The Red Hotel (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) (12 page)

As they sat down, Everett explained that a jazz quartet would usually be playing on the small stage at the end of the saloon, and the tables all around them would be packed. This evening, however, there was only the three of them, apart from two waitresses and a barman, and the room was almost completely silent.

‘You can pretty much order what you like,’ Everett told them. ‘I’ve kept on three chefs in the kitchen because we still have to feed the maintenance crew and all the security guys, plus we’ll have at least fifteen cops in the building until the crime-scene people are done with what they’re doing, and they’re going to get hungry.’

T-Yon asked for a vegetable omelet with hash brown potatoes and biscuits, while Sissy chose a crab asiago bisque, which was a rich soup made with lumps of crabmeat, butter and cream. She was supposed to be on a diet. She was
always
on a diet – spinach, mostly. But she doubted if she would ever visit Baton Rouge again in her life – that’s if she survived
this
visit – so she decided that she might as well indulge herself.

Even as she ate, however, she couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was a
presence
in this hotel. She had never felt such cold hostility in any building before, and it wasn’t just the frigid air conditioning. It was almost as if somebody were covertly watching them, and narrowing their eyes with jealousy and hatred at every move they made. She couldn’t help herself from turning her head around, now and again, to see if she could catch anybody looking their way, but there was nobody there, apart from the bartender. All of the other tables were set with cutlery and glasses, but deserted.

‘Something wrong, Sissy?’ asked T-Yon, after a while. ‘You don’t like your soup?’

‘Oh goodness, no!’ said Sissy. ‘The soup is heavenly. But what I was saying before – about there being some kind of
atmosphere
here – I can still sense it very strongly, even now. In fact stronger than ever. I don’t know how else to describe it. I hesitate to call it a spirit.’

Everett was forking up rice and red beans. ‘I’m sorry, Sissy. No disrespect meant. But I really don’t believe in spirits.’

‘You don’t feel anything yourself?’

‘I feel angry. I feel frustrated. I feel devastated that we may not be able to open tomorrow.’

‘But you don’t feel anything else? You don’t feel when you walk around this hotel that somebody is resentful about you being here? Because that’s the feeling that I’m picking up on.’

‘Oh, come on, Sissy, who could possibly be resentful? Stanley and me, I think we’ve done an amazing job, remodeling. We’ve improved the whole district. We’ve given jobs to over a hundred seventy local people, of all ethnic backgrounds. I think we’ve brought something back that the riverside district has been missing for years. All of the other hotels are state-of-the-art modern. But The Red Hotel, it’s fun, it’s flamboyant. You should see some of the reviews we’ve had already. Four stars and we’re not technically open yet.’

‘Good for you,’ said Sissy. ‘But I’d still like to take a look around, if you’ll allow me. I mean, it’s quite possible that I’m mistaken, but I really don’t think so. I’m convinced that there’s something here that the crime-scene technicians just won’t be able to see, no matter how much Luminol they spray around.’

‘You’ll have to wait until the cops say it’s OK,’ Everett told her, wiping his mouth with his napkin. ‘But, well – my stubborn little sister has taken the trouble to bring you all the way down here, and I guess you can’t do any harm. That’s so long as you don’t let on to anybody else what you’re doing . . . especially the guests, if and when we get them back in. I’d rather they weren’t aware that you’re looking for some kind of evil manifestation.’

‘Now, then,’ Sissy corrected him. ‘I never said for sure that it was evil. Sometimes the most bothersome spirits are the spirits who are trying to do good, and to make amends for transgressions they committed when they were still alive.’

‘In that case,
phew
,’ said Everett, mopping his forehead in mock relief.

‘But don’t let’s count any chickens,’ Sissy cautioned him. ‘If that blood
is
human blood, then the chances are that this spirit or presence or whatever it is
does
have malign intentions. Not just malign, but murderous, too.’

‘But why?’ asked Everett.

‘Because many people who have passed over harbor deep feelings of envy for people who are still alive; and a few of them actually want to do them harm.’

‘You mean dead people want to murder live people?’

‘That’s about it.’

Everett said, ‘I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. Like I told you before, Sissy, I don’t believe in
any
of it. Spirits, after-lives—’

‘Not even God?’

