No mention was made of payment, no credit card requested, no register to sign. Just smiles and nods, as if they had all agreed on something. Smiling back at the welcoming clerk, Stanley wondered what all might be included in the agreement, but he thought he’d better keep that question to himself. Tom was a sweetheart, but he could be stuffy about some things.
They went by way of the interior corridor, following the red carpet. As the young man at the desk had promised, it was easy to recognize their room when they found it. A life-size decal took up much of the door’s surface—the actress in full Mildred Pierce regalia, flouncy dress and apron—and you could almost smell the pies baking and hear Eve Arden’s snappy remarks.
“The Joan Crawford,” Stanley said, beaming with pleasure. “Isn’t it wonderful? They’ve given us the Joan Crawford suite.”
“Is that good?”
“Are you crazy? Joan was practically a goddess.” He opened the door and stood on the threshold, surveying the room. “Oh, look at the bedposts.”
“Are those high-heeled shoes?” Tom asked, a bit bewildered. The enormous bed’s four posts ended at the carpet in carved replicas of sling-back pumps.
“Fuck-me pumps. Just like Joan used to wear.”
Tom scratched his head. “Why would a bed wear high-heeled shoes?”
Stanley swatted Tom’s shapely rear. “For ambience, dummy. And look at these bathrobes.” Stanley held up one of the white terry robes that had been draped gracefully across the bedspread. “Shoulder pads.”
“In a bathrobe?”
“Joan always wore shoulder pads. It was like a trademark.”
“Stanley, in case you haven’t noticed, my shoulders are plenty wide. I don’t need shoulder pads.”
“You do if you’re going to pretend to be Joan Crawford.”
“I wasn’t planning on—”
“This crystal is Lalique,” Stanley said, lifting a cocktail glass from a tray. “And look, the rug is definitely handwoven. I’ve heard Joan’s house had Aubusson on the floors. This is so classy.”
Tom scowled and went to the closet with his hanging bag. “Huh,” he said. “Not too classy, if you ask me.”
“What?” Stanley came to peek around him.
“Nothing but wire coat hangers here. You’d think they’d provide the nice padded ones, wouldn’t you? Even that Holiday Inn we stayed at last year had those.”
Which struck Stanley too, as a little peculiar. He was about to reply when the door to the suite burst open behind them. Tom whirled around, one hand automatically reaching for the Sig Sauer in his shoulder holster, but it was Chris standing in the open doorway.
“Thank God you’re here,” he said. He started to run in Tom’s direction, but before he reached him, he changed his mind, veered, and flung himself instead into Stanley’s arms.
Chapter Six
THE GREETINGS they exchanged were quick and excited, Chris and Stanley both chattering away at the same time, but Tom’s mind was on business.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“Yes, and I think serious conversation is easier with refreshments,” Stanley said. “We all need a drink.”
“The room service is fast,” Chris said.
Stanley placed a call to the bar, and as promised, a tray of margaritas and a cold Dos Equis for Tom arrived within minutes—delivered, Stanley took note, by a drop-dead good-looking waiter. All of the help, it seemed, was gorgeous and friendly. He was beginning to understand how the Winter Beach Inn could get away with charging the steep prices they did.
Tom sat in one of the plush upholstered chairs, and Stanley and Chris sat on the edge of the oversized bed. “Okay,” Tom said, taking a sip of his beer and smacking his lips approvingly. “So tell us your story. You come in late, and you find a body in bed with you, and then you…?”
“Well, once I saw that he was dead—which was pretty obvious, he was cold to the touch—I called down to the desk and said I needed to talk to Frederick, emergency fast.”
“Who’s Frederick?” Tom asked. “And why not call the police?”
Chris shrugged. “It’s the kind of place you sort of suspect they’d want to handle things their own way, isn’t it? Everything is very… well, you know, very. Anyway, Frederick was here in a couple of minutes, but he must have called the police immediately himself, because they were just a few minutes behind him. In the meantime, I had called you.”
