The Fire Night Ball Page 15

  But there was no sign of her.

  Next he checked Marlena’s room. No one there either, and her suitcase was gone.

  He then remembered the puzzling claim she’d made, about checking out of the hotel. He took the Beefeater's gin and vermouth from her private closet and poured himself a martini while he considered the chances of her not being at the hotel.

  No way, he thought, she's here somewhere. She’s downstairs in the bar right now, to show me she’s not afraid of anything. That's the ploy.

  He was chuckling as he descended in the main elevator. The elevator stopped at the third floor, and the doors opened. There was Codwell Dimmer standing at the Coke machine, throwing quarters into the coin slot.

  The apparition rattled Harry to the core. He instantly hit the door-close button so Dimmer wouldn't spot him.

  Had Marlena in fact fled from the hotel, because her husband was in hot pursuit?

  He felt his ardor diminishing. Too bad, because he hadn’t had such a raging hard-on for his mistress in many a month.

  Frowning, he walked into the bar, irritated by the strains of “Hail Britannia” that came on over the sound system.

  That gambit had also been Marlena’s idea, and it had gotten old. Yes, just as Lila had said, it was high time he took a break from this thing he had going with Marlena.

  She wasn't in the bar either, and he felt a lurch of disappointment, until....hold the line. There was a young woman at the far end of the bar, not bad looking, even though she had a nose-ring and purplish hair. She was very thin and about twenty feet tall.

  Damn, he’d never seen such a tall woman before, with slim legs that went all the way up!

  Harry nodded at Shirley, indicating the lone customer’s next drink would be on him. She poured his usual, a club soda with lime.

  “What are you drinking?” he asked the Amazonian, zeroing in on her.

  “Chevas and soda,” she said.

  “And whom do I have the pleasure of meeting?”

  “Keep it in your pants, buster. I play for the other team. Just the same, I’ll take the free drink. The name's Stretch, like a limo. What's yours?”

  "Harry Drake." He smiled ingratiatingly. “What brings you to our fair city, Stretch?”

  “Ain’t that fair so far. I’m here seeing’ relatives. What’s your excuse?”

  “Well, actually, I own this place.” He tried peering into her eyes and offering a trademark smile, but her face remained unfriendly.

  “No shit. Then you’d be acquainted with a friend of a friend of mine.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “Mr. Drake, you need anything more?” asked Shirley.

  He waved a hand, and Shirley disappeared into the background like a shade.

  “Let’s see,” Stretch pondered. “Name sounds like an old-time actress. Marlena Dietrich. Yep, that’s it. Marlena is her name. Big nipples, great cleavage, frizzy strawberry blonde hair, lots of it. A-maz-ing eyes.”

  “Oh yes,” he said noncommittally. Stretch was staring down at him from her great height; he felt very uncomfortable in this position. “Marlena works for us.”

  Stretch didn’t say any more, just drank down her Chevas and soda in three big gulps. Then she belched loudly.

  “As a matter of fact, I was just looking for Marlena.”

  “Oh? Too bad. Elvis has left the building. Takes more than a lunatic to scare that broad. She’s gone off somewhere. She was just here, shootin’ the breeze with us."

  “Us?”

  “Me and my girlfriend, Sally. Mister, here’s a hot tip. Sally’s hiring Marlena away from this outpost to do a big project in Key West, Florida. Authentic architectural restoration. Don’t know what that means, exactly, but looks like you're shit out a luck.”

  She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled, bringing Shirley at a run.

  “I’ll have another, hon.”

  Drake cleared his throat. “Please extend my best wishes to Marlena in her future endeavor.”

  Then, with a bow to Stretch--it was a difficult move, since she towered above him--he began to walk away from the bar.

  He didn’t move quickly; he made it a point not to. The fastest Harry ever moved was a slow stroll. And therefore, he didn’t avoid the unwanted encounter with Codwell Dimmer, who was coming toward him at a fast clip.

  “Thought that was you, Drake,” Coddie said with a forced smile and an outstretched hand.

  “Why, Mr. Dimmer. Whatever brings you from San Francisco to our cold clime?”

