The Dark and Deadly Pool (7 page)

“May I help you?” I asked them.

“No,” the greasy-haired one said, but the other nudged him.

“Maybe,” he said. “There was a guy who left here a little while ago. Kind of skinny and stooped.”

“Wearing a gray suit,” the first man added.

They had to mean Mr. Jones, but I didn’t see any reason to answer their questions. I didn’t know who they were. I just stared at them until Greasy said, “You know who we’re talking about?”

“Are you guests of the Ridley Hotel?”

“What’s that got to do with anything? Do you know the guy’s name, or don’t you?”

“I’m sorry, but this club is for hotel guests and members only.”

“This guy in the gray suit—did he meet anybody here?”

“I’ll have to ask you to leave the health club if you’re not hotel guests,” I said firmly.

“Are you going to answer our question?” Greasy asked.

“I’ve got a good idea,” I said. “I’ll call our chief of security. You can ask him.”

“She doesn’t know anything,” one man muttered to the other.

They gave one last look around the room and left.

I decided I’d better talk to someone in security, and Tina was closest. She was perched on the edge of a lounge chair animatedly chatting with the man with the brown hair. I opened the glass door and beckoned to her. She nodded and stood up.

As I walked back to the office I noticed that Mr. Kamara was accepting a tray from Floyd. Their heads were together, and Mr. Kamara was complaining about something. Floyd looked unhappy. I supposed, from what I’d heard, that Mr. Kamara was awfully difficult to please.

He was such a predictable person, always doing the same thing over and over. Some people really fall into ruts in their lives. Since coming to work at the health club I’d noticed that each afternoon, around three o’clock, Mr. Jones came to the health club, chatted with Mr. Kamara, and left. Then about a half hour later Mr. Kamara called room service for something to eat, and
Floyd brought it. In a little while Mr. Kamara would go for another swim, then leave the club. During the late evening hours he’d be back for another swim. According to Deeley, Mr. Kamara had a morning swim and Mr. Jones usually joined him for coffee by the pool. Same dull pattern every day. Didn’t he ever want to do something more interesting?

Tina joined me in the office. “His name is Kurt Quentin Fraiser. He’s from New Jersey, and he’s here on computer business, but all he can talk about is how much he hates Houston and how dangerous the city is, which shows a decided lack of social perception and ability to relate to the inner needs of others.”

“Why does he feel so horrible about Houston?”

“His wallet got lifted while he was out with some business associates last night.”

“You told me that happened to a lot of the guests here.”

“1 know, but they can’t blame the Ridley, because it doesn’t happen at the hotel, and they shouldn’t blame Houston, because pickpockets are at work in every city of the world.”

“Did he call the police?”

“Of course, and had to go through all the work of informing credit-card companies, which is a big nuisance. Which reminds me—speaking of cards, if he’s going to be here all week, then what about his card? It should be—”

“Tina,” I interrupted, “listen for a minute. There were two men here asking questions about Mr. Jones and who he was and if he met anyone here. They didn’t belong here. I think you should find out what they’re up to.”

Immediately Tina was all business. “What did they look like? Give me a good description.”

I thought hard, trying to remember their faces. “They were about so-so tall. One was kind of yucky, the other was a greaseball.”

Tina rolled her eyes. “Color eyes? Color hair? What were they wearing?”

“Oh,” I said, and told her what little I could remember. She immediately trotted toward the hotel.

A woman poked her head in the doorway. “My little girl dropped her doll in the pool,” she said. “If I dive for it I’ll ruin my hair. Can you fish it out?”

“Certainly,” I told her. I took the long pole with the round, taut net and followed her to the shallow end of the pool. It took just a few minutes to fish out the doll. The little girl grabbed her baby and hugged it.

“Say thank-you,” her mother said.

But the child turned and ran away. Her mother strolled after her.

“Some children have no manners,” Mrs. Bandini clucked.

I saw some leaves floating at the side of the pool, so I used the net to fish them out.

