OtherWorld

  OtherWorld

  by

  Sarah Dreher

  A Stoner McTavish Mystery

  © Copyright 1993 by Sarah Dreher

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by New Victoria Publishers Inc., 7011 S. Pintek Lane, Hereford, AZ 85615

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious

  Cover design based on art by Ginger Brown

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dreher, Sarah.

  Otherworld : a Stoner McTavish mystery / by Sarah Dreher.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-934678-44-8

  1. Women detectives--United States--Fiction. 2. Lesbians--United

  States--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3554. R36085 1993

  813’ . 54 - - dc20

  93-6977

  CIP

  For Joanna and Linda

  CHAPTER 1

  “Help me!”

  Stoner pressed the receiver hard against her ear. “I can’t hear you.”

  “Help me!”

  She motioned to Gwen to switch off the television. The listing of the day’s special events at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom dwindled to a bright dot and winked out.

  “Please,” she said, “try to speak up.”

  The line went dead.

  She punched the cradle button—an act she had always considered less than useless, after all when a phone was dead it was dead and there were no two ways about it, abusing it wouldn’t bring it back. But people did it all the time in the movies and on TV. Of course, they never said “goodbye” in the movies or on TV, rude. She hadn’t sunk that low, not yet. But there didn’t seem to be anything better to do, so she tapped on the cradle buttons like an idiot.

  “What is it?” Gwen asked.

  She hung up and lifted the receiver and got a dial tone. “Somebody calling for help.”

  “We’re not even unpacked,” Gwen said. She sighed. “Your reputation has finally preceded you.”

  “This is serious,” Stoner insisted. “It was someone on the phone, and she said ‘Help me!’ twice, and then the line went dead.”

  Her lover smiled indulgently. “Dearest, this is Walt Disney World. It’s full of children. Children enjoy pranks. Most of all, they like telephone pranks. As a species, it’s what they do best.”

  “I guess so,” Stoner said, not the least bit convinced.

  Gwen tilted her head to one side and looked at her. “That doesn’t do it for you, does it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, call the switchboard and see if anyone has placed a call to this room in the last five minutes.”

  She punched up the hotel operator, who didn’t have—or wouldn’t admit to having—that information-thank-you-for-calling.

  “I guess there’s nothing we can do about it,” Stoner said reluctantly.

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something.” Gwen heaved the largest of the suitcases onto the bed. “Do you want to unpack this, or should I?”

  “I’ll do it. It’s mine.” She popped the locks and began tossing her clothes into a dresser drawer.

  “Stoner.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe you should hang some of those up.”

  “It’s just tee-shirts and stuff.”

  “Some of that ‘stuff’,” Gwen said patiently, “is cotton blouses. And cotton slacks. And a silk shirt. Do you know what being stuffed in a drawer will do to them?”

  Stoner looked at her helplessly, one hand dripping underpants, the other oozing socks.

  Gwen took them from her. “Let me do it. Your idea of organization is one drawer for clean and one for dirty.”

  “It works,” Stoner said.

  “I don’t think so.” Gwen held up a wrinkled, rumpled shirt. She slipped a hanger through its sleeves.

  “You really shouldn’t do that,” Stoner said uneasily. “It’s too much like—well, like roles, you know?”

  “Roles, schmoles.” She looked at Stoner in that brown-eyed, soft, mock-stern way that always made her fall in love all over again. “I adore you. Go check on Marylou. See if she’s recovered.”

  Marylou’s room was next door. She knocked.

  “Come!” Marylou called.

  Stoner peeked around the door.

  One of the beds was completely covered with vibrators.

  “Marylou, what’s that?”

  “What’s what?”

  “The vibrators. What are you doing with all those vibrators?”

  “Safe sex,” said Marylou. She was eating the last of the cheese and crackers they had been served on the plane as a “snack.” Or maybe it was “lunch.” It was hard to tell these days.

  “I know the travel business is dull,” Stoner said, “but you should have told me you were quitting.”

  “Quitting?” Marylou frowned at her. “Kesselbaum and McTavish is finally an institution. We have a repeat clientele. Next year we might even make a profit, if the building doesn’t go condo. Why would I quit?”

  Stoner picked up an Eve’s Garden special and turned it over in her hands. “So what’re you doing? Selling these on the black market or something?”

  “I’m not planning to sell them. I’m planning to use them.”

  “On what?”

  “On myself.”

  “All of them?”

  “Not all at once,” Marylou said. “Maybe consecutively.”

  Stoner returned Eve’s Garden to its assigned spot and sat on the other, uncluttered bed. “Where’s your mother?”

  “At a workshop. She left a note.” Marylou wiped the cracker crumbs from her fingers and began rummaging in her voluminous tote bag. “Don’t you think it’s kind of sick having a psychiatric convention at Walt Disney World on Halloween?”

  “To tell you the truth, it’s the first time I ever realized psychiatrists could have a sense of humor.”

  Marylou dumped the contents of her tote onto the dressing table and rooted through them. “I know I had something to eat in here.”

  “Why not call room service?”

  Marylou sighed heavily. “If they have room service in this place—which I doubt—the food’s probably wretched. Mouse-ke-fries and Mickey-burgers. Made from real mice, no doubt.”

