Bellweather Rhapsody (15 page)

Her eyes spark.

“You have to talk to her mother,” the girl says.

Megan takes a small notebook out of her hip pocket. “Do you know her mother’s name?”

“Viola Fabian,” says the girl, and Hastings stifles a cough.

“An address? Phone number?”

“Here,” Hastings says. “Viola Fabian is here at the hotel.”

Megan gives him a strange look. An incredulous look. As though this is one too many coincidences, even for her; as though Hastings doesn’t remember catching her skinny-dipping with her prom date in the rooftop pool when she was the same age as this adorable witness.

“So let’s go talk to her,” he says.

“Can I come?” asks the girl. “I want to come.”

“No,” says Megan. “And neither can you, Hastings. I’m sorry. This is official police business, not a parade.”

“But—”

“If there’s anything to share, I’ll share it.”

“This woman’s daughter has disappeared from my hotel. I have a professional duty to at the very least
speak
with her.”

“Speak with her tomorrow,” says Megan, and motions the other police officer over, away from Roger and Chris at the front desk and the cluster of young gawkers they’ve attracted. They look college-aged, at least. Hastings prays they aren’t Statewide children who’ll take this gruesome story home to their parents. “Thank you, Alice. We’ve checked out your room, so I don’t see why you can’t go back to it tonight, though I’m sure Hastings can find you a new one if you’d like.”

The girl—Alice—unwraps the blanket from her shoulders and pushes herself up on the arms of her chair. “I want to go back and see for myself. Maybe you missed something.”

Hastings would be impressed if his gut didn’t tell him she was lying (or drunk or high or the butt of an elaborate practical joke). He wonders what instrument she plays, or if she’s in the chorus. She carries herself like a little actress, chin out and head up, all pluck and defiance, even though she’s exhausted and still frightened. Unless, of course, that’s all part of the act.

“You let us know if you find anything,” Officer Megan tells her drily. If he weren’t irritated at being shut out of this investigation, he would have laughed. Megan always was a smartass. “Evening, Miss Hatmaker. Hastings.”

Hastings escorts adorable Alice Hatmaker back to the seventh floor. She doesn’t speak, but he can tell she’s thinking. Thinking hard, brows pressed down, face screwed tight. Caroline would make that face over a particularly difficult crossword puzzle, as if the sheer act of concentration could will a solution into existence. Alice turns her key in the lock and steps into 712 without a moment of hesitation. It has to be a joke. A prank. The missing roommate and this adorable girl have to be co-conspirators in some grand plan to . . . to what? Rebel without cause? Create mayhem for mayhem’s sake?

One bed is still unmade. Alice looks around before taking another step inside.

“Did you find the extension cord?” she asks.

“What?”

“Did you find the extension cord? That’s what she used to hang herself. An orange extension cord.” She’s looking at Hastings, watching him closely, but Hastings barely knows she’s there. All he sees is the bride, the orange cord a tight line connecting the dots of her head and the ceiling.

“What?” he says again.

“I am not lying.” Alice is shaking now, or maybe it’s Hastings who’s shaking. Remembering and shaking. “
I am not lying.
”

He shoves one of his business cards, bent from the pocket of his rumpled pants, into her hand and tells her to call if she needs anything. “Anytime, for anything. If you need me, call this number or stop by my desk. Have a pleasant evening,” he says, and leaves her standing in the doorway.

He remembers every moment of the night the Driscolls died. The day is fuzzier—until the end, the wedding was just like any other held at the Bellweather over the years—but he recalls walking through the lobby in the evening when one of the housekeepers, a sharp girl named Lily, who was employed there for only a year or two, appeared by his side, took him by the arm, and said three words: “There’s blood upstairs.”

They called the police and the manager, and with Lily still on his arm, dragging like an anchor, Hastings rode the elevator to the seventh floor. He smelled the gunpowder first. Then he saw the body in the hall. Bloody and sprawled as though he’d tried to crawl back into the room. Hastings recognized him as the groom—he’d seen him earlier in the day, grinning at the future unfurling before him, the future that now looked to be approximately fifty years shorter than anticipated. Lily was tugging at him, she wanted to go back downstairs, they shouldn’t be here, it was a crime scene, they needed to wait for the police. Hastings shushed her gently. “I know what I’m doing,” he said. “I read about police work all the time. Just don’t touch anything. Notice everything.”

