He began talking to someone on the phone. I looked at my watch. I had to leave right this very minute and hope that traffic on the Katy Freeway was light so I could get to the Ridley on time. I hurried out of the room, down the hall, and managed to catch an open elevator.
Fortunately, I got to the hotel in time to change into my shorts and health-club T-shirt before three o’clock. I even had two minutes to spare, so I quickly tidied up the women’s dressing room.
When I returned to the office, Art Mart had appeared. He was sitting behind the desk, his chin on his hands, staring glumly into space.
“Guess what?” I asked.
“It’s about time you got here,” he snapped, and stood up.
“I’m two minutes early.”
“I’ll give you a medal.” He pulled his car keys out of the desk and squeezed around me.
“But guess what?”
“Don’t say, ‘guess what.’ I hate it when people say ‘guess what.’ ”
“Sorry,” I said.
“So what is it?”
“I thought you didn’t want me to—”
He clamped his teeth together and almost growled. “I just said I didn’t want to hear—Oh, forget it. Have you got something I’m supposed to know, or haven’t you?”
“I have,” I said. “I just came from the police station.”
He looked startled. “Were you able to ID the thieves?”
“No,” I said, “but I saw—ID’d—somebody else. Mr. Jones. You know, the Mr. Jones who comes every day to the club?”
Art leaned on the desk and stared at me. “What about Mr. Jones?”
At last I had an interested audience. “I showed Mr. Jones’s picture to Detective Jarvis, and Detective Jarvis told me they had found a burned-up car this morning, and the car belonged to Mr. Jones. In fact, there was a body in the car, so they think that was probably Mr. Jones.”
Art straightened up and whistled. He looked kind of sick for a minute. “That’s awful,” he said.
I nodded. “Somebody ought to tell Mr. Kamara about it. I think that he and Mr. Jones were friends.”
“Where’d you get that idea?” Art asked.
“Well, they were always talking together. Mr. Kamara isn’t very friendly with anyone else.”
“Mr. Kamara hasn’t any friends,” Art said.
I looked through the large glass window toward the inner pool. As usual, Mrs. Bandini and Mrs. Larabee were seated together. Pauly, thank goodness, was nowhere in sight. Just a few people were in the club at this time, but I could see Mr. Kamara in his favorite spot at the table behind the large potted palm tree.
“There’s Mr. Kamara. I’d better go and tell him,” I said.
“You’d better get to work,” Art said. “The ladies’ dressing room needs straightening, and naturally I can’t go in there while guests are in the club.”
“Deeley’s still out sick?”
“That’s right. So get to work. I’ll tell Mr. Kamara.”
“I guess that’s more proper. After all, you’re the one in charge.”
“Glad you noticed,” Art said, and left the office.
I would have known that Deeley wasn’t back without Art Mart’s mentioning it. The desk hadn’t been straightened. It looked just the way I had left it. Even the note paper with the four circles on it lay next to the pad. As I looked at those circles again, an idea wiggled so deeply in my mind that I couldn’t catch it. There was something about those four circles in that crescent shape. But what? No matter how hard I tried, the idea wouldn’t come.
I couldn’t just stand there, trying to catch an idea. I had work to do, so I went straight to the dressing room, then realized that I had tidied it when I changed clothes here a few minutes ago. I strolled back through the office and stood in the doorway, surveying the pool area. Art had gone. Mr. Kamara was nowhere in sight.
Mrs. Bandini called to me and gestured wildly with both arms, so I walked over to join her and Mrs. Larabee.
“What is going on?” she asked in a stage whisper loud enough to be heard in the hotel.
“We are not ones to eavesdrop,” Mrs. Larabee said, “but there was a commotion we couldn’t miss going on behind the potted palm.”
I glanced in the direction of the palm. It was where Mr. Kamara had been sitting. “What kind of commotion?” I asked.
Mrs. Bandini lit up. “Mr. Martin came and said something to Mr. Kamara—that part we missed—then Mr. Kamara dropped his coffee cup with a crash and shouted something in his own language—which we are not familiar with—and Mr. Martin told him to calm down, but it took him a while.”
