The Red Hotel (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries)

by Masterton, Graham

  ‘Gone-beyonders? Who are they?’

  ‘Dead people, to you.’

  Luther thought for another long while. Then he said, ‘I don’t know what to say to you, Ms Sissy. Do you really believe we got two Suite Seven-Oh-Threes? I don’t mean to cause you no offense but you beginning to sound even wackier than my Aunt Epiphany.’

  ‘No, Luther, I don’t believe you have two Suite Seven-Oh-Threes. I believe you have much more than that. I believe you have two entire hotels.’

  She picked up the One House, Two Houses card again. ‘This is what this card is telling me. You have two hotels, almost identical except for one fraction of a fraction’s difference, either in time or in location, which is why one can exist inside the other.’

  Luther looked around the Showboat Saloon. Then he looked back at Sissy. ‘So you think we’re sitting inside a saloon, inside a saloon?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sissy admitted. ‘Like I said, there may be many more. There may be an infinite number. It could be like looking into one of those three-piece dressing-table mirrors, and seeing your reflections going off left and right, hundreds of them. Where do they end? Do they end at all? And how do you know which one of them is the real you?’

  ‘You messing with my head, Ms Sissy. Are you going to explain all of this to Mr Everett? How about the poh-lice? Think they’ll understand it any better than I do?’

  ‘Not just yet, Luther,’ said Sissy. She nodded toward her DeVane cards. ‘I need to finish this reading first. It could tell me a whole lot more.’

  At that moment, the waitress came back with Luther’s cheeseburger and Coke and Sissy’s iced tea.

  ‘You don’t mind if I dig in, do you?’ asked Luther. ‘I’m so hungry I could eat two of these. Well – from what you say, maybe I’m going to. One burger inside of another burger.’

  He opened his cheeseburger and smothered it with tomato relish before picking it up in both hands and starting to eat. ‘Mmm-mmhh!’ he said, with his mouth full. ‘You don’t know what you missing here, Ms Sissy! This is good!’

  Sissy smiled, but all she could think about was that bloody, headless body sitting in the bath in Room 511, and she seriously wondered if she would ever be able to eat meat ever again.

  She continued to turn over her DeVane cards. The rest of them told much the same enigmatic story as her previous reading. Somewhere, a whistling shadow was patiently waiting for T-Yon. Somewhere, an unknown woman was pressing her hand against a whitewashed wall, while the portrait of a man looked mournfully down at her. Pastry cooks were baking pies with human fingers protruding from their crusts, and leaving them to cool on their kitchen window sill. Down by the water’s edge, Everett was frantically waving a red banner for help, while brown pelicans flocked all around him.

  Sissy had never known the cards to be so urgent, and so alarmist, and yet so confused. She felt almost as if they were panicking.

  ‘You should have ordered one of these,’ said Luther, holding up his cheeseburger, of which he had already devoured more than half. ‘Our grill chef, Jimmy, he’s the best in town. We stole him from Louie’s on West State Street.’

  Sissy gave him a quick-dissolving smile. ‘Maybe some other time.’

  She was just about to turn over the last card but as soon as she touched it she knew that she didn’t need to. She could feel instinctively that it was the Night Kitchen. In spite of that, and even though the cards were so unsettled, she felt a small amount of satisfaction that she had probably learned more from this reading than Vanessa Slider had wanted her to.

  Vanessa Slider had run down the stairs from the roof in her pale green dress, but where had she vanished then? To Sissy, the logical answer was that she had disappeared from one Red Hotel and reappeared in another.

  As she was gathering up her cards, she heard Detective Garrity call out, ‘Ah, Ms Sawyer, ma’am. You’re still here, then.’ He came across the saloon, closely followed by a sallow young detective with shiny black hair and a raspberry-colored coat.

  ‘Hallo, Detective,’ said Sissy. ‘I’m just waiting for Mr Savoie to finish up and then I’ll be leaving. Mr Broody here has kindly offered me a roof over my head.’

  ‘Afraid I have some bad news,’ said Detective Garrity.

  ‘You’ve identified the body?’

  He nodded. ‘The CSIs found a billfold and a signet ring in the bottom of the bathtub, underneath the cadaver. They both belonged to Kevin Mullard.’

