Other People's Baggage (2 page)

MIDNIGHT ICE: TWO

  

“This is Madison Night in room 319. I just checked in. The wrong suitcase was delivered to my room. Yes, I can hold.” I sat on the bed and stared at the neatly folded contents of the suitcase. And by neatly folded, I meant obsessively neat. I knew my spontaneous decision to get out of town had left me packing in a less than orderly fashion, but even if I'd been planning this getaway for a month I would never have packed like this.

While I waited for the concierge to locate Lionel and figure out where my suitcase had gone, I stared at the top layer of the suitcase interior. It was covered in Ziploc baggies, each labeled and numbered. I recognized hair products, cosmetics, and lotions all packed individually. Why would a person separate their toiletries, especially if they checked their luggage? Why use the Ziploc bag at all if you didn't have to go through the security screening with liquids?

“Ms. Night?” said the concierge, returning to the phone.

“Yes?”

“Lionel says that's your bag.”

“That is most definitely not my bag,” I said.

“Would you like to come down to the lobby and talk to him?”

“I'm on my way.”

I left the suitcase open and slipped my feet back into my white sneakers. My underarms were sore from the crutches rubbing the double-knit polyester dress against my skin. I limped a few steps, favoring my injured knee, to test if I could make the trip without the cursed wooden instruments, but it seemed, if I wanted to be mobile, I had no other choice.

Lionel was waiting for me by the concierge desk. The man who had checked me in waved me over. “Ms. Night, I'm sorry for any inconvenience, but Lionel assures me he took your suitcase directly to your room. Isn't that right, Lionel?”

“Yes, ma'am. I noticed the tags on it. I moved here from Dallas, so I was thinking I'd like to ask you what part you're from. You did come from Dallas, didn't you?”

“I connected through Dallas, but I'm not from there. I live in Pennsylvania.” Live. Lived. Once lived. I didn't bother explaining my issues with tense or my own question as to whether or not I'd go back.

“Did you check the luggage tag, Ms. Night?”

“No, I'm afraid I didn't. I opened the suitcase and the contents were unfamiliar.”

The two men looked at each other. “Would you like us to call the airport for you?” the concierge asked.

“No, I can do that, and I should probably have the tag in front of me when I do so. I'm sorry for the confusion. Good night, gentlemen.”

I turned around and went back the direction from which I'd come, back to my room, back to the awesome view and the wrong suitcase. I sat on the bed, then fell backward and spread my arms out to my sides and stared at the ceiling.

I wanted to wash off the day. I limped to the bathroom, where an assortment of shampoo, conditioner, lotion, and soap, but most of all, a post-shower plush white terrycloth robe awaited me. After stripping down to nothing, I stepped in under a hot spray of water, where I stood for the better part of an hour.

I towel-dried and belted myself into the robe, then emerged from the cocoon of steam into my room. The sun was setting, a glow of purple and orange in the sky above the mountainous horizon and deep blue water. I found the mini-bar and poured myself a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, then opened the doors and stood on my balcony. The breeze was cool against my skin. I drank in the air coming off the water, the lingering scent of honeysuckle and grass. This was heaven. This was the most beautiful view I'd seen. No wonder Doris Day had chosen to live here.

I sipped my wine and leaned on the white metal banister. Couples dotted the street, sprinkled with children and dogs. This was a walking town and I was barely able to walk. Not for the first time, I cursed Brad. I cursed the way he'd ended it, two weeks after telling me, one romantic night in the back of Pierot's interior design studio, he wanted us to be together forever. I cursed how I'd skied away from him after he told me he was already married; I cursed the accident that had sent me to the hospital.

A part of me still didn't believe it was over, even if I knew it had to be. That's why I'd left Pennsylvania with a quickly packed suitcase for a spontaneous trip to Carmel, California. I had to go someplace where I knew I wouldn't see him, because the longer I stayed in Pennsylvania, the more I thought I saw him everywhere I went. And the longer I went without running into him, the stronger that feeling became, the feeling I was being watched, that he was there, but not there. I didn't know if it was wishful thinking or paranoia, but I knew I had to get away.

Deep voices pulled me away from the memory of the accident. I looked around, at the balcony to my left and to my right. Both were vacant. The creaking above me let me know my company was one floor up. I sipped the wine and listened to the snippets of conversation.

“The only thing I know is she was supposed to arrive today and we'll see her tonight.”

