Maggody In Manhattan

Chapter Nine

The elevator awakened me several times, as did what sounded like a massive traffic jam a block from the hotel, a spirited rendition of a Bob Dylan dirge by a tone-deaf tenor, and an argument that peaked below my window. A car backfired, or so I told myself. The tenor retraced his steps, incoherent but still enthusiastic. Eventually everybody quieted down, and I was able to take the pillow off my head and breathe the musty air wheezing from the air conditioner.

I lapsed into a convoluted dream involving Kevin, Dahlia, and a faceless assailant in a baggy raincoat, all cowering in the shadow of a nuclear reactor while Raz Buchanon circled them in a horsedrawn buggy. He was snapping the reins so loudly that it took me a moment to realize someone was tapping on my door.

I banished the last of the bizarre dream, went across the room, unlocked the deadbolt, and opened the door as far as the chain would permit. "Who is it?" I whispered.

"Who do you think it is? " Estelle whispered right back. "It sure ain't the mayor wanting to give you a key to the city. Open the door right this minute."

"What time is it?"

"Time to open the door, Miss Third Degree. We are disinclined to be murdered in the hallway while you ask stupid questions."

I closed the door to disengage the chain, then opened it and waited irritably as Estelle and Ruby Bee slipped inside. They were wearing robes and slippers, which at least implied they hadn't been riding the subways or prowling the sex boutiques at Times Square.

I squinted at the clock. "Okay, what's the problem? It's nearly four in the morning. Back home, you may get up with the chickens, but in this neck of the woods, the only chickens are in the moo goo gai pan."

Estelle poked me in the chest. "Here's your poor mother, who's just gone through a terrible ordeal, and you're making smart-mouthed remarks. I'd like to think you can show her some compassion, instead of spouting off like a snotty teenager," She poked me again for good measure.

I bit back a retort and glanced at Ruby Bee. Even in the murky lights from the street, I could see she was upset. She stumbled to the bed and sat down with a muffled moan. "Terrible, terrible," she said, rocking back and forth, her arms wrapped around herself. "I can't think when I've seen something that terrible."

"What?" I snapped, having become inured to her thespian skills well before the onset of my adolescence.

"A body in the kitchen," Estelle said.

I numbly switched on the light and sat down next to Ruby Bee. "Did you have a nightmare?"

She shook her head. "I wish I had, but what I saw was as real as it gets. And the blood! I ain't never seen so much blood in all my born days. There was blood on the floor, blood on the wall, blood on the counters, and blood all over him like he took a bath in it." She covered her face with her hands and slumped forward. "I get all woozy just thinking about it."

I was a little woozy myself. "And this was in the kitchen? You were in the kitchen and found a body? Whose body?"

"It was dark and I didn't stop to ask for identification," Ruby Bee said testily, apparently not as close to a swoon as she'd been two seconds ago. "Nobody would have. For all I knew, the murderer was hiding right there in the broom closet, a butcher knife in his hand. I skedaddled out of there like the hem of my robe was on fire, and I didn't look back."

Estelle sat down on the other side of her. "You did just what any one of us would have done." She gave me a dark look for hinting that Mother had not acted appropriately upon the discovery of a blood-drenched body. "So what are you gonna do about it?"

"About what?" I said more loudly than I'd intended. "I don't even know what we're talking about, for chrissake! For one thing, the kitchen is locked, so there's no way there could be a body down there-or that you could have stumbled over it and fled before you met the same fate. I realize you're anxious about the contest. You had a very vivid nightmare set in the kitchen." My theory was not well received, or so I suspected from the snorts and glares coming at me as if I were a hapless toreador. "The kitchen is locked," I repeated, enunciating slowly and carefully.

"No, it ain't," Ruby Bee said. She took an oldfashioned hairpin from her pocket and showed it to me. "I planned to use this to get the door open, but it wasn't even locked. I eased it open in case it squeaked, took a couple of steps inside, and saw the blood splattered on the wall. I didn't know right off it was blood. There was only a little bit of light from the hallway, so I thought it might have been shadows or even mildew."

