“I can’t tell you everything,” Ted said. “I promised. But I can tell you,” he continued, “that he’s fine. He asked me to buy him some new clothes, which I did. He took a shower and borrowed a car. I don’t know where he went, but he did leave a note for you, just in case you came around. Seems he knows you pretty well.” He handed me a sterling silver letter opener and an envelope. I ripped it open on the spot.
“Don’t look for me, Maya, and don’t worry about me,” it read. “Go home. Relax. I’m following a lead. I’m not in any danger. Love you ever, French”
Go home. Relax. Was he kidding? Did he think I would head home now, sashay over to the pool and grab a Tequila Sunrise?
My meeting with Ted was over. Was I relieved, deflated or confused? A little of each.
Ted invited me to walk over to the main room of the Church Lane Saloon with him, to listen to his new fiddler, Chet Watkins. I agreed, in order to be polite. Ted and I ordered sparkling water and toasted to French’s health.
We sat on wooden benches near the rafters of the great brick warehouse turned concert venue and dance hall, looking down at Chet. Chet was burning up the strings of his fiddle, playing “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”.
After the last resounding chord, we stood up to leave. Ted walked me to the limo, where Marty was waiting. I thanked Ted and waved goodbye, as we pulled away from the curb.
I leaned back and thought about the devil in Georgia. With dead bodies strewn around and abductions on the rise, I was fairly convinced he had made a detour to Florida and was cruising around Orlando just about now.
Chapter 32
Safely deposited back at the main entrance of the hotel by Marty, I walked through the glass entry doors. I was hit by a blast of air conditioning as cold as a Klondike bar. I ran into Lauren White, running, as usual, from point A to point B in high heels and a short skirt.
“Where are you off to now?” I asked.
“You know how it is, Maya. Usually, it’s French who keeps me running. Now that he’s not here, it’s Dave. He’s got me watching everyone at the conference. It’s my job to keep them occupied and happy. I’m busier than a one-armed paperhanger.”
I chuckled. “It must agree with you,” I said, “You look great!” And she did. Lauren was one of the beautiful people. She was single and looking for “the” man. I could have seen her as a threat but, being a good Southern girl from a fine Southern family, a married man would never have been the man for her.
Lauren and I said goodbye and then I wondered, why go back to my home on the lake? I knew what awaited—an empty house full of shadows. The palmetto bugs and wood spiders might miss me if I stayed away a while longer, but they were the only ones.
I thought about French’s note to me. I should go home and relax. But I couldn’t do that yet. Instead, I walked over to the lobby bar with its raised, white, concert grand piano on a revolving stage, and sat down in one of the basket-style loveseats. They were meant for two but it was just Maya French, alone, as usual. I sat toward the back, unnoticed, and took in my surroundings.
I mentally reviewed the events of the previous three days and nights: someone had wrung Redmund Torrey’s neck on Friday night, just after the Sapphire Hotels and Resorts national management shindig had begun—changing the tone of the conference just a teensy bit for those of us in the know. An incriminating receipt had been planted in French’s office and he had been trotted off to jail. It had been a plant, hadn’t it? Between the receipt, the pantyhose box on his desk and his disappearing act, I was confused and uneasy in so many ways.
Sometime the next afternoon, Vacaar Luzi was swept off his wife’s sexy Charles Jourdan's and iced. French had been released from jail but was still MIA.
On my way to see Ted Rains at Church Lane Depot, someone had slipped a chloroformed hankie over my nose and mouth and taken me for a little spin. When I came to on Disney property, I called Lily to come get me, we ran into James, the hotel director there, and he made us stay in a suite at his hotel overnight. The next morning, Lily and I went to Tammy’s for an omelet. Then, I was escorted home by Rick and a belching Koenig, his burps almost making me rolf.
Next, I changed clothes and made it to Ted’s place and back. At least I knew French was alive and well. Now, I was sitting in the lobby piano bar with a stiff upper lip and a Gold Cadillac, which looked like it was going to be my dinner.
