Murder With Reservations (27 page)

“That’s one good thing about renting to crooks,” Margery said. “They always clean up any fingerprints when they split.”

Helen and Peggy followed her inside. The apartment looked ready to show. The tabletops and counters sparkled. The floor was shiny clean.

“She’s gone,” Margery said.

“She take the towels?” Helen said. The residents of 2C usually departed with souvenirs.

“Nope. She got my whistling teakettle and the sea-shell mirror.”

Helen saw the blank spot on the wall by the front door and the empty stove burner.

“But I got first and last month’s rent and a cleaning deposit,” Margery said. “I won’t lose any money. But I liked that mirror.”

“Too bad she got away,” Helen said.

“She left,” Margery said. “That doesn’t mean she got away.”

T
hey grabbed those children and ran out of this hotel like the devil was chasing them,” Sondra said.

“Who?” Helen said. She’d walked in on Sondra and Craig at the front desk.

“That nice family from the Midwest,” Sondra said. “I don’t know how they found out about the deaths, but they packed up and left at two thirty this morning. Wouldn’t even wait until daylight. Sybil was on duty. She said they acted like she was going to murder them in their beds.”

The hotel was unnaturally quiet for eight thirty in the morning. There was no line of impatient travelers at the front desk. No guests waited for the elevator. No one poured coffee or nuked a cinnamon roll in the breakfast room. The room’s TV was off, too. The employees couldn’t bear to watch the morning news.

“Did the other couples check out, too?” Helen said.

“All gone. The hotel is empty,” Sondra said. “All our reservations are canceled for the next month. We have fifty-two rooms to clean today, but then there’s no work. Sybil says she’ll put you both on vacation pay for a week. After that, you may have to look for another job if business doesn’t pick up.”

“No,” Craig said. “I want to work here.”

“We all want to work here,” Sondra said. “We’ll never find another boss as nice as Sybil. She even let me take off time for important tests at school.”

Helen looked down and saw that Craig was holding Sondra’s slender brown hand. Helen couldn’t blame him. The desk clerk was impossibly lovely in a long cream skirt and silk blouse.

Sondra deftly took back her hand. She was used to dealing with smitten men. “Well,” she said, “I have work to do. Cheryl’s cleaning on two. Denise said to tell you that you’re both working together on the third floor. Room 322 still has the police seal on it, so you can skip it, but you’ve got your work cut out for you. A boys’ soccer team stayed in 323, but they checked out the day of the murder. It hasn’t been cleaned yet. Denise said it was trashed. The couple who checked into the honeymoon suite last night carried a bag of fresh produce. They didn’t look like vegetarians to me.”

“Yuck,” Helen said.

“That’s why I like the front desk,” Sondra said. “Nothing but good, clean complaints.”

“I don’t know where to start,” Helen said, as she and Craig rode the elevator upstairs. “They both sound bad.”

Craig pulled out a coin. “Heads or tails,” he said. “Heads we do the soccer room first. I want to start there.”

“Tails we do the honeymoon suite first,” Helen said. “Produce puts me off my feed. I want to get it over with. Loser cleans the Jacuzzi.”

Craig flipped the coin. “You lose,” he said. “We start with the soccer room.”

“I’m afraid to see what those kids did to it,” Helen said.

She unlocked the door to 323, stopped at the threshold, and stared. “I don’t think you won,” she said. “The little bastards,” Craig said.

The room was looped with toilet paper. It zigzagged over the bed and around the lamps. It crisscrossed the chair backs, wrapped around the mirror, and clung to the bathroom fixtures. TP trailed down the shower curtains and ran along the rug. The toilet paper was covered with squiggles of red and yellow Silly String.

Scrawled in Silly String on the bedroom walls was:
We’re Going All the Way—State Champs!

“I hope they lose,” Craig said.

“I assume red and yellow are the school colors,” Helen said. She looked at the toilet paper draping the desk. “It’s stuck to the furniture. Oh, no. It’s wet.”

“With what?” Craig said. “This was a room full of feral boys.” He sniffed the paper. “It’s water.”

