by Tom Shepherd
“Feeling blue, kid?” April Eddington said.
“My best friend in the world probably hates me because I couldn’t stand the sight of blood. I’m a coward.”
“Everybody gets scared, Sally Ann. Brave people overcome their fears by shaking off their failures and trying again.”
“Have you ever been sick at the sight of blood?”
“Every twenty-eight days, hon.”
I smiled and she kissed my head and left me sitting on the floor by the cold fireplace. I tried to sleep but couldn’t. A few minutes later Mr. Bennett slipped through the French doors into the dining room.
“Hector, where have you been?” Dr. Blake said from the table by the window. Tanella’s dad stood and Borkowski nodded, which meant it was okay for the professor to cross the room and talk with Bennett. I swiveled my bottom on the bricks by the empty hearth, listening.
“In my office, stuffing documents in the safe,” Bennett said, “in case the building goes underwater. Where’s Olivia?”
“Left about thirty minutes ago,” Dr. Blake said. “She had something to do in the studio.”
Hector Bennett laughed. “That’s Olivia’s word for the loo.”
“We’ve had another murder.” Dr. Blake told him about Abdu’l.
“Half an hour is a long potty break,” Borkowski said. “Where would Mrs. Bennett go after the bathroom?”
“Maybe up to our penthouse—President’s suite,” Bennett said. “I hate to think of her in that wooden tower in hurricane winds.”
“Better go find her,” Borkowski said, gulping his coffee. “Mr. Bennett, you’ve got an auxiliary generator in the basement, right?”
“If it isn’t under water already,” Bennett said.
“See if you can fire it up,” Borkowski said. “Deny the killer dark corners to hide in.”
Borkowski took Curtis the white cop, leaving Springer the black cop to watch us. Good! He looked tough enough for a dozen killers.
The Israelis and Arabs returned from their meeting, but I didn’t get to talk with Ahmad because he was being briefed about Abdu’l. Prince Ahmad sank into a chair and kept shaking his head when Springer told him. Uncle Bob came over and asked me how I was doing and I lied and said I was okay.
When Tanella came back from the kitchen, her blouse was wet across the front where she had scrubbed off the blood, and she was dripping tears. Her dad said he was sorry for yelling and she cried on his neck for a little while. Then, without a word to me, Tanella curled up on the rug and closed her eyes. Sergeant Springer and Dr. Blake pulled up chairs and sat over her, so I propped myself against a white pillar and drifted into sleep while rain and gale-force winds continued to batter the Island Club Hotel.
I don’t know how much later it was when a soft hand pressed my mouth and fingers tugged at my T-shirt.
“Tanella, what the—?”
“Shhh! Follow me.”
She crawled away, and I doggie-walked after her. Everybody else was asleep, except the helicopter pilots, who were still playing cards with their two crewmen at a round table by the coffee bar. Tanella inched to the far side of the room, slithering under a series of table skirts to conceal her movements. Before any of the Army people looked our way, we had crept beyond the French doors onto the hardwood floor of the hotel lobby.
“We’ve got to get back into our room.” She hopped up the winding staircase from the lobby to the first floor landing.
“Wait for me.”
“How long did we sleep? Good! Only one-thirty. Not enough time to move it.” She snapped on her penlight and started up the staircase.
“What are you talking about?” But she wouldn’t answer.
Darkness filled our attic apartment, and I was glad when Tanella insisted we stand at the bottom of the steps and listen for any sounds above us. Then she switched on her penlight and crept up the steps to our rooms. The bathroom door was ajar. No bundles in the hot tub.
“The drugs are really gone,” she said. “How did they do it?”
“You heard Borkowski say no drugs in the bath tub. Did you expect the druggies to bring them back?”
She trained her light on the rug, following the most direct path from the tub to the stairwell. The light was fading, but I could still see red droplets peppering the carpet.
“Blood from Abdu’l?” I said.
“Must be.”
“But how did it get up here?”
“Let’s keep looking.”
“Please, God,” I whispered. “No more bodies.”
