IN ROOM 33

by EC Sheedy

  "All I know is what he said."

  "What time was that?" Wade asked.

  Mike appeared to think. "Ten o'clock. Maybe later. Not sure, exactly."

  Wade looked at Sinnie. "Makes sense."

  She stared at Mike as if he'd grown two heads, then turned the same look on Wade. "Makes no sense at all! I'm telling you, he wouldn't go there. And he sure wouldn't head for Portland in the middle of the night."

  "Ten o'clock isn't the middle of the night," Wade reminded her.

  "It is when you're seventy years old," she announced.

  He couldn't argue with that. "Let's check out number six." He moved toward the door, and Sinnie and Mike fell in behind him.

  "He left his suitcase," Joy said.

  Wade shifted his gaze back to her. "What?"

  She pointed at the shelf on the top closet. "Looks like a suitcase to me."

  "Maybe he didn't need it," Mike said. "Man didn't have much of anything."

  "He must have used something for his clothes. His bureau's empty." Sinnie looked at Mike as if his brain was leaking.

  She was right, which didn't make Wade feel any better. "Let's check out six." he repeated. At the door, Wade eyed Mike. "You must have something better to do than follow us around."

  "Can't think of nothin'."

  Through gritted teeth, Wade reminded himself it was a free country.

  Room 6 was in worse shape than Henry's place. Someone had trashed it. But no mystery here, just traces of white powder, burnt spoons, and hypodermics.

  "Junkies," Mike announced the obvious. "Probably went out for more drugs and just didn't come back. Might yet." He picked up a spoon, sniffed. "Bad stuff. Real bad stuff."

  Wade ignored him, looked around. Must have been one hell of a party, because there was enough drug paraphernalia for ten users.

  "Tragic," Joy said, more to herself than anyone else in the room."Just damn tragic that people continue to kill themselves this way."

  "Did you know them?" Wade asked Sinnie.

  "Sort of." She looked uncomfortable.

  He waited.

  "Her name was Marianne and the fellow's name was Bruce. Cherry was working with them, trying to get them into one of those addiction programs."

  "Maybe that's why they bolted."

  "Maybe," Sinnie conceded. "But Cherry's going to feel really bad about this."

  Wade looked around the dirty, chaotic room in disgust, caught the trace of a smirk on Mike's face. "Now that we're satisfied"—he looked at Sinnie and quoted—"there's nothing 'funny' going on other than everyday life at the celebrated Hotel Philip, let's get out of here." Mad as hell, he strode toward the door. He hated this aspect of the Phil, the decay and relentless deterioration that made it a home of last resort for people whose next stop was the street. They deserved better and so did the Phil. He shut down his thoughts. Not his hotel, he reminded himself. Not his problem. But after last night, he found shutting down harder to pull off. "I'll come back later and clean the place up," he said, his voice brusque.

  "Why bother?" Joy said and followed him into the hall along with Mike and Sin. She lifted the sheaf of papers in her hand. "If this works out, we'll have a cleanup crew in here next month. Leave it for them."

  All eyes turned to Joy. Sinnie's set on her fast and hard. But before Wade could stop her, Joy went on. "In six to eight months, the Hotel Philip could be completely renovated with people lined up at the registration desk, and—"

  "Joy." Wade snapped out the word. This wasn't the way to let people know their homes were about to be decorated and rented out from under them.

  Joy's gaze shot to Sinnie's face, then to Mike's. "Oh, God, I'm so sorry."

  Sinnie looked as if she'd been punched; it was the first time Wade had seen her at a loss for words. Mike looked thoughtful, which made him look as if he were lifting boulders in a rock quarry. Wade didn't give a damn about Mike, but he did about Sinnie. And he didn't like to see her with that panicky look on her face.

  "I'm so sorry, Sinnie," Joy said again. "I didn't mean to blurt things out like that. Nothing's for sure yet. But it's only fair you know I'm thinking about reopening the Phil. As a hotel. But if it happens," she said, touching Sinnie's arm, "you'll be welcome to stay on, if that's what you want. If you don't, I'll help you find a place you like and pay the rent for a year."

  "What about everyone else?"

