Puppet Read online

  Ben says nothing. The desk clerk pushes a form across the desk, indicates the place for her signature.

  “Don’t you need an imprint of my credit card?” Amanda asks when the clerk fails to request it.

  “The gentleman has already taken care of that.”

  Amanda smiles tightly and hands the clerk her own credit card, whispering under her breath to Ben, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Just trying to expedite things.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “I know that.” He refrains from stating the obvious—“You always have”—but she hears it anyway.

  What was John Mallins doing at the reception desk when her mother shot him? she wonders. Was this the same clerk he’d been talking to at the time?

  “You’re on the sixteenth floor,” the young man tells her, looking altogether too cheery to have recently witnessed a cold-blooded killing. He hands her a small envelope containing her key card, then lowers his voice, as if he is about to impart some news of great importance. “Room 1612. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call. Do you need help with your bags?”

  “We’re fine,” Ben informs him, slipping the overnight bag back over his shoulder and heading for the bank of elevators.

  Amanda is about to stop him, tell him she can handle things from here on out, that it isn’t necessary for him to accompany her to her room, that just because her mother shot and killed a man in the lobby of this very hotel, she doesn’t need tucking in and looking after, that she isn’t the damsel in distress he thought he’d rescued when he married her, that he should know better by now.

  Unless of course, he’s in the mood for a conciliatory quickie, she decides. A brief reminder of the impulsiveness of their youth, an acknowledgment of the chemistry still stalking them, something to get out of their systems once and for all, a let’s-just-satisfy-our-curiosity-and-get-this-over-with kind of onetime thing they could enjoy and then forget ever happened. She might be up for that, she is thinking, as he lowers her bag to the marble floor.

  “I’ll let you find your way from here,” he tells her.

  Amanda tries not to look either surprised or disappointed. It’s better this way, she decides, wondering if he’s going to suggest having dinner after she settles in. She’s hungry. She hasn’t eaten anything all day.

  “I’ll pick you up around one o’clock tomorrow,” he says instead.

  “Fine.” Room service it is, she thinks, retrieving her bag from the floor as a set of elevator doors opens to her left. She steps inside and presses the button for the sixteenth floor.

  “Oh, I almost forgot.” Ben unzips his jacket and pulls out a large manila envelope, thrusting it toward her just as a middle-aged couple enter the elevator, snow sparkling on the shoulders of the woman’s black mink coat.

  “What’s this?” Amanda asks.

  “Something you might want to look at later.”

  The envelope weighs heavily in Amanda’s hands, as the woman in the black mink coat presses the button for the twenty-eighth floor, and the elevator doors draw to a close.

  Amanda throws her overnight bag across the queen-size bed and walks to the window, stares down at the street. It’s very dark, and only a few people are out walking, their faces buried against the raised collars of their winter coats, their backs hunched against the wind, snow falling like confetti on their heads. “What the hell am I doing here?” she asks the silent room. Just last night I was staring out the window at the ocean. “Last night you were puking your guts out,” she amends, exchanging the envelope in her hand for the room-service menu lying on the desk. She grabs the remote-control unit from the top of a nearby cabinet and flips on the television. “Get some noise in here,” she says, glancing back at the envelope on the desk, and deciding not to open it until after she’s had something to eat. She already has a pretty good idea what’s inside it. She should eat something first. Shore up her strength.

  It takes less than a minute to unpack the few items in her bag, five more minutes to decide what she wants for dinner. “I’ll have the carrot soup and the roast chicken,” she tells room service, as a television announcer excitedly reminds her to stay tuned for Hockey Night in Canada.

  “That’ll be one hour,” room service says.

  “An hour?”

  “We’re very busy.”

  Amanda hangs up the phone and plops down on the edge of the bed, her eyes moving restlessly between the salmon-colored walls and the beige carpet at her feet. She leans back, kicks off her black, ankle-high boots, and dangles her now bare feet in the air, as if she were sitting at the end of a dock. “What am I going to do for an hour?” she asks the floral print on the wall above the bed.

