Thicker Than Water (A Leo Waterman Mystery) (8 page)

Place looked like some Hollywood set designer’s conception of a wilderness experience. The Pasadena Ponderosa. Giant fireplace crackling at the far end of the room, urban art on rustic walls, lots of thick, rich-looking furniture arranged this way and that, at least a dozen separate seating areas where guests could commune in bucolic luxury.

I registered as Tom Van Dyne, one of several borrowed identities I’d used back when I’d worked as a PI. The real Tom Van Dyne was serving life without the possibility of parole down in Pelican Bay, so I didn’t figure he’d mind me co-opting his identity. He might be doing forever for offing and then partially consuming both his wife and his mother, but thanks to me he had a perfect driving record and his
credit was top notch. The way I saw it, the guy ought to be grateful.

The gorgeous East Indian girl at the desk volunteered that SmileFest was drawing to a close. Only the awards dinner remained and they were staging that little gala next door in the Vancouver Room as we spoke.

I let the kid carry my bag all the way to my room. His name was William and he was taking a couple of semesters off from Central Washington University to raise funds for grad school. I slipped him a five on the way out. I’m all for education.

The room was as advertised, sumptuous and nobly appointed. As was my habit, I hung my things in the closet, and then unpacked. Something in me feels more settled and at peace if I take my things out of the bag and stow them in the dresser drawers. Don’t ask me why.

After delivering my shaving kit to the bathroom, I sat down on the edge of the bed and looked around. The digital clock read 6:02. I stretched and yawned. I lay back, half on, half off the bed, and closed my eyes. Just gonna rest for a second.

Sometime during the two hours I was out cold, I’d sleepwalked most of the rest of me up on the bed, where I awoke to find myself lying crossways with my lower legs hanging over the edge of the mattress. Wasn’t until I sat up that I realized everything from my knees down was fast asleep. I sat on the bed, stomped my feet several times, and began massaging life back into my lower legs.

I don’t generally remember my dreams, but as I sat there trying to knead some feeling into my calves, I recalled where I’d been for the past couple of hours. I’d been involved in a frantic pursuit, trapped inside a rotting Victorian mansion, where one shabby room led to another and another, to deadfalls and trap doors and secret staircases, where toothless, wild-haired maniacs barred my way at every turn. I saw it all in a single somber second. I saw a terrified Rebecca, stretching, reaching for me but always just beyond my grasp. I cried out to her and then the movie faded to black.

By nine thirty, I’d showered, shaved, and stuffed myself into a suitable pair of trousers and a Tommy Bahama shirt. I’m not much of a dress-up guy. I’m pretty sure my tenuous relationship with fashion dates to my childhood. For reasons I’ve never fully understood, my parents had a nearly uncontrollable urge to dress me like a miniature FBI agent. Birthdays, Easter, Christmas, you name the occasion and there I was in some old photo, squinting into the sun, wearing a Mike Hammer porkpie hat and a John Cameron Swayze trench coat with enough epaulets to tie down a load of lumber.

The Overlook Bar lived up to its billing. It overlooked the dining room, which in turn overlooked the dark waters of Puget Sound, thus allowing me to scan the dinner crowd without actually being among them. It was a big room in the shape of a fan. From above, it looked like a galaxy of flickering candles with waiters flitting from flame to flame. Beneath it all, the clink of flatware and the dull undertones of conversation rose from the room like a long, low musical note. I ran my eyes over the tables one by one, taking my time, making sure. No Rebecca.

I must have unconsciously sighed or something, because the bartender who’d been kept busy by a succession of waiters fetching drinks for their tables, suddenly looked up from the cash register and ambled in my direction. Mr. Nondescript in a black shirt and matching trousers. Maybe fifty or so. Fit and trim for a guy his age. Good teeth shining in the semidarkness. The gold name tag read “Bruce.”

“How ya doin’?” he asked.

I assured him I was peachy and ordered a Heineken.

He swept his eyes over the dining room below. “Looking for someone?”

“Old girlfriend,” I said.

“Sometimes it’s best to just let ’em go,” he offered with a knowing smile.

“Can’t live with ’em, can’t live with ’em,” I joked.

Before we could continue our manly repartee, a piano began to tinkle the opening bars of “Body and Soul.” On my way in, I’d somehow failed to notice the grand piano squatting in the front corner of the room, an eight-hundred-pound oversight that suggested I might be a bit more overwrought than I was willing to admit.

The lady at the piano had a delicate touch and a nice sense of timing. She slid into the chord changes much the way I imagined she’d slid into her blue cocktail dress.

Bruce poured my beer and set it on a cardboard coaster. “What makes you think your friend’s way out here?” he wanted to know. “This is seriously off-season for this place. Soon as the tooth and wallet specialists hit the road, this place is gonna be deader than heaven on a Saturday night.”

“I ran into her mother the other day,” I said. “She thought Rebecca said she was coming out here to get away from it all.”

“‘Away from it all’ we got plenty of,” he conceded.

Seemed like Bruce wanted to talk, so I decided to take a chance and push a little harder. “I figured, you know, what the hell, I had some business out in Port Angeles, figured I’d stop by.” I shrugged helplessly. “You never know,” I said.

“Yeah,” he offered. “I know how it is.”

“Figured she wasn’t going to be hard to find. There’s not that many six-foot-two inch women traipsing around the Pacific Northwest.”