I stared at her. "But why did you go to the kitchen in the first place?"

Estelle twitched disapprovingly. "Would you let her finish the story without this constant interrupting?"

"Sure," I said as I lay back on the bed. "I'll hold my breath to the very end."

"Then," the narrator said in a hushed voice, "I started to tiptoe around the island in the middle of the room, and I happened to put my hand down to steady myself. I felt something wet, and when I looked at my hand, it was smeared with brown stuff. I was pondering it as I took another step and caught sight of the feet sticking out from the far side. I liked to jump out of my skin, lemme tell you. I took a fast look at the rest of it, but there was a noise like someone was lurking in the darkness. I turned tail and ran out the door, along the hallway to the stairs, and right on up to the room without wasting one second."

"She pounded on the door," Estelle added, "and when I let her in, an icy hand seemed to grab my heart and I knew then and there that something terrible had happened. I haven't seen her shaking like this since that ornery escaped convict was on the verge of killing us up on Cotter's Ridge."

I waited for more breathless prose, but it seemed I'd heard the entire story and it was my turn to fabricate. A gentle tap on the door saved me the effort.

"It's the murderer!" Ruby Bee shrieked. "He followed me up here! You got to do something, Arly!"

Estelle shook my arm so violently my head bounced on the bed and my teeth clattered. "Do something!"

"Indeed." I stood up and pulled on my robe, went to the adjoining door, and held it open. "Come on in, Durmond. We're just sitting around the ol' campfire telling spooky stories. Don't suppose you have any marshmallows with you?"

He tightened the belt of his robe as he came through the door. "I hope I'm not interrupting, but I heard voices and I was worried that there might be a problem of some sort." He waited for a moment, then smiled uncertainly and said, "But I can see that you're all safe and sound, and I don't want to intrude."

Ruby Bee and Estelle sensed a more receptive audience. They snagged him, settled him on the bed (my bed), and related the entire story once again, from the hairpin to the pure panic down the hall in 219. I leaned against the wall and listened, somewhat amused by the varying degrees of shock and incredulousness that crossed Durmond's face. Only somewhat amused because it was well past four o'clock by now.

"I don't know what to say," Durmond said when they ran down. "I suppose we ought to take some action, but my only experience in this sort of thing is from television. Should we call the emergency number for the police?"

"No!" I said, startled out of my benign trance.

"We have to do something, missy," said Estelle. "There's some poor soul dead in the kitchen. It's up to us to call the authorities." Ruby Bee nodded, although she looked a shade less enthusiastic about doing her civic duty.

I made a face at Durmond. "Before we do something quite so definitive, why don't we go have a look at this purported corpse?"

"Purported?"

"At this point, it's purported," I said in a grim voice. I wasn't in the mood to explain to him about Ruby Bee's and Estelle's propensity for fanciful tales anymore than I was to explain it to the police. "Estelle, take Ruby Bee back to your room and give her a shot of that brandy you've got stashed in your suitcase. After such an ordeal, she must be thirsty. Durmond and I will go downstairs to the kitchen, and if there's…what Ruby Bee says there is, we'll call the police and deal with them."

Estelle started to protest, then clamped down on her lip and nibbled nibbled on it while she studied her cohort. "I get your drift, Arly. You're thinking the police will leap to the wrong conclusion again and drag your poor mother off to jail. She's not exactly Miss Popularity of the Precinct, is she?"

"Not exactly," I murmured with heartfelt sincerity.

We went out to the hallway. Durmond and I watched the two until they were safely inside their room, then mutely rode the elevator to the lobby. He looked as if he had a lot of questions, but I knew damn well I didn't have nearly enough answers even to start a conversation, much less to sustain one.

