IN ROOM 33

by EC Sheedy

  "This what you want?" Gordy held the tarpaulin in both hands.

  "Yes. Now if you'd be kind enough to open the ties and spread it directly in front of me. So it covers my carpet completely. Nice and flat now," he added, "with the edges straight."

  Christian watched the boy work, insisted he get on his knees to smooth the last of the wrinkles from the tarp. "That's fine. A very good job." He surveyed the tarp, perhaps twelve feet by twelve feet. Big enough. He told himself not to be bothered by its uneven, puckered surface. "On the bureau, as usual, there's your pay for walking Melly. And another five whole dollars for the work you just did." Christian smiled at the boy.

  "You going to paint something, Mr. Rupert?" he asked, heading for the bureau.

  "A little touching up."

  And garbage removal, he added to himself.

  * * *

  Joy and Wade were lucky—at least Joy thought so. They'd been given a table in the corner with a window giving them a clear view of the waters of Lake Washington—and hope of catching a spectacular sunset.

  Wade didn't seem to notice. They'd dropped in to visit Sinnie in the hospital before dinner, and he'd been as quiet as a tomb since. It had been two days since the attack, and Sinnie was no better. Add to that the fact that neither Wade nor she had made any headway on finding out what was going on at the Phil. They'd covered the hotel from top to bottom. And people were still disappearing, without notice, and leaving no forwarding addresses—including the loathsome Mike. No loss, but Joy would have relished the chance to get rid of him personally. Still, with so many rooms empty, the place was eerie. Wade had insisted they go out tonight—to get away from it.

  The only good thing about the Philip in the last two days was sleeping with Wade each night—not sleeping with him was even better, because Wade Emerson was the best lover Joy ever had. There were times when simply looking at him made her mind go blank. It probably wasn't a good thing, long-term, but even if she tried, she couldn't think beyond the now—the strange happenings at the Phil, and Wade's slow, expert hand in bed.

  She shifted in her chair, drank some ice water. "Sinnie's going to be okay, Wade. I'm sure of it," she finally said, wanting to break the silence, reassure him. "If she's made it this far, she's bound to improve."

  "I hope you're right."

  "You've known her for a long time, haven't you?"

  "Forever. She was a friend of my grandfather—and my mother. And mine." He smiled slightly. "After my mother died, she took me on as her pet project."

  Joy tilted her head, waited.

  "She wrote me every week I was in South Woods—that's where I served my time. New Jersey. She never missed. Of course, most of the letters were to give me hell, but... every week." He looked out the window to where the sun was lowering in the west. "She's the main reason I ended up at the Phil. I'd been out for a couple of months. And with no place to go and nothing to hold me where I was, one day I got in my car and ended up in Seattle." He looked away again before turning back to face her, his eyes unreadable. "I never intended to stay."

  "Why did you?"

  "You showed up, for one thing." He reached across the table and took her hand. He smiled fully then, a tease of a smile she knew was intended to change the subject.

  "Flattering, Emerson, but you'd been there weeks before I arrived on the scene." She stopped. "It was the hotel, wasn't it? It was the Phil that held you." Like it held me. A prickle of unease followed. Sinnie said the Phil was in Wade's blood. His legacy, she insisted on calling it. If that were true, he might not be as amenable to her ownership as he appeared.

  "The place needed help. Still does. Hell of an opportunity for occupational therapy."

  "Did it work?"

  He considered her words a moment. "Yeah, I think it did."

  The server came to refill their water glasses.

  When he'd gone, Wade said, "I've been doing a lot of thinking about the Phil." He paused, rubbed his chin. "Hell, I guess this is as good a time as any."

  "Good time for what?" Again that prickly sensation at her nape.

  Only the barest hesitation, then, "I want to buy the Philip from you, Joy. And I want to know if you'll entertain my offer."

  Joy's jaw slackened, and she pulled her hand from his. She hadn't known what to expect, but it hadn't been this. "I don't know what to say."

  "'Yes' would be good."

  "But I thought you were..."

  "Broke?"

