John Lutz - The right to sing the blues

She looked at him oddly and made a darting squiggle of some sort in her order pad. She made similar marks to represent the drink orders, then moved away busily to deliver her message so that someone who read waitressese could interpret and cook and pour.

"The roast-beef sandwiches here are delicious," Sandra assured him. "Now that your mind's at ease about that, what else is worrying you?"

"Do I look worried?"

She nodded her long head. "And puzzled. About what?"

"Why were you waiting for me in my hotel room night before last?" he asked her.

She smiled. "I like you and I like lust."

"I don't doubt the last part," Nudger told her.

She seemed more amused than offended. "There's nothing wrong with lust; it's so much purer and less complicated than love. But why do you doubt the first part of what I said? I do like you."

"But you must know that David Collins doesn't share your affection for me. So why did you give him the letters?"

"David Collins? Letters?"

"Collins is the guy who sent you to search my room and my mind."

"And the letters?"

"The stack of blue envelopes you took from my room and gave him."

As he watched her face, Nudger's stomach began to bother him, a vague stirring of pain and regret. He was wrong about this woman, his stomach was telling him. A presage of guilt twisted its claws into him. It had to be her, and yet it wasn't. He knew it in that instant. He was hurting someone who cared for him, who had trusted him more than he'd trusted her. Yet he had no choice; he had to find out about this for sure, and then probe deeper.

"Is this the big-shot David Collins who gets his name in the papers now and then for charity and chicanery?"

Nudger nodded.

"Never met the man. These his letters that are missing from your room?"

"Not his letters, but they were written by someone he knows."

"And you think I went to you so I could pick your brain and rummage through your room, that I used sex as an excuse to get in and stay awhile." She seemed, more than anything else, disappointed in him. "You believe I stole from you."

"I don't know that for sure. That's why I wanted to talk with you." Too late for moderation; he had lost her.

She stood up from her chair, looking down frowning and slowly shaking her head at him, as if he were vintage wine that had suddenly gone to vinegar. He had let her down in a way not so dissimilar.

"In the grand scheme of things," she told him calmly, "we didn't have much between us, Nudger, but what we did have, you've broken."

"I didn't have any choice. I had to know."

"And do you know?"

He did know; he was certain. It hadn't made sense from the beginning. "You didn't take the letters," he told her. "Sit back down, Sandra. Please."

She gave him a distant, pitying smile, turned, and walked with her long-legged stride through the crowd of drinkers and diners toward the exit. A one-chance woman walking from his life. Afternoon brilliance and traffic noise erupted around her briefly, as if she had magically summoned it all simply by touching the doorknob; then she disappeared into the brightness and sound even before the door swung closed.

Nudger felt suddenly as if the chain-smoking, chain- drinking, moaning girl on the piano were singing just for him. He sat morosely, thinking that the conversation hadn't turned out at all as he'd planned. In fact, a number of incidents had gone wrong for him lately. It was dispiriting; he felt dejected and small. Maybe he'd commit suicide by leaping from his chair onto the floor.

He tried to shake that feeling. It was counter-productive, and he had work to do.

Besides, maybe his string of bad luck was ended. Luck was like that-streaky. And it had balance, a way of equalizing. So probably, despite how he felt about what had happened with Sandra, he'd bottomed out and fortune was now on the upswing. It had to be that way; from now on, things large and small would break his way. He was, in fact, convinced of it. He could feel his new run of luck throbbing in his veins.

A shadow fell across the table. Sandra's? He jerked his head around to look up and behind him, caught the oppressive scent of lilac.

The big waitress was standing over him, looking blankly down at him.

She said, "We're out of roast beef."

Nudger didn't know the woman crossing the Majestueux lobby's deep carpet with a springy, indomitable sort of walk. Preoccupied with his problems, he didn't pay much attention to her until she got nearer. She was in her mid-forties, still attractive in the fragile way of blond women with porcelain complexions. Age had touched her lightly but often, a faint but harsh line here, a lack of luster in the well-coiffed hair there. She seemed brittle yet gentle and knowing, tempered by life's fire. Her springy walk was compact and graceful, like a gymnast's. She was on the short side, petite, and when she locked gazes with Nudger her pace toward him quickened. She had to be-

"I'm Marilyn Eeker, Mr. Nudger," she said. "The desk clerk pointed you out to me. I've been trying to get in touch with you."

"I know," Nudger said. "We seem to be a second behind or ahead of each other. Why have you been looking for me, Miss Eeker?"

"Mrs.," she corrected. "It's about Ineida. I know you've been… looking into her life."

Nudger waited, wondering.

Marilyn Eeker smiled nervously and glanced around. "Can we go somewhere and sit down, Mr. Nudger?"

"Sure." Nudger motioned toward the hotel restaurant. She went inside with him, and the Creole Queen who was the hostess led them to a corner booth by the window. They sat looking out at the wavering heat rising like sultry dreams from the damp street.

Marilyn Eeker said nothing until the waitress had brought the iced tea she'd ordered, the glass of milk for Nudger. She added two exactly level spoons of sugar to her tea, then a squeeze of lemon, dropping the rind into the glass. Nudger noticed that the cuff of her blouse was frayed. When she had finished carefully and thoroughly stirring the concoction, she said, "Ineida's missing, Mr. Nudger. What do you know about it?"

"What I don't know," Nudger said gently, "is who you are, and why you think she's missing."

Marilyn Eeker was surprised; her translucent blue eyes widened. They were beautiful eyes, only just beginning to fade. Then she smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry-I'm not thinking straight these days. I'm Ineida's mother."

Nudger's hand reaching for his glass paused. "David Collins' wife?"

"I used to be. We divorced fifteen years ago. David managed to pull strings, keep custody of Ineida. I live alone now, and use my maiden name. David and I never see each other. But my daughter and I remained close; we became good friends. She confides in me, Mr. Nudger. She told me she thought you were working for her father, then she became unsure of that. Who are you? Who are you working for?"

Nudger looked across the table into the deep and relentless agony that was tearing at the fiber of this gentle woman. Her daughter was missing, and she'd been left out of the game entirely. He figured he owed her answers. "I'm a private investigator, hired to look into Ineida's relationship with Willy Hollister. I can't tell you the identity of my client, but it isn't David Collins."

She gazed out the window for a moment, then turned again to face him and nodded. "I've met Willy Hollister. Ineida brought him by my house to show him off one day. I didn't like him."

"Why not?"

"I grew up on the bayou, Mr. Nudger, then went to school in the East and got sophisticated and came back still a Southern girl and snagged the eligible David Collins for a husband. My father was a naturalist. He used to keep alligators from the time they were barely hatched to when they grew big and wild and something made them return to the swamp. They'd get a look in their eyes just before they disappeared into the bayou behind our house; something would enter their minds that they couldn't control and didn't want to. I hadn't seen that look since I was a tomboy bending saplings, until I met Willy Hollister."