Once Polly’s body turned up, I’d told Tucker I’d go along with his plan that I stay at the hotel. The cleaning girl had been killed at night. The odd activity in the hotel safe had occurred at night. I needed a feel for the rhythm of The Canterbury and its people around the clock.
Tucker’s insistence that I hide why I was really there didn’t sit well with me. Neither did the prospect of being on my good behavior twenty-four hours a day. Nonetheless, late Saturday morning, resplendent in my second-best suit and a tweed hat peppered with blue and pink, I strode into the lobby. I carried a suitcase more dog-eared than Connelly’s, a clipboard, and a wooden carpenter’s ruler with one end unfolded.
At the front desk a woman with a little black poodle yapping under her arm was checking out. A few steps away, her maid held the woman’s furs and directed a wizened bellman as he shuttled a mountain of luggage from the lobby to a waiting car. The creamy leather suitcases didn’t interest me, but when I spotted a stack of hatboxes I nearly drooled. The bottom two matched the luggage, but the one on top was hot pink pasteboard decorated with a flamboyant signature: Schiaparelli.
Elsa Schiaparelli. The genius. The ultimate.
When I looked up, the maid with the furs was eyeing my single suitcase as if detecting the odor of something dead. I gave her a big smile.
“Is this place okay? I thought I’d try it a few days while they treat the place I live for bedbugs.”
She drew back so quickly she collided with her employer, who frowned at her and trotted off, cooing to her doggie. I stepped forward.
The clerk was in his late thirties with a hint of self-importance.
“May I help you?” His eyes lifted not to me, but to someone behind me.
“Yes, please.” A woman brushed around me, leaving a discreet and expensive trail of Joy. “We’re checking out. If I could get something from the safe?”
“Of course. First door on the right. I’ll let Mr. Tucker know you’re coming.”
He picked up the phone as she trotted away. I leaned forward to give my name and ask him to let Tucker know I was here, but a man who’d enjoyed one or two too many good meals charged toward the desk like an irate elephant. He brandished a telegram.
“You!” he bellowed at the clerk. “When did this get here?”
I jumped to the side, sparing my toes a trampling as the man shoved in front of me.
“It just came, Mr. Clarke,” the startled clerk answered. “The bellman took it up to your room, but your maid told him you were at breakfas—”
“You got a phone down here that can make a connection to Cuba?”
“Right over there, sir.”
I raised my eyebrows at the clerk in commiseration. He looked past me again.
“Good morning, Mrs. Avery. How may I help you?”
“I think you need to help her first,” rasped a voice. “She’s been waiting.”
A white-haired old lady had come up behind me. She was tiny, dressed in a red brocade Chinese jacket and flowing black trousers.
“Thanks.” I shot her a smile. “Maggie Sullivan,” I said to the clerk.
“Oh, yes. Mr. Tucker’s expecting you.” He gestured weakly. “In his office. I’ll get your key.”
Mrs. Avery chuckled.
“You okay, honey? It’s a wonder Archie didn’t knock you over. Damn fool thinks the world revolves around him.” Her birdlike eyes took in my folded up ruler. “You some sort of decorator?”
“No, I’m—”
“Any book stores around here?” she asked the clerk as he returned. “I mean good ones, not some cigar stand with magazines and those flimsy paperback things.”
I felt a presence at my elbow.
“Miss?”
The creased face of the bellman smiled up at me as he reached for my suitcase. His skin was weathered, as leathery as the luggage he moved. The pillbox strapped under his chin, coupled with a stature smaller than Wee Willie’s and a bandy-legged gait, brought to mind the unfortunate image of an organ’s grinder’s monkey.
“I’m Smith, miss. I’ll take this up to your room. Oh, no need for that.” He tucked his free hand behind him as I tried to give him a tip. “Mr. Tucker already saw to it. Anything else you’d like me to do for you while you’re here — anything — just ask.”
A pair of bright eyes met mine as if to convey a message.