She stopped for breath, and Mrs. Larabee took up the story. “Naturally, we wanted to see if we could help, so we got up and looked around the palm, and Mr. Kamara’s face was kind of green. I spoke right up and asked if I could get him a glass of water or something, and he shouted at me.”
“We don’t know what he shouted,” Mrs. Bandini said, “but his tone of voice left nothing to our imaginations.”
“We have rarely been so insulted,” Mrs. Larabee said. She folded her hands primly in her lap and looked indignant.
Mrs. Bandini didn’t waste time with attitudes. She leaned forward and said, “So he marched right out of here, and Mr. Martin left, too, and we thought maybe you could tell us what was going on.”
I pulled up a chair and sat down. The only other guests in the club at this time were outdoors catching some rays. Nobody needed my assistance at this moment. “I knew Mr. Kamara would be upset when he heard the news.”
“What news?” they asked in unison.
“The news about Mr. C. L. Jones.”
I thought I’d have to explain who Mr. Jones was, but they both knew. Mrs. Larabee nodded, and Mrs. Bandini said, “That weasely little man who chats with Mr. Kamara every day.”
“Yes,” I said. “I told Art Mart—uh, Mr. Martin—that Mr. Kamara would be upset. He didn’t think so, but I was right.”
“Upset about what?” Mrs. Larabee asked.
“This morning the police found a car that had burned during the night. It was off Highway 288. One license plate was intact, so they traced the owner of the car. It was Mr. Jones’s car. They also found what was left of a body inside the car. They think it might be Mr. Jones.”
For about ten seconds Mrs. Bandini closed her eyes and murmured a very short prayer. Mrs. Larabee tried to look pious. Then they began talking at once.
“How did you find out?”
“How can they tell if it’s Mr. Jones?”
“Was it murder?”
“How come we didn’t see it on TV news?”
“Poor Mr. Kamara. If they were friends, it must have been a terrible shock.”
Finally Mrs. Bandini put a restraining hand on Mrs. Larabee’s arm, scooted forward so that our faces were almost touching, and said, “Mary Elizabeth, tell us the whole story.”
So I did, all about the police station and the mug shots and everything.
“If he wanted a complete description of the men in the business suits, your detective should have asked us,” Mrs. Bandini said.
“You saw the men? You can remember them?”
“Of course,” she said. “They came into the club right after I mentioned to you how very much you and my tall, handsome grandson, Eric Canelli, would like each other. And then you walked toward the door, so we watched you and saw the men. As a matter of fact the shorter one with the mole on the side of his face was wearing a pinstriped charcoal Louis Roth suit like the one my son-in-law, Jerry, bought at a sale at Sakowitz just last month. I commented upon it at the time, didn’t I?”
“Distinctly,” Mrs. Larabee said. “And I remember remarking that your son-in-law looks better in blue because of his complexion, which tends to look sallow in the winter.”
“You saw Jerry when he was trying to get over the flu,” Mrs. Bandini said. “He was sick, and Rose was sick, and it was a terrible week. Other than that week, he never looks s
allow.”
“Would you like to talk to Detective Jarvis?” I asked them. “I know he’d appreciate detailed descriptions of those men.”
Mrs. Larabee suddenly gasped. “Oh, my! I just thought of something! What if those men did something bad to Mr. Jones? What will happen if they find out we described them to the police?”
Mrs. Bandini managed to look both stern and noble at the same time. “It will keep them from doing terrible things to other people, if we help to catch them.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Larabee said. “It was just a thought. Someone had to think of it, so I did.”
“I’ll call Detective Jarvis right now,” I said. I got up and turned to walk to the office, but there was Mr. Kamara scurrying toward me.
“Miss … Miss Young Lady,” he said, and came to a stop right under my nose.
“Mary Elizabeth Rafferty,” I said to him.
“Yes. Young lady, you saved my life yesterday.”
The way his eyes were drilling into mine made me embarrassed, so I stammered, “That’s okay. It wasn’t anything.” That sounded terrible, so I quickly added, “I mean, I’m glad I could pull you out in time, and I’m sorry you got hurt. But you don’t have to thank me.”
