Other People's Baggage (5 page)

MIDNIGHT ICE: NINE

  

The scene was far worse than I'd expected. I needed to call someone—maybe the front desk, maybe 911—and tell them a man was about to be shot by the waterfront, when both men turned and faced the hotel. The man with the gun was Louis.

As I stood there, as still as I could, I realized that I'd made the biggest mistake of my life by turning on the lights. If they'd been able to signal to each other earlier, then surely they'd be able to see me, now.

Jack Jordan clasped his hands together and brought them down on the back of the other man's head. Louis fell to the ground and dropped the gun. Jack picked it up and jogged up the hill.

I knew I couldn't go back to my room. That would be the first place Jack would look for me. I started to leave, tripping over the corner of the bedspread. I heard a sound by the door, mechanisms inside the keycard lock that had tumbled. I was trapped.

I scanned the room for a hiding place. If I got past the beds and found the opening between the curtains I could open the sliding door to the balcony and hide outside, but for how long? The idea of falling down four stories was about as appealing as being caught in the room red-handed.

My right hand was on the closet door, which slid open an inch. As the door to the room opened up, I squeezed into the closet and slid the door shut behind me. I waited, with my heart pounding in my chest, for someone to open the doors and expose me.

I pressed myself backward, despite the pressure of something already in the closet digging into my thigh. A safe, probably, or luggage stand. I knew the importance of remaining still despite the discomfort. I only wished the occupants of room 419 had taken the time to hang up their clothes so I'd have something to hide behind.

“I'm telling you, the light came from this room. I've been watching the windows all night. I didn't make a mistake,” said a male voice.

I froze. It was Jack.

“I don't know what kind of game you're playing, but there's nobody here,” said another voice. It was the other man from the elevators that first day. That meant Louis was most likely the person who'd been knocked out by the waterfront.

“Check the balcony,” commanded Jack. “I'll check the closet.”

I felt the hand connect with the door to the closet before it slid to the side, leaving me face to face with Jack Jordan.

His eyes went wide for a second. He held a finger up to his mouth to silence me, then mouthed the words. “Trust me.” He slid the door shut as quickly as he'd opened it, leaving me speechless.

“You're wasting my time, Jordan. Where is she? I've traveled a long way and spent a lot of money and I'm not leaving without her.”

“I'm telling you, something's not right. We have to get out of this hotel.”

“No. This time I'm telling you what we're going to do. You're going to give me the lady and I'm going to walk out of here and head back to Los Angeles. She's going to be on a plane by midnight and I'm going to be a millionaire.”

“That's not what we agreed on.”

“Yeah? Well, things changed when you knocked out Louis. He's been keeping an eye on the lady since she got here and now he's out of the picture thanks to you. Makes me wonder if you've been planning a double cross all along.”

“Louis is the one who pulled the double cross. I was just taking care of myself,” said Jack.

“Not sure I believe you.”

There was silence, and I pictured the two men facing off, each with a pistol aimed at each other, waiting to see who was going to shoot first.

“Get the lady,” commanded the unnamed man.

“First I want to see the money,” said Jack.

“The money's in the safe in the closet. You'll get it when I see her.”

Before I could figure out how exactly I was going to master the art of transmogrifying, there was a knock on the door. I held my breath and listened for something, anything.

“See who that is,” said Jack.

Soft footsteps, muffled in carpet, walked past me to the door.

“It's the cops,” said the other man.

Another set of footsteps crossed the room, then, a dull thud. Someone grunted, then something large fell to the floor.

I couldn't see how any of that was good.

The closet door slid open. Jack Jordan grabbed my wrist and pulled me out. Grey suit's body lay slumped on the floor.

“There's a man in a uniform outside this door. He is not a cop. He is not going to expect to see you. Use that element of surprise and get out of here. Go to your room—no.” His eyes darted to my face and past me to the door. “Go to the lobby. There's a diner across the street. It won't be empty. Go there, get a booth, and wait for me. Don't talk to anybody, don't tell anybody what's happened.”

“You're crazy!” I hissed. I pulled away from him, but his grip on my wrists tightened.

“There's no time for me to explain what's going on. You have to trust me.”

“No,” I said in a barely audible whisper. “The cops are here to help me.”

