Hotel Paradise (44 page)

I yawned. I doubled my fists, one atop the other, and leaned my chin on them. My eyelids kept shutting, and I must have slept just for a moment until a little snore jerked me awake. My chin was still on my balled-up fists, but I raised my eyes to look over at my rented library picture of the bridge across a pond full of lovely flowers. I told myself that it was like Spirit Lake, but of course it wasn’t. It didn’t look haunted.

•   •   •

Difficulties. Pain. Blame.
Mentally, I pictured the Hanged Man and the orphans-in-the-storm card. And I decided these cards don’t tell your future at all; I think they tell you What Is, or maybe I should say, What You Are. They do not tell you what to do. They do not tell you where Aurora Paradise has her money buried, or where Lola Davidow has the crate of whisky hid. They do not tell you if Ree-Jane will die a miserable death, though you can hope so.

Difficulties. Pain. Blame.

But I was resolute, Mrs. Louderback had said.

Resolute. I wouldn’t give up. That was a comforting thought, even if I wasn’t getting any good advice from those cards of hers. But then I thought: there would be no reason to be resolute if all you had to do was ask the cards for advice, and they would give it. Maybe I only
thought
I wanted help or advice in making up my mind. Probably, when it came down to it, I didn’t want advice at all. For I always hated being told what to do, even by orphans or the Hanged Man.

Life was hard, but I was resolute.

The next morning I called Axel’s Taxis and was told that Axel himself might be coming out my way to deliver some goods and that if he did, he’d pick me up. I knew of course that Axel would do no such thing and that it would be Delbert driving. When the dispatcher asked me where I wanted to be dropped off, I told her the courthouse. I had made up my mind.

I had decided that it really wasn’t right to keep information “vital to the investigation” (which was the way I’d heard such things described) to myself. Although I knew the Sheriff had gone to Cold Flat Junction two days before, and I bet it was about the dead woman, there was still no telling whether it was the Queens who called the police, or someone else, who didn’t know much, maybe even the First Union Tabernacle preacher. So it would certainly save the Sheriff time if I were to tell him what I’d learned from what Jude Stemple had said.

I was not bound to tell the Sheriff about the Girl, though. That would save me a lot of explaining about my first visit to Cold Flat, and going with the Woods to the Devereau house. There was no earthly reason to drag in Mr. Root and the Wood boys and take the chance that somebody in the Sheriff’s office would come out here and grill them. It would probably be Donny throwing his weight around and pretending they were all suspicious characters for going over to the Devereau place. He’d pretty much try and leave me out of it, though, even though I was the ringleader, because the Sheriff would not take kindly to Donny’s treating a child like a possible criminal, especially me. There were advantages to being a child. The police
didn’t think you had anything to do with a murder case, and also you could get into the Orion for half-price.

I ordered the taxi for ten a.m., which would allow me time to wait on anyone coming in late for breakfast. Breakfast is supposed to be from seven-thirty to nine, but my mother will still cook if some guest wants to be served. This annoys me. Dinner is the same way, but Vera and Anna Paugh go home around nine p.m. If guests show up for a room and want a late dinner, my mother obliges, which means I have to oblige too, as there isn’t anyone else to wait tables. Except Ree-Jane, and God forbid anyone would have the nerve to ask
her
to oblige.

So this morning would have to be the one morning Miss Bertha decided to be late for her breakfast. You could have set a clock by her and Mrs. Fulbright, usually. Still, “late” for them was just a little after nine, and that was all right; not even Miss Bertha could take more than a half-hour or forty-five minutes to eat her breakfast and complain.

