My phone chirping an obnoxious little jingle ended my nap. I stretched as much as the cramped front seat of my car would allow. It wasn’t enough to straighten all the kinks out of my
My phone chirping an obnoxious little jingle ended my nap. I stretched as much as the cramped front seat of my car would allow. It wasn’t enough to straighten all the kinks out of my locked up muscles, but it would have to do for the moment.
Fortunately, cheating husbands rarely required me to do much running.
Of course, most of these cases also wrapped up in one evening. Mister Orlon in there had been leading me on a merry chase around the city for three eighteen-hour days without any sign of his illicit rendezvous. It went against my cynical instincts, but I was beginning to wonder if he might actually be clean.
Cheaters are never as careful as they think they are.
But there was no denying that Orville Orlon had spent the last couple days bouncing from one cheap motel to another. He never spent the night—that was back home with his very worried wife—but hours of every day he sat in the squalor of cheap flings and hookers.
Alone.
I’d watched his rooms for hours and no one entered but Orlon and the occasional maid. And none of them stayed long enough to do more than exchange a few polite words. Unless Orlon was the fastest man alive. And the balding, middle-aged banker didn’t seem the type.
The maid I’d paid off at the Royal Egrets had said he was just sitting on the bed watching daytime TV when she’d gone in to make up the room. Mrs. Orlon gave me the impression she was strict, but not so much that her husband would spend, what? Hundreds of dollars on motel rooms just to satisfy his reality TV habit?
I glanced at my phone to check the time: 3:34. And less than 15% battery.
Aw crap.
I must have forgotten to plug the stupid thing in on the drive over. I fumbled the for the cord, but I didn’t really expect it to help. To save energy, the charger only ran while the engine did. And an idling car in the parking lot of a cheap motel is way more noticeable than just another clunker parked on the lot.
On the other hand, catching Orlon red-handed doesn’t count for much if I can’t walk out of here with some kind of proof.
I silently cursed myself for not bringing a real camera.
Maybe if I’d gotten a proper night’s sleep anytime in the last week.
Even when Orlon had been under the watchful eye of his wife, I’d been busy running names of known associates, motel workers, even the occasional guest who’s wallet Lucky had borrowed for me. At this point, I felt like I could recognize by sight every person Mister Orlon had encountered in the last month.
And he didn’t appear to be sleeping with any of them.
I guess that’s a win for human decency, but negatives are so much harder to prove than positives. Mrs. Orlon doesn’t strike me as the type to just take my word for it.
She’d certainly been upset to learn that I was a woman. That, along with hiring a private detective to follow her husband in the first place, suggested the kind of unabashed jealousy that can’t take no for an answer. And to her credit, Orlon was absolutely up to something. I just didn’t know what.
Yet.
I checked my phone again: 3:52, 11% battery.
If he kept to the weird schedule I’d noticed over the past few days, he’d be getting in his car at 4:03 on the dot. And by 4:45 he’d be back home in the suburbs, telling his wife it was another “normal day at the office.”
Without ever setting foot within a hundred yards of the nearest bank.
I drummed my fingers across the steering wheel. So what is it? He get laid off and is too afraid to let the missus know? But then why spend so much on motels? There are cheaper places to spend a day in the city.
My phone buzzed quietly and little message flashed across the top, “Low battery, please recharge.”
There has to be more to it than just wanting a break from his wife, or a reality TV addiction.
Mrs. Orlon said she’d noticed a couple strange withdrawals from their accounts. The kind that could be explained by renting a cheap room several times a week, which is why she’d jumped to cheating. Or at least one reason. But she hadn’t said anything about a disruption in their income. If Mister Orlon wasn’t working at the bank anymore, surely he had to be getting money from somewhere.
And it wasn’t watching TV.
I leaned my seat back so I could drop out of easy sight of the car window if I needed to as four o’clock came around. I wasn’t ready to confront the man—after all, what did I have? He liked to watch trashy TV? Hardly a criminal offense.
I lay back as Orlon stepped out into the chill, spring air. He was wearing his usual business suit, but no jacket. I snapped a couple of quick pictures as my phone’s battery flashed red at me.
No doubt he was here. And all day at that. Maybe it’s time I took a quick look around his room.
Mister Orlon got into his gray sedan and pulled leisurely out of the lot and into traffic. I’d tailed him the past two days, both times he went straight home. Today, I decided to take a different approach.