Her flashlight caught a white fleck on the brick wall across from the handrail at the top of the stairs. I skipped down the steps and snatched the fragment from the mortar where it had lodged.
“Looks like newsprint,” Tanella said. “Of course—they threw the bundles over the rail, stacking them below. Come on!”
In the lower level where the adults slept and worked, Tanella got down on all fours and nosed along the carpet. She looked like an inch worm, scraping the rug with her cheek, careful to avoid the blood stains.
“Look! Wheel tracks. They hauled a baggage cart in here, stacked the bundles aboard, and rolled the dope away.”
“Yeah, I see the grooves.” Luckily, the rugs had a thick nap.
“Why didn’t I think of this earlier, when we came up here with Inspector Borkowski and my father? We might have tracked the pushcart.”
We followed the tracks into the hall, but the carpet was too short to leave a decent trail. And there were no visible blood splotches. Tanella decided to return to Dr. Blake’s suite and study the markings again.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Why are we seeing roller tracks at all? We came up here with a half dozen people. Everyone walked over this rug. Why are tracks visible after so many footsteps?”
“You’ve lost me. I can’t figure what Abdu’l was doing—”
“Yes!” She threw a fist in the air. “I know who did it. I think.”
“Who did what?” Too many crimes to choose from.
“Come on.” She hurried to the door.
“Where are we going?”
“To find April Eddington.”
“Oh, great. Now I’m totally lost.”
Tanella turned back to me. “She’s our link to Tony McClure, the only person we know for sure was on the beach at the drug drop.”
“McClure is dead. Who did what?”
“Come on!” She flew out the door, leaving me in darkness.
“You ain't gonna tell me, right?” I jogged after her.
Twenty-Two
We strolled in the door to the restaurant like we’d been chatting in the lobby. April was sitting in front of an empty coffee cup with a white table cloth draped around her shoulders. Eric slept on the floor by her feet, his back to us.
“You kids are crazy,” April said when she saw us. “I heard about your courage, Tanella. Trying to save that Arab from bleeding to death—you’re really something. But you better stay in this room before you become lead singer for the Ungrateful Dead.”
“Miss Eddington,” Tanella said, leaning forward, almost out of her chair, “you came to the dining room late. Where were you?”
“What, you think I shot the Arab?” She pushed back her chair as if to stand, then slid back until her knees disappeared under the tablecloth. “I was looking through Tony’s things, okay? He owes me some money. I figured the only way I’d get any of it back was to find it in his room. I’m not proud of it, but that’s what I did.”
“Find anything?” I said.
“No money.”
“Drugs?” Tanella said.
“Tony wouldn’t have drugs.”
“He used coke,” I said.
April shook her head. “I don't believe that.”
“Traces of white powder on his dresser,” Tanella said. “He admitted being a user. I’m sorry.”
She crossed her legs, leaning back. “He was hyper. Lots of energy. I thought it was caffeine. He drank canned energy d
rinks by the case.”
“Did you find anything peculiar in his room?”
April shrugged. “Not unless you think a spool of twine is—”
“Wrapping twine?” Tanella said.
“Yeah. On the night stand.”
Tanella looked at me, a sweeping glance, head-to-toe, like she’d never seen me before. “How much do you weigh?”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“How much—?”
“I’m not gonna announce to the whole world—”
“A hundred forty?” she said.
“No way! Less than a hundred.”
“You’re one-thirty, at least,” Tanella insisted.
“No!” I said.
April Eddington opened her purse, began brushing her blonde hair as she listened to us.
“Tell the truth,” Tanella said.
I sighed. “One-thirty-two. But if anybody ever hears this—”
“Jeez, Sally Ann!” Eric said, rolling over. “You’re fat.”
“Shut up!”
“Honey, why did you ask Sally Ann's weight?” April said.
“An algebra problem. Physics, actually. You see—”
Lights came on. Brilliant, hot, shadow-blasting light.
“Well, Bennett got the generator going,” April said.
“Let’s go to the ladies’ room.” Tanella dragged me out of the chair.
