The Hotel

by Melanie Jones Brownrigg

  His door was only a few feet from mine. The walking distance happened so quickly, before I knew it, I was standing in front of room 7. The door was cracked open several inches. Lucky 7. I wouldn’t even have to knock and run the risk of him refusing to open the door. I wouldn’t have to bang my fists repeatedly and scream at the top of my lungs for him to come out and face me. All I had to do was gently push and step inside. I’d have the element of surprise and he wouldn’t have time to throw on any clothes. He’d be caught red-handed. No time for excuses or lies. This couldn’t have gone better.

  As gently as possible, I eased the door open and placed first one foot inside, and then the other. Breathing in the scent of sex filling the room, my fists balled up, considering pummeling my husband. Thick blackout curtains were pulled tight and, even with the door cracked open, the predawn light from outside wasn’t enough for me to see into the room. For a long moment I stood there waiting for my eyes to adjust and straining my ears for sounds of snoring, heavy breathing, or even the rustling of bedcovers. Everything was eerily quiet.

  “Greg, I know you’re in here,” I called out, my hand simultaneously scraping against the wall until I found the light switch and flipped it on. “Oh my God,” I shrieked out in disbelief. My brain, fuzzy from liquor, couldn’t process the sight before me. “Oh God,” I repeated, emitting several gasps from my mouth. “No,” I said with eyes frozen wide.

  It was hard to take everything in all at once, but predominately all I saw was blood and brain tissue everywhere. Crimson splatters covered the bed, the walls, the ceiling and the floor. My heart galloped in my chest, staring at the unrecognizable features of a battered face ... as if someone had taken a tire iron to my husband’s head.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  (Wednesday - Two Days Before Greg’s Scheduled Return)

  My drunk addled body fell back against the dresser, the knobs pressing into the small of my back. Feeling faint, I placed my hands on the furniture just to keep myself upright. When the horrendous enormity of what happened reached my dazed and confused brain, I flew into the bathroom and dropped to the ground, my knees bearing down on the cold hard tile. Not quite making it over the toilet bowl, I splattered vomit around the surrounding area before getting my head situated. Spewing fermented alcohol and rancid semi-digested snack foods, chunks of molten lava erupted from my mouth at a violent rate. Bits of puke mixed with saliva dripped down my chin, while beads of sweat dotted my forehead. Catching a moment’s breath, I unraveled a handful of toilet paper and wiped my disgusting mouth and blew my snotty nose. Then I collapsed on the floor and stared up at the ceiling, my hair in some of the regurgitation.

  My husband was dead. Dead. Worse, he was dead from savage pummeling, possibly with a tire tool. Something I had heavily considered. Did I do it? I’d spent most of the night passed out. Yet somewhere in there I ate those chips and candies. I had no recollection of doing that. Did I do something more? Did I get the tire iron from my car and kill my husband? I remembered wanting to.

  I took a good look at my clothes and couldn’t find any blood, though the front of my shirt had some dribbles of vomit. No blood though. I couldn’t have done it. It wouldn’t be possible to splatter that much blood over every surface of the room and come out unscathed. I didn’t do it.

  There wasn’t anyone beside him in the bed. It was only Greg there. Where did his lover go? She must have done it and then left. Now I regretted putting off my confrontation. If I would’ve forced the issue last night, not only would I have caught a glimpse of the girl, but I might’ve also saved Greg’s life. Damn it. Unable to move from my sprawled position on the floor, I felt tears rolling down the side of my face and dripping onto the moldy tile.

  When I heard an engine cranking up, I knew I had to get my shit together and get out of here before I was found inside the room with a dead body. My husband’s dead body. Damn it. Pulling myself up, I leaned against the vanity and rinsed my mouth and splashed my face. Lingering on weak legs, I became mesmerized by cold droplets of water trickling from my fingertips and swirling down the drain. Still hovering over the sink, using it to keep me upright, I raised my head only to shock myself at my own reflection in the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot. My face was a mixture of red splotchy spots and black globs of mascara. My hair was sticking up in some places and flattened in others. Using a handful of water, I tried to lessen my wild tresses.

