In Cold Pursuit

by Ursula Curtiss

  But the moment got away from her, if it had ever been there. The jaunty stall-keeper returned with change and smiles and flourishes, and Jenny had had time to recover her wits. “That woman in red over there,” she said. “It’s a Siamese cat she’s holding, but wouldn’t you swear it was a monkey?”

  Yes, if you looked at it with your eyes shut, thought Mary. It was clearly time, more than time, to stop pretending that there was no issue at stake. She said calmly, driving down a feeling that, like a member of some Satanist cult, she was about to utter a name which should only be pronounced while standing inside protective lines of chalk, “Was it by any chance Brian Beardsley?”

  9

  IF Jenny had not kept up an uncharacteristic flow of small talk all the way back to the motel, Mary might have convinced herself that she had imagined that instant of focused stillness in the market. She had taken what she considered a decisive plunge, and braced herself for she wasn’t sure what, and she could have gotten just as much drama out of, “Was it Christopher Robin?”

  Because, far from any guilty starts or stage astonishment, Jenny had simply drawn her dark brows together, narrowed her formidable eyelashes a little, and said with a puzzled air, “Brian? What would he be doing in Mexico?”

  The temptation to vindicate herself—“You’d have to ask your friend Myrna about that, because she’s the one who talked to him last”—was strong, but Mary veered instinctively away from that course. She knew that what she had elicited wasn’t an answer, and in fact might have been a schoolgirl’s parry to avoid a direct lie, but she was shaken. How likely was it, really, that Beardsley had found out about a decision made only the night before they left Santa Fe? Jenny certainly hadn’t made or received any telephone calls, and neither of Mary’s neighbors knew about the trip. And the thought of Beardsley mounting a watch somewhere with binoculars was completely ridiculous.

  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 wasn’t in a given locality—and Leroy Romero seemed confident and even a little mocking.

  Which, Candelaria conceded to himself, he had every right to be thus far. On the evening in question, he claimed to have been cruising with friends, a favorite after-dark activity among his age group although it was a continuing marvel to the police that they could afford the gas. If the friends went on supporting his story—as they undoubtedly would; in spite of his youth and slender build, Romero shimmered with menace like a radiator with heat waves —the police couldn’t prove otherwise. The presence of his wallet in the dead woman’s driveway could be explained away in seconds: the thief and real attacker had dropped it there.

  He had at first denied ownership of a knife at all, and when a passing detective had asked sarcastically, “What’d you stab that guy from Phoenix with, a sharp spoon?” he had continued glibly
“. . . since then.” Confronted with his informing friend’s statement about a knife which was a prized possession, he had looked openly deadly for a moment and then said he had lost it a month ago.

  Where had he lost it? On a camping trip in the Pecos Wilderness. There was some derisive laughter at this, because he was patently as interested in camping as a snake in a shoe sale, but again they couldn’t shake him. Nor had they been able to locate anyone in the area who had seen or heard the victim before the pick-up driver had stopped for her.

  Candelaria, a man twice Leroy Romero’s size and age, shut his eyes and tried to put himself in the boy’s position. He had attacked a woman and she had gotten away from him (because—they thought they had this figured out—a coronary unit had been in the neighborhood, its siren sounding like a police car’s). He would have a wild vision of the woman giving the police a usable description of him. He would know that there must be blood on him, so it would be a matter of bolting home to wash himself and his clothing.

  He hadn’t worn gloves—the bite mark on his thumb suggested that—so, apart from being his pride and his status symbol, the knife bore his fingerprints as well as the woman’s blood. Where to conceal it in the dark between her driveway and his own, safe from searchers but findable when this blew over?

  Much better to keep it with him, thought Candelaria, now warming thoroughly to his theme. There was an outside faucet beside the Romero back steps, where he could wash the knife and then hide it— where?

  That convenient faucet (sluice his face and hands at the same time?) kept bobbing up in Candelaria’s mind. Because it suggested something else, so familiar to him from boyhood that he hadn’t given it the attention an alert and curious outsider might? He did now, concentrating on the suspect’s back yard, trying to recapture a half-forgotten formula, thinking about weather conditions at the time involved.

  He hadn’t yet received a copy of the detailed autopsy report, but a glance at his watch showed him that he might still catch the police surgeon; Stoddard was a man to avoid calling at home if at all possible. He pulled the telephone toward him, consulted the list of numbers pasted on a pull-out board of his desk, and dialled.

  Mary had just said goodbye to a bewildered Mrs. Ulibarri, over a distant chorus of background barking, when the light tap sounded at her door.

  She hadn’t put the chain on, but at least the knob wasn’t turning. Jenny always signalled, so was this, incredibly, a maintenance man about her lamp? The chambermaid, having thought of a new place to look for the earring? No, she would have come right in. Mary called a query, and opened the door to Owen St. Ives.

  For a moment, she was terrified. Something had happened to Jenny at the pool, even though in the water she was like a bird in its element, and he had come to break it to her. Then he said, “I have a great favor to ask of you, if you’re not busy for the next fifteen minutes or so. I’ve been—”

  He broke off there, studying her with the blue gaze that was so much darker than Spence’s. He asked curiously, “Do I frighten you for some reason? At times—I notice because you have very pretty eyes, you look as if . . .”

  “No, of course not,” said Mary, feeling the blood rise to her face. “It’s just that you remind me of someone I used to know.” To her own ears that sounded very equivocal, and she stepped back at once, turned to the desk for a cigarette to give her something to do with her hands, took time to inspect it because this was the kind of moment in which she might well light the filter end. “If it’s something I can do?”