The light woke everybody, but we were out the door before Dr. Blake or Uncle Bob noticed us scurrying away.
“Drugs are down the old dumbwaiter shaft in room 314,” Tanella said in the hall.
“McClure’s room? How do you know that?”
“The twine. We opened a drug bundle. Druggies re-wrapped it so they wouldn't spill any cocaine when they tossed the packages onto the dumbwaiter.”
“Bad guys are still lurking somewhere in these hallways.”
“God is on our side.” She raced up the staircase.
I cursed silently. “I hope God prefers fools to dopers.”
We passed a baggage cart parked by the dead elevator down the hall from Tony McClure’s room. With all those bulbs and fluorescent tubes lit, I thought we’d be able to ride the elevators, but the auxiliary generator only powered the lights.
McClure’s body had been removed by Borkowski’s men. I tip-toed around the red smear on the rug. Tanella stomped right into the closet, even though it was dark and deep. She poked into the hole in the closet wall and swished her pen-light into the dark shaft.
“Eureka!”
“Is that Greek for ‘bingo’?” I said.
“My penlight batteries are running low. I can just barely see the pile—it must be all the way down in the basement.”
“Don’t go down to check.”
She withdrew from the hole in the wall, her Afro-Asian features dappled with half-light that spilled into the closet from the room. “Sally Ann, if this dumbwaiter has been out of service all these years, why is there grease on the tracks?”
“Higher quality lubricants in the good old days?”
“This shaft has been used regularly. Probably to hide drug shipments brought in at night. There must be an opening somewhere. We didn’t see it on the way down, so it must be above us, at the very top floor. From the location of this room, we must be directly below the witch’s hat tower.”
“You’re serious?”
“Right,” Tanella said. “Presidential Suite—Hector Bennett’s penthouse. Let’s go back to the dining room.”
Uncle Bob met us at the doors to the dining room, highly upset.
“When your dad found you were gone again, he went a little crazy. He ran into the hallway, calling your name. Sergeant Springer drew his gun, but he didn’t fire. He looked back at us, then ran after Nate.”
“Who’s still here?” I said, doing a quick nose count. Tanella’s dad, Olivia Bennett and all three cops were missing.
“Dr. Thornburg,” Tanella said, “my father’s life is in danger.”
She turned and ran away. I started after her but Uncle Bob grabbed my wrist. “Whoa, Sally Ann! Your dad would skin me alive if I let you get away again.”
“He’s in Augusta—Tanella’s in the halls. Please, Uncle Bob, lemme go!” I twisted away just as the lights went out.
You had to be there. First, I’m standing under a crystal chandelier in a brightly lit lobby, then I’m a blonde bug at the bottom of an ink well. Spinning, swallowed by black air, stumbling out of balance. I crashed into a padded chair, knocked it over and flipped onto the hardwood floor. My hand grazed something sharp and bristly. An animal snout! I screamed—then struck the monster. The blow bounced off eyes that felt like glass marbles. I was still tumbling, and now I felt the creature’s snout and tusks against my stomach as we rolled together across the rug and crashed into the metal screen protecting the lobby fireplace.
I thrashed at the hairy monster on the dark floor. It hopped when I punched, and each jab scratched the heel of my hand like I was beating a bottle brush, but the creature never attacked.
Then I noticed the brute only moved when I struck it.
Fingering the grizzly form, I realized the head in my lap belonged to the stuffed and mounted black boar that had hung above the lobby fireplace since J.P. Morgan shot the unlucky beast in 1908. Snatched from its perch to transport upstairs, darkness had swallowed it when the lights failed. First, cool swirls of relief flushed through me, then I felt foolish. That happens to me a lot.
“Sally Ann!” Uncle Bob said. “Are you hurt?” He swept the lobby with a flashlight.
“I’m okay—I’m going to find Tanella.”
“Get back here!” His beam locked on my peaches-and-cream profile, but before he could grab me I’d bounced upstairs into the darkness.
“This is stupid,” I kept muttering to myself. “I’m going to get murdered. Why don’t I go back down to the restaurant and slurp some nice, warm Coca-Cola—?”
