The Unbidden Truth

9

Mark Ormsby was tall, over six feet, and so thin he looked starved, with a sallow complexion and lank sand-colored hair. He had deep vertical frown lines and crow’s-feet, although he was no more than forty.

“Mr. Wenzel said I don’t have to talk to anyone about that night,” he said.

“And he’s absolutely right,” Barbara said. “You don’t, but I hope you will. I have to try to fill in background in order to defend Carrie Frederick.”

He looked over her shoulder, around the empty lobby with a nervous darting glance. “Come on in,” he said. “This way.”

He moved quickly, and she followed him to the office behind the check-in counter. “If anyone comes, you understand I’ll have to go out to the desk,” he said. “No one else is on duty right now.” He left the door ajar and seated himself at a cluttered desk, motioning toward a chair for her.

“I understand,” she said gravely, accepting his responsibility with the same concern he showed. “What I’m interested in is why you hired her and how she worked out. Things like that.”

“Yes. I see. I needed two cocktail waitresses and six or seven showed up that day,” he said. He spoke fast in a high-pitched voice that would quickly start to grate. “I was interviewing one of them when I heard the piano. We hadn’t had a player for over a year. I mean, with the business climate the way it’s been, it didn’t seem worth the cost, and he wasn’t very good. So it was a surprise. I started to go out and say knock it off, but it didn’t sound bad, so I didn’t. Then it got better. I interviewed another woman, and by then I was thinking that whoever was playing might be a draw. Business was already down these past two years, and with the smoking ban, it got worse. It wasn’t my fault. Nothing I could do about it, but we couldn’t keep waitresses. The tips were down, you see. And I just wanted part-timers. I left her for last, and by then I was sort of liking what she was doing, mixing things up like she does. And I hired her. Business was almost double within a month. Word of mouth, the best advertisement, you see.”

“She said she complained to you that Joe Wenzel was harassing her. Do you recall that?”

“Oh, yes. Two weeks after she started, and I could already see that she was helping business. But he was part owner. It was a real dilemma. I didn’t know what to do. Rock and hard place, you see.”

“I understand,” Barbara said, mustering some faux sympathy. “What did you do? Did you talk to him?”

“No. No. Not him. I mean, he already knew what he was doing, and he didn’t care about business, or anything else that I could see. I mean, he took the executive suite and ordered things at odd hours from the kitchen, and his whole attitude said he didn’t care what anyone thought. I talked to the other Mr. Wenzel, his brother. I thought he should know, and speak to him.”

“Did he?”

“I don’t know. He came out with Mrs. Wenzel to hear her play, and he looked at the books and saw how things had improved and all. And the sons came out to hear her, and they looked at the books, and I supposed they would have a family meeting or something, but no one told me anything—they never do—and Joe Wenzel didn’t change, so I just don’t know.”

“What did you mean by his attitude? Was he abusive?”

“No. No. I didn’t mean to imply anything like that. But, you see, he didn’t care about anyone here. I mean, he’d come in late in the day, dirty. I don’t mean road mussed like the travelers or anything like that. Dirty. Dirty hands, dirty clothes, like he’d been rooting through the ashes at his old house or something. I guess his clothes all got burned up and he only had what was in his suitcase when he came here, and he didn’t get around to buying much new. So he’d come back from wherever he’d been, dirty, not shaved, with the same clothes on day after day, getting dirtier and dirtier, and he’d go through the lobby to the bar and get a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and carry it back, no matter who was in the lobby. It made a bad impression. And he didn’t care.”

He sounded anguished, as if personally to blame for such reprehensible behavior. Barbara resisted an urge to either pat his head or belt him. She nodded. “Was he like that when he hung out watching Carrie play?”

“No. He cleaned himself up by evening. He’d eat in the dining room or else in his room. He wanted a table waiting for him whether he was going to show up or not. There had to be a table for him every night, no matter how busy the dining room got. And sometimes, in spite of the business climate, it did get busy, you know, but not like before. Sometimes when she practiced, he’d come to the bar and watch her. He didn’t usually stay long because the cleaning people were around, and we’d be stocking the bar and doing things of that sort. She did that every day, after the continental breakfast was over at nine-thirty, she would practice. The nights she played, he’d sit at the bar watching her and drinking. She told me, and then Mickey told me the same thing. I wasn’t usually here at night, you understand.”

“Of course. They say no one heard the shot that night. Isn’t that a little strange? With so many people in the bar, leaving, probably standing around and talking a little.”

He shook his head. “Not really. I’ll show you.” He stood up, his movements as jerky as his speech had been. She followed him from the office through the lobby. It was spacious with comfortable chairs, a few tables, the usual tourist brochures, the check-in counter. “See, here are the rest rooms, women’s, men’s, and next is the elevator and then the stairs. Across the corridor, two meeting rooms, empty that night, of course, although they used to be filled, but then…Anyway, next, the housekeeping supplies room. His suite, the executive suite, is opposite. And on the upper floor it’s the same layout, meeting rooms and the executive suite, unoccupied that weekend. Most weekends, in fact. Sixty-five-percent occupancy on good nights. So no one was very close, and the rooms are pretty much soundproof. Did you want to see the executive suite?”

She said yes, and he opened the rooms for her. There was a large bedroom first, next to the inside stairwell, then a larger living room, and beyond it a tiny kitchen. The suite was very handsome, richly furnished. There were doors to the hall and doors to the outside in both the living room and bedroom.

