When they arrived outside The Red Hotel, they saw that half of Convention Street along the 200 block was cordoned off by yellow police tapes. Five squad cars were parked facing the curb, as well as a dark blue panel van from the forensic unit, and assorted cars and vans from WAFB 9 and WBRZ television stations and WJBO radio. The sidewalks were crowded with onlookers.
A warm breeze from the Mississippi, only a block to the west, set the police tapes flapping like applause, so that the atmosphere sounded almost festive.
‘So much for playing it down,’ said Sissy.
‘The poh-lice put out a statewide media appeal for Ella-mae,’ Luther told her. ‘And you know what folks are like. If something horrible has happened, they got to come along and gawp, even if they never get to see nothing. Look at them. You’d have thought they had something better to do.’
A police officer unwound one of the tapes for them so that they could drive through and park on Lafayette Street, next to the hotel’s side entrance. Luther heaved himself out of the driver’s seat and led them inside. They crossed the lobby, where police and reporters were milling around, as well as several unhappy-looking guests, and made their way to Everett’s office. Compared to the street outside, the inside of the hotel was icy cold, and Sissy couldn’t help herself from giving one quick shiver.
Everett was talking to Detective Garrity when Sissy and T-Yon and Luther came into his office. His red necktie was loose and his shirt was crumpled and his hair was even more mussed up than usual. His eyes looked puffy, too, as if he hadn’t slept well.
He came around his desk and gave T-Yon a hug and a kiss.
‘So, pischouette, you came here anyhow! As if I didn’t know you would!’ Then he turned to Sissy and said, ‘Hi there. Welcome to The Red Hotel. You must be my sister’s boyfriend’s psychic aunt.’
‘Got it in one,’ said Sissy, holding out her hand. ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Everett, regardless of the circumstances. You can call me Sissy. It’s easier than saying “my sister’s boyfriend’s psychic aunt” every time.’
Detective Garrity came over and clasped her hand too. ‘Detective Garrity, Baton Rouge Police Department,’ he announced himself. ‘Mr Savoie here tells me you’re something of a fortune-teller-slash-clairvoyant-slash-medium type.’
‘That’s roughly about right,’ said Sissy. ‘One of those fortune-teller-slash-clairvoyant-slash-medium types that you’re extremely suspicious of, considering your past dealings with such people.’
Detective Garrity’s little black turtle eyes seemed to shrink to pinpoints. ‘Oh, yeah. And how would you happen to know that?’
‘Because I’m a fortune-teller-slash-clairvoyant-medium type, and because I’m very good at reading people’s auras. Everybody has an aura, and the moment you saw me and realized who I was, Detective Garrity, your aura went as dark as the sun going down.’
‘Oh yeah. And what did you surmise was the significance of that?’
‘It told me very explicitly that you don’t hold psychics in very high regard, and the most likely reason for that is because sometime in the not-too-distant past you have had an unpleasant or humiliating experience involving a psychic. Or fortune-teller-slash-whatever.’
Detective Garrity stared at Sissy with those little pinpoint eyes for a very long moment. Then he gave her a very thin smile and said, ‘Good. You’re good. Even if you’re right, and I don’t hold psychics in very high regard.’
T-Yon said, ‘Luther told us what’s been happening here. I really think that Sissy can help you to find out who’s responsible. Or what.’
Everett glanced sharply at Luther, but Luther pulled a face and said, ‘They was going to find out sooner rather than later, so why not? Trying to keep a lid on it ain’t going to make one smidgen of difference, is it?’
‘You don’t think so? Detective Garrity has just been telling me that we may have to evacuate the entire hotel.’
‘I’m afraid that’s right,’ said Detective Garrity. ‘Even though we haven’t discovered any cadavers yet, the amount of blood that we’ve encountered makes it highly probable that we’re dealing with more than one act of homicide. It would be foolhardy in the extreme to allow guests to remain here in the hotel until we know for sure.’
‘Terrific, isn’t it?’ said Everett. ‘We haven’t even officially opened and they’re closing us down.’
‘How many guests are we talking about?’ asked T-Yon.
