Puppet (12 page)

She tears at the envelope before she realizes it isn’t sealed, pulls out a series of newspaper reports.
WOMAN SHOOTS MAN IN CROWDED HOTEL LOBBY
, one headline screams.
MURDER AT THE FOUR SEASONS HOTEL
, announces another. And still another:
WOMAN TARGETS TOURIST
.

“Great.” Amanda stares hard at the grainy, black-and-white photograph of the man identified as John Mallins, finding him much as Ben described—a middle-aged man with a mustache. Ordinary in every respect but one—he’d been shot and killed by the woman in the photograph next to his.

Amanda delays looking at the picture of her mother for as long as she can, choosing to concentrate on the text below it.
Gwen Price
, it reads,
age 61, is seen being led from the
lobby of the Four Seasons hotel by two policemen, after a man vacationing at the hotel was gunned down at point-blank range.

Amanda gasps as she raises her eyes to the photograph of her mother being led from the hotel in handcuffs. Who is this person? she wonders, trying to reconcile the frail, fair-haired woman she sees with the raging harridan of her childhood and the glassy-eyed automaton of her youth. Another photograph is more familiar. It is a close-up of her mother sitting in the backseat of the police car, staring out the side window, her gaze blank, bordering on indifference, although her jaw is relaxed, and her lips are actually hinting at a smile. “What the hell are you smiling about?”

The papers are frustratingly vague about the actual attack, the police unwilling to speculate on a motive for the shooting.
“At this point, your guess is as good as mine,”
someone named Detective Billingsly is quoted as saying.

“Who are you, John Mallins?” Amanda skims the various articles for any pertinent information, but finds only details she already knows.
John Mallins … 47 years old … a businessman from England … vacationing in Toronto with his wife and two children …
She stops reading, her gaze returning to the man’s picture. “Who vacations in Toronto in February?” she asks out loud, echoing Jerrod Sugar’s earlier query. “You came here to see somebody, didn’t you?” Was it my mother?

There is a knock on the door. “Room service,” a voice announces before Amanda has time to ask who it is.

“You’re early,” Amanda tells the young man gratefully, leading him into the center of the room. He is short and slender in his maroon uniform, his pale skin scarred by acne. He looks barely out of his teens. “You can set it up over here.” She motions to the foot of the bed.

The waiter awkwardly adjusts the sides of the tray table, smooths the white tablecloth, lifts the lid off the carrot soup for her inspection, then does the same thing with the main course. “Roast chicken, asparagus, and a baked potato with butter, sour cream, bacon, and chives.”

“It smells wonderful.” She signs the chit, leaves a generous tip. “Thank you.” He doesn’t move, and for a second Amanda wonders if she’s left enough. She follows his gaze to the bed, the newspaper clippings lying like squares on a quilt across the bedspread. “Terrible thing,” she ventures. “Were you here at the time?”

“I was in the hotel, yeah. But not in the lobby. I didn’t see anything.”

“I bet you’ve heard plenty, though.”

He shrugs. “A bit.”

“Like what?”

“We’re not supposed to talk about it.” The young man shifts uneasily from one foot to the other, eyeing the clippings suspiciously. “Are you a reporter?”

“A reporter? God, no. I was just curious.” Amanda leans forward to sniff at the carrot soup, allows the front of her robe to gape slightly. “Is his family still here?”

The boy’s eyes glom on to her partially exposed breasts. “Yeah,” he mutters distractedly. “Actually, I just took the kids up some hamburgers.”

“They’re not on this floor, are they?” She tries to make the question sound as casual as possible, but a slight catch in her voice threatens to betray her. “I mean, it freaks me out a little to think I might be staying on the same floor as some poor guy who got shot.”

“Don’t worry. They’re on the twenty-fourth floor, other side of the hotel.”

Amanda smiles, gathers the sides of her robe together.

“I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”

“Told me what?” Amanda smiles, and the waiter nods gratefully before backing out of the room. “Other side of the hotel,” Amanda repeats as she plops down on the bed, and lifts the lid from her carrot soup, wondering what, if anything, she plans to do with this information. “Twenty-fourth floor.”

