The sixth book in the Arly Hanks series, 1992

Ruby Bee squeezed by Perkins and perched on the edge of the pew next to Estelle. "You ain't gonna believe this," she whispered, her face flushed with excitement clear up to her grayish-brown roots. Her eyes glittered like little sugar cookies, and her best blue dress had been buttoned so hastily that her bust looked as lumpy as an ungraded county road. "Why, you could have knocked me over with a feather duster when I opened the letter."

Estelle glanced at her out of the corner of her good eye. "It's about time you got here," she said. Her lips barely moved, and her tone made it clear that certain people's disreputable appearance and lack of promptness would be discussed later. She herself was above reproach in her aquamarine dress with matching shoes and eyeshadow. Her red beehive hairdo towered less than usual out of deference to those in the pews behind her, but there were some fanciful ringlets below her ears and framing her face, and the overall effect was appropriately festive.

"I'd say this letter's a sight more important than an ordinary wedding, Estelle Oppers, and I don't appreciate being scolded, neither. If you're so dadburned worried about-" Ruby Bee stopped as she realized half of the congregation were openly staring and the other half pretending they weren't but listening just the same. Even Brother Verber, his fingers entwined on his belly, was regarding her disapprovingly from the pulpit. She sat back and fumed in silence.

Having squelched the behavior in the fifth pew, Brother Verber figured it was time to get the show on the road. He nodded at Lottie Estes, who was sitting at the upright piano (the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall was not yet able to afford an organ, although another bake sale was in the planning stages).

Lottie stopped wondering what Ruby Bee was hissing about, poised her hands, and hit the keys with enthusiasm, if not accuracy. As the somewhat familiar strains of the wedding processional filled the room, throats were cleared, eyes turned misty, hands automatically fumbled for tissues, and everybody got down to the serious business of watching Dahlia O'Neill marry Kevin Buchanon. The general feeling was that both of them ought to listen real carefully to the vows before they took 'em.

"There it is!" Ruby Bee shrieked, her finger jabbing the plastic barrier like a frenzied woodpecker. "Driver, do you see it? The Chadwick Hotel, on the right, just past that little vegetable stand!"

"Would you calm down?" Estelle demanded in a spitty whisper. "You are behaving worse than a fat kid in a candy shop, and it's beginning to try my patience. I swear, you must have spotted the Empire State Building ten times so far, along with the Statue of Liberty, which I seem to recall is out in the middle of water."

"I take you there?" the driver said in a guttural accent.

"The hotel," Ruby Bee said, now pounding on the barrier meant to protect the cab driver from robbery-or his fares from his sour odor. "The Chadwick Hotel's where we're staying. But don't let me stop you, Estelle, if you want to keep riding around with this man, so you can find out what it feels like to be smashed to death by a bus."

She was sounding on the shrill side, but it had been a real heart-stopper of a trip from the airport. Somehow the driver's ability to speak regular American disappeared right after the luggage was put in the trunk, and for all she could tell, they'd pretty much careened down the same streets two or three times amidst an endless stream of yellow cabs, all barreling along like they were in a race, changing lanes every ten feet, dodging buses, honking continually, missing pedestrians by inches, and begging for an accident. She'd gasped so many times her throat ached, and she was surprised she'd been able to unclench her bloodless, icy fingers from the door handle.

The driver turned around and showed them a few brown teeth. "You want stop here?"

Ruby Bee thought of a lot of scalding comments, but held them back and nodded. "Of course we want stop here, if it ain't out of your way!"

The cab pulled to the curb, and they all looked at the front of the Chadwick Hotel, or what they could see of it through the scaffolding. As they stared, two men with toolboxes came out the door and continued down the sidewalk. The driver grinned at them. "No can stay here. We go now, yes?"

"No," Ruby Bee said. She poked Estelle, who was making a face as she tried to read a sign on the door. "Do you aim to sit there all afternoon?"

"That says it's closed for remodeling and won't open until next year. This can't be right. Where's that last letter you got?"

"It's in my handbag and it says we're staying at the Chadwick Hotel on 48th Street. I don't care what the sign says-this is the right place."

"Not right place," the driver said. "We go my cousin's restaurant, have nice couscous, meet plenty men who like soft white women?"

Ruby Bee and Estelle scrambled out of the cab like it was beginning to sink into the pavement. While the driver removed their luggage, they debated the tip and arrived at a scrupulously fair amount. The driver spat only once as he left them on the sidewalk, and his curse was too foreign to bother about. They were engulfed in stinky black smoke as he screeched away.

"Well, fancy that!" Estelle snorted. She was going to wait for a doorman to fetch their luggage, but a whiskery man in an army fatigue jacket was bearing down with a real peculiar glint in his eye, so she grabbed hers and told Ruby Bee to do the same.

They were about to go through the door when three more workmen, dressed in jumpsuits and all carrying toolboxes, came out and brushed past them just like they weren't there. Before they could recover, a van stopped behind them and all of a sudden crates were being carried in and other crates out. The wild man in the army jacket was staring at them, most likely planning how easiest to murder them, and a woman crooning to herself in some funny language and wearing a coat so filthy you could see the fleas hopping asked point-blank for a dollar. Ruby Bee was too startled to refuse her and probably would have given her every last penny (and signed over her traveler's checks, too) if Estelle hadn't intervened.

Across the street, two men staggered out of a store, pushing each other and shouting words that were downright rude. The van was blocking traffic, and now horns were blaring and drivers were poking their heads out their windows to yell things that were just as rude, if not a sight worse. The two men began swinging at each other like playground bullies and threatening to call the cops. A couple, both with spiky orange hair, tattoos on their cheeks, earrings in their noses, and matching black leather jackets, weaved down the sidewalk, sharing a bottle in a brown bag and gawking at Ruby Bee and Estelle as if they were the funny-looking ones. A helicopter droned across the sky, and steam swooshed from a grate not ten feet away as the sidewalk trembled ominously.

"This ain't Maggody," Ruby Bee opined.

"And here I am thinking it is!" Estelle snapped. "I suggest we get our things and go inside before we get killed." She took her own advice, and Ruby Bee followed, a little reluctantly since the sounds and the sights and even the smells were interesting. There were plenty more sights and sounds and smells in the lobby. Mysterious pieces of furniture were draped with tarps, and part of the linoleum floor had been ripped up to expose patches of black glue dotted with hairs and dustballs, and in one corner, the mortal remains of a small furry animal. A tablesaw dominated the middle of the room, and as they hesitated, a man appeared from a corridor, switched on the saw, and began to mutter to himself as the sound of screaming wood overpowered the horns still blaring outside. Someone was hammering someplace; that was hard to miss and about as welcome as a bushy-tailed missionary on a bicycle.

The man cut off the saw and disappeared down the corridor. Ruby Bee dropped her luggage and pointed at a counter in front of a dark recess. "Do you reckon that's where we check in?"

"I think we ought to check out of this place and find out where it is we're supposed to be."

"I already told you that this is the place. It's in the letter, and I don't aim to go traipsing around Noow Yark City looking for what's right here under our noses." She made her way through the patches of glue to the counter, and tapped on a silver bell. "Yoohooo? Is anybody back there?"

The wood-sawing man returned. This time he noticed them and, after a minute of frowning, said, "Closed for remodeling, honey. Why doncha call the YWCA and see if they can help youse two out?"

Ruby Bee took the letter from her purse and showed it to him. "This was sent special delivery, and it says we're supposed to stay here, so this is where we're going to stay. Do you happen to know where the manager is? If you can't spit out the words, you just go ahead and point."

Before the man could answer (if he indeed intended to), the door opened behind Estelle and a man carrying a suitcase came into the lobby. His expression of disbelief was nearly identical to Estelle's; Ruby Bee thought about commenting on it, then remembered how Arly had told her not to speak to strangers like they were ordinary folks browsing in the Hardware Emporium on a Saturday morning.

The man wasn't strange-looking, however. He appeared to be in his early forties, maybe a shade older, with shaggy dark hair going gray at the temples, a kind of messy mustache with its fair share of gray, droopy brown eyes that reminded her of one of Perkins's hounds, and such poor posture that she had to restrain herself from poking him in the back and telling him to stand up straight. He was wearing a beige raincoat that had seen a lot of rain and a tweedy hat with a single, frayed feather.

He took off his hat and nodded. With a smile as sad as his eyes, he said, "Please excuse me, ma'am. I seem to have found myself in the wrong place, although I could have sworn…"

"You looking for the Chadwick?" Estelle butted in. "Well, so are we, and we didn't reckon on a construction site."

He nodded at her. "Yes, the Chadwick Hotel. I've been invited to participate in"-he gave them an embarrassed look-"a cooking contest, and I thought this was the place."

"So did we," Estelle said tartly, "but someone must have gotten the name wrong, because anyone with the sense God gave a goose can see that-"

"This is the right place," Ruby Bee said, a little miffed because this gentleman was a real contestant like herself, and Estelle was forgetting that she was merely along for the ride, so to speak. She came back across the room and held out her hand. "I'm Ruby Bee Hanks, and I'm in the contest, too."

"Ah," he said, his forehead wrinkling while he appraised her as if she'd presented herself as an entry rather than a contestant. "I'm Durmond Pilverman. I'm not quite sure what we ought to do at this point, Mrs. Hanks. I was under the impression that the marketing representative would be here to handle the hotel reservations and such. Unless the gentleman in the cap is he, we may have a problem."

The subject of the remark shook his head. "Naw, but lemme see if I can hunt up Rick. He's what you might call the site supervisor. Maybe he can sort this out."

Estelle stuck out her hand. "I'm Estelle Oppers, Mr. Pilverman. I came along with Ruby Bee so she wouldn't get herself mugged in the airport, or get hopelessly lost before she ever caught sight of the hotel. We're from Maggody, Arkansas." She gave him a moment to respond, but he was now regarding her with the same sharply quizzical look he'd given Ruby Bee-who was not pleased with the remark about getting mugged or lost. "Where're you from?"

"Connecticut," Durmond said with a vague gesture. Estelle opened her mouth, but Ruby Bee wasn't about to listen to any more aspersions. "Why, I used to have a second cousin who lived in Connecticut," she inserted neatly. "Elsbeth Matera was her name, but of course she died way back in 1952, so I don't suppose you'd remember her, even if you knew her. She had palsy something awful during her last few years, bless her soul, and the nurse's aides had to read the little cards and letters I sent her on her birthday and at Christmas. Did you ever happen to…?"

"I'm afraid not," he said. He glanced over her head as a door behind the registration counter opened. "Perhaps we have someone to help us?"

Ruby Bee wasn't real sure the man was the one she would have picked, given her druthers. For one thing, he looked meaner than a rattlesnake, with his squinty eyes, fancy hair swept back in a televangelist's pompador, and snooty sneer. He probably wasn't even thirty years old, but he was regarding them like he owned the hotel and everything else on the block, and they were nothing but those homeless people that Arly had warned her about. Mr. Pilverman's mustache was messy but friendly; this man's was nothing more than a thin black line that could have been drawn with a felt-tipped pen. His lips were thinner than Mrs. Jim Bob's.

She wasn't a bit surprised when he said in a real cold tone, "The hotel is closed for remodeling. Please be about your business elsewhere."

Durmond Pilverman stepped forward, saving both Ruby Bee and Estelle the necessity of what might have been a fine display of indignation. "These ladies and I were told that the Krazy KoKo-Nut cookoff is to be held here, and we have letters to that effect. Are you the manager?"

"In a manner of speaking. May I see this purported letter?" He extended a hand with well-manicured nails and a ring as gaudy as a carnival prize. His cuff fell back to expose a heavy silver bracelet. If that wasn't bad enough, he had several gold chains around his neck like he thought he was one of those egotistical Hollywood movie stars.

Ruby Bee was about to warn Mr. Pilverman not to hand over anything to this fellow with all the jewelry when the door again opened. This time it admitted several folks, all of them looking unhappy in varying degrees. The unhappiest of them all was a pretty young woman in a pale green skirt and jacket, carrying a briefcase in one hand and a clipboard in the other. Her eyes were flashing like the taillights on a taxi.

"Are you Richard Belaire?" she demanded as she strode across the room. She sounded as if even a hint of affirmation would result in bloodshed. "Are you?"

The snooty man behind the counter got snootier. "No, dearie, I'm president of the Junior League, but I must have left my white gloves and pearls at home today."

"You have not returned my last four calls, Mr. Belaire, and it's caused me a great deal of inconvenience. We need to talk. In the office-now." She went down the corridor, and after a pause, Mr. Snooty Pants went through the door from which he'd come earlier. "Goodness gracious," Ruby Bee murmured.

"What on earth is going on here?" gasped a woman in the doorway. She nudged her companion, a teenaged girl, then let her luggage fall to the floor. "What kind of hotel is this? This will not do-not at all!" She spotted them and managed a tight, harried smile. "I'm Frances Vervain, but please call me Frannie. I presume you're here for the contest? Catherine is thrilled to be selected as a finalist, but we were led to believe we would be staying in a decent hotel, and this won't do. Catherine has a terrible time with allergies. At the first hint of dust, her eyes water and she cannot breathe."

Ruby Bee looked at the woman, who seemed pleasant enough despite her inclination to talk faster than a trout goin' after a mosquito. She had blond hair that was a little too brassy, but nobody ever said there was anything wrong with helping Mother Nature every now and then. Maybe a little too much makeup, and maybe dressed more like a teenager than the mother of one.

The hemline was far from flattering, to put it kindly, and the bright pink of the dress called attention to her thick waist and unfortunate hips.

The daughter, Catherine-with-allergies, was slender to the point of resembling a beanpole. She had a cloud of frizzy auburn hair and no makeup to speak of, except a hint of blusher beneath dramatically pronounced cheekbones. Her posture was erect to the point of rigidity, as was pretty much everything about her. She looked awfully humorless for someone her age, what with her sulky expression, but Ruby Bee could understand how a ride from the airport could do that to a body.

"So you're a contestant, too?" she asked the girl, giving her a friendly smile.

The girl turned to her mother. "I hope you're satisfied."

"It's going to be fine," Frannie said coolly. She repeated her name to Durmond Pilverman and Estelle, and after a few minutes of conversation, all the adults were on a first-name basis and feeling better about the immediate future. Catherine stared out the glass doors.

The woman in the green suit reappeared. "I'm Geri Gebhearn, the contest coordinator from Prodding, Polk and Fleecum," she told them. "There's been a small problem concerning communication with the hotel, but let's all hope it's under control-at least for the time being. Mr. Belaire has arranged for rooms on the second floor for you, and of course we'll be using the kitchen when the big moment arrives."

"The sawdust," Frannie said, glancing at Catherine's glacial face. "It's going to make it ever so difficult for Catherine. She's had allergies since she was-"

"The saw will be removed," Miss Gebhearn said firmly. "Mr. Belaire says the remodeling will be confined to the upper floors until the end of the week. This means we'll have to tolerate a certain amount of noise and disruption, but there are union contracts involved that cannot be breached. In any case, there are enough rooms on the second floor to house you, and the lobby and dining room will be cleared and straightened for our use." She flipped to a page on the clipboard and scanned it. "Let's see who we've got, shall we?"

Despite lingering uneasiness on several people's parts, they gathered around her.

I was daydreaming about the automat on 42nd Street, the last one in town-Manhattan, not Maggody-and the only place where I'd felt like a perpetual winner at the slot machines. There were no maitre d's, no waiters to introduce themselves and rattle off the specials, no haute cuisine or haute anything else. All it took was a pocketful of change to win the sort of food that sustained my soul, like macaroni and cheese, limp broccoli in watery sauce, and soggy egg salad sandwiches. Even after ten years of life in Manhattan, a little bit of Maggody had still flowed within me like a secondary infection in my bloodstream. Maybe there was no cure for it, and never would be. A chilling thought.

But the automat was what I was daydreaming about when the telephone rang, and I was doing so because I hadn't had a decent meal since I'd driven Ruby Bee and Estelle to the airport in Farberville the day before and watched them disappear into the great blue yonder, feeling as if I were a mechanic watching a heavily laden bomber head for enemy lines.

It was likely to be Mrs. Jim Bob making sure I'd bought proper Christian cookies, I decided as I went to the back room to get my radar gun. It was still ringing when I returned, armed to the teeth with said weapon and a magazine. I chewed on my lip, which tasted no better than the canned soup I'd been subsisting on for more than twenty-four hours. It could be the Stump County Sheriff, good ol' Harve Dorfer, wanting me to do something I'd probably prefer not to do, such as untangle bloodied drunks from a wrecked car or help scoop a bloated body out of the lake south of town. Or it could be the man of my dreams. Him, or the Pope; the odds were about equal.

I picked up the receiver. "Yes?"

"Oh, Arly, thank the Lord I got hold of you! The awfullest thing has happened, and I don't know what to do! I keep rubbing my face and trying to tell myself it's all nothing but a nasty nightmare and there ain't no cause to go bellowing like an orphaned calf in a blizzard, but-"

"Estelle?" I said sharply. The background cacophony nearly drowned her out, and I caught myself wondering if she was calling from the concrete island in the middle of Times Square.

"Well, it ain't the mayor of Noow Yark City! Didn't you hear a word of what I just-"

"Calm down. I heard very little of what you just said, mostly because you weren't making any sense." I sat down behind the desk and took a breath, hoping she was doing the same. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, if you don't count your own mother being locked up in jail for murder."

After a pause fraught with frowns and grimaces, I said, "I suppose I do count that, Estelle. Could you please explain what you said in a little more detail? Who, and what, and when, and where, not to mention the ever-popular why?"

"It happened last night, and if you ask me, it was her own darn fault for firing the gun at the police when they broke down the hotel room door. After that, they weren't in the mood to listen to her explain why a bucknaked man was bleeding like a stuck pig right there in her bed. She kept tryin' to talk to them in a right nice fashion, but you'd have thought she was visiting some country where they ride around on camels. I've never seen a bunch of grown men get themselves so riled up over one itsy-bitsy bullet that didn't even hit any of 'em."

Don't think for an instant that I was taking notes or formulating questions designed to elicit further information. I wasn't so much as blinking, and I wouldn't have flinched if I'd been stung by a hornet, or a whole swarm of them.

"Would you repeat that?" I managed to say.

"I said the bullet didn't hit any of 'em, but all the same they put handcuffs on Ruby Bee and took her away, just like she had been holding up a liquor store or a bank. She wasn't nearly as mad as I would have been, although I must say she was acting downright crumpy about the whole thing."

"Why on earth…?" I began, but words abandoned me and I shrugged as if Estelle were across the desk from me.

"You would be too, if a smart-mouthed cop tackled you and nearly made you hit your head on the dresser. They wouldn't even let me talk to her, much less go along to find out where they were taking her. Instead, they made all of us wait downstairs most of the night, then questioned us one at a time in that snooty manager's office. I don't want to say anything unkind about those policemen, but there wasn't a one of them much brighter than Kevin on one of his better days. The one I talked to had a face uglier than a mud fence stuck with tadpoles and an accent I couldn't hardly understand. He hadn't ever heard of Arkansas, if you can believe that!"

"Estelle," I said, getting a little crumpy myself, "you still haven't told me what happened to Ruby Bee. Is she all right?"

"How would I know, Miss Hard of Hearing? I already told you how the police dragged her away in handcuffs and couldn't be bothered to tell me where they were taking her." She gasped. "Oh, dear, there's that crazy whiskery man who's been following me since we got here. I got to go, Arly. He's licking his lips something fierce, and I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have a knife in his pocket or an axe down his britches. Talk to you later."

"Wait!" I screeched. "Don't you dare hang up!"