“When it’s windy the leaves from outside fall into the pool,” Mrs. Larabee said. “Wait till it’s windy. You’ll get a lot of work fishing out leaves.”

I looked up at the ficus tree nearby. “The trees in here don’t seem to drop many of their leaves.”

Mrs. Bandini and Mrs. Larabee chuckled as though they shared a great joke. “That’s because the ficus trees aren’t real,” Mrs. Bandini said.

I reached out and touched the tree’s trunk. “It feels real.”

“Oh, the trunk and branches are from a real tree. That’s what makes them look like they’re live ficus trees. But if you look closely you can see that the leaves are silk
and glued on.” Mrs. Larabee looked smug. “Most people would think what you thought, but we know better.”

I glanced around at the other plants. “Are the others fake too?”

“Don’t say ‘fake.’ ” Mrs. Bandini leaned forward, her voice barely above a whisper. “ ‘Fake’ is for cheap plants. Say ‘artificial.’ It has more quality, and believe me, you couldn’t touch these ficus trees for under $298 apiece.”

“The other plants are real,” Mrs. Larabee said. “But ficus are hard to grow inside and they make a terrible mess with leaves all over the place, so that’s why these are artificial.”

I had my mouth open to ask another question, but Tina suddenly burst through the hotel door and loped to where I was standing. “Liz!” she said. “The manager is furious, and Lamar is furious, and you’re a witness.”

“A witness? To what?”

“To the thieves,” she said. “A couple of hours ago someone stole two of the hotel’s valuable antique sofas!”

I have never been ordered to march myself to the principal’s office, but I could always imagine how horrifying the experience must be. Being sent to the Ridley Hotel manager’s office was just as terrifying. I mentally practiced what I would do and say. I would smile graciously, charmingly, and introduce myself with dignity. After all, what was I so scared of? I hadn’t done anything.

As I entered the office three men slowly rose and stared at me.

The office was large enough to have a sofa-and-chairs-conversation grouping at one end and a desk at the other. The walls and upholstery were in blues and corals and grays, all brightened by the glass window-wall at one side. A huge bouquet of real flowers was at one end of the desk, and another bouquet on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The flower tones mirrored the soft room colors.

So did one of the men. He wore a light wool gray suit with a coral-and-gray-striped tie. I assumed he was the manager, so I said, “I’m Mary Elizabeth Rafferty, sir.” I held out a hand and took a large step forward, banging
my shin into the coffee table and toppling the small vase of flowers. Deftly I caught them, righted them, and held out my hand again.

He didn’t shake my hand. He just made an impatient motion, as though I were a fly he’d like to shoo away, and sat down. The other two men immediately sat down. Nobody asked me, but I sat down too.

“You know Mr. Boudry,” the manager said, “and this is Detective Jarvis from the Houston Police Department.”

I nodded to Lamar, whose solemn facial expression didn’t change, and to the detective, who didn’t seem to fit either in the chair or in the dark-blue suit he was wearing. His shoulders were as broad as a football player’s, and what was left of his hair was sun-bleached.

“I’m sorry, but no one has ever told me
your
name,” I said to the manager.

“I am Mr. Lewis Parmegan,” he said.

“How do you do, Mr. Parmegan. I’m Mary Eli—”

“So I have been informed,” he said. “I have also been informed that you arrived at the Ridley at the same time as the men who came to pick up the sofas.”

His eyes darted like little spears in Lamar’s direction. A muscle in Lamar’s chin twitched. He must have been terribly upset.

“They claimed they had an order to clean the sofas,” I said. “I don’t understand what happened. Did someone steal the sofas from them?”

Detective Jarvis leaned toward me. “It was a bogus operation,” he said. “The men who took the sofas simply posed as cleaners. They had no order to clean the sofas. They used the trick to steal them.”

“That’s awful!” I said.

“Can you give us descriptions of the men?” he asked.

I leaned back in my chair and thought a moment. “Yes,” I said. “I didn’t pay much attention to the driver of the truck, so I can’t tell you anything about him. There were four men who came inside the hotel with me. Two were just ho-hum, one was kind of a yuck, and the other was about an eight.”

