§ § § - February 17, 1979
At three-thirty Tattoo came into Roarke's study, his suit jacket unbuttoned and his thick black hair a bit windblown. Roarke smiled. "Ah, hello, my friend," he said.
Tattoo stopped short and then beamed, looking relieved. "Oh good, the Black Mass didn't get you yet."
Roarke gave him a remonstrating look. "Now Tattoo, you know better." He caught himself when he realized his assistant was unaccompanied. "Where's Leslie?"
"I don't know, I thought she was with you," said Tattoo blankly, removing the jacket and laying it on one of the club chairs. "Isn't she?"
"I sent her to the luau clearing so that she could perhaps assist you with some of your duties during the day," said Roarke. He frowned. "Didn't she find you?"
"I haven't seen Leslie since I left here this morning," Tattoo informed him.
They stared at each other for several seconds; then Roarke frowned deeply and arose. "I think we'd better go look for her. I sent her to you when I went to meet Ms. Garwood to go horseback riding, and that's the last I saw of her. When she didn't come home for lunch, I assumed you and she had eaten at some other establishment."
"I ate at the hotel, and she wasn't with me at all," Tattoo said. "I had a lot of places I had to go anyway." He looked stricken. "Boss, she's still brand-new—there's every chance in the world she's gotten lost somewhere and can't figure out where she is. Maybe the Black Mass got her!"
Roarke's dirty look was full of exasperation. "That will do, Tattoo. Come quickly."
They got into a rover parked out front and, after a moment's deliberation, decided the best thing to do was to take the northern branch of the Ring Road and drive along it. But it took them the better part of half an hour before they spied a forlorn figure in a pale-blue sundress plodding wearily along the side of the road, head down. Roarke pulled up alongside and called, "Leslie, what on earth happened to you?"
She yanked bolt upright, her face shocked and then immensely relieved, as if she had been so lost in misery she had never heard them coming. "Oh wow, am I ever glad to see the two of you!" she cried, racing across the road and climbing into the car.
Roarke made a three-point turn to get them going back the other way. "Why on earth are you all the way out here, walking along the road like that? Do you know you're nearly halfway across the island from home?"
"Is that all? I thought I wasn't getting anywhere at all," she groaned. "Gosh, Tattoo, you sure were on the run. I couldn't find you to save my life."
Roarke and Tattoo looked at each other. "Leslie, perhaps you'd better tell me the full story, beginning from the point when I sent you to the luau clearing," Roarke said.
She sighed and launched into her tale; the more she told, the more amazed both men were. "I wasn't sure if I should wait an entire half-hour for the bus or not, but then that native girl came out of the opera house and saw me there, and she said she'd call her boyfriend who had a motorcycle. So she went in and called, and in about ten minutes he showed up on this huge black monster. We all fit on it though, so he took me over to the ferry dock. I was gonna ask him to wait, but he just waved at me and roared off. And of course, Tattoo wasn't at the ferry dock anymore by then. So all I could do was start walking. And, well, that's where you found me."
"Sacre bleu," muttered Tattoo in astonishment.
"Why didn't you simply call me at the house?" Roarke wanted to know.
Leslie stared at him in the rearview mirror, with the first tendrils of apprehension creeping into her expression. "I thought you weren't at home," she said in a small voice. "I mean, you were out with Ms. Garwood and I…um…I thought you'd be gone the rest of the day. And besides, I…" She blushed vividly, hung her head and mumbled something.
"What was that?" Roarke probed.
Crimson with mortification, she met his gaze for a bare tenth of a second in the mirror before admitting in a slightly louder voice, "I don't know the phone number at the main house."
"You could certainly have asked anyone, at any time, to place a phone call for you," Roarke admonished. "Tattoo and I each thought you were with the other, and when we discovered you weren't, we were very worried indeed."