“I suppose it had a lot of his things in it when he was killed,” Barbara said.

“Not as much as you would think,” Ormsby said. “Racing forms and newspapers, a few magazines. A lot of house plan sketches. Personal things in the bathroom, a few clothes. He had a CD player and disks, and a tape recorder and player. He had earphones that plugged into the tape player. Heaven knows why. There weren’t any tapes. I’ve been told people could hear his music late at night sometimes, but I don’t see how. If they complained, what could I do? He was part owner.”

“What happened to his things?”

“The police took some. I made them give me an inventory, of course. Then Mr. Larry Wenzel came over and finished clearing stuff out. I gave him the inventory. I didn’t want any problem to come up about something missing, you understand.”

“That was wise,” she said. “Did Joe Wenzel ever have a woman here?”

His mouth pursed and he nodded. “I believe he did now and then, but not that night.” They left the suite and she asked which room Gregory used sometimes.

Obligingly Ormsby showed her the room reserved for Gregory Wenzel, next to the supplies room. It was a predictable motel room, with an outside door and the door to the hall, better furnished than most motel rooms, but not as luxurious as the suite.

“You’re certain it wasn’t used that night?” she asked, looking it over.

“Absolutely,” he said. “The maid would have known. They can tell, you know.”

When Barbara returned to her office, she found Carrie in the reception room talking to Maria. “Hi,” she said.

“Do you have a minute?” Carrie asked. She looked as woebegone as a stray.

“Sure. Come on back.” She led the way to her office. “What’s up?” she asked, taking a seat on the sofa, motioning for Carrie to join her.

Carrie slumped into a chair. “I’m trying to find a job,” she said. “I was going to register with a temp agency, but one of the questions asked if I had ever been arrested. I told the woman I wasn’t feeling very well and I left. It will be like that, won’t it?”

“Maybe,” Barbara said. “What were you registering for?”

“Anything. Housecleaning, clean stores, wait on tables.” She drew in a breath. “If I lie about it, would it hurt my chances? I mean if they found out.”

“They probably would find out,” Barbara said. “Eugene’s a small town in a lot of ways. Hold it a sec, will you? Be right back.” She went to the reception room again, where she was not at all surprised to find Maria measuring coffee into the coffeemaker so that all Barbara would have to do was push the start button. “Maria, will you ask Mama to poke around for a job for Carrie, no questions asked. She can say I recommend her, if that would help.” Maria’s mother knew everyone in the neighborhood. If there was a job available, she would know about it.

Back in her own office again she said, “Try to be patient. We’ll see if we can round up something for you. Meanwhile, do you want to take a walk?”

Barbara drove them to the end of the parking area at Skinner Butte Park and headed toward the Rose Garden. Aromatherapy, she thought. No one could stay depressed after wandering among the roses for half an hour or so.

“Have you thought of any incidents from the lounge that might help?” she asked as they walked.

“Nothing specific. No one liked him, but no one hated him that I could see.”

The river sparkled and foamed over rocks newly revealed by low water. Barbara could have named the month just by noting which rocks were visible.

“Are the berries edible?” Carrie asked when they began passing them.

“Sure. And clean. No sprays. Help yourself, if you can find any ripe ones left. They get pretty much picked over.”

Carrie started picking blackberries and eating them. “Darren told me what you did for him,” she said, wiping her hands on her jeans and grimacing. “That one was sour. Darren thinks you’re terrific.”

“He wouldn’t say anything like that,” Barbara said with a laugh.

“He didn’t have to say it,” Carrie said, hunting for another ripe berry. “I could tell.” She jerked her hand back and put her finger in her mouth.

“Thorns,” Barbara said. “I thought you knew.”

Carrie shook her head. “I never was out in the country much, just cities. This is the first one I’ve ever seen that has blackberries growing in it.”

“They’re called noxious weeds in these parts,” Barbara said. “There’s a mother plant under Eugene, all of the county probably, and she sends her daughters up everywhere, overnight it seems. You can’t get rid of them. What did you do in all those cities you kept visiting?”

“Got a job and a place to sleep, then walked around or drove around looking at things. I spent a lot of time in the libraries. Darren loaned me his card so I don’t have to stay there to read. First time since I left Terre Haute that I could actually take books out with me. My God! Look!”

She stopped moving, gazing at the river, where a great gray heron was skimming inches above the water. They watched it out of sight. “I never knew they were this far north,” Carrie said. “I used to see them in Florida.”

“When you were driving around, do you think you would have recognized anything from your past?”

“Barbara, believe me, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. Just looking. Every city was new to me. Like Eugene is new.”

“Okay. Pretty soon we’ll leave the bike path. I want to show you one of my favorite places.” They walked on in silence. But she had been searching, Barbara thought. She had been looking for a lost childhood.

They left the path, went up some steps and to the entrance to the garden, where Carrie stopped moving again and drew in a long breath. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

Then Barbara felt as if she had been forgotten, as Carrie walked along the path bordered with tidy little tea roses, on to the exuberant shrub roses with ten-foot-long branches heavy with blossoms, on to the ramblers, the reds so dark they looked black until highlighted by sun when they glowed bloodred. She had drawn ahead of Carrie, feeling the intoxication the fragrance always brought. When she turned to glance back, Carrie had frozen in place, staring at a rose blossom. Her face had gone white.