“Do you trust your source?”

“I don't see any choice right now.”

“So she's at the hotel. She could be here already. She could be in any one of these rooms and we wouldn't even know it.”

“Yeah. We might have walked right past her and not even known. Do you know who brought her?”

There was no answer.

“Doesn't matter. She's going to be in the bar tonight, and that's when we'll grab her.”

Grab her. A chill ran down my spine.

“You don't think anybody will notice you grabbing a blonde from the bar?”

“I can't see any other choices.” There was a pause. By now I'd identified the voices as the two men from the elevator. “So here's the plan. Get into disguise by nine, meet at the bar at nine-thirty. When she shows up, we hit it and quit it. Until then, it's the friendly stranger routine. got it?”

The friendly stranger routine
. That's what I'd allowed myself to believe only moments earlier. I gripped the metal banister harder for balance.

“Hey Louis, did you find out where she's coming from?”

“Someplace on the east coast. I don't know the details, but I know she made a stopover in Dallas.”

That's when I dropped the glass.

MIDNIGHT ICE: THREE

  

“What was that?” asked one of the voices.

I stumbled backward, through the balcony doors. My right hand grabbed at the sheer curtains that blew in and out of the room, steadying myself. I was afraid to be visible. I slid the glass door shut and pulled the cord that blocked the sunlight from the room. I lowered myself to the floor next to the plush Queen Anne chair in the corner.

Minutes later there was a knock on my door. I tried to curl into a ball but my injured knee wouldn't bend. I twisted to my side and lay down against the carpet. The slightest task of breathing in, breathing out, was too loud and threatened to give away my presence.

The knocking started up again. “Ms. Night? This is Jack Jordan, hotel security. I'm here to check on your luggage. Ms. Night, are you in there?”

I wanted to get up, to open the door, to tell this Jack Jordan there were men in the room above me who wanted to grab me at the stroke of ten o'clock, but even as I thought the words, I knew I would sound crazy. There had to be another explanation.

“Ms. Night?” he repeated.

Stop saying my name! I screamed internally. Out loud, I said nothing.

A piece of white paper slipped under my door. I sat on the floor by the arm chair for another two minutes, marked off by the red neon clock that sat on the nightstand next to the bed. Finally, I pushed myself up and retrieved the paper. It was on hotel letterhead.

 

Dear Ms. Night,

 

We've been notified of a luggage mix-up at DFW airport thanks to a storm that knocked out their computers. We have no word on where your luggage is or how soon we can get it to you, but we hope to have an answer shortly. In the meantime, please contact our front desk for any toiletries or immediate needs you might discover and we will do our best to accommodate you.

 

Sincerely,

Jack Jordan

Manager, Hotel Security

 

I moved to the hotel phone and dialed the operator, then asked to be connected to my airline. I met with a recording that acknowledged an unusually long hold time and issued a blanket apology to callers concerned with missing luggage. I held for a half a minute more, then hung up.

Within seconds, the phone rang. “Hello?” I answered.

“Is this Ms. Night in room 319?” said a male voice.

I slammed the phone onto the receiver before contemplating my very actions confirmed who I was. Before the phone could ring again, I called the front desk.

“This is Madison Night. Would it be possible for me to change rooms?”

“Is there a problem with your room?” asked Harrison. “You requested a view and we think you have one of the most spectacular that we have to offer.”

“I know, yes, that's true.” I looked at the crutches lying across the bed. “I was wondering if you had anything closer to the first floor. I didn't expect to have such trouble with the crutches.”

“Would you like to use our hotel wheelchair?”

“No!” I answered quickly. “Is there a Jack Jordan who works for the hotel?”

“Yes,” he paused. “He's our security manager. Ms. Night, are you sure there's no problem?”

“Can you ask Mr. Jordan to meet me in the bar at nine o'clock this evening?”

“Mr. Jordan is not in the habit of meeting guests for drinks.”

“Tell him—tell him I've been hired to investigate this hotel. Tell him Ms. Day asked me to meet with him.”

The concierge's voice dropped to whisper. “Ms. Day arranged this?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“I'll deliver the message.”

I hung up the phone. Now what? I'd demanded a meeting with the head of security, who I didn't know, who wouldn't recognize me. Or maybe he would. Maybe he was one of the voices from the balcony above me. Maybe he was planning to grab me. Maybe I'd just organized a meeting with the man who I wanted to avoid.

