Matt Shaw’s stomach churned.
Not another glitch. The
sales conference he’d spent the last six months organizing was already off to
a terrible start. He’d woken to
discover that an April storm had settled in during the night,
bringing--already--three inches of rain and a raft of delayed flights.
And the people who had managed to get there were complaining to
anybody who would listen.
And now Karen Winkelhoffer was lumbering toward him
with an absolutely frantic expression on her chubby face.
Somebody had probably slipped on a wet patch of floor and broken their
neck--or worse.
At least she understood how important the conference
was to him. That was something to
be thankful for. She’d only come
on board a month ago, and when she showed up for the interview, his first
thought had been to send her back to Human Resources and tell them to keep
looking. But he’d been desperate
since Lorraine had her accident. He
wasn’t like those guys at his level who insisted on having a bit of eye candy
parked outside their offices, but still, Karen had to be at least two hundred
pounds overweight. How could a
person even be healthy like that?
And today she’d turned up in an alarming bright-red
suit. Was that the fashion now?
To flaunt how huge you were?
“Matt,” she panted as she got closer.
“We have a big problem.”
“Oh?” He
tried to say it calmly. People
expected the boss to be calm, no matter what, and he was the director of sales
training.
He took her by the arm and led her behind a potted
ficus tree. “What’s going
on?” The hotel lobby was
swarming with wet people who were already upset.
He certainly didn’t want anyone to suspect that he wasn’t on top of
things.
“There’s been a robbery.”
He felt his stomach lurch like he was on a roller
coaster. Everybody at Conglomerated
Computer Services made fun of the Regency TravelTel because it was right next to
a prison. Some people called it the
Regency Travel Hell; even his boss called it that. But Matt had a department budget to balance, and the
TravelTel was decent and economical.
“What kind of a robbery?” He was amazed that his voice sounded normal, given the state
of his intestines.
“A ring,” she gasped. “Stolen out of a room.
Barbara LaSalle’s room--you know, she’s that woman from Dallas.
She says it’s worth $15,000.”
“Where is she now?” he asked.
“She’s talking to Mr. Bertram.”
David Bertram was the hotel manager.
Matt sighed. “I
guess I’d better go see what the story is.”
*
* *
Karen followed him through the lobby.
He looked so worried, and she didn’t think he deserved to be worried,
not the tiniest bit. She still hadn’t gotten over the thrill of that day a month
ago when he looked at her across his desk, smiled his wonderful sweet smile, and
said, “I’ll see you first thing Monday morning.” It had been March then.
So appropriate for a new beginning.
She hadn’t been able to believe her good fortune:
an administrative assistant job at Conglomerated Computer Services.
Even the building was perfect: soft carpets; plants--real plants, not
plastic; music everywhere you went, even in the restroom.
Not quite as glamorous as it would be to work across the river in
Manhattan, but so much better than the Garfield Department of Public Works.
Boy, had she enjoyed giving them notice.
And throwing that lazy, mean Frank out of her apartment.
She didn’t need a supposed boyfriend calling her “Miss Piggy.”
She knew she was fat.
*
* *
As Barbara LaSalle laid a carefully manicured hand on
Matt’s sleeve, Karen looked down at her own hand. She’d painted her nails bright red last night, to go with
the red suit she’d bought at Mandee’s especially for the sales conference.
But Barbara LaSalle’s nails weren’t red, she
noticed. They were pale, like
natural nails, except they kind of glowed and the tips were even paler, almost
white. The hand went with
everything about her: the slim navy suit, the smooth blond hair, the heavy drift
of expensive perfume.
“Yes,” Barbara LaSalle was saying, “right out
of my room while I was in the Fitness Center this morning. I couldn’t go jogging because of this damn rain.”
She glanced back and forth between Matt and David Bertram.
It’s like I’m invisible, Karen thought.
But she had to stay, in case Matt needed her.
He looked kind of sick. She
could tell that he was trying to act like everything was under control, but it
was obvious that he was really upset.
“The hotel does have insurance, doesn’t
it?” Barbara LaSalle said.
“I--of course,” David Bertram said.
“Let’s go into my office.”