Pretty much, I knew nothing and I was getting no smarter sitting here. I thought about all the people I knew at Sapphire and wondered which of them had been closest to Torrey. Would there be any sense in trying to question them? How long could the OPD and our staff keep this whole mess quiet?
My mind doubled back to French, as it always did. Where the hell was he? Always traipsing off when I needed him most. Someday, when this was all a distant memory, I would have to pull a disappearing act on him, just one time, just to get even. Would he even notice?
Chapter 33
“Hi there, may I sit with you?” A woman’s soft voice broke my train of thought.
I looked up and into the lake blue eyes of Alana Torrey, grieving widow number one. I nodded, smiled and scooted to one side of the loveseat. She sat her slender self into the other side and there was still room to spare between us. If the rich were indeed different, then so were the beautiful. On my brightest and best day, I would never be an Alana Torrey.
Alana embodied my ideal of feminine everything. A cross between a Barbie doll and an expert on international business, she was also a style queen, who must have catalogued her clothes and kept detailed records of what she wore when, where and with whom, as she never wore the same ensemble twice.
Along with her now-dead husband, Alana had always been the public face of Sapphire Resorts, frequenting the society pages of magazines such as Town and Country, Vogue and Vanity Fair. I wondered if designers comped her ball gowns for high profile events. She was seated right next to me, probably looking for companionship and compassion, or maybe she even had a confession to make—and I was busy envying her.
“Alana, I’ve been worried sick about you,” I lied, remembering how my thoughts had been consumed with French, the murders and Alana not at all.
“I’ve stayed in my suite this whole time. It’s strange. It feels like time has stopped. I feel empty. Everything feels unreal, like I’m observing from a distance.”
“Oh, Alana—” I said. There were no words. Looking into her sad, tired eyes, my self-absorbed little heart did go out to her and I teared up a little with her.
The cocktail server arrived, breaking the mood, and took Alana’s order, a champagne cocktail. Interesting choice. Something ticked in my brain. Champagne? Wasn’t that usually reserved for celebrations?
We sat together, listening to Harry Parker on the piano. That man could play anything from Rachmaninov to Luther Vandross. No matter what state anyone’s state was in, music could transport people to better times and better places.
Her drink arrived and Alana raised her glass to me before she took her first sip. “Here’s to us,” she said, her eyes fixed on some point in the distance. “One of us, the usual Sapphire widow, whose absentee husband is farting around this property somewhere; the other, a real Sapphire widow, whose husband won’t be farting at all any more. Campai!”
Wow! I had not expected such a pithy toast from her. It only went to show that you couldn’t judge a lady by her persona, her footwear or her designer togs. There might be a lot more to Alana than I had ever guessed. I clinked glasses and wondered if a petite dolly like her had the muscle to toss a two-hundred pounder down a laundry chute.
We sipped together in silence for a moment, then she turned to me with a sigh and said, so very softly that at first I thought I had heard wrong, “I knew about all of Red’s other women, of course.”
“That must have been difficult for you,” I said, hoping my shock didn’t show.
“Oh, it was. It sure was. Redmund was not easy.”
What could I s
ay? I nodded dumbly and took another sip of my drink.
“He was hard to live with,” she said, almost to herself. I turned my gaze toward her and looked into her eyes, so near, so transparent, so blue.
“Hard to live with, all right, but I never would have guessed this.” She paused. “Turns out, he’s much harder to live without.”
I nodded solemnly. What was I to make of this? She loved him and missed him, in spite of his character defects? Or, was it regret? Did she wish she had not strangled him now that he was gone? I took another sip of Gold and maintained my silence.
My mind wandered off to pantyhose. What would be Alana’s preferred brand? Just then, she crossed her long, blonde legs and I looked down. She was wearing no hose at all.
