The Perfect Impression by Blake Pierce

CHAPTER ELEVEN

As they burst through the French doors, it took a moment for Jessie’s eyes to adjust to the darkness.

Dooley, dimly visible in the distance, waved at them from across the way. When they reached him, they found a figure on his knees in the dirt by the rose garden. He was bent over, hugging his stomach and rocking back and forth.

“What’s going on?” Peters asked, trying to catch his breath.

Before Dooley could reply, the figure made a violent retching sound. The noise echoed loudly, temporarily drowning out the sound of the ocean, which was only a hundred yards away. After what felt like an eternity, it stopped.

“This is where I found him,” Dooley said. “I didn’t see him at first but it wasn’t hard to follow the sound.”

Jessie knelt down next to the man. She recognized him from the Catalina Ballroom earlier, though she hadn’t realized who he was at the time.

“How are you doing, Mr. Aldridge?” she asked.

“Better now,” he croaked. “I think I got it all out.”

“That’s good to hear, because I’ve got a few questions for you.”

“I didn’t kill Gabby,” he muttered as he wiped the long drop of drool from his chin.

“That’s fantastic news,” she said. “But we still need to talk. Mr. Dooley and Detective Peters are going to help you to your feet. Then we’ll find a more comfortable place to chat. Let’s go to the manager’s office.”

As they headed inside, it quickly became clear that Peters and Dooley were having trouble keeping Aldridge, who was a big guy, upright.

“Maybe we do this in the bar?” Dooley suggested. Jessie nodded.

They dropped him in a plush chair near the entrance, where he immediately slumped back, almost becoming a part of the thing. While he recovered, Jessie turned back to Dooley.

“Thanks for your help,” she said. “On your way back up to watch the guests in the ballroom, can you ask Mr. Barksdale to have some coffee and toast brought in here for Mr. Aldridge?”

Dooley nodded, too exhausted to speak. Peters looked equally beat.

“How do you want to do this?” he asked.

“I think I can handle Mr. Aldridge here,” she replied, trying her best to fight off the fatigue she too was feeling. “Why don’t you go back to the ballroom and finish up with the remaining guests there?”

“Are you sure?” he asked, wiping the sweat from his brow. “This guy looks like he could be a handful.”

“I don’t think Mr. Aldridge is going to give me any trouble, are you?” she asked the human furniture.

“Couldn’t even if I wanted to,” the man grunted, his eyes closed tight.

“See,” Jessie said. “Besides, between my gun and cuffs, it would go poorly for him if he changed his mind. Thanks though.”

Peters nodded, apparently satisfied that he’d expressed enough gallantry, and headed for the elevator, even though the single flight of stairs would have been quicker. He looked completely wiped out.

When he was gone, Jessie looked around for a chair that she could move near Aldridge. As she grabbed one from a nearby cocktail table, she caught the eye of Maura the bartender, who was wiping down some highball glasses.

“What are you still doing here?” Jessie called out across the room.

“I sent the servers home after all the commotion,” Maura said. “They seemed pretty freaked out. Unfortunately, I forgot that means I have to do all the post-close cleaning. It goes slow when you’re on solo duty.”

Jessie looked at her watch. It was 3:54 a.m.

“So you don’t always work this late?”

“I try to avoid it,” Maura replied. “But this is a special occasion. Barksdale wants us to open at the usual time tomorrow, which is nine a.m. And since everyone else is terrified that a murderer might belly up to the bar, he’s worried we’re going to get a lot of late sick calls. So I have to handle the opening. I’m thinking I may just crash in the employee lounge for a few hours. It’s hardly worth going home. You okay over there?”

She looked over at Theo Aldridge.

“I think so,” Jessie said as she placed the chair across from Aldridge. “You got my back if he gets snippy?”

“Me and Chuck both,” the bartender said, holding up a night stick that Jessie assumed was Chuck.

“Thanks. I’ll let you know if I need you two.”

She returned her attention to Theo Aldridge, whose eyes were still closed. That afforded her the opportunity to really take him in for the first time without having to be clandestine about it.

Everything about the guy was big. She’d noticed when Peters and Dooley were dragging him over that even while slouching, he was as tall as them. At his full height, she suspected he was around six foot four. He was thick and broad shouldered, likely around 225 pounds. He was so muscular that she wondered if he might be a bodybuilder. She guessed that he was her age, if not a little younger. He was tan, with the same sun-bleached blond hair as Detective Peters, a telltale marker that he was an outdoorsy type.

“You ready to talk, Mr. Aldridge?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ve been ready for hours.”

“What happened to you?”

“I guess the bathtub’s worth of alcohol I drank tonight finally caught up with me. Or maybe it was a bad oyster. It could have been those two combined with learning that a woman I know got stabbed to death. Take your pick.”

“All solid options,” Jessie said, refusing to be baited by his purposefully acerbic tone. “So where do you think we should start?”

“I told you I didn’t do it. We can start there.”

“Do you have people who can verify that for me?” Jessie asked.

“Absolutely,” he said. “I don’t think I was alone for more than a minute or two all night up until Melissa started screaming. I can write down the names of everyone I was with.”

“That would be lovely,” she said. “But before we get into all that, I have another question for you.”

“What’s that?” he asked, finally opening his eyes, revealing that they were a startlingly bright blue.

“Where’s your wife?”

She watched closely for his reaction to the question.

“Oh, that,” he said, seemingly unfazed. “She didn’t do this, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she left the island before any of this happened,” he said. “She took the afternoon ferry back to L.A.”