  Reaching for the tiny complementary bar of soap, I peeled the paper off and discarded it in the trash can situated next to a splatter of my own stomach fluids. Running the bar under the water and lathering it into a sudsy mixture, I scrubbed my face and cleaned some vomit residue from my chin and shirt. Next, I worked on mopping up my puke and cleaning the toilet. Then I took a towel and wiped everything I had touched.

  After cleaning the bathroom, I worked on getting up my courage to pass back through the room. The crime scene ... the place where my dead husband was bashed to death. I wanted to push back time and end yesterday in a different way. I wanted to bury my head in the sand and pretend this never happened. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.

  But it was real and worse, inadvertently I had placed myself at the scene of a vicious murder. And wasn’t the spouse always the first suspect? How was I going to explain being in this room? And my DNA was everywhere. I needed to get rid of it and get gone.

  In steadying myself against the doorframe, I realized I was leaving my prints there too. What all had I touched? Taking the towel, I wiped the sides of the door and then went back to where Greg was ... what was left of Greg. Even though I tried hard to keep from looking, as I wiped the dresser, unintentionally, I caught the reflection of his mauled face in the mirror. It was so horrible. Poor Greg. He didn’t deserve this. Ava didn’t deserve this. Tears fell down my cheeks and dripped onto the dresser. I mopped them up, trying hard to eliminate my DNA. There was no use, I had left tears, fingerprints and vomit. My presence was everywhere and there weren’t any available cleaning chemicals. I just needed to get out.

  Back in my own room, once again, my emotions fell and broke apart. Unable to make it to the bed, I dropped to the floor and curled myself into a lonely, frightened ball. Rocking backward and forward, tightly hugging myself, I wanted to shake away what I had seen, and what had happened to Greg, my handsome, kind-hearted husband. Everything would be different from this point forward. The ripple effect would affect me, and especially Ava. She was fatherless. I was a widow. Our world was fractured now. Nothing would ever be the same.

  What came next? Did I call the police and report my husband’s murder? It was the right thing to do, and Greg shouldn’t be left like that. When I reached for the phone in my purse, I noticed blood on the carpet, and it was all over the bottom of my shoes. How did this happen? Somehow, I must’ve stepped in a patch on my way out. Panicked, I slipped my shoes off and opened the door to look back toward Greg’s room. Sure enough, I’d left a trail of blood from his room straight to mine.

  My heart pounded against my chest as I ran for a towel. Taking a careful look around to make sure no one was outside, I set to work trying to clean up the bloody prints. Scrubbing back and forth, I managed to clean each spot enough so that it was hardly noticeable. Then, using a second towel, I diligently tried to sop up the bloody trail I’d left inside the room. Finally, I cleaned my shoes. But what good did it do? Most likely I’d left shoeprints in Greg’s room. Forensics would easily match my shoes to the prints, a tiny size four, which not many adults wore. I’d been seen here too, not only by the guy who checked me in, but a private investigator ... of all the people. You’d have to be the world’s worst detective not to figure this crime scene out. Wife next door. Wife in victim’s room. Wife must’ve done it. Case closed.

  After careful consideration, calling the police was out of the question. It was far too risky. They might haul me in for questioning, and then before I could leave, they'd arrest me on charges for murdering my husband. What I need
ed to do right now was to figure out who was in that room with him. She was the one who most likely killed him. But doing so would take time.

  Thinking forward, as soon as the cleaning crew (assuming this placed cleaned their rooms), found Greg, they’d be on the phone to the police. Then the police would blaze a path to my front door in no time flat.

  In hindsight, I should’ve taken Greg’s wallet. Without his ID, identifying his body would’ve made for a slower process. And now that I thought about it, I needed his phone too. I was listed as one of his favorites, making me one of the first people the police would call. And too, he’d probably called his lover numerous times, making his recent call list a sure-fire bet to have led me straight to her. Then again, I didn’t know Greg’s password so I couldn’t have gained access. Perhaps I could’ve used his index finger and opened his phone. No, I couldn’t have. Not only was body heat needed to transfer the print, but I also wouldn’t have been able to get that close to him, not like that. Unfortunately, when the door closed behind me, it automatically locked. There wasn’t any way for me to reenter and collect or search through those items. I’d blown my opportunity.