"I'm sorry," Leslie said, barely audible, her head hanging again. She remained silent all the way back home, despite Tattoo's attempts to coax her out of her doldrums. Roarke had a feeling he had pushed a little too hard somehow, but he wasn't sure how, and at any rate didn't have time to investigate at the moment. There was too much to do. So he suggested Tattoo take Leslie to the evening's luau where they could have supper; Tattoo agreed, suggesting out of Leslie's earshot that it might help cheer her up. Roarke smiled, hoping this would work, and commended his assistant for the idea.
Tattoo and Leslie both changed clothes—Tattoo replacing his jacket, vest, shirt and bowtie with a colorful Hawaiian shirt, and Leslie donning a pair of shorts and a green-and-white-striped top—and set off for the clearing that had given Leslie so much trouble that afternoon. "You'll like the luau," Tattoo promised her. "We have it every Saturday night. It's a little different every week, but there's always some kind of entertainment, and they always have food. Lots of tropical fruit and Hawaiian dishes. You'll feel better after you've eaten, anyway." He grinned at her and urged her along.
"Okay," Leslie agreed. She did have to admit that she was ravenous by now, having missed lunch altogether, and that was the only thing that gave her any enthusiasm at all for this new venture. Tattoo led her through the buffet set along one side of the clearing, and she piled her plate high with everything that looked even a little appealing to her. Tattoo stared at her in astonishment as they retreated to a spot he had staked out at the table farthest away from the action, which was a small band singing a drifting Hawaiian tune while a couple of hula girls performed in front and another circled the tables, dropping leis around the necks of random guests as she went.
"Are you really gonna eat all that?" he asked, gaping at Leslie's plate.
She glanced at it, then at him, then shrugged sheepishly. "I'm hungry. I never did get to eat lunch," she pointed out.
He shook his head teasingly. "Boy, if Mana'olana could see you now," he said, and for the first time since he and Roarke had found her, she laughed. Already the grandmotherly cook had gained a reputation among the three of them for scolding Leslie about her less-than-robust eating habits.
Chuckling, Tattoo led her back to their spot and they settled down to eat; she had made quite an inroad on her plate when the tune came to an end and the spectators began applauding. Tattoo hastily swallowed a bite and arose. "Be right back," he said to Leslie, and hurried out to stand in front of the band. "Attention," he called. "Attention! Please, can I have your attention?" The audience quieted and everyone watched him expectantly. "You have been watching our beautiful ladies dance for you. And now comes the highlight of our show, when they will teach the Fantasy Island dance to the three lucky men who received the flower leis during the last dance." The only lei-wearing man Leslie could see was a dark-haired man who looked as though he should have been rather stocky but was actually fairly lean, whose face wore a look of utter consternation; nearby sat Mary Hoyt, the nun who was questioning her vocation. She was giggling in delight. The audience laughed too, and clapped as Tattoo called for applause and the dancers coaxed the reluctant men up front. Leslie found herself grinning and looking forward to the spectacle.
"Now, gentlemen," Tattoo said, "line up, please, and do as the girls do. Music, please." The band started up a new song, and Leslie watched as Tattoo exchanged smiles with the lead singer and unabashedly joined right in the hula dancing. The song was one Leslie thought she had heard before, something about going to a hukilau, whatever that was; she found herself laughing at the men's antics as they clumsily tried to follow along with the fluid motions of the hula girls. The man who was with Mary Hoyt hammed it up a bit, making her laugh some more; she would have to remember to ask either Roarke or Tattoo what his name was. Mary was laughing as well, and Leslie found herself hoping the pretty young woman would fall enough in love with that man to have a full life.
She was able to finish eating at leisure, enough to fill her up and make her feel rather sleepy, as though she'd just finished a Thanksgiving dinner. "You should be full after all that," Tattoo remarked teasingly, urging her up. "It's going on eight—I think we better get you back home. You don't have any homework, do you?"
She shook her head, rising with a small groan and holding her stomach. "I finished it yesterday. Ugh…I think maybe I ate too much."
"Looks like it to me too. Well, come on, once you get home, there'll probably be some more mail you can sort out," Tattoo said. He detoured long enough to commend the band on their performance and invite them to help themselves to the buffet; then he led Leslie along the shortest path back to the main house.
