The Dark and Deadly Pool

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  I reached out and hung up the phone, immediately drifting back into my dream, which obligingly pulled itself together and went off in another direction.

  Time doesn’t exist in dreams, so I don’t know how much of it passed before the telephone rang again. Once more I pulled the receiver under the covers and tried to mumble something.

  This time it was Mr. Parmegan. He was brusque, clipped, and kept it short. That was fine with me. That meant I didn’t have to say anything.

  “I was apprised by Mr. Boudry about your work of detection last night,” he said. “I’m thanking you by telephone, because with the number of appointments I have on my schedule for today, I would not be able to thank you in person.”

  “Thank you,” I echoed.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, and hung up. I did too.

  I floated back into my warm, dark, comfortable place. When the telephone rang again I automatically brought the receiver in with me without coming to full consciousness.

  “It’s me—Art.”

  “Um-hmmm,” I said.

  “So what went on?”

  “Why does everyone ask me about Soledat? Why don’t they just talk to Lamar?” I murmured.

  There was a pause. “I didn’t get all the details,” he said. “Fill me in.”

  “You know—tonight,” I murmured, and tried to turn over without losing the phone.

  Art said something else, but I tuned him out. “Goodnight,” I mumbled, and gave a gigantic yawn.

  “Wake up,” Art Mart said. “I’m talking to you. Remember, I’m your boss.”

  I groaned and tried to make myself think. “What time is it?”

  “Eleven,” Art said.

  “Oh. Then I’ve got to get up anyway. Thanks for waking me up. Good-bye.”

  “Liz! Are you listening to me? Stop rambling on and answer my question.”

  I made myself sit up. That helped. Opening my eyes helped too. “What was the question?”

  “Did anything happen in the club that I should know about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then how come some of the stuff that belongs on the desk was scattered behind it on the floor?”

  I told him about the drunk in the sauna. When I finished he said, “That’s it? I thought you were going to tell me something important. You’ve just been wasting my time.”

  I growled into the telephone, but he’d already hung up. There’s nothing like being angry to help you wake up. I stomped into the bathroom and washed my face and brushed my teeth. I remembered that Fran was coming over, so I put on my new yellow shorts and knit shirt. I wasn’t wearing them for Fran. After all, he was just a casual friend. I was wearing them for myself. They were comfortable and cute and looked good with my red hair. Well, what was wrong with wearing them to please myself?

  As I brushed my hair I wondered what was the matter with Lamar Boudry. He had practically sworn Fran and me to secrecy, then he ended up telling half the people in the hotel about Marco Soledat. I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t notified Soledat himself.

  I called Detective Jarvis from my bedside telephone, but he wasn’t in. He had gone to Beaumont and would be back later in the day. I didn’t leave a message, and I didn’t want to talk to anyone else. I’d wait. Telling him about the list wasn’t that urgent.

  I had just walked into the kitchen when the doorbell rang. It was exactly twelve o’clock, and there was Fran with hamburgers, fries, and strawberry frosties.

  “Great!” I told him. “I’m starving. But it’s not fair for you to keep paying for our food. You bought the ice cream and the doughnuts too.”

  “You pick up the tab next time,” he said.

  “Okay.” I popped a couple of fries in my mouth and licked the hot grease and salt from my fingers. “Next time, for a change, I’ll get Mexican food. No. Wait a minute. Next time I’ll make fajitas. I’m not much of a cook, but I make great fajitas.”

  We smiled at each other over our hamburgers. We were both so hungry that we didn’t say much until we had almost finished our strawberry frosties.

  “I’m looking forward to the symphony tomorrow night,” I said.

  “Speaking of symphonies”—Fran reached across the table and, with his napkin, wiped off my strawberry moustache—“I think you were right in the first place about all the crimes being orchestrated.”

  “I couldn’t have been. You saw the deal with the stolen meat. A one-man operation.”

  Fran was smugly pleased with himself. “Think about it. When did Soledat pick up the meat he had hidden in the garbage?”

