Hotel No Tell Read online

  “Only Ballard.”

  “But you were so nice to the guests! You worked so hard!” I wished Pippa could have heard this part, too. “And it wasn’t even your real job!”

  “Well, that’s what undercover is,” I said modestly.

  “You even helped me call Cracker Barrel and Kleenex!”

  Tommy’s eyebrows shot up in perplexed amusement, and I knew that somehow, someday, once he figured out what it meant, he would use this against me.

  “That was part of being undercover, too.”

  “Woooow.”

  It was an extremely gratifying reaction.

  Pippa returned, smoothing out her red-polka-dot-on-black dress. “Well, father and son need a bit of time to work things out. Junior’s not atall pleased that he was kept in the dark on all of this.”

  “But he was a potential suspect.”

  “Yes, and you can imagine how that delights him. He does seem awfully … attached to his cousin.”

  The three of us let the implications of this musing sink in.

  “You think there was a little …” Tommy twirled his fingers in the air.

  “Oh no,” Asa said firmly, and we looked at him, surprised by the confidence in his voice. “I think Jeremy is the only person in the whole world Hutchinson loves, or even likes. He just hates everyone else, including himself,” he said plainly. “It’s not sexual or anything.”

  I wondered from whence this bit of deep insight sprang.

  “He’s so mean to you, Zephyr, that at first I thought he was covering up some attraction. But then I realized he really, truly doesn’t like you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But I wasn’t picking up anything on gaydar, either. I mean, we have a lot of hot guests, and … nada. He’s just a sad, lonely, angry guy.”

  “You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

  “I do more than call 800 numbers. Hey, Zeph?” he said as the four of us headed to the lobby to find a line of guests waiting irritably at the unmanned desk. “I know this isn’t your real job, but now that you caught your bad guys, is there any way you could cover for me just one last time so I can go see my acupuncturist? My ankle’s really acting up today.”

  I grimaced apologetically.

  “You let someone stick needles in you for fun?” Tommy asked Asa.

  I saw Asa begin to bristle, but before he could launch into an impassioned defense of Eastern medical arts, I interrupted.

  “She’s not just an acupuncturist, right, Asa? She’s Wiccan. It’s needles and spells, and it works for Asa, so, really, that’s all that matters.” I widened my eyes at Tommy to indicate that he shouldn’t pick on such a pathetic target. “Let’s go,” I urged.

  Tommy moved his lips from side to side, weighing his possible responses, any one of which was likely to make Asa cry.

  “I got a buddy who’s afraid of roller coasters. Could she help him?” he asked earnestly.

  “What, he’s afraid one’s gonna jump out of his closet?” I scoffed just as Asa gushed, “Oh, absolutely, she can help anyone with anything.”

  Tommy took down the witch’s e-mail address. Disgusted, I shook my head and dialed the Hudson Street Nursing Home. At least one of us was staying on track.

  “Arturo,” I said efficiently when the curt voice answered. “This is Zephyr Zuckerman, one of your volunteers. I wanted to stop by and check on Samantha Kimiko Hodges right now. Is she around?”

  I heard papers rustle and something begin to beep. I wondered if he’d heard me.

  “Extra-short? Japanese, sounds Jewish?” he said after a pause.

  “Yes.” I took a moment to be impressed that, despite his distracted appearance, Arturo really did know each of his elderly charges.

  “Gone.”

  I was a little less impressed.

  “Excuse me?”

  “She left this morning. Packed up. Said she was headed north.”

  “How far north?” I asked, panicked. “A Hundred Twenty-fifth Street? Canada? What?”

  “Poughkeepsie.”

  “Poughkeepsie? What’s in Poughkeepsie?”

  “Like I know. Okay, goodbye?”

  “Wait!” I called out. I could hear the impatience in his silence. I needed him to stay on the line while I tried to think. “Spell Poughkeepsie?” I begged.

  “I couldn’t possibly,” he said, and hung up.

  I felt Pippa watching me.

  “Two outta three ain’t bad?” I suggested meekly.

  “Yeah!” Tommy O. howled later that night at the White Horse Tavern. “Once you got the Father and the Son, who needs the fuckin’ Holy Spirit?”

