Murder at Pride Lodge [A Kyle Callahan Mystery: 1] Page 7

  Cowboy Dave, the bartender, would be there by sundown. Marti Martin always came for the big holiday weekends, Fourth of July, Halloween, even Valentine’s Day, despite being alone. “What better time to meet a Valentine?” she had said to Kyle last February. He didn’t point out to her it hadn’t worked yet, but being fond of Marti he hoped to see her checking in one of these times with another woman and a twinkle in her eye.

  There would be others, filling up every room the Lodge had to offer. The basement would be turned into one big party space with pumpkins and witches, cobwebs and plastic zombies. Cowboy Dave would serve an endless flow of drinks, assisted by one of the other staff stepping into Happy Corcoran’s place; there was always someone available, one of the twins maybe, or Elzbetta when she got off shift waiting tables. Kevin, aka Kevin the Magnificent, karaoke master of ceremonies and tireless self-promoter, would oversee the festivities, and they would all dance the night away.

  Kyle sipped his coffee gone cold and watched as Ricki provided just the right amount of professional fawning to guests, smiling and nodding, careful not to be too familiar even if he knew all their secrets. Kyle made a mental note to have a private conversation with Ricki when things slowed down. Ricki may well know something he didn’t realize he knew, for unless the killer had already left—and Kyle had reason to believe he had not—he would be there among them this weekend. By the time he and Danny left for New York City, Kyle intended to identify a murderer and gain vindication for his poor dead friend.

  Chapter Ten

  An Offhand Remark

  It was an offhand remark, the kind no one noticed and that would have been forgotten had it not jarred something in Kyle’s memory. He hadn’t paid it any mind, either, until he was resting in the cabin and about to read another few pages of a novel based on the fictional exploits of a chamber maid at the court of Mary, Queen of Scots.

  Kyle had planned to read and take a nap after lunch. That was his preferred agenda on weekends, holidays and any other day he wasn’t working. It had nothing to do with getting older; he had been an avid napper since childhood. First came a good meal, then twenty minutes or so of reading, and finally drifting off to a luxurious sleep. He remembered doing this exact routine at his grandmother’s house in Skokie, Illinois. His grandparents had lived there for many years and had raised his father and aunts there. Kyle loved visiting them, his grandmother especially, a plump and spry woman who doted on her grandchildren. His feelings for his grandfather were equally uncomplicated: he didn’t much like the man, and he had always assumed there was a connection between the distance he had with his father and the distance he always observed between his father and grandfather. It seemed icy father-son relationships ran in the family. But Grandma Nonny, she was different. And Kyle had always been her favorite, even if no one said it aloud.

  Napping eluded him this Friday afternoon, as did the ability to focus on his book. The anxiety had started that morning with Teddy’s death and escalated during lunch, when Kyle and Danny found themselves sitting at a table with the lesbian couple from the pool that morning. There were plenty of other places to sit, no reason whatsoever for the four of them to eat together, but the women walked into the dining room, saw Kyle and Danny looking at their menus, and the tall one, Eileen, said, “Afternoon, gentlemen, Kyle,” remembering his name, “mind if we join you?”

  Kyle was quickly trying to think of a reason to say no when Danny motioned at one of the two empty chairs at their table and said, but of course, they’d be delighted.

  “We don’t know them,” Kyle whispered.

  “That’s what makes it interesting,” Danny said, just as the women made it to the table.

  Typical Danny, Kyle thought. Master schmoozer, glad-hander, always on in social settings. It went with his job and why he was so good at it, but it sometimes led to encounters Kyle would rather not have.

  Kyle noticed that the shorter woman, Maggie, wasn’t tweeting or texting at the moment, but she kept her right hand poised just above the cell phone hooked on her belt, as if it were a gun holster and she was prepared to draw quickly, firing off messages with the speed of bullets. Both women wore jeans and what looked like plain light blue men’s shirts. Kyle noticed Maggie wearing lace-up work boots, better used to walk along metal beams in the sky than hiking hillsides in Pennsylvania. Combined with the pink cat-eye glasses it made for quite a look.

