Old Lady (Iron Disciples Book 2) (11 page)

“I’m busy thanks!” I shout, and then I take my hand away
from the phone. There’s gotta be something I can say to keep this room. Then it
hits me. I’ll have to discourage them from giving the room to another guest.

“Look ma’am,” I begin. “I didn’t mean for this to happen
but it just did. I’m an Alameda County Investigator working the Hollister
Family disappearance case and I just caught a major break. What that means is I
have classified documents scattered all over the room.”

“Can’t you just pick them up?” The clerk asks.

“I’m sorry I didn’t make myself clearer. I have every
piece of evidence spread out along with a maze of colored threads connecting
pieces of evidence to other pieces of evidence to possible to perpetrators. It
would literally take three people half a day to unravel the mess; you
understand right?”

“Well…under the circumstances…I guess we can move the
other guest to another room. I’d hate to be the person who ruined an important
investigation. I just have to insist you be out in two days. The hotel itself
is booked solid for the month starting Friday for the convention and it’s going
to be a logistical nightmare to reschedule everyone if I can’t have the room
back by Friday at eleven. Is that okay?”

Suddenly I can breathe again. “The department is in your
debt ma’am. In fact, can I get your name? I want my people to know who it is
that helped us break the case.”

“Uh, yeah… yes ma’am. My name is Karla with a K,
Cervantes. I am happy to help.”

“Thank you Karla with a K. Now I’d better get back to
work.”

I hang up the phone. I need a fucking drink. I go to the
mini fridge and open the door. There should be something good in here. I grab
three tiny bottles of Jack and collapse on the bed. What the fuck am I going to
do now? I guess I’ll just clean the mess up and hang until Friday then find
another place to stay until I can figure out where I stand. I’m sure I used my
card so it won’t be difficult for police to track me down. On the other
hand…the club will surely take matters into their own hands. That should buy me
more time. I doubt they can track me by my credit card like the police can.
That also means I can keep using my cell phone as well. Question is…do I call
Stacy or not.

After I polish off the tiny liquors I hobble over to
Cade’s shirt, pick it up and join it with my blouse in the sink. I really have
no idea what to use to get out blood and am about twenty minutes into scrubbing
when I realize what an Idiot I am. I don’t need to clean these clothes. I can just
discard them. I do on the other hand have to clean the carpet by the bathroom
door where Cade’s shirt was laying all night. That’s gonna be a fucking
problem. I take the two bloody clothing items and drop them into the bathroom
wastebasket. Then I take out the plastic lining and tie a not in it. I’ll just
stick it in my suitcase and throw it out when I leave. Now to the carpet. I
guess I’ll have to get some cleaning supplies. There’s just no way a bar of
soap and free shampoo is going to take out the stain.

I end up having to catch a taxi to a Safeway store where
I got several different heavy duty cleaning supplies. One of these has to work.
On the other hand I’ve watch enough CSI Miami to know that all investigators
have to do is just spray this stuff called Luminal, I think, and they can see
blood was cleaned from the floor. As long as I get this shit cleaned up there
should be no reason anyone would even come looking for blood. I should be in
the clear.

Then it hits me again like a ton of bricks. I killed
Cade! How the hell did I manage that? I must have waited till he was asleep or
something. Oh shit. And I have no memory of it. I swear to god, I will never
get drunk…never drink again. Abruptly I begin shaking deep inside. Gradually
the shakes work their way to the surface and pretty soon I’m literally quaking
in my shoes. In fact I’m shaking so much I have to just sit down before I fall
down. I hobble over to my bed and grab the wastebasket just before the heaves
begin. My stomach rebels so violently when I double over I end up falling to
the ground where I just curl up in a fetal position shaking like a baby. How
the hell did I get here? I used to be a respected financial advisor for Capital
America. I was a vice president for fucks sake! And now I’m holed up in a hotel
trying to cover up a murder that I committed during a drunken blackout! What
the hell is wrong with me? Before I can answer that my cell phone starts
ringing. I grab my purse and fish it out; its Stacy calling. Damn, I should
have ditched the phone. I really can’t be talking to anyone. Not if I’m going
to disappear which is exactly what I have to do.

After the phone stops ringing I open it up and take out
the sim card and stuff it in my pocket. I’m not 100% sure I’m going to ditch my
phone. I have over 400 contacts and a couple hundred pictures as well as over
2000 text messages that I do now want to lose. Ideally I’d transfer all this
stuff to my new phone or to a SD card so I won’t lose the information. I turn
off the phone and stuff it back in my purse just as more waves of nausea work
its way through my system. I can’t live like this. My brain is not designed for
this kind of stress. I’ll crack! I’m going to lose everything that is important
to me, which is mostly my career. I love my work; it’s who I am as a person. If
I wasn’t a trader what would I be? My whole identity is wrapped up in Wall
Street and I don’t know what I’ll do without it. I have followed the market
ever since I was in middle school.

As I lie here curled up with my mouth tasting like the
bottom of a birdcage, mind wavers on the edge between mild panic and complete
bat shit crazy! I can feel a black dread threatening to swallow me up and once
that happens there’ll be no coming back for me. As I lie here waiting for the
latest events in my life to eat me alive I realize what I have to do. I need to
call my aunt. I need to talk to the woman who raised me. Only problem is, the
last time I talked to her she didn’t remember me. Alzheimer’s disease has been
slowly taking my aunt away from me and it’s been years since we last talked. My
uncle died six years ago and my aunt has been in an assisted living place for
the past four years. I need to talk to someone who knows me; the real me. I
need to confess. My life has been so crazy since I met Cade that I need someone
to put it all in prospective for me and if I can catch her lucid she just might
be able to do that for me.

