five

“This is really nice of you folks to open up Astrid’s room for me.”

“We’d like to accommodate the hotel by vacating her room as quickly as possible,” Etienne confided as he unlocked the door, “so it’s no inconvenience. What is it you said you’re looking for?”

“Just some silly…trifle,” said Otis. He smoothed his hand over the bristly white hairs of his beard as if he were caressing a security blanket. “Something I lent her that I’d like to get back.”

I’d skipped the group buffet dinner in favor of room service and quiet, and amazingly, after enjoying a hot meal and a long bath, I’d felt so restored that I’d volunteered to lend Etienne a hand while he packed up Astrid’s belongings. Otis had knocked on our door before we left, asking if it would be possible for him to retrieve a personal item from Astrid’s room, so since we were headed in that direction anyway, Etienne had invited him to join us.

Etienne pushed open the door and flipped on the wall switch, casting light into the far corners of a room that was an exact replica of ours—queen size bed, desk with rolling chair, mirrorless dresser, flat screen TV, upholstered barrel chair, floor lamp, glass-top side table. The only difference was that Astrid’s room looked as if it had been upended by the Wizard of Oz tornado.

“Oh, my.”

Clothing tumbled over the tops of opened drawers. Bedding hung to the floor down to the mattress cover. Underwear and nylon stockings lay scattered about the floor. An emptied suitcase sat atop the luggage rack. The closet door was halfway open, the hotel ironing board lying on the floor, the guest safe unused.

I gaped at the chaos. “Are we looking at the aftermath of a burglary?”

“Hell, no.” Otis fisted his hands at his waist, his eyes hooded and unreadable. “Tidiness wasn’t one of Astrid’s virtues—or time management. When the two clashed, the result often looked like this.” He shrugged. “The place actually looks pretty good if you consider she was running late this morning.”

Etienne remained anchored to the spot, surveying the scene with doubt in his eye. “Was ripping her bed apart an integral step in her morning routine?”

“You bet. Bed bugs. She’s been terrified of them ever since she got bitten on one of our overnight gigs a couple of years ago, so she’s been a little obsessive about hunting them out no matter how nice the hotel. You wouldn’t believe how long it took for those bites to disappear. She kept scratching them. They got infected. It was a mess.”

“So you’re saying that this”—Etienne gestured toward the disarray—“is perfectly normal?”

“No. I’m saying that in Astrid’s world, this”—Otis tossed out his meaty hand in a gesture that mimicked Etienne’s—“would be considered House Beautiful.”

Etienne arched his brows. “If you say so.”

“I’ll—uh…I’ll pull up the bed covers so we can have a place to fold her clothes.” I crossed the floor, snatching up her nylons and underwear as I went. “Have you spied your trifle yet, Otis?”

“Nope, but don’t you folks pay any attention to me. I’ll just snoop around the room for a minute and hope for the best.”

“If you tell us what you’re looking for, we might be able to help you find it,” I insisted.

He slid the closet door all the way open and poked his head inside, moving hangers and sorting through the shelves. “It’s kind of a book thing.”

“A novel?”

“Uhhh…poetry.”

Otis read poetry? Aww. Apparently there was a romantic disguised beneath that bushy beard of his. “What’s the title?”

He stepped into the bathroom. “Title?” His voice echoed out to us.

“Of your book of poetry.”

“Oh.” I heard the zzzzzt of a zipper being opened and closed. “I—uh, I can’t remember.” He stepped back into the room. “I’m not very good with titles.”

“Large book or small book?” asked Etienne as he removed clothing from the dresser drawers.

“Uhhh…average size.”

I was beginning to think that Otis knew less about this book than Prissy knew about birthin’ babies. I exchanged a curious look with Etienne. “It’s not a library book, is it?”

Otis regarded me with bright eyes. “That’s it exactly! A library book. So if I don’t find it, I’ll be looking at a pretty hefty fine.”

Why did I feel as if I’d just given him an out? “When did you give it to her?” I asked as I began to fold the sweaters and tops that Etienne placed on the bed.

Otis searched the drawers that Etienne had just finished emptying and scratched his head. “At the airport?”

I smiled. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

“I guess I gave it to her at the airport.” He went down onto his knees to look under the bed.

“Maybe she stashed it in her handbag.” I glanced around the room. “Has anyone seen it?”