The pounding on the door resumed. Jack stepped away from me and peered through the peephole, then came back. He put his hands on my forearms and squared me off. “When you open the door, look at the officer. Decide for yourself if you should trust him or not.”

“Why should I listen to you?” I asked.

Unexpectedly, he put his arms around me and hugged me, pinning my arms to my sides. “I know I'm asking a lot of a stranger,” he whispered in my left ear. He released his hug and stepped back, waiting to see what I would do next. “If you believe he's a real cop, then tell him everything.” He let go of me.

I stepped away from Jack, my back pressed against the wall. I searched his face for something reassuring but saw nothing. I stepped past him. When I reached the door, I looked to Jack one last time. He wasn't there. I tucked my chin and braced myself. I pulled the door open.

I recognized the uniformed officer who stood in the hallway. He had longish blond hair tucked behind his ears and a mole under his left eye. He was the man who had driven me from the airport to the hotel. He was not a cop.

Jack was telling the truth.

I sucked in a deep breath of air and pushed past him as instructed, then ran as fast as I could into the hallway, down the hall, to the elevator. My knee pulsed, but adrenaline kept me moving. I jabbed the up and down buttons by the elevator. The up button lit up first and I hopped inside and pressed Door Close. My heart pounded in my chest like a chef pounding out a chicken breast with a wooden mallet. I didn't care I was going up without an escape route. Up was better than where I had been, and after going up my only problem would be getting back down. I could deal with problems like that.

And then elevator stopped on the eleventh floor. The doors eased open and a fresh new problem confronted me.

I was face to face with Brad.

MIDNIGHT ICE: TEN

  

I slapped at the panel of buttons on the wall. One of the buttons screamed the alarm. The doors slid shut. Brad didn't move. I gulped deep breaths and punched the lobby button repeatedly, as if it would make the elevator travel faster. I looked around the elevator for a hidden security camera, something that indicated that there was a chance I wasn't really all alone. Aside from the reflection of the brunette stranger in a cowboy hat and Dodgers t-shirt in the mirrored ceiling, I saw nothing.

When I landed in the lobby several older couples stood around in nylon jog suits and bright white sneakers, as if their trip to Carmel had required new workout clothes. A police officer stood by the front door. I didn't know if he was real or not. My knee throbbed but I headed past the early birds to the front door anyway, in search of the crutches I'd abandoned in the front garden beds earlier that morning.

“I don't know who she is,” I heard. I looked in the direction of the voice and saw Kitty from the front desk talking to a man in a black suit and tie. “She was here right before Louis left. He found her crutches out front. I don't know where she went.”

“Did you see her leave the hotel?” asked the man.

“No.”

“Can you describe her?” he asked.

“She looks like, well, she looks like that,” She pointed to a poster from
Midnight Lace
that hung on the wall of the hotel. By her feet a small dog wound circles around her leg, circling her with a blue leash.

“She looks like Doris Day?”

“Pretty much. She has fluffy blond hair and a cute freckled nose. She's thin and wore a floral dress. She smiled a lot.”

The man studied the poster on the wall for a few more seconds. “Always liked her,” he said, as if he were talking to himself.

I stood to the side of the column, weighing my options. On one hand I could approach the man talking to Kitty, tell him what I'd been through, and hope he was somehow able to help me. There had to be a reason he was asking her about me. On the other hand, I didn't know
why
he was asking about me. I caught my reflection in the glass frame of the
Midnight Lace
movie poster and gasped. Brown streaks from the temporary coffee-hair color ran down the side of my face like skinny sideburns and dripped onto the collar of the t-shirt. I looked a wreck.

And suddenly I knew Brad hadn't recognized me.

I inhaled deeply and blew the air out of my mouth. I straightened my posture and walked out of the hotel as though I was balancing a book on the top of my head: confident, smooth, injury-free. The doctors had told me I would know when I was well enough to start walking without the crutches, and right now, I knew. Even though pain shot through my leg at evenly spaced intervals, I faked good health until I reached the sidewalk, then crossed the street and entered the diner Jack had mentioned.

A rotund man in a stained apron approached my table. I ordered a cup of coffee and a Denver omelet before realizing I had no money to pay. I unzipped the small red and white cotton purse I'd slung across my body, hoping Elli had left behind enough emergency cash to buy me breakfast in a somewhat overpriced diner in Carmel By-The-Sea. I didn't come up with any cash, but I came up with a small black velvet pouch.

