by Bob Wade
John Henry blinked. “Huh?”
“Shut off all the lights, please. Thanks.” A flick of the switch and the room was pitch black. John Henry, looking back, imagined he could see her round eyes shining affectionately at him. “And shut the door, please, too — I like to sit alone in the dark.”
“Sure,” said John Henry hollowly. “Sure.” He pulled the blue door shut after him and hurried Sin along the path toward the friendly brightness of the hotel.
“I wouldn’t have had it happen for the world.” Mr. Gayner was prostrated.
“Okay, I understand that,” John Henry said. He stood behind his wife’s chair, gripping the uprights. Sin sat there fidgeting angrily.
The assistant manager leaned his gaunt body back in his swivel chair and clasped his hands. He seemed about to suggest a choice of low-priced caskets. “Faye Jordan is,” he mourned, “a child of whim. Whim and wealth are an uncomfortable combination. Cottage 14 has been held open for a week, pending her arrival — she paid the rental all that time, of course. When she arrived this evening, I naturally moved her into Cottage 14 — which she had specified in her telegram. A short time ago we discovered a mistake had been made in her telegram. Instead, she desired Cottage 15.”
“Of all the silly things!” Sin exploded. “What difference does it make if it’s one cabin or another. They’re all the same, aren’t they?”
Gayner shrugged. “Exactly the same, Mrs. Conover. Believe me, I emphasized that to Miss Jordan, but nothing would do but that she have Cottage 15. To make a long story short — ”
“You moved our things out,” John Henry said.
“Just next door,” Gayner soothed. “You’re now in Cottage 14. I realize and regret the embarrassment which this whole business has caused. I had expected to be on the desk when you returned. That way I could have prevented this unfortunate episode.”
“Well, frankly,” said Sin, “this isn’t the sort of thing I’d expect at a hotel with the Las Dunas’ reputation.”
The hotel man sorrowfully scratched his long nose. “These things happen in any catering business, madam. We consider ourselves fortunate when one of the parties concerned is reasonable. I thank you for that. Of course, I did my best in your absence — I secured permission to move your baggage between the cottages.”
John Henry swallowed with difficulty. “Permission! Who gave you permission?”
“Your representative here. The tooth-paste fellow. Mr. Trim.”
John Henry stopped pacing around in Cottage 14 and plopped down on the bed beside Sin. “I know how you feel, honey.” She was lying across it, fully dressed, and he stroked her hair gently.
“I’d rather we planned our own evenings. When everything happens at once, I get confused. When I get confused, I get scared. What’s so special about Cottage 15, anyway?”
“Beats me.”
“That Jordan girl’s crazy.”
“Sure. Just don’t worry, cutie.” There were two light taps on the living-room door. “There’s our boy now.”
He was right. Mr. Trim stood blinking on the porch, brown eyes as limpid as ever. His small mouth and bald head reminded John Henry of an underfed Humpty Dumpty.
“Come in, Mr. Trim,” Conover greeted him. “My wife wanted to see you.”
The tooth-paste man sidled in apprehensively, turning his flat straw hat around and around with nervous fingers. He obeyed John Henry’s injunction to sit and revolved the hat until Sin padded in from the bedroom, stocking-footed, when he sprang up again. “I hope you’ll forgive this intrusion,” Trim rattled in his high precise voice.
“We called you,” clarified Sin. She folded her arms.
“I know,” the little fellow confessed miserably, “you haven’t been having a good time. That’s why the Company sent me here. And I’ve failed.” John Henry shifted his feet, hoping Mr. Trim wouldn’t break down. “First of all, I’m awfully sorry the misunderstanding arose — ”
“We are, too,” said Sin, unswerving.
“Oh.” This wasn’t the answer Trim had expected, but he recovered. “I tried high and low to find you when Mr. Gayner come to me earlier with the problem. But you had gone somewhere.”
“Thinking,” the hardening John Henry put in, “that our personal property would be safe while we were gone.”