  ‘Oh, no, I’m so sorry. Oh, that’s terrible.’

  Detective Garrity was trying hard not to sound too emotional. ‘That’s only a preliminary ID, of course. But I can’t see how there’s any doubt. Kevin – you know – Kevin was a truly great guy. Rough at the edges, if you know what I mean. Terrible taste in suits. But you could always count on him, day or night. God knows what the hell they did to him.’

  Luther was still chewing the last of his hamburger. Suddenly he frowned, and stopped chewing, and chased something around the inside of his mouth with his tongue. He reached up with finger and thumb and carefully spat it out.

  ‘Gristle?’ asked Sissy.

  Luther picked up his napkin and wiped it and then he held it up. It was a green plastic button.

  Vanished

  Sissy went back to Everett’s office. Everett was standing around talking to Charlie Bowdre and two other maintenance men, while Bella was tidying up his desk for him.

  ‘You all ready to go?’ asked Everett.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sissy. ‘My bag’s at reception. I’m waiting on Luther, that’s all. He’s not feeling too good.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? What’s the problem?’

  ‘I think you’d better ask him yourself.’

  She didn’t know for sure that Luther had been eating what he had suspected he was eating, and she didn’t want to upset Everett more than was necessary. The CSIs had asked Luther to stick his finger down his throat and vomit into a bowl so that they could analyze his stomach contents. Just thinking about it made Sissy feel nauseous.

  She looked around. ‘Where’s T-Yon? I wanted to make sure that she was OK.’

  ‘She’ll be here directly. She forgot her make-up, that’s all, and she went back up to her room to get it.’

  Sissy sat down in the corner. Detective Garrity came into the office and took Everett aside, speaking to him quietly and intently. It was obvious from the look on Everett’s face that Detective Garrity was telling him what Luther had found in his cheeseburger.

  When he had gone, Everett turned to Sissy and said, ‘You knew about this?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sissy admitted.

  ‘You’re a fortune teller. Tell me this. Can things get any frigging worse than they are already? Personally, I don’t see how they can.’

  Sissy was tempted to try and explain her idea about the hotel within a hotel. The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. It was a known phenomenon, phasing, scientifically measurable, and it had been the only plausible explanation for countless so-called ‘hauntings.’ True, she had never come across it on such a massive scale before. Usually, it was little more than singing in an empty room; or the reflection of a dead husband, seen through a window; or the smell of baking when the stove was cold, and the wife who had once bustled around the kitchen was lying in the cemetery.

  But Sissy thought: it’s possible, if Vanessa Slider is vengeful enough. Who knows what people can do when they feel bitterly wronged?

  Luther appeared, gray-faced, his eyes red-rimmed, as if he had been dusted with ash.

  ‘How are you feeling now?’ she asked him.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘That’s three times I swilled out my mouth with Listerine but I can still taste it. Yecchh! One of those CSI women promised to call me as soon as she’s analyzed it, but I’m not too sure I want to find out, to tell you the God’s honest truth.’

  ‘I expect you want to go home,’ said Sissy. ‘I was hoping to have a quick word with T-Yon, but I have her cell number
. I can call her later.’

  ‘Thanks, Ms Sissy. Appreciate it. You’re a lady.’

  T-Yon stepped out of the elevator when it reached the second floor and walked quickly along to Room 209. Police officers and security guards were still searching the upper floors, but now that everybody else had been evacuated The Red Hotel was unnaturally quiet. Occasionally she heard a shout or an echo, or the whine of an elevator, but the only other sound was her wedge-heeled sandals on the thick gold carpet.

  She reached Room 209 and opened the door. She went directly to the bathroom where she had left her make-up. She wouldn’t have bothered but it was a nearly new bottle of Diorskin Nude foundation which had cost her forty-six dollars.

  She dropped the bottle into her gray leather purse, and checked her hair in the bathroom mirror, flicking her fringe with her fingertips. She thought that her eyes looked swollen, which was hardly surprising after last night’s interrupted sleep and the grisly scenario she had witnessed in the mirror of Room 511.

  She went back into the bedroom and stopped dead.

