The Red Hotel (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries)

by Masterton, Graham

  ‘Well, me too,’ said Sissy. ‘Has Luther told you the latest?’

  She nodded, and stopped smiling. ‘Do the police have any idea who did it yet?’

  ‘Not so far,’ said Luther. ‘If they do, they ain’t telling us. They still don’t know what happened to that chambermaid yet, Ella-mae.’

  Shatoya opened the screen door wider and said, ‘Come on in, Ms Sissy. You’ll have to excuse the chaos. I only came home myself not more than twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sissy. ‘And, please, Shatoya – just call me Sissy.’

  Inside, the Broody home was middle-class comfortable, furnished with oversized armchairs upholstered in gold brocade and feathery pampas grass in big copper pots and glass figurines of unicorns over the fireplace. One wall was taken up with an arrangement of framed family photographs, with the Broody children triumphantly holding up sports trophies and high school diplomas. In the opposite corner stood a bookshelf filled with a thirty-volume Americana Encyclopedia, as well as books on hotel management and African-American history. On top of this bookshelf, however, sat a scruffy, tufty-haired doll. It looked out of place, but Sissy immediately recognized it for what it was. It had criss-cross red stitches for eyes, and it was wearing what looked like a white kimono with gray twine wrapped around its waist. A wanga doll, commonly used in voodoo rituals, and, in this particular costume, specifically dressed for the removal of curses.

  ‘You’d like a drink?’ asked Shatoya.

  ‘A glass of white wine if you have it. If you don’t, a soda would be fine. Anything cold. I haven’t gotten used to this heat yet.’

  ‘Oh, we have plenty of wine,’ said a hoarse female voice. ‘Nobody else drinks in this house except for me.’

  A startlingly thin woman in a silky black dress came into the living room from the kitchen. She was very dark-skinned, much darker than Shatoya, and her hair was gray and close-cropped. Her bone structure was just as striking, though. She had high cheekbones and slanting, Egyptian-looking eyes. She was wearing even more jewelry than Shatoya, too: a heavy silver necklet and six or seven clanking silver bangles on each skinny wrist. On her right shoulder she had a tattoo of a serpent swallowing its own tail.

  She came over to Sissy with her hand held out in greeting. She seemed to undulate rather than walk, as if she were performing some kind of ritual dance.

  ‘This is my Aunt Epiphany,’ said Luther. ‘Epiphany, this is Ms Sissy Sawyer I was telling you about.’

  ‘Ohhhh,’ said Aunt Epiphany, drawing her lips back over her teeth in a wide, feral smile. ‘You the visionary.’

  ‘I don’t know about visionary,’ said Sissy. ‘I can tell fortunes, yes, and some of the time those fortunes come true, but it doesn’t go a whole lot further than that.’

  But Aunt Epiphany leaned toward her and pressed one fingertip to her right nostril and sharply sniffed. ‘You got the vision all right. I can smell the gunja on you. That’s why they axe you down to BR, isn’t it? Something ain’t right at that Red Hotel, and nobody can work out what it is, because it’s not of this world.’

  ‘Oh, hush up, Epiphany,’ said Luther. He turned to Sissy and said, ‘Aunt Epiphany thinks that everything that goes wrong in this life is caused by loa.’

  ‘You mean voodoo spirits?’ Sissy asked her.

  Aunt Epiphany vigorously nodded her head. ‘I say to Luther – when he tell me about that cleaning girl going missing like that, in such a mysterious way with no footprint – I say let me talk to Papa Legba. He will communicate with the loa for me, and explain where that girl disappear to.’

  ‘Well, I have some ideas of my own about that,’ said Sissy, but then she saw Shatoya frowning at Luther as if to say – please, not more superstitious mumbo-jumbo. So she took hold of Aunt Epiphany’s bony hand and squeezed it. It was surprisingly cold, as if she had been holding a glass full of iced tea. ‘Why don’t we just sit down and enjoy a drink? It’s been such a stressful day for all of us, hasn’t it, especially Luther. Maybe we can talk about The Red Hotel later.’

  Aunt Epiphany looked at her with narrowed eyes, and gave her hand a squeeze in return, as if to confirm that they were sisters in the supernatural.