* * *
Without the suitcase, I was free to have my first real look at the lobby. The registration desk was to my left. Across the way a wide arch opened into the hotel lounge, which judging by its size was intended only for guests. At the rear of the lobby, centered, was the elevator. Beside it a carpeted staircase wound up to the floors above. Halls on either side of stairs and elevator led to rooms further back.
Resisting an urge to match my steps to the fleurs-de-lis pattern, I followed royal blue carpet toward the hall on the left and the door the desk clerk had indicated was Tucker’s office. Just beyond, in the hallway itself, Archie Clarke was ensconced in a glass-doored phone booth. He appeared to be shouting.
“Sure glad to see you,” Tucker said when he opened the door in response to my tap. Shadows under his eyes told of a night short on sleep.
“I hope things are going better than yesterday.”
“They couldn’t go much worse.” He knocked on the edge of his desk and attempted a smile.
Like the man who occupied it, the office was small, but it was on the plush side, with a carpet and a drinks cabinet. Across from his desk, a big, gaudy, theatrical poster in a frame decorated the wall. The safe at the heart of his problems was also in the wall across from his desk.
Tucker waved me toward a chair and sank wearily into his.
“The police... well, they didn’t exactly arrest me, but they took me downtown and kept asking me questions, some of ’em over and over. It shook me plenty, I tell you. They kept me till almost ten. Poor Frances was beside herself. She stepped right in and cracked the whip here, though.
“They were decent enough about it. The police. I’d asked could they please not bother the guests, and they didn’t. Just stayed back in the housekeeping office and talked to the staff.”
If the cops had held back, it told me they hadn’t found anything concrete suggesting a link between victim and guests.
“They came to see me,” I said. “Wanted to know what I was doing here.”
“Oh, yeah. They asked me, too. I told them that about checking people we might hire.”
“They seem to think you were having an affair with Polly.”
His mouth opened wordlessly.
“I don’t know whether to laugh or be insulted,” he said at last. “I have NEVER cheated on Frances. Not once. Never even thought about it.” There were tears in his eyes. “I love her!”
“I know you do. The problem is, you fired a man for making a pass at her. The cops think it shows more interest than a boss ordinarily takes in something like that.”
His gaze faltered.
“So. You mind telling me why you didn’t mention it to them? Because I’m guessing you didn’t, which just about guaranteed they’d wonder why.”
His bottom lip pushed out. That was as close as his face could come to the unfamiliar contours of anger.
“It wasn’t none of their business.”
“And the reason you didn’t tell me? After hiring me to try and help you? After I specifically asked whether anyone had a grudge against you and might want to even scores?”
“It didn’t seem important,” he muttered.
“What didn’t seem important?” Frances slid through the door. She had a mug with a saucer on top in her hand.
“Telling me he’d fired someone when I asked if anyone had a beef with either of you. He didn’t tell the cops either.”
“Kenny Stone, you mean? Oh, Joshua.” The last two words came out in a sigh, as though she’d repeated them often.
“He couldn’t have been the one getting into the safe.” Tucker crossed his arms stubbornly. “He’s not smart enough, and he’d never have nerve — for that or killing Polly either, if you’re wondering. He’s a sniveling jerk who couldn’t keep his nose out of the sauce.”
I shoved Tucker’s desktop notepad toward him.
“I want his address.” He opened his mouth to argue. “Or I’m done here.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Joshua, do as she asks!” Frances set the mug at her husband’s elbow. “And tell her the rest. No, I will. Kenny made a pass at me too — got me into a corner and tried to kiss me. That’s why Joshua really fired him. He probably didn’t tell the police — or you — out of some silly notion of - of protecting my honor.”
“You’ve been through enough.” Tucker slid Kenny Stone’s address toward me. “I didn’t want them grilling you. Wearing you out.”
He was the one who looked worn out at the moment. He noticed the mug beside him.
“What’s this?”
“Cocoa.”
“Cocoa? It’s not winter.”
“You need something in you besides coffee. It will give you some energy.”
The back of her hand stroked his cheek. I looked away with a pang. No one had ever touched me with such loving concern. Or maybe they had, and I’d pushed away.