There were still six more people to call from maintenance as well as fifteen from housekeeping. Decker was about to make another phone call when there was a knock on his door frame. Marge came in, rubbing her eyes.

“We’re taking a break. Want to see the movies?”

Decker checked his watch. “I think I’ll drop by my house and see if my wife still remembers me. What’s the status? Wanda told me that Adrianna never made it back to her car.”

“We saw her pull up, park, walk to the elevator door.”

“And that’s the last you’ve seen of her?”

“So far we haven’t seen her walking through any of the hospital parking lots. She wound up at the construction site. At some point, she had to leave the hospital. The problem is that the cassettes aren’t that clear. There are plenty of people going in and out that we can’t identify.”

“Or someone carried her out under the radar. Adrianna seemed to have suffered a bloodless death. That’s strangulation or poison. There are lots of ways to get hold of potent chemicals inside a hospital.”

“Povich said that there are cameras on the narcotic cabinets. I’ll take a look at them. See who’s been checking out the strong stuff. When are the tox reports due in?”

“Not for another couple of weeks,” Decker said. “What’s happening with Aaron Otis and Greg Reyburn? Shouldn’t they be in town by now?”

“Their car broke down about fifty miles north of Santa Barbara. It’ll take until tomorrow to fix it. It’s almost easier for Oliver and me to drive up than to wait for them to come down, but I figured it would be more professional to interview them here.”

“It can wait until the morning. Have you had any luck locating Garth Hammerling?”

Marge shook her head. “What about this, Pete? What if after Adrianna called Aaron, Garth called her back and told her that he had cut short his vacation just to talk to her. Maybe she didn’t want to meet with him at home, so they agreed to meet at the hospital.”

“Go on.”

“They meet and they talk and then they fight. Something bad happens and Adrianna dies. Garth panics, and somehow gets rid of her. I bet he’d know how to get her out without being noticed.”

“But a call from Garth didn’t register on Adrianna’s phone.”

“So maybe he called Adrianna at the hospital because he knew she wouldn’t answer his calls on her cell.”

“It took him at least three, four hours to come down to L.A. If she was waiting that long for him in the hospital, someone would have seen her at that time.”

“Could be that she was dog tired and went to sleep in an on-call room while she waited.”