“We have your reservation, sir,” the assistant manager said numbly, at the check-in counter. He was a guy in his late twenties with short-cropped prematurely gray hair and a scar over his left eye; he was pleasant enough but had an all-too-familiar look, the postwar equivalent of what we used to call the thousand-yard stare.
“Which theater?” I asked.
“Huh?” He flashed a nervous smile. “Pacific.”
“Me too. I helped remodel Guadalcanal.”
“At least you had some ground under you—I was on a carrier.”
“Listen, Mac, you got any suites available?”
“Just one; we’re underbooked, and even off-season, the suites get snapped up.”
“But you do have one?”
“Yes,” he said, but shook his head, no. “The Governor’s Suite. It’s pretty expensive—it’s where Pancho Villa, Judy Garland, Conrad Hilton and Clark Gable’ve stayed.”
“Together?”
That made him chuckle; he looked like he hadn’t chuckled in a while.
Pushing my hat back, I scratched my head. “I have to do some interviews and I’d rather not do them in a public place, like your bar or restaurant—”
“It’s fifty a night.”
“Christ, I just want a room, not stock in the joint. Never mind—my cheapskate boss would stick me with the bill. I’ll muddle through with my five-dollar room …”
“… It’s just the one night?”
“Yeah.”
“Take the bastard,” he said. He had a tiny smile as he handed me the key. “You gonna eat first?”
“Think so.”
“Leave your bag. I’ll get it to your room.”
“Thanks, Mac.”
“A warning, though …”
“Yeah?”
“The Governor’s Suite is Rebecca’s favorite room.”
“Who’s Rebecca?”
He raised the shrapnel-scarred eyebrow. “Our resident ghost. She was a chambermaid, murdered by her jealous lover here, back in the thirties.”
“No kidding. Was she … is she … good-looking?”
“They say she’s a gorgeous redhead.”
“What the hell—I always wanted to lay a ghost.”
I tipped my hat to him and headed over to where leather armchairs were grouped about a large carved-wood-and-stone fireplace; New Mexico or not, it was chilly enough for a fire, flames lazily licking logs. Only two of the comfy chairs were taken, by a couple I’d spotted when I came in. The glow of the fire lent the pair a golden patina that made them seem a part of that old photo I’d walked into.
They were seated next to each other, but not saying anything much, watching the fire like a disaffected married couple watching television. These were obviously my interviewees: they fit the descriptions Pearson had provided, although the woman’s didn’t do her justice, as she’d been pronounced merely beautiful.
In her late twenties, a petite, painfully pretty thing, sitting with her hands in her lap atop a small black patent-leather purse, Air Force nurse Maria Selff looked a little like Dorothy Lamour only better, and instead of a sarong she was wrapped up in a simple but shape-hugging short-sleeve powder-blue frock with Spanish-style white embroidery on the bodice. Her heart-shaped face was blessed with large, luminous, long-lashed dark blue eyes, a strong yet feminine nose, and full, cherrylipsticked lips, stark against her milky white complexion, starkly lovely next to the lustrous black hair of her shoulder-brushing pageboy.
This is what the boys overseas had been fighting for, what pilots had painted on the nose of their planes, what dogfaces had pinned up in their barracks and foxholes, what Varga and Petty had imagined and God had finally accomplished. And yet her manner was shy, even demure.
Her male companion was out of his league, but then most men would have been, even those that weren’t—as Glenn Dennis was—a mortician. Smelling of Old Spice, which was better than formaldehyde, Dennis was of medium height, slender, twenty-five maybe, with short brown hair, heavy streaks of eyebrow lending the only distinguishing feature to a pleasant, oval face; he struck me as rather mild and unassuming, a rather typical small-town merchant, even if he was dealing in death. He was duded up in a Western shirt, tan with brown trim and cuffs, with a bolo tie and crisply pressed stockman’s slacks—trying to be worthy of her, the poor sap.
“Mr. Dennis?” I asked.