She hung up.

I sat for a very long while, staring at the telephone and trying to pluck tidbits of factual information out of the bizarre conversation. A naked man bleeding in Ruby Bee's bed. When the police broke down the door, she'd fired a gun at them. Humorless chaps that they were, they'd tackled her to the floor, handcuffed her, and taken her away to be booked for murder. As of the moment, she'd not returned. Estelle had been questioned. She was now being knifed/hacked by a wet-lipped man who'd been following her since their arrival.

"And that's all we know," I said just to hear my voice and reassure myself I hadn't been beamed aboard any hovering alien spacecraft. The PD looked the same-dusty, hot, seedy if not squalid, in need of a sweeping that wasn't on my agenda any time soon. Outside, pickup trucks grumbled down the highway, along with an occasional car filled with tourists searching for bucolic quaintness and finding a lot of tacky poverty. Car doors slammed as folks came and went at the supermarket across the road. Neighborly greetings were exchanged. A child wailed, a dog barked.

The telephone rang, and this time I did not dally. I lunged for the receiver, slapped it against my ear, and said, "Estelle?"

"Hardly. This is Mrs. Jim Bob, Arly. We'll need seating for six tonight, and I seemed to recall there are only two or three chairs. You need to arrange to borrow some from the Sunday school room at the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall and set them-"

"You got it," I said and hung up. That was a link with reality, I told myself. Ruby Bee might be jailed for murder nearly two thousand miles away, but it was business as usual in Maggody. When the telephone once again rang, I was a little more cautious. "Arly Hanks here," I said.

"This is Eilene Buchanon, Arly. I'm worried sick about Kevin and Dahlia. They were supposed to call last night, but they didn't, and we haven't heard a peep from them for three days now. I was wondering if you could…"

Definitely business as usual. "Could what, Eilene?" I prompted her. "Get in my car and go find them? I thought I heard somebody say they were on their way to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. In that they have several days' head start-and are likely to have taken enough wrong turns to be in Mexico by now, I doubt I'll have much luck."

"I know," she said limply. "I'm just so worried about them. I was deadset against this idiotic idea of theirs, but Earl just laughed and said they should take their best shot at finding it." She began to snivel, and her voice grew hoarse. "They were raised right here in Maggody, where everybody knows everybody. It don't exactly teach you to watch out for people who might be dangerous or want to hit you over the head and steal your car…or worse. Why, they might be-"

"Tell you what," I interrupted, "I'll call the state police and ask them to check with their counterparts along Kevin and Dahlia's proposed route. They were heading east, right?" I diligently recorded their itinerary and wasted a few more breaths assuring her I'd do something about the missing couple. I then replaced the receiver and sank back in my chair, seeking comfort from its familiar familiar contours and tendency to squeak when I shifted.

Ruby Bee had mentioned the name of the hotel in which the silly contest was to be held. I had not written it down, nor had I paid particular attention to the name of the marketing firm that was conducting the contest. I worked on the latter for a while, but all I could come up with was a vague notion that it involved physical violence. My dim memory of the hotel's name stirred a Dickensian ember. Not Twist, not Copperfield, not Scrooge or Cratchit, and at least on my part, not any Great Expectations.

I was not in the mood for literary trivia, but I kept at it until I hit upon Pickwick, gnawed on my fingernails, and shortly before they began to bleed about the cuticles, arrived at Chadwick. I called information and was told by a male of Eastern European origin that the number was not working. I told him it damn well was, and we debated this until he got bored and disconnected me.

I could, of course, call all the precincts in Manhattan. If by sheer serendipity, I found the right one, I could then attempt to track down someone with information about the status of my mother's…arrest for murder.

Or I could cut the crap and do what I would have to do eventually, which was hunt up the directory and start calling those few airlines that flew out of Farberville and ultimately landed in one of the vast, flat wastelands surrounding the island of Manhattan.

"Are you sure this is the right place?" I asked the cabbie as I studied the scaffolding. "There must be another Chadwick Hotel somewhere. This is closed for remodeling."

"We're at the only one I've ever heard of, and I've been driving for eighteen years. But it makes no difference to me if you want me to cruise around for a while. East side, west side, anywhere you want to go. Suum cuique, as I always say."

"No, this must be it," I said without conviction. I paid him and carried my bag into the lobby, where it was cool and dim, if not elegant. The furniture was shabby and arranged rather oddly, the plastic plants coated with dust, the floor missing half its linoleum. Wondering what Ruby Bee and Estelle had made of it, I went to the reception counter and tapped a silver bell.

When nothing happened, I repeated the action several times, and then dropped my bag and sat down on the arm of a sofa to decide what to do next. I might have been mistaken about the hotel. There was no sense of occupancy, and certainly no hint of a national contest in progress. Outside, there was life, albeit screaming, snarling, honking, exploding life. Inside, there was something very wrong.

"I had to report your salary," said a male voice from the corridor beyond the desk. "I couldn't help it, Rick. Those fuckin' buzzards at the IRS will demand an audit this year, just like they did last year and the year before. So act like a good citizen and pay your income taxes like everybody else. Maybe you'll get a medal one of these days."

"Maybe I'll shove it up your ass," said a second voice.

"I'm an accountant, not a magician. I've got enough problems with the invoices and the cash flow and our arrangement with the union bosses. I don't need you whining at me. You got problems with me, you call Mr. Gabardi and tell him all about them."

A door slammed, ending what I could hear of the conversation. At least there were people within the hotel, which was marginally encouraging. If I sat long enough, perhaps I would get to see one of them, or even find out what the hell was going on with Ruby Bee.

The front door opened and an elderly man in a white jacket, a lime green shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and plaid pants entered the lobby. The top of his head was shiny and dotted with freckles, but there were tufts of white hair above his ears, and a few more shooting out of same. His skin was dark and deeply wrinkled, his nose reminiscent of a plum. He carried a small suitcase and a newspaper.

"How ya doing?" he said to me, then went to the desk, banged the bell, and shouted, "Rickie, my boy, show yourself! I am in need of a hot shower and a cold drink. Airplanes make me nervous in the stomach and sweaty in the palms, and now I want to relax." His accent was a mixture of Brooklynese and Italian, his attire strictly Floridian retiree. All he needed to complete the ensemble was a pair of golf shoes.

An exceedingly ashen young man came through a door behind the desk, doing his best to smile. Even from my perch across the lobby, I could see the tic at the corner of his mouth and the unnatural bulge of his eyes. "Why, Mr. Cambria, how nice to see you again. No one told me you-" He spotted me, and his attempted geniality dried up. "Who are you? Another coconut from Kansas?"

The man glanced back at me with an uneasy frown. "Rick, you're supposed to have this under control. Although Mr. Gabardi decided to have me stay here for the next few days, he still has faith that you know what you're doing."

The one addressed as Rick (and the one who'd been expressing his unhappiness about his taxes) took the other's arm and tried to urge him around the end of the counter. "Please, wait in my office while I deal with this. There's a bottle of very soothing scotch in the bottom right drawer of the desk. I will be honored if you will sample it, Mr. Cambria."

Cambria refused to be urged one inch. "I would rather go to my room and make a call. A long distance call."

"Of course you would." He opened a drawer and took out a key. "You must stay in the penthouse. I'll be up shortly to remove my things from your way, and I'll bring the scotch and some ice. I'm afraid we don't have maid service, but I myself will change the sheets and-"

"First, the call," the older man said as he took the key, winked at me, and went to the elevator. Rick hurried after him in time to push the button, then stepped back and maintained a pained smile until the doors slid open.

Once Cambria had been whisked upward, Rick returned to the desk and scratched his chin with a well-manicured fingertip while we assessed each other. I waited silently, and he finally sighed and said, "Are you like a judge for this screwy contest or something?"

"Something," I said, nodding.

"Is there anything I can do or say that will induce you to go away?"

"I don't think so."

He smoothed down his narrow mustache with yet another well-manicured fingertip, glanced over his shoulder at the closed door behind him, and shook his head. "This has been some coupla days. Only a week ago did anyone bother to inform me of this contest, and nobody seemed to remember that I am up to my ass in remodeling. When you're dealing with union guys, you can't tell them to take a short hike, unless you plan to make like a submarine in the bottom of the Hudson River. After last night, that has begun to appeal." He noted my wince. "You got something to do with this shooting thing, right? Are you the dame's lawyer?"

"Her daughter," I admitted. "I flew in about an hour ago, and I'd like very much to find someone who'll explain what's going on."

"So would I, but I got problems with the accountant and Mr. Cambria in the penthouse and I think I'd better make some calls myself. The pistol-packing maniac-pardon me, your mother-was in 217. The police sealed it off, so I moved that woman who was with her to 219. It's possible she is up there now, presuming she didn't get her hair caught in a ceiling fan and her head was jerked off." He twitched a third well-manicured fingertip in the direction of an elevator, gave me a smirky look, and disappeared through the door.

The elevator groaned and shuddered, but eventually I found myself walking down the corridor of the second floor. The carpet was worn and badly stained, the unappetizing beige paint curled off the walls, and the redolence was that of the restrooms in Grand Central Station-or any ol' bus station in this great land of ours.

Some of the doors had numbers; others did not. I had no difficulty locating 217, however. It was crisscrossed with yellow tape and seals, and an officious sign threatened would-be trespassers with everything short of capital punishment. A few inches above the sign was a splintery hole…Ruby Bee's signature, so to speak.

I tapped on 219. The door opened, and before I could speak, I was yanked inside. The door slammed so quickly my heels felt a breeze.

"Oh, thank gawd you made it," Estelle said, collapsing on me in a bony hug. "I am worried sick, and all I've been able to do all day is sit here in case Ruby Bee calls or Geri finds out what's happening or the police come back to drag me off in handcuffs or I just go plum out of my mind like ol' Particular Buchanon. Remember when he decided there were Nazis in his attic? I could hear his shotgun all the way out at my house."

I squirmed free, caught her shoulders, and pushed her down on the narrow twin bed. "Get a hold of yourself," I said as I looked around the room. It was adequate for the two narrow beds, dresser, and night table, as long as you didn't mind stepping over the furniture and suitcases every time you moved. The flowers on the wallpaper clearly were not perennials; their season had come and gone. The artistic spiderwebs dripping from the ceiling implied other life forms enjoyed more success, as did the tiny brown beads along the baseboard. All in all, it was your average New York hotel room.

"What're we gonna do?" Estelle demanded. "You don't aim to stand there gawking while your own flesh and blood's being gnawed by rats in some filthy jail, do you?"

"I still don't know what happened." I sat down across from her, patted her knee, and suggested she begin at the beginning-slowly, thoughtfully, omitting nothing that might be important.

She omitted nothing, from the exchange between Ruby Bee and the cute lil' stewardess (Mitzi) concerning the socalled food (worse than the specials at the Dairee Dee-Lishus) served on the airplane (cramped), the airport aswarm with foreigners (potential purse snatchers, every one of them), the cabdriver (as ornery as Raz and twice as dumb), the lack of a welcoming committee in the lobby (a disgrace), and the arrival of the contestants, companions, contest coordinators, and possibly enough workmen (real pushy fellows) to remodel the entirety of the city from 48th Street to the tip of the island (and it sure could use a facelift).

"Wait a minute," I said, rubbing my face, "you were spouting off names too quickly. I met the manager when I arrived. His name's Rick, right?"

"Geri called him Richard Belaire, but a carpenter called him Rick. He's a real uppity sort whose, mama should have smacked some manners into him long before now. Anyway, he acted like he wasn't gonna let us stay here, but Geri marched him off and told him how the cow ate the cabbage, and pretty soon he comes back with room keys and says this floor is okay." She glanced disdainfully disdainfully at the room. "Okay if you do your redecorating at garage sales or flea markets! Why, the Flamingo Motel beats this place hands down-and costs a quarter of what that little framed sign on the back of the door says. You ain't gonna believe it, but when you open the bathroom door, it hits the bed and you have to slither in sideways. And you'd better decide aforehand what you're gonna do when you get inside, 'cause there's no room to turn around."

"Who's Geri?" I asked.

"Geri Gebhearn is the gal from the marketing firm. She's in charge of the contest. A sweet thing, with big brown eyes and a heartshaped mouth. I'm not sure she's real pleased about her job, even though she seemed to take to telling folks what to do like a hen does to a handful of corn. She's the one who gave out the room keys, told us to get settled, and then said she'd send out for some food that we could eat in the lobby. The restaurant's closed on account of the remodeling, so I don't see how the contestants can use the kitchen, but Geri goes off again to talk to Mr. Richie Rick and comes back and says-"

"Why is the contest being held here?"

Estelle gave me a huffy look. "I ain't the one running it, so how would I know? Catherine's mother liked to have a fit over the sawdust, and I told her that if I was-"

"Catherine's mother? Is she one of the contestants?"

"Didn't they teach you to pay attention when you went to that police school? " She stood up and would have paced had space allowed it. She was obliged to stand over me; her hair was such that I felt as though I were being intimidated by a six-foot fire hydrant. "Catherine Vervain is this sour pickle of a girl, and she's the contestant, although if you ask me, her mother-Frannie-sent in the recipe and stuck Catherine's name on it. The girl does nothing but sulk, and refused to eat the Chinese food on account of it having some chemical in it. I myself thought it was real tasty."

"Catherine and Frannie," I said humbly. "Who else?"

"Well, there's nice Mr. Pilverman, who was naked in Ruby Bee's bed. He's a mannersome sort, a widower, and you can tell from looking at him that he's not keeping company, not by a long shot. No woman in her right mind would let him wear that shoddy old raincoat out in public." She paused, her good eye sweeping over me like a liposuction tube. "Not that old, either. Nothing to write home about, but kind of attractive and real polite. You might take to him."

"Then he's not dead?"

"Of course he ain't," she said with a snort. "They finally got the telephones fixed a while back, and Geri called to say that he's gonna be just fine. In fact, as soon as they get him patched up, he's coming back here so we can get on with the contest."

I looked up at her. "And Ruby Bee?"

"Geri couldn't find out anything. She said she and Kyle were gonna go down to the police station to see if they could fetch Ruby Bee, but she didn't sound real optimistic."

"Kyle," I said, zooming in on the next name. If we continued at this rate, we might be ice skating at Rockefeller Center if and when Ruby Bee was released. "Who's Kyle?"

"Kyle is the son of the KoKo-Nut company president. He's a scrawny thing with oily hair and ferrety face, sorta like that cousin of Kevin's who was in prison. That sure was a lovely ceremony, wasn't it? I heard Mrs. Jim Bob was all hissy about Dahlia wearing white like she was a virgin, and there ain't nobody gonna argue she was, not after-"

"Do you mind?" I said in an admirably controlled voice. "The contest is being run by a couple of kids, and in a hotel managed by a third. The contestants are Pilverman, who's been shot, Ruby Bee, who shot him, and a sulky kid, who can't tolerate monosodium glutamate. You and the girl's mother are along for the fun. Is that everyone?"

Estelle put her finger on her lips, tiptoed to the door, and eased it open. After a peek, she closed it and tiptoed back to the bed, although we'd been conversing in normal voices all this time (and she'd squawked more than once).

"There's one more," she whispered. "Her name's Brenda Appleton, and she's with her husband, Jerome. They're next door in 221. She's kind of a featherbrain, always blithering about her girls in California and her house on Long Island and how she volunteers at the library and plays bridge on Wednesday afternoons. It ain't hard to figure out why her daughters moved all the way across the country. She's lucky they stopped when they came to the ocean, instead of renting rowboats and heading for China."

"And her husband?"

"He doesn't say much. He's short and tubby, and his hair looks like freshly vacuumed shag carpet. He wears thick bifocals that make him look like a toad, and I wouldn't be surprised if his tongue was long enough to snag a fly. I can't quite put my finger on him, but he sort of reminds me of the oldest Nookim boy. You know, shifty-eyed and most likely thinking awful things about people. Not saying 'em, mind you-but thinking them all the same." She wiggled her eyebrows at me. "And he was sneaking peeks at Geri whenever his wife wasn't watching him. He didn't have to say what he was thinking then. No, it was smeared all over his face like cupcake icing."

"Okay," I said slowly, "I think I've got everyone sorted out for the moment. Now, what exactly happened last night? Where were you?"

"Well, we all gathered in the lobby and ate off paper plates. Not everybody, now that I think about it. Brenda's husband said he had work to do and went up to their room. Catherine said she was feeling poorly on account of the sawdust, and she left in the elevator with Jerome. Oh, and one of the contestants hasn't arrived. I disremember the name, but a female. So on one side of the lobby was Ruby Bee and me, Brenda, Geri, and Kyle. Durmond Pilverman was sitting on a sofa next to Frannie Vervain, who was so busy trying to cozy up with him that she dumped chop suey in her lap.

"And…?" I said.

Estelle stepped over my bag, navigated through their impressive quantity of suitcases and canvas bags, and stopped in front of the cracked mirror over the dresser. Once she'd made sure her hair was intact, she began to apply lipstick with a heavy hand. "And Geri said that the kitchen would be cleaned so the contestants could take turns trying out the oven and making sure they had all their pots and bowls. That was supposed to happen this afternoon, but Geri didn't plan on Ruby Bee shooting anybody and that awful mess with the police all night long."

"If you don't stick to the story, I'm going to take that lipstick tube from your hand and use it as a weapon," I said sharply-and sincerely. "Most of the group were in the lobby. At some point, Geri mentioned a rehearsal scheduled for this afternoon. Presumably, everyone came upstairs for the night."

"You can presume anything you want," Estelle retorted archly, then stopped and cocked her head. "Do you reckon that's the elevator?"

"I don't care if it's a newly installed escalator to heaven. What about last night?"

She opened the door, popped her head out, and with a squeal, vanished into the hall, leaving me to ponder how much damage I could do with a tube of Strawberry Soda Gloss.

There was a gentle tap on the door. "Durmond?" called a woman's voice. "Are you awake?"

He handed me the drink, then opened the door. "Come in and join us, Geri. There's someone you might like to meet." He took her hand to usher her in, closed the door, and beamed at me as if I were a student who'd produced a clever answer. "This is Arly Hanks, Ruby Bee's daughter."

Geri wrinkled her nose at him. "Kyle's with me."

"Oops," Durmond said as he reopened the door. "Sorry about that, Kyle. Come have a drink with us."

The straggler came into the room and introductions were made. Both seemed uninterested, despite my self-perceived role as assailant's daughter.

"I'm so glad that you were able to come on such short notice," Geri said with a perfunctory smile, then opened her briefcase, took out some papers, and handed them to Durmond. "These are copies of the medical forms and insurance paperwork from the hospital. The Krazy KoKo-Nut Company will absorb all the cost, naturally. I cannot believe they're forcing us to use a hotel with absolutely no security. This is Manhattan, not some idyllic little suburb." She glared at her companion. "I assume you spoke to your father about all this?" Estelle's description of Kyle's ferrety face was accurate. He wasn't sending adoring looks at Geri, however, and he sounded miffed as he said, "I tried to call my father to tell him about the incident last night, but he wasn't in his room. I left a message with the desk. This hotel isn't my idea, either. It's a directive from Interspace Investments."

"This is not the time for excuses. Poor Durmond was shot and then subjected to…further indignities. If you cannot arrange for proper security, I'll do it myself!"

Kyle flushed. "Do you want me to rent a uniform and go stand by the door?"

"At least you'd be doing something useful, for a change." Geri sat down on the edge of the bed and began to sort through papers in her briefcase.

Durmond and I watched all this in silence. We even exchanged significant looks, although I had no idea what they signified. Kyle clearly had several retorts in mind, but after a moment of twitching his lips mutely, he leaned against the door and folded his arms.

