The Haunting of Hotel LaBelle

by Sharon Buchbinder

  Lucius got down on his knees and folded his hands. Franny sat beside him and begged too.

  A mixture of anger and pity churned inside her. Never before had a live and a dead man begged her not to leave them—at the same time. She shook her head, and a strangled laugh escaped. “I’m going to regret this, I just know it.”

  “Thank you!” Will jumped up and down. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  Lucius offered her a charming grin and blew her a kiss.

  A flock of butterflies quivered in her belly. She shook her head. I must be nuts. Of all the ghosts in all of the hotels she’d visited, this one was the most annoying, amusing—and attractive. Franny ran in circles and yelped.

  A three ring circus. And she was the only one who could appreciate it.

  “Come on, Will. Show me those rooms.” She picked up the pug. “Do not hide anything else from me.”

  “Yes, ma’am, right away.” He led her up the stairs to the opposite end of the hall from hers and opened the door. “Ta dah! The modern traveler’s dream room.”

  To say the room was institutional would be an understatement. White walls, shiny white shelves, a coat hanging area but no dresser, a low white counter under the flat screen TV, a white table that looked like it belonged in a hospital room, and white towels—folded incorrectly—in a Spartan white-tiled bathroom greeted her. The sawdust and glue made her and Franny sneeze.

  Lucius strolled out of the shower. “What did I tell you?”

  Tallulah glared at him and put her fingers to her lips. Franny wriggled happily in her arms, and she put the dog on the floor. Lucius patted the pug’s belly while Franny rolled in a delirium of ecstasy at his feet. If the pug had been a cat, she would have sworn Lucius was made of catnip.

  Damn this man—no, ghost—was getting under her skin.

  “Will, who’s your decorator?” She wanted to ask if it was someone who specialized in hospitals, but restrained herself.

  He puffed up his chest and jabbed at it with his thumb. “You’re looking at him. Got the idea out of a catalog for assemble-it-yourself furniture. Cheap and easy. I had them ship out enough for ten rooms. Only got one done because the construction crew walked off.”

  Showed their good taste.

  “I know what they did—it’s not that hard. It’s like building blocks for adults. Stuff even comes with detailed instructions,” Will enthused. “I’m going to find a high school kid to help me do the rest.”

  “No. Don’t.” She put her hand out like a traffic cop. “See if you can return the unused materials.”

  “Why? I thought this was genius. People want their computers and need lots of outlets.”

  “This is an historic hotel. Guests will come here to experience the flavor of that era. It’s one thing to provide modern amenities with Internet access, WiFi, and outlets. It’s a completely different thing to destroy the very thing guests would flock to see.”

  He shook his head and looked around. “What am I supposed to do with this room?”

  “I don’t know.” If the local hospital was short on space, maybe he could rent it out as an isolation unit. “I’ll figure something out.” She glanced at her watch. “I have to leave now, or I’ll miss my appointment with Emma.”

  Will looked stricken. “So soon?”

  “It’s part of my job. I interview everyone.” Her heart twisted with pity. “I have an idea.”

  His face brightened. “Yeah?”

  “While I’m gone, you can get rid of those tire planters.”

  His face fell. “I made those.”

  They make the place look like a bunch of hillbillies live here.

  Tallulah handed him a frowny face sticky note. “Perhaps there’s another place you can put them to good use?” Out of sight. Away from the hotel.

  Will pouted. “What am I supposed to do with the flowers?”

  She put her fists on her hip. “Put the plants in the ground around the wraparound porch.”

  He needed something to keep him out of trouble.

  His shoulders slumped. “All right.”

  “And while you’re at it, think about a sign. Something wooden, not that ugly thing you can barely see from the road.”

  He opened his mouth, and she slapped another frowny face sticky note in his hand.

  “And not neon. A painted wooden sign, with a light that shines on it so people can see it.”

  Will nodded like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  “Go out and play in the dirt. It will do you good.”

  Will trudged out the door ahead of her.

  “Well,” Lucius whispered in her ear, “was I wrong?”

  She jumped. “Stop sneaking up on me. No, you were right. This room is a nightmare.”