I smeared a generous helping of lipstick over my mouth, and patted on a a few too many layers of blush. Then a quick touch of mascara to complete the look. The rear view mirror made it clear I wasn’t winning any beauty pageants, but it should be enough to sell the lie I had in mind. With a little help.
I undid the top two buttons on my shirt, swore, and popped the third too. Just to be safe. Then slinging my purse awkwardly over my shoulder—it really wasn’t that style of bag—I stepped out into the evening.
The cold breeze ripped through me like I wasn’t even there and I shivered.
Picked a hell of a day not to wear a coat.
Heels would have helped sell the ensemble, but the only ones I had were in my trunk. And I didn’t want to spend a second longer than I had to in that wind. Besides, the guy at the counter wasn’t going to be looking at my feet. And in my practical shoes, I could cover the twenty yards to the front entrance in a handful of quick strides.
The motel lobby spit hot air through the half-mangled sliding doors.
Must’ve been recent, the owner wouldn’t want to be wasting that kind of money on heat.
I’d been in cheap motels like that where the in room systems were intentionally disconnected to save a few bucks.
To make up for it, the lights were set dim, lending the lobby a mysterious air. Specifically, what might be lurking in the shadowed corners? Mold? Cockroaches? Moldy Cockroaches?
Glad I’m not really staying here.
A young man sat behind the front desk with his nose plastered to a book. I couldn’t make out the title at my angle, but the spine read “King” in bold letters.
Really? In a place like this, that’s just asking for nightmares.
I leaned my elbows on the grimy counter—I was hesitant to let the rest of me touch anything. “Hi, sorry, but my…friend just left and he thinks he dropped his wallet in the room. Could I please get in there and look for it?” I gave him my most girlish voice.
Without looking up from his book, the man grabbed a sheet of paper from his side of the desk and set it in front of me. It read in a thick font: We are NOT responsible for lost or stolen items.
I suppressed my sigh of exasperation and tried again. “I understand that. But he only just left. Housekeeping can’t have gotten to the room yet.” And by the looks of the lobby, never would. “Can’t you just…Grant me a few minutes in there to look?” I pulled a fifty dollar bill from my purse and set it on top of his little sign.
Fifty bucks is probably most of renting that room for myself.
He still didn’t look at me, but his fingers shifted to trap the bill. “What’s the room number?”
I giggled. “112.”
Sighing, he dragged himself out of his chair, keeping his spot in the book pinched around one hand and palming the money with the other. “Give me a minute.” He meandered into the back room.
If he looks for me on the cameras….
But he returned a moment later with a plastic room key. “112. If you’re still there when the maid shows up, you’re on your own.”
“Thanks, handsome.” I plucked the key from his hands and hurried out to the room. I knew just where it was I’d been watching it all day.
The inside was just what I’d expected: peeling paint, sticky carpet, and one queen bed—still made—opposite a cheap TV on a fake wood dresser. The air itself seemed grimy. I’d have slipped on the rubber gloves from my purse even if I hadn’t been concerned about leaving fingerprints.
There was so little in the room, it only took me a couple of minutes to riffle through the drawers, under the blankets and pillows, and in the little alcove pretending to be a closet. I even went through every nook and cranny of the disgusting bathroom. All without turning up anything I didn’t expect to find in that motel.
But the cockroaches didn’t appreciate my thoroughness.
I was getting desperate—not because I believed housekeeping would catch me, based on what I’d seen I could have camped out in that room for days without ever running into them—but because there had to be some explanation for Orlon’s spending hours in these cheap motel rooms. I ran my hands along the back of the TV, trying to feel something—anything—that didn’t belong.
No luck.
Maybe he really is just trying to get away from his wife, or hide the fact that he’s lost his job. Desperate men sometimes do stupid things.
Frustrated, I tossed the TV remote from its place on the dresser across to the bed. The back plate sprang off, spilling the batteries across the ugly bedspread. And a little strip of something white.
I had to tug a little to free it from the springs of the battery compartment. It was thin slip of paper with a hefty string of numbers carefully handwritten on it.
Some kind of code.
I didn’t have the brainpower to even attempt to decipher it at that moment, but it sparked an old memory from back in my FBI days. Hadn’t there been a case over organized crime that had come across notes like this before? That hadn’t been my department but I’d gotten beers with some of the OC guys from time to time and they’d let something slip.
What was it?
When it dawned on me, I grabbed up my phone to call someone—even I wasn’t quite sure who—but the battery had finally given up on me.
I swore and ran back to my car.
Mister Orlon wasn’t cheating, he was trying to hire a hitman.
To Be Continued…