  She could watch television. Except she doesn’t understand a thing about hockey, and two complete cycles with the remote-control unit reveal there is absolutely nothing on TV she wants to see. Even the porn available—among the offerings, something called The Fuller Bush Girl—fails to tempt her.

  She could take a walk, explore the neighborhood, with its trendy boutiques and hip nightclubs. Except that it’s cold and it’s wet, the shops are all closed, and even the thought of alcohol makes her stomach lurch.

  Damn that ex-husband of hers anyway. Where was he rushing off to in such a hurry? Hot date with the comely assistant crown attorney? “Well, it is Saturday night,” she reminds herself out loud, falling back against the pillows and wondering why she is thinking about Ben at all. She’s barely thought of him in years.

  Although that’s not exactly true, she admits silently, covering her eyes with her right forearm, trying to block out the image of him standing in the airport, her first sight of him in over eight years. And there he was, looking as good as he had on the day she’d told him she was leaving.

  “I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” he’d said simply, then, even more simply, “Do you?”

  Amanda sits up abruptly. “I will not do this.” She reaches for the phone. “No way am I going through that again.” She calls the operator. “Can you get me the hotel at the Metro Convention Center, please?” A minute later, she is talking to a woman who greets her in both English and French. “Jerrod Sugar’s room, please. Thank you.”

  “Mr. Sugar isn’t answering,” the woman informs her after half a dozen rings. “Would you like to leave a message on his voice mail?”

  “No, thank you. I’ll call back.” Missed your chance, big guy, Amanda thinks as she hangs up the phone. “Okay, I give up. Hockey Night in Canada it is!” She flips to the proper channel, spends ten minutes trying to follow the action. “What the hell is an ‘offside’?” she demands of the announcer, pushing herself off the bed and deciding to take a bath. She turns on the tap, strips out of her clothes, and stands naked in the middle of the bathroom, waiting for the tub to fill.

  The phone rings.

  “Ben,” she says, turning off the tap, and reaching for the phone beside the toilet. She lets it ring a second time before picking it up. No point in appearing too eager. “Hello?” No, I think I’m too tired for dinner. Thanks anyway. I’m just going to climb into a hot bath and get a good night’s sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.

  “Ms. Travis,” an unfamiliar voice says, “this is room service. We forgot to ask what kind of potatoes you’d like with your chicken.”

  A sharp stab of disappointment pushes its way between Amanda’s breasts. “What are my choices?”

  “We have french fries, mashed, baked, or au gratin.”

  She shrugs. “Baked.”

  “Butter, sour cream, chives, bacon?”

  What the hell? “All of the above.”

  “Thank you. We’ll get that to you as soon as possible.”

  Amanda returns the receiver to its carriage, turns the hot-water tap back on, and watches until the tub is full almost to the very top. Steam is rising from its surface as she steps gingerly inside, the water quickly turning her skin an alarming shade of pink as she s
ettles in and closes her eyes. “What’s the matter with you?” she asks, water sneaking between her barely parted lips. Are you upset because your mother murdered a man in cold blood, or because your ex-husband didn’t ask you out to dinner?

  She flips onto her side, causing water to splash over the edge of the tub and onto the floor. Don’t be ridiculous, she castigates herself. I have no interest in Ben Myers. He is part of a past I couldn’t wait to escape, a past I did escape, a past he has somehow managed to drag me back into. That is what I’m so upset about, why I’m feeling at such loose ends. It has nothing to do with him. Nothing at all.

  Except did he have to show up at the airport, looking so goddamn knight-in-shining-armorish? Did he have to look so damn good?

  Amanda feels the sudden threat of tears and sits up abruptly, once again sending spasms through the water and causing it to slosh over the side of the tub. Ripping the paper cover off the small bar of soap, she begins furiously scrubbing at her arms and legs, rolling the sweet-smelling soap across her breasts and stomach, trying to ignore the tears now falling down her cheeks, to pretend that they are merely errant drops of bathwater. She swipes at them with the back of her hand, feels the acidlike sting of soap in her eyes. Good, she thinks. Something real to cry about.

