bum’s rush with a side of baloney.
“Pity about Maria,” Glenn Dennis said, as I walked him out into the Lodge’s moonswept parking lot, the cool night air pungently tinged by the surrounding pines, whose silhouettes made a decorative pattern against the deep blue sky. “If she don’t feel good, she can stretch out in my backseat and I’ll get her back to Roswell, lickety- split.”
I figured getting stretched out in the mortician’s backseat-lickety-split or otherwise-was exactly what Maria wanted to avoid; but I didn’t tell him that.
“She’s feeling nauseous,” I said. “Having all these unpleasant memories stirred has really upset her. And the idea of a long car ride is something she just can’t handle.”
He nodded, chin crinkling. “Maria
That was disappointing news, but then again, maybe that had been her way of trying fend off the mortician’s advances.
“Well, Glenn,” I said, “I’ll get her a room, and then drive her back to her car, at that lake, first thing tomorrow morning.”
“I’d stay and help you out,” Dennis said, as we reached his car, a blue Buick, “but I gotta be into Ballard’s by nine. We got two big funerals tomorrow.”
“It’s a living,” I said.
He laughed gently. “That’s one thing about my trade-you never run out of customers.”
We shook hands. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and I had a hunch Maria had misread his natural friendliness for lechery. On the other hand, who knew what any man might be tempted to do, at night, in the desert, with Maria?
He drove off, kicking up gravel dust, and I headed back inside, stopping at the front desk for a word with my pal the assistant manager.
“You have any little complimentary toiletry kits,” I asked him, “for guests who got separated from their luggage?”
He raised the shrapnel-scarred eyebrow. “Male or female?”
“Female.”
He smiled just a little, said, “I’ll have housekeeping stop by with what you need.”
“Thanks.”
“Uh, it doesn’t include Trojans.”
“It’s not like that. Really. Anyway, I’m a Sheik man.”
I knocked at Suite 101, and her musical alto said, “Mr. Heller?”
“Yeah, it’s me, Maria. I’m alone.”
She cracked the door open, sneaking a peek at me-she didn’t know me well enough to recognize my voice, I guess-and then let me in.
“He’s gone?” she asked eagerly, hands clasped to the lucky white embroidery decorating her bosom.
I nodded, taking off my hat, holding it over my heart briefly. “To another, better place.” I tossed the straw fedora onto a coffee table as I took in the joint.
The Governor’s Suite was really something-even more steeped in Victorian ambiance than the lobby, with just as high a ceiling, and an open stairway leading to a balcony off which the bedroom could be glimpsed; tucked under the stairway was a wet bar and the bathroom. The rest of the downstairs was a sitting room, or a living room, really, with a cozy scattering of mahogany and satinwood antiques; the lighting was subdued-she’d turned on a single amber-shaded table lamp-and a golden hue suffused the handsomely appointed suite, with its yellow-and- white brocade wallpaper, white marble fireplace overhung with gilt-framed desert landscape, and green-and- yellow-and-gold floral carpet.
Maria noticed me taking in this opulence-the clue may have been my mouth hanging open-and, glancing up, she said, “There’s even a chandelier.”
There was; a crystal one.
“Not very big,” I said. “Still, it’s one of the larger chandeliers I’ve run into in a hotel room.”
She laughed at that, just a little, enough to show me that her laughter was as musical as her voice.
“Thank you for … getting rid of him.”
I shrugged. “Glenn doesn’t strike me as such a bad egg. Seemed genuinely concerned that you weren’t feeling well.”
Now she seemed mildly embarrassed. “I probably overreacted … but the way he looks at me, things he says, I know he’s holding out hope for something that’s …”
“Hopeless?”
She nodded, shivered, and sat in the middle of a floral-upholstered love seat angled toward the fireplace, smoothing the skirt of the powder-blue dress, both feet on the ground, knees together, prim, proper … provocative. I moved to an easy chair opposite her, similarly angled. She sat hugging her bare arms.
I nodded toward the fresh wood in a brass bin. “Want me to make a fire?”
“I do feel a chill.”
As I built the fire, we made casual conversation. I asked her if she’d gotten herself a room.
“No. You don’t think there’ll be a problem …?”
“Not as underbooked as they are. I stopped by the desk, to get you some complimentary toiletries. Somebody ought to be around with ’em, soon.”
Her expression was warmer than the fire I was lighting. “Are you always so thoughtful, Mr. Heller?”
“Unfailingly … except around Christmas, when I get distracted-you know, all that stopping by orphanages handing out toys, and hitting hospitals, caroling.”
She didn’t laugh this time, but she did smile, and it was a surprising smile, one that made her little-girl vulnerability disappear; she had rather large teeth, very white, a smile almost too big for her face, an overpowering smile, not unattractive exactly, but turning her into someone else, momentarily.
“It’s a defense mechanism, you know,” she said, as her smile dissipated and the big blue eyes again became her dominant feature.
The fire was going now; I sat in the easy chair across from her. “What do you mean?”
“The jokes, the wisecracks. You hide behind them.”
“Everybody hides behind something.”
“Why is that, d’you suppose?”
“Well, the alternative is being seen as we really are-and nothing frightens us more than that, does it?”
The fire, cracking and snapping to life, was casting its dancing shadows on us, throwing warmth and color, tinting her a burnished amber. “You’re surprisingly deep, Mr. Heller.”
“I was trying for refreshingly shallow.”
“I’m surprised. I didn’t expect to like you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know … Mr. Pearson is kind of … smarmy.”
“Ever meet him?”
“No. Just talked to him on the telephone.”
“Well, it’s worse in person. So, you figured anybody working for him had to be a jerk?”
“I guess.”
“Then why cooperate with him?”
“I can’t say.”
“Why not?”
Her expression darkened. “… I gave my solemn oath to Mr. Pearson.”
That meant he was paying her-a journalistic taboo that probably got violated about as often as your average parking meter. Judging by this girl’s apparent conservative nature, I figured she probably had some family problem, a mother with a bad heart, father in an iron lung, brother in a wheelchair, that only money could cure. Even a prospective nun can fall into the end-justifies-the-means trap.
“We should probably get started,” I said. “You mind if I take notes?”
“No …” Her brow furrowed. “… but Mr. Heller, let’s get something straight between us, right now.”
