Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

She rose and studied the bedroom, finally going to a bureau. She jerked open its reluctant drawers in turn. Each was lined with the living room wallpaper. Under each lining was bare wood.

She returned to the bathroom, gazing pensively at its accouterments and herself lost in a sea of semblances. No place to hide paper here; besides, it would have rotted by now.

That left the living room.

Midnight Louie anticipated her by jumping off the bed and trotting back to the main room.

Temple followed, wondering what had stirred his sluggish soul.

She entered the room just in time to hear a faint clicking. Aha! Superior feline hearing strikes again.

Temple eyed the open blinds at the windows, welcoming the bold bars of light striping the floral carpeting. No self-respecting spirit would deign to appear against such a well-lit background. Then her own ears traced the snick-snick sound to its source.

The keyhole. Someone very physical was attempting to break and enter.

Louie stood by the door, stretching his considerable length up it until his paw patted the doorknob, which was beginning to tremble preparatory to turning.

Temple looked around. No place to run, no other exit. No place to hide. She darted to Louie's side and flattened herself against the wall, hoping the cat would divert whoever entered long enough for her to brush by and escape.

Unless it was a hotel maid. The rooms were amazingly dust-free.

While Temple stood in closer communion with the atrocious wallpaper than she would have wished, Louie retreated from the door and gave a welcoming meow.

Traitor!

The door swept open at last, ending the suspense and nearly smashing Temple behind its solid bulk.

Keys jingled. Someone moved a couple steps into the room. Temple held her breath, wishing she'd brought the shield of her tote bag from the office below.

The form pushed farther into the room as Louie turned around in the middle of the carpet and flopped heavily on his side, Good distracting tactic, Louie! Play the friendly pussycat .

Temple edged around the door and stopped as the intruder turned.

"What are you doing here?" they shrieked at each other in unsettled unison.

Van von Rhine put one hand to her breastbone and one to her pale blond French twist.

Temple wasn't sure whether she was more protective of her heart rate or her hairdo.

"You!" she exclaimed. "I'd heard Chef Song mention that the blinds were open in this room.

They're never open."

"So you came up, alone, to investigate?" Temple sounded as incredulous as she felt.

''Apparently you did too."

''Apparently . . . not. I'm the disturber of the dust, the barer of the blinds."

"Why?"

"I had a wild idea."

"That's what you're paid for, but why have them in this suite, of all places?"

"Because, of all places, this is the one where Jersey Joe Jackson was liable to hide something. He'd done it before."

"Hide what?"

"The missing original plans to the basement."

"Why do they matter?"

"I don't know that they do, but I decided to take a look for myself."

Van's piercing blue eyes flicked to the doorknob. "How did you get in?"

"Pass key." Temple flourished her open sesame.

"How did you get a key? They're only kept in my office."

"Yancy got one from a helpful Fontana brother."

"Which one?',' Van's voice was sheer steel.

"Who can say for certain with Fontana brothers? Listen, what's so awful about my trying to track down a lead from the past? I'm supposed to dream up a dynamic new theme for this hotel.

I have to dig deep for that."

"Not here." Van looked around, then clasped her hands over her bare upper arms and shuddered. "It truly is haunted. I can hardly bear being here, but in a sense, I'm the guardian of this place. There's nothing here, Temple, but things we shouldn't disturb."

''Did you replace the mattresses?''

Van looked startled. ''Yes, but how--"

"Then there's nothing in them. What about the old ones?"

"Destroyed. They were broken down."

"Did anybody examine them first?"

"Of course. After the silver dollars came tumbling out, you can imagine that every spring and piece of cotton batting was torn apart."

"So it never was there."

"This . . . missing plan, you mean? It's only the basement, after all, and that was extensively remodeled two years ago."

"Why is it the only floor plan missing?"

"Because it wasn't important!" Van answered, exasperated.

"Or because it was the only important one."'

"Can we leave?"

"This place really makes you nervous."

"Doesn't it spook you?"

"No," Temple replied stoutly, completely forgetting her earlier heebie-jeebies, another vivid forties expression.

She turned to regard the room again. "Only the bedroom bureau drawers are big enough to hold an architectural plan, and they don't. The closet is dead space, empty as a tomb. Sorry,"

she added as Van shivered again. "The desk is too small for anything. The only possible other place to look would be inside the walls. After all, Jersey Joe built this place. He could have easily concealed something in the construction."

"I am not," Van said grimly, "tearing the walls apart. I refused that option even to hunt for more blasted silver dollars, though everyone pooh-poohed my notorious superstitions. The point of leaving this suite alone was preserving whatever . . . ambiance it had and respecting whatever . . . influence the dead Mr. Jackson still has. Had."

"A pity"--Temple glowered around like an interior decorator with indigestion--"this wallpaper design is so busy. Who could tell if it had ever been tampered with--by anyone? Or anything."

Her eyes fell on the desk again, with it's perplexingly ordinary contents. The banker's lamp beamed down on the rich leather surface. Something, a dust mote perhaps, danced in the lamp's narrow, bright beam of light.

Louie catapulted to the chair seat and atop the desk before Temple could blink at the motion. He began pawing at the, lamp, pushing it askew.

Van uttered a strangled scream, but Temple saw the reason for Louie's attack.

"A moth," she said, watching its small gray form flutter upward as Louie stretched three feet up the wall--and then jumped upward another foot--"to capture it. "Just a moth."

"There is no such thing as 'just a moth' in a hotel," Van replied, the starch stiffening her voice again.

Temple pulled Louie down with little resistance, getting her nose right against the wallpaper in the process.

''Wait a minute. The paper is faded over the desk."

''I told you. Except for the mattresses, this room has not been touched in thirty years. Of course the wallpaper is old and faded--"

"But more faded here. See? A big oblong over the desk, like something had hung there."

''Something did hang there." Van was speaking through her teeth now. "Could you please close the blinds so we can leave? These rooms are bone-chilling."

Temple saw that Van's massaging hands were raising goose bumps on her arms, and hastened to undo the damage that she had done: letting new light shine on an old environment.

"I didn't know they had colored bathroom fixtures in the forties," she yelled to Van from the bedroom blinds.

"The rich did, and Jersey Joe Jackson was filthy with lucre when he built the Joshua Tree.

The bust came later," Van caroled back. "Please hurry!"

Temple was just as glad to have another human being present as she returned the bedroom to its eerie, perpetually dimmed state. She charged into the living room to shut the blinds there.

"What is this blond cabinet, a radio?"

"Early t-t-television." Van's teeth were chattering now. "Don't you feel the c-c-cold?"