"So the contest will continue?" I asked Geri.

"Yes. It's totally absurd, but the show will go on. My secretary"-she glanced at Kyle-"managed to touch base with my boss. He was displeased to hear what happened, but he was quite firm about our continuing here in the Bates Hotel."

Durmond put his hand on my shoulder, which sent off all kinds of adolescent fireworks-invisible, I hoped. "You'll need to find a room for Arly. I'm sure she's thrilled at the opportunity to watch the Krazy KoKo-Nut cookoff in all its flaky splendor."

"Flaky is right," Geri said grimly. She slammed closed the briefcase and consulted her watch. "I'll go downstairs in a minute and speak to Rick. I'm quite sure Krazy KoKo-Nut will be delighted to provide the salary for a temporary doorman, should Rick resist, as well as a room for you, Arly. And please forgive me-I'm not at all like this usually. But less than a week ago the account was literally thrown onto my desk, and then I was assigned to work with someone who has no experience in promo, and my boss is being as beastly as Scotty Johanson, and Mother's livid because I-" She broke off as tears began to wobble down her cheeks. Seconds later, she was sobbing and the rest of us were patting her on the back and murmuring inanities. Even the broody Buddha relented and sat beside her, cradling her hand and sounding quite as ineffectual as Durmond and I.

It fit perfectly into the lunatic scenario. I wouldn't have been surprised if Mrs. Jim Bob, Brother Verber, and Mr. and Mrs. Kevin Buchanon marched into the room and announced they were planning a ménage à quatre in the next room. Oh, to be in lazy, hazy Maggody, where nothing ever happened.

For those who are a mite confused by all the comings and goings of people in the oddly parallel universes of Manhattan, Maggody, and Tennessee (or maybe Kentucky by now), rest assured that everyone was pretty much in place for the duration.

The fifth and final contestant, Gaylene Feather, had arrived and was in her room unpacking while she listened to a talk show that concerned the secret lives of transvestite Episcopalian priests. Down the hall from her, Durmond was wincing as he dressed. Brenda and Jerome were in their room; he was dealing with work he'd brought and she was fretting about the time zones and her daughter's lackadaisical attitude about picking up the telephone.

Farther afield, in a charmingly swank salon, Catherine was having makeup done under hawk-eyed maternal supervision. Ruby Bee and Estelle were heading down a flight of stairs to the vast labyrinth of dark, odoriferous tunnels and graffiti-riddled trains, both so determinedly fierce that they were unnerving the regular psychotics who inhabited the station. Neither realized they were being followed, but they would before too long.

Geri was on the telephone in the hotel office, desperately pleading with a receptionist. The desk was littered with lists, most of them scratched to the point of illegibility and splattered with a saline solution of perspiration and tears. Kyle was cleaning countertops in the kitchen. Rick was on the third floor with two men sporting the insignia of an electrical contracting business. Mr. Cambria smiled benignly at pedestrians from his post outside the door of the Chadwick Hotel.

Back in Maggody, the newly elected president of the Committee Committee Against Whiskey was sitting at the dinette on the sun porch, drinking tea and making notes as she plotted an appropriate course of action to save the youth of Maggody (and some others who could use a righteous shove) from demon whiskey. It was a nice day, what with the sun shining and the foliage aglow with autumn colors, but the newly elected president wasn't admiring nature. She was pursing her lips and wondering where Brother Verber had been the night before-and that smart-mouthed Arly Hanks, who, from all accounts, had torn out of town without so much as a word of explanation to anyone and thus far had not returned. The newly elected president finally put down her pen and went to make some calls to see if anybody knew what was going on.

The husband of the above was out back picking up garbage scattered on the lawn. It looked as if dogs had gotten in the cans, or maybe a coon. Odd thing was, dogs and coons hardly ever left behind a Bible under a limp lettuce leaf. Jim Bob started to toss the Bible into the garbage can, then stopped and opened it on the off chance there was a name written within the inside cover. There was. Frowning, he set it aside and resumed his chore.

Brother Verber lay on the couch inside the silver trailer that served as the rectory for the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall. Like the newly elected president, he was oblivious to the day unfolding outside, since he was keenly and painfully preoccupied with his pounding head, moldy tongue, bleary red eyes, tumultuous stomach, and general feeling of being trampled by an endless herd of bison. Which, for all he could recollect of his previous evening's adventures, might well have happened. Whatever lust he might have been harboring had been replaced with righteous heartburn.

Raz Buchanon was on Cotter's Ridge, as was Marjorie. She was snuffling contentedly for acorns, but he was up to no good.

Eilene Buchanon was well on her way to losing her mind, having spent the night alternately pacing the floor and sitting by the telephone, willing it to ring. Well after midnight, her husband had gone on to bed with a few grumpy remarks, and earlier in the morning had gone on to work with a few more, even grumpier, since Eilene had not been of a mind to fix him breakfast.

Joyce Lambertino was vacuuming the front room and trying to remember if she had enough sugar in the cannister to make peach cobbler for her in-laws, who were coming for supper. Shortly afterward, she discovered there would have been enough had the kids not made Kool-Aid and left snowy white hills all over the counter and the floor. No use crying over spilt sugar, she wearily told herself as she went for the broom and dustpan.

Somewhere in Tennessee (or maybe Kentucky by now), Marvel was cruising along in the passenger's seat, his feet on the dashboard and the warm breeze buffeting his face, gazing at the bucolic panorama and humming along with the whiny country music from the radio. The road to Cleveland had turned out to be damn empty thus far, and they'd been obliged to sleep in the car. He was in the mood for food.

"When we gonna eat, man?" he asked Kevin.

"As soon as we find a place," Kevin said, glancing in the rearview rearview mirror. "Doesn't that sound like a good idea, my sweetums? Eggs and sausage and grits? Biscuits and gravy? You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

Dahlia was still in the only position that gave her relief from the insidious itching. She grunted and said, "All I'd like is to see you being dragged behind the car in a gunny sack. I must have told you twenty times that this is the wrong road, but you just kept driving and now we're so lost that the cows probably speak a foreign language. It's all your fault."

Marvel turned around and smiled at her. "Hey, Big Mama, you got to trust me on this. We're not lost. I know exactly where we are. Why, if you were to blindfold me and spin me around three times, I'd still know where we are."

"Yeah," Kevin said, bobbing his head like a dashboard figurine. "Marvel knows where we are."

"So where are we?" she demanded.

Kevin stared pleadingly at Marvel, who was a little bit uneasy about the direction of the conversation (and of their desired destination). The latter finally cleared his throat and said, "On the road to Cleveland. Your man Marvel ain't gonna steer you wrong. I been to Cleveland so many times I could find it in the dark. You just relax and leave the navigating to me, Big Mama."

Kevin accurately interpreted the noise from the backseat as a mixture of disbelief and of displeasure with the increasingly frequent use of the phrase "Big Mama." He wanted to believe Marvel more than anything (except the consummation of the marriage), and he was aware that he didn't have a passel of options at the moment. "Look up there," he said, struggling to sound like a hearty trailblazer. "We're coming to a town, and if that's not a cozy café, then I don't know what it is. It doesn't look busy, so we can be settled in for a nice big breakfast afore you can count to ten.

He parked right as Dahlia reached eight, hurried out of the car and opened her door, and with some exertion, managed to slide her out of the car and get her steadied on her feet.

"Not much of a town," she said, squinting at the few buildings, ramshackle house, and rusted mobile homes on cinder blocks. "It's uglier than Maggody."

Marvel was equally unimpressed. "Or East St. Louis long about January, when the snow turns to slushy mud."

"This looks like a mighty fine café," Kevin said with enough enthusiasm for all three of them. With Marvel trailing behind, he herded his beloved across the rocky parking lot, through the doorway, between the tables, and to a booth where he gestured for her to tuck herself in.

"Ain't this nice?" he said hopefully.

Dahlia looked real hard at the interior and then at him. "I wouldn't let my dog eat here." Nevertheless, she managed to slide into the booth, pick up a menu, and begin to read, saliva gathering in the corners of her mouth as she savored the promise of carbohydrate heaven.

"It's cool, Big Mama," Marvel said as he slid in across from her. "We gonna have ourselves some food and drink. Sure we are." He grinned at the two elderly men sitting at the counter and at the waitress in the kitchen doorway. Something about the way she was eyeing him made him uneasy, but he figured his main man and Big Mama weren't going to drive another mile until they ate. His instincts were very good.

It was approaching four o'clock when we returned to the Chadwick Hotel. It felt more like midnight (in the Arctic Circle, no less) to me, but I'd just spent six hours in the company of two exceptionally unimpressed tourists, who were still verbalizing disbelief that a crowded little coffee shop (and by no means spic and span) had the audacity to charge seven dollars and fifty cents for a cheeseburger-and then put the coleslaw in a paper bonbon cup. And some of those silly things at the Museum of Modern Art! Both of them had made known, loudly, that someone had sure pulled the wool over the museum folks' eyes. Why, anyone with half a brain could see that big picture was nothing but a black square. Minimal art? About as minimal as you can get with nuthin' more than a can of black paint! And look at that, Miss Art Expert-it ain't anything more than a bunch of ropes curled up, and a mite sloppily at that. If we was to gather up the junk out behind Raz Buchanon's barn and send it to these folks, they'd probably send back a generous check and a thank-you note. As for those other so-called paintings, prettier pictures were taped on Joyce Lambertino's refrigerator, and you could tell what they were supposed to be, presuming you were charitable and remembered how old the children were.

And so on and so on, until I was no longer amused, or bemused, and was reduced to offering sullen explanations and wishing I were wearing a hood…and a noose. Even Durmond, who'd initially made an effort, had quieted down after we'd been asked to leave Tiffany's (Ruby Bee had been determined to get Gloria Swanson's autograph, and the woman thus identified all the way across the showroom had taken the accusation rather poorly).

Geri was in the lobby, the clipboard clutched in her hand and a faint frown marring her flawless brow. "Oh, good," she said, taking attendance with a gold pen. "I can't promise which media people will show, but there were a few who didn't curse at me or flatly refuse. It's shaping up nicely. The caterers are here, and the bar is set. The flowers came at noon, and…" The frown deepened just a teensy bit. "I haven't seen Kyle all afternoon. The grocers delivered the ingredients an hour ago, but since he'd danced off with the key, I had to have the boxes left outside the kitchen. I do hope he didn't say to hell with it and head south to join his father and dear Mr. Fleecum."

"I saw him midmorning," I volunteered. "He was going out to buy the utensils that were needed for the contest. He didn't mention suntan lotion and a beach towel." A genetic disposition to meddle in romantic endeavors made me add, "He wasn't too happy to be treated like a combination of a scullery maid and an errand boy." Geri stiffened. "I was working on the media contacts, which is my area of expertise. There's absolutely no reason to sponsor these things if coverage isn't forthcoming, and Prodding, Polk and Fleecum does have a reputation in the field. In any case, Kyle'll be in the spotlight tomorrow when he presents the grand prize."

"Ten thousand dollars," inserted Ruby Bee, much brighter now that she could dismiss the nonsense passin' for art in Noow Yark City and focus on more important issues.

"In a manner of speaking," Geri said uneasily. She poised her pen over the clipboard and began to murmur to herself as she perused the page. She glanced up as the door opened.

Kyle carried two bulging sacks, with a third balanced atop them. "I hope I never have to go through this again," he said as he headed toward the kitchen. "There was a sale on crockery, and I barely escaped intact."

"Did you get everything?"

"Every last damn thing. As much as I'd like to stand here and chat, my arms have lost all feeling."

"How dreadful for you. I do hope they spring back to life, since you'll need to put away all the little things you picked up and then distribute the ingredients to the proper boxes. Once you've done that, lock up and be back at five. And, please, try to wear something suitable for the media."

Kyle's neck muscles tensed, but he continued down the hallway. While our group stood like children awaiting permission to go to the bathroom, Geri complacently resumed her study of her clipboard.

The elevator doors opened and a trim, middle-aged woman joined us. "Oh, Geri, dear, have you seen Jerome? I popped out earlier to shop, and I thought he was intending to work in the room all afternoon, but he's gone. I cannot face the idea of television cameras and newspaper reporters without him beside me to keep me from making an idiot of myself. My daughters say that every time I open my mouth, there's room for a discount shoe outlet to fit inside, and-"

"No, I haven't seen him, Brenda," said Geri, "but the press reception doesn't start for an hour. I'm sure he's just gone for a walk and will be back shortly."

"I suppose so," she said, sighing in much the fashion Eilene Buchanon did when informed of Kevin's latest mishaps. She acknowledged my introduction with yet another sigh and was hovering near the door as Ruby Bee, Estelle, Durmond, and I went to the elevator and rode to the second floor. The two intrepid tourists continued to their room, now engrossed in the spectre of a large sum of money.

"A quiet drink?" Durmond said as we paused in the hall to locate our respective room keys. "I think I need something after today's…outing. Gloria Swanson must be laughing hysterically from the great beyond, along with Picasso and Warhol, and poor old Monet, who probably intended all along for his paintings to be blurry."

"I wish I were with them. Let me wash my face, then I'll tap discreetly on the adjoining door and we can do the dirty deed without stirring up any gossip."

The elevator door slid open. Brenda and Frannie stared at us, then nervously twittered as if they'd been accused of conspiring to rig the Krazy KoKo-Nut cookoff.

"Frannie's coming to my room for a little drink," Brenda said in response to our less than inquisitive expressions. "I know we shouldn't be imbibing at such an hour, but I'm so excited about the press reception, and, as Jerome says, it must be five o'clock somewhere in the world."

"I've been out shopping," Frannie said, somehow equally compelled to explain herself-and the highly suspicious presence of shopping bags in her hands. "I sent Catherine back here earlier to take a nap and prepare herself for the press. She's been in numerous beauty pageants, talent contests, that sort of thing, and she does much better if she's well rested. The DO NOT DISTURB sign's still up, so I guess she's asleep."

"What time is it in California?" Brenda asked as the two went down the hall. "I never can keep it straight, although I do know it's much earlier or much later. Vernie's a freelance writer, as I told you, and works at home. She's sold articles to-" The door closed on Vernie's career.

"I'll be ready in a minute," I said to Durmond, then went inside my shabby little sanctuary and sank down on the bed. The ghastly foray had left me so tense that I was trembling, as if I'd confronted my past on every corner. I hadn't scrutinized every face for that of my ex, nor had I really worried that I would run into him or anyone else. In Maggody, population about 755 (depending on who was off visiting relatives), you bet. In Manhattan, population 10,000,000 (give or take a million), not likely-but too close for comfort, nevertheless.

The red bulb on the telephone was blinking. I punched for the operator and waited, although I was more interested in the far side of the adjoining door than I was any messages.

Rick responded with a surly, "Yeah? Whaddya want?"

"My message light's blinking. This leads me to believe there's a message."

"Hang on." He banged down the receiver, cursing, and several minutes later, came back on, cursing. "Goddamn Gebhearn dame swept everything off the desk. Here it is, no thanks to her. Some broad named Ellen called, said to call her back, said it's an emergency." This time he banged down the receiver in its cradle.

I replaced mine more gently and flopped back on the limp pillow. I'd been expecting the message to be from Ruby Bee, concerned with the presence of cockroaches in their room or a desire for sodas from the machine in the lobby-both of which she would have construed as emergencies no less volatile than a neighborhood nuclear meltdown. But Ellen who?

There was a mild tap on the adjoining door. I pulled myself up, rubbed my eyes, and opened it. Durmond held two glasses, the ice cubes tinkling seductively, a bagged bottle, and a bag of potato chips. "Your place or mine?" he said.

I waved him in and, while he fixed drinks, said, "I've had a message from someone named Ellen. I have no idea who it might be. Could it have been meant for you?"

"A woman calling me? " With a self-deprecatory chuckle, he sat down on the bed and began to open the bag. "Who'd be interested in a dreary old professor who's desperate enough to mutilate a perfectly decent cake recipe with Krazy KoKo-Nut?"

"She said it was an emergency," I said, ignoring his melodramatic display designed to elicit a tender response from yours truly. "I guess I'd better ask Ruby Bee and Estelle if they have any idea who it might be. I'll be right back."

"Don't worry about me. I'll just sit here by myself."

"Do that." I went down the hall and knocked on their door, When Estelle opened it, I made a rather natural attempt to enter the room. Natural and unsuccessful. "What's the deal with the security in this room?" I asked, irritated. "Are you entertaining sailors or something? Boozing it up with traveling salesmen from Toledo?"

"Ruby Bee is gettin' herself gussied up for the press reception," Estelle said, glancing over her shoulder. "She's wedged in the bathroom at the moment, while I try to figure out what she's gonna wear. The room's too darn small to have other people traipsing in and out all the time like a bunch of gawky outlanders. Now, what's your problem, missy?"

Manhattan was unnerving me, but it was unhinging them. I told Estelle about the mysterious call from "Ellen," and was told that they were a sight too busy to worry about my anonymous callers. On that note, the door was closed.

As I retreated toward 204, a man with erect peppery hair and thicklensed glasses came out of one room and headed for the door through which Frannie and Brenda had gone earlier. The missing Jerome, I surmised as I smiled vaguely and made a move to pass him, wrinkling my nose as I caught a whiff of perfume tainted with cigar smoke.

He stepped back to block my way. Although we were the same height, he seemed to think he could tower over me and intimidate me with his masculine authority, or at least his bad breath. "Who are you?"

"Not my mother's keeper," I replied mildly. "How about yourself?"

He moistened his lips with a normal tongue. "I'm Jerome Appleton, honey. My wife's one of the contestants, and I came along for moral support. How about yourself?"

I recognized his voice, although it was no longer roaring about the blankety-blank buzzards at the IRS. I introduced myself and admitted I was in a similar role. "I guess this is convenient for you," I added, "since the Chadwick Hotel is one of your accounts."

"This dump? You gotta be kidding." He moved toward me, and as Estelle had sworn, it was damned easy to see the mental icing on his face, not to mention the real dribble on his chin. "I handle a coupla clubs not too far from here, though. Maybe while the contestants are busy, we might go have a drink to console ourselves for missing out on the limelight? Don't get me wrong, honey. I'm not suggesting anything more risqué than that-unless you're in the mood…?"

"You really are a toad, aren't you?" I said evenly. "Do you have dead flies stuck between your teeth?"

"Jerome?" Brenda said, opening the door and frowning as she noticed his face, which was frozen in a fine imitation of a gargoyle. All we needed was a flying buttress on which to perch him. "Is something wrong?"

"Nothing." He brushed past her and closed the door.

I was not popular on the second floor of the Chadwick, I thought as I trudged on my way like an errant mail carrier. The last time I'd received the cold shoulder from Estelle and Ruby Bee, they'd been up to no damn good, not to mention enmeshed in a thoroughly idiotic kidnapping plot that had backfired and then some. It was hard not to suspect they were up to something now, but I had no idea what it could be.

There was something damned fishy about the so-called mugging in the stairwell, but everyone seemed content to dismiss it as a typical New York close encounter of the wrong kind. I was the only person who remained unsatisfied with the story. But it was hard to explain why Durmond had been dragged to Ruby Bee's room and stripped, and the police alerted to storm the same site. To myself, anyway-since no one else was asking.

I stopped in front of the stairwell door around the corner from the elevator. Almost invisible in the terminally dingy pattern of the carpet was a round brown speckle. I knelt and looked for others. There was a trail of sorts, and I determined that it began by the door and went in the direction I'd just come. Like Raz's sow on the scent of a wily truffle, I crawled down the hall, restraining myself from actually snuffling as each speckle lured me on.

