The Hotel Detective (28 page)

“Margarita cheesecake,” he said. “Never heard of it.”

He looked at it longingly. He hadn’t yet eaten breakfast, and judging by the denuded section, it did come recommended.

“Oh, go ahead,” said the Pillsbury Dough Boy, sounding more irritable than charitable.

At first bite, Am knew why the dessert had gone over so well. “Delicious,” he said. His second bite he announced as “Heaven.”
Am’s third pronouncement was “Sublime.” And then, to his disappointment, there wasn’t any left. That motivated him. There
was the chance that if he caught the thieves quickly, they would still be holding some of the cheesecake and he might wangle
another piece.

Am asked for the chefs to assign a dollar figure to their loss, and after a small consultation they settled on three thousand
dollars. He inquired when the desserts had disappeared and was told they could have been taken only between ten and eleven
o’clock, the time when they were all at breakfast.

“Worked all night,” the big chef said, “and set up all morning, and then this happened.”

“And you just left everything here and went to breakfast?” “What were we supposed to do, take ten thousand desserts with us?
We closed the doors, of course.”

Which meant that only half the Hotel would have been subject to aromatic seduction. All eyes were on Am. He wished he had
a magnifying glass, or a deerstalker cap, or a tic, something odd and eccentric to convince the circle of doubters that a
qualified sleuth was at hand. He couldn't think of any other questions, so he pretended to take a great interest in all the
spots where the desserts had been lifted. If so many eyes hadn't been on him, he probably would have sampled several more
desserts. Walking up and down the aisles, he stopped every so often to imitate the same kind of poses people affect when confronted
with modern art. Then he tried a different perspective, got down on his knees, and peered around. A marine white glove test
followed. There were papers and crumbs on the floor.

“Were these papers here when you left for breakfast?” Am asked.

The fat chef again consulted the other white hats. Then, together, they all shook their heads. They looked like a religious
order, their habits bobbing, the brethren of licked spoons.

Am checked the waste-baskets in the room. It was customary for the banquet crews to completely empty the trash whenever breaking
down a meeting room. Most of the containers were half-full, filled with foils, papers, doilies, and napkins. Am pulled some
samples out of the trash and examined them. Fresh.

“Your creations aren't missing,” he announced. “They've been consumed.”

The chefs regarded Am and his announcement as they would someone who had caused their soufflé to fall. “Look,” he said, “I
am very sorry, and apologize on behalf of the Hotel California. I intend to find out which individuals did this. But while
I'm doing that, I suggest you rearrange the desserts so that the bare areas don't look like Mother Hub-bard's cupboard. If
you think additional desserts are in order, I'll put an SOS out to our kitchen and have them whip some out.

The Dough Boy became the sour-dough boy. “We have emphasized quality in our creations,” he said, “not quantity. And besides,
the show starts in less than two hours.”

“Then we had all better get busy,” Am said.

Roger, who had remained mute around the chefs, found his tongue outside the room. “Probably just some vagrants who walked
in,” he said, “some beach people who sniffed out a free chow line.”

He sounded hopeful. It was a favorite tactic of his to blame anonymous sorts. Am always suspected he did that not for lack
of imagination, but to avoid any possible confrontations.

“A thousand desserts?” said Am. “Not likely.” “Employees?”

His second favorite target. “Possible, but I wouldn't bet on it. At least two hundred employees would have had to have a Twinkies
attack at the same time.”

“What, then?” asked Roger.

“A pack,” Am said. “A hungry pack. We need to find our Marie Antoinette.”

“What?”

“`Let them eat cake,' ” he quoted. “In this case, they did.” The thrill of the hunt didn't infect Roger. “Well, now that it's
in your able hands, Am…

Am shook his head and motioned for Roger to follow.

“Where are we going?” Casper asked miserably.

“First stop,” said Am, “sales and catering.”

