Double Whammy (A Davis Way Crime Caper)

by Gretchen Archer

  Same drill as the Bellissimo: to get into the room safe of an occupied guest room, it took one housekeeping supervisor pass-card swipe, one security pass-card swipe, and two other employee witnesses, one from housekeeping, the other from security. Everyone, including me, had to sign on the dotted line before and after.

  They all peered at the pathetic wedding rings. They all turned to me.

  Really?

  I smiled.

  * * *

  I had Natalie Middleton’s blessing to stay at the Silver Moon as long as I was working. So I could justify the two glorious nights, but I couldn’t justify a third on Bellissimo’s dime because I now knew there was no entering the safe without an authorized break-in crew, two passkeys, the code, an act of Congress, or a bulldozer. Did I give George the satisfaction of hearing those words pass these lips? No, I did not. But I didn’t have to; I’m sure he figured it out when I pushed through the doors the next morning with all my earthly belongings in tow. It was Thursday. I’d been on this assignment for two and a half weeks, and I suppose I was headed back to the EconoLodge after my shift today. The Silver Moon rooms were three-hundred dollars a night and I didn’t have that kind of extra loot lying around. The best I could hope for was that the porn stars next door had moved on.

  The shift started, like every other shift, with Maria, our supervisor, complaining Spanish-style about the shoddy job we’d all done the day before. It was a total waste of time, the purpose of which was to give Maria’s pets time to drag into work. The second they staggered through the door Maria announced, “Dat all. Geet to de work.” I sat through the ten-minute pep talk every morning wondering how Maria managed to maintain her perfect manicure. Her fingernails were blood red, out to there, and her index fingers had geometrical designs in white. At the end of today’s lecture, I gave Maria a big hug when she passed me a clipboard full of room assignments. She pulled away from me and looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. I pulled away from her with a passkey to every room on the floor.

  At eleven that morning, six guest rooms spicked and spanned, Santiago knuckled the door frame of the room I was cleaning, lucky number seven, and in his heavy accent called, “Anna? Anna?”

  I rose to my knees. I’d been between the queen-sized beds spot cleaning red wine off the carpet. At least I hoped it was red wine. “Do you need me, Santiago?”

  He blabbered in his native tongue. I didn’t catch a word of it. Then Miss Heidi Dupree’s lovely frame stepped into the open doorway beside Santiago’s. In her arms she held a basket. I could see the top half of two dark bottles of wine pointed in opposite directions.

  “I need in a guest room,” she said. “And this guy can’t hear a word I’m saying.”

  “He hears you.” I stood, smoothing my uniform. “He doesn’t speak fluent English.”

  “Then he shouldn’t work here.” She shifted the weight of the basket to her hip. “I’m in a hurry. Come open this door for me.”

  Protocol was crystal clear: never let anyone in a guest room for any reason, that’s the supervisor’s call. I’m sure, though, somewhere in small print, it says that temporary residents of the EconoLodge wearing hot, itchy wigs were exempt.

  “Which room?” I asked.

  She took off.

  I followed.

  “Here you go.” I used the passkey I’d stolen from Maria to open the door of room nineteen-twenty-two. She and her basket breezed by me, then spun.

  “I’ve got it from here.”

  I smiled and stepped back an inch.

  “Really.” Miss Dupree was becoming impatient with me. “I’ll only be a minute.” Then the bitch slammed the door in my face.

  I sprang into action, using Maria’s key again, to slip into the room directly across the hall where I could watch from the peephole. I wish I had knocked first.

  “Nelson?” A wild-haired woman sat straight up in the bed, saw me, and screamed out a lung. “Who are you?” The part of her I could see was completely naked. She grabbed for the covers. “Get out! Get out of my room!” She flailed an arm at the door, showing me the way.

  “Oh!” I screamed. “Pardon! Pardon!” I used my best Tex-Mex accent. “Excuse! Excuse!”