The lobby was quiet, although the traffic beyond the glass doors had abated only slightly. I'd never been able to figure out why the streets were crowded all night long in Manhattan, who the busy bodies were and where in the hell they were so eager to be in the hours before dawn. One of life's little mysteries.

"Let's just get this over with," I said as I took off down the dimly lit hall to the kitchen.

"You're the cop," he said from behind me, his slippers softly slapping the floor.

I hesitated in front of the kitchen door for a moment, then eased it open and found the switch on the wall. The room flooded with harsh white light. Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to step inside and look at the stainless counter for signs of a bloody handprint. The surface was clean. The five boxes, each with a contestant's name scrawled on the top, were in a neat row.

I exhaled noisily and went on around the island. The wall wasn't wasn't splattered with anything I could see, and there certainly were no feet poking out from beyond the far corner. I completed my circumnavigation of the island and joined Durmond at the door.

"No body," I said with a shrug. "No blood, no nothing. It looks pretty much the way Kyle and I left it this morning." I reached for the light switch, but my hand froze in midair and I turned back around with a puzzled frown, "No, it doesn't," I said, mostly to myself, as I struggled to form a mental image of the room as it had been earlier.

Durmond put his hands on my shoulders. "There's certainly no body, as you said. Your mother had a nightmare about creeping down here, and convinced herself and Estelle that it really happened. Let's see if we can get a little more sleep." He began to massage my neck, which must have felt like a bundle of ropes. "Then again, if we can't sleep, we can find other ways to pass the time."

"There's something missing. Four somethings, to be more accurate." I pulled free of his hands and went back around the island to make sure I wasn't as addled as Ruby Bee. "This morning there were four cases of Krazy KoKo-Nut stacked against this wall. They're gone."

"Are you sure Geri didn't have them moved?"

"To tell the truth, I'm not sure about anything anymore. We'd better go tell Nancy Drew that she was seeing things, and then I'm going to lock myself in my room and go back to bed. If someone's crazy enough to steal Krazy KoKo-Nut, no telling what else he or she might do before the sun rises."

"I'd be delighted to serve as a bodyguard," he said, advancing slowly.

"Good," I said, retreating briskly. "You can sit outside my door the rest of the night. I'd loan you my gun, but I left home without it. Silly me."

"I have a gun, but I'd hate to use it on someone who's obsessed with pseudo-coconut. It'd be like shooting a hopelessly sick animal, wouldn't it?" The ends of his mustache twitched as he smiled, and there was something going on behind his gentle brown eyes that I couldn't begin to read.

"I think I'd better let Ruby Bee and Estelle know that everything's okay," I said. I held my ground until he turned and went out of the kitchen, then looked once more to make sure there was no blood, switched off the light, and closed the kitchen door.

"Kevin!" hissed Dahlia, reaching across the table to shake his shoulder. "Wake up!"

"Wha…?" He lifted his face, which had been flattened like a pancake from being on the table for more hours than he could count. It was so dark that it took him a minute to think where he was, and why there were fingers biting into his shoulder like a vise. "Is that you, my beloved?"

"Shush up," she continued, still trying to squeeze some sense into him. "This is our big chance to escape. Marvel's gone off somewheres. All we got to do is creep out the back door. Come on!"

Kevin rubbed his eyes and tried to spot Marvel somewhere in the shadows of the café. He listened real hard, too, but all he could hear were birds and insects outside and the low rumble of a car or truck way far in the distance. "Where is he right now?" he whispered to his beloved bride.

"I dun told you he's off somewheres, most likely asleep. We can sit here till dawn trying to guess, or you can get off your runty butt and follow me out the back door so we can go to Niagara Falls."

Grunting ever so softly, she began to slide out of the booth. Kevin was far from convinced this was the best thing to do, but he wasn't about to argue with her, not when she'd been through such trials and tribulations these last days, all of them his fault. He wouldn't have been surprised if she regretted ever marryin' him. Wouldn't have blamed her if she did, neither.