  The two figures who had materialized at the end of her bed last night were standing between her and the door. One was about as tall as she was, while the other was much shorter, like a child, but both of them were draped in black sheets, so it was impossible to tell who they were or what they looked like.

  ‘What?’ she said. Her voice came out much higher than she had intended, and it was tight with fright.

  The two figures said nothing, but simply stood there, side by side. T-Yon could hear them breathing under their sheets, and the smaller one sounded as if it were suffering from a cold.

  ‘What do you want?’ T-Yon screamed at them. ‘Get out of my way!’

  She raised her purse over her head and took two steps toward them, but without hesitation the taller one lifted both of its black-sheeted arms and pushed her, hard. She stumbled backward over the large wooden linen chest at the foot of the bed and fell heavily on to the floor, hitting her shoulder against the dressing table.

  She tried to climb back up on to her feet, but the figure came up to her and pushed her again, and then again.

  ‘Get away from me!’ she shouted. ‘What do you want?’

  The taller figure reached out an arm from underneath the folds of its sheets, took hold of the sheet that covered its head, and dragged it to one side. As it pulled the sheet clear, it revealed itself to be a man. He looked about thirty-five, very pallid, as if he never went outside in the sunlight. He had sparse, spiky hair, drooping eyes, and a bulbous nose with a cleft in the end of it. His lips were crusted with scabs, and his front teeth were missing. A razor-wire tattoo encircled his neck, and his hands were crawling with tattoos, too.

  T-Yon thought that he looked like an ex-convict. Whatever he was, he wasn’t a ghost, but in some ways he was even more frightening than a ghost, because T-Yon suspected that he had come here for the sole purpose of doing her harm. He stood staring down at her, shifting a large wad of gray gum from one side of his mouth to the other. The smaller figure remained under its sheet. T-Yon could hear its phlegm cackling in the back of its nostrils.

  ‘What do you want?’ T-Yon repeated. ‘The cops know where I am. If I don’t go back downstairs in a couple of minutes, they’ll come up here looking for me.’

  ‘I ain’t concerned about that, bo,’ the man replied. His voice was high and reedy for a man of his bulk, with a strong local accent. ‘By the time the cops come looking for you, you’ll be someplace where nobody on God’s good earth will be able to find you.’

  ‘Just let me out of here,’ said T-Yon. Then she screamed out, ‘Help! Somebody help me! I’m in here! Help me!’

  The man gave a wheezy laugh, and the smaller figure giggled, too, underneath its sheet, and then gave a thick, viscous sniff.

  ‘You shouldn’t waste your breath, bo,’ the man told her. ‘There ain’t nobody on this floor excepting you and me and little peeshwank here. Now, let’s get going, shall we? We don’t want to keep the pauvre defante mom waiting, now do we?’

  ‘Get out of here! Get away from me! Somebody help me! Anybody!’

  T-Yon seized the edge of the dressing table and managed to pull herself on to her feet. She feinted left, and then right, and then made a rush toward the door. She had hardly taken two steps, however, when the smaller figure wrapped its sheeted arms around her legs, just above the knees, and clung on tight. She staggered, and tried to wade forward, but the man hooked his left arm around her neck and wrenched her head sideways.

  ‘There ain’t no future in trying to run off,’ he told her. His breath stank of garlic and that sweet, dark brown odor of decaying teeth, which not even his chewing gum had been able to mask. ‘Ain’t nobody can hear you – and like I say, you’ll be long gone before anybody starts asking theirselves what’s become of you.’

  ‘You’re choking me!’ gasped T-Yon.

  ‘Oh, I won’t choke you, bo. Not before the pauvre defante gets to talk to you.’

  T-Yon tried to scream again, but she managed only a muffled blurt before the man clamped his hand over her mouth.

  ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here, peeshwank,’ he said. The smaller figure opened the door and held it open while he frogmarched T-Yon out into the corridor.

  T-Yon was hyperventilating now. She twisted from side to side and kicked her legs up into the air, but the man was much too strong for her. He held her so close and so tight that his stubble rasped against the side of her cheek and she could smell not only the blasts of fetid breath that came out of his mouth but his body odor, too.

