Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
With all the renovations that Big and Little had agreed to, they’d been painting.
But whoever had painted this room had painted the window shut.
I had a knife on me, but there was no way to get it open and get out before Calahan barged in, so I rushed back into the bedroom and slid under the bed just as I heard the door open.
Window won’t open. Need a diversion so I can get out.
I listened as Calahan walked inside and immediately went into the bathroom.
If the shower fired up, I only had to bide my time, then hustle out, but unfortunately, it was just a fast relief and flush and he was back in the bedroom.
He flopped on the end of the bed, and I said a silent prayer of thanks that Big and Little had sprung for new furniture.
The old beds would have left me flat as a pancake.
I heard the minifridge open and smiled. Now if he’d just chug whatever he’d taken out and hit the bathroom, I might be able to flee.
I didn’t have to wait that long.
The explosion outside wasn’t as loud as the dynamite Gertie usually set off, but I had no doubt where it had come from.
“What in the world!” The room door flew open and banged against the wall as Calahan rushed out.
I peered out from under the bed skirt and saw Calahan in the middle of the parking lot, staring at his truck, which was encased in a pillow of smoke.
Unfortunately, he was still too close for me to make a run for it as there was nothing nearby to duck behind.
I waited for the follow-up—because surely that wasn’t all Gertie had in her handbag of tricks—when suddenly the metal wheels of a cart rolled into the room.
“Get in!” Shadow Chaser said in a sort of yell-whisper.
I slid out from under the bed and without a second’s hesitation, flipped into the laundry cart, and he threw a comforter over me.
“What the hell is going on here?” Calahan’s voice boomed from the doorway.
Shadow Chaser was humming and Calahan repeated his question.
“What?” Shadow Chaser asked. “Oh, wait. Earbuds. Sorry. You can’t listen to AC/DC on low. Can I help you?”
“What are you doing in my room?”
“Baking a cake…laundry, of course. Virginia called in sick. We all know she’s not—she just gets drunk and then can’t make her shift, but management won’t let me fire her and I’ve been dealing with the contractors all day so I couldn’t get to the linens.
I told them we needed to hire someone older and ugly who doesn’t get invited to parties.
Maybe even a diabetic since they should avoid too much drinking, but they said—”
“Are you mental? Did you not hear that explosion? Someone vandalized my truck.”
“Oh. Sorry, the music was so loud and I was singing. Do you want me to call the police? Oh, you are the police.”
“Did you hear me say someone vandalized my truck? They set off a bomb of pink glitter on it.”
“Well, that’s one I haven’t heard yet. Usually they just smash windows and steal sunglasses or something. So I should call the police.”
“You should start helping me question everyone here to see who saw something.”
“Dude, this is the kind of place where no one sees anything. Besides, that’s not in my job description and unless you want to sleep on a sketchy mattress tomorrow and dry off with toilet paper, I have laundry to do. I’ll just call the cops.”
“Forget it!”
I heard stomping as Calahan left and then the cart began to roll so quickly that I wondered if Shadow Chaser was jogging it down the walkway. We made a sharp turn where I was pretty sure the breezeway to the back of the hotel was and then I heard him open a door and push the cart inside.
“Get out and go hide somewhere else before I have a heart attack.”
I popped out of the cart and realized we were in the laundry room.
“Good call,” I said. “Thanks for the assist.”
“Gertie painted a penis in white glue on that cop’s windshield and then set off a pink glitter bomb on the hood of his truck, which almost makes the heart attack I’m going to have worth it. Still, I might need to start drinking now and stop maybe sometime in October.”
I grinned. “I owe you.”
He grimaced. “Since I already owed you, can we just call it even and you stop coming here?”
“As soon as the bad guys stay somewhere else, I’ll be happy to. But you’d probably miss me.”
His look of dismay was so apparent that I couldn’t help laughing as I rushed to the door and peeked out.
The breezeway was clear, so I sprinted for the back of the motel and then skirted the back side and circled around to the end where the SUV was parked.
I jumped inside and found Gertie doubled over laughing. Even Ida Belle was chuckling.
“You really did it, didn’t you?” I asked. “You painted a glue penis on Calahan’s windshield and blew up a glitter bomb on it.”