Which, of course, she did. The orange juice was watery, the corn cakes soaked up too much syrup, the sausage wasn’t spicy enough. This really irritated me, for usually she squawked about just the opposite: my mother put much too much pepper and spice in things. It was all so ridiculous; they were the same corn cakes and sausage as she’d always had, year after year. Mrs. Fulbright told her to stop making trouble for people, but Miss Bertha just sat rigid, her arms lapped around her like a little gray mummy, shaking her head. I took the plate she’d pushed away back to the kitchen and banged it down on the serving counter. My mother said just to send her in another plate of cakes and sausage and tell her they were made specially. There were sausage patties sizzling on the black griddle, sending up gray threads of smoke. My mother was taking off her apron, unwinding the ties, which she usually wrapped twice around her waist, the apron being so big. She told me she had to go out to the front desk and talk with Mrs. Davidow about the linen delivery and that in two minutes I was to turn the patties over and cook them on the other side. I could grease the other griddle and use the batter in the bowl. “You know how,” she said. “Just take her in fresh cakes and she’ll think I made them especially, the old fool.” Then she strode off through the side screen door and along the little wooden walk towards the office.

I was pleased to cook the breakfast; I liked being put in charge. While the sausage grease popped, I rooted in the icebox for the can of green chilies I knew was there, and which my mother used sparingly
in a hot sauce for some Italian dish. I removed one to the chopping board, took the big knife from an earthenware bowl and chopped the chili in tiny bits. I pressed some of these into two sausage patties before turning them over. Humming away, I carried the batter bowl to the griddle and spooned out the corn cakes. The batter was thick and grainy. My mother’s corn cakes would have been my favorite if it hadn’t been for those buckwheat cakes. Or the waffles onto which she would drizzle fresh fruit syrup.

The sausage was done and when the corn cakes bubbled up I quickly turned them over with a spatula and let them cook just a minute on the other side. I reached down a plate from the ledge above the stove where they sat warming and slid the cakes onto the plate with two patties. The rest of the patties I carefully lined up on a paper towel to drain off the grease, as my mother always did.

Then I carried Miss Bertha’s plate into the dining room. It was nine-thirty-five by now.

Miss Bertha didn’t hang around the dining room long after she got a mouthful of that sausage, which was fine by me, for my taxi would be arriving in twenty minutes or so. I was careful to remove the plate to where Walter was slowly wiping a platter and scraped the sausage into the garbage. I did this in case anyone decided to investigate. Walter was grinning, for he knew something was going on. Who wouldn’t, with Miss Bertha yelling someone was trying to kill her? I told Walter I’d tell him all about it when I got back from town, but right now I was in a big hurry, and also, I could hear my mother walking through the dining room. She had an unmistakable way of walking, and I recognized her footstep. I quickly told Walter I’d appreciate it if he didn’t happen to mention I cleaned Miss Bertha’s plate. That just made him grin more, his flat smile nearly splitting his face in two. Walter just loved to be in on a secret.

My mother marched into the kitchen saying that Miss Bertha was throwing a fit, the old fool, because the sausage was poisoned. She had a way of banging pots and pans around when she was annoyed, the way an artist would probably throw his brushes against the wall if he didn’t like the way his picture was going. Then she picked up one of the remaining sausage patties from the paper towel and bit off a piece.

“It tastes perfectly all right to me; it tastes exactly the same as yesterday’s. Here—” She broke another patty in two, walked over to
the dishwasher, and handed me and Walter the halves. “Doesn’t it taste the same?”

We both chewed and considered. I said, “Of course it does.”

Walter said, “Uh-huh, same as always. Real good.”

My mother threw up her arms. “If all three of us think so, then she’s obviously loony.”

My mother was very democratic that way.

“And she says she’s not going to eat
one more meal
in this place. Which should be good news for
you.”
She smiled at me. “You won’t have to wait tables at lunch.”

A bonus! All I’d wanted was to get my ten o’clock taxi. I never expected a bonus.

Then Walter said, giving us his slow smile, “I guess she thinks only
her
patties was poisoned.” He gave his sucked-in laugh. I glared at him. “Too bad I went and throwed the rest of her breakfast away,” he said, winking at me. “The old fool.”

•   •   •

As I climbed into the cab, Delbert squinted his eyes, as if that would help him hear better. He asked me what in tarnation people was yelling about in the hotel and I said I hadn’t the least idea and I’d like to go to the courthouse, please. I ignored his comment about having taken me there just a couple of days ago and was I in any trouble? He thought this was hysterical.

Just to see what the answer would be, I asked him what happened to Axel. Didn’t he have things to deliver somewhere in Spirit Lake? “Oh, Axel done that,” he said. “Early on this morning. He would of come got you, only he had an emergency call from up there at Buena Vista.”