  The man half pushed her and half swung her along the corridor. As they passed the last bedroom door she felt a rising flood of terror, because there was nothing ahead of them now but the window at the far end. She could see the Hilton Hotel on the opposite side of Lafayette and she could hear the noise of traffic two stories below.

  Still the man kept humping and heaving her along, and she was helpless to stop him. Dear God, she thought. He’s going to throw me out.

  Strutting beside them, its black sheets rustling, the smaller figure started singing in its catarrhal voice:

  ‘Jolie blonde, regardez donc quoi t’as fait!

  Tu m’as quitté pour t’en aller,

  Pour t’en aller avec un autre, oui, que moi,

  Quel espoir et quelle avenir, mais, moi, je vais à voir!’

  T-Yon was blinded by the afternoon sunlight shining in through the window and she squeezed her eyes tight shut.

  Bitter Feelings

  Luther said, glumly, ‘How about you, Ms Sissy? You reckon we’ll get over all of this? The way it looks to me now, it wouldn’t surprise me if we have to close our doors for good.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll get over it somehow,’ said Sissy, looking out of the window of his Jeep as they drove southward through the subdivisions of East Baton Rouge.

  ‘Is that what your cards tell you?’

  ‘Right now my cards can’t see beyond any of this mayhem. I just feel that you’ll get over it, that’s all – feel it in my water. But I don’t think it’s going to be easy, and it could be highly dangerous.’

  ‘Why, thank you, Ms Sissy,’ said Luther. ‘You sure know how to cheer a body up, not.’ He licked his lips, and swallowed, and grimaced. ‘Sheesh, I can still taste that goddamn cheeseburger. I think I’m going to be tasting that goddamn cheeseburger for the rest of my life.’

  They were passing a cemetery, clustered with hundreds of marble headstones, all of them shining orange in the light from the sinking sun.

  ‘See that?’ said Luther. ‘That’s the Sweet Olive Cemetery. That’s where my uncle is interred, Aunt Epiphany’s late husband, Elijah. She comes up here just about every Sunday afternoon to talk to him. According to her, he still has plenty to say, even though he’s passed over. Sometimes she says that she can’t get a word in edgewise.’

  ‘There’s a lot of gone-beyonders like that,’ said Sissy. ‘A few of them don’t even realize
that they’ve passed away. Most of them do, sure, but they still haven’t finished speaking their mind, and they don’t see why a minor inconvenience like being dead should shut them up.’

  They turned into Drehr Avenue, and continued south. This was a quiet, shady street, lined on either side with live oaks and southern magnolia. Set back behind the trees Sissy could see grand family houses, some with sweeping driveways and pillared porticos. Eventually, however, they reached a more modest house, a 1920s Colonial Revival painted primrose yellow and surrounded by a picket fence. Luther parked his Jeep in front of the garage and opened the passenger door so that Sissy could climb down.

  Although the sun was so low, it was still fiercely hot and humid, and the chirruping of insects made it sound as if they were surrounded by thousands of sewing machines. There was a strong fragrance of gardenias in the air.

  ‘Pretty house,’ said Sissy.

  ‘Couldn’t afford it if I wanted to buy it now,’ said Luther. ‘Four hundred thousand and upward, some of these properties. But we ain’t thinking of moving. Not till they take us up to the Sweet Olive Cemetery, anyhow, to join Uncle Elijah, and I hope that won’t be anytime soon. Never could stand the fellow, to tell you the truth.’

  Luther lifted Sissy’s suitcase out of the back of the Jeep and followed her up the steps on to the porch. ‘Shatoya!’ he called out.

  Almost at once the screen door opened with a loud squeak and a smiling woman came bustling out, wiping her hands on her frilly pink apron. She was big-bosomed and wide-hipped, and she had a broad, well-boned face, with an immaculate Michelle Obama-style bob that was held in place by plenty of shiny hairspray. She wore huge hoop earrings and a necklace of chunky blue crystal beads.

  ‘Ms Sissy, this is my wife Shatoya. Shatoya, this is Ms Sissy Sawyer.’

  ‘I saw you at the gala,’ smiled Shatoya. ‘Welcome to our home, Ms Sissy. I only wish we could have invited you here under happier circumstances.’