The Hotel Detective (A Hotel Detective Mystery Book 1)

by Alan Russell

“Perhaps Mr. Weintraub would like to sit for a minute, have a glass of water . . . ”

  “We’ll need a taster before we ever sit here again.”

  Am shut his mouth. It was either that or bite off his tongue. But rather than having to endure future accountings of how the uncaring staff had left her dying husband to crawl to his room, and instead of delegating the unpleasant chore of accompanying the Weintraubs to another employee, Am decided that he should escort the couple to their room.

  Whiney’s diatribe never stopped. She was surprised that the Hotel was still in business; why, when they had checked in, they were forced to wait two hours for their room (“But didn’t you check in at ten in the morning, Mrs. Weintraub?”) and even then hadn’t gotten the room they wanted (“As I understand it, Mrs. Weintraub, the room you wanted was a suite, but when it was offered, you wanted it for the same rate as a studio guest room”). And now her husband had been poisoned. Poisoned. Am decided not to argue that point. He wasn’t certain he could sincerely object to the idea.

  “It isn’t enough that people jump from their balconies,” she said, “and get murdered in their rooms. No. Now you’re trying to kill people in your restaurants. Is this a war zone or a hotel? What? Do you give people the choice of doggie bags or body bags?”

  Whiney was still complaining on her doorstep when Am announced, “Thankyouandgoodnight.” He suspected Whiner’s voice was already back, but even he couldn’t get a word in when his wife was on a roll.

  Common sense dictated to Am that he should cut his losses and leave, but there was still the matter of making Marcel see that his actions could not be condoned. It would have been nice if a contrite Marcel had been waiting in the kitchen, but the chef had been called to a table. Wonderful. Whenever praise was heaped on Marcel, he was twice as insufferable.

  “Am?”

  Nils Olsen had an expectant look on his face.

  “Mr. Weintraub’s fine, Nils,” he said.

  He nodded. But that wasn’t his question. There was another priority. “They didn’t sign their guest check, Am. Gunther said I should ask you about it.”

  Translation: Is it all right if I add the gratuity to their check?

  Servers always try to be mind-readers. When stiffed, they invariably imagine that the patron meant to leave a gratuity but somehow forgot—that, or they assumed it was part of the guest check. The rule in the Hotel California’s restaurants was never to assume a guest’s intentions. If they didn’t include a gratuity, that was that. Of course that was an edict that had been handed down by non-tipped management, and this was an out-of-the-ordinary situation.

  “Had the Weintraubs pretty much finished their dinners?” Am asked.

  “There wasn’t a thing left on their plates,” said Nils. “He choked on his last bite of veal.”

  Am debated for a moment. “Put yourself down for fifteen percent, Nils,” he said, “and close it out to their room number.”

  “Thank you, Am.”

  He started walking away, but Am called him back. “If you save his life again, Nils,” he said, “you’re fired.”

  Nils searched Am’s face. Even after years in the country, he still wasn’t sure of American humor. “That’s a joke, yes?”

  “Ask me next week.”

  There are worse places to wait than in a cavernous hotel kitchen. Rather than go home and open a can of beans and a can of beer and contemplate the longest day of his life, Am decided to take advantage of one of the great perquisites of hotel management and eat a fine meal. Of course, a condemned prisoner gets that same privilege. Am didn’t feel like waiting for food, so he wrote out a slip for prime rib. Staff always takes care of staff very well. He was cut off the better part of a cow and given enough potatoes and vegetables du jour to feed three people. As he walked by with his bounty, the pantry chef told him to save room for some fresh puff pastries smothered in chocolate-dipped strawberries “that anyone would die for.”

  The aromas in a great kitchen are almost meals in themselves. The scents primed Am’s appetite even before he sat down. He hadn’t known how hungry he was and in short order did the impossible: finished his plate and even had room enough for one of those decadent puff pastries.

  Marcel still hadn’t returned, and once again Am considered just leaving, but his stubbornness wouldn’t let him do that. He decided to go out to the restaurant and look for him. That proved to be a tactical mistake. The chef was sitting at the critic’s table. From his rapturous expression, he might as well have been in bed with him. All he needed was a pillow and a cigarette. Am tried to retreat, but it was too late.

