He took it, and the man with the clipboard looked at it too. “What’s so special about it?” he asked me. “I’ve seen better-looking handbags than that.”
“It’s a security regulation,” I told him.
He shrugged. “You got tight security here?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“The best,” the guard said. He handed back my handbag just as Lamar strode in. Lamar ignored me, eagle-eying the men in white uniforms. As I left I heard one of them telling Lamar, “We got orders to pick up two ten-foot sofas to be cleaned. Have you got enough authority to sign this?”
I walked on to the health club through the side lobby, glancing into the main lobby as I passed. There were only two ten-foot sofas in the hotel, and they were gorgeous and probably terribly expensive, with hand-carved mahogany framing coral-and-silver brocade. They didn’t look as though they needed cleaning to me, but hotel managers must know what they’re doing.
Mr. Jones and Mr. Kamara were seated as far from the pool area as they could get, behind a large potted palm tree. Their plastic lounge chairs sagged under their weight as the men leaned close to each other. Mr. Kamara was wearing bathing trunks, but Mr. Jones was dressed in a wrinkled gray suit. He was probably hot, because his face was red, and he kept rubbing at his forehead with a handkerchief. With his other hand he kept batting away a palm tree frond that dipped low enough to tickle his head. All that mopping and batting made him look like a wiggling gray spider.
But Mr. Kamara wasn’t the fly. Instead, he looked as though he could eat Mr. Jones, with or without ketchup. I couldn’t tell what the two men were saying, because the gurgling, bubbling Jacuzzi drowned out their words, but each time Mr. Kamara hit his fist on the arm of the lounge chair, Mr. Jones winced and shuddered.
“Liz!”
I jumped as Art Mart yelled at me from the open office doorway. “You’re five minutes late!”
“Sorry!” It took only seconds to reach the office.
“A large convention of insurance salesmen will be here for the next three days, and they’ve already started coming into the club. So get with it, will you?”
I’d never seen him this grouchy, but I didn’t let his rudeness bother me. What can you expect from someone like Art? Not much. “I’m with it,” I told him. “On duty. Bright and cheerful.”
He actually growled at me, snatched his car keys out of the desk, and said, “I’m off. Got stuff to do.”
“Are you going to be back?”
“Maybe yes, maybe no.”
“But you said the club would be really busy.”
“So what? I hired you because I thought you could do the job. How smart do you have to be to pick up dirty towels? If you don’t think you can handle it, just say so.”
It would have given me a great deal of pleasure to tell him what I was thinking about him, but I wanted to hang on to my job. So I quietly said, “I can handle it.”
Without another word he strode out of the office.
I completed my check of the women’s dressing room and sauna, but there were guests in the men’s section. Art was right. The club was getting busy in a hurry. I toured the pool area, stopping to say hello to Mrs. Bandini and Mrs. Larabee, and passed Mr. Jones, who was leaving the club. “Good-bye,” I said cheerfully, but he didn’t seem to hear me. He pushed through the door, head down, muttering to himself.
Just as I sat at the desk Tina popped into the office. “Hi,” she said. “Ready?”
“For what?”
“Card file.” She handed me a stack of cards an inch thick. “Here are the new ones, and while you’re busy filing them, let’s see if we can’t find that good-looking guy’s card.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know, but he’s out there right now, sunning himself. He’s already got a great tan.”
I pulled the file from the side drawer and handed it to her. “Here. While I study the new ones, you can look through the file and find his name.”
While Tina was busy with the file, I checked in four guests, mentally matched their faces to their cards, handed them towels, and smilingly said that I hoped they enjoyed their stay in the Ridley health club.
As I went back to the desk, Tina snapped shut the lid of the file and looked puzzled. “So where is he?”
“Who?”
“The guy with the brown hair. His card isn’t in here.”
“Maybe he checked out.”
“No. I told you. He’s out there sunning himself.”
“Maybe the card was misfiled.”
“I went through the whole thing.”
“Do you suppose he’s not really a guest here? We could ask security to check.”
