Nice Weekend for a Murder Read Free Page B

distinct and distinctly unreal in the blue-gray moonlight.
    But back in the room we had a problem.
    “Twin beds,” we said.
    “There must be some mistake,” I said.
    “Maybe it’s because we’re not married.”
    “If it comes to that, I’m ready for a ceremony at sea. Where’s the captain of this ship?”
    “Wouldn’t that be your friend Curt Clark?”
    I paced between the beds. “When I made the arrangements with Curt, I told him I was bringing a female companion. I figured he would’ve guessed I didn’t mean my Aunt Mabel.”
    “If you had an Aunt Mabel.”
    “If I had an Aunt Mabel,” I said, and then, in midpace, I noticed something else that wasn’t there.
    “Where’s the goddamn TV?” I said.
    Jill poked around, looking in this corner, and that one; and in the bathroom, and she even, I swear to God, looked under the nearest bed.
    “There doesn’t seem to be one,” she said.
    “How do they expect me to watch
Hill Street Blues
?”
    “Somehow I don’t think they do.”
    “What the hell else am I supposed to do with my Thursday nights in Iowa?”
    “We’re not in Iowa, anymore.”
    “They got TVs in New York,” I said, irritably, “even upstate,” and went for the phone on the nightstand between the beds. Only there wasn’t one.
    “There isn’t even a damn
phone
,” I said. “Maybe if I go down to the front desk, they’ll provide me with two tin cans and a long piece of string!”
    “Cool it, lover,” Jill said, pointing to the table next to her. “There’s a phone here by the window.”
    And there it was. It had been right in front of me before and I hadn’t noticed, so caught up in the view of the lake and mountains and such had I been.
    “It’s on a long cord,” Jill said. “Want to move it over to the nightstand?”
    “No,” I said, joining her, dialing 0. “All I want is my TV and a double bed.”
    “I like a man who knows what he wants.”
    “Curt Clark’s room, please,” I told the operator, and waited. I looked around the room some more, waiting for Curt to come on the line.
    “If I got to pay a little extra myself,” I said, “I
am
going to get my double bed and TV. I’m a juggernaut on this one, kid.”
    She gave me a thumbs up. She worked for a cable company. She believed in TVs. Double beds, too, for that matter.
    The phone was ringing in Curt’s room and in my ear and it would have gone on forever, I guess, if I hadn’t hung up.
    I stood. I spread my hands and said, not without a little desperation, “How do they expect us to have any fun in a room with twin beds and no TV?”
    Jill shrugged expansively. “It’s a mystery to me.... But then this is a mystery weekend, isn’t it?”
    “Come on,” I said, taking charge, heading for the door. “If I know Curt, he’ll be down in the bar. We can get this thing straightened out.”
    My hand was on the door but I stepped back; somebody had trumped my doorknob with a knock. Okay, then. I was game; I opened the door.
    Curt Clark was standing there, with a big grin on his face—and where else did you expect it to be?
    He moved in past us, a good-looking, rangy guy in his late forties, with thinning blond hair and dark-rimmed glasses; he was wearing a sports coat with patched elbows, and corduroy trousers.
    “Ah, good!” he said, gesturing about him. “You got one of the nice rooms.”
    “The nice rooms?”
    “Well, they’re
all
nice, but they don’t all have fireplaces. That’s cute, don’t you think?”
    “Yeah, uh... it’s cute.”
    Curt turned to Jill and said, “And you must be...”
    “Mal’s Aunt Mabel,” she said, smiling, shaking his hand.
    He didn’t get the joke, but he knew an inside joke when he saw one and laughed a little anyway. “Funny,” he said, “I figured you for this Jill Forrest person Mal’s always raving about.”
    Tom Sardini wasn’t the only reason my phone bills were thicker than my latest novel.
    “That’s me,” she said. “I have to admit I