Lorraine sighed. “Clay, I can’t walk all the way down to Tribeca like this. I just can’t.”
“Isn’t the thought of getting those letters back giving you strength?”
“I’m getting blisters!” Lorraine cried, stopping dead in her tracks and stomping her foot. But she’d stopped on a grate, and the heel of the shoe she stomped slipped between the metal pieces and got stuck. When she tried to pull her shoe out, the heel snapped off.
“Oh, no!” she cried. “These shoes were my favorite!”
“Your favorites are the ones that give you blisters?” Clay asked wryly.
“I guess so!” Lorraine kicked off her shoes, pulled the heel out of the grate, and stood barefoot on the sidewalk. Despite her disappointment, the feeling of her bare feet on the pavement was heavenly. “Mama Mia, that feels so much better. But I can’t walk barefoot, Clay. I might step on glass or a nail or something.”
“What do you propose we do?”
“I don’t know. Why did that stupid airline have to lose my luggage?”
“I wish I could answer that for you, Lorraine.”
“Can you carry me?”
“All the way to Tribeca? No way.”
“There’s a lot of money at stake.”
“Not enough to pay for chiropractors for the rest of my life. Listen, Lorraine, I live on Ninth Street. Let me run down there and get my bicycle. I’ll come back and get you as fast as possible.”
“You can’t leave me all by myself.” She looked around. “It’s dark and deserted.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I’m scared,” Lorraine whined. “I could get mugged.”
“Then how about if we go back to the hotel? It’s only about eight blocks. I think I can carry you that far. Your friend the greeter is dying to welcome you home. You can shoot the breeze with him until I pick you up on my bicycle.”
“Won’t that look weird?”
“Lorraine!”
“I’m sorry. Okay. Give me a piggyback ride.”
He turned his back to her, leaned down, and she jumped on board. Her legs wrapped around him, her arms around his neck, they started back up Fifth Avenue. “I’ll walk the last block,” she told him. “To be seen like this wouldn’t be good for my image.”
“Don’t worry,” he muttered. “I’ll gladly drop you when we get close.”
22
Regan, Billy, Melanie, and Cal Hopkins, the head of security at the Gates Hotel, made the arduous journey up a dark, hot stairwell to Georgina’s room. By the time they reached the forty-second floor, they were all sweating.
“Kit’s lucky she had that bunionectomy,” Billy commented as he took a long slug of bottled water.
Cal had handed them each a bottle before they started the trek. “I don’t need anyone passing out on me,” he’d said. They followed him down the long hall. He stopped and trained the flashlight on the door of Georgina’s room and unlocked it with a master key. He pushed the door open. Slowly he started inside.
Regan’s first impression as she shone her flashlight around was that Georgina was not a neat freak. There were two queen-size beds, one of them covered with a jumble of clothes. A half-full suitcase was open and on the floor. A quick check of the bathroom revealed the basics most women bring on a trip. Cleansing cream, moisturizer, toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, hair spray, makeup, etc.
“Nothing looks too unusual,” Regan commented. She took a quick look through the clothes on the bed. She found nothing hidden there or anywhere in the suitcase. A couple of stylish but wrinkled dresses were hanging in the closet. They still had the price tags on them. Maybe the fruits of her shoplifting, Regan thought. Three pairs of shoes were on the closet floor. A quick look through a leather portfolio on the desk revealed nothing but papers regarding the insurance convention. “Melanie, you’re the only one of us who knew her. Is there anything here that strikes you odd in any way?”
“No,” Melanie said with disappointment.
Regan opened the drawers of the dresser. The top two were empty. In the bottom drawer there was a pillow in a red pillowcase. “Does this belong to the hotel?” Regan asked Cal.
“No. A lot of people like to travel with their own pillows. I know my wife does. She wants a flat pillow and can’t stand hotel pillows that are big and fluffy or hard as a rock. Trouble is, she sometimes forgets to bring it home. Our guests do the same. You wouldn’t believe the stuff people leave behind!” He whistled. “It’d curl your toes.”