  Faced with the situation I was in, and needing to buy more time, I did the only thing I could think of. With a trash bag in hand, I gathered up my empty tiny liquor bottles, the empty bottle of Dr. Pepper and the snack wrappers. Then I wiped the room and crammed the used towels in with the rest of the trash. Of course, I’d missed something. My DNA was probably in a million places, but it wasn’t boldly obvious. With any luck at all, it would take CSI a while to find it, because what I most needed, was more time.

  Collecting my purse and taking the bag with me, I opened the door and shifted my gaze from one end of the parking lot to the other. Not seeing anyone, I left room 6 and placed my “Do Not Disturb” sign on Greg’s room 7. Tossing the bag in the trunk of my car, I looked up and was surprised to see the chunky middle-aged woman standing near me.

  “Morning,” she said as she crawled into the big rig next to my car.

  “Hello,” I said back. Funny, at one point I had thought the burly guy, or even the young guy, drove the truck. Instead, it was Big Bunny, assuming she registered under that alias. At any rate, she had just witnessed me putting a black trash bag in my trunk. Great. Just great.

  As I climbed in my car, I had another thought that might buy me more time. It wasn’t respectful of my husband’s soon-to-be-decaying body, but I had Ava to think about. So, I did what needed to be done and came to stop in front of the registration office.

  “Can I help you?” asked a large woman with a massive beehive hairdo that would make Marge Simpson jealous.

  “Yes, I stayed in room 7 last night and I’d like to continue using it until...” Greg was scheduled back late Friday night, according to the lie he’d told me. “Until Saturday morning.”

  “Oh good. We do love repeat customers.” She looked me up and down. “As gorgeous as you are, you must be doing a hell of a business. I’ll bet you have the men lined up and waiting for their turn.”

  In my mind, I rolled my eyes. “Well, you know what they say ... if you’ve got it, flaunt it.”

  She emitted a deep boisterous laugh. “Ain’t it the truth. And honey, you’d better use it while you can, because I can tell you from experience, beauty fades.”

  “Yes, I already feel like my time is running out.” Like as soon as my dead husband’s body was found.

  “It’s $35 a day. But you might want to consider our package rates … $200 a week, or $750 a month. Saves a lot on the overhead and you don’t have to check in each time. You’ll keep the key to your room and can come and go at-will.”

  “That’s interesting,” I said. I wondered how many of last night’s hotel guests had a key. Did Greg piss one of them off and they entered at-will and killed him? Perhaps his lover had her own key. “Let me just pay until Saturday and I’ll think about the available plans.”

  “Okay, well that’ll be $105.”

  Shit. I didn’t have that much money. I was going to have to use a credit card, one with my name on it. Dang, I was not very good at this crime stuff. “Here you go,” I said blowing out a deep breath and hoping I could track down Greg’s lover/murderer before the police tracked me down.

  She gasped. “A credit card! You don’t want to put this on a credit card ... do you?!”

  “I don’t have any money right now.”

  Her big old brown eyes grew wide, she made a fish face with her mouth and her brows pinched so tightly together, the combination of her expression scared me. “What d’ya mean you don’t have the money? What about the dough you made last night? You spend it already? Jesus, you got a drug problem, in addition to that alcohol problem?” She sniffed her nose in my direction. “I don’t like trouble around here. I run a clean, quite operation. No drugs ... do you understand?”

  “Yes, of course. I don’t have any problems,” I assured her, despite smelling like I’d thrown up a liquor store and looked like death warmed over. “It’s just that my pimp came by and took the money.” Jesus Christ. Never in a million years would I have imagined myself having this conversation.

  She shook her head at me and for a moment I thought her big old beehive might topple her over. “Then he’s supposed to pay for the room.” She eyed me again. “You do look like a babe in the woods.”

