“Perhaps the room next to it, then,” she said.
“I am sorry, ma’am, but the rooms on either side, 621 and 625, are also taken.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, ma’am, but I’ll check anyway.” He paused, clicked a few keys, and stared at the screen. “Yes, ma’am. They are both occupied, and—”
“Across the hall, then?”
“I was about to tell you that rooms 622, 624, and 626 are also occupied. Though two of those will be vacant later today. However, I can give you a lovely room on the floor above. Room 723 is vacant and has the same dusky salmon color with a soft turquoise base as 623. Both rooms offer a superb view of the lake, which is the reason most guests want a room on the north side. In fact, some of our guests have thought rooms 723 and 823 have an even better view because—”
“No, no, that won’t do,” she said. She stood there, apparently in contemplation. Her back was to me, but her burnt orange acrylic nails tapped the counter. “I so wanted to stay there. You see, my husband died three months ago. Our plan had been to come here for our tenth anniversary. That’s tomorrow.”
She was a tall, beautifully built woman. Because I couldn’t see her face, I shifted my position. I still couldn’t see, so I held up my hand for Burton to wait, and I walked within five feet of her and behind the desk as if I were going down one of the two passageways. I stopped and examined her closely for a few seconds. That’s just the way I am. I’m curious about people, especially one as unusual as this woman.
My presence didn’t matter; she seemed lost in her own thoughts and unaware that I had approached the desk. She wore a simple navy blue tailored suit that showed her figure to full advantage. Her cloth-covered pumps were obviously made to match the suit. She had curly black hair that barely brushed her shoulders. I figured the hair was probably dyed because the color was too perfect. She had high cheekbones and the classical line of nose and chin. Her skin texture was smooth. She would have been a beautiful woman except that only her mouth smiled. Her dark eyes remained expressionless. I thought that full, rich mouth had probably become quite accomplished at showing the full range of human emotion, but the eyes looked as if they were dead. If eyes are the windows to the soul, no one could see inside that woman.
Her thick, dark hair fell across one eye, and she pushed it away from her face. That drew my attention and I stared at those acrylic nails. Why would anyone choose such an outlandish color? Except for those nails, she could have been a model—an older version—but she definitely had that kind of beauty.
I might have remained focused on the nails except that I knew she had lied to the clerk. I could tell by her body posture. Most people have some giveaway signals, and the way she held her body was my clue. I wondered why she concocted such a story. Who cared why she wanted the room?
I walked back and sat down next to Burton. He knew me well enough that he didn’t say anything. He too, watched the action at the desk.
“I do apologize, ma’am,” the clerk said to her, “but it’s not—”
“Surely there is some way. If you would explain my situation to the person who currently occupies room 623—”
“I’m sorry. It truly is not available.”
“But please. Maybe I could talk to him, or her, or whoever.” Her right hand held up two twenty-dollar bills.
The clerk’s eyes focused on the money before he said, “I’m sorry.”
She added two more bills.
Even I could see the temptation in Craig’s eyes, and before she could interrupt him again, he said, “You see, the police have, uh, sealed off that room. There was a crime committed there. You know, like on television—”
“That’s terrible. How soon will they finish?” Her hand dropped to the counter, and I couldn’t see what she did with the bills.
This time he shrugged. “I can give you 423 or 523. Would that work for you?”
“When will the room be available?” The voice was louder and slightly harsh.
“I don’t know. Maybe not for days,” he said. “The police wouldn’t tell me.”
She mumbled something and turned away. She stuffed something inside her shoulder bag, and I assumed it was the money that Craig had reluctantly turned down.
I marveled at her again. I revised my opinion—she wore a little too much makeup, but it was expertly applied. Everything about her was perfect, everything except for those garish nails.
At that moment she turned my way and our eyes met. She must have realized I had been listening, because she smiled with only her mouth while those lifeless eyes stared at me. She cleared her throat, and I sensed she wanted me to think she was slightly embarrassed. “Just seems terrible for a murder to take place in such a quiet setting.”
