Vanishing Ladies

Chapter five

‘What’s the ma...?’ Blanche started, and then she saw what I was looking at. Her face went white, almost as white as it had looked when it was plastered with make-up. Her hand went to her mouth, and I thought I’d hear a full-bodied scream, but no sound came from her throat. She moved away from the wall quickly, as if the spreading red smear were a Martian fungus which would envelop and destroy her.

I walked to the wall quickly. I stooped down and touched the red smear with my fingers. It was sticky and cold. It seeped steadily from a crack in the wall, seeped steadily from cabin number 11.

I got to my feet.

‘Where are you going?’ Blanche asked. There was panic in her eyes now, a sick panic that made her lips tremble.

‘Next door,’ I said. I started for the door, and then I went back to the dresser where I’d unceremoniously dumped my trousers before heading for the shower. I took my .38 and holster from the back pocket. I unholstered the gun, threw off the safety, and then walked out of the cabin.

There were no lights in 11. I climbed the steps and rapped on the door with the butt of the .38.

‘Open up!’ I said.

I tried the door. Usually a door will give just slightly when you twist the knob and lean on it. This door didn’t budge an inch. It was sealed more tightly than an Egyptian crypt. I rapped on the door again. ‘Open up, goddamnit!’ I yelled. I heard footsteps behind me on the gravel, and I swung around, bringing up the .38. It was Blanche.

‘What are you doing?’ she said. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘Crazy enough to know blood when I see it,’ I said. I pounded on the door again, and then I stopped pounding and came down off the steps. I went into the cabin next door to 11, the cabin that was mine for the night, the cabin with a 12 under the light, the cabin with a spreading puddle of blood on the floor. Blanche followed me in.

‘That’s not blood,’ she said. ‘You’re crazy.’

‘Am I?’ I put the .38 down on the dresser. ‘I’m going to take off this robe and put on my pants,’ I said. ‘You’d better leave.’

‘I’ll stay,’ she answered.

‘Your choice,’ I told her. I took off the robe and flipped it onto the bed. I pulled on a pair of undershorts, a tee shirt, and my trousers. Then I opened the dresser drawer and took O’Hare’s .32 from where I’d left it. I stuck that in my left hip pocket. I picked up the .38, and that stayed in my hand. Then I started for the door again.

‘Where are you going now?’ Blanche asked. She was very upset. Her mouth was still trembling, and she could hardly keep her hands still.

‘Up to see Mike Barter. He should have a key for that cabin.’

‘Why don’t you stop acting like a cop?’ she shouted. ‘A little red paint—’

‘Red paint, my ass!’ I said, and I went out onto the gravel.

The light from 12 splashed onto the gravel for a good ten feet before darkness swallowed the path. I walked at a fast clip, and behind me I could hear Blanche struggling with her high heels on the loose stones. There was a hardtop Cadillac parked in front of the office. It hadn’t been there before, so I assumed it was the car which had pulled in while I was talking to Blanche in my cabin. There was no light coming from the office. I banged on the door.

‘Barter!’ I yelled. ‘Mike Barter!’

There was no answer. I began to bang on the door again, and it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t even tried the knob. I don’t know if your mind ever has short-circuited like that, where the simple obvious things don’t seem to register, where everything seems to be an insurmountable problem that has to be solved the hard way. The easy way was trying the door knob. I tried it, and the door swung open.

The office was pitch black. I groped for a light switch. The first thing I saw when the lights came on was the calender with the picture of the voluptuous blonde.

‘Barter!’ I yelled.

My voice echoed throughout the cabin and the woods. There was an interior door in the office, and I opened that and walked into a small surprise. The surprise shouldn’t really have been one because motel owners do have to live some place. But I hadn’t expected a full-fledged apartment tacked to the back of the office. Nor had I expected one quite as sumptuous as this. I had, to be truthful, expected the door to open on a closet or something.

It opened on a big living room covered with a plush rug, furnished in expensive modern. It opened on a hi-fi cabinet about a hundred miles long with a bar at one end of it, the bar stocked with stuff I couldn’t afford to pronounce. There were doors leading from the living room. There was more.

I only tried one of the doors. I wasn’t house-hunting at the moment. The door I tried opened on a bedroom. There was a large double bed, and a circular white rug thick enough to swallow up a safari. There were dressers and mirrors and a night table and a chaise longue, and a frilly woman’s dressing table. A woman’s pink mules rested at the foot of the dressing table. The sheets on the bed were made of blue silk, and the white monogram on them read SBR. The sheets were as out of place in this neck of the woods as Satan would have been at the last supper. The covers on the bed were turned down, but the bed had not been slept in.

The room was something of a mess.

Dresser drawers were open, clothing askew. The closet door was open, and there were a lot of empty hangers, and a lot of hangers on the floor, and also one dress which had probably slipped from a hanger.

I left the light burning on the night table, just the way I’d found it. I walked into the living room, and maybe I should have tried the other doors, but I didn’t. When you’re making a search, it should be a careful one. That’s elementary police work. But I was searching for a key, so I left the closed doors closed, and I walked through the living room and into the office again.

I went directly to the desk, figuring Barter was most likely to keep his keys in it somewhere. I pulled open the top drawer.

Mike Barter kept a well-oiled .45, a few bills from a milk company, a letter from a linen supply outfit, a blotter, and a few broken pencils. He did not keep his keys in that top drawer. I spread a handkerchief on my open palm, picked up the .45, and sniffed the barrel. Whatever else Mike Barter had done, he had not recently fired the automatic. I put the gun back in the drawer, closed it, and was opening the second drawer when Blanche came into the cabin.

I swung around. ‘Where does Barter keep his keys?’ I asked. ‘Do you know?’

‘No. Listen to me,’ she said.

‘Don’t give me the red paint story again, or—’

Her eyes blazed at me. For a second, she didn’t look seventeen any more. She looked as old as Methuselah, and her eyes held all the secrets of the universe. ‘Listen to me,’ she said, and there was a tight wire-thin edge to her voice. ‘Get out,’ she said. ‘Get out of here. Forget Barter and forget that blood. Just get out.’

‘I’m getting into that cabin,’ I said.

‘You’re a fool,’ she answered.

I began digging through the second drawer. There were paper clips and stationery and more pencils, but no keys. I slammed the drawer shut. Blanche glanced swiftly toward the interior office door.

‘Phil,’ she said softly, ‘please... take my advice. Don’t bother with this. Get out. Please.’

‘Ann and I are staying right here until...’

I stopped.

‘Ann!’ I said, and I could feel everything inside me go cold. For two heartbeats I stood welded behind the desk. Then I turned and ran out past Blanche, and onto the gravel driveway, and then to cabin number 13. I ran up the steps. I didn’t knock. I simply threw open the door and flicked on the light.

The cabin was empty.