Then I felt my neck and face turn a hot red, because, of course, he hadn’t thanked me.
While I was trying desperately to think of the right thing to say, Mr. Kamara gave a bow and pulled a small box from his pocket, thrusting it at me. “Please accept with my gratitude,” he said.
I took a step backward. “Oh, I can’t.”
“Oh, yes, you can,” Mrs. Bandini said.
“At least open the box and see what’s in it,” Mrs. Larabee said. “It looks like the kind of box they put jewelry in.”
“Thank you, Mr. Kamara,” I said, “but as an employee of the hotel I should not accept a gift from you.”
“Is there a rule?” Mrs. Bandini asked me.
“Well, no,” I said, “but it doesn’t seem right.”
“Is right,” Mr. Kamara said.
“After all, you saved his life,” Mrs. Larabee said. “You’ll hurt his feelings if you don’t take his gift.”
“Mr. Kamara, your thanks are enough,” I said.
“No,” he said stubbornly, making little jabbing motions with the box in my direction. “You take.”
“I think you are hurting his feelings,” Mrs. Bandini said. “You should accept it. Maybe you won’t even like it, but what could it hurt you to take it and say thank-you and let the poor man feel better? You can see how upset he is.”
That I could see, and I was feeling sorrier for him by the minute. So against my better judgment I reached out for the small box, said, “Thank you, Mr. Kamara,” and opened it. Inside, suspended from a thin gold chain, was a gleaming multicolored cloisonné locket about an inch wide and two inches long. “Oh!” I gasped. “It’s beautiful!”
Mr. Kamara smiled, but it wasn’t a smile of pleasure. It was more a flash of triumph, and it bothered me. Perhaps my expression showed my confusion, because he immediately became more friendly and nodded to Mrs. Bandini and Mrs. Larabee too. “Movie star picture inside,” he said with pride, as though he had taken the shot himself.
“Thank you, Mr. Kamara,” I said.
He bowed once more, then turned and left the club.
“Let us see!” Mrs. Bandini had a hand out, so I put the box in it.
“A very nice gift,” she said. “I’ve seen these in the hotel gift shop and while, under the circumstances, it would be rude to tell you the price before taxes, you can take my word for it that it didn’t cost too much and not too little, so I consider this to be a perfectly respectable gift.”
“Put it on,” Mrs. Larabee said. “Let’s see how it looks.”
I took back the small box. “I can’t wear jewelry while I’m working,” I said.
Mrs. Bandini beamed at me. “It will look lovely when you’re all dolled up in a pretty summer dress and going out with a nice tall, good-looking boy—like my grandson Eric. Eric wants to meet you,” she added. “I’ve told him so much about you. In fact, I’m going to bring him to the club this weekend, so the two of you can become acquainted.”
I smiled at her over my shoulder as I practically raced back to the office. All I needed was a bigger, meaner version of Pauly at the club.
I unlocked the bottom desk drawer and tucked the little box into my plastic handbag, then locked it up again. The lull would soon be over. Tina would arrive with the new batch of photo-ID cards, and soon afterward the conventioneers would come, wanting to unwind after sitting in straight-backed chairs at meetings all day.
The file box was in front of me, so I decided to go through the cards and see if any new faces had come in since yesterday. There were just three: a couple who looked happily bemused—yes, their room number showed that they were in the honeymoon suite—and an elderly man whose mouth turned down like an upside-down horseshoe and who peered out from under his bushy eyebrows like a fox from behind a hedge.
His wasn’t a new face. That was a face I’d remember, and I was positive that I’d seen it before. I was also positive that this card hadn’t been in the file yesterday. When had I seen it? Tuesday? Monday?
I needed to talk to someone, so I called the security office. Tina answered, and I told her about the card that had disappeared and returned.
“If you saw this man’s face, would you know if he was one of those who ran into a pickpocket somewhere in Houston?”
“Maybe,” Tina said. “What’s his name? I’ll check the ID file up here.”
“Samuel Smith,” I read from the card. “Suite 826.”
“Got it,” Tina said almost immediately.
“Well?”
