There was the blue car which had followed them for most of the way, but Mary had had time for a glance as they passed it with its hood up and it wasn’t new enough to be a rental, surely the only transportation for a man arriving by plane. Jenny had been living with him, had precipitated a family crisis because of him, would certainly have recognized him even in silhouette behind a steering-wheel—and it was she who had called Mary’s attention to the car.
On the other hand, she had undeniably seen someone (or, thought Mary for the first time, a conjunction of someones) who had astonished and upset her. She had developed an instant longing for a stop to buy facial tissues and emery boards, thereby changing the subject with swiftness, and she had chattered in the supermarket. How funny to see people doing their shopping while sipping at a can of cold beer. Wasn’t it peculiar in such a beer-drinking country that there wasn’t a pretzel to be found? Why didn’t the magazine racks contain a Spanish-English dictionary?
And so on, until Mary began to develop a slight headache. Who had her cousin met in Juarez? Owen St. Ives, swimming coach, she thought, surprised at her own edge. Delectable Astrid. Daniel Brennan, in whose company Jenny had spent perhaps thirty seconds, could scarcely be said to count.
The clerk had an air of importance as he handed over the room key and then reached behind him. “Una carta,” he said, enjoying his game with Mary, “para la senorita Acton.”
Jenny looked bewildered. She accepted the envelope, which Mary saw addressed in a bold blue hand, opened it, unfolded a single sheet of notepaper which she dropped into her bag after reading the brief contents. “Astrid,” she said to Mary. “They’re checking out this afternoon but she wants to thank us for the ride. Shall we go on up? I’m dying to get into the pool.”
The aunt and uncle were thrifty and negligent by turns, then; they drove all the way to Juarez to have their eyeglass prescriptions filled at cut-rate prices, but threw away a day’s tariff because check-out time was one o’clock. Astrid must belong to the head-of-a-pin school of handwriting, Mary reflected idly, because her explanation and gratitude had been compressed into a single line.
The door at the end of the corridor stayed closed as she and Jenny approached their room; presumably the occupants were now familiar with their footsteps. For some reason it was a chilling little thought. Inside, Mary pressed the switch of her bedside lamp and was not surprised that it still didn’t work. She ought to have mentioned the bathtub stopper, so that that wouldn’t get fixed either. She said when Jenny emerged in bathing-suit and robe, “Why don’t you go on down, while I have another try at getting this thing repaired?”
But, as with Alfredo and the books, she didn’t pursue the matter of the lamp. She had made reservations here only through tonight, and although it might be possible to extend them, or move to another motel, it seemed important first to know whether or not Brian Beardsley had come looking for Jenny.
The Taylor house, close to the road with a circular drive, was the logical place for a visitor to inquire, as the Ulibarris’ was set a hundred yards back and they harbored Doberman pinschers behind a chain-link fence. After a considerable delay, because she didn’t know the first name and the telephone book was apparently rife with Taylors, Mary listened as the distant ringing began.
“That’s the phone,” said Pippa Taylor alertly as Meg started the car. Although apparently deaf to the sound of her sister washing the dishes with an exasperated crash, or pushing the furniture screechingly around in preparation for vacuuming, she never missed this signal. Now, she undid her seat-belt. “Quick, give me your key.”
“Let it go, we’re late now, thanks to you taking an hour over your face.”
But Pippa was already out of the car, extending her hand imperatively. “I can’t let it go, it might be Becky about my sleeping-bag. Or,” she said, fast and inspired, “it might be Mom, telling us not to come now because she’s going to have therapy or something.”
Mrs. Taylor had in fact called three days ago with just such a message, and Meg produced the key. “Well, hurry up. I’ll give you exactly one minute, and then, I warn you, I’m taking off without you.”
Pippa raced back to the front door, her gait at odds with the blusher and eye-shadow carefully applied because you never knew who you might meet in the course of visiting your mother in the hospital; the place was crawling with internes. She had to struggle with the key, because it was very slightly bent, but the telephone went on ringing as if with a promise to wait.
It did wait, until the second before Pippa snatched up the receiver and said a breathless “Hello?” to a dial tone.
A mile away, the grounds of the Romero house had been searched for the knife without which the police had no case at all. The grounds weren’t extensive, and it didn’t take long to determine that there had been no fresh digging. A rickety structure at the back of the property contained only six outraged chickens and an innocent bag of feed. The leveling of a compost heap turned up nothing more interesting than a well-rotted dog collar.
Still, it was the gloomy conviction of Gil Candelaria, the investigating officer in charge, that unless the field of search were confined to a sheet of plate glass it was next to impossible to say with certainty that a smallish object