Chapter 34
Alana finished her champagne and left. My Gold Cadillac came to its inevitable end. I sat for a moment, wondering what to do. I still didn’t feel like going back home. I dreaded it, the uncomfortable solitude, the not knowing where French was nor why he refused to come home. Heck, if he didn’t want to be there, why would I? No, I sat there in my little loveseat, all alone, unloved and unlovable, feeling like Little Bo Peep, who had not just lost her sheep but had lost her way.
I know—I’ll pop into the accounting department to see if Jake might still be in the office. We can have a chat.
I heard Jake before I saw him. He was on the phone and laughing about something. What did accounting execs have to laugh about on their office phones? Bookings were up at the hotel. Maybe that alone would be enough to make a bean counter laugh.
He looked up and waved me in, still cradling the phone to his ear with his left shoulder and pushing the buttons of an electric adding machine perched in the middle of his desk.
“Maya, my love, what’s up?” he asked, as he hung up the phone.
“I’m all mixed up, Jakey dear. I can’t find French. No one can find French. I don’t know what to do.”
“Hmm,” he said. “What else?”
“Well, someone tried to kidnap me.”
“What?” Jake said, pinpointing me with his slate blue eyes.
“Yeah. That was strange,” I answered.
“That was strange? That’s all you can say?” he barked.
“Gee, you don’t have to sound so mean,” I said. “Remember, it happened to me once before, back at the Sapphire on Sunset, in a previous life.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” he answered, looking up at the air, and paused. “Were you bound and gagged this time, too?”
“No. This time I was dumped outside the Sword and Chalice. Weird, huh?”
“Do you suppose that slimeball, James, did it?” he asked.
“What, and possibly get a wrinkle in his pressed gabardines? I think not,” I said and we both had a laugh at James’s expense.
Jake’s voice turned serious. “Maya, I don’t want you wandering around alone any more. It’s too dangerous. Sure, Rick has his men everywhere but where were they when you were abducted? How could that even happen?”
“I don’t know,” I answered quietly. That had been bothering me, as well.
“I’m leaving my office in a few minutes,” Jake said. “I want you to wait here while I finish up. Then, I'm personally walking you to your house and making sure it's safe. I won’t leave until I know you’re locked inside.”
“Thanks, Jake,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the gift shop. I need to buy a new pair of pantyhose for tonight. I promise I’ll stay right there.”
He looked at me, weighing the possibilities. “I don’t know whether I can trust you to stay put,” he said, cocking his head to one side. “You understand this is serous, right?”
“Yes,” I said, putting my right hand up in the air. “Scout’s honor. I’ll stay put. No worries. See you there!” With that, I turned and left, heading to the lobby gift shop.
Chapter 35
There is a rhythm to a hotel. Busy in the morning, fairly quiet until lunch. After lunch, quiet again until the late afternoon, when all the happy campers return from Happy Valley, hauling bags of souvenirs, gifts for the folks back home and, most likely, a stuffed animal or two. They hang around, swapping stories, in the hotel lobby for a while.
The gift shop at Silver Pines was much larger than most hotel gift shops. It was divided into four sections: menswear, women’s wear, sundries and even a grocery section. Quite a few hotel guests were shopping. People were in from their day tours to Disney, Universal Studios and Cypress Gardens and they had not yet gone to eat at one of our dining outlets or returned to their rooms.
I had already made my purchase and was now killing time, browsing through the magazines, when I thought I recognized someone in the women’s section. I saw the back of Alana Torrey’s head. She was talking to David Enderly and a woman who looked familiar. It was hard for me to get a good view of them; too many shoppers between us.
I wove my way through the people and the displays, the clothing racks and the busy errant children, who were touching everything with their pudgy little sticky fingers. I wanted to eavesdrop on Alana—what could she, David and Linda Messina have to say to one another that was so important that their heads were bowed together, as if they were telling secrets in third grade?
