Free Board Stiff: A Dead-End Job Mystery by Elaine Viets Page B

hadn’t.
    “She was finishing the last slice when the elevator doors flew open and Daniel Odell stomped out and demanded, ‘Where’s my wife?’
    “‘I have no idea,’ Kelly told him.
    “But he saw Ceci cowering behind the table. ‘Liar!’ he screamed at Kelly and stormed into the breakfast room. He couldn’t have been madder if he’d caught Ceci with another man.
    “He grabbed her by the arm and shouted,
‘What are you doing? You’re hog fat and now you’re sneaking downstairs and shoveling more food in your face. I told you, I won’t have a fat wife.’
    “He yelled so loud, I heard him back here with the door closed. I went out and told him to keep it down or I’d call the cops.
    “‘I’m doing this for her own good,’ he said, and gave me that phony smile.
    “I’d had enough of him. I said, ‘You will not verbally abuse your wife in my hotel. You’ll treat Ceci with respect or you’ll leave.’
    “‘How can I respect her if she won’t respect herself?’ he said. ‘She’s gained forty pounds. It’s a health hazard. I’m a businessman and she makes me look bad.’
    “I said, ‘Handsome is as handsome does, and that makes you the ugliest bugger I’ve ever seen. You can shut up and stay, or you can pack your bags and get out now. Ceci, if you want to sleep in another room, you can. I won’t charge you.’
    “Ceci said, ‘No, no, I’ll go upstairs with Danny. This is all my fault.’ They got into the elevator and up they went. She had tears running down her face, but at least he wasn’t yelling at her.”
    “I don’t understand why Ceci was such a doormat,” Helen said.
    “Some women get like that,” Sybil said. “They’re so used to men treating them bad, they don’t think they deserve better. I saw them leave for the beach about nine thirty the next morning. That’s the last time I saw that poor girl alive. I hope she’s in heaven now, because her husband made her life hell on earth.”
    “Daniel said he didn’t want to go stand-up paddleboarding that morning because he was drinking the night before,” Helen said. “Was that true?”
    “Oh, he was liquored up, all right,” Sybil said. “Bourbon, by the smell of it. But he didn’t need booze to be mean. It came natural.”
    “Did he make any calls from his room?” Helen asked.
    “Used his cell phone,” Sybil said. “He’s not going to pay hotel rates for calls. This morning he asked me if I knew the name of a crematorium.”
    “He’s going to cremate Ceci?” Helen asked. “So soon?”
    “As soon as the medical examiner signs off on it,” Sybil said. “Daniel said he should get the autopsy results by noon today. He’s out making the arrangements now. He told me he’s leaving Florida the minute the autopsy report is in and he can cremate that poor girl and bring her home.”
    “But her death was sudden,” Helen said. “Her family won’t get to say good-bye. Did she want to be cremated?”
    “She’s only thirty. Probably too young to think about it,” Sybil said. “He’s the husband, so he can do what he wants. That son of a bugger will have her cremated for two hundred dollars and carry her ashes on the plane. Save himself the expense of embalming, a casket, flying her body home and a St. Louis funeral.”
    She mashed out another cigarette, then lit a new one. As the flame flared up, Sybil said, “I’d like to see him burn. In hell.”

CHAPTER 10
    H elen breathed in the heavenly scent of the hotel’s lemon polish. It was a relief to escape Sybil’s smoky cave. Helen’s hair reeked of cigarettes.
    She was eager to hurry back to Riggs Beach in her cool white Igloo. The PT Cruiser had earned its nickname for its rounded shape and blasting cold air-conditioning. Even this early in May, Helen could feel the heat building. By June, South Florida would feel like warm soup.
    Ceci Odell’s autopsy report was due any moment, according to Sybil. Once the medical examiner declared her death an