Gnarly New Year (Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #2) (7 page)

“Okay, well thanks for the update,” I said. With that, she took off. Mitchum walked back with us as far as that courtyard then split.

“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to stay put here at the resort. Enjoy the festivities, but please, do yourselves a favor and don’t go into town, okay?” We all nodded. He had a point. The day had been plenty bizarre already. Who in their right mind would go looking for more trouble?

8 nude awakenings

Once Mitchum left, we returned to our suite. We had another surprise waiting for us. As I reached for the door, I realized it was slightly ajar. My heart rate sped up a little. In our rush, had we done that? Was someone in there? Had that fire been started on purpose and the alarm set off so someone could sneak in and wait for our return? I motioned for Brien.

“Door’s ajar,” I whispered in his ear as he bent down. He got it immediately.

“Stay here,” he whispered in reply. What I had in mind was going back downstairs and getting hotel security to come check it out. Instead, Brien sprang into action. He bolted into the sitting room, practically ripped one of the table lamps from its electric socket, and held it up over his head like a gladiator wielding a mallet or a mace. The sitting room was empty. Brien placed a finger to his lips, dashed through the French doors into our bedroom and returned in a matter of seconds.

“Housekeeping,” he said. In his hand, he held a little gold box of chocolates and a note from housekeeping. They had cleaned the room while we were downstairs. Why not? We hadn’t placed the do not disturb sign on the door when we left.

“Why didn’t they shut that door?” I wondered aloud.

“Maybe they were in a rush with the fire and the alarm and all the confusion, Gidget.” Mick yawned and stretched as he made a beeline for that chaise lounge on the veranda. I watched him slip out the door in his hotel robe and slippers. Then it hit me. Why would anyone be cleaning rooms with a fire alarm screaming at them?

“Mick’s clothes!” I dashed into the closet off our bathroom. I had left those wet clothes in a laundry bag—a black bag hotel guests could use to send out their personal items for cleaning.

“Gone! It’s gone, Brien. The bag with Mick’s clothes in it is gone!” I stood there with both fists balled up. “What if that whole fire alarm deal was a distraction to get us out of our room so they could search it?” Brien stood up from where he had been on his knees, plugging that lamp back in.

“It’s okay, Kim. There probably wasn’t much the police could do with those stinky things. If somebody searched the room, they know we're not hiding anything. And, if they took that bag thinking the GPS device was in it, they’re in for a nude awakening!” I blinked.

“A what?”

“A nude awakening. When you’re suddenly faced with the naked truth. It’s not always pretty, Kim.”

“
Rude
awakening, Brien. Not nude.” He blinked back at me.

“The naked truth can be rude, but…” I interrupted him, speaking of rude.

“Oh, never mind. I’m going to call Alex to ask if housekeeping was really in here during a fire drill or whatever it was. Not that I believe bad guys would have made the bed and left us chocolates.”

“Delicious chocolates, too. You want one?” Brien popped a little truffle in his mouth as he asked that question.

“No, I’ve had too much sugar today as it is. I feel almost as jittery as Twitchin’ Mitchum. What is it with that guy?” I groused under my breath as I waited for someone to answer the call I had placed to room service. When they picked up, I asked to speak to Alex. No luck, dang it. I left him a voice mail message inquiring about housekeeping’s visit to our suite.

I hung up the phone and dragged myself out to the veranda. Brien was polishing off the rest of those chocolates with a canned espresso he must have found in the tiny, well-stocked fridge in our suite.  I slumped into a chair next to him and pondered our situation. Despite our vow to stay out of it, here we were knee deep in muck and mire. How had we gotten into this mess? Mick's turning up on our doorstep, so to speak, was a big part of the problem but not all of it.

Why had those two stooges been interested enough in us to follow us around that day? Had it been the news coverage, or Davis’ accusations that we were in cahoots with Owen? Were his suspicions enough to get the Rich Guy with deep pockets to have us followed? Visiting Willow at the hospital the day after that confrontation with Davis could have added fuel to the fire, inflaming speculation that we were plotting with her. It also probably didn't help that we had wandered around behind Corsario's Hideaway and tried to have a chat with Goddard. Interesting how shady an innocent set of events could look, reflecting on them later. I had to admit, Brien and I sure appeared to be mixed up in the mess with Owen. If that was true and we were all in it together, why hadn’t Goddard welcomed us into his bar when we knocked? That was a question I hope Rich Guy never got close enough to ask.