Or maybe I was going crazy.

It was after seven and I was still in the hotel bathrobe. I had nothing to wear except for the vintage blue and white double-knit polyester dress and jacket I'd worn on the plane, and even though I was most comfortable in my sixties vintage attire, right now, that outfit felt too conspicuous. I looked at the suitcase sitting on the luggage cart. No, those were someone else's things. I wouldn't want a stranger rooting around through my things, and I was willing to bet the obsessive-compulsive who had packed three different sizes of hand sanitizer in separate Ziploc baggies wanted it even less.

I redressed in my sheath dress and used the hotel hair drier to fluff my short blond hair into its normal bubble style, draped my small handbag over my shoulder, and left with the crutches digging into my underarms.

Two blocks from the hotel I found a souvenir store. I bought two packs of cotton panties, an elastic bandage, and a navy blue sweatshirt with Carmel embroidered across the chest in gold and white thread. I asked the saleslady to cut the tags from the sweatshirt so I could put it on immediately. I added a pair of sunglasses from the display rack, a travel-sized tube of Motrin, and a pink lip-gloss, paid, and left. The short man from the elevator stood in front of the store, his back to me.

“I don't know if she arrived or not. She was due today, but there was some kind of mix-up in Dallas,” he said into a cell phone.

A shiver ran down my spine despite the warmth of the sweatshirt. The man turned around and saw me, then smiled and pulled his phone away from his head.

“Hey, it's the pretty little blonde from the elevators. You find your room okay?” he asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“That's too bad. My friend and I were trying to figure out which one of us would have the honor of helping you.” He reached out and grabbed for my plastic shopping bag. “But my friend isn't here now, so I guess the honor's all mine. Call me Louis.”

“I'm not done shopping yet,” I said instead of offering a return introduction. I held the bag even though he tried to pull it from my grasp.

“Maybe you're not, but the stores are. It's closing time around here.”

I looked behind me. On the other side of the window, the clerk turned the Open sign to Closed. The lights were out in the store next to them. I tugged on the shopping bag, trying to break it free from his grasp. One of the handles broke. The bag dropped and split, my personal items spilling onto the sidewalk around the feet of people swirling around us.

Louis stared at the oversized sunglasses, anti-inflammatories, and cotton panties. He made no move to pick any of it up. Slowly, he looked up at me. His cheeks were taut, his lips drawn.

I couldn't read his eyes because they were hidden behind his own pair of sunglasses, but I imagined they weren't smiling.

“Kind of suspicious, taking a getaway and not packing your essentials. By the looks of it, you didn't plan on this vacation.”

“Is this man bothering you?” said another man, approaching us.

It took me a second to recognize Harrison the Concierge without his hotel uniform, but when I did, I could have hugged him if it wouldn't have included falling off the crutches.

Louis backed away from us and held his hands in the air. “I was just offering to help, that's all.” Before either one of us could say another word he turned around and disappeared into the crowd of swirling people.

MIDNIGHT ICE: FOUR

  

Harrison corralled my purchases, hugged them to his chest, and stood. I leaned on the crutches and reached for the items, but he took the torn bag from me instead, loaded everything back inside, and knotted the handles together.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I'm fine. I didn't expect that man to—to—”

I didn't know what it was I'd expected or not expected from the man who called himself Louis. I didn't know how to explain to Harrison that I'd overheard very strange things. And I didn't know how to rationalize, to myself, that little by little, I was losing touch with reality.

“You seem a little shaken up. Would you like me to walk you back to the hotel?” Harrison asked.

I scanned the street, looking for signs of Louis, but there were none. I didn't know where he had gone. I wanted to take Harrison up on his offer, but I didn't know how to explain my paranoia without looking like a fool.

“Only if I can buy you a drink to say thank you.”

Harrison looked surprised. “I thought you wanted to have a drink with our security manager?”

“Yes, that's true.”

I thought for a moment and bit my lip. “I'm sorry. Is there another way I can say thank you?”

He blushed, and then I blushed, realizing how the whole thing had sounded. First I'd come off like I was trying to fill my happy hour dance card, and now I sounded like a cougar on vacation.

