Just then David nudged me from behind, and handed me the three keys
Moejy had hidden.
"I just remembered," David hissed, "Moejy was fooling around by the
fork drawer in the kitchen. I looked, and there were the keys! And you
split your infilitive a minute ago."
That wasn't the end of our run of trouble. The night before the
wedding, the fields out back caught fire. Someone driving along
Williams street must have thrown a cigarette or a lighted match from a
car window. Any fire in Banning is a menace because of the brisk,
whipping wind, and this one was no exception.
Grant was shaving when David clattered in to tell me about the fire. I
called the fire department quickly, after a glance out the door; the
licking flames were dramatic and beautiful out there in the blackness
behind Moe's restaurant.
I ran toward the fire with David, beating Grant to the draw. One of us,
naturally, had to stay with the baby and the motel, and I knew I'd be
the one if I didn't hurry!
The fire department was there within five mintues, and before long they
had the blazing weeds under control. The next morning we went out to
inspect the path of the fire, marked by black weeds and burnt earth,
and we saw that the fire had come up almost exactly to our property
line, where it had been stopped.
"See, we aren't jinxed, after all," Grant said.
We realized how lucky we had been. If the wind had been blowing in
another direction, or harder, and if the fire department hadn't been so
prompt, the rear section of our motel--the four single cabins--might
have burned.
Thursday was the day set for the wedding. Mr. Hawkins' well-built body
was encased rakishly in a striped suit, and his brown eyes were
sparkling with his characteristic sly amusement when he came into the
office. I smiled, remembering Miss Nestleburt's remark about hoping he
wouldn't embarass her by playing a practical joke or doing something
eccentric at the ceremony. I couldn't blame her for not quite trusting
him.
Mr. Hawkins swept off his hat. "I know, madame," he said, "what you
think about me. I know what you're thinking right now. It is my fond
hope that I can at least partially obliterate the bad impression I have
made upon you. There are two hours yet before the ceremony, and in
those two hours I propose to work for you. If you will give me cleaning
equipment and fresh linens I shall clean my cabin from ceiling to
floorboard, until it is so spotless it will look as though it had never
been occupied."
Since Grant, who cleaned each occupied cabin each day, whether or not
the occupants were staying over, had cleaned Mr. Hawkins' cabin the
previous morning, it wasn't as much in need of a thorough cleaning as
he implied.
We hadn't cleaned his cabin yet today, though. Since this was to be his
last day here, we planned to wait until he left, and then to get it
ready for a new customer.
I had tried to persuade the pair to stay at our motel for their
honeymoon. Mr. Hawkins, though, insisted that they should travel for a
few weeks, and then settle down in Burbank, where he had a nice home
that had been rented out since the death of his first wife five years
ago. Mr. Hawkins would have liked to spend a comfortable honeymoon in
Banning, probably, but he didn't trust me. He knew that, although I had
laughed off the rubber spider and several other of his little
whimsicalities, I had never forgiven him for the tooth brush incident.
He was afraid that I would seize upon his wedding night as an
opportunity to revenge myself in full.
If he really wanted to clean up his cabin in readiness for a new
occupant, I certainly wasn't going to stand in his way. I led him out
to the linen closet, where I loaded him with a bucket of soapy water,
disinfectant, a broom, a dustcloth, and clean linens.
"Don't get that gorgeous new suit dirty!" I called after him as he
carried the load back toward his cabin.
Grant was mowing the grass on the last of the three white-curbed
islands. The approach of winter had slowed down the growth of the
grass, so that it didn't need as much mowing as it had a few weeks
earlier. It didn't need so much watering, either. Some of the leaves of
the Chinese elms were turning golden or red and dropping to the ground.
It was the basis of a prolonged debate between Grant and me. Would the
elms, or wouldn't they, lose all their leaves for the winter? "Yep,"
said Grant.
No, said I. With all the varieties of non-shedding trees in California,
the people who built the motel wouldn't have been so foolish as to
plant trees that would be bare sticks all winter long, when business
was heaviest and it was most important for the motel to look attractive.
Whenever we couldn't think of anything else to talk about, we argued
about that. And every day there were more leaves on the grass, and the
trees were in a more advanced phase of their strip tease.
Mr. Hawkins returned the cleaning equipment about an hour after he had
taken it, and invited me to inspect his handiwork. He had done a good
job, all right. The place was spotless; the furniture all shone as
though it had been polished, and even the Venetian blinds seemed
cleaner than we had ever been able to get them. A new book of matches
was in the ashtray; two new, fragrant little guest-size bars of
Cashmere Bouquet soap were on the sparkling sink. The bed was made
perfectly, without a wrinkle in or under the spread, and the soft, blue
woolly extra blanket was folded precisely at the foot of the bed, as
neatly as any of the extra blankets on the beds in the other cabins.
The cabin would be ready to rent to the most discriminating customer as
soon as Mr. Hawkins removed his suitcases and a few of his clothes that
were hanging in the closet. They would return and get all their
belongings after the ceremony, he said.
"The cabin looks wonderful," I said sincerely. "You've certainly saved
us a lot of work." And I was beginning to think that I had perhaps
misjudged his basic character, when he produced the piece de
resistance. "A gift for you, madame," he said grandly, taking a small
box from his pockets. "A little token of my regard for you and my
appreciation for your forebearance."
Overcome, I was about to open it when Miss Nesdeburt fluttered into the
cabin. She was resplendent in a pale blue satin dress, with four
strands of pearls around her neck. Rhinestone earrings rivaled the
pearls for glory, and her eyes rivaled the rhinestones.