If only Mick hadn’t decided to follow us that day, rather than finish what he had set out to do and deliver that GPS device to Willow. If they had called the police, things might have gone in a different direction for Mick and the rest of us. Not that he seemed worried about it. He dozed in the chaise lounge.

He had to be exhausted by the ordeal. Who could blame him for that? Trying to fight off the sense of impending doom that engulfed me, I made a few half-hearted attempts to dig up background information about the resort developers. I didn’t have my laptop, so I searched the web on my smart phone. That was slow going but I did find a few old pictures of the development team.

When I roused Mick from his sleepy state to take a look, he recognized none of them as the Rich Guy he had seen talking with Davis and the diver we now called Larry. Nor was the Rich Guy in pictures I showed him of happy developers sitting around a conference table or posing with members of the San Albinus City Council on a newly opened boardwalk. Not long after, Mick dropped off, again, snoring this time.

Maybe I was crashing after that sugar and caffeine binge, but I felt despondent and almost paralyzed by our circumstances. Brien had just the opposite reaction. He was buzzing. That new jolt of chocolate and caffeine had pushed him into hyper-drive. Brien sat down and tried to watch surf videos on his phone. Two minutes later, my hunky surfer dude popped up and headed back inside to our suite. In no time, he returned with a new suggestion about what to do next. 

“The coffee and donuts have me wired. All the grievous things going on around us, too. We must have caught Jessica’s calamity magnetism. You want to go to the gym and work out with me, Gidget?” Those sentences spewed forth at a startling speed, running together without a pause or a breath in between them.

“Oh, I’d like to work out with you, all right, Moondoggie. Too bad we’re stuck babysitting.”

“This New Year’s Eve sucks, so far, doesn’t it?”

"Having a drunken, snarky surfer dude in a Santa suit fall on our floor at the crack of dawn was bad. Listening to his sad story while our detective friend with nervous tics slid closer and closer toward his dark side was worse. A fire and two dead bodies in one day, the worst. Not what I had in mind as a way to say goodbye to the old year.”

Sucks, was putting it mildly
, I thought. I stopped before uttering those words aloud, trying to halt my plunge into despair. Instead, I stood and took a couple of steps toward Brien. I stood on my tiptoes and planted a big kiss on Brien's luscious lips.

“Mick won’t be here much longer. Mitchum is going to pick him up and take him into protective custody, and then you can make it up to me.”

“That’s a promise!” Brien lifted me up off the ground and twirled me around. My head was still spinning when he put me back down, smothering me with kisses. With a knock on the door, new hope sprang into my heart.

“Ooh, Brien, maybe that’s Mick’s new babysitters.” Brien wasn’t convinced and shifted into hypervigilant mode. The fire-and two-dead-bodies part of our eventful New Year’s Eve had not been lost on him, either. He pressed a finger to those dreamy lips I had been smooching, then quietly made his way to the door and peered through the peephole. I saw a wave of relief flow over him as all his tensed muscles relaxed.

“It’s Alex.” Still being cautious, Brien opened the door but left the security chain on it. “Hey, Alex, what’s up?”

“I may know where that bag is—both bags. I got Kim's message.” He looked over his shoulder as if concerned that someone might overhear him.

“Wait, I’ll let you in.” Brien closed the door, removed the security chain, and then reopened it. Alex stepped into the room and Brien shut the door behind him.

“I’ve been asking around, and one of the women in housekeeping thinks she might have picked it up and tossed it in with the other laundry on her cart. A black cloth bag, kind of like our Santas carry around here. She remembers it because it was wet, stinky, and lying on the floor near one of the elevators. Housekeeping was in here already today, too. The room number was posted as one that had been cleaned. Whoever cleaned it would have had to swipe a card to get in, so there's probably a record of the time they entered the room if it's important to know.”

“It could be. Let's take care of the bag search for now. How do we find it?” I asked.