“Not just any glue—superglue. That thing isn’t coming off, even with a chisel.”
“All amusement aside,” Ida Belle said, “the downside is that if Calahan calls the cops, who knows when he’ll get around to drinking something.”
“He won’t call the cops,” I said.
I told them about his interaction with Shadow Chaser and my escape, and they started laughing again.
“I get it,” Gertie said. “If the cops come out, they’ll see that Pink Pretty on his windshield. And no way Calahan is letting that story get out. He’ll take a sledgehammer to his windshield and claim a rock hit it before he lets cops know.”
Ida Belle nodded. “That’s the kind of story that will follow you your entire career. Well then, I hope he goes back in soon to stew over a cold bottle of something and doesn’t just keep standing there staring at it.”
“Me too,” Gertie said. “I want to get a picture now that the smoke has cleared.”
“I’ll go peek around the corner,” Ida Belle said.
“I can do it,” Gertie said. “I’m the one who wants the picture.”
“We all want a picture, but I move faster than you.”
“I moved pretty fast when I was running away from Calahan’s truck.”
“Uh-huh. And how does your knee feel now?”
Gertie huffed. “Fine. But I want a close-up and a distance shot so we can identify the truck.”
Ida Belle slipped out of the vehicle and peered around the corner of the moving van.
Calahan must have cleared the scene because she took out her phone and took some pictures.
When she climbed back in she pulled them up to show us.
Sure enough, there was a bright, glittery, neon-pink penis across the entire windshield of Calahan’s truck.
“Good Lord,” I said, choking as I laughed. “That thing is huge.”
“Said no one to Calahan ever,” Gertie said. “He ought to be thanking me.”
“That was a big risk,” I said. “He could have seen you drawing it on.”
“He was hurrying inside like a man who had to take a big pee,” she said. “And I’ve been practicing.”
“I’m not even going to ask. Well, hopefully, he decides to decompress with a beer or water.
I figured I’d dose both since I wasn’t sure.
Whenever he clears out, we’ll replace the ones he didn’t drink and the empties with clean containers.
We’ll have to get some cheap beer at the store on the corner.
I don’t figure he was counting the water since he took an entire case from Shadow Chaser. I’ll just restock any water from that.”
“You know he’s going to blame Francine for this,” Gertie said.
I nodded. “I called on the way to pick you up. Calahan had the shrimp gumbo along with a bunch of other customers eating from that same pot. He won’t have a leg to stand on.”
“That might be a literal description if he chugs more than one,” Gertie said. “My whole left leg went numb. I was vacuuming when it hit me and had to use the darn thing as a crutch to make it to the bathroom.”
Ida Belle stared at her in dismay. “Why must you overshare?”
“Because I’m me. You either get oversharing and pink glitter penises or watching old Westerns and griping at Walter about eating an entire bag of chips.”
Ida Belle just sighed.
It was a long boring forty minutes before we saw any activity. Shadow Chaser had already sent twelve texts, worried about what was coming next and giving Gertie kudos for the glitter bomb. I kept telling him no one knew what was next, but I don’t think he believed me.
Then he called. “That fool just asked me to drive him to the hospital. What did you give him—you know what, don’t answer that. I told him that our liability insurance would drop us cold if I was driving guests around on my moped, and that even if I had a car, I wouldn’t let him in it sick.”
“Good. Stay out of it.”
“Like that’s possible. I’m already in this up to the top of my laundry bin.
Then he demands that I go drape a sheet over the windshield of his truck.
I told him that I’d have to bill him for the sheet since no way I’m laundering anything with glitter here, and that would be an extra thirty dollars. The cheapskate refused to pay it.”
“Maybe you should stop answering your phone.”
“Already forwarded to the answering service.”
“Good. Hang tight. I think we’re about to get an answer to your what’s-next question.”
Ten minutes later, I heard an ambulance in the distance.
“I think we’re up,” I said.
Ida Belle grinned. “I should have figured Calahan would call the paramedics. God forbid he drive himself to the hospital with Gertie’s artwork on his windshield.”
“In all fairness,” Gertie said, “he probably shouldn’t drive after drinking that stuff. It does weird things to your muscles.”
“And you keep drinking Nora’s random cocktails, why exactly?”
Gertie shrugged. “They work.”