Page 22 of The Shadow Friends

“Tell her she puts on a hell of an event,” Maggie said, and hung up. She paced over to the sink and had the sudden urge to again wash her hands. Closing the barn door after the horse has escaped, she thought as she scrubbed with soap and water for the fifth time that day. Being trapped in quarantine made her acutely aware of all the microbes that must be swirling in the air. She wondered about the last patient who’d stayed in this room, and whether the person had survived. Wondered if the patient’s viruses still lingered here and if, even now, she was breathing them in. She studied herself in the mirror and smoothed back her hair. At the moment, she looked perfectly healthy, her arm muscles well-toned from working on her farm. She was perfectly healthy, aside from the injuries acquired during her old job—a broken ankle after a bad parachute landing, a chunk of shrapnel embedded in her leg from an IED. Her blood tests, according to Dr. Stamoran, were all in the normal range. But of course they were; she wasn’t sick . . . yet.

She paced back to the window and looked down at the parking lot. Declan was nowhere to be seen. She had told him to go home, but now that he was gone, she felt abandoned. She wondered what developments she was missing, what tidbits of information they had not shared with her. It was now five o’clock, the time of day when she and her friends usually met for martinis. How nice it would be right now to taste the tang of vodka, something she doubted she could order from the hospital cafeteria. She should have asked Declan to smuggle in a bottle of Belvedere so she could join them at cocktail hour, at least in spirit. One hundred eighty proof alcohol was powerful enough to kill a virus, wasn’t it? Surely vodka could be called medicinal?

Her cell phone rang. A different tone this time, not a phone call but a FaceTime video. She accepted the call and saw Ben and Declan standing beside Declan’s blue Volvo. In the background was a broad swath of lawn that was so manicured it looked like an undulating green carpet. It was the Cod Cove Resort’s golf course. A strand of yellow crime scene tape fluttered on the grass.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“A new development here,” said Declan.

“And it’s a weird one,” added Ben. “We thought you’d want to monitor this, at least remotely.”

“Where are you?”

“The Cod Cove employee parking lot,” said Declan. He made a slow rotation to give her a 360-degree view of their surroundings. She saw more crime scene tape, bright and festive, like leftover ribbons from a birthday party. It was the only sign that something bad had happened there, but clearly something had. “The Crime Scene Unit just towed a brown Toyota to the state lab, so there’s not much to see here right now. And the body’s been moved to the ME’s office.”

“Whose body?”

“A woman named Karen O’Brien. White female, forty-eight years old,” said Ben. She could see him at the edge of the screen, reading from a pocket notebook. “She was employed as a waitress here at the hotel. She clocked out of work last night around ten thirty p.m., but she never made it to the employee cottage where she was staying. Her body was found here a few hours ago, in the trunk of her vehicle. Her purse, including wallet and cash, were on the passenger seat, apparently untouched.”

“How did you learn all this so fast?”

“Ingrid and Jo were the ones who found the victim. As you said, Ingrid puts on a hell of a conference.”

Maggie sank down on the bed, shocked by this new development. “Do they have any suspects?”

“None so far. Lloyd’s doing a deep dive online, to see what he can dig up on Karen O’Brien.” Declan’s face was back on the screen, and he looked grim. “Here’s the thing, Mags. There are a few details about this that concern us. They certainly bother Ingrid, anyway.”

“Go on.”

“The victim was stabbed in the left eye, apparently with a stiletto. That was her only injury. It would have been a quick, quiet death. Very efficient.” He paused. “The kind of murder you don’t see every day. Certainly not in Maine.”

“No,” she murmured. “Tell me about this stiletto.”

“It’s with the ME’s office now. We’re hoping Jo will fill us in with details after the autopsy.”

“Who was this woman? Did she have an old boyfriend? Some ex-husband who wanted her dead?”

“More to come on that. But there’s something about this that really bothers us.”

“A woman stabbed in the eye isn’t enough?”

“It has to do with the hotel’s CCTV system,” said Ben, poking his head onto the screen.

“What about it?”

“Yesterday afternoon, part of their hotel security system went down. There was no video recorded on sections of the property for over twenty-three hours. They didn’t get the system back up and running until a few minutes ago.”

She considered this for a moment. “You think it was sabotage?”

“I can’t help but wonder,” said Declan, back on camera. “I’m sure Ingrid’s wondering as well, considering who was at the conference. A lot of retired State Department and intelligence folks. A lot of high-value targets.”

“Yet a waitress was killed?”

“Still, it’s interesting.”

Maggie was back on her feet and pacing again. “What does Jo say about this? She knows we can be useful. She might be willing to share a few details.”

“We haven’t spoken to her yet. You know how she hates it when we interfere. If we stick our noses into this, it’ll tick her off.”