‘Fifty-seven. But the last time I checked we had one hundred three booked in for tomorrow, and it could be more by now. Every single one of whom we will have to contact and tell that they can’t stay here for our gala opening ceremony, complete with The Ralph Dickerson Jazz Ensemble and The Back Bayou Zydeco Quintet and enough crawfish to feed the entire population of Baton Rouge for the next six months, as well as appearances by his honor, Mayor Dolan, and his delectable daughter, Lolana, who happens to be Miss Teen Baton Rouge, and a stand-up comedy routine by the very pricey Jerry Lake, who will expect us to pay him whether he appears or not.’
‘Don’t look on the black side just yet awhile,’ said Detective Garrity. ‘Right now we’re regarding the entire hotel as a crime scene, but once the forensics people have finished checking for bloodstains and fingerprints and any other circumstantial evidence, we may be able to give you a partial all-clear. For the guest rooms and the public areas, anyhow.’
At that moment, Bella slid back her window and said, ‘Excuse me, boss. Sorry to interrupt but I’ve just had a call from Nesta at reception. She has at least thirty guests lining up to check out and cancel the rest of their reservations, and demanding a refund.’
‘Shit,’ said Everett.
‘Looks like you won’t have to evacuate the hotel after all,’ said Detective Garrity. ‘Looks like your guests are doing the evacuating for you.’
Everett sat down behind his desk. ‘That’s it. We’re finished. We’re totally wiped out. How the hell are we going to get over something like this?’
Luther said, ‘Plenty of hotels have murders in them, and they don’t go out of business.’
‘Oh yeah? Name one.’
Sissy came up to his desk and said, ‘I imagine that you’ve searched the whole building?’
Everett looked up at her as if he were tempted to say something deeply sarcastic, but then he said, as courteously as he could, ‘Yes, Sissy. You did say your name was “Sissy”, didn’t you? Yes, we’ve searched the whole building. First of all our security team went through it, and now the police have gone through it, and what they found was absolutely zilch.’
‘All the same, there is something here.’
‘What do you mean? Something like what?’
Detective Garrity was leaning against the filing cabinet with his arms folded and a toothpick in his mouth. He took out the toothpick and said, ‘I think Ms Sissy here is talking about a spirit, if I’m not mistaken. That’s what I was told when I was out looking for a woman who was supposed to have been strangled in a house on Spain Street in the Garden District.’
‘A spirit?’
‘That’s right. There was no trace whatsoever of a cadaver, but this psychic gentleman swore to me that her spirit was still in the house, and that he could hear her talking to him. On the basis of that and some circumstantial forensics we arrested her former husband and charged him with homicide. Whereupon the strangled woman herself appeared at the precinct and said that she had never felt healthier.’
Sissy turned and gave him a smile. ‘I’m sorry for what happened to you, Detective. I’ll admit that there are plenty of so-called psychics who simply take advantage of people’s need and gullibility. But there are some sensitives who really know their stuff.’
‘So how do we know which kind are you?’
‘You don’t. Not until I get results. It’s the same for detectives, wouldn’t you say? You get your highly competent detectives but you also get your so-called detectives who mostly get by on bluster and bluff. I know. I used to be mar
ried to a cop.’
Detective Garrity plainly didn’t like that response. Still leaning against the filing cabinet, he said, ‘When you say “results”, what kind of “results” are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about finding out what’s going on here, and as quickly as possible, before anybody else gets hurt. If people have been murdered here, we need to know who did it, and why, and how they managed to get away with it.’
‘And how do you propose to do that, exactly?’
Sissy turned back to Everett. ‘With your permission, I’d like to search through this entire hotel until I’ve found what I’m looking for.’
‘You mean like spooky voices in the walls,’ said Detective Garrity. ‘And what makes you think that I’m going to authorize you to wander around a crime scene listening for ghosts?’
He cupped one hand to his ear, and said, ‘Hallo. Is there anybody there?’ He meant it as a joke, but his voice was so flat and his eyes were so humorless that nobody so much as grunted.
