The Dark and Deadly Pool (11 page)

“Of course,” Mrs. Larabee said. “It was just a thought. Someone had to think of it, so I did.”

“I’ll call Detective Jarvis right now,” I said. I got up and turned to walk to the office, but there was Mr. Kamara scurrying toward me.

“Miss … Miss Young Lady,” he said, and came to a stop right under my nose.

“Mary Elizabeth Rafferty,” I said to him.

“Yes. Young lady, you saved my life yesterday.”

The way his eyes were drilling into mine made me embarrassed, so I stammered, “That’s okay. It wasn’t anything.” That sounded terrible, so I quickly added, “I mean, I’m glad I could pull you out in time, and I’m sorry you got hurt. But you don’t have to thank me.”

Then I felt my neck and face turn a hot red, because, of course, he hadn’t thanked me.

While I was trying desperately to think of the right thing to say, Mr. Kamara gave a bow and pulled a small
box from his pocket, thrusting it at me. “Please accept with my gratitude,” he said.

I took a step backward. “Oh, I can’t.”

“Oh, yes, you can,” Mrs. Bandini said.

“At least open the box and see what’s in it,” Mrs. Larabee said. “It looks like the kind of box they put jewelry in.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kamara,” I said, “but as an employee of the hotel I should not accept a gift from you.”

“Is there a rule?” Mrs. Bandini asked me.

“Well, no,” I said, “but it doesn’t seem right.”

“Is right,” Mr. Kamara said.

“After all, you saved his life,” Mrs. Larabee said. “You’ll hurt his feelings if you don’t take his gift.”

“Mr. Kamara, your thanks are enough,” I said.

“No,” he said stubbornly, making little jabbing motions with the box in my direction. “You take.”

“I think you are hurting his feelings,” Mrs. Bandini said. “You should accept it. Maybe you won’t even like it, but what could it hurt you to take it and say thank-you and let the poor man feel better? You can see how upset he is.”

That I could see, and I was feeling sorrier for him by the minute. So against my better judgment I reached out for the small box, said, “Thank you, Mr. Kamara,” and opened it. Inside, suspended from a thin gold chain, was a gleaming multicolored cloisonné locket about an inch wide and two inches long. “Oh!” I gasped. “It’s beautiful!”

Mr. Kamara smiled, but it wasn’t a smile of pleasure. It was more a flash of triumph, and it bothered me. Perhaps my expression showed my confusion, because he immediately became more friendly and nodded to Mrs. Bandini and Mrs. Larabee too. “Movie star picture inside,”
he said with pride, as though he had taken the shot himself.

“Thank you, Mr. Kamara,” I said.

He bowed once more, then turned and left the club.

“Let us see!” Mrs. Bandini had a hand out, so I put the box in it.

“A very nice gift,” she said. “I’ve seen these in the hotel gift shop and while, under the circumstances, it would be rude to tell you the price before taxes, you can take my word for it that it didn’t cost too much and not too little, so I consider this to be a perfectly respectable gift.”

“Put it on,” Mrs. Larabee said. “Let’s see how it looks.”

I took back the small box. “I can’t wear jewelry while I’m working,” I said.

Mrs. Bandini beamed at me. “It will look lovely when you’re all dolled up in a pretty summer dress and going out with a nice tall, good-looking boy—like my grandson Eric. Eric wants to meet you,” she added. “I’ve told him so much about you. In fact, I’m going to bring him to the club this weekend, so the two of you can become acquainted.”

I smiled at her over my shoulder as I practically raced back to the office. All I needed was a bigger, meaner version of Pauly at the club.

I unlocked the bottom desk drawer and tucked the little box into my plastic handbag, then locked it up again. The lull would soon be over. Tina would arrive with the new batch of photo-ID cards, and soon afterward the conventioneers would come, wanting to unwind after sitting in straight-backed chairs at meetings all day.

