Little Life Lesson 41: Pinning any hope on Alyson is like wearing leg warmers (Even cute ones.42 With unicorns on them.43 Or frolicsome dolphins.44) around Polly: a Very Bad Idea.
I’d collected the hairs up, along with similar ones we found on the steering wheel. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them, but it was great to know that if I did need evidence of Jack’s corrupt soul, I had plenty of it.45
Roxy was finishing my breakfast as Tom said, “You know, Jas, I don’t think those were Jack’s wheels. It seems like if you were going to try to kill someone, you wouldn’t use your own car. Plus, purple shag seems kind of feminine. Like maybe it’s a woman’s car. I just don’t see Jack cruising in that on a regular basis. Do you?”
“I wouldn’t even know. We haven’t really gotten past the whole ‘You’re evil,’ ‘Perhaps,’ patch of dialogue,” I told him. Bitterly. And yet with a hint of great inner fortitude. Because that is the kind of woman I am.46 “Do you think he stole the car?”
“It doesn’t look messed with. I’m thinking he borrowed it. Did you notice all the cars around us also had that sticker Veronique mentioned? I think we were in the employee parking section. Maybe we can use that to find out who owns the car and get a line on your magic man.”
“He is not my—never mind.”
“You mean like Jack got close to someone who works here to find out where Fred and Fiona were?” Polly asked. “But how do we find out whose car it is?”
Roxy swallowed the last of my pancakes and said, “That’s easy. We just have the head of hotel security make a few calls.” She looked at Tom. “Right, Mr. Curtis?”
“You’re only young once,” Tom said, doing a perfect imitation of L. A. Curtis’s voice. “Nothing happens in my hotel I don’t know about.”
We decided that it would be better to impersonate the head of security on the phone from a more private location than the hotel coffee shop, and I wanted to put the evidence we’d collected into envelopes, so we went back to my room. In case I was worried my day couldn’t get any better, when we got there we found the Thwarter snooping around. Fortunately I’d decided to store all the magazine articles and the evidence we’d collected so far in Polly’s backpack, so it was safe from his patented ThwartVision. The shoe box fuming chamber was poking out slightly from under the bed, but from his relatively pain-free expression I deduced he hadn’t found it yet. When we came in he scowled at me for a moment, then launched into one of his loving father-daughter chats:
Thwarter: Where have you been?
Jas: Breaking into cars in the parking lot.
Thwarter: Is everything a joke to you, Jasmine?
Jas: Actually right now I am suffering from a secret sorrow so heavy my organs are being smashed by it.
Thwarter: (snorting) Sherri! and I are having brunch with your aunt and uncle. Don’t forget that our final family dinner is tonight at eight o’clock.
Jas: I’ll be there if I’m not dead by then.
Thwarter: You’ll be there. Period.
Which left me with the cheery knowledge that my father would want to spend time with me even if I were a cold, stiff corpse. Not every daughter can say that, I bet!
Once he and Sherri! were safely out of the room, Tom, who was our sherpa because his carpenter pants had the largest pockets, dumped the hairs and button we’d collected on the desk and went to the phone to make his call.
“Hey, Jas, your message light is blinking,” he said.
“I bet it’s the Hench Twins looking for you, Tomás,” I said. “Could you play it on the speakerphone?”
I’d just finished writing EVIL BOY HAIRS FROM DEATHMOBILE on the outside of an envelope when the sound of the voice leaving the message stopped me cold. It wasn’t Alyson’s voice. It was a little boy’s voice. Fred’s.
And he was scared to death.
He was whispering and sniffling at the same time so it was hard to hear him, but it sounded like he said, “Jas, you said everything would be okay, that you would keep him away but now he’s here. Mad Joe is scared, Jas. He’s trembling and he wants you to come help him. Jas, you promised…I’m so scar—”
Click. Dial tone.
It had happened. Red Early had come for Fiona and Fred.
“Should we call back?” Roxy asked.
But I didn’t stay to answer. “I’m taking the stairs, you take the elevator, meet me at room 40215.”
Twenty-four
Fred had told me his room number the day we went to get ice cream, but when we got to room 40215 the DO NOT DISTURB sign was up and there was no answer to our knocking.
“There’s a house phone just down the corridor. I’ll go call security,” Polly said, and took off.
I put my ear against the door. There was no sound. Nothing. “I don’t think there’s anyone inside.”
Polly came running back, panting a little. “Security says they’re sending someone up to investigate the situation and we should go back to our room.”
Hmmm, or NOT. Roxy and Tom did in fact go back to my room, but only to grab the evidence we’d found in case we needed it, while Polly and I waited in front of Fred and Fiona’s door. If they were in trouble, I wanted to be there to help.
Little Life Lesson 42: Security officers have very good, if selective, memories.
The first thing Security Officer Kim and Security Officer Reese said when they saw me at the end of the corridor was, “Miss Callihan.” They recognized me! Even though our time together the day before when they escorted me to Mr. Curtis’s office had been brief, it obviously left an impression on them. I would have been flattered if Security Officer Kim hadn’t immediately clicked on his walkie-talkie and said, “Cancel that emergency status on floor forty. It’s a prank.”
