“You’ll never guess what, Willeen,” he said excitedly.
“No, I probably won’t,” she agreed, rubbing her eyes.
“I have a whole bag of new towels in the trunk of my car. If you go get them, we’d be all set.”
Willeen looked at him and scrunched up her face. “I don’t know.”
“Please,” Bessie shrugged. “For my sake.”
Willeen shrugged her shoulders. “What’s the harm? I wouldn’t mind using a new towel myself.”
Eben and Bessie listened as the back door slammed and Willeen crunched across the yard to the garage where Eben’s car was hidden. A few minutes later she was back.
“I guess you like the color green, huh?” Willeen commented. “Ya know, sometimes it’s good to buy two different colors that complement each other.”
“Since I never really had a permanent home,” Eben said in a dejected voice, “I never learned the tricks of decorating.”
“Enough of your dismal stories,” Willeen said. “Let me talk to Judd.”
When Judd came out of the shower, Willeen tugged at the flimsy towel wrapped around his waist. “Our guests would like to go under the sprinkler, as it were.”
Judd grinned at her. “We’ll let them take a shower. Hey, Eben,” he yelled, “do you two want to take one together?”
“NO!” Bessie bellowed from the depths of her being. Judd got a good laugh out of that one. “Come on. Isn’t there any sexual tension in that room?”
“Absolutely not!” Bessie croaked.
Eben rolled his eyes at Bessie. “You didn’t have to be so definite. Would you like to go in the shower first?”
“No, you’re more desperate than I am.”
They had to wait until Willeen took her shower, after which there was no hot water left. Eben and Bessie still took their turns, and after they had both spruced up, they were allowed to sit at the scarred Formica kitchen table. Under Judd’s watchful eye they ate their cereal with plastic spoons. The air was chilly and what could have been a cozy farmhouse filled with inviting smells and crocheted doilies instead reminded Bessie of an abandoned flophouse. How did they end up with this place? she wondered.
Willeen was sitting on a broken-down love seat a few feet away, filing her nails. The sound drove Bessie crazy. It went right through her, like fingers on a blackboard. Bessie’s nails were strictly no nonsense, clipped to the quick, kept short to make her housework easier. They required a minimum of fuss, the way Bessie liked most things.
Willeen bit down on a cuticle and it seemed to relay a thought to her brain. “Ya know, I wonder if that washer and dryer work. I have some laundry and I didn’t use Eben’s towels because I hate to use towels before they’re washed. Other people’s germs are on them.”
But it’s all right for us, Bessie thought.
Judd opened the kitchen cabinet under the sink and discovered an almost empty box of laundry detergent. “There’s some soap here, Willeen. I got some things that need to be washed too.”
“Goody gumdrops,” Willeen said as she put down her nail file and headed into the bedroom.
Bessie and Eben were eating in silence, except for the snap, crackle and pop of their cereal. They both munched slowly, savoring the time they were allowed to sit up and have a different view. For both of them, even the sight of the tacky furniture was better than staring at the four walls of the bedroom. Finally Judd grew impatient.
“Hurry up, you two,” he ordered. Quickly they gulped the rest of their food, were allowed to use the bathroom once again, and then were escorted back to their holding area. Judd yelled to Willeen to give him a hand.
After Eben was secured, Willeen left the rest of it to Judd. She went back into their bedroom and gathered up his pants and socks and underwear and a few of her own unmentionables off the floor. The Mishmash bag, containing two leftover towels, was on the couch in the living room. As she passed by, she scooped it up and carried it with the rest of the laundry over to the prehistoric washing machine by the back door. She stuffed everything in, poured in what soap was left, and closed the lid. After a few minutes of pulling and yanking the two lone knobs, she was rewarded by the sound of water rushing in.
“Voi-lah,” she said aloud. “What a glamorous life I lead.”
From behind, Judd put his arms around her. “After we finish this job, we’ll go someplace great.”
“I hope so.”
“What do you mean, you hope so?”