The file box was in front of me, so I decided to go
through the cards and see if any new faces had come in since yesterday. There were just three: a couple who looked happily bemused—yes, their room number showed that they were in the honeymoon suite—and an elderly man whose mouth turned down like an upside-down horseshoe and who peered out from under his bushy eyebrows like a fox from behind a hedge.

His wasn’t a new face. That was a face I’d remember, and I was positive that I’d seen it before. I was also positive that this card hadn’t been in the file yesterday. When had I seen it? Tuesday? Monday?

I needed to talk to someone, so I called the security office. Tina answered, and I told her about the card that had disappeared and returned.

“If you saw this man’s face, would you know if he was one of those who ran into a pickpocket somewhere in Houston?”

“Maybe,” Tina said. “What’s his name? I’ll check the ID file up here.”

“Samuel Smith,” I read from the card. “Suite 826.”

“Got it,” Tina said almost immediately.

“Well?”

“If he had any trouble with pickpockets, he didn’t report it.” Then she said, “That’s odd. Let me talk to Lamar. I’ll get right back to you.”

“What’s odd?”

“Lamar’s scribbled a little note at the bottom of Smith’s card.”

“What does it say?”

“I can’t decipher it. I think it says,
watch him.
”

“I wonder what it means.”

“That’s what I’m going to find out. I’ll let you know when I bring in the afternoon ID cards.”

“Thanks,” I said as Tina hung up. I closed the file and
picked up the note with the four circles drawn on it. I intended to toss it into the wastepaper basket, but I studied it again. There was something about it that nagged at me. Something familiar.

Fran appeared in the doorway. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I answered. Fran had the nicest smile.

“The Houston Symphony Orchestra’s going to be playing outdoors in Miller Theater on Sunday. I found out that’s your day off, and I switched with another guy so I’ll be off then too. I’d like to take you to the symphony. We could bring a blanket and some food and sit on the grass and—”

I didn’t hear another word he said. All of a sudden that crescent of circles made sense. It was like a symphony orchestra—the string instruments here, the wind instruments there, the drums … I jumped to my feet, ran around the desk, caught the toe of my tennis shoe on the desk leg, and stumbled into Fran’s arms.

“Oh, Fran! You’re wonderful! You did it! You did it!”

Fran staggered back but managed to stay on his feet. He helped me back on mine, looking very pleased with himself. “I knew that sooner or later I’d come up with something you’d want to do on a date,” he said.

I still held tightly to his shoulders. “No! Listen, Fran. Listen. It’s not the date. It’s what you said about the symphony orchestra. It’s those little circles we drew on the notepad. Don’t you see?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

I drew him closer. “Remember? You said that each of them stood for a separate crime. They weren’t related.”

He nodded. “Okay. I remember now. But what about them?”

“They’re like the parts of an orchestra, Fran. Each part is separate, but the conductor brings them together. The
different kinds of crimes that are taking place in the hotel could be tied together, too, if one person were conducting them!”

Fran gaped. “You might be right. But the conductor would have to be someone in the hotel.”

I lowered my voice and looked around. “Let’s tell Lamar about this.”

“We can’t do that,” Fran said. “The conductor might very well be Lamar.”

“Oh, not Lamar!” I said.

“Why not?”

“He’s so efficient. He cares about his job.”

“It could be a front. Who else would know as much about what goes on in the hotel?”

“The manager, Mr. Parmegan.”

“Okay. We’ll put him on our suspect list too. I can try to keep up with what he’s doing each day. He follows a pretty constant routine.”

Another thought occurred to me. “Why does the conductor have to be working at the hotel? Why can’t he be one of the guests? Mr. Kamara keeps a regular routine, too, and he was the one who knew Mr. Jones.”

“Okay. Mr. Kamara’s on the list, but I think you’re going off in the wrong direction.” Fran looked at his watch. “Uh-oh. I’ve been here long enough. I have to get back.”

He stopped at the doorway and turned. “You didn’t answer about the symphony tickets. Should I get them?”

