“I’m always surprised to see another Santa Fe face down here,” Daniel Brennan had said as an excuse for his dwelling regard, but, apart from Texans, New Mexicans formed the largest bloc of U.S. visitors. In the course of one weekend the autumn before, while staying at another motel, Mary had seen three people she recognized.
Firmly, she resumed her book, wishing that it were possible for her to like steak-and-kidney pie.
The pool area was deserted, and the underwater light had been switched off.
The man on the concrete deck had been holding his right hand in the water for over five minutes. Two fingers had been frostbitten when he was a boy, and even after all these years any prolonged exposure to cold turned them a startling tallow color, the nails tinged with blue. People tended to comment on it.
He took his hand out of the water, straightened, used his handkerchief and walked away from the pool, lighting a cigarette for anyone who might be watching although curtains were drawn everywhere. Carelessly, a guest taking a stroll before retiring or entering one of the bars for a nightcap, he passed under one of the lanterns directing the way back and glanced at his hand.
As he had hoped, he would not draw any attention to himself if he decided to use the pool. His middle fingers had not turned white.
At something after ten o’clock, Mary gave up on the recovery of her books.
Her swim had revived her briefly that afternoon; so, later, had drinks and dinner. Now, all at once, the various encounters of the day had her so stunned that it was a matter of almost no moment when the stopping mechanism of the bathtub did not work, so that she had to settle for a shower instead of a sleepy soak, or when, presently, her bedside light did not function either; all this in spite of the imposing trappings.
Jenny, necessarily reduced to the hotel’s brochure about what to see in Juarez, offered to turn off her own lamp at once, but Mary assured her, “Not on my account.” Unlike many people, she found a faint reflected glow on her eyelids a positive aid to sleep, a pleasant borderland between wakefulness and dreaming. Back turned to the other bed, she gazed between dropping lashes at the door in its well of dimness beyond the bathroom and facing closet . . .
. . . And heard herself arguing away the marriage to Spencer Hume. She had been mainly a devil’s advocate at first, because neither of them regarded such a step lightly, but little by little, like a convert to vegetarianism putting someone else off his chosen food, she had convinced them both, although at the end Spence had said, between bewilderment and anger, “Damn it, Mary, we can’t both have been crazy.”
Unlike people in plays and books and possibly real life, they had not remained friends. They had avoided each other assiduously, not easy in Santa Fe and posing difficulties for hostesses who had entertained them both, until Spence’s company had offered to transfer him to San Francisco and he had leaped at the chance. Taking with him his blue gaze which could suddenly fall into a reverie about the oddest things, and the flicker of beginning gray in the dark hair above his ears although he was only thirty-four.
But that wasn’t Spence. That was . . .
“Mary,” Jenny was saying in a frightened, insistent voice. “There’s someone at the door, trying to get in.”
Mary, jerked out of her dark-gold, sleep-buzzing trance, saw that the doorknob was indeed turning, sprang out of bed, cried distractedly, “Oh, I don’t believe this!” for the benefit of whoever it was, and fumbled her way into her robe as she went to the door. “Who is it?”
“Alfredo.”
At close to eleven o’clock, if not after? Still a little dazed, Mary undid the chain which was more of a decoration than any real safeguard and opened the door a cautious two inches. A pile of recognizable books met her eye, with above them the expressionless face of the bellboy. There was no apology for the late hour, no query, even by means of facial gymnastics, as to whether he had disturbed them.
Mary opened the door wider, took the books, thanked him, didn’t ask where he had found them, and knew that she was spineless to give him a dollar for this eccentric and semihostile delivery. It crossed her mind as she closed the door after him that possibly he made a lucrative practice of holding odd items for ransom—in the flurry of arrival people were apt to put down things like cameras or prescription sunglasses—but perhaps she was prejudiced because of that signal down the corridor.
“This place is crazy,” said Jenny with conviction from her bed. “Doesn’t anybody ever knock?”