  “After he went off duty.”

  “Nope,” Fran said. “His shift ends about the same time mine does, and I’m through about fifteen minutes before you. But Soledat didn’t pick up his meat packages until after you and Tina would have left. Both times you saw him, you had stayed later than usual.”

  “Couldn’t he have timed our schedule himself?”

  “Too complicated. There are a lot of people involved. Soon after you leave, the night cleaning crew comes on, and so forth.”

  “So you think someone gave him the schedule.”

  “I think it’s highly possible.”

  “But who?”

  “Who would know the schedules?”

  “Well,” I said, “Mr. Parmegan would, and Lamar—” I stopped and stared at Fran. “Couldn’t anyone get hold of a schedule? They must be written and in someone’s office.”

  “Sure,” he answered, “as long as it was someone with some kind of authority.”

  “Well, it can’t be Lamar!” I said firmly. “Have you got any other good ideas?”

  “Do you have some paper and a ballpoint?” he asked.

  I got up and fished some out of the drawer under the wall phone in the kitchen. Fran began writing, and I slipped into the chair next to him and leaned over his shoulder so I could see what he was doing.

  “You’ve drawn four circles.”

  “Same old circles,” he said. “Maybe they can help us work this out.”

  “When we did this before I put a box where the conductor would stand and put a K for Mr. Kamara in it.”

  “This time let’s put a question mark in the box,” Fran said as he wrote.

  I leaned closer, peering at the sheet of paper. “Your question mark looks like a P.”

  “I didn’t promise calligraphy,” he said. “You’ll have to take what you get. Now—first circle in the orchestra: meat. We’ll write Soledat on the line from the box to the circle.” Fran leered and twirled an invisible moustache. “He’ll soon learn to play another tune.”

  I groaned and sat back. “That’s awful. Besides, we’ve got that one figured out. Go on to the sofa.”

  “It would be more comfortable than this kitchen chair.”

  “Fran, be serious.”

  “Whose name do we write on this line?” Fran said.

  “That’s a tough one.” The room was quiet and filled with the warm, cozy pungency of onion and mustard. A fat black bee buzzed and batted against the window, and I could imagine my thoughts buzzing and batting inside my head, trying to form an idea.

  “Who would need those sofas?” I finally asked.

  “They’d never fit in a house,” Fran said.

  “A mansion, maybe.”

  “People who could afford a mansion wouldn’t need to steal sofas for it.”

  “How about another hotel?”

  “No good,” Fran said. “A lot of travelers would come in and say, ‘Oh, those are the sofas that were stolen from the Ridley.’ ”

  “Not if they were re-covered. People would remember the fabric and color. A re-covered sofa would look very different. It’s like when thieves steal a car they usually paint it another color.”

  He sat up straight and looked at the wall clock. “We’ve got time. Let me make a few telephone calls. Where are your Yellow Pages? Look up the pages for upholstering companies.”

  Fran made one call after another. Each
time someone answered he made his voice deeper and asked the same thing: “When are my two ten-foot sofas going to be ready?”

  And after each answer he mumbled a quick “Sorry. I must have dialed the wrong number.”

  Until the fourteenth call. After his question and the answer that followed he snarled, “Who am I? You know who I am.” There was a pause, and he said, “No, this is not your brother-in-law.”

  Fran hung up the phone and sat at the table again. He plopped his elbows on the table and rested his head on his hands. “Do you know how many small upholstery companies there are in Houston?”

  “If I had stolen the sofas,” I said, “I’d take them to a different city to be reupholstered.”

  Fran groaned. “This is harder than I thought it would be.”

  “Not for the police,” I said. “That’s one more thing I can tell Detective Jarvis about.”

  “One more thing? Oh, yeah. The list,” Fran said. “He’d be the one to tell about it.” Fran gleefully rubbed his hands together. “Are we on a roll, or are we on a roll! Sit down, Liz. Next up is the circle with stolen items in it.”

  I sat across from Fran. “None of the silver or paintings or things are taken through the doors of the hotel.”