“I’d like to talk to you sometime,” Billy said. “I’m a stand-up comedian and I’m always looking for material.”
“Really? Well, stop by one of these days. I’ll show you our lost and found department. If you can’t find a few jokes from what piles up in there, then you should give up on comedy.”
“Thanks,” Billy muttered. “I accept your challenge.”
Something made Regan pull the pillow out of the drawer. The red pillowcase looked worn out. She walked over to one of the beds and slid the pillow out of its case. The zipper of the stained shabby pillow was partially separated from the pillow itself.
“I wonder why she doesn’t get a new one,” Melanie commented. “I know she makes good money. I mean, she makes more than I do and my pillow doesn’t look like that.”
Regan unzipped the rest of the zipper and reached inside. Her fingers touched on what felt like small pieces of thick paper. She reached and pulled them out. “Photographs,” she murmured. Quickly Regan placed six photos next to each other on the bed. As she and Cal shone their flashlights over the images, they all gasped.
Five photographs were of different men’s arms with angry red welts that spelled out I AM A SNAKE with varying degrees of clarity.
“Her friend wasn’t kidding!” Melanie said. “Oh, my God! She is so cruel!” Unconsciously, she rubbed her arms. “Regan, you have to find that guy tonight.”
“I intend to do my best. Now what about this?” The sixth picture was of a young girl of about ten, standing in front of a redbrick restaurant with a woman who appeared to be in her sixties. There was a neon sign in the window that was hard to decipher. “I wonder if this is Georgina with her grandmother.”
“Who else’s picture would she keep in her pillowcase?” Melanie asked as she stared at the photo. “She told me she was so close to her grandmother. The girl looks like it could be Georgina…”
Cal took the picture in his hands and studied it. “Wait a minute! I recognize that place and that woman!”
“You do?” Regan asked, astonished.
“It was a little hole-in-the-wall called Nunzio’s on the Upper East Side. I used to go there more than twenty years ago with my friends. It was open until four in the morning and was always jammed. This lady was the bartender! She was one tough broad but she made the best margaritas in town!”
“Are you sure?” Regan asked.
“Yes! This woman had a picture of her granddaughter behind the bar.” Cal smiled. “She bossed everybody around. Especially when she saw a guy who wasn’t treating a girl right. She threw more people out of that joint.” He paused. “She used to say they should be boiled in oil…We all got a big kick out of her.”
They were all silent for a moment. “She made margaritas?” Regan asked.
“Yes.”
“Kit said Georgina drank a margarita tonight. You say the bar isn’t there anymore?”
“No. The woman died in a terrible car accident years ago when she was on vacation. The owner eventually sold the place. I was so shocked when I heard she had died. It seemed like she was going to outlive us all.”
“So that’s what happened to her,” Melanie said softly. “Georgina never mentioned how she died.”
Regan sighed. “Cal, where on the Upper East Side was the bar?”
“Up in the Eighties off of Second Avenue.”
“Could you get me the exact address?”
“I’ll find out for you right away.”
Re
gan glanced again at the pictures of the hideously scarred arms. “We’ve got to find Georgina. If her grandmother worked on the Upper East Side, she might have gone back up there tonight. Let’s get going. I’ll call the police in Atlanta from the car.”
“I’m coming with you,” Melanie cried. “I don’t care what Dexter says. He was too much of a wimp to come up here with us. If I lose my job, so be it. Those pictures are awful! I want to help you find Georgina before she brands anyone else. Kit knows what she looks like but she’s on crutches. I can run in and out of bars and spot her easier than you can from just a picture. Especially since the bars are so dark tonight.”
Regan looked at the young girl with affection. She remembered the way she felt when she was Melanie’s age and started to work on cases, fueled by a desire for justice. “It’s fine with me, Melanie. But I’d hate for you to get fired.”
Melanie threw her arms in the air. “If I can’t risk my job at this age doing what I think is the right thing, then when can I? Besides, how would it look for my company if after hiring a nutcase like Georgina, they fire me for wanting to help find her?”
