murdered?” she blurted out, wanting to get it over with as quickly as possible and go home.
The kid stopped, leaned over and said conspiratorially, “I heard her name was Jones. Liz Jones.”
Karen felt the blood drain from her face. Her heart jackhammered and the room seemed to spin crazily.
“One of the maids found her this morning,” the bellhop continued in a hushed whisper. “Strangled with her own panty hose, I heard. The cops are still here asking questions down in the ballroom but so far I don’t think they’ve found the killer.”
Hadn’t she known it would be Liz? Oh, yeah? And how exactly had she known that? First superstitious and now psychic? She didn’t like this.
Get a grip. You suspected it was Liz or you wouldn’t be here. So, tell someone what little you know and let’s get out of here.
She glanced down the hallway toward the door marked Ballroom. All her fears rushed to her head like too much champagne. What did she really have to tell the police? That Liz had been involved with a man in some secret relationship. And the name of the man? She didn’t know. What did he look like? Well, she only saw him for an instant. Did she think she would recognize him again if she saw him? Maybe.
He’d looked surprised when he saw her, probably because her dress had appeared to be covered in blood. It was actually red wine that her blind date had spilled on her. No, he wasn’t blind, just nervous.
Karen took a breath. All right, she didn’t have much to give the police. For all she knew he could have been Liz’s ex, the one she said she’d left because of his jealousy. But if any information Karen had could help find the killer—
BELATEDLY, Jack noticed two things about the young woman that made him glad he hadn’t made that bet after all.
One was the look on her face as she stopped a bellhop near the entrance. She wasn’t asking directions to the dining room. She looked too apprehensive. Too…suspicious.
But that wasn’t all. He hadn’t noticed before just how quickly she must have dressed. It was a little too cold out for sandals, especially without socks, and she wore no coat over her faded T-shirt and worn blue jeans.
But what really convinced him she’d been in a hurry was what he glimpsed beneath that washed-thin T-shirt. Nipples. No bra. She had definitely looked like the prim-and-proper, wouldn’t-be-caught-dead-in-public-without-a-bra type.
Whatever the bellhop had said to her had left her shaken. Maybe she’d just heard about the murder. Then what had gotten her out of bed so abruptly this morning? It wasn’t meeting Mom and Grandma at the buffet. Not that half of Missoula hadn’t come up for breakfast this morning after the news of the murder. He really doubted it was the link sausages and powdered scrambled eggs that had brought them.
Curiosity. The same stuff that killed cats. So was that what she was doing here, too? Idle curiosity? No, not as anxious as she appeared nor dressed like that, he told himself. Not this woman.
He looked closer. She was nervously kneading something balled up in her right hand.
Damn, he thought, craning over the mezzanine railing to see her through the crowd. She reminded him a little too much of himself—someone who’d been dragged out of bed too early in the morning. Only he had a good reason. He wondered what hers was. And if they had anything to do with the other?
KAREN FELT SOMETHING in her hand just as she reached the ballroom doorway. She uncurled her fingers, surprised to find the latte-stained napkin with Liz’s number on it. She started to put the napkin and number in her purse, but as she took a step into the ballroom, she looked up and saw that the room was empty, the police gone.
No, not entirely empty.
Her feet halted so abruptly she almost toppled forward onto her face. Through the bank of windows facing the parking lot she could see the cop cars pulling away. What had literally stopped her in her tracks was the lone man she saw silhouetted against the window, watching the police leave.
Her heart dropped to her stomach. Could it be? She stared, her eyes widening as she realized he was dressed just as he’d been last night. And there was something about him—
Seemingly unaware of her presence, he pushed open the door and started toward the parking lot.
Karen stumbled back from the doorway, bumping into the wall as she looked around for a policeman. But she saw no one in uniform—and the man was getting away!
JACK WATCHED HER, now definitely intrigued. One minute she was peeking into the ballroom, the next she was reeling back out, looking as if she’d seen a ghost.
What the hell? He moved down the mezzanine to get a look into the ballroom, wondering what she could have seen. Empty. How had he missed Detective Denny Kirkpatrick, the man he’d been waiting to literally grab when the cop came out of his last interview? Because Jack had been watching the Girl Next Door instead of tending to business. And it looked as if the cops had left by a rear exit. Just his luck.
He glanced to where he’d last seen the woman standing just moments before and swore under his breath. She was gone! But something lay on the floor. A round white object the size of a golf ball.
He took the stairs two at a time. In the spot where she’d been standing, he reached down to pick up what appeared to be a balled-up white napkin. Great investigative work, Adams. A dirty napkin. He started to discard it when he noticed what looked like writing on it.
He uncrumpled the napkin. A phone number?
CHAPTER THREE
Karen scrambled out the front door of the hotel toward the parking lot at a run. If she could just get the license number on the man’s car—
Across the parking lot, she saw him get into a large, dark sedan. From this distance, she couldn’t even see the plates, let alone the make or model of the vehicle to give the police. Newer, expensive, American-made, would be her best guess and that, she knew, was worth nothing.
She sprinted to her car, leaped in and started it. All she could do was follow him and hope to get close enough without him getting suspicious.
But as she drove past the hotel, she had the oddest feeling she was being watched. First omens, then bad-luck dresses, clairvoyance, now paranoia? What next?
She sped off after the mystery man, the road dropping down the mountainside in tight switchback curves. In the distance she could see Missoula glittering brightly in the sunshine but ahead on the narrow two-lane road, no sign of the car. Had he seen her? Is that why he’d taken off so fast?
She gripped the wheel, heart pounding, expecting to come flying up on his car around the next curve as she careened off the mountain. He probably wasn’t even the killer. Just some poor harmless man who resembled the man she’d seen with Liz last night.
Harmless. Karen liked the sound of that, she thought as she swerved around another blind curve. Beat the heck out of the alternative: that she was chasing a killer and he’d be waiting in ambush for her around the next bend.
Unfortunately, she didn’t think of the man she’d seen last night in the hotel hallway with Liz as harmless.
She tried to
