A Flower in the Desert (34 page)

W
HY ARE YOU LOOKING FOR HER
?” the woman asked, glaring at me over the counter.

“Because she's in trouble and I want to find her before the trouble gets worse.”

“That's none of my business.”

“I understand that. All I'm asking for is information.”

Only a few women in the world can be accurately described as barrel-chested, but Margery Helms, the day clerk at the motel, was one of them. She wore a gray wool blazer over a black rayon top that was tight against her heavy breasts and her heavy tubular belly. A strand of imitation pearls lay along the taut fabric, a string of golf balls on a black trampoline, and they moved slowly up and down as she breathed. The blazer had shoulder pads, but she didn't need them. Beneath her blue-rinsed hair, her round face was lacquered with cosmetics that glistened like bacon fat. She was in her fifties and she could have been J. Edgar Hoover's sister, except that probably she would have killed J. Edgar when he was a little boy. With her bare hands. I could understand why she might've frightened the night clerk. She frightened me.

Her hard gray eyes glared at me as she said, “I'm not going to give you any.”

“Did you read about the woman in Hartley?” I asked her. “The one who was killed two days ago? She was a friend of the woman I'm looking for.”

I was standing on the customer side of the front desk. Glancing to my left, I saw that the Hispanic maid who'd been tidying the rack of postcards was watching me. I lowered my voice. “Look, Mrs. Helms, this woman's in trouble. All I want to do is find her. And help her.”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “But I'm not going to reveal any information about any of our guests. It's against company policy. Now, will you be checking out this morning?”

I didn't think she was sorry. I thought she was rather pleased. I thought, as Juanita Carrera might put it, that she was exercising her small measure of power.

“Soon,” I said. “May I talk to the manager?”

She smiled, and there was triumph in the smile. “Mr. O'Hara is in Albuquerque, at a meeting.”

“When will he be back?”

Another smile. “I really couldn't say.”

I nodded. “Were you ever in the Wehrmacht?” I asked her.

She frowned, puzzled. “And where might that be?”

“Outside Cleveland.”

She said dismissively, “I've never been to Cleveland.”

You should go
, I almost said.
Now
.

But I didn't. She was, after all, only doing her job. Instead, I thanked her—sourly—then walked back across the parking lot to the rented room, carrying the disposable razor, the toothpaste, and the toothbrush I'd bought in the tiny gift shop. I'd left my emergency toiletries bag in the Subaru when I picked up the Jeep. I had thought I'd be back for the car yesterday afternoon.

I had just finished shaving when a knock came at the door. I toweled my face dry, saw that I'd nicked myself along the jaw, and walked to the door, dabbing the towel at the wound.

It was the maid from the lobby. “Do you speak Spanish?” she asked me.

“
Poquito
,” I said.

She glanced quickly around her, then asked me, in Spanish, “May I come in?”

“Of course.”

Forty or so years old. A dark, broad face that had seen some bad weather and some bad times. Black hair that looked dyed but probably wasn't, pulled back behind her small ears below a starched white maid's cap. A stocky, muscular body inside the green and white uniform.

She looked about her uneasily as she stepped into the room. Probably she wasn't comfortable entering the room of a male guest. I
closed the door and asked her, “Would you like to sit?”

She had moved to the center of the room. She turned to me. “No. I will stand. Thank you.” She put her hands in the pockets of her uniform. “Senora Linda. She is in trouble?”

“Yes,” I said. I swung the towel over my shoulder, leaned back against the door, crossed my arms. “Yes, I believe she is. Did you hear me talking, at the desk?”

“I did not mean to listen,” she said. “But, yes, I heard. My English for speaking is not good, but I can understand it well.”

“My name is Croft,” I told her. “Joshua Croft. And what is your name?”

“Rodriques.” She held her head a little bit higher. “Senora Rodriques.”

“Senora Rodriques, I thank you for coming to see me. Did you meet Senora Linda?”

“Yes. Her and the little one. Mary.”

So now I knew that Winona had a new name, and I knew what it was. I wondered if Melissa had intentionally given her the English version of Juanita's sister's name. “Did you speak with her often, while she was here?”

“Not often, no. But several times. I liked her, but I felt badly for her. She was a troubled woman, I think.”

“Why did you think so, senora?”

“She never went out. She and the little one stayed always in their room, except to go for small walks through the town. Often, they ate here. They watched the television all day and all night.”

“But you said you talked to her.”

“When I came to do the cleaning of the room. Only for a few moments at a time. She and the little one would leave, and she would take her book with her, but soon they would return, sometimes before I was finished.”

“Her book?”

“She said she was a writer. She spoke excellent Spanish. Mexican Spanish, not the kind from Spain. She said that her book was the reason she spent so much of her time in her room. But to stay in a small room like this all day, that is not good for a small child.”

“How did the child seem to you?”

“Quiet. Very quiet. It was not good for her, being here like that.”

“What kind of book did the senora have?”

“A small book, but thick. Red. Like a diary.”

“Did you ever see her writing in it?”

“No. But sometimes, when I came to clean, it was lying beside her on the bed, closed, with a pen on top of it. It seemed to me that she had been writing before I arrived.”

“Always she took this book with her when she left the room?”

“Yes.”

“Did the senora tell you where she would be going after she left Taos?”

“No.”

“Did you see her leave, when she left for the last time?”

“Yes. I was crossing the courtyard when I saw her car. She waved to me. So did the little one.”

“Which way did the car go? North or south?” South was the direction Melissa would've taken to reach the commune in Palo Verde.