  They sat in the kitchen for supper – spicy chicken legs with collard greens and sweet potatoes. Sissy wasn’t feeling at all hungry because she still couldn’t get the gory image of Detective Mullard’s butchered body out of her mind, but she managed to eat a little.

  Luther poured himself a large glass of cloudy lemonade. ‘Do you know when they first developed this subdivision, people thought that none of the plots would ever sell, because they were so far out of town? More than two and a half miles. But they did sell. This particular plot went for four hundred dollars, and that was a whole lot of money in nineteen twenty-five. You could buy a new Model T Ford in those days for less than three hundred.’

  It was obvious that he was trying to keep the topic of conversation away from The Red Hotel, but Sissy could tell that they all had it in the back of their minds, like a semitransparent ghost standing in the corner of the kitchen.

  ‘You sure you’ve had enough, Sissy?’ asked Shatoya. ‘You haven’t eaten enough to keep a gnatcatcher alive.’

  ‘It’s delicious,’ Sissy told her. ‘In fact I insist that you give me the recipe. But, like I say, it’s been a very stressful day.’

  At that moment, Luther’s cell jangled. He said, ‘Excuse me,’ and got up from the table. He went into the living room and Sissy could hear him saying, ‘What?’ and ‘what?’ and ‘when?’ and ‘how long ago was that?’

  After a minute he came back into the kitchen and said, ‘That was Mr Everett. Seems like his sister, T-Yon, has gone missing. He asked me if I’d bring Ms Sissy here back to the hotel.’

  ‘Gone missing?’

  ‘She went back up to her room on the second floor because she’d forgotten something, and that was the last time anybody saw her. Mr Everett says they’ve searched all over but there ain’t no trace nowhere.’

  ‘In that case, the sooner we get back there the better,’ said Sissy. She dropped her napkin on to the table, pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘I’m sorry, Shatoya. That was a truly lovely supper.’

  Aunt Epiphany said, ‘You need me to come?’

  ‘No, you stay here, Epiphany,’ said Luther. ‘This whole thing is weird enough without you and Papa Legba.’

  ‘Don’t you go denigrating Papa Legba,’ Aunt Epiphany retorted. ‘Papa Legba has saved my skin many, many times when I was going through difficult days; and many more of my friends besides.’

  Sissy said, ‘I’ll talk to you later, Epiphany. Right now I think I know what’s happening at The Red Hotel, and it doesn’t have anything to do with voodoo.’

  ‘Everything has something to do with voodoo,’ said Aunt Epiphany. ‘Voodoo is life and death, happiness and sadness, wealth and poverty, hatred and love. Voodoo is all about setting wrong things right.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Sissy. ‘Meanwhile we need to get back to Convention Street, just as quick as we can.’

  She went to the bathroom before she left. There was even a wanga doll in here, too, sitting on top of the toilet cistern. This one was wearing the yellow and green robe of a success wanga, which was supposed to bring its owner happiness and wealth.

  Sissy tidied her flyaway hair in the mirror. Maybe it was just the soft lighting in the bathroom, but she was surprised how young she looked, as if the challenge of The Red Hotel had brought her a freshness that she had been gradually losing in her lengthening widowhood in Allen’s Corners. She realized that she had only smoked three cigarettes all day, and two of those she had lit and then crushed out almost immediately.

  As they drove back to The Red Hotel, Luther said, ‘Mr Everett sounds real desperate, I can tell you. I can’t say I blame him, after what happened to Ella-mae and that detective.’

  Sissy said nothing. It was a measure of how worried Everett must be, if he was asking her to
help him look for T-Yon. People resorted to the supernatural only when they had lost their faith in everything else, and sometimes that included God.

  Luther pulled in behind two white squad cars that were parked in front of The Red Hotel’s main entrance, which was floodlit now that it was dark. They climbed out into the sticky evening heat and found Everett waiting for them outside. Six or seven uniformed police were gathered on the sidewalk, as well as two TV crews and a knot of local reporters. The reporters called out, ‘Mr Savoie! Mr Savoie!’ but Everett showed them the flat of his hand to make it clear that he wasn’t going to answer any questions. He ushered Sissy through the revolving door, with Luther following close behind.