Jessie had gotten pretty good at mastering her poker face during these interrogations but hearing Aldridge’s words, she felt her jaw drop.

“I’ve been talking to your friends all night,” she said. “Why is this the first time I’m hearing of this?”

He shrugged.

“Probably because it’s pretty embarrassing and no one wanted to be the one to mention it.”

Though her head was spinning at the possibilities, Jessie tried not to leap to conclusions.

“I guess that means you get the honor of explaining,” she said, “which is probably appropriate anyway. What happened?”

Aldridge sighed deeply, grabbed the arms of the chair, and managed to pull himself up to a fully seated position.

“We got into a fight,” he confessed. “She got pissed, packed up her stuff, and headed out. I tried to convince her to stay, told her that a disagreement between us shouldn’t ruin the whole weekend. But she said she wasn’t having a good time and wanted to get back to the baby anyway.”

“What was the fight about?” Jessie asked.

“You know, just couples stuff. I said the wrong thing. She wouldn’t let it go. She said she wanted to leave. I wanted to stay because this was the first time we’d gotten an entire weekend off since Ginny was born nine months ago. That only made her angrier. She told me I couldn’tcome back with her. So I stuck around, drowned my sorrows in too much liquor, partied too hard, discovered that someone I came here with was dead, and ended up vomiting in a rose garden. That’s my night. How was yours?”

Though she was disgusted by his lack of sensitivity, she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of showing it, so she didn’t pause for even a beat.

Not great,” she told him. “I’ve been trying to find out who murdered that very friend of yours and I keep bumping into walls set up by the lot of you. Speaking of, I noticed you didn’t answer my question about what you were arguing with your wife about.”

“Yeah, that was intentional,” he said, moving from snarky to overtly confrontational for the first time. “It was between me and Ari. It has nothing to do with any of this, so I don’t see why it matters.”

“Everything matters, Mr. Aldridge,” Jessie shot back.

Just then, Esteban arrived with the toast and coffee. He placed them on the small drink table next to Aldridge. As he did, he caught Jessie’s eye.

“I’ll be right back,” she said and joined the waiter by the door.

“Detective Peters didn’t want to interrupt your questioning,” he whispered, “but he asked me to let you know that he’s nearly completed all of his interviews. Security will be clearing the ballrooms soon and all the guests will be returning to their old rooms or newly assigned ones. He said he’ll be compiling his notes in the Catalina Room, ready to talk when you’re done.”

Jessie looked over at Aldridge, who seemed more focused on stirring his sugar than providing helpful answers. Unfortunately, until she’d had a little time to review her own notes, she wasn’t confident that she could wring any new ones out of him. This might be the perfect time to download what she and Peters had learned. She could only hope that the detective would be better at that than he had been at the rest of the investigative process.

“Thanks, Esteban,” she said. “Please tell him I’ll be right up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with that southern twang that she was pretty sure didn’t originate in Texas. When he left, she returned her attention to the big blond guy in the chair, who was chomping on his piece of toast like he hadn’t eaten in days.

“Here’s what’s going to happen now, Mr. Aldridge,” she said matter-of-factly as she ripped two sheets of paper from her notepad. “First, I want you to write down your address and every phone number I might use to reach your wife. When I leave you, I want you to reconstruct your timeline for the night, including everyone who can vouch for your whereabouts and what time you were with them.”

“A lot of it’s kind of hazy,” he said, crumbs falling out of his full mouth.

“Do the best you can,” she said, trying not to gag. “When you’re done, give it to the hotel manager, Mr. Barksdale, and ask him to pass it on to me. Then I want you to return to your room and stay there until you’re contacted. You are not to leave the hotel, much less the island, without authorization. If you do, you’ll be considered a fugitive from justice. You don’t want that. Do we understand each other, sir?”

Unable to speak with his mouth jam-packed with dried bread, he nodded and gave her a thumbs-up. After he handed her his wife’s contact numbers, she turned to leave, giving Maura a wave. The bartender did the same, only instead of using her hand, she waved Chuck the night stick.

As Jessie walked up the stairs, she tried Ariana Aldridge’s cell and home numbers. She got voicemail both times and left the same message asking for her to call back. She was frustrated by the delay until she remembered that it was still only four in the morning.

As anxious as she was, it was a little early to expect someone to answer. All the same, she called the desk sergeant at LAPD’s Downtown Station and asked him to get a squad car to do a drive-by of the Aldridge house, just in case she was packing up for an unplanned trip out of the country.

Satisfied that she’d done all she could, she headed up to meet Peters. Exhausted and discouraged by the lack of progress, she was tempted to call Ryan, if not to get his advice, then to just hear his voice. This place, with all its secrets and unfriendly faces, made her feel especially lonely.

But that would be selfish. Hopefully, he was sleeping deeply and not having one of the occasional nightmares that made him wake up sweating. She also wondered how Hannah was doing. Sometimes late at night, she could hear her sister whimpering in her sleep. It was crazy, but some part of her thought that her presence in the house could keep their demons at bay.

Niggling at the back of her brain was another concern: with the looming threat of the Night Hunter, or some sick protégé of his, they would need all the rest they could get. She wanted Ryan at the top of his game as he investigated the case. And she wanted Hannah alert to any possible threats she might face. Reminding herself that there was nothing she could do about any of that now, she walked into the empty ballroom where she found Detective Peters sitting at a table with his head in his hands. Without all the guests, the place felt strangely sad, almost as if it was longing to fulfill its intended purpose.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

Peters lifted his head and Jessie could tell immediately from his stricken expression that something was very wrong.

“Gabrielle Crewe was pregnant,” he said.