Chapter four:
Sitting corpse
Our chariot trade entertains the notion that an assistant manager is merely a convenient mustache stationed in the lobby so upon request he can direct the high-heeled half of our clientele to “the first door on the left upstairs on the mezzanine.” Truth is, some bow ties aren’t good for much else. Reidy Duman is.
Reidy doesn’t make with a headwaiter’s hot buttered hauteur. But he chums with our upper-crust patrons as easily as he gets along with the staff. High score in any hostelry.
So I was glad to see his long-nosed, cleft-chinned countenance poking in from the other bedroom, a minute after Auguste left.
For one thing, the Plaza Royale has a rock-ribbed rule: never unlock a closet in absence of guest — unless an assistant manager is nigh. For another, I couldn’t search the suite and keep an eye on Lanerd, at the same time.
It wouldn’t be fair to suggest he was acting like a man who’d used a steak knife with felonious intent; I’d had no experience along those lines. But he wasn’t acting with the aplomb you’d expect of a business wizard with an international rep. I didn’t turn my back on him, tell you that.
“You dine here in the suite, Mister Lanerd?”
“No.” He didn’t seem to be paying attention to the Stack O’ Jack yammer-yammer any longer; wasn’t even watching the screen. “I have to speak at that banquet downstairs, hour or so. Miss Marino had dinner here with her maid, far’s I know.”
The whoop-it-up lad on the program soothed some party at the other end of the phone, for having guessed Miss Mystery was Dinah Shore and anyhow she was still a great big winner because wasn’t she getting a fine pair of Koblers for free? “How long you been here, Mister Lanerd?”