  “Where you boys from?” Maggie said, un-holstering her smart phone and setting it on the table as she sat down.

  “New York City,” Danny said. “How about you?

  The women were seated now and Elzbetta, on duty for lunch and dinner, hurried over with two more menus. Elzbetta had the appearance of a young woman who never expected to work where appearances mattered: twenty-eight years old, mid-length yellow hair (for it could not be called blonde) with purple streaks in it, five tiny gold hoops rimming her left ear, a nose stud, and all black clothing: black jeans, black shirt, black shoes.

  “I’m Elzbetta,” she said to the table, “and I’ll be your server today. Probably every day you’re here, unless you stay past Sunday. I don’t work Monday or Tuesday, in case you were wondering, which I doubt. And no, it’s not a nickname for Elizabeth. It’d old-country, Slavic or something. You’d have to ask my mother which old-country, but she’s dead and never did tell me. Drinks for anyone? Bar doesn’t open ‘til two.”

  The four looked at each other, wondering as much about the overload of information from their waitress as they were about what to order. Kyle thought having alcohol that early in the day was a sign of someone with a problem, which immediately made him think of Teddy.

  “Tomato juice please, Elzbetta,” answered Eileen, putting just a slight emphasis on the name. “With ice.”

  Maggie said water was fine, while Kyle and Danny both asked for coffee. Elzbetta turned on her heel and hurried off, writing the drinks down on her order pad.

  “Philly,” Eileen said, turning to Danny as if there had been no interruption.

  “Now we are,” Maggie added, sounding none too happy about it.

  “Maggie’s from a small town in western PA,” Eileen explained. “She thinks Philly is the big city. Which it is, but c’mon, New York City? I can’t get her to go there with me and we’ve been together for thirteen years. She’s convinced we wouldn’t get out alive. And the subways? Like being buried alive, she says, as if she’d know. I miss the Big Apple.”

  “Does anyone still call it that?” Kyle mused, starting to warm to their company.

  “Not for a while, I don’t think,” Danny said. “It was part of an advertising campaign, like those ‘I Love NY’ coffee cups with the heart on them. Back in the 70s or 80s when the place was going to hell.”

  “Well,” said Eileen, “Maggie thinks it went to hell and stayed there. I told her it’s run by Disney now but she won’t believe me.”

  “What’d you think of that dead guy?” Maggie blurted, abruptly changing the subject. Either she didn’t like her phobias being put on display or she had very poor social skills. “There hasn’t been anything on the news about it.” At that she glanced at her phone, as if news of any importance would set it vibrating.

  “Who’s going to report it?” asked Eileen. “It was six hours ago.”

  “To answer your question,” Kyle said, “I knew the dead man. He worked here for many years and was a friend of mine, at least the last year or so.”

  “My mother was an alcoholic,” Maggie said. “No good comes of it.”

  Kyle was wondering what made Maggie think Teddy was an alcoholic and why she would offer up such personal information, when Elzbetta arrived back with their drinks.

  The now-foursome placed their lunch orders and continued with their conversation, the rest of it light, about the unseasonably warm weather and the pleasures Philadelphia had to offer, since it was the only place all four of them were familiar with. They watched as the restaurant started filling up with guests from the night before
and new arrivals. Much to Danny’s displeasure, Linus Hern swept into the room halfway through their meal, deliberately talking loudly so no one would miss his entrance. He had a young man in tow—not the same one he’d come with last year—and only two acolytes this time, fawning over Hern and glancing around to be sure they were looked at.

  Linus was an imposing figure even without the ego. He stood six-three and carried himself like a man ten years younger than his sixty-two years. He wore his thinning hair a natural gray and swept back, no doubt the better to expose his face. Danny suspected contacts, since he had never seen Hern with glasses and knew that weakening vision was simply a part of aging. Today Hern was wearing cream cotton pants and a light blue jacket over pink shirt, something that looked more appropriate to spring than fall, but it wouldn’t surprise Danny for Linus Hern to expect the seasons to bow to him and not the other way around. The young man gliding close to him was almost an afterthought, but a handsome one. Tanned in October, in tight sky-blue jeans and a Pride Lodge sweatshirt Linus had no doubt bought for him. The party moved en mass to a table well away from them, much to Danny’s relief. He knew he would have to encounter Hern face to face at some point this weekend, but the later in their stay the better.