“Apparently not. Well, let’s hope that’s the last of it.” Mary went back to the door and hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the outer knob; it was a small deterrent but it might help. She returned to her bed, half-expecting it to buckle to the floor, exchanged a last farewell with Jenny, who turned off her lamp, and tried to recapture her earlier drowsiness without, however, resorting to Spence.
She kept an eye on the doorknob for a while, in case the staff should suddenly remember more errands here, but it began to swim away as fatigue took over. There was a dim and reassuring wash of gold in that corner of the room; evidently the rambling circuit of the Casa de Flores stayed lit through the night. In the other bed, Jenny gave a few settling flounces and retreated almost at once into a sleep-bound silence.
Mary fell asleep herself, her consciousness grazed now and then by the sounds of people calling to each other in the corridor outside, and once, although that might have been part of a dream, a muted cry.
In another motel room, less than a mile away, a girl who looked extraordinarily pretty even with her hair in rollers was saying to a man’s shadow projected on the wall opposite the open door of the bathroom, “I declare, if I’d known you were going to keep me locked up like this I wouldn’t have come.”
“You weren’t locked up, and I told you tonight was business.”
Someone warier might have taken alarm from his tone; the girl did not. “Well, what about tomorrow? Is that business too?” Because she was creaming her face as she spoke, and then turning her head a little to examine one perfect eyebrow, she missed the lifting and down-chopping motion of the shadow arm, a soundless expression of rage.
But the voice that came out of the bathroom a second later was calm. “Tomorrow we’ll do whatever you like. After—” he had had time to take her measure, and he was almost playful, like a man holding candy just out of a child’s reach”—you do something for me.”
7
MARY, waking to the unfamiliar walls and furniture and window, thought at first that the day was overcast. It took her moments to remember that a certain hour of the morning here the sunlight was so white that the very air seemed to fume with it, turning the bluest of skies smoky by contrast.
Jenny’s bed was empty, and the familiar worry sprang up, to be coped with by the familiar arguments. She had gone for an early swim—but the watch on the night table said that it wasn’t early, a little after nine-thirty, and when Mary went into the bathroom Jenny’s bathing-suit was hanging from the shower rail.
She’s a big girl now, thought Mary, and had scarcely completed this far-from-comforting reflection when there was a tap and then the sound of the key and Jenny came in, triumphantly bearing a newspaper. “I got the last one. You were sleeping so soundly that I didn’t want to wake you.”
She wanted the Jumble, of course, because events in El Paso could scarcely be of interest. Although— Mary finished dressing—Jenny also entertained herself with the unlikely conjunction of names in wedding announcements, for which she had an eagle eye. (“Miss Ethel Racey and Frederick Scoot . . . maid of honor, Miss Glenda Walker.”)
At this hour of the morning, the dining room was being readied for lunch. The coffee shop, sparsely populated, appeared to be in the grip of one of the internecine wars which occasionally occur in public places, the hostess in rivetted conversation with the cashier, waitresses in dissolving and regrouping knots, busboys, of insufficient rank for these councils, staring enviously. Factions in the kitchen, thought Mary, or a key empl
oyee threatening to quit and sides being taken.
She was eventually able to order orange juice, cantaloupe, and coffee, recommending the fruit to Jenny, who shook her head and wanted only a small glass of tomato juice and coffee into which she would unobtrusively drop a saccharine tablet. “Suit yourself,” said Mary, careless, “but I thought you might like to have a look at the shops this morning, with an eye to birthday presents or even Christmas, and it’s apt to be a lengthy process.”
This wasn’t true—to the disappointment of neophytes who looked forward to some keen haggling, shopping in this part of the city was a straightforward, one-price affair—but to Mary’s gratification Jenny succumbed to the melon. A waitress presently tore herself away from the far wall to refill their coffee cups, but was still so fascinated by the murmurs and gesticulations going on at the cashier’s stand that she kept the urn tilted and Mary, instinctively following her gaze, was caught unaware by a hot flow out of the saucer, over the table edge, and into her lap.
