IN ROOM 33 by EC Sheedy Read Free Book Online

gaped at her. "Where the hell did that come from?" Buy it? Hell. He couldn't wait to be free of the place. Another few days and he'd have things figured out, some kind of plan in the works. And saddling himself to the Phil wouldn't be part of it.
    "You should go to that Lana woman and get your hotel back. Your grandpa would want you to have it. That poor man will be trembling in the dirt, thinking about his hotel in the hands of that greedy piece of baggage your daddy married." Her stare was python-mean.
    Wade froze. Even Sinnie hadn't ventured into this territory before. He picked up his tool belt, wondered again what had possessed him to buy the thing. "I'm going up to four—Henry's doorknob has gone missing. I said I'd replace it for him. After that I'm going on mop duty."
    "Henry's doorknob can wait and so can your darn mop." She clutched his arm. "What can't wait is this hotel. If you don't do something, we're all going to get our walking papers. The lot of us. Besides that, this place is rightfully yours. If you'd have made up with your daddy, maybe—"
    He pried her fingers from his forearm. "Leave it alone, Sinnie. You know, and I know, there's no going back. My father's dead and this hotel was part of his estate. It belongs to Lana Cole now. What she does with it—and when she does it—is her business. My guess is she'll sell the place with the speed of light."
    "And won't that be grand!" She glared at him. "We all sit here waiting for our eviction notices, while a shifty-eyed developer makes plans to tear the Phil down and build God knows what."
    "You don't know that." Wade figured Sinnie was right, but even so, he didn't intend to set eyes on Lana Cole again. For any reason. Ever. The woman was every man's wet dream, gift wrapped—with the killer force of a radiation leak. Lana Cole had come into his father's life, absorbed him, and destroyed his family with one feline swoop of her eyelashes. Even in the years since, telling himself over and over again how it took two to break up a marriage—that his father was as much at fault as Lana—he still harbored a near-pathological hatred for the woman.
    He loosened the buckle on his carpenter belt a notch. "I'm going." He strode to the door.
    Sinnie called after him, her voice less strident now. "What's happening here, Wade Emerson—it isn't right. This place should be yours. Your grandpa would've wanted it that way."
    Wade's hand was on the doorknob and he kept his face to the door when he said, "Forget my grandfather. Forget about this place being mine. And especially forget about me having anything to do with Lana. And giving her a pile of money for my own family's hotel—assuming I had it to give. It isn't going to happen. You, me, and all the rest of the hotel's exalted clientele will be living in Dumpsters before I go within a thousand miles of that woman."
    Sinnie wasn't deterred. "But what if someone else does, Wade? What if someone gets to her before you and grabs the Phil out from under your slow-moving behind?"
    "Then good luck to them. If they have to be in the same room as that woman to get it, I feel damn sorry for them." He walked out.
    * * *
    "Mr. Rupert, are you there? I've brought Melly back."
    "Mind, boy. I'm coming." Christian Rupert touched a button on the side of his recliner, and the chair seat lifted enough for him to reach his cane and pull himself to a standing position. At eighty-nine, his head worked fine, but the body under it was a crumbling mass of brittle bones and spent muscles, the lot of it weighing barely a hundred pounds. Some days he thought maybe he wouldn't bother dying, just hang around long enough to disappear.
    "Mr. Rupert," the boy called again. He heard Melly whine, let out a couple of short barks.
    "Almost there," he said, and picked up his struggling pace. At the door he stopped and flipped up the cover of his peephole. "Anyone with you, boy?"
    "No, sir."
    He asked the same question every time. The boy knew he had to