The Hotel Detective (11 page)

“That arrogant jackass!”

Sharon made her announcement just outside room 711 and punctuated it by shaking her fist. Realizing there was a certain measure
of temper tantrum in her response, and that Am was watching her, she forced herself to be more collected.

Am was having second thoughts about his partner. She was actually human. Her personality seemed to have blossomed under the
California influence. Or maybe it was the potential murder that had brought out the best in her.

“He wasn't exactly encouraging, was he?”

“He was horribly condescending,” she said, “and that's something I find intolerable.”

They stepped into an elevator and started their descent. “But he did leave us an opening,” said Am.

“What are you talking about?”

“McHugh said it: Bring him the condom, and he'll put people on this case.”

The elevator doors opened. They walked out to a hallway

of people, so Sharon lowered her voice to a whisper: “But the condom wasn't in the room.”

“Which means what?”

“I can assure you, Am Caulfield,” she said, “that I am no expert on these matters, but I assume the thing was probably flushed
down the toilet.”

“Wrapper, too?”

“Presumably. Where else would it be?”

“You'd be amazed at what people throw from their balconies,” said Am. “Absolutely amazed.”

Sharon considered his implication. “But that would be like—like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“Depends,” said Am, “on where the condom landed. The Hotel uses a bulldozer to clear seaweed from the beach every morning.
But the stretch of sand just beneath the rooms gets raked by the grounds crew every day. They manicure the sand, give it a
special look, do everything but imprint the Hotel logo in it. Even a used condom wouldn't escape their notice.”

The glamour of their enterprise, Sharon thought, was dulling rapidly. “Not exactly a treasure hunt,” she said, screwing up
her face slightly.

Even Am had to concede that hunting for a used condom didn't rank anywhere near searching for a missing weapon. It might have
been evidence, but it was hard to envision it as desirable evidence. “Just think of it,” Am said, trying to put the best light
on the object, “as looking for a clue.”

Sherlock Holmes never solved any cases this way, thought Sharon, but Am was right. A clue was a clue, wasn't it?

Am could see her doubts and decided he should quote Chief Horton: “You don't look a gift horse in the mouth,” Am said, “and
you…”

He stopped himself before finishing with the Chief's, “And you don't fart into the wind.” The man truly wasn't quotable. The
break in his own wind wasn’t noticed, though; another voice had stepped in.

“Am! Oh, Am!”

Only Mary Mason could sound that excited. Am groaned. It wasn’t that Mary was a bad person. It wasn’t that she didn’t try
hard in her job. But her Pollyanna demeanor would have driven Norman Vincent Peale to take a poke at her. The word
perky
had been invented to describe Mary. A television game show hostess didn’t have anything on her, but if ever the right person
had been mated to the job, Mary was it. She was the Hotel’s social director. Mary was the one who led Hotel guests in limbo
lines and sing-alongs. She organized clam bakes and passed out the wood for the beach bonfires. As she was quick to tell everyone,
her job was “so much fun!”

“I was just about to page you, Am!” she bubbled. Mary was the only adult Am knew who really bubbled.

Am introduced Sharon to Mary and in the same breath tried to explain their need to run, but Mary wasn’t about to be denied
an audience.

“I just heard about Chief Horton,” she said, “and I can tell you that news threw me something terrible. Did you know the Chief
was supposed to talk to one of my groups today?”

“No, I didn’t Mary. Look—”

“Then I heard that you were serving in his place, and you know what I thought? Why, Am could give the same talk.”

She was more Valium than human, Am thought. “What talk, Mary?”

“Hotel security.”

Am’s first impulse was just to say no. His second was to protest that he hadn’t even had the job for twenty-four hours. He
settled on his third response: What group would possibly want to hear such a speech?

“Murder Mayhem Weekend, Am!” exclaimed Mary. “It’s upon us.”

Shit, he thought. Murder Mayhem Weekend. Of all the artificial events the Hotel sponsored, and there were hundreds of them,
murder mystery weekends were the worst. Imagine a high school pep rally going on for two days, and you had some idea of what
a hotel staff endured during such goings-on.

