The Red Hotel (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) (7 page)

Detective Garrity’s jaws continued to chew gum. He looked at Everett with eyes as black and hooded as a turtle. ‘No, sir. To be truthful to you, I don’t seriously believe that this is gravy.’

Two crime-scene specialists arrived, one tall African-American woman and one short, bullish-looking white man with rimless spectacles and a blue shaven head. They unpacked their kits, taking out Sangur strips for the rug and BlueStar Forensic liquid for the polished wooden floor that surrounded it, to see if there were any blood spatters that might have been washed or wiped away.

The African-American woman moistened a Sangur strip, which was like a large cotton bud, so that it turned pale yellow. She wiped it against the stain on the rug, and almost immediately it turned a bright greenish-blue. She held it up without a word, so the two detectives could see it.

‘Probable for blood,’ said Detective Garrity, flatly.

The bullish-looking CSI turned to Everett and said, ‘Maybe you can give us some elbow room now, sir, so that we can check out the rest of the room.’ The way he said it, it didn’t sound like a request.

‘Sure,’ said Everett. He had plenty of work to be catching up with downstairs, even though he hardly felt like carrying on as if it was business as usual. Luther was waiting for him outside in the corridor.

‘Well?’

‘Worst case scenario. They believe that it’s blood.’

‘We need to work out how we’re going to present this, Mr Everett, sir. I mean, like, media-wise.’

‘I don’t have any idea. “Copious bloodstains have been discovered on the seventh story – but don’t panic! We haven’t found any corpses yet! So far as we know, nobody has actually been murdered at The Red Hotel, so we trust that you all enjoy your stay with us – sweet dreams!”’

They went back down to the ground floor. In the elevator, a pretty young brunette in a tight turquoise T-shirt kept smiling at Everett and batting her eyelashes, but Everett found it impossible to give her anything in return but a quick, sick grin. Jesus, if somebody
had
been killed, right here in The Red Hotel, he could be ruined.

He returned to his office and slid back the glass partition. ‘Bella, how about a
very
strong cup of coffee?’ In fact, he could have used a double Jack Daniel’s, straight up, but he wanted to try and stay clear-headed.

‘Oh, boss – you’re back!’ said Bella, brightly. ‘Your sister just called you! I told her you were tied up. She gave me her number . . . someplace in Connecticut, she said. She didn’t leave a message but she asked if you could call her back asap.’

‘OK, fine. Thanks. Do you want to get back to her for me?’

He sat down at his desk. His press officer, Olivia Melancon, had left him her latest media release, with a color photograph of himself and his partner, Stanley Tierney, and the mayor of Baton Rouge, George Dolan, all standing in front of The Red Hotel beaming with pride and holding up their thumbs. Her headline proclaimed:
THE FUTURE IS RED – New Lease Of Life For BR’s Bijou Hotel
.

The future is red
,
he thought. Well done, Olivia. You don’t know just
how
red. Red bloodstains and red balance sheet, both.

His phone warbled. He picked it up and it was T-Yon.

T-Yon said, ‘Thanks, Bella,’ and then, ‘Everett? It’s me. Everett – is everything OK?’

‘Where are you? Bella said you were someplace in Connecticut.’

‘Allen’s Corners, it’s just outside of New Milford. We came here to see Billy’s aunt Sissy.’

‘OK. What are you calling me for? You sound kind of upset.’

‘It’s a really long story but we came to see Billy’s aunt because she can tell fortunes, and tell you what your dreams mean, stuff like that.’

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘She’s fantastically good at it. She uses these special cards like nothing you ever saw in your life. They all have these really strange pictures on them, like witches and peculiar children and people getting baked into pies.’

‘Really? Jeez.’ Everett was trying to read Olivia’s media release at the same time as talking to T-Yon.

‘She told me my fortune.’

‘And, like, what? She told you that some horrible fate is going to befall you? You know I don’t believe in any of that hooey.’

‘Everett, she said that you were worried. In fact she said you were
very
worried. She said that it’s something to do with The Red Hotel, and it’s red.’

Everett abruptly leaned back in his chair. ‘Say that again? It’s something do with The Red Hotel, and it’s red?’

‘That’s right. The color red. She didn’t exactly know what, but it all seems to be connected to a woman who used to run The Red Hotel way back whenever.’

