Shamus in a Skirt

by M. Ruth Myers

  “I don’t want you telling me anything you shouldn’t,” I said cautiously, “but the guy who owns it wants to hire me. He wants me to evaluate their security. I thought I’d better check with you two before I rushed in. Make sure the place was on the level.”

  Billy practically popped his buttons. It was exactly the sort of prudence he longed for me to show. Seamus eyed me with a glint of skepticism. I didn’t like misleading them, but technically it was true. A hotel’s security included a safe.

  Finn’s wife, Rose, brought me a Guinness without being asked.

  “Tell Finn he needs to buy a radio so people can hear the World Series this time,” she said.

  For the second year in a row, Cincinnati was playing. Last year, a number of regulars had abandoned Finn’s in favor of a pub where they could listen to the games. He’d groused at the time. Now he snorted.

  “Not worth it if Cincinnati loses as fast as they did last time,” he said from his spot at the taps. “You just want me to get it so you can listen to that Charlie McCarthy fellow.”

  “Why? I already hear one dummy talking day-in day-out.” Rose swept past him to a chorus of laughter.

  When we were alone again, Billy and Seamus and I drank some stout.

  “Any trouble The Canterbury since the hotel changed hands?” I asked.

  Billy looked at Seamus, who shook his head. A bad knee had put Seamus mostly on desk duty these days. He heard things Billy didn’t. They’d been partners for years, several of them after Seamus recovered from the bullet that damaged his knee. Then arthritic stiffness had begun to set in.

  “No women taking strangers upstairs. No gambling or donnybrooks I’ve ever heard of,” said Billy. Seamus nodded.

  Their report made Joshua Tucker’s rash of trouble even more intriguing.

  We yakked and sipped and Billy left for home and dinner. I was fixing to ask Seamus if he wanted to go somewhere for a blue plate special when his gaze shifted and his bony face softened.

  I knew without looking around who had entered. For one thing, I felt a jolt of energy hit the room. For another, Rose, who was mostly a solid and sensible woman, glided swiftly down to fuss over wiping our end of the bar. It put her in perfect position to greet the only customer I’d ever known to make her giddy as a girl.

  “Hiya, Connelly.” I turned a smidgen on my stool to nod to the cop with brick brown hair who’d come to join us.

  Mick Connelly was in his early thirties. He had a casual air that hid nerve and hardness born of coming of age amid Ireland’s political violence. He must have raced home the minute his shift ended, for he’d already changed from his uniform to street clothes.

  “Traveling, are you?” asked Seamus, nodding at the worn valise he carried.

  “On my way to the train station. I knew you’d seen the telegram come for me, and I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “Not bad news, then?”

  Connelly’s face split into the widest grin I’d ever seen on it.

  “Anything but.” As if in a toast, he raised his valise. “I’m off to Chicago to bring back the love of my life.”

  Rose’s eyes widened. A frozen moment passed before her features moved toward a scowl. She stole a glance at me as I sat dumbstruck.

  Connelly had done everything to create the impression I was the love of his life. I’d tried to convince him I didn’t want to be. I wasn’t cut out for a cottage and kids. Nonetheless, I felt as though I’d just been punched in the stomach.

  “Have a good trip,” I managed to say. “Hope the pair of you will be happy.”

  “Over the moon happy — guaranteed.” He touched my shoulder lightly. “We’ll have a pint together when I get back, eh? See you, Seamus.”

  He turned to throw Rose a wink, which always fluttered her pulses, but she’d huffed down to join Finn at the taps. Connelly strode out with his loose-limbed gait shaped by country roads. Every step sang of eagerness. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

  “Well! Did you ever?” sniffed Rose, rejoining us.

  I shrugged.

  Seamus was looking at me. He tucked his head and smiled. It indicated what would have been a chuckle in most people.

  “What’s funny?” I asked, more crossly than I intended.

  “This old world. The people in it, mostly.”

