cat in a crimson haze

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Temple hadn't liked that.

  Cats were reputed to possess some special sixth sense, a kind of animal ESP. Why was the cat suddenly bent on keeping her such close company only now that she was about to enter a set of rooms purported to be haunted?

  Temple looked down at her feet.

  Midnight Louie's limpid eyes were gazing up, the irises as big as black marbles in the soft-lit hotel hallway, the green only a halo around the fathomless darkness of his expression.

  "Ridiculous!" Temple told herself--or him. Or the so-called ghost. She wrenched the key right and turned the knob at the same time.

  The door eased open with a truly corny creaking sound.

  Oh, please.

  She stepped inside, feeling her high heels sink even deeper.

  The room was dark, its windows shaded. A scent of stale lemon-wax perfumed the dimness.

  When Temple's palm patted down the wall for the light switch, all she felt was the slightly rough pattern of wallpaper.

  Louie was no longer brushing her ankles.

  A clock ticked with a showy sharpness of sound no longer allowed in battery-operated models of today. Apparently something in this room was plugged in, so maybe a lamp was too.

  Temple shuffled her feet over the carpeting, wary of unseen barriers. Her eyes were adjusting enough to distinguish horizontal bars of faint light on the right wall.

  Shadowy things shaped themselves to the dimensions of the room: a sofa in the center. Or a coffin... A tall narrow cabinet against one wall. Or a mummy case... A chair skirt snagging on her instep. Or the brush of spectral fingers at her ankle . . .

  She glimpsed a shoulder-high shape near the sofa. Either a lamp shade . . . or a Chinese peasant in a coolie hat.

  Hey, there was nothing spooky about a Chinese peasant in a coolie hat.

  Temple delicately touched the silhouette, feeling her fingernails scratch taut-stretched taffeta . . . or the papery skin of a seated corpse!

  She pawed below the brittle fabric, found the cool, urn-shaped outline of a porcelain lamp base . . . or the smooth bronze sides of a funerary urn containing ashes not quite cold, ...

  She clutched at the phantom of a light switch, something plastic that would click. What she found was the shape of an ornate key, but it turned. Cherry-tinted light flooded down on her hands like diluted blood, but her fingernails looked gore-black.

  A sudden rattling sound-- the clatter of skeletal bones? -- made her start, nearly overturning the lamp shade. The sound came from the shuttered windows, and then a broader streak of daylight broke through.

  By its narrow band of brightness, Temple navigated her way to the window, where Midnight Louie was perched on a fragile-legged blond Hepplewhite table, one massive paw thrust into the light.

  The window wasn't covered by shutters. Temple saw, but blinds--broad-vaned, industrial-strength wooden blinds that made thoroughly modern metal miniblinds and micro-mini-blinds look like effete little toothpicks.

  Blinds were nothing. Temple edged to the side, found the cords and pulled until the vanes stood up and took notice of the sunny day outside.

  In the greater light, she marched to the next window and performed the same chore, then dusted her palms. There wasn't any grit between them, but there should have been.

  Temple surveyed the living room where Jersey Joe Jackson had wheeled his last deal. By the time of his death, he had lived here in sufferance, according to some, a penniless, aging has-been tolerated only for the memory of his own legend.

  She toured the last living arrangements of the late Jersey Joe Jackson, pausing at the lamp to shake her head at the shade's whimsical form--that of a crimson-laced corset. Surrealism, she recalled, had influenced late forties decorative accessories, however funky the form.

  The apple-green satin drapes framing the windows fell in still-shining cartridge pleats, fluted like a classical column. Padded valances were upholstered in the same satin, and curled on the ends like huge Ionic capitols, or an upswept forties hairdo. Given their formality and height, Temple couldn't help thinking of Lieutenant Molina.

  Midnight Louie, having successfully drawn her attention to the blinds, had retreated to the chartreuse-upholstered sofa. There, the green of his eyes shone to advantage in the flattering daylight that shrank his dark pupils to mere slits.

  Temple analyzed the room, understanding why it was part of what was called a ''Ghost Suite."

