Sleeping Beauty (5 page)

David grinned and shook his head. "Nope. She buried Uncle Leo forty years or so ago, and she's shown no inclination to replace him. She's a bit eccentric, but she'll treat you right. Tell her I sent you over."

"Thanks." Neill slung the duffle onto his back and then nodded at his motorcycle. "How long do you figure it's going to take?"

David had already determined that the engine had sucked a valve, but there hadn't been time to determine the full extent of the damage. He shrugged. "Hard to say. I can tear down the engine tomorrow afternoon, figure out what parts I'm going to need."

With an inward sigh, Neill resigned himself to the fact that he wasn't going anywhere for at least a couple of days. It would take that long to arrange alternate transportation if the Indian couldn't be repaired quickly, which seemed highly likely.

Following David's directions, he found The Blue Dahlia Motel without trouble. Standing on the sidewalk, he viewed the place without favor. He'd spent too many nights in mediocre motel room beds to be impressed by the tidy landscaping and recent paint job. The name of the place was spelled out in blue neon script, with the dot over the
i
forayed by a multi-petalled dahlia. It was a striking display, especially for a rather nondescript little building in what appeared to be a nondescript little town, but he didn't allow himself to get his hopes up.

Eccentric.
Neill rolled the word over in his mind as he pushed open the door marked Office. David Freeman had said his great aunt was eccentric. Experience had taught him that the word could be used to describe a multitude of conditions from mildly unconventional to crazy as a bed bug. The woman who was watering a pair of rather sickly looking philodendrons didn't look like she fit at either end of the scale.

He guessed her age to be somewhere around seventy, but there was nothing frail about her. Her hair was an uncompromising steel gray, worn cropped short around her square face. The practical style fit the direct look in her pale blue eyes. Her short, sturdy form was clad in a denim shirt and softly faded jeans. She looked exactly as he would have imagined a farm wife would look, except for her shoes—red sneakers with gold glitter stars, worn with red and white striped socks.

Neither the shoes nor the socks would have raised an eyebrow in Seattle or Los Angeles, but he supposed in a town the size of Loving a penchant for glitter-covered sneakers was enough to get her labeled an eccentric.

"Are you Dorothy?"

"Dorothy Gale. Looking for a room?" she asked, not looking particularly pleased by the possibility.

"Yes." He offered her the smile along ago girlfriend had told him should be registered as a lethal weapon. Unimpressed, she continued to frown at him. With a sigh, Neill abandoned charm and decided to try simple facts. "David Freeman said you might have a room available."

"No he didn't." She moved behind the desk, setting down the green plastic watering can with a thump. "No 'might' about it," she added before Neill could protest his honesty. "Pretty much always have rooms, except now and again around Christmas. David knows that." She didn't seem to expect any response, which was just as well, because Neill didn't have one. "How long are you staying?"

"I don't know. Until my motorcycle is repaired or I can make other arrangements for transportation. A couple of days. Maybe longer."

"I can let you have a room with a king-size bed and a kitchenette." She named a rate, and Neill nodded.

"Sounds fine."

"Fill this out. I'll need a credit card or cash in advance.''

Neill pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and handed her a credit card before picking up a pen from the counter and pulling the file card toward him.

"We've got cable," Dorothy said, as she imprinted his credit card. Now that he'd officially become a guest, she seemed disposed toward friendliness. "Movies twenty-four hours a day. You like movies?"

"Haven't had much time for them in the past few months," Neill said absently, his attention on the card he was filling out.

"l'm not talking about the nonsense they're making these days," Dorothy said so sternly that Neill looked up. He was startled by the fierce glare she'd fixed on him. "They splatter blood and guts all over the screen and call it horror, or show a couple bouncing up and down in bed and think it's erotic. Nonsense. Pure nonsense. Not a filmmaker alive today who knows what he's doing. Know what the blue dahlia is?"

