Double Whammy (A Davis Way Crime Caper) (6 page)

“Who has billions in cash sitting around?” I asked.

“Casinos.”

Right.

“This,” my father pushed a photograph my way, “is the guy who had lunch at Mel’s.”

“Teeth.”

Daddy rotated the picture and took another look. “He does have a mouthful.”

“If he mentioned my name at Mel’s, you know he got an earful. They don’t serve anything but cholesterol, heartburn, and the We Hate Davis special.”

Mel, of Mel’s Diner, a run-down greasy spoon and permanent resident on the health department’s disaster list, is my former father-in-law. My former mother-in-law, Bea, runs the cash register and her mouth.

My father shrugged. “You’re probably right, but you never know. This fella,” another mug shot slid my way, “is the one Meredith met.”

“No Hair.”

Meredith is the owner/operator of a curiosity shop a block east of the police station, on the first floor of the three-story antebellum my father grew up in. The main parlor and the receiving room across the hall are where she sells toys, doodads, antique toys, and antique doodads. The former library is also the current library, where you can thumb through rare and collectible books, mostly mysteries, packed in the old floor-to-ceiling wall shelves and displayed in antique curio cabinets. (People come from everywhere for those dusty old books—go figure—but never stay. Which is how she met Riley’s father, who didn’t stay either.) The library (where Riley was conceived, not something Meredith broadcasts) leads to the old sitting room that she keeps stuffed with racks and trunks of crazy vintage clothing, and she converted the kitchen to accommodate an old-fashioned soda-fountain lunch counter, with huge glass jars full of candy you can’t find anywhere, like licorice jujubes, bubble-gum cigars, and Razzles. She serves homemade vegetable beef soup and grilled-cheese sandwiches that she prepares with three slices of buttered Texas toast and about a pound of Velveeta each. It’s a heart attack on a plate, and my father eats one every single day. You need a crane to pick it up and a nap immediately after.

Meredith changes the storefront window every week, pulling the front curtains closed on Friday afternoons. Three counties turn out on Monday to see what she’s done. One week she might have a Big Band theme going, an upright piano front and center with horns of all shapes and sizes suspended above and around it, Tommy Dorsey piping through the store and onto the sidewalk. The next week it could be a Mary Poppins window with parasols, stuffed penguins, and mannequins decked out in full regalia just like Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. The funniest is when my four-year-old niece Riley is part of the storefront, dressed up as a fuzzy little chicken for a hoedown-themed display or as a baby-girl Elvis for a King of Rock and Roll window.

Not only do Mother and Daddy
both
like Meredith, she has an endless supply of energy and imagination. The woman is crafty, clever, and six inches taller than me. It’s a wonder we speak.

“He told her he was just passing through,” my father said.

“Sure he was. To where?”

Daddy drummed his fingers on the table. Everyone knew Pine Apple didn’t lead to anywhere else.

“What did she tell him about me?”

“She didn’t. He didn’t ask. He poked around, had a chocolate malted, bought three books, a handful of old neckties, then left.”

I wasn’t surprised about the ties, but I wondered what he could possibly want with three crackly books. The huge man with dark beady eyes and without a hair on his head didn’t strike me as the curl-up-by-the-fire-and-read-a-musty-book type.

“And this last guy,” my father pushed an index card my way, then tapped it. “George Morgan?” Tap, tap. “Nothing, Sweet Pea. I couldn’t pull up a current residence, a full Social, or even a library card. I couldn’t find where he’s ever purchased a piece of property, borrowed a dime, been in the Big House or the military. All I could find was a vehicle registration and license, and you gave me those. Who is this guy?”

“He’s my driver.”

“Your driver’s living in his car.”

“I suspected as much.”

“How is he in play, Punkin?”

I thought about it a second. “I think he’s been on the Job.”

“Is that so. And?”

I shrugged. “Makes you wonder.” Which, it didn’t. We both knew why a law enforcer might disappear, and it wasn’t pretty.

“Watch your back, Davis.”

“Always, Daddy.”

I watched from the window until his taillights disappeared. The sun would set all too soon—I hate winter—and I had three hours of road to cover.