  Detective Garrity was waiting for them by the fountain in the lobby, drinking a plastic cup of coffee with a lid on. His skinny necktie was loose and there were dark circles under his eyes.

  He wiped his mouth with his fingers and said, ‘It wasn’t my idea, Ms Sawyer, bringing you back here. But Mr Savoie believes you might have some kind of intuition where his sister has disappeared to.’

  ‘Yes, I do think I might,’ said Sissy.

  She sounded so confident that Detective Garrity was taken aback. ‘Oh, really. Do you want to share this intuition?’

  ‘Not just yet. First of all I need to go up to T-Yon’s room, and see if I can pick up any resonance.’

  ‘Resonance?’

  ‘Everybody leaves some resonance behind them, especially when they’re stressed. It’s the same as a scent that a police tracker dog can follow. In fact many people think that tracker dogs can sense a person’s resonance as well as their smell.’

  Detective Garrity shook his head and turned to his young partner in the raspberry-colored coat. ‘Can you believe this lady? She knows more about detecting than I do. Even our dogs are psychic and I never knew it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Sissy. ‘The sooner I get started the clearer any resonance is going to be.’

  ‘Detective Thibodeaux here will go up with you.’

  ‘I’ll come too,’ said Everett.

  ‘No,’ said Sissy. ‘I have to go up on my own. If there is anything there, or anybody there, they won’t come out unless it’s just me. And you, Everett, I think you need to have somebody with you at all times. I really mean that, day and night.’

  Detective Garrity tugged at his nose and looked distinctly unhappy. ‘I’m supposed to be responsible for this crime scene, Ms Sawyer, and if I allow you to go upstairs and something untoward should happen to you—’

  ‘I don’t think it will, Detective, and even if it does it won’t be your fault. It would reflect very much worse on you if you didn’t allow me to go up there and we never saw T-Yon again.’ She stopped short of saying ‘or found her butchered in a bathtub.’ Everett was probably having mental images of that already.

  Detective Garrity said, ‘OK. But I’ll post some officers on the staircase, right outside the door on the second-story landing, and I want you to take a radio up with you. If anything spooks you in any way at all, you call for assistance.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Sissy. ‘Is there any special code I should use?’

  ‘You could say “one-oh-eight” which means “officer needs assistance”. On the other hand you could simply yell “help”. That would do it.’

  Detective Martin went off to find Sissy a radio. Everett said, ‘You will be able to find her, won’t you?’

  ‘I hope so, Everett. She’s a lovely girl, your sister, and . . . well, she and I were beginning to form quite a bond. Not quite mother and daughter, but almost.’

  ‘Everything I said before about all of this psychic stuff – you know, not believing in spirits or anything – I didn’t cause you any offense, did I?’

  Sissy laid her hand on Everett’s arm. ‘Everett – if I took umbrage every time somebody told me that they didn’t believe in spirits, I’d be sulking twenty-four seven.’

  Detective Martin came back and helped Sissy to fasten the radio to the collar of her kaftan. She tested it. ‘Psychic Sissy to Dour Detective, come back?’

  ‘This is a police radio, Ms Sawyer,’ said Detective Garrity. ‘Not a CB.’

  ‘So long as it works, and you come running if I need you.’

  Detective Garrity and Detective Thibodeaux escorted Sissy up in the elevator to the second floor.

  ‘I don’t know why the hell I’m going along with this,’ said Detective Garrity.

  Sissy gave him a quick, tight smile. ‘You’re going along with this, Detective, because just like me you know there’s nothing else left for us to try.’

  ‘Ma mère saw a ghost once,’ put in Detective Thibodeaux. ‘It was the pet cat she used to have when she was a kid.’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ said Detective Garrity.

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Sissy told him. ‘Dogs and cats have been known to come back, in spirit form. Even canaries.’

  The elevator doors opened and Sissy stepped out. Detective Garrity said, ‘Don’t forget, Ms Sawyer. If anything goes wrong – if anything doesn’t look right or sound right – you call for help.’