I wasn’t really interested in any emergency the people who owned Buena Vista might have; they were all falling down drunk most of the time and having to be taken to the hospital. As Delbert talked on, I looked out of my window at the open field where some of the older La Porte kids came to race their ancient, beat-up cars. Bronze in the sharp sunlight, the dirt showed old slicks of oil and grease in between the puffballs and straggling black-eyed Susans that managed to sprout where there was grass left to do it. It made me mad to think that whole field would be covered with wildflowers and grass if it weren’t for the boys with their ugly shrieking cars. I also saw tire-sized patches of
grape hyacinths and I wondered if Nature wasn’t stronger than I gave it credit for being. I remembered the woods around the lake, the way the underbrush, the stout vines, and the thick-trunked trees had taken over the road where a person used to be able to drive a car, and the flat paths that had once been a way through. The Devereau house, which had once seemed to be the very center of that side of Spirit Lake, looked as if in a few years’ time it might be invisible to the eye, where the heavy-leaved branches would overlap and cover it like dark green water, and it would sink.

I was thinking these thoughts all the way into town, with an added thought for God as we passed St. Michael’s on the right. I was jolted out of my thoughts when the taxi pulled up to the side of the courthouse, and Delbert told me, Here you are! as if it was pretty clever of him to know where it was. I got out and paid him the fare, plus a quarter tip, which pleased him. Then I ran on into the building. Having made this decision, I could hardly wait to get everything off my chest.

•   •   •

“Sam ain’t here.” Donny was sitting behind the Sheriff’s desk again, sounding pleased to be delivering disappointing news.

“Where’d he go?”

He looked at me for a long while, making up something even more frustrating to tell me, then said, “Police business.” He leaned way back in the swivel chair and clasped his hands behind his head, rocking slightly, just to let me know he had taken over.

“I’ve got to talk to him. It’s important.”

“Well, talk to me. I’m in charge till he gets back.” His smile was so insincere it was rancid, like cold grease.

I looked as if I was considering telling him, which of course I wasn’t. “I guess I can wait.” I walked back to a short row of hard chairs and sat. I knew he hated me watching, especially as he hadn’t anything important to do. He would have liked me looking and listening if he’d been on the phone with the mayor or even the governor, or if he’d been telling off somebody about a violation. Except for Donny and me, the place was empty; there wasn’t even the secretary or the file clerk for him to pretend to be busy with. After a while of me staring and him picking up and putting down sheets of paper and pink memo slips, I guess he couldn’t stand it any longer, me being there and seeing he really didn’t have much authority over anything.

“Sam’s over to Cold Flat. Probably be gone all afternoon.”

I caught my breath, but outwardly appeared cool. “He was just there a couple of days ago,” I said, adding, “So were you.” It would irritate Donny to pieces that I knew this. It did. He glared at me. I slid off the chair said goodbye and thank you and left.

•   •   •

Sometimes when I want to think I go into the Candlewick, just to browse around and look at Miss Flyte’s “effects.” They are often wonderful, and she likes having people come in, even if they aren’t the buying type. That is definitely me.

The sun never seems to make a direct hit on Miss Flagler’s plate glass; it only manages to paint a seam or a ruffle along the side or the bottom edge. This is because Miss Flyte lowers a narrow awning over the window which cuts the light partially off from both shops.

Inside, it is shadowy and, with the lighted candles, almost spooky. It would be a fire hazard to have a lot of candles burning, so these are either protected by glass globes or wall sconces or otherwise surrounded by something which is not flammable. She likes to place candles between facing mirrors to give the effect of wavering flames, reflected endlessly; or to surround them with a three-sided mirror and get something of the same effect, this time tripled.

Miss Flyte was not there today, so Bonnie, the stock girl and general helper, was behind the register. She was looking at a magazine, wetting her finger and slowly turning pages as if it was one of those ancient manuscripts with jewellike decorations. I forget what they are called. She didn’t pay any attention to me (people don’t like kids in shops) until I asked her where Miss Flyte was. She answered without even looking up that she was at Miss Flagler’s.