  “Oh, relatives, the holidays,” said Coddie. “Marlena’s cousin always throws a big bash on Christmas day. Her mother is in town. You may have heard.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard,” said Harry with cold geniality. “Well, I was just leaving. Nice seeing you again, old man.”

  “Oh, please don’t leave me hanging,” said Coddie ingratiatingly. “The women are Christmas shopping. I was hoping to buy you a drink and beat you at a game of pool. Like the old days. Remember?”

  “Seems to me I was the victor.”

  “Righto. You owe me a sporting chance to even the score, ha, ha.”

  “What are you drinking, Dimmer?”

  “Whisky, straight."

  “Your money is no good here, old sport. Shirley, get Mr. Dimmer the whiskey we keep downstairs.” Turning back to Coddie, he said, with a cold gleam in his eye, “If you have a mind to bet, name the amount.”

  “Five hundred is all I have on me.”

  “We can make it a thou. I’m sure you’re good for the rest.”

  “A thou it is then.”

  "I'm a bit rusty," said Harry conversationally, as he racked the balls. "When I was in college, though, I wasn't too bad at this game. Fairly routinely, I used to run the table."

  After he said the words “run the table,” he did the deed, like clockwork, across the scarlet cloth.

  Coddie was very gracious about the quick loss, forking over the cash he had with him. He said he would bring the remaining half to Chloe’s Sunday night, when they’d meet again. There was a pool table at Mill’s Creek, he told Harry, though not so grand as this one.

  Harry shrugged. “Shoot yourself. I'm in no hurry.”

  "Perhaps next time we can play for something more interesting.”

  “Such as?”

  “My wife, of course, in exchange for my silence.”

  “Your silence? About what?”

  Harry was lighting a Cuban cigar, which Shirley had brought him along with the bottle of whiskey

  “I could raise a stink if I wanted to. You went back on your word of honor, pal.”

  “Sorry, I’m not following. My word on what?”

  “You promised if I allowed Marlena to come over here on this trumped up ‘job,’ you'd follow two rules I set down.”

  “I don't vaguely recall it, but, okay, I’ll bite. So what were the two rules, Dimmer?”

  “Not to fall in love with her and not to knock her up.”

  Harry laughed unpleasantly. “I can assure you, old sport, those rules haven’t been broken.”

  “I assure you, old sport, that at least one of them has been broken, and your honor is forfeit.”

  Harry clapped him on the shoulder. “See here, Dimmer, I don’t mean to be rude, but frankly, I'm not in love with your wife. You can have her back, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

  “Didn’t think you were, Harry. Didn’t think you had it in you. Now listen up. I’ll say it again, loud and clear. You've broken one of the rules.”

  Harry had been fiddling with his personally designed pool cue, taking it apart, telescoping it, and putting it back inside its leather case. His back was turned when Coddie said the last words. When he turned around, his expression was strained.

  “Explain what you mean, Dimmer.”

  “You got the message all right. You’ve knocked her up. She's pregnant.”

  “That’s a boldfaced, despicable lie!”

  “Try selling that stor
y to the local doctor who ran the test.”

  Harry shut his gaping mouth and strolled over to the side wall. He stood with head bowed before a display of historic pool sticks, including one belonging to his grandfather, Augustus “Curly” Drake. Marlena had dug it up somewhere and presented it to him on his last birthday.

  “Th-th-th-th-th-that b-b-b-b-b-bitch!”

  Coddie came up behind him. “What did you say?”

  “N-n-nothing.”

  “Oh dear. It appears the bitch hasn’t told you. I’m sorry, old sport. Well, perhaps I was hasty in assuming you’re the father. At any rate, you’re on the hook. I hold you accountable, as will the world. The great event has happened on your watch, not mine.”

  “And what, may I ask,” spoke Drake brutally, “does your wife intend to do about it?”

  “Well, I suppose you’d better ask her yourself. You’ll see her Christmas night at Mill’s Creek. As I said, we’ll play for keeps, and I suggest you throw the game and give me back my wife. Or else, I’ll make your life a living hell. I’ll take you for everything you’ve got.”

  This time, it was Coddie who strolled away from the field of play with a smirk on his face, while Drake stared at the floor, ruminating.

