Left on St. Truth-Be-Well Read online

  “Ew! No! But you know, I think one of the boys who changed the sheets was loaning rooms out by the hour. There were a couple of rooms with busted locks that got a lot more use than they shoulda.”

  Carson paused for a second until the whirring heat was uncomfortable against his skin. “Okay, so your lock wasn’t broken?”

  Stassy looked uncomfortable. “Uhm, no, Carson. Not with what we were doing in there, right? I mean, shouldn’t that sort of thing be, uhm, you know. Private?”

  The shaver slipped, and his soul patch almost went the way of the stubble. Wow. Nothing like seeing yourself reflected in the eyes of an idealist, right? With a sigh, he trimmed the soul patch a little closer than he’d planned and dumped the stubble in the trash before packing the thing away.

  “Yeah, but it was broken when we found the body. I’m thinking that someone broke the lock to drag that guy in there.”

  “So?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Stassy, did he kill the guy on the porch and drag him inside? Did he invite him inside and then kill him? Did one person kill him and the other one hide the body? Seriously, these are questions we’ve got to get to the bottom of, before the cops start looking too closely at you!” Beard taken care of—would aftershave be overkill? He’d never slept with someone he’d wanted to strangle before either. Maybe not. He fished some out of his kit.

  Stassy gnawed on a crust ruminatively and then looked stricken. “Oh geez, you don’t think this will get Uncle Ivan in trouble, do you? I know he’s worried about me. I don’t want the cops looking at him!”

  “Ivan can take care of himself, kid. I’m more worried about you.” Just a little aftershave, right? Oh hell. Maybe that was too much. Maybe he should take a shower. Maybe he should just grab Stassy and haul ass to Chicago—that would be good, right? Just deliver Stassy and let Ivan’s lawyers take care of it?

  “Yeah, that’s nice, Carson, but I’m more worried about Toby. They’re not excited about strangers here, but they’re really not excited about Toby. I guess he was sort of a fuckup or something in high school.”

  “I am aware. Don’t worry, the guy he works with at the youth center has his back. We’re going to go ask the hotel people some questions—”

  “Won’t the police do that?”

  Carson winced, not wanting to explain the deal between Dale and his brother. Not that he didn’t think Stassy wouldn’t understand, but Carson felt an odd surge of protectiveness: he didn’t want anyone to see Dale as anything but self-contained. Carson had gotten a glimpse of the frustrated brother and the devoted son. Like Stassy said, those things were private.

  “Yeah, but they don’t seem that quick on the uptake. I don’t trust your fate in their hands, right?” He wet a comb and ran it through his hair and then repacked the shaving kit and put it on the bed. He grabbed another T-shirt, a fresh pair of socks and underwear, and his clean jeans, and walked into the bathroom for a look-see, wondering if he should take anything else.

  “Yeah, that’s sweet,” Stassy said from outside the bathroom. “I’d feel better if you weren’t acting more like this was a chance to get laid than the deal with my life.”

  Oh for fuck’s sake—Carson had had enough. “You know, Stassy, you got this thing in your head, like I’m a big player, but you know something? My last girlfriend got pregnant with someone else’s baby.” He pulled the shower curtain back and slammed it forward for no other reason than because he was pissed. “She told me this in a note, if you feel me, that she wrote on the way to her wedding. You want to guess when that baby was born?” He peered around the corner to see if Stassy could still see him from the dresser, but Stassy had apparently moved back toward the bed. “I’ll save you the trouble. I found out about it the same night you and me had a meet in a broom closet. So I get that it’s nice for you to pretend that I’m the world’s biggest fucking manwhore, but the truth is, when someone with a good smile is nice to me, I might just be ready to give them the time of the fucking day, are we okay with that? Oh fuck. Jesus, how long have you been there?”

  Apparently the reason Stassy had disappeared from the dresser was to let Dale in while Carson was midrant.

  “Long enough to hear that you’re okay with me being nice to you. Are you ready to go?”

  Embarrassing. Just no other word for it. Carson snagged the shaving kit off the bed and rolled it up in his change of clothes as he spoke. “Yeah. Enjoy your privacy, Stassy. I’ll be back sometime tomorrow morning.”