Once she'd popped free of the booth, she grabbed his wrist and led him ponderously yet relentlessly through the tables. "You'd think I was taking you to the dentist-instead of risking my own life to save your hide. It's a good thing one of us has the smarts to do something other than snore."

"I'm awful sorry about how this honeymoon is-"

"Will you shush up?" Clamping harder on his wrist, she navigated through the gap at the end of the counter, pulling in her elbows to make sure nothing got toppled off, and dragged him into the kitchen. There was enough light from a utility pole for her to make out the back door, and once they got closer, to make out the key in the deadbolt lock.

In that she was steering, Kevin decided he'd better guard the flank and kept his head turned accordingly. There was no Marvel silhouetted in the doorway, his gun raised and his eyes as cold as a killer's. Encouraged, Kevin tried to report as much to Dahlia, but she shushed him again and busied herself with the key.

The door obligingly opened with nary a squeak. "Once we're outside, we'll run over to those trees," she said in a low voice. "Keep your head down unless you aim to have it blown right off your shoulders and mounted on the wall alongside that buck in the front room. You ready?"

Kevin was a little dismayed at the image she'd evoked, but he swallowed several times, reminded himself of his duty to his wife, and nodded. She began to push open the screened door. The tiny ticks seemed louder than firecrackers, but there wasn't anything they could do but grit their teeth and pray Marvel was tuckered out from all his crimes.

Still hanging on to Kevin in case he lost his nerve, Dahlia lifted her foot to step onto the concrete block steps that led to a weedy path.

The gunshot was a darn sight louder than a firecracker. The flash of light from behind the tree was followed immediately by the sound of wood splintering not more than an inch from her face. Shrieking, Dahlia instinctively flung her three hundred pounds plus backward, unmindful that she was taking Kevin with her as they crashed into a table near the door, and then in dizzyingly quick succession, into a kitchen counter, a collection of mops and brooms propped in a corner, a metal bucket, and the stove, at which point a skillet brimming with grease clattered to the floor.

A second shot came from the same direction, although at this point neither newlywed was keeping a tally. The grease splashed all over the floor, and all of a sudden they were slipping and sliding like novice rollerskaters, hanging on to each other and screeching something awful.

The next shot shattered the window above the sink and showered them with glass. "Let go of me!" Dahlia howled, too frantic to realize she was the one hanging on for dear life. "You're gonna get me killed!"

Kevin obediently attempted to jerk his wrist free, and this was enough to send Dahlia's feet out and up. The rest of her went down with a boom that made the entire café tremble. Tin cans fell off the shelves, as did coffee cups and plastic tumblers. jars of pickles and jam exploded as they hit the floor. Silverware tinkled in a drawer.

Marvel came to the doorway of the kitchen, his gun in one hand and a paperback book in the other. "I swear," he said, watching Kevin and Dahlia on the floor, "I leave you two alone for five minutes, and you take to wrestling in bacon grease. I know it's your honeymoon, but do you think you could restrain yourselves a little while longer? There're a dozen rednecked cops out there hoping to shoot me between the eyes, and I don't have time to worry about you two." He waved the gun at them. "Get off that floor and try to behave, you hear? Didn't your mamas teach you anything?"

They continued to flop on the floor, making animal noises and grabbing at each other. Disgusted, Marvel went back to the front room and watched the cops as they scurried around on the far side of the road. There was still a lot of moaning going on in the kitchen, but he decided to let them have their fun in private.

"Yes, I'm quite sure there were no bloodstains anywhere in the kitchen," I said to Ruby Bee and Estelle, neither of whom looked convinced. We were alone in the dining room, but as I paused to reiterate what I'd just iterated for the tenth time, Rick came in with a coffee urn, banged it down on a nearby table, and stomped out. Mr. Cambria, dapper in his blue uniform, appeared with a tray piled with cups, saucers, and other pertinent paraphernalia, twinkled at us, and set the tray beside the urn.