  * * *

  I tried to track her, I really did. I hobbled west on Waverly Place as fast as my mother’s high heels and narrow skirt would allow. I headed straight to the nursing home to look for clues to where Samantha might have headed. I dreaded the thought of arresting an eighty-plus-year-old woman, but I was also unwilling to tolerate unfinished business. I had enough of that in my life as it was, without having to accept it as part of the conclusion of my first major case. There would be no loose threads, no strands trailing behind for Tommy and the peanut gallery to pull on whenever they encountered a dull moment.

  I didn’t even bother pretending to Arturo that I was an overeager volunteer concerned about the whereabouts of my newly adopted grandma. Dejected, I flashed my badge and asked to be let upstairs. I wasn’t expecting him to be impressed and he wasn’t. He still made me sign in.

  On the way to Samantha’s room—correction, former room—I scoured the hallway of the third floor, desperate for any kind of clue. The birthday decorations that had been disheartening to begin with were now completely shriveled, the limp balloons resembling scrota. What did I think I was going to find? Samantha had nothing left to lose except her freedom.

  Outside the door to her own room, Alma Mae Martin was chatting easily with a man half her age. He wore a suit and carried a briefcase and stooped his shoulders deferentially before her. She was clearly delighted with the conversation, her laughter rolling down the hall in regular, tinkling intervals.

  She waggled her fingers at me and continued talking to her … lawyer? Lover? Long-lost nephew? Whoever he was, I was certain I’d never get the true story. Still, I looked forward to letting her regale me with whatever tale she chose the next time I visited. And I would continue to visit, I vowed. My mother’s proviso about childlessness crackled like static electricity along the back of my mind, but so, too, did the thought of my own old age. How many of these residents had no family to check in on them? How many, when they said farewell to their own lives, would be taking a chain saw to their branch of the family tree?

  I opened the door to room 308 and surveyed its bareness. The walls were naked, the bed was stripped, the closet was empty. No surprise. I sat down on the mattress and allowed myself to stop, to really stop, for the first time in days. I kicked off my shoes and rubbed my aching toes. Below me, the trees in Abingdon Square Park looked dull, biding their time until they could embrace the oranges, reds, and yellows that were working their way south.

  I would have fled, too, I thought, resisting the urge to lie down. Who wanted to experience autumn from this room? If you couldn’t watch the leaves turn with someone you loved at your side—in which case the spot from which you viewed them didn’t really matter—then you’d want your gazing location to be lovely, extravagant even, if you could afford it. A hot-air balloon. A cottage in the Catskills. The deck of a sloop in the middle of the Hudson.

  Suddenly I was certain Samantha had not for a moment considered doing anything as uninspired as remaining in the tristate area. She would not retread old paths, nor would she forge new ones in familiar territory.

  I jumped up and opened each of the three desk drawers. In the bottom drawer, almost invisible against the white background, was a folded piece of Greenwich Village Hotel stationery. I snatched it up.

  “Dear Busybody Cop, Rest easy. This alter kocke
r promises not to pretend to try to you-know-what anybody else. I got what I need. Just let me finish out my days in peace. Don’t take any wooden nickels.” She’d signed it “Mrs. Kimiko Hodges.” Samantha was on a plane by now to … anywhere. For a minute I was overcome with an envy so strong it left a bilious taste in my mouth.

  Just as quickly, I chastised myself. What the hell did I have to be envious about? I was young, healthy, employed, loved, entertained, well fed, and had a warm bed to sleep in. Any gaps in my happiness were entirely of my own doing. I thought about Gregory’s proposition, of his willingness to forgo offspring for me, if I would agree to have a conversation about it once a year. I was having a hard time remembering what about that plan had been so offensive to me only four days ago.

  Infantilizing. I’d used the word “infantilizing.” Infantile was my reaction to him, I thought now as I watched a few overeager leaves float down from their branches, nudged along by a gentle breeze. In truth, like this case, it was the untidy conclusion in his proposal that bothered me. The “for now” of it. For now we would not arrest Samantha Kimiko Hodges. For now Gregory and I could be together in peace. I wanted big one-hundred-percent-forever yeses or nos in order to move forward. As I approached officially being in my early thirties (as opposed to the Big 3-0, which was all about the novelty of the odometer turning over), it seemed that I should be wrapping things up in order to move on to the next phase.

