“We certainly do.” Brennan was forceful about it, although this was the kind of mechanism which would leave Jenny imprisoned. “Jaime’s is a nice place, but there odd people everywhere.”
The night was chilly, holding left-over drips and glistens from the rain. Brennan was giving off little whiffs of Jenny’s cologne as he moved, but luckily he seemed unaware of this. Halfway to the stairs along the railed walk, a door came a few inches open at the sound of their footsteps, and a man’s voice called jovially, “Hey, what kept you so long?” He could only have seen the dimmest of outlines against the sporadically lighted front of the far side of the annex, but he said at once, “Oh, I beg your pardon,” and closed the door.
“We had a few things to clean up,” murmured Brennan.
He went before Mary down the steps, and strolled across to the edge of the willow-sheltered pool, which, not lit, held only little tremors of reflected pinkish-gold on its dark surface, along with a faint brilliance, at the shallow end, from a lamp at a corner of the building. “Someone dropped either a silver dollar or a pendant in here this afternoon,” he said conversationally. “I wonder if it’s been retrieved? I told one of the bus boys about it.”
Not caring much, Mary joined him automatically. There was always something fascinating about water, particularly in a dry country and perhaps especially at night. Any daytime gaiety had been swallowed up then, with the depths renewing their cold secrets until sunlight wiped them clear again.
She looked at a faint half-curve of glitter on the bottom, at perhaps four feet, and pointed. “There it is.”
Brennan moved closer. “Well, I suppose it can’t go down the drain,” he said, and turned to glance curiously at her through the obscurity. “I didn’t do a very good job of explaining myself at dinner. What I really meant to say—”
Something brushed lightly between Mary’s shoulder-blades. It was only, could only have been a frond of willow, but she stepped instantly away. She didn’t want to hear what he had meant to say, not just now, even though there have been a peculiar intimacy in the room where they had worked while Jenny slept. She had a slight sense of dizziness, as if the metallic curve on the pool bottom were a shining object suspended by a hypnotist.
“You’re cold,” said Brennan abruptly as shafts of willow-fragmented gold struck across at them and a car engine started. In the same unobtrusive way in which he had claimed the doorknob upstairs, he now had possession of Mary’s elbow. “Let’s get that drink.”
She hadn’t been aware until then of a physical chill, but in the bar she gave a reminiscent shiver. Mercifully, the musicians had departed. As at the motel pool, Brennan did not rely on the mercies of a waiter, but went off and returned speedily with their drinks.
He didn’t pick up where he had left off outside. He asked instead, “Who do you think was responsible for the sabotage?”
Which he had accepted at once, even though he viewed Jenny with a fairly cool eye; that fact was suddenly as warming as the drink. “The man I told you about at dinner, the one with Astrid,” said Mary. Without realizing it, she must have been preparing a cut version of this. “Jenny was quite involved with him a couple of months ago, and he was furious when she broke it off. He isn’t, I gather, a man who likes being crossed.”
“Unlike the rest of us who revel in it,” remarked Brennan, giving her a mildly amused look. “He was certainly going to get his revenge, with bells on, but how did he . . . ? Oh, Astrid, I suppose, as she was staying right there with her nonexistent aunt and uncle. Lucky you found the stuff in time.”
He hadn’t, naturally, commented on her motives for exploring Jenny’s suitcase in the first place—but then for all he knew Mary was a chronic opener of other people’s mail, a listener at keyholes, a reader of diaries not her own. She said with firmness, “Yes, it was. If I hadn’t gotten worried about the combination of liquor and whatever prescription Jenny takes . . .”
“It’s none of my business, I know,” said Brennan into the little trail-away silence, “but Jenny looks as though a Shirley Temple would set her on her ear. Who let her—?”
Mary supposed that it was his business, in a fringe way, because he had helped her unquestioningly. Still, the implied criticism—just as if she had not framed a related wonder to herself—made her prickle slightly.
“Another guest at the motel, who must have been as startled at what happened as I was.” How to undo the impression of two lone females in Mexico on pleasure bent, dividing up for a little adventure: that one’s mine, you can have the other? To explain that she was to have been a member of that party would suggest either that good manners in honoring Brennan’s prior invitation had spoiled her evening or that she had preferred his company.
Mary finished her cigarette without hurry, to avoid any appearance of even minor confusion, and slipped her coat back on. “I’m sure Jenny’s still in the depths, but I think I ought to be back there anyway. Thank you for the drink, and for your help upstairs—I was on the point of flying to pieces.”
“You were keeping your head very well.” Brennan was standing too, gesturing down at her glass, still a third full. “But you haven’t—”
“I’ve had enough to restore me, honestly,” said Mary, and said goodnight and