  She pushes a washcloth against her eyes, presses it against her closed lids until she sees small squares of gray, like a crossword puzzle. And then the puzzle explodes into a series of images: Ben following her out of the club she’d been tossed from because the bartender wasn’t buying her fake ID, then kissing her full on the mouth before he even told her his name; Ben’s hair falling into his eyes as he thrust himself repeatedly inside her, his entire body glistening with sweat; Ben’s naked body as he lay sleeping beside her, his sly smile when he awoke and reached for her again.

  They were so good together.

  Before he started mistaking sex for love.

  “No!” Amanda cries now, shaking her head, water spraying from her hair like water from a dog’s back. “I am not doing this.”

  Except she has always done exactly this, she thinks, wrapping herself in a thick white towel and emerging from the tub. She has always used sex—as a weapon, as a panacea, as a way of keeping her distance, of maintaining control. She laughs. Intimacy as a substitute for intimacy. Hadn’t Sean accused her of that very thing?

  Amanda wraps herself in the long, white terry-cloth robe the hotel provides, towel-drying her hair as she returns to the bedroom. Outside her window, snow continues to fall. Inside, burly young men continue skating across the television screen. An announcer yells, “Icing!”—whatever that means. Only a minute away from her still-steaming bath, and already Amanda feels cold. She checks the clock beside her bed. Almost half an hour before dinner is scheduled to arrive. Reluctantly, she grabs the manila envelope from the desk and carries it to the bed, where she pulls down the floral bedspread and sticks her feet beneath crisp white sheets. “Might as well get this over with.”

  She tears at the envelope before she realizes it isn’t sealed, pulls out a series of newspaper reports. WOMAN SHOOTS MAN IN CROWDED HOTEL LOBBY, one headline screams. MURDER AT THE FOUR SEASONS HOTEL, announces another. And still another: WOMAN TARGETS TOURIST.

  “Great.” Amanda stares hard at the grainy, black-and-white photograph of the man identified as John Mallins, finding him much as Ben described—a middle-aged man with a mustache. Ordinary in every respect but one—he’d been shot and killed by the woman in the photograph next to his.

  Amanda delays looking at the picture of her mother for as long as she can, choosing to concentrate on the text below it. Gwen Price, it reads, age 61, is seen being led from the lobby of the Four Seasons hotel by two policemen, after a man vacationing at the hotel was gunned down at point-blank range.

  Amanda gasps as she raises her eyes to the photograph of her mother being led from the hotel in handcuffs. Who is this person? she wonders, trying to reconcile the frail, fair-haired woman she sees with the raging harridan of her childhood and the glassy-eyed automaton of her youth. Another photograph is more familiar. It is a close-up of her mother sitting in the backseat of the police car, staring out the side window, her gaze blank, bordering on indifference, although her jaw is relaxed, and her lips are actually hinting at a smile. “What the hell are you smiling about?”

  The papers are frustratingly vague about the actual attack, the police unwilling to speculate on a motive for the shooting. “At this point, your guess is as good as mine,” someone named Detective Billingsly is quoted as saying.

  “Who are you, John Mallins?” Amanda skims the various articles for any pertinent information, but finds only details she already knows. John Mallins … 47 years old … a businessman from England … vacationing in Toronto with his wife and two children … She stops reading, her gaze returning to the man’s picture. “Who vacations in Toronto in February?” she asks out loud, echoing Jerrod Sugar’s earlier query. “You came here to see somebody, didn’t you?” Was it my mother?

  There is a knock on the door. “Room service,” a voice announces before Amanda has time to ask who it is.

  “You’re early,” Amanda tells the young man gratefully, leading him into the center of the room. He is short and slender in his maroon uniform, his pale skin scarred by acne. He looks barely out of his teens. “You can set it up over here.” She motions to the foot of the bed.

  The waiter awkwardly adjusts the sides of the tray table, smooths the white tablecloth, lifts the lid off the carrot soup for her inspection, then does the same thing with the main course. “Roast chicken, asparagus, and a baked potato with butter, sour cream, bacon, and chives.”