"Arly?" Durmond said from behind me. "Are you okay?"

I stood up and tried to think of something clever to explain my porcine imitation. In that nothing came to mind, I was relieved when he said, "There's something on the news that…well, did you say the name of your town is Maggody?" He pronounced it "mu-GOH-dee," but I forgave him since he'd saved me the necessity of a lie.

"Maggody," I said, stressing the first syllable. "It rhymes with 'raggedy.' But I can't believe it's on the news. Stoplight go dead? Fish kill downstream from the sewage plant? Pedigreed sow on the rampage?"

He hurried me into my room and turned up the volume on the television set in time for the tail end of the story. When the flat-faced anchorwoman moved on to footage of sump holes in Florida, I found myself numbly staring at the now dark message button on the telephone. "Not Ellen," I heard myself croak. "Eilene."

At five o'clock we drifted out of our rooms for the press conference. I was still concerned about Kevin and Dahlia, but there wasn't a blessed thing I could do beyond calling Earl and Eilene for updates. I admitted only to myself that I was as worried about the physical and emotional well-being of the hostage taker as I was about that of the hostages. He couldn't have known what he was getting himself into, but I figured he was regretting it by now. Red Chief was only a kid, after all.

Durmond joined me at the elevator. "You look nice," he murmured murmured, "and not at all like a bumpkin cop. You should wear your hair like that more often."

Okay, so I'd let my hair down, but only in the tangible sense. And run hot water in the shower in hopes the steam would undo the wrinkles in my unspectacular dress. And put on some makeup. None of it meant anything whatsoever. After all, I wasn't wandering down to Ruby Bee's Bar & Grill for a beer; I was attending a catered affair in midtown Manhattan. I wasn't a rube at heart. I was hip enough to don the appropriate camouflage for the big city.

"Well, yeah, maybe so," I responded cleverly.

Ruby Bee and Estelle came down the hall, both gussied to the hilt. Eyebrows may have risen, but they merely exchanged told-you-so looks. We discussed the situation in Lebanon, but without any keen insights, or even dull ones.

Before the elevator arrived, other doors opened and the crowd swelled. Frannie kept tugging at Catherine's sleeve and brushing at the faint creases. Her face pale, Catherine gazed at a reality of her own making. Gaylene Feather tottered along in spike heels and yet another leather skirt that barely covered the top of her thighs.

We jammed into the elevator and creaked down to the big event. The doors to the dining room were open. Geri stood just inside, her ubiquitous clipboard in hand, and a determinedly bright smile on her face. Her simple black dress and single strand of pearls gave her an elegance I couldn't have achieved with a fat checkbook and a week in Paris. It wasn't challenging to imagine her as the sentinel of a sorority house on the first day of rush. "Don't you all look charming!" she said to us. "Brenda and Jerome are already here, and now we're all accounted for. Let's come right in and have a drink, shall we?"

We obeyed. The dining room was of moderate size, with seating for sixty or so customers. Each round table had a linen cloth, pristine ashtrays, and a vase of flowers. At the far end of the room was a long table covered with platters and trays, overseen by a pimply young man in a white jacket. A bartender waited behind a smaller table in the corner. Pedestrians on the far side of the windows glanced incuriously at us as if we were mundane freshwater fauna (i.e., guppies) in an aquarium.

Brenda and Jerome sat at a table near the window. She had a multicolored drink in front of her, he a more lethal martini. His eyes flickered at us over the rim of the glass as he downed his drink, shoved back his chair, and wound his way through the tables toward the makeshift bar. He moved carefully, which led me to suspect it was not his first martini-or second.

"Isn't this fun?" Brenda said, fluttering her fingers. "Jerome, dear, I'd love another of these wonderfully fizzy drinks. Frannie, that color is just marvelous on you. Catherine, you look absolutely darling! When Vernie and Deb were your age, they wore nothing but sloppy T-shirts and jeans with holes in them. I can't count the number of times I told them that they looked worse than ragamuffins off the street."

Gaylene clucked sympathetically. "These darn kids today-they lack class, if you know what I mean." She took off for the bar, her skirt creeping up her rump with each step. By the time she reached it, there was no doubt as to the color of her panties.

Ruby Bee and Estelle put their handbags on the nearest table and homed in on the food like airborne missiles with heat detectors. Frannie sat down next to Brenda, and after a moment, Catherine followed Jerome's path. This left me in an awkward position, as in standing next to Durmond in the doorway. I was quite sure we resembled a pair of freshmen at the first sockhop of the year.

"Thank you so much for coming!" Geri trilled from the lobby. I looked back at the two men in business suits, who were frozen just inside the lobby door. They were not identical, but their gray suits, hats, briefcases, and dumbstruck expressions were close enough to qualify them as salt and pepper shakers. She hesitated, then extended her hand and continued. "Are you from Travel and Leisure? I just knew Tina would come through for me, and I'm so very, very pleased that you're here. Come right in here and we'll get you settled with drinks and let you meet our five super-finalists! They're so eager to meet you. Do you have a photographer coming?"

"I don't think so," muttered one of the men. They conferred for a moment, then allowed Geri to escort them to the bar. As Jerome and Catherine turned around, I noticed she was holding a glass not unlike his-right down to the olives. Across the room, her mother winced, but continued to chatter with Brenda.

Durmond and I drifted toward the food. It looked good, especially to someone who hadn't had a decent meal in so long she felt as emaciated as one of Perkins's dawgs. I picked up a plate and allowed myself a visual feast: meatballs, imported cheeses, seafood platters, cold cuts nicely curled around fillings, crudités, and fruit dipped in dark chocolate.

As I poised a serving fork over the shrimp, Ruby Bee sniffed and said, "It's not bad, but I'd be embarrassed if I was Geri. Lord only knows how much this cost, and there ain't a wienie in barbecue sauce to be seen, much less any potato chips or mixed nuts."

"Or onion dip," Estelle said, smirking. "How much trouble is it to whip up a batch of onion dip, for pity's sake? Now, your fried okra is a sight more trouble, but I always say it ain't much of a party without fried okra." She peered more closely at a platter. "You'd think they could afford to pay someone to peel the shrimp for 'em."

"That cheese looks like it's been bleached," added Ruby Bee, pointing at a slab of Brie. "And this one smells worse than Boone Creek in August, when the fish take to flopping in the mud. What do you reckon this stuff costs?"

Don't think for a second that they weren't piling up their plates with the objects of scorn, or that I was about to jump into that conversation. I escaped to the bar, praying that their hisses were inaudible and no one from the press would realize I even knew the two gourmands.

Said gentlemen were being served cocktails. I nodded to them, asked for a beer, and fled to the farthest table to devour meatballs and bleached cheese (in Maggody, if it's not Velveeta, it's highly suspect).

Geri herded a man into the room. "This is simply marvelous of you, and I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am." She gave him a conspiratorial smile. "You're from Gourmet, aren't you? You've got that look, if you know what I mean."

"Whatever you say, doll." The man winked at Geri and headed for the bar. She managed to close her lips, although it took a moment for her smile to slip back into place, and once again, the tiny frown line appeared.

It was still there as Ruby Bee and Estelle approached my table, staggering under the weight of their plates. "But the Buchanons all look alike," Ruby Bee was saying in a low voice as they sat down. "Maybe he's kinfolk on the less successful side of the family. Not everyone can be a plumber, Estelle. Some folks got to settle for less."

Estelle chased down a meatball and popped it in her mouth. "It's more likely I'm seeing things after all this time in this crazy town. Afore long, I'll probably see Mrs. Jim Bob selling pretzels from a pushcart and Hiram flapping the reins on one of those fancy carriages in the park. Brother Verber panhandling at the subway station. Perkins's eldest driving a cab."

"But you have to agree there's a favorance that ain't easy to miss. A right strong favorance."

Before I could dredge up the courage to ask what the hell they were talking about, Durmond appeared at my elbow and said, "If I may presume to intrude on such a lovely trio…?"

"Goddamn it!" Catherine exploded. We all stared as she banged her glass down on the table and grabbed her mother's arm. "For once in my life, why don't you leave me alone? I am not your Barbie doll! If you've got a problem with that, you can go straight to hell!"

It should have been an exit line, punctuated with the slam of a door. Instead, she released her mother's arm, sat back in the chair, and calmly picked up her glass. She wasn't exactly smiling, but she had a vague aura of triumph that made me uneasy.

Frannie tried to laugh. "Oh, dear, let's watch our temper and our language. We wouldn't want these representatives of the media to get the wrong idea." She waved at the three people hovering near the bar.

All three turned back and demanded refills. Frannie lowered her hand and again forced a laugh, although it reminded me of a drill sergeant on the verge of announcing a twenty-mile hike. "We'll be sure to go to bed early tonight. Lots of rest will make us feel so much better for the big contest tomorrow."

"Oh, yes," Catherine said complacently. "I can hardly wait to go to bed. All the little piggies want to go to bed, don't they? We can't have any little piggies crying wee, wee, wee all the way home."

Geri's lips quivered, but she clearly was at a loss for a response. No one else did any better, and we were all waiting for inspiration when the lobby door opened. Geri exhaled and looked over her shoulder. "Why, if it isn't the representative of Krazy KoKo-Nut, a mere twenty minutes late for our little reception! The media will be so pleased that you've deigned to grace us with your presence."

Kyle stopped in the doorway. "I had to shower and change after spending the day doing your chores. One would think the marketing firm could handle the mindless details, since that's what they're getting paid for. What a shame no one with experience was put in charge."

Geri's chin shot up, and her shoulders rose as if she were wearing inflatable pads. "What a shame no one from Krazy KoKo-Nut has enough sense to behave properly in front of the media."

"My goodness," Ruby Bee whispered, "the good ol' boys at the bar are less fractious than these folks. When I had to throw out that one-eyed fellow from Hasty, he managed to apologize real nicely before he threw up all over the hood of his truck."

"It happened to be my station wagon," Estelle said tartly, "and I'd just washed it that very morning."

Catherine stood up and began to move around the table, touching heads as she chanted, "This little piggie went to market, and this little piggie stayed home." She dug her fingers into her mother's lacquered blond hair. "Should have stayed home, anyway." She continued past Brenda, saying, "This little piggie had roast beast, and this little piggie"-she sank down on Jerome's lap and stroked his bristly hair-"had some. Didn't you, piggie wiggie?" Before he could answer, she returned to her chair, smiling modestly, as if she'd aced the talent portion of the pageant. Durmond leaned toward me. "I'm not sure this is what Geri had in mind."

"At least no one's been killed," I answered in a low voice, then mentally cursed myself for tempting fate. This was not a gathering of happy campers. At the table near the window, Brenda was nervously watching Frannie, who was scowling at Catherine. Jerome was staring at the olives in his glass, his lower lip thrust forward and his knuckles white. Catherine serenely awaited the scores from the judges. Geri and Kyle were glowering, Ruby Bee and Estelle were hissing, and the three men near the bar looked as if they were wishing they were history. Gaylene was grazing contentedly, however, and Durmond was sipping his drink with a faintly amused look.

"I want another drink," said Catherine, shoving her glass across the table to Jerome.

"Now, Catherine," Frannie protested, "why don't we have some ginger ale? It's not becoming for someone your age to-"

"She's old enough." Jerome took her glass and started for the bar. "Old enough for a helluva lot of things, including some you've never thought of."

Brenda glanced at Frannie. "Jerome, I really don't think you ought to-"

"Then don't think," he said over his shoulder. "It's a little late in the game for you to take up a new hobby, anyway. If little Miss Vervain wants a goddamn martini, she's going to goddamn have one." Stricken, Brenda covered her face and began to sniffle. Frannie patted her shoulder, while the rest of us tried to pretend we hadn't heard his remarks. Gaylene was the only one of us with any success. Oblivious to the chill in the air, she marched over to one of the reporters (the salt shaker), fluttered her eyelashes, and cooed, "I'm actually a dancer at the Xanadu Club just off Broadway and 52nd. You ever been there, honey?"

"No, but I'll damn well make the effort," he said, slipping his arm around her waist. His hand dropped to her derriere. "Can you get me a table right up front?"

Geri cleared her throat. "Well, then, shall we all mingle just a bit and do some interviews? These lovely representatives of the press must have busy schedules, and we don't want to detain them any longer than necessary."

"She can detain me all night," said the pepper shaker, drooling into Gaylene's cleavage.

The last of the reporters winked at Geri and said, "So who's gonna detain me? You look like the sort who might go for something like that, hey?"

To add to the fun, Rick came to the door. A startled look crossed his face, but he rearranged his smirk, put his hand solicitously on Geri's arm, and said, "Oh, dearie, I'm so sorry to bring bad news, but some lady from a food magazine just called to say she won't make it. She has a hangnail."

Geri's eyes welled with tears. She knocked away Rick's hand and slammed the clipboard into Kyle's abdomen. "I've had it with all of you! This is more than anyone should have to bear! I don't care if every last one of you chokes on Krazy KoKo-Nut and dies! I cannot stand the sight of you! You're all worse than Scotty Johanson, and he's nothing but a turd! I hate you!"

With a howl of a coyote, she dashed across the lobby and out the front door. We couldn't hear what she said to Mr. Cambria, but he came into the lobby, scratching his head and mumbling to himself.

"I want another drink," Catherine repeated in the ensuing silence.

The elevator awakened me several times, as did what sounded like a massive traffic jam a block from the hotel, a spirited rendition of a Bob Dylan dirge by a tone-deaf tenor, and an argument that peaked below my window. A car backfired, or so I told myself. The tenor retraced his steps, incoherent but still enthusiastic. Eventually everybody quieted down, and I was able to take the pillow off my head and breathe the musty air wheezing from the air conditioner.

I lapsed into a convoluted dream involving Kevin, Dahlia, and a faceless assailant in a baggy raincoat, all cowering in the shadow of a nuclear reactor while Raz Buchanon circled them in a horsedrawn buggy. He was snapping the reins so loudly that it took me a moment to realize someone was tapping on my door.

I banished the last of the bizarre dream, went across the room, unlocked the deadbolt, and opened the door as far as the chain would permit. "Who is it?" I whispered.

"Who do you think it is? " Estelle whispered right back. "It sure ain't the mayor wanting to give you a key to the city. Open the door right this minute."

"What time is it?"

"Time to open the door, Miss Third Degree. We are disinclined to be murdered in the hallway while you ask stupid questions."

I closed the door to disengage the chain, then opened it and waited irritably as Estelle and Ruby Bee slipped inside. They were wearing robes and slippers, which at least implied they hadn't been riding the subways or prowling the sex boutiques at Times Square.

I squinted at the clock. "Okay, what's the problem? It's nearly four in the morning. Back home, you may get up with the chickens, but in this neck of the woods, the only chickens are in the moo goo gai pan."

Estelle poked me in the chest. "Here's your poor mother, who's just gone through a terrible ordeal, and you're making smart-mouthed remarks. I'd like to think you can show her some compassion, instead of spouting off like a snotty teenager," She poked me again for good measure.

I bit back a retort and glanced at Ruby Bee. Even in the murky lights from the street, I could see she was upset. She stumbled to the bed and sat down with a muffled moan. "Terrible, terrible," she said, rocking back and forth, her arms wrapped around herself. "I can't think when I've seen something that terrible."

"What?" I snapped, having become inured to her thespian skills well before the onset of my adolescence.

"A body in the kitchen," Estelle said.

I numbly switched on the light and sat down next to Ruby Bee. "Did you have a nightmare?"

She shook her head. "I wish I had, but what I saw was as real as it gets. And the blood! I ain't never seen so much blood in all my born days. There was blood on the floor, blood on the wall, blood on the counters, and blood all over him like he took a bath in it." She covered her face with her hands and slumped forward. "I get all woozy just thinking about it."

I was a little woozy myself. "And this was in the kitchen? You were in the kitchen and found a body? Whose body?"

"It was dark and I didn't stop to ask for identification," Ruby Bee said testily, apparently not as close to a swoon as she'd been two seconds ago. "Nobody would have. For all I knew, the murderer was hiding right there in the broom closet, a butcher knife in his hand. I skedaddled out of there like the hem of my robe was on fire, and I didn't look back."

Estelle sat down on the other side of her. "You did just what any one of us would have done." She gave me a dark look for hinting that Mother had not acted appropriately upon the discovery of a blood-drenched body. "So what are you gonna do about it?"

"About what?" I said more loudly than I'd intended. "I don't even know what we're talking about, for chrissake! For one thing, the kitchen is locked, so there's no way there could be a body down there-or that you could have stumbled over it and fled before you met the same fate. I realize you're anxious about the contest. You had a very vivid nightmare set in the kitchen." My theory was not well received, or so I suspected from the snorts and glares coming at me as if I were a hapless toreador. "The kitchen is locked," I repeated, enunciating slowly and carefully.

"No, it ain't," Ruby Bee said. She took an oldfashioned hairpin from her pocket and showed it to me. "I planned to use this to get the door open, but it wasn't even locked. I eased it open in case it squeaked, took a couple of steps inside, and saw the blood splattered on the wall. I didn't know right off it was blood. There was only a little bit of light from the hallway, so I thought it might have been shadows or even mildew."

I stared at her. "But why did you go to the kitchen in the first place?"

Estelle twitched disapprovingly. "Would you let her finish the story without this constant interrupting?"

"Sure," I said as I lay back on the bed. "I'll hold my breath to the very end."

"Then," the narrator said in a hushed voice, "I started to tiptoe around the island in the middle of the room, and I happened to put my hand down to steady myself. I felt something wet, and when I looked at my hand, it was smeared with brown stuff. I was pondering it as I took another step and caught sight of the feet sticking out from the far side. I liked to jump out of my skin, lemme tell you. I took a fast look at the rest of it, but there was a noise like someone was lurking in the darkness. I turned tail and ran out the door, along the hallway to the stairs, and right on up to the room without wasting one second."

"She pounded on the door," Estelle added, "and when I let her in, an icy hand seemed to grab my heart and I knew then and there that something terrible had happened. I haven't seen her shaking like this since that ornery escaped convict was on the verge of killing us up on Cotter's Ridge."

I waited for more breathless prose, but it seemed I'd heard the entire story and it was my turn to fabricate. A gentle tap on the door saved me the effort.

"It's the murderer!" Ruby Bee shrieked. "He followed me up here! You got to do something, Arly!"

Estelle shook my arm so violently my head bounced on the bed and my teeth clattered. "Do something!"

"Indeed." I stood up and pulled on my robe, went to the adjoining door, and held it open. "Come on in, Durmond. We're just sitting around the ol' campfire telling spooky stories. Don't suppose you have any marshmallows with you?"

He tightened the belt of his robe as he came through the door. "I hope I'm not interrupting, but I heard voices and I was worried that there might be a problem of some sort." He waited for a moment, then smiled uncertainly and said, "But I can see that you're all safe and sound, and I don't want to intrude."

Ruby Bee and Estelle sensed a more receptive audience. They snagged him, settled him on the bed (my bed), and related the entire story once again, from the hairpin to the pure panic down the hall in 219. I leaned against the wall and listened, somewhat amused by the varying degrees of shock and incredulousness that crossed Durmond's face. Only somewhat amused because it was well past four o'clock by now.

"I don't know what to say," Durmond said when they ran down. "I suppose we ought to take some action, but my only experience in this sort of thing is from television. Should we call the emergency number for the police?"

"No!" I said, startled out of my benign trance.

"We have to do something, missy," said Estelle. "There's some poor soul dead in the kitchen. It's up to us to call the authorities." Ruby Bee nodded, although she looked a shade less enthusiastic about doing her civic duty.