The Night Visitors
Everett took Sissy and T-Yon into the Showboat Saloon so that they could have a drink and something to eat. The saloon was decorated like the interior of a turn-of-the-century paddle steamer, with a wide staircase and a galleried landing running all the way around. Eight sparkling chandeliers were suspended from the ceiling and the room was furnished with red plush banquettes. There was a long mahogany bar with engraved mirrors behind it and bottles of every kind of liquor. Sissy could almost imagine Clark Gable coming down the stairs with a white bow-tie and a cigar.
As they sat down, Everett explained that a jazz quartet would usually be playing on the small stage at the end of the saloon, and the tables all around them would be packed. This evening, however, there was only the three of them, apart from two waitresses and a barman, and the room was almost completely silent.
‘You can pretty much order what you like,’ Everett told them. ‘I’ve kept on three chefs in the kitchen because we still have to feed the maintenance crew and all the security guys, plus we’ll have at least fifteen cops in the building until the crime-scene people are done with what they’re doing, and they’re going to get hungry.’
T-Yon asked for a vegetable omelet with hash brown potatoes and biscuits, while Sissy chose a crab asiago bisque, which was a rich soup made with lumps of crabmeat, butter and cream. She was supposed to be on a diet. She was always on a diet – spinach, mostly. But she doubted if she would ever visit Baton Rouge again in her life – that’s if she survived this visit – so she decided that she might as well indulge herself.
Even as she ate, however, she couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was a presence in this hotel. She had never felt such cold hostility in any building before, and it wasn’t just the frigid air conditioning. It was almost as if somebody were covertly watching them, and narrowing their eyes with jealousy and hatred at every move they made. She couldn’t help herself from turning her head around, now and again, to see if she could catch anybody looking their way, but there was nobody there, apart from the bartender. All of the other tables were set with cutlery and glasses, but deserted.
‘Something wrong, Sissy?’ asked T-Yon, after a while. ‘You don’t like your soup?’
‘Oh goodness, no!’ said Sissy. ‘The soup is heavenly. But what I was saying before – about there being some kind of atmosphere here – I can still sense it very strongly, even now. In fact stronger than ever. I don’t know how else to describe it. I hesitate to call it a spirit.’
Everett was forking up rice and red beans. ‘I’m sorry, Sissy. No disrespect meant. But I really don’t believe in spirits.’
‘You don’t feel anything yourself?’
‘I feel angry. I feel frustrated. I feel devastated that we may not be able to open tomorrow.’
‘But you don’t feel anything else? You don’t feel when you walk around this hotel that somebody is resentful about you being here? Because that’s the feeling that I’m picking up on.’
‘Oh, come on, Sissy, who could possibly be resentful? Stanley and me, I think we’ve done an amazing job, remodeling. We’ve improved the whole district. We’ve given jobs to over a hundred seventy local people, of all ethnic backgrounds. I think we’ve brought something back that the riverside district has been missing for years. All of the other hotels are state-of-the-art modern. But The Red Hotel, it’s fun, it’s flamboyant. You should see some of the reviews we’ve had already. Four stars and we’re not technically open yet.’
‘Good for you,’ said Sissy. ‘But I’d still like to take a look around, if you’ll allow me. I mean, it’s quite possible that I’m mistaken, but I really don’t think so. I’m convinced that there’s something here that the crime-scene technicians just won’t be able to see, no matter how much Luminol they spray around.’
‘You’ll have to wait until the cops say it’s OK,’ Everett told her, wiping his mouth with his napkin. ‘But, well – my stubborn little sister has taken the trouble to bring you all the way down here, and I guess you can’t do any harm. That’s so long as you don’t let on to anybody else what you’re doing . . . especially the guests, if and when we get them back in. I’d rather they weren’t aware that you’re looking for some kind of evil manifestation.’
‘Now, then,’ Sissy corrected him. ‘I never said for sure that it was evil. Sometimes the most bothersome spirits are the spirits who are trying to do good, and to make amends for transgressions they committed when they were still alive.’
‘In that case, phew,’ said Everett, mopping his forehead in mock relief.
