Free Double Whammy (A Davis Way Crime Caper) by Gretchen Archer Page B

passed me a clipboard full of room assignments. She pulled away from me and looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. I pulled away from her with a passkey to every room on the floor.
    At eleven that morning, six guest rooms spicked and spanned, Santiago knuckled the door frame of the room I was cleaning, lucky number seven, and in his heavy accent called, “Anna? Anna?”
    I rose to my knees. I’d been between the queen-sized beds spot cleaning red wine off the carpet. At least I hoped it was red wine. “Do you need me, Santiago?”
    He blabbered in his native tongue. I didn’t catch a word of it. Then Miss Heidi Dupree’s lovely frame stepped into the open doorway beside Santiago’s. In her arms she held a basket. I could see the top half of two dark bottles of wine pointed in opposite directions.
    “I need in a guest room,” she said. “And this guy can’t hear a word I’m saying.”
    “He hears you.” I stood, smoothing my uniform. “He doesn’t speak fluent English.”
    “Then he shouldn’t work here.” She shifted the weight of the basket to her hip. “I’m in a hurry. Come open this door for me.”
    Protocol was crystal clear: never let anyone in a guest room for any reason, that’s the supervisor’s call. I’m sure, though, somewhere in small print, it says that temporary residents of the EconoLodge wearing hot, itchy wigs were exempt.

    “Which room?” I asked.
    She took off.
    I followed.
    “Here you go.” I used the passkey I’d stolen from Maria to open the door of room nineteen-twenty-two. She and her basket breezed by me, then spun.
    “I’ve got it from here.”
    I smiled and stepped back an inch.
    “Really.” Miss Dupree was becoming impatient with me. “I’ll only be a minute.” Then the bitch slammed the door in my face.
    I sprang into action, using Maria’s key again, to slip into the room directly across the hall where I could watch from the peephole. I wish I had knocked first.
    “Nelson?” A wild-haired woman sat straight up in the bed, saw me, and screamed out a lung. “ Who are you ?” The part of her I could see was completely naked. She grabbed for the covers. “Get out ! Get out of my room!” She flailed an arm at the door, showing me the way.
    “Oh!” I screamed. “Pardon! Pardon!” I used my best Tex-Mex accent. “Excuse! Excuse!”
    Heidi Dupree and I spilled into the hallway on the same click of the second hand, and she looked at me as if I were crazy, which, at the moment, I was. I fell against the wall to catch my breath and Heidi Dupree took off in a hurry, but only after throwing me a parting glare. She had one hand balled into a fist, like she was holding something. As soon as she turned the corner to the elevator, I took off after her, my orthopedic shoes falling like bricks on the carpet. I slowed and waited until the elevator doors opened, then closed, peeked around the corner and saw a wad of wet tissue, still grooved from her grip, in the ashtray between the elevator doors that I’d just cleaned and stamped a perfect script “B” for Bellissimo into not an hour earlier. I really didn’t like this girl.
    I ran back down the hall and stopped outside of naked wild-haired woman’s room. If she was on the phone tattling on me, I’d probably be able to hear her muffled outrage, and if that were the case, I planned on hiding. I couldn’t hear a thing over my accelerated heartbeat from all the running; hopefully naked woman had gone back to sleep. I counted to twenty, then pulled a new set of latex cleaning gloves from my pocket, tugged them on, and used Maria’s key again to enter the room Heidi Dupree had done her business in.
    The gift basket containing the wine was on a table in front of the Gulf-view window. A card was tented in front of the basket.
     
Congratulations! Present this for a Couple’s Massage at four o’clock this afternoon at the Bellissimo spa as our honored guests.
     
    It was signed Mark Fredrickson, a name I recognized