Everett paused for a moment, and then he said, ‘That would be . . . what was her name? Vanessa something. I know – Vanessa Slider. I remember the name because it’s like slider turtles. So far as I know she was the only woman who ever ran this hotel.’

‘When was that?’

‘Oh, who knows – way back in the late nineteen eighties, I think. Luther told me all about it. She and her husband used to manage it together but then her husband died and she took over. She ran it for a while – maybe three or four years – but then she was found guilty of assaulting a call girl who had come to the hotel to service one of the guests. Tried to strangle her, that’s what Luther said.’

‘It’s
her
,’ said T-Yon. ‘Whatever you’re worried about now, it’s all to do with her. What did you say her name was?’

‘Vanessa Slider. But I haven’t told you that I
am
worried.’

‘You are, though, aren’t you? Sissy said that these cards know everything, and they never lie.’

‘T-Yon, it’s all baloney. They’re
cards
, that’s all.’

‘It’s not just the cards, Ev. I didn’t want to tell you, but I’ve been having nightmares, too. Nightmares about us – you and me. That’s why I came here to see Sissy in the first place.’

‘Nightmares? What kind of nightmares?’

‘They’re just terrible. I mean like really,
really
horrific. I’ll tell you all about them when I see you. I can’t describe them over the phone. But they started when you opened The Red Hotel, and Sissy is sure that there’s some link between my nightmares and this woman who used to run it – this woman and her young son.’

Everett said nothing. He didn’t know if he ought to tell T-Yon about the bloodstains or not. Even though Detective Garrity had said that they were probably human, he was still holding out hope that they had come from some animal; or that they were paint, or dye, or even red-eye gravy, goddamnit.

T-Yon said, ‘Sissy thinks that this woman is looking for revenge. She doesn’t know all of the details yet. We’re going to do another reading this evening. But she says that we could be in real danger – both of us, you and me.’

‘How can she be looking for revenge? If she was running The Red Hotel in the nineteen eighties she must be getting on for eighty by now – that’s if she’s still alive.’

‘Sissy believes that people can still come looking for revenge, even after they’ve passed over.’

‘Oh, spare me! Come on, T-Yon, when people are dead, they’re dead. We never hear from Momma, do we, and
she
had plenty to be vengeful about, the way Poppa left her to bring us up all on her ownsome.’

‘That’s different. And anyhow, Momma never bore a grudge against anyone. She wasn’t that kind of a person. She was sweetness and light, God bless her.’

‘T-Yon,’ said Everett, ‘thanks for your call but I really have to go now. I’m up to my ears.’

‘So you’re telling me that you’re not worried about anything at all?’

‘Right now – apart from finding myself three qualified sous-chefs before tomorrow lunchtime – no.’

‘Cross your heart?’

Everett was just about to answer when he was almost deafened by a piercing whistle. Immediately, he took the phone away from his ear, but the whistling continued, rising and falling like a high wind whistling through a gap in a window. T-Yon was still talking, but he could barely make out what she was saying.

‘T-Yon?’ he shouted. ‘T-Yon? There’s some kind of interference on the line, I’ll have to call you back!’

‘
What?
’ she said.

‘I said there’s some kind of interference on the line! Can’t you hear it? Like somebody whistling!’

‘
Can’t . . . hear . . . anyth
—’

‘I’ll call you back, OK?’

He switched off his phone and went over to the sliding glass window. ‘Bella, can you get me that number again, please? T-Yon’s number in Connecticut?’ He stuck his finger in his ear and screwed it around. ‘The phone started making this really loud screeching sound. Damn near deafened me.’

She had started to punch out the number again when Luther knocked at the door.

‘Just had a complaint from five-one-two.’

‘What was it? For Christ’s sake, Luther, can’t
you
deal with it?’

‘I been up there already, Mr Everett, sir, and I sure don’t know what to make of it. Thought you’d want to come hear it for yourself.’

‘
Hear
it? What do you mean by that?’

‘It’s a whistling noise. Like somebody whistling, only real loud. I can’t work out where it’s coming from, or what’s causing it.’

Everett turned back to Bella and said, ‘Bella – forget that call for now. I’ll be upstairs on five if anybody needs me.’