There, Am was sure, they’d find answers to the cream-puff caper. The trail of crumbs was already in place, and they had but
to find where it led. At least in theory. Along the route Am paused several times, testing the wind and his sense of smell.
He sniffed mightily, but he didn’t have to. Pavlov’s dogs wouldn’t have needed a bell to start their salivating. With this
kind of scent, they’d probably look rabid. The call of the desserts was strong. There were four other meeting rooms in the
near proximity of the Montezuma Room. Usually neighbors see something. In this case they would certainly have smelled something.
A noseful of temptation had drifted down the path, and it wasn’t honey bees that had been drawn to the scent and the scene.

Kim Yamamoto greeted Am and Roger with a tired smile. She was in the middle of a desk of contracts, probably trying to make
sure no other Bob Johnson fiascoes were imminent.

“If you’re not too busy, Kim,” Am said, “I’d like a rundown on what groups are meeting this morning in the Sea Horse Hall,
the Spinnaker Room, the Starfish Room, and the Sextant Room.”

Kim didn’t refer to her notes, could have probably named what was going on in all fourteen of the meeting rooms if put to
the test.

“In the Sea Horse Hall is the Starving Artists Sale. The Spinnaker Room has the La Jolla Republican Women’s brunch, and in
the Starfish is Trend-three. The Sextant Room has some Procter and Gamble executives.”

The starving artists, despite the nomenclature, were not Am’s first choice for suspects. The group booked twice a year and
advertised paintings for as low as $39, worth almost every penny. It was amazing how much bad art they sold. As for the so-called
starving artists, most of them churned out about twenty-five masterpieces a day and made quite a good living.

Am asked for the prospectuses on the groups and ran down their vital statistics. His first hunch, he thought, was wrong. His
primary suspects had been the Republican Women, suspicions based on Teapot Dome, Watergate, and a liberal upbringing. But
there were only eighty women attending the brunch, not enough to make away with upward of a thousand desserts.

The numbers were there for the Procter & Gamble execs, but his gut feeling was that they weren’t involved in the crime: Fortune
500 types usually didn’t commit high jinks without sufficient highballs, and it was too early in the morning for those.

That left Trend-3, whatever that was. According to their prospectus, there were approximately two hundred participants.

“What’s the story on Trend-three?” he asked.

“ ‘Three phases to a new you,’ ” quoted Kim. “They work on mind, body, and soul.”

The body part interested Am. “Special diet?” he asked.

“Starvation diet,” she said. “They monitor everybody’s caloric intake.”

Bingo. “May I look at their file?” he asked.

Trend-3 could just as well have been called Trendy. There were a lot of New Age buzz words in their brochure. The workshop
was aimed at facilitating “a self-actualizing experience”: a revitalization of spirit, weight loss, and personal epiphany.
Am had seen that troika of promised change bandied about before, what he referred to as happiness, thinness, and godness.
Devout mendicants need not apply. Operations like Trend-3 never priced their holy trinity cheap.

Several gurus of the whole-grain set were running the program, had incorporated the Hotel’s spa into their own regimen, but
the Trend-3 approach sounded a bit schizophrenic: alternate pampering with spanking. Body wraps, mud baths, pore (not to be
confused with poor) therapy, acupuncture, haiku, and massage were offset by strenuous exercise, ice baths, Rolfing, and colonic
irrigations. The only thing consistent was their diet, or lack of one. Carrot juice, salads a rabbit might declare scanty,
and blanched rice were the meal offerings of the day. This was the third day of their four-night, three-day gathering. The
joys of fasting, meditation, and physical therapy might have sounded good in a brochure, but Am suspected by this time the
participants would have viewed the Golden Arches as the pearly gates. He had his culprits, all of them.

Roger again tried to wriggle out of deputy duty, but Am wouldn’t let him disappear. The aromatic offerings of the Montezuma
Room were easily discernible around the Starfish Room, lingering like the breath of Satan. Am pushed open the doors to the
meeting room, motioned with his arm until Roger preceded him, then walked inside. The group leader was in the front of the
room, pretzled on a mat in the lotus position. Her disciples were trying to imitate her serenity and her pose. She had long
braided hair, gave the appearance of being a graying flower child. Her eyes were closed. Either her concentration was complete
or she was good at ignoring the worldly. She was leading the class in some sort of breathing exercises, but they had stopped
their breathing. As surely and quickly as cops are made on the mean streets, the participants, the majority of whom appeared
to be aristocratic women, had made Am for the hotel dick.