  Stassy nodded, looking miserable in the corner of the room, and Carson sighed. “Look, we’ll bring you something good for breakfast, okay? Bagels, some shmear—it’ll be okay.”

  “Toby?” the kid said forlornly, and Carson just wanted to pat him on the head and make it all better. Young love, right?

  “We’re working on it. Don’t forget to call Ivan.”

  Stassy’s grimace was reassuring. If you were looking like you didn’t want your parents to know something, that meant you were at least a little engaged in saving your own skin. “Yeah, I will. If I tell him I’m gay, he’ll believe me. If you tell him I’m gay, he’ll think you turned me that way.”

  “Oh Jesus fucking Chri—”

  “I’m sorry, Carson! You’ve got this rep. Maybe you’re right and you don’t deserve it, but that doesn’t mean you don’t got it!”

  “I’ll tell you what I got. I got to go eat something, and I got to go find out who killed the idiot in your old hotel room, and apparently I got to go surfing tomorrow because my life will fucking end if I don’t. And somewhere in there, I got to have my head examined, because I can’t even fucking believe this is my life!”

  Carson tucked his little roll of shame under his arm, double-checked his pocket for his key, and then stalked out the door. He heard the slam behind him and knew Dale had followed, and he looked around for the pickup truck Dale had talked about.

  He saw it: big, candy-apple red with a roll bar on top. It could have been one of those obnoxious ones, a redneck’s dream machine, but it had primered spots on the back and the bed had a big toolbox and a surfboard rack, and generally it looked lived-in, so Carson forgave it for being fuck-me red and really freakin’ big.

  “Looks comfy,” he said, trying not to sound sarcastic, because he wasn’t being that way. “Needs a dog.”

  Dale nodded with unexpected enthusiasm. “It does, right? I’ve been combing the ’net for something big in our area. I want, like, a cross between a Newfie and a Great Dane, you know?”

  “Why, so it can eat Manhattan?”

  Dale laughed and nodded like a little kid. “Exactly!” He pulled the passenger door open for Carson, who rolled his eyes and boosted himself up onto the bench seat, and did the belt.

  Dale swung himself up into the truck and paused, looking at the keys in his hand. “Did you love her?” he asked into the sudden stillness.

  “Sherri?” Carson asked, not even wondering anymore how much Dale had heard.

  “Yeah. Did you love her?”

  “A little,” Carson admitted on a sigh. “She was fun, you know? I like fun. You sort of value people who make you laugh.”

  Dale glanced at him sideways. “Yeah. Yeah, you do. Is there anyone out there you loved a lot?”

  “Not so much. You?”

  Dale thought about it, and his smile amped up extra high, with a blinding edge of smartass. “The girl who first put out for me. Man, I will love her to the day I die!”

  Carson laughed, and then his throat got tight for no reason he could put a name to. “What about your first guy?”

  A considering silence. “He was great. He was a friend, still is. Moved to Des Moines, married a pretty girl, had lots of babies. They send me Christmas cards, it’s all good. You?”

  Carson looked straight ahead before closing his eyes. “Frat party hookup. He blew me behind the dorm building. Never did catch his name. Are we gonna drive this heap across the fricking street or not?”

  He kept his eyes closed when
he felt Dale’s hand—long-fingered and warm—squeezing his thigh. “You’re gonna remember the holy fuck outta my name, okay, Carson?”

  Carson nodded and swallowed, then very deliberately returned the grip on that warm hand. “Yeah, I hear you.”

  “And I don’t plan to forget yours.”

  Carson managed enough self-possession to be irritated. “Thank the fucking gods, now are we gonna go?”

  But Dale didn’t take any of his shit. The comforting hand on his thigh became the strong fingers at his chin, and Dale turned Carson’s head and forced Carson to meet his gaze directly. “I mean it, Carson. I’m not going to hurt you, and I may change your life. Don’t be so stubborn about it. It’s going to happen. It was probably going to happen the minute you walked into the café this morning, but all the rest of it just makes things more exciting. I’m not going to ask if you can handle that, because I know you’ll give me all sorts of bullshit about being able to handle anything, but I am going to ask you to trust me to do it right. Can you do that?”