“Don’t expect me to thank the little slobs,” Helen said. “This is going to be a bear to clean.”

“Did they leave a tip?” Craig asked.

“A penny on the dresser,” Helen said. “Look at this mess. What kind of men are they going to be?”

“The kind who stay in 323,” Craig said.

After two hours of scraping, scrubbing and swearing, they’d stripped off the wet toilet paper and Silly String. Helen cleaned the last sludge out of the tub and stood up, dizzy with fatigue. Craig was looking tired, too. As they pushed the heavy housekeeping cart past room 322, Helen could see fingerprint powder on the door. She was glad the room was still sealed.

“How long do you think it will be before we clean that?” Craig said.

“If we’re lucky, the hotel will close first,” Helen said. “That fingerprint stuff is worse than Silly String.”

The morning was long and hot. Most guests had turned off their room air conditioners to be environmentally conscious. They forgot about the hotel maids, who roasted while they cleaned the steamy rooms. Helen turned the air conditioners back on, but the rooms didn’t cool down quickly. She and Craig were both sweating by the time they took their eleven-o’clock break.

At eleven fifteen they were ready to tackle the honeymoon suite. Neither had much enthusiasm for the job. The two randy adults had made almost as much mess as a whole teen soccer team. The sheets had been dragged off the bed. Beer cans littered the tabletops, and a bottle of red wine was spilled on the carpet.

“At least they put the cucumbers in the wastebasket,” Craig said.

Helen grabbed the alcohol spray off the cart and studied the Jacuzzi. It was streaked and smeared like a first grader’s finger painting. “This is disgusting,” she said. “I hate fresh fruit in the Jacuzzi. There’s squashed peaches, bananas and strawberries, plus whipped cream, dark chocolate—and dark hair.”

“You sound just like Rhonda,” Craig said absently, as he gathered up the dirty bedsheets.

Helen was too stunned to say anything.

“Rhonda was always bitching about the whipped cream and shit,” Craig said. “Every damn time she had to clean that Jacuzzi, she complained about crawling into the tub. She could gripe for hours. I got sick of listening to her.”

“How did you know?” Helen’s voice was a croak. “You never met Rhonda. You came here after she was killed.” She looked at his sweaty hair. It was blond. But he had dark roots.

“What do you mean?” Craig unfurled a clean sheet across the huge mattress, and the damp Band-Aid flapped up on his wrist. There was no wound. It covered a tattoo— Bart Simpson on a surfboard saying,
“Cowabunga, dude.”

Something to do with a cow,
Penny the waitress had said,
or a cowboy or a ranch.
Dude ranches. Dude.
Cow-abunga, dude.
Bart’s words had gotten a little twisted in Penny’s mind, but she was right. There was a tattoo on the cute surfer dude. And he had dark hair that he’d dyed blond.

Helen stared at the tattoo, fascinated. She was looking at the hand of a killer.

Craig’s voice went shrill, and he started talking faster. “You all said she bitched and whined.”

“No,” Helen said. “You said she complained to you. For hours. We never said anything to you about her complaints. Denise is too professional to criticize the staff to a new hire. I sure didn’t say anything. After Rhonda died we were all too ashamed of ourselves. We made her into a saint. We would never have told you that.”

“Cheryl told me,” Craig insisted. “That’s right. It was Cheryl.” He gave Helen that sun-drenched smile.

“No, it wasn’t,” Helen said. “Cheryl felt guilty because she’d turned down Rhonda’s money. She wouldn’t have bad-mouthed her.”

She looked him right in his lying hazel eyes. “You’re Rhonda’s mystery boyfriend. She talked about you all the time. You’re her handsome dark-haired man with the money.”

“You think I dated that skank?” he said. “You’re crazy, bitch.”

Helen knew she was right. Craig’s odd behavior made sense now. She saw him crawling around in the housekeeping room, giving her a lame excuse about dropping a spray can cap. She heard Craig asking her out—and Cheryl, too. He didn’t like older women. He wanted to pump the maids about hotel hiding places.

“You’re trying to find the money, aren’t you?” Helen said. “That’s why you asked us where we’d hide it.You’re the dead robber’s accomplice. He was shot before he could give you the money.”