Roarke was out when they got there, so they settled in for a quiet interval, with Leslie reading a library book in the absence of any new mail, and Tattoo studying what looked like some kind of small ledger. But Leslie's mind began to wander, and eventually she looked up from her book. "Tattoo? You know that song those guys were hula-ing to?"
"What about it?" he asked, giving her his full attention.
"Well, I was wondering…it's been running through my head like songs do, you know what I mean?" He grinned and nodded. "Anyway, it made me start wondering. What's the difference between a hukilau and a luau?"
Tattoo laughed. "Most people think they're the same thing. I think you're the first one who ever asked if there was a difference." He began to describe a hukilau to her, but before he had gotten very far, a guest dropped in and waxed so enthusiastic about the evening luau that they both laughed about it when he was gone and forgot her question altogether. Soon the study quieted again, with only the chime of the grandfather clock every quarter hour to break the silence.
Finally Roarke came in, at somewhat past nine o'clock; this was Leslie's usual bedtime, but he and Tattoo tended to be a bit more lenient on weekends. "Ah, good evening, Tattoo," Roarke greeted, stepping into the foyer. "Hello, Leslie."
"Good evening, boss," said Tattoo, and Leslie offered her own shy greeting.
Roarke smiled at her and rounded her chair to settle into his own. "Still up?"
"Yes, I didn't feel much like sleeping," Tattoo admitted.
"I'm too full to sleep yet," Leslie confessed, and Roarke looked curiously at her, which prompted the story of the mountain of food she had consumed at the luau. Roarke laughed. "So you enjoyed the luau then, did you?"
"Sure," she said. "The food's really good—no wonder I overate."
With another chuckle, Roarke pulled his date book closer to him. "I see."
"Anyway, I thought I better let it digest awhile," she added, "and Tattoo said he'd stay here with me till I was ready to go up to my room."
Roarke smiled again at this, then flicked a glance at Tattoo as he reached for an elegant quill pen to make some notations in the date book. "Oh?"
Tattoo nodded. "Besides, I wanted to make sure you got home okay."
Roarke paused and stared at his assistant for a moment, his features softening into a smile. "Your concern is deeply appreciated." He reached for a drawer and pulled it open—only to reveal the raised, hissing head and telltale collar of a huge cobra coiled therein.
Leslie shrieked; Roarke reared back and Tattoo leaped into action, seizing a poker from a stand stocked with old fireplace tools and flinging the snake from the drawer, then beating it several times over with all his strength till the deadly reptile stilled. Roarke got to his feet and assessed the situation with a quick, "That's enough, my friend." Leslie, her whole body quaking, had to use the desktop to push herself to her feet; some morbid human failing in her seemed to be propelling her to look at the mess. Tattoo threw the poker aside and stared solemnly up at his boss.
"A cobra," Roarke murmured, frowning.
"One of the deadliest snakes in the world," confirmed Tattoo.
Leslie spied a little silver trinket in the drawer at that point. "What's that thing?"
Roarke followed the shaking finger she pointed and picked it up as Tattoo exclaimed low, "Boss…it's the Black Mass symbol." It was a strange little ornament, looking like a kneeling goat flanked with large wings, sprouting long curved horns from its head; its eyes were two small emeralds. He handed it to Tattoo, who stared at it and then turned to look up at Roarke again. "Boss, it was meant to kill you!"
Leslie thumped back into her seat, just in time to see a black hooded figure sweep past the tall shuttered windows. She gasped aloud, but Roarke had caught sight of it too, and he instantly rushed out of the study in pursuit, leaving Tattoo holding the winged-goat charm and Leslie half in and half out of her chair, overfilled stomach forgotten.
"What was that all about?" asked Tattoo.
Leslie realized he'd missed the figure slink past the windows. "We saw somebody out there," she said. Before he could say anything, she scrambled out of the room and followed Roarke onto the veranda, where she saw him now standing on the front walk, looking around without spotting anything untoward.
She approached the top of the steps. "Did you see him?"
