Hotel No Tell Page 12

  <2 bad u cdnt come to the stn lst nite. 2nite? (Delt)>

  There was no way for Delta to know how much I loathed texting abbreviations, that I considered them dangerously close to the end of civilization. He couldn’t know that even a missing apostrophe was enough for me to consider—however unfairly—dropping a person as a friend, at least in the short term. Gregory, of course, knew exactly how to send a message that didn’t drive me to despair for the human race.

  I chucked the phone into my backpack and sank down on the round leather stool we were allowed to use as long as no guests were in the lobby.

  “Zephyr,” Asa chided, shocked at my multiple breaches in protocol. He tilted his head dramatically toward the bride.

  “Oh, and one other thing,” she said, her voice strained from trying to sound like a relaxed person. “Make absolutely sure that the bag with the black-and-white ribbons on it goes to the Voldmans. They have a four-month-old and they said that, at that age, black-and-white shapes are excellent for the baby’s cognitive development.”

  Asa and I stared at her.

  I watched her mouth move, but the blood pounding in my ears drowned out her voice. Summa, Jeremy, Samantha. And maybe Zelda Herman. I was tangled in a massive knot of string and couldn’t figure out which thread to grab on to first to unravel it. How the hell was I going to cram in another visit to Bellevue, attempt to follow Zelda Herman to Desbrosses Street at 2:00 P.M., and be on a train to Hellsville at 5:10? Not by perching here like a seal at the aquarium.

  For the third time that morning, I fled my post, promising a wailing Asa that I’d make it up to him in the form of a dozen 800 calls on his behalf.

  “We’ll haul in everything from Swedish Fish to Post-its,” I called over my shoulder. “An afternoon you won’t soon forget!”

  Chapter 8

  I finally stopped shaking somewhere around Tarrytown: By 125th Street, I had already downed one of the pear ciders that Macy had thoughtfully provided as onboard refreshment, and at Yonkers I popped a second and that had done the trick.

  My first death threat and I couldn’t breathe a word to the friend beside me, carefully affixing first-class postage to a stack of wedding invitations. At least, I was pretty sure it had been a death threat. It turned out that threateners don’t always spell out the threat as clearly as the threatened might hope. There’s a lot of room for interpretation, misinterpretation, and ensuing paranoia, but I was almost positive that Jeremy Wedge had threatened to kill me that afternoon, right there in the ammonia-scented halls of Bellevue Hospital.

  He hadn’t been in his bed. His old roommate, he of the culinary wrath, was gone, and in his place was a man who seemed pleasant enough. One glass eye but otherwise apparently normal.

  “Do you know where Jeremy is?” I’d asked hesitantly, knowing that even the most pedestrian of questions was a potential land mine in this place.

  “Rec room, most likely,” answered the roommate with a grin.

  “Thanks. And which direction …?” I pointed toward the corridor.

  “I’m trying to get to Iraq. Do you think you could write me a check? My name is Sandy Miller, two ‘L’s.”

  “Um,” I said, backing out of the room. “Great. Thanks.”

  “Okay,” Sandy said cheerfully. “Bye, now.”

  Three men sat in the grim rec room, each keeping his distance from the others. One was reading a ragged Bible, another was sleeping in a chair—I hoped he was only sleeping—and Jeremy, once again impeccably dressed, glared out the window, his arms crossed. Even from behind, I could tell he was seething.

  “Uh,” I said by way of a greeting. Jeremy turned his head sharply.

  “God fucking dammit—you again,” he snarled.

  Three years earlier, this salutation probably would have caused me to burst into tears. I reflected that I must be improving as an investigator—or at least hardening—because it only made me flinch.

  Despite himself, Jeremy was obviously desperate for someone to talk to, or at least rail against.

  “You gonna say anything, Helen Keller?” Now, that just didn’t even make any sense. “Because my goddamn family doesn’t believe it wasn’t a suicide attempt and signed me up for another week in this resort. I’m being transferred to some other floor, like a fucking convict or a sales manager. So unless you’re here to sign release papers, get the fuck out.”

  He turned back to the window.