“Mr. Gayner was so wrought up — I couldn’t refuse — ” The wizened representative scrutinized the inside of his hat as if he had notes there. “It’s my fault. I didn’t realize a different cottage would actually make any difference to you. It must have been quite a shock to find your clothes gone and — ”
“It was,” John Henry said grimly. “But not so much of a shock as it was to find all our things had been searched.”
Mr. Trim sat down abruptly. “Searched! You mean somebody actually tampered with your personal belongings?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh, no!”
Sin said scornfully, “Oh, yes! We wouldn’t say so otherwise.”
“You see, Mr. Trim — whoever searched our stuff did it in a hurry. They didn’t try to be neat. Everything’s in a mess.”
“I could kill them!” Sin jounced down on the davenport viciously. “They broke my bottle of peppermint. Now all my lingerie smells like chewing gum. I don’t even think it’ll wash out.”
“I’m flabbergasted.” Trim fanned himself with his straw hat. “I’m more than flabbergasted.”
“Oh, well,” said John Henry moodily. He couldn’t keep angry long at a time. “It’s not as if we were surprised. Nothing surprises us any more.”
The tooth-paste representative stood up and said vigorously, “Something has to be done,” and walked around the room in a little circle. Then he sat down again. “This can’t be allowed to happen in a civilized community. After all, I’m responsible, you see. For the peppermint and everything.”
Sin fought against it, but she felt a trace of warmth for their unwanted aide. Maybe his bald head was solid rock, but he was sincerely trying to do his job. John Henry and she shouldn’t take everything out on him.
“Johnny, maybe you should tell Mr. Trim the whole story.”
Her husband’s head came up in surprise. “You think we should?”
“He might have an idea.”
“Well,” doubted John Henry. He regarded Trim’s anxious expression narrowly. Then he attacked the story, wandering back and forth in front of the other man, trying to remember everything that mattered. The wounded prowler, the robed waiter, the playing card queen, Barselou’s hostile attitude … Only when Conover got around to the shooting in the alley’s and Homer Anglin’s dying message did Trim squirm and commence puckering his forehead confusedly.
“You can understand why we feel more than just ordinary annoyance, can’t you?” Sin asked while her husband caught his breath.
Mr. Trim skinned colorless lips back over his discolored teeth and made clucking noises. “Say, I don’t know what to say,” he confessed.
“It’d make more sense if Anglin had given me something,” John Henry said. “But he didn’t. He just said, ‘You already got it’ and died. I didn’t get anything. There’s nothing in our luggage because we looked pretty carefully.”
“Except my peppermint,” Sin commented bitterly.
Trim reached over and laid his straw hat on the davenport beside Sin and folded his hands in his lap. “But somebody thinks Anglin gave you something, Mr. Conover,” he said owlishly.
John Henry showed impatience. “We figured that.”
“My point is that that is quite probably why Mr. Gayner was so willing to accommodate Miss Jordan. Moving your baggage would give him an excellent opportunity to search it.”
“I don’t get it,” admitted Sin. “Why should Mr. Gayner want to go through our things?”
“Because he was told to, Mrs. Conover.” Mr.Trim sat very straight and looked proud of himself. “You see, Mr. Gayner’s boss — in fact, the boss of most things in Azure — is Mr. Barselou. Mr. Bar
selou owns this very hotel.”
First, John Henry just grunted. Then he flung his arms wide like a soap-box orator and said, “Well, how do you like that!”
Sin pounded one small fist against Mr. Barselou’s davenport. “No wonder! But why?” Her tan face tied up in a knot of confusion. “Why?”
“Just more weight to your husband’s belief that Mr. Barselou is hip-deep in this business, whatever it is. And there’s no doubt that Mr. Barselou believes that you, in turn, are working against his interests.” Trim asked gently, benevolently, “Mr. and Mrs. Conover — answer me truthfully. Are you?”
“For heaven’s sake no!” said Sin and crossed her heart. “All we want is to be left alone.”
“Then,” said Mr. Trim relievedly, “I suggest we go to the police.”
“No!” The other two jumped at John Henry’s outburst and he flushed. “I mean, no. Maybe now that Barselou’s searched our stuff, he’s convinced we haven’t got what he’s after. Besides, I’d feel like a dope telling all this extra stuff to that police lieutenant now.”
