What I had in mind was a book I had seen when Minnie and I had browsed the stock earlier in the day. No, that was yesterday, I remembered, as I glided noiselessly down the hall. I don’t know why people call two A.M. the middle of the night when it’s really the beginning of the day.
I knew just where the book was, visualizing it in my mind, as I turned left at the second hallway. It was nestled beside Marcie’s extensive inventory of health, diet, exercise, and Bargello cookbooks. Marcie had not written this book, but she had written the forward to it, a glossary of interactive drugs. I wanted to look up the drugs Clover had told me were found in Twyman’s blood samples.
This thought and the ironic notion that although Marcie was the only wife who Twyman hadn’t stolen a book from while he was married to her occupied my mind to the extent that I suddenly realized I was lost in the maze of halls. I found myself at what I remembered to be the door to the kennel. Marcie couldn’t write. Oh, she has all those books with her name on them, but the woman can’t write. No wonder Twyman had left her for Babe. Nothing to steal.
I decided to give Bailey a beginning-of-morning hug before I retraced my steps to the gift shop.
I was bending over his cage, trying to figure out how to get the wire door open, when someone came up behind me and grabbed me around the waist. A man’s hand covered my mouth. The hand stifled my instinctive scream, and I struggled to get away.
“Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie.”
I bit the hand before the words sank in.
“Ouch.”
I almost sobbed. “Kissed the girls and made them cry?”
“When the boys came out to play,” came the pained response.
“Georgie Porgie ran … Oh, Steven, you scared me to death. What on earth are you doing here?” I turned in his arms and gave him the two-fisted beating that I had been going to give an unknown assailant.
“Whoa. That’s enough. Ouch. Stop that, Honey. And here I thought you needed protection. Wrong!”
We collapsed on the ground before Bailey’s cage.
“Nice robe. Makes you look like a ghostly nun.”
I wrapped the now-open robe around the long, pastel Bargello sleep shirt I wore. “I’m glad you like it. I bought you one. Can you let Bailey out? He thinks we’re playing.”
“Yeah? What game?” He reached over and twisted the plastic lock on the cage. Bailey bounded out and licked us both enthusiastically.
Suddenly suspicious, I asked, “Steven, how long have you been here? I thought you were going to Hollywood.”
Steven Hyatt stretched his lanky length on the grass while Bailey scampered around, visiting friends in the other cages. He seemed to be taunting them with, Hee hee, I’m out and you’re not.
“I came Monday night. Hey, I work here.”
“Oh, right. Doing what? No, don’t tell me. You’re the new masseuse they were telling me about?”
He straightened up with dignity. “I’ll have you know I am the official Bargello dog walker and night guard.”
I rolled on the grass, choking with laughter. “Won’t let you near the women, eh? Good instincts.”
“Not until they finish my security check, but what the hey, a job’s a job.”
“Obviously you’ve come here to guard and protect Janie and me. Ah, Steven, did you think there would be trouble in spa city?”
“Now where would our Nancy be without her Ned?”
I hadn’t realized I had missed Steven so much. It had only been four days, but it felt good to be bantering with him as we lay in the grass, accepting quick licks from Bailey as he enjoyed his unexpected freedom.
“That’s why Bailey settled down. He didn’t pine for me because he had his own playmate and constant companion. Now tell me why you didn’t go to Hollywood, and just maybe I’ll tell you all Janie and I have learned about Twyman.”
Steven told me that after thinking about all his and Silas’s jokes about us being safe at a ladies’ spa, he had remembered I could get in deadly trouble right in my own house. So, he had put his Hollywood trip on hold for a week and come to east Texas to stand guard. He’d found an immediate opening in the kennel, but his security clearance had left him frustrated. Until they had further checked his background and references, he wasn’t allowed near the main buildings. “I sleep right here with the dogs,” he said, and his nod indicated a cement blockhouse behind him, which also stored feed and supplies for the animals.
