by Alan Russell
“You suggested,” Sharon interjected quickly, “that a burglar might have been interrupted in the midst of a theft.”
“I did not,” McHugh said emphatically. “That is how the media interpreted the information that I passed on to them. What I said was that the female victim’s purse had no identification or money, leading us to believe those items had been removed. I also said that there was no cash in the man’s wallet.”
“What about his credit cards?” asked Am.
“They were left,” McHugh said.
“Isn’t that unusual?”
“Not necessarily. You can’t trace cash. And if you’re in a hurry . . . ”
McHugh’s insinuation didn’t sound emphatic enough to Am. “That’s the assumption, isn’t it? No one’s mentioned premeditation.”
“And I haven’t, either,” McHugh snapped. But, with a grudging admission, he added, “The crime scene contains contradictions.”
“Contradictions?”
“There are certain discrepancies.”
Am to Sharon: “Are you following this?”
“Can you elaborate?” she asked.
“This is off the record, and not attributable.” McHugh’s pale blue eyes sought Am’s and Sharon’s, and they both nodded.
“You’ve probably heard the victims were found in a walk-in closet?”
Cotton had told his story enough so that everyone on staff had heard. They nodded again.
“Well, the murderer took the precaution of cleaning up.”
“Wiping for fingerprints?” asked Am.
“More elaborate than that. And less elaborate. He wrapped the bodies in bed linen, and cleaned up where the struggle took place. He worked hard at getting the blood out of the carpeting, but he didn’t dispose of the murder weapon, and he didn’t wipe off his fingerprints. The evidence guys are having a field day in there.”
“Why would you clean,” asked Sharon, “if not for the purpose of covering up?”
The detective gave a significant shrug.
“When did the murders take place?” asked Am.
“They’re doing tests now.”
The same answer he had given during the press conference. “Preliminary analysis?” Am asked.
“Off the record,” said McHugh, “yesterday. Late afternoon or early evening.”
“Any suggestions,” asked Sharon, “on how we handle guest safety concerns?”
Out of habit, Am reached down and picked up some litter off the hall carpeting. The toilet lid wrap must have fallen off a maid’s cart. The Hotel California’s strips didn’t have the wording Am had seen at other properties, announcements like “Sanitized for Your Protection”; they merely had the Hotel’s insignia stamped on perfumed paper. Am had never been able to figure out the innkeeping tradition of using paper wrap for the privy, but it seemed as if fewer places were using them these days. The Hotel, he figured, would remain one of the last holdouts. He stretched the strip of paper with his two forefingers.
“Encourage normal precautions,” said McHugh. “Tell guests not to answer the door without checking the peephole, and offer escorts to all your rooms. Instruct the staff to offer simple, reassuring answers to any inquiries, and conclude by emphasizing that the police believe the assailant fled the scene of the crime some time ago.”
“And do you?” asked Am, the question offered with extended fingers and the toilet wrapper.
McHugh stared at Am. The look usually worked. “Most murderers don’t stick around to improve on their tans.”
Am responded to his words, not his eyes. “His cleaning up would seem—”
“Look,” said McHugh, “in times of stress you can’t expect people to respond rationally. We got a shrink on the department who figures a kid might have done this, someone fourteen, maybe fifteen. She thinks the kid was rifling the room when the couple walked out of the bedroom and he panicked. Afterward he was still thinking like a kid. Hide the bodies, clean up, and maybe no one will notice, sort of like what we all did when we broke Mom’s favorite vase.”
“Has the woman been ID’d yet?” asked Sharon.
“Negative,” McHugh said. “The dead lawyer had lots of lady friends. One of his partners is flying up to do a positive ID on him, and we hope he’ll know who she is. In the meantime we’re doing our own tracking. Your front office manager, Roger, has been very helpful in getting us whatever we need.”
That didn’t surprise Am. Casper always enjoyed doing anything but front office work. Am wanted to ask more questions but felt a little silly trying to do so while facing McHugh with the paper wrap between his fingers. He had thought to slip it unobtrusively into a pocket, but there hadn’t been a good moment.