“How did you know it was a murder?” I asked.
“Oh, uh, I assumed . . .”
Again I knew she was lying, and I wondered why. So what if she knew it had been a murder? What was the big deal?
She turned again and faced the clerk. “All right, give me a room as close to 623 as you can, on the north side of the building.”
“As you like.” He attempted a professional smile. He wasn’t gifted that way, and his smile appeared forced. He would have done better to have remained expressionless. He clicked on his keyboard, but I believe he already knew what rooms were available. “I can give you 629 or 631 or—”
“Fine. Anything. Give me 629.”
He handed her a form to fill out and asked for her credit card. I don’t know why I watched, but I did. For a second time, I got up from the sofa and edged closer so I could hear and observe everything.
“Thank you, Ms. Knight.” He laid the credit card imprint on the counter for her to sign before handing her a key. “We still use keys here instead of the magnetically keyed cards. Our owners think it retains more of the ambience of a quaint and quiet—”
“Whatever,” she said, grabbing the key and walking toward where I assumed the elevators were. Because she didn’t hesitate, it was obvious she really had been here before. Maybe she had come on her honeymoon. But after ten years, would she still remember which way to the elevators? Maybe she wouldn’t.
As soon as she was out of view, Burton turned to me. “Doesn’t that strike you as odd? Several people wanting room 623?” he got up and walked to the desk. “How many people have asked for 623?”
“Three. Maybe four. Five. I don’t remember, but this is strange,” the clerk said. “I mean really strange, as in insane. The police haven’t released the information that he was murdered in room 623, only that a man was found dead in the Stone Mountain area. They certainly didn’t say it happened here at the Cartledge Inn, and I’ve watched the news on CNN and Channel 2. So why would all these people want the same room?”
“Yes, that is strange,” Burton said.
“Bizarre,” Craig said.
Again Burton asked for a room and told Craig he had a reservation. He added, “You can put me anywhere you want.” He pulled a card from his wallet. “This is to show I’m an ordained minister and—”
The clerk nodded. “Thank you.” He found the reservation and said, “Yes, there is no charge for the room.” He asked Burton how long he planned to stay (three nights) and gave him room 430. “Unless you don’t want to be part of this ongoing stream of traffic; in that case I can put you in 315 or 316—that’s in the south wing.”
“That’s fine. I don’t need traffic.” He smiled and added, “I came here to be alone.”
After Burton filled out the information card and received his key, he turned to me. “It’s been good to see you again,” he said. “My luggage is in the car, so I suppose I’d better get it.” He started to walk toward the entrance.
I didn’t want him to walk away, but I couldn’t think of anything to hold him. As I turned around, I bumped into a tall, broad-shouldered man.
“Sorry, miss,” he said.
“Ollie! What are you doing here?” Burton called out. He turned
around and walked back over to the man. They did the male, A-frame-hug thing with about five pats on each other’s back, which doesn’t make any sense to me.
“Hey, Julie,” Burton said, “I want you to meet an old friend of mine.” He introduced him as Oliver Viktor. They had been classmates in college. “Ollie was a member of our church for a couple of years until he moved over here to the east side of town. What was that? Five years ago?”
“Yeah, five or six.”
I smiled at Ollie, but immediately I didn’t like him, and I wasn’t sure why. I usually like most people, so I figured my reaction spoke more about me than it did about Ollie.”
“This is the man who tried to lead me astray many times!” Burton said and laid his arm on his friend’s shoulder. “We did a lot of crazy things in college—”
“No, you did the crazy things,” Ollie said. “I was merely the mastermind behind the brilliant ploys and fabulous activities.”
Burton laughed. “He’s right, you know. He was the trickster—”
“The brilliant thinker and mastermind genius is what this low-level pastor means—”
“Uh, as I said, Ollie was the trickster and planner behind a lot of pranks and—”
“But always in good taste,” Ollie said.