  Heidi Dupree and I spilled into the hallway on the same click of the second hand, and she looked at me as if I were crazy, which, at the moment, I was. I fell against the wall to catch my breath and Heidi Dupree took off in a hurry, but only after throwing me a parting glare. She had one hand balled into a fist, like she was holding something. As soon as she turned the corner to the elevator, I took off after her, my orthopedic shoes falling like bricks on the carpet. I slowed and waited until the elevator doors opened, then closed, peeked around the corner and saw a wad of wet tissue, still grooved from her grip, in the ashtray between the elevator doors that I’d just cleaned and stamped a perfect script “B” for Bellissimo into not an hour earlier. I really didn’t like this girl.

  I ran back down the hall and stopped outside of naked wild-haired woman’s room. If she was on the phone tattling on me, I’d probably be able to hear her muffled outrage, and if that were the case, I planned on hiding. I couldn’t hear a thing over my accelerated heartbeat from all the running; hopefully naked woman had gone back to sleep. I counted to twenty, then pulled a new set of latex cleaning gloves from my pocket, tugged them on, and used Maria’s key again to enter the room Heidi Dupree had done her business in.

  The gift basket containing the wine was on a table in front of the Gulf-view window. A card was tented in front of the basket.

  Congratulations! Present this for a Couple’s Massage at four o’clock this afternoon at the Bellissimo spa as our honored guests.

  It was signed Mark Fredrickson, a name I recognized from the Casino Host roster. I walked to the closet. Pulling the doors open, I was greeted by the unmistakable tang of hair spray.

  * * *

  From the housekeeping break room, which I had all to myself, I called Natalie. “I need a quiet place, a computer, and street clothes.”

  “For how long?”

  “At least a few hours.”

  “Give me ten,” she said.

  Hours? This thing would be said and done in ten hours.

  “And I’ll need computer clearance again for restricted files, Natalie.” I could almost hear her raising one perfect eyebrow.

  “Which ones?” she asked. “Internal or client?”

  “Both.”

  I tracked down Maria, fifteen tissues to my face, blowing my nose with gusto.

  She put all ten of her red fingernails straight out, hands splayed. “Stay over,” she warned me. She eyed me, up and down. “I take guess. You feel no good?” She blinked a hundred times.

  I coughed for her.

  “Aye, aye, aye.” She shooed me away.

  Natalie set me up in an unoccupied guest room on the fourth floor, which was—I hate to complain—not as spiffy as the rest of the place. The higher up you go in this building, the better the facilities, all the way to the top floor, which was rumored to be one massive breathtaking suite fit for Elvis. Hotel floors four, five, and six were the junket floors, where busload after busload of retirees were temporarily housed. Don’t get me wrong, these rooms beat the EconoLodge’s rooms to death. And I was happy, happy, happy to be in one without a cleaning cart.

  A chocolate brown Nike warm-up suit in a clingy knit blend, strappy tank in the trim color, a bright teal, and Airs with a bright teal stripe were on one of the beds. Dropping my ponytail wig to the floor, I got out of my housekeeping uniform and into my tennis star outfit as quickly as I possibly could, shaking my hair out, loving Natalie.

  A laptop computer was on the desk. I fired it up. I would watch my steps while romping through Bellissimo’s cyber world, just in case someone was following me. I did’t really need to know hot, hot, hot Richard Sander’s exact age, or see his Las Vegas wife’s photo. There is a time and place for everything. This wasn’t it.

  The registered guest in room nine
teen twenty-two was Robert Edding, and I supposed his wife Gracie was with him, because the hair-sprayed closet had several womens’ blouses hanging in it. The Eddings were from Corpus Christi, Texas, and the computer told me that they’d visited four times the previous year, staying three nights each time. I pulled up Robert Edding’s play history. He was a slot player, and his casino activity rated him a five, meaning, after a ton of calculating on the casino’s part, he could be counted on to leave five thousand dollars here, more or less, each visit. In the big picture, that made him a decent, steady player. Put him in the company of a hundred thousand others who came four times a year and dropped five thou each and you’ve got yourself a nice bottom line. And fives were the least of it; the Eddings were small potatoes here.

  However, Robert Edding found himself at the right place at the right time this morning. His electronic portfolio showed him charging two buffet breakfasts plus a six-dollar tip to his room at nine thirty-eight, and at ten fifteen, hitting a slot jackpot of $22,500 on machine 238007. Woo-hoo! Way to go, Robert!

  And that’s how Miss Dupree knew there’d be something in the safe. And she knew when they’d be out of the room, too, because she’d booked the spa herself.