With my right hand shaking, I felt the bulging contents through the velvet. As if the shaking was contagious, my left hand shook as I undid the knot in the drawstring. I fed two fingers into the small opening and spread the fabric apart, then looked inside at the base of a small light bulb.

Not what I'd expected.

The waiter returned and filled the chipped beige coffee mug on the table with steaming hot coffee. I dropped the pouch into my lap and covered it with my napkin. I couldn't tell if he'd seen it or not, but until I knew what it meant I didn't want anybody else to know I had it. I leaned in and busied myself with pulling the top off a small plastic cup of creamer, then dumped it into my mug and stirred. I kept up the routine until the waiter was back behind the counter, then tapped the spoon on the side of the mug and set it into onto the table.

What did it mean? I wondered. Had this pouch been filled with a diamond at one point like Jack had told me? And if so, where was it now? Had it ever been in the pouch? Or had this been a double-cross all along?

I drank from the chipped coffee mug and considered other questions. Where had the pouch come from? Even if I didn't agree with her choice of baseball teams, it seemed unlikely that Elli, the very stranger whose luggage I'd ended up with, was really a jewel thief and a double-crossing smuggler. But how else could I have come to be in possession of this pouch?

I closed my eyes for a second and thought back over what had happened earlier. I'd hidden in the room, in the closet. Jack had been the one who exposed me hiding in the closet. He asked me to trust him and he arranged a way for me to get out of there. And then he hugged me.

He must have planted the pouch on me during the hug.

I'd been oblivious to everything at that moment—everything except getting away.

It clicked into place. He was the one who'd told me to stay in my room. He was the one who knew my story, who pretended to protect me by asking the operator to screen my calls. It had been his idea for me to disguise myself, so no one else would recognize me. If he'd hidden the pouch on me, nobody else would think I was connected to him when he came to collect.

And one last thought hit me. It had been his idea for me to go to the diner.

A collection of bells announced new customers entering the diner. I looked up at the door and clutched the black velvet pouch tightly in my left hand. Jack headed directly toward my table, followed by the man in the black suit from the lobby.

MIDNIGHT ICE: ELEVEN

  

They slid into the booth across from me. I felt like a scared rabbit must feel when hunting dogs close in. A small, vulnerable animal with no avenue for escape.

“You did good back there,” said Jack.

“Who are you people?”

“We have to leave, Ms. Night,” said the man in the suit.

“I'm not leaving with either one of you until I know who you are and what this is about.”

The two men looked at each other, then the man in the suit nodded at Jack.

“Madison, I want you to meet my partner,” Jack said. “This is Special Agent Hamilton Reed.”

“Ms. Night, you are in possession of something illegal. You need to come with us.”

“The only thing I'm in possession of is a light bulb. You want it? It's yours.” I fished my fingers into the black velvet pouch, then set the small bulb on the table next to the salt shaker.

“Keep your voice down, Madison,” Jack said.

The two men looked at each other. Jack stifled a smile. Agent Reed stood up. I looked back and forth between their faces. Agent Reed sat back down. Jack put his forearms on the table and leaned in.

“What are you afraid of, Mr. Jordan?” I asked in as casual of a voice that I could muster. I used his last name on purpose. I didn't want to feel like we were on comfortable terms anymore. I wanted to go back to the strained formality we'd had yesterday. I reached out and palmed the light bulb and put it back into the pouch. “Surely you don't think I had anything to do with—with—with the disappearance of the lady,” I finished.

Agent Reed's eyes widened. “The lady?”

“Yes. The lady who came from Dallas. Mr. Jordan knows who I mean. Don't you?”

Jack turned to the special agent. “Get us some coffee. I need to talk to her alone.”

Agent Reed slid from the booth and took up a position at the counter. He briefly spoke to the cook, then raised a knee and half-sat on a worn green vinyl swivel stool with rust peeking from the joints. They weren't half bad, those stools. Sand the rust, redip them in chrome, reupholster the vinyl—

“Give me the pouch.”

“Sure,” I said. “I can't see why anybody would want it anyway.”

I set the pouch on the table in front of his arms. He kept his arms crossed for a few seconds while he considered it. “When did you realize it was a light bulb?”