“Oh, really?” Burton looked at me. “Good taste? How does this sound? We had a boring speaker at our commencement—”
“Boring sounds mild,” Ollie said, but he grinned and obviously enjoyed this trip down memory lane. “I felt I was doing something uncommonly good for the entire graduating class.”
“We’d heard that speaker a couple of times before—”
“And he always ran over the allotted time when he spoke.” Ollie shook his head and frowned. “That’s what got me the most. If they allotted him thirty minutes, he took forty or forty-five—”
“Right, so Ollie got the idea of how he could shut him up.” Burton blushed and looked away to hide it. “What we did . . . well, it—it wasn’t kind.”
Ollie shrugged. He looked like a man who shrugged a lot. “We weren’t trying to be kind. Only effective. And it was fun.”
“Okay, yes, to a couple of twenty-two-year-olds, it seemed like fun when we planned it, but—”
“It was fun,” Ollie said, “and it worked.”
I had already entered Zone Total Boredom by then and I honestly didn’t care, but it was obvious that such pranks were an important part of their relationship. So I asked the right question, “What outrageous things did you two guys do at your commencement?”
Burton rewarded me with one of his heart-melting smiles. “Uh, well—”
“The president of the college knew I was into all kinds of—uh, well, youthful pranks,” Ollie interrupted in a voice he intended to come across as modest. “So I had to divert him.”
“Yeah, divert is right.” Burton shook his head, and his eyes made me realize he thought it was a terrible thing to do. “You see, Julie, it did seem like fun at the time. We thought only of ourselves, not about the feelings of anyone else or—”
“Hey, don’t start that,” Ollie said. “He was a stuffy jerk, and he deserved what happened. So tell her.”
“Ollie convinced me to give up my alarm clock and set the alarm for 4:00—the time the speaker, Dr. Garrar Terashita, was scheduled to end.”
“What a hoot! What pandemonium!” Ollie laughed and whacked Burton on the shoulder. “The old buzzard was in the middle of a sentence, and the alarm rocked the building. Everyone just stared for a minute or so. They couldn’t figure out what caused the noise or where it came from. Seven of us knew what was going on, and we laughed the loudest—”
“I didn’t laugh,” Burton said. “I saw that poor man’s face and realized what a mean—”
“Oh yeah, I forgot,” Ollie said. “And after the ceremony, my good friend lectured me over the evils of our ways. That’s what he said, but I really think he was most upset because he had lost his alarm clock.” Ollie winked at me as if I were supposed to laugh with him.
I didn’t laugh.
“Yes, it was insane with noise. Our little group laughed,” Burton said, “but I felt sorry for the faculty, especially the president and the others sitting behind Dr. Terashita.”
“What happened?” I asked. “I assume they figured out the source of the noise.” I didn’t like playing the straight role for Burton’s comic friend, but I felt I had to do it.
“Finally the dean of students and a couple of the profs ran toward the podium.” Ollie’s voice had become louder, and he roared as if it were the first time he had ever told of his great escapade. “It took the dean a few more seconds to find the alarm clock. You know why? Because I had taken Burton’s clock and buried it inside the flower stand that was in front of that podium.”
That still didn’t seem funny to me, but I hadn’t been there, so maybe it had been funny. Regardless, in my newly volunteered role, I knew the next question to ask. “Did you get into trouble?”
“Nah,” Ollie said. “They questioned me, and I said, ‘I did not put that alarm clock inside the flower stand’—deep inside so they had to remove the flowers to get to it.” He winked at me. “See, I told the truth.”
“That was because they didn’t ask if you had planned it.”
Ollie shrugged. “But Burton here was such a good boy, no one ever would have suspected he would do such a devious thing.”
“So you got away with it?”
“We got away with it, but—”
“But what?” I asked. There. I had done my duty. That would be my last question.
“Preacher boy confessed.”
“You did what?” I hadn’t planned to ask that one, but it made me respect Burton a lot more. Not that I needed to respect him more. “That must have taken a lot of guts.”