"Stay back, Leslie," Roarke ordered without glancing back, jogging toward the side yard near where the lane curved away toward the Ring Road. She watched him stop in the lane and look around for a moment, before his white suit was suddenly illuminated from one side and they both heard an engine roar to life and wheels screech into motion.
"Look out!" Leslie screamed, her voice nearly lost in the noise.
Roarke dived out of the way of the speeding vehicle; as it squealed past them and away up the lane, he leaped back to his feet and ran for a jeep parked nearby. Leslie was about to leap the steps to join him, but he saw her move. "I told you to stay back!" he barked at her before throwing himself into the jeep and peeling out after the vanished mystery car. Leslie stopped where she was and watched the jeep's taillights disappear around the curve, then blew out a breath and fled back into the house to inform Tattoo.
Tattoo had dropped the Black Mass symbol onto the desk and listened in horror to what she had to say. "Which way did they leave?"
"Down the southern side of the lane," said Leslie. "I didn't really see the thing that almost hit Mr. Roarke, but I'm pretty sure it looked like a pickup truck."
"Okay, come on," said Tattoo, snapping into action. "We're going after him—he might need some kind of backup." He made a hurried phone call, then urged Leslie outside with him, pulling the outer door closed behind them. Within minutes a rover arrived and they both jumped in; Tattoo told the native driver to stick to unpaved dirt roads as much as possible, which he did once they spied a little-used dirt lane veering off into the jungle, bearing telltale tire tracks.
It was so dark that they could see nothing beyond the scope of the headlights, and the car's engine overrode any other sounds. It took them almost ten minutes, with a lot of slowing for ruts and pits in the road, before they pulled up into a somewhat wider patch in the lane and the headlights outlined a pickup truck and Roarke's jeep. In the distance, at the very edge of the lights' reach, they could see a figure in white; it turned sharply as their car pulled to a stop a safe distance from the other vehicles.
Since the two native men Tattoo had recruited both followed the Frenchman when he jumped out and ran for Roarke, Leslie felt she had no choice but to follow; who knew what was out here and what might get her? Tattoo reached him first, and she was still jogging over to catch up when she heard him ask, "Boss, are you all right?" At Roarke's nod, he added, "Do you know who it was?"
Roarke shook his head and smiled at Leslie, who had finally caught up. "Whoever it was seems to know the island as well as we do," he said slowly.
"Then that's better than I do," Leslie injected, making a face.
Roarke smiled at her. "You'll learn. Well, there's nothing more to be learned here; we had better return. It's late and you, my child, need to get your sleep."
§ § § - February 18, 1979
Though she hadn't expected to, after the tension of the previous evening, Leslie slept well, and awoke refreshed and ready to help Roarke with whatever he assigned to her. "You should find this fairly simple," he mused over a light breakfast. "You might wish to help Tattoo at the breakfast buffet—be sure there is enough for everyone and find out what needs to be replenished from the hotel."
Mana'olana, loading some unused dishes and utensils onto a rolling cart, shook her head at Leslie. "Young lady, you really should have some fruit with that cereal."
"Oatmeal's enough for me. That's all I eat in the morning. I've always been like that," Leslie protested, startled.
Tattoo winked surreptitiously at her and turned to the cook. "Let her be, okay? She ate a whole pile of food last night at the luau, and her stomach's probably still trying to work that off. You should've seen all the stuff she had on her plate."
Mana'olana gave Leslie a disbelieving look, then sniffed. "Hmph…that's what happens when you don't eat any lunch." So saying, she left with the cart.
"Brother," Leslie grumbled, scooping up some more of her oatmeal. "There's just no pleasing her, I guess."
Tattoo and Roarke laughed, and their conversation moved on to a few other duties Roarke wanted Leslie to help Tattoo with before the meal ended and they dispersed for the morning. Leslie followed Tattoo to the clearing where the breakfast buffet was being held; in fact, it was the clearing where the luau had taken place the previous evening. "You sure get a lot of use out of this place," she remarked.
