Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 2 - Stellium in Scorpio (13 page)

"Teague,
call the police," Callie ordered. I hesitated. This would mean describing
what was on the tape, perhaps locating and viewing the tape in public. It would
involve her parents. It would be invasive and embarrassing.

"We
have nothing to report," I stammered as I got down off the chair. "I
couldn't even tell if it was us, and the image is gone and—"

Callie
handed me the phone. "Call the police now, or I will!"

I
shook my head in agony over being in this situation.
Good grief! How the
hell did this happen?
I rang the police and got a desk sergeant. He
listened to my statement and said he'd send someone over to the hotel within
the hour.

"Thank
you," Callie said, then picked up the phone and called her parents, asking
if they would meet us downstairs at the coffee shop, an attempt to get them out
of their room immediately and away from their TV.

I
slung my shirt on and stepped into my tennis shoes.

"Wear
this shirt. It makes your eyes pop," Callie said.

"My
eyes are popping without a shirt! What difference does it make what I wear if
they've just seen me butt naked making love to you! That was our Dallas Cowboys
night, in case you've forgotten!" I said, my voice going up an octave.

"I'll
never forget that night!" Callie squeezed my hand, reassuring me.

With
that, we went downstairs to determine what, if anything, had appeared on her
parents' in-room TV. I had to keep reminding myself to breathe.
What I do is
my own damned business.
But I knew from years in the motion picture
business that it took days with a talented director, lighting designer,
cinematographer, and makeup artist just to get a nude kissing scene to look
good, and that raw, poorly lit, unstaged sex scenes could look absolutely
horrific.

"I
hope you're not embarrassed over our lovemaking," Callie said, picking up
on my thoughts as we got off the elevator and scanned the lobby for the police,
who apparently hadn't arrived yet.

"I'm
not embarrassed. I just don't want it to look bad on camera," I said.

"Good."
Callie gave me a look that said she didn't believe me.

I
stopped at the front desk. "The police are looking for us."

"Of
course they are," Ms. Loomis said without looking up. I decided not to
take offense.

"If
they inquire at the front desk, we're in the coffee shop," I said and
continued on with Callie. "Every time I walk up to the front desk, I'm
demanding a security guard, threatening to call the police, or meeting the
police! In fact, since I've known you, I've met more police than when I was on
the force! Furthermore, and more importantly, this is not a good way to meet
your parents for the first time, right after their having seen me naked on top
of you!" I stopped ranting when her parents came into view like a
nightmare on the horizon, there to avenge their daughter's deflowering, ready
and waiting to suck the life from me and pick my bones clean.

"You
okay?" Callie said in what would be our last private words together.

"Sure."
I shrugged.

Paige
and Palmer Rivers were seated at a corner table in the coffee shop, neither
smiling at us nor frowning at us, just fulfilling our request to show up.
Callie greeted them in a chipper tone, kissing each on the cheek, and then she
introduced me with an amazing amount of pride in her voice, given the
circumstances.

Paige
said, "Hello, dear."

Palmer
nodded. Palmer struck me as a man who had a lot to say but picked his time to
say it. I imagined he was the last of the concrete cowboys pulling his big rig
across the state to deliver oil field pipe that would crush anything that got
in its way, delivered to men who would crush anything that got in theirs.
Palmer was the kind of man who didn't trust you at first, but when he did, he'd
get up in the middle of the night and drive five hundred miles to give you the
shirt off his back, and never expect a thank-you. On the other hand, if Palmer
didn't like you, I suspected that he might just beat you to death with a tire
iron and call it a day.

Callie
asked if they'd slept well, Paige rattled on about how nice the room was, quiet
and with a good mattress. But the conversation was strained.

The
waiter showed up and took our order. I felt Palmer watching me like a peregrine
falcon through one intensely focused eyeball with the iris dilating in and out.
I ordered pancakes, silently preferring a sedative. That out of the way and
small talk diminished, Callie took charge.

"Did
a video come on in your room just before I called you?" she asked flatly.

"Yes,"
Paige said, wincing. "I didn't know who to call about it!"

Callie
assured her that we had called the police, and that they were going to appear
within the hour. I felt my chest tightening and my ears turning red as Paige
and Callie launched into a dissection of the injustice of what had occurred,
the invasion of privacy, the perversion of the perpetrator, the deplorable idea
that someone could invade a hotel room with a camera—all while Palmer and I sat
silently avoiding eye contact. Paige went on about it as if it were a movie
starring two strangers and not her daughter and me.

"I
saw the whole thing!" Paige said loudly. "I was shocked, because I
thought, T didn't order this movie. What in the world!' And then two women
doing God knows what, and I got confused, thinking, well, how did this get into
my TV? I was so shocked I didn't even know if he was awake. Did you see it,
Palmer?"

"Just
the climax," Palmer said without expression.

That
startled even Callie, who said she'd better go to the lobby and wait for the
police officer. Paige went with her, leaving me with Palmer.

He
sipped his coffee and stared up at the constellations that ran across the top
of the ceiling, a universe of stars shining down on sausage and hash browns. He
didn't say a word. I tried not to let my mind imagine what he was thinking. It
seemed like an hour before he finally said, "Callie's psychic." I let
all the air out of my body in one relieved sigh, grateful that he wasn't going
to stab me with his breakfast fork. Palmer lodged a toothpick somewhere back in
his bicuspid and left it there. "Her mother's psychic too. So I've lived
with psychic women all my life," Palmer said and my mind filled in the
rest of his sentence:
And that's how I knew you were messin' with my
daughter,
or
That's how I knew this whole thing was going to come to no
good.
But Palmer seemed contained. I told myself to relax.

