by Nic Saint
Vernon shook it off. No way one of the richest men in the country would stoop so low as to patronize the Gateway Lodge in Middletown, Ohio. Men like Hall stayed at the poshest hotels in the world. Men like Hall probably owned the poshest hotels in the world.
Vikki tucked a strand of hair back into her bob. Her pits were drenched with sweat, her blouse sticking to her back and her legs were hurting from being on her feet for so long. She’d been standing at the front desk for over five hours and she was pretty much beat.
When her shift had started that morning the storm was already raging but she had no idea it would get this bad this quick. Hour after hour she’d been watching the WKRC newscaster get gloomier and gloomier and the forecast get worse and worse. Now, a little past noon, it was so dark out it might just as well have been past six o’clock, and the snow was still falling from the leaden sky, the wind roaring and howling, and WKRC’s weatherman spelling doom with each new weather forecast.
She thought about her bike parked in the motel parking space, and how there was no way she was going to be able to get home when her shift was over. Her mom had already called, telling her she’d pick her up, but by now the weather was so bad there was no way she was going to let her mom risk life and limb by driving out here in her crappy old car. She’d only get herself stuck and would have to be rescued by the National Guard or something.
Vernon had already told her she could sleep at the motel for the next couple of days. Same story with the cooks and the rest of the staff. He had a couple of extra rooms on the third floor that needed to be remodeled and weren’t fit for paying guests to stay in. Besides, it wasn’t as if anyone else was going to come in for work tomorrow. And the guests had to be fed, the rooms cleaned, and the front desk manned in case people needed something. Like a map of the area and some pointers on the funnest things to see in Middletown. Yeah, right. The only thing to see right now was snow, snow, and even more snow!
At least Vernon had assured them there was plenty of food and supplies to last them the three days the storm was supposed to pummel the area, and the Gateway Lodge was a pretty sturdy structure and wouldn’t blow away, no matter how hard the storm huffed and puffed.
She glanced down at her phone. Billy had sent another message. He was still mighty upset she’d called off their date tonight. Said if he couldn’t rely on her he was going to have ‘do some serious thinking about their future together.’
She set her lips and plunked down her phone. What an idiot. Didn’t he have eyes in his head? Couldn’t he see there was a frickin’ blizzard rolling into the area?
A heavyset man approached the desk. He had a gray buzzcut, a perfectly trimmed little mustache and beetling brows. He looked vaguely familiar. And it wasn’t because she’d handled his registration. She’d know if she had. She was great with faces. “If you want to register I’m afraid we’re full now, sir,” she said in her kindliest voice. “But if you talk to that man over there, he’s organizing the local shelter and he’s leaving in just a few minutes.”
But the man waved an annoyed hand. “I’m a guest at the motel, Miss…” He frowned at her name tag.
“Mammal. Vikki Mammal,” she said.
“Right,” he said dismissively. “The thing is… I’m here with my daughter and we were supposed to meet her fiancé. We were going to drive into the city and take a flight out to Arkansas. Only so far he hasn’t shown up. And now I’m worried that with the storm…”
“What’s his name? I’ll see if he checked in.”
“Towns. Donny Towns.”
She quickly checked the register on her computer. “I don’t have a Mr. Donny Towns staying at the Gateway Lodge I’m afraid, Mr…”
“Hall. Wilbur Hall.”
Her eyes widened slightly. Of course. Wilbur Hall. Owner of the biggest chain of supermarkets in the country. His likeness had been on the cover of Time Magazine. He’d even written a book about how to go from zilch to zillionaire in a lifetime. She tried her best to hide her excitement. It didn’t do to fawn all over the motel’s guests. Then again, it wasn’t every day that a man of Hall’s stature stayed at the Gateway Lodge. Actually more like never.
Hall hesitated for a moment, fingers drumming on the desk. Then he seemed to make up his mind about something and took out his phone. “What if I showed you his picture? Maybe he’s one of the people you had to send away because the motel was full.” He swiped at his phone for a moment then held it out in front of Vikki’s nose. “Recognize him?”
