In Between (11 page)

“I'm going to go read that manuscript,” Sam said. “You can play games with him if you want.” He lingered long enough to watch Royce discover the mess in the bathroom.

Royce went to the door, opened it, and stepped into a puddle. Both sinks were overflowing. He cursed and hurried to turn off the water and open the drains. He turned off the bathtub water and opened that drain.

“It's getting to him,” Lori muttered. “At least, he's sweating a little.”

Royce threw a couple of towels down on the water on the floor and stomped to the living room again where he stood glaring with his hands on his hips.

“Yeah, but the wrong way. He's just getting mad. Wrong reaction. Now what?”

Royce was striding across the room to the door to the corridor. He pulled it open savagely, and cursed again, louder and more vehemently. He gave the housekeeping cart a hard shove, sending it back toward the end where it had been parked before. At that moment Louise entered the suite through the sliding door.

“Royce, for God's sake, what are you doing?” she demanded in her shrill voice.

“Nothing!” He slammed the door and swung around to turn his glare onto her.

“Well, you don't have to make a damn fool of yourself doing it.” She put a wrapped sandwich down on the desk. “Pastrami on rye. I think that's what you ordered. Haven't you even started on that speech yet?”

“See you later,” Sam said. He was laughing when he vanished.

“Someone banged on the door,” Royce muttered. He went to the desk and sat down, opened both laptops, his and Vicente's, without speaking to her again. She regarded him for a moment, shrugged, and withdrew to the walkway. As soon as she was gone, Royce got up and went to the table where glasses and a couple of bottles were, along with the ice bucket. He poured an inch or two of scotch, opened the ice bucket and cursed again. He sipped his scotch, grimaced, and headed for the bathroom, where he ran water into the glass. While he was there Lori unwrapped the sandwich which had been cut into halves. She took a big bite of excellent pastrami on rye. Her hand melted through the sandwich a moment later when Royce returned.

He yelped and dropped his glass as the sandwich fell to the floor. Lori regarded it with regret. Pastrami had escaped and separated, mustard side down, on the thick pale carpet. Before Royce moved, Colonel opened the sliding door and stepped inside the room.

“Royce, if you've transferred the speech to a thumb drive, I'll pick up—” He stopped. “My God, what happened?” He was looking at the mess on the floor with near horror.

“It slipped off the table,” Royce said quickly. “I tried to grab it and dropped my glass.”

“For God's sake, man, call housekeeping and get that mess cleaned up. About the speech on your thumb drive?”

“I'll do it immediately,” Royce said. “It won't take a minute. I'll clean up that stuff afterward.”

“Do the speech. I'll get a towel and soak up the scotch. It smells like a cheap bar in here.” He started to walk toward the bedroom and bathroom beyond, and Royce blocked him.

How far away was the bathroom? Lori wondered, and put herself there. To her satisfaction, it was far enough. She had a physical hand. She used it to turn on the water in both sinks and close the drains, then flitted back to the sitting room.

“I'll get to that,” Royce was saying. “Sit down, relax a minute. First the speech, then clean up.” He had put his hands on the other man's chest.

“Nonsense,” Colonel said angrily, knocking Royce's hands away. “You just get to the speech.” His voice had taken on a different tone, a tone of command without a trace of cordiality.

Royce backed away from him, sat down at the desk, and inserted the thumb drive into the laptop. He began to scroll, searching for the speech.

Colonel strode through the sitting room, through the bedroom and into the bathroom. He cursed in a loud voice. “Goddamn it, Royce, what's wrong with you? There's water everywhere, faucets turned on. Have you lost your senses?”

Royce groaned. “There's something wrong with the plumbing,” he said. “It just comes on like that.” He had the speech finally and files were being transferred to the thumb drive. It didn't take long. When he was done, Colonel was standing over him, regarding him with a frowning, intent expression. “The laptop's all yours,” Royce said, removing the thumb drive. Colonel took the laptop without a word, turned and walked to the sliding door, where he paused.

He gave Royce another long, sober examination, frowning. “Pull yourself together, Stossel. When you finish rewriting the speech and print it, let me have a look,” he said coldly and walked out.