"Rickie will be back with donuts and danish," he said with a courtly little bow. "May I have the honor to serve you ladies some coffee?"

"You'd better get back to your post, Mr. Cambria," Rick said, returning with the predicted pastries. "She'll have a tantrum if we are missing a doorman, and that's the last thing we need. If everyone will cooperate, maybe we can get this contest over with and all of you can go home. These have not been my favorite few days."

Cambria put his arm around Rick and squeezed him tightly. "Rickie, Rickie-don't you listen when I tell you the importance of a good sense of humor? You young kids today, you push too hard, try to make everything happen all at once, think you can go from gardener to president in the blink of an eye. Believe me when I tell you to sit back, relax, smell the roses, or in this case, the coffee."

"How true," Ruby Bee said with a sharp look at yours truly, who hadn't intended to dispute the premise.

"There, Rick, you hear the lady?" Cambria slapped him on the cheek, then nodded at us and went into the lobby to assume his post, whistling all the while. He arrived in the nick of time to open the door for Kyle, who rushed past him without a word and came into the dining room.

"No sign of Geri?" he asked between gulps of air.

"None, but I'm sure my luck will change." Rick gave us a humorless smile as he left.

Kyle fixed himself a cup of coffee and sat down. "I talked to her an hour ago, and she agreed to come back. We've decided to skip the trial runs in the kitchen and get straight down to business this afternoon. We'll draw lots for position, and the first finalist starts at one o'clock." He took a slurp of coffee and managed to return the cup to the saucer with a lot of rattles but only a minimum of sloshes. None of us mentioned the droplets on his tie. "If we stick to the schedule, all the recipes should be ready for judging at seven tonight. I'll announce the winner, present the prize, and you people can get busy packing."

"You mean the ten-thousand-dollar prize," Ruby Bee said, softening softening the reproach with a grandmotherly smile.

"In a way." Kyle consulted his watch, then ran his hand over his hair, wiped his palm on his trouser leg, and busied himself with the remainder of his coffee.

"Shit, I wish the other contestants would get here. I called and told them to meet here at ten. It's already a quarter till. You people are on time. How hard can it be to take the elevator down one entire floor?"

"Real hard when it doesn't work," Gaylene said as she came into the dining room. She wore skin-tight shorts and a gossamer blouse, and her ash-blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. "It's a good thing I didn't twist an ankle coming down those slippery ol' steps. How could I play the slots on crutches?"

It must have been a rhetorical question, in that she headed for the coffee urn without waiting for our opinions. Ruby Bee and Estelle agreed to allow me to bring them coffee and donuts, and we were all settled as Frannie and Durmond came out of the stairwell door and came across the lobby.

"That makes four-no, three," Kyle muttered, oblivious to the crumbs on his chin and lapels, and also to the smudge of powdered sugar on the tip of his nose. "All we need are Brenda and the kid, and we'll be set." He rapped his cup on his saucer. "Listen everybody, Geri should be here any minute to take charge, and please don't give her any grief. Do whatever she says, okay? She'll take you on a tour of the kitchen, at which time you can check your individual boxes to make sure you've got everything you need. The boxes will then be sealed, and no one will be allowed in the kitchen until it's his or her turn to prepare an entry. Only the contestant and Geri will be in the kitchen from that point on. As each entry is finished, it will be locked in the pantry under Geri's supervision, and she'll have the only key."

"Did you look in this pantry?" Ruby Bee whispered at me, then caught Kyle's beady stare and sat back. I nodded, even though I hadn't.

"I'll have to stay with Catherine when she prepares her recipe," Frannie said.

Kyle gulped at her. "Impossible."

"She has asthma," Frannie countered with a shrug. "I have to be there with her inhaler and her tablets. I'm the only one who can judge the severity of an attack and give her the proper dosage. In fact, she had an attack last night and I told her to stay in bed until the actual time of the contest."

Kyle tried to stare her down, but eventually conceded. "Yeah, as long as you don't help her prepare her entry. Nobody else has any medical problems, right?"

