“I told them about our conversation and how Joe—he’s the hotel manager—and I went up to the room to make sure your husband hadn’t had a heart attack in there. When we went in, the place was spotless. I swear to you, honey, no one ever slept in there. I could just tell, you know?” She had adopted a nervous habit of ending all her sentences with a question. “Then they asked who was on duty when Mr. Barnes checked in—”
“Who was on duty?” I interrupted.
“That would have been Joe, the manager, who checked him in. The front desk clerk was on his dinner break.” She gestured toward the man from earlier.
He nodded. “I’m Joe Templeton, Mrs. Barnes. I didn’t remember him until the police showed me a picture.”
I pulled out my stack of the same fifteen pictures the police had copied. I fanned them out in front of him.
He looked down and nodded. “Yes, that’s the man I remember.”
“Did you notice anything unusual about the check-in?” I asked. Drew inched up behind me, and I shifted to give him room at the counter.
“It was a routine check-in. He had one bag. I offered to bring it up for him, but he said no thanks. He paid with a corporate credit card, not so unusual in this place, and he said he wanted to pay up front so he wouldn’t have to check out later. That’s typical. People want to go to their meetings and get…” His voice trailed off, and he looked at Carol Ann.
“Home.” I finished for him and gave him a small smile. “That’s okay, Mr. Templeton. They want to get home. Then what? Did you see him go to his room?”
“As I told the detective that was here, the office phone rang, and I had to run and get it. The desk clerk had stepped out to dinner. After he paid, I went into the back office. No one was in the lobby.” He genuinely looked as though he wished he had seen if Greg walked toward the bank of elevators or out the front door.
A thought occurred to me. “What about surveillance?”
Joe shook his head. “We have one video camera on the front desk, and it keeps forty-eight hours of video and then tapes over itself. This is a corporate hotel in a corporate center. There’s no crime here. The only reason we had the cameras installed was to watch the employees.”
Carol Ann offered, “We had a situation a year or so back. The gentleman has since been fired, but that’s why we have the cameras now.”
“What time did the clerk come back? Maybe he saw Greg leaving on his way in?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” Joe said. “Carlos went to the new Thai restaurant around the corner and returned through the side entrance, closest to the street. I’m really sorry, Mrs. Barnes. We said all this to the police. I really wish I had more information to give you.”
My heart skipped. “Where is the Thai restaurant?”
Joe gave me directions.
“Thank you very much. I might be back with more questions,” I added over my shoulder as I turned toward the door.
Drew had to jog to keep up. “Okay, Sherlock, what are you thinking?”
“Drew, Greg loves Thai, but I hate it. So he always eats it when he’s away.” I paused at the light, and even though the red hand flashed, I darted across the empty four-lane street, heading for the neon Pad Thai sign.
When we got to the other side, Drew grabbed my elbow. “Listen. You can’t go in there guns blazing. You’re not the cops. These people are probably immigrants. If you go in there, all hopped up on adrenaline and flashing pictures, you’re going to scare them into silence. We need to finesse them. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you need to be sadder. Be the Claire I drove up here with and less your old self.”
“I’ll try,” I promised, but my hands were shaking. I wasn’t a cop, but I knew a lead when I had one. I also knew my husband. He had checked into the hotel around dinnertime, and there was a Thai restaurant within walking distance. He had eaten there. I could feel it. No one but me would know that.
When we pushed open the door, a bell chimed. The restaurant was empty, and pop music drifted softly out of the Muzak system. The intoxicating scent of fried seafood made my mouth water, despite the fact that I didn’t like Thai food. A fifty-gallon aquarium filled with bright orange and white koi took up one wall. A thirty-ish Asian woman sat behind the counter on the opposite wall, reading a tabloid. She looked up, and I gave her as sad a smile as I could muster. She returned my smile with her own inexplicably sad one.
I wondered what time they opened for dinner and checked my watch—two fifteen. “Hi. My name is Claire Barnes. I’m looking for someone. Can you tell me who was working on the evening of September twenty-eighth?” I tried to look forlorn, but I was fearful that I had come on too strong. It was a cop question, not a sad woman missing her husband question.