Murder's Last Resort (12 page)

Chapter 39

We decided to break into Meeting Room C around midnight. I asked Jake to do the pre-mission legwork. As a Sapphire employee, he was able to pop his head in and ask the police if they needed anything from room service or housekeeping. They declined, but he used the moment to find out that they were packing up for the night around 10. He reported that the guys were still in there, but the vibes were very low key.

At 11:00 p.m., Lily, Jake and I were gathered together in my house, dressed in black and wearing tennies. We sipped at the strong cups of tea I had brewed before they arrived.

“I take it you want us to be alert,” Lily said, as she hoisted her cup and added, “Chin chin.”

“That was the general idea,” I answered.

“This tea is going to go right through us,” Jake said.

“That’s why we’re gathered here at 11:00 p.m. Plenty of time to have a case of nerves and get it out of our systems, so to speak. Did you ever notice that this house has five restrooms?” I answered.

Lily changed the subject. “What do you think we’ll find?”

“Probably some files we can copy. Let’s pray that the notes they took in the interviews are still lying around. They must have created files on everyone they interviewed and what about French? They may have some info on him that they’re not sharing.”

“You’ve probably had this same thought: even if they took great notes, would they know how to interpret them?” Jake asked.

“That, dear Jake,” I said, “is why we must find those notes.”

* * *

We walked through the reception area on the ballroom level. It was not a hot ticket at 11:55 p.m. We didn’t need a smoke bomb in order to create a distraction while we jimmied the door open with a crowbar.

No, this operation was a lot more laid back than that. Jake used his master key and the three of us waltzed right into the darkened room. We had brought flashlights so we wouldn’t have to put on the ceiling lights and call attention to ourselves if security strolled by. Once we were in, I took off the sweater I had tied around my waist and stuffed it into the crack under the door. We were free to roam, but I didn’t want to hang around too long.

Eureka! We found the files right away, stacks of them, filled with yellow legal sheets covered in handwriting. I was doing a victory dance when Jake began waving his arms like a scarecrow gone wild.

What did he want? Was he joining me in my dance? He put a finger to his lips. Then I heard it, my heart pounding like a bomb that might explode in my chest, as I held my breath. We all doused our lights. Footsteps paused in front of the door. I felt light-headed.
No, I can’t faint. I have to be strong.
Two men talked, rattled the doorknob, then moved on.

A minute later, Jake was the first to put on his flashlight. His pupils were enormous with fear. Lily was leaning against a desk with her face in her hands.

“That was too close for comfort,” Jake said. “Maya, Lily, go, go, go, go! Let’s each turn on a printer and make copies, then get the hell out of here before they come back.”

It took forever for those sleepy old printers to fire up but, when they did, so did we. We copied everything, then made like hockey players and got the puck out of there.

Chapter 40

It was Thursday morning. Florida sunshine streamed through the French doors of my bedroom and onto the bed, where I sifted through the photocopied files.

“Are you decent?” Jake asked through the bedroom door.

“Sometimes I’m profane,” I countered. “Come on in.”

“Good morning, Maya,” Jake said, as he elbowed his way in, carrying a tray with a teacup and fresh berries in a footed glass bowl.

“So, Jake, how is it we never got married?” I asked, thinking about how much I loved this man.

“Maya, Maya, Maya. Don’t you remember we’ve agreed never to speak of that?” he said.

“Oh yeah, that’s right. I’m missing the proper attachments. I remember now,” I answered with a smile.

He set the tray down and told me he was leaving for work. He gave me strict instructions not to leave the house nor to open the front door. I agreed and Jake left, just as the phone began to jingle.

It was David Enderly. He wanted me to come to the hotel to meet him for lunch in a few hours.

“What’s up, Dave?” I asked.

“I need your advice on something and I also want to tell you a few things. I’d rather not talk on the phone. Please meet me at La Croqueta.”

“Okay,” I said, hoping he’d have some insight on someone or something. I dialed Jake in his office. He said he would escort me to La Croqueta, our gourmet restaurant on the ballroom level.

That settled, I took my time looking through the files. I made separate stacks for each person interviewed and added notes of my own where applicable. There was a lot of reading but, in spite of that, I learned very little new.

