Doris Rangel - Marlie's Mystery Man

She glanced around the deserted lobby. “After the crowd this morning, it’s certainly quiet now. Where is everyone?”

“Out looking at the stars. Most of them won’t be in till the wee hours.”

“Then would anyone mind if I browse the hotel bookshelves and read for a while in the parlor?”

“Not at all. We want our guests to feel at home.”

“Be right back,” Marlie said as she headed up the old-fashioned staircase to pull off her hiking boots.

When Caid heard a key rattle in the lock, he turned away from the window and his perusal of the street below to deliberately step toward the center of the room.

The door swung open and a woman entered, switching on the overhead light as she did so. His roomie, apparently.

Somewhere between mid-to late-twenties, she had short tousled brown hair, a snub nose with a dusting of freckles across it, a generous mouth, and eyes that he couldn’t tell the color of but which were bordered with thick lashes the same shade as her hair. She was a little on the short side perhaps, but feisty with it, he could tell.

The woman was just plain cute, he thought, the kind of cute that in a puppy would make him want to take her home.

She also completely ignored him. A strange man stood in the middle of her hotel room and she didn’t so much as back up a step.

Caid rubbed a tired hand over his mouth and jaw. He’d been getting the same reaction all day…or lack of it. People he’d known all his life looked through him as if he wasn’t there. He’d gotten right in Durig’s face at the bank and yelled at him, but Durig hadn’t even blinked.

After failing to get anyone at the bank to notice him, Caid went to The Drugstore to buy aspirin and get a cup of coffee. Though he sat at the counter right in front of the kid behind it, no one waited on him. He finally dropped change by the cash register, took a bottle of aspirin off the shelf and left to walk to the garage where they’d towed his truck.

The vehicle was a mess and certainly not drivable, but when Caid tried to talk to Jimmy to get the lowdown on repairs, the garage owner ignored him, too. An oil stain had better conversation.

Totally frustrated and even more totally bewildered, Caid used a public telephone to call the ranch. He didn’t like what happened then, either.

“This is the Rollin’ M,” Waldo snarled, his usual way of answering the phone.

“Waldo, it’s Caid. I need you to drive into town and pick me—” Caid began.

“Hello? Hello?”

“It’s me,” Caid said loudly. “Turn up your hearing aid, dammit. I need you to…”

But he was speaking to a dead phone. Swearing, Caid dug into his jeans for more change and punched in the ranch number again.

“Rollin’ M, and buster, you better have somethin’ to say. I ain’t got time for this,” Waldo spat.

“It’s Caid. Can you hear me? I need—”

The response was an earful of profanity that would make a stevedore blush.

“It’s me!” Caid yelled at the top of his lungs. “Listen up, Waldo. I need—”

Dial tone.

Defeated, Caid replaced the receiver.

Next he tried to hitch a ride to the ranch with the owners of the property adjacent to his, but the Hendersons looked right through him and turned a deaf ear.

Not knowing what else to do, he at last walked back to the hotel, snagged a cup of coffee from the complimentary carafe in the deserted lobby and climbed the stairs to his room. His head felt like a mission bell at the noon hour and all he wanted at the moment was a handful of aspirin and a bed. He’d deal with the rest later.

Well, it was later, and even after a restless nap, he still didn’t know how to deal with it.

People just weren’t seeing him. He felt like the Invisible Man, except that guy could at least be heard.

The woman sat down on the side of the bed opposite the one he slept in and bent to untie the laces of her hiking boots. He’d like to ask just why the heck she’d commandeered his room, but knew it was probably a lost cause. No one else today had listened to him.

She’d tugged the second boot off when she paused, still holding it in her hand, and gazed for a long moment in front of her. Then she frowned.

Following her gaze, Caid looked to see what had captured her attention. All he saw was the bed he’d spent the afternoon in. The rumpled unmade bed.

“Bad housekeeping,” she finally muttered disapprovingly, then stripped off her socks and walked barefoot into the bathroom.

When she returned, she rummaged in a dresser drawer, came up with a clean pair of socks, picked up a bottle of lotion from the top of the bureau and sat down in the chair near the window, brushing by Caid in the process, actually touching his shirtsleeve—well, her shirtsleeve—without so much as breaking stride.

What she did next had Caid groaning inwardly. The woman poured a generous dollop of lotion into her palm and proceeded to massage her cute little feet.

As soon as the peppery smell of lavender filled the room, Caid sneezed.

The woman jumped a mile.

She’d heard him! But before Caid could say anything, he sneezed again. This time, however, she paid no attention, just went on slathering lotion.

Caid sneezed again. And again.

Finally, eyes streaming, he walked to the open window behind her chair and took a deep whiff of clean, unscented mountain air. By keeping his nose pressed to the screen, he managed to keep from sneezing until she closed the bottle, put on her clean socks, picked up her key from the dresser and headed for the door, obviously not bothering with shoes.

Good. As soon as she left, Caid was finding the nearest trash receptacle. Bye-bye, lavender lotion.