  How many people had he talked down from cliffs with that syrupy country-boy voice? Or did he just look at them with those heavy-lidded eyes and they jumped off the cliffs all by themselves? Carson breathed deeply through his nose and smelled a little bit of sweat and, reassuringly, brushed teeth.

  “I’m not a player,” Carson muttered, still stung.

  “That’s understood.”

  “I never woulda hit on Stassy if I knew it was gonna freak him out.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “I just don’t go home with random anyone.”

  “But when we’re done playing junior detectives, you’re going to go home with me.” Dale’s tone brooked no argument, and Carson was out of fight anyway.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  He closed his eyes and felt Dale’s breath puff quietly on his face, then a brush of lips. “Good boy. Let’s go be Columbo, you think?” Dale pulled back from the kiss and started the truck.

  Carson shrugged and tried to make like his heart wasn’t racing in his ears. “Columbo was old-school. Let’s make like that Don Flack guy on CSI: New York.”

  “Eddie Cahill? You got a thing for him?”

  Carson flushed. “He has nice eyes,” he muttered, because they were, in fact, a lot like Dale’s.

  Dale knew it too, the bastard, because his low laughter lasted until they’d pulled out of the hotel and crossed the street. He killed the motor, and in the near dark they walked toward the lobby entrance of the Bates Parrot Hotel.

  Carson had a sudden thought. “Hey, you’re gonna hafta be the one to talk to Beatrice behind the counter, okay? Man, I just took off last night, and Ivan’s the one who called and canceled the reservation. She is not going to think very kindly of me, right?”

  “Wow, Carson, way to pony up.”

  “So I should have slept in the bug-infested spooge, is that what you’re saying?”

  They both grimaced, and Dale shrugged. “Yeah, okay. Maybe not. Yeah, I’ll talk to Bea. What are you going to do?” He smirked. “Besides sit in the truck and beat off thinking about me.”

  “God, you’re an ass. I’m going to go try and find the bellboy, any bellboy. Stassy said someone was letting people into the rooms, the ones with broken locks like mine, and charging by the hour. You better believe the bellboy knows something about that, right?”

  Dale’s eyes widened and he nodded. He seemed impressed, and Carson had to keep himself from wagging his tail and panting in happiness. “Absolutely. Tell you what, you go wandering the corridors, I’ll call you—wait. Gimme your cell.”

  Carson pulled it out and they exchanged numbers quickly, and Carson turned to go. Then he whirled around and glared at Dale as the smart of a quick smack on the bottom stung him.

  “What the hell was that for?”

  Dale smiled cockily. “God, what wasn’t it for? Now shoo!”

  Carson tried his usual snarky grin back, but when he felt his face heat, he knew what came out was a little bit shy. He turned and sauntered away and pretended his breath didn’t come short just imagining the night ahead.

  He shook off the feeling as soon as he rounded the corner, and started a serious investigation of the hotel. He still had his key card, and, taking a calculated risk and counting on enough disrepair for it not be canceled yet, he rounded the short end of the L and used it to get into the stairwell so he could wander the corridors and look for the phalanx of nearly invisible workers who usually frequented a hotel. Sherri had started out as a hotel maid, but she’d been smart: she’d worked her way up to a concierge’s position before she’d broken up with him and moved to LA with her new husband to manage a Hyatt. She’d told him a good hotel probably needed one staff member to every two guests—if you counted cooks, bellboys, concierges, maintenance, cooks, waiters, busboys, the people at the gift store—a lot of people worked there, and if they were good at their jobs, you hardly saw them. They were invisible.

  He figured that in a shitty hotel like this one, there still had to be at least one staff member to every six or seven people, right? If every room was like his, the place would be as resoundingly empty as…

  Empty as…

  Well, hell. Every footfall rang hollowly on the thin carpet between the rooms, and he fought the temptation to shout “Halloo!” down the corridor to see if it echoed. Jesus, if this was one person for every ten people, there might not be ten people in the entire place. Carson turned, took a right and then a left, and that’s when he finally heard something.

  A familiar something.