  The forties-style furniture was an odd albino amalgam of modern lightness of color and traditional eighteenth-century furniture forms. The graceful blond mahogany legs of sofa, tables and chairs seemed almost gilded in the afternoon light, but they were actually silver-white in tone, except for the frankly blond cabinet between the windows.

  The carpeting was dark, the better to show off the ashen-legged furniture. Temple stared down at a matted ocean of forest-green leaves and exotic maroon blossoms. She felt she was walking on Monet's water lilies.

  A pale Sheraton desk hugged the wall by the door. Temple trod water lilies to the desk, then switched on the green-glass-shaded banker's light hunkering over a gold-tooled, green leather deskpad.

  She wasn't surprised that everything worked here. The place was untouched, but not untended.

  The effluvia of thirty years or more floated in the shallow central desk drawer. Old bank books bound by rotting rubber bands. Stamps so outdated they were worth only a penny.

  Unused stationery as yellow and brittle as autumn leaves. Some of it was imprinted ''Joshua Tree Hotel & Casino," with smaller block letters underneath announcing ''Las Vegas's biggest little hotel."

  Temple was surprised by the number of stubby pencils in the drawer, a collection formed before the dawning of the age of ballpoint and felt-tip pens. The gaudy barrel of a fifties Esterbrook pen rolled under her fingertips as she probed.

  She found a letter to Jersey Joe Jackson on faded rose stationery signed "Mona." The contents were almost deliberately bland and there was no return address.

  Temple pulled out the delicate desk chair and sat on its bold maroon and forest green satin stripes relieved by a pinstripe of chartreuse.

  Dust fuzz hobnobbed in the drawer corners with rusted paperclips. Someone had lined the drawer with the same bamboo and jungle growth wallpaper that swathed the walls. Not Jersey Joe, Temple would bet. Anyone nicknamed Jersey Joe would not be the drawer-lining type.

  She found a string of tiny keys, the type shaped for hard-sided suitcases of another era, for ladies little jewel boxes and diaries, for strongboxes and secret cabinets. They jangled like jewelry and would have looked swell--that was a forties expression, wasn't it, along with jeepers creepers and mairsy doats?--silverplated and dangling from a chain bracelet today.

  What did these fascinating Lilliputian keys open once? Why had a two-timing crook with a penchant for squirreling away ill-gotten goods kept them? Didn't anybody at this hotel have a curious bone in their body?

  The room's silence was utter, to the point of rebuff. Temple fished out something caught in the crevice of the drawer--a holy card edged in gilt, picturing some pastel-tinted female saint or other looking sappy under a coyly tilted halo. The back text marked the passing of one Harold Lynch on October 8, 1943. Poor Harold had only been thirty-three. In the drawer's right back corner, a white satin garter coiled like a deflated balloon. Several dull red wooden gambling chips lay scattered amid the dusty papers like lost coat buttons.

  The deeper but smaller drawers on either side held plastic boxes filled with paperclips and rubber bands, a deck of well-thumbed playing cards bearing the image of a robust pinup girl with very long hair and legs.

  "Ouch!'' Temple had found a hoard of thumbtacks-- rusted.

  She slammed the offending drawer shut and squeezed her fingertip until she had produced a Sleeping Beauty drop of blood as crimson as a Ceylonese ruby cabochon.

  She rose and went through an ajar door, looking for the bathroom. She found herself in a dim bedroom and stumbled her way i
nto a black-hole-of-Calcutta closet before trying another doorknob with her good hand.

  This time there was a wall switch. It flooded the room with a funhouse-mirror-view of Temple holding her right wrist and blinking.

  The bathroom was smaller than it seemed. Tiled in large squares of mirror, none of which matched reflections perfectly with their neighbors, it created a fractured, surreal multiplicity of images--maroon porcelain pedestal sink, commode and built-in bathtub; black octagon-tiled floor and--surprise!--a silver-leafed ceiling that softly echoed the reflections below.

  Temple went to the sink and turned a massive porcelain handle.

  Water flowed, not fast, but it flowed. She guessed that even the original plumbing to this suite had been left intact during the remodeling.