She did. The picture Wilbur Hall was showing her was none other than Hot Gangster. His mugshot had become an overnight sensation when the NYPD had published it on their Facebook page. Quickly dubbed Hot Gangster on account of the fact that he looked more like a male model than a gangster, women had wanted to date him, men had wanted to be him, and soon after his release he’d gotten a contract with a modeling agency and had become one of the most sought-after catwalk models ever. His face, tattoos and all, now frequently appeared in clothes ads and perfume ads and ads for pretty much everything under the sun.
And then Vikki remembered something else. Wasn’t Hot Gangster engaged to be married to the daughter of a very wealthy individual? Of course! He was going to marry Wilbur Hall’s daughter, the equally rich and very delectable Tracy Hall, well-known socialite.
She realized Mr. Hall was waiting for her reply, so she quickly nodded. “He’s here, Mr. Hall. I checked him in myself. But he didn’t use the name Donny Towns.” She frowned, trying to recollect what name he had used. At the time she’d thought he looked familiar. “This must have been yesterday, um… before lunch. And I put him in room… 24B.” Her fingers were already dancing across the keyboard. “I remember because 24B is the room where we like to put our local celebrities. Politicians, sports stars, people like that. And he looked so familiar I figured he was famous for something, so I decided to put him in 24B.” She realized she was babbling when she finally brought up the registration. “There we go,” she said, chipper and bright. “He’s registered as Mr. Adam Plauder.”
And then she saw the anomaly and her eyes widened.
“What?” asked Wilbur Hall, now visibly irate. “What is it?”
She looked up at the man and met his eyes. She saw they were small eyes, buried between the flabby contours of his face, and they were flashing angrily. This was not a man who liked to be kept waiting by lowly receptionists.
“What?!” he demanded.
“He’s not alone in that room, Mr. Hall. It’s registered to a Mr. and Mrs. Plauder.”
Chapter 6
Dee finally found the plastic container with the baby food she’d prepared at their hotel in Dayton and took it out. Maya had changed Jacob’s diaper but he was still crying, which probably meant he was hungry. She gently cradled and rocked the baby in her left arm. His face was red from crying and his dark hair plastered across his little brow. She felt his temperature. Normal. At least he hadn’t suffered from the trip up from Dalton or the surprise detour to Middletown and its sterling Gateway Lodge.
Maya had gone downstairs to check out the motel, Scott had taken it upon himself to walk Ralph again, and Tom was reading something on his laptop, his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose and his face scrunched up into his usual expression of concentration. She knew better than to interrupt him when he was like that. Their vacation over, he was going back to work in a few days, Maya and Scott were going back to school and Dee was returning to the art gallery she ran in Seattle’s Pike/Pine neighborhood.
Dee peeled back the lid on the container, dug the spoon in and started feeding Jacob the mashed veggie and potato combo. She hoped the motel would give her access to the kitchen so she could maybe prepare her little darling some choice food later on. This was her last container and then her stash was finished.
Jacob had stopped crying and was munching his food with marked interest. She smiled. “You were hungry, weren’t you? That’s right,” she said as he grabbed at her hand, eager for more of the yum
my food. “We’re not exactly on the plane home yet but we’re getting there.”
She glanced out of the window, where the world was wiped away in a complete whiteout by now. She frowned. “Tell me Scott isn’t taking Ralph out in this weather.”
“They’re fine,” said Tom. “I told him to stay close to the motel.”
“Tom! They’ll be blown away!”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Tom muttered.
She got up from her perch on the edge of the bed and walked over to the window. She could hardly see the parking lot. “It looks pretty bad out there, Tom.”
“Mh…” was Tom’s only response.
“Oh, for God’s sakes. Tom!”
He finally looked up, and removed his glasses. “What?”
“You have to go after him. He can’t be out there in this weather. He’ll freeze!”