My description straightened his spine and flexed the muscles along the side of his jaw. He noticed that I noticed and slid himself to the far end of the bar with a bit more nonchalance than the moment called for. I watched as he busied himself with a stack of receipts, then poured a club soda over ice and delivered it to the lady playing the piano. He leaned in close and whispered in her ear. She said something. He shook his head and then whispered some more. As he walked away, she pulled her eyes from the keyboard for long enough to flick an inquisitive glance in my direction.

Once back behind the bar, Bruce experienced an overwhelming need to straighten and dust his liquor inventory. He found a white metal stool, climbed up onto the middle step, and dusted the shelves, top to bottom, one at a time. I listened to the piano and sipped at my beer as he worked his way in my direction.

When the passage of time and empty state of my beer glass made it impossible for him to ignore me any longer, he inquired, “Another?”

“Was it something I said?”

He stepped over to the register, pulled a stack of credit card receipts from beneath the cash drawer, and shuffled his way toward the bottom of the pile. He separated one from its brethren, returned the rest, and slid the drawer shut.

“This your friend?” he asked.

I took the receipt from his hand. Chase MasterCard. Rebecca Ann Duval.

“That’s her,” I said.

The pianist segued into a stately version of “Take the ‘A’ Train.”

“Maybe it’s best,” Bruce said resignedly.

“Maybe what’s best?”

“That you stopped by,” he said. “Sometimes these things just work out.” He waved a knowing hand. “You know—cosmically.”

“Ah,” I said, as though I knew what in hell he was talking about.

A waiter arrived with a drink order. Bruce ambled down to the far end of the bar and got busy mixing up a couple of mojitos.

By the time the waiter had disappeared with the drinks, the song had moved to Cyndi Lauper’s
“
Time after Time,” and Bruce was leaning on the bar in front of me.

“Way I hear it…,” he began. “They had to send security out to her cabin this morning.”

I tried to remain calm. “Really,” I said. “How come?”

“To get her out of there.”

“She wouldn’t leave?”

“Not from what I hear.”

“Why did they want her to leave?”

“All of a sudden her credit was no good.”

“Any idea why?”

“I hear the bank turned her card off.”

Of course they did. The minute Marty Gilbert requested Rebecca’s credit card history, Chase security had automatically been notified. Police inquiries make banks nervous and banks take very few chances with their own money. Your money, they’d bet on a Tijuana cockroach race. Their money is a whole different story. The frequency of use, combined with the unusual geographical location of the charges and a police inquiry, had set the bank’s algorithms to dancing the tarantella. Bingo. Stop payment.

“So what happened?”

The telling made him nervous. He double-checked the surrounding area. “Hey…,” he wheedled. “…you know I’m just the messenger here. I probably shouldn’t even be…”

I reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. “No trouble from this end,” I assured him. “Just tell me what happened.”

He wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. “Last week or so she was here…” He paused again. “One of the locals…a real jerk…” He stopped talking, trying to choose his words carefully. “His name’s Teddy. Teddy Healy. Teddy’s a first-class pain. Comes down here, puts the moves on every female under sixty. Gets in fights with patrons.” He waved an angry hand. “Teddy’s just a pain.”

“What’s Teddy got to do with this?” I pressed.

“He was all over her,” Bruce said. “Buying her drinks. Buying her dinner. Trying to work his way…you know…”

“Into her pants,” I finished for him.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Was she going for it?”

“Not at first.”

“But he wore her down.”

His turn to shrug. “Looked that way to me.”

A trio of waiters arrived with drink orders. Bruce straightened up.

“Why do you say that?” I pressed.

“She…you know, after they threw her out of the cabin…”

“Yeah.”

“She left with Teddy.” He looked over his shoulder at the impatient trio of waiters. “You want to know about Teddy, ask Patty.” He nodded at the piano lady. “She can tell you a lot more about Teddy Healy than I can.”

Patty’s age was hard to tell. She could have been a hard-driven thirty-eight with a lot of city miles on her, or a well-preserved fifty-five that had been garaged and only driven on Sundays. Either of which worked for me.

I remembered my reaction to Rachel Thoms earlier in the day and wondered why, all of a sudden, I found myself physically attracted to women. I hadn’t thought about women in years. At least not in that way. I’d been way too busy feeling sorry for myself to be concerned with such tawdry urges and now, all of a sudden, at the least appropriate moment imaginable, I was like a slumbering bear, suddenly out of hibernation and lumbering around the neighborhood looking for a meal.

I sipped at my beer and wondered, for the umpteenth time, about the walking contradiction that was Leo
Waterman. I spent an uncomfortable twenty minutes wandering through the ins and outs of my tortured psyche before I finally came to my senses. Too much introspection always made my head hurt, so I simply leaned back against the bar and listened to the music.

She played another couple of numbers and finally ended with a flourish that said tonight’s musical interlude was over. As the last strains of a tune I didn’t recognize floated through the air, I slid from my stool, and walked toward the piano at the far end of the room.

She saw me coming, retrieved a sequined clutch purse from inside the piano bench, and staged a hurried exit. Like I told Ricky Waters, I was faster than I looked. I made up the distance in half-a-dozen strides and stepped around her.

“Might I have a word?” I asked in my most courtly manner.

Apparently, chivalry wasn’t my strong suit. She turned her shoulders, slid past me, and started down the stairs at a dainty lope.

I trailed along in her wake. Past the phones and the elevators, past the dazed-looking concierge sitting at his desk, and out into the lobby, where she finally tired of me filling up her rearview mirror and stopped walking. She turned to face me.