She asked the question with such ferocity that Neill couldn't help but wonder if an incorrect answer would cost him his room. Later, he decided that it must have been the pressure of the moment that dredged the faint memory to the surface of his brain.

" It was the title of a movie, wasn't it? With Alan Ladd?" He was really pushing it now, but there was a challenge in her eyes—a challenge that softened to approval at his answer.

"Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake and William Ben-dix. Paramount. 1946." She reeled out the information in a staccato burst. "Written by Raymond Chandler. Film noir, they call it now. We just called it a damned fine movie and left it at that. Who's your favorite actress?"

The question shot out at him, but Neill was not stupid. He abandoned Michelle Pfeiffer without a second's hesitation and searched through mental files for a more acceptable choice. An exquisite face floated into focus. ''Gene Tierney."

"Made some fine movies," Dorothy admitted with grudging approval. "Can't beat Laura for sheer suspense."

"Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb and Vincent Price," he said, on more secure ground. He'd seen Laura on late-night cable just a few months ago.

He couldn't quite shake the feeling that he was being tested to see if he was worthy of having a room.

"What was the name of Clifton Webb's character?" Dorothy asked, immediately depressing any pretensions he might have had to movie buffdom.

Neill shrugged. "He typed in the bathtub. I remember that."

"Waldo Lydecker," she supplied with a friendly smile that made it clear that, if there had been a test, he'd passed.

Thinking about the exchange an hour later, Neill found himself grinning. Dorothy wasn't exactly warm and fuzzy but she was interesting, and there was a sparkle of humor in her eyes that suggested she hadn't come by the title of "eccentric" by accident.

The room she'd given him was larger than he'd expected. The tiny kitchenette might come in handy if he decided to wait until his bike was repaired. The decor, considering the owner, was surprisingly normal, if you didn't count the movie posters that replaced the usual innocuous prints. All in all, it seemed like a pleasant enough place to spend a couple of days. He'd liked David Freeman at first sight and saw no reason to change his opinion, and his landlady promised to provide some interesting conversation.

It was a small town. If he hung around long enough, he was likely to catch a glimpse of most of the inhabitants. Maybe he would even cross paths with that pretty little blonde with the big gray eyes. Anne. Not that he would have stayed just for that but, when life handed you lemons, you might as well try your hand at lemon meringue pie, and she had definitely looked edible.

Loving wasn't likely to turn up on anyone's list of top ten places to visit in the state of Indiana. A small farming town surrounded by com and wheat fields, the single main street was lined with the expected assortment of businesses—a feed store, a couple of cafes, a tired-looking five-and-dime. There was a bank, and a real estate office with a sign that announced hours two days a week and gave a phone number, in case you had a sudden urge to buy or sell and couldn't wait until Tuesday or Saturday.

It was a town much like a lot of other small towns Neill had been in, a little more prosperous than some. Loving's only claim to fame was the thousands of letters that poured into the post office every St. Valentine's Day to receive an appropriate postmark. It was something of an annual event, requiring the postmistress to hire on extra help. He had this tidbit courtesy of Dorothy, who had been watering the flower beds in front of the motel when he left his room, Tuesday morning.

After a brief greeting, she'd demanded to know if he'd caught The Prisoner of Zenda on cable. "Didn't come on until midnight but it's worth staying up late for. Not the wussy version they made in the fifties but the original, with Ronald Coleman and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Now there was a man who knew how to swash and buckle."

Neill admitted that he'd been asleep at midnight but was able to say, truthfully, that he'd seen the movie and liked it. His confession that he hadn't even known there was a second version appeared to meet with her approval. She smiled, revealing a set of suspiciously perfect teeth. This morning she was wearing baggy khaki shorts that revealed knobby knees, a short-sleeved plaid shirt and another pair of red sneakers, though there was no glitter on these.

"Remakes are almost always a mistake," she said firmly. "Look at My Man Godfrey. Nothing against David Niven, but he just wasn't William Powell."

Neill nodded, feeling as if he was on solid ground with this. David Niven and William Powell had definitely been two different people.