He shook his head, emphatically. ‘Not even God. I was brought up a Baptist, but with a little bit of Roman Catholicism thrown in. Our Momma always made sure we went to church on Sundays; and when she died, and we were adopted by the Savoies, they still insisted that we went to church. You want to hear me sing
Oh, Happy Day
?’

‘No, no. You don’t have to do that. I’ll take your word for it.’

At that moment Detective Garrity came across the saloon, with Detective Mullard close behind him. Detective Mullard was vigorously blowing his nose.

‘Hi folks,’ said Detective Garrity. ‘Not too bad news. The forensics team are done checking the second and third floors, so if you need accommodation for yourselves tonight, those are the floors to head for. No guests tonight, Mr Savoie, but it looks like there’s an outside chance that you may be able to reopen and hold your opening ceremony tomorrow, as planned.’

‘So the CSIs didn’t find anything?’ asked Everett.

Detective Garrity shook his head. ‘Nope. Not on either of those two floors, anyhow. And believe me they have more than a dozen technicians up there, dusting every door handle for fingerprints and checking every inch of carpet for blood spatter.’

He looked across the table at Sissy, as if he expected her to challenge him, and ask,
How about spirits?
Did they check for spirits?
But Sissy knew when it was important to keep people on side, and she thought that it was better for her to say nothing at all.
The time might well come when I need your help, Detective Garrity, and I’m not going to put your back up just to score a point.

‘OK,’ said Detective Garrity. ‘We’ve carried out another thorough search of the entire hotel – floor by floor and room by room – and this time we brought in the tracker dogs, too, just to make sure. We even checked the a/c vents and the laundry disposal chutes. We’re now one hundred percent sure that Ella-mae Grover is no longer in the building; and neither are any unauthorized personnel. If somebody murdered Ella-mae, which is still the likeliest scenario, he or she somehow managed to take her cadaver out of the hotel and dispose of it elsewhere.

‘All the same, the hotel will be guarded by officers from the BRPD throughout the night, as well as your own security people, and I’ll come back to see you tomorrow morning, Mr Savoie, sir, and discuss the situation with you then.’

‘So we may be able to hold our opening gala after all?’ asked Everett.

‘Unless some dramatic new evidence turns up, maybe you will. Enjoy your meal, folks. And
dormez bien
.’

They stayed in the saloon, drinking and talking, until well past midnight. T-Yon tried to explain to Everett about the reading that Sissy had given her with the DeVane cards, and how she had seen
La Châtelaine
, the woman she took to be Vanessa Slider, and her son, Shem. She told him about the distressed faces that she had seen in the grass, and the blood, and how she had seen Everett himself waving a red flag for help. She even told him about the ghostly apparitions that they had seen in Sissy’s living room, the blurry white images that had flickered in front of them, and then faded.

Everett said, ‘You told me you were having nightmares, too. What was that about?’

T-Yon blushed. ‘I’ll tell you later, when it’s just you and me.’

‘You know what I think?’ said Everett. ‘I think this catering course of yours is putting a whole lot more pressure on you than you realize. You’re in a strange place, far away from home. You’ve found yourself a brand new boyfriend. That’s why you’re having nightmares. You’re, like, disoriented. Your brain is still trying to make some sense of it all.’

‘If it’s all in my head,’ T-Yon retorted, ‘how come the DeVane cards came up with all of those predictions about Vanessa Slider, and this hotel? How come Sissy feels that there’s some kind of atmosphere here? How come she knew Ella-mae’s name was Grover? Sissy never met me before. She never even knew who I was.’

Everett shrugged, and took a mouthful of Heaven Hill whiskey. ‘Don’t ask me, boo. Like I said, I don’t disrespect anybody who believes in the supernatural, and fortune-telling. I check my own horoscope every morning in the
Advocate
– not that it ever turns out to be the remotest bit accurate. But what’s been happening here – the bloody rug, the whistling, Ella-mae going missing – there has to be some rational explanation for it. Maybe it’s going to take some lateral thinking to find out who’s behind it. But, so far as I’m concerned, it’s a
who
. It’s a real person. Not a spirit, not a ghost. A real, genuine, living and breathing person. Vanessa Slider, come on, T-Yon. Be serious.’