I fish my phone out of my purse, put the sim card back in
and dial my aunt’s number. I’m just about to hang up when someone finally
answers.

“Swift’s residence.”

“Hi…uh my name is Morgan Swift…is my aunt available?”

“She’s here, if that’s what you mean, but I can’t say how
lucid she’s going to be.”

“I understand. Just…just put her on please.”

“One moment please,” she replies.

She must have the phone in her hand because I can hear
her shouting my aunt’s name. Then I can hear her cajoling my aunt to take the
phone. Then she’s explaining who is on the phone and I can tell it’s just not
getting through to her. I can feel my heart sinking further. My last attachment
to this world is beyond me now. I don’t bother waiting for her caregiver to
come back on the phone. It’s hopeless. I disconnect the call and hurl my phone
across the room where it bounces off the wall simultaneously ejecting the back
cover and the battery.

As the minutes pass me by I can feel myself sinking lower
and lower. Why I stopped talking to my aunt I’ll never know. She was the one
who was giving me the letters from my mother but according to my uncle she
mistakenly threw out the last ones, forever breaking that connection I had with
my mother. Strange how I’m just remembering that now. I remember being so
pissed about that even though she would have never dreamed of doing that had
she been in her right mind.

I hobble back to the mini fridge and scoop out an armful
of those little bottles and wobble my way back to the bed. I’ll worry about the
blood stains later. Right now I need to drink. I need to forget my Alzheimer’s
aunt…again, and put a cushion of liquor between myself and the last day or so
if I am going to have any chance of sanity.

An hour later I’m flipping through the channels looking
for something interesting to watch. To my right is a growing mound of empty
bottles. I had no idea they stocked the room with so much booze. Maybe I
requested extra when I checked in. I fall asleep to the sound of Anderson
Cooper’s voice as he lends an air of suspense to some story about a bomb
sniffing dog and his handler in Afghanistan.

When I finally wake up its dark. I look around for my
phone until I remember its lying on the floor somewhere without a battery.

I wake up again with the sun shining in my face, burning
holes in my corneas. I close my eyes and burry my face into a pillow until my
stomach tells me I better find the trash and fast. I barely make it in time
before all the shit I drank last night comes spewing out in a foul liquid mess
and not all of it makes it in the basket. Which reminds me, I still have to
clean the carpet and I have to do it by tomorrow at eleven. I lie around for
another couple hours until the room slows to a moderate spin before crawling
across the carpet to my bag of cleaning supplies. On the way I pass my phone
and battery. Without thinking I put it back together and turn it on. I have six
missed calls, all of them from Stacy. Bag in hand I mosey on over to the bloody
patch and dig through my supplies until I find hydrogen peroxide. I read
somewhere that this stuff is supposed to take out blood even dried blood
stains. I slip on my new yellow rubber gloves, take out a couple cleaning rages
and pour some peroxide directly onto the blood stains. I wait with my breath
held as the clear liquid pools up on the carpet for a second before soaking in.
It doesn’t foam or fizz up like I had imagined and does very little in the way
of breaking down the blood stains. Frustrated I just scrub the shit out of the
carpet but you can still see a light red patch of blood. This shit is gonna get
me arrested unless I can find a way to get rid of the blood.

By midnight I am as desperate as I have ever been.
Nothing is getting rid of the blood stains. This is getting fucking serious!
There’s no way in hell I can leave this hotel room with blood behind. I’ll be
in bars by lunchtime tomorrow. I decide to take a break and knock back a few
coronas that I purchased at Safeway this afternoon. By one in the morning I’m
ready to give it up. This fucking stain is never coming out. I hobble back to
bed and fall asleep instantly.

My pounding head wakes me with the sun. It must be around
six in the morning. I feel slightly nauseated, but it’s a vast improvement over
the last two days. There’s really nothing to be done but pack my shit and find
another hotel. After everything is packed I hobble around the room one more
time just to make sure I have everything.

Then I see the patch. There’s a fucking a huge ass swatch
of carpet cut out of the fucking floor! Holy fucking shit, did I do that last
night? Oh fuck me! This is bad. What the hell was I thinking? I have never been
one to drink very much, but these last three days or so I have been drinking
like a fucking fish. I would never have guessed I’d be prone to blackouts. Oh
man…this is really bad. What the fuck was I thinking? I didn’t even realize I
owned a knife. By the looks of the cuts it must have been a pretty damn dull
knife I used. I look around the room for a good hour but I cannot seem to find
the knife anywhere. I guess that’s a good thing. A search through my suitcase
reveals the carpet swatch I cut out. It’s just lying there between my clothes. I
guess I should be relieved though. No one’s gonna find any blood now so that’s
good.

It’s nearly ten when I finally check out of that
miserable room. The woman at the desk does her best to be pleasant but I must look
like hell because she keeps shooting me these looks when she thinks I’m not
looking. Fortunately when I walk out there is a cab sitting there waiting for a
faire. I climb in.

“Take me to another hotel,” I command. “This one’s all
full up.

While my cabbie drives I call ahead to a few hotels until
I find a reasonable one that has a room for a week. It’s about two in the
afternoon by the time I get settled into my room. In the past twelve hours I
have received three calls from Jason and a half dozen from Stacy. I also
received five other calls from an unknown number. Strangely no one left me any
messages. I’m too terrified to talk to Stacy. I’m sure she’s trying to warn me
about the club and I appreciate that but I don’t need to talk to her to know
that I am in deep fucking shit.