Page 62 of Unalive On Air

“Nothing unusual afterwards? Do you recall seeing Franny, or Sergeant Davies, or anyone else . . . Angel?”

“No. Well, Franny was working at The Paragon, but I honestly don’t remember seeing her then or any time before that. I’m not even sure she was on shift. You’d have to check the hotel’s records. They’re in Hels’s office. On her computer. I don’t know how to access them, though.”

“You think Helga murdered you.” It’s not a question. I’m already familiar with Peter’s thoughts on this matter, but something about her motive doesn’t sit right with me.

“I don’t think. I know,” he says.

I lay on the impartiality, try to make it seem like I’m not doubting his account of the events. “But you still love her? You sleep in her office every night to be closer to her? This hotel’s enormous. If I knew exactly who my killer was, I wouldn’t elect to spend as much of my time with them as possible.”

He sighs. “She was—is—my everything. Without her, what is there? I wanted to grow old with her, go into this afterlife together. Till death do us part, remember. It’s difficult. I can’t explain it, but when you love someone that desperately . . . you’d literally die for them.”

“So . . . you’ve forgiven her? For murdering you. Accidentally or not.” It still isn’t sitting right. Peter’s reasoning, his “devotion,” his borderline stalker behaviour. Would Helga kill him and then stick around? She’s not local to the area, so would she have left her family behind and chosen to live with the guilt? Who does that?

Peter screws up his face and turns his head to the side. Suddenly he’s no longer looking so sleepy. “Maybe.”

Beside me, Jeanie chews on her thumbnail. When I make eye contact with her, she removes her hand, straightens her spine, and offers me a pleasant but forced smile.

I decide it’s time to move on. “We have a potential motive for Peter, but what about you, Pixie?”

Pixie startles as though she wasn’t expecting me to call on her next. “What about me?”

“What can you tell me about your last few moments?”

“Well,” she says with a dramatic pause. “Nothing, really.” The ghosts laugh. “We did a gig. It finished about eleven thirty. Then we moved to the bar for the afterparty. Came upstairs to the suite, partied a bit more. Finally, everyone left to go back to their own rooms, and I crashed around four, and like Jeanie said, woke up dead.”

“Who were you partying with?”

“The rest of the band. Tommy, Johnny, Lenny, and Rocky. The roadies, a few groupies, some of the hotel staff.”

“The hotel staff?” My pencil poises itself over the paper. “Was Franny there?”

Pixie thinks for a second. “No. I don’t remember seeing her. But Helga was around for a bit.”

“Helga?” I ask, my heart racing.

Only Peter seems interested in what follows next. I imagine it’s a much‑discussed topic the others have heard many times before.

“She drank tequila with me in the restrooms,” Pixie says, shrugging off the statement.

“Do you think she could’ve poisoned you? Switched up the booze or added something?”

“It’s unlikely. She drank the exact stuff I did, then we had a heart‑to‑heart in the stalls while she threw up and I held back her hair—it was long then. I never saw her after that, at least not while alive.”

Pixie’s response doesn’t entirely disprove my theory, and she must read this on my face because she adds, “I don’t think I was poisoned. There was no vomit and no . . . bowel or bladder evacuation. But . . . my eyes were bloodshot, and as I paced around the room, I noticed something else . . .”

“What?”

“A pillowcase with two black smudges.”

“You were suffocated?” I say it like a question. I’m not sure why. “Could it have been one of your bandmates? Maybe an over-infatuated groupie?” I’ll admit that the only motive we have so far for Pixie is Angel’s xenophobia. But it would be weird for him to target only Pixie, and not the dozens of other Americans who were undoubtedly here at the same time.

“I mean, yeah, it’s a possibility,” she says. “We were the same as every other band. There was always in-fighting, but it was mostly between the boys. I never got involved in their arguments. I know some magazines claimed I was having an affair with Johnny, and then with Rocky, and then with whoever else, and that a jealous lover was to blame, but the truth is Johnny and Rocky were fucking each other, and I like women.”

I go to respond, realise I have nothing to say, and snap my mouth shut.

“I was alone in the room when I died. No sign of a break-in or a struggle. Whoever killed me either had a key, was let in by someone with a key, or . . . could walk through walls . . .”

I don’t miss the glance Pixie shares with Jeanie.