Jenny gazed in consternation. “But what about dinner?”
“It’s still early.” Mary was ruffling through the pages to the J’s. “We can dress and pack and I’ll take the bags over while you wait downstairs.”
Here it was: Jaime’s Hotel, almost in town and on a main street, where she had stayed on two or three occasions and to which in case of necessity she had a mysterious entree, as yet untried, passed on by a friend. Jaime’s had none of the pretension of the Casa de Flores. Its paint was in need of repair, its beds made protesting sounds, its upholstered-appearing chairs were apt to send an unwary sitter ricocheting. But the two-storied annex where Mary had always stayed was built around a flagstoned center courtyard where the swimming pool was willow-hung and flower-fringed, and the atmosphere was friendly and the food good. Mary sometimes suspected that its raucous neon sign and the faintly raffish pink light emanating from it at night were deceptions: Jaime’s did not need to woo tourists for its survival.
Two minutes later, having been informed politely that there were no vacancies, she was testing her ploy. “I see. Would it be possible—” she made it sound unrelated, an afterthought, so as not to spoil this game for future comers ”—to speak to Raoul?”
Surprisingly, for all its amateur-detective air, it worked. A courteous voice which was Raoul’s came on after a short wait, and after Mary had identified herself as a friend of the Julian Bells in Santa Fe there was a further little pause and then, “A double room with bath . . .Yes. About seven-thirty?”
Jenny, poised with a pink dress over her arm to await the outcome of the call, made a pleased zero in the air with thumb and forefinger and withdrew. Mary said a warm thank you to the unknown Raoul and hung up, resolving to take back a bottle of gin for the martini-drinking Bells. Which reminded her of her own barely touched drink; she moved across the room to it, and was suddenly in the exact spot where she had stood that morning after washing the spilled coffee out of her clothes. She had been very briefly bothered then, as if she were neglecting something which ought to be done, and now she knew what it was.
Her suitcase, closed but not locked because she had long ago lost the key. She had defended the chambermaid to Jenny, but her mind had obviously made a note of its own because in a gesture alien to her—it had never crossed her mind before to distrust a maid—she carried the suitcase to the bed (Had there been an edge of fabric protruding from it that morning? There wasn’t now), opened it, inspected the contents.
She was found of her gold heishi earrings and a sand-cast silver pair, but they were hardly goals for theft and they were there, nestled in the side zippered compartment. Nor did it look—Mary found herself remembering the woman’s silent, sloping glide—as though the suitcase had been prowled through.
Jenny issued forth in her pink dress, bangs firmly damped down, mildly inquisitive at the sight of Mary contemplating her own belongings as though they were the work of an old master. Mary said, “It’s just occurred to me that people are very fast with their passkeys here and you’re travelling around with your grandmother’s pearls. Do you keep your suitcase locked?”
Jenny shook her head; like Mary, probably like a great many other people, she had lost the key. “But I’m not a hundred per cent crazy.” She drew out an apparently unopened package of pantyhose, slipped her fingers inside and extracted the single strand of quietly shimmering pearls, which she fastened at once about her throat. “Foiled again,” she said fondly.
So Mary, forgetting the fact that there were two actions possible with suitcases, dismissed the matter from her mind. She dressed, found a childish satisfaction in phoning downstairs to have her bill prepared, told Daniel Brennan when he called that they were moving to Jaime’s Hotel and that she would meet him there at seven-thirty.
“Jaime’s?” The telephone wire conveyed as much astonishment as a facial expression. “That’s where I’m phoning from, as a matter of fact. . . No Jenny?”
How easily and frequently they used her name. It did not enter Mary’s head that, for purposes of striking up an acquaintance, her cousin was as made-to-order as an exotic dog on a leash. To avoid any misapprehension, she said that Jenny had turned out to have dinner plans of her own, an obvious lie in view of that offhand acceptance at the pool, and realized as she was speaking that Brennan hadn’t sounded disappointed but only formally polite.
He suggested a restaurant new to Mary—“If you have a raincoat, that is. Otherwise . . .”
Mary, who had been conscious for some time of the ticking, prickling sounds against the window, replied that she did. So, fortunately for the plan she had devised on her way back from the parking area, did Jenny. In it, in spite of her storklike legs, she was not nearly as noticeable.
“Out to kill,” remarked Jenny suddenly. She had been inspecting her own blue eyeliner the moment before; now, in the mirror, she was studying Mary in thin sauterne-wool only slightly paler than her hair, the skirt swaying as she moved, only the earrings with their vertical hyphens of gold for accent.
“No, just to stun,” said Mary ironically. “I’ll be right back, I’m going to settle up at the desk.”
Her bill was in error by two dollars and eighty cents. To the clerk who corrected it with a practiced air of amazement and apology, she was at pains to explain that they were checking out because Miss Acton’s accident at the pool was turning out to be a little more serious than they had thought, and it seemed wise to get her back to her own
