She had expected this to sink in, and it did. The clerk was instantly on guard, pointing out with much raising of shoulders and eyebrows that a posted sign advised divers that they were at their own risk. He would remember them and their destination homeward quite well, now, in case a man inquired for Jennifer Acton. Mary paid her bill, and turned to find herself gazing at Owen St. Ives.
How much of that had he heard? He was certainly looking attentive, as well he might, expecting to take the invalid out to dinner momentarily. “Jenny will be down in a minute,” said Mary, moving out of earshot of the desk. “Did you—” she smiled at him briskly, the gift counsellor who had been called away to other duties “—get your shopping done?”
St. Ives nodded. “I took your advice about a shawl.” His dark blue gaze stayed on Mary’s. “I’m sorry you can’t join us, but I understand there’s a friend.”
He used the term in its comprehensive context rather than that of a single engagement. (Jenny’s work? “Your Mr. Brennan?”) Mary didn’t explain, partly because the lobby was beginning to be crisscrossed by people meeting other people for drinks or dinner, and the bellboy whom the clerk had summoned had spread his feet and clasped his hands behind his back with the air of a man whose patience was wearing dangerously thin. “I’m sorry too. Good night,” she said, and glanced back involuntarily as she reached the glass doors. Absurdly, she had expected him to be gazing after her. Instead, he was talking to the desk clerk.
There was nothing coy about Jenny. Thoroughly dressed and ready to depart, she greeted Mary in mid-corridor with the frantic announcement that she was going to be late; from her tone, Owen St. Ives might have been prepared to leave on the dot without her, as implacably as a train or a bus. Mary assured her that he was waiting, said, “Jaime’s Hotel, remember, it’s on Panama Street,” and watched her flash around the turn for the stairs.
She had already made her automatic inspection of bathroom, closet, bureau drawers, and managed to squeeze the books into their luggage. Five minutes later she was out in the chilly, rainy parking lot, the suitcases in the trunk of the car, the bellboy tipped, her keys in her hand.
She retained a gratifying memory of her own insouciant wave at the watchful eye that had peered out from that other room at the sound of all those footsteps; the door had shut so sharply that it was a wonder he hadn’t caught his nose. She also realized, as she closed herself into the car and inserted the ignition key, that in spite of her last-minute check for belongings she had left her faithful Juarez—travelling, fruit-peeling knife behind her on the desk.
Buy a new one tomorrow; she certainly wasn’t going all the way back up to her room even if there had been time. In fact, after several dull metallic grinds in which the engine didn’t turn over, she wasn’t going anywhere, at least in this car. For the second time in her three-year ownership of it, the first having been on a morning when the temperature was six below zero, it had failed her.
She got out into the dark.
The other and unsuspected knife in her life, a switch-blade not used for slicing limes but for driving deep between rib-bones, had on Gil Candelaria’s hunch been discovered in a now-dried abode brick in a form in the suspect’s back yard. Candelaria and a deputy had had to break a number of innocent bricks before they found it. Leroy Romero’s mother had begun to cry when the adobe broke away from the metal; his father had straightened his shoulders briefly before he let them droop again. In both reactions, there was a kind of terrible relief.
Even to the naked eye, the knife hadn’t been washed thoroughly, but then Leroy Romero was young, arrogant, and, in charge of loading and delivering the bricks, confident of his ability to extract the one that mattered. They weren’t made here on a large scale; it was a family enterprise, and the buyers were neighbors engaged in minor construction like walls or repairs to existing walls. Candelaria bore his prize away, reflecting that the elder Romeros, not cowed by poverty or incessant hard work but by their son, had deserved better.
Although it would take time for the analysis to come through from the police laboratory, Candelaria felt sure enough to let the dead woman’s husband know that what they had every reason to believe was the murder weapon had been found. He fished through his papers on the case, located the number, dialled.
. . . No answer.
But of course he would be at the funeral home.
11
“...SO I had to take a taxi,” finished Mary a little breathlessly to Daniel Brennan in the lobby of Jaime’s Hotel.
It was comfortably unchanged from her last visit, and a far cry from its counterpart at the Casa de Flores. There were what appeared to be the same rubber plants in the windows facing the street, and a small pink-lighted fountain in an alcove beside the 1 stairs still let out a ratchety complaint under its splashing. The far end was in semidarkness out of deference to a televised baseball game being watched by a few dim, absorbed shapes. The bellboy was also familiar, with his long mobile face which might have belonged to a mime; in fact, Mary had never seen another bellboy here, although others must exist.
Brennan was considering the rain-ruffled hair and color-stung cheeks she had already seen reflected in the mirror behind the desk. “Would you rather have dinner here, in view of the weather? I made reservations at the other place, but they’re easily cancelled.”
“No, not at all, if you don’t mind driving in the rain.” Mary felt actually exhilarated by it and the accompanying drop in temperature; it was
