Chapter 3
Ricky and I had been here once before, crossing paths with a dead body.
I tried to remember what I had done the last time, and realized that I’d gone into shutdown mode.
I checked in with myself to see if that was going to happen again.
I was more than a little unnerved, to be sure, but a hand to my chest confirmed that my breathing was normal.
A quick scan behind the eyes confirmed that my brain had no immediate plans to check out.
All systems remained in operation, so that probably meant it was time to try to help Ricky.
“What happened?” I edged cautiously toward the door as I tried out this obviously weak opening gambit, both curious to see the scene and not entirely sure that I wanted to.
Ricky was still planted to his spot, his torso twisted toward me, his face a mask of glassy shock. “I was opening the door when this guy fell from … somewhere … into the hot tub,” he said flatly.
I was close enough now to see a leg draped over the edge of the hot tub and an arm bobbing on the surface of the water, both pulsing in time with the jets.
The leg was clad in a pair of chinos, a patterned dress sock on the visible foot; the arm was inside a sweater, probably much darker green than usual from being submerged in the water.
There didn’t seem to be any bubbles coming from the submerged upper body, but to be certain I asked, “Are you sure he’s dead? Should we be trying to get him out?”
“He hit the edge of the tub before he went in,” Ricky said, turning back toward the body and staring blankly into the water. “There was a nasty crack. His eyes are open, too. I’m pretty sure he died on impact.”
I took this in. I wasn’t shutting down, but I also wasn’t feeling too swift. Finally, I said, “Well, uh …”
Ricky nodded, as though this had been a useful contribution to the situation. “Yeah.”
Suddenly, something in my brain snapped. “Jeez,” I said, as I turned and took a wild look around the room, trying to locate a phone. The first one I found was the room phone, so that’s the one I picked up.
I was fumbling with the buttons when Mary Alice’s voice came through the handset. “Hello? Mr. Popp? Mr. Warner?”
“Uh, hello,” I said breathlessly. “I was trying to call 911.”
“Oh, no! What’s happened? I can put that call through for you,” she said quickly.
I forced myself to listen to my breathing instead of the hum rising between my ears. “Could you? That would be great. A guy fell into our hot tub, maybe from the balcony above ours or something, and we think he’s dead.”
“Oh my god! I’m calling right now!” She hung up without waiting for a response.
Ricky hadn’t moved. I padded to the door. “Mary Alice is calling 911 for us. Could you hear me? Was I coherent?”
“I dunno,” he said without moving his gaze from the lifeless limbs coming out of the hot tub.
I reached out, gently grabbing his arm. “Why don’t you come inside,” I said, pulling him stumblingly through the door and leading him to the couch.
As soon as I had gotten him seated, there was a panicked rap at the door.
I let Mary Alice in, then the paramedics a few minutes later, and the sheriff a short time after that, and for a little while it was all Ricky and I could do to sit, still and silent, side by side, as our room went from a scene of disaster to one of total chaos.
Eventually, after fumbling through a few questions from the sheriff, we were allowed to leave the room so that we wouldn’t have to watch the body being removed.
Mary Alice led us up to the lounge and gave us each a mug of cocoa before bustling off again.
We sat silently, warming our hands on the mugs but not drinking, for a long time.
Finally, I ventured a look at Ricky. His face had lost the glassy look and settled somewhere in the neighborhood of ashen, and very, very tired.
I pried a hand from my warm mug and reached over, brushing Ricky’s hand with a finger. “Are you okay?”
He lifted his eyes to me and searched me for a second, looking for words.
“Oliver, I …” His voice broke, but he pushed on.
“Last time … I didn’t—I don’t think either of us actually saw …
but I saw it this time. I saw, and I heard, and …
” He kept his brown eyes locked on me, still searching, coming up short.
I felt myself coming up short, too. For lack of anything to say, I gently hooked my finger under one of his, sharing the warmth of his mug and the first contact between us that I’d ever really initiated.
After a moment, he pulled the rest of my fingers into the rest of his, and we sat like that for a while.
There was a commotion in the lobby as the elevator doors clanged open and a trio of EMTs poured out, the clatter of gurney wheels mingling with their swift footsteps toward the door as we both looked down into our mugs to avoid seeing anything.
When we looked up again, Mary Alice was rounding the divider from the lobby into the lounge, coming toward us and slumping into a chair at our table.