We walked to the hotel side by side, me on the crutches and Harrison holding my bag. I wanted nothing more than to throw the crutches away, to burn them, to wake up tomorrow morning and be able to walk like I walked before the skiing accident, but the voice of the hospital doctor echoed in my head.
Recovery will take time. Don't try to rush it.

We reached the hotel quickly. I leveraged my weight against the banister and hopped up the three steps in front of the hotel door. I turned to face Harrison and looped my hand through the handle of the shopping bag.

“Thank you,” I said. “I'm sorry I already made other arrangements for tonight.”

“Tell you what. I'll come to the bar around nine. If you're alone, I'll join you. If you're with Mr. Jordan, I won't.”

“That hardly seems fair. You're helping me and now I'm inconveniencing you.”

“Ms. Night, I'm happy to help you. In fact, if there's anything you need, anything you forgot to buy at that drug store, I want you to call me.” He pulled a small notepad out of his jacket pocket and wrote a phone number on a blank piece of paper, then tore it off and handed it to me.

“Does the hotel offer this kind of service to every guest?” I asked.

He leaned in and whispered, “Only the ones who know Ms. Day.” When he pulled back, he smiled a warm smile.

It was well after eight by the time I returned to my room. I hadn't seen any other familiar faces in the lobby or hallway, and I hoped the opposite was true as well. In less than an hour I'd be sitting with the hotel security manager and I'd be able to tell him about the conversation I'd overheard. If he believed me, I'd tell him about the men by the elevators. Harrison could verify one of the guests had approached me on the street. I felt better knowing I was doing something about the situation, versus locking myself in my room and fearing for the worst. The only thing I did fear was being recognized. Walking around in a vintage dress with a sixties-style blond bubble cut wasn't doing me any favors in the anonymity category, and my one attempt to blend in, in the Carmel sweatshirt, had already been made. I needed some kind of disguise, but aside from wearing the hotel bathrobe, I had no other options.

Unless…the suitcase. Maybe there was something in the suitcase.

I flipped it open and dug past the layer of Ziploc baggies to the neat piles of folded clothes. I set the baggies on the bed, exposing a red and white bandana print and a cowboy hat. What the—?

I closed the suitcase and located a luggage tag right next to the white tag the airline had wrapped around the handle. “Elliott Lisbon” read the name. Elliott. This was one odd dude. What kind of a weekend did he think he was taking? A country and western escape?

I moved the cowboy hat to the side and picked up the red and white bandana print. It was a long prairie skirt, the kind I passed over in countless thrift shops while I looked for the sixties vintage I favored, only, this one had tags attached. Was Elliott a cross-dresser? I put the skirt back into the suitcase and rooted further down. A red and white poppy print peeked out from below something chambray. It was a swing dress with dark brown accents. I could wear that, I supposed. Whoever this Elliott character was, he was nothing like me, and that might work to my advantage.

I changed into a clean pair of panties and pulled the swing dress over my head. It was pretty in a sundress kind of way. Repeated washings would soften the fabric, but like the bandana skirt, this dress had tags on it, too. I imagined Elliott shopping for this weekend with the same care with which he had packed his toiletries. I imagined, for a second, the stranger's reaction when he opened my suitcase and saw my polyester dresses and four tubes of sunscreen. I was sure it would be a letdown.

I fished the elastic bandage out of the bag from the drug store and wound it around my knee, tight enough to minimize the swelling but not so tight I cut off my circulation. I swallowed four anti-inflammatories with a glass of water from the sink and looked at my reflection.

Exhaustion painted the two dark circles under my eyes. I needed to sleep tonight. The time change, going from the east coast to the west coast, had left me feeling like it was going on midnight, not nine. And being a morning person, I wasn't used to being up until midnight. I'd make my meeting with Mr. Jordan brief. I'd tell him what was going on and I'd retire.

I ran cool water into my hands and ran my hands through my hair, then massaged a dollop of complimentary hotel moisturizer into it and combed it straight back. My lips were rosy, as were my cheeks. As the clock approached nine, I thrust my room key into my handbag, grabbed the crutches, and headed down to the bar.

I took a seat along the wall next to the fireplace and looked for familiar faces. I saw none. A cocktail waitress approached me and I ordered a glass of white wine. As she left to fill my order, I saw my worst nightmare, standing in the entranceway. The two men from the elevator, engrossed in a heated conversation with Harrison the Concierge. With them was a fourth person, and there was no mistaking his identity.

It was my Ex, Brad Turlington.