Part 4 (1/2)

'Did you get up at all during the night? Did you go to the bathroom?'

'No, I didn't.'

Cab nodded and let the polite dance play out between them. He wanted to put her at ease and not imply that there was anything special about his visit. She and her husband were two of many guests looking out on the beach, not suspects with a connection to the victim. Even so, he had little doubt that she'd already seen through him and was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He studied the woman in front of him. Hilary Bradley was smart, and she was pretty, too, in a mature, self-confident way. He figured she was a few years older than he was, maybe forty, or maybe knocking on the door. Her face was rounded, with blue eyes and thin black gla.s.ses, and dangly earrings that looked like red sour b.a.l.l.s. She wore a simple burgundy top, tan slacks that emphasized her long legs, and sandals. Despite her shoulder-length blond hair, she wasn't a cla.s.sic bombsh.e.l.l, and he didn't imagine she ever had been one, even when she was younger. Nonetheless, she had the s.e.xiness of a woman who knew she was two steps ahead of you in just about everything.

She looked up at Cab. Based on his height, almost everyone did. He could feel her taking his measure, even as he did the same to her. Most people underestimated him. They thought he was a spoiled beach b.u.m; he didn't look like a man who'd graduated from UCLA in three years. They saw the pomade in his hair, the exfoliated complexion, the earring, the suit, all of it on top of a lean body that made the ceilings look low, and they wrote him off as a shallow metros.e.xual. He didn't care. He also didn't think Hilary Bradley was the kind of woman who would make that mistake about him. Her face was a mask as she stared at him, revealing nothing, but she had the look of someone who didn't misjudge an enemy.

Cab glanced at the hotel roster in his hand. 'You're not here alone, are you, Mrs Bradley? Your husband is with you?'

Her voice was cool. 'That's right.'

'His name is Mark?'

'Yes.'

'Is that him I hear in the shower?'

'Of course.'

'I'd like to talk to him, too,' Cab told her.

'I doubt he saw anything either.'

'How do you know? You said you were sleeping.'

Hilary got a little frown on her face, as if she was annoyed at being outfoxed by his question, if my husband saw anything overnight, he would have told me.'

'I still need to speak to him myself.'

'We'll try to find you before we leave, Detective,' she said, with a glance at the door to the room. Her meaning was clear: she wanted the interview to be over.

Cab stroked the point of his protruding chin and stayed where he was. 'Do you mind if I ask what you two are doing in Naples?'

'We're on vacation. I'm a high school teacher, and it's spring break. We had some hotel points on our credit card, so we used them to get a free week here.'

'Nice. How did you happen to choose this hotel?'

He watched her think through her response, as if she was trying to understand his motives in asking. Or maybe she was trying to a.s.sess how little she could say without lying. 'In addition to my academic teaching, I've been a dance coach for many years,' she explained finally. 'Some of my former students were performing in a college compet.i.tion at the hotel this week.'

'So when you're not coaching dance, what do you teach?'

'Math.'

'Math was never my subject,' Cab said, which was a lie. He'd aced every cla.s.s in school. Except geography. His brain didn't process directions. He needed a map to find his own bathroom.

'Where do you teach?' he continued.

'It's a high school in Door County, Wisconsin.'

'Where exactly is that?' he asked.

'If you look at a map of Wisconsin, Door County is like the state's pinky finger. The peninsula juts out into the water between Green Bay and Lake Michigan.'

'Sounds like a pretty spot.' 'It is.'

'Do you know a family named Fischer living in that area?'

Hilary's blue eyes turned cold. Cab figured that Lake Michigan was probably cold, but it would have felt as balmy as the Gulf compared to this woman's eyes.

'Do you think I'm stupid, Detective?'

'I'm sorry?'

'I know you're not here because we happen to have a room that overlooks the beach. I don't imagine the lead detective on a murder investigation does the grunt work of interviewing hundreds of potential witnesses.'

Cab smiled. 'There's a lot more grunt work than you might imagine.'

'Someone already told me that the dead girl is Glory Fischer, and someone obviously told you you about me and my husband.' about me and my husband.'

'Yes, your husband's name did come up.'

'Mark had nothing to do with this.'

'Maybe not, but you can understand my concern, given his relations.h.i.+p with the Fischers. Particularly the dead girl's sister.'

'There was no relations.h.i.+p,' Hilary insisted. 'The accusations against him were false.'

'I don't really care,' Cab told her. it raises suspicions about him cither way.'

'My husband didn't kill Glory Fischer.'

'Except we've already established that you were sleeping, Mrs Bradley, so you really don't know what he was doing.'

'I know Mark.'

'n.o.body knows anybody,' Cab said.

'Maybe you don't, but I do. I'm not going to see my husband subjected to another witch-hunt, Detective.'

'I don't do witch-hunts. I don't believe what anyone tells me, good or bad, until I can prove it one way or another. So right now, what I'd really like is for your husband to stop hiding behind the bathroom door pretending he's in the shower, and instead have him come out and talk to me.'

'I'll let him know you stopped by,' Hilary said.