Foul Play on Words

by Becky Clark

  Every time I bent over to balance the pillows, she’d knock them over trying to kiss me and steal some trail mix from my bowl. The more I laughed, the more exuberant she became. Finally, Scott walked over. With Brad Pitt beside him.

  “Scout. Sit.”

  She stopped mid-lick and mid-bounce, sitting as still as Lot’s wife at Scott’s side.

  Her handler turned to me. “I’m sorry about that. She gets a little excited. But I think she likes you.”

  I rubbed Scout on the side of her face. “I like her too.”

  One inch of her tail flicked back and forth.

  “I should be that lucky,” Brad said.

  “My secret’s out. I love getting my face slobbered on.” I rubbed Scout some more, bending closer. “Sorry, baby. You’re not slobbering and I didn’t mean to imply such a thing.”

  Flick, flick, flick.

  I offered Brad and Scott some trail mix. When they both declined with grimaces, I said, “More for me” and nibbled another handful.

  We watched a couple of dogs run through the makeshift agility course. Then Scott said, “Okay, Scout. Want one last turn?”

  Without waiting for a command, she raced around the course. Scott didn’t even tell her what to do, but she completed it exactly as the two previous dogs had. But faster, much faster, despite almost catching her girth inside the tunnel of chairs. She wiggled free and galloped toward us, skidding to a stop at Scott’s feet.

  “She’s amazing,” Brad said to Scott.

  I bent to nuzzle her. “Yes, you are. Who’s amazing? Who’s an amazing girl? Is it you? Yes, it is. It’s you!” Scout and I had a moment until I realized how silly I must sound. I straightened and felt my face flush.

  “You love her.” Brad chuckled.

  Scott nodded. “Scout has that effect on people.”

  “Can she teach me?” Brad waggled his eyebrows.

  “Scout or Charlee?” Scott teased.

  “There’s an idea.” Brad turned toward me. “Wanna slobber on my face?”

  “Tempting, but no.”

  “Aw, c’mon. Have a drink with me. I’m not ready to go up and deal with my roommate yet. Being awfully cranky.” He batted his eyes melodramatically. “You’re not cranky at all.”

  “We’ll leave you two to it. Come on, Scout. Bedtime.”

  I said, “Bedtime for me too,” but wished I hadn’t when Brad waggled his eyebrows again. “Geez, you’re relentless. Go find someone else to flirt with. Maybe you’ll wear them down.” I fluttered my fingers goodbye to him and met up with Scott and Scout waiting at the elevator.

  “No nightcap?” Scott asked.

  “Nah. I’ve got a boyfriend I’m on my way to call right now.”

  “Does he know you have a boyfriend?” Scott ticked his head toward Brad, who was walking into the bar area.

  “Yeah. Brad’s a big flirt,” I said. “Probably wouldn’t know what to do if his lines worked on anyone.”

  “You’re right. Come to think of it, seems whenever I see him, he’s hanging out with guys. Just a big talker.”

  We both glanced over at Brad, now sitting at the bar talking animatedly with the bartender.

  The elevator came and as the doors were closing, Brad gave us a happy little wave. Scott waved back, but both Scout and I reached for the button for the eighth floor. Me with an index finger, her with a snout.

  “You’re on eight? We are too, aren’t we, Scout?”

  Scout replied with a thump of her tail.

  “You taught her to push the button?”

  “No, she already knew that. I just showed her which one was eight.”

  I let Scout push the button.

  We got off on eight and walked together. I realized Scott might be escorting me to my door and I waved him off. “I’m okay. You don’t need to walk me home.”

  “No, I’m down this way. 811.”

  I blushed. Of course. I stopped at 809. “Good night, you two.” I fished my key card from my back pocket and unlocked my door.

  “G’night, Charlee. Say good night, Scout.”

  Scout gave one solid bark. Then another. Then a third.

  “What a good girl you are,” I said. “Bark back atcha.”

  A woman with an angry face poked it out of a door down the hall. When she saw the full impact of Scout staring at her she pulled back inside and closed the door without a word. I felt a vindictive delight that Scout’s bark annoyed her as much as her always-needing-filled ice bucket annoyed me.