  I pushed my stout away. I couldn’t swallow it. All I wanted was to go someplace dark and curl up in a little ball to stop the hurt.

  EIGHT

  Once Polly’s body turned up, I’d told Tucker I’d go along with his plan that I stay at the hotel. The cleaning girl had been killed at night. The odd activity in the hotel safe had occurred at night. I needed a feel for the rhythm of The Canterbury and its people around the clock.

  Tucker’s insistence that I hide why I was really there didn’t sit well with me. Neither did the prospect of being on my good behavior twenty-four hours a day. Nonetheless, late Saturday morning, resplendent in my second-best suit and a tweed hat peppered with blue and pink, I strode into the lobby. I carried a suitcase more dog-eared than Connelly’s, a clipboard, and a wooden carpenter’s ruler with one end unfolded.

  At the front desk a woman with a little black poodle yapping under her arm was checking out. A few steps away, her maid held the woman’s furs and directed a wizened bellman as he shuttled a mountain of luggage from the lobby to a waiting car. The creamy leather suitcases didn’t interest me, but when I spotted a stack of hatboxes I nearly drooled. The bottom two matched the luggage, but the one on top was hot pink pasteboard decorated with a flamboyant signature: Schiaparelli.

  Elsa Schiaparelli. The genius. The ultimate.

  When I looked up, the maid with the furs was eyeing my single suitcase as if detecting the odor of something dead. I gave her a big smile.

  “Is this place okay? I thought I’d try it a few days while they treat the place I live for bedbugs.”

  She drew back so quickly she collided with her employer, who frowned at her and trotted off, cooing to her doggie. I stepped forward.

  The clerk was in his late thirties with a hint of self-importance.

  “May I help you?” His eyes lifted not to me, but to someone behind me.

  “Yes, please.” A woman brushed around me, leaving a discreet and expensive trail of Joy. “We’re checking out. If I could get something from the safe?”

  “Of course. First door on the right. I’ll let Mr. Tucker know you’re coming.”

  He picked up the phone as she trotted away. I leaned forward to give my name and ask him to let Tucker know I was here, but a man who’d enjoyed one or two too many good meals charged toward the desk like an irate elephant. He brandished a telegram.

  “You!” he bellowed at the clerk. “When did this get here?”

  I jumped to the side, sparing my toes a trampling as the man shoved in front of me.

  “It just came, Mr. Clarke,” the startled clerk answered. “The bellman took it up to your room, but your maid told him you were at breakfas—”

  “You got a phone down here that can make a connection to Cuba?”

  “Right over there, sir.”

  I raised my eyebrows at the clerk in commiseration. He looked past me again.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Avery. How may I help you?”

  “I think you need to help her first,” rasped a voice. “She’s been waiting.”

  A white-haired old lady had come up behind me. She was tiny, dressed in a red brocade Chinese jacket and flowing black trousers.

  “Thanks.” I shot her a smile. “Maggie Sullivan,” I said to the clerk.

  “Oh, yes. Mr. Tucker’s expecting you.” He gestured weakly. “In his office. I’ll get your key.”

  Mrs. Avery chuckled.

  “You okay, honey? It’s a wonder Archie didn’t knock you over. Damn fool thinks the world revolves around him.” Her birdlike eyes took in my folded up ruler. “You some sort of decorator?”

  “No, I’m—”

  “Any book stores aroun
d here?” she asked the clerk as he returned. “I mean good ones, not some cigar stand with magazines and those flimsy paperback things.”

  I felt a presence at my elbow.

  “Miss?”

  The creased face of the bellman smiled up at me as he reached for my suitcase. His skin was weathered, as leathery as the luggage he moved. The pillbox strapped under his chin, coupled with a stature smaller than Wee Willie’s and a bandy-legged gait, brought to mind the unfortunate image of an organ’s grinder’s monkey.

  “I’m Smith, miss. I’ll take this up to your room. Oh, no need for that.” He tucked his free hand behind him as I tried to give him a tip. “Mr. Tucker already saw to it. Anything else you’d like me to do for you while you’re here — anything — just ask.”

