Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 2 - Stellium in Scorpio
Page 9
"Okay, so what are they buying?"
"Sex," Callie said and her voice was far away.
Callie was jarred back into reality by her cell phone ringing. She answered, spoke for a few seconds, and then hung up. "Mom and Dad will be in early in the morning. Their plane was delayed."
"Great," I said and Callie looked at me, I presumed, for signs of sarcasm. "Great that they're still coming," I said and monitored my tone for believability.
Chapter Nine
Callie was in high spirits because her parents were finally here in the hotel and in the room right next to ours. The moment she heard their key in the lock, she dashed next door to greet them, returning fifteen minutes later to suggest I wait to say hello until they'd had time to get some rest. Their flight had indeed been delayed, their room wasn't ready, then they were put on the third floor by mistake and finally moved up to the twelfth floor, so they were pretty worn out and ready for a rest. Callie was disappointed to learn they were only going to be here for twenty-four hours—her dad had a meeting back in Tulsa. That meant one full day with them and I got Callie back. I would meet them at breakfast and some afternoon socializing and then it would be pretty much over. So I was in good spirits myself.
Callie's upbeat mood made her playful and amorous, a state I breathlessly awaited but not exactly at this moment. I was sound-shy when it came to sex. It had to do with the insanity of my upbringing.
By the time I'd reached puberty, it was stamped into my DNA that my Midwestern parents would not approve of my having sex in the abstract, much less approve of my having sex in the specific, and they would definitely not approve of my having sex with a person of the same sex, because sex should be preceded by a wedding and followed by a honeymoon, the purpose of which was the procreation of people who looked and sounded like my parents. That last thought served as a mental prophylactic.
My parents, Ben and Lu, had evolved over the last twenty years, and I was over forty, for God's sake, so why was I nervous? Nonetheless, Ben and Lu's heads loomed as large as the Wizard of Oz, bobbing over my bed if ever I lay with my lover in any room adjacent to theirs. Therefore, the idea that Callie's parents had checked into the hotel and were now in the adjacent room, with only the thin-as-a-cardboard-box wall between us, was just one step removed from having my own parents present.
"What's with you?" Callie said, snuggling up to me. "Come here."
"Shh," I whispered.
"Why?" She giggled at me.
"We're right up against their wall."
"Whose wall?"
"Your parents'."
"So what? They know you and I are together." She rubbed her hand across the soft hair between my legs.
"Okay, fine. I just don't want them to hear that we're together."
"Are you ashamed of us?"
"No, not at all. Of course not! I mean, I don't want to hear them either. I just think lovemaking is private, that's all."
"So, are you going to have a very quiet orgasm?" she said, leaning over me and putting her tongue where her hand had been. I bolted upright in bed, banging my head against the headboard, which in turn banged against the wall, and I yelped like a teenager, drawing back from her touch. She laughed. "Well, I'm sure they'll wonder what that was about."
"Sorry," I said and took a deep breath.
Suddenly the TV came on as if possessed. On the screen was a still shot, like the opening frame of a video on pause. It was a shot of our hotel room, Callie and me in bed together, in such an intertwined position that it was hard to see whose legs belonged to whom. The text beneath the image said: Check out now or this tape will be broadcast throughout the hotel.
"That's us on TV!" Callie shrieked.
I picked up the phone and rang the front desk, getting Ms. Loomis upon request. I told her frantically what we were looking at on our TV screen. She offered to send someone up to investigate as, mercifully, the image disappeared and the closed circuit network of the hotel took over, describing where to dine and what to see. I told Ms. Loomis the image had just disappeared, and she assured me that she would immediately contact the hotel audio/video department and find out who was on duty and what had occurred. I hung up, knowing whoever had done it was long gone, and I squirmed over the existence of such a shot, our not knowing if it was an idle threat or if it would indeed be broadcast in every room including 1252, where Callie's parents were staying.
I stared up at the ceiling, analyzing the location of the camera from the angle of the video. The camera would have to be up high, shooting down in a wide angle onto the bed. I jumped up and pulled the chair over to stand on it so I could examine the walls, running my hands across the smooth paint looking for pinholes of light or slits in the crown molding, any place a camera lens might hide, as Elmo rolled his eyes over my repeated gymnastics. I found nothing, and whoever put the camera in our room could just as easily have removed it, for all I knew.
"Teague, call the police," Callie ordered. I hesitated. This would mean describing what was on the tape, perhaps locating and viewing the tape in public. It would involve her parents. It would be invasive and embarrassing.
"We have nothing to report," I stammered as I got down off the chair. "I couldn't even tell if it was us, and the image is gone and—"
Callie handed me the phone. "Call the police now, or I will!"
I shook my head in agony over being in this situation. Good grief! How the hell did this happen? I rang the police and got a desk sergeant. He listened to my statement and said he'd send someone over to the hotel within the hour.
"Thank you," Callie said, then picked up the phone and called her parents, asking if they would meet us downstairs at the coffee shop, an attempt to get them out of their room immediately and away from their TV.
I slung my shirt on and stepped into my tennis shoes.
"Wear this shirt. It makes your eyes pop," Callie said.