  “Good girl,” I said again and gave her a good-night thump on her side.

  I peeled off my clothes and changed into my comfy brushed-cotton pajama bottoms and an oversized T-shirt of Ozzi’s I’d stolen from him. I took a good long sniff of the shirt before pulling it over my head. It still had a trace of his scent, a cross between freshly mowed grass and pancakes. I always thought this odd, because even though he ate pancakes—boy, did he eat pancakes—he never mowed grass. But there it was.

  A weird noise caught my attention. I stood still and cocked my ear to determine if it originated in my suite or not. It was a rhythmic thumping and squeaking, and I shuddered to think I was hearing the Ice Lady shaboinking someone. But no, it didn’t quite sound like that.

  I stepped toward the bedroom wall and listened again. It was coming from Scott and Scout’s room next door. Faintly, I heard Scott laugh and then say, “Okay, that’s enough. I know the rules have been a bit lax lately, but I don’t think it befits a show dog of your caliber to jump from bed to bed. Now get down and eat your dinner.”

  I heard two squeaks and one last thump and I pictured Scout’s sweet face staring adoringly at Scott, who, I was sure, forgave her misbehavior immediately.

  Thinking of Scout eating dinner made my stomach growl and again I kicked myself for not getting some of that Watanabe food when I’d had the chance. Multiple chances, in fact. The minibar was an option, but not a good one. The armoire door hung open, so I closed it when I passed by to dig out the room service menu from the padded three-ring binder of hotel information. After thoroughly perusing it, I settled on clam chowder and a grilled cheese sandwich. I had a million problems, but lactose intolerance wasn’t one of them.

  I was startled to see that my share of the T-shirts and iron-on patches were folded in a neat stack on the loveseat. Clementine must have seen that I’d forgotten them and asked Jack or housekeeping to deliver them to me. My scalp prickled to think that someone had been in my suite for some reason other than to clean it. I grabbed the three-ring binder again and sidled over to the floor-length curtains at the sliding door. I held the binder as far away from me as possible and used it to flip the curtains away from the wall. Of course nobody was behind them, but it made me feel the teensiest bit better to check. I did the same thing with the shower curtain in the bathroom and the open door into the bedroom.

  Certain I was alone, I searched the suite for an electrical outlet so I could charge my phone while I talked to Ozzi. As I passed the armoire, the door had opened again and I knocked my head against it as I felt around the nearby wall. The armoire was where the TV and mini-fridge lived, ferpetesake. No electricity supply? Did they run solely on fervent wishes?

  I hadn’t been able to find an open outlet the day before either, but I’d thought it was just fatigue. Again, I plugged my phone into the only outlet I could find and sat on the closed lid of the toilet to dial Ozzi. I’d decided while following Jack through the dark bowels of the basement that I’d tell Ozzi everything that was going on, despite what Viv wanted. I needed a second opinion, a voice of reason, a sounding board. However, I resolved not to mention that perhaps I’d been followed to Watanabe’s. If I was going to use Ozzi as a sounding board, I needed him to be unemotional. I was emotional enough for the both of us.

  I didn’t want to dive right into my problems, so we chit-
chatted a bit and he told me about the project he’d completed today. I only understood about two-thirds of what he said about his computer job. It always sounded to me like my boyfriend was a hacker, but he’d assured me he was not (despite that time he’d hacked my laptop) and that everything he did was completely legitimate, virtuous, and wholesome.

  Well, maybe not everything was wholesome. As I drifted away from Ozzi’s words and let his voice wash over me, I suddenly wished I was in his bed. And that we were doing something other than talking.

  A loud knock jolted me back to the Pacific Portland Hotel.

  “Room service.”

  “Hang on, Oz. My dinner’s here.” I put the phone down next to the sink and opened the door.

