Free Murder With Reservations by Elaine Viets Page A

tortured into knots and the pillows were punched into unyielding lumps. She pulled off the bedding and put on new sheets, the king-size expanse of linen flapping like a ship’s sails. As she raised her arms, lightning strikes of pain threaded down her shoulders and stabbed her neck and back. Her body still wasn’t used to hard labor.
    “Doesn’t this job wear you down?” Helen said, rubbing her sore shoulder. She had another date with the Motrin bottle tonight.
    “Working at the convenience store was worse,” Cheryl said, carefully dumping a butt-filled wastebas-ket into the trash bag. That was supposed to be Helen’s job, but Cheryl wasn’t taking any chances today. “I worked the late shift and lived in constant fear I would be gunned down by a robber. Drunk guys yelled at me. Women screamed when I didn’t move fast enough. After two weeks I quit to clean homes, but I burned out on that, too. You can’t please some people. When this job opened up, I took it and was glad. I do my work. No one breathes down my neck. When I’m done, I go home.”
    A good attitude, Helen thought, though she wasn’t sure that 323 would ever get done. The room had more ash than Pompeii. Helen sprayed the furniture with lemon wax, but the cigarette ash floated into the air and settled somewhere else. She sprayed the dresser so much, the ash stuck in the lemon muck.
    Enough, Helen decided. Smokers sleep here. They’re not going to mind a little ash. She started dusting inside the drawers.At least this guest didn’t spit sunflower seeds in them.
    Helen wiped out the top drawer in the long dark dresser. It wouldn’t shut. She pulled it out a little more and shoved it back in. The drawer was stuck. She yanked it harder, and pulled it out completely. Helen tried to force it back into the dresser. No luck. Helen felt like a befuddled baby trying to shove a square puzzle piece into a round hole.
    “What’s wrong with this drawer?” Helen asked, trying to slam it into the dresser.
    Cheryl popped out of the bathroom. “Another problem?” she said.
    “This drawer won’t go back in,” Helen said, sounding like a petulant child.
    Cheryl put down her bathroom spray and got on her knees before the dresser, as if bowing to a dark beast. She expertly jiggled the drawer, while making soft, soothing sounds. It slid smoothly into place.
    “I’m sorry I’m so much trouble today,” Helen said.
    “That drawer is not your fault,” Cheryl said. “It’s left over from the bank robber.”
    “You had a bank robber stay here?”
    “I thought everyone knew about Donnie Duane Her-kins. Robbed the Seafield Bank and Trust six months ago. It was all over TV.”
    “I don’t follow the news as well as I should,” Helen said. “I guess I missed that story.”
    “Donnie Duane didn’t actually rob the bank,” Cheryl said. “He carjacked a depositor on her way to the bank in broad daylight. She was an office manager delivering the cash deposits for a telemarketing company. The owners were too cheap to hire an armored car service.
    They made their office manager take the money to the bank. Donnie Duane pistol-whipped the woman and stole a hundred thousand dollars in cash.” Helen whistled.
    “That’s a lot of cash. What were they selling?”
    “Septic tank cleaner,” Denise said. “The cops thought it was way too much cash, too. Once they started poking around, the telemarketing company suddenly pulled the plug. They’re out of business—at least under that name.
    “Donnie Duane got all their dirty money, then took a room at our hotel, two miles from the bank.”
    “That was dumb,” Helen said. “Why would he do that?”
    Cheryl shrugged. “Didn’t make the slightest sense to me. The FBI believed he had an accomplice in the area and was waiting for the guy to show up when he got caught.”
    “Did the robber go to prison?”
    “He wasn’t that lucky,” Cheryl said. “His picture was on TV every ten seconds. An anonymous caller