Well, Lori thought, that was interesting. The little bit of haunting had shaken Royce, but he had become angry, not frightened, while Colonel's words and expression had washed the color from his face and made his hands shake. Afraid of Colonel, afraid for his position in the company, afraid of what was in the manuscript that could have repercussions for him? Maybe all of the above, she told herself. Sitting on the back of the sofa she watched Royce clean up the sandwich and toss a towel down on the scotch-soaked carpet. A smear of mustard remained on the carpet. He scowled at it, then went to the bathroom for a wet towel and spread that on the stain. Finally he sat at the desk and began to examine the speech on his monitor.

Lori flitted to the end room where Sam was reading the manuscript. “Anything?” she asked.

“Oh boy!” he said. “Emails between Royce and Malcolm, between Malcolm and a couple other company men, science studies heavily redacted, or rejected altogether. It's dynamite. How about you?”

“Royce is afraid of Colonel, who called him Stossel, and who wants to see the speech when it's rewritten. That's the weak link, Sam. He wasn't afraid of balls flying around, or water overflowing, but he's afraid of Colonel. I need to think while you read away.”

Minutes later Sam looked up from the manuscript to see Lori with her eyes nearly closed, slowly rocking back and forth on the bed. “Enough of that,” he said shuffling the manuscript pages back together in a neat stack. “It's damning, more than damning. Plenty to kill for to prevent publication.”

Lori did not respond.

“I'll go eavesdrop some more,” he said. “I'll leave this here if you want a look at it.”

She nodded and waved him toward the door. He scowled at her, then left to drop in on Alex first, then whoever came to mind next. In half an hour he was back. She was still sitting cross legged on the bed, but with her eyes wide open and a determined expression on her face.

“What?” he asked.

“I need a tape recorder, or a smart phone that can record, a tablet, something that can pick up sound and play it back. Can do? I think I have it. What do you have?”

“The captain's been ordered to spend the night here. Alex's clothes are in the helicopter on their way to the police lab where they expect to find forensic evidence linking him to the murder. The lieutenant governor wants an arrest in the morning, to clean up this mess and let the big shots get on with business. Alex's girlfriend, who happens to be an attorney for the group he belongs to, is with him. She claimed to be his attorney and demanded they let her in. They're in the sack. I didn't linger. Royce is working on the computer in his room. The grieving widow and Cruella are packing up, planning to leave in the morning with their lawyer. They're going to meet with the others for a drink, then dinner in their room with Royce. And that's all.”

“It's plenty,” Lori said. “All good. I'll be in Royce's room. When you get the recorder, whatever form it takes, I'll tell you what I'm planning. See you.” She vanished.

Royce was still at the desk with two windows open on his laptop, comparing text from one side with the other. Looking over his shoulder Lori easily spotted the changes he had made. First, a sickeningly fulsome eulogy to Malcolm Vicente, followed by a welcoming statement to the attendees in Vicente's name. A gradual slide into first person Royce Stossel praising the past year at ChemAg…

Lori left him to inspect the rest of the suite. No one had cleaned up a thing: a towel was still on the spilled scotch, another on the mustard-stained carpet. Wet towels were strewn about on the bathroom tiles. Thoughtfully she turned on the taps and closed the drains in the sinks then moved on to the bedroom. More thoughtfully she added a couple of pillows and punched down the top pillow on one of the beds and rumpled the bedspread a lot. The television was showing an interesting movie with the sound muted, and that made her want to look in on Alex and his girlfriend. They were in bed, a sheet pulled over them, her head resting on his chest, as close as two people could get to each other and still be separate entities. They were murmuring endearments. The girlfriend had copper-colored short, curly hair, and she had freckles. For some reason that pleased Lori and she blew them a kiss as she left, to flit back to Royce's room.

She had just settled on the sofa when the sliding door opened and Cruella entered. She sniffed in disgust at the messy room and turned a glare onto Royce. “For God's sake, haven't you finished yet? How long does it take to make a few changes in a speech already written?”

“It's harder than you think,” he snapped. “And I'm done. I just need to print it out.”

