Stud Rites (19 page)

Without waiting for her to finish, Harold made a stupendous effort aimed, I think, at salvaging the situation.

Or at least at salvaging the Hawaiian cake. Barging into his wife, the manager, and Freida Reilly, and shoving past several hotel employees who’d gathered, I suppose, in the hope of offering some assistance, Harold stomped up to the cake, loomed over it, spread his arms, got a grip on whatever tray or giant platter supported it, and, with a massive show of muscle, succeeded in dragging the confection forward and raising it upward until it cleared the table. Maybe his fingers slipped on the icing. As the huge cake began to tremble and slide from his grasp, he lunged ahead and, like a desperate parent snatching for a plummeting child, wrapped his arms around the cake and attempted to hold the crumbling mass in a gigantic bear hug. Instead of mercifully dropping with one thud, the cake slowly peeled itself apart layer by layer and chunk by chunk. The icing, as I’ve said, was a pale apricot color intended, perhaps, to suggest orange blossoms. The interior, however, proved to be dark chocolate. Gobs of cake glued themselves to Harold’s suit. The icing must have been exceptionally adhesive. His sleeves bloomed with little sugar flowers. The bird of paradise tarried in the middle of his stomach before dropping pitifully to the floor.

The gasps and laughter were inevitable. Mavis, the mother of the bride, did not join in. In ringing tones, she demanded to know who the hell was responsible for this inexcusable screw-up.

Instead of answering directly, the manager apologized. ”An unfortunate miscommunication,” I heard him valiantly maintain.

With a look of scorn that would have set lesser men aflame, Mavis exercised the organizational skills that she must have developed in planning the wedding.

Rounding up various waiters and waitresses, she held a huddled conference. Then she announced the results to the entire Lagoon: ”In the kitchen,
our
beautiful cake was clearly labeled WEDDING. Then it was moved into the corridor, where it sat completely unattended! And while it did, our label was maliciously replaced with a card that read LAGOON!” Her voice quivered. She cleared her throat and glared at the manager. ”Maliciously replaced by a heavyset woman who was observed by one of
your
waitresses in the vicinity of
our
cake!” Turning to address us all, she continued, ”By a heavyset woman that this
same
waitress had previously observed on the grounds of this hotel walking a
DOG!
”

Which waitress was now apparent. A woman in a sarong was slinking out of the Lagoon. On her face was a big smirk.

”Darlene!” the manager called. ”You will get back here this minute and help us straighten out this misunderstanding! Why in God’s name didn’t you stop this individual, whoever she was, from fiddling with the labels on the cake?”

”I didn’t see her
touching
the label,” Darlene answered so defiantly that I could hear, see, and smell the lie. ”I thought she was just looking at the cake.”

”And do you see this woman here? Is she here now?”

Darlene nodded. In response to a request from the manager, she pointed a finger straight at Sherri Ann Printz.

Sherri Ann bounded from her chair. ”I damned well went nowhere near that cake!”

”Oh, yes you did!” Freida charged. On her fleshy bosom, the gold malamute seemed to frown. ”And I don’t know how you did it, but you got the entrees mixed up, too! From the moment you arrived here, you have done nothing but cause trouble, trouble, trouble! You are a jealous, spiteful woman, Sherri Ann! And I have had
all
I intend to take from you!”

With that, Freida stooped, grabbed two huge fistfuls of the sugary glop at Harold Jenkinson’s feet, marched over to the Printzes’ table, and, with both hands, smeared Crystal’s dark chocolate wedding cake, apricot icing, and confectionery flowers all over Sherri Ann’s astonished face.

The silence in the Lagoon was absolute.

Excusing myself, I went to the bar, ordered a double Scotch, and drank alone. Downscale really is beneath me.

I AWOKE at three o’clock, stumbled in the darkness to the bathroom, and hunted through my two cosmetics bags. Reluctantly, I looked in Leah’s numerous makeup kits, searched through the beautifying debris strewn around the sink, and checked the travel cases Leah uses for her hair dryer and her rechargeable toothbrush. Inspired, I tiptoed back into the room, got my purse, returned to the bathroom, and, in its bright light, discovered that I’d used the last spare tampon I always carry. Suppressing a sigh, I padded back into the room and eased open the closet door. The dogs stirred. ”Shh!” I told them. On my knees, I located my big soft-sided suitcase and blindly ran my hands over its interior, including the side compartments. I hate to admit that I looked in Leah’s handbag, too. Nothing. I’ll skip the gory details and report only that the situation was dire.

After making do with the scanty supply of tissues in the bathroom dispenser, I threw on a sweatshirt, jeans, and shoes, and belatedly remembered to take the room key and every piece of change from my purse. I recalled that in addition to miles of mirror and counter, the fainting couch, and the dainty chairs, the big public ladies’ room had vending machines. I slipped out into the silent, empty corridor. As I was passing the alcove that housed the soft-drink and ice machines, a sudden liquid rattle sounded to me like the hacking, coughing ghost of a thirsty, cranky James Hunnewell. Before I even peered into the little room, I knew it would be empty of the quick and the dead alike. The only movement was invisible: the hidden motion of a cycle-shifting motor somewhere deep inside the ice machine.