"It's very handy for all kinds of events," Tattoo agreed. "Come on." Leslie obediently trailed him along the buffet table, which seemed well-stocked; then, as a young native man wheeled in a covered cart bearing more food, Tattoo signaled at him and double-checked what was on it.
"This is for Mr. Birdsong and Miss Arden," the young waiter informed him, gesturing at the pair, who were seated at a nearby table shaded with a yellow umbrella, covered in a brilliant-red cloth and surrounded by four cheerful red-and-yellow chairs. "It's a gift from some other guests." He indicated three tables some little distance away; Tattoo glanced that way, swept his gaze across the tables' occupants, and nodded.
"Good. I wanted to check with Mr. Birdsong anyway," said Tattoo. "Something else for you to learn, Leslie." He winked at her again, then gestured for both Leslie and the waiter to follow, and approached the table.
As they got nearer, Leslie heard Jean Arden remark, "That's how they all start out, eager and naïve." She sounded jaded and resigned.
"What's wrong with that?" asked Birdsong blankly, then turned to Tattoo as he, Leslie and the waiter with the cart paused beside their table.
"Nothing," said Jean, "but it never lasts." She noticed the newcomers then and looked up, flashing a quick, preoccupied smile.
"Morning," Birdsong said to Tattoo, including Leslie with a smiling glance.
"Miss Arden, Mr. Birdsong," said Tattoo in greeting.
"Good morning, Tattoo," Jean said and then let her smile warm for the uncertain Leslie. "Hi there."
"Hi," Leslie murmured shyly. Tattoo cast her a look over his shoulder, making her wonder what she was doing wrong now, before retreating into host mode again and gesturing at the waiter's cart.
Birdsong gaped and started to chuckle in amazement. "What's this, champagne for breakfast? We didn't order any champagne."
"Compliments of the gentlemen over there," said Tattoo, and pointed out the tables the waiter had earlier indicated.
They all looked around; Leslie recognized the burly ex-wrestler from the day before, Hammerhead Harris, and the flashily clad sheik, as well as the other guy whose name she'd barely heard and now couldn't quite remember…Billy something, she thought. They all nodded at Birdsong in what looked like a rather meaningful way; each of them was seated with one of the twenty finalists for the starring role in the movie Birdsong was casting.
"Uh-huh," Jean said disgustedly through a small sigh. "It begins with champagne and ends with a brown paper bag full of money."
Birdsong took instant offense. "Are you implying that I'd sell out?" Jean nodded firmly, and he scowled, shifting in his chair. "Don't be ridiculous!"
"Well, fact: Hammerhead Harris is sponsoring Miss Little Rock. Fact: Big Billy Tidwell is sponsoring Miss Brooklyn; and fact: Sheik Abib over there is sponsoring Miss Can-Can, Gigi." She speared Birdsong with a look. "Now does that tell you anything?"
Birdsong shifted again, peering uneasily back and forth between Jean and Tattoo; she looked as if she had been expecting these developments, while Tattoo just smiled blandly and Leslie looked on in amazement. She recognized the woman with Billy Tidwell as the cheery New York native who had asked her for directions to the casting office, and shook her head to herself. Did that girl know what she was involved in?
"Well," Birdsong announced suddenly, "I won't be bought." He got up from his chair and left without another word; Jean stared after him, looking genuinely astounded, and Leslie had to grin. Tattoo caught sight of her expression and winked.
"Well, if you'd excuse us," he said, and motioned the waiter away with the cart. But Leslie lingered, watching Birdsong stride away and disappear into the trees. Jean Arden was still staring after him, as if stricken with some kind of revelation.
"Leslie, come on!" called Tattoo, and she jumped and scuttled off to join him. He eyed her with interest. "What were you doing?"
She threw a glance behind her at Jean, whose face presented a study in determination as she gathered her things together and hurriedly left the table. "I think Miss Arden's changing her mind about Mr. Birdsong," she mused.
"You do?" inquired Tattoo in a tell-me-more tone.
"Well, you saw the way she thought Mr. Birdsong would've accepted that champagne from those guys, right? And then the way she looked when he said nobody was gonna buy him? I think she figured out he's really not the same kind of crooked Hollywood type she expects out of everybody else."
