Double

“He had no reason to, sir. Until this morning, when I happened to mention to him that you’d been asking about Bungalow Six.”

Nice, I thought. They’ve got it all worked out nice and pat. I said, “How about if I talk to Mr. Ibarcena? Or is he off again on another errand?”

“As a matter of fact, he has left the hotel. But if you’d care to talk to Mr. Beddoes I’m sure that can be arranged.”

“Mr. Beddoes said it was all right, did he?”

“Why, yes, sir, he did. Would you like to see him?”

“Sure. I’d like it a whole bunch.”

“If you’ll just wait here for a moment...”

He came around from behind the desk and went through a door to the left marked PRIVATE. Two minutes later he reappeared and gestured to me, and I went past him and into an anteroom that might have been a waiting area in some sort of penitentiary: gray carpeting, flat white walls, gray steel file cabinets, and a desk with a frumpy-looking young woman behind it. There were three doors leading off the anteroom, two of them closed and one open. In the open doorway was Lloyd Beddoes, smiling at me. But the smile was a little off-center, like a tough warden welcoming a member of the Prison Reform League.

“Come in,” he said, “come in, won’t you?”

I went in. His office was bigger than the anteroom and a little less institutional, with windows that looked out toward the ocean on one side and the gardens on the other. The air conditioner was on and turned up high; it was like walking into a cold-storage locker. Beddoes shut the door, waved me to a chair, and went behind his desk and sat down when I did. The smile was still in place and still crooked. He had a tense, worried look about him, similar to the one he’d worn yesterday while Knowles and his men were on the grounds.

“Now, then,” he said. “Mr. Scott explained about the misunderstanding with Bungalow Six?”

“He explained it.”

“You seem, ah, a bit skeptical.”

“Why should I be skeptical?”

“No reason. None at all.”

“I’m just curious,” I said. “I ran into Timmy Clark and his mother yesterday, not long before Elaine Picard’s death, and we had a talk. The boy indicated they’d be staying on here another day or two. Then all of a sudden they disappeared. You can see how that would make me wonder.”

Beddoes plucked nervously at a wing of his blond hair. “Oh yes,” he said, “of course. Perfectly understandable.”

“How come?”

“I don’t... Oh, you mean how come they left so suddenly. Well, I believe it had to do with a family emergency of some kind. You’d have to ask Mr. Ibarcena.”

“I’ll do that. I don’t suppose you know where they went?”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t. Perhaps Mr. Ibarcena—”

“But you can tell me where they live.”

“Where they live? Why do you want to know that?”

“We kind of hit it off, the three of us,” I lied. “Talked about getting together later on. So I’d like to get in touch with them. Pretty woman like Mrs. Clark... you know how it is.”

He nodded a little jerkily; his smile wasn’t much at all now. I wondered if he’d turned the air conditioner up so high on purpose, just before I came in, to keep himself from sweating during our little interview.

He said, “I’m afraid I can’t give out that information.”

“Why not? You’ve got a record of it, haven’t you?”

“Of course. But the law forbids us to divulge personal data about our guests.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want to break the law, would we.” I started to get up, pretended to change my mind, and sat down and leaned toward him. “Any word yet on Elaine Picard?”

He blinked at me. “Word? I don’t know what—”

“About her fall yesterday. Whether it was an accident or what.”

“Oh. No. No word.”

“You haven’t talked to the sheriff’s department since then?”

“I... no, I haven’t talked to them.”

“Well, what’s your opinion, Mr. Beddoes? Did she fall or jump? Or was she pushed?”

“Pushed?” he said. His hands twitched; he folded them together to keep them still. “What makes you think she might have been pushed?”

“I didn’t say that’s what I thought. But it is a possibility, wouldn’t you say?”

“No, I wouldn’t. Who would want to — to murder Ms. Picard?”

“Seems you might have some ideas about that.”

“Well, I don’t. Why should I?”

“She worked for you; she was your chief of security. Any sort of security or police work can be high risk at times.”

“Not at the Casa del Rey. We’ve never had any serious security problems.”

“I heard you tell Lieutenant Knowles that she was distraught the last time you saw her. Extremely distraught, I think you said. That didn’t have anything to do with her work here?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Do you know what was bothering her?”

“I have no idea. None.”

“But you did know her personally, didn’t you?”

He twitched again; the question seemed to make him even more nervous. “No,” he said. “No, I didn’t know her well at all. We certainly didn’t socialize, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“I’m not implying anything, Mr. Beddoes. Did you know any of her friends? A young guy with wavy brown hair named Rich, for instance?”