  Two questions remained: who was her partner and how was he getting into the safe? A third question loomed. If I ordered a room-service lunch, would Natalie have a cow?

  * * *

  I held my fake Louis Vuitton hobo wide open over the bed, flipped it, and set the vast collection free. I gave it a good shake to dislodge the stuck-on stuff and twice as much fell out. Goodness gracious. I waved through the toxic cloud and vowed to clean out my purse more than once a year. I needed the three cell phones, my three pounds of keys, and should probably keep the seventeen or so paperclips, but as far as I could see, everything else could go. I found a ten-dollar bill in the mix, freed a penlight from my keychain, and pushed the rest of it into a small mound for later.

  Downstairs, hugging the walls, with my head down, I ducked into the gift shop, the twenty-four hour variety that sold beef jerky, contact lens solution, and K-Y His-and-Hers. I stood in line to purchase an ounce and a half of hairspray for five dollars, and a miniature plastic container of baby powder for the outrageous price of four dollars. There wasn’t a baby butt out there that needed to smell that fresh; save your money and just put the kid in the tub. I thought of my sister Meredith, after Riley was born, telling me that until I had a child of my own, my nuggets of parenting wisdom weren’t welcome.

  Back in my room on the fourth floor, the first thing I did was remove a pillowcase from one of the bed pillows. And you know what? Not the same thread count as the higher floors. I pulled open the closet doors. The florescent interior light came on automatically. Guess what? These were half the size of the upstairs closets.

  Next I stepped into the bathroom and pulled a handful of tissues from the box on the vanity. I passed them under a slow stream of water, then swiped back and forth across the keypad of the wall safe. I blew the keypad dry, then gave it two good squirts of hairspray, put the pillowcase over my head, and plopped down on the floor to wait. I hummed to pass the time. After two stanzas of We Wish You a Merry Christmas, I stood, felt around, and found the edges of the safe. I stabbed in the general direction of the keypad quickly, four times, before I could seriously orient myself to the ten-digit keypad, and even so, I’m pretty sure I pushed one, three, seven, and nine. I yanked the pillowcase off my head, dug the flashlight out of my pocket, and pointed it directly on the keypad.

  Nothing.

  I angled the beam. More nothing.

  I squeezed a perfect circle-dot pattern of the baby powder into the palm of my hand, then blew it onto the keypad like fairy dust. While it clung, sort of, I still couldn’t see anything noteworthy, even with the flashlight. I stepped in, pulled the doors closed to eliminate the overhead light, and tried the flashlight again.

  Bingo.

  In the ambient darkness, the thin illumination revealed three smudges in the light powder film: numbers four, five, and six. Wait a sec. I’d pushed four buttons.

  The World Wide Web told me that there were twenty four possible combinations of four different digits, but because I like to make things as hard on myself as humanly possible, I’d pushed one of the numbers twice, which bumped the possible combinations up to thirty six. Even so, a ten-year old could sit down with a pen and paper and come up with the thirty six possibilities in a flash. Me being far past ten, it took almost fifteen minutes. And another twelve minutes testing them. I hit pay dirt about halfway down the list: five, six, four, five sprung the safe open. On my sixth go-around, I popped it in less than four minutes, probably because I skipped the pillowcase part and just squeezed my eyes shut until I could see dancing dots. By now it was almost three o’clock and I was choking on hair spray and baby powder.

  Show time.

  With a weary sigh, I dug through my cell-phone collection for the Mac Daddy. It was time to do what I’d managed to avoid for a month: Make direct contact with No Hair and Teeth.

  * * *

  The grainy overhead-perspective surveillance video of the previous four room thefts had masked how young Heidi’s partner in crime was. When I finally got a good look at him, he appeared to be late 20s, early 30s, and my best guess was that Heidi was both splitting the take and spending quality naked time with the guy. They would miss each other when they went to prison for ten to twenty.

  It was four-fifteen. We’d taken our places as Robert and Gracie Edding checked into the spa.

