The Immaculate Deception (34 page)

The couple across the hall in 7B was noisy. I peeked out. The light was on in their compartment. The woman pulled her blonde ponytail off. She was nearly bald under the wig. My heart sunk. Poor woman. Must be a cancer patient. God bless her.

I closed my eyes and tried to think about my next move. Nothing. I couldn’t get the image of the wig out of my head. Wig… Like the ones Tammy had in the round boxes in her closet. She had kept her stage makeup and wigs. Might as well, I’m sure Momma had paid good money for them. Darn her hide. Why did Tammy have to go and change jobs, making Momma pay for another school for her? Selfish little girl.

~*~

Thursday evening, I detrained in Miami and took a cab across the causeway into the City of Miami Beach, arriving at the Fontainebleau Hilton Hotel before nine o’clock. As I waited in the check-in line, I heard a boisterous old bellhop. His slight British accent perked my ears. His face reminded me a little of someone I’d seen before. They must not have mandatory retirement here. The bellhop spoke to a younger co-worker. “You should go home and have your wife make you a big pot of chicken soup. Chicken breast, carrots, onions and celery. That’ll take care of the flu. And some Pedialyte. You know, the stuff for babies? You need to get your electrolytes back in balance. The house doctor that used to work here, I asked him one day, how much he charged. He said, ‘Fifty bucks a pop and I see about thirty patients a week. I give ’em pills but all they really need is Pedialyte and chicken soup. The pills just make ’em happy. Don’t really do nothing’.”

I was next up in line after Mrs. Johnson got her room rate in order. There seemed to be a problem relating to her repeatedly making but not canceling internet reservations, which resulted in her inadvertently booking four rooms.

“
Hello.” The old bellhop was greeting me.

I smiled back at him. “Hello.”

“
Where’re ya from?”

“
Virginia.”

“
Oh beautiful country there. I have a timeshare in Colonial Williamsburg.”

I smiled again. “Are you the one who was talking about chicken soup?”

“
Yes. The guy came to work with the flu. I told him to go home and get the wife to make chicken soup.”

“
Best thing for it.”

“
Oh so you know about it. You must be a nurse?”

“
No, a nurse’s daughter.”

“
Have you seen the show in our Club Tropigala?”

“
No, but I’ll try to catch it.”

“
And we have a cover band, a Rat Pack tribute group in the evenings, right across the lobby. The real Rat Pack used to perform here. Back in the days when you couldn’t come through that revolving door without a coat and tie on. Yep, I was here from the first day. I had just taken an early out from the Secret Service when the hotel began hiring. I was a concierge when we opened in 1954. Took care of all the big names. Who was your favorite?”

“
Lucille Ball.”

“
Oh lovely girl. Big tipper too. Yep, she did a little show in that three-hundred-seat theater. It wasn’t called the Tropigala then. Who else do you like? We had the Beatles, Sinatra…”

“
What was he like?”

“
Not nice. I took care of his mother, his son, his daughter. Knew ’em all. Guess how many cigarettes he smoked a day?”

I shrugged vacantly.

“
Four packs. Sammy smoked seven. Dino, three. And you know what? They’re all dead now. Don’t you go and take up smoking, young lady. It’ll kill ya.”

“
Do you know anything about the Make Believe Island?”

The old boy’s face lit up. “Do I know it? I guarded Harry S. Truman there, during the second war. He was Vice President, hunkered down. Me and the cutest little gal agent posed as a couple of honeymooners in paradise for our cover. We fell in love.”

“
Where is it?”

He wiggled his finger and I followed him over to the concierge desk. He produced a map from behind the counter.

“
You have a car?”

“
No.”

“
Okay. What you do is get a cab to take you down Route One along the shoreline. You stop at this little public park,” he circled it, “then rent a boat. Sail southeastward, between Virginia Key and Key Biscayne. Oh shoot, you’ll never find it. When do you want to go?”

“
Huh?”

“
I’m off tomorrow. I’ll take you. It’ll be nice for a stroll ’round memory lane.”

Chapter Fifteen

I
inquired at the front desk about shopping. Conveniently enough, I just had to take the lobby escalator downstairs to the boutiques handily located under the hotel. The shops were closing up, so I had to hurry. The fitting rooms were my friends as I discovered I was now a comfortable size ten. Loose even, in the pants. I bought a little black dress, a pair of white capris, white blouse, three pairs of cotton panties, one bra, some exercise wear and a black and yellow tankini. The small selection of shoes didn’t fit me. I was wide-footed because of my fat flat feet and the bunion.

I toted my purchases up to the seventh floor and hung them in my room. I plopped down onto one of the queen-sized beds and picked up the phone on the nightstand. I dialed my home number and punched the appropriate keys to check my answering machine.

The robotic voice announced, “You have three new messages.” Wow. Three.

“
Message one.”

“
Yes, this is Elizabeth Claytor of Really Good Books. I’m calling for Orpha Donna Payne regarding your manuscript,
Hundred Dollar Bill
. My number is two–one–two, five–five–five, thirty–four hundred.”

I gasped for air. Was she offering to buy it? Oh my gosh! She must be. She wouldn’t call to tell me nanny nanny boo boo. Or would she? Oh my gosh! I heard the beep.

“
Message two.”

“
Oh-Donna! Turn on the TV! Little Mount Vernon is burning! Oh-Donna! Pick up!”

I heard sobbing. Well, Tammy did sound genuinely upset. Not like Perry. I heard the beep.

“
Message three.” Click. I heard a beep. Must have been a telemarketer.

“
End of Messages.”

I hung up and dialed again. I had shivers hearing Elizabeth Claytor’s voice. I tried to read something between the words but couldn’t. Tammy sure sounded rattled about the fire. I couldn’t float on the call from the editor because of my darned old family crisis
du jour
. Dag nabbit.