  What next phase? This was it. I was living it, loose ends and all.

  I shoved my feet back into the heels and tried to stand, but it hurt too much. Way too much. I freed them once more and padded out of room 308, down the hall to the elevator. It was a one-minute walk from the nursing home to my apartment, and I didn’t plan to spend a second of it in those toe corsets.

  Alma Mae’s visitor was waiting for the elevator, peering up at the lighted numbers above the door. He nodded at me with a quick, shy smile and pretended not to notice I was shoeless. A true gentleman.

  The elevator dinged open and we stepped in. I tried to ignore the various unsettling textures my stockinged soles encountered.

  “Friend of Miss Martin’s?” I inquired politely. I could pretend to myself that he was a potential witness to Samantha’s escape, but I knew I was just being nosy.

  He shook his head.

  “Relative?”

  He pursed his lips silently but pleasantly, the way I did when an unwelcome stranger made an unwanted overture.

  “I’m a signature expert,” he finally offered.

  I glanced at him quickly to see if he was putting me on. I was the queen of donning cool-but-phony job titles for the duration of an elevator ride or a cocktail party. Was he telling the truth? Had Alma Mae been forging signatures for something? Was she in on this whole scam with Samantha? Was it even bigger than I thought? Were there even more loose threads? I couldn’t hold back.

  “Did Alma Mae forge a signature?”

  “No,” he said with alarm. “Not at all!”

  “Did someone she know forge a signature?” I pressed.

  He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “I’m on assignment from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Miss Martin is in possession of some letters. Many letters.”

  “Ohhhh,” I chuckled, relieved. “Yeah, from Jack, Bobby, and Robert.”

  “She’s shown them to you, too?” he gushed earnestly, as if relieved someone else was in on a secret he was bursting to tell.

  “Uh,” I said, eyeing him cautiously. His face was bright and open, and he was finally looking at me instead of the door. “No, she’s only told me about them.”

  “Oh, they’re such lovely letters! Beautiful, astounding missives. Revelatory. The biographers are going to have a field day.”

  I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times before any sound came out.

  “You’ve confirmed they’re authentic?”

  He nodded happily.

  “Alma Mae actually had affairs with the Kennedy brothers and McNamara?”

  “Well, now, that’s Miss Martin’s private business, isn’t it? Though I suppose it won’t be for much longer.” He chuckled to himself and shook his head. The doors slid open on the first floor. He touched his fingertips to his temple in an old-fashioned salute, then disappeared.

  I stared after him, a shoe hanging limply from either hand, and reevaluated everything I thought I knew about Alma Mae. Apparently you could be ladylike and have loose threads hanging out all over the place—it probably made it easier for a lover to undress you with his teeth.

  Chapter 20

  The Somali pirates survived Lenore, but just barely. They made her wash their dishes and scrub their floors and they berated her and even struck her once, but they were still no match for her. Before she would do the laundry they ordered her to do, she inspected the clothes they wore, and if she saw even a spot, she demanded they hand over the offending article immediately so that she could maximize efficiency. When they showed her their disgusting lavatories, she insisted she could not do a perfect job with the toothbrush they’d provided. They had only intended the task to be a form of punishment, not a productive act, but soon admitted to their stash of 409 and Dobie pads. Before long, the ship was gleaming. She reorganized the galley and the maps on the bridge and made suggestions to the head pirate for restructuring his chain of command. When a representative of the Seychelles government finally boarded the ship, bearing a suitcase full of cash (covertly provided by the U.S. government, which officially would not negotiate with terrorists), Lenore was sipping milky tea with the captain, chatting as easily as they could through the broken English of a crew member.

  Lucy anticipated great changes in Lenore upon her return. She anticipated humility, the kind that comes after one has had a face-to-face with one’s mortality. She anticipated a quieter, kinder, introspective mother-in-law. She anticipated that Lenore would at least stop changing her children’s outfits when she came to babysit.