“Find what?” We all turned to see Mick peering in at us from the veranda through the screen door. Still half asleep, he wasn't all that careful about his bathrobe.

“Mick, shut the robe, Dude. We’ve seen more than enough of you for one day.” I glanced at Brien, then at Alex, who had a smirk on his face.
Here we go again
, I thought. Before I could say a word to clarify matters, Alex spoke.

“I know, I know, it’s not what it looks like!”

“Yeah, and it’s none of your business as long as nobody’s hurt, right? So where can we find that bag—both bags?”

“In the laundry room down in the basement. You need an employee card to get in there, so I'll escort you.”

“I want to go, too.” Mick slid the door open and stepped inside.

“I’m not so sure you should go anywhere, Mick. You do not look well, Bro. Not to mention you can’t go roaming around the hotel in a bathrobe, flashing people.”

"Don’t you have a pair of swim trunks I can put on under this thing?”

“That could work, Brien. With dark glasses, too, he might not draw much attention to himself," I sighed. "Besides, he might be able to spot that bag sooner than we can. It ought to be easy enough to find a black bag in the midst of all the white sheets staff must unload around here. But, who knows?”

“Got it. Can you wait a minute, Alex?”

“Sure.”

“Follow me, Mick.” Brien took Mick into the bedroom. Soon they were back with Mick in a pair of trunks and one of Brien’s t-shirts. The trunks fit pretty well, but that shirt was way too big. An appropriate choice, otherwise. The picture on the front of that shirt had Santa doing a wild maneuver on a surfboard.

“Good one, Brien. Maybe they’ll figure Mick’s face got hammered in a surfing accident. The glasses are a big help, too, don’t you think, Alex?”

“I guess so,” Alex replied wobbling his head back and forth in a non-committal way. Brien had slipped on a pair of sneakers and Mick now wore Brien's Rainbow flip-flops instead of slippers.

“Let’s go!” I said, and the three of us marched out of the room behind Alex. He keyed in our destination, so we went straight to the basement, avoiding stops at other floors and picking up guests.

When we stepped off the elevator, Alex led us to the laundry room and opened the door. A sea of laundry confronted us. Some piled in carts, had already been sorted, as Alex pointed out. Other sacks were waiting to be dumped and sorted. Wouldn’t you know it? Those bags included more than a few like the one I had used to stash Mick’s Santa suit!

“This is going to take a while,” I muttered.

“It better not take you too long. All the rooms are supposed to be cleaned by 1:00. They’re running a little behind because of the fire and all.” As he said that, he paused for a moment and looked at each of us. I could tell he was having second thoughts about helping us.

“The fire wasn’t even on our floor,” I said, hoping to allay any suspicions he held that the incident had anything to do with us. Those words did more for him than they did for me. I was still plenty uneasy about the all too timely coincidence. Of course, anyone watching us would surely have figured out we fled our suite in the company of a homicide detective. With any luck they'd come to the conclusion that Mick had passed that GPS device along to Mitchum.

“The laundry crew comes in after that to sort items that get laundered here from those they bag up and send out for special care or dry cleaning at a shop in San Albinus. Those smaller bags piled up over there are guests’ personal items, so probably not where you want to start.”

“Thanks, Alex.” For more than an hour, we went at it. Not a pleasant task, by the way. Housekeeping and the laundry crew are underpaid, no matter how much they make. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the hotel catered to pigs rather than people. That’s probably not a nice thing to say about pigs.

The sad part of this latest unexpected turn of events on New Year’s Eve was that we didn’t find either bag. It was unsettling that Mick’s Santa suit wasn’t in there. Worse that despite our disgusting chore, we had not discovered that GPS device. I was beginning to hate that thing.

Was it the Maltese Falcon, like the worthless object that had kept all those bad guys in that old Dashiell Hammett story, duking it out with Sam Spade? Was Mitchum right all along? Had Owen Taylor made it up? He didn’t strike me as a diabolical mastermind. Deluded, maybe. Wouldn't Davis, and the unknown puppet master now pulling the strings, have required more than the word of a deluded dope like Owen to get on board with his scheme? There had to be something tangible and tantalizing to have set off the latest round of trigger-pulling and dead bodies.