Keeper of the Keys (33 page)

In the kitchen, the phone message light blinked. She finally noticed it on the way to the fridge to try to find some old salad she had just remembered.

Zak!

“Hiya. Friday. We said Friday. Where are you, Kat? I waited. If you’re like this before we even get to know each other—don’t call me, baby. I won’t be home.” She picked up the phone and dialed his number. Voicemail.

Bad timing was how it felt, as if she had somehow skated right past Zak on the boardwalk of life. “I just can’t find the time right now for us, Zak. I’m sorry.”

27

R
ay arrived in the predawn, well-stubbled. He prowled her premises while she hit the bathroom, opening drawers, taking in the view from her deck, analyzing her architecturally. “You have to get some lamps,” he said. “These overheads are disgusting. And the popcorn ceiling has to go.”

“Quit that,” she said as she came out.

Ray, at the moment immersed in studying the contents of her bookshelves, said, “You don’t like me figuring you out.”

“These things aren’t me.”

“You’re the one who told me about how much you can learn from looking at people’s homes. I spy with my little eye your dark side. No porn DVDs for this lady; no, you’ve got a much more embarrassing secret. You’re a reader.” He plucked a book from the shelf. “Hemingway?”

She smiled, caught in her own game. “Okay, Ray. I’ll tell you about that guy and why I have this book of short stories. He stole everything that made him special from Gertrude Stein. You think that deceptively simple little style of his was original?”

“I could get into that with you another time.” He put it back, then took out another. “Woolf?”

“Boring but so beautiful.”

He placed the book back exactly where it had been, then turned to her. “I thought—men and bars.”

“Them, too, sure, sometimes. After all, men’re not all as patronizing as you.”

“Is that what I am? Patronizing?”

Kat smiled. “Earnest and clueless, that’s how you mostly are. But you seem to be trying, I’ll give you that.”

Kat wheeled her small suitcase to the front door while Ray stood at the window, admiring her tiny view of the Pacific. “You sit here at night and see the sun set. Here,” he said, going through the sliding door and finding the spot on the balcony where he could best view the ocean. “You watch the day end.”

“Yep, that’s what I do,” she said. “Now enough with the getting-to-know-Kat number. I’m ready.”

He carried her bag down the stairs. Kat took a quick sip of coffee from her thermos and stifled a laugh, looking at her living room one last time before she went into the hall and locked up, seeing it from a stranger’s point of view. The place wasn’t trendy or enthusiastic or glam. It was stuffed with things, messy, and comfortable.

She fluffed her hair. There was a there there, that was the main thing.

They were almost to the San Bernardino Valley by the time the sun came up over the mountains. Kat stole a glance at Ray in his sunglasses, while she braked and maneuvered through a snake pit of semis, and wondered again what he expected to find. Paranoid scenario: he already knew they would not find Leigh, but his show of cooperation would keep Kat from suspecting him of hurting her.

It all could be a show. But she had been forgetting to keep her guard up, had even started to like him and hope for him as well as for herself. Tighten up, she told herself sternly.

At eight-thirty they found the motel on the edge of the ritzy desert oasis of Palm Springs. Yes, Kat thought, a person on the run might say, I made it, and pull into the first motel with a Vacancy sign.

For here it was, the Blue Sky. The motel sprawled along a busy road, one story, adobe-colored, with Spanish arches and a tile roof, a fountain in front. The water was a nice touch, gurgling, faking an oasis.

Farther east there would be championship golf courses, pools, hotels, restaurants, shopping. Kat remembered the town as a compact, wealthy, sedate Vegas. Tuesday morning, and the only people going to work seemed to be Hispanic. The retirees would still be putting in the laps in their backyard pools.

They drove around the parking lot, looking for Leigh’s minivan. Nothing. Driving past the corner market farther up the road, and up and down a couple of side streets, all they turned up was a guy washing his driveway with a hose—felonious waste of water. “We’ll just have to get the room number somehow,” Ray said as they parked under the portico. The external air temperature was eighty-seven degrees, according to the thermometer Velcroed onto the Echo’s dashboard. The earth-withering heat slapped her down as she climbed out. “Ow.” She flung her hand away from the car.

“Let me go in,” Ray said.