I made a face at Durmond. "Before we do something quite so definitive, why don't we go have a look at this purported corpse?"

"Purported?"

"At this point, it's purported," I said in a grim voice. I wasn't in the mood to explain to him about Ruby Bee's and Estelle's propensity for fanciful tales anymore than I was to explain it to the police. "Estelle, take Ruby Bee back to your room and give her a shot of that brandy you've got stashed in your suitcase. After such an ordeal, she must be thirsty. Durmond and I will go downstairs to the kitchen, and if there's…what Ruby Bee says there is, we'll call the police and deal with them."

Estelle started to protest, then clamped down on her lip and nibbled nibbled on it while she studied her cohort. "I get your drift, Arly. You're thinking the police will leap to the wrong conclusion again and drag your poor mother off to jail. She's not exactly Miss Popularity of the Precinct, is she?"

"Not exactly," I murmured with heartfelt sincerity.

We went out to the hallway. Durmond and I watched the two until they were safely inside their room, then mutely rode the elevator to the lobby. He looked as if he had a lot of questions, but I knew damn well I didn't have nearly enough answers even to start a conversation, much less to sustain one.

The lobby was quiet, although the traffic beyond the glass doors had abated only slightly. I'd never been able to figure out why the streets were crowded all night long in Manhattan, who the busy bodies were and where in the hell they were so eager to be in the hours before dawn. One of life's little mysteries.

"Let's just get this over with," I said as I took off down the dimly lit hall to the kitchen.

"You're the cop," he said from behind me, his slippers softly slapping the floor.

I hesitated in front of the kitchen door for a moment, then eased it open and found the switch on the wall. The room flooded with harsh white light. Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to step inside and look at the stainless counter for signs of a bloody handprint. The surface was clean. The five boxes, each with a contestant's name scrawled on the top, were in a neat row.

I exhaled noisily and went on around the island. The wall wasn't wasn't splattered with anything I could see, and there certainly were no feet poking out from beyond the far corner. I completed my circumnavigation of the island and joined Durmond at the door.

"No body," I said with a shrug. "No blood, no nothing. It looks pretty much the way Kyle and I left it this morning." I reached for the light switch, but my hand froze in midair and I turned back around with a puzzled frown, "No, it doesn't," I said, mostly to myself, as I struggled to form a mental image of the room as it had been earlier.

Durmond put his hands on my shoulders. "There's certainly no body, as you said. Your mother had a nightmare about creeping down here, and convinced herself and Estelle that it really happened. Let's see if we can get a little more sleep." He began to massage my neck, which must have felt like a bundle of ropes. "Then again, if we can't sleep, we can find other ways to pass the time."

"There's something missing. Four somethings, to be more accurate." I pulled free of his hands and went back around the island to make sure I wasn't as addled as Ruby Bee. "This morning there were four cases of Krazy KoKo-Nut stacked against this wall. They're gone."

"Are you sure Geri didn't have them moved?"

"To tell the truth, I'm not sure about anything anymore. We'd better go tell Nancy Drew that she was seeing things, and then I'm going to lock myself in my room and go back to bed. If someone's crazy enough to steal Krazy KoKo-Nut, no telling what else he or she might do before the sun rises."

"I'd be delighted to serve as a bodyguard," he said, advancing slowly.

"Good," I said, retreating briskly. "You can sit outside my door the rest of the night. I'd loan you my gun, but I left home without it. Silly me."

"I have a gun, but I'd hate to use it on someone who's obsessed with pseudo-coconut. It'd be like shooting a hopelessly sick animal, wouldn't it?" The ends of his mustache twitched as he smiled, and there was something going on behind his gentle brown eyes that I couldn't begin to read.

"I think I'd better let Ruby Bee and Estelle know that everything's okay," I said. I held my ground until he turned and went out of the kitchen, then looked once more to make sure there was no blood, switched off the light, and closed the kitchen door.

Geri remained rigidly angry as she repeated what Kyle had said concerning the schedule, nodded grimly when Frannie presented her case for inclusion, and ordered the contestants to follow her to the kitchen.

"Isn't this exciting?" Frannie said as she, Ruby Bee, Gaylene, and Durmond trooped out the door. No one answered.

I refilled my cup and sat down across from Estelle. "Okay, we're here all by ourselves. I'm not saying Ruby Bee found a body in the kitchen, but if she did-what was she doing down there in the middle of the night?"

"You'll have to ask her why she went there. I ain't her psychiatrist, for pete's sake, and I gave up a long time ago trying to second-guess her motives for most everything she does."

"Don't try to spoonfeed me that nonsense. Why'd she go to the kitchen at three in the morning?"

Estelle took a compact and a tube of lipstick from her purse. "Maybe she was looking for a glass of warm milk. I myself was asleep, so I didn't even know she was gone until she came back and pounded on the door." She deftly outlined her lower lip in a shade I would have dubbed "Virulent Cerise," clicked the compact shut, and dropped it and the lipstick back in her handbag. "I wonder how long they're gonna be in there? I was thinking we might try again to go to the Statue of Liberty and-"

"You didn't ask her why she'd been creeping around the hotel in the middle of the night? Get off it, Estelle. I don't know what you two are-"

"Has either of you seen Jerome this morning?" Kyle asked from the doorway. We shook our heads. "Brenda's locked herself in the bathroom of 211 and she won't come out. She's not making much sense, but she sounds really upset about Jerome. You don't think she'll…do something, do you?"

"I have no idea," I said uneasily.

Kyle groaned as if someone had crunched on his toes. "Oh, God, this is the last thing we need. Has Geri come yet?"

"She took the contestants to the kitchen about five minutes ago," I said. "If Brenda's locked in the bathroom, how'd you get into her room?"

"I got a passkey from Rick." He stared down the hallway, his expression increasingly bleak as he no doubt visualized the likely scenario. "Maybe you two could go up to her room? She might be more willing to talk to women. I'd call Jerome's office to see if he's there, but I don't even know where it is. They live out on Long Island somewhere, so his office could be there or in the city or almost anyplace, and I have no idea what the name of the firm is." His knees buckled, and he grabbed the back of a chair to catch himself. His voice rose in pitch and volume as he gazed imploringly at us. "Please see if she'll talk to you. I don't know what else to do. If she harms herself, the police will investigate and I might as well go ahead and slit my own throat."

"We're going," I said before he wet his pants in front of us. "Take it easy, Kyle. Brenda and Jerome were bickering last night. I didn't hang around for the finale, but it's likely that he stormed away to his house, or to his office, or even to another hotel. Of course she's upset about it. That doesn't mean she's going to end it all by drinking an entire bottle of Pepto-Bismol."

"She sure was upset at the reception," Estelle contributed thoughtfully. "She might be depressed enough to slash her wrists like Fizzy Westend did when his third wife ran off with that janitor at the high school. I can still see him staggering down the road like a three-legged calf, and bleating like one, too, while the blood spurted out like ribbons."

I grabbed her elbow and hustled her to the stairwell before she could come up with any more bright ideas. I knew we were both thinking about the purported corpse and the missing man, and I was not ready to dismiss it as a whimsical coincidence-if there had been a body. Estelle was convinced Ruby Bee had seen one, but she was as gullible as the local girls who swore you couldn't get pregnant if you were drunk. We have a lot of youthful mothers in Maggody.

I opened the door of 211 and cautiously said, "Brenda? Are you okay?"

Opting for the less delicate approach, Estelle pushed past me and knocked briskly on the bathroom door. "Brenda, honey, it's Estelle and Arly. Kyle said you were upset, and we thought we'd better come up and see if there's anything we can do for you."

The only response was the flushing of the toilet. While Estelle continued to make soothing noises to the scarred door, I ascertained that the only clothes hanging in the closet were Brenda's. All the shoes were pastel pumps. There were no manly items on the top of the dresser, and only one bed had been disturbed. "He's gone," I reported quietly. "It's obvious he packed his bags and left at some point last night. We're dealing with a straightforward marital problem, not some dark mystery. They fought, he left, and she's crying her eyes out in the bathroom."

Estelle nodded, then raised her voice. "Brenda, there's no point in staying in that little bitty room for the rest of your life, just because your husband walked out on you. Why doncha come out? You could call your daughters. Wouldn't it make you feel better to talk to them?" She waited for an answer that failed to arrive, and she tried a new approach. "If I have to, I'll stay out here beating on the door the rest of the day. Unless you want to be responsible for some bruised knuckles, you wash your face and come out here on the double, you hear?"

The door opened, and Brenda emerged, her face blotched and puffy, her eyelids so swollen they were almost closed. Her hair was damp, as was her nightgown, and she was shivering despite the feebleness of the air conditioner.

Estelle took her arm and solicitously placed her on the bed. "That's being more sensible. You want me to dial the telephone for you?"

"I don't want to call them," Brenda said dully. "It's not going to make me feel better to tell Vernie and Deb that their father's a satyr and a sadist. They probably know it, but I'm not going to be the one to say it aloud."

"Oh, honey," Estelle said, sitting beside her to hold her hand, "you and Jerome just had a spat, that's all. All married couples do, even newlyweds on their honeymoons. He'll come back before long, his tail between his legs, and apologize for being such a brute. I'll bet he's already sitting at his desk, feeling guilty and fretting over what to say when he calls you. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if he showed up real soon with flowers and a box of candy."

"I would be," she said in the same listless voice. "For one thing, he and his girlfriend are on an airplane to some city in South America…Rio, I think. I can just see them with their champagne and caviar, chuckling about how poor, stupid Brenda never knew a thing until he was packed and halfway out the door. All I can say is she'd better keep an eye on him, or she'll find herself replaced by the next young thing that rumbas into the room and snuggles in his lap."

"That's awful, but maybe it's for the best. You've still got your girls, and your house, and your bridge game, and your volunteer work. You'll stay so busy you won't even miss him."

Brenda toyed with her wedding ring but sounded a bit brighter as she said, "Jerome insisted on watching ball games on television every night. I've always been fond of those exotic nature programs, myself."

"Like the mating rituals of insects?" Estelle suggested. "I saw the most amazing thing…"

I let myself out of the room, relieved we hadn't found Jerome wrapped in a shower curtain and Brenda attempting to drown herself in the commode. As I'd tried to tell Kyle, it was nothing more than a man with a midlife crisis and a sudden interest in the mating rituals of younger women. Not all of them flew to Rio to play out their pathetic fantasies; I personally knew of one who'd settled for a seedy residential hotel two blocks away from his paramour until she could dispose of her spouse and free up some closet space.

I went to my room and lay down on the bed to think-not of the maladies of marriage but of more current events. Jerome was not missing, in a manner of speaking, and therefore no longer qualified as our mischievous corpse. Perhaps Ruby Bee had been sleepwalking, I proposed to myself. She'd managed to get outside the room, gripped by her bloody vision, and awakened when she found herself in the corridor. It had taken her an hour to persuade Estelle to buy her story, and then they'd come knocking on my door.

As for the missing cases of Krazy KoKo-Nut, it was more likely that Geri or Rick had arranged for them to be moved to a less obtrusive location, such as the pantry. All the other odd little things that had happened didn't matter one damn bit. Durmond had been mugged by an overly conscientious sort who wanted to make him comfortable in Ruby Bee's bed. Mr. Cambria was a doorman in Miami, and this was a busman's holiday. Magazine reporters were earthy.

The telephone rang. Remaining supine (mentally as well as physically), I fumbled for the receiver and said, "Yes?"

"Oh, Arly, it's awful!" Eilene shrieked, nearly piercing my eardrums. "There was gunfire at the café last night! Nobody's real clear what happened, but the police haven't seen either of the kids this morning!" She began to hiccup so loudly that I could barely understand her. "The killer's not dead, though. The police know that much."

"How do they know that?"

"He ordered a pizza. A large supreme with anchovies and extra cheese. The delivery boy had to take it right up to the door, hand it over, and then run for his life. The deputy said the poor boy had the tip clutched in his hand so tightly they had to pry his fingers open."

I searched the ceiling for guidance, but all I saw were waterstains, one of which bore an eerie resemblance to a pizza. "Well," I said weakly, "it sounds as if everybody's okay. They're certainly not starving if they've got pizza."

"But, Arly," she wailed, "Kevin hates anchovies!"

It occurred to me that despite my earlier bout of self-congratulatory analysis, I didn't exactly have things under control.

Once I'd finished feeling sorry for myself, I considered my dilemma. The fact that I'd fled the scene of the crime was hardly worth stewing over; New York's finest would be hard-pressed to assign me a motive, and I was prepared to plead temporary insanity. I doubted it would be difficult to persuade them-or anyone else, including myself.

No, the dilemma circled around how to find Ruby Bee and Estelle in a city that stretched from the top of the Bronx to the bottom of Battery Park, less than fifteen miles but all of them a tad more congested than, say, the cow pasture out behind the Flamingo Motel.

They, along with Gaylene, Durmond and his disreputable friend, and Brenda, might come home to the hotel, wagging their tails behind them, but I wanted to talk to any and all of them before the police took charge. Somewhere in the city was a veritable parade of Krazy KoKo-Nut finalists. All I had to do was find it-and be damn quick about it.

Gaylene was the head majorette, I thought as I began to trudge toward Broadway. She could have taken off for any of a million destinations. Then again, I told my self with weary optimism, she could have gone to her apartment to practice her kabobs. It wasn't an especially brilliant theory, but it was the best I could produce, and I went into a stationery store and asked to borrow a telephone directory. After a short discussion with a woman larger than Dahlia and twice as surly, I became a bona fide customer with the purchase of a large bottle of aspirin. The directory hit the counter with a thud.

If she had a number, it was unlisted. I thought about calling Geri to ask for Gaylene's address, but decided it would not be prudent to call attention to my absence, or anyone else's. I tried for a moment, and then came up with the name of the club where Gaylene worked. The Xanadu had a telephone, along with an address only a few blocks north of where I was.

I kept my eyes averted as I walked past porn shops, peep shows, and posters extolling the talents of both bosomy women and young men who aspired to be bosomy women and were dressed accordingly. Chains and leather seemed to be the fashion, as were whips and masks and a lot of things that I was unable to identify. It was sleazier than I remembered, but it may have been my fault. On sleepless nights in Maggody (and there'd been more than a few), I'd allowed myself to romanticize the city, to think of the theaters and galleries and museums, rather than of the deteriorating infrastructure, the growing population of homeless, the pervasive crime, the expressions of those who had been victimized and those who knew it was only a matter of time.

I instinctively tightened my grip on my purse as I went past a derelict sprawled in a doorway and kept my face averted as I passed a huddle of teenaged boys. The paranoia was coming back like a recurrent case of the flu, and I picked up my pace. When I arrived at the pertinent street, I looked both ways for any sign of the Xanadu, sighed, and headed to the right because it was easier than crossing Broadway to go to the left.

Halfway down the block I found a sunbleached poster that proclaimed the Xanadu Club to be the home of THE WORLD'S SEXIEST WOMEN. The neon sign was dark, however, and the door was locked. This was not earthshattering, since the poster also proclaimed that the first show would start in roughly eight hours. No cover charge, but the tab on the two-drink minimum might startle good ol' Toledo Ted.

As I turned to retrace my path to the hotel, I noticed an alley beside the building. It was as inviting as the weedy path to Raz Buchanon's cabin, but I'd walked a long way to do nothing more than gaze at the exterior of the nocturnal habitat of the World's Sexiest Women. And I had to admit I was running low on brilliant ideas.

The alley was lined with metal garbage cans, most of them filled to overflowing. The walls on either side of me were decorated with unsavory suggestions in a rainbow of spray paint-New York's only indigenous folk art. Things rustled as I walked by, and I was unhappily aware of the sweat spreading across my back and slinking down the sides of my face. It was nearly as much fun as stalking a still on Cotter's Ridge, I thought with a grimace as I came around a corner.

The small parking area was defined by a chain-link fence and dominated by a white Cadillac. A few hardy weeds had cracked the asphalt and were flourishing as best they could in perpetual shade. Two steps led up to a blue door with a sign that discouraged trespassing, as did the descending line of locks and the bars on the window beside it.

I righteously told myself I had no desire to set foot inside the place, continued to the window, and stood on my tiptoes. Through a wire mesh and a veneer of accumulated grime, I could see a dark office crammed with standard furniture-and a three-quarter profile of Brenda Appleton, who was seated at the desk, her fingers tapping the arms of the chair and an impatient look on her face.

I sank back on my heels, but before I could get my jaw off my chest, the blue door opened. I ducked behind the front of the Cadillac, anticipating at least one bullet between my eyes, and asked myself how I could be so incredibly stupid. Nothing came to mind.

"You're such a sweetie, Mr. Lisbon," Gaylene said. "I know it's awful of me to miss even more work, but when a girl's got a free trip to Vegas, she's gotta take it." I heard a murmur; then she giggled and said, "Who knows? Maybe I'll win the ten-thousand-dollar prize, too. Wouldn't that be something!"

The door closed, and her high heels echoed down the alley. I peeked over the hood of the car, but ducked as a light came on in the office and a darkly tanned man with a crewcut appeared. His mouth was moving as he reached for a cord and closed the curtains on whatever the hell was going on in there.

I stood up slowly, ascertained my forehead was as last I'd seen it in the cracked mirror (with the exception of a heavy glaze of sweat), and eased around the Cadillac to the edge of the building. Gaylene was gone.

I arrived at the sidewalk in time to see her turn at the corner and head down Broadway. Seconds later, two figures emerged from a deli and took off after her at what I'm sure they felt was a prudent distance for amateur sleuths hot on the trail of Manhattan's version of Mata Hari.

Half a block later said sleuths yelped loudly as I clamped down on their shoulders. Ignoring the pedestrian traffic that flowed around us as if we were submerged rocks in Boone Creek, I said, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"You'd like to give me a heart attack!" Ruby Bee said, clutching her chest and blinking at me.

Estelle looked no more thrilled to see me. "I can't believe you don't know better than to sneak up on folks like that! Why, the very first thing that flashed across my mind was that that psychotic man had finally caught up with us and was aiming to murder us right here in broad daylight."

"In broad daylight on Broadway," I said agreeably. "It has a certain poetic ring to it, doesn't it? At the moment I'm the only one thinking about murdering you two, but I'm willing to hold off for a few more minutes. We can discuss your behavior here, or we can do it in this bar. God knows I could use a beer."

Ruby Bee glanced down the sidewalk, but her prey had vanished. "I could do with one myself, come to think of it. But I don't have all the time in the world to sit and chat. I'm supposed to be in the lobby at two o'clock sharp so Geri can fetch me to fix my cake for the contest."

I followed them into the bar, and we found a table near the window.

"This is right nice," Estelle commented, nodding at the wide mahogany bar and row of padded stools. "Of course it ain't at all as homey as yours, Ruby Bee, but I must say those ferns add a summery feeling."

"Ferns shed," Ruby Bee said. "I'm not about to have to sweep the floor any more than I already do, and-"

I unclenched my teeth long enough to say, "Stop it!" then subsided as a waitress approached our table and took our orders. "We are not going to debate the decor. You are going to tell me what the hell's been going on, and why you were following Gaylene just now."

"Following Gaylene? " Estelle chuckled at the very idea. "We wanted to see Times Square, so we figured we had enough time to walk over and look around. It's kinda odd how the famous theaters are stuck between those nasty shops, isn't it? It seems to me the police ought to-"

"We're not going to debate the zoning, either," I said coldly. "I came to find you because Jerome Appleton's body was discovered in a dumpster behind the hotel less than an hour ago."

Estelle gasped. "But that can't be! He's on an airplane going to South America."

"Not anymore," I said. "I recognized him."