As the group moved down the hall, Karen followed.
“It’s OK,” Matt said, turning to her as they
reached the door. “You don’t
have to stay. In fact, they might
be needing you back at the sign-in table. I
think we’ve got twenty or thirty more people showing up, assuming their plane
can even land.”
Karen lingered just long enough to hear Barbara
LaSalle’s answer when David Bertram asked her what time she’d been in the
Fitness Center. Between ten and
eleven, Barbara said.
Odd, Karen thought, as she headed back toward the
sign-in table. Odd, she thought
again as she passed the door of the Fitness Center.
Odd, she thought for the third time as she opened the door and peered
inside.
It was a tiny room, only big enough for a few
machines and a treadmill, not nearly big enough for somebody to disappear, even
somebody as skinny as Barbara LaSalle.
The thing is, Karen had been there once today
already. Heading out of the
building for a quick cigarette break, which she’d taken under a dripping
awning by the entrance to the hotel’s restaurant, she’d seen the words
“Fitness Center” and paused to look inside.
She wanted to compare it to Lady Slim, the gym on Midland Avenue in
Garfield that she’d just joined. Now
that she’d left the Garfield DPW behind and gotten rid of Frank,
maybe . . . just maybe, she could lose some weight.
Stranger things had happened.
That cigarette break had taken place at ten-thirty,
right smack dab in the middle of the time that Barbara LaSalle said she’d been
exercising. Except she hadn’t
been in the Fitness Center, not that Karen had noticed anyway.
Karen checked her watch. Maybe she’d grab a quick cigarette now. If twenty or thirty more people were showing up, she’d have
a long stretch at the sign-in table before she could escape again.
As she stepped out the side door and pulled her pack
of Virginia Slims from her purse, a plump woman in a tidy blue polyester
pantsuit and a laminated name tag stepped out after her.
“Not here,” she whispered, gesturing toward Karen
with a hand that already held a cigarette.
David’s a fusspot about the butts.
Follow me.”
As they shared a companionable smoke on the loading
dock, huddled against the wall to stay dry, the woman introduced herself as
Connie Sanchez, the housekeeping manager.
When Karen got back to the sign-in table, she was
greeted by a cheerful hubbub. A
small army of men in white shirts and black pants and women in white blouses and
black skirts were arranging hors d’oeuvres on a long table covered with a
starchy white cloth. Behind a bar
that had appeared out of nowhere, a bartender was deftly twisting a cork from a
bottle of white wine.
Everything was there--plates with huge wedges of
cheese; baskets overflowing with crackers; platters holding delicate open-faced
sandwiches; puffy things sliced in half and reassembled with creamy spreads and
bits of shrimp or ham.
People were grumbling about the weather, especially
the ones who had flown in from places like Florida and California.
And they were already gossiping about the stolen ring.
Honestly, Karen thought, it sounds just like the Garfield DPW.
Wouldn’t high-class people, with their expensive clothes, their perfect
hair and teeth, their well-toned bodies, be above gossip?
But no, right near her, a woman who looked like she
had stepped out of the pages of one of those beautiful magazines they had at
Karen’s new expensive hairdresser was saying to another, “That’s what
comes of having this at the Travel Hell. With
all the money we make for Conglomerated, you’d think they could be a little
more generous. And you’d think
they’d have learned from experience.”
“It’s happened before?” the other woman said.
“Laptops.” The
first woman nodded sagely. “Out
of car trunks. And people get their
pockets picked in the bar.” She
reached for one of the puffy things with the creamy spread and shrimp and popped
it into her carefully lipsticked mouth. Karen
loved shrimp, deep fried especially, but even like this they’d be good. . . .
“It’s that prison. . .” The woman gestured vaguely with another shrimp puff, like she
was pointing toward something but didn’t quite know what direction to aim.
“They’re all locked up, aren’t they?” the
other woman said, looking alarmed.
“Of course--but their relatives come to visit
them.” She ran her tongue over
her teeth like she was trying to dislodge something, then she swallowed.
“Now, let me ask you. What
kind of people have relatives in prison?”