I was disappointed that the police had not conducted thorough interviews with Alana and Mona, the two widows. Was this the Achilles tendon of southern gentlemen? I had no such weakness and became determined to speak to Alana and Mona myself.

When Jake came for me, he asked what I had found in the files.

“Next to nothing,” I admitted.

“That’s a disappointment,” he said. “And to think, we nearly died of heart failure getting them.”

“Yup,” I said, discouraged.

“Did they have any news on French?” Jake asked in a hopeful tone.

“Nope,” I said.

* * *

We entered the restaurant and Jake talked to the maitre d’, Enzo Rossini. Soon we were following him to Enderly’s table. Dave rose, shook hands with Jake, gave him the obligatory invitation to join us and Jake did the ritual, “No, no, I couldn’t—I have too much work to do, but thank you,” before he left.

“Hi Dave, what’s up?”

“You’re asking me?” he said, with a puzzled look in his eyes. “I invited you here to ask you the same thing. I was only hoping I could wheedle some information from you.” He looked around like a cornered animal. “I am not up to this challenge, Maya. That’s off the record, of course.”

I nodded but didn’t interrupt what seemed like it was going to be a good rant.

“First Torrey, then Vacaar are murdered, then you get shot. What in the hell is going on here? This is supposed to be a resort, a place where people come to relax and play with their families. How can we expect people to keep coming here, when people are dying and getting shot?” He spoke quietly, yet I could hear a thin edge of hysteria in his voice.

“I want to ask you something, Maya.”

“Sure.”

“Have you ever heard anything about Frankie Messina being connected to the mob?” Dave again looked around, as though he were being watched.

“Sounds corny, doesn’t it?”

“I’m serious,” he said.

“Okay, Dave, I’ll be straight with you. Yes, talk like that does follow him around. He’s always given me the creeps,” I added.

“I knew it!” Dave said, with a note of satisfaction in his voice.

The waiter interrupted and took our orders, not that I expected to eat much. Dave’s angst was contagious and this conversation was making me tense. Was that an itch I felt on my torso?

Just then, I saw Dave’s wife, Margie, out of the corner of my eye. She walked up to our table and asked if she could join us. David said yes, then jumped up and kissed her cheek, pulling out a chair for her to be seated.

Margie enquired as to my wellbeing, clucking sympathetically and showing great interest in my bandaged arm. The waiter took her order and I asked her about her kids and school. She went on and on about them. Then, she told me about their summer sports programs and what good swimmers they were.

The more she talked, the more uncomfortable Dave looked. I reckoned he had told her everything that had happened at the hotel. Now that she was sitting with us, he was afraid she would give something away that was supposed to be confidential.

Did it matter? Soon, with the police taking the files downtown, everything would be all over Orlando. She continued to babble, while we waited for our lunch to arrive.

La Croqueta served a shrimp scampi salad that approximated poetry. Tableside, the maitre d’ prepared and then served me prawns with shiitake mushrooms on a bed of aioli-drizzled fiddleheads. The delicate aroma of herbs and seasonings happily distracted me from David’s tension and Margie’s ceaseless chatter.

Truth was, she was a little annoying. She was even more bright and bubbly than her normal perky self. Come to think of it, she had been nearly giddy every time I had run into her lately. For someone whose husband was working around the clock, she was far too happy. The obvious thought came to me—maybe she was glad that David was seldom home these days.

Was it my imagination or did her face light up while Enzo prepared my scampi? I wanted to warn her. I wanted to tell her about being a hotel wife, but I could no sooner do that than teach her Russian verb conjugations over coffee and dessert. Every hotel wife had to find out these things on her own.

She was either in it for the long haul, and learned to adjust to lots of alone time by building friendships with other hotel wives and filling her days with playing tennis or golf, getting manicures and pedicures and going to endless lunches with the gals, or she turned into a bitter little side show.

She could cultivate a public persona as the accessory to a high profile man by devoting herself to meaningful charities and fundraisers, improving her husband’s and her own standing in the community, or she could ignore propriety and do her own thing, something she might later regret.

A good hotelier didn’t notice his wife’s loneliness. His hotel was his life, his work, his wife and his mistress, all rolled into one. A hotel could keep a man busy every day of his life, around the clock, and could provide a bed at night, too.