“Mr. Lay didn’t like us particularly at the time.”
“I’d feel like a dope. I thought I was smart keeping some of this to myself — he’d give me life if I changed stories now.”
The Bry-Ter representative got out his ivory toothpick and worked on his teeth while he considered. “Say, that’s obstructing justice. But that’s not my department. I can see why you wouldn’t want to court trouble and I guess the police will find out this funny business by themselves.” He held up his toothpick brightly. “We’ll hire a private detective. The Company will — ”
Now Sin objected. “Johnny and I have just been married three years. We still like to be alone together. It’d scare me to death if somebody was tramping around the cottage all night. We want a chance to relax and enjoy this vacation.”
“No, thanks,” added her husband. “We’ll leave well enough alone.”
“Well,” said Trim disappointedly, tucking away his inspirational toothpick, “if you just want to forget it …”
A little while after that he retrieved his straw hat, took quite a while bidding both the Conovers good night and finally left. Sin and John Henry undressed in silence. The smell of peppermint essence pervaded the bedroom and kept all their reflections on one lurid track. A circular track that ended where it began.
“You know, Sin,” John Henry mused as he buttoned his pajama top absently and gazed somewhere beyond the pink blossoms patterned into the wallpaper, “I was thinking about what you said earlier tonight. Who are we?”
She giggled. “Gee, we know, don’t we?”
“We don’t know who Barselou thinks we are. Sin, he’s fighting somebody he’s never seen — or he’d never have mistaken us for them.”
Rolling back the sleeves of her robe contemplatively, Sin said, “But poor Anglin knew we were wrong — after he saw you. What was he trying to deliver?”
“That’s over our heads.” He folded back the bedcovers in a neat triangle on each side. “But first Anglin tries to drop off his ‘it’ here and no luck. Then he tries to give it to Barselou — and gets stopped.”
“What did you do with my curlers?” Sin found them where she’d laid them on the ivory dresser. “Poor guy — trying so hard to peddle his something.”
John Henry stuffed his handkerchief under his pillow, lit a cigarette and sprawled on the bed. “But here he’s headed for Barselou — right at his back door — and bang! He gets delirious and thinks he’s given something to me. Why me?”
“Maybe he thought you were Barselou,” his wife said. “You’ve been putting on weight lately.”
“No,” said John Henry, pointedly ignoring her, “it was probably a mistake. You know, he’d seen me in the cottage when he was looking for somebody else. When he was shot, his subconscious mind — ”
“I had a philosophy prof at State that explained things like you do,” said Sin, gathering up her equipment. “And I got a D.”
Her husband chuckled. “Only because you were sexy-looking. You deserved an F. Anyway, mistake or not, Anglin decided to give it to me instead of Barselou.”
“That’d be swell — except that you didn’t get anything, you don’t know what you didn’t get and you don’t know where it is now.” She started for the bathroom. “We’ll leave well enough alone. You were the guy who said that.”
“Okay, okay. But I notice you’ve been thinking about it too.”
Sin paused with one hand on the doorknob. “Suppose Anglin came up the canyon counting the cottages instead of reading numbers. That’s what I’ve been thinking.”
“Suppose he did. It’s dark and it’d be easier than walking up on every front porch.”
“You know how some buildings and hotels don’t have any thirteenth floor? ‘Cause people are superstitious? So they just skip that number.”
“Wait a minute — I see what you mean, Sin — ”
“Uh-huh. I’ll bet there’s no Cottage 13.”
“Sure, that’s it! Clever girl, honey. That means if Anglin came along counting cottages — and got our old Cottage 15 — he was one number over.”
“See, Johnny? Anglin came into the fourteenth cottage. But he wanted Cottage 14. Now let’s drop it.”
John Henry swung his legs off the bed and sat up excitedly. “Hey, maybe Anglin was going to meet the girl here in 14. Anglin makes a mistake and comes to 15, instead. As soon as she finds it out — wait a minute! How’d she find it out?”
Sin sighed. “Does it matter?”