"Then that's who was in the kitchen last night," Ruby Bee said. "I thought that might be who it was, but Brenda's such a dithery thing that I didn't want to worry her. I took a real fast look and almost fainted on account of the blood being as awful as it was…"

The waitress banged down two beers and a glass of sherry, regarded us with a frown until I'd paid the tab, and returned to the stool at the end of the bar to resume her conversation with the bartender. I suppose she'd overheard worse.

"Why did you go to the kitchen?" I demanded.

She looked at Estelle, who took a sip of sherry and said, "I already told Arly that you might have been in the mood for a glass of warm milk."

"And I already said I didn't believe one word of it." I realized I was strangling an innocent beer glass and forced myself to uncurl my fingers.

"I reckon you don't have much choice," Ruby Bee said with a mulish frown.

"May I point out that the police do have choices? The most obvious one is to drag you back to that cold, dirty cell and leave you to regale the rats with your silly lies. Then again, they might choose to interrogate you night and day until you come up with a better explanation."

Her lower lip may have quivered just a tad, but she shook her head, finished her beer, and put down the glass. "I need to get back to the hotel and study my recipe. Come on, Estelle, you can coach me on the order of the ingredients."

"There is no contest!" I said so loudly that the waitress and bartender stared. "There has been a murder, dammit! The police will be there to conduct an investigation, not to sample the entries and pick the winner! They may even want to ask you some questions-none of which will have anything to do with teaspoons and measuring cups and pinches of salt and Krazy KoKo-Nut!" I could hear myself getting more strident with each sentence, but I was unable to stop myself. "You found the goddamn body, Ruby Bee! Don't you remember?"

"How could I forget a thing like that? Do you really think they'll stop the contest? Jerome wasn't a contestant, you know." She shrank under my glare, then took a tissue from her handbag and dabbed at her nose. "Maybe you're right about the contest being canceled. It'd be hard on Brenda to fix her entry not ten feet from where they found her husband's body."

"She'd be fumblin' like a pup," Estelle added. "Of course he was supposed to have left her for a younger woman, so it's not like she planned on seeing him anytime soon."

I gestured at the waitress for another round. "I can see you're both too distressed by Jerome's murder to discuss last night. Let's talk about the night Durmond was mugged and tucked into bed in your room. Where were you before you came back to the room?"

"Shopping," they said in unison, although not with the melodious effect of the Methodist choir.

"At nine o'clock?" I took my sweet time raising my eyebrows. "I would have thought you'd be worn out from the trip, if not a tiny bit intimidated about prowling after dark in a big, bad city. Where did you go?"

"Just here and there," Ruby Bee mumbled. She stared at Estelle, who nodded nervously in agreement.

"What did you buy?" I persisted.

Estelle hesitated until the waitress had replaced our glasses with full ones, then cleared her throat and said, "I picked up some souvenirs at a shop at the end of the block. Nothing really interesting."

"A shop at the end of the block?" I said. "Do you mean the porn shop at the end of the block? What exactly did you buy-a leather bikini? Handcuffs? Edible underwear?"

She turned bright pink. "It's none of your business, missy. I just browsed for the most part."

"You didn't tell me it was that kind of place," Ruby Bee said, then realized her error and got real busy with her beer.

"And where did you go?" I growled at her.

"I decided to visit a few grocery stores, just to compare what they carry with what's at the SuperSaver back home. I went into one place that was run by these Asian people. You'd think one of them could speak American, but they were all gobbling in some language that I couldn't make heads or tails of. They sounded like a flock of turkeys the way they were carrying on."

She was turning pinker than Estelle, and her hand shook as she picked up her glass. Despite her years of intensive practice, she was not a particularly glib liar.

"I get it," I said slowly. "Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Did you get a package of coconut so you could use it in your cake instead of the soybean flakes? You've done some lowdown things before, but I'm amazed that you would stoop to cheating in a cooking contest, Ruby Bee." I tried not to grin, but I couldn't help it. "I'm disappointed in you, to say the least. What would Lottie and Elsie think if they heard about this?"

Ruby Bee hung her head in a fine display of penitence. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. It's not my fault that Krazy KoKo-Nut tastes so dadburned awful that it'll ruin the best recipes. I just couldn't bring myself to make my chocolate chip bundt cake and use that stuff. I have my reputation to think of." She gave me a look meant to be remorseful, but it reeked of slyness. "You won't tell anybody, will you? I don't know what Geri would do if she heard about it, but I'd as soon lick the sidewalk in front of the hotel as be thrown out of the contest and sent home in disgrace."

"I may, or I may not," I said archly. "Is that why you snuck down to the kitchen last night-to put the real coconut in your box?" She nodded warily. "Well, did you make the substitution or not?"

There was a pause that didn't just reek of slyness; it literally stank of it. "No," she said, "because of the shock of finding the body like I did. I was so discombobulated that it was all I could do to get myself out of there before I was murdered."

"Speaking of which," Estelle murmured, "maybe we ought to go back to the hotel? Geri's likely to be in a real tizzy this time, what with the police and all. She'll be sobbing louder than a passel of preachers outside the Pearly Gates."

Refusing to be bullied, I stuck to my story that I had followed Gaylene to the Xanadu because I suspected her motives in entering the contest. I explained how I'd happened to meet Ruby Bee and Estelle while they were exploring the neighborhood, glossing over a few details and stressing that I'd left Mr. Lisbon in good health inside his club. Due in small part to Durmond's bland gaze, and in large part to my real aversion to jail cells, I finally got around to the events of four o'clock in the morning.

Lieutenant Henbit seemed gratified by my candor, but mystified by my disclosure that the murder had most likely occurred in the kitchen and someone had gone to the trouble of removing the body to a dumpster and tidying up. I added that the cases of Krazy KoKo-Nut had also taken a trip, although they'd been returned some time between four and ten o'clock.

"Just what is this KoKo crap?" Henbit asked, scribbling a note.

"That pretty well describes it," said Durmond. "A perverse sign of progress, I suppose. No doubt there's a scientist out there who's devising a scheme in which someday everything that passes our lips will be synthetic."

"Yeah, maybe." Henbit read through his notes for a moment. "What's puzzling me is why your mother went to the kitchen."

"You'll have to ask her."

"She have any kind of relationship with Appleton?" he continued ever so craftily. "They ever go off by themselves for a time, or have cozy conversations in the corner?"

I finished my coffee and stood up. "I really couldn't say, but I'd be surprised if they've so much as exchanged nods since they arrived. He wasn't polite to any of us, including his wife." I thought about how he'd looked in the dumpster and shook my head. "Even so, it was a damn nasty trick to dispose of him like that. How was he killed?"

"Bullet in the neck," Henbit said. "It destroyed the carotid artery, which was why it was so messy."

"And the weapon?" Durmond asked quietly.

"We haven't come up with it yet, but there're some unhappy men out back sifting through garbage. We won't see the ballistics report for a couple of weeks, much less the results of the autopsy. We pulled a stiff out of the river more than a week ago, and we're still waiting to hear something on that, not that it's gonna be any big surprise. Not that this one will, either. As for Lisbon, he was shot in the back of the head with enough caliber to take off his face. Real nasty, according to the first officer on the scene."

I wished him luck with Ruby Bee and Estelle and went into the lobby. Mr. Cambria was back on duty, but I didn't feel overly safe and secure in the hotel, even with cops in the kitchen and cops in the dining room and cops in the alley out back. Hell's bells, I was a cop, and I sure wouldn't have depended on me for anything more than a neatly written parking ticket.

I was under orders not to leave the hotel, which was fine with me. I lingered in the lobby, trying to overhear the conversation between Henbit and Durmond in the dining room, but one or the other had closed the doors. Thinking about my room upstairs was enough to give me claustrophobia, and I was reduced to sitting on a sofa in the lobby when Kyle and Geri came out of the office.

Her blotchy face and swollen eyes reminded me of Brenda's grand exit from her bathroom. "This entire debacle is your fault, you know," she said to him. "Right this minute I could be in the chaise lounge on the deck, but instead I'm going to have to deal with negative press. I hate negative press!"

"Speaking of the press," I inserted politely, "did you confirm the credentials of those people at the reception?"

"Why would they lie?" she countered, making it clear they were likely to be the only unimpeachable souls in the entire city, if not the state.

"Ruby Bee and Estelle were interrupted in the middle of a conversation about how someone in the room resembled a plumber."

"And I should know what a plumber looks like?" Geri said, then turned on Kyle. "I find it reprehensible that one of your contestants not only killed her husband, but also went to some seedy nightclub and killed the manager. If I'd had the slightest inkling that you were including homicidal maniacs on your list of finalists, I never would have set foot in this place."

"I told you the names came from Interspace Investments," he said sulkily.

"Which ones?" I asked.

"What difference does it make?" Geri said, but put her clipboard on the counter and flipped through the pages.

"The two contestants from the original list are Ruby Bee and Catherine. We were supposed to have a cab driver from Brooklyn, a taxidermist from Boise, Idaho, and some hack mystery writer from Hansville, Washington. Instead, we get a hooker, a professor, and a homicidal maniac. It's rather obvious that this sort of decision process should be left to professionals, isn't it?"

She had a point. I thought for a minute (an increasingly alien activity), and said, "Why did the original three decline?"

"Ask him," Geri said as she let the pages flutter down.

Kyle stared at the floor. "They all called the same morning. The cab driver fell and broke his leg, and the taxidermist accidentally severed a finger. The writer said he'd decided to take a three-month cruise to Alaska. Someone from Interspace called that afternoon and said they'd found alternates."

"Lucky us. We got a hooker, a professor, and a homicidal maniac," Geri added with a sneer.

"They didn't phrase it quite that way," he said. "I'd better call my father with the news that the contest is off. He'll be pissed, but there's nothing we can do about it-except pray they find Brenda and arrest her without giving the media all the details about the purpose of her stay here."

He started for the office. Geri stared for a minute, slammed down the clipboard, and took off after him. "Just a minute, buddy boy. If your father calls my boss again and tries to blame this mess on me, I'll personally swim to the Cayman islands and bury him up to his neck in the sand so the crabs can chew off his face!"

They continued their discussion in the office. Beyond the closed doors of the dining room, Lieutenant Henbit and Durmond sat with their backs toward me, intent on their conversation. On the counter not ten feet away, the clipboard lay abandoned on the counter, just begging to be given some attention and a few kind words.

Soft-hearted kid that I was, I sauntered over to the alcove, ducked beneath the counter, and removed the clipboard and myself to a shadowy corner. There were a lot of lists, some scratched into illegibility and others fresh with ill-fated optimism. I finally found the list of contestants and jotted down the addresses of the three replacements.

As I returned the clipboard, I glanced up. Mr. Cambria was regarding me from the sidewalk, not with his usual twinkly smile but with a cold impassivity that caused the hairs to rise on my arms and a lump to settle in my stomach. I felt like an animal on a stainless steel table in a laboratory.

The smile reappeared as he turned to speak to someone, and seconds later Gaylene came into view, laden with shopping bags, her purse, and yet another suitcase. I ducked back under the counter and hurried toward the stairs, not sure I'd interpreted his expression correctly but no longer in the mood to linger in the lobby. Nobody ever died of claustrophobia, for pete's sake.

Once I was in my room with the door locked, I sat down on the bed and looked over what I had scribbled. Unsurprisingly, Gaylene had a local address. Brenda lived in Peabody, New York, which I seemed to remember was on Long Island. I called information and got her number, then took a deep breath and dialed it. A male voice answered.

"Is Brenda home?" I asked.

"Who's calling?"

"Just one of the girls. I wanted to know if she wants to play bridge tomorrow at her house or at the club."

"Who is this?"

"I'll call back later," I said and hung up, aware I'd been chatting with a cop. Brenda hadn't gone home, apparently. If she'd murdered her husband and/or the nightclub owner, she might well have chosen a less obvious haven. But it was equally possible that she had no idea that either murder had taken place and was shopping at Saks or having a three-martini lunch in honor of Jerome's departure (albeit for a destination noticeably farther than Rio).

I looked back at the list. Durmond Pilverman resided in Beaker Lake, Connecticut, and taught at Drakestone College. He taught something "very obscure," he'd said. The college might not be in the same town, but it was apt to be in the same area.

It turned out to be in the same area code. I first called his home number and was not amazed when no one answered, in that he'd told me his wife was deceased and implied he lived alone.

"How obscure is it?" I muttered as I dialed the number of the college. The switchboard operator refused to put me through to his office on the grounds that he didn't have one and was not a member of the faculty. I insisted that he was. After a few rounds of "is too," "is not," I asked for the administration office. "May I help you?" asked a bored young woman who did not sound dedicated to the proposition.

"I'm trying to get some information about Durmond Pilverman. I was under the impression he's a professor there, but the switchboard operator seemed to disagree."

"Yeah, hang on," she said, then punched a button that allowed me to be entertained by a saccharinized Beatles' medley. We were well into "Yesterday" when she returned. "He used to be here, but now he's not anymore. That's all I can tell you on account of our policy."

"Can you at least tell me what department he was in?" I asked before she could cut me off.

"I dunno. It's like we've got this really strict policy about not giving out information about faculty and students. I think there's a law or something."

I put on my smiliest voice. "There's no law against naming his department. It's in the old catalogues, which means it's already in the public domain."

"Yeah?" she said dubiously.

"You can tell me."

We discussed the issue at length. After I'd defined public domain" and assured her several times that I was merely tracking down a dear old friend, she told me he'd been in the sociology department. I went back through the switchboard and found myself speaking to the department secretary, a bored older woman. Her vocabulary was better, as was her attitude (when I explained that Durmond had inherited property in Idaho), and she suggested I speak to Dr. Ripley. I professed willingness to do so immediately and was told Dr. Ripley was conducting a graduate seminar and could not be reached the rest of the day.

All this had taken most of an hour. I now knew Durmond was no longer on the faculty of Drakestone College. I also knew he had a gun in the dresser and a peculiar affinity for disreputable friendships. Then again, I didn't know how his mugging related to the murder, but I was convinced it did. He'd been shot in the stairwell by someone thoughtful enough to put him in a bed. Jerome had been shot in the kitchen by someone who'd felt the need to clean up afterward. Thoughtfulness and cleanliness were not traits I associated with the local criminal element.

I lay down on the bed and began at the beginning.

Staring at the ceiling produced nothing more illuminating than an awareness that it needed new sheetrock. Oh, I'd posed some fascinating questions to myself, but unlike "Jeopardy!" contestants, I was shy on answers. I decided to forego this beginning business and focus on the corpse.

Jerome had been killed in the kitchen. In theory, the kitchen was locked and Kyle Simmons had the only key. It had been in his possession from the moment the four cases of Krazy KoKo-Nut arrived until, I assumed, the police took it away from him in order to secure the scene.

I forced myself to replay the hour or so we'd spent preparing for the contest. The key had been in the lock when I entered the kitchen, and when we left…it had been left as well. Kyle had returned several hours later, at which time Geri had berated him for not having left the key at the hotel. But he had-and in a rather obvious place for it.

Clutching my pillow, I muddled for a while and came up with a tenuous idea. Someone had chanced upon the key in the lock, removed it for a period of time, and then replaced it before Kyle arrived with the bags of utensils. And unless Kyle had unlocked the door for Jerome in the middle of the night, there was now another key floating around in someone's pocket.

Who had borrowed the key long enough to have a duplicate made? Ruby Bee, Estelle, Durmond, and I had been busy making total asses of ourselves in various locales along Fifth Avenue. Catherine and Frannie had departed for a beauty salon; later in the afternoon, however, Frannie had returned laden with shopping bags and mentioned that Catherine was napping. Implying she'd been in her room, Brenda had come looking for Jerome-implying he hadn't.

He was a candidate, although no stronger a one than a boyish Democrat confronting a rich Republican incumbent. Geri had been in the hotel, but she needn't have bothered to go through convolutions to get a duplicate key; all she had to do was keep the original. Excluding the workmen, the only other people within spittin' distance were Rick and the enigmatic doorman, Mr. Cambria.

I was approaching a full-scale migraine, but I squeezed my eyes closed and continued my mental meanderings. Rick had been seriously perturbed when Geri demanded the key. In fact, he'd been on the verge of combat when twinkly ol' Mr. Cambria had suggested that he cooperate. And what had provoked this sudden interest in the not especially interesting kitchen? The arrival of four cases of Krazy KoKo-Nut.

No one had admitted a fondness for soybean flakes, tinted or otherwise, and it was more than challenging to come up with a reason why anyone but a full-fledged wacko would kill for them. Yet an awful lot of people were behaving oddly over something Ruby Bee'd sworn was unfit for a sow (okay, a pedigreed sow, but still…). Interspace Investments, Inc. had bought the company and were enthusiastic enough to move up the date of the contest and host it in their own hotel. They'd rounded up replacements when the three original contestants had dropped out…with a broken leg, a severed finger, and a sudden desire to explore the Alaskan coastline for several months.

Gawd, I hated coincidences almost as much as I hated the island on which I was currently prone. I dealt with the latter by standing up, gazing sullenly at my reflection, and heading out the door to find Lieutenant Henbit and impress him with my insightful logic.

This proved to be a veritable piece of cake as the elevator doors slithered open and he and Durmond came out. "Ah, Ms. Hanks," he said, politely ignoring my gasp, "I was on my way to your mother's room to have a word with her. Several words, to be more accurate. Mr. Pilverman has convinced me that her discovery of the body in the kitchen was…well, not fortuitous, but perhaps serendipitous. However, neither of you has an explanation for her untimely presence. Let's hope she does." Durmond looked in need of a dry cleaner's establishment, and not just for his clothes. He was watching me with such gloominess that I had to restrain myself from tweaking his cheek and assuring him everything was just dandy. "I'm going to lie down for a few minutes," he said to both of us, and then to me, "but you're welcome to join me for a drink later."

"I don't know," I murmured, not at all pleased with the emotional turmoil he'd managed to stir up with his morose eyes and smile. "I'll have to see how I feel, but now I'd like to have a word with Lieutenant Henbit." I waited until Durmond went into his room, grabbed Henbit's arm, and dragged him down the hall toward the higher numbered rooms.

"Ms. Hanks," he said as he removed my hand, "I really have more important things to do than to play secret agent with you. I'm aware that you're the chief of police of your little town in Arkansas. I have no doubt you're skilled in the art of running speed traps and tracking down foxes in the chicken coops. This, however, is not Arkansas, and I must insist you-"

"Wait just a goddamn minute, Lieutenant Henbit! I'm getting sick and tired of being dismissed as a two-bit cop from a one-bit town. I'm coming to you with valuable information, possibly what you need to determine who killed Jerome Appleton and why." I held up my palms and moved backward. "But if you're too busy to listen, I'll run along and have myself a high ol' time with a bug zapper and a six-pack of beer. Golly, I may jest go git myself another tattoo." His jaw was out and trembling just a tad, but he took a breath and said, "What information do you have?"

"I think it's likely that the cases of Krazy KoKo-Nut contain contraband of some sort. Based on several oblique references to Florida and the Caribbean, I'd suggest you test the contents for drugs."

He gave me an indulgent smile. "We have. The lab tests aren't completed yet, but the preliminary word is that the four cases contain nothing more than foultasting, rubbery soybean flakes with artificial flavor and artificial color, all packaged in unsullied plastic bags. It ought to be illegal, but it's not."

"Are you sure?"

"I just told you this was preliminary, so in that sense we're not sure. Why don't you go take a nice nap like Mr. Pilverman, or even with him, if that appeals? I need to ask your mother some questions, and then go back to my office to see what kind of progress we're making on the current whereabouts of Mrs. Jerome Appleton." With a nod, he went down the hall toward Ruby Bee's room, leaving me to stand there gawking like a damnfool tourist in the mean streets of the city.