"Mutiny on the Bounty is another one." Dorothy leaned on her rake, narrowing her eyes against the sun's glare. "Can't say the Brando version didn't have something to offer, but where was Charles Laughton?"

"Dead?" Neill offered hesitantly, when she seemed to be waiting for a response.

There was a moment of silence, then Dorothy chuckled. "Probably. You have to watch me when I get started talking about movies. Truth is, it's something of a hobby of mine."

Neill raised his brows and tried to look as if this was news to him, but she only laughed again. "Don't get smart with me." She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a battered gimme cap with the words John Deere emblazoned across the front. Tugging it on over her gray curls, she fixed him with a look of bright interest "So, tell me about yourself."

One thing Neill had leamed in the years since his fifcrst book hit the bestseller lists was the art of talking without saying much. It hadn't taken him long to figure out that successful writers tended to fall into the same category as train wrecks and alien sightings—they sparked curiosity and inspired questions he soon got tired of answering. Where do you get your ideas? How did you get a publisher? Can you really make a living that way? And his personal favorite: Have I read anything of yours? which always made him wonder if the questioner had mistaken him for a psychic. How the hell was he supposed to know what they'd read?

He'd experimented with lying—nothing killed a conversation faster than the announcement that you were a mortician, and short-order cooks generated little interest. But there was always the chance that a new acquaintance might be around long enough to find out the truth, which would lead to hurt feelings and possible recrimination. So he'd developed the ability to tell the truth—or part of it, anyway— and make it sound too dull to merit further discussion.

When he parted company with Dorothy, she knew he was a writer but was left with the vague impression that he wrote articles for technical journals. He'd told her he was taking a vacation, which was the truth, and that he had no particular schedule, also the truth. He'd also learned a considerable amount about his landlady, gotten a brief history of Loving and refused an offer to have a VCR installed in his room so he could avail himself of Dorothy's extensive collection of movies on tape.

By the time Dorothy went to answer the phone in the motel office, Neill guessed they'd been talking for close to an hour. Mostly Dorothy had talked and he'd listened, but he'd enjoyed every minute of it. Like most writers, he had an insatiable curiosity about people and places, and he enjoyed Dorothy's trenchant commentary on the town and its inhabitants. By the time they parted company, he felt as if he'd been given a crash course in local politics, and it amused him to find they were every bit as hotly debated and intrigue-filled as they were in a big city.

The Blue Dahlia Motel sat back from Signal Avenue, which was the main street in Loving. The neon sign with its multi-petaled dahlia looked faintly tatty in broad daylight. There were cars parked in front of two of the dozen units, and Neill wondered if the place ever filled up completely. Christmas, maybe, he decided, when people came back to spend the holidays with family.

With nothing better to do, he wandered toward the main part of town. There wasn't enough of it to call it a downtown, he thought, walking past a hairdresser's and a drugstore. The businesses were all of the mom-and-pop type, with straightforward window displays that focused more on information than artistry. He exchanged hellos with a young mother pushing a baby carriage, a grizzled old man wearing coveralls, two young girls who looked too fresh-faced and cheerful to be teenagers, and a deep-bosomed matron wearing a floral print dress that looked like it dated to the 1940s.

Time warp, Neill decided, stopping beneath a shade tree whose branches arched over the sidewalk. That was the only possible explanation for what he was seeing. He hooked his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans and contemplated the possibility. Smiling, friendly faces, tidy little businesses—he'd obviously passed through a time warp and landed in the fifties. Or maybe, considering his landlady, he'd fallen into an old Blondie movie.

It had just occurred to him that he was hungry when he realized that he was standing in front of a grocery store. Bill's Grocery was written in plain block letters across the front of the building. There was an appealing simplicity to that, a stolid refusal to pander to those who might want fancy names or curlicues on their letters. After two years of living in Seattle, where there was a specialty "emporium" or "market" on every other comer, there was something pleasantly honest about the chunky block of a building with its plain name.