She stood in the shade by the car, imagining a star drifting too close to the earth in a disaster movie and searing the landscape, blinding her through her shades and shriveling her skin. Ray negotiated with the clerk inside behind the barrier of glass, smiling, gesturing like a Napolitano. For somebody who hadn’t communicated very well with his wife, Ray seemed to have a way of persuading people to go his way, so she waited and hoped.

When he came out, she said, “Well, is Leigh staying here or not?”

“He says no. He remembers your phone call. We’re lucky to get rooms at all, he’s so suspicious. Luckily the place isn’t jammed full, it’s a Tuesday in August, not exactly the best weather for a visit. He says it’ll be ninety-nine by noon.”

She examined his face and read nothing. “That’s it? Aren’t you disappointed?”

“We just got here. Keep your shirt on.” He picked up his bag. “Got us communicating rooms at the corner, away from the traffic,” he said, self-satisfied in the way guys were when they killed a deer with a rifle or made money on a stock. He handed her a card key. “Meet me at the coffee shop in ten minutes.”

She walked along the concrete path in front of the third-floor rooms, second-floor rooms, first-floor rooms, cursing the efficient blinds. Now and then she caught a glimpse of motel life, a man sitting on the bed watching TV, loud noises of squabbling kids, a woman on the phone brushing her hair, heedless of the open window.

She wasn’t Leigh, though, and Leigh wasn’t in the standard-issue coffee shop. They showed the waitress her photo and got another look and a shrug.

They ate. Kat had a headache behind her eyes. She thought, another wasted trip, and this thought was very frightening, because the road seemed to end here at the motel. It seemed to Kat that if they didn’t find Leigh here she would have to admit she was dead.

“If she’s not using the coffee shop, I guess it’s not much use to check out the pool,” Ray said. “We can do that, though, and keep a watch on the rooms, and we can keep looking for her van.”

“You think the clerk was lying?”

“I think the clerk was doing his job. Protecting people’s privacy.”

“After this we’ll have to go home,” Kat said.

The waitress gave him the check and he got out his credit card. As he was signing the bill, the door opened and the motel clerk came into the coffee shop. Waving a hand familiarly at the waitress, he zeroed in on their table and slid into the booth next to Kat. He was younger than she had imagined through the window, Latino, with large clear brown eyes, not hostile but not friendly, either.

“Why do you want this lady?” he said.

“Why do you care?” Ray said. “If she hasn’t been here?”

“Curiosity. I keep track of cops traveling through. Do I need to watch out for her?”

“It’s nothing like that,” Ray said. “I’m her husband, just like I said.”

“Who’s she?” he said, motioning with his thumb toward his seatmate.

“I’m her sister,” Kat said.

“Like I told you,” Ray said.

“Still lying,” the clerk said.

“How do you know I’m lying?”

“Because the lady I’m thinkin’ of, she ain’t got a sister.”

Ray’s mouth dropped open. “She’s here?” Kat experienced a peculiar feeling in her chest. Hope, rising eternally. But she felt very fragile, as though she couldn’t bear for this hope to be crushed, too. She and Ray looked at each other. The clerk was watching them.

“I didn’t say that. There’s a similar lady. I gave her a call. She said she had a husband, but no sister.”

“Okay,” Kat said. “Look, we shouldn’t have tried to tell you a lie. I’m not her sister. It’s true, she doesn’t have a sister.”

“Let me see your driver’s license,” he told Ray. Then, “And yours, too.” Kat produced hers, and he looked them both over carefully. “Wait here,” he said, and left.

Five minutes passed. The hum in the coffee shop seemed to get louder. Kat was trembling; it was freezing in there and too brightly lit, and her headache was getting worse. She and Ray seemed to have lost the ability to speak. This is it, she kept saying to herself. One way or the other.

Just when she thought she couldn’t bear one more second of this purgatory, she saw the clerk come in again. He plopped down and said, “This lady—she says she’s willing to talk to you.” He held up a hand. “Wait. That’s all she said. She doesn’t talk much. That’s it. I don’t know anything else.”

“What’s her name?” Ray said.

“Gale Graham.”

“How long has she been here?”

“A while. Do you want the room number or not?”

“Is she—did you recognize her photo?”