I’d savored the surprise of what great getup Natalie had in store for me until now, glancing at the duffel bag expectantly several times. The dress-up aspect of my new job was the best part—it made me feel safe and I loved the clothes. I unzipped the bag slowly, tooth by tooth, like opening a present. Natalie Middleton had missed her calling; she should have been a personal shopper instead of a personal assistant.

Inside the duffel I found an envelope with my name handwritten across the front. There was a short page of blah-blah, go here, go there, blah-blah, a car key on a round silver ring, and a tarnished metal key on a green plastic key fob, number thirty-four and EconoLodge stamped in flaking gold ink. Under the envelope were a maid’s uniform, flesh-colored support hose, a dark brown pony-tail wig, and thick-soled white industrial shoes. Size six and a half.

SIX

The EconoLodge sucked. The housekeeping job sucked harder. Two weeks into both, I was sleep deprived, my hands were raw and blistered, my back broken, my feet blown up to small pillows, and I didn’t have a clue who was stealing money from guest-room safes. More than that, I barely cared.

The good news was I’d all but forgotten the bad taste my first Bellissimo assignment had left me with, and the drudgery of this new assignment only had a bad odor. My ninety-day commitment was down to the high-sixties.

A heap of junk that Nattie insisted was a rental car was parked outside room thirty-four at the EconoLodge the first night. “Housekeeping personnel don’t drive brand-new shiny cars, Davis. Drive the rental back and forth to work.”

That pile of scrap metal reeked, died twice at red lights, and the radio only hissed. I decided quickly that my first commute in it would also be my last. I’d rather take the bus. I’d rather hitchhike. I’d rather crawl. I parked it in the employee parking garage, which, as it turned out, was in a totally different zip code than the Bellissimo. As I switched off the ignition the damn thing backfired, the amplified bomb blast bouncing off the concrete walls, taking ten good years off my life. I left that rattletrap there for good. I left the keys in it, very tempted to leave it running. I could walk to work and back in thirty minutes. It wouldn’t kill me.

Eight hours later I was so near death, that walking to the EconoLodge would have been the last straw. At the end of my first day with Guest Services, I felt like I’d pulled a log truck uphill by the bit between my teeth all day. I’d been screamed at in rapid-fire Spanish often and at length. I’d been forced to hover over an endless succession of toilets. I’d inhaled toxic chemicals all day. I’d manhandled mountains of suspicious bed sheets. I’d picked up a thousand gooey bars of soap, and, possibly the worst, I shattered a mirror into a million shiny slivers.

As I stood in line to punch out, everyone else jabbering cheerily as if they’d spent the day poolside, the very effort of inhaling and exhaling was about all I could manage. Walking to the hellhole EconoLodge was no longer an option. The thought of meeting up with the clunker I’d said goodbye and good riddance to almost brought me to tears, and then I remembered my friendly cabbie.

I couldn’t very well whistle through VIP in my maid getup and hail myself a taxi, so I left through the employee-service entrance and circled around the property on foot, which was about six miles cross country; I could have walked to the EconoLodge just as easily. George was right where I left him, and he was asleep. I found a nice big magnolia tree to hide behind and lobbed cherry LifeSavers, one at a time, onto the hood of the dirty white car.

The LifeSavers came from a guest room I’d all but licked clean, at the bottom of a basket of goodies the room’s last occupant had walked off and left, along with a rancid water glass full of drowned cigarette butts on a non-smoking floor. The rule seemed to be if the guest was still a guest, leave everything as close to where you found it as possible. If the guest had checked out, anything they left was fair game. This was explained to me in pantomime.

I eyed the basket.

Finder’s keepers—the only, single, solitary perk of this job.

There were only two LifeSavers left when George finally stirred, craned in my direction, and beckoned me with no energy and no recognition.

I ducked my head and made a run for the backseat.

He let out a huge sigh. He didn’t turn when he said, “You make a better redhead.”

I froze. I stared at the back of his head until he turned around and acknowledged me. We locked eyes. “Shut up, George, and drive.”

He cranked her up. “Where to?”

“The EconoLodge.”

I swear I heard him snicker.

