three of them. If the same holds true for the others, it should take less than an hour to clear all of them.”

“You want to tell me what’s going on, Detective Peters?” Jessie asked.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s clearly something happening that has you concerned but that you’re hesitant to share. I thought we’d gotten to know each other well enough over these last few hours for you to realize that I vastly prefer sharing to hiding.”

He sighed.

“I’m hoping it’s nothing,” he said. “If it is, I didn’t want to add to your plate unnecessarily.”

“I’m used to having a full plate, Peters. Hell, it’s usually overflowing. What’s going on?”

Heck came out of the ballroom, looked at Peters, and shook his head. Jessie glared at the detective, about ready to blow. The detective saw her face and must have sensed what was coming.

“We might have a problem,” he said hurriedly.

“What’s that?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“Theo and Ariana Aldridge are missing.”