McCone and Friends (14 page)

Outside of town the road wound high above the slow-moving river. At the hamlet of Monte Rio, we crossed the bridge and turned down a narrow lane made narrower by encroaching redwoods and vehicles pulled close to the walls of the mainly shabby houses. Neal began squinting at the numbers. “Dammit, why don’t they make them bigger?” he muttered.

I refrained from reminding him that he was overdue for his annual checkup at the optometrist’s.

Shar was the one who spotted the place: a large sagging three-story dirty-white clapboard structure with a parking area out front. The roof was missing a fair number of its shingles, the windows were hopelessly crusted with grime, and one column of the wide front porch leaned alarmingly. On the porch, to each side of the double front door, sat identical green wicker rockers, and in each sat a scowly-looking man. Between them, extending from the door and down the steps, was a series of orange cones such as highway department crews use. A yellow plastic tape strung from cone to cone bore the words DANGER DO NOT CROSS DANGER DO NOT CROSS DANGER DO NOT CROSS…

In as reverent a tone as I’d ever heard him use, Neal said, “Good God, it’s the old Riverside Hotel!”

While staring at it Shar had overshot the parking area. As she drove along looking for a place to turn around she asked, “You know this place?”

“From years ago. Was built as a fancy resort in the twenties. People would come up from the city and spend their entire vacations here. Then in the seventies the original owner’s family sold it to a guy named Tom Atwater, who turned it into a gay hotel. Great restaurant and bar, cottages with individual hot tubs scattered on the grounds leading down to the beach, anything-goes atmosphere.”

“You stayed there?” I asked.

Neal heard the edge in my voice. He turned his head and smiled at me, laugh lines around his eyes crinkling. It amuses and flatters him that I’m jealous of his past. “I had dinner there. Twice.”

Shar turned the MG in a driveway and we coasted back toward the hotel. The men were watching us. Both were probably in their mid fifties, dressed in shorts and t-shirts, but otherwise—except for the scowls—they were total opposites. The one on our left was a scarecrow with a shock of long gray-blond hair; the one our right reminded me of Elmer Fudd, and had just as bald a pate.

When we climbed out of the car—the grocery sack needing a firm tug—Neal called, “I phoned earlier about the jukebox.”

The scarecrow jerked his thumb at Fudd and kept scowling. Fudd arranged his face into more pleasant lines and got up from the rocker.

“I’m Chris Fowler,” he said. “You Neal and Ted?”

“I’m Neal, this is Ted, and that’s Sharon.”

“Come on in, I’ll show you the box.”

“’Come on in, I’ll show you the box’” the scarecrow mimicked in a high nasal whine.

“Jesus!” Chris Fowler exclaimed. He led us through his side of the double front door.

Inside was a reception area that must’ve been magnificent before the oriental carpets faded and the flocked wallpaper became water stained and peeling. In its center stood a mahogany desk backed by an old fashioned pigeonhole arrangement, and wide stairs on either side led up to the second story. The yellow tape continued, from the door to the pigeonhole arrangement, neatly bisecting the room.

Shar stopped and stared at it, frowning. I tugged her arm and shook my head. Sometimes the woman can be so rude. Chris Fowler didn’t notice though, just turned right in to a dimly lighted barroom. “There’s your jukebox,” he said.

A thing of beauty, it was. Granted, a particular acquired-taste kind of beauty - shaped like an enormous trash can of fake blond wood, with two flaring red plastic side panels and a gaudy gilt grille studded with plastic gems. Tiny mirrored squares surrounded the grille, and the whole thing was decked out with enough chrome as a 1950’s Cadillac. I went up to it and touched the coin slot. Five plays for a quarter, two for a dime, one for a nickel. Those were the days.

Instantly I fell in love.

When I looked at Neal, his eyes were sparkling. “Can we play it?” he asked Chris.

“Sure.” He took a nickel from his pocket and dropped it into the slot. Whirrs, clicks, and then mellow tones crooned, “See the pyramids across the Nile…”

Shar shook her head, rolled her eyes, and wandered off to inspect a pinball machine. She despairs of Neal’s and my campy tendencies.

“So what d’you think?” Chris asked.

I said, “Good sound tone.”

Neal said, “The price is kind of steep for us, though.”

Chris said, “I’ll throw in a box of extra 78’s.”