“Mary…”

“It’s important, Am. These things are so much fun, but sometimes they do seem a teensy bit unreal. This time we agreed to
inject a little reality at the onset of the event. Besides, it’s in their contract. Hotel security talk. See?”

Mary stuck a paper under Am’s nose. He purposely didn’t read it. “You’ll have to get someone else, Mary,” he said. “Kendrick’s
gone, and we’ve had a theft, and there was the suicide…”

“Don’t you think that suicide will fit marvelously into your talk?” she asked.

“Marvelously,” Am replied, deadpan. “Why, maybe we can even have a body thrown by the window when I’m referring to it.”

There were some people sarcasm shouldn’t be attempted upon. Mary clapped her hands. “Oh, that’s a great idea, Am! I’ll see
if I can get a dummy.”

“I was just—”

“The talk is scheduled at one o’clock in the Spindrift Room. You should see how they’ve set up for the luncheon! We’ve got
a bunch of Art Deco props. It’s very twenties. The actors will just love it.”

From what Am had been forced to witness in the past, the actors were about as subdued as Gilbert & Sullivan performers. They
went around reciting their speeches in mock operatic form and were as subtle in their posing as a troop of flashers.

“In fact, I'm going to help pick up the Murder Mayhem participants right now. They're coming by train. We're going to meet
them with a hearse caravan at the Del Mar station. That should be a scream!”

Lily Tomlin once remarked, “I hate to imagine what the creator of Muzak is thinking up at this very moment.” Am was certain
that same genius had come up with murder mystery weekends. The plots changed frequently, but the outcome was always the same.
A mock murder occurred at the onset of the gathering, and the guests had to figure out who the murderer was. Various clues
were offered during the course of the weekend, some valid, some red herrings. Sometimes the episodes were structured like
great scavenger hunts, with each clue leading the would-be sleuths to actors, who furthered them along in the puzzle. Am had
had to deal with the aftermath of misinterpreted clues and faulty detecting, had been forced to apologize for those would-be
detectives who had made nuisances of themselves to guests who weren't participating.

Amateurs, he thought. Walter Mitty complexes every one. He almost said that aloud before remembering that he himself was in
hot pursuit of a soiled condom. But this was different. This was real murder.

“But it wasn't only your speech that I needed to talk to you about, Am,” said Mary. “I just realized that there was something
else I should tell you.”

Am didn't like the tone of Mary's voice. She wasn't a deep thinker. Mentioning the advent of a nuclear war would be an afterthought
to her. “What?”

“The Murder Mayhem group is taking up a hundred and twenty-five guest rooms. Right now it's booked under the name of the Bob
Johnson Society, and I'm afraid that's where some confusion might occur.”

Am was watching her closely. There was something that wasn't ringing quite right in her “Up with People” act.

“You see,” she said, “I booked all the rooms under the name Bob Johnson.”

That wasn't unusual. Sometimes getting individual names out of groups was as easy as pulling teeth. Conventions often committed
to guest room space long before knowing the names of their attendees. Since time immemorial, hotels have been imploring groups
for their rooming lists, but more often than not the individual names are turned in late, sometimes at the last minute. It's
not uncommon for hundreds of rooms to be blocked under one name. In this case it was Bob Johnson.

“And there might be one eensie little problem.”

Am's eyebrows asked the question.

“The Bob Johnson Society is just that,” she said.

“Just what?”

“Everyone in it is named Bob Johnson.”

Mary kept talking. She didn't see Am's face changing. It looked something like Lon Chaney turning into the Wolf-man.

“As I understand it, a journalist named Bob Johnson founded the society,” she said. “Bob Johnson thought there ought to be
an annual gathering for people with his name. I guess it's about the most common name in the country, even more common than
John Smith.”

Am knew only too well that hotels had enough problems when two people with the same name were registered. Now he was facing
a situation where one hundred and twenty-five rooms were to be registered under the same name. The confusion promised to be
horrendous. The Hotel was projected to have six hundred and twenty-five rooms occupied that night. That meant that one in
every five guest rooms would be registered to a Bob Johnson. The potential for Bob Johnson chaos couldn’t be underestimated:
messages, and deliveries, and charges, and reservations were all waiting land mines. A plan had to be drawn up to mitigate
the Bob Johnson effect.