I reached in my robe pocket and gave him a plastic keycard. “Here, I have two. I lost mine the first day and they replaced it. When I told them I’d found it under the bed, they just said they would rekey it so they both worked. Take it. You never know when it will come in handy.”
“Yeah, like maybe I could slip into your room and we could …”
Steven gave me a demonstration of what we might do if he came to my room, and I was very surprised at my reaction. Somehow, in all the years I had known him, this view of Steven Hyatt had never crossed my mind. It felt good, I thought, to be held and caressed by him. I snuggled against his neck. “Hmmm, you smell like wet dog.”
He sighed. “So much for romance. Okay, you’re dying to tell me. What have you and Janie discovered that is more important than this?” And he gave me a very nice kiss.
“Janie who? Oh, you mean Mother?” I pulled my robe together again and sat with my knees tucked under my chin, my arms wrapped around my legs. Hot as it was in east Texas in August, it was chilly and damp on the grass at two in the morning. I told Steven about Clover visiting my room, about what Janie had found out about Marcie and Babe from the kitchen staff. Finally, I asked him if he could have gotten the dates wrong in Gabriella’s office.
“No, it said Saturday, August the eighth. Why?”
“Because Clover seemed confused when I said I knew they were all meeting on Saturday. Like I had gotten the date wrong.”
“Did it ever occur to you, maybe they changed the date?”
THIRTY–EIGHT
“Of course,” said Janie when we shared our breakfasts-in-bed on the floor of my room the next morning. “That must be it. Anyway, I can find out easily enough. Karen in the front office is the sous-chef’s sister. You wouldn’t believe what trouble she is going through with her husband. Her sister is just beside herself with worry. I swear half the world is having marital problems.”
“That I believe,” I agreed. “I hope you don’t take this personal, Janie, but the last happily married couple I knew died when my mother and father died.”
“Were they really happy, Honey? Or is that just how you remember it?”
I looked at her. “Good question, Janie. Devoted, certainly. Loyal, absolutely. Happy? Yes, I’m sure they were.”
“Are you going to eat that other piece of English muffin?”
I passed her the muffin and said, “Find out from the receptionist Karen when Babe and Gabriella are coming. But be careful. Remember, if we are right about Twyman, and it’s looking more and more like we are, one of them is a murderer.”
“Just one of them? Sounds to me like we’re looking at a Murder on the Orient Express situation. I think they all did him in. And as far as me being in danger, what about you? You run around in the middle of the night and you worry about me? Tell me some more about Steven Hyatt. Did he propose again?”
“He mentioned something about it, yes.”
“Lord, Honey, you’re blushing. So, what did you tell him this time?”
“Same thing. That I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. What I do know is that I have to see Harry first. I made up my mind about that. Soon as we leave here, I’m going to get a passport and go to London and find him.”
She thought about it as she chewed my muffin. “That works. I understand that. If I didn’t have to find a lawyer and get on with the divorce, I’d go with you.” And then she laughed.
“What?”
“Lord, look at you Honey. Four months ago, you wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Now you’re heading
overseas.”
“I hate to think it’s the money that makes the difference, but it certainly has changed my life,” I admitted. “Which reminds me, I need to call Bondesky and make sure that the money is safe.”
She reassured me, “Oh, I’m sure it is. I’d put my money on Bondesky.”
I reminded her, “I did.”
In the end, we didn’t need Karen’s confirmation that Babe was arriving early at The Bargello. By the time I reached the facial room, every woman at the spa was talking about the star’s early-morning arrival. I listened as the attendant deep-cleansed my face and neck with cool lotions and soothing creams that she rhythmically applied with soft, warm sponges.
“I heard that Marcie met her personally at the door. Babe flew into Dallas and a limousine brought her straight here.”
“I heard that there is a man with her. Wonder where they will put him?”
“Who is he? And I’m sure she’s going into the private wing. They have suites over there.”