  The twins, Austin and Dallas, had changed into their waiter clothes (black pants, white shirt, black vest, a code Elzbetta paid no mind to) and were working the quickly-filling room.

  Diane Haley and her beautiful partner took a seat by the window, Diane waving slightly at Kyle. The male couple they’d seen checking in were missing, and there was one woman who had come in and taken a seat by herself. Kyle remembered seeing her pull up in the parking lot last night as he and Danny walked down to the cabin. Something about her struck him: she seemed to be intensely observing everyone and when she saw him looking at her, she looked back, staring, really, until he blushed and looked away.

  “We haven’t seen you here before,” Danny said, continuing the lunch conversation. “Is this your first time?”

  “It is indeed,” said Eileen. “I knew Dylan back in high school. We were both in the closet, but we knew, ya know? We ended up coming out to each other but no one else, not until our senior year. He took the plunge first, God love him. This was in Philly, he’s from there, in case you didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t,” said Kyle. “I knew he and Sid lived in Long Branch, New Jersey, and they’ve been together for ten years. They had a big anniversary party last spring. But other than that, no.”

  “Did pretty damn well for himself,” offered Maggie, looking around the room to indicate she meant the Lodge itself.

  “I’d say he married well,” Eileen said. “Or luckily. Anyway, we lost track for, what, thirty years? And then, Facebook! Just a couple months ago I got a friend request.”

  “They’re not your friends, most of them,” said Maggie with slight but noticeable resentment.

  “Says the woman who tweets to four hundred followers, perhaps a dozen of whom she actually knows.”

  “It’s a completely different social media.”

  “Maggie dropped off Facebook,” Eileen explained. “A falling out with someone, so she declared it a diabolical corporate plot to get as much information about us as possible and she deleted her account.”

  “Which is never really deleted,” said Maggie. “Nothing’s ever truly deleted. It’s all data mining.”

  Eileen rolled her eyes and continued. “Dylan and I have been in touch since then, sometime in the summer. He told me about Pride Lodge, I looked it up and it seemed like a great place to visit.”

  “And he gets to live here,” Maggie said. Then, to Eileen, “You’re welcome to buy me a resort.”

  “As soon as the rich aunt I don’t have dies and leaves me a couple million dollars, I’ll be happy to.”

  “Is that what happened?” Danny asked. “Dylan inherited from an aunt?”

  “On, no,” Eileen said. “Not Dylan. Sid. Bought the place for cash, Dylan said. And just in time! Who knows what a developer would do with this land.”

  Elzbetta appeared seemingly out of nowhere. “Finished with these?” she said, as she took their empty plates without waiting for an answer.

  “I’m still working on mine,” Kyle said playfully, his plate empty.

  Elzbetta gave him a weary smile and headed off again, her arm piled with dishes.

  “Will we see you at the pumpkin carving?” Eileen asked. “I’m told it’s the official start of the Halloween fun.”

  Kyle wondered what fun there could be, considering the day had begun with a man’s death. He started to say as much, thought better of it, and just said yes, they would be there that afternoon for the pumpkins, they wouldn’t miss it.

  You’re welcome to buy me a resort. An offhand remark, a few words, information Kyle had not had and would probably never have known without that chance encounter. He gave up any hope of taking a nap and turned to Danny, who’d been reading the current issue of New York magazine in bed next to him.

  “It’s funny . . . “ he said.

  “I’m waiting,” Danny replied, not taking his eyes off an article on the slate of Oscar hopefuls opening in December.

  “The detective asked me an odd question, about how much I thought this place would cost. I didn’t give it any thought until lunch, when they said Sid paid cash for it.”