  "Yes."

  "Not quite. I have enough to give you a substantial deposit, and I can raise the rest." His expression turned cynical. "If there's one thing you learn in my business, it's that there's always money around. It's just a matter of finding it and structuring the right deal with the right people. I'll work it out. I wouldn't expect you to take a cent less than the property is worth."

  "But your—" She hesitated, her mind stumbling over what this meant: her own emotional connection to the Phil, the sense of home it gave her, how for the first time, walking those neglected halls and counting broken windows, she'd found a purpose in life. "You have a prison record... for fraud. Won't that make things difficult?"

  "Difficult, not impossible. No one lost any money dealing with me. I saw to that. Actually, I already approached Rupert about the deal. Big mistake. Turns out there was bad blood between him and my grandfather, and the last thing he wants is an Emerson owning his 'home,' as he calls it." He reached for her hand. "Or maybe he thinks you make a prettier landlord. In which case, he'd be right." He turned her hand in his and ran a finger slowly across her palm.

  She quivered at his touch but said nothing.

  "I take it from all your questions you're open to a proposal?" His eyes turned sober, oddly speculative, and they left no doubt he was dead serious.

  "I, uh, don't know." She stalled, tried to clear her head. "And I did promise David Grange the chance to outbid any other offers." It would be easy to say no to David, but to Wade? The man who should have inherited the property in the first place. Still she needed time to think, hadn't realized until this moment the strength of her connection to the Philip, how much it figured in her future.

  "Fair enough. I'm not looking for special consideration or a special price."

  She fidgeted with her napkin. "There are things you don't know about the will." Like how the proceeds, either by sale or operation, were intended to support a stepmother he detested.

  "I'm listening," he said.

  Joy looked for a way to start, the right words, but before she could find them...

  "Well, well, look who's here." Lana's voice slid into their conversation like a playful ferret. Joy almost knocked over her glass. Wade's grip on her hand tightened to near-painful before he released it.

  When he looked up at Lana, his expression went from light to dark in a blink. He did not stand. Joy knew this wasn't going to be good. "Mother," she said, giving the barest of nods to acknowledge David.

  Lana stared openly at Wade. "It's been a long time."

  "Not long enough."

  "Ah, I see I'm still the mean stepmother."

  Wade looked at her in contempt."I don't know what you are, Lana, but I'm sure 'mean' doesn't cover it."

  "Oh, dear," Lana purred. "And I always speak so highly of you, Wade." She paused, lowered her lashes. "All of you."

  It looked as if Wade exerted all his control to stay in his seat, but he said nothing.

  "So what brings you two together, monkey business or business... business?" Lana's steady, avidly curious, gaze held Joy's.

  "Nothing that concerns you, Mother," she lied, and glancing at David, she added, "And David looks hungry. Why don't you go to your table?"

  David nodded. "Good idea. Let's go, darling." He tried to take her arm, but Lana refused to move, her attention seemingly glued to Wade.

  "If you must know," Wade said smoothly, "I'm planning on taking back the Hotel Philip. I just made an offer to buy it from your daughter."

  "What the hell is going
on here?" David's voice rose.

  "I see," Lana said, her response as subtle as David's was blunt.

  Joy knew from her mother's terse reply, her shuttered gaze, she was stunned—as was Joy.

  Wade had overstepped himself. Joy had agreed to nothing. She looked at him. His face was fixed into stubborn lines, his gaze locked with Lana's. A slow, dangerous simmer churned in her stomach. Before she could speak, David leaned over the table, loomed above her.

  "What you're doing. It's stupid," he said. "If Stephen had wanted Wade to have the hotel, he'd have left it to him, not you and Lana."

  Wade's eyes shot to David. "What?"

  David started to answer him, but Lana interrupted. "I warned you, David." She gave him a sly look. "Although in the end, I suppose Wade's money is as good as yours. No harm in a small bidding war, is there?"

  Grange looked shell-shocked, gaped openly at Lana, and didn't say a word.