  Even for Marlena, this was way off the chart.

  First, the bitch leaves her divorce papers out like a billboard sign. Then, she ruins his bar to get his sympathy, with techniques out of the fucking Middle Ages. And now, she sends her terrier to worry him with a trumped-up pregnancy claim!

  What was the next game up her sleeve – murder?

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  On the road, Marlena stopped twice more before arriving at Drake’s Roost. Once was to vomit at the side of the road. Her second stop was at a party supply shop.

  She turned into a gravel parking spot just past a signboard along the road that said “Costumes For Any Occasion.”

  Her idea for a ruse had come straight from Cassandra’s story.

  Cassandra had taken her Indian maid’s place at a Thanksgiving Day pageant staged in 1900. She'd attended in disguise after applying brown makeup, donning buckskin clothing, and covering her red-gold hair with a braided black wig. She wanted to get into the Brighton ranch, where she wasn’t welcome, having been vying with Miss Brighton over Curly Drake. All this, to sneak a peek at Nicholas Brighton, the returned native son who'd made a name for himself in San Francisco.

  Taking a page from her talented ancestor’s exploits, Marlena figured to get through the door at Drake’s Roost disguised as a hotel employee, Jane Dovetail, the Native-American housekeeping manager.

  Swooshing her hair under the wig and pulling down the braids of the wig in back, Marlena asked the shop clerk if there was makeup to go with the costume.

  “Oh, yes, right here,” he said. “Sacajawea is a favorite with the schoolgirls at the Brighton Charter School. They present a Christmas pageant every year. Ma’am, are you going to wear it now?" He looked at her curiously.

  "Oh, yes. I'm the entertainment at my daughter's seventh birthday party."

  The next thing she had to do was get past the butler. She drove up the long driveway to Drake's Roost with her wig on straight and her heart in her mouth. Anticipating Harry’s amusement when he got a load of her costume, she giggled.

  This bold gambit might be my best move ever.

  “Your name, pleath, Mith?” asked the rotund butler with the shaved head, giving her a leisurely once-over. A white turban was perched atop his shaved head and a red sash was loosely wound around his white caftan, which bulged over his paunch. Diamond studs much larger than her own glittered in both ears. “Jonas” was tattooed on his forearm.

  Name? Her mind swirled through its database.

  "Nevada Carson,” she said promptly. Nevada Carson was Cassandra Vye's stage name in California. With it, she’d amassed a personal fortune, then given it all away in her dead husband's name.

  “It’s a matter of some urgency that I see Mr. Drake. There’s a serious problem at the hotel,” she added briskly.

  “Oh my,” sighed the butler. “Wait here. I’ll thee what her wants to do.”

  Her?

  For the first time since pouncing on this bold, creative idea, Marlena felt a wave of panic, breaking out into a cold sweat. She hadn't counted on Lila being at home. Carlotta had plainly said Lila was flying to Palm Springs for a pre-holiday spa treatment.

  Before she had time to gather her wits and flee, there was Lila herself, floating down the long hallway, a white, diaphanous gown trailing behind her. She wore her glossy black hair in a long coil down her back. On her neck was an Elsa Peretti heart necklace.

  Marlena blanched, recognizing the necklace as the same piece she and Harry had looked at together at South Coast Plaza. She felt lightheaded, as though the marble floor had been jerked out from under her.

  But setting Marlena even more off balance, was Lila’s stunning appearance. She had never set eyes on her before, and Harry carried no pictures of her. Why, his wife was a knockout, with a magnetism immediately felt. Here was a fact even more dazzling and peculiar: Lila was a dead ringer for an elegant, half-nude lady in a painting Marlena had spent many hours gazing upon as a child.

  Lila might have been the model for Grandpa Bellum’s controversial possession, a framed painting he’d stubbornly insisted on hanging in the parlor, right over his couch, when he came home from the Italian campaign after WWI. The likeness made Marlena feel weak in the knees.

  Family lore had it that upon the lady’s first appearance in their home, Granny had declared one of them must exit, permanently. But Grandpa had prevailed in the disagreement by saying the lady was the image of Granny when she was a “young slip of a thing."