  I was in the closet, mostly in the dark, wedged into the opposite corner from the safe behind two hanging Bellissimo robes and Mrs. Edding’s blouses. The top of my head just cleared the hanging bar. I watched the live feed coming from the hall on a three-inch handheld. My breath was coming at a slow, steady pace, with adrenaline pumping through me that was more about never seeing the EconoLodge again than anything else. I’d been in tight positions many times through the years, with opponents far more armed and dangerous than this guy. Speaking of armed, I was packing again. Pepper spray and handcuffs, but, hey, you gotta start somewhere.

  The teeny camera feeding me video was tucked between potted hydrangeas on a flower cart driven by—this is hilarious—No Hair. Teeth was waiting downstairs outside of Heidi Dupree’s office so he could give her the good news. We met at Natalie’s place a half hour ago, and the two men flipped a coin for the jobs. No Hair, sporting a tie with a sleeping Garfield the Cat on it, lost.

  “Two out of three,” he said.

  “No way, man. We don’t have time for that.” Teeth took his win and ran with it.

  Natalie drummed her fingers on her desk impatiently. “It doesn’t matter. Get going, one of you.”

  “I can’t get in a closet,” No Hair, a.k.a. Jeremy Coven, said it to Teeth, a.k.a. Paul Bergman, as if he’d suggested he ride a tricycle through the casino. “Are you out of your mind?”

  I’d only seen these guys in I’d-like-to-rip-your-head-off mode, and it was nice to know they were, indeed, humans, as opposed to straight-up killing machines. They were each the size, shape, and weight of refrigerators, and having spent half of the afternoon inside a closet, I agreed: No way No Hair could hide in the closet, even the ones upstairs that would hold a twin-size bed. Not that Teeth could.

  “Clearly—” They turned to me like who are you again? “Neither one of you is going in the closet. I’ll do the closet. You wait outside the room in the hall.”

  No Hair said, “No offense, little lady, but you couldn’t take down a bunny rabbit.”

  “You’ll be right behind her, man,” Teeth said.

  “I can do my job, thank you,” I assured them.

  “What am I supposed to do in the hall?” No Hair demanded. “You think the guy will blow me a kiss then go load up the cash?”

  He had a point. These two could clear a church of nuns; a thief would most certainly tuck and run.

  Natalie reached for her phone. “This is
Natalie Middleton from Mr. Sanders’ office. I need a room service uniform in size…” she looked up at No Hair. He let his meaty cheeks fill with air, then let it out slowly. If I’d been wearing a hat, I’d have been chasing it.

  “Fifty-two.” We barely heard him.

  “What?” Teeth asked on a laugh. “Fifty-what?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Well, what about housekeeping?” Nattie asked. “Do you have a fifty-two in a housekeeping uniform?” We all waited. “Send it up,” she said. No Hair threw his hands in the air. Natalie dialed another number. “I need a horticulture cart,” she said. “I don’t care. Whatever you have. And right now.”

  So No Hair, in a forest green jumpsuit, was pushing a cart full of pretty potted flowers when our mark strolled down the hall in one of his previous disguises, the spa robe and slippers. On the tiny screen it looked like he was running, so No Hair must have had the cart on the move, going about his blossom business in the opposite direction. And just in case I was in the closet doing my nails and eating bon-bons, No Hair’s voice boomed through my earpiece, “Coming your way.”

  “Right,” I said, just as I was attacked by serious vertigo. No Hair must have swung the cart around, and sure enough, there was our mark’s backside.

  “I forgot my inhaler,” he pleaded to the second-shift supervisor, who I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting and who, incidentally, spoke perfect English. “And my wife has our room key,” he added.

  “I need some identification, Mr. Edding.”

  He showed off his spa wear. “I don’t have any! It’s in the spa locker.” He looked down the long hall. “Do I need to go get it?” Right about then, he sucked in a huge gulp of air. “I need in,” he squeaked, pointing at the door.

  “Okay, hold on, hold on. Let me make a call.”

  I measured him against the door and got a feel for how much space he would take up in the closet, choosing the spot and angle he’d most likely work from based on his size. No Hair and I continued to eavesdrop as the housekeeping supervisor called the spa. She asked if there were a Mr. Edding checked in. “And what’s his room number?” She said thank you and snapped the phone closed. She whipped out her passkey and granted him entry. “Have a nice day, Mr. Edding. Hope you get to feeling better.”