“If he had any trouble with pickpockets, he didn’t report it.” Then she said, “That’s odd. Let me talk to Lamar. I’ll get right back to you.”
“What’s odd?”
“Lamar’s scribbled a little note at the bottom of Smith’s card.”
“What does it say?”
“I can’t decipher it. I think it says, watch him.”
“I wonder what it means.”
“That’s what I’m going to find out. I’ll let you know when I bring in the afternoon ID cards.”
“Thanks,” I said as Tina hung up. I closed the file and picked up the note with the four circles drawn on it. I intended to toss it into the wastepaper basket, but I studied it again. There was something about it that nagged at me. Something familiar.
Fran appeared in the doorway. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I answered. Fran had the nicest smile.
“The Houston Symphony Orchestra’s going to be playing outdoors in Miller Theater on Sunday. I found out that’s your day off, and I switched with another guy so I’ll be off then too. I’d like to take you to the symphony. We could bring a blanket and some food and sit on the grass and—”
I didn’t hear another word he said. All of a sudden that crescent of circles made sense. It was like a symphony orchestra—the string instruments here, the wind instruments there, the drums … I jumped to my feet, ran around the desk, caught the toe of my tennis shoe on the desk leg, and stumbled into Fran’s arms.
“Oh, Fran! You’re wonderful! You did it! You did it!”
Fran staggered back but managed to stay on his feet. He helped me back on mine, looking very pleased with himself. “I knew that sooner or later I’d come up with something you’d want to do on a date,” he said.
I still held tightly to his shoulders. “No! Listen, Fran. Listen. It’s not the date. It’s what you said about the symphony orchestra. It’s those little circles we drew on the notepad. Don’t you see?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
I drew him closer. “Remember? You said that each of them stood for a separate crime. They weren’t related.”
He nodded. “Okay. I remember now. But what about them?”
“They’re like the parts of an orches
tra, Fran. Each part is separate, but the conductor brings them together. The different kinds of crimes that are taking place in the hotel could be tied together, too, if one person were conducting them!”
Fran gaped. “You might be right. But the conductor would have to be someone in the hotel.”
I lowered my voice and looked around. “Let’s tell Lamar about this.”
“We can’t do that,” Fran said. “The conductor might very well be Lamar.”
“Oh, not Lamar!” I said.
“Why not?”
“He’s so efficient. He cares about his job.”
“It could be a front. Who else would know as much about what goes on in the hotel?”
“The manager, Mr. Parmegan.”
“Okay. We’ll put him on our suspect list too. I can try to keep up with what he’s doing each day. He follows a pretty constant routine.”
Another thought occurred to me. “Why does the conductor have to be working at the hotel? Why can’t he be one of the guests? Mr. Kamara keeps a regular routine, too, and he was the one who knew Mr. Jones.”
“Okay. Mr. Kamara’s on the list, but I think you’re going off in the wrong direction.” Fran looked at his watch. “Uh-oh. I’ve been here long enough. I have to get back.”
He stopped at the doorway and turned. “You didn’t answer about the symphony tickets. Should I get them?”
“I’m sorry, Fran,” I began, but the eager look on his face stopped me. After all, listening to the Houston Symphony Orchestra together wasn’t exactly a real date. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer you right away,” I finished. “Yes. I’d like to go with you.”
For a few moments Fran looked as pleased as a puppy when you scratch his tummy. Then he became serious. “I won’t see you tonight,” he said. “My aunt and uncle are visiting, and my mom made me promise I’d come home as fast as I could, so I could get in on the tail end of the party they’re throwing.”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
“You bet,” Fran said, and vanished from the doorway.
I sat at the desk and picked up the sheet of notepad paper. In the center at the bottom, where the conductor would stand, I drew a small box, and inside the box I wrote the letter K, for Kamara. Then from that box I drew lines radiating out to each of the circles. Inside circle one I wrote sofa. Inside circle two I wrote meat. Inside circle three I wrote stuff, because naturally there wasn’t room to write things like silver and paintings and things like that. Inside circle four I wrote PP for pickpockets.
The Dark and Deadly Pool Page 8
