The Hammett Hex

by Victoria Abbott

  For my second plate I opted for the agnolotti stuffed with butternut squash. I love all pastas, but especially stuffed ones, and Vera couldn’t abide squash. We all know that what Vera can’t abide doesn’t turn up at Van Alst House. Once again, I could enjoy it with a clear conscience. My dining companion moved on to the lasagna, a safe choice.

  The agnolotti were plump and stuffed with flavorful squash and a hint of what? Sage? Brown butter? Whatever it was, the dish was worthy, served as it was, alone with no distracting vegetables, but with large shavings of very good parmegiano reggiano.

  Apparently, the lasagna didn’t merit a single comment. In fact, Smiley didn’t eat more than a third of it, pushing the rest randomly around the plate.

  I, on the other hand, considered ordering a second plate of agnolotti for dessert. I didn’t think the waiter would cope with that break with tradition, however, so I stuck with the dessert menu. Like the dinner list, there were no surprises. I went with tartuffo. Again, something the signora didn’t serve.

  As our large waiter bowed his way toward the kitchen with our orders, Grumpy stared at the table and drummed his fingers on it. I turned my attention to the other couples on the other side of the restaurant. One couple was head to head, foreheads touching as they shared a laugh, seemingly oblivious to the rest of us. I suppose I must have leaned sideways a bit to get a better look at them, maybe soak up a bit of that joyful spirit. As I did, my red napkin slipped to the floor. I bent over to get it, and for some unknown reason I lifted my head a bit too fast and banged it on the underside of the table. I gave the table a dirty look as if that made any sense. Of course, the way the evening was going, I could expect a bit more sympathy from that wooden table than from my dinner companion. I rubbed my head and did a double take. The waiter had hurried back, bowing, as I sat up straight in my seat. “Signorina! So sorry! Are you all right? More wine. Yes!” He snapped his fingers and a much smaller waiter came running with an emergency refill. He was obviously of the same school as the signora. I found myself shaking my head and saying, “No, thank you.” It didn’t work, of course.

  “I’m fine really,” I said, caving in to the extra wine. Why fight it?

  Grumpy managed to ask, “Are you okay?”

  I had just clearly said I was fine, but I let that go and nodded.

  The waiter filled my glass and for good measure Mr. Grumpy’s glass too.

  Both waiters eased away from the table with a flurry of well-wishing, the older one giving the occasional bow. I raised my glass and smiled at him. Thank you, I mouthed.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” Mr. Grumpy said.

  Uh-oh. What was up? Rethinking the relationship now that we were on the other side of the continent? “Can it wait?”

  “It can’t. And I am sorry.” The old familiar blush was making its way to the roots of his hair. He still wasn’t making eye contact.

  I glanced over at the waiters, who were no longer paying attention to us because they were busy snapping their fingers at the busboys, and then I turned my eyes toward to the laughing couple, who had never even noticed us in the first place.

  Smiley leaned forward and opened his mouth.

  I made the international sign for “zip your lip.”

  “Don’t be like that,” he said. “I’m trying to—”

  Sometimes you just have to take action. I knocked over his water glass onto his lap. The look on his face almost made up for all the glowering.

  “Let me help you,” I said, grabbing napkins from the next table as well as ours. I moved to his side and began to “assist.”

  “Please stop,” he said.

  I leaned in as if to give him a peck on the cheek, as the other couple seemed to be doing again.

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  I whispered in his ear, “Don’t tell me anything. There’s a bug under the table, a listening device.”

  Already waiters were scurrying to address our problem.

  “No problem,” Smiley said to them. “We can manage.”

  “So clumsy of me,” I said with a bit of a simper. I returned to my side of the table and swilled a bit of wine. I raised my glass to Tyler and winked.

  He lifted his glass, shrugged and managed a weak grin.

  I beamed at the waiter. “You know, I think I’ll have the tiramisu as well as the tartuffo. One lonely dessert never seems to do the trick.”

  Before and during the second dessert, I filled the air with chatter, especially my hope of doing a boat cruise around the bay and maybe going to Napa for a wine tour. I babbled merrily about everything except what I was really worried about: the strange things that had happened since we’d been in San Francisco.

  As for Tyler’s big secret, I’d already known he was guilty about something. He’s a very ineffective liar, having missed the formidable training that growing up with my uncles provided me. Despite that, I preferred to be honest with each other whenever possible.

  We finished our second desserts and ordered Spanish coffees. Tyler was starting to squirm, but I felt like running up the bill for whoever had arranged this dinner in order to tape our conversation. My money might have been on the hotel manager, but this whole day had been so full of unknowns. One thing I did know—that manager had whopping big feet and he wasn’t the person who had dropped that bedspread over my head. The mic under the table of the restaurant he’d sent us to certainly made it look like he was implicated. But how? And who else was involved for whatever reasons?

  Perhaps I’d know more when Tyler finally was able to get that confession off his chest. Whatever it was, I was hoping it wasn’t a breakup.

