Lugging my Gladstone bag, I moved through the covered entryway, pushing open double doors decorated with stained-glass windows, and entered into a two-story lobby that was at once cavernous and cozy, its dark woodwork highly polished, its hardwood floor worn, plants and flowers everywhere, from potted to freshly cut, a world of elegant antiques and hand-beveled glass and sepia lighting; it was as if I had walked into a daguerreotype.
“We have your reservation, sir,” the assistant manager said numbly, at the check-in counter. He was a guy in his late twenties with short-cropped prematurely gray hair and a scar over his left eye; he was pleasant enough but had an all-too-familiar look, the postwar equivalent of what we used to call the thousand-yard stare.
“Which theater?” I asked.
“Huh?” He flashed a nervous smile. “Pacific.”
“Me too. I helped remodel Guadalcanal.”
“At least you had some ground under you-I was on a carrier.”
“Listen, Mac, you got any suites available?”
“Just one; we’re underbooked, and even off-season, the suites get snapped up.”
“But you do have one?”
“Yes,” he said, but shook his head, no. “The Governor’s Suite. It’s pretty expensive-it’s where Pancho Villa, Judy Garland, Conrad Hilton and Clark Gable’ve stayed.”
“Together?”
That made him chuckle; he looked like he hadn’t chuckled in a while.
Pushing my hat back, I scratched my head. “I have to do some interviews and I’d rather not do them in a public place, like your bar or restaurant-”
“It’s fifty a night.”
“Christ, I just want a room, not stock in the joint. Never mind-my cheapskate boss would stick me with the bill. I’ll muddle through with my five-dollar room …”
“… It’s just the one night?”
“Yeah.”
“Take the bastard,” he said. He had a tiny smile as he handed me the key. “You gonna eat first?”
“Think so.”
“Leave your bag. I’ll get it to your room.”
“Thanks, Mac.”
“A warning, though …”
“Yeah?”
“The Governor’s Suite is Rebecca’s favorite room.”
“Who’s Rebecca?”
He raised the shrapnel-scarred eyebrow. “Our resident ghost. She was a chambermaid, murdered by her jealous lover here, back in the thirties.”
“No kidding. Was she … is she … good-looking?”
“They say she’s a gorgeous redhead.”
“What the hell-I always wanted to lay a ghost.”
I tipped my hat to him and headed over to where leather armchairs were grouped about a large carved-wood-and-stone fireplace; New Mexico or not, it was chilly enough for a fire, flames lazily licking logs. Only two of the comfy chairs were taken, by a couple I’d spotted when I came in. The glow of the fire lent the pair a golden patina that made them seem a part of that old photo I’d walked into.
They were seated next to each other, but not saying anything much, watching the fire like a disaffected married couple watching television. These were obviously my interviewees: they fit the descriptions Pearson had provided, although the woman’s didn’t do her justice, as she’d been pronounced merely beautiful.
In her late twenties, a petite, painfully pretty thing, sitting with her hands in her lap atop a small black patent-leather purse, Air Force nurse Maria Selff looked a little like Dorothy Lamour only better, and instead of a sarong she was wrapped up in a simple but shape-hugging short-sleeve powder-blue frock with Spanish-style white embroidery on the bodice. Her heart-shaped face was blessed with large, luminous, long-lashed dark blue eyes, a strong yet feminine nose, and full, cherrylipsticked lips, stark against her milky white complexion, starkly lovely next to the lustrous black hair of her shoulder-brushing pageboy.
This is what the boys overseas had been fighting for, what pilots had painted on the nose of their planes, what dogfaces had pinned up in their barracks and foxholes, what Varga and Petty had imagined and God had finally accomplished. And yet her manner was shy, even demure.
Her male companion was out of his league, but then most men would have been, even those that weren’t-as Glenn Dennis was-a mortician. Smelling of Old Spice, which was better than formaldehyde, Dennis was of medium height, slender, twenty-five maybe, with short brown hair, heavy streaks of eyebrow lending the only distinguishing feature to a pleasant, oval face; he struck me as rather mild and unassuming, a rather typical small-town merchant, even if he was dealing in death. He was duded up in a Western shirt, tan with brown trim and cuffs, with a bolo tie and crisply pressed stockman’s slacks-trying to be worthy of her, the poor sap.
“Mr. Dennis?” I asked.
He looked up sharply, stood, nodding, extending his hand. “Yes, sir. You must be Mr. Heller.”
“I must be,” I said, shaking the hand, and motioning for him to sit back down. “Miss Selff? Nathan Heller.”
“Oh my,” she said, looking up at me like a frightened child, covering her mouth with a hand. She began to tremble, and averted her eyes from mine.
Usually I have to work at it awhile, before getting a reaction like that out of a woman.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Is something wrong? Did I-”
She was shaking her head, still turning away from me, holding up a hand, calling a momentary halt. “No, no … you didn’t do anything … I’m the one who’s sorry …”
Goddamn, she was crying! Fumbling with her purse, finding a hanky, she dabbed at her eyes, sniffled, and regained her composure.
“You … you just reminded me of someone, that’s all,” she said. “It’s a rather startling resemblance, and I’m afraid it just … threw me a little.” She smiled, embarrassed. “Please sit down, Mr. Heller.”
I nodded to her as I took the chair beside Dennis. She got her compact out of her purse, checked her makeup-it was fine-then returned it to her purse and her purse to her lap and her folded hands to their patent-leather altar.
I appreciate your cooperation, Miss Selff … Mr. Dennis,” I said. “I know this was a difficult decision …”
“I’m afraid I’ve made a terrible mistake,” she said. Her voice was a fluid alto, still quivering slightly from the odd emotional outburst. “I’m putting all of us in harm’s way, here.”
“Now, Maria,” Dennis said, his voice higher-pitched than hers and as flat as hers was musical, “that’s nonsense. It’s been almost two years since the trouble.”
“We were followed,” she said gravely, her distressed gaze starting on him, landing on me-and holding.
“Were you?” I asked him.
Dennis shook his head, no, insistently. “Highway was darn near empty. One farmer in a beat-up old pickup went roarin’ around us, like to have his fenders fall off. That wasn’t any government man.”
“They have devious ways,” she said.
Her melodrama was at once silly and disturbing.
“I’d like to interview you, individually,” I said. “But first, let’s get to know each other a little. Why don’t we have dinner? I’ll admit to being starved; I haven’t eaten since Chicago.”
“I could eat,” Dennis admitted.
She shrugged. “Fine.”
Just off the lobby, the dining room was called Rebecca’s (after the gorgeous ghost, whose image in stained glass adorned several windows) and we had the place pretty much to ourselves. Despite the Victorian trappings, the menu included plenty of traditional New Mexican dishes, and I tried the green chile stew-which made first my mouth, and then my eyes, water-while Dennis had spareribs with chauquehue (cornmeal and red chile) and Miss Selff a small bowl of soup, Anasazi bean with lamb, which smelled so good I had the waitress bring me a cup.
I used small talk to get information out of them and, I hoped, put them at ease. Dennis, it seemed, was not a full-fledged mortician at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, but an assistant, serving a sort of internship.