“Good point, Melanie. Now let’s get going.”
23
Wally and Arthur were speeding across the George Washington Bridge in glum silence. Pointing to the darkened Manhattan skyline, Wally marveled, “That’s something isn’t it?”
“You don’t have to point it out to me,” Arthur growled. “Are you forgetting I was already there tonight?”
“No. Sorry. It’s just weird that the only lights are coming from the cars on the road.” He glanced down at his lighted dashboard, and his heart skipped a beat. There was one light there that he hadn’t noticed when they got into the car. The warning light on the gas gauge. They were running on empty. The last couple times he’d taken the car on a quick errand, he’d noticed that he needed gas. But both times there had been a line of at least two cars at the local gas station, so he put off filling the tank.
A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face.
Please God, he thought. Just let us get to Tribeca. I’ll leave the car on the street and walk home if I have to. He slowed down to preserve whatever fuel was left.
“What are you doing?” Arthur snapped. “We’re not out for a Sunday drive.”
“I don’t want to get a ticket,” Wally mumbled as he took the exit that led them to the West Side Highway. “The last thing we need to do is attract attention.” He kept his foot on the accelerator as lightly as he could while still maintaining a steady rate of speed. It couldn’t be more than five miles, he told himself as he gripped the steering wheel tightly. Come on, baby. We’ve been together through thick and thin. Just get me there, and I promise I’ll never do this to you again.
As they drove down the West Side Highway, Wally started to feel better about their chances for a successful arrival in Tribeca. South of One Hundredth Street, the car sputtered.
“What’s that?” Arthur spat.
“What’s what?”
“What’s wrong with the car?” Suspicion in his eyes, Arthur leaned over and looked at the gas gauge. “We’re out of gas, you idiot! What’s wrong with you? We could have taken my car!”
“You were too upset to drive,” Wally protested as he steered the sputtering car to the side of the highway, where it went kaput. “I’ve been meaning to get gas…”
“Meaning to get gas! You get behind the wheel during a blackout, and you don’t check to see how much gas you have?”
“I was stressed out!” Hoping against hope, Wally turned the key. The engine whined and moaned but refused to turn over.
“Let’s go,” Arthur said as he started to get out of the car.
“Go? And leave my car here? It’ll get towed.”
“Well then why don’t you call the police and report it? While you’re at it, ask them to give us a ride to Tribeca.” Arthur stepped out onto the street and slammed the door.
My contractor’s ultimate fantasy was so misguided, Wally thought as he got out, retrieved two flashlights from the backseat, and locked the car. “If it doesn’t get towed, it’ll get stolen,” he mumbled.
“By thieves who just happen to be carrying a can of gas?” Arthur asked sarcastically.
They started walking along a footpath near the river. As strolls go, if one was in the right frame of mind, it was the perfect time for one. The night—dark, quiet, and calm—had a mysterious, ethereal beauty.
“I hope we don’t get knifed,” Arthur said with his usual pessimism. “This area is deserted. You don’t know who we might come across. That’s why I bought the stun gun. Do you know they’re legal in most states? But not New York or New Jersey. Ohhhh, no. I read online that instead of having Tupperware parties, women all over the country are having taser parties. They’re buying them for self defense!”
“What don’t you read online? You’re a fountain of information.”
“I enjoy my time at the computer.”
“Well, legal or not, you might have left the stun gun behind at a crime scene. That’s our problem. That’s why we’re here right now.”
They continued on in silence for several minutes.
“Look!” Arthur whispered. “There’s someone coming this way.” In the distance a lone figure was headed toward them. Arthur’s knees started to shake. “Maybe we should cross the highway.”
“What kind of a man are you?” Wally asked with disgust. “Just keep walking. There are two of us and one of him.”
As the figure drew closer they could tell it was a disheveled man with a beard. He was wearing a backpack and looking down at the ground as he trudged along, mumbling to himself.
