Mystery Writer's Mysteries Box Set 1-3

by Becky Clark

  My plan was to march over to Jack’s concierge station and demand information, but my hands started to shake. I veered to the bar and asked for a glass of water. I forced myself to sip the entire thing mindfully, willing myself to calm down.

  Sure, I’d stolen stuff from Roz’s office, but it had to be done, right? Roz and Jack were both acting so suspiciously, lying about this and that, and Viv was being completely wacko. I was the only one who could get to the bottom of this fiasco.

  Right? Was I?

  I drained my glass, feeling less and less sure of anything.

  “Anything else for you?” the bartender asked.

  I studied the rows and rows of bottles behind him. “Give me a shot of that.” I pointed to his left, at a squat bottle made of clear glass with a silver stopper that resembled a pineapple. Or maybe a pinecone. The bartender lifted it down by its neck and I saw two silver hands clutching the sides of the bottle. Or maybe they were two silver leaves.

  “You’re a tequila gal?”

  “I am today.”

  After my shot—okay, fine, two shots—I summoned courage to my sticking place—or sticky place, since my shaky hands had spilled a bit of tequila—and marched across the lobby to where Jack worked at his desk.

  He saw me coming and retreated to the reception desk in a poorly masked attempt to act busy far away from me. I met him there, leaned toward the desk clerk, and said in the sweetest voice I could muster, “I’m so sorry to drag Giacomo away, but I have a problem only he can help me with.” I held Jack’s upper arm and saw the clerk’s mouth twitch. She got a knowing look on her face and nodded the teensiest bit. “No! Not that,” I said, dropping his arm. “I have some questions only he can answer.”

  The clerk’s nod became more emphatic. “I hear you, sister,” she muttered before walking away.

  I turned to Jack, both of us fire-engine red and clutching ourselves as if we had been caught naked in math class.

  “Thanks. Thanks a lot,” he said.

  “It’s not my fault your handsome is right out there for everyone to see.”

  Jack used his arm to wipe his brow. “What was it you wanted?” I could tell from his voice he’d rather I didn’t actually tell him.

  “I have more questions about Hanna. I need to—”

  Cutting me off with a finger in the air, he pulled me away from the reception desk. He dialed his phone and whispered into it, “Meet me downstairs.” He marched to the hallway leading to the meeting rooms and I followed.

  Was he taking me to Hanna? Was she hiding in the hotel? Or was he taking me to the kidnappers? I stumbled in front of the Deschutes Room but he only gave me a cursory glance over his shoulder.

  When we got to the Clackamas Room, before the hallway made its ninety-degree turn, I stopped. The chances were good not many people were in the other, more distant parts of the hallway. “Where are we going?”

  Jack had already turned the corner with his long stride, but stepped backward toward me. “Downstairs.”

  “Why?”

  “You said you had more questions about Hanna.”

  “Why can’t I ask them here? And who did you call?”

  “saRAH. Better for her. Lots of people happy to rat us out.”

  “For what? Dating? Besides, I told the front desk clerk I had a problem. I’m sure she assumed it was work-related.”

  Jack turned the corner. “Are you coming or not?”

  Was I? No, I wasn’t. I considered diving into the workroom, and all the tasks waiting to be done. That’s what I should be doing. Not this, whatever “this” was. I took a hesitant step toward the Mount Hood Room. But what if Hanna was down in the basement? What if she needed help? What if Clementine hadn’t gone down there to question Billy the PI or smoke weed after all? What if that was just a story? What if I could mop up this mystery in the next hour, then get back to putting on this stupid conference?

  Courage. Sticking place. Suck it up, Charlee.

  I turned the corner and saw Jack gripping the handle of the hidden door.

  I looked behind me. I looked at Jack. Then I followed him through the door.

  Eleven

  Jack reached behind me to shut the door. As before, the dim yellow bulb cast the short hallway in a weird, unnatural sort of twilight. Jack moved faster than I did and the darkness swallowed him. I hurried to catch up. When I did, I saw him waiting at the stairs, which descended into even more darkness.