I peered out the wall of windows. Wow. The Atlantic Ocean. Aquamarine, teal and midnight blue farthest out. Two people on personal watercrafts. One parasailer. Brave soul there. People playing in the surf.

Closer to the hotel, I looked right down onto the free-formed rock grotto pool. Palm trees. A waterfall. Couples floating, holding hands on rafts built for two. Seeing this was surreal. It was so similar to what I remembered from my dreams. And oh my goodness, the lobby was spot-on to what I had dreamed.

Someone knocked on my door. I trotted over and peeked through the little view hole. I saw an elderly Katherine Hepburn look-alike in fuchsia lipstick dressed in resort wear and a straw hat. I flung the door open.

“
Momma!”

“
Hello, little doll. How are you?”

“
I’m terrible actually, Momma. Come in. How are you? I was so worried about you.” I tugged her into the room and shut the door. “Sit down, Momma.”

“
Thank you.” She femininely perched on the end of a bed.

I said, “How’d you know I was here?”

She grinned, “A little chicken told me.”

“
A little chicken—the bellhop?”

“
I don’t reveal my sources.”

“
Momma, where have you been?”

“
It’s the first full week of August.”

“
Palm Springs?”

“
Absolutely.”

“
So then why are you in Miami Beach?”

“
Palm Springs is Miami Beach.”

“
What?”

“
My cover.”

“
Your cover?”

“
So your father wouldn’t pester me.”

I smiled at her. I was so relieved to have found her. Well, she’d found me. “Hey, you want a drink? Some coffee or something? A martini? I could open the honors bar and see what we have.”

Momma laughed at me. “This I gotta see. You pull a hot cup of coffee and a martini outa the little computer-rigged fridge.”

“
Oh I guess that was pretty stupid. You want a soda? Or I could figure out how to use the in-room coffee maker.”

“
How ’bout we go down to the lobby bar for a drink?”

I’d never been to a bar with my mother before. “All right, Momma, why the heck not? I’ll get my purse.” I picked up the big tote bag. I yanked my fanny pack out and I also wrestled Momma’s beige pocketbook out. “Here, I brought you your purse too.”

She searched my face. “Oh. Did you?”

Okay, that worked. I felt shame. “Well, you see…” I couldn’t explain my way around this one, not yet.

She grabbed the purse and began rifling through. Great. I really felt bad. Now she was checking to see what I’d stolen.

She finally said, “I thought I had a stick of gum left.”

“
Guilty as charged. Sorry, Momma, my mouth was so dry. Here, I’ll treat you to a pack of gum from the in-room thingy.” I retrieved a pack and handed it to her.

She snatched it and smiled, dropping it in her purse. “I might as well wait until after the martini.”

~*~

We sat on a big comfy loveseat, near the window wall overlooking the lushly landscaped pool. It was perfectly illuminated, providing a romantic backdrop of palm trees and tropical flowers and more palm trees. “I just love palm trees,” I told Momma.

The waitress brought Momma’s dry vodka martini with a twist and my frothy pink cosmopolitan.

I said, “Thank you. Umm…our candle blew out.”

The waitress apologized and said she’d take care of it.

We looked outside and sipped our beverages. The band was warming up.

“
Hey, the guy at the piano looks like Dino,” Momma said.

“
He was your favorite, wasn’t he?”

“
You’ve been listening to your father too much.”

I didn’t know where to begin. So much had happened. All right, I’d start at the beginning. “Momma, Daddy passed away.”

She stared across the room.

“
Momma, he had a cardiac arrest.” I cried.

“
I know,” she said.

“
How?”

“
They told me at the hospital. Your brother tried to commit me, you know.”

“
I know… He told me that you murdered Daddy.” I swallowed hard and studied her reaction.

“
That is why they locked me up. We had a hell of a fight. Yes, I did hit the son-of-a-bitch over the head with his cane. But I didn’t kill him. He ran down the street, screaming like a girl. He was alive and telling his tall tales when they locked me away. When did the old fool die?”

“
Four days later. Monday, July thirty-first.”

“
I seriously doubt I even gave him a goose egg bump on his head. That is too big of a stretch to say he died from that injury four days later.”

“
No, Momma, he had other injuries. Someone turned the freezer over on him.”

“
When?”

“
I don’t know. But when I found him lying there, he told me that you murdered him.”

She crossed her arms and legs. “That son-of-a-bitch with his tall tales set me up to take the rap for his death. He was a doctor, he no doubt knew the end was near. He was ninety-two years old and had those mini-strokes and high blood pressure. He must have really hated me. Well, it was mutual.”

I thought about her scenario. It made sense. It would be like Daddy to go ahead and pull one last great performance before he died. He never seemed to like Momma very much either. Still, what an awful bitter man Daddy must have been to pull that one off. Must have been a hell of a fight they had to make him wanna take revenge on Momma like this.

“
Why did you fight? Why did you hit him?”

“
I don’t want to talk about the son-of-a-bitch. Drop it, Oh-Donna.”

I had never seen Momma so angry. “Tammy had him cremated. No autopsy. So we’ll never know what caused his death.”

“
He’s dead. Good riddance.” She blew her nose on a paper napkin from the cocktail table.

“
Momma, why did you disappear?”

“
First week of August.”

My mind was racing with wild questions. “But you just disappeared without telling anyone. I was so worried. How could you do that? Do you have any idea what was going on at home? Perry accused you of murder and Tammy cleaned out the whole house. And you just conveniently disappear because it was the first week of August? That’s just not good enough an explanation. I need some straight answers. Now. What have you been doing all these years in Miami? Why did you need a cover?”

“
Where were you when Perry locked me away? Where was Tammy? Where was Nathan? Nobody cared about me. Nobody came for me,” she shot right back at me.