Just get in the car, tomorrow, and bid farewell to all this. Tyler suddenly felt better, as if realizing she could leave had lifted an oppressive weight from her spirits. The knot of fear in her stomach loosened. She could leave. Nobody would force her to seek out Dan. Nobody would force her to take the Beast House tour.
If I don’t want to, she thought, I won’t.
She put away the telephone directory, pulled the curtains across the windows, and took off her clothes. Inspecting her bra in the dim light, she doubted she could ever remove the bloodstains entirely. Even if she succeeded, she would never forget this was the bra she had worn when the man attacked her. It would always be a reminder. So she took it into the bathroom and dropped it into the waste basket.
Standing by the road, she had cleaned most of the blood from her skin. But she hadn’t taken off her bra. Some blood had soaked through it, leaving faint rust-colored blotches on her breasts.
In the shower, she lathered her body with a thin bar of motel soap and used a washcloth to scrub her face and neck, her shoulders, her arms, her breasts—every inch of skin that had been touched by the man or his blood. She rinsed. She turned her back to the spray and looked down. Her breasts were tawny to the tan line, then creamy white to the darker flesh of her nipples. No trace of the blood stains remained. Nevertheless, she soaped the washcloth and scoured herself once more before leaving the tub.
The bath towel was threadbare and half the size of her towels at home. After drying herself, she wrapped it around her waist and left the steamy bathroom. She turned on a lamp. The towel pulled loose as she sat down at the dressing table. She left it draping her lap and brushed her hair. Only the fringes at her neck were damp from the shower. With the short length, she had no trouble fixing her hair up enough to look presentable.
Leaning against the table’s edge, she studied her face in the mirror. Her eyes needed help. Definitely. They looked haggard and slightly dazed. With a conceal stick from her makeup bag, she covered the smudges under each eye. She darkened her feathery lashes with mascara, then brushed her lids with light blue shadow. A vast improvement.
As she put on lipstick, she wondered why she hadn’t bothered to do all this before driving out to look for Dan. Well, she’d been in a hurry. And nervous. Maybe it was something else, though. Maybe it was simply that she thought he wouldn’t mind her scruffy appearance. Or maybe, deep down, she had somehow known she wouldn’t find him.
She got up from the table. Its edge had left a crease like a long red scar just below her rib cage. She rubbed it as she carried the towel into the bathroom.
She had already decided what to wear. Though she would have preferred slacks because of the chill outside, she’d made up her mind to wear a skirt instead. Rummaging through her suitcase, she took out what she needed. She stepped into fresh panties, hooked her garter belt around her hips, and sat on the bed to put on her nylons. She’d selected a blue tweed skirt. It wasn’t very summery but then, neither was the weather. Not at night, anyway. With the skirt on, she slipped into a wispy bra. Its silken feel made her nipples rigid. She drew a white cashmere sweater down over her head. It wasn’t thick enough to hide the jut of her nipples completely, but her only other white bra was in the bathroom waste basket. A black one might show through the sweater.
“What the hell,” she muttered.
With Nora at the same table, who would be looking at her anyway?
Abe, that’s who.
She felt a rather pleasant, nervous tremor. It stayed with her as she stepped into her heels, put a few necessities into a clutch purse—including her room key—and approached the connecting door.
“Nora?” she called. “Left yet?”
“Five minutes ago,” came the answering voice, followed by a guffaw. “Want to come through? My side’s already open.”
Tyler pulled open her door. The room was a twin of her own. Nora was seated at the dressing table, changing her earrings. “I’m just about set,” she said. She had on the same green gown she had worn to last night’s banquet. With her low neckline and spaghetti straps, she looked considerably more formal than Tyler.
“Going to a prom?” Tyler asked.
Nora eyed her, grinning. “My, don’t you look preppy. Going to a frat dance?”
“Call me Muffin.”
“I just figured I might as well give the boys something to look at.”
“Where’s Jack going to pin your corsage?”
“To my boobie, darling.” Finished with her earrings, she took a white, cable-knit shawl off the bed, wrapped it around her shoulders, and picked up a purse that matched her gown. “Shall we be off?”
Outside, the breeze was mild. The sun felt much warmer than Tyler had expected. It hung above the distant treetops, blazing into her eyes. She lowered her head and watched her shoes move over the courtyard’s asphalt. “What time is it?” she asked.
“About five thirty. The tail end of the Happy Hour.”
“I hope Abe and Jack are the patient type.”
“We’re well worth waiting for.”
“Right.” She hesitated. “I’ve been thinking.”
“What?”
“I’m not sure about all this business…looking for Dan, digging up the past. Maybe it’d be better to call it off.”
“Getting the jitters?”
“I’ve had the jitters all along. But nothing’s been going right, you know? It’s almost as if I’m not meant to find him.”
“Meant? That’s a cop-out.”
“And if I do find him, and if he’s not married or something, who’s to say we’re still…I don’t know, the same people? I know I’m not. He’s probably changed, too.”
“No harm in giving it a shot.”
“Isn’t there? I don’t know.”
Nora frowned at her, looking concerned. “What is it?”
“I just…it didn’t seem like such a bad idea, last night. But after everything today…” She shook her head. “I have this kind of sick feeling about it.”
“Just nerves.”
“No, it’s more than that. I have this feeling that if I do find Dan, I’m going to be very sorry. I’m going to wish I hadn’t.”
They crossed the entry drive to a shaded walkway.
“It has been one hell of a day,” Nora agreed. “I can’t blame you for feeling a bit down. But maybe you’ll feel different in the morning.”
“Maybe,” Tyler said.
Nora pulled open one of the double doors, and they entered the restaurant. The hostess’s desk, with a goose-neck lamp shining down on the reservation list, was deserted. No one was seated in the dining area to the right, but the tables were set. A woman in an ankle-length dress was bent over one, lighting the chimney candle of its centrepiece. From the left came the sounds of quiet conversation and clinking glass.
They stepped past the desk, past the partition behind it, and entered the cocktail lounge. Several people were seated at the bar: a lone man joking with the bartender, a middle-aged redhead with her hand on the thigh of the man beside her, a husky gray-haired man sitting with a blond fellow. Tyler turned her eyes to the tables. She spotted Abe and Jack in a corner booth, and Jack waved. “They’re over…”
“That’s Gorman Hardy,” Nora said. She was leaning sideways as if to get a better look at someone down the bar.
“The one with the other guy?”
“That ‘other guy’ is Brian Blake.”
Tyler could only see the back of the older man, but the blond one was talking, head turned enough to show the side of his face. “You might be right,” she said.
“Of course I’m right. Let’s go over and say hi.”
“Must we?”