S
URPRISINGLY
, she sleeps well, having dozed off sometime during the third period of the hockey game, and waking up only when a knock on her door announces room service is waiting with her breakfast. She throws on her robe and stumbles groggily toward the door, sleep clinging to her neck and shoulders, like a too needy lover. She vaguely remembers having filled out the breakfast menu and hanging it outside her door last night when she wheeled her dinner tray into the hall, but she can’t remember what items she selected. “Smells good,” she says, the wondrous scent of Canadian bacon bringing her fully awake as she ushers the pretty Filipino waitress inside. The young woman sets up the tray table at the foot of the bed. “Were you here when that man was shot?” Amanda asks casually, as the woman hands over the bill for her signature. What the hell? It doesn’t hurt to try.

The waitress shakes her head, her dark ponytail waving adamantly from side to side. “It was my day off.”

“Terrible thing.”

“Yes, miss. Very terrible.”

“Did you ever meet Mr. Mallins?”

Again, a vigorous shake of her head.

“I understand his family is staying on the twenty-fourth floor.”

“I don’t know, miss,” the waitress replies, cutting Amanda off before she can say anything else. She motions toward the tray table. “Here you have orange juice, coffee, bacon and eggs, whole-wheat toast, and morning newspaper. Can I get you anything else?”

“No, nothing. Thank you.”

“Have a nice day.”

“You too.” Amanda pours herself a cup of coffee and carries it to the window, stares down at the street. There isn’t a lot of traffic, which isn’t surprising since it’s early Sunday morning and the snow has been falling steadily all night. What was she doing badgering the poor waitress? Does she really think the kitchen staff will know anything of value? Even if she can persuade one of them to tell her what room the dead man’s family is staying in, even if she is foolhardy enough to go up there, it doesn’t necessarily follow that Mrs. Mallins will know anything about why her husband was shot. And even if she did, does Amanda seriously think she’d consider sharing that information with the daughter of the woman who shot him?

Still, seeing her, talking to her, might provide at least a clue.

Or maybe not.

When had she ever had a clue about anything where her mother was concerned?

Amanda returns to the tray table, glances down at the morning paper. The front page is filled with news about the growing probability of America going to war with Iraq. There is nothing on the front page, or indeed,
anywhere in the first section, at all about the murder. Only in the section called GTA, which she assumes stands for Greater Toronto Area, does she find any mention of the crime, and it’s basically a recap of everything she’s already read. Mystery Still Surrounds Murder of Tourist, the small headline states, the ensuing article barely mentioning Mrs. Mallins at all.

“Somebody has to know something,” Amanda mutters, unwrapping the cellophane from the top of the glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, and swallowing the juice in one long gulp. She looks at the clock. Eight thirty. Four and a half hours before she’s supposed to meet Ben in the lobby. What’s she supposed to do till then?

“I can’t even go shopping,” she pouts, knowing that the stores don’t open until noon. She flips on the television set, browsing so quickly through the channels that the remote seizes up, its fading batteries unable to keep time with the speed of her thumb. Eventually, she succeeds in shutting the damn thing off and tosses the now useless remote to the floor, finishing her breakfast in silence. She then brushes and flosses her teeth until her gums are sore and stands under a long, hot shower, scrubbing mercilessly at whatever skin she has left after last night’s bath. It takes her almost forty minutes to dry and style her hair so that it looks as if she hasn’t styled it at all, and almost as long to apply her makeup so that it looks as if she isn’t wearing any. Then she tugs her black turtleneck sweater so roughly over her head she practically has to start the whole process all over again. “What the hell am I doing?” she asks her reflection in the mirror, seriously considering packing up her overnight bag and catching the first plane out of town.

There is a knock on the door. Ben? Amanda wonders, hearing a noise in the hall. Is it possible the man at the reception desk slipped Ben a key card? That he would use it? “Ben?” Amanda asks, coming out of the bathroom as the door to her room opens.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” a woman in a neat blue uniform exclaims. “I didn’t think anyone was here. I’ll come back later to make up the bed.”

“No, that’s okay. You can do it now.” Amanda steps back, allows the woman from housekeeping entry. “I’m leaving in a few minutes.” She is? Where is she going?