“Gotta run, Am,” said Mary. “Remember, one o’clock.”

Am was thinking desperately. At Mary’s retreating figure he had time only for a diversionary vision: murder. And not one that
had anything to do with the mystery weekend. Am turned to Sharon. She took in his despairing glance and offered sympathy in
return. The solace gave Am some strength. He found his voice.

“Find the condom,” he croaked. “Ask for Enrique. He’s the head groundskeeper. I’m going to…”

He made a feeble motion, searched for the appropriate words, then waved his hand in disgust and walked off. Ran even. Sharon
felt sorry for Am. But then she also felt a little sorry for herself.

Find the condom, he had told her. Nothing like being left holding the bag, she thought.

While he was rifling through the remains of the dead, Carlton came to the sobering conclusion that in addition to being a
murderer, he was now a grave robber. The thought was almost enough of a deterrent to stop his plundering, but not quite. Carlton
justified his actions by reasoning that he wasn’t really disturbing the dead. They were still in the closet. He was just going
through some of their hitherto untouched belongings that had been left in the room. David had strewn his wallet, and his Breitling
watch, on the bedstand, while Deidre’s pocketbook and her nylons had been thrown on top of the dresser. The items looked as
though they had been dropped rather hurriedly. That thought hardened Carlton to his search.

David’s wallet was full of green, and credit cards, and the telephone numbers of half a dozen women. As wallets went, the
inside contents were much like Carlton’s (except for the telephone numbers). There were no secret pictures, no surprises.

Deidre’s purse held more interest for him. Women and their handbags had always been a mystery to Carlton. At another time
he would have derived pleasure from doing just such a surreptitious search. What was in purses that produced so many bulges
and made them look so weighty? Carlton had never seen anything useful, like a Swiss Army knife, emerge from a purse. His observations
had yielded him glimpses of lip-stained Kleenex, fuzzy key holders, and appointment cards. Trembling slightly, Carlton dumped
the contents of Deidre's purse on the bed. She had been traveling with a cosmetics counter. There were also tissues, gum,
jewelry, hair bands, tampons, pictures (none of him, just of her sister and parents), pens, combs, lotion, sunblock, and a
checkbook/wallet.

Carlton knew where Deidre carried her mad money. She had dug through her purse on more than a few occasions in search of her
hoard. He had never understood her logic. Why hide money away when you know it's there? He opened the compartment and took
out her store of mad money. Usually there were a few bills inside. This time there were a number of Ben Franklins. He counted
ninety-six, almost ten thousand dollars.

Hundreds (or was that thousands?) of ideas popped into Carlton's head, plots and snippets from every hackneyed police show
he had ever seen. He could flee with the money and end up in Mexico. It was only a half hour drive south, and there was enough
money to keep him in margaritas for a long time.

Or better yet, he didn't even have to flee. He could bury the dead, and no one would be the wiser. There was plenty of room
on the Hotel grounds. Or in the sand. People were always digging holes in the sand for one reason or another. Or what if he
just flew back home? The police would have a hard time proving he was a murderer. Wouldn't everyone say he was the last person
in the world who could have done such a thing?

Enough, he thought. Carlton told himself the schemes were too repulsive to consider. He had never been the type to root for
the bad guys. When good didn't triumph in the films, he got downright annoyed. It wasn't right that the bad guys should ever
win. In his estimation the movie business had gone downhill ever since John Wayne had died. But that was Hollywood, always
twisting things, and thighs, around.

He would give himself up. That's what he would do. But when Carlton left the room, he made a point of posting the Do Not Disturb
sign on the door. He also didn't leave empty-handed. He took Deidre's wallet, and all of David's money, with him.

Enrique Albanil had been tending the Hotel’s grounds for twenty years. He was a swarthy man, his naturally dark complexion
baked an even darker brown from the long hours he had spent out of doors. All of Enrique’s workers were Latino, as he was.
His English was minimal, which was why Enrique had kept repeating, and amplifying, upon this strange woman’s request. What
she was asking didn’t seem to make sense in either Spanish or English, though.