"My eyes are popping without a shirt! What difference does it make what I wear if they've just seen me butt naked making love to you! That was our Dallas Cowboys night, in case you've forgotten!" I said, my voice going up an octave.
"I'll never forget that night!" Callie squeezed my hand, reassuring me.
With that, we went downstairs to determine what, if anything, had appeared on her parents' in-room TV. I had to keep reminding myself to breathe. What I do is my own damned business. But I knew from years in the motion picture business that it took days with a talented director, lighting designer, cinematographer, and makeup artist just to get a nude kissing scene to look good, and that raw, poorly lit, unstaged sex scenes could look absolutely horrific.
"I hope you're not embarrassed over our lovemaking," Callie said, picking up on my thoughts as we got off the elevator and scanned the lobby for the police, who apparently hadn't arrived yet.
"I'm not embarrassed. I just don't want it to look bad on camera," I said.
"Good." Callie gave me a look that said she didn't believe me.
I stopped at the front desk. "The police are looking for us."
"Of course they are," Ms. Loomis said without looking up. I decided not to take offense.
"If they inquire at the front desk, we're in the coffee shop," I said and continued on with Callie. "Every time I walk up to the front desk, I'm demanding a security guard, threatening to call the police, or meeting the police! In fact, since I've known you, I've met more police than when I was on the force! Furthermore, and more importantly, this is not a good way to meet your parents for the first time, right after their having seen me naked on top of you!" I stopped ranting when her parents came into view like a nightmare on the horizon, there to avenge their daughter's deflowering, ready and waiting to suck the life from me and pick my bones clean.
"You okay?" Callie said in what would be our last private words together.
"Sure." I shrugged.
Paige and Palmer Rivers were seated at a corner table in the coffee shop, neither smiling at us nor frowning at us, just fulfilling
our request to show up. Callie greeted them in a chipper tone, kissing each on the cheek, and then she introduced me with an amazing amount of pride in her voice, given the circumstances.
Paige said, "Hello, dear."
Palmer nodded. Palmer struck me as a man who had a lot to say but picked his time to say it. I imagined he was the last of the concrete cowboys pulling his big rig across the state to deliver oil field pipe that would crush anything that got in its way, delivered to men who would crush anything that got in theirs. Palmer was the kind of man who didn't trust you at first, but when he did, he'd get up in the middle of the night and drive five hundred miles to give you the shirt off his back, and never expect a thank-you. On the other hand, if Palmer didn't like you, I suspected that he might just beat you to death with a tire iron and call it a day.
Callie asked if they'd slept well, Paige rattled on about how nice the room was, quiet and with a good mattress. But the conversation was strained.
The waiter showed up and took our order. I felt Palmer watching me like a peregrine falcon through one intensely focused eyeball with the iris dilating in and out. I ordered pancakes, silently preferring a sedative. That out of the way and small talk diminished, Callie took charge.
"Did a video come on in your room just before I called you?" she asked flatly.
"Yes," Paige said, wincing. "I didn't know who to call about it!"
Callie assured her that we had called the police, and that they were going to appear within the hour. I felt my chest tightening and my ears turning red as Paige and Callie launched into a dissection of the injustice of what had occurred, the invasion of privacy, the perversion of the perpetrator, the deplorable idea that someone could invade a hotel room with a camera—all while Palmer and I sat silently avoiding eye contact. Paige went on about it as if it were a movie starring two strangers and not her daughter and me.
"I saw the whole thing!" Paige said loudly. "I was shocked, because I thought, T didn't order this movie. What in the world!' And then two women doing God knows what, and I got confused, thinking, well, how did this get into my TV? I was so shocked I didn't even know if he was awake. Did you see it, Palmer?"
"Just the climax," Palmer said without expression.
That startled even Callie, who said she'd better go to the lobby and wait for the police officer. Paige went with her, leaving me with Palmer.
He sipped his coffee and stared up at the constellations that ran across the top of the ceiling, a universe of stars shining down on sausage and hash browns. He didn't say a word. I tried not to let my mind imagine what he was thinking. It seemed like an hour before he finally said, "Callie's psychic." I let all the air out of my body in one relieved sigh, grateful that he wasn't going to stab me with his breakfast fork. Palmer lodged a toothpick somewhere back in his bicuspid and left it there. "Her mother's psychic too. So I've lived with psychic women all my life," Palmer said and my mind filled in the rest of his sentence: And that's how I knew you were messin' with my daughter, or That's how I knew this whole thing was going to come to no good. But Palmer seemed contained. I told myself to relax.
"The trouble with Callie and her momma is, even when they don't know what you're doin', they think they know what you're doin'. And to make matters worse, it's someone out in outer space tellin' 'em what you're doin', someone you can't even talk to. She told me that you stay up in your head all the time. Well, at least that's a place. She and her momma are out of their bodies most of the time. They're talkin' and communin' and hearin' from people. I learned a long time ago that information from the cosmos can override plain common sense, but you won't convince them of that. It's a challenge." He shook his head in wonderment. "Now when I met Paige, this psychic stuff didn't even come up because, of course back then, they'd just throttle you, and take you to the priest, and try to scare the demons out of you. It's only been recently that people are into that, if you know what I mean. TV and all that. Television can get you in a lot of trouble." He looked me square in the eye, longer than anyone had ever looked at me in my lifetime, and rolled the toothpick across the front of his mouth and into a crevice of the other bicuspid.