“Well, do it! We're having a drink with the others and then dinner in Mother's room at seven thirty. And for God's sake, clean yourself up. You haven't even had a shower today and you need a shave.” She talked as she moved through the sitting room to the bedroom door where she paused. “We're leaving in the morning, Mother and I. I'll come by and pack my things later.” She had moved on to the bathroom by then and she shrieked. “Royce, my God, what is the matter with you? There's water running!” She turned the taps off and on tiptoes left the bathroom to go to the closet in the bedroom. She shrieked even louder.

“Oh my God! How could you?” She was staring at the television. “You've been in here watching porn! Are you out of your mind?”

Royce jumped up from the desk chair and ran to the bedroom where he stared, stupefied, at the television. He ran to the bedside and fumbled with the remote. She snatched it out of his hands and turned off the television. Her mouth was a tight hard line with virtually no lips showing. She threw the remote across the room, marched to the closet and snatched out a dress. Then, without another look at him she went to the door and out.

Royce didn't move for a few seconds. He was pale and sweating, his hands shaking. Slowly he roused enough to return to the sitting room and go straight to the side table where he picked up the scotch bottle and drank from it.

“Shave,” he muttered, fingering his chin. “Shower. Clean up.” He bit his lip and went to his laptop, tapped in print commands, and then went to the bathroom where there were no more dry towels. Frowning, he went to the telephone, paused his finger over room service, and instead of calling for towels, he went to the corridor door and opened it. Cautiously, he peered down the corridor both ways, then darted out to grab some towels from the cart that was still parked near his door.

At the bathroom doorway, he took off his shoes and socks before entering. Lori watched him take off his shirt and toss it down and start to take off his slacks. She waited until the shower was running before she approached the laptop.

She was seated at the desk when Sam appeared. “I have a cell phone and a tape recorder outside, on the cart,” he said. “And don't even ask how much trouble it was to snare them.” He looked at the monitor. “What the hell are you doing? We can't contact anyone, remember.”

“But I can edit his text,” she said.

On the screen in large print on three lines were the words:
Why me? Why murder Vicente? Why me?

“I just found the right letters and moved them around a little, added bold and a bigger font. His words, not mine.”

“He'll just delete all that. Then what?”

“Take the first page of the printout and stash it somewhere. I'll print this. You'll see. I have this in the print queue for fifteen copies. It's all he'll print at least that long. Bring in the tape recorder and turn it on, and put the cell phone turned to record in the bedroom. After that no more talk between us, just in case. People can't hear us, but who knows about a machine? It's going to be show time any minute now. I'd be willing to bet that he doesn't know a thing about print queues.”

She deleted her page of edited text, leaving the first page of the speech on the monitor as Sam went through the wall to the corridor in order to push the cart back to the door of the suite. At the far end of the corridor he saw Captain Conkling entering the last bedroom, the one he had come to think of as his room. Back inside Royce's suite, he opened the door, retrieved the tape recorder and cell phone, and handed them both to Lori.

“The good captain is going into our room, and the manuscript is still on the bed. I'll see what he makes of it.” He vanished.

Lori turned on the tape recorder and placed it on the desk with a sheet of paper over it. Then she hurried to the bedroom and set the cell phone to record and put it on the bedside table facing the television. Listening for the shower, she went to the television and turned it on again to the porn movie. When Royce entered a second or two later, dressed in the white robe furnished by the resort, she watched him go to the dresser and open a drawer where his shirts had been. He pulled it out all the way, cursed under his breath and pulled out the lower drawer, then went to the twin dresser and repeated his actions, cursing more audibly. He went to the closet and yanked out a suit, shoved other garments to one side and, after tossing the suit down on one of the beds, he spotted the movie playing.

“God damn it!” he yelled and ran to the television and turned it off. His hand was shaking. He sat down on the bed and rubbed his hand over his face. “What the fuck is happening?” he muttered and he buried his face in his hands and slumped. After several seconds he stood and returned to the bathroom where he picked up the shirt he had taken off and tossed down. It was wet. Everything in the bathroom was sodden, water stood on the tile floor, droplets fell from the mirrors. He looked ready to weep as he walked woodenly into the sitting room, carrying the wet shirt. He went to the desk and lifted the phone, then dropped it when he saw the printout with the words
Why me? Why murder Vicente? Why me?