Neal said, “I don’t know…”

And then Shar wandered back over. “What’s with the tape?” she asked Chris. “And what’s with the guy on the other side of it?”

Neal looked as if he wanted to strangle her. I stifled a moan. A model of subtlety, Shar, and right when we were trying to strike a deal.

Chris grimaces. “That’s my partner of many years, Ira Sloan. We’ve agreed to disagree. The tape’s my way of indicating my displeasure with him.”

“Disagree over what?”

“This hotel. We jointly inherited it six months ago from Tom Atwater. Did either of you guys know him?”

I shook my head, but Neal nodded. He said, “I met him.” Grinned at me and added, “Twice.”

“Well,” Chris said, “Tom was an old friend. In fact, he introduced Ira and me, nearly twenty years ago. When he left the place to us we said, ‘What a great way to get out of the city, have our own business in an area that’s experiencing a renaissance.’ So we sold our city house, moved up here, called in the contractors, and got estimates of what it would take to go upscale and reopen. The building’s run down, but the construction’s solid. All it needs outside is a new roof and paint job. The cottages were swept away in the floods, but eventually they can be rebuilt. Inside here, all it would take is redecorating, a new chimney and fireplace in the common room on the other side, and updated kitchen equipment. So then what does my partner decide to do?”

All three of us shook our heads, caught up in his breathless monologue.

“My loving partner decides we’re to do nothing. Even though we’ve got more than enough money to fix the place up, he wants to leave it as is and live out our golden years here in Faulkneresque splendor and while it falls down around us!”

Neal and I looked properly horrified, but Shar asked, “So why’d you put up the tape?” maybe a single-minded focus is an asset in a private investigator, but it seems to me it plays hell with interpersonal relations.

Chris wanted to talk about the tape, however. “Ira and I divided the place, straight down the middle. He took the common room, utility room, and the area on the floors above it. I took the restaurant, kitchen, bar and above. I prepare the meals and slip his under the tape on the reception desk. He washes our clothes and pushes mine over here to me. I’ll tell you, it’s quite a life!”

“And in the meantime, you’re selling off the fixtures in your half?”

“Only the ones that won’t fit the image I want to create here.”

“How can you create it in half a hotel?”

“I can’t, but I’m hoping Ira’ll come around eventually. I wish I knew why he has this tic about keeping the place the way it is. If I did, I know I could talk him out of the notion.”

Shar was looking thoughtful now. She walked around the jukebox, examining its lovely lines and gnawing at her lower lip. She peered through the glass at the turntable where the 78 of “You Belong to Me” now rested silently. She glanced through the archway at the yellow plastic tape.

“Chris,” she said, “what would it be worth to you to find out what Ira’s problem is?”

“A lot.”

“A reduction of price on this jukebox to one my friends can afford?”

I couldn’t believe it! Yes, she was offering out of the goodness of her heart, because she’d seen how badly Neal and I wanted the jukebox, and she knew the limits of our budget. But she was also doing it because she never can resist a chance to play detective.

Chris looked surprised, then grinned. “A big reduction, but I don’t see how—”

She took one of her business cards from her purse and handed it to him. Said to me, “Come on, Watson. The game’s afoot.”

“Mr. Sloan?” Shar was standing at the tape on the porch. I was trying to hide behind her.

Ira Sloan’s eyes flicked toward us, than straight ahead.

“Oh, Mr. Sloan!” now she was waving, for heaven’s sake, as if he wasn’t sitting a mere five feet away!

His scowl deepened.

Shar stepped over the tape. “Mr. Sloan, d’you suppose you could give Ted and me a tour of your side of the hotel? We love old places like this, and we both think it’s a shame your partner wants to spoil it.”

He turned his head, looking skeptical but not as ferocious.

Shar reached back and yanked on my arm so hard that I almost tripped over the tape. “Ted’s partner, Neal, is in there with Chris, talking upscale. I had to remove Ted before they end up with a tape down the middle of their apartment.”

Ira Sloan ran his hand through his longish hair and stood up. He was very tall—at least six-four and so skinny he seemed to have no ass at all. Had he always been so thin, or was it the result of too many cooling meals shoved across the reception desk?

He said, “The tape was his idea.”

“So he told us.”

“Thinks it’s funny.”

“It’s not.”

“I like people who appreciate old things. It’ll be a pleasure to show you around.”