He's like a cat who's decided to play with his breakfast first and eat it later. He's toying with me, trying to wear me out. Well, I'm a grown woman! I don't need to put up with this shit!
"Look, Palmer, I'm a very direct person." I added quickly, "I'm in love with Callie. I am. And I'm sorry you saw us making love in our hotel room, but I'm not sorry we were doing it...only sorry that you saw it."
There was a long pause and he breathed in real deep. I thought that if he spoke next it could only go downhill, so I decided to get my say in first. "She's a phenomenal person, and a phenomenal lover, and if I could just make love to her all day long, well, hell, that's what I'd do, and that's the truth.. .not eat, not sleep, just love your daughter. You're a man. Surely you can understand those feelings. We're over forty, for God's sake, and we deserve some happiness. So if you don't want to invite us to Christmas dinner or whatever, fine. But I'm not sorry about the videotape of our lovemaking. I mean I'm sorry someone else made the tape, but I'm not sorry we're in it."
There was another long pause during which the only thing that moved was Palmer's jaw muscle as it twitched and tensed and tightened. Palmer adjusted his silver Spandex watchband. He twirled the cowboy hat that rested on his knee. He picked up a fork by its tines and set it down and pressed the tines down onto the tablecloth with his fingers—again and again and again—as if he thought the fork might actually stay like that.
Mercifully, Paige stuck her fairy godmother head into the coffee shop and signaled for us to join them, saying the police officer was here. Palmer reached for the check, and I launched myself out of the chair like a bottle rocket, unaware of how badly I wanted to get away from this table until the opportunity to do so appeared.
The police officer was a gray-haired, pot-bellied detective who'd obviously seen and heard everything one could conceivably see or hear in a town with twenty-four-hour vice. He pushed his hat back on his head, pulled out a pad and pencil, and suggested we go sit on a large settee in the lobby.
"What's in room 1252?" the cop asked.
"That's my room," Paige interjected.
"And you're...?"
"The mother," Paige said seriously, as if she were in an ancient episode of Cagney & Lacey.
"Where's the tape now?" he asked.
"We don't know. That's why you're here," Callie replied.
"Girl sex," her mother whispered, "that's why you're here."
"Invasion of privacy and blackmail, that's why you're here," Callie corrected.
"Well, that too," Paige said.
"And it played in every room?" the cop asked.
"How would I know that?" Paige said.
"The super on the screen said, 'Check out now or this will play throughout the hotel,'" I interjected.
"Maybe it was a commercial. 'Check it out now! Playing throughout the hotel,'" Paige said like an announcer.
"Mother, stop it, please. You're just confusing things." Callie tried to calm her down.
"What am I confusing? I don't want this man to get the idea that I order dirty movies."
"I would never think that, ma'am." The officer smiled.
"Girls Galore! That was the name of the movie that came on this morning. I remember now! And these two girls were doing sex acts!" Paige said.
"With each other?" the cop asked.
"With everyone! There was even a man there too!" Paige giggled and the cop laughed.
"So were Callie and I on your TV?" I asked.
"No! How would that happen?" Paige asked, utterly surprised.
"Good question. You should be a cop." The officer stuck his pen back in his shirt pocket. This was a noncrime in his books, and he was looking for a wrap-up and a quick exit. "I'll file the report, talk to the manager, and if anything else happens, call this number." The officer handed me a card that said Sergeant Lane.
"Yes!" Callie beamed. "You see, I told you everything would work out."
"Except that I just told your dad I'd rather make love to you than eat."
"What did he say?" Callie's eyes flew open wide.
"Nothing. He just sat there and stared at me, and his hat, and his watchband, and his fork..."
Callie burst out laughing.
"I can never look the man in the face again," I said.
"You were so afraid he'd hear us making love through the wall and now you've described it for him! What you fear you bring to you." She grinned mischievously.
Chapter Ten
A nice-looking couple did a double take to look at Callie and me as we walked by, giving us an odd look. Moments later a man walked past and then turned to look again.
"What are they looking at?" I asked.
My question was answered by two short, stocky, pro-bowler-looking ladies in their late fifties. One pinched my arm as they went by and said, "You girls are hot!"
"I have a feeling she's not talking about our wardrobe," I said as the women flew past, destination unknown.
"I think the tape played in someone’s room," Callie said.
"But how?" I asked.
A man in his late forties approached us, pulled his business card out of his pocket, wrote his room number on the back, and asked if we did three-ways. "Saw your ad this morning on my in-house channel!"
I blew up at him and the man hurried away looking confused. We glanced across the room where half a dozen people were going about their vacation routine uninterested in us, so not everyone had seen us. I suggested we abandon Paige momentarily and take a walk so we could talk.
Down the long corridor, under the Addizione VIII archway, I found a spot out of the stream of tourist traffic where I could get cell phone reception and rang George, my attorney in L.A.
"We're going to sue the hotel!" I said.