Tattoo gazed at her, impressed. "Very good, Leslie! Too bad the boss didn't hear that, he'd say the same thing. I think you could go pretty far in this business once you get the hang of things. Come on with me and I'll help you learn some more."
At the hotel they found a minor emergency; a large shipment of mixed-drink ingredients had arrived, and there was no means available by which to get it distributed to its various locations. Tattoo rounded up some of the waiters from the just-ended breakfast shift and assigned them to different supply groups and different destinations while Leslie looked on, trying to make note of everything she heard. Tattoo, catching her, smiled. "I tell you what, Leslie, why don't you help distribute the ones that are going to the lounge here in the hotel," he suggested, handing her a clipboard. "Kono will help you out with that—all you have to do is check off the items as he reads them out to you, okay?"
That sounded simple enough, so Leslie agreed and followed the slender, muscular young native man Tattoo pointed out. Kono smiled and greeted her with a respectful, "Good morning, Miss Leslie."
"Hi," she said with a shy smile. "Tattoo said I should help you out."
"I could use it," he remarked and flashed her a grin that made her grin back. "The hand trucks are already loaded. You take that one and I'll take this one, and we'll come back in a couple of minutes for the other two."
A few minutes later Leslie was checking off supplies on her list as Kono went over them to be sure they were all there; when she finished, he grinned at her again and relieved her of the clipboard. "That was a big help—thanks, Miss Leslie," he said.
"You're welcome," she told him and giggled suddenly. "That was fun."
Kono laughed. "Well, I guess it's fun when you're new to everything. Anyway, have a good day." He nodded at her and left, pulling two of the hand trucks after him.
The bartender grinned at her too. "Before you go, Miss Leslie, would you do me a big favor and feed Coco over there? He's been squawking at me all morning and I haven't had a chance to give him anything." He handed her a small glass bowl full of sunflower seeds and indicated a large red, green and blue parrot sitting on a bamboo perch as if overseeing the activity in the lounge. "I appreciate it."
"No problem," said Leslie, accepting the bowl. Coco saw her coming and bobbed excitedly up and down; as soon as she got close enough and raised the bowl to him, he began plucking seeds out of the bowl and gulping them down at almost light speed. She grinned, amused by the bird's antics.
"Thank goodness," grumbled a voice nearby, and Leslie looked around in surprise to find Sid Gordon himself seated at the nearest table, holding a tall glass of some red concoction with a thick stick of celery poking out of the top. "That stupid bird's been yakking loud enough to make me deaf."
"Sorry, Mr. Gordon," Leslie said timidly.
Gordon twisted around in his seat enough to really look at her. "Oh," he said, as if in surprise, "you're just a kid. Didn't mean to scare ya." He offered a smile that didn't quite reassure. "Thanks for feeding that bird, huh?" She nodded, and he turned back in his chair, taking a long sip of his drink and gazing absently into space.
Coco presently finished his breakfast and squawked at Leslie, "Thank you." This caught Gordon's attention again, but he merely snorted quietly and looked away.
"You're welcome, Coco," Leslie said with a grin, delighted, and returned the bowl to the bartender. He thanked her and actually handed her a five-dollar bill; she tried to demur, but he insisted, and she gave in at last.
"You did me a huge favor, even if it seems like something small. Coco'll be fine now till this evening," he said. "It didn't seem right to let you go without some kind of thanks."
"That was really nice of you, thank you," Leslie said with another shy smile, and he grinned, gave her a quick salute and turned aside to tend to several guests waiting at the bar. Leslie slid the bill into a pocket of her sundress and decided to head out and look for Tattoo, but once again was stopped in her tracks when she saw Jean Arden stride up to Sid Gordon's table, an icy look on her face.
Gordon, looking surprised, gulped back some of his drink. "Oh…good morning, doll! All set for the big event?"
"Not quite, Mr. Rat," Jean said coldly. Leslie stared at her, so fascinated that it never occurred to her that she was openly eavesdropping. "You're using him, aren't you?"