Tom smiled, that typical professor’s smile that she alternately loved and hated about him. “He won’t freeze to death. He just won’t!” he cried when she produced a groan of despair. “I told him to dress up properly and to stay close to the motel. He’ll be fine.”
She was shaking her head, then handed him Jacob and started rummaging around for her coat.
“Oh, Dee, for heaven’s sake,” said Tom, holding the baby as if he were a live grenade. “You’re not going after him, are you?”
“If you’re not going after him, I will,” she said as she pulled on her thick coat.
“He’s a teenager! Everyone knows teenagers are virtually indestructible!”
She didn’t even deign that last comment with a reply. Instead she stomped out of the room, hoping she wouldn’t find her twelve-year-old buried under a thick pile of snow.
Scott inwardly cursed. The Wi-Fi signal was supposed to cover a hundred feet. Well, he wasn’t even thirty feet from the entrance to the hotel and already he’d lost the signal. He tucked the phone into his pocket and stared down at Ralph, who, for the second time since they arrived, was digging his nose into a pile of snow and appeared reluctant to do his business.
“Come on,” he said. “I know you don’t feel the cold but I’m freezing.”
The dog had been whining and scratching at the door of their motel room, a clear sign he needed to go, and since Maya was too busy changing the baby’s diaper, Dad had something important to do on his laptop and Mom was in charge of Jacob’s feeding schedule, it was up to Scott to walk the dog. Again.
When he’d told the others he had better things to do, they’d just shaken their heads and laughed. Well, he had, hadn’t he? He was just about to beat Ricki in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas again and now he had to forfeit his hard-won victory so he could take the dog out for a walk.
Ugh. No fair.
The storm had picked up, and the wind was slicing into him, the snow feeling as if it was trying to freeze him alive. But Ralph didn’t seem to care. He kept walking out further and further, going from snowdrift to snowdrift, happily sticking his nose into the wet muck.
The cars had finally stopped coming, and the parking lot was deserted now, everyone who needed to be inside safely tucked into the motel, and the others probably in that Red Cross shelter or wherever.
They were at the back of the motel now, where Scott’s only view was a few sad trees, their branches heavily laden with snow, part of a small patch of forest. There was something else out there. It was hard to know for sure, what with the blizzard going from strength to strength, but from time to time, when there was a slight lull in the proceedings, he thought he could see a small frozen lake. Would be great for ice skating, he reckoned.
Ralph tugged at the leash and he followed the dog with another tired groan.
“Do your business already, Ralphie,” he implored the dog. “Who cares where you do it?”
But the dog wasn’t listening. Instead he was digging into yet another snowdrift with a fervor and an energy that was probably better spent on worthier undertakings.
They were right behind the motel now, and when Scott looked up he could see he was standing right beneath one of the rooms, the window obviously closed now.
Ralph was still digging furiously, snow flying in every direction. If he was going to do his business here he was definitely making sure he’d dug a nice deep hole first.
Scott glanced around, bored already. He wondered what he’d do next. Maybe he could entice Ricki for a rematch. That seemed only fair. Extenuating circumstances and all that. Only Ricki had never won before, so he might not want to be up for that. He’d just tell Scott he was a lousy loser and to buzz off. Three more days of this crap. Then a flight and then life would go back to normal, and this vacation of hell was finally over.
Visiting Grandma and Grandpa in Dayton for Thanksgiving had sounded like a lot of fun, until they’d arrived and discovered they had to contend with Uncle Gareth and Aunt Suzie and their five annoying brats—none of whom seemed to like Scott very much. All boys, they’d given him a pretty hard time, and he was glad to be rid of the lot of them.
Ralph was tugging at something. He’d dug his teeth in and was pulling mightily.
“What have you got there, buddy?” asked Scott, curious in spite of himself.
But Ralph wasn’t letting go. He pulled and pulled and suddenly there was a rip and the dog flew back, something between his teeth.
Scott sank down on his haunches and held out his hand. “Come here, boy. What have you got?”
Ralph, tail wagging happily, pranced up and dropped a piece of cloth at Scott’s feet.