  A broom-closet something, if he’d ever gone into a broom closet with a person with tits.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh my God! Jonathan, you’re a god!”

  Carson probably would have passed right by the room, because hey, he’d handled that shit before and he wasn’t impressed, but he had an idea.

  Renting the rooms out by the hour, huh?

  Very carefully, he tried the handle and realized that, just like at the room he’d run from screaming, it was broken. The door swung in, and he grimaced at the sight of a very large, very saggy businessman lunging between the thighs of a very, erm, perky young thing with way too much makeup. Even as Carson grimaced, the young thing caught his eyes and held up her hand, five fingers splayed.

  Carson got the idea. Five more minutes. Awesome. He nodded like he was part of the whole shebang and backed up, closing the door softly as he did. Then he slid down the wall, parked his ass on the floor, and waited. If Perky Young Thing and Saggy Old Ass had five minutes, it wouldn’t be long.

  Three minutes. Saggy Old Ass was still pumping away, if the bedspring action was anything to judge, and the maid cart rounded the corner, followed by Manny the Maid—or someone just like him.

  God, he was short.

  Seriously. Carson was five seven, maybe, and this guy was shorter by two inches, at the least. He was short, but his shoulders were massively wide, and his swarthy face was broad, pock-scarred, and ugly.

  Carson’s best friend in school had suffered horrible acne, so Carson wasn’t usually quick to judge there, but it wasn’t just the skin. It was the narrowed, hate-filled eyes and the lips curled up in a sneer. The guy was young, but he obviously hated pretty much everything that moved, and Carson wasn’t all that excited about him either.

  So when he stood up and smiled at the guy, he wasn’t sure what it looked like.

  It didn’t matter.

  Unfriendly eyes dragged up and down his body, and whatever the maid saw, he must have really disliked it, because he gave a faint sneer and said, “No haaablo English.”

  Carson raised his eyebrows. “Bullshit.”

  Again, a sneer, and a head tilt that read, Prove it, asshole! “El naaamo no haaablo English!”

  Carson reached across the cart, grabbed the guy by the scruff of the neck, and shoved him against the door…

  Which popped open, and momentum took them into the room where the couple on the bed was just wrapping it
up.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh! That’s it, baby, come, goddammit, come!” Pretty Young Thing was getting impatient, and Saggy Old Ass was getting tired.

  “Sweetheart, I don’t think I’m gonna… gonna… what in the hell?”

  Oh Jesus. “Man, pay her the money and get the fuck out of here. She’s gone over her time already, and Jesus, she’s put out her money’s worth!”

  “Who the hell are you?” the guy sputtered, and Carson kept his grip tight on Manny the Maid’s shirt collar.

  “I’m the guy who’s gonna report a sexual transaction in here if you two don’t get out of—”

  “Uhh!” the girl whined, and Carson grunted, reluctantly sympathetic. She had stripped blonde hair and bright blue contacts, but he could see the makeup covering the blemishes and the decided lack of chin. She wasn’t pretty, she was never going to be pretty, but maybe here in this sordid hotel room, she could pretend. God, he felt bad for her. Just did.

  “But pay her first, dammit! She’s earned it!”

  “Thank you,” she said with attitude, and he could see Saggy Old Ass fishing out a couple of twenties from his pocket as he pulled up his pants.

  “Yeah, don’t thank me. Get a real job and make these jokers wear condoms, okay?”

  “Whatever!” The real job thing apparently hurt. Well, he could sympathize.

  “And here’s another tip for free,” he called after her as she shimmied her skintight pink-paisley skirt down and made to walk out of the room. “Stop having sex here. I’m pretty sure the cops are gonna shut the place down.”

  “As if!” the girl said. “One of the deputies is my best customer. He loves this place. I guess his parents brought him here as a kid.”

  Oh great! Dale’s dickwad brother was gonna love that. Well, good. Maybe it would get him to crawl out of Dale’s ass like the ugly flesh-eating bug he was.

  “That’s lovely, sweetheart. I still wouldn’t place any bets on this place being open. Now wash up and move. Me and this guy here, we got business to take care of.”

  “His name’s Jarred,” she said. “He’s my stepfather’s cousin.”