Filmy gauze swooped from a gilded crown to frame the gigantic bed with its rose velvet spread, and I am probably exaggerating a bit, but the soft, white carpet had to be close to knee-deep. The outside wall was glass, and I pulled back the sheer curtains to see another sliding glass door leading to a balcony that ran across that side of the hotel. It was perfect, except for the view. All I could see was the tops of nearby buildings, and I couldn’t imagine why anyone would go out on the balcony when the view inside the room was so much better.
Tina unplugged both the clock radio next to the bed and the television set in the armoire. “Just in case one of these was turned on by mistake,” she told me, although she knew as well as I did that with no one in the room there was no way it could happen. I began to feel creepy again.
She did a fast tour of the second bedroom—which was pretty, but not movie-star pretty like the first—and the gigantic marble bathroom. I stayed right behind her. What impressed me most was the telephone in the bathroom. Imagine! In the bathroom! As though there wasn’t a telephone in every room of that suite.
Tina winced and jumped back as she jerked open the closed shower curtain. When nobody lunged out at us, she let go of my arm, gave a huge sigh of relief and said, “Okay, it’s done. Let’s get out of here.”
But as we left the bedroom area a strange thing happened. The air seemed to grow colder and riffle against the back of my neck. “Maybe we should adjust the air-conditioning in here. It’s awfully cold,” I said, as I gave a quick glance toward Tina.
Tina didn’t answer, and her face told me something I didn’t want to know. She broke into a run, but I beat her time by at least three seconds and might have been faster if I hadn’t tripped over a small footstool and gone sprawling.
“Hurry up!” Tina said. She had the front door open by the time I scrambled to my feet. And as she turned off the light switch I thought I heard her murmur, “Don’t leave me.”
“I’m not going to leave you,” I said.
At the same time she said to me, “What is that supposed to mean? I’m not going to leave you.”
I gasped and stammered, “Y-you said it. I didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t. You did.”
“I did not!”
We stared, wide-eyed, as it dawned on us who had spoken. Then we screeched and slammed against each other as we raced out the door, bouncing off the walls in our mad dash for the elevator. As though we were little kids, we jabbed at the button over and over and hopped up and down, whimpering and squeaking.
Suddenly the elevator doors slid open, a headless man in a tuxedo thrust himself toward me, and I screamed.
“Sorry,” the bellman named Ziggy said. “I didn’t know anybody would be standing there.” He pulled back his luggage cart, on the end of which stood a fully clothed dressmaker’s dummy, and swung it sideways, passing around me.
“I do like that scream,” a woman trilled. She followed Ziggy out of the elevator and beamed at Tina and me. “Now, which one of you darling girls made that beautifully loud noise?”
“She did,” Tina answered quickly. “I’m with security.”
I recognized the woman immediately as Roberta Kingston Duffy, the mystery writer. I’d met her when she’d visited the Ridley Hotel a couple of months ago, getting acquainted with the layout before she wrote the script for the murder-mystery weekend. Mrs. Duffy had short, curly gray hair, a round, rosy-cheeked face, and reminded me of my grandmother. But my grandmother behaves in a normal way and doesn’t carry dressmaker’s dummies in tuxedos around with her, or compliment people on their screams, or sit in the coffee shop making notes and mumbling aloud about whether her current victim should be shot, stabbed, or poisoned.
A much younger woman, Mrs. Duffy’s daughter, Eileen, stepped out of the elevator and joined us. She was my height, and her hair was as red as mine. The only difference was that someone might think about me, “Liz has such a sweet face,” whereas anyone who looked at Eileen Duffy would immediately think, “Wow!” and try to remember if they’d seen her on the cover of Vogue or in a current movie.
