two.
Vacuuming could be heard from 716. Mahoney and I looked into 718, saw what we needed to see, and walked inside.
The rooms were adjoining rooms, and the doors were open on both sides so the maid could get in and out of either room whenever she needed to. At the moment, she was busy working on the rug in 716, and didn’t hear or see us in the adjoining room.
“Has she done the bathroom yet?” I hissed at Mahoney. He stuck his head in and nodded, yes, the bathroom had been cleaned.
We scuttled into the bathroom. Fortunately, the shower had a door, not a curtain, and we both managed to get inside and wait without causing so much commotion that the maid, in the next room with the vacuum going, would notice.
“This is not my idea of a great Saturday afternoon,” Mahoney said. “If I’m going to spend time in a shower with someone, I’d prefer it not be you.”
“Quiet,” I told him. “We have to make sure we get out before she locks those adjoining doors.”
Sure enough, after about fifteen uncomfortable minutes (being fully clothed in a small shower with another man is, at best, awkward), the maid in the next room seemed finished with her work. I signaled Mahoney, and we crept out of the shower and into Room 718.
The door was still open, but I saw the cart move past it and toward the next pair of rooms. She was getting ready to finish up.
Mahoney and I scampered through the adjoining door and into the shower in 716, just to be safe. Within a minute, the adjoining doors were closed and locked, and so was the door to the room we were stuck in. I looked at my watch.
“We’ve got about an hour and fifteen minutes,” I told Mahoney, and we walked out of the shower, no cleaner than we had been before we got in, and into the room.
I reached into the canvas bag I’d brought and took out the snacks we’d agreed upon. Wow! Fat Free Chips for me, a box of Ring Dings for Mahoney. I had a bottle of Diet Coke, and he satisfied himself with orange soda. We were an elegant pair.
It was, of course, a classier hotel room than I’m used to, since our family budget doesn’t always allow for a wet bar, a Jacuzzi, and a king-size bed.
“We should have used the honor bar instead of bringing our own,” I said. “Then we could have charged Stephanie for the snacks, at about three bucks for a bag of peanuts.” I sat down and arranged the food on the table. “Plenty of time.”
“Great,” said Mahoney. “I’ll brush up on my canasta.”
Instead, he actually lay down on the bed (after removing his shoes—ever the gentleman, my best friend) and went to sleep, leaving me an armchair in which to ponder the meaning of life in its many permutations for a little less than an hour. I would have gone to sleep myself, but Mahoney’s snoring could probably be heard in Princeton, NJ, a good sixteen miles to the south.
That’s why we were caught so completely off guard when the hotel room door opened and the dark trench coat, the dark glasses, and the awful toupee told me that Gibson had entered the room. He was concealing a gun in his right hand.
“Come on in, Legs,” I said. “Sit down. Relax. Take off your hair.”
Louis Gibson tore off the dark sunglasses and stared at me. “I’ve always wondered why you called me that,” he said.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Mahoney was barely awake, and shoeless, and therefore not a terribly useful deterrent to violence. He sat up and started glaring at Legs, who stood in front of us with the hotel room door closed and the gun fully visible now.
“Actually, it was the reason I knew you were alive,” I said. “But I’m never going to tell you why we call you that.”
“How will I go on?” Legs said with what he uses for sarcasm.
“You were right, then?” Mahoney asked.
“Yeah. Legs, here, has been alive the whole time. You killed your own brother to cover up your embezzlement and give the cops no reason to look for you, didn’t you, Legs?”
Gibson didn’t answer, but he did take a roll of duct tape out of his trench coat pocket, and motioned Mahoney into the desk chair. Mahoney didn’t move right away, so Legs put the gun closer to my face and cocked it. That convinced my bodyguard that it