  “Ham! Ham!”

  Reluctantly he walked over to the table. The critic and his friend might have had to eat opossum, but no doubt that was a tastier dish than crow.

  “Ham,” Marcel said, “zis gentleman zink I am a genus, and I zay, who am I to argue?”

  Three people laughed.

  “A genus, yes,” said Am. “But we’re still not sure of the species.”

  No one smiled, and the critic went so far as to decide Am needed another lecture. “A great chef always innovates, is never complacent. Chef Marcel tells us he never attempted this dish before.”

  “He gambled,” Am admitted.

  “He won,” said the younger man. “It was delicious. Gamey yet tempered.”

  Temper did have something to do with it, Am thought.

  “I could listen to zis all night,” said Marcel.

  “Marcel is fond of telling us what he served at the Last Supper,” said Am.

  Marcel’s possum was apparently much better loved than Am’s quips. He excused himself, afraid if he watched much longer, Marcel might bloat up to the point of exploding.

  Only management was allowed to use the kitchen as a shortcut, probably because management knew that it was rarely a shortcut at all. On his intended way to the parking lot, Am was waylaid by the sight of one of his favorite desserts: double chocolate amaretto mousse. He paused to ask the pantry cook if there was a spoon to lick, and his inquiry resulted in a parfait glass chock full of the mousse. It took Am a few minutes to work through his rapture. He probably shouldn’t have stopped by his office, but there was a note he remembered he should write.

  He felt oddly content. Having a full stomach might have had something to do with that. For most of the day the world had seemed to be collapsing under his feet, but now that his maw was filled he felt the cosmos had somehow become aright.

  Just as Am entered his office, the phone rang. He saw that the call was originating from Gunther’s extension. With each ring the phone seemed to ring louder, but Am resisted the temptation to pick it up. It was late, and he didn’t have it in him to fight any more dragons. The ringing stopped, and Am praised the Almighty. The note he had thought it necessary to write was becoming less important by the moment. Then the phone started ringing again. This time it was the front desk calling, and again Am wouldn’t answer. I can sneak out, he thought. But he had neglected to lock his office door. The Weintraubs had visited him countless times before and knew only too well where to find him. They entered from the lobby, walking inside without knocking and looking like spaghetti western villains out for revenge.

  “Went back to the restaurant,” he said.

  “Returned to the scene of the crime,” she said.

  “I thought we might get hungry later,” said Whiner.

  “Midnight snack,” Whiney chimed in.

  “So I asked what happened to my dinner.”

  ‘“Where is it?’ he asked.”

  “And they told me they had thrown it out.”

  “Threw it away without asking,” she said.

  They looked at Am expectantly. That was his clue to offer apologies and compensation. He continually amazed guests with his stupidity at not understanding what they thought was obvious.

  “I talked with your server, Mr. Weintraub,” he said. “He told me that both you and your wife had finished your dinners . . . ”

&n
bsp; Whiner held up his right arm and his index finger. “But I hadn’t finished,” he said.

  “The only thing you didn’t eat was that last piece of veal that—”

  “A man pays for his meal, isn’t he entitled to all of it?”

  Am looked from one face to the other. He hoped they were joking, but they weren’t smiling.

  “Mr. Weintraub, I find it difficult to believe—”

  “I find it difficult to believe that you charged me for a meal I didn’t finish. You did that, didn’t you? Authorized that bill to be signed over to our room?”

  “When you left the restaurant you weren’t in any condition—”

  “Now I’ve returned. And I’m hungry. But my meat isn’t there. I don’t think I should have to pay for that entrée. Or I should have another one made for me.”

  “In all fairness, don’t you think—”

  “Another entrée, or I refuse to pay.”

  “We’ll make your entrée,” said Am.

  That wasn’t the answer Whiner wanted, but it was still victory enough. “Have it sent to the room,” he said.

  “We wouldn’t dine in one of your restaurants again,” she said.

