The Witness

pressure her. But she knew he’d like her to come to the park on Saturday where he played softball.
    She wasn’t ready, and didn’t know if she’d ever be ready, to face all the people who’d come, who’d talk to her or about her.
    She picked up the wet, mangled tennis ball, threw it so Bert could continue his game.
    She heard Brooks say, “I’m on my way.” Then, when he stuck the phone back on his belt, “Crap.”
    “There’s some trouble?”
    “Spoiled rich kid gets high, trashes hotel suite, slugs hotel manager.”
    “Oh. Your friend Russ Conroy?”
    “Yeah. Justin Blake equals spoiled rich kid. He tried to fight with hotel security, and is now being held by same until I get there. I’m sorry.”
    “It’s your job.”
    “And this one’s going to take a while, as it involves a belligerent troublemaking asshole; his annoying, enabling and influential father; and the long-suffering lawyer the kid’s behavior keeps in Gucci loafers and Chivas Regal. I may not make it back tonight.”
    “It’s all right.”
    “Easy for you to say, you’re not missing lasagna.”
    “I’ll keep some for you. It holds well.”
    “Thanks. I’ll call you either way. I’ve got to wash up some before I head in.” He took her hands, leaned in to kiss her. “I’ll miss you.”
    She liked to think he would—a little, anyway. Being missed by someone was another first in her life.
    The dog trotted up as Brooks went inside, then simply stood, panting a little, the ball clamped in his mouth, his eyes on the door.
    “He’ll come back if he can,” Abigail said. “We have to be all right without him, too. It’s important we’re all right on our own.”
    As she threw the ball again, she thought she’d just make a salad for her dinner. Eating the lasagna by herself seemed too lonely.
    T HE I NN OF THE O ZARKS stood on a gentle hill just inside the town limits. The four-story Victorian had been built by a successful bootlegger back in the twenties as a country home. His success had come to a hard stop just days before the end of Prohibition, when a rival had shot him with a Henry rifle while the man took a turn on his veranda with a Cuban and a glass of moonshine.
    The widow had never returned to the house, and for some years thereafter, it fell into disrepair. The oldest son, who liked to play the ponies, sold it the minute it came into his hands.
    Russ’s grandfather rebuilt and redesigned it largely on his own, and opened it as a hotel in the spring of 1948. While not a raging success during Cecil Conroy’s day, it held its own. As the artist community took shape in the seventies and eighties, it graced many canvases, one of which had the good fortune to catch the eye of a wealthy collector in New York.
    Inspired by the painting, the collector, as well as some of his friends and associates, began to make the hotel the base for getaways, business/pleasure interludes and assignations.
    As a result, by the turn of the century, the hotel had earned a face-lift and the addition of a spa and an indoor pool.
    Its fourth floor included the perk of twenty-four-hour butler service, and held the most prestigious suite in the building.
    With Russ beside him, Brooks stood in that suite, with its pale gold walls, its dark-toned, gleaming antiques, its glowing local art.
    Glass sparkled on the polished chestnut floor from the broken prisms of the once grand parlor chandelier. The heavy blown-glass vase that had surely been thrown into the sixty-inch flat-screen TV lay shattered on the handwoven rug that bore stains from the contents of one of three empty bottles of red wine. The remains of a Tiffany lamp shone on the debris of dishes, wasted food, overflowing soap dishes filled with butts and a scattering of porn DVDs.
    The blue-and-gold silk of the sofa fabric bore cigarette burns like ugly eyes.
    “And you should see the bedroom,” Russ commented around a split and puffy lip. “Motherfuckers.”
    “I’m sorry about this, Russ.”
    “The master bath’s jet tub’s stained with this wine, with piss. One of them broke the faucet clean off. Don’t ask about the toilet.”
    “We’re going to need pictures, before and after. Can you ballpark the monetary damage, just to give me a picture?”
    “More than seventy-five thousand, probably closer to a hundred. Jesus, I don’t know, Brooks. Could be more once we get under what we can see. And smell.”
    “How many were in here?”
    “Three. Girls in and out, too. They