  We did at least leave a tip. After all, it’s not every day you get all those bows and all that finger snapping. The other couples did glance up as we stood to leave. Tyler managed to preserve his dignity by folding his jacket over his arm and letting it hide the water stain on the front of his pants. Face it. Wet pants aren’t a good look for anybody.

  As we finally made our way out of the restaurant, waiters bowing and waving as we went, I leaned into him, this time without doing him any damage. He seemed to be feeling a bit better, all things considered, but something was still weighing on him.

  I wondered if he could have hidden something in his hotel room that caused all this trouble and why he wouldn’t have mentioned it. I could see how that would make a person feel bad.

  We strolled past the many gelato shops on our way back, but even I couldn’t have managed another bite.

  “Whoever planted that bug didn’t get their money’s worth tonight,” I said, giving him a little poke in the ribs, “but we sure did.”

  He nodded grimly. I took that to mean he would have enjoyed it more if he hadn’t had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Sure I’d made a few remarks about Mr. Grumpy, but it really hadn’t bothered me all that much, maybe because I eat three meals a day with a woman who has raised disagreeability to an art form.

  I gave him a nudge with my elbow to follow up on the poke. “Sorry about the glass of water on your lap. I wasn’t aiming for you but I did need you not to say anything you didn’t want to have taped. Not that I know what you were going to say, but I’m sure you’ll tell me in good time.” I added a silent “or else” to that.

  Figuring that I could wait, I linked arms with him and said, “When you’re ready.”

  I decided to relax and enjoy the evening walk. Unlike our quiet town of Harrison Falls, the sidewalks were teaming with people, ambling along in twos and threes, walking dogs, wheeling bikes, relaxing in outdoor cafés, eating gelato, you name it. Some older women in uniforms trudged with heavy shopping bags, younger men and women jogged by in sleek sportswear. A place for everyone, this town.

  “Tomorrow will be our gelato day,” I said, leaning in. The thing was I still felt the tingle of attraction to my grouchy police offic
er. He didn’t have the lean handsome face of the man who had robbed me of my college fund and maxed out my credit cards before leaving me high and dry. And he didn’t have Lance’s kooky charm and movie star looks. He was committed to being a police officer although that was the worst possible match for me given my family. He didn’t always do what I wanted, but in the long run he was there for me. He’d changed jobs for me. He was ridiculously neat and organized and believed in the rules and doing his duty, but he’d still taken unpaid leave from the new job for this special vacation, to make a new start for us. No question that he was the guy for me. And eventually, I’d learn why he was being such a pain in the behind during that new start.

  A silent but not unpleasant twenty minutes downhill and we were strolling along the boardwalk by the edge of the bay, along with a gazillion other starry-eyed visitors. We found a convenient bench and sat down to stare happily until we lost ourselves in the images of the glittering water.

  Just as the evening chill was starting to sink in, he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh well, people get in bad moods. Too bad it was during our free, no-strings-attached dinner.”

  “It’s a good thing you spotted that device . . .”

  I stopped myself from saying, “I know.” No one likes an “I-know-it-all.”

  “Because I was about to tell you something.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “I was keeping it from you.”

  As if I didn’t know. I squeezed his hand.

  “I think I know what they were looking for.”

  I waited. I felt a knot in my stomach that had nothing to do with two desserts and a Spanish coffee.

  “It’s something I had in the room.”

  I took a breath and thought, as Vera might have said out loud, “In our lifetime.” Really, he was too much sometimes.

  “I hid it under the mattress in the bed by the window. I guess you interrupted him before he got that far.”

  I couldn’t stop myself. “And what was it? The Hope Diamond?”

  “Don’t laugh. It was a photo album.”

  “What?”

  “A photo album.”

  That came as a surprise. “What photo album? You carried an album with you? What for? Why didn’t you mention it?”

  “Which question do you want me to answer?”

  “Pick one.”

  “My grandmother gave me the album.”

  “She did? When?”

  “My first visit when I went without you. You were on your hunt for vintage stuff, I went to see her on my own. I’m sorry. I didn’t mention the album. Don’t know why.”

  “I know not a single person from the Bingham family. If I was given an album, I would want some time alone with it. I get it and you don’t need to apologize.”

  “Thanks. I wasn’t sure what was going on in my head.”

  “No worries. Tell me about the album.”

  “It was just an old family album, pictures of my dad when he was a kid, pictures of his father. Pictures of Gram. Some of me as a baby and as a kid with Gram before the family got . . . messed up.”

  “But that must have been wonderful.”

  “It was. Gram said some of these pictures were the only ones left. So, yeah, it’s great. I intended to show it to you . . .”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I just needed some time with it.”

  “I get it.”

  “Alone. I guess that’s stupid. I feel like a jerk about tonight. I get tied up in knots sometimes.”