"I can't get this dress zipped! Will you zip up the back of it?" she
appealed to me.
I zipped it for her, and said, "Isn't it supposed to be bad luck to let
the groom see you in your wedding dress before the wedding?"
"Bad luck? Mais non!" she scoffed. "I'm not superstitious."
She must have seen my incredulous smile. "I don't believe in dreams any
more either," she went on. "I've decided Elmo's teachings about the
meaning of dreams is just a lot of nonsense. None of the things that my
dreams prophesied, according to his teaching, came true. I think," she
confessed, her fair skin turning pink, "I just had all those dreams
because I wanted to marry Mr. Hawkins!"
"Well, I suppose that's possible," I conceded.
They were married at the home of one of Banning's ministers. I was a
witness; and after the brief ceremony (during which Mr. Hawkins behaved
like a perfect gentleman) they drove back to the motel, to let me off
and to stow their luggage in the car. Miss Nestleburt's car was stored
in a garage; they hadn't figured out exactly how or when they were
going to get it, but they didn't want to go on their honeymoon in
separate cars!
They let me off at the office, and drove back toward the cabins they
had been occupying. Fifteen minutes later they drove out, paused by the
office to honk a raucous farewell, and began to edge into the line of
traffic on the highway. Grant and I went outside to wave at them; Mr.
Hawkins waved back, and from his hand hung what looked like the corner
of a woolly blue blanket.
I stared after the car as it swung onto the highway, and then I said to
Grant, "Did you see what I saw?"
But Grant had already started toward the back row of cabins. I followed
him, and we burst into the spotless cabin that Mr. Hawkins had lived
in. It was still beautifully neat, especially since his luggage and his
clothes were gone--but now the extra blanket was gone from the foot of
the bed! "He took our blanket!" Grant exclaimed.
"Let's be sure," I said. "Maybe it's just another of his jokes. Maybe
he just wanted us to think he did." We searched the place thoroughly;
we looked under the bed, in drawers, on the closet shelf. We even
glanced into Miss Nesdeburt's cabin. We couldn't find the blanket.
"I guess he took it, all right," I said at last. "Well, he isn't going
to get away with it. I'll go after him."
I would have let Grant, as a representative of the sterner, stronger
sex, handle the situation, except that I was so furious with Mr.
Hawkins that I couldn't bear to let anyone else have the pleasure of
dealing harshly with him.
I got into our car, backed it out of the garage, and drove quickly to
the highway. I turned left, in the direction in which Mr. Hawkins had
gone, and pressed my foot down hard on the gas.
Mr. Hawkins must have been driving fast, too. I didn't catch up with
them until we reached the side road that led to Twenty-Nine Palms. They
were hesitating there, apparently trying to decide whether to go
straight ahead or to have a look at Twenty-Nine Palms. About the time
they decided to go straight ahead, I drove up beside them. "Pull over!"
I yelled.
"Look, dear, a lady traffic cop," I heard Mr. Hawkins observe loudly;
but he pulled meekly off the highway, near some clumps of sagebrush.
The desert rolled in swells around us, its sands sparsely covered by
cactus plants and by an occasional grotesque Joshua tree. Sharp
mountains, partly covered with snow, walled us in, and ahead of us the
highway disappeared into sloping hills.
I parked behind them, and got out of the car. I felt selfconscious as I
stalked toward them. I was acting just like a traffic cop.
Mr. Hawkins narrow brown eyes were laughing at me as I said icily, "I'd
like to have that blanket back, if you don't mind."
Miss Nestleburt drew in her breath in a sharp gasp. "What do you mean?"
she asked, her tiny white hands going to her mouth.
"What blanket, madame?" Mr. Hawkins inquired courteously.
"The blanket you took from our motel!" I snapped. "There it is! Right
on the seat between you!"
Mr. Hawkins didn't glance at the blanket. "Your suspicious nature
grieves me," he stated. "Why, simply because I have a blanket, do you
assume that it is your blanket?"
"Because the extra blanket is gone from your cabin, as you know."
"Madame," he replied, "I fear that you are mistaken. I am quite
positive that the blanket to which you refer is still in the cabin it
has been my happiness to occupy for awhile. Why don't you hurry back
and look more thoroughly?" He started the motor of his car.
"Give me that blanket!" I cried.
"This blanket," he said, "is mine. It was a--a wedding present." His
eyes shifted as he spoke, and his face wore a furtive, guilty
expression.
Angrily I stepped on the running board, put my arm through the window
and reached across him, seizing a corner of the blanket. I pulled. Mr.
Hawkins held the rest of the blanket, and he pulled also.
Miss Nestleburt--she would always be Miss Nestleburt to me, even though
she had made the mistake of marrying this sly, underhanded
thief--clasped her little hands in distress.
After a brief tug of war Mr. Hawkins made what came as close to being a
courtly bow as possible, under the conditions and in his position. He
released the blanket, and I gathered it into my arms triumphantly. Mr.
Hawkins sighed.
"If you are so determined to have my blanket, all right. I suppose, in
the motel business, you must get supplies in any way you can. But
there's just one thing," he said mildly. "Before you take it, will you
identify it, or try to? I just want you to admit, before we part, that
you know it isn't yours."
"But it is!" I cried. "Do you think I'd be so interested in getting it
away from you if it weren't?"
"Frankly, yes."
Fuming, I held up the satin edges of the blanket. "It has 'Moonrise
Motel' stamped on the edges somewhere," I said. "All of our blankets
do. Just wait. I'll find it right away."
I searched fruitlessly for a few minutes, while Mr. Hawkins sat
watching me, a widening grin on his face.