Mrs. Duffy began to introduce herself and her daughter, but I said, “We met you on your first trip to the Ridley, and I’ve read all of your really great mystery novels, but I don’t expect you to remember us. This is Tina Martinez, and I’m Liz Rafferty. Tina works in security, and I’ve got a summer job here in the—”
Mrs. Duffy held up a hand to stop me. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “I love to play detective, so I’m going to guess.” She then studied me from top to toe as she said, “Your hair has curled in little ringlets around your face, which shows you’ve recently been in an area that’s probably warm and damp. Your tennis shoes are almost spotless, although they’re slightly run down on the inside of both heels, which means that although you’ve owned them for a month or so, you’ve always worn them indoors. You’re wearing shorts, so I’ll say that you work in the Ridley health club and you’ve recently come off duty. Am I right?”
“Yes!” Tina exclaimed. “That’s fantastic.”
It wasn’t bad, but Mrs. Duffy could have reached the same conclusion if she’d just read the words, RIDLEY HEALTH CLUB, that were printed in large letters on the front of my pink T-shirt.
Eileen grinned at me as though we were in on a secret. “I remember you, Liz,” she said. “You’re my witness in the health club. Did you get the information sheet that lists what you’re supposed to tell the people playing the mystery if they question you?”
I nodded. “I’ve gone over the material and practiced being questioned, so I don’t think I’ll make any mistakes.”
“Of course you won’t, dear,” Mrs. Duffy said, and turned to her daughter. “Don’t you think we should give Mary Elizabeth an additional job? She’d make a great screamer.”
“It’s fine with me,” Eileen said. “Liz can have the job if she wants it.”
I didn’t understand what they were talking about. “I’m supposed to scream? Where? When?”
Eileen answered, “During Friday evening’s party someone has to run into the room screaming loudly, practically collapse in the chief of security’s arms, and tell us that she’s found a body.”
“Thank you very much,” I blurted out, “but I did find a body once, and I’d rather not do it again.” As I pictured that horrible Mr. Kamara floating facedown in the Ridley swimming pool, I shuddered.
“Really? You found a real body?” Mrs. Duffy asked, and her eyes lit up. “I’d love to hear all about it. You must tell me—”
Before she could continue, her daughter stepped in. “There’s nothing to worry about, Liz,” Eileen said. “Our script is all fun and make-believe. We use professional actors as the suspects, I play the part of the detective, and there won’t be a real body. We’ll just draw an outline on the carpet around one of our actors with masking tape. It will be on the floor at the scene of the crime along with clues we’ll put here and there, and we won’t let the participants examine the crime scene until after we read them the coroner’s and the crime lab’s reports on Saturday morning.”
“The coroner and the crime lab sound real,” I told her.
“We have to be realistic as far as the plot and the clues are concerned,” Eileen said. “We have to play fair, so every clue must be there.” She waited a moment and asked, “Well? What’s your answer?”
Why shouldn’t I do it? It beat scrubbing tiles in the health club. I’d be glad to leave that job to Deely Johnson, our new health-club director. “All right,” I answered, but a question occurred to me. “Where is the scene of the crime?”
Mrs. Duffy smiled. “We’ve got a good one,” she answered, “a whole suite in which to plant clues. As a matter of fact, it’s on this very floor—room nineteen twenty-seven.”
I spoke without thinking. “Oh, no! That suite is haunted!”
“Your public relations manager told us,” she said. “That’s why the suite is available for our crime scene.”
&nbs
p; “But the ghost—”
“My dear Mary Elizabeth,” Mrs. Duffy said, “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
It was hard to keep my mouth from falling open and staying there. “But you write about ghosts. There are ghosts in some of your mystery novels,” I insisted.
“I invent them and write about them because people love to be frightened,” she said. “My ghosts are no more real than the ghost in that silly story about room nineteen twenty-seven.”
It was obvious that the two of us did not look at life the same way. I gulped and squeaked, “I really don’t think I want to be your screamer.”
“Oh, you don’t have to come up here,” Mrs. Duffy explained. “We’ll just want you to race out of the elevator and run screaming into the ballroom next door. You don’t have to take the elevator any higher than the second floor.”
