"Are you sure?"
"I just told you this was preliminary, so in that sense we're not sure. Why don't you go take a nice nap like Mr. Pilverman, or even with him, if that appeals? I need to ask your mother some questions, and then go back to my office to see what kind of progress we're making on the current whereabouts of Mrs. Jerome Appleton." With a nod, he went down the hall toward Ruby Bee's room, leaving me to stand there gawking like a damnfool tourist in the mean streets of the city.
And to think I'd skipped lunch to concoct my brilliant theory that had explained a helluva lot of things-perhaps not every itsy-bitsy bugaboo, but some of them, anyway. I was leaning against the wall, watching Henbit knock on Ruby Bee's door, when I heard voices and footsteps in the stairwell. I eased open the door in time to hear a male voice assessing the chances (not good) the Mets would win the pennant. A second male voice concurred.
They continued down and presumably out into the lobby. I went to the landing and confirmed as much, then twisted my neck and looked up at the seemingly endless stairs leading into the darkness. With all the confidence of someone walking into a subway tunnel, I went to the third floor, where the remodeling supposedly continued.
The door was not locked. I opened it far enough to stick my head out and ascertain the existence of a table saw, a pile of mismatched lumber, a rusted air conditioner surely on its way to its burial, and other debris appropriate to a remodeling job. It was pretty much what I expected, and I was about to duck back into the stairwell (and go find some lunch) when I heard the unexpected from around a corner.
"Then you think lead pipes are the answer?" said Rubella Belinda Hanks of Maggody, Arkansas. "I always thought copper was the way to go."
"Well, the rust factor's what you got to worry over," said a genial man, identity and hometown unknown.
"Ain't rust just a royal pain in the butt!" chirped Estelle Oppers of Maggody, Arkansas.
They were heading in my direction. I let the door click shut, hesitated long enough to scratch my chin and frown, then scurried up to the next landing and waited.
I was gratified when the door below me opened and the two adventuresses began to descend. "All I can say is that it's a good thing he works for that magazine at night!" Ruby Bee said with a sniff. "Imagine not knowing your copper pipes from your lead pipes."
Estelle sounded equally disdainful as she said, "I doubt he knows his spigots from a hole in the ground! I'm glad we don't have to count on him when pipes start bursting in the winter."
"I should say so. Do you remember back in 'eighty-six when we had that hard freeze right before Christmas and-"
"It was 'eighty-seven, the same year my cousin Carmel was electrocuted in the bathtub. His wife said he always played the radio, but she was seen at a bar less than a week later and dressed in jeans so tight-"
The door banged closed on yet another diverting incident in the Chadwick Hotel.
"I told you to make sure you had the maps," Dahlia said, her tone as deflated as her chins. "Right before we got in the car at that horrible motel, I asked point-blank if you had the maps, and you said you did, even though the maps were in the room and your head was up your behind. I was gonna make sure, but then you had to go and drop my suitcase so everyone in the parking lot could see my underwear just a-flutterin' in the breeze. Right then and there I should have told you to take me home so I could call a lawyer and git myself a divorce."
Kevin tried not to whimper from under the chair where he'd gotten himself wedged more 'n an hour ago. Sweat was gathering in his eyes and leaking into his ears something awful, but there wasn't anything he could do on account of being tied up. "I guess I deserve it," he said, trying to be brave like a frontiersman surrounded by hostile Indians and down to his last bullet. "It's all my fault, my darling. I dun everything wrong from the minute we hit the highway leading out of Maggody."
"You're darn right it's all your fault," Dahlia said. "If someone like Ira was here, he'd know what to do about it. I keep asking myself why I had to be kidnapped with you instead of a real man who ain't afraid to protect his woman from danger."
Marvel, who was once again in the kitchen making sure the cops weren't getting ready to do something stupid, eased away from the window, and took the last piece of bread from the wrapper. Shit, he thought, they were running out of food. Big Mama wasn't much fun, but there'd be hell to pay if she found out they might have to make do on water and crackers. He could order another pizza, he supposed, but just remembering her reaction to the anchovies was enough to make his stomach go sour.
"Beloved," Kevin whined from the front room, "if I was a policeman or an FBI agent, I'd just gnaw my way out of these ropes and shoot that fellow until there weren't nothing left of him."
She responded to that, but Marvel wasn't listening. He was thinking, and after a minute, he hurried to the front room and picked up the telephone on the counter. He punched for the operator and said, "I want to talk to someone at the police station in whatever this hellhole is called. If you don't put me through, I'll kill one of the hostages and kick the body out the back door."
"Kevin," said Dahlia, although in a tone that suggested he engage in volunteerism rather than heroics, "do something."
Marvel pointed the gun at her until she subsided. "Okay, listen up real good," he said into the receiver.
"I'm fed up with this and ready to negotiate. Thing is, I don't trust you honky rednecks. I want you to get a dude from the FBI and send him in here to work out the details. What's more, my man, I don't want some local asshole putting on a three-piece suit and claiming to be a fed. The only man I'll deal with is gonna be a brother." He listened for a moment. "Yeah, a black man, and I don't care how you're going to get one. All I can say is that if he doesn't come up on the porch at precisely nine o'clock, his arms in the air and his credentials between his teeth so I can read 'em, I'll shove my gun up one of the hostages' noses and splatter brains and blood on the wall.
"Kevvie…" Dahlia wailed, covering her face (and nose) with her hands and slumping across the table. He couldn't see any of this, wedged as he was, but he could hear the distress in his beloved's voice and it was worse than being poked in the eye with a sharp stick.
"And while we wait," Marvel said, "why don't you send over a big bucket of fried chicken and some biscuits and gravy?"
To Kevin's relief Dahlia's wails dribbled off with a hiccup or two.
As I came out of the stairwell, the door of 215 opened and Frannie, after a hushed word over her shoulder, came into the hallway. "Catherine's resting," she said. "I thought I'd find out what we're supposed to do about food, since the kitchen's off-limits and we're not allowed to leave the hotel. I really don't know what to think about this whole thing. Brenda seemed like such a pleasant woman. Jerome was beastly, but I can't imagine her actually going so far as to…"
For some reason I couldn't define, I shot a quick frown at her door before I said, "He was brutal during the press reception, wasn't he?"
"But Geri certainly upstaged everyone," she said with a dry smile.
"She's worse than some of the teenaged girls back home. She doesn't have half the poise your daughter's shown these last few days, although Catherine did seem…excited last night. Whatever did she mean about the little piggies?"