The Fat Innkeeper (A Hotel Detective Mystery Book 2) by Alan Russell

Author:Alan Russell [Russell, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Three Tails Press
Published: 2018-05-26T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Six

“What the hell is the matter with this place?”

Cleo had not bothered to respond to Bradford’s first dozen pronouncements, but she was getting tired of hearing the same rhetorical question over and over. “A watched pot never boils,” she said.

“Watch me boil,” muttered Bradford.

He was waiting for some, any, satisfaction. That funny-looking Japanese manager Toyota had told him everything would be “okay,” but not a damn thing had changed. He and Cleo had waited around for an hour now. Most of that time they’d had to listen to Missy’s lovemaking. The woman put a steam whistle to shame. You’d think she would have been worn out, but no sooner was her screaming done when a party started up in her room, a party, by the sound of it, that was loads of fun.

Not that they hadn’t been invited. Doug and Missy had yelled for them to come on over, but Cleopatra was still sulking. Bradford had tried to make it right for her, to smooth things over. He’d flagged down that damn leering bellman, asked him to get them a bottle of bubbly. The bellman had returned with the champagne a short time later, had even set everything up nicely. Bradford had thought their luck was changing. But then that bellman had asked that damnable question to Cleopatra. “How old are you?” Bradford had told him she was twenty-six, but the bellman insisted upon seeing identification. You’d think Cleopatra would have had the sense to have had a fake ID, but no. She was three months shy of being twenty-one, reason enough for that prick bellman to take away the champagne. What galled Bradford most was that he had already paid for the champagne and given the man his tip.

“I’m going to the bar,” said Bradford, “to get us another bottle of champagne.”

“Are you sure you’re not going to stop by the party?” asked Cleo.

“No, I’m not going to stop by the party.”

He tried to keep the edge out of his voice. Things were definitely not going as planned. By this time he had expected them to be well on their way to making wedding plans—without any talk of a prenuptial agreement, of course.

“I want to make everything better,” he said, striking a note somewhere between ingratiating and wheedling. “I had this idea of how everything was going to be, and I’m sorry it hasn’t happened that way. What I figure is that we can wet our whistles, and then get something to eat. Maybe by the time we return, some magic elves will have transformed this room. If not, we can check out and find somewhere else to go.”

Cleo’s face softened. He did care. “Hurry back,” she said.

Anyone working in the hospitality industry knows the look. It isn’t something that can be confused for anything else. The look is the picture of an employee who has the need to scream, but is restrained by circumstance or surroundings. When encountering the look, Am knew it was advisable to run the other way, because if you didn’t, the odds were you’d soon be wearing that exact same face.

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