We pulled into the parking lot, and he drove straight to my Volkswagen. I knew I was right about him; he’d been on one side or the other of the law. Otherwise, he’d have had no idea what I drove. Or what color hair was under the wigs.

“What time do you want me to pick you up in the morning?”

See?

I huffed. “Six forty-five.” I passed him a plastic bag full of loose change I’d collected off nightstands and dressers. He shook the bag, then looked at me.

“What? I can’t pay you a hundred dollars every time you take me three blocks!” I got out, slammed the door, and braced myself for my next chore—surviving the EconoLodge a second night.

*    *    *

“It couldn’t be
that
bad,” Natalie said. “There’s very little turnover in housekeeping.”

“That’s because they’re raking in the dough on that job. The housekeepers are filling up ten bags a day each with loot from the rooms.”

At the end of my second week, Natalie and I were having a sit-down at the casino next door, the Gold Mine, hidden amongst gigantic slot machines.

“Why are we here?” I’d asked.

“I love their coffee,” she’d replied.

“The job is nasty, Natalie,” I told her. “People are just
gross
. And they steal everything that isn’t nailed down. Today? Today I had a room that had a
lamp
missing. I cleaned the same room yesterday and the lamp was there.”

“What about the safes?”

Each guest room has a ten-inch recessed wall safe inside the closet. It was there to tease the guests:
Go to the casino and get a pile of money to put in me
. When the guests check in the little vault is wide open, the instructions loud and clear: leave this thing as you found it. If they have any reason to use the safe, they program their own top-secret four-digit code that allows access to whatever valuables they place in the safe, and if they happen to check out without opening it, the housekeeper has to stand there and try four-digit number combinations until they guess the correct one.

Just kidding.

Ninety-nine percent of the time the wall safes, like the two sheets of Bellissimo stationery in the desk, aren’t touched. Here’s an interesting fact: the Gideon organization doesn’t place a free Bible in casino hotel rooms. Does that make any sense? You’d think they’d put
two
in every room.

“Everyone seems to follow procedure,” I told her. “If we get to an unoccupied room where the guest left it locked, we call the supervisor. She brings the master key and opens it.”

“Have you run across that?”

“Once,” I told her.

“What was inside?”

“French fries.”

Natalie’s head jerked. “What?”

“Congealed French fries. I swear.” I flashed her the Scout’s Honor salute. Or maybe it was the Witches’ Honor. “They were swimming in so much ketchup I thought someone had locked up a body part, like a kidney or a big nose.”

“What did you do?”

“I had to pick up the nasty things, then scrub out the safe.”

Nattie recoiled.

“See? I told you.”

*    *    *

The room safes were being broken into randomly; the common denominator eluded me other than baby powder, because traces of it were found all four times. All I really knew was that I hated cleaning hotel rooms and that the thief was wearing Pampers.

I had
Jeopardy!
turned low on the television to muffle the noise of my neighbors, who’d had screaming sex twice already, once during the news and then again during
Wheel of Fortune
, with the four incident files and a take-out pizza spread out on the EconoLodge’s version of a bedspread: it was made of plastic, didn’t provide a single blanket element other than covering the cardboard sheets, and it smelled like feet.

I’d studied these files for two weeks now, and still a pattern hadn’t emerged. Truth be told, I only glanced at the stack the first week, unable to hold anything as heavy as a sheet of paper after my grueling day shifts, but began digging through them in earnest over the weekend. Two things dawned on me while staring at the stain patterns on the thirty-seven EconoLodge ceiling tiles: one, the Bellissimo had higher sanitation standards than the EconoLodge, and two, the reward for catching the thief would be a different assignment, something that didn’t involve removing gooey things from the bottom of hotel garbage cans during the day or having pervy neighbors at night.

The security footage was the same. I ran all four clips a dozen times on my teeny computer, backed them up, and watched them a dozen more. A dark-haired man, the same man each time (who knew the camera angles, because I couldn’t get a full shot of his face), stood outside a guest room chatting it up with the housekeeping floor supervisor. She used her pass key to give him entrance to an occupied room where he went on to relieve the room safe of its pesky contents. Only, as it turned out all four times, he wasn’t the occupant.