“It’s not a prank. That boy, the one I was in the casino with yesterday?”
“The minor you were willfully corrupting? Yes?”
There was so much wrong with that statement I didn’t even know where to start. And I had more important things to get to. “This is his room. He called me and left a message that he was in trouble and we came right down here but now there’s no answer when we knock. I think something is really wrong.”
Officer Reese reached out and flicked the DO NOT DISTURB sign with his finger. “You can read, can’t you, Miss Callihan? Or do you need me to tell you what this says?”
Okay, now, that was just unnecessarily mean. Maybe I was a repeat offender in the eyes of the law, but that didn’t mean I was lying. Or illiterate. I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. I looked down and saw three things at the same time.
1. My hands were trembling.
2. I had run to Fred’s room still holding the envelope marked EVIL BOY HAIRS FROM DEATHMOBILE.
3. There was a dark brown drop on the carpet just outside the door, and another, smaller one, a little farther down the corridor.
I also saw Tom and Roxy coming toward us, with Tom’s pockets bulging with our evidence. I put up my hand to stop them, looked back up, and said to Security Officers Kim and Reese, “You’re right. I’m making a big deal about nothing. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. We’ll go back to my room.” I nodded to Polly. “Come on. We’ve caused enough trouble already.”
We caught up with Roxy and Tom. “Don’t say anything, just come with me,” I whispered to them and kept walking, head down, toward the elevators.
“Where are—” Polly started to say when we got in, but changed course when I nodded toward the security camera, and finished with, “—Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man, would make a good song title, don’t you think, Rox?”
When we got out, I made a sharp left. Polly said, “Jas, our room is the other way.”
“But the closest staircase to Fred’s room is this way,” Roxy said, figuring out what I was doing.
We reached the staircase and started going up.
“Okay,” Polly said as we climbed, “I saw that you had your fingers crossed when you were talking up there and knew that meant you
were lying, but why did you do it?”
“Because if we stayed, they would never have left.” I stopped at the landing of the fortieth floor. “There were what looked distinctly like blood drops going from the door down the corridor. They got smaller, meaning they were leading away from Fiona and Fred’s suite. The way they looked, I think someone was injured and removed from that room. And Officers Kim and Reese weren’t going to do anything about it.”
“So the sooner the security guards go away—” Roxy said.
“—the sooner I can bypass the electric lock and get us in there,” Tom finished.
“You can do that?” I asked.
“I think so. One of the guys from work this summer is an ace locksmith and told me all about them, but I’ve never tried it before.”
Polly carefully opened the stairwell door a crack, said, “All clear,” and stepped into the corridor. When we were back in front of the Bristols’ room, Tom studied the lock for a moment and turned to me. “Could you lend me your Sheriff’s badge?”
I handed it to him, and from where I was standing it looked like all he did was touch the lock, say, “Abracadabra,” and the door opened.47
Little Life Lesson 43: If you find yourself in a room you’re not supposed to be in, via a means you’re not supposed to use, doing something you’re not supposed to be doing, remember to lock the door.
Putting on the safety chain might not be a bad idea either.
Twenty-five
We walked in, paying no attention at all to whether the door locked behind us.
(Little Life Lesson 44: One of those portable motion detectors with an alarm on them could also come in handy in a situation like this.)
I thought my room was nice, but Fiona and Fred’s made it look like a coat closet.
(Little Life Lesson 45: Or a chair jammed under the door handle.)
Their suite was easily four times the size of mine and very deluxe. You walked into a marble foyer, with a door on one side to a guest bathroom. If you kept going, there was a dining area with a table, and then, farther in down some steps, two sitting areas, one with a TV and chairs and one with a couch. There was a door on either side of the foyer that led to two bedrooms, each with their own bathroom, one of them with a folding bed against the wall.
“Is it only me, or are you guys getting a totally creepy vibe?” Roxy said as we stood in the entry way.
“Creepy,” Polly agreed. “But I don’t know why.”
At first glance it seemed like your regular morning in the Bristol household, right down to the breakfast dishes on the dining table and the chairs pushed back casually, as though Fred and Fiona had just gotten up to go in the other room for a sec and would be right back. It all looked totally normal.
Except for the line of dried blood drops that went from the door to the table. Or rather, the other way: The drops got closer together near the table, which meant the line started there. The ones I’d seen in the hallway were a continuation of it.
“Someone was hurt right here,” I said, pointing to the place where the drops started. “Polly, is your Howard Hughes freaky germ light in the backpack?”
“Would you be referring to my black light? Yes. Why? You want to use it now, Miss Mocky-Mock?”
“Yes, please. I have an idea.”
Polly found the black light while Tom closed the curtains and Roxy turned off the overhead lights. When it was dark, I flipped the black light on and pointed it at the area with the most blood.
Polly said, “Wait, I think there’s something on the arm of the chair.” I moved the light to where she was pointing, and a long thin object lit up. A hair.
“Can you shine the light into the sitting area more?” Tom asked from down there. “On the floor. Yeah—wow. Check it out.”