He could hear it as soon as they stepped out of the elevator. Only three of the rooms on the fifth floor were occupied, out of twenty, but five guests were standing in the corridor with their fingers in their ears, looking distinctly unhappy. The whistling sound was overwhelming – the same hurricane-force whistle that Everett had heard on the phone. It rose and fell in both volume and pitch, and at its highest it made it almost impossible to think, let alone hear anything.

‘
What is it?
’ a young man shouted. Although it was only mid-afternoon, he was wearing only a hotel bathrobe, white with
The Red Hotel
embroidered in red on the pocket. Everett recognized him and his pretty blonde partner as a honeymoon couple who had booked in only about three hours ago. ‘It’s even making the TV go on the fritz!’

Everett walked down to the end of the corridor and looked out of the window. There was nothing outside the hotel that could be making a whistling noise as loud as this. There was no wind blowing, no helicopters hovering, no emergency vehicles parked in the street, no construction sites with klaxons or hooters.

Luther yelled, ‘Could be the plumbing, what do you think? You know – air that’s gotten trapped in the pipes, something like that? My Aunt Epiphany’s house used to rumble something terrible when she got air trapped in her pipes.’

‘I don’t have any idea!’ Everett yelled back at him. ‘Just get Charlie Bowdre up here with his maintenance crew!’

The honeymooner came up to them. ‘We can’t stay here with this noise going on! Like, if you can’t fix it, you’re going to have to find us another room!’

An older man quavered, ‘It’s playing all hell with my hearing appliance! Like somebody screaming, right inside my head! If I suffer a perforated eardrum, because of this, I tell you, I’m going to sue your ass!’

‘OK, OK, everybody please calm down!’ Everett shouted. ‘I’m going to call for our maintenance guys to come up here as quick as they can. Like my deputy manager says, it’s probably nothing more serious than some air in the water pipes, or maybe it’s an a/c problem. Whatever it is, we’ll get it sorted asap. Meanwhile, if you’d all like to come down to the Showboat Saloon, we’ll give you complimentary cocktails and snacks until you can return to your rooms.’

Even though the whistling was now even higher – so high that it was right at the upper edge of human hearing – the guests appeared to be satisfied with Everett’s offer, and they returned to their rooms to change into clothes that would suit the Showboat Saloon.

Luther meanwhile called Charlie Bowdre, their maintenance engineer, on his headset and told him to get up to five as fast as humanly possible.

Luther paused, and then he said to Everett, ‘Charlie says he’s all tied up.’

‘What the hell does he mean he’s all tied up? This is a goddamned crisis!’

Luther talked to Charlie Bowdre again. When Charlie Bowdre answered him he raised his eyebrows and said, ‘
Damn
.’ That was about the coarsest expletive that Luther ever used, so Everett knew that it had to be serious.

‘What is it?’ he asked. The whistling had subsided a little, but it had changed to a low, plaintive, quavering sound, like a chorus of desolate ghosts.

‘Charlie says that there’s a loud whistling noise down in the basement and he’s real concerned that the boiler may blow.’

‘Jesus. I don’t believe this. I’m going down there myself. You wait here, OK, until all of these people are ready, and escort them down to the Showboat.’

The whistling rose and fell, rose and fell. Luther looked up at the ceiling, and then all around him.

‘Sure sounds spooky, doesn’t it?’

‘Bloodstained rugs and spooky whistling, I seriously don’t need stuff like this.’

He left Luther and went to the elevator. As he pressed the button to go down to the basement, the whistling abruptly stopped. He turned back and looked at Luther in bewilderment. The total silence was almost as unsettling as the whistling that had come before it.

They waited and waited, but the whistling didn’t resume.

‘What shall I do, Mr Everett, sir?’ asked Luther.

‘Give them their free drinks anyhow. Don’t want them to think we’re cheapskates, do we? I’ll meet you in my office, OK?’

The elevator arrived and its chime made him jump. As the doors opened, he saw the reflection of a young woman in the mirrors; a young brunette woman in a cream-colored dress with her back turned to him. When he stepped into the elevator car it was empty.

He turned around and around. There was nobody else in the car but him, and his own reflections. The young woman must have been an optical illusion, a trick of the lights, and the mirrors. He must have seen nothing more than an image of himself, in his own cream linen coat.