  “Watch where you step. Sometimes there’s rats. Or worse.” Worse than rats? I shuddered to think what I would have done if I’d seen any rats when I was down here alone.

  Of my two choices, to go back or to keep following Jack, I knew one thing. Neither was a good decision.

  I chose to follow him down the stairs. But as I did, one eye watching for rats, I pulled up Lily’s number on my phone. I’d only talked to her twice on the phone since I’d been at the hotel, but I knew that if there was trouble, I’d only have to hit one button and in half a second I’d hear her standard cheery greeting: “It’s Lily! Thanks for calling! What can I do for you?” Unless I got her voicemail, that is. Still a cheery greeting, but absolutely useless for my purposes.

  Of course, I was assuming I’d have cell service. I checked my phone. Two bars. I drew a breath.

  We reached the bottom of the stairs with nary a rat, mouse, or worse sighting. The yellow caged light bulbs were set farther apart, making the light even more dim. I hurried to keep up with Jack, who expertly picked his way through the maze. Only the darkness seemed familiar from before. We twisted and turned so many times I knew I probably couldn’t make it back to the Clackamas Room even if I wanted to. And I was beginning to want to.

  Jack stopped suddenly and I crashed into his back. I took two steps backward when he reached for a door. It opened to the outside of the hotel, and I peeked over his shoulder as he blocked the threshold, looking right then left. It seemed to me like an underground parking area, maybe for deliveries. But there were no vehicles or people there, and he closed the door and continued through the maze. It was bright above my head now, the dim yellow bulbs replaced with higher wattage white ones. I tried to memorize our location in case I needed to make a run for the outer door. I snapped a few quick photos, but they showed only the washed-out back of Jack’s head before me and darkness behind. As I checked the photos, something caught my eye.

  Zero bars.

  Jack was out of view and I hurried after him, longing for daylight. After a few steps, the bright light disappeared and the hallway was plunged back into the eerie twilight. I pulled up my flashlight app and used it to better light my way.

  As I followed Jack, I realized the bowels of the hotel, from the looks of it, were mostly used for storage. Jack zigged, zagged, and then finally stepped into a room filled with furniture that matched some of the pieces in my room on the eighth floor. Three loveseats covered in the same fabric, but the cushions were torn. Several rolling desk chairs missing some of their wheels. Armoires with broken hinges. And one desk broken completely in the middle, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.

  “What?” a voice behind me said.

  Simultaneously I heard a bang on a wall. The hallway and storage room blazed with fluorescent light.

  I jumped directly out of my skin and did an awkward pirouette toward Jack.

  I saw saRAH and Jack staring at me. “Why didn’t you do that on the way down here?” My terror made me sound petulant, which maybe I was.

  “Do what? Turn on the lights?” Jack said.

  I nodded and tried to regain some dignity.

  “Why would I do that? I knew where I was going. The emergency lights save energy.”

  There was no sign of Hanna or kidnappers or anyone else down here. I plopped myself on the nearest torn loveseat and took a deep, cleansing breath. I powered down my flashlight and noticed I was at thirty-eight percent power. “Why did we come all the way down here?” I still sounded petulant, but I was fine with that. Better
than having them know how close I was to peeing my pants.

  “It’s obvious. I have the run of the place, but maids don’t. Ever seen a uniformed maid in a hotel lobby? It’s easier for saRAH to sneak down here.”

  “She was in uniform in the restaurant,” I pointed out.

  “I like to push the envelope. Live dangerously,” saRAH smirked.

  Suddenly I jumped up from the loveseat. “Do you guys come down here to—”

  “Gross!”

  “No!”

  To cover my embarrassing imagination, I said, “Sorry. I thought it would be a good place to, you know, live dangerously … sneak a smoke.”

  “Oh,” Jack said. “Well, yeah, we do that.”

  “What’s this all about?” saRAH asked, lighting a cigarette.

  Since it didn’t look like I was going to rescue Hanna or get whacked, I said, “I need to access Hanna’s social media.”

  saRAH expelled a smoky breath that would have been right at home in a film noir from the 1940s. “Hanna doesn’t respond to calls or texts unless she instigates the conversation.”

