"Ridiculous!" Temple told herself--or him. Or the so-called ghost. She wrenched the key right and turned the knob at the same time.
The door eased open with a truly corny creaking sound.
Oh, please.
She stepped inside, feeling her high heels sink even deeper.
The room was dark, its windows shaded. A scent of stale lemon-wax perfumed the dimness.
When Temple's palm patted down the wall for the light switch, all she felt was the slightly rough pattern of wallpaper.
Louie was no longer brushing her ankles.
A clock ticked with a showy sharpness of sound no longer allowed in battery-operated models of today. Apparently something in this room was plugged in, so maybe a lamp was too.
Temple shuffled her feet over the carpeting, wary of unseen barriers. Her eyes were adjusting enough to distinguish horizontal bars of faint light on the right wall.
Shadowy things shaped themselves to the dimensions of the room: a sofa in the center. Or a coffin... A tall narrow cabinet against one wall. Or a mummy case... A chair skirt snagging on her instep. Or the brush of spectral fingers at her ankle . . .
She glimpsed a shoulder-high shape near the sofa. Either a lamp shade . . . or a Chinese peasant in a coolie hat.
Hey, there was nothing spooky about a Chinese peasant in a coolie hat.
Temple delicately touched the silhouette, feeling her fingernails scratch taut-stretched taffeta . . . or the papery skin of a seated corpse!
She pawed below the brittle fabric, found the cool, urn-shaped outline of a porcelain lamp base . . . or the smooth bronze sides of a funerary urn containing ashes not quite cold, ...
She clutched at the phantom of a light switch, something plastic that would click. What she found was the shape of an ornate key, but it turned. Cherry-tinted light flooded down on her hands like diluted blood, but her fingernails looked gore-black.
A sudden rattling sound-- the clatter of skeletal bones? -- made her start, nearly overturning the lamp shade. The sound came from the shuttered windows, and then a broader streak of daylight broke through.
By its narrow band of brightness, Temple navigated her way to the window, where Midnight Louie was perched on a fragile-legged blond Hepplewhite table, one massive paw thrust into the light.
The window wasn't covered by shutters. Temple saw, but blinds--broad-vaned, industrial-strength wooden blinds that made thoroughly modern metal miniblinds and micro-mini-blinds look like effete little toothpicks.
Blinds were nothing. Temple edged to the side, found the cords and pulled until the vanes stood up and took notice of the sunny day outside.
In the greater light, she marched to the next window and performed the same chore, then dusted her palms. There wasn't any grit between them, but there should have been.
Temple surveyed the living room where Jersey Joe Jackson had wheeled his last deal. By the time of his death, he had lived here in sufferance, according to some, a penniless, aging has-been tolerated only for the memory of his own legend.
She toured the last living arrangements of the late Jersey Joe Jackson, pausing at the lamp to shake her head at the shade's whimsical form--that of a crimson-laced corset. Surrealism, she recalled, had influenced late forties decorative accessories, however funky the form.
The apple-green satin drapes framing the windows fell in still-shining cartridge pleats, fluted like a classical column. Padded valances were upholstered in the same satin, and curled on the ends like huge Ionic capitols, or an upswept forties hairdo. Given their formality and height, Temple couldn't help thinking of Lieutenant Molina.
Midnight Louie, having successfully drawn her attention to the blinds, had retreated to the chartreuse-upholstered sofa. There, the green of his eyes shone to advantage in the flattering daylight that shrank his dark pupils to mere slits.
Temple analyzed the room, understanding why it was part of what was called a ''Ghost Suite."
The forties-style furniture was an odd albino amalgam of modern lightness of color and traditional eighteenth-century furniture forms. The graceful blond mahogany legs of sofa, tables and chairs seemed almost gilded in the afternoon light, but they were actually silver-white in tone, except for the frankly blond cabinet between the windows.
The carpeting was dark, the better to show off the ashen-legged furniture. Temple stared down at a matted ocean of forest-green leaves and exotic maroon blossoms. She felt she was walking on Monet's water lilies.
A pale Sheraton desk hugged the wall by the door. Temple trod water lilies to the desk, then switched on the green-glass-shaded banker's light hunkering over a gold-tooled, green leather deskpad.
She wasn't surprised that everything worked here. The place was untouched, but not untended.
The effluvia of thirty years or more floated in the shallow central desk drawer. Old bank books bound by rotting rubber bands. Stamps so outdated they were worth only a penny.
Unused stationery as yellow and brittle as autumn leaves. Some of it was imprinted ''Joshua Tree Hotel & Casino," with smaller block letters underneath announcing ''Las Vegas's biggest little hotel."
Temple was surprised by the number of stubby pencils in the drawer, a collection formed before the dawning of the age of ballpoint and felt-tip pens. The gaudy barrel of a fifties Esterbrook pen rolled under her fingertips as she probed.
She found a letter to Jersey Joe Jackson on faded rose stationery signed "Mona." The contents were almost deliberately bland and there was no return address.
Temple pulled out the delicate desk chair and sat on its bold maroon and forest green satin stripes relieved by a pinstripe of chartreuse.
Dust fuzz hobnobbed in the drawer corners with rusted paperclips. Someone had lined the drawer with the same bamboo and jungle growth wallpaper that swathed the walls. Not Jersey Joe, Temple would bet. Anyone nicknamed Jersey Joe would not be the drawer-lining type.
She found a string of tiny keys, the type shaped for hard-sided suitcases of another era, for ladies little jewel boxes and diaries, for strongboxes and secret cabinets. They jangled like jewelry and would have looked swell--that was a forties expression, wasn't it, along with jeepers creepers and mairsy doats?--silverplated and dangling from a chain bracelet today.
What did these fascinating Lilliputian keys open once? Why had a two-timing crook with a penchant for squirreling away ill-gotten goods kept them? Didn't anybody at this hotel have a curious bone in their body?
The room's silence was utter, to the point of rebuff. Temple fished out something caught in the crevice of the drawer--a holy card edged in gilt, picturing some pastel-tinted female saint or other looking sappy under a coyly tilted halo. The back text marked the passing of one Harold Lynch on October 8, 1943. Poor Harold had only been thirty-three. In the drawer's right back corner, a white satin garter coiled like a deflated balloon. Several dull red wooden gambling chips lay scattered amid the dusty papers like lost coat buttons.
The deeper but smaller drawers on either side held plastic boxes filled with paperclips and rubber bands, a deck of well-thumbed playing cards bearing the image of a robust pinup girl with very long hair and legs.
"Ouch!'' Temple had found a hoard of thumbtacks-- rusted.
She slammed the offending drawer shut and squeezed her fingertip until she had produced a Sleeping Beauty drop of blood as crimson as a Ceylonese ruby cabochon.
She rose and went through an ajar door, looking for the bathroom. She found herself in a dim bedroom and stumbled her way into a black-hole-of-Calcutta closet before trying another doorknob with her good hand.
This time there was a wall switch. It flooded the room with a funhouse-mirror-view of Temple holding her right wrist and blinking.