  Lana stared at Joy, her expression blandly malevolent. "For things to have gone this far so fast, all I can say is he must be even better in bed than he used to be."

  Joy, who'd been about to state that she wasn't selling anything to anyone, closed her mouth with a snap. She'd heard her mother's words and, snakelike, they coiled in her throat until she couldn't breathe, couldn't make sense of them.

  She stood abruptly.

  She'd had enough of her mother, David, and Wade—all of their self-serving maneuverings to gain control of the Phil. "Excuse me," she said. She picked up her coat and bag and strode double-time across the crowded restaurant. In seconds, she was outside, hailing a cab.

  A second after that, Wade grabbed her arm and swung her around to face him. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  "Let go of me." She yanked her arm from his grasp, raised it again.

  He took her arm down, held it this time. "Where are you going?"

  "Home."

  "The Philip?" He gave her a dark look.

  "Yes, the damn Philip. Although I'm beginning to wish I'd never set eyes on the place." She tugged her arm. "I said, let go of me. Or I'll damn well scream my head off."

  He didn't let go; instead he lifted her chin and forced her eyes to meet his. "Scream at me when we get home. And considering I deserve it, I promise to take it like a man."

  "Was that the soft echo of an apology I heard?" Not enough, Wade. Not nearly enough.

  "It was."

  She shook her head to release his grip on her chin. "And now I'm supposed to forget you were arrogant and presumptuous in there."

  "Do or don't. Your call. I was wrong and I'm sorry."

  "The Philip is mine, Wade. Not yours, not David's, not my mother's. Mine. I'll be the one making the decisions, and it would be best if you"—she cocked her head toward the restaurant door—"and everyone else would get that straight."

  His look was dark, unreadable, and after a second or two, he gave her a curt nod. "Message received. Now if it's all the same to you, I'd like to stop by the hospital again, then find something to eat." He gestured back to the posh restaurant. "Unless you want to go back in there."

  "I'd rather eat curried maggots."

  "Agreed." He paused, rubbed the back of his neck. "And from what your mother said in there, I'm guessing you have questions for me."

  "Not even one." She looked determinedly unconcerned, which wasn't easy because her body felt turned inside out. Her mother's words—better in bed than he used to be—might be a flashing neon sign in her head, but she'd swallow her tongue before asking Wade for the gritty details. Pride? Maybe, but somewhere down deep was a sense of ruin, a feeling she wouldn't admit or dare expose. All she could hope now was that her plan to make the Phil her work, her home, and a source of financial security for her mother wasn't a useless dream, as feathery and unlikely as the dreams she'd begun to spin around Wade.

  "Okay, but let me say this. It's not what you think. I did not sleep with your mother and would not if she were the last woman on earth."

  "I don't need your sexual history. I thought we'd agreed on that."

  He cursed. "Fine. We'll drop it—for now. But leaving things unsaid isn't an option."

  "I'd say that depends on the 'things.'"

  He gave her a sideways look, half curious, half irritated. "Are you generally this stubborn?"

  "Not generally, always."

  "Good to know." He smiled slightly. "We'll do a last check on Sinnie, sort out what the hell is going on at the Phil. And when we've both calmed down, had time to think, we'll talk." He took her elbow and started them both down the street toward his car.

  "You generally so damn bossy?" she asked.

  "Always."

  A half a block away, they reached his Explorer, neither adding anything more to their aborted conversation.

  But Joy couldn't get past it.

  Better in bed than he used to be...

  He'd denied it, but Joy knew her mother. Knew the power she had over men and how she used it.

  Wade was right—they did need to talk, and he wasn't the only one with explaining to do.

  She looked out the window. There was the matter of the two million dollars she had in the bank. Money given to her by a man—in exchange for three months of her time.

  No one knew about that.

  * * *

  It was after ten o'clock when Wade and Joy slid into the booth at a diner a few blocks from the Phil.

  Wade felt like crap. Sinnie's condition hadn't improved, and Joy had barely said a word to him since they'd left Cristobel's. A glance in her direction told him that wasn't going to change anytime soon. He didn't push it, because he was a goddamn coward and didn't look forward to telling her about his relationship—or whatever the hell it was—with her mother.