A hand grabbed my T-shirt in the darkness. “Sally Ann!”
I pulled away. “Don’t do that!”
“It’s me.”
Well, it sounded like Tanella. “How do I know it’s you in the dark? One of the killers could imitate voices.”
“He’s dead.”
“Flick on your penlight,” I demanded.
“It’s dead, too.”
“What’s the square root of sixty-five?”
“Eight-point-zero-six-two-two-five.”
Had no idea if the answer was right, but that had to be Tanella. Anybody else would have stopped at the second decimal place. She laughed. It was weird—I could hear and touch her, I even smelled the soap she’d used to wash away the blood. But the hallway was so utterly dark I couldn’t see my own finger poking my nose. We were two voices without bodies. That was okay, because I’d seen enough bodies today.
“Footsteps above. My dad is looking for me on the next floor.”
“How do you know it’s him?” I said.
“I don’t.”
“Mysterious sounds, overhead in the dark,” I said. “Cheerful as a cemetery at midnight.”
“Feel along the wall until your eyes adjust to the darkness.”
“Girl, my eyes are adjusted, and I’m still walking inside a licorice stick.”
“Take my hand—we’ve got to find the stairwell up to our floor,” she said. “My father is in serious danger.”
“Because the killer wants to silence him?”
“No! Because the police will shoot him for escaping while all he’s doing is looking for me. Stairwell—let’s go!”
It cost me two badly bruised shins from a fall over the coffee table to learn Tanella’s dad wasn’t in his suite. While I was hobbling and bitching about my wounds, she found the candles and matches Moses gave us.
“God, it’s dark!” I said. “Can’t find my white ass with both hands.”
“That’s it!” She struck a match and lit a candle. The glare hurt my eyes, so I looked away. “The ring—the missing ring! Ju
st a minute.” Tanella stood silently, holding the candle, with hurricane Hagar battering the windows. She was thinking. I could almost hear the tumblers clicking into place.
“Sally Ann, if my dad is searching for me in the dark, frightened for my safety, where will he go for help?”
“Uncle Bob?”
“He’s downstairs with the diplomats.”
“Inspector Borkowski? No, forget that. So, who?” I smiled as the light bulb in my brain clicked on. “Girlfriend Olivia, up in the witch’s hat?”
Her voice went icy. “You didn’t have to mention the girlfriend factor.”
“Sooorry.”
My candle went out twice along the way, and twice I tipped it against Tanella’s flame to re-light. Walking in the darkness with a candle is about useless, anyway. You have to shield the flame with cupped fingers or it dies, you can’t see very far, and the brightness in your hand actually blinds you. It doesn’t cast light like a flashlight. I tried holding my candle high, playing Statue of Liberty, but hot wax dripped on my hair and I cussed myself for a fool.
Somehow, we found the base of the spiral staircase leading up into the hotel tower. Tanella and me climbed ahead, passing a brass plaque on the wood panel that announced the Presidential Suite. At the top of the steps, light leaked into the stairwell from a door standing ajar. Olivia was talking to someone, but I didn’t hear the other voice.
“This is not a good sign,” I whispered.
“Shhh!” Tanella scolded.
“Yes, yes. I know,” Mrs. Bennett was saying. “Of course. Well, that’s what I thought, but the hurricane...Sure. Soon as I know.”
“Her phone is working—?” I started to say something obvious, but Tanella smothered my mouth with the heel of her hand, flattening my nose.
“Yes!” Olivia said. “Do you think I’d call unless I wanted to tell you? God! You’d think I just started doing this. All right, I’ll keep in touch with him. All right. Yes. Goodbye.”
“That does it!” Tanella pulled open the door and marched into the circular suite. I gulped, following her.
Olivia Bennett nestled on a milk-white sofa, wearing a jade pantsuit and a single string of pearls. Around her dozens of scented candles flickered, beeswax and clove and jasmine and vanilla. On the far wall I noticed a small pair of wood doors, waist high, latched.