  “I’ve been entrusted with twenty-five dollars to buy a birthday present for my sister-in-law, preferably a poncho or a shawl. I don’t know why my brother would think me capable of this, as I’m no good about women’s clothes, but she wants something from Mexico,” said St. Ives, “and I wondered if you’d help me pick something out.”

  Mary was obscurely glad about part of his statement; if necessary, Spence could have selected an entire wardrobe for a woman without going wrong anywhere. She said doubtfully, “Oh, but—”

  “She’s tall,” said St. Ives, recognizing this demur, “and . . . large. She has red hair.” He considered for a few seconds. “Very red,” he added.

  Mary thought privately that anyone tall and large with very red hair would be better off without a poncho, but she said, “Well, I’ll try, if you can give me five minutes first.”

  He nodded his appreciation. “I’ll get the car and meet you in front. We’ll be quick about this, I promise.”

  Mary washed her face rapidly, put on light fresh makeup, combed her hair. Her dress was beginning to feel like a uniform, but the one that had been splashed with coffee wasn’t quite dry and in any case, after that remark about her eyes, she was going to be every inch a gift counsellor.

  Owen St. Ives wasn’t in front, because a number of guests were arriving to fill the vacuum left by the after-lunch exodus. Mary caught his signalling wave and threaded her way to the other side of the cobbled court. She was in the car, and it was moving, before she realized with astonishment that for the first time in almost forty-eight hours she had completely forgotten that she was not alone here. She said, “Oh, wait a minute, I’ve got to let Jenny know that I’m going.”

  He didn’t hear her; he had his head out the window, backing clear of what seemed like an endless Cadillac.

  “Owen?” Mary touched his arm and he swung the wheel and brought his head back in to gaze at her inquiringly. “I’d better let Jenny know that I’m going, she’s at the pool expecting me for a swim.”

  “But we won’t even be fifteen minutes,” said St. Ives. “We’ll buy anything at all that has made in Mexico on it.”

  It was so at odds with him that Mary laughed a little in spite of her growing sense of guilt. “No, I must. She’ll go all the way up to the room, dripping and freezing, and find herself locked out.”

  She had the door firmly open by this time. St. Ives glanced at his watch. “The place I had in mind will be closing in a few minutes—”

  Perhaps because of opposition, however slight, Mary’s compunction was turning into actual worry— why, when Jenny could give lessons to a fish? Because of that startling episode at the market? She got out of the car, aware of a disappointment that mirrored his, and said before she closed the door, “I’m really sorry, but most of the shops here have quite pretty lacy shawls. I think you’re safer with that than a poncho.”

  “Thanks anyway,” said St. Ives a trifle moodily, and drove away.

  To run to the pool would be ridiculous, now that she hadn’t left the motel after all and was on her way to it. Mary walked rapidly along the arched passageway, emerged, found herself standing involuntarily still and staring.

  The late afternoon was warm and windless, as though the weather were holding its breath for something, and there were a number of bathing-suited people on the scene but not in the water, including the two children who usually splashed so tirelessly at the shallow end. There was also a waiter, unmoving, with a tray of drinks poised at shoulder level. Daniel Brennan sat alone at a table, his chair swivelled around.

  It took Mary moments to realize that in the same way in which a pair of expert dancers could clear a floor by silent and unanimous consent, Jenny had claimed the pool for herself by a virtuoso display from the diving board.

  She was climbing up the ladder now, tugging briefly at her cap. Apparently oblivious of her intently watching audience, she paced along the board, positioned herself at its end with her back to the water, took a visibly deep breath, sprang high, and twisted twice before she entered the pool with almost no splash. She had evidently been doing variations of this for some time, because the tableau began to break, the erstwhile or would-be swimmers moving away, the waiter finally proceeding with his tray.

  Daniel Brennan rose and came toward Mary. “That is a diver,” he remarked. There was something neutral in his tone. “My friend has Mexican stomach, to put it at its politest, and we’ve been working in his room betwe
en groans.”

  Without actually taking Mary’s arm he had maneuvered her to his table and pulled out a chair so naturally that she sat down without thinking. “This is my spectator sport break. I’m not—” he was barefoot, in dark blue trunks and polo shirt “—supposed to be swimming here legitimately but I did go in. What can I get you to drink?”

  Owen St. Ives had had a Bacardi on the rocks waiting for her—informed by Jenny, Mary reminded herself. She asked for a gin and tonic, and Brennan picked up his own empty glass. “Quicker,” he said, and started off in the direction of the bar.

  Jenny was on the diving board again, out of breath but purposeful. She saw Mary, waved, ran three steps and soared off in a front flip. When she emerged again and executed a dive so complicated that it was possible to see individual muscles tense and relax and tense again as she stood in position, Mary felt a deep stir of uneasiness. Jenny had strong feelings about people who monopolized pools, which was exactly what she was doing, and in spite of her expertise in the water she wasn’t an exhibitionist. Moreover, this was not an exhibition in any accepted sense; it was something grim and driving and joyless. She was, thought Mary, like someone who has received a severe shock and starts scrubbing the house with furious, vacant energy.

  Daniel Brennan came back with their drinks. It must have occurred to him that Mary might wonder why two men with business to transact occupied different motels, because he said as he set the glasses down, “I stayed here once shortly after they opened. I got the impression that they were paying me, and I’d better look sharp.”

  He studied Mary’s expression and followed her gaze to the ladder which the claret-suited figure, lean as a whip if a whip could have bones, was climbing again. He said, still with that detached air, “She —Jenny, did you say?—has been at this for at least half an hour.”