“Thank you. I’d like that.”
Dinner was most pleasant. They moved inside to eat. Though the choice was limited, the food was good, well prepared. They had a corner table for two. At one point he saw Dora Northard come in and flash him a wry smile of accusation. He found Ellen Christianson was very good company. She had a quick mind, a sense of the ludicrous. She had kept her eyes open and her anecdotes of life at the Terrace Inn were full of a sad, wry humor. He talked about his work for a time, and her questions were perceptive. He learned that her father, an executive of a small shipping line, had died the year she got out of school, and his will had left her a small income. She spoke again of the man she was divorcing, but this time with calmness. He had inherited textile money, a great deal of it. She was accepting only the expense money. They had lived in California. After she received her decree, she planned to go East to stay with her sister for a short time and then look for work in New York. Though she had wanted children badly, she was glad now there had been none. He asked her what sort of work she wanted, and she spoke vaguely of trying to get on a magazine, some department that had to do with clothes or decorating, and he found himself speaking a bit too expansively of his contacts and what he could arrange. He stopped when he realized he was sounding too big-wheel.
He liked her face. It had strength and sureness. There was no vapidity in her face, no coyness in her manner. Yet despite her lack of artifice, she was entirely feminine.
She said, over the empty coffee cups, “It is so hard to feel like yourself in this place. Everybody is watchful. And they decide what you are. And they make their decision so obvious that you find yourself trying to be what they have decided you are. Anybody can be a chameleon out here.”
“They call you the Duchess.”
“Good Lord! That’s a little shocking, isn’t it?”
He signed the check, then held her chair back for her. They went out and she said, “Whatever we do, if it’s outdoors, I need a sweater.”
He walked with her to her room and waited out in the shadows until she turned the light off and came out. She had changed to a wool skirt and a cardigan. He walked with her down the covered walkway. She paused and lit a cigarette, her hands cupping the flame, and he looked at her as the flame touched her face with flickering orange light. There was something special about standing near her in the night, aware of her faint perfume, seeing the look of flame against that good face. He felt a sudden surge of excitement and anticipation, then pulled the reins tight and told himself this was an attractive woman and no more.
“What now, Jay? Where do we talk? I know a place I’d like you to see, but we have to drive there.”
He agreed. She directed him. The narrow road turned off the flats toward higher ground. He guessed they were five miles from Oasis Springs when she told him where to turn and park, warning him not to go too far forward because of the sand. He turned off the lights, and they looked at Oasis Springs, like a lighted ship on a calm night ocean.
“Like it?”
“How did you find it?”
“I guess I was looking for a place where I could hold onto my perspective, Jay. It makes it all look tinselly and silly down there, doesn’t it? If you stay down there too long, you begin to think it’s important.” There was a jeweler’s sky over the blue velvet desert, and he could sense the weight of the stone mountains behind them. She settled herself a bit, half turned toward him, her back against the door, drawing her knees up onto the seat, patting her skirt. “About Joan,” she said quietly.
“About Joan. I know what I want to hear, of course.”
“I could tell you what you want to hear. A nice white lie. But it was like this. She was here when I checked in. She hadn’t been here long. I was full of the glooms. I liked her. I needed her kind of brightness and fun. Not the kind the others have. She talked about you, as I said, and about the divorce. I wouldn’t say she was exactly a shallow person. She just existed on a different level from mine. A level of sensation, perhaps. As though she’d do anything in the world for fun and excitement. I think too much. I ask myself why too often. The divorce seemed like a good idea for the two of you. But, you see, she didn’t stay that way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Several days before she went away on that trip, or wherever she went, she changed. She acted nervous, depressed. I had no chance to talk to her. I wondered about her. Of course, I never got my chance to ask her. Now do you see what I mean?”
He ran his thumb along the angle of his jaw and heard the soft rasp of the stubborn beard, a small sound in the night stillness. The cooling motor of the car creaked. “It leaves me where I started. Either she changed her mind and wanted me to phone her; wanted to call it all off — or something happened out here. She went away for a time. That makes it seem as though it was something that happened out here.”
“But you don’t know that, do you?”
“No.” His voice was harsh.
“You should find out where she went, and why.”
“Do you know where to start?”
“Here’s all I know about her trip, Jay. She didn’t plan for it. She didn’t take anything with her. She left the Terrace Inn after lunch on a Tuesday. She didn’t come in Tuesday night. She came back during the small hours on a Thursday morning. The police tried to find out where she had been. I know they checked the men she had dated. There weren’t any here in the hotel. There were several in town she had gone with from time to time. They all claimed they hadn’t seen her since the previous weekend. That investigation was kept pretty quiet. Mr. Gerald Rice wanted it played down, I understand. And anything Mr. Rice wants done is done. So I don’t know where your starting point is. I’ve thought about that ever since I saw her there, in the pool.”
“You saw her?”
“I was up early. I was getting dressed when that man started yelling. I came out and saw her. I didn’t know how long she’d been in there. I went in with my clothes on and got her. By then the man from the desk came running out. He pulled her out, and we stretched her out on one of those poolside mattresses. I started artificial respiration, but I could tell by the feel of her it was no good. I kept it up until the emergency car got there with the oxygen. They pronounced her dead. That was when I reacted. I’d been very competent until then. And the shivers started. I couldn’t get it out of my head, the way she’d looked. That sort of helpless and pathetic look of the back of her neck and head, her hair all plastered down. I hadn’t known until then her hair was dyed.”
Jay Shelby stared at Ellen Christianson. “Dyed? You’re mistaken.”
“The roots were dark, Jay. Black.”
“Ellen, I know the color of her hair. I can’t possibly be mistaken. Look, she fell once. Cut her head. It had to be shaved and stitched. We were a long way out of town. I changed the dressings. I saw the new hair growing in where her head had been shaved. So pale it was almost white. Her hair wasn’t dyed.
“But I tell you. I saw it. Her hair was dark near the roots. For a good quarter of an inch. And her eyebrows and eyelashes were dark, Jay.”
“That was her coloring. She liked the contrast. And she did darken them a bit to heighten the contrast. You must be mistaken.”
She said firmly, “The woman I took out of the pool had dyed hair.”
“Then it wasn’t Joan.” he said firmly, and his mind did a curious double-take, like the trained timing of a television comedian. Not Joan. Yet he had seen her, in Burlington, after the barbaric finesse of the undertaker’s art, surrounded by too ripe flowers and much weeping, face pale on the satin pillow. Joan. There could be no resemblance that close — even to the tiny scar on the bridge of her nose, from the time, as a child, she had fallen from a playground swing. He had seen that scar on the body, back there in Burlington, looking at her and knowing that her people were looking at him with hate. There is the one who ruined her life. No, his trained eye could not be mistaken. He had seen the body of his wife.