Chapter 17
My stomach twisted into a knot as I made my way to the elevator and rode up to the top floor. The soft tinkle of the piano greeted my ears as I emerged into the lobby.
Erik was sitting with his feet up on the desk, a book in his lap. He straightened when he saw me. “Hi, Mr. Popp. You here for that milkshake?”
“Yes, I guess so,” I said. “If you’re not too busy.” I realized too late that what I had meant as polite may have come off as sarcastic.
Erik didn’t seem bothered. “It’s no problem. What kind do you want? I can do vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry. Sorry I don’t have anything more exotic. I suppose I could throw some bar pretzels in if you want.”
Pretzels sounded about right for the state of my gut. Come to think of it, though, they sounded pretty tasty, too. “How about a chocolate shake, and you put some of those pretzels in?”
“Sure,” Erik said as we rounded the partition into the lounge together. The room was empty except for Wiley sitting at the piano, skillfully playing a jazzy instrumental of “Fly Me to the Moon.”
Target acquired. Now to execute my mission.
I had hoped thinking like a spy would help soothe my nerves, but it mostly reminded me that I had no training for this, and perhaps even less natural aptitude for it than most people. So, I knew it was going to be awkward and feel completely fake. Might as well get on with it.
I stepped over to the piano, wondering if it would be too much for me to lean casually on it.
I decided that trying to pull off “casual” might be a bit too ambitious, so I settled for my usual “uncomfortably stiff” instead.
After a moment, Wiley’s eyes rose from the keys and he gave me a curt nod of greeting.
“That sounds great,” I said. “You’re really good.”
“Thanks,” he said, his voice low and flat. “I worked my way through college playing at Nordstrom. Now it’s my party trick. You go to a party and sit at the piano all night. Everyone knows you were there, you helped everyone have a great time, but you don’t actually have to talk to anybody.”
Maybe Wiley was a genius. I wished I had a skill like that to get me through social obligations.
“I heard you playing the other night, too. Before Richard died,” I tried.
There was no real reaction. “Alas, poor Richard,” Wiley said theatrically as he played a flourish with one hand, holding out an imaginary skull in the other. “I knew him.”
“Have you been spending a lot of your time here playing?”
He shrugged, his hands still steady on the keys. He segued into a new tune, something vaguely familiar that I couldn’t quite place.
“Keeps me out of trouble. But I only play after the sun goes down,” he said, nodding behind him toward the window, through which I could see the last echoes of daylight bouncing off the distant edge of the Pacific.
“During the day, we find other ways to play. Like today, I was helping my cousin Lis interview morticians. Doesn’t that sound fun? ”
“Not really,” I said, clumsily seizing this opportunity. “Hopefully you did something nicer yesterday.”
He didn’t respond right away, and when he did, he didn’t answer. “Do you know this song?”
“I can’t put my finger on it,” I said.
“It’s called, ‘Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying.’ Make of that what you will.”
I had no idea what to make of it.
“‘Yesterday,’” he went on, a faraway look in his eyes.
“That’s a song, too.” He started to play the Beatles tune, still keeping the arrangement jazzy.
“Yesterday, after our walk on the beach, which you crashed, I went with my lovely wife to get a late lunch in town, from the venerable Ronnie Wise. She knows me well, having been my third-grade teacher once upon a time, so she can surely confirm that we were there. We got back right as all the commotion was happening at the spa. You can check with Erik, or Mary Alice, or Rachel, or either of her daughters—they were all here and they all saw us return, together. That’s what you want to know, right?
Where I was when Cecilia died? Now you know.
How about when Richard died? Where was I then?
You’ve got me there; I was in my room, alone, reading a book.
I can show you the book, but it can’t say a lot on my behalf.
So I’m still a suspect for that one, right? ”
I didn’t know how to respond. Wiley didn’t seem any angrier than usual, but his baseline was unpleasant enough that I was leery of provoking him any further. Erik waved to me from across the lounge. “You want whipped cream on your shake?”
“Sure,” I said, then returned my focus to Wiley, deciding to be straightforward with him. “Maybe you are still a suspect. But we don’t actually know whether Richard was murdered. Or Cecilia. What do you think happened?”
“I told you what happened to Richard. He was throwing that rug and he lost his balance. I guarantee you that’s what happened.”
He had changed songs again. It took a few bars for me to identify this one: “The Lady Is a Tramp.”
“You seem so sure of that,” I said. “But why was he throwing the rug?”