  For now, he'd settle for the deafening silence.

  They both ordered burgers and two glasses of milk. The burgers arrived at the same time Joy's cell phone rang.

  "It's Cherry. For you." She handed the phone to Wade. He had a fleeting thought he should get one of the damn things again. He hadn't bothered since prison.

  Wade listened for a time, then cursed. "Stay in your room, Cherry. Lock up tight, and don't answer the door to anyone. Not anyone, you understand?" He listened some more. "We'll be back in half an hour—less. Just do what I said, okay?"

  Joy's eyes were big when he handed her the phone. "What is it? What's wrong?"

  "The only people left in the hotel are Cherry and Gordy, and us. Everyone else is gone."

  "Not Lars and Rebecca! They'd never leave."

  "Yesterday I'd have agreed with you. Today they're gone." And if Wade would have bet on anyone to hang in there, it was Lars. Whoever the hell was behind this exodus, and it was damn sure someone was, they knew exactly what strings to pull.

  "I don't get it." Joy slumped back in the booth, stared at her untouched burger. "It makes no sense. Any of it."

  "There's more."

  "More?"

  "They found Henry's body down the alley from the Phil. Behind a Dumpster. The police came by about an hour ago, to check out his room. Ask questions. But from what Cherry said, they figured he was another aging wino who'd had one too many, got himself in a brawl, and crawled off to rest. Died instead." Wade's gut denied it. Henry's M.O. was to drink alone and fall asleep. Never hurt a soul—except his own.

  Joy went stark white.

  He gestured to her burger. "You might want to take a bite or two of that. I think we'd better get back there."

  She ignored his instruction, kept her eyes fixed on his. "Mike has to be part of this, Wade. Has to be!"

  "If he is, he's smart enough to make himself scarce. Right now he's just another missing Phil tenant." Which leaves no avenue of proof. Wade picked up his burger. He didn't have much of an appetite left, but he figured it was now or never.

  Joy sat back against the booth, food untouched. "The only sure thing is that all this trouble has to do with Stephen leaving me the hotel." She chewed on her bottom lip. "It can'
t be Sinnie. It can't."

  He put down his burger, gave her his full attention. "Sinnie?"

  She dug into the bag sitting beside her. "I didn't want to tell you—you were so worried about her and everything. But this"—she held out a red felt pen—"was in Sinnie's hand the morning we found her in my room. I didn't know what it meant, wanted to think about it. But thinking hasn't helped. I'm more confused than ever. But it was Sinnie who wrote the messages on my wall. I'm sure of it."

  Wade rolled the big, red pen between his fingers. Sinnie? Try to scare Joy away? "It doesn't wash. For one thing, she was too busy matchmaking. The day she set eyes on you, she wanted me to propose. She wanted me to marry you so I could get the Phil back. That's how Sinnie's mind works. Not to scrawling ugly words on someone's wall."

  Joy looked shocked. "She wanted you to marry me?"

  "Not the worst idea I've ever heard."

  "To get the Phil back?"

  "That part is Sinnie's concoction. She thinks the hotel should be in Emerson hands."

  "Obviously, so do you, considering your offer to buy it."

  "The business part of this relationship is separate from the personal part. About as separate as it gets." Although after tonight, he'd have a hard time convincing her of that.

  "Still, that pen"—she gestured with her chin to the pen he rolled between his fingers—"was in her hand for a reason. It's possible she knows something we don't."

  Wade didn't believe for a second that Sinnie had anything to do with what was going on at the Phil. But Joy was right on the rest; Sinnie knew more about the old place than anyone else alive.

  "I think we should check out her room," Joy said.

  He took a last bite of his burger, left the other half on his plate, and slid out of the booth. It didn't look as if Joy was going to eat anyway."Why not? We've checked everywhere else. Let's go."

  * * *

  The night was warm and humid, but the penthouse was sealed tight against any breeze that might make its way in to cool things down.