“Since we’re all busy people . . . ” McHugh’s statement tailed off into a question as he stared pointedly at the toilet wrapper.
“Thank you, Detective,” said Sharon.
At McHugh’s departure, Am ripped apart the strip and looked around for a handy trash can, but he didn’t see one. Sharon pretended not to notice, which made the situation that much more ridiculous. Am decided this walking around each other, and being formally polite, had to stop.
“We’ve got this one guest who drives the maids crazy,” he said. “Whenever he’s with us, he never seems to use the toilet. The strip is always there. It looks like it’s never disturbed. Barb the housekeeper thinks he might have one of those ileostomy bags, but I think he’s just a joker who likes to play with people’s minds. I’m convinced he slides the wrapper on and off.”
“That seems like a pretty silly thing to do.”
“Everyone has little tricks that get them noticed. Winston Churchill used to put pins in some of his cigars. During important debates, when the opposition had the floor, he’d light up his stogies. Everyone would watch his ash get larger and larger. They’d wonder, when is that damn thing going to fall? And after a while nobody would be listening to any speeches. They’d just be watching that growing ash on Winnie’s cigar. That’s how the maids are with this guest. They look at him with a bit of awe and a bit of fear. They see him in the room for days, and they wonder if there won’t come the time when he just explodes. He’s become quite the myth.”
Am stuck the remains of the strip into his pants pocket. A real hotel detective, he thought, probably wouldn’t be talking about bodily functions at a time like this. But in a world of the strange there is still the need to talk about the offbeat, to stand back and try to reaffirm what is normal and what isn’t. As he had gotten older, Am thought that arbitrating normality had become that much tougher.
“This whole thing reminds me of your saint,” Sharon said.
“What saint?”
“Julian. Remember how you said he came home and thought he’d found his wife with another man, and he killed the couple?”
Am nodded.
“There’s something baroque about all this. Why would the murderer clean? And why did the murderer kill?”
“Few murderers are saints,” Am reminded her.
Then he recalled something that Mark Twain had once written and repeated it aloud: “‘All saints can do miracles,’” he said, “‘but few of them can keep a hotel.’”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sainthood was not on Carlton’s mind.
It usually isn’t on first dates. Carlton and Bobbi had decided that the fraternity of the Bob Johnsons was not as important as their time together. They talked over drinks in the Sandcomber Lounge, a bar whose tropical island motif looked as if it had been inspired by Disney. There were ersatz palm trees that had wind birds perched on limbs. Given a breeze, or even overactive air-conditioning, the birds let out electronic warbles. The sounds delighted visiting tourists, but one bartender had quit and filed a workers compensation claim, stating that the noise was akin to eight hours of hearing fingernails on a chalkboard.
The wall ornaments were consistent with the kind of flotsam designers would want to find on beaches, colorful worn glass, sand dollars,
shells, and multihued fish netting. There was no sewage, tar, dead fish, or syringes on display. Most of the drinks were served in coconuts or pineapples. A barnacled dinghy in the corner was home to some musical instruments and presumably a band that had not yet arrived. Each of the tabletops was adorned with sand and driftwood. Bobbi touched her fingertips along the sand and declared that the designer who had thought up the effect was a genius. Those who had to clean the fallen granules, which were supposed to be corralled inside an upraised lip but regularly found their way to the floor, would have disagreed. Little indentations were left in the wake of Bobbi’s fingers.
“Footprints in the sands of time,” she said.
“That’s beautiful,” said Carlton.
“Some poet wrote that,” she said. “I write poetry, too.”
“And I’ll bet it’s pretty, but it couldn’t be as pretty as you.”
Her fingers stopped dancing in the sand and reached for his. Their digits twined.
Carlton spoke from his heart: “I wish this was a deserted island, and only the two of us were on it. Like Robinson Crusoe.”