Karen looked away, wondering if Matt had heard any of
the gossip and trying to fight down the desire to grab a plate and put together
a wonderful snack to see her through until she could go home to dinner.
That would ruin the whole plan, she knew--the plastic
bags of carrots and celery, the pile of Diet Gourmet dinners in the freezer, the
gym membership. Just thinking about
the gym made her shoulders ache. How long would it take before she could work out on those
terrible machines and not feel crippled the next day? Especially that thing they called the elliptical glider.
It just seemed to torture every muscle she possessed, and all at the same
time. Maybe she could switch to
something else. Maybe it wasn’t really all that essential.
They didn’t even have one in the TravelTel Fitness Center.
Thinking about the Fitness Center made her remember
Barbara LaSalle, and the curious thought that had pricked at the corner of her
brain when Barbara LaSalle mentioned what time the ring had been stolen.
Something was fishy about the woman.
And come to think of it, the sound of her voice, that Texas twang, had
reminded Karen that Barbara LaSalle was the person she’d had a whole annoying
hassle with even before the conference began.
She’d suspected then that the woman was up to something.
And there she was now, standing by the hors
d’oeuvres, just looking around, not talking to anybody.
The perfect opportunity.
Karen made her way to the table, fought back the
impulse to grab a plate and load it with shrimp puffs, and turned casually
toward Barbara LaSalle, whose perfume was so strong that it almost drowned out
the tempting smells coming from the platters of food.
“How’d things work out with the hotel
insurance?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet,”
Barbara LaSalle murmured and edged away like she didn’t want to talk,
at least not to Karen. She was
still wearing one ring, a wedding ring apparently.
It was just a plain band, and on her left hand.
“You must exercise a lot,” Karen said, hoping she
sounded admiring and not just jealous. Barbara
LaSalle seemed to be ignoring her, but Karen persisted.
“I just joined a gym.” Barbara
LaSalle let her eyes drift over Karen’s body.
A scornful smile twisted her lips. Karen
ignored it. “The Fitness Center
here looks pretty good. Did you try
out that elliptical glider? They
have one at my gym too.”
“Try out the what?”
Barbara LaSalle seemed puzzled.
“The elliptical glider. You know, it’s like you’re running and rowing at the same
time.” Barbara LaSalle still
seemed puzzled. Karen took a deep
breath. “I thought you said you
were in the Fitness Center while your ring was being stolen.”
Now Barbara LaSalle looked startled.
“What is this? Law and Order?
Yeah, sure. I was on the
elliptical glider. It’s just like
the one in the gym I go to home.”
No, it’s not, Karen said to herself, because there
isn’t one, you fake, and she fought back the little smile that was creeping
over her lips.
Back at the sign-in desk, Karen pulled the folder
labeled “Car Rentals” from a heavy canvas bag tucked under her chair.
When the sales staff came to town for meetings, it was easier and cheaper
to set them up with rental cars at the airport than to dispatch greeters to
ferry them to the hotel from whichever of the three New York City-area airports
they flew into. But as far as possible, they were doubled up, three or four
to a car, based on what time their flights arrived.
Karen leafed through the rental agreements, trying to
ignore the growling of her stomach and the fact that people were now milling
around the room carrying plates stacked high with those tempting goodies from
the hors d’oeuvres table.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she murmured to herself, tracing
a red fingernail (not a fashionable color, she now realized) over the rental
contract. Barbara LaSalle’s name
was on the contract, and on a post-it note Karen had written, “Insisted on her
own car. Matt OK’d 3-5-06.”
Why did she need her own car?
*
* *
A cluster of last-minute arrivals showed up just
then, a group from the Denver office whose plane had been delayed by the rain,
and Karen was busy signing them in and giving them their registration packets
and their name tags until Matt hurried up to the desk.
“Three o’clock,” he said, glancing at his
watch. He looked kind of haggard,
and Karen wished that she could hug him. “I’ve
been with David Bertram this whole time. Nothing’s ever easy.”
He sighed. “Good old
Travel Hell.”
“No,” she whispered. Out of deference to Matt she refused even to think of it as
the Travel Hell.
