“I’m a little worried. She wasn’t well last night. She could be up there sick, not able to answer the phone. I’m a friend of hers. Marlowe’s the name.”
He looked me over. His eyes were wise eyes. He went behind a screen in the direction of the cashier’s office and spoke to somebody. He came back in a short time. He was smiling.
“I don’t think Miss Mayfield is ill, Mr. Marlowe. She ordered quite a substantial breakfast in her room. And lunch. She has had several telephone calls.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said. “I’ll leave a message. Just my name and that I’ll call back later.”
“She might be out in the grounds or down on the beach,” he said. “We have a warm beach, well sheltered by a breakwater.” He glanced at the clock behind him. “If she is, she won’t be there much longer. It’s getting cool by now.”
“Thanks. I’ll be back.”
The main part of the lobby was up three steps and through an arch. There were people in it just sitting, the dedicated hotel lounge sitters, usually elderly, usually rich, usually doing nothing but watching with hungry eyes. They spend their lives that way. Two old ladies with severe faces and purplish permanents were struggling with an enormous jigsaw puzzle set out on a specially built king-size card table. Farther along there was a canasta game going—two women, two men. One of the women had enough ice on her to cool the Mojave Desert and enough make-up to paint a steam yacht. Both women had cigarettes in long holders. The men with them looked gray and tired, probably from signing checks. Farther along, still sitting where they could look out through the glass, a young couple were holding hands. The girl had a diamond and emerald sparkler and a wedding ring which she kept touching with her fingertips. She looked a little dazed.
I went out through the bar and poked around in the gardens. I went along the path that threaded the cliff top and had no trouble picking out the spot I had looked down on the night before from Betty Mayfield’s balcony. I could pick it out because of the sharp angle.
The bathing beach and small curved breakwater were a hundred yards along. Steps led down to it from the cliff. People were lying around on the sand. Some in swim suits or trunks, some just sitting there on rugs. Kids ran around screaming. Betty Mayfield was not on the beach.
I went back into the hotel and sat in the lounge.
I sat and smoked. I went to the newsstand and bought an evening paper and looked through it and threw it away. I strolled by the desk. My note was still in Box 1224. I went to the house phones and called Mr. Mitchell. No answer. I’m sorry. Mr. Mitchell does not answer his telephone.
A woman’s voice spoke behind me. “The clerk said you wanted to see me. Mr. Marlowe—” she said. “Are you Mr. Marlowe?”
She looked as fresh as a morning rose. She was wearing dark green slacks and saddle shoes and a green windbreaker over a white shirt with a loose Paisley scarf around that. A bandeau on her hair made a nice wind- blown effect.
The bell captain was hanging out his ear six feet away. I said: “Miss Mayfield?”
“I’m Miss Mayfield.”
“I have the car outside. Do you have time to look at the property?”
She looked at her wristwatch. “Ye-es, I guess so,” she said.
“I ought to change pretty soon, but—oh, all right.”
“This way, Miss Mayfield.”
She fell in beside me. We walked across the lobby. I was getting to feel quite at home there. Betty Mayfield glanced viciously at the two jigsaw puzzlers.
“I hate hotels,” she said. “Come back here in fifteen years and you would find the same people sitting in the same chairs.”
“Yes, Miss Mayfield. Do you know anybody named Clyde Umney?”
She shook her head. “Should I?”
“Helen Vermilyea? Ross Goble?”
She shook her head again.
“Want a drink?”
“Not now, thanks.”
We came out of the bar and went along the walk and I held the door of the Olds for her. I backed out of the slot and pointed it straight up Grand Street towards the hills. She slipped dark glasses with spangled rims on her nose. “I found the traveler’s checks,” she said. “You’re a queer sort of detective.”
I reached in my pocket and held out her bottle of sleeping pills. “I was a little scared last night,” I said. “I counted these but I didn’t know how many had been there to start with. You said you took two. I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t rouse up enough to gulp a handful.”
She took the bottle and stuffed it into her windbreaker. “I had quite a few drinks. Alcohol and barbiturates make a bad combination. I sort of passed out. It was nothing else.”
“I wasn’t sure. It takes a minimum of thirty-five grains of that stuff to kill. Even then it takes several hours. I was in a tough spot. Your pulse and breathing seemed all right but maybe they wouldn’t be later on. If I called a doctor, I might have to do a lot of talking. If you had taken an overdose, the homicide boys would be told, even if you snapped out of it. They investigate all suicide attempts. But if I guessed wrong, you wouldn’t be riding with me today. And where would I be then?”
“It’s a thought,” she said. “I can’t say I’m going to worry about it terribly. Who are these people you mentioned?”