  “Not stupid. Look, Tyler, there’s nothing at all surprising in you wanting to look at this album alone. It’s a big emotional load and of course you needed to keep it to yourself for a while. If someday you want to share it, I’d love to look at it, but you don’t need to worry about that. Just get your head around this newfound relationship and enjoy it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m glad they didn’t find it.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “How did you get it from the room without anyone knowing?”

  He shrugged and, for the first time since the robbery, showed his grin. Welcome back, Smiley.

  “Sometimes it pays to be a police officer.”

  “Nice. And a bit noir.”

  He did his best to look noirish but, you know, with the blond curls, the little gap between the front teeth and that blush, it didn’t come easy.

  “Um. Did you slip it under the mattress again?”

  He hesitated.

  I said, “I hope you’ve decided to trust me.”

  “Right. I figured they wouldn’t look twice. Although now that I’m saying it out loud, it does seem pretty stupid that anyone would turn over two hotel rooms and attack you over an old family photo album. I don’t know why I thought that.”

  “Exactly. It’s not like you were the Romanovs.”

  “I think you’re right. I hid it because—”

  I squeezed his hand. “Told you, I get it. It means a lot to you.”

  “I’ve been feeling more like a teenage girl than a cop over the whole hidden photo album thing. Glad it’s out in the open.”

  “It’s not really a Hammettish behavior, is it? Or maybe it is. I mean what would Nick Charles say?”

  “He’d say that it’s been too long between drinks.”

  I laughed. “Nora’s up for it. But while we’re sipping, we’ll have to figure out why our table was bugged.”

  He stiffened. “It has to be the manager.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I can’t figure out why he’s involved but my gut tells me he is.”

  “He is pretty strange. On the other hand, we have that fabulous suite and we had a pretty good dinner—”

  “Easy for you, you didn’t get a glass of water dropped in your lap.”

  “That’s true and I enjoyed every mouthful of dinner because I wasn’t consumed with guilt over something perfectly understandable, but that’s all behind us now.”

  “Maybe you were hiding something from me too.”

  “Maybe I am.” There was that Guy Noir Bobblehead, saved for the right occasion. “I’m not consumed with guilt, but I am really wondering what there is about us that’s attracting the wrong kind of attention.”

  “Chances are that some crook has one or both of us mixed up with somebody else.”

  “I should take notes. Option one: Mistaken identity. Sounds right for a Hammett adventure. Just add fog and stir.”

  “It does sound right.”

  “Then option two: How about someone thinks we have something belonging to them?”

  “Like what? Not the photo album?”

  “Well, that’s the mystery, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t see what we could have that belongs to someone we don’t even know about.”

  “I’m just speculating because we don’t really have anything to go on. You’re a cop. Don’t you come up with hypotheses during an investigation? What harm can it do?”

  He said, “You’re right. What about option three: Maybe a random burglar with a mean streak. Most likely in real life.”

  “That would be the hardest option, because we’d never find out, would we?”

  “This is a big town, and as upsetting as it was, it’s still a small crime and won’t be big on the cops’ priorities. We’ll probably never know anyway. Although it seems unlikely that it’s random considering the Prius incident and the cable car attack both involved—”

  “Me. So it’s got to be connected. Maybe option four brings us back to the manager.”

  “No question. Upgrading us to a suite, giving us a free dinner in a pricey restaurant, I wondered about that.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  He rumpled his forehead. “A theft ring? Some kind of blackma
il scam? Could happen, I suppose. I guess my idea about the album was just the guilt talking.”

  “No doubt. And maybe when this so-called ring found out you were a cop, they decided to treat you with kid gloves.”

  Our eyes met and we both found ourselves laughing. “That is a bit ridiculous,” I admitted.

  “More than a bit. Everything’s a stretch.”

  “But even so, it is strange that we were treated like that.”

  He said, “My guess is that they were afraid of a lawsuit. If you could make the case that their room keys weren’t secure and guests could be attacked in the stairwell. An unoccupied suite and then springing a couple hundred for dinner is a small price to pay to keep us from getting lawyers or cops involved.”

  “And don’t forget the social media threat. But then how do we explain the bug under the table?”

  Smiley said, “Same deal. They want to make sure that they know what we were planning. Take our measure.”

  “They went to a fair amount of trouble. Do you think they were hoping to hear something they could use against us?”

  “Like I said, they’d want anything to steer clear of a lawsuit or a police investigation.”

  “Well, let’s lull them into a false sense of security when we get back.”

  Considering we didn’t know what was going on or who was behind it, we were in a great mood as we returned.

  We made a point of stopping to see the manager to thank him for the dinner and to test an idea. It was obvious he’d been working a brutally long shift. No wonder he seemed out of sorts. We laid it on thick.

  “Excellent,” I gushed. “We had fun and it was so good to have a chance to have a great meal and just think about what we’re going to do next.”

  Smiley said, “Given the seriousness of the attack on Jordan and the damage done to our rooms, I am assuming that you have arranged for extra security to protect us while we’re here.”

  I thought the manager might have paled.

  “Of course,” he said. I was surprised his pointed nose didn’t grow another inch in front of us.