He summoned up a smile, but it was just a ghost of
its usual self. “Time to get
started, I guess.” He gestured
toward the open door of the meeting room, where rows of people awaited him,
engulfed in an expectant hum of conversation.
He leaned toward her. “And
say, Karen, you don’t have to hang around.
Take a break if you want. We’ll
be busy enough afterwards.”
Karen’s stomach was growling so loud she was sure
everybody could hear it. She cast a
despairing glance at the buffet table then grabbed her umbrella, stood up, and
hurried toward the lobby. There
were some energy bars tucked in her gym bag out in the car.
One of those would keep her going.
Even though there’d been plenty of places near the
hotel entrance when she’d pulled in this morning, she’d parked at the
absolute edge of the lot, way around the back past the loading dock, in the
shadow of the dumpsters arranged against the chainlink fence. It had been kind of spooky at seven a.m., with the view of
the prison, and the rain lashing that strange tall grass that looked like
cattails without the tails.
Parking far away was another part of the new plan.
The list that she’d clipped from the article in Woman’s World
said that you could walk off a hundred or more calories a day if you always made
it a rule to park as far away as possible from where you wanted to be.
Now the lot was totally full, not spooky at all, and
the rain was actually slacking off a bit. So
she was surprised when she heard herself shriek as a figure with an umbrella
suddenly appeared from around the side of the dumpster and sprang into her path.
Before she knew what was happening, the creature grabbed her with the
hand not holding the umbrella, and Karen was engulfed in a heavy wave of
fragrance.
A Texas-accented voice said, “Oh, my God, you
startled me,” and Barbara LaSalle let her hand drop and took a step backwards.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Getting something out of my car.”
Barbara LaSalle didn’t look as well-groomed as she had this morning.
Her lipstick was smeared and her hair had been disarranged from its
smooth wave.
“What are you parked way out here for?”
Barbara LaSalle frowned.
“Exercise.”
Barbara shot back the cuff of the expensive-looking
blouse that peeked from beneath her suit jacket and took a quick glance at her
expensive-looking watch. “Did
Matt’s talk start yet?”
“Probably,” Karen said. “It’s after three.”
Barbara hurried off, stepping between the puddles as
quickly as her spindly-heeled shoes would allow.
As Karen circled the dumpster and headed toward her
white Corolla, she passed another car parked at the edge of the lot, a Ford
Escort, the make and model favored by the rental company that Conglomerated
patronized. A man was sitting
behind the steering wheel, his head turned in the direction of Barbara
LaSalle’s retreating form.
Murmuring the Escort’s license number to herself,
Karen rustled in her gym bag for an energy bar. When she found one, she tore off the wrapper and took a
ravenous bite, but she didn’t head back to the hotel.
Instead, she settled into the driver’s seat of her
own car, slipped her key into the ignition, and stepped on the gas just long
enough for the engine to give a feeble cough.
She did the same thing again, and again.
Finally, she pulled the key out with what she hoped
was a disgusted flourish, jerked the car door open, and hurried over to the
Escort.
She had to tap on the window to get the man to lower
it, and as he studied her, the expression on his handsome face wasn’t very
friendly, despite the smear of lipstick near his mouth.
Trying not to be obvious about it, Karen let her eyes drift to the lapel
of his fashionable sports jacket. No
name tag. That’s why he wasn’t running back to the meeting room in
time for Matt’s welcoming speech. So
why was he sitting in a car rented by Conglomerated Computer Services?
“I think my engine is wet,” she said, trying to
sound helpless. “I can’t get it
to turn over.” Actually Frank had
been such a bum, she was used to doing everything for herself, but this guy
didn’t have to know that.
“I noticed,” he said lazily.
But even those two words furnished another piece of the puzzle.
*
* *
Through the half-open door of the meeting room, Karen
could hear Matt’s voice. He was
thanking the sales staff for their dedicated professionalism and predicting that
the coming year would offer them even more opportunities for professional
growth. She was paging through the
car rental forms again, searching for Barbara LaSalle’s. When she realized that her hunch about the license plate had
been correct, she went looking for Connie Sanchez.
*
* *
“A man? From Texas?” Connie said, raising her
brows.
