Free McCone and Friends by Marcia Muller Page A

three-story dirty-white clapboard structure with a parking area out front. The roof was missing a fair number of its shingles, the windows were hopelessly crusted with grime, and one column of the wide front porch leaned alarmingly. On the porch, to each side of the double front door, sat identical green wicker rockers, and in each sat a scowly-looking man. Between them, extending from the door and down the steps, was a series of orange cones such as highway department crews use. A yellow plastic tape strung from cone to cone bore the words DANGER DO NOT CROSS DANGER DO NOT CROSS DANGER DO NOT CROSS…
    In as reverent a tone as I’d ever heard him use, Neal said, “Good God, it’s the old Riverside Hotel!”
    While staring at it Shar had overshot the parking area. As she drove along looking for a place to turn around she asked, “You know this place?”
    “From years ago. Was built as a fancy resort in the twenties. People would come up from the city and spend their entire vacations here. Then in the seventies the original owner’s family sold it to a guy named Tom Atwater, who turned it into a gay hotel. Great restaurant and bar, cottages with individual hot tubs scattered on the grounds leading down to the beach, anything-goes atmosphere.”
    “You stayed there?” I asked.
    Neal heard the edge in my voice. He turned his head and smiled at me, laugh lines around his eyes crinkling. It amuses and flatters him that I’m jealous of his past. “I had dinner there. Twice.”
    Shar turned the MG in a driveway and we coasted back toward the hotel. The men were watching us. Both were probably in their mid fifties, dressed in shorts and t-shirts, but otherwise—except for the scowls—they were total opposites. The one on our left was a scarecrow with a shock of long gray-blond hair; the one our right reminded me of Elmer Fudd, and had just as bald a pate.
    When we climbed out of the car—the grocery sack needing a firm tug—Neal called, “I phoned earlier about the jukebox.”
    The scarecrow jerked his thumb at Fudd and kept scowling. Fudd arranged his face into more pleasant lines and got up from the rocker.
    “I’m Chris Fowler,” he said. “You Neal and Ted?”
    “I’m Neal, this is Ted, and that’s Sharon.”
    “Come on in, I’ll show you the box.”
    “’Come on in, I’ll show you the box’” the scarecrow mimicked in a high nasal whine.
    “Jesus!” Chris Fowler exclaimed. He led us through his side of the double front door.
    Inside was a reception area that must’ve been magnificent before the oriental carpets faded and the flocked wallpaper became water stained and peeling. In its center stood a mahogany desk backed by an old fashioned pigeonhole arrangement, and wide stairs on either side led up to the second story. The yellow tape continued, from the door to the pigeonhole arrangement, neatly bisecting the room.
    Shar stopped and stared at it, frowning. I tugged her arm and shook my head. Sometimes the woman can be so rude. Chris Fowler didn’t notice though, just turned right in to a dimly lighted barroom. “There’s your jukebox,” he said.
    A thing of beauty, it was. Granted, a particular acquired-taste kind of beauty - shaped like an enormous trash can of fake blond wood, with two flaring red plastic side panels and a gaudy gilt grille studded with plastic gems. Tiny mirrored squares surrounded the grille, and the whole thing was decked out with enough chrome as a 1950’s Cadillac. I went up to it and touched the coin slot. Five plays for a quarter, two for a dime, one for a nickel. Those were the days.
    Instantly I fell in love.
    When I looked at Neal, his eyes were sparkling. “Can we play it?” he asked Chris.
    “Sure.” He took a nickel from his pocket and dropped it into the slot. Whirrs, clicks, and then mellow tones crooned, “See the pyramids across the Nile…”
    Shar shook her head, rolled her eyes, and wandered off to inspect a pinball machine. She despairs of Neal’s