  “The restaurants in World Showcase are supposed to be good.”

  Marylou humphed.

  “Honest. Remember when the Newtons came here a couple of years ago? They really liked the restaurants.”

  “True,” said Marylou. “But we haven’t the slightest idea what kind of standards they have. For all we know, they could make my mother, the Fast Food Queen, look like a gourmet.”

  Stoner stretched out on the bed, hands behind her head, and looked over at her friend. “I’m glad to see you’ve gotten over the trip down.”

  “Gotten over?” Marylou asked, her voice sliding up an octave. “Gotten over? It was the most disgusting experience in my thirty-five years on this planet. I’ll never get over it.”

  Stoner grinned at her. “I’ll bet, right now, there are flight attendants saying the exact same thing.”

  “It was their decision to do that kind of work. I’m not going to feel guilty. Besides...” She sniffed haughtily. “...I think I conducted myself admirably.”

  Stoner pretended to give that serious thought. “I guess so. Of course, your behavior during take-off and landing wasn’t exactly restrained.”

  The minute the plane had begun to taxi down the runway, Marylou had started to harangue the other passengers in a loud and un-ignorable voice. “You people are all crazy. We are in a lo
ng metal tube that can’t possibly support our weight. They’ve locked the doors. There’s no escape. Did you see the pilot? I did. I saw him last week on ‘Unsolved Mysteries.’ Are you aware that that very man—if he’s even human, which I doubt—personally murdered eight people? Do you know how he did it? He took them up in a private plane and jumped out. Jumped out. Leaving them to perish in the fires of Hell...”

  The flight attendant—a bubbly brunette with skin-tight uniform and the only real spit-curls Stoner had seen outside of old photographs in 1950s issues of Life Magazine—pounced on her with soothing tones, “There-there-ing” like a mother with a frightened child.

  “Do not patronize me, Madam,” Marylou snapped. “They are taking us miles into the air, from which we will drop like a rock. I have no intention of being patronized at a time like this.”

  At that point, Stoner had tried to deny ever laying eyes on Marylou before in her life—which was difficult since Marylou was sitting between Stoner and Gwen, and it was obvious from various little gestures of affection that passed between the two of them and across Marylou’s lap that they would never have allowed themselves to be separated by a stranger.

  “It’s all right,” Gwen said, letting a little of her Georgia accent slip into her speech because this was a Delta flight, and the attendant was probably from Atlanta. “It’s her first flight.” She patted Marylou’s hand, while looking earnestly at the woman. “She’s only been out a couple of days, you know.”

  The flight attendant, whose name tag introduced her as Ellen, a good, steady, reassuring, dependable kind of name, rearranged her face into a mask of professional competence and concern. “Out?” she asked in a voice that didn’t quite manage to sound blasé.

  “Of the—” Gwen made circles in the air with her hand. “The...the...you know.”

  “Oh,” said Ellen. “The...you know.”

  “Nothing serious,” Gwen said in a hushed voice. “A little impulse control problem, that’s all.”

  She’s going to get us thrown off the plane, Stoner thought. But they don’t throw you off of planes. Not at thirty-thousand feet. Do they?

  Gwen fumbled in her purse and brought out a packet of chamomile tea. “If you could just make this up for her, I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  “Well,” Ellen said. “If you think so. But we can’t have the other passengers…”

  “Of course not,” Gwen said.

  When Ellen was out of ear-shot she turned to Marylou. “If you don’t get a grip on yourself right this minute,” she said, “I will never speak to you again.”

  Which had reduced Marylou to a state of mumbling grumble until they began their descent into Orlando International Airport. At which point she announced that they were now being hurtled earthward at the speed of light and would never survive the loss of pressure and subsequent explosion.

  “What I wonder,” Stoner said as Marylou began rearranging the vibrators into a pattern she felt was more aesthetically pleasing, “is how we’re going to get you home.”

  “I’m not going home,” Marylou announced. “I’ll conduct our business by phone from our branch office in Kissimmee—whatever that is.”

  Stoner felt mildly annoyed. “This really isn’t funny…”

  “FUNNY?” Marylou shrieked. “Did I look as if I were having fun?”

  “Sorry,” Stoner muttered, though she was still peeved but wanted to avoid an argument.

  “I told you when we opened the travel agency, I will do everything in my power to help other people—even strangers, even unpleasant strangers—to enjoy memorable and hassle-free vacations. But I will never, ever travel myself. I hate it, Stoner. I really hate it.”

  Little tears trembled on the rims of Marylou’s eyes, and Stoner was a goner. She’d never been able to bear seeing Marylou unhappy. She got up and put one arm around her. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay.” One of the tears gave in to gravity and slipped down Marylou’s cheek. “It’s bad enough, not being able to do something that everyone else in the entire world enjoys, but the one time I screw up my courage and try, I’m stuck in this God-forsaken, overgrown amusement park full of—of CREATURES, or whatever they call them...”

  “Characters,” Stoner said.

  “I may never get home, and they don’t even have room service.”

  “They must have room service,” Stoner said in a comforting way, and handed Marylou a tissue.