Detective Jarvis looked up from the pad he had balanced on his knee and licked the end of his pencil. “What does that mean?”

“Be specific,” Lamar snapped.

“Like color of hair and that kind of stuff?”

“Exactly.”

I wish Fran had been with me. He probably would have remembered. I had to think hard. “Okay. Two of the men were the kind who show up in a group picture at a company picnic and somebody says, ‘Who are those guys?’ only nobody remembers that they were even there at all. That’s what they looked like.”

Mr. Parmegan gave a sigh. “Height? Weight?”

“The same.”

They all stared at me, and I added, “I mean, who’d notice? Kind of average.”

The detective shifted, and his chair creaked. “How about the other two? Anything you could identify about them?”

“Let’s see—the man with the clipboard. He was kind of a dandruffy type with a moustache that should have been sent to the cleaners. Jowls too.”

“What color moustache?” Detective Jarvis asked.

“Dirty.” He just looked at me, so I tried to elaborate. “Maybe brown-dirty. I can’t remember.”

“Anything else?”

“He was the yuck,” I said.

“How about the fourth man? He’s the eight?”

“Right.”

Mr. Parmegan shook his head. “Wait a minute. We established there were only four inside the building, not eight.”

“Eight, meaning on a scale of one to ten,” I told him. I was getting warmed up now. “He was about six one, with sandy hair that curled up just a smidgen where it was long on his neck, and a dimple in the middle of his chin, and blue eyes, and broad shoulders, and his ears were just a little bit pointy, which was kind of cute.”

“Weight?” Detective Jarvis was writing as fast as he could.

“Perfect.”

Lamar scowled at me. “We are asking for specifics.”

“Specifically, I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t weigh him. I just fell under him.”

Detective Jarvis looked as puzzled as Mr. Parmegan, so I hurried to explain what had happened.

“Just what did you hear the men say?” the detective asked, so I told him what I remembered.

“Did you see Mr. Boudry sign the order form?”

The manager was glaring at Lamar as though the whole thing were Lamar’s fault. I felt sorry for him. I said, “No, I didn’t.”

“Thank you, Miss Rafferty. You may go now,” the manager said.

But I wasn’t ready to go. “Don’t blame Mr. Boudry,” I said. “The men couldn’t have stolen the sofas if Mr. Parmegan didn’t leave for lunch at the exact same time every day.”

“What?” Mr. Parmegan’s mouth popped open and stayed open.

“Sure,” I said. “Their plan wouldn’t work if Mr. Parmegan had been available. They had to know he
wouldn’t be on hand. I’d guess that somebody in the hotel, who knew Mr. Parmegan’s schedule, worked it all out.”

Detective Jarvis licked his pencil point again and smiled at me. “Good thinking,” he said.

But Mr. Parmegan scowled at Mr. Boudry so hard that his forehead almost met the end of his nose, and his words peppered the room like BB shot. “Mr. Boudry is one of those who know my daily schedule.”

“So does nearly everyone who works at the Ridley,” Lamar answered.

“Especially Mr. Parmegan,” I added.

“Thanks for your help, Mary Elizabeth,” Detective Jarvis said. “We may want you to look at some mug shots later, but for now you can get back to work.”

Again I thought about that gap in the walls outside the pool area. There didn’t seem much point in telling Detective Jarvis, since the gap had nothing to do with the theft of the sofas, so I kept my mouth shut.

Lamar and Mr. Parmegan didn’t notice when I left the office. They were too busy studying each other with deep suspicion.

I hurried back to the health club. Since we didn’t have a lifeguard, it wasn’t mandatory that someone be on duty every single minute, but the guests liked it better if one of us was there to smile at them and hand them a towel as they checked in, and Lamar liked it better if we checked names and faces with the photo-ID cards and made sure that no one sneaked in.

But I hadn’t needed to worry. Art Mart was slouched down in the desk chair, admiring his long, muscular legs, which were stretched out in front of him. He barely glanced up as I came into the office.