The Corpse in the Cabana

look. “I can keep a secret.”
Oh, I just bet you can. “Still, you don’t want to get messed up in this.”
“Sure, I do,” he said warmly. “Anything I can do to help, I’ll do it.”
I studied him for a moment, wondering what his angle was. Why was he so keen to help? Oh, my word, maybe he’s the killer!
Of course, that was ridiculous. Why would Lucas Salvatore, a man who could buy and sell Natasha Winters ten times over, want to kill her? Okay, she was a nasty piece of work, but I couldn’t see Lucas caring about that. He seemed so...unruffled about darn near everything. As far as I knew, Natasha and Lucas ran in completely different circles. In fact, during the scuffle at the opening night party, they both had acted like they’d never seen each other before. Granted, it was easy enough to pretend not to know each other. What if they’d been lovers who had a falling out, and Lucas killed her in a fit of passion?
No. I couldn’t quite see that. For one thing, Natasha was a bit trampy for a class act like Lucas Salvatore, but even if he’d been into her, he was far too old. Natasha liked them young. Lucas was a good-looking guy and in remarkable shape, but he hadn’t seen twenty in quite some time.
Once I’d settled in my own mind that Lucas wasn’t a true suspect, I decided I could use his help. After all, he was a thriller writer. He must have picked up a thing or two while researching his novels. After all, I’d learned to make pemmican for one of mine. Believe me, that is not something you want to get into.
“All right, this is why I need a pencil,” I said, pulling out the slip of paper. “I found this in Natasha’s room.”
“You broke into a crime scene?” He didn’t seem particularly shocked.
“I know right? She’s a lunatic,” Cheryl muttered.
“Not a crime scene, exactly,” I said. “I mean she didn’t die there.” He gave me a look which I ignored. “In any case,” I continued, “if I rub the pencil over the impressions on this sheet of paper, we can read what was written on the pad. It might lead us to the killer.”
“Or it might be a shopping list,” he pointed out with annoying logic. Cheryl stifled a giggle.
“Do you or do you not have a pencil?” I snapped.
“I do not, I’m afraid, but I am certain I can acquire one.” He stood up and strolled to the bar. As he leaned over, his shirt rode up enough that I could see he had a very nice backside. I told myself not to stare.
“Don’t you just love how take-charge he is?” Cheryl asked dreamily, swirling a fry around in a pool of ketchup.
“Yeah. Totally. Why did you have to go blab?”
“Because he’s an expert.”
“He’s a writer,” I snorted, “that doesn’t make him an expert on anything except maybe comma usage, and even that’s doubtful.” Most writers, including yours truly, have a dickens of a time with commas. Thank goodness for line editors, that’s all I’ve got to say.
Editors. Now there was a thought.
“What about Natasha’s editor?” I asked.
“Yvonne?” Cheryl frowned. “What about her?”
Yvonne Kittering had been Natasha’s acquisitions editor at Romantic Press. Sort of like her rep or sales agent, I guessed—unlike most of us who were published there, who were pretty much left to our own devices and never heard from our acquisitions agents again, Yvonne’s sole job was to keep Natasha happy. Not exactly my idea of a dream job. Rumor had it that Yvonne hated Natasha, though I’d never seen Yvonne do anything but suck up.
“Maybe they had a falling out or something. Natasha was notoriously hard to work with,” I suggested. “If I were Yvonne, I’d have murdered Natasha years ago.”
Cheryl waved that away. “I saw them at the party. They seemed perfectly fine. Yvonne was kissing her backside as usual, and Natasha was lapping it up like she was the Queen of Sheba.”
“Huh. Still, I’d like to talk to Yvonne. Even if she isn’t a suspect, I bet she would have a good idea on who’d have it in for Natasha. And why.”
Lucas returned to the table before I could continue my train of thought, stubby pencil in hand. “As my lady wishes,” he said, handing it to me with a flourish.
“Thanks,” I said lamely. Laying the paper on the table, I used the broad side of the lead to lightly color over the impressions. Letters became visible, and I frowned.
Cheryl leaned over my shoulder. “What is that? Letters?”
“Yes. Looks like a K and a V. Followed by a number: 506.”
“Sounds like a hotel room,” Lucas drawled, leaning back in his chair.
It sure did. “Okay, but what about the letters?”
“Maybe they stand for the name of a hotel or something,” Cheryl suggested.
“Wait, there’s more,” I said as I scribbled across the lower half of the paper. “It’s a time. Ten p.m. No date, unfortunately, but it couldn’t have been too long ago or someone probably would have written over it by now.”
“All right,” Lucas said, leaning forward and clasping his hands on the table. “We’ve got a time, a location—I’m betting that room is in this hotel—so what do the letters mean?”
He was right. Natasha wasn’t exactly the sort to put herself out, and she didn’t much care about being subtle. She’d probably insist the meeting take place as close to her own room as possible. “I’m guessing it was whomever she was meeting.”
“KV,” Cheryl muttered. “I don’t know. That doesn’t sound familiar.”
I grinned as a thought struck. “Sure it does.”
The other two turned expectant gazes in my direction.
“It does?” Cheryl asked.
“Sure. I’ll bet you anything it’s Kyle. Natasha’s boy toy.”

Chapter 6
Prime Suspect
FINDING KYLE WAS EASY enough. He was ensconced behind the circular bar in the middle of the hotel lobby wearing his hotel uniform of khakis and a white button-down shirt with the Fairwinds