  “They don’t.” Marylou sniffled and blew her nose.

  Stoner brushed Marylou’s hair back from her face. “Sure, they do. If they don’t, I’ll get you something.”

  “That’s not the point. We’re stuck in a hotel that doesn’t understand the concept of room service. If they don’t understand that, God knows what else they don’t understand. This place is… is primitive.”

  “Marylou, it’s one of the most up-to-date, state-of-the-art resorts and theme parks in the country. Probably in the world.”

  “‘State-of-the-art’,”Marylou grumped. “You’re starting to talk like a Yuppie. Reagan and Bush are gone to reap the benefits of twelve years of greed and general nastiness, Yuppies are Out—and now you start talking like one.”

  “I try to stay current,” Stoner murmured modestly.

  Marylou tossed the damp tissue into the waste basket and finished off the last of the airline peanuts. “Did you see the topiary? God in Heaven.”

  “Sure, I saw it.”

  “Sea serpents. Elephants. RATS!”

  “I think that was Mickey Mouse.”

  “We hadn’t even reached the hotel, and the place is full of mutants.”

  “They were only bushes.”

  “Plants are plants,” Marylou declared, “and creatures are creatures...”

  “Characters,” Stoner said.

  “...and anyone who grows plants to look like creatures is sick. We are trapped here at the mercy of SICK MINDS.”

  “It’s a theme park Marylou. Walt Disney World is a theme park. Theme parks are like that.”

  “Yes, and what’s next?” She rummaged deeper into the spilled contents of her voluminous tote bag and managed to come up with a tiny box of Godiva chocolates. “Next, I suppose you’ll be dragging me off to Dollywood. Or that Jim and Tammy Fay Christian Place.”

  “They sold the Christian Place.”

  “Well, I’m sure there are other spots equally appalling.” She unwrapped a chocolate and popped it in her mouth. “No, you may not have one of my chocolates.”

  “I don’t do designer candy,” Stoner said.

  “Quiet. I’m having a peak experience.”

  She waited until Marylou had finished the chocolate, fascinated as usual by the way a simple piece of candy drained the tension from her friend’s face. Sort of like watching someone start to have a heart attack and pop a little nitroglycerine. She wished her own problems were that easy to get rid of.

  “I’ll never understand,” Marylou said as she lovingly folded the foil wrapper and placed it reverently in the waste basket, “how you can face daily life in America on the things you eat.”

  “I eat pretty much like everyone else,” Stoner said.

  “And look at what ‘everyone else’ has done to the world.” She sighed. “God, to think I’ll never see Boston again! The Public Gardens! The Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum, the MFA, the Pops! Fenway Park!”

  Now Stoner really had to laugh. “You’ve never set foot in Fenway Park in your life.”

  “But the possibility was there.”

  “We’ll find a way for you to get home,” Stoner said. “For now, why not just enjoy it? We have a whole week to relax and have fun.”

  “Fun,” Marylou grumbled. “Surrounded by creatures.”

  “Characters.”

  Marylou began unpacking furiously. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.”

  “I didn’t twist your arm. I didn’t hold a gun to your head. In fact, I tried to talk you out of it.”

&nbs
p; “They offered us rates,” Marylou admitted.

  “We get offered rates to all kinds of places. All the time.”

  “Not to Walt Disney World.” She drew a sequined black bra from her suitcase and tossed it into a drawer.

  Now Stoner really was curious. “Seriously, why did you decide to come?”

  “No reason.”

  “I’ve known you for more than fifteen years. You’ve never done anything without a reason. Maybe a fucked-up reason. Maybe for a reason you found out later wasn’t the reason you thought was the reason. But there’s always a reason.”

  Marylou grabbed a handful of red lace panties and stowed them in the drawer. “All right. I felt left out.”

  “Left out?” It was hard to imagine Marylou left out. She seemed always to be with someone, or about to be with someone, or arranging to be with someone—out with friends or on dates, visiting clients’ homes to look at slides. Marylou was one of those people who make friends effortlessly and without apparent anxiety. Unlike, Stoner thought, yours truly.

  “You’re always going off to neat places and doing exciting things, because you’re not afraid to travel. And I always have to stay home.”

  Stoner was shocked. “Neat places? That haunted house in Maine? You thought that was a neat place? You must be nuts!”

  “Well,” said Marylou, “maybe not that one.”

  “I’ve nearly been killed half a dozen times. Maybe that was exciting, but it wasn’t neat.”

  “Not exactly, I guess.”

  “And for real fun and games, try being warped into another century. That’s really neat.”

  Marylou help up her hands. “All right. So maybe those things weren’t fun, but at least things happen to you. Nothing ever happens to me.”

  Stoner had to admit that was true. Very little did happen to Marylou. Stoner had always rather envied her that. “Well,” she said, “something’s happened to you now.”

  “It certainly has,” Marylou said in a righteous tone. “And it more than makes up for all the things I’ve missed. But I still haven’t had a mystery to solve.”

  “Okay,” Stoner said, “here’s one. A few minutes ago the phone in our room rang. When I answered, a woman’s voice said ‘Help me.’ Said it twice. It sounded like someone in trouble.”