I gave a huge sigh of relief. “Then it’s okay. I’ll take the job,” I said.
Ziggy had put their bags into room nineteen twenty-five, next to the haunted room, and was coughing quietly to himself, hoping he could get his tip and leave.
“Mom,” Eileen said, “the bellman’s waiting, and it’s late. We’ve got to make sure our actors are settled in and get them together for a run-through. I want to take the whole thing from the top.”
But Mrs. Duffy said, “I’d love to hear about this body Liz found.”
“Later,” Eileen told her, and said to us, before she pulled her mother away, “We’ll see you tomorrow afternoon at rehearsal.”
The moment we got on the elevator, Tina grabbed my arm and cried, “Liz! She may write a book about how you found Mr. Kamara’s body floating in the swimming pool and how you helped solve the thefts at the Ridley! You could be famous!”
I just shrugged and tried to look modest. What could I say? I was thinking the same thing myself.
“It would have to have a scary title,” Tina went on. “Something like Horror Night at the Ridley or Thieves Who Sneak Through the Darkness.”
I looked at her and said, “Yuck.”
“Let’s see. The murder took place in the dark in the swimming pool.” Her eyes narrowed and her forehead scrunched into little wrinkles as she worked on it. “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll come up with something.”
The next morning as I packed my suitcase, Mom came into my room, sat on the bed, and said, “Aren’t you going to have fun!”
That haunted room had interfered with my sleep, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. “I don’t think so,” I told her.
“Of course you are. Your aunt Sally went to one of those mystery weekends and said it was a fantastic experience. Teams were all over the place trying to find clues and solve the crime. The competition grew fierce. A woman was pushed into the swimming pool, and a man swore he was being followed. It was great fun.”
“A laugh riot,” I said, and folded the last of my pink health-club T-shirts. Since my instructions said that I’d have to be easily identifiable at all times in uniform, those regulation shirts, white shorts, white socks, and tennies were as dressy as I’d get. I didn’t have much of a wardrobe problem.
I tossed in my makeup, hairbrush, and comb, snapped the case shut, and tried to catch it before it fell off the end of the bed. I didn’t make it. It bounced against my shins, so I sat down beside Mom to rub my aching legs and asked, “What kind of people come to these mystery-weekend things?”
“People who love to read mysteries,” she said. “They’ve read so many they think they can solve them.”
“Like being a cop?”
“More like being an amateur detective character, like those in some of the mysteries they’ve read.”
“That’s just what Tina told me, but it seems like an awful lot of work. You’d have to think hard all weekend.”
“The people who participate are intelligent people. They like to use their minds.”
Mom gave me one of those knowing looks, and I knew that the next thing she was going to do was suggest I follow their good example, so I said, “If those people were still in high school, they’d use their minds. Boy, would they use their minds! If they had Mrs. Barclay for civics, they’d never stop using their minds. When I graduate from high school, I’m going to give my mind a vacation. For at least one week I’m not going to think about anything.”
“Very funny,” Mom said. But I wasn’t being funny.
I slumped and stared at my shoes. “It’s going to be a long weekend,” I said. “I just wish that Fran had been chosen to be one of the staff witnesses. This is his weekend off duty, and I can’t share it with him.” It was also the last day of July, with little more than three weeks left before my job would be over and the fall semester would begin. I was going to miss working at the Ridley.
“So that’s why you aren’t looking forward to the mystery weekend—because Fran won’t be there.” Mom smiled and squeezed my shoulders, and I guess she understood how I felt, but I didn’t want to admit anything. After all, she was my mother.
Just then the doorbell rang. Mom hopped to her feet, I dragged myself to mine, and we both headed toward the door. Hopping beats dragging, so she got there first.
Fran burst in. His hair was tousled and his cowlick was sticking up, but he grinned at me and shouted, “Liz! I just got a call from my boss in room service! With all that’s going on at the Ridley this weekend, they need everyone in room service to stay on duty, and because it’s my weekend off, they want me to be a witness in my room-service uniform for the mystery weekend!”