He looked up sharply, stood, nodding, extending his hand. “Yes, sir. You must be Mr. Heller.”
“I must be,” I said, shaking the hand, and motioning for him to sit back down. “Miss Selff? Nathan Heller.”
“Oh my,” she said, looking up at me like a frightened child, covering her mouth with a hand. She began to tremble, and averted her eyes from mine.
Usually I have to work at it awhile, before getting a reaction like that out of a woman.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Is something wrong? Did I—”
She was shaking her head, still turning away from me, holding up a hand, calling a momentary halt. “No, no … you didn’t do anything … I’m the one who’s sorry …”
Goddamn, she was crying! Fumbling with her purse, finding a hanky, she dabbed at her eyes, sniffled, and regained her composure.
“You … you just reminded me of someone, that’s all,” she said. “It’s a rather startling resemblance, and I’m afraid it just … threw me a little.” She smiled, embarrassed. “Please sit down, Mr. Heller.”
I nodded to her as I took the chair beside Dennis. She got her compact out of her purse, checked her makeup—it was fine—then returned it to her purse and her purse to her lap and her folded hands to their patent-leather altar.
I appreciate your cooperation, Miss Selff … Mr. Dennis,” I said. “I know this was a difficult decision …”
“I’m afraid I’ve made a terrible mistake,” she said. Her voice was a fluid alto, still quivering slightly from the odd emotional outburst. “I’m putting all of us in harm’s way, here.”
“Now, Maria,” Dennis said, his voice higher-pitched than hers and as flat as hers was musical, “that’s nonsense. It’s been almost two years since the trouble.”
“We were followed,” she said gravely, her distressed gaze starting on him, landing on me—and holding.
“Were you?” I asked him.
Dennis shook his head, no, insistently. “Highway was darn near empty. One farmer in a beat-up old pickup went roarin’ around us, like to have his fenders fall off. That wasn’t any government man.”
“They have devious ways,” she said.
Her melodrama was at once silly and disturbing.
“I’d like to interview you, individually,” I said. “But first, let’s get to know each other a little. Why don’t we have dinner? I’ll admit to being starved; I haven’t eaten since Chicago.”
“I could eat,” Dennis admitted.
She shrugged. “Fine.”
Just off the lobby, the dining room was called Rebecca’s (after the gorgeous ghost, whose image in stained glass adorned several windows) and we had the place pretty much to ourselves. Despite the Victorian trappings, the menu included plenty of traditional New Mexican dishes, and I tried the green chile stew—which made first my mouth, and then my eyes, water—while Dennis had spareribs with chauquehue (cornmeal and red chile) and Miss Selff a small bowl of soup, Anasazi bean with lamb, which smelled so good I had the waitress bring me a cup.
I used small talk to get information out of them and, I hoped, put them at ease. Dennis, it seemed, was not a full-fledged mortician at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, but an assistant, serving a sort of internship.
“I graduated in ’46, from the San Francisco Mortuary College,” he added cheerfully, cutting meat off a bone. He said it as if he were looking forward to the class reunion.
Miss Selff had been a nurse since 1945, only it wasn’t “Miss.”
“Actually,” she said, “it’s Mrs. Selff. My husband was a pilot, Army Air Force.”
I drank some ice water; those green chiles were getting to me. “What does he do now, Mrs. Selff?”
“His B-17 went down over Dresden.”
“I’m sorry.” That was a tough break: only a handful of planes were shot down in the devastating raid on the so-called Florence of Germany. “Do you have any children, Mrs. Selff?”
“No. We didn’t have much time together—just one leave.”
She looked like she might start crying again, so I dropped the subject.
The mortician, however, picked it up. “After the tragedy, Maria decided to dedicate herself to her husband’s memory, and stay in the service.” He beamed at her. “I really admire her for that.”
This, understandably, seemed to embarrass her.
She pushed her barely touched bowl of soup away and leaned forward, the big blue eyes wide enough to dive into. “Is it possible, Mr. Heller, that we could talk more privately than this?”