  "I'll offer the same arrangement to anyone who's made their home at the Phil for over five years."

  Sinnie said nothing, still dumbstruck.

  "It will work, Sin," Wade said, relieved Joy had opted for his recommendations on the tenants.

  "This your idea, Wade?"

  Joy answered, "Yes, it was Wade's idea—and a good one."

  Sinnie shot a nervous glance in Joy's direction. "So you're really thinking of operating this old place as a hotel again?"

  "Yes."

  "Where you going to get the money?" Trust Sinnie to be direct.

  Joy glanced at Wade—he could have sworn she looked guilty—then said, "I've got the money, or at least most of it."

  This was news to him. "You did read those numbers, didn't you?" The estimates he'd worked on—which excluded final figures on the air conditioning and electrical—said close to a couple of million was needed to get the ball rolling.

  "I know the numbers"—she glanced at Sinnie and Mike—"but I'd rather not discuss them standing in the hall."

  "Your place or mine," he said.

  "Mine." She looked uncomfortable and quickly added, "But tomorrow. I'll be more, uh, certain about things then."

  Wade knew there were as many questions in his eyes as there were secrets in hers—plus a heaping of guilt. Curious.

  "Well, kids, helluva tour, but I'm outta here," Mike said. Two seconds later he trudged down the hall and disappeared into the fire escape stairwell. Sinnie watched him go, her expression troubled.

  Joy went one way down the hall and Wade went the other, a thoughtful unusually quiet, Sinnie at his side.

  Outside her door, without warning, she grabbed his forearm and dug in her nails. "Don't let her do it. You do it. This is your hotel. Not hers. She's just a girl." Her voice was low, earnest.

  Figuring he was in for another of her lectures about his "legacy," he loosened her grip, touched her anxious face. "It's all right, love. Everything's going to be okay. You and I both know the Phil can't survive as it is. Change is inevitable. And better Joy Cole than a wrecking ball." He kissed her cheek. "If she can make it work, you and all the rest of the tenants will be treated fairly. That's all you can ask." He opened her door, gently shoved her inside."Just think about it before you set that hard old head of yours against it, okay?"

  "Oh, I'll think on it, all right. Won't be thinking about much else from here on in." She closed her door in his face.

  Wade headed for the Phil's front door, questions drumming in his head. He'd figured when Joy had time to digest the financial demands for renovating the Phil, she'd bolt or at least contact Grange and start the selling process. She hadn't.

  The woman was full of surprises.

  Outside, the morning was bathed in sunlight, and with Old Sol levering his way still higher in the east, it promised to be a sweltering day.

  Wade stretched, eased his tense muscles into more fluid movement, then started to run. He pushed Joy Cole and her scheme for the Phil to a back corner of his mind. And when he'd freed up his more rational thinking, the first person who came to mind was Henry.

  Wade might tease Sinnie, and the woman might drive him crazy, but she had the instincts of a CIA agent. If she thought something was wrong, it probably was. When he finished his run, he'd check Henry's room again, this time without an entourage.

  He jogged easily to the corner, crossed the street, and ran into Blackberry Park. He picked up his pace—didn't spot the cab following him, nor was he aware of the azure blue eyes tracing his every movement.

  Chapter 9

  Lana watched
Wade's strong legs and powerful stride take him to a tacky little park not far from the hotel; then she leaned back into her seat.

  He was better than she remembered. Any woman in her right mind would want him all over her. Want all of him. She doubted her so-smart, so-cool daughter would be any different. When a man who looked that good wanted you, you wanted back. Of course, he'd want Joy, if for no other reason than she looked so much like Lana.

  She smoothed her hair and refreshed her makeup.

  The situation was troublesome.

  When Lana glanced out the cab window at the Hotel Philip, she didn't see a stolid, lusterless hotel with broken windows and a dirty brick facade; she saw a very large check made out to her.

  If Wade seduced Joy, if they slept together—and if he was as physically commanding as she remembered—that check, along with a lifestyle she was determined to maintain, was at risk. Lana wasn't fond of risk.

  "That horrible, hideous hotel," she said, unaware she'd spoken aloud.