We all shook our heads, and I hoped I was the only one who heard Ruby Bee mutter, "Except for that man in the kitchen. I'd call being dead a downright serious medical problem."

Kyle glanced our way, but merely said, "Well, then, why don't you have more coffee while we wait for Geri. She said she'd be here at ten." He looked at his watch, and then at the window. "I'd better check on Brenda. I think it'll be better if we're all here when Geri comes. She's still a little upset after last night's reception."

I watched him as he walked across the lobby, futilely punched the elevator, and disappeared into the stairwell. He was uncomfortable in his role as drill sergeant, but he was doing fairly well. Sure, he'd ruined his tie, and his jacket was so sprinkled with crumbs that he might have been in the throes of terminal dandruff. To his credit, his voice was breaking no more than every third word and his eyes were slightly less panicky than those of an animal caught in a steel trap. It was only a silly contest, I told myself as I finished my coffee. He'd been tense the day before, but now he was so wired that he might detonate any minute.

"What's bugging that Kyle fellow?" Ruby Bee said, paraphrasing my thoughts. "It ain't like he has to run the contest by his lonesome. Geri's coming back, so all he has to do is toady around and pretend he's important."

Estelle nodded sagely. "He's acting like someone stuck a piece of dynamite up his rear and struck a match." She made sure Durmond and I were the only ones paying any attention, then lowered her voice. "Maybe he had something to do with that corpse in the kitchen…The first time I laid eyes on him, I knew he was a sneaky sort. After all, a ferret ain't nothing but a domesticated polecat."

"Neither he nor Geri is staying in the hotel," I pointed out. "Rick may have conceded the kitchen key, but I can't see him handing over the key to the hotel. They weren't even here at four in the morning."

Durmond, in a whisper almost as theatrical as Estelle's, said, "And there was no corpse in the kitchen. Arly and I checked very carefully."

"There most certainly was!" Ruby Bee protested.

I managed to control my temper, for the most part. "No, there wasn't, dammit! Not unless he waited for you to leave, and then hopped up, grabbed a mop and a dishrag, got everything cleaned up, and wandered out the door with four cases of Krazy KoKo-Nut in his pocket!" For the most part, as I said.

I might as well have been arguing with Particular Buchanon-after his funeral. Ruby Bee thought for a minute, and said, "I think you're on to it. Somebody came into the kitchen after I left, moved the body, and cleaned up that awful mess. Who'd do a thing like that?"

Optimist that I was, I tried again. "If there was as much blood as you claim there was, no one except a band of elves could have accomplished all that in the short amount of time."

"It wasn't all that short an amount of time." Ruby Bee gave Estelle a nervous look. "I'd say we discussed what to do for a little while before we decided we'd better tell you about what I saw in the kitchen."

"We didn't want to disturb you," said Estelle, trying to act as if that were one of their priorities.

I knew them too well. "How considerate of you. Exactly how long did you dangle on the horns of this particular dilemma before you came to my room?"

"It could have been most of an hour," Ruby Bee mumbled. "I believe I'd like another donut. How about you, Estelle? The ones with the lemon filling are nice and tart."

"An hour?" I said wonderingly. "You debated the delicate issue of disturbing me for an hour? I am impressed, ladies. Ruby Bee's been known to call during the first sneeze to tell me she's coming down with a cold. But a body covered with blood-hey, let's take plenty of time."

"Shhh!" Estelle said, gesturing at the others in the room, all of whom were hearing enough of our conversation to look worried, if not scared sick.

Or then again, they might have spotted Geri striding down the sidewalk and through the lobby door. Maybe they could hear her grinding her teeth. Those with telepathy might have been hearing some colorful language, if her fierce scowl was any indication of her thoughts.

She slammed the briefcase down on a table, took out her clipboard, and in a voice nearly primal in its hostility said, "Let's get this damn thing over with, shall we?"