“I’m sorry, Fran,” I began, but the eager look on his face stopped me. After all, listening to the Houston Symphony
Orchestra together wasn’t exactly a real date. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer you right away,” I finished. “Yes. I’d like to go with you.”

For a few moments Fran looked as pleased as a puppy when you scratch his tummy. Then he became serious. “I won’t see you tonight,” he said. “My aunt and uncle are visiting, and my mom made me promise I’d come home as fast as I could, so I could get in on the tail end of the party they’re throwing.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

“You bet,” Fran said, and vanished from the doorway.

I sat at the desk and picked up the sheet of notepad paper. In the center at the bottom, where the conductor would stand, I drew a small box, and inside the box I wrote the letter
K
, for Kamara. Then from that box I drew lines radiating out to each of the circles. Inside circle one I wrote
sofa.
Inside circle two I wrote
meat.
Inside circle three I wrote
stuff
, because naturally there wasn’t room to write things like silver and paintings and things like that. Inside circle four I wrote
PP
for pickpockets.

Now all I had to do was to figure out how Mr. Kamara could manage to orchestrate all these crimes. He’d have to have help. Where would he get it?
Sofa, meat,
and
stuff
left me blank. But on the line to circle four I wrote
Mr. Jones.
What if Mr. Kamara came into the health club office each day when no one was looking, stole some of the cards, gave them to Mr. Jones, who followed the people and stole their wallets? Then, the next day Mr. Jones could bring back the cards and Mr. Kamara could replace them.

There was something wrong with this.

Somebody was almost always in the office or nearby. It would be hard for Mr. Kamara to count on being able to
sneak in and out. And this was a large hotel. Lots of types of people stayed at this hotel. How would Mr. Kamara know which ones had wallets worth stealing?

Someone would have to know which guests had lots of money and which didn’t. Someone who would see guests opening their wallets, flashing their bills.

Floyd Parmlee? In room service?

I began to get excited. Floyd could tell Mr. Kamara. Mr. Kamara could tell Mr. Jones.

I let out a long sigh. Again I had come to a dead stop. How could Mr. Kamara get the cards in and out of the file box in the health-club office? I’d have to think about that one awhile.

But before I could work on it, two families of petite people came into the office. I recognized the mothers and fathers from their cards. There were half-a-dozen assorted children with the adults. Children rarely showed up on the photo ID’s, because—unless their parents were holding them—they were too short to be in range of the hidden camera. No one in the group seemed to understand English, but they understood smiles. I handed them towels and managed to separate them, getting them headed for the appropriate dressing rooms.

The stack of towels on the table near my desk was getting low, so I took more from the closet to add to the pile. Art Mart had apparently stuffed the towels on the closet shelves without any regard for neatness; so I straightened the pile.

“Mary Elizabeth! Where are you?”

The loud hiss in the office startled me. I jumped, dropping some of the towels, and stepped out of the closet.

Mrs. Bandini’s eyes were so wide she looked like a little gray-haired owl. “You have got to do something quick!” she said. “The Jacuzzi is filled with naked people!”

I followed her out of the office. The two families who had just come in filled the Jacuzzi. They were chattering and smiling, and bouncing the children from one to another.

They all looked at me. “Do any of you speak English?” I asked.

They just stared.

“Maybe you should call security,” Mrs. Bandini said, still in a stage whisper.

“I’ll try body language,” I said. “Maybe that will do it.” So I pointed at Mrs. Bandini, then gave a little tug at the strap of her red bathing suit. “This is a bathing suit,” I said.

They looked at each other, then back at me, and laughed as though I’d made a very funny joke. One of the women nodded and gestured at Mrs. Bandini to join them in the Jacuzzi.

So I went through the motion of removing clothes. They watched intently. Then I shook my head and pointed at the Jacuzzi, waiting to see if they understood. They laughed even harder.

I sighed. “I don’t know how to make them understand,” I said to Mrs. Bandini. “You’re right. I’ll have to call security.”