“If we don’t pull this off…”
Judd put his hand over her mouth. “We are going to pull this off. No problems, no complications…”He tilted his head in the direction of the guest room. “And no witnesses to worry about.”
33
REGAN WAS DREAMING that she was in an audience somewhere, watching a play. The actor was onstage knocking at an apartment door and no one was answering. He kept knocking.
“Nobody’s home,” Regan wanted to yell, but in the way of dreams, she couldn’t form the words. Instead she squirmed, moving from side to side, and finally drifted into consciousness. “Hmmmm. What? Oh.” She sat up in the bed. Kit was still out like a light. The knocking was for real, coming from a few feet away.
Regan pulled on her bathrobe and answered the door. Tripp was standing there with a breakfast tray.
“Did I wake you?” he asked.
“Yes,” Kit called from the cot. “But I’ll take some coffee and then go back to sleep.”
Tripp grinned and came in, setting down the tray on the dresser. “Louis thought you guys might like an eye-opener. Juice and coffee.”
“What time is it?” Regan asked him.
“Nine o’clock.”
“Nine o’clock! I wanted to get up early anyway,” Regan said. “There are a few things I wanted to do this morning.”
Tripp poured coffee for both of them. Regan took hers and sat on the bed. “How are you doing today, Tripp?”
He shook his head woefully and pushed back the ash-blond hair falling over his forehead. “My old man already called me from his office this morning.”
“Is that bad?” Kit asked, as she sipped the freshly squeezed orange juice.
“He wants me to fax him my résumé.”
“Louis has a fax downstairs,” Regan said. “I’m sure he’d let you use it.”
“He might have a fax. But I don’t have a résumé. He’s sick of me being a ski bum.”
“Sit down and talk to us for a few minutes,” Regan urged.
“Yeah,” Kit agreed. “If you have a couple of hours, I’ll tell you my problems.”
Tripp laughed and sat on the room’s only chair.
“My cousin is home for Christmas and was over at my parents’ house last night. He’s just gotten a really good job on Wall Street and now my father’s all bent out of shape. He wants to see the résumé that I’m supposed to have been working on.” He sighed. “My cousin is such a nerd.”
“I think I’ve met him,” Kit said.
“What?”
“Never mind.” Regan laughed. “We’ll help you with your résumé if you want.”
“But I have no experience doing anything but working in this kind of job in ski resorts.”
“We’ll call in Regan’s mother,” Kit said. “She writes fiction.”
Regan grabbed the pad next to the bed. “Tripp, what’s your full name?”
He hesitated. “Are you ready for this? It’s Tobias Lancelot Wooleysworth the Third.”
Regan stared at him. “That’s pretty heavy.”
“You think my old man would have shown a little mercy,”Tripp said. “But misery loves company. He’d been saddled with that name since birth, so why not old sonny boy? At least I’m a third, so they called me Tripp.”
“Very preppy. Where are you from?” Kit asked.
“Connecticut.”
“Me too. I’m from Hartford. And you?”
“Greenwich. But my parents are getting ready to retire to Florida. My father wants me to
be ‘settled’ before they move. I told him I’m twenty-five years old, leave me alone.”
Regan wrote his name on the top of the pad. “That name will impress the personnel department of any major corporation. Or at least raise their curiosity. It sounds like you come from somewhere. I should introduce you to the guy I met last night. He’d kill to have a name like that.”
“So what do I put on the résumé after my name?”
“The schools you attended.”
“I went to boarding school in Switzerland for a couple of years, then to Stanford,” Tripp offered.
“Sounds great. Then, after listing your education, you just have to embellish the wonderful experiences you’ve had,” Regan said with enthusiasm. “Like right now you’re part of an international management team getting this restaurant off the ground.”
“International?” Tripp asked.
“Louis’s mother came from France.”
“Cool.” Tripp pointed to the canvas of Louis XVIII. “Speaking of France, what are you going to do about getting that cat framed?”
“I’ve got to find out this morning where to take him.”
“If Louis lets me out, I’ll help you carry it.”