“Sure. After Anglin left, you had me turn the porch light on, Sin. She could have seen the blood next to the door where he put his hand. So she guesses her man has been there and insists on having the cottage he visited. Make sense?”
“I guess so.”
“She figures that Anglin left whatever he was to deliver in 15. So she wants to have the cottage and a good chance to look for it. Just in case, our stuff is searched, too.”
“Well, which side do you have your Miss Jordan on?” Sin asked. “Did she spill the peppermint or did Barselou’s Mr. Gayner? I’m lost.” She opened the bathroom door.
“You know, Sin,” said John Henry, pleasantly thoughtful, “I think it would be a smart thing if I tried to get chummy with the Jordan girl tomorrow and — ”
Sin stopped right where she was. “Oh, you do!”
“Well, I just thought that she could probably clear things up for me in about two minutes. That’s all.”
“I don’t doubt it. She looks like it, all right.”
“You jealous?” John Henry asked in pleased tones.
“Well, maybe just a little bit.”
“Don’t be a dope. You don’t have a thing to be jealous about and you know it.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said his wife grudgingly. “Maybe you like that slinky type.”
“I like my women redheaded. With green eyes. And …” With both hands he traced a symmetrical outline in the air.
“Johnny, you’re terrible.” The click of the bathroom latch put a decisive end to the conversation. “Hey, how long you going to be in there?”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE MORNING SUN sent golden rays like soft-tipped arrows, prodding the silent town to its feet, caressing the pale buildings, driving darkness slowly from the streets, invading the palm-shaded grounds of the hotel upon the hill.
Among the shadows of the chill morgue, the police surgeon stripped the sheet away from the slab and wrinkled his nose distastefully. In the tiny room next to his office, Lieutenant Lay sprawled on his back and snored. Barselou turned off his desk lamp as morning glow began to seep through the plate-glass window. He scowled again at the worn map on his desk and penciled a faint cross upon it. Odell slouched at the counter of the Tomahawk Drive-Inn, drinking his second cup of coffee of the day. Munching a piece of dry toast in the already-steaming kitchen of the Las Dunas, Vernon expected the worst: that some cottage would want room service. Upstairs, Sagm
on Robottom commenced a short note to his wife, decided to do his setting up exercises instead. The portable typewriter in Thelma Loomis’ second floor room had been clattering for fifteen minutes. Gayner stood in the lobby and critically surveyed the tile floor, still needing its initial sweeping. Humming happily, Mr. Trim cleaned his teeth. In Cottage 15, Faye Jordan painted her toenails and waited for the phone to ring.
In Cottage 14, Sin pulled the covers tighter into her mussed red hair, dreaming she was being chased over foot-gripping sand dunes by a Queen of Diamonds. And John Henry Conover sneaked outdoors to see if there was a Cottage 13.
There was not.
Disconsolate, Vernon departed with the dirty dishes and the few remnants of breakfast. Sin returned to the living room a moment later, her hair brushed into a smooth pageboy that glinted like a ruby.
“Johnny, what are you doing?”
John Henry stopped peeking outdoors between slats of the Venetian blinds and spun hastily, his round face guilty. “Just — looking out,” was the best he could think of.
“What at?” Sin went to the window herself. “Oh!” She raised one stern eyebrow at her husband. The occupant of Cottage 15 was disappearing down the flagstone path toward the hotel. There was a great deal of pale skin which her white knitted bathing suit didn’t cover.
“Just checking up,” John Henry said lamely.
“Oh, yeah?”
“I heard her door slam and I was curious. Ever since you figured out that cottage number business — ”
“Now see here, John Henry — ”
John Henry sabotaged her objections. He seized her pliant body, bent it back across his arm, bit the tip of her nose gently and lifted her back to her feet. Sin came up laughing.
“What have you got in your pocket, anyway?” she wanted to know. Her hand plunged into the breast pocket of his dark-blue sport coat. “Oh,” she said, “here’s your pencil,” and dropped the Eversharp back into his pocket. Sin pivoted happily away from him, her full peasant skirt whirling about her bare legs. “What a wonderful place to be!” Then she stopped. “Honey, what’s the matter?”