“Which would make me what? Friday?”
“Monday through Friday. And the weekends, too.”
She giggled at that one. Her Bobby had quite the silver tongue. “I feel like I’m dreaming,” she said.
“Me too.”
“Oh, look. The sun’s about to set. Let’s watch.”
Hand in hand, they observed the sun being swallowed from their own tropical island. In its wake they were bathed in a red glow.
“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.”
“You are a poet,” he said.
“Borrowed again,” she said. “But I’m going to write a poem about all of this.”
“Am I going to be in it?”
She tried to hide her big face behind her big hands, a move that beguiled Carlton, and said, “I’m thinking of slipping you in.”
No one had ever included him in a poem before, of that Carlton was sure. He felt reborn, like one of those plants that against all odds emerge out of rock or asphalt, and he tried to express that thought to Bobbi.
“That’s beautiful,” she said.
“Another?”
Intruding on their red glow, and their mutual admiration society, was a cocktail waitress. She was dressed in a sarong of tropical colors. Her rainbow piscine name tag said Rhonda and identified her hometown as Bayonne, New Jersey.
“Let’s walk on the beach instead,” said Bobbi.
Am signed off on yet another form. Who guards the guards from bureaucracy? he wondered. As interim security director, he had found himself vouching for just about everything.
Lost and found duty was one of his new responsibilities. He had charge over inventorying and locking up all unclaimed items. While most guests were just negligent or absentminded, he knew some deliberately left behind certain articles. The Hotel now sent sealed generic letters to guests, advising them that an item(s) had been left behind in their room and that they should contact the director of security for further information. The lack of specifics was an improvement over the Hotel’s previous method of sending out postcards describing what was being held. One man had been advised that a pink nightie was left in his room, but not before his wife, family, the postman, and half the people in his town had been informed of the same thing. The man’s wife had threatened to sue him for divorce, and he had threatened to sue the Hotel for breach of privacy. The pink nightie was never claimed.
The pickings for that day weren’t as salacious. A dozen rooms had left behind books that Am logged dutifully, though he knew that most guests never wanted them back. In six months they’d either find their way to the Hotel library or to interested employees. One man had forgotten his swimming trunks and another his two ties (though he wasn’t fond of neckwear, Am had one of the largest tie collections in the Western world, courtesy of guest largesse). From three other rooms had come an electric razor, a camera, and a wind-up alarm clock. Am was glad that nothing too exotic had been left behind. He’d heard about guests who’d forgotten their pornographic tapes, bondage material, and sexual paraphernalia. Most, but not all, were embarrassed when claiming their losses.
The only lost item not quite run-of-the-mill was a man’s wedding ring, which had been left in the Bob Johnson hospitality room. Even that wasn’t too unusual, except that most of the time wedding rings were found next to room sinks or in one of the lounges. There wasn’t anything distinguishing about the gold band, no inscription or initials. Am supposed that “To Bob” wouldn’t have helped him much anyway.
There were numerous reports to write, the usual closing of the barn doors after all the animals had escaped. The keystone report was purportedly for Kendrick, but Am knew it would be copied and forwarded to the owners, as well as to Hotel legal counsel. In it, Am carefully detailed what had occurred. When the Hotel was sued (these days it was never a question of “if”), the report would certainly be subpoenaed. Putting a positive light on murder wasn’t easy. Am noted that there was no sign of forced entry and documented that there were no outstanding keys to the room. He included a copy of the security rounds, which showed how the guards had conducted a pass of the floor every three hours, a progress recorded by their having to manually punch in a code. Unmentioned was how most guards considered patrolling another form of sleepwalking, and that they remembered to open their eyes only when clocking in, if then.
Am documented that there had been no reports of noise from other rooms and nothing untoward seen by staff. He didn’t speculate, just included everything that was known about the deaths that didn’t put the Hotel in a bad light. Brevity ruled.