“I’ve arranged a suite for that very purpose, Mrs. Selff. But I would like to interview you separately.”
Dennis frowned. “Why? Our stories kinda dovetail, you know.”
“That’s the problem.” I sipped my ice water. “I really need to hear your stories independently. It’s not good investigatory technique to allow interview subjects to interact…. The result can be a collaboration that doesn’t truly represent what either party saw.”
“I’d really like to get away from this public area,” she said, scooting her chair away, wadding her napkin and tossing it on the table, with an air of finality. “I don’t want to be seen.”
I got the room key out of my pocket. “Why don’t you go ahead to the suite, and wait there? I can interview Glenn downstairs, in the bar.”
She worked up a tiny smile, but on those luscious lips it was monumental; I wasn’t quite in love with her yet—at this point I’d only steal for her: we were hours away from murder. “Could you walk me to the suite, Mr. Heller? I’d feel more at ease.”
“Certainly.”
The mortician started to rise, but the Selff woman gave me a quick, narrow-eyed glance that sent a message: she wanted to speak to me, alone.
“Glenn,” I said, with a familiarity generally reserved for close friends, “why don’t you settle up the bill for me—just charge it to my room, Suite 101. Then go on down to the bar and find us a nice private booth.”
“Sure,” he said, but he obviously sensed something. “See you in a little bit, Maria.”
She smiled and nodded to him, rather stiffly.
Then she and I were on our way to the suite, moving together down a wide empty hallway. We’d walked silently for maybe a minute when Maria planted her tiny black-pump-shod feet on the carpet and swiveled toward me, clasping her hands tight before her like she was trying to keep a lightning bug from escaping. Her voice trembled as she said, “I need your help.”
“Name it.”
Her eyes tensed. “Glenn … he’s a problem.”
“How so?”
She sighed and her bosom strained at the embroidered bodice and, as I tried not to pass out, she looked away from me and began walking again, slower; I tagged along.
“We were dating,” she said, “back in ’47, at the time of … you know, at the time of all this … strangeness. We’d just gone together a few weeks, a month at most, and then when the strangeness began, I … I told Glenn it was better we didn’t see each other.”
“And not just because of the ‘strangeness,’ I take it.”
She nodded, smirking with chagrin. “I’m afraid I used that as an excuse to break it off with Glenn. He was moving way too fast … I’d only just started dating again … after Steve died, for the longest time, I …”
“I understand.”
“Anyway, now, almost two years later, against my better judgment, I agree to talk about what happened, and suddenly it’s thrown Glenn and me back together—I allowed him to drive me down here.”
“I see. And he’s trying to rekindle a spark you never felt.”
She stopped again, looking up at me with an expression that was not without compassion. “Yes. Glenn’s a nice man, but he thinks ‘no’ is a three-letter word.”
“Nice men usually spell better than that.”
The expression darkened, she shook her head and began walking again, more quickly now. “I don’t want to ride home with him tonight. I don’t trust him.”
“Hey, you wouldn’t catch me dead, riding with a mortician.”
That made her smile, just a little; she started walking again. Did I mention she smelled of Evening in Paris perfume, ever so delicately?
She was saying, “I’m enough of a nervous wreck without having to worry about those clammy mortician hands of his…. Would you drive me back to Roswell?”
“Tonight?”
“No, tomorrow morning…. I’ll get a room or something.”
Normally a letch like me would take this as an opening; but something wasn’t right about it, and I said so. “I thought you didn’t want to be seen with me. That was the whole point of meeting away from town—”
“I left my car in a parking lot at Bottomless Lake, southeast of Roswell. That’s where Glenn picked me up. You can drop me there. No one will see.”
“You should have just come separately …”
Abruptly she stopped, and clutched my arm: a tiny hand with surprising power. “I needed to talk to him about what happened; I needed to try and make him understand how dangerous this is. I need to do that with you, too, Mr. Heller.”
Then she let go of my arm and began to walk again, slowly, saying nothing.