Like a cop looking out on a barroom of hard cases, Am moved his eyes around the room. Some of those who were gathered blushed,
and others looked away, but maybe half were bold enough to give him the “cat who ate the canary” look. They weren’t about
to repent now. They knew what he was there for and didn’t have an ounce, let alone a few pounds, of guilt in them.

Madame Sominex finally acknowledged Am and Roger. She acted as though her vibrations had been disturbed, shook her head before
opening her eyes and looking in their direction, then closed them again for a long moment, as if trying to dismiss a mirage.
No such luck.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“I’m Am Caulfield,” he said, “the assistant general manager of the Hotel. I was hoping I could speak with you.”

Her nod managed to involve every vertebrae in her neck and could have been timed with the little hand of a clock.

“Continue your breathing,” she told the class. “Search for that place in your being that is the sun, that is warmth, that
is lightness, that cannot be touched. Find where nothing can intrude, where all is safe and whole unto itself.”

She was limber, able to rise from a position that would have bought most an appointment with a chiropractor.

“I think it would be better if we talked outside,” Am said.

She raised an eyebrow but didn’t argue, acceded to his wish, but at her unhurried pace. Am held the door for what seemed an
eternity, and finally she passed through it.

“This is Roger,” said Am, trying to get him to emerge from behind his back.

“Call me Sabrina,” she said.

“Sabrina,” Am said, “have you been in charge of the Trend-three gathering this morning?”

“I have.”

“Including the times between ten and eleven?”

“I was. We were rebirthing then.”

“You were with your class the entire time?”

“I was.”

That surprised Am. Unless her wards had astral-projected into the hall of desserts, he would have to find another group of
culprits. Maybe his initial hunch was right, and the Republican Women were involved. Or the Bob Johnsons. Why hadn’t he thought
of them?

“That is, I was there in body for most of that time, and there in spirit for the rest.”

“What do you mean?”

“I physically absented myself so as to not present a barrier to the participants and their pursuit of their personal Vision
Quest. And I had to retrieve a compact disc.”

“A compact disc?”

“Las Vissen’s ‘Ocean Serenades.’ Do you know it?”

Am shook his head.

“It’s a marvelous piece. We were making breakthroughs, and I sensed that ‘Ocean Serenades’ would help us even more, would
be just the inspirational music to inspire everyone.”

“So you were gone…?”

“Perhaps twenty minutes. But I left them with good thoughts, and Berlioz. His ‘Symphony Fantastique.’ “

Subtitled, no doubt, “Desserts Extraordinaire.” It must have been a feeding frenzy, Am thought, everyone snapping at desserts
like sharks in blood-filled waters.

“I would imagine you noticed the…the aromas this morning?”

“Call me Sabrina” didn’t understand what Am was asking. He sniffed for emphasis. “The wafting scents,” he continued, “from
all of the desserts?”

“Yes,” she remembered. “It was a good example for us. I called upon everyone to go beyond that instant of enticement, to reach
into themselves for what was truly significant, to draw upon their essence and remember the smells of spring, and pine cones,
and flowers, and baby’s hair. I showed them how the realm of the physical could not compare with where they could go and where
they had been.”

“They need a remedial course,” Am said flatly.

“I don’t understand.”

“While you were out, your class consumed three thousand dollars’ worth of desserts.”

Sabrina wasn’t about to believe him and displayed another lesson in vertebrae movement, this time managing to straighten every
one in her spine. “You are mistaken,” she said.

“I’d like to ask your class,” said Am.

“They were
rebirthing
,” she said with emphasis.

“Mother’s milk apparently wasn’t enough.”

She turned her back on Am and marched quickly back into the Starfish Room, her dream walk and lassitude at an abrupt end.
Halfway into the room she slowed down, remembering herself. She mumbled a mantra for a few moments, found her inner peace
again, and then faced the class. With an apologetic tone of voice, she called everyone back from their “other places.” Am
wondered how many were at Winchell’s Doughnuts.

Sabrina assumed a self-righteous pose, and Am almost felt sorry for her. She expected so much from human nature, had obviously
never worked in hotels.