“When I looked inside. I wanted to know what this is about,” I demanded. I expected him to refuse or to clam up.

“Why?” he asked, catching me off guard.

“Why what?” I repeated.

“Why do you care? It has nothing to do with you.”

“You lied to me. When I told you about Brad Turlington, you said he was a figment of my imagination. That's not true. When I ran past the cop outside of 419, I came face to face with him. It's him. I know it's him.
I know it's him.
”

Jack leaned forward. “Describe this guy to me.”

I closed my eyes for a second, breathing in the memory of Brad. “Tall, thin. Curly black hair. Sideburns. Glasses. He has on an orange plaid shirt and khaki trousers. Purple converse sneakers. He's wearing a gold watch, a vintage Rolex and he smells like Old Spice. He must have gotten caught in the sun yesterday because the tip of his nose is sunburned.” I was surprised by the level of detail I recalled of Brad from the split second I'd seen him in front of the elevator.

“What did he do when he saw you?” he asked.

I opened my eyes and stared at the chipped coffee mug. “Nothing. He didn't recognize me,” I said quietly.

Tears filled my eyes, tears I tried to blink back. Instead, they overflowed and ran in streaks down my cheeks, dripping bronzer-colored drops onto the white napkin in my lap. I swiped at the tears and inhaled sharply through my nose.

“Wait here.” Jack slid from the booth and joined Agent Reed. I willed myself to get control of my emotions.

I hadn't wanted to believe it was over, but after I'd left the hospital, I wanted nothing more than to move on. In time I'd stop looking for him around every corner. With time I'd learn to shut myself off so this would never happen again. I had come to Carmel to get away, to make a break, to clear my mind. I'd been emotionally vulnerable when I'd landed at the airport and I'd let that vulnerability turn into a paranoid roller coaster ride. Enough. I would not let Brad continue to erode my emotional stability.

I looked out the window of the diner toward the hotel. Men in painter's caps and overalls carried supplies through the front door. A white van was parallel-parked in front of the lawn. On the side of the van was a familiar logo: Pierot's Interior Design.

I knew the logo. I knew it all too well. Pierot's was the furniture store where Brad and I had met back in Philadelphia, when it was owned by Mr. Pierot, soon to retire. It was where Brad had taken me under his wing and taught me about Mid-Century Modern design, the store that I ran while he traveled the country taking interior design jobs. It was where I learned how to acquire merchandise for resale without breaking the bank. I narrowed my eyes as I wondered what the van was doing in California, then remembered when he'd ordered the signs—magnets, really—with the Pierot's logo, to add a bit of professionalism to his freelance team when he took jobs around the country.

Jobs around the country. Like Carmel By-The-Sea.

To Doris Day's hotel, currently under renovation before the annual Carmel Art Festival. That's why it had all seemed familiar. Brad had bid on this job when we were still together.

Another man opened the van and put a floor lamp inside. I recognized the style immediately, a product of the fifties atomic era that captured the whimsical impact that technology and outer space had inflicted on interior design. It was my single favorite design aesthetic, the one category where Brad and I disagreed when he trained me to be an interior decorator. He liked the minimalism of the mid-fifties, the planes of Danish modern, the simplicity of George Nelson and Charles Eames. I did too, but I was also drawn to the sillier aspect of midcentury design: yellow walls, sputnik lamps, radial clocks, donut phones, and boomerang tables. Where Brad's sense of decorating was rooted in wood, mine was rooted in laminate. He'd tried to change my tastes but it didn't work. Eventually, he blamed it on my fascination with Doris Day movies, something he knew he could never undo.

And here I was, sitting in a diner across the street from the hotel Doris Day owned in Carmel, watching a man in overalls carry furniture out of the hotel, furniture that by anybody's account had been handpicked to make the place something special.

In a moment, as I sat watching the man in overalls load items from the hotel into the back of the van, it occurred to me that everything I'd seen, everything I'd heard, everything I'd imagined, made sense if I trusted one man's information.

“Jack,” I called out suddenly. “I know where to find the diamond.”

The two men looked at me. I stared out the window, glued to the scene. I was right. I knew I was right. Now I just needed to make sure the right men believed me.

Special Agent Reed paid for my coffee and we left.

“Follow me,” I said, heading back to the hotel.