  A satisfied expression crossed his face.

  “Don’t get too smug,” she warned. “I need to pull a jack rabbit out of a hat to fix this place.”

  “If anyone can do it, it’s you. You’re a powerful Medicine Woman, Tallulah. You just don’t know it yet.”

  He vanished before she could retort that it would take two Medicine Women to fix the place.

  Tallulah made sure Franny had lots of fresh water and was safely ensconced in her paw print bed in the hotel room before setting out for Little Big Horn Battlefield. No radio, no audio books, just blessed quiet reigned—now that Lucius wasn’t whispering in her ear, jumping out of showers, or talking to her behind Will’s back.

  Flat, wide-open spaces and clouds that looked as if a great artist stroked the deep blue sky with a cotton tipped paintbrush met her gaze when she took her eyes off the asphalt. She was used to flat plains and wide expanses in Oklahoma, but here the color of the earth, the sky, the rolling hills, waving grass, and the clouds gave her the same sense of sacred grounds she’d experienced in the Pictograph Caves.

  Relaxed and at peace, at last, she enjoyed the easy sixty-mile drive. After lunch, she intended to spend a few hours exploring the battlefield, but right now she had to find the restaurant.

  Emma had told her the trading post sat right across from the main entrance to the national monument visitor center. Hard to miss really, given the huge arrow pointing at the entrance. Teepees sat in front of the restaurant, mute testimony to an old way of life. The building, draped in red, white, and blue bunting, bore stars, antlers, and skulls of cattle, a Wild West blend of animal trophies and patriotic profusion. She was to meet Emma at the restaurant, but she didn’t specify where. Pots of flowers exploding with red, white, and purple blooms lined the walkway. Tallulah walked the length of the extensive wooden porch and decided to go into the store to look for her.

  A riot of colors, sounds, and smells overwhelmed Tallulah when she stepped inside. Glass cabinets and counters showcased collectible and expensive artwork. Displays of Native American textiles, souvenirs, books, puzzles, and toys vied for her attention as she wandered the aisles. She stopped in front of a large stone fireplace decorated with the enormous head of a buffalo and searched for Emma’s long black braids and quick smile. The smell of fry bread wafted by, and her stomach growled.

  “Hello!” Emma called from the one side of the store she hadn’t searched.

  “Thanks for meeting me. What a place. I don’t know where to look first. I’m in sensory overload.”

  “Ha! Wait until you bite into an Indian taco. Then your taste buds will be singing and dancing too.”

  They chose a table inside the restaurant. As promised, the taco was divine, the service was friendly, and the price was right. Between bites of food, Tallulah encouraged Emma to tell her about her time at the Hotel LaBelle. She wanted to get to know her better. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something told her Emma was more than just a maid.

  “Will’s got a gambling problem. Lost a lot of money at the casino and owes more than he’s making.”

  “Wait,” Tallulah put her fork down. “I thought he played the ponies?”

  “That too.” Emma sipped he
r soda. “He’s up to his eyeballs in debt, owes me a month’s pay, and the contractors walked off because he fell behind paying them too.”

  Tallulah looked Emma in the eye. “You’re working for free? Why do you stay?”

  “Let’s just say, I have a vested interest in the place, especially now that he’s gotten it halfway back on track.” She threw her hands up. “But, I can’t help feeling something’s off about Will. Not just the gambling thing. The guy shows up out of nowhere with a pile of money and says he wants to invest in a ruin of a hotel.”

  “Pile of money? As in cash?” Tallulah pulled out her large pad of sticky notes and black marker. “How much?”

  “He says three hundred thousand.” Emma bit on her taco and moaned. “Delicious.”

  “The bank must have wondered where it came from. There are regulations about how much cash you can carry around. Laws put in effect to keep drug lords and terrorists from laundering money.”

  Emma nodded. “He said he had a bill of sale from a property in California, but it sounded fishy to me all the same.”

  Tallulah wrote, Follow the money.

  “Some of my friends on the rez tell me he’s in deep Buffalo dung with some bad guys.” Emma shook her head. “They play for keeps.”