“Someone else will have to tell you that,” Wiley said, humming along to the song.
“Where was Tawny while you were reading your book alone?”
“Aren’t you perceptive. Tawny was walking on the beach,” Wiley hummed. “She takes a lot of walks on the beach, haven’t you noticed? And she always takes her shoes off. But you want to know something funny? Before yesterday, she never came back with sand on her feet.”
I couldn’t figure out this obscure comment, either. “What about Cecilia? You and Tawny both have an alibi. So what do you think happened to her?”
“I think she got lucky,” Wiley said. “She got to get away. She lived a long time, sat on a great big pile of money most of her life, made a lot of people miserable with no inconvenience to herself, and got to die halfway through a massage. Now that’s what I call a happy ending.”
Yikes. Rachel had entered the lounge, joining Wiley on the piano bench and giving me an impatient look, and Erik was waving my milkshake at me, so it was time to extract myself. I wasn’t sure exactly what I had learned, or how much I could trust Wiley. “Well, thanks for indulging me,” I said.
“It’s your dime,” he replied blandly. “Not really any of your business though, you know? You might want to keep out of it.”
“Richard died on our balcony, in front of my friend.” I shrugged as I walked over to retrieve my shake, wondering what Rachel wanted with Wiley.
At the bar, I leaned in close to Erik, whispering, “Pretend we’re talking about something.”
He leaned in, too, whispering back, “About what?”
“Whatever,” I hissed, “but we’re not actually talking. I want to eavesdrop.” I shot my eyes in the direction of the piano.
Erik nodded, then began gesticulating and silently moving his lips.
Wiley had kept playing, the music masking his own whispered conversation with Rachel.
Whatever he told her was too much for her to keep her voice down, however; he tried to increase his volume, but couldn’t entirely drown out her yelped response. “Are you serious? I knew it! God!”
“Keep it down,” I heard him urge, but a second later, his playing stopped abruptly. I shot a glance back over my shoulder to see Rachel still swatting at his hands to get him to stop.
“I don’t need to keep it down,” she said, her voice rising almost to a yell. “This is a problem, and you need to deal with it! What are you going to do? Tell me,” she demanded, then, her eye catching me and Erik looking her way, she raised an angry point toward the lobby. “You two! Out!”
“Rachel, calm down,” Wiley said testily. “Why don’t you and I leave. Erik is working, and the other one is snooping. This is too public.”
She glared at us all the way out as Wiley led her by the arm through the lobby and out to the parking lot. I turned back to Erik, flashed him a grin and a shrug, collected my milkshake, and headed for the elevator.
The sweet and salty combo of chocolate and pretzels was a solid choice, I decided, sucking on my straw as I reentered our room.
“How’d it go?” Ricky called from the bed, not waiting for me to even close the door behind myself. “What did you find out?”
“I’m not very good at this stuff,” I said, “so I don’t know how much to believe. Wiley said he was alone when Richard died, reading in his room, and that he and Tawny were coming back from the café in town when Cecilia died. He still thinks Richard fell while throwing the rug off his balcony.”
“Did he say why he believes that? Why would Richard be throwing the rug? It’s so weird, and weirdly specific,” Ricky said, eyeing my milkshake as I sat down next to him.
“He didn’t say, but he seems really sure about it.” We both thought hard for a moment, me slurping up more milkshake through my straw.
Ricky got distracted by my slurping. “What flavor did you get?”
“Chocolate with pretzels.”
“That sounds good,” Ricky said, still covetously eyeing the cup.
“It is,” I said, sucking more down.
He watched me for a few more beats, then gave up waiting. “Jeez, Oliver, can I have some?”
“I thought you said it was for me,” I protested. “And you’re lactose intolerant.”
“I can have a sip,” he said. “If this is how you’re going to be, I might have to reconsider things.”
I handed over the cup, then was struck by what he’d said.
Ever since I’d come back from the beach, he’d acted as though nothing had changed between us.
If anything, he’d been cuddlier again. I’d let it ease some of the hurt I’d been feeling, but it sure wasn’t helping the confusion. “Reconsider what?”
“You know,” Ricky said, smiling as he handed the cup back. “Dropping the whole ‘pretend’ thing.”
I furrowed my brow, trying to puzzle through his bizarre, callous approach to all this.
“You look confused,” he said. Well, duh. “Did I imagine that conversation? Did we not finish that conversation?”