Tina stood up and smiled. “I’m security. Remember? And what a good excuse to start a conversation. See you later.”
She zipped out the doorway, heading for the outside pool—just as a small body dashed past her and cannonballed into the pool, sending up a sheet of water.
Tina jumped back, glaring and muttering, and snatched up a towel. As she blotted the spots on her uniform she said, “This is your department. Yell at him. Kick him out. Have him arrested for impersonating a human being.”
I had seen who it was. Pauly Canelli. “I’ll be stern,” I said, and marched to the side of the pool. Pauly had surfaced and was grinning at me.
“I told you not to do that,” I said.
“I forgot.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“What are you gonna do about it?”
I put my fists on my hips and tried to look tough and mean. “Out of the pool!”
“I’ll tell my grandma.”
“Out!”
He swam to the shallow end, near to the chair in which his grandmother was enthroned. I walked around the edge of the pool to meet him. I noticed two men in business suits standing by the door to the hotel. Perhaps they were new guests. I should find out, but I had to take care of Pauly first.
Mrs. Bandini was all smiles as Pauly ran to her. She enfolded him in a large beach towel and beamed at me. “Isn’t he a lovely boy? Both of my grandchildren are such a joy to me.”
“She made me get out of the pool,” Pauly whined.
Mrs. Bandini’s eyes grew wide. “Why?”
“He was cannonballing people,” I said. “I told him not to.”
Mrs. Bandini chuckled. “I thought it was something important. Well, Pauly won’t do it anymore, will you, Pauly, my love?” Without waiting for his answer she said to him, “Why don’t you ring up room service and get something good to eat, like a hamburger and milk shake? And later you can go back in the pool if Liz says you can, and I’m sure she will.”
“It’s okay,” I mumbled, wishing I had handled things better.
As Pauly ran to the house phone, Mrs. Bandini confided, “He’s so much like his big brother Eric was at that age. So full of life and fun and mischief.”
I just smiled back. What could I say?
“I can’t wait until you and Eric meet each other,” Mrs. Bandini added.
As far as I was concerned, I hoped that day would never come. I glanced at the door and saw that the two men in business suits were still there. They were both about my height and stocky. They were old enough to have jowls, and the dark-haired one could have used a shampoo. “Excuse me,” I said to Mrs. Bandini, and walked toward the guests.
“May I help you?” I asked them.
“No,” the greasy-haired one said, but the other nudged him.
“Maybe,” he said. “There was a guy who left here a little while ago. Kind of skinny and stooped.”
“Wearing a gray suit,” the first man added.
They had to mean Mr. Jones, but I didn’t see any reason to answer their questions. I didn’t know who they were. I just stared at them until Greasy said, “You know who we’re talking about?”
“Are you guests of the Ridley Hotel?”
“What’s that got to do with anything? Do you know the guy’s
name, or don’t you?”
“I’m sorry, but this club is for hotel guests and members only.”
“This guy in the gray suit—did he meet anybody here?”
“I’ll have to ask you to leave the health club if you’re not hotel guests,” I said firmly.
“Are you going to answer our question?” Greasy asked.
“I’ve got a good idea,” I said. “I’ll call our chief of security. You can ask him.”
“She doesn’t know anything,” one man muttered to the other.
They gave one last look around the room and left.
I decided I’d better talk to someone in security, and Tina was closest. She was perched on the edge of a lounge chair animatedly chatting with the man with the brown hair. I opened the glass door and beckoned to her. She nodded and stood up.
As I walked back to the office I noticed that Mr. Kamara was accepting a tray from Floyd. Their heads were together, and Mr. Kamara was complaining about something. Floyd looked unhappy. I supposed, from what I’d heard, that Mr. Kamara was awfully difficult to please.