Scott stared at the cloth, then stared into the hole the dog had dug.
And that’s when he saw that a man was staring back at him.
Chapter 7
Scott jerked up and involuntarily yelped in shock and fear. He landed on his butt in the snow, still staring at the man, who kept staring back, eyes open and frozen and… dead!
Scott yelped again, this time louder. And that’s when a woman’s cries reached his ear.
“Scott! Where are you? Answer me, Scott!”
Mom came around the corner, trudging through the snow.
He held up his hand. “Over here, Mom,” he said.
“Oh, Scottie!” she cried, and hurried in his direction. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Mom. It’s just that…” He pointed at the dead man. “He’s not fine.”
Mom had finally reached him and was helping him to his feet. “What are you talking about? Who?”
But then she saw it, and she, too, produced a loud cry of shock. “What’s that?!”
“I think that’s a dead man, Mom. And from the looks of things he’s been out here for a while.”
They both stared down at the man. He wasn’t wearing a thick coat or a hat or anything. From what they could see of him he was only dressed in a plaid shirt. Not exactly the dress code for a blizzard, Scott reckoned. “Do you think he was taking his dog for a walk and froze to death?” he asked. “Or maybe he came out here for a smoke?”
Mom seemed to swallow away a lump of uneasiness, then approached the man.
Ralph, meanwhile, sat on his butt, panting happily, like a dog who hasn’t just found a bone, but an entire bag of bones. He produced a cheerful woof and Scott patted his head. “Good boy,” he muttered. “Good boy.”
“He’s got something stuck in his chest,” said Mom now, hunched over as she studied the dead man. She then looked back at him, an expression of something between awe and shock on her face.
“Stuck to his chest? You mean like a piece of chicken or cheese dip?”
She was shaking her head slowly. “More like… a knife.”
Once again reality seemed to elude him, as if it were suddenly operating just slightly outside of his grasp. Like one of those artsy movies Dad liked, where nothing seemed to make sense. “A knife to cut the chicken?”
Mom swallowed once again. “I think he was killed, Scott. Someone stuck a knife in this guy and killed him then left him out here to die.”
Vernon was stomping his feet in an attempt to keep warm. Pretty soon now night would fall and the blizzard would reach fever pitch. No one was supposed to be outside when that happened. He’d seen The Day After Tomorrow and people could simply freeze to death by being exposed to these elements. And now this. A dead body. And not just a dead body but a dead guest. First that turd in Professor Kelly’s toilet and now a dead guest.
What a day.
He recognized him, too. It was that famous Hot Gangster. He didn’t look so hot now, though. More like Frozen Gangster. Or Iced Gangster, as it was obvious he’d been murdered.
That’s what you got from hosting gangsters in your establishment, of course. Sooner or later they bumped into other gangsters and one of them bumped off the other one.
The big question was: why did they have to do it at the Gateway Lodge for crying out loud? Why not take their business to some other hotel in town, or even the mall? Why here?
He stomped his feet some more and blew into his hands. Ravi Fischer, who was the motel’s handyman, and Beau Snoop, member of the Gateway waitstaff, were digging the dude out with shovels and had finally managed to remove enough of the snow so they could pull him out of his frosted grave and shift him on top of the wheelbarrow.
Vernon leaned in and grabbed the dead guy’s feet. To his surprise he was barefoot. Huh. Weird. He grabbed them and pulled him up while Beau and Ravi did the same with the guy’s torso, Ravi hoisting him up by the left arm while Beau took care of the right one.
“Dude’s heavy,” said Ravi with a grunt.
“Are those… pajamas?” asked Beau.
“Yep. He decided to come out here in his pajamas, get stabbed and die,” said Vernon, exasperated. “Just pull, Beau, and stop asking your stupid questions.”
“If you ask me, he probably got chucked out of that window up there,” said Ravi, gesturing to the window just overhead.
Vernon looked up. “Huh. That’s 24B. Was he in 24B? I’ll have to ask Vikki.”