Tom was thoughtful for a moment. Stanley and Chris sipped quietly and waited for him to think things through. “And before you found this dead man, you were out on the town?”
“Right. Making the rounds. Dancing, you know, making out here and there, the usual. I had just gotten in.”
“Okay, then, somebody brought the body in here while you were out dancing—but why here? Why your room?”
“Maybe they meant to frame Chris for the murder,” Stanley said.
“That’s a possibility,” Tom agreed. “Which poses the question, why you? Who did you piss off?”
“You know,” Chris said thoughtfully, “I’ve been stewing over this ever since I found him, and I don’t think it was actually about me. I think I got in the way accidentally. I mean, this was in the Alice Faye suite, but that wasn’t my original room. I was in a different one to start, the Jeanette McDonald, which is right next door.”
“Oh, the Jeanette McDonald, I’ll bet that was something,” Stanley said, rolling his eyes.
“It was.” Chris’s face lit up. “You can’t believe it. This garden swing made of paper flowers, hanging from the ceiling—you expected Charles Pierce to go sailing over your head singing ‘San Francisco.’”
This had been a favorite routine of the popular female impersonator from the sixties. Stanley and Chris were too young to have seen him perform in person, but luckily his routines had been preserved on tape, and they had nearly worn their tape out watching and rewatching him as he swung gaily over the heads of his audience, lip-synching Jeanette McDonald.
“Uh, I hate to spoil the chitchat,” Tom said, “but how did you get from one room to the other?”
“Oh, there was a plumbing problem. The toilet in the Jeanette MacDonald backed up. Maybe some of the paper flowers got into it. And apparently they’d had a last-minute cancellation—”
“Sounds awfully convenient,” Tom said.
“So they gave me the keys to the room next door, the Alice Faye.”
“And when you moved to the new room, you didn’t notice a body on the bed?” Tom asked.
“I don’t think it was there then. But I admit I didn’t take more than a quick peek. I was just about to go out to one of the clubs for some dancing, and the cab was already waiting, so I only glanced in and headed out. Then, when I got back, it was late, and I seriously had to use the loo, so I let myself in and headed straight there, tout de suite, as the French like to say, and when I was finished in there, I came out and just kind of fell onto the bed.”
“Which by this time had a body on it.”
“Yes, but I didn’t see it. Not right off. It’s a big bed, bigger than king-sized. Like this one. All the beds here are huge.”
Stanley looked at their bed. “You could do a Busby Berkeley routine on top of this one and not kick somebody at the far side. Not anybody you’d care about, at least.”
“Exactly. Anyway, I didn’t turn on the room light when I came in. There was enough light to see my way to the bathroom, which was very much on my mind. And I turned on the light there, of course, and I took a pee, and then I turned that light off, so when I came back out into the bedroom, it was extra dark, if you know what I mean, and I bumped into the bed and half fell onto it, and I thought, what the hell…. Okay, to tell the truth, I was wasted. I just laid back and closed my eyes for a minute or so, and I was almost asleep, until I turned over and realized I wasn’t alone. That’s when I turned on the light and… well, I could see right off the bat he was dead. Actually, I knew that before I turned on the light. He was stone
cold.”
“So it sounds to me like probably you weren’t even intended to find the body,” Tom said. “Someone just stored it there temporarily, not knowing you had switched rooms, thinking that room was empty.”
Chris sipped and nodded. “That’s what it seemed like to me too.”
“Which suggests,” Stanley said, “someone with the hotel management, doesn’t it? Someone who knew there had been a cancellation.”
“Only, if it was somebody with the hotel, wouldn’t they have known the rooms had been switched too?” Tom said. “Which kind of eliminates the hotel people, it seems to me.”
“Well, it had to be someone with a key,” Stanley said. “Maybe it was a cleaning lady?”
“They use boys,” Chris said. “And none of them are ladies. Trust me.”
“So, a cleaning boy, then.”