Karen nodded. “Has
to be. He has a really strong
accent.”
“But not part of the CCS reservation block?”
A small pucker appeared between the brows and Connie’s light-brown hand
stroked the beginnings of her double chin.
“Ephraim is on duty at the desk right now.
He’ll probably do it for me. He
lives in Paterson too--we’re neighbors, and I got him this job.”
Karen smiled, exhaled a puff of smoke, and watched it
drift off into what was now just a light drizzle. Karen and Connie were standing on the loading dock again,
Karen looking toward the corner of the parking lot where the two cars still sat
in the shadow of the dumpster.
“And you’ll be here tomorrow morning?”
As Connie nodded, Karen told her what to look for,
and they made a date to meet for a cigarette break on the loading dock at ten.
*
* *
“He was not in his room alone last night,” Connie
said with a giggle as she pulled an envelope from her purse and waved it under
Karen’s nose. The sky was still
gray today, and the air was damp, but no rain was falling.
“You did it!”
Karen was so excited that when she raised her cigarette to her lips, she
inhaled too fast and started choking.
“It wasn’t hard,” Connie said, but paused with
a worried look on her face as Karen caught her breath and gasped a few times.
She only relaxed when Karen finally smiled.
“The computer knows everything, and he’s the only person registered
now who’s from Texas and isn’t part of the CCS conference.”
She studied the remains of her cigarette for a second, took a quick puff,
and tossed the butt onto the concrete floor of the loading dock.
“Lloyd Walters,” she said. “Room
412.”
She folded back the flap of the envelope and gingerly
pulled out a crumpled tissue. “So,”
she said, “unless he wears really heavy cologne, this is the proof that they
know each other very well. Serena
picked it out of the wastebasket when she made up the room this morning.”
She sniffed at the tissue. “Smells
expensive,” she said.
“You probably have a friend on the maintenance
staff too,” Karen said, holding out her pack of Virginia Slims and watching
while Connie helped herself.
*
* *
“I didn’t call for a plumber.”
Lloyd Walters frowned at the apparition in the hallway outside Room 412.
It was a scrawny guy dressed in dirty jeans and the scruffiest plaid
shirt Lloyd had ever seen. He was
holding a rubber plunger in his hand like it was some kind of trophy. Lloyd himself was wearing smoothly pleated gray pants and a
V-necked alpaca sweater over an open collared shirt.
“Routine,” the plunger guy said, smiling
cheerfully and shouldering his way into the room.
“You don’t wanna let it go, you know, ‘cause if it backs up, then
you got big problems.”
“I’m really kind of busy--”
Lloyd stepped sideways and positioned himself against the bathroom door.
“Just take a minute, really.
Boss’s orders. Gotta do this whole floor by quittin’ time.”
“But I don’t need--” Lloyd broke off in the mid-sentence. The guy moved like a weasel.
He was already leaning over the toilet, getting ready to lower the
plunger into the bowl.
Grunting with annoyance, Lloyd wandered back to his
chair by the window and picked up the copy of USA Today that he’d been
reading when he heard the tap at his door.
From the bathroom came an off-key rendering of “You
Can’t Always Get What You Want,” followed by a torrent of flushing water.
The cheerful face appeared around the corner of the
bathroom door. “Havin’ a little
problem,” the guy said. “A clog
in the cagorkfoot. Gonna take a few
more minutes.”
Lloyd looked at his watch and frowned.
If the phone call from Manhattan came, maybe the plunger guy wouldn’t
know what it was about. Maybe he wouldn’t even hear anything. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” had morphed into
something by Led Zeppelin, with a corresponding rise in volume.
Water rushed again, more water than just from a
toilet flush. What was the guy
doing in there? Just then, the face
reappeared around the corner of the bathroom door.
The guy was wearing just a T-shirt now.
“You smell somethin’?” he said, wrinkling his nose.
“Kinda like somethin’ burnin’?”
Lloyd sniffed the air. The guy was right. Strands
of smoke even seemed to be drifting into the room.
He stood up, tossing the newspaper aside, just as the hollow whooping of
the fire alarm echoed in the hall.
“What’d I tell ya?