And to think I'd skipped lunch to concoct my brilliant theory that had explained a helluva lot of things-perhaps not every itsy-bitsy bugaboo, but some of them, anyway. I was leaning against the wall, watching Henbit knock on Ruby Bee's door, when I heard voices and footsteps in the stairwell. I eased open the door in time to hear a male voice assessing the chances (not good) the Mets would win the pennant. A second male voice concurred.

They continued down and presumably out into the lobby. I went to the landing and confirmed as much, then twisted my neck and looked up at the seemingly endless stairs leading into the darkness. With all the confidence of someone walking into a subway tunnel, I went to the third floor, where the remodeling supposedly continued.

The door was not locked. I opened it far enough to stick my head out and ascertain the existence of a table saw, a pile of mismatched lumber, a rusted air conditioner surely on its way to its burial, and other debris appropriate to a remodeling job. It was pretty much what I expected, and I was about to duck back into the stairwell (and go find some lunch) when I heard the unexpected from around a corner.

"Then you think lead pipes are the answer?" said Rubella Belinda Hanks of Maggody, Arkansas. "I always thought copper was the way to go."

"Well, the rust factor's what you got to worry over," said a genial man, identity and hometown unknown.

"Ain't rust just a royal pain in the butt!" chirped Estelle Oppers of Maggody, Arkansas.

They were heading in my direction. I let the door click shut, hesitated long enough to scratch my chin and frown, then scurried up to the next landing and waited.

I was gratified when the door below me opened and the two adventuresses began to descend. "All I can say is that it's a good thing he works for that magazine at night!" Ruby Bee said with a sniff. "Imagine not knowing your copper pipes from your lead pipes."

Estelle sounded equally disdainful as she said, "I doubt he knows his spigots from a hole in the ground! I'm glad we don't have to count on him when pipes start bursting in the winter."

"I should say so. Do you remember back in 'eighty-six when we had that hard freeze right before Christmas and-"

"It was 'eighty-seven, the same year my cousin Carmel was electrocuted in the bathtub. His wife said he always played the radio, but she was seen at a bar less than a week later and dressed in jeans so tight-"

The door banged closed on yet another diverting incident in the Chadwick Hotel.

I stayed in my room the rest of the afternoon, eating pizza (no anchovies) and trying to sort through everything I knew. Or what I thought I knew, anyway, which was a whole 'nother ball game. The Chadwick Hotel had not seen fit to provide its guests with embossed stationery, but I scrambled through drawers until I found a scratch pad, took a pencil from my purse, and sat crosslegged on the bed while I made numerous lists and drew little arrows all over them. The arrows had points; the lists did not.

I was having such a fine time that I was seriously annoyed when the telephone rang. Furthermore, I hadn't had much luck with calls lately. I let it jangle for a long time, but finally I got tired of listening to it and picked up the receiver.

"Oh, Arly!" Eilene shrieked (her standard approach these days). "There's been a breakthrough! They're still being held hostage in Lebanon, but it looks like they'll be released if negotiations are successful. A man's on his way from Washington, D.C., to act as the go-between. Their nightmare may be over after all this time, and they can come home to their families and loved ones."

"That's great news," I said, feeling as though I was linked to CNN. "Why is the guy having to come from Washington?"

"The terrorist demanded to speak to a black FBI agent, if you can imagine. I didn't know there were any, but the policeman said they tracked one down and sent for him. He's more of an office worker than one of those agents who goes around with a gun chasing drug smugglers and folks who want to shoot the president. He has to fly into Frankfort, and they'll fetch him in a car and take him straight to the café."

"Great news," I repeated weakly.

"I'm just beside myself! I've been pulling out my hair and pacing up and down like a caged animal in a zoo. Earl's just as distraught as I am, although I must say he ain't missed any meals-or any ball games on the television."

"Well, it sounds as if it'll be resolved soon and the bride and groom can resume their trip to Niagara Falls." I tried to think of something else to say, but I'd worn myself out with all the lists and arrows. "Thanks for calling, Eilene. I'll be sure to tell Ruby Bee and Estelle the good news."

"You don't have to tell them about it, Arly. I talked to 'em a while back. Just tell them that Earl says even a plumber's apprentice knows that copper is better than lead. It costs more, but you come out ahead in the long run. Earl couldn't believe a real plumber'd say something that stupid. He says it sounds more like Kevin." I asked her to call back when the hostages had been released, then replaced the receiver and pretended I was studying my lists. So Ruby Bee and Estelle were still on the case, were they? Lieutenant Henbit might not be pleased to hear they were dabbling in his water. I sure as hell wasn't. Whatever was going on under the guise of a cooking contest was a damn sight more dangerous than the chemicals enhancing the soybean flakes.

Rehearsing a few acidic phrases under my breath, I was halfway across the room when there was a knock on the adjoining door, presumably from the hand of a man who was no longer a professor but was professing to be one just the same. And had a.38 Special in his dresser drawer. Yeah, that man.

I opened my door. "I was just on my way to have a word with some meddlesome broads from Maggody."

Durmond stood there, his shoulders slumped and his face as gray and limp as an old washrag. I'd seen better color on a cadaver. Beneath his eyes were half-crescents darker than bruises. He had on a different shirt, but it was as wrinkled as if he'd changed before he took a nap. I was about to repeat myself when he sighed and said, "May I come in, Arly? I've just had a call from Alex Ripley, and I think we'd better talk before you jump to a lot of erroneous conclusions about me."

"I already have," I said crossly, then gestured for him to enter the room. "Although I doubt they're all that erroneous, unless the entirety of Drakestone College is conspiring to play a practical joke of some kind. I didn't speak to anyone who sounded as though she had that lively a sense of humor."

"I was on the faculty until it was determined that my wife's cancer was inoperable. I stayed home to take care of her, and I just…never returned to the classroom." He gave me a quick look as he sat down, and although his voice remained soft, it took on an edge-the kind with which you can slice a ripe tomato-as he added, "I find it odd that you called Drakestone to check on me, but what's even odder is that you knew the name of the college."

"You must have mentioned it. Maybe Geri said some thing, or Kyle heard it from this investment corporation and passed it along."

"I wasn't added by the corporation, Arly. Kyle Simmons's father arranged to have me included as a contestant. I suggested that he put my name in with the other two replacements, and he did it right before he left for a vacation." The edge became sharper than anything advertised on late-night cable. "But I didn't mention Drakestone to anyone because I didn't want any snoopy sorts to attempt to verify my credentials. There's only one way you could have come up with the name of the college."

"Okay," I said, leaning against the wall.

"Which means you must have noticed the weapon in the drawer. I wish you hadn't searched my room, Arly. I guess your cop instincts got the better of you, but it's unfortunate and will cause complications I'd hoped to avoid."

I regarded him, uncertain what I ought to admit and how much mendacity he might buy. "I'm sorry if it was inconvenient," I said at last, opting to be obtuse, "but possessing a concealed weapon has that risk. So you're not a professor, and the president of Krazy KoKo-Nut was so enamored of your recipe that he arranged for you to participate in the contest. What was his approach-physical violence or cruise tickets?"

Durmond winced. "The tickets, please. Mr. Simmons is not the sort of CEO to resort to severing fingers or breaking bones."

"That's good to know. But why did he do you such an inestimable favor?"

He picked up my scratch pad and shook his head as he looked at it. "Why do you think?"

I was almost positive that Rick and Cambria were members of an organization that preferred the physical violence approach, and over several generations had perfected it. But I couldn't quite envision Durmond in the role-maybe because I didn't want it to be true. "Beats the hell out of me," I said as I went into his room, fixed myself a drink, and came back to the doorway with a glass and a guess. "Unless you're a cop?"

"A cop of sorts," he said wryly. "More of a federal agent, to be precise. I retired from the DEA fifteen years ago, but a couple of the guys dropped by while I was spending my days out in the boat, and their invitation had more appeal than returning to my classroom at Drakestone. My wife taught there, too. We used to eat lunch in her office every day and complain about campus politics, the escalating ineptness of the students, disappointing movies, and the weather." I watched the ice cubes melt while I considered him in this new role. It eventually began to make sense, along with dealing with some of the bugaboos mentioned earlier. "How about the overly friendly psychotic in the khaki jacket? Is he a fed, too?"

"Sonny's been trying to keep track of the contestants when they leave the hotel. He thought his cover would make him invisible, but he didn't count on the Arkansas contingency. They scared the shit out of him in the subway."

"And you're here because this whole thing is a sham to cover drug distribution," I said as I sank down on the end of the bed and took the pad from him. "Interspace Investments, Inc. is a mob organization. They bought the Krazy KoKo-Nut company in order to launder money and insisted the contest be held in this"-I gazed at the room-"dump in order to divert attention from the dealers going in and out with their tool kits and boxes. No wonder the plumber didn't know his spigots from a hole in the ground."

"Plumber?" he said, justifiably puzzled.

"Ruby Bee and Estelle recognized him at the reception, although initially they assumed a family resemblance was responsible. Being the meddlesome broads that they are, they trotted up to the third floor this afternoon and chatted about plumberly subjects. He failed the test, although who knows what the two concluded about his lack of expertise." I paused to scan my notes. "The lobby was used before the contest. They then moved to the third floor and continued the remodeling ruse to cover the comings and goings."

"That's our theory," Durmond said, although it seemed to me he ought to show a little more appreciation for my display of deductive prowess. "The big shipment came in the Krazy KoKo-Nut cartons, of course. Geri screwed up the plans when she insisted the cartons be secured in the kitchen, as did whoever shot Jerome Appleton at the same site. The last thing Rick and Cambria wanted was to draw attention to the shipment and provoke undue interest in it."

"So they moved the body out to the dumpster!" I said, getting into the rhythm of it. "They cleaned up the blood and borrowed the cartons long enough to exchange the drugs for innocent packages. But why would they kill Jerome there to begin with? It would make a helluva lot more sense to escort him out to New Jersey or sink him in the river or whatever is the current vogue these days."

"Drive-by shootings outside of restaurants are gaining in popularity," Durmond murmured, clearly impressed with my enthusiasm if not my logic.

I stood up and began to pace as best I could, rubbing my hands together and gnawing on my knuckles as I careened around the tiny room. Pacing in Maggody's a lot easier; I've been known to resolve sticky problems out in the pasture behind the Flamingo Motel, despite the prevalence of cow patties. "The corpse in the kitchen was a problem for them, to put it mildly. And why kill Jerome in the first place? That's what destroyed their scheme. They must have been alarmed when Geri snagged some of the dealers and insisted they were magazine reporters, but they managed to get things under control again." I reeled around, tripping over my carryon bag. "After Geri's boss called her and ordered her to continue, that is. Kyle had called his father and was shaking in his boots after the conversation. All these executives know darn well what's going on in the hotel this week. Why didn't someone call the police?"

Durmond tapped his chest. "The department approached the senior Mr. Simmons, after which he agreed to put my name down as a contestant in exchange for immunity. He then felt the need for a long vacation, as did Geri's boss. Sure, they both know who owns Interspace Investments, but coupled with fear was a significant amount of greed. They're also keenly aware of the wisdom of distancing themselves from anything that might lead to indictments."

"So they threw a couple of kids into the pit to save their hides? That's not exactly sporting." I resumed my flight pattern, although I did keep an eye on the carry-on bag. "Rick's a kid, too, which is why Cambria rushed here from Florida after the incident in the stairwell and agreed to take the role of doorman. Neither of them wanted an outside security man to monitor the arrivals."

"You're not bad at this business," he said (and high time). "But we don't have any proof that the Krazy KoKo-Nut cartons contained cocaine, and you've produced a very good reason why Rick and Cambria didn't shoot Jerome. Then, of course, we still have a problem with the murder at the Xanadu and the subsequent disappearance of the recently bereaved widow."

"I can't handle every last detail," I said gracelessly. "After all, it's what you get paid for, isn't it? I'm just a hick from Arkansas. You're the big-time fed. You can have a long talk with Lieutenant Henbit about this while I pack my bags, gather up the overgrown girl detectives, and find out about the next flight out of this absurd city. I didn't want to come in the first place, and I don't want to hang around a hotel owned by mobsters." I snatched up the carry-on bag and opened it with enough vigor to rip the teeth out of the zipper. It was merely a gesture, in that none of us would be allowed out the hotel door, but as gestures go, it had a certain style.

"Well, then," he said, moving his hands aimlessly as if he were a confused conductor, "I suppose I'll call Henbit from my room. He already knows who I am and why I'm here, naturally, but he might have further information that Sonny and I can use. I'll…talk to you later, if you're in the mood."

I jerked open the door and stood there until he was in his room. I didn't exactly slam it, but I may have failed to ease it closed. Why was I in this snit? Because I was sick and tired of people not being who they claimed to be, from the professor who was a fed to the plumber who dealt drugs to the ex-husband who was a philandering son of a bitch whose concept of morality rose and fell with his prick (inversely, that is).

Flopping onto the bed and bursting into tears appealed enormously, but I resolutely clenched my teeth, jammed my fists in my pockets, and stared blindly out the window until I was cooled off enough to think.

Another bugaboo bit the dust. I reopened my adjoining door, confronting his, and loudly said, "And you weren't mugged between the first and second floors, either! You were on your way to the third floor when-"

The door opened. Durmond had removed his shirt, and the sight of the vivid red scar and heavy bruising around it took the wind right out of my sails, so to speak. It was a damn good thing I wasn't vying for the America's Cup.

In a much calmer voice, I continued the sentence. "When you were shot, not by some punk but by one of the dealers-or even by Rick. They had the same problem as they did in the kitchen. in order to draw attention away from that part of the hotel, they moved you into one of the rooms and stripped you to add to the muddle. Rick must have called the police and been pleasantly surprised when Ruby Bee returned in time to take a wild shot through the door. I wonder what he thought when you came up with your story?"

"That I was confused, I suppose." He flushed as he realized I was staring at his seminude torso. "Ah, let me grab a shirt and we can…Would you like another drink, Arly? I'm out of canapés, but…"

It was obvious he was still confused, but he didn't deserve to be in any better mental shape than I was. We regarded each other with varying levels of bemusement, neither of us quite sure what to do next. We finally figured it out and tacitly decided to do it in his room. And did it damn well, too.

The knock on Durmond's door was more than mildly inopportune. I grabbed my clothes and hightailed it to my room, then leaned against the adjoining door while I caught my breath and reminded myself I was well past the age of consent-and had done more than my share of any consenting. Hell, I'd initiated it. There was no reason to feel like a kid caught necking on the porch. We were both single, sober, and attracted, and we'd been heading in this direction since we first laid eyes on each other. For all I could tell, I'd been heading in this direction since the stewardess had offered me a complimentary beverage of my choice and a foil packet with six lightly salted peanuts. As far as directions go, it wasn't a bad one.

I regarded my flushed face in the mirror while I dressed and repaired my hair. There was no scarlet message written on my forehead, but it was obvious I hadn't been flipping through a magazine during the last half hour, not with a complacent smile like mine. I peered more closely at my eyes, which were simmering with the frustration born of being interrupted during a more leisurely expedition. It then occurred to me that I'd fled so quickly that I didn't know the identity of the intruder in the next room. I gave up analyzing my recent behavior-not repenting, mind you, analyzing-and went to the adjoining door to knock. My hand froze as I heard Lieutenant Henbit's dulcet voice.

"Yeah, we picked her up at Grand Central," he said. "She had a hundred thousand in her bag, but refused to explain it or anything else. One little phone call, and this sleazy lawyer comes barging in, bitching about a lack of evidence, and advising her not to say a word."

"A hundred thousand," Durmond said with a whistle.

"This particular sleazy lawyer has been on retainer for certain unsavory families for the last decade. Why would a nice suburban housewife call him?"

"Because her husband worked for them," I said as I came into the room. Henbit made a burbulous noise, but I ignored it. "I heard him and Rick in the office the day I arrived. Jerome Appleton was their accountant. That explains why Brenda was invited to be a contestant, and why she knew the name of a sleazy lawyer." I resisted the temptation to make a more generic remark about the profession and waited for Henbit and Durmond to congratulate me on the significance of my comments.

"We know that," Henbit said. "What I was about to point out when you barged through the door"-he paused to smirk at the rumpled sheets from which we could all see steam rising-"or back through the door, was that we now know that Mrs. Appleton was aware of her husband's association with the Gabardi organization. Our theory is that he decided to walk out on her, packed his bags, and tried to split. She didn't go for it, so she followed him through the kitchen to the alley, where she shot him."

"Ruby Bee saw the body in the kitchen," I protested.

"So she says. The lab boys are testing the floor and walls for blood, and we'll have the results before too long. Thing is, she could have shot him there just as easily and dragged him out to the dumpster, set his luggage where it could be stolen by the first bum that staggered by, and then, being a finicky homemaker, felt obliged to clean up the mess she'd made. I'm aware Pilverman here is convinced there were drugs involved, but we haven't turned up so much as a gram and I don't have the manpower to crawl over every inch of this place in search of one."

"Where'd she get a hundred thousand dollars?" I asked.

"From his suitcase. Maybe he's the sort who prefers to pay cash instead of putting it on plastic."

Durmond gave me a warning look. "I talked to Sonny earlier about this. Let me share our thoughts with you. Appleton went to the kitchen to avail himself of a package or two of Colombia's finest on his way south. Rick and Cambria were there, getting ready to replace the contents of the cartons with what was supposed to be in them, and they were unhappy about Appleton's plans. One or the other shot him, and they took away the cartons to complete the substitution. Ruby Bee saw the body before they'd had time to move it to the dumpster, clean up the blood, and replace the cartons."

It wasn't quite what he and I had come up with, but I merely frowned and said, "The cocaine's liable to be on the third floor, Lieutenant Henbit."

"Ms. Hanks," he said, his frown a great deal less winsome than mine and his drawl more pronounced, "we have searched the third floor. There is a great deal of evidence that the remodeling continues. We're talking tools and lumber and sawdust and sheetrock and all those subtle hints even we could hardly miss. If there ever was cocaine, it's long gone from this hotel. I don't give a shit what you, Agent Pilverman, and his undercover cohort think, and to be blunt, the last thing I need is a one-bullet cop and a pair of feds messing up my investigation."

I was going to tell him I had three bullets, but I sensed it was not the moment to quibble about such details. Nor did I offer the information that he had a couple of amateurs on the prowl, partly because I had no idea what they were up to and partly because I was pissed at his attitude. He'd find out in good time. "What are you doing with Rick and Cambria?" I asked meekly (I do great meek).

Henbit bristled like a sow. "I can't do anything. Despite Agent Pilverman's invitation to avail ourselves of his department's thick files on the suspects, we can't do a goddamn thing without proof. So what if they shot Appleton and moved the body? Do you know how long we could detain them on the evidence we've got? They wouldn't have time to finish a cup of coffee before the lawyer was there to escort them out the door, and I'd be explaining to my superior why I'd booked them in the first place. I can hear him mentioning the night shift in Flatbush."

"The department's been after these guys for four years," Durmond said, sighing. "Two good men were executed last year in Florida when their covers were blown. We've got three of the lower echelon in the witness relocation program, whooping it up on tax dollars, but nevertheless ready to testify if we can get indictments. Gabardi's organization is responsible for maybe a third of the drugs in this city, and we can't nail the son of a bitch. I'd settle for Cambria, the second in command, but I'll be damned if we bust him for some misdemeanor."