As I walked, I scanned the crowds of people already pouring onto the streets. Carmel By-The-Sea was a walking town, and by the looks of it, it was a morning town, too. Cars were in the way more than they were a convenience factor. I'd noticed most of the tourists parked their cars when they arrived and didn't move them again until the day they left.

A bicycle cop poised on his bike in the driveway between two hotels. His uniform matched that of the officer who had come to the hotel room earlier.

“Excuse me!” I called out to him before Jack or Agent Reed could respond.

The officer shielded his eyes and looked at me, but didn't respond. I crossed the street and closed the distance between us until I was right in front of him.

I took two deep breaths, one for courage and one because I was out of breath, then started talking. “Hi. I'm Madison Night. I'm staying at that hotel and there's something criminal going on in there. Some kind of jewel heist. Did you see the men who followed me out of the diner?” I asked.

I turned to look behind me and shielded my own eyes. Jack and Special Agent Reed were gone. I turned back to the officer, who was still staring at me. “I don't know where they went. Anyway, this is important. See that van in front of the hotel?” I pointed to the Pierot van. “Those aren't real decorators. They're faking it. They're pretending so they can take something valuable from the hotel.”

The officer looked over my shoulder, then back at me. “I'll keep an eye on them.”

“So you believe me? Do you want to take my name down for a statement or something?”

“That won't be necessary. I'll take it from here.”

That's exactly what I wanted to hear. “Thank you officer,” I said, all the while knowing the man I spoke to was faking his own identity as much as I had been faking my information.

I returned to the hotel lobby and found Jack and Agent Reed sitting by the fireplace. I wasn't terribly surprised they'd left me. I eased myself into the seat in front of them. My back was to the concierge desk.

“Here's what's going to happen—” I started.

“Ms. Night, with all due respect, you're not the one calling the shots,” said Special Agent Reed.

I crossed my arms and leaned forward. “Do you know what's going on?” I asked Agent Reed. When he didn't answer, I turned to Jack. “Do you?” I waited a couple of seconds.

“Listen to the lady, Reed,” said Jack.

Agent Reed crossed his own arms to mirror my body language. I wasn't sure if he was going to say something or not. He didn't.

“The cop I approached out front is not a cop but he thinks that I think he is. I told him to follow the men unloading the furniture from the hotel because they're not really decorators and they're trying to smuggle something valuable from the hotel.”

“Why do you think those men aren't really decorators?” Reed asked.

“They are decorators—that's the point. The fake cop doesn't know that, so now he's off on a wild goose chase.”

Neither Reed nor Jack reacted, so I knew the information I'd spoken so far wasn't news. I continued. “The diamond isn't in that van. It's safe. But if you want to make sure the men from 419 don't get her, we have to act fast.”

“Ms. Night, thank you for your help, we'll take it from here,” said Special Agent Reed. He stood up from the table and turned to Jack. “I'm going after the decorators.”

Jack nodded, then turned to me. “What else have you figured out?”

Jack Jordan had been the only person to investigate what I'd said so far. If anybody was going to listen to me, I suspected it would be him.

“The men loading the truck out front are probably freelancers. I didn't think about that when I made the reservation, but Brad's been applying for jobs around the country, trying to build his client base and his reputation. The hotel is under renovation. Brad must have hired freelancers when he took the job. He doesn't have a staff in California and it would be cheaper to hire someone here then to pay people to travel with him. You already told me Brad's not on the guest list. He's here to work, not to play. That's why his name isn't in the system. He's not part of the problem.”

“Go on.”

“The cop on the bicycle was wearing the same uniform as the man you knocked out upstairs. It says Carmel, NY.”

“And you told him to follow the decorators?”

“I figured it was the only way to get him away from the hotel.”

“But they're decorators,” Jack said.

“Yes. They're probably putting items in temporary storage so they can paint the place.”

He held out a hand. I grabbed it and he pulled me up. “Were you telling the truth, Ms. Night? You know where the rock is?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I'm going to visit our friends. You get the rock. Meet me as soon as you can.”

“You want me to get it?”

“You're the one who's undercover,” he said, with a hint of a smile pulling at the corner of this mouth.

“Where do you want me to meet you?”

“I'll let you figure that out, too.”

He left before I could tell him I seriously had no idea.