  "Where to, ma'am?" the cab driver asked, looking at her through the rearview mirror.

  She gave him her address, and he pulled away from the curb. Lana gazed blindly out the window, tried to think what to do next. One thing was imperative. She had to keep her eye on things; she couldn't sit by and wait on pins and needles for Joy's decision. If she and Wade were fucking each other's brains out, she needed to know.

  Which meant getting closer to her daughter.

  She put a hand on her stomach, applied pressure to settle it. Close wasn't something she did well.

  But it would make David happy. He'd wanted her to "keep abreast of things," but she'd put it off, not relishing the task of spying on her daughter, and not thinking it necessary.

  That was before she knew Wade was in the picture.

  Lana hadn't seriously believed Joy would take on the hotel, had convinced herself she was being her usual difficult self, solely to irritate Lana. After all, she had no money, no business experience, and chronic wanderlust. She'd thought her contrary, maddening, and inconvenient, but never the threat David thought her to be.

  Wade being on the scene changed that.

  He regarded the Philip as his by right, had been fixated on it since he was boy. When Stephen disowned him and threw him out of the house that night, he hadn't cared about anything except the Philip. "Keep all the other crap," he'd said, referring to what at the time was a substantial fortune. He'd been so calm, so determined. "But the Philip is mine. It's what Grandfather wanted. It's what I want—for me and Mom. That's all. You and your whore of a wife are welcome to the rest." The boy was fiercely protective of that cow of a mother of his, she remembered.

  Stephen, enraged by Wade calling her a whore, said hell would freeze over before Wade saw a penny of Emerson money or the deed to the Phillip. He'd told him to get out, said he never wanted to see him again. He never did.

  Lana put her head back against the headrest.

  Now Wade was back, and he'd been handed the perfect opportunity to get his hotel and get laid at the same time. What man would resist that? None that Lana knew of.

  The cab driver pulled up outside her house. She paid him and walked the short distance to her front door.

  Inside she went into the living room and sat heavily in a chair. Dear God, this whole business was tiresome.

  She was exhausted by it.

  But exhausted or not, Lana wouldn't allow Wade to seduce his way to her money. She'd stop him, by any means available. And, of course, with a man the means was always available, conveniently located behind a zipper. She smiled, knew the chance of her righteous daughter taking her mother's leavings to her own bed were less than zero.

  But before that, she'd do the mother thing, find out what was going on in her daughter's perverse, high-minded brain.

  * * *

  First thing Monday morning, Joy took a seat across from Jarvis Deane, her banker. His desk, glass-topped, was surgical clean—not a paper on it except a file with her name on its tab.

  Her married name. Joy Marie Sheldon.

  "Mrs. Sheldon," he said, his tone breezily formal. "It's nice to see you again."

  "Call me Joy, please—and it's Cole, Mr. Deane, not Sheldon. Hasn't been since... the marriage ended." Joy ignored the stones in her stomach.

  "Yes, of course. It's been a while, hasn't it?"

  "Eight years."

  "Really? Time flies and all that." He pulled the file toward him and opened it. "Let me see what we've got here." He opened the folder, swiveled the computer on his desk to face him, and keyed in the number from the file folder. His eyebrows lifted. "Very nice."

  She wanted to run but instead asked, "How much?"

  He put a finger on the screen. "One million, nine hundred and forty-two thousand dollars and... twenty-six cents." He closed the file in front of him and smiled at her, as if he'd just delivered her a healthy set of twins.

  Joy emptied her lungs in one loud swoosh and crumpled back in her chair. "That much? Really?"

  "Really. Behold the miracle of compound interest and a conservative investment strategy. Combined, they've come close to doubling your money in eight years." He swung the computer aside, fisted his hands, and plunked them on her closed file. "So you're here, Mrs. Shel—Joy. Which means you have plans for your money. How can First Bank help?"

  * * *

  Joy left the bank a half-hour later, her emotions tangled—satisfaction in the knowledge she had the money to begin work on the Philip in the same stew as an overwhelming regret she was about to use money she'd tried to forget she had for nearly a decade.