“I can’t say.” He handed them a map of the complex, which turned out to be much larger than they had imagined from seeing its front, including two adjoining buildings. Building A hosted the overnighters. Another building, for monthly renters, held struggling young families receiving Section 8 funds from the government. Building C held what he called “executive suites” and were for paying clients who stayed a week or two.

“Here.” He tapped a fingernail on room 116 of Building C. “Her room. First floor, by the pool. I’ll be checking on her in an hour. And I made copies of your IDs. You know what I’m sayin’?”

Ray led the way. She followed him, step for rapid step, along the harsh white concrete walkways to Building C.

They arrived at 116. Two dried-out potted palms flanked the doorway. The sun was fierce on the concrete. When Ray didn’t knock but stood, hanging back off the walkway like someone who did not belong, Kat knocked firmly.

No answer.

She tried the doorbell.

Again, nothing.

Then, like a chapter starting up in a children’s story, the door opened.

28

L
eigh stood there, in a tank top, shorts, and running shoes, long hair in a ponytail.

Ray and Kat faced her uncertainly, but not for long. “You came for me!” she cried, leaping forward into Ray’s arms. She buried her face in his shoulder. He held her tight, his eyes squeezed shut as if he was in pain.

Kat stepped back, dizzy, watching as they pressed against each other so hard they almost toppled over there in the entryway. Realizations tumbled through her mind. Leigh was alive. She had run away after all.

Ray hadn’t murdered her. Ray was just Ray. The police, the suspicion—it amounted to nothing.

Leigh ran away, leaving them to search for her. She had caused so much pain—

But she was alive. Ray and Leigh held each other, then pulled apart enough to look at each other. Then there were a lot of kisses, more hugs. After a long, long time, the couple broke apart, and Kat took a good look at her lost friend. Taller than Kat remembered, older, pretty in a grave way in spite of dark circles around her eyes.

“Kat,” Leigh said, her voice muffled, and her arm drew Kat close. “You here? Incredible. Come in.” They stepped out of the heat and into the arctic breeze of a Palm Springs motel room.

The room, slightly larger than most hotel rooms, had textured wallpaper, soothing green and white in an abstract fern pattern. Double-glass doors, at the moment standing ajar and letting in a river of superheated air, led out to a courtyard. Beyond low palms and succulents that fringed a flagstone walkway, the turquoise, freeform pool beckoned, the water reflections dancing on the ceiling of Leigh’s room like something alive. The king-sized bed was unmade. A jumble of groceries was stacked on the desk, and the TV was on, muted. Leigh had been here awhile.

They stood in the room and stared at each other. Where should they start? With her frightening absence? With all the distrust, and the many changes?

“We thought something had happened to you,” Kat said at last, her voice hoarse.

In a quiet voice, Leigh said, “I had decided to come home. I want you to know that. I’m ready to face—everything.”

Ray and Leigh sat down on the edge of the bed together. He put his arm around his wife and held on tight. Kat took a chair by the door.

Ray said, “I’m so very, very sorry, Leigh. I didn’t treat you right.”

His wife shook her head. “No. No, darling. It wasn’t you. I should have come straight home. I was confused and—hurt.”

“I never should have—”

“I need you so much—” They fell together like drowning sailors, murmuring and sighing. Kat tried to restrain herself.

“Kat?” Leigh was examining her.

“Hey.” Kat’s voice felt less forceful than usual.

Leigh’s eyes whipped between Ray and Kat and cruised back again, settling finally on her husband.

“Is this like—I take up with your best friend so you search for mine and hook up?” The corners of her mouth trembled, but turned up slightly. Kat realized she was joking, obviously as unsteady with the situation as they were.

Kat said, “Gee, Leigh, there was that ugly possibility that Ray might have killed you and buried you under a new swimming pool in Laguna or somewhere.”

“What?”

“The police—your father called the police.”

“Oh, no. I knew I should have called them. But—Dad’s a police officer—it would have set things in motion—I couldn’t—” Leigh stood and went over to Kat, put her hand on Kat’s shoulder, and looked into her eyes wonderingly.

“When I—saw you both standing there in the doorway, I had the awful thought this was some kind of payback for Martin. I’m sorry. I’m—so surprised.”