  “It will be sent up,” Am promised.

  They walked out of his office, and Am walked back to the kitchen. Marcel was sitting in his office, smoking a cigar. His preferred spot was directly under the No Smoking sign. Marcel’s burlap bag was on the floor. Am reached deep inside it and pulled out a particularly sorry specimen of squashed opossum. Even Marcel, who always seemed oblivious to smells, sniffed disdainfully.

  “Weintraubs,” said Am.

  “Mon Dieu,” said Marcel.

  The chef had heard displeasing words from those—those—cretins before.

  “He never finished his veal marsala,” said Am. He held up the opossum. “This,” he said, “is going to be the veal marsala.”

  “But you need to marinate ze possum meat, Ham,” said Marcel. “You need to add ze herbs, and stoop it in ze spices, and—”

  Am dropped the opossum in front of him. “This,” he repeated, “is the veal marsala. They won’t eat it tonight. And you know how the taste and complexion of meat can change overnight.”

  “But what if zay complain? What if zay say eat’s not veal?”

  “Then we play possum,” said Am.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Most large hotels have resident managers. The perks of such a position are many. A casual observer might consider the job as being the closest thing to royalty. Meals are provided by the hotel, along with daily maid service and laundry privileges. But the sword of Damocles also comes with the job. Am had lived at hotels before but had never much liked it, could never shake the feeling that he was on the job twenty-four hours a day and that doom was always hanging over his head. Whenever the phone rang, he anticipated it to be a problem, not a friend. And there was the fishbowl feeling, the staff monitoring the goings-on of his life as if it were spectator sport. But had he still been a resident manager, Am reflected, staff wouldn’t have had much to talk about lately. Nowadays he was having trouble getting a life separate from work. The antidote for many suffering job burnout is a change of scenery, an escape to some hotel where they can be pampered. But that didn’t work for Am. Whenever he visited other properties he felt like a magician analyzing another practitioner’s tricks. A getaway would be good, though, maybe a surfing trip down the Baja peninsula or a camping excursion to some secluded canyon in the Anza-Borrego Desert. The desert, located within the boundaries of San Diego County, was itself larger than some states, while the county as a whole could claim more square miles than half a dozen states. Within San Diego County were mountains, deserts, and the ocean. Anyone with time and money would be hard-pressed to ask for a more diverse and pleasant locale, but Am always seemed to be short either the hours or the cash.

  Too tired to read, too numb to move, Am resorted to the intended soporific of television. His timing couldn’t have been worse. The lead story on the eleven o’clock news was the murders at the Hotel. According to the report, Jane Doe still hadn’t been identified, and neither had the murderer. There was a clip of McHugh responding to (or was that evading?) the reporter’s questions. Am thought there was more to be learned by the detective’s omissions than in what he said. On air, McHugh never mentioned the cleaning up of the crime scene or how the suspected murderer had gained access to the guest room in the first place.

  For Am, the worst part of the news was having to watch himself being interviewed. He thought he had the presence of a cornered fox in a room of baying hounds. The only good thing about his segment was that it was short. Maybe his unintelligible mumbling had something to do with that. Am was glad he had listened to the housekeeper’s suggestion of filling the room with flowers. He had sarcastically asked if she wanted to make it look even more like a funeral parlor, but Barb had countered that the viewers might notice the pretty arrangements more than the story being presented. She had artfully positioned the flowers in front of the dais so as to obscure the Hotel California display (usually burnished to a high polish whenever the media was around). Barb’s flowers had shown up beautifully.

  Murders and festive flowers made for conflicting signals. The day had been full of those. Things are not always as they seem, thought Am, words he associated with Conrad, an elderly bellman who had worked at his last hotel. Ninety-nine times out of one hundred, Conrad said, he could gauge his tip to within a dollar of what he would ultimately receive, but every so often he encountered a guest who fooled him, who offered him a hauteur and a smile that all but guaranteed a substantial promissory note. “The kind of guest,” according to Conrad, “who passes along a folded bill into your palm as if deeding you the world.”

