Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-three

I marched into the hospital, then saw an elderly woman at the front desk and made a conscious effort to slow down and appear less pissed off. Doubted she’d want to help me if I started shouting demands.

“Hello, I’d like to speak to Janet Spinelli, please. We had a lunch meeting scheduled, but she never showed up.”

“Oh dear, that won’t do. Let me give her a call, make sure she’s in her office.” The volunteer overseeing the desk looked over the directory list, then punched the number into the phone. She listened for a moment, then shook her head and hung up. “I’m sorry, she’s not answering. Maybe she had to run some errands?”

“Would it be possible for me to wait in her office? I really need to talk to her.”

“Well . . .” She glanced over at the security guard sitting next to her, who shrugged and went back to his phone. “Maybe you could sign in? And just wait here in the lobby? I don’t think I can let you into her . . . Oh, Miss Stanton! Perfect timing.”

A stocky White woman wearing an ill-fitting pencil skirt and suit jacket with white gym shoes joined us at the desk. “Hi, Avis. What can I do for you?”

“Miss Stanton here is Miss Spinelli’s assistant,” Avis the volunteer explained, addressing me. “She can help you out.”

I thanked Avis and turned to Miss Stanton, holding out my hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Lila Macapagal, and I had a lunch meeting scheduled with Janet, but she never showed up. She’s not answering her phone, so I was wondering if you knew when she’d be back.”

She returned my firm handshake, then pulled out her phone to consult her calendar. “That’s odd. I have you on the schedule for lunch at one thirty p.m. and have the reminder set as well. She never showed up?”

I shook my head. “I waited for half an hour before ordering lunch for myself. I just finished and decided to stop by to see if there was some kind of mix-up.”

Miss Stanton pulled her lips into a thin line. “Let’s go upstairs and see if she left a note or something. This is rather unlike her.”

We rode the elevator in silence while I texted Adeena what I’d learned and Miss Stanton also thumbed through her phone. Once we reached their floor, we hurried over to Janet’s office, Miss Stanton pulling her keys out of her purse.

It was unnecessary.

The door to Janet’s office was slightly ajar, so after a quick glance at her assistant, I pushed it open. Her office was fairly small, with a tiny workspace shunted off toward the side and an enormous mahogany desk dominating the room. My eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to it, and Miss Stanton and I made the discovery at the same time.

Or at least, she screamed at the same time I noticed the blood pooling on the floor and the figure lying behind the desk. As she ran out to the hallway calling for help, I moved toward the figure, careful not to disturb any of the surrounding area. Luckily, the room was neat and tidy, with everything in its place.

Except for Janet, of course.

She lay behind the desk, curled almost into a fetal position. Her eyes were closed, and I couldn’t see her chest moving, but as I reached my hand out toward her, debating if I should feel for a pulse, I was rewarded with a tiny flutter of breath against my skin.

“She’s still alive!” I called out.

A doctor rushed into the room, followed by two nurses pulling a stretcher. The doctor did a cursory check on Janet, then barked instructions to the nurses, who quickly yet gently lifted her onto the stretcher. Before I could fully process what was happening, she was whisked away and a security guard entered the room to hold us for questioning.

Time passed slowly as we waited for the cops to arrive. The security guard glared at me when I pulled out my phone, so I focused on comforting Miss Stanton, who’d started crying. Finally, a uniformed police officer made his way over to us. After a brief introduction, he got right to the questions.

“What were you two doing in here?” he asked.

Miss Stanton explained she was Janet’s assistant, gesturing to the ID card hanging on her lanyard and pointing toward the matching placard on her desk. “Janet missed a scheduled appointment with Miss . . . Lila, so we came up here together to talk to her.”

“What did you need to talk to Miss Spinelli about, Miss Lila?” the cop asked.

Detective Park appeared at the doorway. “Yes, Ms. Macapagal, what did you need to speak to her about?”

I took a step back. “Detective Park! What are you doing here?”

“We got a call about an assault victim at the hospital, and I come here to find you stomping around my crime scene.” He gestured around the room. “What exactly is your connection to the victim?”

“I was supposed to meet her for lunch. She’d called me saying she had information that could help me out.”

He nodded, jotting this down on his tablet. “Regarding?”

I swallowed. “The, uh, the Derek Winter case.”

He raised an eyebrow, but kept writing. “What kind of information?”

“She wouldn’t say. Just told me I owed her a decent lunch in return. We were supposed to meet at Sushi-ya at one thirty.”

“What time did you arrive?”

“At the restaurant or here at the hospital?”

“Both.”

“I walked into the restaurant at one thirty on the dot. Janet’s not the most patient person, and I was worried she’d leave if I was late. But she wasn’t there. I waited half an hour for her, but she never showed. So I treated myself to an excellent lunch, then came here to the hospital.”

Remembering the conversation at the restaurant, I added, “Oh, and did you know that Akio Sato assaulted Derek? And that Yuki was having an affair with him?”

He continued writing without missing a beat. “So you had lunch, a bit of gossip, and then what?”

Upset he wasn’t taking my sleuthing seriously, I crossed my arms and frowned. “And everything else you can get from her,” I said, motioning to Miss Stanton, who was being interviewed by the cop who’d arrived before Detective Park. “She arrived a couple minutes after I did and we came up to the room together.”

“You didn’t touch anything, did you?”

I shook my head.

“What do you think Miss Spinelli wanted to tell you?”

“I wish I knew, Detective.” I glanced over at her desk, wishing I’d had time to look for clues before the cops had arrived. “Her assistant might know. Or maybe Terrence, her fiancé. He was the one who urged her to call me.”

He stopped writing. “Why would he do that?”

I shrugged. He wasn’t going to get much more out of me on that matter. It was none of his business.

“All right, you can go for now, but be available for more questioning if anything comes up.” He sighed and put his tablet away. “How’s Rosie doing, by the way?”

Record scratch moment. “Excuse me? What do you care?”

He frowned. “I consider her a friend and want to make sure she’s doing OK.”

“She’s in fear of losing her restaurant, her home, and now me. How do you think she’s doing?”

Now it was his turn to cross his arms and get defensive. “You act like I’m gunning for you. Just because I don’t tell you who or what I’m investigating doesn’t mean that I’m twiddling my thumbs while I sit on my ass at the station. I don’t need to clear my actions with you. I go where the evidence points me.”

At this point, the shock of finding Janet and frustration with the case overrode my “don’t antagonize the cops” survival instincts. “Yeah, well, evidence can be falsified. I bet you just want to wrap this up quick and neat, add another notch to your belt. Who cares that you’re literally ruining the lives of innocent people?”

His eyes flashed, but when he responded, his voice was calm and even. “Could you please tell your aunt I asked about her? I’d like to stop by some time to check up on her. You seem to be too busy running all over town interrogating people to be much help to her. Oh, and one more thing,” he added. “‘Innocent people’ don’t usually have a record. You think I wouldn’t check what you’d been up to when you were in Chicago?”

And with that parting shot, he was gone.