Keeper of the Keys

“I sure helped.”

“Maybe it’s time to forgive yourself.”

“I didn’t take good care of him, you know? I guess I didn’t know how. Oh, I hate never being able to clear things up with Leigh!”

“Maybe you’ll get your chance.”

“Huh?”

“Talk to Leigh about it. The other thing Jim said was that Leigh stayed at least once at the Blue Sky Motel in Palm Springs. I told him about Idyllwild and he told me about the place.”

“ Palm Springs! You think-you think-”

“Shall we go back to the police?”

“I say we go to Palm Springs. I think Leigh’s dad is going to reflect on your conversation and follow up with the police.”

Ray nodded. “I agree. But I can’t go tonight. I have to check on my mother.”

“But-”

“I have to. We’ll both get a few hours of sleep and pack a bag this time. It’s only a few more hours, Kat.”

“I won’t sleep at all,” she said. “But, yeah, I’ll leave a message at the office tonight. And I need to stop by and make sure my sister is okay. I’ll gas up the Echo on my way back to Hermosa. Let’s take the Echo.”

“Why?”

“Because your expensive little toy only has two seats. If we’re lucky, we’ll need three. I’ll pick you up before the traffic starts. Five a.m.”

“Thatta girl,” Ray said. “If you’re driving, I’ll come in from Topanga to your place. Five a.m. is fine.” They looked at each other.

“It’s all about taking better care of each other,” Kat said. “Your mother, my sister. If we find Leigh, let’s take better care of her, too.”

“We could call,” Ray said. Kat clapped her forehead and grabbed her cell phone. She had the Palm Springs number in another minute and had to punch out the number three times, her hand was shaking so much. When the clerk answered, she said, “Uh, may I please speak to Miss Hubbel?”

“Who?”

“Hubbel. Leigh Hubbel.”

“Nobody here by that name.”

“Tall, blonde girl. Please. This is important.” But she had made a misstep saying that. The clerk’s tone became suspicious. “I’m sorry, we don’t give out information that way.”

“But-please-”

“No one by that name is registered here.” The line went dead. Miserably, Kat told Ray what he had said. “What if he tells her some strange woman was looking for her? Maybe she’ll leave! I’ll call back and ask him to leave her a message-”

“Leave who a message?” Ray said. “Anybody tallish and blondish around the place? Let’s just get there and find out one way or another ourselves.”

Kat meditated for half an hour on the bedroom rug. She felt unhurried afterward, prepared to accept whatever they found. She packed lightly, not a problem since she had very little clean.

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.