“North,” she said. “But often they went for breakfast at the McDonald's. That is north of here. And they had not eaten yet, that day. Perhaps they went there.”

I nodded. “Is there anything else you can tell me, Senora Rodriques?” So far as I knew, Mrs. Rodriques was the last person to have seen Melissa and Winona before they disappeared.

She shook her head. “No. Will they be all right? She and the little one?”

“I hope so. I thank you very much.” I reached back and tugged out my wallet. “May I offer you something for your assistance?”

She took her hands from her pockets and waved them. “No, no. I want no money.”

“Senora, please. You have been of great help to me.”

“No, no. I wanted to help the senora only. And the child. Thank you very much, but no.”

I nodded. “As you wish. Do you intend to clean this room now?”

“You are leaving very soon?”

“Yes.”

“I will return. There is another I must clean first.”

“Very well. Thank you again, senora.”

“For nothing. I, too, hope that the senora and Mary are well.”

After she left, I put two twenties on the top of the dresser.

“The book,” Rita said. “The diary. Melissa was using it to write her account of what happened in Cureiro.”

I shrugged. “She told Juanita she'd be writing an account. So, yeah, probably.”

“And you checked the McDonald's?”

“Yeah. One of the girls there remembered her from the picture, said she'd come in a couple of times for breakfast. But the girl couldn't remember what days she'd been there. And naturally, she didn't pay any attention to which direction Melissa took when she drove away. She was too busy.”

“Which is no doubt why Melissa ate there in the first place.”

I nodded.

We were sitting on the sofa again. Rita wore a white blouse this morning, and a blue skirt that, like the others, reached to her ankles. We were both drinking tea.

I said, “The woman from Albuquerque. The S and M queen. She couldn't tell you anything useful?”

Rita shook her head. “She hasn't seen Melissa for three years, and Melissa and Roy went to only a couple of meetings back then, before their divorce.”

“Meetings?”

She smiled. “Not orgies. The group down there is more of a discussion group. They sound a fairly sedate bunch. They have pot luck dinners once a month.”

“What do they bring? Chicken in Chains? Roast Beef Torquemada?”

“Joshua. You're not very tolerant today.”

“I'm pissed off. I've run out of places to look and people to talk to. This is a mess, Rita. Stamworth, the Salvadoran, death squads. And now Melissa and Winona have vanished into thin air.” I drank some tea.

“Let's put Melissa and Winona aside for the moment,” she said, “and deal with the others, one at a time. Starting with Stamworth. What do we know about him? When did he first show up?”

“Sometime toward the end of September. In L.A.”

“Before Cathryn was killed.”

“Right.”

“We don't think he killed Cathryn.”

“I don't, no. I think that was the Salvadoran.”

“And we don't think that Stamworth's really with the FBI.”

“No.”

“But we don't know with whom he might actually be working.”

“No.”

“He showed up next here in Santa Fe, last week, just after Cathryn was killed. He talked to Deirdre Polk, Rebecca Carlson, and your friend Arnstead, at Juanita Carrera's apartment.”

“Right.”

“We're assuming that he knew about Polk and Carrera from Melissa's phone bill.”

“Right.”

She sipped at her tea. “Next time we hear about him, he's in Los Angeles, talking to you.”

“Right. On Tuesday night.”

“We don't know how he knew about you.”

I shrugged. “Someone must've told him.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps one of the people you spoke to was being watched.”

“A stakeout?” Maybe. “And Stamforth, or someone working with him, gets the license number off the rental I was driving. And then gets my name from the rental company.”

She nodded. “Someone working with him, I should think. Stamworth was probably still here, in Santa Fe, while you were asking questions on Tuesday.”

“Why?”

“Because it was from here that Melissa sent her postcard to Cathryn. He would've known about the postcard from the Los Angeles police. Why return to Los Angeles unless you suddenly appear over there, asking questions?”

I nodded. “L.A. is only a few hours away. He could've flown there Tuesday night. But we still don't know why Stamworth is looking for Melissa.”

“For the same reason, perhaps, that the Salvadoran is looking for her.”

“To kill her?” I finished off my tea.

“Not necessarily to kill her. To contain her, possibly. Possibly he's learned about what Melissa saw in El Salvador. Possibly someone in the government, our government, felt that Melissa represented a possible embarrassment, and sent Stamworth to track her down.”

“But he was looking for her
before
Cathryn was killed. Before anyone knew where Melissa might be.”

She sipped her tea. “We're assuming that Cathryn talked to someone about the card from Melissa. We don't know for certain who that was or—”

“I've got an idea about that,” I said. “About who she talked to.”

She nodded. “Charles Hatfield. The man you talked to in Los Angeles. At Sanctuary.”

I looked at her. “Rita. I wish you wouldn't do that.”

She smiled. “He knew Cathryn, he admitted that.”

“So did Edie Carpenter. And Chuck Arthur.”

“Each of them said they only met her once. Hatfield admitted to seeing her several times, around the Sanctuary offices. And if Cathryn were going to talk to anyone about receiving a postcard from Melissa, wouldn't Hatfield be the obvious choice? He was the man Melissa worked for. He was—ostensibly, anyway—as dedicated as Melissa to the cause.”

“He was also a liar,” I said.

“In what way?”

“That phrase Melissa used in her card to Cathryn—‘
The flower in the desert lives.
' He told me he'd never heard it, that it didn't mean anything to him. Juanita Carrera told me last night that it was a standard phrase used by the death squads. They've even used it in letters sent to Salvadorans in Los Angeles. Hatfield had to know about it.”