Soon we were at the door to Suite 101. I asked, “Do you want me to tell Glenn you’re not going back with him?”
She beamed at me and it was like watching one of those speeded-up movies where they show flowers blooming. “Will you handle it, Mr. Heller? I’d be very grateful.”
That voice … she talked like Dinah Shore sang….
“Sure,” I said. “Which is a four-letter word, by the way … but don’t worry about it.”
That got another little smile out of her, and she handed me my key, and I unlocked the door for her, and she slipped into the suite, the first pretty girl who ever figured my hotel room was a safe haven from wolves.
In the basement of the hotel was the Western-themed Red Dog Saloon, with timbered fake-adobe walls, an intricately carved mahogany bar and wanted posters of Billy the Kid, Jesse James and Black Jack Ketchum. A bartender in a red vest and a barmaid in a dancehall dress were entertaining a handful of couples sipping beers or cocktails at tables and booths. This seemed to be—in the off-season, anyway—a place for couples, not necessarily married ones, to get quietly away.
Glenn sat in a back booth, sipping a glass of beer. I slid in across from him.
“She’s a little high-strung,” I said, arching an eyebrow.
“No kiddin’! She was weird all the way down here. You know, we used to go out, a little, you know—date? Hell, I know that’s over but I don’t see any reason we shouldn’t be civil to each other.”
“She wasn’t civil?”
“More like sullen. She’s really got herself worked up over this.” He sighed. “Not that I blame her. If she saw what she says she saw, it’d give anybody a permanent case of the willies.”
“Glenn—is it all right, me using your first name?”
“Sure. You go by Nathan or Nate?”
“Make it Nate. Glenn, you don’t share Mrs. Selff’s fears about reprisals?”
The heavy eyebrows lifted. “Well, hell, Nate, maybe she’s right—there were all kinds of threats and even some strongarm tactics …”
“By the military?”
“So they say, and I witnessed a little of it, myself. Anyway, there was enough of that nonsense that I can see Maria bein’ spooked. But that was almost two years ago, and—speaking for myself—there’s been nothin’ since.”
I got out my spiral notepad. “Why don’t you tell me your story, Gle
nn? Do you mind if I take notes?”
He didn’t mind. Back in ’47, on the afternoon of Saturday, July 5, Dennis had been “minding the store” at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell. Ballard’s, “the biggest firm of undertakers in town,” had a contract with the RAAF (Roswell Army Air Field) for both embalming and ambulance service.
So it was no surprise to Dennis, receiving a call from the RAAF’s mortuary affairs officer.
“This fella,” Dennis said, cradling his beer in both hands, “Captain somebody, don’t remember his name, he was more an administrator than a technical specialist, and didn’t know the ins and outs of handling corpses.”
The officer had asked Dennis if Ballard’s had any small caskets available, child- or youth-size, and if those caskets could be “hermetically sealed.” The assistant mortician had said there wasn’t much call for the latter, but as to the former, the funeral home had one kid casket in stock, and could call the warehouse in Amarillo and have more in by the next morning.
Dennis had asked, “Has there been some kind of crash, or accident, Captain?”
The Ballard Funeral Home had handled as many as twenty bodies at a time, from crashes out at the base, and had invested in building a special chamber next to the embalming room specifically for such emergencies.
But the captain had said, “No, no … we’re, uh, having a meeting and discussing provisions for, uh … future eventualities…. We’ll let you know when and if we need a coffin.”
“Well,” Dennis said, “if you need a bunch of little coffins quick, I gotta get the call in to Amarillo before three, and that’s just a couple hours from now.”
“At present I’m only gathering information,” the mortuary officer said, thanked the mortician and hung up. Dennis shrugged off the peculiar call and was in the driveway, washing one of the hearses, when the phone rang again. Running in to answer it, Dennis found the mortuary officer on the other end of the line.
“Glenn,” the captain asked, “how do you handle bodies that have been exposed out in the desert sun?”
“For how long?”
“Four or five days. What happens to tissue when it’s laid out in the sun like that?”
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