Venom: A Thriller in Paradise (The Thriller in Paradise Series Book 3) by Rob Swigart

investigation revealed no indication of sexual activity.”
    “And…?” Chazz urged after a brief silence.
    “And the room is very, very clean.”
    “Sure. The maid cleaned up.”
    “Cleaner than that. No fingerprints anywhere. No sign of use. No luggage. No hair in the sink, no scraps of paper in the wastebaskets. The woman, too. She had been cleaned. After she died.”
    “Who rented the room?”
    Cobb nodded at Patria’s question. “The murderer, most likely. A phantom. Vanished. As if never existed. A Frenchman who called himself Henri Christophe, a clerk in the French consulate in San Francisco. But there is no such person. Immigration has no record in the computers. He checked in the day before yesterday. Paid for two nights in advance with cash from a large folded packet of American money, twenties, used. He tipped generously. Gave a Visa card for identification and guarantee. Also his international driver’s license number. Since he had not charged anything on the card, the clerk did not run the computer check. There is no such card and no such license. He was a nice-looking man with a heavy accent. Nothing else to distinguish him. Brown hair, medium length. Didn’t remember eye color, but they were probably brown. Average height, average weight, average looks. Good clothes but not outstanding. Quiet and polite. Unmemorable.”
    “A real murder, and it isn’t your case?” Patria asked. “If Taxeira is handling it, it will probably remain a mystery.”
    “You are kind to suggest I could do better. But as the great detective Charlie Chan has said, ‘Successful detective is plenty often man on whom luck turns smiling face.’ The captain will need plenty of luck on this one. She had no clothes.”
    “The murderer cleaned up, packed her clothes with his, and left. What kind of luggage did he come in with?” Patria asked.
    “You would make a good detective, Mrs. Koenig. The check-in clerk thought he had a shoulder bag. That was all. Didn’t require a bellhop. He could walk out of the hotel carrying it and no one would notice.”
    “Maybe you should be grateful it’s not your case,” Chazz suggested.
    “Mmm.”
    After Cobb left Chazz suggested Patria bring Orli down to the lab with him while he examined Dr. Shih’s samples. “She’d enjoy a visit to the gardens.”
    Patria would have none of it, though. She walked tightly to the bedroom door. “You take her, you think it would be so damn nice.” She opened the door.
    “What’s wrong?”
    She turned. “God damn it, Chazz. I have work to do. I can’t spend all my time baby-sitting.”
    “Patria,” Chazz began patiently. “You wanted…”
    She flared up then. “I did not goddam want! You wanted. You wanted children. I wanted my career. I had a career!”
    “You still…”
    “Oh, shut up! You don’t understand anything.”
    He felt his own anger rising and started to turn away. Aikido was not helping him deal with this kind of conflict. It seemed as if it never did. But he stopped before taking the first step. “We came here, got back together, to get away from the stress of the mainland, competing careers, all that,” he said softly.
    Her face tightened. “I miss the stress,” she said with frightening intensity. “I miss the competition, the excitement. I was publishing important research.”
    “You still publish.”
    “One lousy archeology piece on the Kapuna site for a popular magazine!”
    “You got paid. A lot of money.”
    “Oh, Chazz,” she wailed.
    He went over to her and took her in his arms just as Orli woke up and started crying. They both turned and started toward her. She rolled her head in their direction, her eyes screwed shut. Then the eyes opened wide, and she smiled widely with a hiccup.
    Patria and Chazz both started laughing. Patria scooped the infant up and said, “Okay, okay. Let’s go to the goddamn gardens and show her all the pretty poisonous plants.”
    Chazz took that in silence. The crisis was