  ‘I will.’ The elevator doors closed and Sissy started to walk along the corridor to Room 209. Before she reached it, however, she stopped and sorted through her bag to find her witch compass. She opened it up and held it out in front of her. For the first few yards its needle rotated aimlessly, but as she came closer to Room 209 it suddenly swung around, and began to point directly ahead of her.

  By the time she reached the door the needle was quivering excitedly. Sissy took out the key card that Everett had given her and slid it into the lock. The door opened and she stepped inside. She was tempted to call out, ‘Hallo! Is there anybody in there?’ but she knew that there was no point. All of the guests had been evacuated, and if there were anybody here, even if they were human, they wouldn’t call back.

  She walked into the middle of the room and looked around. The needle of the witch compass began spinning now, very fast, which told Sissy that T-Yon had been here not too long ago, but that she had been interrupted, or disturbed. The spinning came from fear, and uncertainty, and the appearance of something unexpected.

  She stopped, and listened. Very faintly, she could hear a childish voice singing. It was somewhere out in the corridor, by the sound of it. She stepped back out of the room and stood in the middle of the corridor, straining her ears. The voice was high and strangulated and singing in French.

  ‘Jolie blonde, regardez donc quoi t’as fait!

  Tu m’as quitté pour t’en aller . . .’

  She wasn’t a fan of Cajun music, and she knew almost nothing about it, but she had heard Jolie Blonde before. She walked at a slow, measured pace along the corridor, clasping her witch compass tightly in her fist. She didn’t need to look at it. She could hear its needle spinning around and around, faster and faster.

  The singing continued. As she approached the window at the far end of the corridor, it grew louder, but then it gradually began to fade, until it sounded so faint and far away that she could barely hear it.

  She stopped. She had passed the last doorway in the corridor. The singing had died away completely, and now the only noise was the soft, moth-like whirring of her witch compass.

  Something was here. Something very powerful, and very close. Sissy could feel a cold, crawling sensation on the back of her neck, which gradually spread across her shoulders and down her spine.

  Something was right behind her.

  She turned around. Her heart was knocking against her ribcage in slow, congested thumps.

  Not more than ten feet in front of her the woman in the pale green dress was standing by the wall. Her face was dead white, thin and oval, with eyes that looked more like smudges of shadow than eyes. Her hair was a dark, rusty red, and loosely tied back with a pale green ribbon.

  She stood with her hands clasped together in front of her, in a pose that was simple and modest but very self-possessed. The witch compass kept on whirring and whirri
ng, and Sissy knew that it was the proximity of this woman who was causing it to spin so fast.

  ‘Who are you?’ Sissy asked her. She had a catch in her throat so she repeated herself. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’

  ‘You’re asking me that?’ the woman replied. Her voice was extraordinary, thick with static, as if she were talking on a crackly old Zenith radio.

  ‘I’m looking for a young girl,’ said Sissy, trying to sound undaunted. ‘She came up here but she’s disappeared. I need to know where she is. I don’t want her to come to any harm.’

  ‘You’re asking me who I am? You’re asking me what I’m doing here?’

  ‘I just want to know where this girl is. I’m very anxious that she doesn’t get hurt.’

  ‘What are you doing here? This is no business of yours. Go home. I know what you are. Go away.’

  ‘Have you seen her? Blonde, very pretty. She came up here to collect something from Room Two-Oh-Nine but now she’s missing.’

  The woman was silent for a few moments. She appeared to be slightly out of focus, which Sissy at first thought was her fault, because she had mistakenly put on her old spectacles. When she squinched up her eyes, however, she realized that the woman was out of focus. Her outline was blurred, and she appeared to twitch now and again, like a home movie with broken sprockets.

  ‘Of all people . . .’ the woman said. ‘Of all people – these two should never have taken over my memories. This brother and this sister, they took everything. My life. My world. Everything. Now they want my memories too?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Sissy. ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I just want to know where this girl is. Her name is Lilian Savoie, they call her T-Yon. Have you seen her?’

  ‘I want both of them,’ said the woman, in her crackly voice. ‘I want both of them together. They took everything.’

  ‘Do you have her hidden?’

  ‘What business is it of yours? Go home. I know what you are. Go away.’