Chapter 43
Whelan did his best to make himself presentable in the locker room. He doused his head in cold water, scrubbed his hands and arms with soap, and donned his fourth clean shirt of the day. He found an old pair of sneakers in his locker and changed out of his boots.
He was combing his wet hair in the mirror when Shorty, one of his coworkers, walked by and gave him a teasing once-over.
“Got a hot date tonight?”
“Yeah. Britney and Beyoncé are dropping by after their big concerts tonight,” Whelan said. “Hey, Shorty, can you give me a ride up to the hotel?”
“I guess.”
Whelan shoved aside a pile of fast-food wrappers and energy drink cans and climbed into the passenger seat of Shorty’s truck.
“What’s up at the hotel?”
“Boss wants to see me,” Whelan said.
Five minutes later, the truck stopped a few yards short of the hotel’s porte cochere. “Management don’t like us driving up here where the paying customers come in,” Shorty explained.
Whelan hopped out. “Thanks, man.”
Inside, the hotel lobby seemed quieter than usual. The desk clerk, a primly dressed middle-aged woman in her blue blazer and pink shirt, gave him a questioning stare as he walked past.
“Mrs. E asked to see me,” he said.
At first, when he glanced inside Traci Eddings’s office, he didn’t see her. He knocked on the doorframe. “Hello?”
Nothing.
And then, a disembodied voice said, “Come on in.”
He walked in and peered over her desk, which was when he spotted the Saint’s CEO stretched out, flat on her back on the floor.
“Hey. Are you okay?” He stepped around the desk and gave her a hand as she scrambled to her feet.
“Just a killer headache,” she said. “Compounded by a whole lot of concerned and pissed-off people.”
“Listen, I can still hitch a ride home with one of the guys on the crew,” he said, starting to back out of the room.
“I just had a little late-afternoon sinking spell. But I took three Tylenol and I’ll be fine once I get up and start moving again.”
He pointed at the smashed pill bottle and the capsules scattered around on her desktop and the carpet. “I see that.”
“Yeah, I had a little trouble with the childproof cap,” she said ruefully as she swept the capsules back into the bottle and stashed it in her purse. She brushed some carpet lint off her navy slacks. “Let me gather myself and we’ll be off,” she said.
“No offense, but you don’t look so hot. Maybe you should go home and get some rest.”
“I’m fine,” she repeated. “Let’s roll.”
When they were buckled into the front seat of her Mercedes she handed him her cell phone. “Put your address in there, so I can get directions on Google Maps.”
“It’s not that complicated,” Whelan said. “Follow the causeway off the island. When you get to the mainland, hang a left, and when you get to the traffic circle, take the second exit onto Beachview, then follow that into the village. I’ve got a studio apartment above the surf shop.”
She didn’t say much as she drove, but she kept yawning, and he noticed she kept pressing her fingertips to her temples.
“Would you mind if I drove?” he asked, when they were a mile down the causeway.
“I’m actually a very safe driver,” she said, yawning again.
“But you’re exhausted. And I do this for a living, you know, or at least as a paying side hustle.”
“You’re right,” Traci said. “I feel like, excuse the expression, shit on a shingle.” She pulled off the roadway and they switched places.
Once they were under way, she leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes. A few minutes later, Whelan glanced over when he heard her breathing slow. She was asleep. A moment later, she was softly snoring.
Whelan turned the radio to an easy listening jazz station and followed his own directions into the village.
He pulled into the small parking lot in the lane behind the surf shop. It was posted NO PARKING, VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED, but the shop was closed for the night and he knew for a fact that the shop’s owners rarely summoned tow trucks. Anyway, he wasn’t really parking. Just stopping and dropping off a passenger. Himself.
He cleared his throat. “Mrs. E?”
She didn’t stir, but a thin ribbon of drool dribbled down her chin.
“Traci?” He waved a hand in front of her face. Nothing. He gently tapped her shoulder and in almost comical slow-motion style she slumped sideways until her nose was in his lap.
He shook her again. “Hey, Traci. Wake up. We’re here. Can you wake up?”
In response she turned her head slightly, burying her nose in his crotch.
