The Dark and Deadly Pool (9 page)

“Don’t try to make a mystery out of them.” Tina gave a loud yawn. “A lot of strange people wander in and out of a hotel.”

“But they asked nosy questions about Mr, Jones. Shouldn’t we do something about it?”

“There’s nothing to do. Except, I guess, if you see them again, let me know right away.”

“Did Lamar tell you that I tried to reach you earlier?”

“No. Anything important?”

“Yes,” I said. “That guy’s card. That Kurt Quentin Fraiser. It’s back in the file.”

“Forget him,” Tina said. “I have.”

“But, Tina—”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Tina said. “There’s no point in wasting time flirting with men from out of town. It’s an exercise in frustration and could eventually lead to a lower self-image if I’m not careful. I need a really positive self-image.”

“Tina—”

“I’m tired of being a poor nobody,” Tina said. “And it’s hard waiting to be rich and famous. Did I tell you that I’m going to be famous too?”

“Probably,” I said.

“Of course, if anyone really super comes in, I might make an exception.”

“Tina, about the cards—”

“Lamar’s coming back. I’ve got to tour the lobby. Talk to you later,” Tina said, and hung up.

I stared at the telephone for a couple of minutes. If Tina weren’t concerned about a card that was missing, then wasn’t, maybe I shouldn’t be either. I couldn’t help it. The whole thing made me feel uncomfortable.

A second wave of guests came into the hotel as the first wave dressed and went out for late dinners. Very few people wanted to swim outside at this hour, so the inside section of the pool was crowded with laughing, splashing bodies. Just tidying up after all those people was a full-time job, and most of them couldn’t read. I mean, people kept taking glasses into the Jacuzzi, even though right over their heads was a decorative sign asking them not to; and one out-of-shape businessman after another belly-slapped the water right under the sign that said
NO DIVING IN THE POOL, PLEASE
. Maybe whoever had painted the signs shouldn’t have included the word
please.
No one seemed to take the rules seriously.

By eleven o’clock, when the last guests had been politely edged out of the club, I had picked up at least two dozen towels from the floor and bench in front of the towel hamper, and made a collection of items that had been left behind and could be claimed in the office: two pairs of sunglasses, a paperback romance novel, four combs, one funky earring, and a very skimpy top of a bathing suit. It was certainly small enough. I could see how the owner could misplace it—even when it was being worn.

Fran came in one door of the office as I stepped through the other. His hair was neatly combed, and his smile was as bright as the bowl of daisies he thrust toward me.

“Thank you!” I said. “They’re beautiful!”

“And practically fresh too,” Fran said. “The people in 912 only had them two days before they checked out.”

“Secondhand daisies?”

“Bet you never heard of that before, huh?” His smile didn’t waver. I put the bowl on the desk as he added, “Where to?”

“Sit down,” I said.

“I thought we were going somewhere to talk.”

“We can talk right here.”

As he sat in the extra office chair his shoulders slumped just a little, his coat wrinkled, and his cowlick sprang into action. It was the most vivid case of disappointment I’d ever seen.

I sat across the desk from him and leaned forward, keeping my voice low. “Listen, Fran. This is business. Important business. I need to talk to you about the crimes going on at the hotel.”

“You need to talk to Lamar, not to me.”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t have any real facts to give Lamar, just feelings.”

“I can’t do much about your feelings. I’ve tried.”

“For one thing,” I said, “some of the cards in the file are missing, then they turn up again.”

He blinked a couple of times. “That’s a crime?”

“I don’t know what it is. It’s strange, and it must mean something.” He continued to look puzzled, so I said, “And then there’s all the valuable stuff that’s stolen from the hotel.”

“Like the two sofas?”

“The sofas make the third thing. Those so-called cleaning men didn’t take all the paintings and silver and stuff that Lamar told us has been disappearing.”

“So we’ve got three crimes? I don’t see—”

“Four. Don’t forget the meat. Lamar said roasts and turkeys were disappearing from the kitchen.”

For a few minutes Fran closed his eyes, nodded sagely,
and kept murmuring, “Um-hum, um-hum,” while I waited eagerly for what he would say. Finally he opened his eyes, looked at me, and said, “You realize that none of this makes a bit of sense.”