  “I believe you. I don’t think you tried to kill yourself.”

  His back went rigid and I knew I had his attention. I stepped closer to him so we wouldn’t be overheard.

  “Jeremy,” I whispered. “Why did Summa give Samantha Kimiko Hodges half a million dollars?”

  He put both palms against the window and I braced myself for an eruption.

  “Who?” he said carefully.

  “The Summa Institute, your comp—”

  “No.” His voice was ice. “Who got the money?”

  “The woman who gave you your love potion,” I said to his back.

  Jeremy whirled around. Beneath his freckles, his face was gray. His eye sockets seemed to sink while his eyeballs bulged.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” he snarled. He was either an excellent actor or we were on ground much wavier than I’d anticipated.

  I took a step back. The man with the Bible glanced up at us. I gathered my courage and did my best imitation of someone with authority.

  “Your institute gave the old woman on the fifth floor five hundred thousand dollars, and three days later you find yourself taking a potion of hers that did in fact contain lethal amounts of Ambien. So. My question is: What kind of business was she doing with Summa? With you? And why did she try to kill you?”

  Now take a breath, Zephyr.

  Jeremy narrowed his eyes and set his jaw. When he spoke, his voice was calm. “Who else have you told about this?”

  “No one,” I said, surprised that it was his first question. A small part of me anticipated a little thank-you for identifying his alleged would-be murderer.

  “Not even your fat friend at the front desk?”

  “Asa?” What did he care about Asa? “No.”

  Jeremy balled up his fists as if preparing to slug me. He released them, then leaned in close enough that I could feel his stale, institutional breath on my face.

  “Who do you work for?”

  This time I didn’t even flinch, which I thought was progress.

  “I work for your uncle.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “The fuck I care what you believe.”

  Ever so gently, he gathered my mandarin collar in one hand. It was the most violent gesture ever bestowed on me, or at least as violent as having a gun pointed at me for twenty seconds during the nadir of Roxana Boureau’s previous professional endeavors.

  “Stop playing detective, Zephyr.” I felt the warm exhalations from his nose and wondered whether I could safely wash my face in Purell.

  “I’m not—”

  “I don’t know what you know or how you came to know it, but I suggest you leave. I will give you a healthy incentive, you chirpy little blackmailer. So tell me how much you want. To go. The fuck. Away.”

  Even I recognized it was not the time to be offended by the descriptor “chirpy.”

  “I … I’m not blackmailing you,” I whispered. “I just want to help—”

  He tightened his grip on my collar, which brought my whole body closer to his. Under other circumstances, it could have been a step in a dance of passion.

  “You’re a fucking liar. Think of a number right now or you will regret it.”

  A devil on my shoulder wondered, for a fraction of a second, what it would feel like to give my Roth IRA a healthy boost.

  “Can I …” I didn’t even know what I wanted to ask or how to stall for time.

  “No, you cannot. Shall I count to three?” he sneered.

  “No!” I realized that if I didn’t pretend to be
what he thought I was—a blackmailer—his suspicions might begin to veer closer to the truth. “I’ll tell you what I want.” My voice cracked like a newly adolescent boy’s. “Oh, I’ll tell you. I want … I want what you gave her. Half a million.”

  He pulled me so close I could see nose hairs.

  “Two fifty?” I amended.

  “You understand,” he growled, “that I don’t have ready access to my checkbook in here.”

  “That’s okay,” I croaked. “No rush.”

  “And then you go away and don’t ever let me see you again.” He shoved me back on my feet, hard. I rubbed my neck where the collar had dug into it.

  “No problem. This isn’t my idea of a grand destination,” I spat at him.

  “No. I mean quit the hotel, you moron.”

  “Excuse me?” I laughed incredulously.

  “If I see you standing there when I get out of here next week …” He shrugged as if he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions.

  Which is why I was left unable to parse the exact details of his threat. And although I’d been quivering, standing there in Jeremy’s clutches, I was thrilled, too. Jeremy had no idea how much he’d given away by threatening me. Of course, neither did I, but I would soon. I hoped. Actually, it wasn’t yet clear that Jeremy’s five hundred grand had anything to do with Ballard McKenzie’s one hundred grand, but it seemed fair to assume that there might be some connection.