“Not necessarily,” Chris said. “Listen, this place, it’s like an endless game of musical beds. I don’t know how they could keep really close tabs on the keys. I mean, anyone could keep one or have it copied. These guys, the older ones, they’re high-powered types. Not the type you’d question too stringently if they said they’d lost a key. The management here plays everything by the golden rule, which is, he who has the gold, rules.”
“So we’re back to square one,” Stanley said.
“Maybe not all the way back,” Tom said. “We know this kid—does he have a name?”
“Barry,” Chris said. “When Frederick saw him, that’s the first thing he said, ‘Oh God, it’s Barry.’”
“Just Barry?”
“That’s all he said. But since I’ve been here, I’ve learned this isn’t a last-name kind of place. Not for the younger guys. They mostly just go by first names. The older guys use last names. A lot of them are Misters. Mr. Smith is very common, if you get my drift.”
“Okay, Barry, then. And you didn’t know him?”
“Well….” Chris scrunched up his face.
“You did know him?” Tom was surprised. “That changes things.”
“No, I didn’t know him… but I’d seen him. Around. He was a regular here. So I knew him to recognize him is all. He was awfully good-looking. It would be hard not to notice him.”
Tom took a moment to digest that. “Okay,” he said. “We know this Barry was a regular here, and we know he was murdered, and not by a rattlesnake as we were meant to believe. And we can suppose someone put him in your room by mistake—meaning, they didn’t know you would be coming in there during the night. Hmm—raises the question, if it wasn’t someone with the hotel, how did they come to think the room would be empty?”
“Anybody could see the previous occupant check out,” Chris said. “Especially if he left by way of the pool.”
“Whatever. One thing is clear, this all ties in to this hotel. I think the first thing we need to do is talk to this what’s-his-name, the manager,” Tom said.
“Frederick,” Chris said. “He’s expecting you. I told him you were on the way. I told him you were friends of mine and you are private detectives and you always solve your cases fast.”
“And he was cool with that?” Tom asked. “With our being private detectives?”
“I don’t think he’s real enthusiastic about the local police.”
“You think they’re homophobic?”
Chris thought about that. “In Palm Springs? No, not really. Not most of them, at least. I am sure of that. Gosh, this town is practically a gay resort—but there’s always one or two lemons in the basket.”
“We met one of the lemons, up in Riverside,” Stanley said. Chris looked a question at him, but Stanley only said, “I’ll tell you later. But you don’t think there’s a problem with this place and the local constabulary?”
“Maybe not the constabulary. But this place, the Inn I mean, it’s a little out of the ordinary. Way out of the ordinary, as a matter of fact. It’s just not your typical gay club, and I think the locals don’t quite know what to make of it. It gets a lot of the power crowd, and that makes people nervous. And Frederick, he can be a little… well, you’ll see for yourself.”
He picked up the phone and said, “Is Frederick available? My friends would like to chat with him.” He replaced the receiver and said, “He’ll meet us by the pool.”
Chapter Seven
THE CROWD by the pool seemed to have multiplied since they’d glanced at it coming in. Several heads turned their way when they came out onto the patio. Tom, as usual, got lots of admiring glances. Something about him was like catnip to gay boys. Stanley had ever to be vigilant.
A thin man of middle height stood up from a table in one corner—a power table, Stanley would have called it, and he guessed this was their host, Frederick.
He took in Frederick in quick snapshots as they came toward him—expensively layered salt-and-pepper hair, pale watery eyes, a mouth with almost no lips, and those undistorted by smiles. He wore a white Hermes shirt with a butter yellow ascot at his throat and white linen trousers that had obviously not come from Wal-Mart.
He watched them without expression as Chris led the way across the patio, weaving in and out among crowded tables, saying hi to a few of those they passed. It was typical of Chris, Stanley thought, that it had taken him no more than a day or two to get to know many of the regulars.
“Frederick,” Chris said, “these are the friends I told you about, Tom Danzel and Stanley Korski. This is Frederick, the manager.”
They shook hands all around. “Frederick Ralston,” Frederick said. “But you can call me Frederick. Everybody does.”