My pace quickened. At the end of the hallway, I descended a flight of twisting stairs. Instead of taking the familiar route through the maze that ultimately led to the lobby, I followed the series of arrows that read TO THE LAGOON. The arrows eventually led me to a door that opened to what I recognized as the grotto end of the dimly lighted Lagoon, a mock-tropical garden with split-leaf philodendrons, narrow flagstone pathways, and patches of fir-bark mulch planted with vines and impatiens. Avoiding the shadowy paths through this South Seas paradise, I followed a sort of sidewalk of artificial-grass carpet that ran along the perimeter, past the numbered doors of guest rooms and big, heavily curtained plate-glass windows intended, I suppose, to compensate for the airless undesirability of the interior rooms of the hotel by offering a bold vista of plastic foliage.

After I turned a corner, guest rooms finally gave way to function rooms. The deserted restaurant appeared. I hurried past it and dashed into the big, brilliantly illuminated ladies’ room, where I poured large amounts of small change into the vending machines and supplied myself with enough sanitary protection to last through the next week. Feeling shy about passing through the lobby clutching a bouquet of feminine hygiene products, I decided to retrace my route around the grotto. Despite all the talk about random violence engendered by the recent slaying of Elsa Van Dine, I was only slightly more wary than I’d ordinarily have been in making my way alone through a sleeping hotel. Although I assumed that Hunnewell’s murderer must be someone at the show, probably someone staying at the hotel, my vigilance was the taken-for-granted alertness that prudent women develop. In fact, my mind had drifted to memories of a seventh-grade girls-only minicourse called, of all things, ”Growing Up and Liking It,” which, despite the name, said nothing about orgasm and everything about cramps and self-adhesive pads.

I had just passed the dark, empty restaurant and entered the tropical-garden area when a series of muted noises emanated from what sounded like the far end of the cavernous Lagoon. A door opening? A soft voice? Someone taking a dog out, I thought. Or maybe another woman in my little plight. If so, I’d generously spare her the trip to the ladies’ room. Then a voice again, a deep voice, a man’s, I assumed: ”Hello?” And only seconds later, a gut-wrenching scream, ungodly loud, that rang through the huge, ridiculous Lagoon, reverberated off the high glass ceiling, and sent me pounding down the carpeted walk toward the source of that ungodly scream. As I rounded the corner at the far end of the Lagoon, the only movement I noticed was the slow, automatic closing of the door through which I’d first entered, but when the door had finished closing itself and had sealed off the bright light of the corridor beyond, on the dark carpet ahead of me a figure moved.

Foolishly rushing on, I slammed my foot into what turned out to be one of the decorative paddles from the Lagoon walls, and in a frantic effort to keep my balance, stretched a hand toward one of the plate-glass windows of a guest room and found myself teetering amid a pile of tampons and carefully packaged sanitary pads as guest-room doors opened and voice after voice demanded to know what was going on. It took me a second to identify the angry, distraught face of the figure sprawled motionless on the carpet at my feet: Harriet Lunt, the lawyer who specialized in dogs, the hypocrite who’d joined Victor Printz in belittling our rescue dogs and who’d suddenly become an ardent supporter of breed rescue when I’d pretended to represent the
Gazette.

Ignoring the stuff I’d dropped, I hurried to her, helped her to her feet, and asked the inevitable: ”Are you all right?”

By then, eight or ten people had emerged from nearby rooms.

”Just my shoulder,” Harriet Lunt reported. ”My left shoulder.” With the fingers of her right hand, she explored the injury. Then she raised her left arm, moved her elbow around, and said, ”Probably nothing worse than a bad bruise.” She wore the kinds of gigantic foam hair curlers that are banned in Cambridge (they’re a symbol of female oppression) and an old-fashioned pink mesh hair net dotted with miniature bows. Her quilted cotton bathrobe was identical to one I’d given my grandmother last Christmas.

As people crowded around to ask what had happened and how Mrs. Lunt was doing, she kept saying that she was shaken up, that was all, and that there was nothing wrong with her shoulder that an ice pack wouldn’t fix. Before long, someone appeared with a plastic bag of ice cubes, and a woman I didn’t know introduced herself as a doctor and tried to persuade Mrs. Lunt to let her look at the injury. Mrs. Lunt, however, was exclusively interested in finding out whether anyone had seen her assailant. ”You were the first one here, weren’t you?” she asked me.

I had the sense that she didn’t remember me. ”Yes, but all I saw was that door over there closing. What happened?”

”I really have no idea,” she said. ”I was asleep. I heard a tap on the door. That’s what woke me up. And I assumed it was Sherri Ann or Victor, because Bear’s been having a little trouble with the change in the water, and I told them I had some Lomotil, if they wanted it. They said no, but when I heard that tapping on the door, I thought maybe Bear had gotten worse, and they’d changed their minds.” She paused. ”Should’ve,” she commented. ”Nothing like Lomotil.”

”Very effective,” I agreed.

”So I threw on my robe and went to the door. But when I opened it, there was no one there. And then I heard... I thought I heard someone say my name. So I took a step out and I said ’Hello?’ But there was no answer, so I thought I’d imagined it. Or maybe I’d heard somebody’s dog. So I turned around to go back in my room, when all of sudden! Out of the blue! Something came crashing down! And I must have spied something out the corner of my eye, because I managed to duck my head and raise up my arm. And that’s where he got me: right here. Knocked me to the ground.” She wrapped her right hand around the injured shoulder. ”What did he get me with?”

”A paddle,” I said. ”One of those Hawaiian paddles that are hanging on the walls.”

”Poor Elsa,” sighed Harriet Lunt. ”And then James. And now me.”