“I heard that she is sick. Now, don’t go telling this, but I mean really sick.”
“I think he’s her manager or something like that.”
“Don’t you think it’s strange that Babe and Marcie are friends? I mean, after all, Twyman Towerie left Marcie to marry Babe.”
“Isn’t that just like a man? Did I tell you about my second husband?”
“It was my third that gave me fits, but what can you expect from a man that you meet at a casino on the Riviera?”
“I have more food on my face right now than I have in my stomach,” came a complaint from a voice beside me.
I took the cotton pads off my eyes and raised my head only to be greeted with a shot of warm mist. Before the beautician clucked at me and put the pads back on my eyes, I had made out the large form of Minnie on the table next to me. “Let me guess,” I said. “Cucumber, chamomile, and a little rosemary and thyme?”
We giggled and sang an off-key version of “Scarborough Fair.”
Everyone in the room laughed, but one woman said, “Oh, you young things. Just you wait. When you’re our age, you’ll be glad your mothers brought you here. Can’t get a man with a rough complexion, you know.”
I asked Minnie, but the whole room listened, “Is that what you want, Minnie? To catch a man?”
“I don’t know, Lydia. I think I would like for a man to catch me. No, I would like for us to catch each other. I want a man who respects me as much as I respect him. Who thinks my thoughts are as important as his. That my decisions are as valid as his. One whose ego lets me have a life, too.”
The facial room grew quiet. We could hear the waterfall of the mood tape in the silence as the half-dozen women and their attendants thought about Minnie’s words. Finally, one beautician called Minnie by my name as she said, “Get real, honey, I’ve worked here for over six years. I’ve never met a happily married woman yet.”
“She’s right,” said one of the older women from her table. “It all stops after the wedding.”
“So,” asked Minnie with a chuckle in her voice, “why is it that I’m supposed to get married?”
Janie reported at lunch that Gabriella Rusi was due in at three that afternoon.
I felt goose bumps rise on my skin as I said, “This is it, then. The gathering of the girls. All the women who loved Twyman, married him, and kept his secret.”
“Yeah,” said Janie. “Wonder why they did that?”
“Reckon we’re fixing to find out.”
THIRTY–NINE
It was easy to be flip when I was lying in the lap of luxury, getting a facial followed by a languid massage. Easy to talk about climaxes and wax eloquent on other people’s relationships. Be superior about love and marriage. Smug even.
It was another thing to have both of my arms firmly secured to one of the chair arms of The Bargello conference room chairs with silver duct tape. As were my ankles to the chair’s legs. Not only did I feel claustrophobic, I felt downright helpless as I watched four women finish a chapter in their lives that had begun long before I knew they were even writing it.
The only one of Twyman’s ex-wives I hadn’t seen personally was Gabriella Rusi, but I could have picked her out of the midway crowd in the middle of Cotton Bowl Sunday at the height of the State Fair of Texas in Dallas. Steven Hyatt’s original description of the author’s second wife certainly helped, as did the fact that I first saw her talking to Clover in the hallway.
I’m afraid I had been sleuthing on my own again, which should be a lesson to me, when I saw Clover hurrying down a hallway I hadn’t been down before. It was the hall to the private wing and was heavily monitored with security cameras. I hadn’t figured out how to snoop there without being seen, but when I saw Clover in her white robe head down that hall, I followed her. I wanted the answer to some questions.
Although the hood covered her head, I knew it was Clover. No one else walked the way she did, like she was walking the range, closing in on some prey. She disappeared around the corner of the rambling private area, the super deluxe wing where Marcie lived and it was rumored that Babe was ensconced and where I presumed Clover was lodged also.