  She looked up at a sky slowly shifting from summer blue to gray. You said I'd be glad I had it one day, Matt. You were right. Thank you.

  And there was her mother...

  When Lana discovered the source of Joy's wealth, she'd revel in how her "high-minded prig of a daughter"—a description she'd used more than once—had taken a man for a pot-load of money.

  It didn't matter.

  What mattered, suddenly more than anything, was the Philip, the work and challenge of bringing it back, making the old new again. What had started as a slow-building dream during her tours of the Phil had come alive in Wade's carefully thought out numbers. The Philip could come back. And Joy could make it happen. How ironic. All the years of traveling on trains, boats, and planes—and the endless stream of nondescript hotels—yet it was a hotel, a decaying ruin of a hotel, that now felt like home.

  She wouldn't let her mother, or the origin of her money, ruin that.

  While she walked, the sun flitted in and out from behind gray clouds. It was sultry hot. But it wasn't the heat that made her mind stop on one thing that, strangely, bothered her more than any other. If she wanted his help—and she did...

  She'd have to tell Wade.

  * * *

  Wade had spent the weekend thinking and Monday morning running. By the time he got back to the Phil, it was after ten and Sinnie and Gordy, Gordy's mom, Cherry, and Lars and Rebecca were camped in his room. No Mike, thank God.

  Sinnie had made them all coffee and doled out his cookies, and except for Gordy, who was watching television, they sat around his kitchen table eating as if it were their last supper or a funeral watch. He didn't need this. He had serious thinking to do. He'd been running for hours, and his head was clearer than it had been in years.

  He had the rudiments of a plan rooting in his brain, and he wanted time to forge it into something more solid than wishful thinking. He did not want a roomful of people.

  "What's this about?" He stood in a runner's sweat in the middle of the room and called on his limited patience. He raised a hand. "If it's about plumbing, I don't want to know. I don't do plumbing."

  Lars laughed. Sinnie gave him her fish-eye. "Five's empty. Everybody's gone."

  Wade stopped on his way to the bathroom, where he was bent on taking a shower. "What do you mean, gone? And who's everybody?"

  "Everybody but me, that's who," Sinnie said
. "I'm the only one left on five. Phyllis and Jack from 53 are gone and that nice Doddie woman from 51. Pretty, with the red hair?"

  Wade didn't know, but he came around quickly to Sinnie's "something strange" theory. These defections made it six people leaving within a couple of days. Unlikely statistics. Wade looked at the people sitting around his table. "Anybody here know anything about this?"

  As one, they shook their heads. Then Rebecca spoke. "I think Nick and Natalie are going, too. I saw her bringing in boxes from the market down the street."

  "Did you talk to her?"

  "She said she was cleaning up, getting rid of stuff." Rebecca's voice was soft when she said, "I didn't believe her. She looked—she looked scared, is how she looked."

  "Rebecca," Lars interjected. "Don't start imagining things."

  "I'm not—" She rubbed a hand nervously over her rounded belly.

  Wade held up a hand. "The one thing we don't need is a domestic dispute." He looked at Sinnie. "Any chance you've let it loose in the hotel about Joy's plans?"

  She opened her mouth as if to deny, then muttered, "I might have mentioned it."

  "Sin!"

  "You think that's the problem? What about Henry? He didn't know anything about that."

  "Maybe Henry's case is different, but there's the strong possibility that more than one tenant will skip rather than hang around and wait for an eviction notice."

  "That's possible," Lars said. "I know since Sinnie told us, we've had our eye out for another place."

  "That's hogwash and you know it, Wade Emerson," Sinnie added.

  Gordy piped up. "What time is it?"

  Cherry, who was about to join in the dispute, turned to her son instead. "Almost ten-thirty, Gordy. You better go."

  Gordy got up from where he'd been sitting on the floor in front of the TV. "Yeah, Mr. Rupert doesn't like anybody late." He stretched, a tall man stretch, and looked at Wade. "I got a new job. Mr. Rupert wants me to do the ten o'clock check and the three. And next week maybe the five o'clock, right before his dinner." He smiled at Wade as he walked out the door. "Standard rate, too."

  Wade looked at Cherry. "What's he talking about?"