Craig slammed the sheets down on the floor. “Lady, I don’t know what I’ve done to you, but I don’t deserve this.”

Helen’s brain felt supercharged. She saw connections everywhere. “You wanted Rhonda to look for that money. That’s why you hooked up with her. It was easy, wasn’t it? She hung out at that bar and had a taste for lowlifes. You started taking her out. Don’t deny it. You took her to the diner down the road. A waitress saw you together.”

“You’re freaking stupid,” Craig said.

“I was. But I’ve smartened up,” Helen said. “I can see through you like a window. You gave poor Rhonda promises and cash—more cash than she ever saw in her life. You led her on. What happened then, Craig? Why did you kill her? Was she starting to get suspicious? Or were you too impatient? When she didn’t find anything, you killed her and took her place so you could search the hotel yourself. She told you nobody ever quit a job at the Full Moon, so you created a vacancy.”

“Helen, look at me. Do I look like a killer?” Craig looked like a minor movie star, golden, handsome, magnetic. His voice was soft and reasonable. His gloved hands were swift. They reached for the broom and swung it at Helen’s head.

“Crazy bitch,” he shrieked.

Helen saw his eyes flicker a fraction before he struck. She turned enough to catch the blow with her shoulder. The force knocked her into the wall. Craig swung viciously at her head with a black desk chair. She slid down the wall, and he barely missed her. The chair broke apart, leaving a dusty hole in the drywall.

My God, Helen thought. He’s trying to kill me. She was nearly blinded by the drywall dust. Helen felt along the floor and found a splintered chair leg and the bottle of alcohol.

Craig flung a lamp at her head. Helen ducked. The heavy brass base hit the wall, and the shade cartwheeled across the floor. The bulb shattered.

“Argggh!” Craig charged again, swinging the shattered chair back. The jagged edges made a weird and lethal weapon.

Helen slashed at Craig with the splintered chair leg, knocking the broken furniture out of his hands. She hit him so hard, the shock ran up her hand.

Craig yelped and crashed to the floor. Helen sprayed his eyes with alcohol, kicked the broken chair back away, and body slammed herself down on his chest.

“Oof!” he said as the air left his lungs. Craig’s eyes were squeezed shut and leaking tears. When he could talk again, he wheezed, “Ow, bitch. I can’t see. I’m blind.”

“Good,” Helen said. “You tried to kill me. Why did you kill Rhonda?”

“It was her fault. She made me do it. My eyes hurt.” Craig struggled to sit up. Helen clubbed him with the broken chair leg, and pointed the alcohol spray bottle at his red, watery eyes.

“Stay,” she said, as if he were an unruly dog. “Lie down and play dead.”

Craig stayed still as a corpse.

Her hand found a sharp shard of lightbulb, and she held it over his left eye. “How’d you like to be really blind?” she said.

Craig’s voice was a dry whisper. “We had a deal. Rhonda would search the hotel, and we’d split the money when she found it.”

“Some deal,” Helen said. “What did she get out of it?”

“I had the hotel plans,” he said. “I told her about good places to search—vents, ducts and unmarked storage areas. I gave her money for expenses.”

“Fake fifties,” Helen said.

“Hey, they spent just like real money. I told her to do anything, pay anyone, to find that cash. I’m a dead man if I don’t come up with it by next Thursday. I made a deal with some very bad people. The only reason I’m still alive is they knew the situation. Once I had Rhonda working for me at the hotel, they gave me a deadline to find it—or else. They said they’d cut my heart out and show it to me. I couldn’t run. They were watching me.”

“Did Rhonda know this?” Helen asked.

“She knew I was desperate. All she gave me was a bunch of excuses. Then I found that plane ticket in her purse. She was going to take my money and run.”

“No, that’s what you were going to do, Craig. You were going to abandon Rhonda as soon as she gave you the cash. Or did you always plan to kill her?”

Craig said nothing. Helen made a tiny cut in the tender skin under his eye with the broken lightbulb. Helen stared at the thin line of blood welling up in the cut. That scared her so much, the shard slipped from her fingers.