“Thanks, Tripp. I’m sure he’ll let you. I’ll get dressed and come downstairs.”
Tripp got up. “I’d better head down. Louis is going to be looking for me. Thanks for your help. Maybe you two should do an infomercial on motivation or something.”
Kit’s head was buried in her pillow. “I don’t particularly feel like a role model for motivation at the moment.”
“Seriously, Tripp, when we get some time I’ll help you with the résumé if you want,” Regan said.
“Being a private investigator, she can spot lies,” Kit said. “So she’ll make it seem as truthful as possible.”
“Anything to keep my father off my back,” Tripp said and closed the door behind him.
“He’s cute,” Kit said. “Other than the fact that he’s six years younger and has no clue what he wants to do with the rest of his life, I’d go out with him.”
“Maybe you can teach him how to use the computer,” Regan suggested.
“Now it’s your turn to shut up.”
Regan got up and stretched. “It’s terrible to be that age and so unsettled.”
“Not like us old broads, huh.”
“You said it.” Regan told Kit of her plans for the morning. “So why don’t you take it easy? I’ll come back to get you and we can go meet those guys at Bonnie’s for lunch.”
“I’m counting the minutes.”
34
ON TUESDAY MORNING, Ida was so excited she could hardly stand it. She’d never been inside a celebrity’s home before. And to think she was getting two for the price of one! Last night Ida had phoned her best friend Dolores back in Ohio and told her to go over to her house and get Nora Regan Reilly’s books and send them out to be autographed. Priority Mail. It was worth the expense.
Ida checked her watch and hurried down the street. It was nine fifty-eight. She’d be working at the cleaner’s from ten until two, and then was due at the Woods’ house at three. At precisely ten she pulled open the door and scurried into the dry-cleaning shop. “Hello, Max.”
Her boss looked up from the cash register. “Good morning, Ida. How are you feeling today?”
“Thankful to be alive,” Ida said. “Thankful that the Good Lord allowed me to wake up this morning and still be breathing.”
“That always helps,”Max said as he unwrapped a packet of quarters and watched them cascade into the drawer. He was a young man in his early thirties. Tall and skinny with gray hair, he was given to short sentences and what seemed like shorter conversations. Still waters hopefully run deep, Ida often thought.
“Today should be busy. Two days after Christmas and everyone’s dirty clothes are piling up. And of course people drink too much over the holidays and get careless. Then they have to get their outfits ready for New Year’s Eve…” Ida took off her ski jacket and hung it over the hook that was marked IDA.
“Good for business,” Max said. “A few people were already in this morning. You can tag their clothes.”
Ida adjusted her glasses, walked over to her work station, and reached into the bin of dirty clothes. She pulled out a man’s suit and checked the pockets for any abandoned personal items and was disappointed to find there were none. Reaching for a set of tags, she tried to make her next remark sound casual. “Were any movie stars in here this morning?”
Max didn’t even look up from his hard work arranging the money drawer. “Nope.”
“Um-hmmmm,” Ida said as she stapled the tags onto the jacket and pants. This suit looks expensive, she thought and dropped it into the second bin. She looked up at the big clock on the wall. Three minutes past ten. My God, she thought, this is going to be the longest day of my life. She could see that the hotels had dumped off their loads of cleaning and they all needed to be tagged. With the prices that Max insisted on charging just because it was Aspen and he could get away with it, Ida thought it would be cheaper to buy new clothes than send your old ones out for a few spins in a vat of chemicals.
Max slammed the register drawer shut with an air of authority and announced to Ida, “I’ll be in the back.”
Ida sighed and bent over the big white basket of soiled garments. She reached for a bundle and hoisted it onto her work area. The worst part of the hotels providing the cleaning service, she thought, is that many of the celebrities never needed to bring in their dirty clothes themselves, unless it was an emergency and they’d missed the morning pickup. Heck, Ida had taken this job so she’d meet people, and lately the only things that stared her in the face were big piles of smelly laundry.
The bell over the front door tinkled and Ida looked up.
