What Goes Up...

**********

John's head ached. The shrill tone came and went, came and went. He knew its origin but found it hard to roll over in bed and pick up the phone.

Weakly he said,"Yes." His tone tired and sleepy. He looked at the bedside clock that indicated a luminous four o'clock.

"John, its Senator Edwards. Get washed and dressed and come to my room when you are able, please. It's important." The phone whirred.

The Senator had hung up.

**********

Robert put the phone gently back into its rest and for the hundredth time glanced across to Sonia's lifeless, naked form.

He spent the next twenty minutes washing and dressing himself, then cleaned the room of her presence. With some difficulty he managed to dress her body. His last gesture was to close her eyelids.

His hand whipped away as he heard a gentle tapping on the door.

"Yes?" he inquired apprehensively.

"It's me... John."

Robert opened the door and allowed the young man entrance to the room then closed it quickly.

John saw Sonia's unmoving body and knew.

"Christ, Senator what have you done? What in God's name possessed you?" he hissed, moving over to Sonia's body and grabbing the phone.

For a man weighing one hundred and eighty pounds Robert's body moved surprisingly quickly as he reached out and plucked the phone from John's hand.

"No," said Robert, vehemently. "No police. We can sort this mess out together. It's simple... all we need do is put the body in another room and no one will trace it back to mine."

"Simple? Simple?" reiterated John's suddenly high pitched voice. "It may be simple to you Robert but I don't want to spend ten years in jail for conspiracy to murder."

"You won't have to if you put her body in the room this card-key fits," he said, brandishing the plastic card to room 166. "If you don't do as I ask then I'll say you killed her in your room and put her body in mine to implicate me. Don't forget there are probably traces of your semen still inside her."

The air hung heavily between them. John's mind whirled with the possibilities of his actions. If he helped the Senator now perhaps later he could use this to his own advantage. If anyone saw him moving the body he could say she was drunk, paralytic. He made up his mind.

"Robert, help me put her over my shoulders."

John's labored breathing in the confines of the stairwell echoed in his mind. 'I must get himself into better shape,' was a thought that filtered through as his right hand held onto the woman's cool legs.

His hurried stride over the corridor's dense carpet led him to the door marked 166. He deftly inserted the card and turned the handle. She was getting heavier and he wanted this over.

He shut the door noiselessly behind him and waited for his sight to adjust to the dim light.

The darkness uttered a single loud snore.

It was at that point John knew he had made a bad decision.

Slowly he discerned the area from where the snoring emanated - the bed. He walked over and accidentally kicked an empty glass bottle into the woodwork of the bedside cabinet. 'Shit!' he thought.

The snoring continued without missing a beat. Realization dawned that whoever was snoring was in a stupor. Even an earthquake would have difficulty waking them.

He slowly released his burden onto the bed alongside the snoring figure. Deftly searching Sonia's handbag he pocketed the Senator's money, discarding the bag on the floor and left the room.

In the stairwell he vowed the Senator would pay dearly for this night's work.

**********

A coldness in her back was the first unquiet indication Harriet experienced as she dragged her numbed mind from sleep. She turned over and felt a cold hand then opened her eyes to see Sonia's profile in the gray of early morning.

"Sonia?" she said, shaking the bleary remnants of sleep from her cloudy mind. "Sonia what is it?" Reaching over Harriet shook the woman's shoulders.

Then, it hit her. She was dead. Somehow she must have killed her but the how and why eluded her. She burst into tears as she sobbed her heart out for the loss of her lover.

A thought shattered her grief. She would be tried for her murder. Suddenly her guilt flew out of the window as she schemed for a way out of her predicament. Nothing came to mind. She continued to weep.

Her grief lasted longer than the horror of what she had supposedly done. She tried to find solace by searching Sonia's handbag that lay at the foot of the bed. The contents spilled onto the floor and she rummaged through them, searching for something, she knew not what. There were only the usual articles a woman carries with her.

'So few possessions with which to die,' she thought, breaking down again.

She picked up the clutch purse to put everything back when she felt a stiffness to the base of the purse that she knew should not be there.

Once she found the opening the plastic card was easily removed.

'Why?' she thought. 'Why would Sonia have booked herself another room in the same hotel when she knew she was spending the entire evening with me?'

The room number was 156. The floor below.

She hurriedly washed and dressed and left the room taking Sonia's key with her.

Once beside the door of room 156 she held her breath and placed an ear to the cool wood for a few moments. No sound. She unlocked the door.

Stepping inside, her immediate perception of the room's interior was that it was much larger than her own. The faint smell of male cologne hung in the air. An image of Robert stepped into her thoughts.

The curtains were drawn but all three rooms were empty. She checked the closet, drawers and bathroom cabinet but apart from the hotel's own linen and ornaments there were no visible signs of occupancy.

'Strange,' she thought, 'not even a change of underwear.'

She quickly made her way back to her own room and sat on the bed next to Sonia's cold body, contemplating what to do next. Somehow she had to get Sonia's body into room 156. 'But how?' she wondered.

It was seven o'clock when a noise in the corridor jolted her to the door to find the cause. Peering cautiously down the hallway she caught sight of a stockinged leg and a broom handle disappearing through a doorway. Outside of which stood a large mobile laundry basket together with another cart containing household cleaning equipment.

Her lethargy disappeared in a flash of inspiration. She lifted Sonia from the bed and dragged her under the armpits to the door where she left her propped upright against the wall.

Stealing a glance along the hallway in both directions she walked casually to the laundry basket and looked inside the room. Two maids were busy scrubbing out the bathroom. She whisked the trolley along the corridor and prayed mightily no one would come along. She took out most of the dirty linen then dumped her lover's body into the cart and covered it over. Gently closing her door she made for the service elevator that took her swiftly down to the next floor.

Would her luck hold?

With her heart in her mouth, Harriet strode up to the door, unlocked it and reaching into the bin lifted off the covers. She tossed them aside and grasping the body's legs she hung them over the side of the cart. Reaching under the woman's armpits she lifted with all the strength she could muster. Her exuberant momentum carried her backwards through the doorway.

Sonia's cold body pinned her to the floor.

Harriet nearly panicked and rolled Sonia away from her. She dragged her into the bedroom, drew down the covers, undressed her with practiced ease and placed her in the bed. She threw the bed covers over her body, tidied her clothes, wiped clean the room's card-key and left it on the bedside table.

Glancing round she tried to picture in her mind what she may have touched and thoroughly cleaned every surface. With a quick look around she wished her lover farewell and quickly retrieved the discarded linen.

The return journey was uneventful but she decided to reconnoiter first before wheeling the trolley into position.

No one was about and she placed it back into its original position.

She skipped away to her room. Swiftly and silently shutting the door behind her. She rested her shaking body against its cool surface.

'I did it,' she thought. 'I really did it.' Tears welled in her eyes as she shivered and sobbed her heart out. For the next twenty minutes she was inconsolable.

**********

The first Harriet knew of her husband's involvement with Sonia was at breakfast the following morning as she opened the folded newspaper. Its headline stabbed at her heart - 'SENATOR HELD ON CALL-GIRL MURDER.'

Hungrily devouring the front page story she began to realize that what she had smelt in the hotel room had been Robert's cologne.

She felt used and abused but knew her actions had been vindicated. Robert had killed their marriage. Sonia's death would ultimately rid Harriet of Robert.

Absentmindedly her fingers played with the hollow, gold crucifix hanging from her pale neck.

Inside, the warmth found Sonia's coiled red pubic hair.