“Not Freddy?” Stanley asked.
Frederick gave him a chilly look. “Frederick,” he repeated firmly. “Please, won’t you sit down?”
Frederick asked if they wanted drinks, and when they did, summoned a waiter with the slightest flutter of his fingers. They made small talk while they waited for the drinks.
“Did you fly in?” Frederick asked.
“Drove down,” Tom said. “I’ve got some metal in my hip. Gets them all excited at the airports.”
“I had a friend who forgot about his Prince Albert,” Chris said.
“What’s a Prince Albert?” Tom asked.
“It’s a ring through the foreskin,” Stanley said. Tom winced.
“Talk about embarrassing,” Chris said. “Apparently the security help had never heard of one, so he had to show them. I’ll bet that made for a lot of excited conversation afterward.”
The drinks came—another Dos Equis for Tom, a pitcher of margaritas for the others, a Perrier for Frederick, however. “I’m working,” he said, toasting them with his glass.
“So, this guy, this Barry….” Tom came to the point. “Did he have a last name, incidentally?”
“Palmer. His name was Barry Palmer,” Frederick said.
“Okay, Barry Palmer. We hear he was here a lot of the time. Did he work for the motel?” Tom asked.
Frederick drew himself up with a haughty air. “Inn. We prefer to call ourselves an inn. You may have noticed our sign when you arrived. It’s about a block high, and it says in bright red letters, The Winter Beach Inn?”
“Okay, inn, then.” Tom was unimpressed by the show of grandeur. “And this Barry Palmer worked for your inn?”
Frederick frowned. “Well, not exactly,” he said in a somewhat hesitant voice.
“He was a guest, then,” Stanley suggested.
“Umm, not exactly a guest, no.” Frederick and Chris exchanged glances.
“So, what is not exactly a guest and not exactly an employee?” Stanley asked Chris. “You mean he just hung out at the bar?”
“Don’t look at me,” Chris said. “I’m not in that league.”
“What league is that?” Tom asked. Chris gave Frederick another look.
“He was… if you must know, we call them icing,” Frederick said. “Just among ourselves, you understand.”
“Icing?” Tom gave him a puzzled look.
“Yes. As in, the
icing on the cake.”
“The cake being…?”
“This, obviously.” Frederick made an expansive gesture with his hands that took in the patio and the palm trees—and the swimming pool, with naked and mostly naked men clustered here and there, in the water and out, on beach towels and chaise lounges, and seated at the glass-topped tables with their lavender umbrellas shading them from the desert sun. “The Winter Beach Inn. The ambience. The over-the-top rooms, the enormous pool, the bar, the restaurant—it is one of the best restaurants in Palm Springs, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”
“One of the best I’ve eaten in anywhere,” Chris said with enthusiasm.
“Thank you. We try to be. It’s what our clients expect of us.” Frederick gave him a watery smile and turned his attention back to Stanley. “But when I refer to the ambience, I mean more than anything else, a matter of style. We’re not like other resorts. Even our rooms are created especially to charm our visitors.”
“We’re in the Joan Crawford suite,” Stanley said. “Those robes with the padded shoulders, the whole setup. It’s wonderful.”
“Of course it is.” Frederick took the compliment in stride, as if it were expected. “It’s meant to be wonderful. We know our clientele. We cater to their tastes. This is the place to stay now in Palm Springs, for gay men certainly. We have more requests for bookings than we could possibly accommodate. We turn people away every day. The Joan Crawford, by the way, is one of the most requested suites.”
“The closet is full of wire coat hangers,” Tom said.
The movement of Frederick’s lips might have been a rare smile, but carefully smothered. “Our little joke. By the time you return to your room, you’ll find that they have been replaced. I assure you, we want our guests to be happy. When we asked your friend here, he said he thought you’d be very pleased with the Joan Crawford suite. As a matter of fact, we moved someone else to accommodate you.”
“We are pleased. And we’re very appreciative too,” Stanley said. “I do know you’re fully booked.”
A Deadly Kind of Love Page 4