“Hear that, Ida?” Max shouted from the back where the pressers were already at work, pressing and singing along and dancing to whatever song was on the radio. Max was at his work station armed with a squirt bottle, ready to attack any stained clothing with the zeal of a revivalist.
Deliberately Ida ignored him. Of course she heard it, she was standing right in front. Sometimes she worried that inhaling all those chemical fumes all year long was making him a little bananas.
“May I help you?” Ida said sweetly to a beautiful young woman with dark shiny hair wearing an expensive fur-lined jacket.
The woman handed her a piece of white material with spaghetti straps. “Someone spilled red wine on me last night. Can you get it out?”
“Of course we can,” Max said, suddenly breathing down Ida’s back. “Write out the ticket, Ida.”
Ida turned to him and said wryly, “I wish I’d have thought of that.” She licked her finger and pulled the top slip from a neat pile on the check-in counter. Next she picked up the white garment. “Where’s the rest of it, dear?”
The customer stared at her with a blank expression. “That’s it.”
“Sexy,” Ida murmured. Hard to believe it’s a dress, she thought as she wrote down the customer’s name. It must stretch out more than a rubber band. I should only charge her for a necktie. “Here we go,” Ida said, smiling, handing over the pink customer copy. “Tomorrow okay?”
“Sure. See you then.”
Once again Ida checked the clock on the wall. I shouldn’t wish my life away, she thought. But today I just can’t help it.
After what seemed like an eternity, the hands of the clock finally rested on twelve and two. It was time for her to leave, to begin her new job rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous.
35
AFTER TAKING A hot shower, Regan felt ready to take on the day. She went downstairs to Louis’s office and found him on the phone.
“Hi, darling,” he whispered and then spoke into the mouthpiece. “This party is going to be so fabulous. Every-body’s coming… Who?… I said everybody. We’re getting extensive media coverage. It’s the hottest ticket in town…. I’ll fax you a pres
s release.” He hung up the phone and rolled his eyes. “I have national publications coming and the society editor of the Ajax Bulldog is telling me they have a lot of invitations for that night and they’ll see if they can make it. Oh please…” He opened his desk drawer and removed his bottle of Tums. “I’m eating these things like candy.”
“Those are what Eben had in his medicine cabinet.”
“Don’t mention him,” Louis cautioned. “It’s Tuesday and I’m still in business. There are only two more days where he can ruin me. How was the cot?”
“Kit said she was so tired last night she would have slept on a bed of nails, but on a normal night…”
“I’ll see what else I can find. We’re all booked up. Every bed in the house is taken. Are you going skiing?”
“Later. Now Louis, do you know the guy who wrote that article about Geraldine?”
“I’ve met him a couple of times. Why?”
“I don’t know. I’d just like to talk to him about the paintings.”
“Don’t stir up any trouble!”
“I’m not going to. From the article it appears that he knows a lot about art. I think it could help. He might have some interesting insights about what’s gone on, and about the painting in Vail too. Could you call him for me?”
Louis put his hand over his heart. “Regan, the last thing I need is any more negative publicity.”
“What about the old adage: ‘I don’t care what you say about me as long as you spell my name right’?”
“After Thursday they can say whatever they want,” Louis said as he begrudgingly picked up the phone and called over to the Aspen Globe. “Ted Weems, please… Oh… Well, this is Louis Altide at the Silver Mine… Could I get his home number?… I have a private investigator who wants to talk to him about the series he’s doing…” Louis winked at Regan, hung up, and dialed Ted’s number.
Regan sat there in awe as Louis pulled off a phone call that would have made a drama teacher’s heart sing. He sounded so confident, so convincing, so full of admiration for Regan, so determined to cooperate with the authorities and get to the bottom of what looked like Eben’s crime spree. Finally he dropped the phone back into its cradle. “That was easier than I thought. He said to come on over to his apartment right now. It’s not far from here.” Louis wrote down the address and handed it to Regan. “He has to go out to do an interview in a little while.”
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