  “Making him even more anxious to get the hotel back up and running.” Tallulah wrote, Desperate. “Bad combination. Broke, in deep debt, and desperate.”

  “Exactly.”

  Emma tried to pay for lunch, but Tallulah slapped her cash down first. “This is on me.”

  “How about if I take you for a stroll around the battlefield? Walk off some of that fry bread? I’ve heard the rangers tell the stories so often, I can repeat them for you.”

  “I’ll drive,” Tallulah said.

  As she pulled through the national monument entrance, a pall of silence fell upon the two women. Without saying a word, Emma climbed out of the SUV and led Tallulah through the visitors’ center, bypassing the souvenirs and history books. They stood outside in the shade of a green overhang, surveying the expanse of grass, rolling hills, and tombstones on a nearby ridge.

  “This is where the ranger usually has the program. It’s pretty good, with perspectives of both the Native Americans and the white men.” She smiled. “One of the rangers always calls the white men illegal immigrants, which makes me laugh. I prefer the Crow Nation tour. You get the real deal with that one. Today, you get me—guess you could say I’m your personal Crow tour guide.”

  They stood together in silence, the weight of over a hundred and forty years of history and the deaths of white men and countless Native Americans pressing upon Tallulah. A battle won by the Native Americans, but the war won by the whites forcing the real landowners onto the reservations with a diet of rancid meat, fatty bacon, flour, and coffee. Death of the spirit by enslavement. Death of a culture by domination.

  Dotted with white stone markers where the white men were buried where they fell, the rolling green hills held fewer red stone markers where oral history said Native Americans fell. Their bodies were quickly retrieved by their tribes and buried in trees, caves, or scaffolds. Overwhelmed by sadness, Tallulah closed her eyes.

  An ear shattering explosion erupted overhead. A man screamed, “It’s a good day to die!” Tallulah fell to the dirt and covered her ears, but the noise pulsed in her bones. The ground thundered. Men shouted, “More ammo! More ammo!” Guns roared. Smoke filled her lungs. Someone shrieked and fell with a thud in front of her, kicking gravel and dust into her face. Trembling like an aspen in a windstorm, Tallulah dared to peek through her fingers. A white man’s head fell in front of her, his eyes wide, mouth still open in a scream, crimson blood splattering on her hands. Heart in her throat, she crab walked backward into a wall and lay facedown, hands over her head, shuddering and sobbing, until someone grasped her shoulder and rolled her over.

  “Tallulah, can you hear me?”

  “Emma?” she whispered. “You’re okay? Where did the bomb come from?”

  She shook her head. “There was no bomb.”

  Tallulah sat up and leaned against the wall, her heart drumming an erratic beat. A crowd of people encircled her, staring at her and talking to each other, concern and fear playing across their faces, voices rising and falling in waves. Someone recommended calling the park rangers.

  Emma turned and faced the crowd. “She’s okay. You can go on your way.”

  “There was an explosion.” Tallulah held her hands up. “Blood. There was blood on my hands.”

  Nothing. Not a drop of red.

  “I heard guns, men screaming—it was a war zone.”

  “It’s just not fair.” Emma pulled Tallulah to her feet. “I’ve been to a sweat lodge and even spent a week fasting in isolation on spirit quests. Nothing. You show up on a beautiful day, sit down in a nice restaurant, have a delicious Indian taco, and what happens? You have a vision. Not just any vision. No, you see the Battle of Little Bighorn.”

  Shaking and disoriented, Tallulah repeated, “It felt so real. Like the man in the cave, only worse, much worse.”

  “You see visions.” Emma grabbed her upper arms and stared directly into her eyes. “Tell me the truth. Have you been seeing Lucius Stewart?”

  Chapter Four

  Lucius sat on a rocker on the porch and watched the clouds pile into a quilt of blue, purple, red, and orange overhead. Even after more than a century, he never tired of the spectacular Montana sunset, and he yearned to share his gratitude for the Lord’s simple gifts with another human being. The only living soul, other than animals, who knew he existed was off at the Crow Reservation. As if taking land away from the original owners and forcing them into an area a tenth of what used to be rightfully theirs could be “reserved.”