  “Garbage again?”

  “No. They’d have to be taken to the kitchen to be put into the garbage, and everyone in the kitchen would see them.”

  We both thought for a long time, until Fran said, “I think with this one we’re up against a blank wall.”

  I bounced in my chair. “The wall, Fran! The gap in the wall. I know they’re taken out through the wall.”

  “Then they’d have to be taken into the health club. People would see the things carried in.”

  “Unless they’re smuggled in.”

  “Not many people could smuggle a painting under a bathing suit.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Listen,” Fran said. “Other things must come into the club. Room service, for instance.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Food. People are always ordering food and drinks. But no one brings in silver pitchers or paintings. Believe me, I’d notice.”

  “Is anything else brought into the club?”

  “The custodians come in to clean it.”

  “There’d be a constant check on the custodians. That wouldn’t work.”

  I leaned back and sighed. “Also, where would they hide the stuff? The only place in the health club would be the closet or the desk, and Deeley or I would see anything that didn’t belong in either of those places. I think we’d better move on to the last circle.”

  Fran had written wallet inside the circle. “I think we know a lot more about this operation than we did,” he said.

  “We do?”

  “Think about it.” He squeaked his chair back from the table and tilted it. “Some of the cards were missing, then put back. You suspected that while the cards were out of the file the people on those cards had their wallets stolen by a pickpocket. You know of that one case—that Franklin Kurtin Quaiser.”

  “That’s Kurt Quentin Fraiser.”

  “Whatever. According to Detective Jarvis, C. L. Jones was a known pickpocket.”

  “And every day he came to the club and talked to Mr. Kamara.”

  “Who else did Jones talk to?”

  “Nobody, that I know of.”

  “Who else did Mr. Kamara talk to?”

  “Nobody, except room service, when he ordered something to eat.”

  “Didn’t Floyd Parmlee always bring his order?”

  I jumped up and walked back and forth, so excited I couldn’t stand it. “Yes! And I saw Mr. Kamara give him money! So Floyd could fit into the scheme!”

  Fran’s chair nearly went over backward. He grabbed the table edge, righted himself, and got up. “Listen, Liz, how about this? Floyd would be in a position to know who some of the big spenders were or who might open a fat wallet. Suppose he passed on that information to Mr. Kamara, who passed it on with the photo-ID cards to Mr. Jones? Then, after Mr. Jones stole the money, the three of them split it?”

  “We’ve got it!” I said. I grabbed Fran and hugged him.

  He hugged me back, and I suppose we could have enjoyed the hug for a while longer, except that he said, “But how did they get the cards from the file in the health-club office?”

  I pulled back. “I don’t know the answer to that.”

  “So what do we do next?”

  I glanced up at the clock. “Let’s go to the health club. We’ll have a little over half an hour before we have to be on our jobs. Maybe we could look around. Maybe we’ll get an idea.”

  I ran into the bedroom and pulled on my pink club T-shirt and shorts and rejoined Fran. “How’s that for fast?” I asked him.

  “Fine,” he said, “except you put your shirt on backward.” So I had to go back into the bedroom and switch it around.

  I began to put the box with the locket in it into my plastic purse, then changed my mind. “I’d better wear it,” I said. “I could tuck it down under the neck of my T-shirt.”

  “The chain would show,” Fran said.

  “I know what I’ll do.” I took the locket out of the box and stuffed it into the hip pocket of my shorts. The T-shirt hung over the pocket, covering it nicely.

  “Is anyone going to be upset at our nosing around?” Fran asked.

  “Deeley won’t care,” I said.

  And she didn’t. “You want to show your friend around the club, be my guest,” Deeley said, answering the excuse I’d given her.

  “I’ll just take a look through the men’s side,” Fran said, and went off murmuring, “Very nice, very nice.”

  “How’s everything going?” I asked Deeley.

  “Okay. Someone came and fixed the lock on the desk. You can put your purse in here again.”

  “Where’s Art Mart?”