I stumbled over a toddler. He yelped and I shrank behind a greeting card display, while mumbling, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” to both the little boy, who started to sniffle, and to his mother. Mom turned toward me, shooting daggers with her eyes, while she comforted her son.
My only thought: Did I blow my cover? It seemed not. Unaware of their surroundings, Alana, David and Linda continued to talk. Their eyes were locked, and their facial expressions were serious, even tense. I continued to edge closer, hiding behind a large round rack of women’s sweat suits, thumbing through the clothing as though I were looking to buy.
“What do you mean?” I heard Alana say, in a tone of hushed surprise.
“Just what I said,” Linda responded. “I know what I saw.”
“Linda,” Alana answered, “I think you should keep this to yourself. You don’t know whom this could harm if this came out.”
“Okay,” she answered with reluctance, her left hand crinkling the fabric of her tennis shorts. “I better go now.” She gave Alana one last glance before she moved away.
“This will all work out for the best. You’ll see,” Alana called after her.
David had said nothing during the conversation, only nodded his head once in a while, as though he were committing every word to memory.
Alana then headed out the doors toward the elevator lobby and David and Linda headed briskly in the opposite direction toward the sculpture garden.
At 6:30 p.m., why would Linda be heading out with David at her side? She was supposed to go to her room to change for a Sapphire dinner event on the mezzanine level. I knew this because I was supposed to be doing that same thing.
It was too irresistible. I had to snake through the loitering guests and follow them. Jake would understand when I called him later and explained my thinking. Jake might play at it but he could never stay angry with me for long.
Chapter 36
Linda and David were walking through the sculpture garden, when David tripped over something and almost fell. I was afraid Linda might see me as she turned and asked if he was all right, but they continued their walk toward Papa’s. A moment later, David looked at his pager, said goodbye to Linda, and hurried off toward the pool.
Was Linda going to have a drink with her husband, Frankie, before cleaning up and heading to the dinner? It could be, I supposed. I was beginning to feel foolish for following her when she, abruptly, made a 180° turn and began walking toward me.
“Well, hello, Maya! How nice to run into you here. Are you going to meet French for a drink?” she asked.
“Actually, I was just going to use the little girls’ room,” I lied. “It’s one of the best on the property and underused this time of day.”
“I have to g
o, too,” she said. “Mind if I join you?”
I wanted to say, “Oh, great!” Instead, I said, “That would be fine, Linda. Friends that tinkle together, winkle together.”
She looked at me, as if to say, “Huh?” and then laughed. “Maya, you are such a card!” she said, and off to the restroom we strolled.
Once outside of Papa’s again, we took leave of one another. She said she was headed back to her room to change. I wasn’t so sure but I couldn’t follow her again. My chance to spy on her had passed. Frustrated, I walked away from her toward my home.
In the restroom, she had mentioned nothing about her chance meeting with Alana and David in the gift shop, but why would she? She also didn’t mention why she was headed to Papa’s Place, then decided against it. I wanted to ask her but it was none of my business.
As I took the shortcut on the hanging bridge over the pool toward home, I pondered these things. I was in the middle of the hanging bridge, walking as briskly as a person who is swaying from side to side can do, when I heard a popping sound. At once, my left shoulder stung worse than the time a deer fly bit me. When I checked it out, my linen jacket seemed to be oozing grenadine. Then, darkness closed in like a collapsing umbrella and I sank where I stood, swaying slightly, twenty feet above the deep end of the pool.
Chapter 37
I was awakened by the smell of bacon. Gosh, was it breakfast time already? I hoped so. I was ready for waffles, smothered in butter and maple syrup. I started to get up.
Ouch! It was not time to get up. I was in a world of hurt and in a moving vehicle. Everything was a little fuzzy, but as I turned my head, I saw a good-looking kid sitting next to me, sinking his teeth into a double-bacon cheese burger. That explained the smell of Saturday morning breakfast, but why was I lying here next to a teen-ager in uniform?
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