  “That he inherited from an extremely generous aunt just when Pucky was selling the Lodge. Timing’s everything, they say. I imagine Linus Hern would concur. The man has the most uncanny timing—he gets out with the money just in time. Whatever sap he sold the restaurant to goes out of business three months later, and it’s nothing to Linus, he’s on to the next venture. You’d think investors would have learned by now.”

  “You’re not listening to me,” Kyle said. “You’re fantasizing a terrible end to a man you shouldn’t be wasting your resentment on.”

  “He’s had his eye on Margaret’s Passion for some time, you know. He circles, like a vulture.”

  “What if there was no rich aunt? What if the money came from somewhere else?”

  “And Teddy found out and was about to blow the whistle, so they silenced him.”

  “Yes, exactly!”

  “You should take that nap. Your brain’s tired. It’s got you imagining things.”

  “Should I call her?”

  “Who?”

  “Detective Sikorsky.”

  “I imagine she’s pretty good at finding these things out on her own,” Danny said. “For that matter, she may already know. After all, she didn’t ask how someone could afford to buy Pride Lodge, just how much it might cost.”

  “Ah, but that’s the question, isn’t it? How could someone who worked as a bank manager save up a couple million dollars to buy property? And why make up a relative who gave you the money?”

  Danny tossed his magazine aside and swung his legs around off the bed. “You could ask them yourself in about twenty minutes. It’s almost pumpkin carving time.”

  Kyle glanced at the dresser clock. Almost two hours had passed since lunch. He would not be taking a nap this afternoon. He sighed and slid off the bed, hoping for answers but still not certain what the questions were.

  Chapter Eleven

  A Table for One

  For a moment she thought the man staring at her knew who she was, then she realized it was impossible. She was a stranger to everyone here, and everyone here a stranger to her. It must be the way she dressed, common enough in a resort filled with gay men and lesbians; or, more likely, she reminded him of someone he knew. That happened a lot. She’d been born with one of those faces that could serve as a template for at least one person in everyone’s life. It had happened to her as a girl in Santa Barbara, and again in St. Paul. Anywhere she went, really. Every few months someone would stop her and say, “Don’t I know you?” She was the spitting image of their cousin or an old classmate. Once in a great while they actually did know her, and she would lie. “No, sorry, my na
me’s Bo,” she would say after they insisted she reminded them of an old acquaintance named Emily. “Bo Sweetzer.” She liked the name. Bo. One syllable. Gender-neutral. She knew people assumed it was a nickname, some diminutive of “Barbara” perhaps. It added to the fun.

  She glanced at the table for four and saw he had turned his attention back to one of the women. Yes, she assured herself, he could not possibly know anything about her but instead had made the common mistake of appearing to stare when really just lost in thought. Nonetheless, there was something about him, a curiosity she found threatening. She would have to keep an eye on him until she was safely away.

  “My name’s Austin,” the young waiter said, startling her. He’d come up from behind her, but she chastised herself nonetheless for not staying fully aware of her surroundings. Assassins did not make those kinds of mistakes twice. She resolved in the instant to stay vigilant, even as she turned to him and did a double-take.

  “I thought your name was Dallas,” she said.

  “We’re twins. But we don’t dress alike and he wears his hair shorter. He’s also ten pounds heavier than I am, which should be obvious. Are you ready to order?”

  “I’ll have the usual,” Bo said, toying with him.

  Austin stared at her, even less amused than he had been, which was not at all. “Maybe my twin brother knows what your usual is, but I’m not him, which I just explained.”

  “Ah, yes, he’s ten pounds heavier. Sorry. Just two eggs over easy, wheat toast, no potatoes. Coffee when you have a chance.”

  Austin jotted down the order and hurried away, rolling his eyes behind her back: another comic. He knew from working at the Lodge that it takes all kinds.

  Pride Lodge, Bo thought. They should have called it Pride Circus. The man Dylan was the ringmaster, she’d seen that already, with the old guy Sid hanging back. Dylan fussed over everything, especially the guests. He told the staff what to do and when, but in a nice way, she’d noticed. Pity.