  How convenient, I thought.

  “She might respond to a direct message from me,” Jack said. “Why?”

  “I told you before. Viv wants to get in touch with her.”

  “Maybe she’s avoiding for a reason.” More smoky words from saRAH.

  I fought the urge to wave my hand in front of my face because I suspected that was exactly what she wanted me to do. “Maybe. But wouldn’t you like to know?”

  Instead of answering, she blew smoke slowly and deliberately into the air and then panicked when she realized she was directly under the smoke alarm. She and Jack frantically fanned the smoke away. When it had dissipated, saRAH stubbed out her cigarette and dropped to the arm of one of the loveseats.

  “What’s her username on Facebook?” I pulled out my phone. Still no bars. I’d have to check her profile later.

  saRAH snorted. “Facebook? She’s not ninety.” She raised one perfectly threaded, disbelieving eyebrow.

  “Fine. What’s her social media platform of choice?”

  “If you have to ask, you probably aren’t on it.” saRAH fiddled with her pack of cigarettes, closing and opening her hand until the package was crushed. I didn’t even think she noticed.

  “Instagram, then.”

  “Nope.”

  “Twitter? Tumblr? Snapchat? Weibo? Reddit?” I raised one finger and smiled, convinced I had it. “LinkedIn.”

  saRAH started to answer but Jack interrupted. “Actually, it’s Symwyf.”

  “Sim Whiff ?”

  “Speak Yo Mind With Yo Friends.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  saRAH tucked her crushed cigarette pack into the couch cushion. “Not surprised.”

  “It’s new,” Jack said.

  I won’t lie. It hurt that he gave me a verbal pat on my forty-years-in-the-future blue-tinted grandma hair.

  He pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’ll DM her right now and tell you the minute she responds.” When he finished he looked at me. “Want me to also send a tweet to our friends and ask if anyone has seen her?”

  I wondered if he had really direct messaged her. He had bars but I didn’t? “No. I don’t want to alarm anyone,” I said, even though these two were not the least bit worried about Hanna. But if there really was a kidnapper paying attention, I wouldn’t want him—or her—to get a whiff of anything. Especially not a Symwyf.

  “I don’t know why you’re so worried about her,” saRAH said. “Hanna goes AWOL all the time—”

  “Mostly to get away from her mother,” Jack added.

  “Where does she usually go?”

  “Once she followed a boyfriend to Hawaii on the surfer circuit,” saRAH said. “And another time she went to hike the Appalachian Trail on a dare.”

  “Who dared her?”

  “Me.” saRAH rubbed her throat with one hand.

  “Why would she run off without telling her mother?” I wanted to understand Hanna and Viv’s relationship.

  “Their relationship is … complicated,” Jack said.

  “That’s what I hear. How is it complicated?”

  saRAH ticked off the reasons on her fingers. “Viv doesn’t like Hanna’s boyfriend, doesn’t like that Hanna dropped out of college, doesn’t like that Hanna doesn’t do what Viv wants her to do, doesn’t like that she has a part-time job that doesn’t come close to paying her bills—”

  “How does she support herself ?”

  Jack and saRAH exchanged an uneasy glance.

  “I don’t know, but it’s probably got something to do with her boyfriend.” Jack spat out the word like it was a bite of Jerry’s Avocado Crumble.

  “What’s Hanna’s boyfriend’s name?” I asked. They answered in unison. “Michael Watanabe.”

  “The drug dealer?”

  Again they nodded in unison.

  saRAH and Jack exchanged a kiss in the dark hallway outside the storage room after the fluorescents had been turned off. She went one way and I followed Jack the other. The trip back to the lobby seemed to take a fraction of the time it had taken to get down there. Fear and an unknown destination play tricks on your senses, I guess.

  Jack went back to work. I plopped into an overstuffed chair in the lobby with a good view of the revolving door and dialed the Watanabe Yatai takeout number. While I waited for Hanna’s boyfriend to deliver my order—and maybe some answers—I watched dogs and their handlers run through a small agility course they’d set up with props from the lobby. The hassocks were still there from before, joined by sets of throw pillows leaning together in inverted Vs.