  It was high time to bring Pippa up to date, but each time I’d called in that day, she’d either been on the ferry or on another line. I was irritated with my boss; if nothing else, I’d needed someone to tail Zelda Herman for me while I interviewed Jeremy, and there was no one I could ask except Pippa. Outside the hospital, I tried to reach her once more and failed, tried to hail a cab and failed, and wound up jogging to 42nd Street and over to Grand Central, blowing off some steam on the way.

  I spotted Macy waiting for me at track 30, her back to me. I was about to call out when I looked down and saw I was still in my hotel uniform. Gasping, I turned on my heel and fled downstairs to the bathrooms. Inside the stall, I shoved my sweaty uniform back into my knapsack and tied my sweater over my soaking T-shirt. With a groan, I realized I’d been so distracted by my sleepless reunion with Gregory, followed by my dawn interview in the park with Samantha, followed by a search of her room, followed by my bewildering telephone exchange with the receptionist at Summa, followed by the tête-à-tête with Jeremy, that I’d forgotten to pack anything for my trip north.

  * * *

  “So what made you call the dermatologist?” I asked Macy as the train hurtled past Peekskill. Although the two pear ciders were partly to thank, I was impressed by my ability to compartmentalize my life. Here I was, carrying on a conversation as though I hadn’t been on the receiving end of a death threat not two hours earlier. This, I thought, this is what allows otherwise great (and lousy) politicians to preach morality while carrying on affairs with interns, assistants, and Argentineans.

  Macy put down an envelope and stretched her fingers. “Because the last guy, the one with the sprained ankle—”

  “There were two sprained ankles: Is this the fertilizer mogul or the sculptor?”

  “The sculptor—thank you, Your Tactfulness. He had had an ugly divorce.”

  “You can’t hold that against him.”

  “Well, I can, actually. I never told you his whole deal. He was an artist-retreat cheat. He goes to Yaddo for a few weeks to finish stuff for his exhibit, sleeps with some woman who blows up video cameras while filming the explosions—hello, amateur irony hour—and poof goes his ten-year marriage. Kind of like the videos,” she added with mock thoughtfulness.

  “And he didn’t live happily ever after with the exploder?”

  “She went trotting back to her girlfriend of seven years. She’d wanted to sample men again and see if she was missing anything.”

  “Verdict?”

  “Not even a little bit. So now he’s out in the cold with only his lead sculptures to keep him warm at night.”

  “He didn’t cheat on you,” I pointed out.

  She peeled the backing off a picture of a great horned owl. “Please. Once a cheater, always a cheater.”

  I tried not to think about whether Gregory had been with anyone in our time apart—not that it would in any way qualify as cheating. I just had a knack for torturing myself.

  “How does a cheating sculptor inspire you to call a dermatologist?” I asked, gathering the discarded wax paper from the stamps and crumpling it. “Or are you finally willing to admit that you’re not cursed?”

  “No. I am not saying that at all. What I’m maybe saying …” Macy tucked a loose hank of hair behind her ear. “Okay. I might be willing to admit a tiny bit that maybe I would like to be with someone. And it was only a couple of sprained ankles.”

  “It is killing you to say I was right.” I nudged her knee with mine.

  “I thought it was sweet that the guy’s mom was pimping him out,” she continued, ignoring me. “A guy like that probably wouldn’t be a cheater is what I’m thinking.” She turned to me suddenly and pointed, her finger like a gun. “But I’m bringing an Ace bandage with me on the date.”

  I swatted her hand away. “Stick it in your bra and let it do double service.”

  She allowed a grudging smile.

  I intercepted a rolling bottle with my foot as the train pulled in to Garrison. Did she honestly think she was cursed? I still couldn’t tell how much of Macy was shtick. If, as Lucy had once hypothesized, Macy was truly afraid of intimacy and eschewed parenthood because it was easier for her to give of herself to strangers, did that matter to me? Certainly her reasons were more laudable than mine.