The ensuing fluster with a hastily produced damp napkin seemed to communicate itself around the room. Mary reassured the girl, who looked panicky under the menacing regard of the hostess, and let a negligent interval go by before she said to Jenny, “There is nothing quite like cold coffee, inside or outside,” and left the table.
In the upstairs corridor, icy in her wet dress and pastily clinging slip, she took automatic note of the room service cart outside the room which was beginning to assume a Poelike character, and the cleaning cart, midway along the other side. A maid—her back was to the light from the window at the end of the corridor, but from her height and the outline of her head she was the earring-hunter of yesterday—was bundling linen into a laundry bag while she listened to the man who was already so strangely familiar to Mary that she could have picked him out of a crowded station.
The man from the pool, concerned about Jenny. Mary let herself into her room just as he was starting to turn.
She had travelled light to Juarez as always, two dresses for daytime and two for night, so it was a matter of the mint-leafed white which she had worn in the car on the way down. Fortunately, it was of a fabric which started to shed wrinkles the moment it was placed on a hanger. Mary washed her coffee-stained clothes rapidly and, key in hand, stood at the door for a puzzled moment, as if there were something else she should be doing before she left the room.
It couldn’t, said the age-old and totally false reassurance in such instances, be very important.
On the half-landing between the slippery flights of stairs, she encountered the man from the pool, who had been openly waiting for her. He wasn’t the astonishment of the night before, but she still felt a small jolt along her nerves—because so often she had exited from after-theater ladies’ rooms to where Spence waited, or come home to find him pacing her living room when she had been delayed at work?
He was friendly and casual, and said by way of explanation that he had realized only after leaving her last night that he hadn’t introduced himself— Owen St. Ives. He knew Mary’s name, from Jenny. He added that he had been trying to find out from the maid, without success, the identity of the invisible occupants at the end of the corridor. “None of my business, but I’m torn between a case of plague and somebody who’s been getting white roses from the Mafia. Unfortunately, the maid doesn’t speak English.”
He glanced inquiringly at Mary as he spoke, as though she might have succeeded where he had failed. His eyes weren’t brown, as they had looked in the orange glow from the wall sconces the night before, but very dark blue. “I know,” began Mary, and stopped, because it would be ridiculous to confide to a man she didn’t even know the woman’s strange and silent invasion of her room.
They had reached the doorway of the coffee shop, and Owen St. Ives lifted a hand in greeting to Jenny, still at the table. He said to Mary, “You’re staying at least through tonight, aren’t you? Then I’ll see you both later, I hope.”
Mary rejoined her cousin, and saw that her impression from a distance had been correct: Jenny wore the faint remains of a blush. Clearly she had a penchant for men considerably older than herself, and just as clearly Brian Beardsley had been supplanted.
Good, said Mary to herself with force, because this meant that the problem had largely evaporated. Still, it was something of a surprise to realize that her senses might have betrayed her again, there on the stairs; that St. Ives, who could have registered only a blur of motion as she entered her room, might very well have been waiting not for her, but for Jenny.
Out into the blaze of light to the car which, presently, Mary surrendered to the watchful eye of a brown-uniformed policeman. Even without a parking meter to be fed by him, this was standard procedure. Where no such official existed, bands of small boys took over.
In various shops—the main market could wait until afternoon—she and Jenny looked at tooled leather handbags, flower-decorated straw bags, onyx chess sets and pottery owls, sheaves of brilliant paper flowers, hand-embroidered cotton blouses and dresses, mirrors set in sunbursts of tin or mosaics of rainbow glass. Under this assault of color and variety Jenny began to acquire a glazed and indecisive expression, but finally bought a mantilla for her mother and a pair of silver filigree earrings which were not, Mary considered, going to do a thing for Gerald Acton.
