The Resort (17 page)

“His vegetarian meatloaf is out of this world,” the woman said.

“Let's keep walking,” the chef announced.

This part of the garden was on a slight downward slope, and they passed single file over two split-log steps embedded in the dirt. To both sides grew some sort of deep green ground cover. “New Zealand spinach,” Roland said. “It's a little rough if you eat it raw, so I don't often use it for salads, but it's delicious when steamed.”

He didn't stop to pick any but continued onward. “And this is the heart of my garden, its raison d'être.” Roland led them between two overgrown bushes to what looked like a children's play area, a section of ground cordoned into a rectangle by four railroad ties.

“Come closer,” he said enthusiastically, bending down.

They gathered around. In the dry open area, Rachel saw a little corral and a barn made out of papier mâché surrounded by bonsai pine trees. Nailed to the hard-packed dirt with skinny overlong spikes were rats. Dead rats that had been shaved bald and lacquered with some sort of clear glossy finish to make them shine. One of them was positioned on its hind legs in front of the barn, its pink pointy whiskerless face overlooking the scene before it. Another was situated next to the corral fence and dressed in a ragged piece of black cloth. Still others were arranged in a semicircle looking out at the bonsai trees. There was new blood saturating the dirt on which the barn was located, and what looked like an unborn kitten lying curled behind the papier-mâché structure, its translucent eyelids closed tightly. The entire scene was so sick and disgusting and out of place that she didn't know what to say. There had to be some sort of narrative to this tableaux, but she had no idea what it could be. Were the rats supposed to be farmers or townspeople or family? What was the point? She looked around at her fellow tour takers and was shocked to see not outrage and horror but only mild curiosity and an inquisitive interest.

She focused on the semicircle of dead shaved rats.
This
was the reason for the garden's existence? It didn't make any sense, and she found the irrationality of it unnerving. But no one seemed to be questioning the chef's statement. That bothered her, too. She didn't like their passivity. It was as if they and the chef were all on some mental wavelength she could not hope to access.

“This was the first thing I set up when I started the gourmet garden five years ago,” Roland said, and there was pride in his voice. “I planted the rest of the fruits and vegetables around it.”

Rachel excused herself, walking back between the bushes to the garden proper. Her chest felt heavy, her lungs filled with foul air, and she breathed deeply as she looked around at the squash and the herbs and the rows of tomatoes. She scanned the section of garden they had not yet visited, saw an apple tree, some citrus trees, tall stakes with climbing vines of various peas and beans, and, at the far end of the garden . . .

The gardener.

He was staring at her as he crouched down beneath an orange tree, and though she was only a foot or two away from her tour group, her mouth felt suddenly dry and her heart pounded crazily with fear. He was pulling weeds and had a perfect right to be there, but she knew instinctively that work was not what had brought him to this spot at this time.

She had.

He stood, and there was a dark stain on the left knee of his dirty work pants, a stain that could have been coffee, could have been mud but that she knew to be blood.

There was a bigger stain in the crotch of his pants. A wet spot that could only be one thing.

Rachel wanted to walk back behind the bushes to where Roland was showing off the sickening tableaux that was the heart of his garden, but she did not want to give that twisted bastard the satisfaction of knowing that he had scared her off, so she remained where she was, staring at the gardener at the far end of the vegetable patch.

And he started dancing.

It was the same strange capering jig he'd performed Thursday night, and once again it was for the benefit of her and her alone. If anything, it seemed more odd and incongruous in daylight. She felt unclean merely from watching it, violated in some strange indefinable way. His eyes remained fixed on her, a dirty knowing gaze that matched perfectly his sinister movements, and she finally forced herself to turn aside and hurry back to join the rest of the tour.

From down at the end of the garden she heard rough derisive laughter.

They were just finishing up with that sickening corral and its bald rat diorama. Whatever insights or information he had to impart had already been divulged, but she didn't really care. She was happy just to get away from the gardener. And when Roland led them out again and started down the dirt path toward the apple trees, the man was gone. It had been less than half a minute and as far as she could tell there were no gates in any section of the high iron fence that surrounded the garden at this end, but he had vanished and was nowhere to be seen.

Rachel spent the rest of the tour in a state of heightened anxiety, always alert for the sound of movement behind the trees or bushier plants, eyes constantly searching for any sign of the gardener. But he had really and truly gone, and when they finally came to the end, a part of her was relieved that it was over.

By this time, the chef had accumulated an entire bushel of herbs, vegetables and fruits. He plopped the heavy basket down on the ground. “That concludes the garden tour. I thank you all for joining me and hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.” One of the women started clapping, and the rest of the group joined in, Rachel included. Roland bowed graciously, then held up a hand for silence. “We still have the cooking demonstration planned for those who are interested. Do any of you want to participate in a hands-on demo in the Saguaro Room's kitchen?”

“Yes!” they all exclaimed nearly simultaneously.

“All right then, let's go make something out of these ingredients we picked.” He smacked his lips, smiled, and for some reason his gaze landed on Rachel. “Who's ready for some hot sex soup?”

 

Lowell and Ryan gave up on the car almost instantly. There was nothing visibly obvious that was wrong, and it was just too damn hot out here to waste time guessing about things they knew very little about. Lowell closed the hood, tried the key one last time, then the two of them walked up to the lobby and strode directly to the concierge. He explained that his car wouldn't start, the battery seemed to be dead, and the white-haired man behind the desk assured him that The Reata would take care of the problem. “I'll have one of our fleet mechanics take a look. If all you need's a jump or a recharge, we can do that right here. I can even have a battery delivered from Tucson by this afternoon if that proves to be necessary. If it's anything beyond that, we can arrange for a tow. Do you have AAA?”