“I don’t know about guts,” Burton said. “What we did wasn’t right, and it disrupted everything. Dr. Terashita was so embarrassed and hurt that he didn’t try to finish his speech. As he threw his papers together, I saw the pain in his eyes, and I knew I had done a rotten thing.” He turned his gaze toward Ollie. “And it was a very, very mean thing to do.”
“Aw, c’mon, it was fun—”
“Not that one.” Burton shook his head. “But the other things this evil genius did weren’t so bad. At least that’s the only time I was aware of someone being hurt.”
“What about the effigy?” Ollie prompted. As he said those words, I began to realize why I didn’t like him.
“I didn’t have anything to do with that, and if I had known, I would have refused to participate,” Burton said. “It was one of your few plans I refused to join in with. Remember?”
“Yeah, I forgot. You had gotten so lame by then, but that was all right, because I got some other guys—guys who appreciated a good joke.”
I hoped we were ready to move on, but Ollie explained that he detested one professor, the man who taught most of the required English classes. “Boring old guy,” Ollie muttered. So he talked two other students into helping him. They stole a scarecrow from a farmer’s field, hung it in the quadrant, wrote the professor’s name on a placard, and pinned it to its chest. “You know, I can’t remember the old buzzard’s name.”
“Hawkins. Dr. Robert Hawkins IV,” Burton said softly. “I liked him and learned from him—”
“Oh yeah, maybe you did, but he bored me.”
“Are you easily bored?” I asked and hoped that would change the subject.
Ollie shrugged for the third time. I had been correct—he was one of those frequent shruggers. But then, he had the shoulders for it. “Oh, before you ask, I’ll bet you can’t guess why I’m here.”
“It certainly can’t be to ask for room 623, can it?” that was a smart-mouthed remark said in my most sarcastic tone. I felt I was back in my own territory—at last.
“How did you know about that room?” Ollie stared at me and seemed genuinely surprised.
This time I shrugged—exaggerati
ng the movement for his benefit. I don’t think he caught my mockery.
“Hey, I don’t know how you figured that out,” Ollie said, “but yeah, that’s why I’m here. It’s room 623. But how—”
“The clerk told us,” Burton said quickly. He knows me, and he could see I was getting ready to make another smart remark.
“Okay, okay, dumb clerk,” Ollie said. He turned to me and grinned. He must have thought his conversation charmed me. Okay, for some women that would have been charming, especially when those green eyes lit up. I admitted to myself that he was as handsome as any man I’d ever met. He probably pumped iron five hours every day. His ash-blond hair had barely begun to recede on top, so it was nice to see that he was flawed, even if only a little.
“You see, Julie, I work for the DeKalb County Police Department. I’m here to investigate a murder.”
“A murder?” I said and batted my eyes a couple of times. I figured out that the Cartledge Inn was in DeKalb County and not inside Stone Mountain, which made it a county matter.
“Yeah, scary stuff, huh?”
“The murder? Who was murdered?” Burton asked.
“Stefan Lauber,” Julie said.
Ollie held up his hand. “Wait a minute, missy. How do you know about this murder and his name? Don’t tell me the clerk blabbed that much. We haven’t released his name to the public.”
“Not exactly the clerk’s fault,” I said because I didn’t want to cause any trouble for Craig. “I’m a therapist. Stefan is a client . . . was a client, and—”
“And you make house calls?” There was that grin again, but it soon disappeared as the upper lip curled into a sneer.
I wanted to slap the expression off his face, but I restrained myself. “Not ordinarily, but this was special,” I said. “Mr. Lauber asked me to come here. He said it was extremely important.”
Ollie’s eyes traveled from my head to my feet and back to my face. “Yeah, I can guess that it was special.”
His attitude shocked me so badly I was momentarily speechless. If I had been fifteen years old, I would have punched him in the nose, regardless of his size.
Everybody Wanted Room 623 Page 2