  The waiter waltzed in with a large tray and, without asking where I wanted it, placed it on the short coffee table in front of the loveseat. He handed me the ticket. I quickly calculated the tip, signed it and handed it back, and then escorted him toward the door. As I neared it, I banged my upper arm against the armoire door—hanging open yet again—and then closed it so he wouldn’t bump into it.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Really? Another “ma’am”? I had to quit wearing sensible shoes. “Thank you. It smells delicious.” I wondered who’d made it.

  I closed the door behind the waiter and saw the armoire door had eased open for the ten-thousandth time. I picked up the white napkin folded neatly on the tray and tried to loop it around the knobs in an effort to keep them both closed. The knobs were small, the napkin was thick, and I couldn’t make it happen. Plus, Ozzi and my dinner awaited. I draped the napkin over the open armoire door. If it was going to hang open, at least I could tie a surrender flag to it.

  Grabbing the bowl of chowder with one hand and the plate with the diagonally cut sandwich in the other, I returned to the bathroom to finish my conversation with Ozzi.

  “Okay, I’m back.” I took a big bite of the sandwich. A sharp crunch, then a delightful combination of hot, gooey cheddar and pepper jack oozed into my mouth. I swallowed, then took a spoonful of chowder. I must have made yummy noises because Ozzi asked, “Are you eating or do you just miss me a lot?”

  “I do miss you, but lordy, this chowder is delish!”

  “I bet Portland has good chowder. Are you seeing any of the city?”

  “Not much. I took a walk a little while ago but mostly I haven’t left the hotel since I got here.” After eliciting a solemn—heart-crossing, mother’s life and such—promise not to breathe a word of what I was about to tell him, I filled Ozzi in on what was going on with Hanna’s kidnapping, the suspicious behavior of everyone, and the new threat hanging over the heads of conference attendees if the kidnappers’ demands weren’t met by noon Saturday. “And now, all I want to do is figure out a way to cancel this conference without everything back­firing on me—and on everyone else—in a grand and spectacular manner.”

  “What are your options?”

  “I could call in a bomb threat,” I suggested.

  “I think they call that domestic terrorism.”

  “Wreck the power supply at the hotel? I know where the basement is. That’s probably where everything is.”

  “Illegal.”

  “I could give everyone food poisoning at lunch tomorrow.”

  “Illegal and derivative.” Ozzi made that unconscious noise he makes when he’s thinking. “Maybe you could make a surprise announcement at lunch tomorrow that the conference is cancelled and everyone needs to clear out immediately.”

  “Then I’d be on the hook for all of Viv’s costs. I’m sure I’d be the first one named in her lawsuit.” I finished the last couple of bites of my dinner. “I don’t see how I can cancel the conference.”

  We talked a bit more about how I might be able to convince Viv to cancel or involve the police, but it seemed fairly hopeless. I told Ozzi I needed to call my brother too, and we said our goodbyes. Again, I wished I could do it in person.

  When Lance answered my call, I filled him in and told him about the ransom, the ticking clock, and Viv’s weirdness about the money. “Will the police get involved if there’s embezzlement?” I asked.

  “Any evidence ?”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “Then still no.”

  “Will the police get involved if … someone … calls in an anonymous bomb threat, or shuts down the hotel power, or if everyone at the conference gets food poisoning?”

  Lance was quiet for a moment. “Yes, but not in the way you want. Don’t do any of that, okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  “Lance, seriously. Does this sound like a kidnapping?”

  “Seriously? No. Why would this girl be kidnapped? Sounds like she disappears regularly. And that ransom amount? Sounds bogus to me. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the amount of a tax lien against Viv.”

  Lance had verbalized everything I’d been thinking.

  After we hung up, I left my phone charging in the bathroom but moved out to the living room. The pile of T-shirts and iron-on logos sat there in a heap, accusing me of neglect. Reluctantly, I knew I wasn’t going to solve any mysteries that night and might as well do the ironing Clementine demanded of me.

  “There have to be more outlets in this stupid room,” I muttered, dropping to my knees. I crawled the perimeter of the living area, indeed seeing the hint of an unreachable outlet behind the armoire. I followed another cord snaking out and traced it to the lamp on the desk. The lamp near the loveseat had a light fixture attached to a wall switch. I crawled into the bedroom. If there wasn’t one in there I’d have to iron in the bathroom. I crawled the perimeter there too, and on the last available wall, the one on the far side of the bed, I finally found an open outlet I could reach. Kind of.