There were splinters of wood strewn across the carpet. “See that?” he said, pointing. “I’m guessing he broke through the door. Probably shot with his back to it, so the force of his body taking the shot—and the shot itself—fractured the frame.” He pointed again. “See how there’s no blood here by the open doorway? That means he was thrown with force. Must have been a hell of a gun.” Lily was crying soundlessly, fat tears running down her face. Hastings peered around the doorway, into 712.

The bride swayed from the ceiling. Her face was hidden by her hair.

“Hung herself,” he said. His throat felt strange. He gulped. “Orange extension cord. Secured on the sprinkler system.” He gulped again. “One glove on, one glove off, dropped on the floor. Also on the floor—shotgun. Murder weapon.”

Lily’s hands were clamped around his arm, tight as a tourniquet. “Harry,” she was saying, “Harry, we need to go. You can’t be here. Harry, please listen to me.”

“Bed’s turned down, our service. Mints on the pillow. Not used.” His throat clicked. “Uhm.” He passed a tongue that didn’t feel like his own over papery lips. “We have to go inside, we have to see the whole—”

Vomit lurched up his throat. He ran down the hallway and made it about ten feet from 712 before depositing the contents of his stomach in a small pile on the carpet. He knelt. He pressed his palms flat, deep into the pile. His vomit was blue, and for a moment he was horrified before he remembered the blue-frosted wedding cake downstairs. It was the last thing he’d put in his stomach.

Lily was kneeling beside him, rubbing his back with the flat of her large, cool palm, and Hastings was mortified to discover himself curling up in her lap.
What are you doing?
he thought.
This is not right
. He knew Lily, liked Lily quite a bit, but this went far beyond what was appropriate between a fifty-something concierge and a twenty-something housekeeper. His body didn’t seem to care. His body only wanted to feel the warmth of her lap beneath his head, the weight of her hand on his temple as she stroked his hair, the warmth of her breath as she whispered in his ear, “Harry, I’m here. I’m here.”

He saw the shoes then, with his head in Lily’s lap. Small reddish Mary Janes, one clamped tight in the dead groom’s fist. “Shoes,” he said to Lily, but Lily didn’t hear or didn’t understand, because she shushed him.

The next morning, she brought him a breakfast tray and the news that the police had traced the Mary Janes to a bridesmaid, a little girl of twelve who’d apparently seen the whole thing.

He recalled a little girl, a shy little girl checking in with her family. Mouse-like, her fingers closing over a butterscotch candy without once lifting her head. She did say thank you, however softly; he remembered that. Then he had seen her again, yesterday, walking through the lobby in a bright maroon dress with puffy shoulders. He had greeted her, told her she looked very nice, asked her to save him a dance. She met his gaze with serious dark eyes but kept walking. Her dress had been the color of the shoes in the dead man’s hand. An exact match.

That poor, poor creature.

“Can I talk to her?” Hastings asked.

Lily looked stricken. “The family’s gone. I saw them leave the hotel this morning.”

“How can they leave town before the investigation is over?” Hastings was so confused. He was in a hotel bed, in a hotel room smelling of old smoke—room 130, the room he occasionally catnapped in. How had he gotten here, had Lily brought him? He was in his undershirt, his shorts, and his socks. Had she undressed him? His head hummed. It was hard to think, hard to hear. “It’s a crime. Unsolved. How can the police let them leave?”

Lily sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at the coverlet. It was several generations behind the rest of the hotel’s bed linens. “It’s been ruled a murder-suicide. No investigation.”

“But it makes no sense. They just got married.
Yesterday
. Why would you kill yourself and your husband on your wedding day?”

Lily was fiddling with a ring on her finger, on her left ring finger. An engagement ring. Hastings hadn’t known Lily was engaged. Had she told him and he’d forgotten, or had it been a secret until now?

She shook her head. “I have no idea, Harry,” she said. “No idea at all.”