“She was carrying it with her this morning, bella.”

“I know. It was a huge high-end designer bag that probably cost a small fortune. Hard to hide something that big. So…where do you suppose it is?”

Etienne’s voice grew soft. “Her accordion case is apparently indestructible, but the only personal item of Astrid’s that the police could salvage from the explosion site was the badly damaged photo page of her passport. Her handbag didn’t fare well in the blast. I’m afraid there was nothing left of it to recover.”

“Oh.” Obviously, my brain was still a little addled because I sure hadn’t connected those dots. Of course her handbag had been obliterated; that’s what bombs were built to do. Obliterate things.

“So if she was carrying my book with her, it’s gone?” asked Otis. “Destroyed?” He pulled open the drawer of the nightstand to find it empty.

“That would be my guess,” said Etienne.

Otis looked oddly pensive before heaving a disappointed sigh. “Maybe the librarian will go easy on me if I explain what happened.”

“My mom works in a library. Would you like her to write you a note?”

“No, thanks. I’ll wing it.” He circled the bed, peeked behind the drapes, and checked under the barrel chair before scratching his head again. “Must have been in her pocketbook because it’s sure not here. Okay, then. I’ll get out of your hair now and let you finish up what you’re doing. Thanks for helping me out.”

“No problem,” said Etienne as he escorted him to the door. “I just wish the outcome had been better for you.”

“Me too. Me too. But at least I tried.”

Etienne walked back to the bed with Astrid’s lime green spinner suitcase in hand and set it on the mattress. “I know the man is grieving and might not be feeling himself, but did he seem a bit disingenuous to you?”

“A bit? What I’d like to know is, if he wasn’t actually looking for this book that he knew nothing about, what was he looking for?”

“Whatever it was, he didn’t find it. I’ll clean out the bathroom.”

As I placed a couple of stacks of folded clothes into the suitcase, I noticed a bulge in a side pocket. Peeling the Velcro strips apart, I dug out a household storage bag filled with a dozen truffles that were so badly squished, the interior of the plastic was a dark smear of melted chocolate. “Astrid was a chocoholic,” I called out to Etienne before depositing the bag in the wastebasket and heading for the closet.

Every hanger had something dangling from it. Ankle-length dresses in assorted colors for her beer hall performances. Crisply starched aprons. White blouses with short puffed sleeves and low-cut ruffled bodices. And at the end of the row, a frothy display of femininity in pastels as pale as butter mints. “Aww.”

Etienne emerged from the bathroom with an armful of zippered toiletry bags. “Aww what?”

“Look at these nighties. They remind me of something TV housewives wore in the boudoir a few decades ago, in the days when they scrubbed floors and vacuumed carpets in high heels and pearls.”

Lace. Silk. Nylon. Spaghetti straps. Ruffles. Feathers. Ankle-length confections with see-through cover-ups as delicate as gossamer. “Peignoirs. I didn’t think women wore peignoirs anymore.”

“Astrid Peterson obviously did.”

I fingered the bodice of one nightgown, noting how the lace design was missing several strategic threads and the satin ribbon was frayed at the edge. “Do you suppose these were part of her wedding trousseau? Trousseaus and hope chests were a must with brides in my mom’s generation. Women embroidered little flowers on pillowcases and collected pieces of their good china and bought provocative intimate apparel for their honeymoon. These days brides-to-be register at Home Depot and ask for gas grills and nail guns.”

“Her lingerie does look a bit tattered.”

“I remember my mom wearing a peignoir once when I was little. I thought she looked like a princess, so I asked her if she was going to a ball. I never saw her wear it again. I think she traded it in for flannel pajamas and wool socks.” I grinned. “The closest thing I’ve come to a peignoir was one Halloween when I bought a French maid outfit. It had a flirty little short skirt, an apron, a lace choker and cuffs, and a lace garter belt with black fishnet stockings. I was the most popular girl at the party that year.”

A slow, seductive smile worked its way across his mouth. “No doubt.”

I removed her nightgowns from their hangers and returned to the bed, folding them neatly into her suitcase before emptying the closet of her folk costumes. When I’d compacted all her belongings into her spinner, Etienne made a final sweep of the room and gave me a thumbs-up. “I think that’s everything.”

I closed the lid, checked to make sure that none of her costumes were poking out the sides, and zipped it shut. After hoisting it to the floor, Etienne preceded me into the hall. “Would you get the light, bella?”

