The voice belonged to a black man in a stylish gray suit. His tie was red, his teeth were white, and his eyes (brown, not blue) were as impenetrable as the surface of the interstate. When I merely looked at him, he added, "You must not be feeling well. I'll be happy to escort you to a table at the bar or outside for a breath of fresh air." He glanced down at the drink in my hand and frowned ever so slightly. "Or have a waitress bring you a cup of coffee."
"No, thank you," I said. "I just stopped to have a drink on my way upstairs. What time does this place close?"
"Close?" His smile grew wider. "Like the Pinkertons, we never sleep. You, on the other hand, probably should. I hope you'll visit again tomorrow. We have raffles and contests every day at The Luck of the Draw. This weekend's grand prize is a trip to Jamaica. Be sure and enter."
He took my elbow and led me toward the door back to the hotel. I was too annoyed to resist, although I did crane my neck for a parting look at the craps table. If I'd actually seen Jim Bob-and I wasn't at all sure I hadn't been hallucinating-he'd vanished like a stack of five-dollar chips.
Estelle was snoring vigorously as I let myself into the hotel room. I undressed in the bathroom and crawled into the other bed. Sleep eluded me for a long while, and when it finally came, it was riddled with visions of Ruby Bee stretched out in a casket and Jim Bob doing belly flops across a craps table.
Neither was a pretty picture.
The hotel room was noticeably lighter when I was awakened by the sound of a siren. Groaning, I burrowed under the pillow and willed myself to go back to sleep, but the siren grew louder. Car doors slammed. People began jabbering in the hall outside the room. A second siren shrieked the approach of yet another official vehicle.
"What's going on out there?" said Estelle, sounding as if her mouth was filled with gravel. "Maybe you ought should look out the window and see if the hotel's on fire. I am not gonna scurry down some fire escape without putting on lipstick."
I did as she'd suggested. Eight stories below in the parking lot, a police car was parked at an erratic angle, its blue light spinning. An ambulance was speeding toward it. Guests and employees had gathered in the driveway. A woman dressed in jogging clothes and high-topped athletic shoes sat on a curb, her head between her knees. A police officer squatted beside her.
"There's been some sort of accident," I said, "but I can't make out what happened." I pulled back the heavy drapes, opened the sliding glass door, and went onto a balcony large enough to accommodate two chairs, a small table, and no more than three pigeons. My toes curled as they met cold concrete, but I grabbed the rail and looked down.
"Well?" demanded Estelle from the warmth of her bed.
I retreated inside and closed the door. "It looks as if someone fell from a significant height. A jogger must have discovered the body."
"What a thing to wake up to," she said as she struggled out from under the blankets. "Why didn't you shake me when you got here, Arly? I meant to wait up for you, but I guess I must have dozed off. Did you go by the hospital?"
I described my brief encounter with the ICU nurse at the hospital, then went into the bathroom to take a shower and brush my fuzzy teeth. When I emerged, she was on the balcony.
"Can you tell what's going on?" I asked as I got dressed.
"The body's been taken away in the ambulance, but from the way the police are measuring and looking up this way, the poor thing must have gone off a balcony right close to ours."
I prowled around the room while she took her time in the bathroom. It was too early to catch Dr. Deweese at the hospital; he wasn't slated to make rounds until eight. I ordered coffee and toast from room service and mindlessly watched some wake-up network show in which people seemed to be congratulating each other for breathing. Eventually I went back out onto the balcony, but the activity in the parking lot had melted away with the early-morning frost.
Estelle came out of the bathroom with her hair firmly pinned in place and several layers of scarlet lipstick defining her mouth. "I can't believe I went to sleep before you got here," she said as she poured herself a cup of coffee. "Night before last was rough, though, what with the gunfire well into the wee hours. I didn't think Ruby Bee'd ever fall asleep. When she finally did, I spent the rest of the night frettin' like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I just want you to know that I did my level best to make her say what was wrong, but I might as well have been butting heads with Mrs. Jim Bob."
I squeezed her hand. "I'm sure you did whatever you could, Estelle. She'll be fine."
"What'll we do if she isn't?"
I couldn't bring myself to offer much in the way of blithe assurances, so I refilled my coffee cup and sat back. "What did you mean when you mentioned gunfire?"
"You would not believe the awful place we stayed? I fully expected to be murdered in my bed. Stormy said she saw drug deals going on all night right outside our rooms. And of course there was the bald man that had the audacity to follow us on the Graceland tour, and then Baggins ups and sez we're not staying the night in Tupelo, which sent Taylor into a hissy-fit, even though Todd was-"
"Slow down," I said. "I have no idea who these people are."
"Folks on the tour, except for Baggins, who's the driver, and the bald man. I don't know who he is, unless he's Stormy's boyfriend. I was hoping Cherri Lucinda might know what he looks like, but she said she's never met him."
I held up my hands. "Forget I asked, Estelle. I drove half the night and I'm operating on three hours of sleep. You can tell me all the gossip and intrigue later."
She glowered at me, but fell silent and turned her attention to the TV set. I counted off minutes. It had taken me less than half an hour to drive from the hospital to the casino, and I wanted to be back there when Dr. Deweese arrived.
I was about to suggest we leave when there was a knock on the door. Wondering if room service had returned to repossess the coffee pot, I opened the door.
The woman in the hallway had noticeably bloodshot eyes and an ashen complexion. She put her hand to her mouth. "I am just so sorry for bothering you. I guess I have the wrong room."
"Is that you, Cherri Lucinda?" called Estelle.
The woman hurried past me, bent down to hug Estelle, and then sat down on the bed I'd recently vacated. "This trip is a nightmare? Everything's gone wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if that Miss Vetchling is some kind of nasty witch like the one that was going to eat Hansel and Gretel. If she was to walk into this room, I'd snatch the clipboard out of her hand and whack her over the head with it? I wouldn't be one bit sorry, either."
"I don't think she's responsible for Ruby Bee's ailment," said Estelle. "What's more, even though we didn't see any Shriners riding around Tupelo on their funny little motorcycles doesn't mean they weren't there. They could have been having their convention in another part of town."
Cherri Lucinda fell back across the bed. "That's not what I'm talking about. Don't you know what happened?"
Fearing that we were about to be treated to a lengthy discourse on the foolhardiness of high-stakes gambling or the effrontery of the male species, I said, "Estelle, we need to leave for the hospital."
"Didn't all the commotion wake you up?" persisted Cherri Lucinda. "I mean, I wouldn't be here if the cops weren't searching my room. I stood out in the hall for a while, but these ladies by the elevator started whispering and staring at me like I was some kind of freak just because the cops wouldn't let me put on makeup. They acted like they weren't gonna let me get dressed, either, but then the woman cop said I could if she stayed with me to make sure I didn't tamper with evidence. I don't see how I was supposed to do that when I don't know what evidence they were talking about."
"What are you talking about?" I asked.