  “Went off for more towels. We ran out real fast this morning. Had a big crowd.”

  Fran came back looking puzzled. “Nothing,” he mumbled to me.

  Deeley looked surprised. “It’s not that bad. In fact, the guests think it’s pretty nice.”

  “Well, it’s got a great closet,” Fran said, opening the extra door in the office and poking his head inside.

  “Hey!” Deeley called. “That’s not for the guests. That’s just our supplies closet.”

  “Don’t mind him,” I said to Deeley. “He’s just nosy.”

  “Open shelves, everything out in the open,” Fran said. He closed the door.

  Deeley was watching him suspiciously, so I said, “Come on, Fran. Let’s sit by the pool and think—uh—talk.”

  We walked toward a pair of chairs that were under the ficus tree next to the pool. “I can’t figure it,” Fran said. He flopped into one of the chairs, staring up at the tree. I sat in the other chair.

  Suddenly Fran stiffened and clutched the arms of his chair. “Do you know that tree isn’t real?” he asked.

  “I thought you knew that.”

  He sat up and looked at the bark. Then he poked out a finger and touched it. “But this part is real.”

  “Mrs. Bandini explained it to me. Real trunk, fake leaves. Otherwise they’d be all over the pool.”

  Fran got to his feet. “What about the roots?” He poked at the bark chunks around the base of the tree. “Glued,” he said. With his knuckles he wrapped on the large brass planter. It answered with a deep, ringing bong.

  “I told you the tree is fake,” I said.

  Suddenly Fran gripped the trunk of the ficus with both hands and pulled up and sideways. The tree and the base swung upward, leaving a large cavity in the huge brass planter underneath.

  “There it is,” Fran said, as we leaned over and stared into the empty planter. “The hiding place.”

  Deeley called to us from the office doorway. “What are you two doing with that tree?”

  Fran carefully lowered the ficus and its base back onto an inside rim that held it in place. “
This tree needs a dentist,” he said to Deeley. “Definitely has a cavity, maybe even needs a root canal.”

  Deeley frowned at him. “That’s supposed to be a joke?”

  “He has a strange sense of humor,” I said to Deeley. I tried to act calm and composed, but inside I was jumping up and down with excitement.

  Deeley went back into the office, and I said to Fran, “Now we can tell Lamar what we know.”

  “Not yet,” he said. “We don’t know enough. We’re guessing that the stolen objects were hidden in the planter, but we don’t know how they were taken from here. A silver platter could go through the pool, but it wouldn’t help a painting.”

  “Anyone inside the club could walk out through the doors in the glass wall. They open from inside even when they’re locked. They just don’t open from the outside for people trying to get in.”

  “So the thief could just walk out with the loot?”

  I nodded eagerly. “Right around the pool and through the gap in the wall. Now, can we talk to Lamar?”

  “One more thing,” Fran said. “How was the stolen stuff brought in here?”

  I leaned back in my chair. “Darned if I know.”

  The door from the hotel opened as Mrs. Bandini and Mrs. Larabee came in. Mrs. Bandini was carrying a box about a foot square in addition to her usual gym bag. They were dressed in almost identical purple jogging suits, and Mrs. Bandini had a green plaid scarf tied jauntily around her hair.

  As soon as they spotted me they waved and yoo-hooed and bobbled toward us as fast as they could go. Their smiles grew even broader as they came to a stop. Fran and I got to our feet. I introduced him.

  Mrs. Bandini included Fran in her smile. “I remember you. Room service,” she said.

  “That’s right,” Fran answered.

  “You’re a very nice boy. Pauly likes you,” she said. Then she turned to me, her eyes sparkling. “I’ve got two surprises for you, Mary Elizabeth. The first one you can enjoy right now.”

  With great ceremony she put the box on the table and removed the lid. It was filled with homemade cookies, golden and crispy and rich with the fragrances of butter and vanilla.

  “Wow!” Fran said.

  “Try one! Right now!” Mrs. Bandini said to me. “I’m glad your young friend is here. He’ll enjoy some too.”