It was late when I chased after Clover. Middle of the night late. I had actually been on my way to let Steven in the main building. I knew he had the key I had given him, but he didn’t have a clue as to how to find his way around inside the spa. We had decided when I visited Bailey to meet at eleven that night at the entrance nearest the kennel where I would guide him back to my room for a conference with Janie and me. Steven wanted to call Silas Sampson back in Fort Worth and fill him in on what we had found out. I argued that we didn’t have enough facts to call our favorite detective, but Steven said Clover’s confession about the blood samples was enough.
Janie waited back in my room—with snacks from the kitchen—for both of us.
I was honestly going to play it out that way. Then I saw Clover scampering down the hall like the white rabbit from Alice, and I followed.
At the corner of the hall where I lost Clover, I hesitated before choosing a direction. Right or left? Right felt right, but since I was always wrong, I turned into the hallway on the left. Who knew that for the first time in my life I would be right the first time?
The hallway to the left was empty, but behind me, just around the corner of the right hallway, I heard voices. I turned quickly but not before the two hooded figures had seen me.
Gabriella was tall and lithe in her white robe. The hood was pulled back from her head and I was mesmerized by her startling dark good looks. I wondered why Steven had never told me how beautiful she was. Her actual beauty had never come across so dramatically on the televised segments I had seen her on, in which she just looked foreign and vaguely mysterious. In real life, maybe it was the robe; she looked like a high priestess.
“What do you want?” she demanded. “This is a private wing.”
“I’m lost,” I said. “I was taking this robe to a friend and turned the wrong way. It’s so easy to get lost around here, you know. I am so sorry.” I held up the robe that I had been taking to disguise Steven Hyatt as I spoke.
My chatty excuse might have worked if Clover hadn’t blurted out my name with a gasp: “Honey!”
Gabriella glanced at Clover before returning her dark, soulful eyes back to me. “Honey? The Honey? The one with the fruit name? My, my.”
I decided right then and there that Gabriella was the killer.
Maybe it was the gun she pulled from her robe pocket and held in my face.
FORTY
I just read in People magazine where some famous detective said that he could always figure out the perpetrator from the clues left at the crime scene. For instance, if guns were used, the odds were super high that it was a man. I think my experience at The Bargello would definitely put a sock in his statistics. Gabriella used hers, a Smith and Wesson twenty-five-caliber semiautomatic, to wave me into a nearby room, which turned out to be Marcie’s conference room. Bo
th Marcie and Babe were seated at the marble-topped conference table, and their mouths fell open as they saw me, but that was nothing compared to what their eyes did when they saw Gabriella with the gun.
Marcie was the first to speak. “Gabriella, don’t be a fool. Put that down. This is one of the guests.”
Babe said, “Oh, shit.”
“Marcie, this is our little snoop. Meet Honey … What is your last name, anyway?”
“Huckleberry,” said Clover. “And she’s a friend of mine. Stop that, Gabriella. Put down that gun.”
“No, I don’t think so. Not until I’m sure our Miss Honey knows the whole story. Sit down, honey.”
“Thank you, but I must be going,” I said.
“I don’t think so.” Gabriella laughed. “Marcie, dear, get something to tie her up.”
Clover snorted her dear snort. “Gabby, are you serious? This is just a child.”
“Sit down, Clover. I came here to get some answers, and this child, as you call her, is part of it, so I want her to stay.” Gabriella turned the gun on Marcie. “Marcie, do as I say.”
A white-faced Marcie rummaged through a drawer in a side table and came up with a roll of duct tape. “Will this do?”
When I was secure to Gabriella’s satisfaction but not to mine, Gabriella laid the gun on the table and said, “Okay, now everybody sit down.”
It was obvious that she felt herself in charge of the meeting. She didn’t actually give the come to order command, but she did start the ball rolling with a jolt. “Okay. Now which one of you idiots killed Twyman?”
So, I was wrong in thinking it was Gabriella who murdered Twyman, just like I was wrong in thinking Steven Bondesky had killed Steven Miller. Constrained and uncomfortable as I was, I found that I was interested in the answer, too.
The Complete Honey Huckleberry Box Set Page 34