Every transfer from one property to another meant a fresh start from the ground up. Hotel wives paid their dues over and over again until their Honorary Lifetime Moving and Re-Locating cards lost their magnetic strips and had to be replaced. Still, it was a step up from being a suburban housewife.

The hotel life included hobnobbing with politicians, dignitaries, royalty, the rich, the famous, and the very rich and the very famous. Turn down service and mints on the pillows each night weren’t bad, either, unless you fell asleep on them, drunk, like Philip Trotter once did. He woke up in the morning, looked in the mirror and began to scream. He thought his left ear had hemorrhaged and death by brain tumor was imminent.

I wanted to tell Margie about my own near-death hotel wife experience. I wanted to tell her about a Rooms Exec in Aruba, who had been attentive and solicitous while French worked himself into exhaustion, getting the first mega Sapphire Resort in the Caribbean off the ground. Mr. Rooms Exec was Johnny-on-the-spot and always at my side with tea, sympathy, Remos Fizzes and open-topped jeep rides along the empty highways that followed the coastline of the rocky, little island. While French worked twenty-four hours a day in the resort, this man gave nearly the same amount of time to working on me.

Johnnycakes was aboveboard and on the up and up until one evening that ended with a midnight ride in a classic, convertible XKE. My guard was down as we sat, watching the waves lap against the shore. I felt a tender kiss on the nape of my neck and it felt good. With a sick shiver, I realized I had to get back to French—now. I belonged with him and not this bottom-feeder.

I wanted to say to her, “Margie dear, I know how easy it is to feel flattered by someone’s attention, when Mistress Hotel takes your man, wraps him in her velvety black-out drapes and fluffy down comforters, leaving you alone at home, night after night.” But I knew she wouldn’t hear me. She had to walk this road alone, make her own decisions.

These were my private thoughts at lunch as Margie’s doe eyes followed Enzo around the restaurant. Enzo’s interest in Margie, every time he visited our table, was also unmistakable. Dave was oblivious to the vibe. When the absurdity of the situation became too much for me, I looked the other way and right at a piece of Death by Chocolate, a signature Silver Pines torte.

Dave, Margie and I shared a slice of the hazelnut and truffle concoction with espressos on the side. Nobody’s troubles, not Dave’s, Margie’s, Enzo’s or even my own, were ever worth missing a good dessert.

Chapter 41

When lunch ended, I called Jake and he walked me back to the house. He checked each room, closet, bathtub and under each bed, then gave me a sweet little kiss on the forehead and locked me in. I said goodbye to him and was flooded with a wave of sadness.

Why were two Sapphire guys dead? Why was French still AWOL? Why was I here alone with my arm in a sling and my spirits in a slump? Why did Margie have to look so happy every time Enzo walked by? Why was David so blind to it?

I knew the answers. They had to do with hotels, ambition, sleazy men, neglected women, greed and personal grudges. Those were the biggies. Why then, could I still not put any meaningful clues together and find the murderer? I felt like a great big flop, a loser and a lonely one at that.

Normally, this would be a perfect time to throw myself a little pity party; I could feel my throat start to constrict and the tears welling, but the phone rang and ended all that. I cleared my throat and said, “Hello?” a few times to the beams in the ceiling before I picked up the phone for real. No use in sounding desperate for a call; it might ruin my image.

French! It was French! Could it be true?

“French, I can’t believe it. Is it really you?”

He sounded unlike himself. His voice was muffled and it came from far away. “Maya, Maya, it’s the man in the moon,” he half-rumbled, half-spoke.

Why was he using this silly code? I knew it was him. “I hear you. Where are you?” I managed to blurt out but he spoke right over me.

“Meet me late tonight, early tomorrow, in the wee hours. The wee hours.”

“Okay. Sure.” I knew which wee hours he meant. All I needed was a place.

“Meet me where the egret spreads his white, feathered wings. Alone. Tell no one.”

“Okay,” I said, but he was already gone.

I got it. I knew he was keeping it brief, in case the line was tapped.

I was so excited, I wanted to scream out loud. I didn’t dare. Who knew what else was bugged around the house? Instead, I locked myself in the bathroom, turned on the shower full blast and, with the water rushing like winter run-off from the top of Mt. McKinley, I laughed, yelled, whooped and hollered and did a little Maya dance of joy.