  A pair of bright eyes met mine as if to convey a message.

  * * *

  Without the suitcase, I was free to have my first real look at the lobby. The registration desk was to my left. Across the way a wide arch opened into the hotel lounge, which judging by its size was intended only for guests. At the rear of the lobby, centered, was the elevator. Beside it a carpeted staircase wound up to the floors above. Halls on either side of stairs and elevator led to rooms further back.

  Resisting an urge to match my steps to the fleurs-de-lis pattern, I followed royal blue carpet toward the hall on the left and the door the desk clerk had indicated was Tucker’s office. Just beyond, in the hallway itself, Archie Clarke was ensconced in a glass-doored phone booth. He appeared to be shouting.

  “Sure glad to see you,” Tucker said when he opened the door in response to my tap. Shadows under his eyes told of a night short on sleep.

  “I hope things are going better than yesterday.”

  “They couldn’t go much worse.” He knocked on the edge of his desk and attempted a smile.

  Like the man who occupied it, the office was small, but it was on the plush side, with a carpet and a drinks cabinet. Across from his desk, a big, gaudy, theatrical poster in a frame decorated the wall. The safe at the heart of his problems was also in the wall across from his desk.

  Tucker waved me toward a chair and sank wearily into his.

  “The police... well, they didn’t exactly arrest me, but they took me downtown and kept asking me questions, some of ’em over and over. It shook me plenty, I tell you. They kept me till almost ten. Poor Frances was beside herself. She stepped right in and cracked the whip here, though.

  “They were decent enough about it. The police. I’d asked could they please not bother the guests, and they didn’t. Just stayed back in the housekeeping office and talked to the staff.”

  If the cops had held back, it told me they hadn’t found anything concrete suggesting a link between victim and guests.

  “They came to see me,” I said. “Wanted to know what I was doing here.”

  “Oh, yeah. They asked me, too. I told them that about checking people we might hire.”

  “They seem to think you were having an affair with Polly.”

  His mouth opened wordlessly.

  “I don’t know whether to laugh or be insulted,” he said at last. “I have NEVER cheated on Frances. Not once. Never even thought about it.” There were tears in his eyes. “I love her!”

  “I know you do. The problem is, you fired a man for making a pass at her. The cops think it shows more interest than a boss ordinarily takes in something like that.”

  His gaze faltered.

  “So. You mind telling me why you didn’t mention it to them? Because I’m guessing you didn’t, which just about guaranteed they’d wonder why.”

  His bottom lip pushed out. That was as close as his face could come to the unfamiliar contours of anger.

  “It wasn’t none of their business.”

  “And the reason you didn’t tell me? After hiring me to try and help you? After I specifically asked whether anyone had a grudge against you and might want to even scores?”

  “It didn’t seem important,” he muttered.

  “What didn’t seem important?” Frances slid through the door. She had a mug with a saucer on top in her hand.

  “Telling me he’d fired someone when I asked if anyone had a beef with either of you. He didn’t tell the cops either.”

  “Kenny Stone, you mean? Oh, Joshua.” The last two words came out in a sigh, as though she’d repeated them often.

  “He couldn’t have been the one getting into the safe.” Tucker crossed his arms stubbornly. “He’s not smart enough, and he’d never have nerve — for that or killing Polly either, if you’re wondering. He’s a sniveling jerk who couldn’t keep his nose out of the sauce.”

  I shoved Tucker’s desktop notepad toward him.

  “I want his address.” He opened his mouth to argue. “Or I’m done here.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Joshua, do as she asks!” Frances set the mug at her husband’s elbow. “And tell her the rest. No, I will. Kenny made a pass at me too — got me into a corner and tried to kiss me. That’s why Joshua really fired him. He probably didn’t tell the police — or you — out of some silly notion of - of protecting my honor.”

