I registered, took the key and drove over to cabin number ten. Mrs. Casper watched from a curtained office window as I unlocked the turtleback and took out a traveling bag. The bag contained shaving gear and a fifth of Old Taylor. I took it into the cabin and used the contents.
Mrs. Casper wasn’t around when I stopped by on my way out. There were two camp stools on the porch. A copy of the Gravenstein Mail lay on one of them and enough light was reflected from the sunken sun to read it. I picked it up and sat down. The Mail was a three sheet weekly which reported the price of poultry, hops and apples, along with the news that the Hiram Slacks had done it again. There weren’t any after dark ads.
The screen door banged and Mrs. Casper stood looking down at me. “Was there something else?”
“I’ve decided to pay in advance, Mrs. Casper,” I said. “I may be leaving early in the morning.”
“All right, that’ll be four and a half,” she told me. “Stay right there and I’ll make out a receipt.”
I threw the newspaper on the other camp stool, stood up and leaned against the porch railing. In the distance, over the tops of the redwood trees, under a fading silver and orange sky, green peaks wore opalescent halos.
“Doesn’t seem to be much doing,” I remarked, paying Mrs. Casper for the receipt. “I appear to be your only guest.”
“Well, the season’s officially over now. Columbus Day ends it, you know.” She dropped into a camp chair with an accordian sound. “But the weather’s been good and they’re still drawing middlin’ crowds on the river. Too early in the week end for us to get the overflow yet.”
“I should have stayed in Tasco, I guess, since I’m going north in the morning. But a friend of mine recommended your place, said it was nice and clean and quiet. He’s right.” When Mrs. Casper brightened I added, “Robert Donaldson told me about it. Know him?”
“I should say,” she cackled. “Mr. Donaldson stays here quite often, spring and summer. Seldom a month goes by he don’t visit with us.” Mrs. Casper leaned toward me and spoke in a stern, confidential whisper, “Though heaven only knows what he wants a room for. His bed ain’t slept in half the time.”
I left Mrs. Casper on the porch, went back to the heap and headed out Russia avenue toward Geronimo River. After ten miles of corkscrew, climbing roads I was in Avonella, the hub of the resort section. I checked the hotel and a couple of clubs here, then drove out of town, following the river road. Three roadside joints later I found what I was looking for.
The Rio cabana, a small circular structure with a low thatched roof, squatted in a cluster of redwoods a few hundred feet off the highway. A neon sign in the center of the parking lot in front blinked its name, and the canvas banner below it advertised Doris Dawn at the piano. A showcase next to the door held an enlargement of the photograph on Donaldson’s bedroom bureau.
It was an intimate saloon, dimly lighted. To the left of the entrance there was a bar, an alcove at the end of it bearing the legend Rest Rooms, Telephone. On the right was a large room, wicker tables and chairs crowded around a Baldwin in the center of the floor. Three men and a woman stood at the bar, four couples sat at four different tables, a gum chewing waitress slouched against the far wall. The bartender, in a loud Hawaiian sport shirt, wiped the bar in front of me with a damp towel.
I ordered bourbon and soda and walked through the arch to the telephone booth. I looked for Doris Dawn’s name under all the towns listed in the thin directory. She wasn’t in any of them.
When I returned to the bar Doris Dawn was at the piano. She played well, looked better and was prettier than her picture. She wore a strapless green evening dress and her swirling red hair caught and hurled bright javelins from a floor spotlight as she played.
The bartender hovered. I gave him a dollar bill. He rang it up and brought back a quarter. I pushed it back at him. “I’d like to hear ‘If you can’t leave it alone, take it’,” I said. “And do you think the lady will have a drink with me?”
“She sure will,” he said emphatically. He flipped the quarter into a glass on the back bar and signalled the waitress. She came off the wall like the rebound in handball.
I carried my drink to a table and sat down. The waitress had a few words with the bartender and walked to the piano. As she talked the redhead glanced at me indifferently. The waitress kept talking. She must have been saying: So business is lousy, what the hell, let him buy you a drink. The redhead played my request.
After two more numbers Doris Dawn joined me. I thanked her for coming. She thanked me for asking her. The waitress arrived with another highball for me, a long stemmed glass of pink tea for the redhead. She gave me two dollars back for a pedro and looked surprised when I tipped her without argument.
“It’s my first trip to the river this year,” I said. “Looks like I missed the crowds.”
“Yes,” Doris Dawn said listlessly. Unlike her photograph, this girl’s eyes were lifeless, her face slightly drawn. She was worried about something and I wasn’t at the table at all.
“Do you play here all year round, or just during the summer?” I asked.
“All year except January and February,” she said. “We’re one of the few places that stay open.” She started to sip her drink, but put it down quickly.
“Could I order you something else? I’m up here alone, just feel like talking to somebody. My wife understands me and I have no troubles.”
She forgot she was worried about something and felt me with her eyes. The babes this Donaldson latched on to. She said, “Whatever you’re drinking.”
When the waitress brought a new bourbon Doris Dawn took a deep swallow of it and smiled at me. “When we’re busy all I do is play the piano,” she explained. “In the off season I drink this other swill with any two-bit jerk who can afford it.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m sorry,” she laughed musically. “I wouldn’t have switched if you were in that bracket.” The lights were in her eyes now and she was smiling with good white teeth.
“Where did you ever get a moniker like Doris Dawn?” I asked. “With that hair and those eyes it ought to be Murphy, or O’Toole.”
She continued to smile. “As a matter of fact it’s Doris O’Rourke. I used to play the night club circuit and my own name was death in the ads, so they told me.”
“Then you gave up the big cities for the peace and quiet of Geronimo River.”
Her smile disappeared, the lights went out and her preoccupied mood returned. “That was the idea,” she said passively.
We worked on our drinks a few more minutes, until she excused herself and went to the piano. I went back to the phone directory. This time I found it: O’Rourke, Dorothy, One Rosebud lane. A map at the front of the book showed me how to get there.
Five
A bright half moon helped me find Rosebud lane, a paved narrow stretch which shot off an artery of the main road and wound up the side of a hill. Number one was a fenceless cottage behind a narrow square of lawn, with a driveway and one car garage, at the foot of the hill. There was a night light burning over its door, but no signs of life. I passed the cottage, climbing the road behind it in low gear. The night was still as Tut’s tomb.
I had to go all the way to the summit to turn around. My headlights picked up a flurry of arms and legs, scaring the bejabbers out of a couple in the back seat of a parked car there. Coming down, the sudden flush of a toilet sounded like a dam breaking in the quiet, and I saw a thin sliver of light flash at the rear of Number one.