“But it has to!” I wailed.

“How? As far as we know, the men who said they were from a cleaning company had never been seen in the hotel before. There’d be no way they could take the smaller valuables. And if they walked into the kitchens and stole some of the roasts, they’d certainly be seen by some of the chefs. Do you know how many people work in the Ridley kitchens?”

He picked up a pencil and tore a sheet of paper off the pad next to the telephone. On it he drew three circles. “Here are your crimes,” he said. “You can see that none of them is related to the others in any way.”

I reached over and drew a fourth circle. The circles now formed a crescent shape. “Don’t forget the photo-ID cards.”

“What kind of a crazy criminal would steal cards from the photo-ID file and then bring them back?”

“Kurt Quentin Fraiser had his wallet stolen.”

Fran stood up, leaned toward me so that our noses were almost touching, and said, “Who is Quirt Kenton Fraiser, and what has his wallet got to do with anything?”

I leaned back and sighed. “I wish I knew.”

His voice became soothing. “You’ve been working very hard today, haven’t you?”

“Don’t patronize me, Fran.”

“Of course not,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere and get ice cream and talk about Quirk Frentin Kaiser’s wallet.”

“I want to go home.”

“Good idea. I’d like that,” he said. “Do you have plenty of ice cream there?”

I picked up the telephone and dialed the security office. Tina answered.

“Tina,” I said, “you told me that Quirk—uh—Kurt Quentin Fraiser had his wallet stolen.”

“Who? Oh … yeah. I remember. Yes, he did.”

“And his card was missing at the time.”

“Was it?”

“It must have been.”

“So?”

“So what about the others who’ve had their wallets stolen by pickpockets? What about their cards?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t checked on their cards.”

“Then maybe we’d better.”

“It’s all past tense. I don’t see how we can,” Tina told me. “Anyhow, it’s past time for my shift to end, and I’m leaving as soon as Lamar gets back to the office. Why don’t we just sleep on the idea and see if anything else develops?”

“That’s just an excuse to get out of doing anything tonight,” I told her.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “ ‘Sleeping on it’ is a valid way of allowing the subconscious mind to wrestle with a problem. It’s been verified by countless researchers.”

“Okay, Tina,” I said. “See you tomorrow afternoon.” I replaced the receiver and turned back to Fran. “Does it make sense now?”

“Yes,” Fran said. “You’ll be glad to know that I’ve stopped worrying about your mental condition.”

I had to smile at him. He looked like an elf that hoped he wouldn’t be stepped on. “Then why don’t we get the ice cream?” I asked.

None of the ice-cream shops were open, so we ended up buying two pints of double chocolate chip and a bag
of plastic spoons in an all-night Randall’s supermarket. We sat in Fran’s car in the store’s parking lot—under an arc light that turned our lips purple—ate the ice cream, and talked.

We didn’t talk about crime at the Ridley. We talked about ourselves. Fran had dreams too. He told me how intensely he had wanted to be an international ski champion and how hard he had worked until three years ago when his family had moved from Denver, Colorado, to Houston, where the only deep snow comes on Christmas cards.

“You don’t have to be tall to be a skiing champion,” Fran said. He looked off into space for a few minutes, and a glob of ice cream fell from his spoon back into the carton. I knew he was seeing himself soaring out over a ski jump, in perfect harmony with the earth and the sky.

I told Fran about my dream of conducting an orchestra. He listened seriously and said that he could understand. He wiggled over so that our shoulders touched. He wiped a smudge of ice cream off my chin, and with his spoon he scooped up a blob that had landed on my T-shirt.

“Sorry,” I said. “I tend to be clumsy. I’m always embarrassing myself.”

“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said. “You’re beautiful enough to get away with a little clumsiness.”

“Me? Beautiful?”

“Of course,” Fran said. He took my empty ice cream carton, tossed them both in the backseat, put his arms around my shoulders, and kissed me.

I liked his kiss. I wanted to snuggle right into it. Obviously, skiing was not the only thing that Fran was good at. But a message of reason kept poking me. This wouldn’t work. I couldn’t date a guy who was four inches
shorter than me! And what about my plan to hold out for what I wanted—for the best? If I let this go on, Fran would be hurt.

