I waved him in and, while he fixed drinks, said, "I've had a message from someone named Ellen. I have no idea who it might be. Could it have been meant for you?"
"A woman calling me? " With a self-deprecatory chuckle, he sat down on the bed and began to open the bag. "Who'd be interested in a dreary old professor who's desperate enough to mutilate a perfectly decent cake recipe with Krazy KoKo-Nut?"
"She said it was an emergency," I said, ignoring his melodramatic display designed to elicit a tender response from yours truly. "I guess I'd better ask Ruby Bee and Estelle if they have any idea who it might be. I'll be right back."
"Don't worry about me. I'll just sit here by myself."
"Do that." I went down the hall and knocked on their door, When Estelle opened it, I made a rather natural attempt to enter the room. Natural and unsuccessful. "What's the deal with the security in this room?" I asked, irritated. "Are you entertaining sailors or something? Boozing it up with traveling salesmen from Toledo?"
"Ruby Bee is gettin' herself gussied up for the press reception," Estelle said, glancing over her shoulder. "She's wedged in the bathroom at the moment, while I try to figure out what she's gonna wear. The room's too darn small to have other people traipsing in and out all the time like a bunch of gawky outlanders. Now, what's your problem, missy?"
Manhattan was unnerving me, but it was unhinging them. I told Estelle about the mysterious call from "Ellen," and was told that they were a sight too busy to worry about my anonymous callers. On that note, the door was closed.
As I retreated toward 204, a man with erect peppery hair and thicklensed glasses came out of one room and headed for the door through which Frannie and Brenda had gone earlier. The missing Jerome, I surmised as I smiled vaguely and made a move to pass him, wrinkling my nose as I caught a whiff of perfume tainted with cigar smoke.
He stepped back to block my way. Although we were the same height, he seemed to think he could tower over me and intimidate me with his masculine authority, or at least his bad breath. "Who are you?"
"Not my mother's keeper," I replied mildly. "How about yourself?"
He moistened his lips with a normal tongue. "I'm Jerome Appleton, honey. My wife's one of the contestants, and I came along for moral support. How about yourself?"
I recognized his voice, although it was no longer roaring about the blankety-blank buzzards at the IRS. I introduced myself and admitted I was in a similar role. "I guess this is convenient for you," I added, "since the Chadwick Hotel is one of your accounts."
"This dump? You gotta be kidding." He moved toward me, and as Estelle had sworn, it was damned easy to see the mental icing on his face, not to mention the real dribble on his chin. "I handle a coupla clubs not too far from here, though. Maybe while the contestants are busy, we might go have a drink to console ourselves for missing out on the limelight? Don't get me wrong, honey. I'm not suggesting anything more risqué than that-unless you're in the mood…?"
"You really are a toad, aren't you?" I said evenly. "Do you have dead flies stuck between your teeth?"
"Jerome?" Brenda said, opening the door and frowning as she noticed his face, which was frozen in a fine imitation of a gargoyle. All we needed was a flying buttress on which to perch him. "Is something wrong?"
"Nothing." He brushed past her and closed the door.
I was not popular on the second floor of the Chadwick, I thought as I trudged on my way like an errant mail carrier. The last time I'd received the cold shoulder from Estelle and Ruby Bee, they'd been up to no damn good, not to mention enmeshed in a thoroughly idiotic kidnapping plot that had backfired and then some. It was hard not to suspect they were up to something now, but I had no idea what it could be.
There was something damned fishy about the so-called mugging in the stairwell, but everyone seemed content to dismiss it as a typical New York close encounter of the wrong kind. I was the only person who remained unsatisfied with the story. But it was hard to explain why Durmond had been dragged to Ruby Bee's room and stripped, and the police alerted to storm the same site. To myself, anyway-since no one else was asking.
I stopped in front of the stairwell door around the corner from the elevator. Almost invisible in the terminally dingy pattern of the carpet was a round brown speckle. I knelt and looked for others. There was a trail of sorts, and I determined that it began by the door and went in the direction I'd just come. Like Raz's sow on the scent of a wily truffle, I crawled down the hall, restraining myself from actually snuffling as each speckle lured me on.
"Arly?" Durmond said from behind me. "Are you okay?"
I stood up and tried to think of something clever to explain my porcine imitation. In that nothing came to mind, I was relieved when he said, "There's something on the news that…well, did you say the name of your town is Maggody?" He pronounced it "mu-GOH-dee," but I forgave him since he'd saved me the necessity of a lie.
"Maggody," I said, stressing the first syllable. "It rhymes with 'raggedy.' But I can't believe it's on the news. Stoplight go dead? Fish kill downstream from the sewage plant? Pedigreed sow on the rampage?"
He hurried me into my room and turned up the volume on the television set in time for the tail end of the story. When the flat-faced anchorwoman moved on to footage of sump holes in Florida, I found myself numbly staring at the now dark message button on the telephone. "Not Ellen," I heard myself croak. "Eilene."
Her white gloves clutched in one hand, Mrs. Jim Bob rapped on the rectory door, determined to go on doing it until she received a response. "I know you're in there," she called sternly. "When I came out of the Assembly Hall, one of those licentious hippie women across the road said you hadn't been out all day. She also said she was thinking about bringing you some carob cookies and a pot of herbal tea, but I put a stop to that." She increased the fury of her fist. "Brother Verber, you are trying my patience. Open up this minute!"
The door opened, and Brother Verber blinked down at her with the unfocused gaze of someone who has been knocked up the side of the head with a two-by-four. "Why, Sister Barbara," he said, swallowing several times between each word, "how nice of you to come visitin' like this."
She took in his bathrobe, pale puffy face, and eyes zigzagged with red lines. "Are you sick?"
"I've had a touch of a stomach virus," he said as he held open the door for her and tried not to wince as her high heels clattered like a machine gun across the living room floor.
"We missed you at the organizational meeting last night," she said, twisting her gloves and tapping her foot, clearly not in the mood to proffer sympathy for the invalid's woeful condition. "I was disappointed, Brother Verber. You and I must join forces to lead the community away from the wickedness. No one else has the kind of dedication to decency, the commitment to righteous and oldfashioned Christian morality." She eyed him narrowly, and her lips all but disappeared. "The meeting ended at ten, and I drove by here afterward. The lights were off, and I could only assume you'd found something more entertaining elsewhere." Brother Verber pulled the bathrobe around him more tightly and searched his maladroit mind for an explanation that might gain him temporary parole (a full pardon was most likely out of the question). He took his handkerchief from a pocket and began to mop his forehead, doing his best not to squirm as her eyes bored into him like skewers. "You and I surely are the generals in the Almighty's army," he said, wishing his mouth wasn't drier than a wad of cotton. "That's right-the brigadier generals leading on the Christian footsoldiers, marching against the forces of evil."
"I believe we were discussing your absence from the Christians Against Whiskey meeting, Brother Verber."