  The water washed away her blood, its brightness lost against the sink's maroon bowl.

  Temple pinched forefinger and thumb together and hoped the pressure would stop the bleeding. She wasn't half done here and it would be tacky to drip blood on the furnishings.

  Presumably that grisly privilege would be left to the ghost of Jersey Joe Jackson when, and if, he decided to show himself.

  Leaving the bathroom light on. Temple moved back to the bedroom and opened the blinds at its two windows. She turned to face twin beds covered in chartreuse satin . . . and one of them was doubly upholstered, since Midnight Louie was now sprawled in jet-black array on the becoming back-ground.

  ''Oh, you think you look like the cat's pajamas on that poison green color, don't you?" she chided Louie, glad nevertheless for his company.

  ''Now. The silver dollars were hidden in a mattress. If I were going to hide something as large as an architectural plan, a mattress would do fine."

  Temple squatted by the twin bedframe bare of lounging cat to pull up the coverlet. The white cotton sheets were scratchy. No ironing-free miracle-fiber blends in the forties, and no color but white.

  She untucked the generous bottom sheet--no fitted sheets then, either--and grimaced to unveil a modern-looking mattress. Digging the sheet free around the bed, she finally revealed an appalling label: Beautyrest. She doubted that brand dated to the forties, and doubted even more that this cloud pattern fabric did. Nothing leafy, green, or jungle like about it.

  Louie squeaked a protest when she jerked the bottom sheet free on the neighboring mattress to find the same disgusting, spanking new, modern-day fabric. When Jill and Johnny had discovered what they had been sleeping on--a mound of stolen silver dollars, and what were they doing in this supposedly never-rented room anyway?--the old mattress covering must have shredded. Van von Rhine, tiptop hotel manager that she was, had replaced it with a new one, and its mate, so the two beds, however unused, would match.

  Temple made obeisance to the beds--and indirectly to Midnight Louie, who had not moved so much as a hair as she wrestled the linens--then retidied the sheets.

  She rose and studied the bedroom, finally going to a bureau. She jerked open its reluctant drawers in turn. Each was lined with the living room wallpaper. Under each lining was bare wood.

  She returned to the bathroom, gazing pensively at its accouterments and herself lost in a sea of semblances. No place to hide paper here; besides, it would have rotted by now.

  That left the living room.

  Midnight Louie anticipated her by jumping off the bed and trotting back to the main room.

  Temple followed, wondering what had stirred his sluggish soul.

  She entered the room just in time to hear a faint clicking. Aha! Superior feline hearing strikes again.

  Temple eyed the open blinds at the windows, welcoming the bold bars of light striping the floral carpeting. No self-respecting spirit would deign to appear against such a well-lit background. Then her own ears traced the snick-snick sound to its source.

  The keyhole. Someone very physical was attempting to break and enter.

  Louie stood by the door, stretching his considerable length up it until his paw patted the doorknob, which was beginning to tremble preparatory to turning.

  Temple looked around. No place to run, no other exit. No place to hide. She darted to Louie's side and flattened herself against the wall, hoping the cat would divert whoever entered long enough for her to brush by and escape.

  Unless it was a hotel maid. The rooms were amazingly dust-free.

  While Temple stood in closer communion with the atrocious wallpaper than she would have wished, Louie retreated from the door and gave a welcoming meow.

  Traitor!

  The door swept open at last, ending the suspense and nearly smashing Temple behind its solid bulk.

  Keys jingled. Someone moved a couple steps into the room. Temple held her breath, wishing she'd brought the shield of her tote bag from the office below.

  The form pushed farther into the room as Louie turned around in the middle of the carpet and flopped heavily on his side, Good distracting tactic, Louie! Play the friendly pussycat.

  Temple edged around the door and stopped as the intruder turned.

  "What are you doing here?" they shrieked at each other in unsettled unison.

  Van von Rhine put one hand to her breastbone and one to her pale blond French twist.

  Temple wasn't sure whether she was more protective of her heart rate or her hairdo.

  "You!" she exclaimed. "I'd heard Chef Song mention that the blinds were open in this room.