  “How long do you think we have to stay tomorrow?” Macy tucked the stamped invitations into her duffel bag.

  I shrugged, feeling anxiety begin to seep through me. The closer we got to Hillsville, the more trouble I had recalling why I thought I could spare this time away from work.

  “I was hoping at least one of my clients would need me in the city,” Macy mused. “Do you think I’m minimizing weddings to the point where I’m putting myself out of business? Oh my God, look at the leaves turning!” She sat straight up in her seat and jabbed at the train window. The passengers on the Garrison platform looked at her with alarm, but she didn’t notice. “Hey, let’s go apple-picking while we’re up there. That’s a kid-friendly thing to do, right? And we could build a fire and drink apple cider! Do they make cider before October?” In mere seconds, Macy had talked herself through a 180 so that she was now champing at the bit to get to suburbia. I smiled at her like a proud mama.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing. I just like your attitude.”

  The train began to move again, and I leaned forward in my fake-leather seat to watch the river. It was dusk and I had to work hard to see through my own reflection to the view outside. For the most part, I had willed myself out of work mode and into supportive-friend mode, but one small, niggling thought remained: I was almost definitely sitting on an attempted-murder case, and it was critical that I find a moment to steal away and call Pippa. If Samantha Kimiko Hodges was to dole out any more lemon-flavored philters in the next twenty-four hours, I could be out of a job and on trial well before Jeremy ever got around to laying a hand on me.

  Chapter 9

  The evening had begun well enough, with Lucy racing down the stairs, flinging her arms around our necks, and proclaiming her undying gratitude before the door had even closed. Leonard had picked us up at the train station on his way home from work, and although conversation with him was often hampered by his shyness and ear-tugging, he seemed more confident and forthcoming than I’d ever seen him in the city. Perhaps returning to his native environment had been good for him. Too bad Lucy perceived his happiness as disloyalty.

  The signs of distress hadn’t been immediately apparent. We hugged and cooed and the kids were squealing and squeaking, so it
took a few minutes to realize that the busy street sounds we were hearing—sirens, honking, the rhythmic thump-thump of traffic going over a steel plate, the occasional rumble of a storefront security gate being pulled down—didn’t match the serene road outside. It turned out that Lucy had been so homesick for New York that she’d called Dover Carter with a specific request. He had called a sound guy he knew and come up with a custom sound track that we now had the privilege of enjoying over the centrally wired sound system Leonard had so innocently installed.

  But the babies were even cuter than I remembered, toddling around, bellies first, in footie pajamas. They had become pretty, actually, with their high foreheads, generous eyes, and pillowy, kissable lips (glistening with drool, but still). In the bright, warm kitchen that smelled promisingly of butter and garlic, watching Leonard and Lucy expertly prompting Alan and Amanda to issue forth seal-like giggles, I had one tenth of one second of doubt about my decision to keep my eggs on the shelf. I felt a tug of longing for the glass jars of pasta neatly lined up on the counter, the fresh spider lilies in the living room, the copper umbrella stand by the front door, and the enormous farm table set with cloth napkins.

  There was no reason I couldn’t have these things, I reminded myself, pulling Amanda onto my lap. One didn’t have to wait to have children, or even to be married, before one could equip oneself with a cobalt-blue KitchenAid mixer, but in truth they were all of a package. Part of the mixing experience were the rosy little faces covered in flour peering into the bowl. Just then, Amanda sneezed, and her rosy little face erupted with more snot than I imagined could be contained in such a small cavity. I handed her to her father, and as I washed my hands at the deep porcelain sink with the swan-neck faucet, I realized that my longing for a mixing experience could easily be satisfied with an occasional cookie-baking party.

  After just twenty minutes of the Amanda and Alan show, the twins were hustled off to bed: The household was currently under tight rule by an absentee monarch, the author of a sleep guide that Lucy referred to no fewer than three times as her bible. As soon as the family disappeared upstairs, Macy and I found the audio closet and shut off the city sound track, right in the middle of the heavy clank of a bike messenger’s chain hitting the sidewalk.