  I dragged the ironing board from the closet into the center of the bedroom and after several tries, got it set up. It seemed wobbly but it would have to do. I carried it to the side of the bed where the outlet was and tried to slide it into the gap between the bed and the wall. I finally succeeded in wrangling it into place by standing with it on the bed, then lowering it down as if I was a construction crane and it was a load-bearing I-beam in a skyscraper.

  To plug in the iron, I had to twist myself into a master yoga position that involved a complicated process of breathing some space into my hips and softening my inner groin. But I finally did it.

  As my reward, I dialed up the True Crime channel on the TV in the bedroom and settled in for some Forensic Files while I knelt on the bed to iron on those stupid patches. The instructions on the patches advised me to use something called a press cloth. I almost certainly didn’t have one, and opted instead for a washcloth from the bathroom.

  When the iron was hot, really hot, probably too hot, I placed it on the dry washcloth, which was placed on the iron-on patch, which was placed on the T-shirt, perhaps even in the correct position. It made an alarming sizzly noise but I held it on for thirty seconds, per the instructions. When I pulled off the washcloth, it smoked. The patch had a perfect nubby imprint of the washcloth. It was crooked on the T-shirt and one corner was bent up. Most of it adhered to the shirt, but it wasn’t pretty.

  “I told her I’m not good at this,” I muttered.

  I ironed long into the night, kept company by all manner of true crime stories but barely making a dent in my piles of T-shirts, mainly because I had to give myself a mental pep talk before tackling each one. I finally turned off the iron around midnight, my legs tingling with pins and needles, and collapsed into bed. My last T-shirt looked no better than my first.

  I thought I’d be able to sleep, since every part of me was exhausted up to and including my spleen, but I was wrong. The body was willing but the brain wouldn’t relax.

  There’s something about the middle of the night that makes everything—and I mean, everything—seem worse t
han it could ever possibly be.

  Glaciers melting. Fires raging. Snipers. Politics.

  That freckle? At two in the morning, obviously skin cancer that had metastasized.

  That noise? A marauding army coming to drag me off to Camp 1391.

  That bill from Mastercard? Debt so deep a backhoe couldn’t dig me out.

  Misplaced car keys? Clearly dementia.

  That gray hair sticking straight out of my chin like a tiny flag? Impending geezerhood, incontinence, and sensible shoes for the rest of my life.

  And now, in addition to all that, I had a kidnapping that might or might not be a kidnapping to solve, with someone who really didn’t want my help in solving it.

  I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and groaned when I saw the time. I held it, gently rolling it from my right hand to my left and back again.

  I should call the police and demand they investigate. But what if it wasn’t really a kidnapping? What if there wasn’t really any ransom? I’d look dumb, they’d look dumb, Viv would look dumb. Or worse, we’d look like criminals. I set the phone back on the nightstand.

  But what if it was a kidnapping? I picked up the phone again. Was this just overblown, melodramatic middle-of-the-night angst? Would insisting on an investigation get Hanna killed? The cops would require some kind of evidence, which I didn’t have and Viv would deny. I set the phone down.

  That freckle was not skin cancer, there was no army near Portland, and I had plenty of time left to take a heroic stand against sensible shoes.

  Things would look better in the daylight.

  Because they couldn’t look worse.

  Twelve

  I woke Friday morning with a serious crick in my neck from jolting awake in the wee hours when the ironing board collapsed. The clamor had launched me from my bed like a scud missile. The buckled ironing board could lie there forever for all I cared, slowly becoming buried under eons of dust and neglect. Or the maid could deal with it. Either way, it was dead to me.

  Another drizzly, overcast day matched my mood, but I harbored high hopes that pancakes would lighten it and somehow strengthen my resolve not to return to bed. Hiding under the covers remained just on my horizon, but I willed myself to greet the day.