  “It smells wonderful.” She signs the chit, leaves a generous tip. “Thank you.” He doesn’t move, and for a second Amanda wonders if she’s left enough. She follows his gaze to the bed, the newspaper clippings lying like squares on a quilt across the bedspread. “Terrible thing,” she ventures. “Were you here at the time?”

  “I was in the hotel, yeah. But not in the lobby. I didn’t see anything.”

  “I bet you’ve heard plenty, though.”

  He shrugs. “A bit.”

  “Like what?”

  “We’re not supposed to talk about it.” The young man shifts uneasily from one foot to the other, eyeing the clippings suspiciously. “Are you a reporter?”

  “A reporter? God, no. I was just curious.” Amanda leans forward to sniff at the carrot soup, allows the front of her robe to gape slightly. “Is his family still here?”

  The boy’s eyes glom on to her partially exposed breasts. “Yeah,” he mutters distractedly. “Actually, I just took the kids up some hamburgers.”

  “They’re not on this floor, are they?” She tries to make the question sound as casual as possible, but a slight catch in her voice threatens to betray her. “I mean, it freaks me out a little to think I might be staying on the same floor as some poor guy who got shot.”

  “Don’t worry. They’re on the twenty-fourth floor, other side of the hotel.”

  Amanda smiles, gathers the sides of her robe together.

  “I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “Told me what?” Amanda smiles, and the waiter nods gratefully before backing out of the room. “Other side of the hotel,” Amanda repeats as she plops down on the bed, and lifts the lid from her carrot soup, wondering what, if anything, she plans to do with this information. “Twenty-fourth floor.”

  NINE

  SURPRISINGLY, she sleeps well, having dozed off sometime during the third period of the hockey game, and waking up only when a knock on her door announces room service is waiting with her breakfast. She throws on her robe and stumbles groggily toward the door, sleep clinging to her neck and shoulders, like a too needy lover. She vaguely remembers having filled out the breakfast menu and hanging it outside her door last night when she wheeled her dinner tray into the hall, but she can’t remember what items she selected. “Smells good,” she says, the
wondrous scent of Canadian bacon bringing her fully awake as she ushers the pretty Filipino waitress inside. The young woman sets up the tray table at the foot of the bed. “Were you here when that man was shot?” Amanda asks casually, as the woman hands over the bill for her signature. What the hell? It doesn’t hurt to try.

  The waitress shakes her head, her dark ponytail waving adamantly from side to side. “It was my day off.”

  “Terrible thing.”

  “Yes, miss. Very terrible.”

  “Did you ever meet Mr. Mallins?”

  Again, a vigorous shake of her head.

  “I understand his family is staying on the twenty-fourth floor.”

  “I don’t know, miss,” the waitress replies, cutting Amanda off before she can say anything else. She motions toward the tray table. “Here you have orange juice, coffee, bacon and eggs, whole-wheat toast, and morning newspaper. Can I get you anything else?”

  “No, nothing. Thank you.”

  “Have a nice day.”

  “You too.” Amanda pours herself a cup of coffee and carries it to the window, stares down at the street. There isn’t a lot of traffic, which isn’t surprising since it’s early Sunday morning and the snow has been falling steadily all night. What was she doing badgering the poor waitress? Does she really think the kitchen staff will know anything of value? Even if she can persuade one of them to tell her what room the dead man’s family is staying in, even if she is foolhardy enough to go up there, it doesn’t necessarily follow that Mrs. Mallins will know anything about why her husband was shot. And even if she did, does Amanda seriously think she’d consider sharing that information with the daughter of the woman who shot him?

  Still, seeing her, talking to her, might provide at least a clue.

  Or maybe not.

  When had she ever had a clue about anything where her mother was concerned?

  Amanda returns to the tray table, glances down at the morning paper. The front page is filled with news about the growing probability of America going to war with Iraq. There is nothing on the front page, or indeed, anywhere in the first section, at all about the murder. Only in the section called GTA, which she assumes stands for Greater Toronto Area, does she find any mention of the crime, and it’s basically a recap of everything she’s already read. Mystery Still Surrounds Murder of Tourist, the small headline states, the ensuing article barely mentioning Mrs. Mallins at all.