There were several supplemental reports. Am wrote of the response teams that had been formed, his conversation with McHugh, and the efforts to ameliorate the situation. He concluded with a brief write-up on the Bob Johnson Society and the goings-on of the Murder Mayhem Weekend. For once, the show had lived up to its billing.
Am wasn’t yet ready to relax. As he finished up the reports, he tried to make them look all the more official with appropriate titles. He quickly put a heading to all of the accounts, save for the Kendrick summary. Am didn’t want to use “murdered” in the title, and he thought “incident” too trifling. Already punchy, he remembered what Sharon had said about St. Julian. He tapped out, “A Visit from St. Julian,” and contemplated the heading for a few moments of perverse pleasure before deleting the entry and entering, “The Unfortunate Deaths in Room 605.”
Before turning off the computer, Am called up that room number. Looking up the charges of the dead was getting to be a habit of his. The first thing he noticed was the privacy notation. David Stern had requested that he not be bothered with any telephone calls and had asked the Hotel not to acknowledge his presence on the property.
There wasn’t much to his bill, except the excessive eating in. Judging by the expensive room service charges, he and his lady friend had dined well. The last charge had been recorded a little before five the previous day. If McHugh was right about the time of their deaths, they wouldn’t have had long to digest their last meal.
Curious, Am scratched out a note to accounting. He wanted to take a look at 605’s charges. On the signed room service tabs would be a notation of who had done the serving; maybe the waiters had noticed something out of the ordinary.
Am reached out to turn off the computer but at the last moment found himself tapping into room 711. Tim Kelly’s death now seemed like a distant memory. Was it only a dozen hours earlier that he had first scanned Kelly’s charges and come away with a head of steam? That steam had certainly dissipated. He and Sharon had combined for some beautiful theories that had been belied by harsh facts. He should have remembered one philosophy professor’s favorite quotation: “There is nothing uglier than reason when it is not on your side.” Kelly hadn’t had sex or drugs, and his only rock and roll had happened when his body hit the sand.
For a few moments Am rememb
ered the thrill of the hunt that he and Sharon had experienced and the sense of intimacy that had grown between them. The blood sport had been exciting. He had been forced to reassess his initial impression that she was some stuck-up easterner weaned on private schools. There was still her reserve, though. She was good at reining herself in. He wondered why she felt that need.
Computer screens are this century’s gift to daydreaming, but even in his fog Am recognized something was wrong. There was something disconcerting, something . . .
Tim Kelly’s bill. The man had died early that morning, so how was it that he had already been charged room and tax for the night?
Looking for answers, Am found that Casper was still on the job, miracle of miracles. “Roger,” said Am, handing him a printout of Tim Kelly’s bill, “what’s this?”
The front office manager looked over the bill and its charges and could apparently find nothing wrong. “What do you mean, Am?”
“Kelly died at two A.M. How can we be charging him for tonight?”
“Oh, that,” he said. “I talked with Mr. Kendrick before he left this morning, and I mentioned that the room might have to be out of service for tonight. He said if that was the case, we should add on the room charge.”
And since all the Contractors Association rooms were being charged to the master account, the additional room night would probably never be questioned. And even if it was, the Hotel could counter that the room couldn’t be rented because of Kelly’s death, and that the group should be liable for the charge.
In disgust, Am said, “I’m surprised Kendrick didn’t insist we charge ten dollars to put pennies on the dead man’s eyes.”
Roger/Casper surveyed the list of charges once more. “I don’t see that notation anywhere, Am. Should we be adding that to the bill?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
The staff parking lot, referred to as Outer Mongolia, was on the southeastern edge of the Hotel property. The valets parked guest vehicles in what was called Inner Mongolia, which was much closer to the Hotel. Frequently Am took the bus to work or bicycled from his Del Mar bungalow, but today he was glad he had driven. If only Annette (he wasn’t in the New Age habit of naming cars but had accepted her name along with her pink slip) cooperated, he could make his getaway and look forward to a few hours of blessed sleep.