Gordon squinted at her in puzzlement. "Using who? What're you talking about?"
"That nice, sweet, naïve Felix Birdsong. You've set him up as a patsy!"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Gordon said and took another draft from his glass, his gaze falling away from Jean's.
"Sid, I just came from your office, where I went through your personal files and your personal set of books," Jean announced. Gordon stared up at her with a touch of alarm in his eyes. "Now, you've oversold the picture, Sid: fifty percent to Big Billy Tidwell, fifty percent to the oil sheik, and as far as I can figure out, about a hundred and twenty percent to that moron Hammerhead Harris. And," she concluded, "you promised each and every one of them that their girl would be the star!"
"Oh…hey…so they'll get a little sore at Birdsong," Gordon said, revealing his flustered state through his vague stammering. "Uh…so…so what?"
Outraged, Jean exclaimed, "Sid, this is no small-potato deal! Felix could get hurt or worse!" She glared expectantly at him.
Gordon sighed and tried to placate her. "Listen, doll. How'd you like a nice boost in salary and a new title?" Jean looked even more outraged and offended. "As of right now, you're raised a hundred bucks a week and you're associate producer on the film." He beamed at her. "Aren't I wonderful?"
For a moment Jean stared at him; a slight smile bloomed on her face and Leslie thought she could just hear the woman chuckling derisively to herself, before she reached over, removed Gordon's glass from his hand and calmly upended it over his head. With that she slammed the empty glass back onto the table and stalked out.
Gordon stared morosely after her, dripping red Bloody Mary, cradling the stalk of celery and several ice cubes in his arms, and sighed to himself, "I shoulda made it two hundred bucks a week." Leslie slapped a hand over her mouth and sneaked out of the lounge as fast as she dared tiptoe, anticipating relating to Tattoo what she'd heard.
It turned out he'd already departed; the headwaiter told her he had left word that she should return to the main house, so she headed that way, grateful that she didn't have to go hunting Tattoo down the way she had the previous day. She did, fortunately, find Roarke in the study, just accepting a large batch of mail. "Wow," she said, as the postal carrier dug out a number of rubber-banded stacks of envelopes. "Mail on Sunday?"
Roarke chuckled. "We deal with so much correspondence here that the mail must be delivered seven days a week," he told her. "You're just in time to sort these out." He thanked the postal carrier, who smiled at Leslie and departed, and turned to his ward. "Where did Tattoo go?"
"I don't know," she said. "I was helping out one of the guys in the lounge at the hotel, and some stuff came up, and when I came back out he was already gone. The headwaiter said he told him to tell me to come back here." She remembered then and pulled the bill from her pocket. "I actually earned five dollars just for feeding the parrot in the lounge. I guess the bartender was rushed and didn't have a chance, so he asked me to do it."
Roarke laughed. "Good for you."
"I overheard something else too," said Leslie, and on his interested look, related the conversation she had witnessed between Sid Gordon and Jean Arden. Roarke nodded now and then as she spoke, and when she finished, he smiled.
"It seems your hunch yesterday about Mr. Gordon was correct," he observed.
"My hunch…? Oh yeah," she recalled suddenly. She grinned sheepishly, thrilled to know that she was doing so much better today after yesterday's little fiasco. Deciding she'd better play it safe to be sure her good luck lasted out the day, she readily agreed when Roarke pushed the rubber-banded mail in her direction and asked her to sort it.
The day wore along and Tattoo remained absent; when lunchtime came and went and he was still a no-show, Roarke frowned. "Apparently he's been extremely busy this morning. I didn't think there were that many fires to be put out."
"Shouldn't I have gone with him?" Leslie wondered.
Roarke smiled at her. "Actually, I suspect if he had needed your help, he would have contacted us and requested it. You've been a big help to me here, so don't think your efforts are going unappreciated." He extracted his gold watch from his vest, checked it, then clicked it closed and replaced it. "You can take a short break and come with me to see Ms. Garwood after the meal. Don't hurry."