The woman props her supply table against the open door. She is in her mid to late thirties, small and round, and her skin shines like rich black satin against the pale blue cotton of her uniform. “You sleep well?” she asks, scooping the remote-control unit off the floor.

“Very well, thank you. No dreams.” No ex-husbands chasing her through snow-encrusted streets, no mothers waiting in opulent lobbies to ambush her with a gun.

“You saving these?” The housekeeper holds up the crumpled newspaper clippings littered among the sheets.

“No. You can throw them out.” What’s the point in saving them? She’s read them so many times she can almost recite them by heart.

“Nasty business.” The housekeeper shakes her head as she tosses the papers into a plastic garbage bag.

“Were you here when it happened?” Again Amanda tries to sound casual, as if she’s merely making polite conversation.

“No. I was finished for the day. But one of my friends, she was just coming in for her shift, and she saw the whole thing.”

“She did? What did she see?”

The woman from housekeeping leans in, whispers conspiratorially, “She saw this older, well-dressed woman walk across the lobby and shoot poor Mr. Mallins.”

“Poor Mr. Mallins,” Amanda repeats. “You sound like you knew him.”

“I cleaned his suite a couple of times.”

“He was staying in a suite?”

“I think he was pretty flush. Dressed real nice. Rumor has it he was wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit when he was shot.”

Amanda absorbs this latest bit of information. The only men she’s ever heard of who wear two-thousand-dollar suits are gangsters. Is it possible her mother has some connection to organized crime?

“Besides, his wife and kids were with him,” the housekeeper continues, oblivious to Amanda’s inner musings. “They needed two rooms.”

“Yes, I hear they’re still at the hotel.”

“Guess they have to wait until after the autopsy to take the body back to England. Such nice people. Kids are so well-behaved.”

“What’s Mrs. Mallins like?”

“Quiet. Doesn’t say much. Just real polite.” The housekeeper rolls the bedsheets into a giant ball, looks contrite. “The management says we shouldn’t discuss what happened, but it’s hard not to, you know. Everybody wants to talk about it.”

“Of course.”

“It’s funny. People are always worrying about young black men causing trouble, when it’s the old white women you gotta watch out for.” She laughs.

Amanda tries to join in, but the laugh catches in her throat. “I better go, let you do your work.” She grabs her purse and coat from the closet, throws both across her shoulders.

“Have a nice day,” the housekeeper calls after her.

The elevator is empty when Amanda steps inside, but it stops on the fourteenth floor to admit a middle-aged man lugging a heavy suitcase, and again at the tenth floor for a woman and her two young children.

“Mommy,” the little girl whines as the elevator doors draw to a close. “Tyler’s stepping on my toes.”

“Am not,” her tow-haired brother responds, deliberately pushing against his younger sister.

“He’s pushing me.”

“Am not.”

“Tyler, that’s enough.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Well, stop it anyway.” His exasperated mother smiles wanly at Amanda.

Attractive woman, Amanda thinks, although she already looks exhausted, and the day has barely begun. Amanda returns the woman’s smile, silently congratulating herself for her decision not to procreate.

“Where’s Daddy?” the little girl demands, tugging at her mother’s skirt. “I want Daddy.”

It suddenly occurs to Amanda that she is standing in the elevator with Mrs. Mallins and her two children. A million questions instantly fill her brain: What was your husband doing in Toronto? Did he come specifically to see my mother? What was the relationship between them? Is there anything, anything at all, you can tell me, that will
make sense of all this craziness? “Mrs. Mallins,” she begins softly, the name a whisper.

The woman turns toward her. “I’m sorry. Did you say something?”

The elevator door opens at the lobby, and the man with the heavy suitcase barrels his way out first. “I’m sorry to bother you,” Amanda begins, hanging back.

“Daddy!” the little girl shouts, flying into her father’s waiting arms.

“Daddy!” Tyler shouts louder, throwing himself against the man’s legs.

“Yes?” The woman in the elevator looks expectantly at Amanda.

Amanda feels instantly foolish. “I’m sorry. My mistake. I thought you were someone else.”

“What took you so long?” the woman’s husband asks, as he guides his family toward the exit.

“Tyler had to go to the bathroom, and then Candace said she had a tummy ache.”