I cast a final look back before I flipped the switch. I had no logical reason to doubt Otis, but why couldn’t I shake off the niggling feeling that the room hadn’t been carelessly cluttered by Astrid? Why did I get the feeling it had been ransacked?

Once back in our room, I lingered in the bathroom, applying Tilly’s shaman-approved restorative compound to the lesions on my face. I didn’t expect miracles, so if the cream did nothing more than fade the redness, I’d be a happy camper.

By the time I finished, Etienne had returned Astrid’s room key to the main desk and was already in bed. I crawled in beside him, snuggling against the sinewy contours of his body and tingling all over as he cocooned me in his arms. “You won’t have to wake me up in the middle of the night to check my pupils or pulse or anything, will you?” I asked.

He pressed his mouth to my ear, his lips soft, his breath warm. “Should I wake you in the middle of the night, bella, it won’t be to check your pulse.”

I was so happy to be safe in bed beside him, I almost purred. I probably would have if a darker thought hadn’t intruded. “What did you do when you heard the bomb blast today?”

His body stiffened involuntarily before he relaxed again. “I was disoriented initially. I couldn’t pinpoint the location of the sound because it seemed to come from everywhere. But Zola didn’t hesitate. She grabbed my arm and spun me around in the direction of the main boulevard. And she didn’t mince words. She told me it was the street with the spooky sculpture and I should go find you.” He paused. “You did say she’s a practicing clairvoyant.”

“She told me this evening that she had a bad vibe that something was going to happen on that street, but she didn’t know that Astrid would be fatally injured.”

“I’m not sure how this is going to play out, Emily. Depending on people’s belief systems, a psychic among the guests could either prove to be a delightful novelty or a thorn in everyone’s side. If she remains low-key, we should have no problem. If not…”

He let me fill in the blank.

“We’ll work it out,” I assured him. “She’s a really nice person, so if she pushes the envelope a little too far and we’re forced to ask her to tone it down, I’m sure she’ll cooperate.”

He responded by growling softly against my earlobe and giving it a playful nibble.

“And while we’re discussing nice people, does my dad seem all right to you?”

“Define ‘all right.’”

“He doesn’t play the accordion.”

“Yes, he does.”

“No. He doesn’t.”

“All right: to be precise, he played in grammar school and gave it up, so he hasn’t touched an accordion for decades. So what I should have said was, he used to play.”

“Who told you that?”

“Your father.”

“When?”

“I spoke to him briefly after the musicians dispersed this evening. He’s never mentioned his musical ability to you?”

I racked my brain for occasions on which Dad had voluntarily uttered a complete sentence. “You do realize that conversation isn’t Dad’s strong point, right?”

“I’m not entirely convinced that your father is as taciturn as you make him out to be, Emily. He might turn out to be a regular chatterbox if someone would take the time to listen to what he has to say. I don’t think he lacks verbal skills. I think he lacks an audience.”

I swallowed slowly, enlightenment hitting me like a lightning bolt. “Omigod, you’re right. The whole family does it. We ignore Dad—we talk over him, we forget he’s there, we assume he has nothing to say, so we don’t even try to engage him anymore.” I pinched my eyes shut, mortified. “What if he’s had tons of stuff to share all these years but kept it all to himself because the rest of us were talking so much, he couldn’t get a word in edgewise?”

“Then you’ll have a lot to look forward to when you give him your undivided attention and let him talk.”

I fell into a kind of exhausted haze as he feathered soft kisses along the curve of my ear, stirring fluttery sensations from my breastbone to my toes. “Umm…would this be a good time to tell you about Mom’s threat to fly home early?”

“No.” He tilted my face upward and placed a long, lingering kiss on my mouth, rendering me blissfully numb. “But I do have a question. The Halloween costume you mentioned—the French maid outfit?” He whispered the words against my lips, his voice low and throaty. “Do you still have it?”

Bam, bam, bam.

I opened one eye to find the room still dark and the nightstand clock aglow with red numerals indicating it was 4:54.

Bam, bam, bam. “Emily? Emily!” Bam, bam, bam.

The door.

Someone banging on the door.

I shot out of bed and raced across the room. I threw open the door to find Dad in his bare feet and pajamas.

“You gotta come quick. Your mother’s had a stroke.”