  “You’ve been through enough.” Tucker slid Kenny Stone’s address toward me. “I didn’t want them grilling you. Wearing you out.”

  He was the one who looked worn out at the moment. He noticed the mug beside him.

  “What’s this?”

  “Cocoa.”

  “Cocoa? It’s not winter.”

  “You need something in you besides coffee. It will give you some energy.”

  The back of her hand stroked his cheek. I looked away with a pang. No one had ever touched me with such loving concern. Or maybe they had, and I’d pushed away.

  NINE

  While Tucker drank his cocoa, I asked if they still wanted to hide the truth about who I really was and why I was at The Canterbury. When they insisted they did, I told them the reason I planned to use instead.

  “Motion engineering?”

  The Tuckers stared at me blankly.

  “It’s another name for time and motion studies,” I said. “Measuring how far workers have to move to perform a task, timing the parts that go into it, seeing what can be changed to increase productivity.”

  Frances understood first. “An efficiency expert!”

  “Yes.”

  “It sounds ghastly dull.”

  “Meaning no one will want to hear much about it.”

  A woman named Lillian Gilbreth, along with her late husband, had pioneered the techniques. After his death she’d continued their work. When Purdue University named her a professor of engineering, stories about a woman being admitted into a man’s field had popped up in papers and magazines. The public library hadn’t had anything by the Gilbreths, but a friend had found a book by them down at the University. The few paragraphs I’d managed to make my way through gave me more than enough information to make people’s eyes glaze.

  “That’s why you’re toting that ruler,” said Tucker. “So you can pretend to measure things and write on that clipboard. You’ll be able to poke around everywhere, ask all kind of questions, and nobody gets the least bit suspicious.”

  For the first time that morning, he started to grin.

  A knock interrupted. The Tuckers froze. Yesterday a similar knock had brought nothing but problems. Frances went to the door, opening it just wide enough to converse.

  “We’re in a meeting.... Ten minutes.... Oh, all right. I’ll be there in two.”

  She came back to join us. There was a new steadiness about her today.

  “It seems there are problems finding a substitute for Polly. I’ll take care of it. Anything else here before I leave?”

  “I need a list of all the current guests who were here on Wednesday and the whole week before that. Were any of them here as far back as when the man went missing?”

  They looked at each other.

  “I don’t think.... Wait. The Szarenskis arrived somewhere near the end,
didn’t they?” Frances rubbed her forehead. “The day we called the police, I think. But not while the man was here.”

  “You’re not saying a guest could have... could have....” Tucker struggled to grasp it.

  “We need to look at all the possibilities,” I said, and wondered if I sounded like Freeze.

  * * *

  When Frances left to tend to the crisis in housekeeping, Tucker opened the safe to give me a view of the cases inside. Mostly black velvet, as we’d discussed. He explained the hotel’s procedure of assigning a number to each item put in the safe. He showed me the logbook where every movement in or out of the safe bore the item number, date and time, along with two signatures: that of the person who took or returned it, and Tucker’s, or that of William, his manager.

  “I thought you told me Frances knew the whole procedure as well.”

  “She does. At least, I had her do it a couple of times when we were first starting so she’d know how it worked, but she doesn’t do anything involving the front desk. Her part’s to oversee housekeeping, kitchen, the dining room. She does the ordering, picks the suppliers to use, keeps track of expenses. We divvy things up.”

  “When a guest first puts a case in, how do you know there’s jewelry inside?”

  His expression turned sheepish. “We look. Not in front of the owner, but first chance we get. Now and then a case has a lock, so all we can do then’s shake it.”

  Sifting through what I’d gleaned about the safe’s operation in hopes of finding something useful would take time. Meanwhile, being inside the hotel was like being dumped out in an unfamiliar neighborhood. I had to learn its streets and alleys.

  “I need you to show me around,” I said. “Make some introductions while I get a feel for the layout.”

  “Sure thing. There’ll be more than a few people waiting to pounce on me the minute they see me anyway.”