“You guys, I’m so sorry about this,” she said, apparently too tired for her usual formality. “I’ll get you into another room, but is it okay if I sit here for just a sec?”
“Of course,” I said. “Thanks for taking charge back there.”
“That’s my job,” she said with a tiny, sad hint of a smile. She leaned forward, setting her elbows on the table and tenting her fingers in front of her mouth, her eyes closed. When she opened them again, she said, “That was my cousin. Richard.”
“The man in …?” It felt indelicate to finish the question.
She nodded. “He was staying in the room above yours. With his wife, Rachel, who you met earlier, I think. It looks like he fell off his balcony, which is weird, but maybe he was drunk or something.”
“He died on impact,” Ricky said dully.
She nodded again. “It looks that way. You guys didn’t hear anything going on up in his room beforehand, did you?”
“There was music,” said Ricky, his monotone taking on a slightly dreamy quality.
“That’s right,” I said. “He was playing classical music. Kind of loud. I didn’t hear anything else.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Mary Alice shrugged. “As far as we know, he was alone in there. His wife is at the movies.” She shot a look over her shoulder toward the lobby, as if realizing that at any moment Rachel could return and walk unwittingly into devastation.
“I don’t want to be insensitive,” I said slowly. Mary Alice gave a small nod of encouragement, so I went on. “Could it have been suicide?”
She thought for a second. “It would surprise me if it was, but I suppose you never know. The sheriff is looking through their room right now, so maybe they’ll find something, but I really think it had to be an accident.”
I thought about this for a moment. It seemed so odd. “I didn’t really look at the balcony in our room too much. Are the railings particularly low? Would it be easy to fall over?”
Mary Alice shook her head. “They’re a standard height. Not especially easy to go over, but I suppose you wouldn’t have to work too hard to do it, either. Richard is—was—fairly tall, I guess.”
The elevator dinged again in the lobby, and Mary Alice turned to look as the man who had been playing piano earlier rounded the corner into the lounge, his eyes on the floor and his mouth drawn down.
I tried to remember who Mary Alice had said he was—a cousin of her cousins, I thought, on their father’s side, and he had been married to that pushy flirt, Tawny.
Mary Alice called out to the man, “Can I get you anything, Wylie?”
He looked up, seemingly confused by seeing us for the first time. “Oh, hi. Yeah. Um, what did I come in here for?”
She rose and started toward the bar, giving Wylie a concerned look. “It sounds like you heard what happened.”
“Yeah. A deputy came to our room a minute ago. Some milk. I think I was supposed to get some milk for Tawny. Do you have any?”
Mary Alice bent over behind the bar, emerging with a carton of milk. “You sure this is all you want? She doesn’t want anything stronger?”
He shook his head. “No, I suggested that, but she insisted on milk. I don’t get it. He was my cousin, and we used to be close and all, but Tawny’s the one going to pieces. I just feel numb.”
“Sounds like shock to me,” Mary Alice said, pushing a tall glass of milk across the bar. “Everybody reacts differently. Is Tawny going to be okay?”
Wylie slumped on a bar stool, clutching the milk. “I’m sure she will. I don’t think they hardly ever spoke, so I don’t get why she’s upset, but she’s down there shrieking and crying. I guess I should see if she’s any better, and take her this milk.” He stood up slowly. “Thanks.”
On his way out of the lounge, he passed the sheriff’s deputy, a small woman with a long blond plait swinging down from underneath her wide-brimmed brown hat. She went directly to the bar. “Any sign of the wife yet, Miz Thatcher?”
“No, not yet,” Mary Alice said.
The deputy took a stool, swiveling to angle herself with the lobby doors in view. “Okay if I wait here for her? Sheriff wants me to catch her before she goes to the room.”
“Makes sense to me,” Mary Alice said.
The elevator dinged yet again, and the deputy tensed a little, only relaxing when a woman I hadn’t seen before, a tall woman in her midforties with a flaming red asymmetrical hairdo, came into the lounge.
Her eyes were nearly as red as her hair, and her voice trembled a little as she addressed Mary Alice, saying, “I finally got Mother to sleep. She’s in my room; I know you’ll need to shuffle things around to make room for everybody. ”
She had stopped near our table, talking to Mary Alice from across the room, and now she turned her attention to Ricky and me, lowering herself into the chair recently vacated by Mary Alice.
“You must be Mr. Popp and Mr. Warner. I’m Elisabeth Rose, Richard’s sister, but call me Lis.
I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through all of this. ”