He was such a predictable person, always doing the same thing over and over. Some people really fall into ruts in their lives. Since coming to work at the health club I’d noticed that each afternoon, around three o’clock, Mr. Jones came to the health club, chatted with Mr. Kamara, and left. Then about a half hour later Mr. Kamara called room service for something to eat, and Floyd brought it. In a little while Mr. Kamara would go for another swim, then leave the club. During the late evening hours he’d be back for another swim. According to Deeley, Mr. Kamara had a morning swim and Mr. Jones usually joined him for coffee by the pool. Same dull pattern every day. Didn’t he ever want to do something more interesting?
Tina joined me in the office. “His name is Kurt Quentin Fraiser. He’s from New Jersey, and he’s here on computer business, but all he can talk about is how much he hates Houston and how dangerous the city is, which shows a decided lack of social perception and ability to relate to the inner needs of others.”
“Why does he feel so horrible about Houston?”
“His wallet got lifted while he was out with some business associates last night.”
“You told me that happened to a lot of the guests here.”
“1 know, but they can’t blame the Ridley, because it doesn’t happen at the hotel, and they shouldn’t blame Houston, because pickpockets are at work in every city of the world.”
“Did he call the police?”
“Of course, and had to go through all the work of informing credit-card companies, which is a big nuisance. Which reminds me—speaking of cards, if he’s going to be here all week, then what about his card? It should be—”
“Tina,” I interrupted, “listen for a minute. There were two men here asking questions about Mr. Jones and who he was and if he met anyone here. They didn’t belong here. I think you should find out what they’re up to.”
Immediately Tina was all business. “What did they look like? Give me a good description.”
I thought hard, trying to remember their faces. “They were about so-so tall. One was kind of yucky, the other was a greaseball.”
Tina rolled her eyes. “Color eyes? Color hair? What were they wearing?”
“Oh,” I said, and told her what little I could remember. She immediately trotted toward the hotel.
A woman poked her head in the doorway. “My little girl dropped her doll in the pool,” she said. “If I dive for it I’ll ruin my hair. Can you fish it out?”
“Certainly,” I told her. I took the long pole with the round, taut net and followed her to the shallow end of the pool. It took just a few minutes to fish out the doll. The little girl grabbed her baby and hugged it.
“Say thank-you,” her mother said.
But the child turned and ran away. Her mother strolled after her.
“Some children have no manners,” Mrs. Bandini clucked.
I saw some leaves floating at the side of the pool, so I used the net to fish them out.
“When it’s windy the leaves from outside fall into the pool,” Mrs. Larabee said. “Wait till it’s windy. You’ll get a lot of work fishing out leaves.”
I looked up at the ficus tree nearby. “The trees in here don’t seem to drop many of their leaves.”
Mrs. Bandini and Mrs. Larabee chuckled as though they shared a great joke. “That’s because the ficus trees aren’t real,” Mrs. Bandini said.
I reached out and touched the tree’s trunk. “It feels real.”
“Oh, the trunk and branches are from a real tree. That’s what makes them look like they’re live ficus trees. But if you look closely you can see that the leaves are silk and glued on.” Mrs. Larabee looked smug. “Most people would think what you thought, but we know better.”
I glanced around at the other plants. “Are the others fake too?”
“Don’t say ‘fake.’ ” Mrs. Bandini leaned forward, her voice barely above a whisper. “ ‘Fake’ is for cheap plants. Say ‘artificial.’ It has more quality, and believe me, you couldn’t touch these ficus trees for under $298 apiece.”
“The other plants are real,” Mrs. Larabee said. “But ficus are hard to grow inside and they make a terrible mess with leaves all over the place, so that’s why these are artificial.”
I had my mouth open to ask another question, but Tina suddenly burst through the hotel door and loped to where I was standing. “Liz!” she said. “The manager is furious, and Lamar is furious, and you’re a witness.”
“A witness? To what?”
“To the thieves,” she said. “A couple of hours ago someone stole two of the hotel’s valuable antique sofas!”
I have never been ordered to march myself to the principal’s office, but I could always imagine how horrifying the experience must be. Being sent to the Ridley Hotel manager’s office was just as terrifying. I mentally practiced what I would do and say. I would smile graciously, charmingly, and introduce myself with dignity. After all, what was I so scared of? I hadn’t done anything.