There goes the alarm. We
better get outta here.”
Lloyd took four quick steps to the closet, where he
quickly slid the door open and reached inside.
“Whatcha doin’ there?” the plunger guy said.
“No time for that. We better clear out pronto.”
Lloyd felt for the door of the safe.
Usually these hotel fire drills were nothing but false alarms--but this
time . . . with that smoke? Who
knew? Something was really burning,
somewhere quite close. A cheap
hotel safe might not stand up to a fire, and besides he needed the contents
within the next few hours.
Slipping a tiny manila envelope into his pants
pocket, he hurried past the bathroom door, out of the room, and down the
corridor toward the lobby. If
he’d paused to peek in the bathroom, he’d have noticed the charred and
soaking remains of a plaid shirt in the middle of the bathtub.
*
* *
Meanwhile, Danny “Fast Fingers” O’Neill was
puzzling over a striking upturn in his luck.
He’d just come from a visit to his longtime girlfriend next door at the
prison, where she had revealed that her parole date had been moved forward to
late summer. Then, instead of being
ushered from the TravelTel as soon as his most recent disguise had been
penetrated, which was what usually happened, he’d been taken aside by the bell
captain and offered a short-term job and a voucher for a free drink in the bar,
to be used as soon as the fire drill ended.
Trailing the murmuring crowd back into the TravelTel
lobby as the firetrucks pulled
away--at least it hadn’t been raining--Lloyd
reflected gloomily that he’d probably missed the phone call.
Those diamond district guys went home on the stroke of five p.m.
He’d seen the buses lined up to take them back to Brooklyn.
All that fuss Barbara made about stashing the car in
a corner of the lot so he could drive away without anybody from Conglomerated
noticing a stranger taking off in one of their rental cars.
Probably totally unnecessary, but she was nervous.
He understood that. She’d
never done anything like this before.
Now he’d have to wait till tomorrow to close the
deal, and he was sure she’d make him go through the whole drill with the car
again. But that was OK.
They’d probably end up making out in the car, just like today.
Truth was, he couldn’t keep his hands off her, no matter where they
were. But it was fun to make out in
a car. Reminded him of high school.
Now, though, he could go for a good stiff drink.
God knows, he’d earned it.
*
* *
“Come in, Ms. LaSalle.” David Bertram greeted her with a broad smile.
Sucker, she thought to herself.
Lloyd’s right. There’s a sucker born every minute. Of course, her husband was a sucker too.
He’d been a sucker for her pretty face, coughed up the money for that
ring to prove his love, and things had been great till she got bored with him
and his puny job and his after-dinner naps.
But he fell for stories like you wouldn’t believe.
Why, she and Lloyd were already spending three or four nights together. But this, this went way beyond anything she would’ve
thought up on her own.
Double the money for one ring.
Collect on the insurance and sell the ring too--enough money for her and
Lloyd to go someplace where nobody knew them and start all over.
She settled into the tastefully upholstered chair
pulled up to the edge of the desk and smiled back at him.
“I’m delighted that this little drama is going to
have a happy resolution,” David Bertram said.
“I am too.”
She gave him one of her extra special smiles, the one that came with a
slight wink. “I really appreciate
all that you’ve done to help me.”
He opened a drawer and looked inside.
A check? Already?
The thought flashed in her brain like the neon sign on a particularly
inviting shop. Her fingers twitched
in her lap and she forced them to lie still.
Now he was holding something in his hand, a tiny
manila envelope like you’d keep a key in, too small to hold a check unless it
was really folded up. He was
smoothing back the flap of the envelope and preparing to drop something into his
palm.
What was going on?
She watched in amazement as her ring tumbled into his palm.
Two police were waiting as David Bertram ushered her
out of his office. They already had
Lloyd.
*
* *
A few hours later, Karen and Matt met in the middle
of the lobby, where the late afternoon sun that had finally broken through the
clouds made a bright pool on the floor.
“Did I mention that I plan to move your performance
review forward a few months?” Matt said.
Even though her stomach was growling like mad, Karen
felt like she was about to explode with joy.
Copyright ©2006, Peggy Ehrhart All Rights Reserved