"The
trouble with Callie and her momma is, even when they don't know what you're
doin', they
think
they know what you're doin'. And to make matters
worse, it's someone out in outer space tellin' 'em what you're doin', someone
you can't even talk to. She told me that you stay up in your head all the time.
Well, at least that's a
place.
She and her momma are out of their bodies
most of the time. They're talkin' and communin' and hearin' from people. I
learned a long time ago that information from the cosmos can override plain
common sense, but you won't convince them of that. It's a challenge." He
shook his head in wonderment. "Now when I met Paige, this psychic stuff
didn't even come up because, of course back then, they'd just throttle you, and
take you to the priest, and try to scare the demons out of you. It's only been
recently that people are into that, if you know what I mean. TV and all that.
Television can get you in a lot of trouble." He looked me square in the
eye, longer than anyone had ever looked at me in my lifetime, and rolled the
toothpick across the front of his mouth and into a crevice of the other
bicuspid.

He's
like a cat who's decided to play with his breakfast first and eat it later.
He's toying with me, trying to wear me out. Well, I'm a grown woman! I don't
need to put up with this shit!

"Look,
Palmer, I'm a very direct person." I added quickly, "I'm in love with
Callie. I am. And I'm sorry you saw us making love in our hotel room, but I'm
not sorry we were doing it...only sorry that you saw it."

There
was a long pause and he breathed in real deep. I thought that if he spoke next
it could only go downhill, so I decided to get my say in first. "She's a
phenomenal person, and a phenomenal lover, and if I could just make love to her
all day long, well, hell, that's what I'd do, and that's the truth.. .not eat,
not sleep, just love your daughter. You're a man. Surely you can understand
those feelings. We're over forty, for God's sake, and we deserve some
happiness. So if you don't want to invite us to Christmas dinner or whatever,
fine. But I'm not sorry about the videotape of our lovemaking. I mean I'm sorry
someone else made the tape, but I'm not sorry we're in it."

There
was another long pause during which the only thing that moved was Palmer's jaw
muscle as it twitched and tensed and tightened. Palmer adjusted his silver
Spandex watchband. He twirled the cowboy hat that rested on his knee. He picked
up a fork by its tines and set it down and pressed the tines down onto the
tablecloth with his fingers—again and again and again—as if he thought the fork
might actually stay like that.

Mercifully,
Paige stuck her fairy godmother head into the coffee shop and signaled for us
to join them, saying the police officer was here. Palmer reached for the check,
and I launched myself out of the chair like a bottle rocket, unaware of how
badly I wanted to get away from this table until the opportunity to do so
appeared.

The
police officer was a gray-haired, pot-bellied detective who'd obviously seen
and heard everything one could conceivably see or hear in a town with
twenty-four-hour vice. He pushed his hat back on his head, pulled out a pad and
pencil, and suggested we go sit on a large settee in the lobby.

"What's
in room 1252?" the cop asked.

"That's
my room," Paige interjected.

"And
you're...?"

"The
mother," Paige said seriously, as if she were in an ancient episode of
Cagney
& Lacey.

"Where's
the tape now?" he asked.

"We
don't know. That's why you're here," Callie replied.

"Girl
sex," her mother whispered, "that's why you're here."

"Invasion
of privacy and blackmail, that's why you're here," Callie corrected.

"Well,
that too," Paige said.

"And
it played in every room?" the cop asked.

"How
would I know that?" Paige said.

"The
super on the screen said, 'Check out now or this will play throughout the
hotel,'" I interjected.

"Maybe
it was a commercial. 'Check it out now! Playing throughout the hotel,'"
Paige said like an announcer.

"Mother,
stop it, please. You're just confusing things." Callie tried to calm her
down.

"What
am I confusing? I don't want this man to get the idea that I order dirty
movies."

"I
would never think that, ma'am." The officer smiled.

"Girls
Galore!
That was the name of the
movie that came on this morning. I remember now! And these two girls were doing
sex acts!" Paige said.

"With
each other?" the cop asked.

"With
everyone! There was even a man there too!" Paige giggled and the cop
laughed.

"So
were Callie and I on your TV?" I asked.

"No!
How would that happen?" Paige asked, utterly surprised.

"Good
question. You should be a cop." The officer stuck his pen back in his
shirt pocket. This was a noncrime in his books, and he was looking for a
wrap-up and a quick exit. "I'll file the report, talk to the manager, and
if anything else happens, call this number." The officer handed me a card that
said Sergeant Lane.

I
stood there in utter shock and embarrassment. "The video never came on in
room 1252? Your mother saw part of an X-rated movie?"

"Yes!"
Callie beamed. "You see, I told you everything would work out."

"Except
that I just told your dad I'd rather make love to you than eat."

"What
did he say?" Callie's eyes flew open wide.

"Nothing.
He just sat there and stared at me, and his hat, and his watchband, and his
fork..."

Callie
burst out laughing.

"I
can never look the man in the face again," I said.

"You
were so afraid he'd hear us making love through the wall and now you've
described it for him! What you fear you bring to you." She grinned
mischievously.

A
nice-looking couple did a double take to look at Callie and me as we walked by,
giving us an odd look. Moments later a man walked past and then turned to look
again.

"What
are they looking at?" I asked.

My
question was answered by two short, stocky, pro-bowler-looking ladies in their
late fifties. One pinched my arm as they went by and said, "You girls are
hot!"

"I
have a feeling she's not talking about our wardrobe," I said as the women
flew past, destination unknown.