But she didn’t exit the room immediately. Instead, after pausing at the door, she backtracked and picked up his Stetson where he’d left it on top of the dresser.

And then she stood stock still, eyes wide and startled, her luscious mouth slightly parted as she stared in apparent amazement at his hat.

Or rather, at the blue feather he kept in the hatband.

With a tentative forefinger, the woman touched the blue feather, for some reason far more interested in it than Caid’s rattlesnake hatband.

“Coincidence,” he heard her whisper to herself. She turned the hat over to look inside the crown.

Then, to Caid’s total amazement, this cute button of a woman did an extraordinary thing.

Gazing at herself in the mirror, she put his hat on her head, where it immediately sank past her ears to cover her eyes and rest on the bridge of her nose. Grinning, she pushed it up again.

“Howdy, partner,” she greeted her image in an exaggerated drawl.

Fascinated, Caid watched as she stuck her thumbs in her belt loops and set her hips to rotating in a slow swivel.

“Ah’m an ol’ cowhand,” she sang nasally, “from the Rio Grande, but mah…something ain’t…something, and mah cheeks ain’t tan….”

Smiling broadly by now, and forgetting completely to keep his nose out the window, Caid turned more fully into the room, the better to appreciate the performance of that enticingly generous derriere.

He sneezed.

The woman stopped midtwang.

Dammit, he’d swear she heard him, but instead of turning toward the sound as any normal person would, she just laughed and shook her head at the far wall, causing his Stetson to drop over her eyes again.

This time, however, she took it off, replaced it on the dresser, flipped off the light and left the room.

The show, apparently, was over.

Disappointed, Caid sighed.

And sneezed.

Well, hell. If he was sharing the room with this woman, he was damn sure getting rid of the lotion she’d just used along with anything else she had that was lavender scented.

And he was sharing the room. At the moment, it was the only place he had to hang his hat, literally, until he could figure out what was going on. Besides, the hotel owed him. Maybe he hadn’t paid for it yet, but he’d reserved the room before they gave it to the woman. Come to that, she owed him, too.

He sneezed.

It wasn’t late when Marlie slowly walked up the staircase to return to her room, but after her active day she could barely keep her eyes open. She’d read for an hour in the hotel’s charmingly Victorian front parlor and now clutched the Agatha Christie mystery, planning to take it to bed with her.

Earlier, she’d asked Ann if the Hotel Limpia had any resident ghosts, but the desk clerk merely laughed, saying the only one she’d heard about, but never seen herself, mind you, was that of a soldier from the old fort.

But it wasn’t a soldier Marlie thought she’d seen. For a split second, as she’d been wearing the hat with the coincidental blue feather and acting silly in front of the mirror, she thought she’d caught the vague outline of a cowboy standing near the window behind her. But then her neighbor sneezed, and of course there was nothing reflected in the mirror but herself.

The Hotel Limpia, with its antique furnishings and bygone western charm, certainly had a way of sending the imagination into overdrive, she thought, unlocking the door to her room.

Once inside, she didn’t bother with the overhead light but switched on the lamp near her bed. In the dimness outside its glow, she eyed with disfavor the double bed that matched her own. Its sheets and covers were lumpy and rumpled just as they’d been this morning.

In all other respects, the hotel service was first rate, but its housekeeping staff left a lot to be desired. Marlie had meant to say something to Ann earlier and forgotten, but she was telling the desk clerk first thing in the morning. There was no excuse for an establishment of this caliber leaving beds unmade.

Gathering clean panties and her pajamas, she headed for the bathroom and a long hot bath, but after stepping out of her jeans and partially unbuttoning her shirt, she remembered the soap she’d found today in one of the shops.

Ah. The perfect end to a perfect day.

Traipsing back to the bedroom, Marlie rummaged through a couple of sacks until she found it. But just as she turned toward the bathroom again, she thought she heard a breathy whistle from next door.

It was just a whisper of sound, but for no apparent reason she suddenly became very aware of her bare legs and half-open shirt.

She grimaced. Too bad there wasn’t another room available. As it was, she had a double room too big for her single self when what she needed was double walls.

All was forgiven, however, when she lowered herself into the deep bathtub. Hot water and lavender soap. Life didn’t get any better.

Unless, of course, a handsome someone scrubbed her back.

Unh-huh. Cut that last thought. Nicholas wouldn’t scrub her back. He’d just tell her how bad hot water and perfumed soaps were for her skin.

Forget Nicholas. And forget hats placed strategically by an interior decorator to enhance an old hotel’s western decor. Forget, especially, hats with blue feathers in the hatband.

A half hour later, too pleasantly lethargic from her hot bath for even Agatha to have appeal, Marlie called it a day. Turning off the lamp, she sank into the old-fashioned bed’s very modern and oh-so-comfortable mattress.

And heard a giant sneeze.

Oh. Good. Grief.

Still, if she could hear the people next door, they could surely hear her. “Don’t you have anything to take for that?” she asked the wall loudly.

Silence.

One might even say stunned silence, it was that thick. Apparently the elderlies in the next room didn’t realize how thin the walls were.