“He’s demented,” Wally muttered.
Moments later, as they were approaching the stranger whose body odor preceded him, Wally felt a sudden urge to be friendly. “Evening,” he said.
The man briefly looked up, lost his footing, tripped, and fell to the ground. “Look what you made me do!” he snarled in a surprisingly cultured voice.
“I’m so sorry. Let us help you,” Wally said quickly as he reached for the stranger’s arm. But the man swung around and threw a punch. Wally reeled backward, blood spurting out of his nose, as the man hightailed it down the path.
Arthur, even though he wasn’t experiencing particularly warm feelings toward Wally this evening, took off after the assailant. He caught up with him, grabbed the straps of his backpack, pulled it off his body, and gave the stranger a good shove. “My friend was trying to be nice to you,” Arthur screamed. “We’re going to call the police.”
Like a shot, the man scurried down toward the river and quickly disappeared.
Stunned, Arthur was left holding the grimy backpack. He wasn’t about to chase the vagrant to an even more remote area. Breathing hard, he turned and walked back to Wally, who had sat down on the ground and tilted his head back to stem the flow of blood. His T-shirt was pulled up around his nose.
“Do you have a handkerchief?” Wally asked in a garbled tone.
“No. My mother told me a gentleman should always carry one, but I guess I’m not a gentleman.” Arthur sat down on the ground next to Wally. He placed the backpack on the ground next to him. “I can’t believe that nut took off without this. He really must have been afraid of me.”
“Do you think there’s anything inside that bag that I can use to soak up the blood?”
“I somehow doubt there are any clean bandages, but if you want me to take a look…” Arthur said hesitantly. If there was anything Arthur hated, it was germs.
“Take a quick look. Then we’ll get going, I promise.” Wally reached for one of the flashlights on the ground next to him and handed it to Arthur.
Wincing, Arthur opened the buckle of the backpack, pushed over the flap, and saw that a blanket that had been stuffed inside. “A blanket?” Arthur muttered as he started to pull it out. Right away he could tell that something was wrapped in it. He started to unroll the blanket with one hand a
nd shone the flashlight with the other. His eyes widened as he caught sight of the objects in the backpack.
“What does he have in there?” Wally asked, gazing up at the stars.
“Wally!”
“What?”
“I think that man is a thief!”
“That makes three of us.”
“I’m not kidding. There are glass sculptures wrapped in this blanket that are worth a fortune. I read about a gallery that’s opening in Manhattan and specializing in glass like this.”
“I must have missed that. You read it online?”
“Of course.” Arthur pulled a second blanket out of the backpack and carefully unrolled it. “Now I’m sure they’re from that gallery!” he crowed triumphantly.
“Why?”
He held up a ruby glass slipper. “This sculpture was the centerpiece of their collection! They had a picture of it in the article. Wally, we are in possession of stolen property! What are we going to do? If we hand these sculptures over to the police, and then they trace the stun gun to me, they’ll never believe we didn’t steal these ourselves!”
24
In the crowded lobby of the Gates Hotel, Kit was sitting in a folding chair that had been provided by a staff member. Her crutches were on the floor beside her. Dexter, who had proclaimed he would watch for Georgina all night if he had to, had gone back to the bar to drown his sorrows over his company’s pending shame. Kit wanted to keep her eye on the front door just in case Georgina returned. In her heart she knew that there was more of a chance that the Queen of England would appear in the flesh.
Georgina won’t be back anytime soon, Kit thought. She is somewhere out there in this dark dark night with that poor guy. If I hadn’t gone to the comedy club with her, he might not be in this predicament. If Georgina had gone alone, the timing would have been different. But, Kit reasoned, trying to make herself feel better, she might have picked up somebody else. She had certainly done it before when she was out alone. Still, Kit couldn’t help but feel that she was somewhat responsible for the fate of Chip Jones.
Carol Higgins Clark Boxed Set - Volume 1: This eBook collection contains Zapped, Cursed, and Wrecked. Page 9
