Double

What about the situation Elaine had uncovered at Casa del Rey? I wondered. And what had been in the clipping she’d sent with the letter to her lawyer? Since it had only been written on Thursday, I doubted she had been able to find out much more in the interim.

Or maybe she had. Maybe that was why she’d died.

This new information made Lloyd Beddoes and perhaps his assistant, Ibarcena, look very bad. I tried to picture them as they’d stood with Wolf in the garden that morning after Elaine’s fall. They’d been nervous. Nervous and upset. But guilty-looking? Perhaps. I’d been plenty upset myself, and my memory wasn’t too clear on the fine points.

I was so preoccupied by the matter of Beddoes and Ibarcena that I simply walked through the living room to the front door, turned the dead bolt, and stepped outside onto the porch. And as soon as I did, I realized I’d made a big mistake.

A sheriff’s-department car was parked at the curb, and Lieutenant Tom Knowles was coming up the walk toward me.

12: “Wolf”

The clerk on the registration desk was the same one who’d checked me in yesterday. Young, spiffily dressed, polite in an aloof way. And as adamant as the black maid I’d talked to a few minutes ago, if a little more patient.

“You must be mistaken, sir,” he said. “Bungalow Six has been empty for over a week.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Yes, sir, of course I am.”

“All right. A woman about thirty-five, brown-haired, slender, fairly attractive. A little boy, seven or so, on the hefty side; fair-skinned, blond hair. His first name is Timmy — I don’t know hers or their last name. Maybe they’re staying in one of the other bungalows?”

“No, sir. Only three of the bungalows are occupied at the moment and I know all of the guests. None of them is a woman such as you described. And certainly none is a little boy.”

“Here in this building, then?”

“Not to my knowledge, sir. If you could give me their last name...”

“I told you, I don’t know their last name.”

“Then I’m sorry, I don’t know what I can do.”

“You can let me talk to the manager.”

“Mr. Beddoes isn’t available.”

“No? When will he be available?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“How about his assistant?”

“Mr. Ibarcena has left for the day.”

“And you don’t know when he’ll be available either, right?”

“No, sir, I don’t.”

I gave it up; this wasn’t getting me anywhere. And none of it made any damned sense. Timmy had as much as told me he was staying in Bungalow 6; his mother had come from there when she was calling him, had dragged him back in that direction when they’d left me. Now they were gone, and nobody would admit that they’d ever been here. Why? What the hell was going on?

Well, maybe the drunk, Jim Lauterbach, had some answers. He’d been there at the bungalow; he’d talked to the maid just before I had. Personal interest in Timmy and his mother? Or professional interest? That was another question that kept nagging at me.

I took a tour of the lobby and the Cantina Sin Nombre, but Lauterbach wasn’t in either place. There was some activity on the mezzanine, and I went up there and the convention was still going on — people milling around, waiting for another panel or product demonstration to start, talking and drinking wine, a couple of them laughing. It surprised me a little and it shouldn’t have. There was no reason for the Society to cancel the rest of the convention just because one of its members had died suddenly. No reason for the Casa del Rey to curtail its normal operations, or for its employees to show any apparent signs of sadness or grief, just because its security chief had tumbled out of the east tower and cracked herself open like Humpty-Dumpty. Just clean up the remains, clean up the blood, pretend none of it had really happened, and then it was business as usual.

It annoyed me — all these people, all that pretense. Because Elaine Picard had been a human being, and she had died badly, and I had seen and heard her die, and death was not something that ought to be ignored or treated with indifference. But there was another reason, too: Timmy and his mother. Something peculiar was going on around here, and that also ought not to be ignored or treated with indifference.

Some of the conventioneers tried to buttonhole me, but I knew what they wanted and I brushed them off. Lauterbach wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Either he was still out roaming the hotel grounds or he was long gone.

I left the building again, made my way back through the gardens to Bungalow 6. No Lauterbach. The black maid had vanished too; the place was shut up tight. I tried the door, the windows in the front wall, but there was no way in short of felonious breaking and entering. And after the maid’s visit, I had a feeling that there wouldn’t be anything to find even if I did get inside.