“Great!” I yelled. Immediately the weekend began to look interesting.
Mom straightened the pictures that had bounced out of place when one of my outflung arms accidentally hit the wall, and Fran said, “I’ve got a neat part. I’m going to narrow my eyes and say things like, ‘The woman who was dressed head to foot in black called room service for coffee, and when I saw the packet of poison in her hand I knew immediately that she had evil intentions.’ ”
“That’s awful!” I said. “I’ve read Mrs. Duffy’s books. She’s a good writer, so I know she didn’t write that!”
“I just made it up,” Fran admitted. “I won’t get my instruction sheet until I get to the hotel.” He looked a little hurt. “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”
“It was too melodramatic,” I told him. “Our instructions say that we’re supposed to act natural and normal. We’re just hotel employees who happen to have heard or seen some things that might be clues.”
“We’ll see.” Fran gave a wicked chuckle and pretended to twirl a long mustache.
“You’re impossible,” I said, and ran to get my shoulder bag and suitcase.
It was hard to say a quick good-bye to Mom, because at the door she held my shoulders, peered into my face as though I were on my way to Alaska, and asked, “They will feed you, won’t they?”
“Of course, Mom,” I said. “We’ll eat all our meals in the employees’ cafeteria.”
“Remember, Mary Elizabeth, to choose a green vegetable and a salad with your entree, and no junk food.”
“Mom, you know I live for junk food,” I said.
“Very funny,” she said again, but I still wasn’t trying to be funny.
I kissed her good-bye, then ran after Dad and his lawn mower to kiss him good-bye too.
Dad, who was sweaty and blotchy with little grass and dirt specks all over his bare chest, turned off the motor so that we could hear each other. “Liz,” he said, “your aunt Sally assured us that there were no elements of danger or daring in this mystery thing, that it’s all in fun.”
“That’s what the author told me.”
“Good,” he said. “Did she tell you exactly what you’ll have to do?”
I nodded. “If anybody asks me, I have to tell them about an argument I overheard in the health club between two of the suspects. But first of all I have to run in, screaming that I’ve found a body.”
He gave a start of surprise, then relaxed as he studied my face. “Good. If y
ou can make light of your experience, then I guess that means you’re beginning to handle things now.”
“No more nightmares about Mr. Kamara,” I said, and managed to smile.
“Have a good time, sweetheart,” Dad told me, and went back to mowing the grass.
I didn’t want Dad or Mom to worry, so I kept to myself the memories of finding Mr. Kamara’s body floating in the hotel’s swimming pool. Never, I promised myself. Never, ever, did I want to discover another dead body!
I threw my things into the backseat of Fran’s old car, which he calls Yellow Belly, and we headed for the hotel.
On the way I told him about the haunted room, but he just said, “Didn’t you know that? I knew that,” which was infuriating.
I asked, “Were you ever inside the room?”
“No,” he admitted, so it was my turn to be smug.
“Well, I was,” I said, “and the ghost even talked to me—to Tina and me, that is.”
Fran took his eyes off the road for a quick glance in my direction. “The ghost talked? What did it say?”
“Tina had just turned off the lights, when the ghost said, ‘Don’t leave me.’ ”
Fran laughed so hard, I was glad we were stopped at a red light. “Some ghost,” he finally managed to say. “Was he scared with the lights out?”
I changed the subject, because there’d be no convincing Fran. I knew what I’d heard, and I remembered only too clearly how scared Tina and I had been. I never wanted to set foot in that haunted room again.
We parked in the employees’ section at the far end of the lot behind the hotel. I fully intended to emerge as gracefully as possible from the Yellow Belly, but tripped over the door frame and landed on my hands and knees. As Fran helped me up, I thought how glad I was that Tina wasn’t there, and uncomfortably, I wondered if she might be right. Maybe the way I felt about myself did have something to do with my short boyfriend and my clumsiness.
The Weekend Was Murder Page 2