“How much is he asking?”
“It’s listed for six hundred fifty, but because you’re his faaavorite customer—and he said it just like that,” Jens adds. “Faaavorite. Like you’re a candy bar or something. Anyway, he said you can have it for five-fifty.”
“That doesn’t sound very favorite to me. Tell him I’ll give him four-fifty.”
“You want me to PayPal the money if he agrees?”
“If you don’t mind … and send me a text either way.”
Jens is about to hang up when he remembers something. “Oh, you got a postcard today; it’s from Heather. She’s in D.C.”
“What’s it say?”
“Not much, just, Wish you were here, and it’s got some giant phallic symbol on the front.”
“Uh-uh. Stop it. What are they teaching you at that university?”
There’s a pause and I can almost hear him grinning on the other end. “Okay, it’s the Washington Monument,” he confesses. “But if you’re going to send that postcard with the words Wish you were here, people are going to talk. I’m just saying.”
“I liked you better when you were ten,” I say in a flat voice.
He’s still snickering when I hang up.
*
The package arrives at 11:23 A.M., heralded by Tami’s voice over the PA system: “Special Agent Donovan to the front desk, please.” The announcement is repeated, and something in Tami’s tone quickens my pace; Jimmy’s on my heels.
“Did that sound a little edgy to you?” he asks.
“If you mean get-your-ass-up-here edgy, then yes.”
Jimmy shakes his head. “What now?”
I recognize the delivery person as soon as I walk into the front office. Shawn or Shane, I don’t remember for certain. He works the day shift at the hotel. Nice enough guy but timid and irritable. Not the normal sort to work the front counter at a chain hotel. He’s standing at the lobby window holding something between his cautious left index finger and timid left thumb.
Something white, with one corner dipped in wet raspberry.
Not a scone.
It’s the size of a small gift box, about three inches on each side and two inches deep. It’s wrapped in white tissue paper and tied off with two strands of narrow red ribbon. The letters FBI jump off the top in bold hues of deep burgundy—fat letters, as if written with lipstick or one of those foam paintbrushes.
Seth or Saul—the hotel guy—is holding a neatly folded brown paper towel several inches below the package, low enough that you can hear each drop hit—tap … tap … tap—but high enough not to splatter.
Red drops.
I suddenly remember the scene from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation where Aunt Bethany shows up with a nicely wrapped gift that’s sticky and wet at the corner. It’s only after Uncle Eddie bravely—stupidly—tastes the seepage that they realized that feeble-minded Aunt Bethany has gift-wrapped her lime Jell-O mold. Something tells me the package in Steve’s hand isn’t Jell-O.
“Hey, Stan.” I give him a what-up? chin-lift, like we’re old pals.
“It’s Sheldon, Sheldon Michaels.” His voice is dry: sand blowing against sun-scorched wood; a rasping, scratching, etching voice.
“Sheldon. Right. I knew that.”
“Please take this,” he says, unimpressed.
“Uhhh … no. Not until you tell me what it is.”
“I have no idea.” He’s impatient; irritated. “The manager ordered me to bring it down here. I refused, but he insisted. Please take it.”
Jimmy snaps on a pair of latex gloves and approaches the tainted box like a snake charmer moving in on a king cobra. “Where’d it come from?” he asks.
“Some guy just walked up to the counter about an hour ago. I was going to give it to you when you returned to the hotel, but about fifteen minutes ago Tracy noticed it was leaking out one side … that’s blood, right?”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Jimmy replies, intent on the box. Taking hold of the ribbon, he lifts it from Sheldon’s hands and gently swings it through the reception window. Tami is one step ahead of us and lays down a thick section of yesterday’s newspaper on the counter next to the window, and Jimmy lands the box dead center with just one glitch: a single drop of viscous red falls and splats next to a coffee mug full of pens just inside the window.
Tami’s not happy.
Without missing a beat, she hands me a can of Lysol and a roll of paper towels. I’m kind of pointing at Jimmy and raising an eyebrow, but she doesn’t get it, so I hose down the red dot with disinfectant and wipe it clean.
Sometimes it’s just easier to do than to argue.
“What’d the guy look like?” Jimmy asks as his eyes walk over every side of the box, lingering long on the raspberry corner.
“I don’t know … average.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“Average height?” I suggest. “Average weight, average haircut?”
“Uh-huh.”
That wasn’t a statement, I think, but before I can say it Jimmy heads me off.
“How old was he?”
Sheldon screws up his face, his eyes drifting up and to the left. “Maybe forty. I don’t know. He could have been fifty. Now that I think about it, his hair was funny, like a bad toupee or a wig, only real big in the front, like Donald Trump.”
“Donald Trump, huh?” Jimmy mutters. “Hold that thought a minute.” Turning to Tami, he says, “Can I borrow your scissors?”
She rises from behind her desk, a pair of pink-handled Fiskars in her hand. Passing them to Jimmy, she takes a step back and watches from behind his right shoulder as he snips the ribbons one strand at a time and peels them back. The phone rings on Tami’s desk, but she doesn’t move. When I look at her, she just shrugs, saying, “If it’s an emergency, they’ll call 911.”
Jimmy uses one side of the scissors to draw a slit in the white tissue paper and then peels it back in multiple sections, exposing a rectangular removable lid. With one gloved hand holding the box, the other on the lid, he mutters, “Hold your breath.”
We do.
He lifts.