Having completed the last purchase, Jenny roamed off to another counter, came back, said, “This is so old hat to you that you must be tired of it, Mary. Why don’t you wait for me a few minutes in the car?”
Mary thought she knew the reason for this suggestion. She said, “Jenny, if you were thinking of buying anything for me—” and was interrupted by one of the rare, teasing smiles and, “Don’t I have any rights around here?”
She started obediently off for the car, a figure at once cool and vivid in the simple leaf-patterned dress, and was stopped almost at once by a hailing “Mary Vaughan” from Daniel Brennan. It was a peculiar form of address, much more recognizing than the use of just her first name, which Southwesterners employed instantly, or a formal greeting. He walked to her car with her, so unalarming that she was amazed at her own suspicions the evening before, and explained that he was in search of a decent light bulb for his reading lamp; the one in place was so dim that moths flew away from it.
“Mine doesn’t work at all, thank you for reminding me,” said Mary, and, after a further comment on the boil of black-tinged clouds which she hadn’t noticed until then beginning to build up in the west, was handed into her car. She got out again almost at once, tipped the policeman to whom this courtesy belonged, was sealed gallantly in once more, wound down the window for a stir of air, idly picked up the newspaper which Jenny had carried away from the breakfast table.
Or not quite idly, because without conscious thought she looked at the index for the weather, turned to the proper page, saw that there would be no point in any further long-distance telephone calls. Both New York and Boston were sunny, with temperatures in the seventies, so the Actons were undoubtedly in Wellfleet.
Although that seemed academic now.
At the motel, it was clear that Jenny was not going to practice any turns for the time being. The name-tagged group was there in force, tossing a beach ball back and forth, full of carried-over merriment from the night before: one of their number had only to call loudly, “Zap!” to elicit a general chorus of laughter and some shoulder-punching among the men.
Jenny tried to stare them into a tighter group, standing on the deck and spinning her cap on her forefinger. Mary, more determined if less militant, slid over the side and managed to preempt a lane at the very edge. Her head came up in mid-stroke at the sound of a sharp scream when she was halfway down the pool, but it was only a woman who had had a toe playfully bitten by one of the men.
Screaming in the water broke a basic rule of conduct, but apart from Jenny’s severe gaze it provoked no reaction at all; a waiter passing by with a tray of drinks didn’t even glance over his shoulder. Frolicki
ng here was evidently done in full cry. Mary wondered what would happen to a swimmer in real trouble, figured out the answer without much difficulty, and saw presently that Jenny had sat down and was no longer glowering. She was looking up at Owen St. Ives, who said something to her and then pulled out a chair and joined her.
Mary had been going to abandon the pool until it was less crowded, but she did six more laps in the clear, crisp-feeling water so that Jenny should not see her in the role of chaperone again. She wondered about her cousin and Owen St. Ives as she swam. There were men who found youth a challenge for its own sake, but he did not look like one of them. Was he simply being—awkward word, it sounded somehow connected with warts—avuncular? Was he here on vacation, and tiring of his own company?
The ball in play hit her on the head with a surprising thump, and a man cried jovially, “Hey, sorry about that!” Just don’t bite my toe, thought Mary, and swam cautiously past him and climbed out. Owen St. Ives got to his feet as she approached the table, but with no intention of leaving. He looked mildly pleased with himself. “I was just telling Jenny—”
A waiter arrived with a tray holding iced tea and two golden Bacardis on the rocks. There was even a glass of water for Mary, who diluted her drinks somewhat. This sure choice shook her until she realized that he would have asked Jenny what to order.
The waiter went away. “I’ve unravelled part of the mystery upstairs,” said St. Ives, “but we’re all sworn to secrecy so the room-service waiter I talked to won’t lose his job. What we have there is an American with a nervous breakdown and a male nurse. He must be readily recognizable, because he’s paying heavily not to be seen.”
In Cold Pursuit Page 6