‘But don’t let’s count any chickens,’ Sissy cautioned him. ‘If that blood is human blood, then the chances are that this spirit or presence or whatever it is does have malign intentions. Not just malign, but murderous, too.’
‘But why?’ asked Everett.
‘Because many people who have passed over harbor deep feelings of envy for people who are still alive; and a few of them actually want to do them harm.’
‘You mean dead people want to murder live people?’
‘That’s about it.’
Everett said, ‘I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. Like I told you before, Sissy, I don’t believe in any of it. Spirits, after-lives—’
‘Not even God?’
He shook his head, emphatically. ‘Not even God. I was brought up a Baptist, but with a little bit of Roman Catholicism thrown in. Our Momma always made sure we went to church on Sundays; and when she died, and we were adopted by the Savoies, they still insisted that we went to church. You want to hear me sing Oh, Happy Day?’
‘No, no. You don’t have to do that. I’ll take your word for it.’
At that moment Detective Garrity came across the saloon, with Detective Mullard close behind him. Detective Mullard was vigorously blowing his nose.
‘Hi folks,’ said Detective Garrity. ‘Not too bad news. The forensics team are done checking the second and third floors, so if you need accommodation for yourselves tonight, those are the floors to head for. No guests tonight, Mr Savoie, but it looks like there’s an outside chance that you may be able to reopen and hold your opening ceremony tomorrow, as planned.’
‘So the CSIs didn’t find anything?’ asked Everett.
Detective Garrity shook his head. ‘Nope. Not on either of those two floors, anyhow. And believe me they have more than a dozen technicians up there, dusting every door handle for fingerprints and checking every inch of carpet for blood spatter.’
He looked across the table at Sissy, as if he expected her to challenge him, and ask, How about spirits? Did they check for spirits? But Sissy knew when it was important to keep people on side, and she thought that it was better for her to say nothing at all. The time might well come when I need your help, Detective Garrity, and I’m not going to put your back up just to score a point.
‘OK,’ said Detective Garrity. ‘We’ve carried out another thorough search of the entire hotel – floor b
y floor and room by room – and this time we brought in the tracker dogs, too, just to make sure. We even checked the a/c vents and the laundry disposal chutes. We’re now one hundred percent sure that Ella-mae Grover is no longer in the building; and neither are any unauthorized personnel. If somebody murdered Ella-mae, which is still the likeliest scenario, he or she somehow managed to take her cadaver out of the hotel and dispose of it elsewhere.
‘All the same, the hotel will be guarded by officers from the BRPD throughout the night, as well as your own security people, and I’ll come back to see you tomorrow morning, Mr Savoie, sir, and discuss the situation with you then.’
‘So we may be able to hold our opening gala after all?’ asked Everett.
‘Unless some dramatic new evidence turns up, maybe you will. Enjoy your meal, folks. And dormez bien.’
They stayed in the saloon, drinking and talking, until well past midnight. T-Yon tried to explain to Everett about the reading that Sissy had given her with the DeVane cards, and how she had seen La Châtelaine, the woman she took to be Vanessa Slider, and her son, Shem. She told him about the distressed faces that she had seen in the grass, and the blood, and how she had seen Everett himself waving a red flag for help. She even told him about the ghostly apparitions that they had seen in Sissy’s living room, the blurry white images that had flickered in front of them, and then faded.
Everett said, ‘You told me you were having nightmares, too. What was that about?’
T-Yon blushed. ‘I’ll tell you later, when it’s just you and me.’
‘You know what I think?’ said Everett. ‘I think this catering course of yours is putting a whole lot more pressure on you than you realize. You’re in a strange place, far away from home. You’ve found yourself a brand new boyfriend. That’s why you’re having nightmares. You’re, like, disoriented. Your brain is still trying to make some sense of it all.’
‘If it’s all in my head,’ T-Yon retorted, ‘how come the DeVane cards came up with all of those predictions about Vanessa Slider, and this hotel? How come Sissy feels that there’s some kind of atmosphere here? How come she knew Ella-mae’s name was Grover? Sissy never met me before. She never even knew who I was.’
The Red Hotel Page 9