“Yes,” Lowell said. “But—”

“Don't worry,” the concierge said. “It'll be taken care of. I'll let you know if it's anything more than a battery problem.” He opened the drawer of his desk. “Here's a beeper. Keep it with you.”

Lowell accepted the device and put it in his pocket. “How much does it cost to have your mechanic look at it?”

“No charge to guests of The Reata. And a jump or recharge would be free, as well.”

There was something to be said for staying at a place that treated its guests so royally.

Lowell gave the concierge his license plate and room number, then, with some effort, took the car key off his key ring.

“I'll let you know as soon as I hear something, which I expect will be in an hour or two.”

“Thanks,” Lowell said gratefully.

The old man smiled. “It's my job.”

He and Ryan walked out of the lobby onto the patio, and he scanned the pool area below for the twins. The only people visible were a couple of resort staffers, a too-tanned man with a too-hip bathing suit and a considerable paunch who was sunning himself on one of the lounge chairs, a mother and her infant son in the water, a young couple ordering drinks at the cabana bar—and Curtis and Owen, overdressed and uncomfortable, seated at one of the umbrella-shaded tables near the shallow end of the pool.

“Let's go get them,” Lowell said. “Then we'll all go back to the room and change.”

Ryan nodded. “Okay, Dad.”

They walked down the flagstone steps. The music being broadcast over the loudspeakers was familiar, Lowell realized, and though he hadn't been paying attention, he did so now. They were the songs of his high school years, those one-hit wonders that had been blasting on the car radios as he and his friends cruised Pacific Coast Highway on endless eighties evenings.

This could probably serve well as the sound track of the reunion, he thought.

Why did he keep coming back to that?

They opened the gate, walking into the pool area. Curtis and Owen looked steadily away, refusing to acknowledge the presence of a parent until the very last minute.

“Thurman!”

Lowell turned at the sound of the voice, and his expression hardened as he saw the activities coordinator waving to him from around the side of the faux rock structure that housed the waterfall and slide. He looked away, but the man quickly jogged toward them, arm raised in greeting or invitation. Something jingled as he ran, and Lowell saw that he was wearing a whistle around his neck. “Pure luck!” he exclaimed as he reached them. “The Cactus Wrens are here for their practice session. We've chosen a captain, and I was just going over a few of the ground rules with them.”

Lowell ignored him, kept walking.

“Dad,” Ryan said. “That man's talking to you.”

He stopped. “Look,” he told the activities coordinator. “I'm not interested.” But then, from the side of the rocks, the members of the team shuffled out, looking lost and unsure of themselves, a group of men in unfashionable bathing suits, some with pale sunken chests, others with overhanging guts. They moved hesitantly toward the edge of the pool, and something about this Bad News Bears of a team touched him, spoke to him.

They needed him.

“The Wrens are still one man short,” the activities coordinator prodded.

He wanted to say no, remembered this asshole jock's obnoxious behavior and sophomoric taunts from earlier, but he found that he could not turn down these men if his presence on the team would help them. That was a weird reaction. And totally unlike him. He was not a team spirit kind of guy, was not even a particularly charitable guy, but for some reason he felt compelled to get involved, and he nodded reluctantly. “I'll do it.”

“Glad to have you aboard!” The activities coordinator pumped his hand with false bonhomie, and Lowell found himself looking at the man's name tag:
Rockne. The Reata. One hundred years.

One hundred years?

That couldn't be right; it had to be a misprint. Or a joke. Nevertheless, Lowell experienced a split second of trepidation that reminded him of his initial reaction to their room when Tammy had taken them on the tour of The Reata. He had never been one to put much stock in first impressions—hell, his first impression of Rachel had been that she was a demure and delicate flower, and that was
totally
off the mark—but he was starting to think that maybe his instincts were sharper than his mind and he should start paying more attention to them.

“Now I've got to go round up the Coyotes and the Roadrunners. Why don't I introduce you to the captain of the Wrens, and you can all get started.” The activities coordinator—

—started toward the group of men standing by the side of the pool.

“Why don't you go wait with your brothers,” Lowell told Ryan. “I'll be back in a few minutes.”

The boy nodded, heading toward the twins' table, and Lowell followed Rockne to meet the Cactus Wrens.

They were indeed a singularly unathletic group of men. The captain, Rand Black, a firefighter from the small town of Rio Verde, seemed the closest to competent, but there was still something shaky about him, as though he was one of those disaster survivors who spent the rest of their lives looking for catastrophes around every corner. The others did not even seem like they wanted to be here but wanted to just relax and enjoy their vacation, and Lowell wondered how they had been conned or bribed or bullied into taking part in a pool volleyball tournament.

How had
he
been suckered into it?

“I'm glad you're here,” Black said after the activities coordinator left. “This is going to be one tough tournament.”

“Yeah,” a gangly man said worriedly.

“I thought this was just a fun Saturday activity.”

“It's supposed to be.”

“Then how do you know it'll be so tough? You can't have played against these guys before.”

“No. I just got here yesterday.”

“Me, too,” a short bespectacled man chimed in.

“I didn't even want to be here,” said a frail elderly gentleman. “They made me sign up.”

“This is our very first practice,” Black admitted.

“Then how do you know it's going to be tough?”

“I met their captain earlier this morning. A guy named Blodgett.”

“What's he like?” Lowell asked casually.

“Big. And mean. He looks like he could be a linebacker or something, but I gather he's some sort of bigwig banker or financial analyst. I got the impression that he was a frequent guest here, that he'd stayed here quite often, which means that he's probably been involved in one of these tournaments before.”