  They're never open."

  "So you came up, alone, to investigate?" Temple sounded as incredulous as she felt.

  ''Apparently you did too."

  ''Apparently . . . not. I'm the disturber of the dust, the barer of the blinds."

  "Why?"

  "I had a wild idea."

  "That's what you're paid for, but why have them in this suite, of all places?"

  "Because, of all places, this is the one where Jersey Joe Jackson was liable to hide something. He'd done it before."

  "Hide what?"

  "The missing original plans to the basement."

  "Why do they matter?"

  "I don't know that they do, but I decided to take a look for myself."

  Van's piercing blue eyes flicked to the doorknob. "How did you get in?"

  "Pass key." Temple flourished her open sesame.

  "How did you get a key? They're only kept in my office."

  "Yancy got one from a helpful Fontana brother."

  "Which one?',' Van's voice was sheer steel.

  "Who can say for certain with Fontana brothers? Listen, what's so awful about my trying to track down a lead from the past? I'm supposed to dream up a dynamic new theme for this hotel.

  I have to dig deep for that."

  "Not here." Van looked around, then clasped her hands over her bare upper arms and shuddered. "It truly is haunted. I can hardly bear being here, but in a sense, I'm the guardian of this place. There's nothing here, Temple, but things we shouldn't disturb."

  ''Did you replace the mattresses?''

  Van looked startled. ''Yes, but how--"

  "Then there's nothing in them. What about the old ones?"

  "Destroyed. They were broken down."

  "Did anybody examine them first?"

  "Of course. After the silver dollars came tumbling out, you can imagine that every spring and piece of cotton batting was torn apart."

  "So it never was there."

  "This . . . missing plan, you mean? It's only the basement, after all, and that was extensively remodeled two years ago."

  "Why is it the only floor plan missing?"

  "Because it wasn't important!" Van answered, exasperated.

  "Or because it was the only important one."'

  "Can we leave?"

  "This place really makes you nervous."

  "Doesn't it spook you?"

  "No," Temple replied stoutly, completely forgetting her earlier heebie-jeebies, another vivid forties expression.

  She turned to regard the room again. "Only the bedroom bureau drawers are big enough to ho
ld an architectural plan, and they don't. The closet is dead space, empty as a tomb. Sorry,"

  she added as Van shivered again. "The desk is too small for anything. The only possible other place to look would be inside the walls. After all, Jersey Joe built this place. He could have easily concealed something in the construction."

  "I am not," Van said grimly, "tearing the walls apart. I refused that option even to hunt for more blasted silver dollars, though everyone pooh-poohed my notorious superstitions. The point of leaving this suite alone was preserving whatever . . . ambiance it had and respecting whatever . . . influence the dead Mr. Jackson still has. Had."

  "A pity"--Temple glowered around like an interior decorator with indigestion--"this wallpaper design is so busy. Who could tell if it had ever been tampered with--by anyone? Or anything."

  Her eyes fell on the desk again, with it's perplexingly ordinary contents. The banker's lamp beamed down on the rich leather surface. Something, a dust mote perhaps, danced in the lamp's narrow, bright beam of light.

  Louie catapulted to the chair seat and atop the desk before Temple could blink at the motion. He began pawing at the, lamp, pushing it askew.

  Van uttered a strangled scream, but Temple saw the reason for Louie's attack.

  "A moth," she said, watching its small gray form flutter upward as Louie stretched three feet up the wall--and then jumped upward another foot--"to capture it. "Just a moth."

  "There is no such thing as 'just a moth' in a hotel," Van replied, the starch stiffening her voice again.

  Temple pulled Louie down with little resistance, getting her nose right against the wallpaper in the process.

  ''Wait a minute. The paper is faded over the desk."

  ''I told you. Except for the mattresses, this room has not been touched in thirty years. Of course the wallpaper is old and faded--"

  "But more faded here. See? A big oblong over the desk, like something had hung there."

  ''Something did hang there." Van was speaking through her teeth now. "Could you please close the blinds so we can leave? These rooms are bone-chilling."