  The thought of Tallulah visiting his old stomping grounds filled him with nostalgia. Many a fine day and night had he spent among the Crow people—although they sure hadn’t been over the moon with him in the beginning. Over the course of time, he worked hard to earn their trust, to prove he wasn’t another lying white man trying to steal from them. He thought he won everyone over—until the night Beautiful Blackfeather cursed him. Unbidden, his thoughts strayed back to the first day he and Mourning Dove actually spoke.

  That morning, Lucius had been heading to the brand new post office in downtown Billings. Two cowpokes staggered up to a beautiful, young Crow woman astride her horse. One man in a ratty cowboy hat, filthy denim trousers, and mud encrusted boots planted himself in front of her blue roan and grabbed at the rein. “Wall, I’ll be. Here’s a purdy Injun gal.”

  Another man with a sweat-darkened bandana hanging loose around his throat, and a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, grabbed at the woman’s leg and missed, slapping the roan’s flank. He raised a bottle, waved it in her direction, and leered at her. “Bet she’d like some fire water.”

  The woman yanked back at the reins, and the horse danced to one side, then the other, but the cow punchers had her hemmed in.

  Predators. He’d seen enough of their kind on the streets of New York City and had tossed plenty of drunks out of the bars of hotels where he’d worked. They always underestimated him. “Hey there fellas, you look like you been up all night celebrating. Ain’t it time you got some rest?” He preferred trading words to trading punches. After all, they might be his customers someday. Unlikely, but one never knew.

  The one with the smoke turned and glared at him with his one good eye, the other hidden behind a black eye patch. “Mind your own business, ya mail order cowboy.”

  Lucius examined his coat sleeves as if he’d never seen them before. “Ah, I could see why you might think that I’m just a tenderfoot out for a short spell to see the sights. But as you can tell from Old Betsy”—he opened his jacket and exposed his Colt Six Shooter—“I’ve been here quite a while. I own a lovely place of lodging on the edge of town. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Hotel LaBelle?”

  The drunkards glanced at each other and shoo
k their heads.

  “No? It is a delightful establishment. I have the softest beds in town, the finest wine, and a piano player so skilled he puts the birds to shame. You really must stop in sometime.”

  “We don’t want nothin’ to do with your fancy pants bed-house. Mind your own business, and we’ll get along just fine.”

  “Oh, but this lovely woman is my business.” He stepped up to the horse and grabbed her hand. She favored him with a stoic look but didn’t resist. “You see, we’re courting. She and I have been seeing each other for some time now.”

  Not a lie. In fact, he’d seen her selling her exquisitely beaded bags and moccasins to the owner of Lamont General Store on the first day he arrived in town in 1900. The shopkeepers bought her handwork for pennies, and then sold them for dollars to sightseers and souvenir seekers. Pretending interest in purchasing a bag for a female relative back east, Lucius chatted up the storekeeper and learned the girl’s name was Mourning Dove. The granddaughter of an Indian scout for the ill-fated men led by General George Armstrong Custer, she traveled sixty miles each month from the reservation to bring her work to the store and to buy supplies. Only the bitter winds and deep winter snows kept her away.

  Lucius made a habit of trying to be in the shop when he saw her coming. Over the course of two years, they exchanged no words but many side glances. At times, he imagined a flicker of interest in her eyes but brushed the thought off. What would a beautiful young woman like her want with an old man like him?

  “If she ain’t no strumpet,” One-Eye sneered, “then why don’t she have no ring on her finger?”

  Lucius shook his head and wagged his finger at the man. “Now you’ve gone and ruined my surprise. I was on my way to the new post office hoping to secure that very thing. Placed my order weeks ago, but you know what the mail’s like.”

  Mourning Dove squeezed his hand and then sign talked, “You fill my heart with joy.”

  Oh, she was a quick one.

  “Now, if you boys don’t mind, I need some private time with my fiancée. I’m sure there’s some painted ladies pining away for you back in the saloon.”