He stopped as we heard the elevator arrive at the floor. There was yet another knock on the door; I had to bite my lip not to join in the game and shout, "Who's there?" Durmond admitted Geri and Kyle, both of whom looked frightened out of their yuppified wits.

"Lieutenant Henbit," Geri said, ruffling her hair with a pale hand and then beginning to toy with the buttons of her silk blouse, "what's the status of your investigation? For reasons beyond my comprehension, my boss insists we continue with the contest. I mentioned the murder, but he dismissed it as random violence and ordered me-ordered me, mind you, to pay no attention to it and…" Not surprisingly, tears flooded her eyes and she sank down on the bed. "I know how to deal with caterers and florists, but Mother never taught me how to work around a murder. I mean, a mugging is one thing. Mr. Fleecum is behaving like an absolute dictator and I simply cannot"-she sniffled but withstood a torrent-"handle this, no matter what he says."

Kyle cleared his throat. "My father was as adamant. He seems to think this murder in the alley is nothing more than a minor nuisance."

"The metropolitan force apologizes for any inconvenience," Henbit said coldly, "but we're going to continue the investigation, and the contest is canceled until this is cleared up."

"Maybe the contest would clear it up," I said under my breath. I noticed I had everyone's attention and raised my voice. "All the contestants are available. Durmond's here. Ruby Bee, Catherine, and Gaylene are in their rooms. Brenda's at your precinct and could be brought to the hotel, should you be amenable."

Geri had recovered from her watery decline and was regarding me with bright approval. "Yes, and then this ghastly contest could be done with and I could head for the Cape. This has played hell with my nerves, ever since it was dumped on me as if I didn't have luncheon engagements or aerobics classes or anything better to do with my time."

"Or with my kneecaps," Kyle contributed.

"The grand winner of the Krazy KoKo-nut Kontest is…" Geri patted down her hair and smiled at us, her shoulders squared with power and padding, "Before I make the announcement, I want to thank all of you for coming, and I'm sure Kyle Simmons, as the company's representative, will want to apologize at length for all this dreadful business with shootings and bodies and policemen disrupting my schedule. I think it's obvious to all of us that the contest should have been held as originally planned, in which case I could have arranged adequate publicity before and after. As it is, I'll have to write up the press releases and fax them from the Cape, and I doubt we'll get half the coverage I could have provided."

Ruby Bee rumbled like a truck changing gears. "I'm sure it'll be just fine. The winner?"

"It should have been Catherine!" Frannie said, slamming her fist on the table hard enough to send the crumbs bouncing into the air like frightened fleas. "I need the money to finance the pageants and take trips to broaden her experiences. The best colleges require that these days. If that awful Jerome hadn't encouraged her to start drinking again, none of this would have happened! He deserved to die for what he did to my daughter."

"He ain't the only one," Estelle added, pointedly staring at Rick. "And it's a darn shame, her being sixteen and from a little town. I think the police ought to arrest that fellow sitting right there, instead of letting him be a judge."

Rick shot a paralytic look at Cambria. "Hey, I don't know what she's talking about. I didn't do anything to that girl."

"We shall discuss it later," Cambria said, his lips barely moving.

Gaylene stood up unsteadily. "I think we'd better discuss it right now, if you don't mind. What's this about Rick and this girl? Are you saying that before the contest he got her drunk and screwed her?"

"In what I would guess is 319, on account of it being above mine," Estelle said.

"It could have been 317, on account of-" Ruby Bee stopped when she realized we were not intrigued by details.

Gaylene marched across the room to tower over Rick. "Is this true, you son of a bitch? How could you do such a thing? Here we've been seeing each other for two years, and you go and screw the first girl that walks by? Do you realize I could have gone on a Caribbean cruise last summer and ended up with a really good tan? But no, I tell Mr. Gabardi that I have a steady boyfriend and I'm not the sort of girl to party behind his back with other men. And I had to miss three nights of work to be a contestant-as a special favor to you! When I get back from delivering that suitcase to Vegas, I won't even have a job because the club's closed! Unless my dancing career takes off, I'll have to go back on the street again."

Rick and Cambria sat like lawn statuary, neither reacting to Gaylene's sputtery outburst. One had a white face, and the other's was growing darker by the minute.

Lieutenant Henbit, in contrast, was blinking at her as if she'd accused Rick of murder and put the weapon on the table. "So you know Gabardi, do you?"

"Of course I do, and he's a swell guy. I wish I'd taken him up on his offer. One of the girls at the club went, and she came back with a diamond bracelet that almost blinded me." She curled her fingers as if to rip into Rick, then lost her resolve and returned to her table, saying to Frannie as she went, "I'm real sorry about what he did to your daughter, honey. It's sickening, and if you want to have his face rearranged or something like that, you let me know and I'll pass it along to some friends of mine."

"I think you ought to do just that," said Ruby Bee, possibly unaware of the implications of her remark-but I wasn't sure.

"She asked for it," Rick muttered, jabbing his thumb at the sleeping girl. "She came up to my room, her blouse unbuttoned to her waist, and grabbed my crotch before I knew what the hell was happening. She had my zipper open and was on her knees before I could get out a word. I've met her kind before, and lemme tell you, she's not a little virgin with ribbons in her hair. I tried to get rid of her, Gaylene honey, but she was all over me like hot tar."

"Hot tar," Cambria echoed with an approving nod. "I can't remember when we last used it." From Rick's expression, it seemed likely that he did.

During this, Geri had picked up her clipboard and was frantically scanning the top page, all the while mewing like a stray kitten. "I don't think we need to discuss this further," she said in a high voice. "Catherine's propensities do not concern the results of the contest. It's unfortunate that we had to listen to what should have been a private conversation, but it's really none of our business…" She looked at Gaylene. "Please don't mention the product if you do go back to your former profession, and forget you were ever in this totally ridiculous contest. Forget the name of my firm, and forget me completely. Pretend I never existed."

Gaylene put a piece of gum in her mouth. "Suit yourself."

"We're down to three," Ruby Bee whispered to Estelle.

"Be quiet!" Geri snapped at her. "We're going to put this unpleasantness behind us and be done with this mess. I am going to announce the winner and head straight out the door. My car is parked in the lot across the street, and my luggage is in the trunk. I'm going to say one name, and then I am history. History! Do you people understand?" No one had the nerve to so much as nod. "All right, then," she continued grimly, "the winner is…No, wait a minute, she's been arrested for murder. Wouldn't the media have a goddamn field day with that? Interviews from a jail cell! A press conference with handcuffs! I'll have to redo the figures. Give me a minute and I'll have the result." She sat down and began to scribble on her clipboard, talking to herself in a shrill and distracted voice.

"I can't believe it!" Ruby Bee said in a voice remarkably similar. "Are you saying that those bars are better-tastin' than my chocolate chip bundt cake? That's flat-out impossible, missy."

"Someone has to win," Geri snarled without lifting her head.

Ruby Bee stalked over to the table where the entries were placed and, with the solemn sincerity of a funeral home director, said, "I have been making this exact recipe for twenty-five years, and you can just ask Arly if it's not the best dadburned cake she's ever had."

I smiled benignly. "I guess it doesn't come out as well with the fake coconut. What a shame."

"But it ain't got that nasty stuff in it," Ruby Bee blurted out, then realized what she'd done and clutched her chest as if experiencing the onset of a heart attack.

"Actually, I gave it low marks for its rubbery texture," Kyle contributed helpfully. "Rubbery texture?" Ruby Bee snatched up a fork, took a bite and chewed it vigorously. After she'd swallowed, she gave him a bewildered look. "It is on the rubbery side, I have to admit. But how can that be? I made it the same way, and even though some of the ingredients are from these parts, I sure know how to fix this particular cake and it always comes out the exact same."

I decided to butt in, now that the stage was set. "You bought a bag of real coconut and one of the Krazy flakes the evening you arrived. Yesterday afternoon in your room you switched the contents. Last night you went down to the kitchen, discovered the door was unlocked, and went in to make the exchange. Despite the necessity of having to step over a corpse, you completed your mission and stole away like a common thief-which you are, by the way-with what you thought was a bag of Krazy KoKo-Nut. Am I right?"

"I still don't understand how come there wasn't real coconut in my box tonight," she said, not willing to acknowledge any guilt.

"Because whoever cleaned up the blood in the kitchen took all the bags out of the boxes and replaced them with real Krazy KoKo-Nut," I explained. "We're going to have one unhappy drug dealer somewhere down the road."

Lieutenant Henbit came across the room. "Mrs. Hanks, what did you do with the bag you took from your box? You didn't flush its contents down the toilet, did you?"

"I was afraid it would stop it up, and I'd hate to rely on that stupid plumber to fix it. I just tossed it in the trash can with what I bought the other night."

Henbit ordered McRowan to take Ruby Bee's key and examine the contents of the trash can in 219. He then approached Rick and Cambria, saying, "If we find cocaine in her room, I'm going to find a way to link it to at least one of you."

"What if their fingerprints are on the bags that were used tonight?" I said. "Neither of them had any business fooling with the ingredients for the contest. Kyle's the one who placed the bags in each contestant's box."

Cambria opened his mouth, then closed it and sighed. Rick gasped for air as if he were drowning in the aura of disapproval radiating from his companion…who happened to be second-in-command of the Gabardi family.

"Okay," Geri said abruptly, having ignored this idle chatter while she realigned her notes. "The winner is Durmond Pilverman. It's been fun working with you, but I need to run along now."

"No, I cannot accept," Durmond said, who'd been oddly quiet during the fireworks. "I'm a federal agent, here under false pretenses. I arranged to be included among the contestants in order to monitor the drug deal we knew was about to take place. The recipe was provided by another agent, and I've only prepared it once before to make sure I could."

"Then you!" Geri pointed at Ruby Bee. "You're the damn winner! You get the grand prize, okay? Your entry had the product in it, and that's all that matters. No one could make anything remotely edible with it, anyway." She burst into tears halfway through the door, but Kyle hurried over to offer his handkerchief and murmur soothingly. At Henbit's bidding, the officer at the door allowed them to sit on the sofa in the lobby.

"I won!" Ruby Bee shrieked, hanging on to Estelle's shoulder. "I won ten thousand dollars! I can't believe it."

"Well, sit down before you make a fool of yourself," Estelle replied tartly. She was going to continue, but suddenly screamed like a banshee that'd been goosed. "There he is! Oh my gawd, do something!"

From behind the window, the whiskery psycho watched us, his tongue darting across his lips and saliva bubbling in the corners of his mouth. He gave us a jaunty little wave, then sauntered out of our sight, a suitcase rather than an axe in his hand.

"He takes his roles too seriously," Durmond said apologetically. "I hardly ever let him go undercover anymore."

McRowan came back into the dining room. "Yeah, there's cocaine in the trash can, mixed up with some flakes. I did a quick search of the room to make sure I'd found it all, and came across a dozen of these."

Henbit took a small pink plastic object from him, studied it for a moment, and said, "This is interesting, although we may not need to confiscate it for evidence." He twisted a button, then set it down on the table and smiled as it began to hop around with a clicky sound. "It's the infamous Popper Penis," he added for those of us ignorant of Manhattan porn shop novelties. We all watched it with mindless fascination as it hopped its way to the edge of the table. At the last second, Estelle grabbed it and buried it in her lap, her face almost as red as her hair.

"Goodness gracious, Estelle," murmured the grand winner of the Krazy KoKo-Nut cookoff.

Henbit told McRowan to place Cambria and Rick under arrest for possession and homicide.

"One minute," Cambria said. "You may have evidence of drugs in this hotel, and it is possible that this young man and I came across a body in the kitchen and felt it would be more appropriate to place it elsewhere. You may discover fingerprints on the bags used tonight, and I may need to discuss this with my lawyer before I explain why I may have handled them at some point. What you do not have is any evidence that this young man and I shot the deceased. He was, in fact, a valued employee. Only today did we learn he planned to leave the country with certain items that did not belong to him."

"That's right!" Rick said. "He was the only one who could deal with the bookkeeping. I myself cannot make heads or tails of-" Cambria's glower was as effective as a garrote.

Neither spoke as McRowan escorted them out the door. Henbit ordered the rest of us back to our rooms, but like Manhattan in the middle of the night, the lobby remained lively. Geri was sobbing while Kyle tried to calm her down, Ruby Bee was raving about money, Estelle was doing her best to explain to anyone who would listen (no one would) that her purchase was nothing but a gag gift, and Frannie and Gaylene were unsuccessfully trying to rouse a comatose ex-contestant.

Therefore, only Durmond and I rode the elevator to the second floor, although it felt more like a decompression chamber than the wheezy product of Mr. Otis's imagination. He (Durmond, not Mr. Otis) invited me into his room, but I wasn't yet ready to see the steamy sheets and insisted we go in mine.

I went to the window and watched the cars crawling below. "I didn't think it made any sense for the two mobsters to have killed Jerome Appleton in the first place. I was surprised when you suggested it to the lieutenant."

"It's a good solution," he said, "and it's possible the weapons used on both Jerome Appleton and Craig Lisbon will turn up in Rick's room on the third floor. When the registration is checked, the police will discover it belongs to Rick, or Ricco, as his Floridian friends call him. He'll refuse to talk, of course, and deny it all the way to the pen. In the meantime, Cambria will be occupied with the drug problem. If I were in the mood for wild guesses, I'd say another bag of Krazy KoKo-Nut cocaine might show up in his penthouse on the very top of the hotel. I'd like to think the police will search the back shelf of the closet."

"How very wild, indeed." I turned away from the window and sat down. Durmond gave me a wry smile while I muddled over the remaining bugaboos that had been haunting me for several days. He looked as if he were encouraging me to come up with answers, which perhaps he was. "How did you know I saw Brenda at the Xanadu?" I asked him levelly.

"I was at the table when you told Lieutenant Henbit."

"You already knew it, blue dress and all, and if you didn't hear it from me, you must have heard it from someone else-or saw her there yourself."

"Through the same window you did, maybe," he said. I considered it, then shook my head. "Ruby Bee followed Gaylene, and you and your pal followed them, although they had a healthy headstart-and they didn't go all the way to the Xanadu. They staked out a spot in a stationery store around the corner. If you did go there, you did it of your own accord, not because you were following meddlesome broads."

"The problem with Craig Lisbon was that it always took him time to decide how to deal with situations that might disrupt his business dealings. He was the sort who might think for a day or two, then realize that Brenda Appleton posed a threat of enormous dimensions. She knew names and faces, dates and addresses, and she might decide to file for a divorce and name everyone, including Gabardi, as a co-respondent. Scorned women have been known to do such things."

"Wait a minute!" I said, aware I sounded as shrill as Geri. "Are you telling me that you went to the Xanadu and killed Lisbon? I really don't want to hear this." Especially, I added to myself, from a man with whom I'd had sex not six hours ago and no more than ten feet away (did I mention the size of the rooms?). "I'm not telling you anything," he said with a sigh that we both knew meant he was telling me everything-and reading my mind along the way.

"I heard the elevator last night," I said, "and I thought it was Ruby Bee returning from the kitchen. But she had come up an hour before she and Estelle cooked up an alibi and came to my room. How high's the penthouse?"

"Very high, and I'm still feeling the effects of the bullet wound. Don't ever get shot, Arly. It hurts like hell, and the scar never goes away."

"Why Appleton?" I asked, refusing to allow his words to get to me. I already knew more than enough about scar tissue.

"I was in the kitchen when he and Catherine appeared."

"So he was the one who had a copy of the key?"

"I would be more inclined to search Rick's pockets. Appleton didn't need one. The door was not locked when they tried it." He took a pick from his pocket. "I was a bit curious who might come prowling."

"Such as everybody in the hotel?"

"There was a lot of traffic," he agreed, "beginning with Jerome and Catherine. Although I'm not a parent, I could certainly see that what he was about to do would totally destroy the child's life. Three months and he would have abandoned her in Rio, possibly addicted to cocaine. She has some problems, including a violent mother, but I could not, in good conscience, allow him to take her with him. I sent her upstairs, and Jerome and I had a talk. He refused to listen to reason, I'm afraid."

"Why did Rick and Cambria come?"

"That was not my doing. I was hoping our Miss Gebhearn might actually produce reporters for the contest, and they would be present at the opening ceremony in the kitchen. In some situations, the media can be useful."

"Brenda was distraught about Jerome leaving her and also terribly chummy with members of Gabardi's big, happy family. She might have called Cambria to stop him."

"You're apt to be right, Arly. They came so quickly that I was barely able to duck into the office. Once they'd taken the four cases upstairs to switch the contents, I came out of the office and nearly encountered Lady Macbeth of Maggody in a flannel gown. Back into the office I ducked until I heard her running down the corridor to the elevator. I hoped she would call the police immediately, but she did not, giving Rick and Cambria time to clean up the blood and move the body outside. I was surprised she didn't, but I underestimated her determination to win the contest." He made me a drink and sat down on the other bed, carefully positioning himself so that our knees did not touch. "All in all, a busy night for everyone concerned."

"Yeah, the elevators really hummed." I assessed the distance between us. It wasn't quite two thousand miles, but it was damn close. "Sonny had a suitcase tonight."

"Cambria and Rick weren't aware that Jerome brought down three suitcases from his room, two with personal effects and one with an impressive quantity of cash. I felt it expedient to relocate the third one before they arrived on the scene to move the body and remaining suitcases to the alley. We did not feel Cambria would donate the money to a worthwhile charity. Besides, we're always mindful of overhead."

"So let me get this straight. Sonny's playing the psycho, and you seem to have decided on the role of white knight. You shot Jerome to save Catherine, and Lisbon to save Brenda. I sure hope you don't decide Ruby Bee's about to drive me crazy."

"I never shoot women," he said with a small frown. "None of us do. We do occasionally find ourselves frustrated in our inability to indict people who've murdered our agents."

"What am I supposed to do with this, Durmond? Try to convince Henbit that you and Sonny are responsible for the two homicides? That you're framing Cambria and Rick? That a government agency pays its utility bills with drug money?"

"I don't know what to tell you, Arly. You've got an old-fashioned sense of morality, which is not a criticism, but we're engaged in an outright war. It would be lovely if everyone played by the rules and the system worked. However, the courts are more determined to protect the rights of drug barons than those of the kids in the schoolyards. Most of us have been forced to succumb to the philosophy that the end justifies the means."

"And all's fair in love and war?" I murmured.

"I didn't want you to get involved and I sure as hell didn't want to get involved with you. If you forget this conversation, twenty four hours from now you can be home in that little town of yours. I'll stay around here to tidy up the loose ends, and then I have no idea where I'll be sent on my next assignment-which could well be my last. " He lifted his hand as if to touch me, then thought better of it and shrugged. "Sometimes I need to reassure myself that I'm not still in the boat in the middle of the lake, surrounded by nothing but flat brown water."

I returned to the window. Lights were on in the apartments across the street, very few with curtains or shades drawn. In one apartment, children sat staring at a television set; in another, a woman slumped on the sofa with a beer in her hand. On the floor above, an elderly man and woman were engaged in a hostile exchange. It was, I thought sadly, the ultimate gesture of defiance required for survival in a city: No matter what we do and where we choose to do it, you can't see me and I can't see you.

I looked at Durmond with the blind stare of an urbanite. "But you took the gun from Rick's room the first night you were in the hotel, didn't you? The scene in the kitchen wasn't all that spontaneous, not if you'd gone to the trouble to steal the gun to frame Rick. You had to shoot someone."

"So many crooks, so little time."

Joan Hess is the author of both the Claire Malloy and the Maggody mystery series. She is a winner of the American Mystery Award, a member of Sisters in Crime, and a former president of the American Crime Writers League. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

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