  Marlena herself had not been able to see a resemblance, other than the hair length. Granny's was also very long, down to her waist, but she pinned it up every morning into a steel-grey bun.

  But Faith judged the painting as being neither decent nor allowable in a good Catholic home. She’d told Marlena it was a mortal sin even to look at it. Therefore Marlena looked at it every chance she got.

  The gilding had worn away from the frame, leaving black paint exposed on the border, with the remaining gold flecked and scant. The tall, willowy lady was in profile and wore a long, trailing gown, diaphanous as a cobweb over the breasts, so one rosy nipple was visible. She was standing on tiptoe, her arms stretched out and holding aloft an ornate bowl filled with white roses. Her glossy black hair cascaded from the back of her head in a long coil that almost touched the marble floor. She posed, chin up, as though making an offering -- perhaps to a far-off deity, or, more likely, Marlena thought, a lazy courtier lounging behind the draperies that bounded the icy room. The coldness of the surroundings was underlined by a sinister mountainous landscape beyond three curved casement windows. The final touch of exoticism--a pair of snow leopards– crouched on the pearly marble floor, inches away from the lady’s delicate, bare toes....

  “What’s this all about, Miss Carson?” said Lila.

  Marlena was feeling dazed and confused, not only because of the subterfuge but also because her memory made it impossible to control her erotic reactions to Lila.

  “Sorry to disturb, m-m-ma’am,” Marlena stuttered. “There’s an emergency at the hotel. I was sent with a message for Mr. Drake by Mr. Simmons. May I see him, please?”

  There, finally, she'd spit it out.

  Lila regarded her curiously. “Doesn’t Mr. Simmons know how to use a phone?”

  “The phone lines are down. I mean, they've been cut.”

  “Really? That’s odd, because I was just on the phone with Carlotta, not a half hour ago. Harry’s not here. So you’ve wasted your trek up our treacherous hill, I'm afraid."

  A wave of nausea swept over her, and Marlena feared she might fall down.

  "So, what's the trouble this time?" Lila yawned. "Did a customer cut off a finger and leave it in the custard to set up a lawsuit?”

  “Oh
no, ma’am. Nothing like that. Four girls under my charge have staged a sit-down over wages.”

  “Oh, is that all?" Lila sniffed. "Sitting down on the job. Well, that’s what they’re good at, isn’t it? Isn't sitting a way of life for you people?”

  Marlena felt a flash of anger on behalf of the underpaid Native-American employees, all dishwashers and maids. Now she regretted not having come up with a different story, one that wouldn't have made the hardworking women targets of this spoiled woman's scorn.

  Then an amazing thing happened. Lila burst into tinkling laughter. Marlena was suddenly reminded of her little friend June, who had thought everything painful in life was funny. June also thought everything oblong on the teacher's blackboard looked like a penis.

  "Why, you should see your face, hon. I was only pulling your chain. Fact is, I'm on the side of those girls. Harry treats his employees like shit. Serves him right if they close him down at the holidays. Power to the people!"

  She was gazing at Marlena with ever-increasing curiosity. And once again, Marlena was being dragged into the past, willy-nilly, by her eidetic memory.

  The lips that spoke the words were pouty, as June’s had been, and like June's, they were begging to be kissed. However, June’s were pink rosebuds, while Lila’s lips were stained darkly scarlet. Marlena’s childhood friend June Thompson had taught her the pleasure to be had from stroking the soft place between her legs. Like Lila, June had pale skin and long, glossy black hair. They'd shocked the teacher by composing an illustrated story about a school employee they had a hopeless crush on; it was entitled "The Janitor's Thing."

  Lila was staring at Marlena. It was impossible for Marlena not to stare back at her, though doing so was totally out of character.

  “It's been a hard week for Harry, hasn’t it? First the weird thing at the bar and now a labor dispute.”

  “May I ask when Mr. Drake is expected back home?” asked the formerly intrepid intruder in a meek voice.

  That gold heart, she thought miserably, was like a signboard of Lila's ownership rights to Harry. For the first time in their long affair, Marlena felt the baseness in her position; she tingled with shame.