Barbara Silkstone - Wendy Darlin 04 - Miami Mummies Read Online Free PDF Page A

here’s Baby! Thank you anyway. Have a good evening!”
    As I eased forward into the shadows I heard the squish of feet on newly sprinkled lawn. The heck with helping the dingbat nab her cat, I had a plane to catch.
    I stopped at the guard booth and asked José to keep an eye on my place. “Thought I saw someone prowling around my windows but it just turned out to be Mrs. Lipschitz.”
    José frowned, his skinny face sliding into the collar of his brown uniform. He punched a few keys on his computerized residents’ list. “No tenemos Lipschitz.” He un-holstered his gun and with shaky hands took a bullet from the drawer and inserted it in the chamber of what looked like a Roy Roger’s special.
    “Don’t do that! Call nine-one-one. No bulleto!”
    I put Goldie in gear and pulled out onto Rebecca Road. My mind skipped ahead to Nashville. Hic was notorious for his frugality. He must be desperate to shell out for an overnight stay.

Chapter Five
    At half-past midnight I arrived at the Thornhill, a seedy ten-story hotel one coronary away from the heart of downtown Nashville. The dump was dark but the street was bright as day thanks to sodium vapor anti-crime-lights on every pole.
    Nary a car, with or without tires, graced the parking lot. My taxi pulled under the canopy as a chunk of plaster crashed from the overhang barely missing the hood of the cab.
    “You sure about this, lady?” the driver said.
    We exchanged looks in his rearview mirror. I wasn’t sure. I paid him and added a fat tip. “Wait here. I’ll either be right back or wave you on.” With my laptop bag slung over my shoulder, I kicked out the wheels on my overnight case and picked my way over the remains of the pavement. The right heel of my ballet flats wedged under the lip of an asphalt crack the size of a roasting pan. I fell catching myself on the wheelie case.
    The Thornhill’s huge double doors swung open with a slight touch as if too tired to resist. Security was probably not in the budget. A fully-armed Avon lady toting catalogues and order forms could wander in here unchallenged.
    The lobby was dimly lit which was probably good. Some things should remain in the shadows. “Hic? It’s me, Wendy!”
    “’Bout damn time!” the voice came from the gloom on the left.
    I turned and waved at the cabbie and wheeled my bag inside.
    Alfred Hiccup stepped from behind the slanting relic of a reception desk, his face looking like a chunk of Mount Rushmore after a landslide. His remaining hairs drooped from a wide center part to below his flabby earlobes. As usual Hic wore his pinky-gray zoot suit with lapels as wide as the shoulder pads, which could have served as running boards on a 1930 Buick. The suit was a throwback from the era of the jitterbug and a tribute to Hic’s penny-pinching.
    “The cook’s holding dinner,” he growled and shuffled off, a grizzly on a mission. I noticed he was wearing Kleenex boxes instead of shoes.
    “It’s good to see you, too,” I said to his back as he lumbered away in a Walter Matthau hunch. He was an adorable curmudgeon.
    The right side of the lobby resembled a narrow airport runway with tiny white floor lights the only illumination. I followed the twinkles tripping three times, once slamming my shoulder into the wall hard enough to cause me to yelp.
    The corridor opened into a humongous post-Cinderella banquet hall with a vaulted ceiling. I strained to see the far side of the area where mounds of broken lumber, plaster friezes, and possibly the corpse of the skunk-ape were piled against a wall, probably pushed there by a frontend loader.
    All but one of the tables were littered with upside-down chairs as if a giant had come through and turned the room on its ear. Our dining experience was to take place at a small round table in a corner near the entrance to the kitchen. Two laminated doors dangled from broken hinges and a light shone through the opening casting a pukey-yellow glow on our table. I smelled the