“Shit. Shit. Shit. What the hell kind of Tylenol did you take?”
He reached across his slumbering boss and picked her purse up from the Mercedes’s floorboard.
Whelan hesitated. In his experience, no woman ever wanted a man digging through her pocketbook. Especially a man she’d just met. But he reasoned that this was an emergency.
He closed his eyes and felt around inside the purse until his fingers closed on a flattened plastic pill bottle.
“Ahh. Success.” He squinted at the pill bottle and then glanced at Traci, who was still slumbering peacefully on his lap. “Tylenol PM. Case closed.”
Somehow, half walking, half carrying, he managed to get her out of the car and up the metal staircase to his apartment. He leaned her up against the railing of the miniscule landing while he unlocked the door, and with an arm around her waist, guided her inside.
The apartment was hot and stuffy. He deposited her on the sofa, then switched on the window air-conditioning unit and the ceiling fan. When he turned to check on his guest, she’d slid sideways, so he lifted her feet off the floor until she was fully horizontal.
“Okay. Now what?”
Maybe, he thought, caffeine would help. He popped a pod of dark Italian roast in his coffeemaker, and filled up one of his two mugs. After it was brewed, he let it cool on the countertop.
He sat on the floor in front of the sofa. “Hey, Traci,” he said loudly. “You need to wake up now. Wake up and have some nice coffee, okay?”
She smiled beatifically and rolled onto her side, facing the back of the sofa.
“This is not good,” Whelan said aloud. He grabbed the remote for the television, which was already turned to the Braves game, turning the volume to high.
His guest did not stir.
He paced around the tiny studio apartment. He’d taken an early lunch break and now he was starved. There wasn’t much in the fridge. A six-pack of beer, a nearly empty jar of pickles, some of the turkey lunch meat and cheddar cheese slices he used to make his bag lunches, half a jar of salsa, and some moldy grapes.
On the way into town, he’d decided to head over to the new Mexican place that had opened across the street. One of the guys on his crew claimed it was authentic Oaxacan cuisine. But did he dare leave Traci alone like this? What if she woke up in a strange apartment and thought she’d been abducted?
Instead, he dumped three bags of snack-sized Doritos onto a plate, tore up some of the cheese slices and scattered the pieces on top of the chips, and zapped it in the microwave, then dumped some salsa on top.
He sat at his table and scarfed down the nachos with a bottle of Modelo. Authentic desperation dinner, Whelan-style. At least he had a ball game to watch.
The Braves were playing at home, but losing 2–3 to the Mets, until the bottom of the eighth, when the rookie catcher slammed a three-run homer into the seats at Truist Park. “Dumbest bank name ever,” Whelan grumped, not for the first time.
It was nine thirty. Traci Eddings had been passed out on his sofa for a solid two hours, and she showed no signs of waking up anytime soon. And now he was tired, bone weary after a full day of sweaty manual labor. Too tired to safely drive his boss back out to the island, and even if he tried, what would he tell the security guard on duty?
Oh, hi. I’ve got your drugged-up boss here. Where should I dump her?They’d probably have him arrested, especially given the circumstances of her niece’s well-publicized overdose.
At ten, he took a hot shower and changed into a clean T-shirt and a pair of jogging shorts. He usually slept nude, but tonight that was not an option.
He’d half hoped she might be awake when he emerged from the bathroom, but instead she was snoring. And drooling on his sofa cushions.
It looked, he thought, like he was going to host a sleepover. And not the fun kind.
Whelan found a light blanket and draped it over her, and slipped her shoes off.
Since she was sleeping on the sofa that normally became his pullout bed, he fashioned a pallet on the floor with a long-disused sleeping bag from his military days, with a throw cushion from the sofa as a pillow.
The floor was unforgivingly hard and the air conditioner wheezed in a way he’d never noticed before, and he was struck by how loudly Traci, a relatively petite woman, could snore. He lay awake for an hour, exhausted but too uncomfortable to fall asleep.
“Fuck it,” he said finally, and helped himself to one of Traci Eddings’s Tylenol PMs. He set the alarm on his phone for 6:00 A.M. and drifted off to sleep. In the morning, he told himself, everything would sort itself out.