  And Lenore did have an epiphany, but not the kind Lucy envisioned. Lenore simply realized how capable she was. She realized that many years had been wasted not being the CEO of something. She arrived home and promptly told her family that she had given them enough of herself for free and was going to business school. The moment the last members of the media departed her front yard, she enrolled in a GMAT course.

  After Lucy got over her disappointment that Lenore’s transformation would not include an apology for a host of insults and infractions, she began to take stock of her own life. She calculated how much of her recent unhappiness had been caused by Lenore, how much by Hillsville, how much by parenthood. With Lenore out of her hair, she figured that if she could get the hell out of Hillsville and find some part-time work, two luxuries she knew they could afford, the quality of life might improve markedly for everyone in her family. Leonard thanked her for trying Hillsville and then put in a bid on their old Perry Street apartment. He actually bought it back for less than they’d sold it, and so came out ahead in their otherwise failed suburban safari.

  “Welcome!” Lucy shrieked at me as I stepped off the elevator and into a sunny space that looked nothing like the one she’d inhabited three years earlier, and not just because there was an enormous hand-painted Welcome Back! banner stretched across the foyer. (I wondered if I was the only one who thought it strange that Lucy had clearly painted it for herself.) Leonard’s one condition for making the move back to New York had been that they acquire adult furniture and eighty-six the tatty brown couch. Lucy had happily agreed and, with Macy’s help, found a decorator who operated on the same principles as No Divas. Lucy gave the woman a budget, handed her a pair of binoculars, and told her she wanted it to look just like Mercedes’s place across the way. Mercedes couldn’t have cared less about the copycat approach; she, like the rest of us, was relieved that Lucy was back in New York, her rightful title as the Princess of Perky restored.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” I apologized as I stepped off the elevato
r, “and I’m sorry I have to leave early. I’m meeting—” But my host had darted off to check on the food for House-warming Take II, which was already in full swing on this warm May afternoon.

  I had hurried up from the Staten Island Ferry terminal after a conference with Pippa that had required two round trips to work out the details of my new assignment. On Monday morning, I was to register for a pedicab operator’s license. It was the first step in a sting designed to catch licensing inspectors at the Department of Consumer Affairs who were allegedly extorting money from the rickshaw bikers. Even though my work would primarily consist of shuttling tourists from Madame Tussauds to the Nike store in the stultifying heat of midtown—Tommy and company had thoughtfully given me a bright-pink helmet, purple streamers, and a Barbie bell—I was looking forward to the opportunity to mount my own tourism campaign. Visitors who heard the siren call of the Olive Garden, American Girl store, or the Hard Rock Cafe would be strapped to their seats and given wax for their ears. It would be my mission to have them reach the Ithaca that lay beyond Times Square, otherwise known as bistros, galleries, and even underground theaters.

  The gig would be my first as a fully licensed private investigator, a license that was now of less use to me since I’d been offered a contract to remain on at the SIC. I probably should have pretended to consider other options, but I accepted before Pippa had even finished laying out the terms (“junior” would be dropped from my title, and my paycheck would appear larger only under a microscope). I didn’t care that the rest of my generation was hopping from job to job to avoid the appearance of stagnation. I aspired to stay as long as they’d have me, hopefully until I’d done the equivalent of accumulating a stash of Lucite handbags.

  I pinched the top of my sundress and fanned some cool air down the front while I scanned the living room for familiar faces. There were shimmering I New York Mylar balloons bouncing near the ceiling, and it seemed that Lucy had bought out the entire stock of Fishs Eddy’s skyline-patterned plates, mugs, and glasses. A framed print of The New Yorker’s “View of the World” was hanging prominently on the single non-glass wall of the living room—as if she was boasting about the myopia she planned to regain. She had brought in revolving displays of kitschy postcards, and more than a few guests were gamely sporting green foam Statue of Liberty headgear. It looked like Lucy had robbed a souvenir kiosk and kidnapped some tourists into the bargain. I stifled the thought that perhaps she could do with a quick visit to the eighteenth floor of Bellevue.