  I watched the dogs leap over the different types of hurdles. I laughed out loud when the smaller dogs jumped onto the hassocks and struck a pose worthy of a Milan runway. I craned my neck when I realized part of the course had been out of my view. Chairs from the restaurant were set up with jackets draped over them to create a tunnel for the dogs to crawl through. I watched a brindle greyhound start through the tunnel but worried when it didn’t come out the other end in the amount of time I thought it should. Apparently the handler was worried too and dropped to his knees at the end of the tunnel. He called out, “C’mon, Shasta. This way!”

  Shasta seemed to get spooked by the tunnel and in her haste to get out, knocked over two of the chairs and got tangled up in the jackets that fell.

  With a start I realized that Jack and saRAH really could have whacked me down in the basement. I would have been hidden like Shasta but nobody would have known to look for me. I’d been scared of them, then I wasn’t, and now I was again. Were they toying with me? They didn’t seem to think it was weird that I kept asking about Hanna. Or did they? Were they just hiding it? Were they hiding her?

  Were they trying to lull me into some false sense of security so they could whack me later?

  So confused. So paranoid.

  My paranoia only intensified when Michael Watanabe arrived with the food I’d ordered. Even though I was fairly certain he didn’t remember me from earlier, I stammered nervously, “You got me hooked!”

  As soon as I said it, I wanted those words stuffed back into my mouth. Probably not appropriate to say to a convicted drug dealer. Even though I was talking about the yakisoba and those delicious octopus doughnut holes.

  He ignored me, instead holding out two plastic bags with Watanabe’s logo stamped on them. “This one’s the—”

  “When was the last time you saw Hanna? Or heard from her?” I blurted, without taking the bags.

  He froze.

  “Do you guys live together?” No answer.

  “Does she work for you?”

  He hadn’t moved. Still held out the bags.

  “Is she on drugs?” I asked, quieter.

  His eyes flickered. Fear? Regret? I couldn’t tell.

  He stepped toward a nearby table and deposited the bags. I realized my paranoia had made me come on too strong. He was ready to hightail
it out of here and I’d never see him again.

  But he didn’t. He moved right in front of me and squared his shoulders. “Are you a narc? Because I’ve done my time. Out of the biz.”

  I calmed myself by filling my lungs with air and then slowly releasing it. He’d given me a second chance. “I’m not a narc. Hanna’s mom and I are looking for her.”

  “She’s disappeared before.” Michael Watanabe walked away, then said over his shoulder, “Always comes back.”

  I stared as he pushed through the revolving door, and long after he’d gone. He, too, was completely unconcerned by Hanna’s disappearance. Alleged disappearance. I couldn’t help but think that all of this had nothing to do with Hanna and everything to do with Viv. But what? It would sure explain why Viv was more than happy to embezzle from the conference but not to get the authorities involved with her daughter’s kidnapping. Alleged kidnapping. Did Viv have something to do with the glitch that charged people almost four thousand bucks for this conference? And why would the kidnapper know or care about the Stumptown Writers’ Conference? It seemed targeted to make trouble for Viv. Or at least gave her some, what … plausible deniability? My brain kept circling back to the fact that none of Hanna’s friends were worried about her.

  I jumped when someone touched my shoulder.

  “Pardon me. I’m sorry to intrude, but ….” Bernice from the front desk glanced pointedly at the takeout bags from Watanabe’s. “You’re not supposed to bring outside food in since we have a restaurant.” Her Southern belle charm dimmed her smile appropriately at being forced to reprimand me.

  I’d completely forgotten about the food and realized Michael left without being paid. I flashed her a grin and handed her the bags. “I actually got this for you guys, to thank you for working so hard to …” I heard the handlers calling commands and encouragement to their dogs. “To thank you for working so hard to correct the double-booking situation.” I had absolutely no idea if they were doing anything to correct the double-booking situation, but if they were, great, and if they weren’t, maybe now they would. Win-win.