I squirmed all the way to the car door and reached behind my back for the handle. “It’s late,” I said. “Mom might decide to call me again. I’d better get home.”

Fran didn’t say anything. He just kept looking at me.

“Listen,” I said. “We’re friends. Okay? I don’t think we should let romance get mixed up in our friendship.”

“If I were a few inches taller, would you feel the same way?”

What could I say? That I have another dream? That I know somewhere out there is a handsome guy who is so tall that I’ll have to look up to him?

“Please, Fran,” I murmured, and wished with all my heart that Fran could have been that guy.

He sat up a little straighter, gave a shrug, and said, “I’ll follow you home to make sure you get there all right.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I don’t live far from here.”

“I know.” He smiled. “We can do this again—the ice-cream part, that is.”

“Sure,” I said, and climbed out of his car. Why did life have to be so darned mixed up?

The next morning I was too busy to think about anything except getting to the police station on time. I left Old Junk Bucket in the parking lot, hoping no one would think he was evidence in an accident case and tow him away. I had dressed in a light-blue tailored shirt and denim skirt, hoping to look so dignified that no one would mistake me for a criminal.

I had never been to a police station, and I suppose that I expected a scene out of one of the television cop shows. But inside the building everything was orderly. Some
well-dressed people, carrying briefcases, strode briskly through the small lobby and down corridors as though they knew exactly where they were going and had a great deal of work to get done. A few people, not so well dressed, who didn’t seem to know their destinations, were directed by a guard at an information booth. I quickly looked around, but no one was dragging in a screaming junkie, and nobody was yelling threats at anyone else. I’d have to remember to tell Fran that this was nothing like the shows on TV.

Someone came up beside me, and I heard the deep voice of Detective Jarvis. “You’re right on time, Mary Elizabeth,” he said. “Come upstairs with me.”

We stepped into an elevator with two men dressed in paint-splattered overalls and caps and a woman who looked like an ad in
Business Journal.
She gave me a sharp, speculative glance over the top rim of her glasses. It made me feel peculiar, so I leaned toward her.

“I’m not being arrested,” I whispered.

The men grinned at me. “
¡Bueno!
” one of them said, but the woman narrowed her eyes and pulled back behind her glasses the way a turtle pulls back inside his shell. I died until the elevator door opened.

“Watch your step,” Detective Jarvis said, leading the way from the elevator. I stumbled into the hallway after him.

He took me into a room in which a number of large scrapbooks were piled on a long wooden table. He pulled back a plastic-and-chrome chair, its legs squeaking against the linoleum-covered floor.

“Sit here,” he said, “and carefully go through these books. See if you recognize any of the faces. I’ve got a couple of things to do, and I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He walked out into the hall, leaving the door wide open.

The books, with their worn, heavy covers, smelled of stale cigarettes. I squirmed into a more comfortable position on the chair, opened the first book, and plunged into a whirlpool of faces. Page after page of faces. Each of them was different, yet pretty soon they all began to look alike. How in the world would I ever be able to find or recognize the two faces I remembered from the sofa theft?

Detective Jarvis swung around the door frame, leaning into the room. “Anything yet?”

“No,” I answered.

“Stick with it,” he said.

“Did Lamar Boudry do this?” I asked.

“Yesterday.”

“Did he find any of the guys?”

“We’ll talk about it later. I don’t want to influence you.”

So I went back to slowly turning pages, one book after another. I tried so hard, but again, all the faces began to blend together.

Until I suddenly saw someone I knew. I was so surprised that I let out a yelp.

Immediately Detective Jarvis was back in the room. He walked behind me and stared down at the book. “Got one?” he asked. He sounded surprised.

I shook my head. “Not one of the sofa thieves,” I told him, jabbing a finger at one of the pictures. “But this man—I know him! He comes to the health club every day. His name is C. L. Jones.”

Detective Jarvis pulled up another small chrome chair and sat in it, spilling over on both sides. He looked at the picture and at me with a strange expression on his face.

“C. L. Jones, you say.”

He paused, and I asked, “Is something the matter?”