The black light was picking up traces of dirt left by someone walking around. It looked like a treasure map on the floor, glowing footprints marking all the places the person had gone—from the dining table down the stairs to the couch, then to each of the two chairs, standing in front of them, over to the armoire with the television, back to the couch, and finally back up the stairs to where we were standing.
“Someone has ADD,” Polly said. “They were going in circles.”
“Or maybe they were searching for something,” I said.
“The cushions on the couch and the chairs do look sort of sloppy,” Tom agreed. “Maybe that’s why the place feels so creepy.”
I went to flip on the light. “That and the blood on the floor.”
Polly said, “Do you think it’s Fiona’s or Fred’s?”
“I don’t know, but judging from this”—I held up the hair we’d found on the chair arm, which was a distinctive shade of bright red—“I’m willing to bet that Red Early is the one who is holding them. The hair still has its root attached, which means it got pulled out. They didn’t go without a fight.”
“But Red Early told Fiona he was going to hunt her down,” Tom said. “Why would she agree to see him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she agreed to see Jack and he snuck Red in.”
“But we were right behind Jack at the roller rink last night, and he didn’t even talk to Fiona,” Polly said.
“No, but I thought I saw their hands touch, like they were passing notes.”
“So what happened?” Polly said. “Fiona and Fred are having breakfast, Red Early comes in, they fight, he wins. Then he ties them up or something while he searches the room?”
“I guess,” I told her. “I wonder what he was looking for. Given the places he searched, like under the couch cushions, it can’t be very bulky. But there’s no question something bad happened here.” I sighed. “We should call the police, shouldn’t we?”
“Oh, yes. I think telling them we broke into Fiona Bristol’s room against the orders of Venetian security and tampered with a crime scene to search it is a great idea,” Polly said. “Should we vote?”
“No.” I picked up the phone and started dialing.
Little Life Lesson 46 (from Polly): Naïveté goes beautifully with prison orange.
The 911 operator put me on hold, so I hung up, got the main police number from information, and when someone answered I explained that I was at the Venetian and I thought a crime had been committed.
“What’s your name, Miss?”
“That doesn’t matter, what matters—”
“Name?”
“Jasmine Callihan. And—”
“Callihan with two Ls? And you say you are at the Venetian?”
“Exactly. We called—”
“Are you the Jasmine Callihan who stole the Venetian limo two nights ago and had to be chased down?”
“Um. Not exactly.”
“Miss Callihan, I don’t think you realize how lucky you are not to have been arrested the other night. Now I suggest you stop playing games and start counting your lucky stars. If you must play pranks, call Venetian Security. Falsely filing a police report is a felony and if you call here again, I will do my best to see to it that you are arrested.”
“Okay, thanks a lot, bye,” I said, trying to sound cheery so Polly would not know what had happened.
“They hung up on you. I heard it,” Polly said.
Roxy frowned. “That means the only people who know Fred and Fiona have disappeared are us.”
“And that we’re the only ones who can find them before anything bad happens,” I said.
“I think you mean something worse,” Polly said, pointing to the blood trail.
I gave her my most nice smile. “Oh, you with your tidings of comfort and joy. Less talking, more looking for evidence.”
Tom, still standing in the living room area, said, “They might have found what they were looking for. Someone burned something in an ashtray here. Whatever got burned is gone, but they left the matchbook.”
“Tom, do you have the envelope labeled Madame Tussauds Matches in your pocket?” I asked. “If the matches Jack used the other night came from
the matchbook here—”
“—it means he’s working with Red Early,” Tom finished, handing me the envelope from his pocket. “Undoubtedly.”
Of course the ripped edges fit against two of the stubs in the matchbook perfectly. No wonder Jack had acted so weird when I said he was Red’s lackey. He was no lackey. He was more like an accomplice. Part of the big show.
As I put the matchbook in its own envelope and gave it to Tom to hold, I reflected that it was good to know I hadn’t set my sights on a mere errand boy, but a real hard-core gangster type. Yes, my taste in men was outstanding. What I wanted to do then was go and quietly hang myself. But I decided the right thing to do was put that off until after we helped Fiona and Fred.
Roxy squealing from inside of one of the bedrooms broke into my deep and important thoughts. “This is Ivan’s room,” she said. “The closet is filled with specially made clothing. The pants have been specially altered to accommodate his extra large—”
Polly put her hands over her ears. “I DON’T WANT TO HEAR THIS.”
“—guns,” Roxy finished. “Hey, Jas, can I have that black light to use in here?”
I turned to Tom. “You go in there and make sure she doesn’t transition from obsessed girl to stalker. Polly, you take Fiona’s room. I’ll stay out here and finish looking around.”
Tom followed Polly with his eyes but said to me, “Your wish, my command, Sheriff.”
“Are you sure we should humor her this way?” Polly asked, from the door of Fiona’s room. “I mean, if she’s checking his sheets for—”
“I am trying not to hear that,” I told her. “Don’t forget to check the folding bed. I think Fred was sleeping there with his mother.”
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