  “Yes ma’am, I’m just starting out in the business. Oh, speaking of money, you’ve reminded me I owe you for a KitKat that accidentally fell from the machine last night.”

  “Oh my God!” she screamed. “You need to get some street-wise in you or you’re going to get chewed up and spit out.” She crossed her arms and glared at me. Then her face softened. “Look, go down to the ATM and bring back the cash. I don’t even have a card reader here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Oh, I also owe you for all the drinks in the fridge too.”

  “Jesus Christ, just go,” she exclaimed, shooing her hand at me.

  So, out the door I went to the nearest cash dispenser and then I was back.

  “Here you go,” I said, forking over the cash.

  “Okay, go ahead and sign in.” She shoved the registration book at me, and I penned again “Lost Hope,” which by now I surely had.

  ◆◆◆

  Babe in the woods might be accurate, because I was certainly unsophisticated when it came to tracking down a murderer. Failing to know even where to begin, I did what any girl in my predicament would do. I ran as fast as I could to my mommy, hoping for words of wisdom.

  Driving across town had given me time to reflect upon the very brutal and very vicious attack of my husband. By the time I came to a stop in my mother’s circle driveway in front of her two-story, white-bricked home, I was bawling.

  Failing the dexterity to finagle the key from my purse, I rang the doorbell and waited for my mother’s approach.

  When she opened the door, her mouth gaped open at the shocking sight of me. My clothes were crumpled. I looked ragged and broken. My teeth hadn’t been brushed, the water had failed at smoothing my Medusa-like hair, and I smelled like a brewery, one I’d vomited up. And she was seeing me after I had cleaned myself up. Thank goodness my mother would’ve already dropped Ava at school. At least I didn’t have to worry about my daughter seeing me in this degrading condition.

  “Greg couldn’t keep it in his pants, and it got him killed,” I cried out in painful agony. Slouching across the room, I slumped myself into her swivel rocker and hung my head. “Oh God,” I cried out in a distressed tone, waiting for my mommy to make it all better.

  “What are you talking about?” My mother stared at me. “What happened to you?”

  “Greg’s dead,” I wailed. “Someone killed my husband.”

  “Greg’s dead! Oh my God ... no, he’s not. Is he? Oh my God.” Her face paled. “Are you hurt? What happened? Oh my God!”

  “Greg cheated on me with some slut in a sleazy motel and I heard them from the room next
door and then someone killed him,” I rattled out in one breath.

  “Emily, you’re going way too fast for me. You need to start from the beginning. And please slow down.”

  “Greg said he was going to Vegas for a 3-day seminar and Taylor Anderson was going with him. But it was a big fat lie, because last night, after leaving the hospital and taking a wrong turn, just by a weird quirk of circumstances, I saw Greg’s car and I followed it to The Bliss Hotel.”

  “The Bliss Hotel,” she yelped in a shocking tone. “Do you mean that prostitution motel down south, a few blocks off I-35? Over on Helton Boulevard?”

  “Yes, exactly.” I couldn’t believe my mother knew of this place. It was certainly news to me. Maybe I was naive.

  “What on earth would Greg be doing in a whore house?”

  “Cheating on me. What do you think?!”

  “But there? Not there! If he was cheating on you, it wouldn’t be there. It’d be anywhere but there. Are you sure you’re not drunk and imagining things? Because you reek of alcohol.”

  “I didn’t imagine it, Mother. I saw him. He was dead.” I paused. “Well, I saw him from across the room. I didn’t go directly up to him. But I know he was dead.”

  “You didn’t check for a pulse! Emily!”

  “Mom, his ... his ... his face was all bashed in. He couldn’t have been alive.”

  “Bashed in! Dear God.” My mother’s face was paling by the second. “This can’t be happening.”

  “It happened. Everything was a bloody massacre. It was horrible.”

  She was quite for a long time and I didn’t mind the reprieve. My head was still pounding, and my stomach felt queasy. In fact, I wanted to lie down and let my dizziness subside.