  Bellmen know they’re supposed to offer a performance commensurate with their tip. The sure knowledge of a large gratuity makes them execute bows that come to within an inch of kowtowing. When receiving a palmed bill, bellmen must read the signals with which it is offered and then take a leap of faith. The etiquette of the situation requires the bellman to offer adequate pomp and circumstance even before knowing the denomination given to them. That moment of truth comes only after the bellman has exited the guest quarters and is out in the hallway.

  “You open your hand,” said Conrad, “and you expect Andrew Jackson, but sweet Ben Franklin or handsome U. S. Grant aren’t unheard-of. You’ll settle for Hamilton, a fair trade for your performance, but you know that Lincoln sometimes comes up.

  “But damn,” said the bellman, “if there aren’t times when you don’t find yourself looking eye to eye with solitary George Washington. Things are not always as they seem.”

  Was this one of those times? thought Am. Had the police offered only a one-dollar explanation to a big-ticket crime?

  As if listening for answers, Am heard a voice, then realized it was only the call of the stationmaster. Because his California bungalow was so close to the train station, Am knew when most trains were running. This would be the last commuter train of the night, the 11:05 P.M. run, heading south to downtown San Diego. Am had set his alarm early enough that he’d probably hear the 5:47 A.M. train going north.

  With stops in Oceanside, San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, Santa Ana, Anaheim, Fullerton, and Los Angeles, he thought, stops he had heard announced thousands of times.

  One day I’m going to play hooky from work, Am vowed, and I’m going to take that train north, and get off at every one of those stops.

  And then what? Author Paul Theroux had just kept traveling, finding more and more train lines, rails across continents. But there is a profound difference between being a traveler and being a hotelier. Am had made his permanence out of transience. He had shared in enough stories and travels as to almost satiate his own wanderlust. Travelers need their ports. That’s what they talk about over the next horizon. And there were some things in his port he needed to make right—for the travelers, for himself.

  There came a lo
ng train whistle, and then there came sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “I’m just going to work,” said Am, using the same soothing tones he would employ if encountering a large, mean-looking, unchained dog. “Just a beautiful drive along the coast.”

  Annette started right up. She probably would have been scrap years back if it hadn’t been for Am’s neighbor, Jimbo, who liked nothing better than working on old cars. Jimbo volunteered his time for “parts and beer,” neither one of which came cheap. His beer belly (proudly referred to by Jimbo as his “Milwaukee goiter”) would have done a sumo wrestler proud; by Am’s figuring, he was in to him for a microbrewery.

  I’m raising a car instead of raising a child, Am thought. Maybe it was time to trade in Annette for something whose upkeep wouldn’t be so expensive—say, the Queen Mary. It was not an observation he dared make aloud.

  As if to belie her age and temperament, Annette cantered along old 101. The route winds along the coast, and through Del Mar offers such scenery as to make even jaded commuters look twice. On the approach to Torrey Pines State Reserve, there are no buildings to obscure the view of the water; to the west there is only the beach and the expanse of ocean. Am did his usual morning scouting for dolphins (he did the same in the afternoon but usually spotted more bikinis than wildlife) but didn’t see any. The dolphins often liked to gambol along the surfline, sometimes even taking the waves like seasoned surfers. A storm had passed through Baja a few days earlier, unusual weather for September, but it suited the surfers just fine. They were out in abundance, waiting for their rides to glory. The wind was up, and the waves were high. Spindrift dotted Annette’s windshield, enough to necessitate turning on the wipers. They worked, if irregularly: the story of the car.

  There is a point in every commute where the workday begins, where you are on company time even if you’re nowhere near the time clock. When Am passed Torrey Pines Beach, and the cliffs blocked any potential roadside viewing of dolphins and mermaids, he started thinking about work. He didn’t consciously see the Torrey Pines (found naturally in only two places in the world and distinguished from other pine trees by its cluster of five needles), or Scripps Clinic, or the Salk Institute, or the University of California at San Diego, or even the long pier marking Scripps Institution of Oceanography. For the last six miles of his drive Am was planning out his workday and praying that there wouldn’t be any new land mines waiting for him.