As I entered the office three men slowly rose and stared at me.
The office was large enough to have a sofa-and-chairs-conversation grouping at one end and a desk at the other. The walls and upholstery were in blues and corals and grays, all brightened by the glass window-wall at one side. A huge bouquet of real flowers was at one end of the desk, and another bouquet on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The flower tones mirrored the soft room colors.
So did one of the men. He wore a light wool gray suit with a coral-and-gray-striped tie. I assumed he was the manager, so I said, “I’m Mary Elizabeth Rafferty, sir.” I held out a hand and took a large step forward, banging my shin into the coffee table and toppling the small vase of flowers. Deftly I caught them, righted them, and held out my hand again.
He didn’t shake my hand. He just made an impatient motion, as though I were a fly he’d like to shoo away, and sat down. The other two men immediately sat down. Nobody asked me, but I sat down too.
“You know Mr. Boudry,” the manager said, “and this is Detective Jarvis from the Houston Police Department.”
I nodded to Lamar, whose solemn facial expression didn’t change, and to the detective, who didn’t seem to fit either in the chair or in the dark-blue suit he was wearing. His shoulders were as broad as a football player’s, and what was left of his hair was sun-bleached.
“I’m sorry, but no one has ever told me your name,” I said to the manager.
“I am Mr. Lewis Parmegan,” he said.
“How do you do, Mr. Parmegan. I’m Mary Eli—”
“So I have been informed,” he said. “I have also been informed that you arrived at the Ridley at the same time as the men who came to pick up the sofas.”
His eyes darted like little spears in Lamar’s direction. A muscle in Lamar’s chin twitched. He must have been terribly upset.
“They claimed they had an order to clean the sofas,” I said. “I don
’t understand what happened. Did someone steal the sofas from them?”
Detective Jarvis leaned toward me. “It was a bogus operation,” he said. “The men who took the sofas simply posed as cleaners. They had no order to clean the sofas. They used the trick to steal them.”
“That’s awful!” I said.
“Can you give us descriptions of the men?” he asked.
I leaned back in my chair and thought a moment. “Yes,” I said. “I didn’t pay much attention to the driver of the truck, so I can’t tell you anything about him. There were four men who came inside the hotel with me. Two were just ho-hum, one was kind of a yuck, and the other was about an eight.”
Detective Jarvis looked up from the pad he had balanced on his knee and licked the end of his pencil. “What does that mean?”
“Be specific,” Lamar snapped.
“Like color of hair and that kind of stuff?”
“Exactly.”
I wish Fran had been with me. He probably would have remembered. I had to think hard. “Okay. Two of the men were the kind who show up in a group picture at a company picnic and somebody says, ‘Who are those guys?’ only nobody remembers that they were even there at all. That’s what they looked like.”
Mr. Parmegan gave a sigh. “Height? Weight?”
“The same.”
They all stared at me, and I added, “I mean, who’d notice? Kind of average.”
The detective shifted, and his chair creaked. “How about the other two? Anything you could identify about them?”
“Let’s see—the man with the clipboard. He was kind of a dandruffy type with a moustache that should have been sent to the cleaners. Jowls too.”
“What color moustache?” Detective Jarvis asked.
“Dirty.” He just looked at me, so I tried to elaborate. “Maybe brown-dirty. I can’t remember.”
“Anything else?”
“He was the yuck,” I said.
“How about the fourth man? He’s the eight?”
“Right.”
Mr. Parmegan shook his head. “Wait a minute. We established there were only four inside the building, not eight.”
“Eight, meaning on a scale of one to ten,” I told him. I was getting warmed up now. “He was about six one, with sandy hair that curled up just a smidgen where it was long on his neck, and a dimple in the middle of his chin, and blue eyes, and broad shoulders, and his ears were just a little bit pointy, which was kind of cute.”
The Dark and Deadly Pool Page 5
