“He is occupied, señor,” she replied. “Will you wait a few minutes?”
“We’ll be at the pool restaurant,” Meg said quickly. “Mr. Ellis is the name.” She turned to Cat. “I’m hungry. Let’s get a sandwich while we’re waiting.”
They walked out of the lobby, through a densely gardened area, and up some stairs to the pool.
Cat was impressed. “I wasn’t expecting anything quite like this in Colombia,” he said, gazing at the large, handsome pool and the beautiful bodies surrounding it. “This reminds me of the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”
“Oh, this can be a very pleasant country,” Meg said, sitting down at a poolside table. “This hotel is my favorite in Cartagena. It was designed by a Cuban just after World War II, and I think it must be a bit like Havana before Castro.”
As they were finishing their lunch, a young man in a suit approached them. “Excuse me, Mr. Ellis? The manager will be occupied for some time. My name is Rodriguez, may I be of assistance?”
Cat offered the man a chair. He had his story ready. “Earlier this month, I believe my niece may have been staying here. I had a brief telephone call from her — a very bad connection — and then we were cut off. I was unable to get through that day, and when I finally did I was told that she was not registered. I’d like to locate her; her mother is worried about her.”
“What was your niece’s name, Señor? I will check my records.”
“Her name is Katharine Ellis, but I think she was travelling with friends, so she may not have been registered. I think if I could learn who she was travelling with, I might be able to contact her through her friends.”
Rodriguez looked puzzled.
“What I wonder if you could help me with is, would it be possible to check your telephone records for the date and learn from which room the call was made? Then we would know to whom the room was registered. The call was made on the second of this month.”
Rodriguez now looked doubtful, and not a little suspicious.
“I am afraid this is irregular, señor. We do not divulge the names of our guests to informal inquiries. In any case, the hotel was filled to capacity on that date, and that would mean searching the records of more than two hundred rooms.”
Cat jotted a number in his notebook, ripped it out, and pushed it across the table, covering two one-hundred-dollar bills. “Here is the number she telephoned. It is in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States. I know this is a great imposition, but I wonder if you might take the time to have a look through your records?”
Rodriguez glanced quickly about him, then pocketed the number and the bills. “Well, perhaps I could take a look through the telephone records this evening, when I am off duty.”
“Thank you so much,” Cat said.
“Where may I reach you, Señor Ellis? This may take a few days, unless I am lucky.”
Meg cut in and gave the man a phone number.
Rodriguez stood and bowed. “I shall be in touch as soon as possible, Señor Ellis,” he said.
“Thank you,” Cat replied. “I will be equally grateful when you have found the information.”
The young man smiled and left.
“What was that number you gave him?” Cat asked.
“My place. You may as well stay out there. There’s a lot of room.”
“You’re sure I’m not putting you out? I could get a room here.”
“Not at all,” she said.
They finished lunch and left the hotel, driving along the beach.
“We’ll take a turn through the Old City,” she said, maneuvering through cars, brightly painted schoolbuses, and horse-drawn carriages. She drove through a gate in the fifty-foot-thick walls, and the character of Cartagena changed dramatically. Suddenly, they were in an earlier century. They wandered through narrow streets and elegant squares. The buildings were beautifully restored and maintained, made of the same masonry and stucco, with the same tile roofs. There was a harmony of design that grew from centuries of tradition and slow change.
“This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen,” Cat said. “I expected this whole country to be one great big hovel, but I was wrong.”
“This part of the city goes back to the early sixteenth century. This was the strongest fortress in South America, the port from which most of South America’s treasure was hauled away by the Spanish.”
They left the walled city and drove northeast along the coast on a two-lane tarmac road. A few miles out of Cartagena, Meg turned left onto a rough dirt track and slowed enough to manage the potholes.
Cat had been impressed with the Caribé Hotel and looked forward to comfortable arrangements for the night. Now, as the Mercedes banged along the track through the cactus, he saw that hope vanishing. He began to think in terms of hammocks slung under thatch. His hopes were not improved when Meg got out to open the padlock on a battered steel gate. After that, though, the road smoothed out and showed signs of having been graveled. Shortly a large tree appeared before them, and as Meg swung the car around it, the house came into view.
It was no more than a few years old, of the traditional white stucco and red roof tiles. Meg used several keys on a sturdy oak door, then they were inside a large, sunlit space, stiflingly hot.
“Jesus, let’s get some air in here,” she said, and began unlocking large sliding glass doors opening onto a wide veranda. The sea breeze swept into the house, quickly cooling the interior. The living-room furniture was a mixture of Bauhaus leather and steel and soft pieces upholstered in pale Haitian cotton. “You’re this way,” she said, waving him into a large, sunny bedroom with a large bed and wicker furniture. “Say, do you play tennis?”
“Sure,” he said, dropping his bags on the bed. “I don’t have any gear, though. Tennis wasn’t what I had been expecting from Colombia.”
She laughed. “In Colombia, expect the unexpected. Look in the second closet, there. I think you’ll find what you need.”
Cat opened the closet and found tennis clothes and bathing suits in a variety of sizes, men’s and women’s. He found some shoes and changed. He could hear her in the kitchen as he came out of the bedroom.
“Just thawing some steaks for dinner,” she called out.
He had another look around the living room. He hadn’t noticed the pictures before. They were very South American-looking, mostly primitives. He liked them. The effect of the whole place was pleasing, much like its owner.
A moment later she joined him and led the way out the front door and along a path to a nicely built hard court. “This is my pride and joy,” she said. “I never have guests who don’t play tennis.” She blew the surface clean with an electric blower, and they began to hit balls.
She played more like a man than a woman, he thought, feeling it in his wrist as he returned one of her forehands. She won the serve and aced him twice before he even got a racket on a ball.
“Sorry about that,” she called out. “I get worse as it goes on.”
She wasn’t sorry about it, and she didn’t get worse. Cat thought if he had not been working out so much the last few months, she’d have run him off his feet. She took the first set six-one, and he stopped feeling guilty about wanting to beat a woman. Playing as hard as he could, he squeaked through the next set, winning it seven-five. At four-four in the third set, she broke his serve, and he reached down inside himself for something more. He had a brief flash of memory, of Quantico and a ten-mile run, surely the last time he had had to try this hard at anything. He broke her serve, then lost his again, then took hers again. His concentration was total now; he might have been playing at Wimbledon. He aced her to get to seven-six, then hit four of the hardest returns of service he had ever hit to beat her, eight-six.