Hastings wraps both hands around his third cup of coffee since midnight. He drums the warm ceramic with his fingertips. Was it ever mentioned in the newspapers what the bride used to hang herself with? Even if it was, those papers were fifteen years old—those stories were written when the Hatmaker girl was a toddler. How could she have known? How could her roommate have known? Why did it seem like a message, a sign meant specifically for him?

He’s back in 130, still wearing yesterday’s clothes, bow tie undone and draped around his neck. It’s five in the morning on Friday. Hastings looks at the calendar tacked on his wall, each month overseen by a different still from a film noir classic. Over the days of November in the year 1997, Barbara Stanwyck’s perfect white face and black, black eyes stare at him. Today is the fourteenth. Yesterday, the day Alice Hatmaker’s roommate hanged herself (or didn’t) with an orange cord, was the thirteenth.

November thirteenth is their anniversary.

Hastings’s heart stops. The preparations for Statewide and all the activity of yesterday—checking students in, shuttling them around, answering questions from parents and chaperones and conductors, and that girl, that strange blurry girl with the dog—had distracted him from the Driscolls’ anniversary. He does the math. If they hadn’t died, the Driscolls would have been married for fifteen years yesterday. What was that—not paper, not china. Crystal. Their crystal anniversary. They would have had children by now, surely; those children would be in elementary school, middle school.

Why does he do this to himself? Every year, on every anniversary, as though their deaths were an act he could have prevented, Harold Hastings imagines a new future for an unchangeable past. He tells himself it’s the least he can do for those poor kids. He’s glad, relieved to have only just realized this. It was hard enough to be around room 712 last night without knowing that history was repeating itself in every way, down to the date.

Hastings finishes his coffee and looks at his watch. Five. That’s ten in the morning in Wales.

He dials Jess’s number. She sounds sleepy when she says good morning.

“Yesterday was the anniversary,” he blurts, and knows that Jess understands what that means. She waits for him to continue. “And it was like the damn thing was happening again. Some Statewide girl said her roommate hanged herself with an orange electrical cord in room seven-twelve.”

“What?”

“Last night. Here, at my hotel.
Jess
. I wish I were lying but I’m not.”

“Hastings—slow down, Hastings. Where are you?”

“Where?” He sniffs. “In my room, of course. I’ve been here all night, ever since
Officer
Megan Sheldrake told me to take a hike. She wouldn’t even let me speak with the girl’s mother. That’s my
job,
that’s what I do. I take care of the guests, and that includes telling them their daughters have disappeared.”

“You need to calm down. You’re scaring me a little.”

He sees her sitting at her kitchen table, lightly touching her collarbone with her fingertips.

“Jess, I’m sorry. I’ve had a lot of coffee tonight.” He laughs.

“I’ll say. Start from the beginning. Tell me what happened.”

“That’s the thing. I can’t tell if
anything
happened. Went up to seven-twelve, searched the whole place myself. Nothing there. No dead roommate. No live roommate either. It’s the damnedest thing.”

“Is she still missing?”

Hastings shrugs. “As far as I know. Megan spoke with the mother last night, who happens to be none other than Doug Kirk’s replacement. If you’ll believe that.” He closes his eyes and presses a thumb against his eyelid.

“Who reported it? Do you think she might have been lying?”

Hastings smiles. His wife has been addicted to murder mysteries her whole life. It was Jess, in fact, who first introduced him to the particular pleasures of Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie. Mickey Spillane. Of Columbo and Kojak, Poirot and Marple, Holmes and Watson. The tone of her voice shifted whenever she slipped into investigative mode, from sunny to crisp, clipped, and efficient. Sharp. He loved her best when she spoke like a private dick.

“Her name was Alice. Alice Hatmaker. Sounded like she was telling the truth. She seemed truly frightened. But I wouldn’t put it past any of these kids to make this up. I only wish I could figure out why.”

“Something’s rotten in Statewide.”

He laughs again. “Shakespeare you’re not, dear.”

“Have you gotten any sleep at all tonight?”

“No,” he says.

“Then here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to turn off your brain and get some sleep. You’re going to talk to the girl’s mother, and then you’re going to go to work.”

“Aye-aye.” He smiles. Jess always has a way of making the world crystal clear again. “That’s why I call you, you know. You make everything make a little more sense.”

She laughs this time. “Then we’re both in trouble,” she says. “Sweet dreams.”