Sissy drained her glass of wine, and stood up. ‘We’ll have to see, won’t we, Everett? To be honest with you, I very much hope that you’re right. At this particular moment, though, I think I badly need to get some sleep. Do you think you can show me where my room is?’

‘I’ll join you,’ said T-Yon. ‘I’m exhausted.’

Everett went to his office to check which rooms they had been allocated, and then took them up in the elevator to the second floor. One of the hotel’s security team was sitting opposite the elevator doors, reading
Sports Illustrated,
a huge African-American in a red shirt and black pants.
He stood up when they appeared, but Everett said, ‘It’s OK, Samuel. Just make sure that you keep your eye on these ladies for me, that’s all.’

‘Sure will, Mr Everett, sir.’

Everett showed them to rooms 209 and 211, which were adjacent to each other at the end of the second-floor corridor.

Before they went inside, T-Yon hugged Everett tight and said, ‘You’re really not mad at me, are you, Ev, for bringing Sissy?’

‘Of course not. It’s great to see you. And, like I say, I can’t see Sissy causing us any problems, so long as she doesn’t tell anybody that this is more than a social visit.’

‘My lips are sealed,’ Sissy promised him.

Sissy found that her case had already been brought up to the room for her. She unpacked, and then she undressed and put on her long cotton nightdress with the tiny pink rosebuds on it. The room wasn’t large, but it was lavishly furnished, with heavy velvet drapes and a marble-topped dressing table and a bedspread with scarlet and gold embroidery.

She went into the bathroom to start running herself a bath and to let down her hair. Maybe it was tiredness, but when she looked at herself in the mirror over the washbasin she thought she was looking very old, with papery skin and eyes that were losing their blue. She could still remember how pretty she had been, but that seemed like a long, long time ago.

She thought about Frank, too. She could remember how his hand had felt, when he stood behind her and put it on her shoulder, and then kissed the nape of her neck. They had been married for thirty-seven years, but now that seemed like a distant memory, too, dwindling smaller and smaller with every passing day.

‘Frank,’ she said, just to hear his name.

T-Yon opened her eyes. Her room was almost completely dark, except for the glow of the standby light on the TV and the illuminated numbers on the bedside clock. It was 2.43 a.m.

She lay there for almost a minute, not moving. She was sure that she had heard a noise, or felt something bumping into the bed, and that was what had woken her up. She listened and listened, straining her ears, but all she could hear was the echoing sound of traffic on Convention Street and the rumbling of a jet at BTR, seven miles away.

No,
she thought,
I must have been dreaming. At least I wasn’t having that nightmare
about Everett
. She turned over, plumped up her pillow and closed her eyes, but almost as soon as she had done so, she heard a rustle, and a whisper.

She froze. She was sure that she could hear somebody breathing – quick, suppressed breaths, like an anxious child.
Maybe it’s my own breathing
, she thought.
Maybe that rustle was nothing more than the amplified noise of the sheet against my ear.

She held her breath and listened even more intently. Only the sounds of the city outside. No rustling, no breathing.
I’m doing it again. I’m letting my imagination run away with me. Maybe I’m asleep right now, and I’m dreaming this
.

But then she heard a soft bump, like somebody accidentally walking into a chair. She leaned over sideways and reached for the old-fashioned lamp on the nightstand, but at first she couldn’t find it. She swung her arm from left to right, knocking the bedside clock on to the floor, and then tipping the lamp over. It fell against the wall and she heard the bulb shatter.

She sat up, pulling the bedcover right up to her neck. She was wearing only a T-shirt and she felt terrifyingly vulnerable.

‘
Who’s there?
’ she demanded, trying to sound angry rather than afraid, but her voice came out breathy and broken.

Nobody answered. She strained her eyes, but now that the bedside clock had dropped on to the floor, the room was almost totally dark.

She began to shuffle herself over to the opposite side of the bed, where there was a second lamp, but before she could reach it she heard another rustling sound, and she stopped, and stared into the darkness even harder. She gradually made out two shapes that were even darker than the darkness itself, like two ghosts draped in black sheets rather than white. One was quite tall, but the other was small, like a child.