Death in Paradise Read Free Page B

have drunk it hot or cold, evidence or not. These days I seemed to be having a lot of trouble keeping my eyes open—a strange and scary turn of events for a normally high-energy person. I entertained secret fears of some dread disease, but I was too busy, and the symptoms—exhaustion, nausea, and excessive thirst—too vague for a doctor's visit. Besides, I was afraid he'd diagnose mono and send me to bed for an extended rest. I never had time to rest.
    I was sitting there, feeling a peculiar combination of numbness and high anxiety, when I remembered the speech. Breakfast would go a whole lot better if we had Martina's speech. Some quick study could read it. Probably me, since I'd written most of it. I went over to her desk and started pawing through her papers. Not on top, where it should have been. Not in the first stack, nor the second. My search grew frantic. There it was. I reached.
    The hand that grabbed my arm was not gentle. "What in hell do you think you're doing?"
    I shook off the hand and turned. He was a big block of a man, wide bodied, thick necked, with a big head. His round eyes had a steely, opaque sheen. "Step away from there, please," he said. It was not a request.
    "I'm sorry," I said, "Detective..."
    "Nihilani," he said.
    "Martina is... was... Martina, the woman in there..." What was the matter with me? I was dithering like an idiot. "We're running this conference together. She's supposed to give the breakfast speech this morning... a speech about sexual harassment and teenage girls that we wrote together. And it looks like I'm going to have to give it instead. I was trying to find it so I could start preparing."
    His face didn't change. There was no emotion as he said, "You can't touch her papers." A man of few words.
    "Just the speech," I said. "Look, you can watch me. Or look for it yourself... or whatever you want. You can initial every page before I leave... anything... but I need that speech."
    "No." He folded his arms and stepped back. "You already screwed around with the papers."
    "What harm can it do?" I argued. "We've got close to two hundred people at this conference. We want to keep things as normal as possible. It won't help to start off the day disorganized and chaotic when it isn't necessary."
    "No," he repeated.
    "Do you have a boss I could talk to? Someone who could authorize me to borrow the speech? That's all I want to do—to borrow it—you can have it back after breakfast."
    "I am the boss," he said.
    Good going, Kozak, I thought. Now what do you do? At that point, my body decided for me. The additional stress of having to beg for the speech on top of finding the body on top of the last two days. Jet lag, lack of food, too little sleep, too much work. Shock. "I think I'm going to be sick," I said. I headed for the bathroom but he blocked my path. "Now what?"
    "Crime scene," he said.
    My room was five floors down and my stomach suggested that it didn't want to wait five floors and two long corridors. "Can you at least get me a towel?"
    Reluctantly, he went to get it and I yielded to a momentary criminal impulse. I had just time to grab the speech and shove it into a pocket before he returned and handed me the towel.
    After seven years as a consultant, I've acquired a measure of poise in awkward situations, but there is no graceful way to be sick in front of strangers. Even alone and under the best of circumstances, it is not an aesthetic activity. The toughest among us can be reduced to a quivering mass with streaming eyes and heaving chest. Red faced, breathless, and depleted. I did my best. I was subtle, discreet, quiet, and wretched. A diner at the next table would hardly have been disturbed. And the steely-eyed bastard watched me the whole time as if it were an event being staged for his benefit. I wiped my face, wadded up the towel, and threw it in the trash. It was wasteful but I didn't care. I couldn't very well rinse it out in the sink, could I?
    "Just a few