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“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Mrs. Alvarez joined them, by accident more than design. She rolled a tray into the great hall and stopped herself at the sight of them. “Pardon,” she mumbled, and guided the tray around them. In Spanish, she muttered, “The meal will begin in fifteen minutes. Spread the word around, if you like. Today we eat early, so we can get ahead of the storm.”
“What’d she say?”
The padre nodded at the woman, and then he said to the Ranger: “Get ready for supper. It’s likely to be our last.”
The afternoon meal was hasty and tense, parceled out in a serve-yourself fashion that required minimal intervention from Mrs. Alvarez or her daughters. There was gumbo in a large tureen, fresh fruit, fried plantains, and corn muffins with butter for anyone who wanted them—though no one had much of an appetite. It was too hard to eat with the giant windows showing off the great chaos that billowed outside; or even after their hostess gave up and closed the curtains. Then the rain began to fall. Rather, it did not fall, so much as it flung itself at the building in droplets as big as marbles, propelled by the heavy wind. The clatter it made upon hitting the glass was worse than the scraping of tree limbs, or the rustling patter of leaves scratching upon it.
The storm would not be ignored. If the guests of the Jacaranda refused to look at it, they would surely hear it anyway.
When it was clear that everyone was finished pretending to eat, Mrs. Alvarez called out, “I need help. The rain has come, and worse will come later. This hotel is our presidio now, and we must make it strong.”
“As if it matters,” grumbled Frederick Vaughn, who was still drunk from his afternoon of evading the Ranger’s questions. If anything, he was drunker now—having finished the bottle of whiskey and perhaps found another to chase it.
“It matters,” the woman snapped. “The hotel is built strong, but it has cracks. It has weak places, where the storm might find a way inside. It will surely try.”
Mrs. Anderson sighed hugely, and gestured at the enormous windows. “What do we do about these? Close the curtains, that’s all. Hope it keeps out the worst of the glass and debris, when the things begin to shatter.”
“Yes, we close the curtains, and we close the doors behind ourselves, and we fasten them.” Mrs. Alvarez folded her arms. “We will lock ourselves as deep inside as we can. We close off all the side doors, and block them with heavy furniture. We shut every window, every door, in every room—and bolt them up tight. Then we close the fire doors, to shut down the hallways.”
“And the front doors?” asked the Ranger. “They’re big and heavy, but…”
“There is a brace for them, a beam. I will need help to move it, but it will hold. Come now, we must work together—before the last of the light has left us.”
The padre rose from his chair. “Let us divide into groups, and secure the wings floor by floor. I’ll begin with the first floor’s east wing,” he declared, meaning the place where Sarah was still laid out, still broken-necked with a ragdoll lying on the bed beside her. “Ranger, perhaps you can take the third floor, of the same wing.” For that was where Constance Fields had died, and the room was closed without being secured. They’d discussed her death already; the Ranger knew what to expect, should he peek inside her quarters.
The remaining guests chose their stations and departed, leaving their plates and cutlery on the tables without a second thought. Mrs. Alvarez left them too, pausing only to tie the curtains shut at each great window. She looked back and forth between the tables and the chairs, as if she considered how useful they might be…but she discarded any thoughts of securing the space any further.
She threw her hands up in surrender, and when she saw the padre watching her, she told him in Spanish, “The glass will break and the room will be in ruins. We can’t save the whole building, and we shouldn’t fool ourselves about it; damage will occur, by the will of God. But we should preserve what we can. Sacrifice the one room to save the one wing. Come with me, we should close this door, and forget this room—it is already lost. Let the storm come inside and clean it out, I don’t care and neither does the Jacaranda.”
He joined her in drawing the big double doors shut in their wake, and then he asked about sheets of wood, and nails. “We can cover some of the small windows, like the ones in these doors—and the front doors. We can keep the glass from blowing around inside, should it break.”
“You can find those things out in the shed,” she said, then withdrew the statement as ridiculous, almost immediately. “But you should not attempt it. No one should leave anymore, this must be our fortress now.”
“I agree, but what about—”
With a snap of her fingers, she cut him off. “Wait—there are scraps by the back entrance. Tim was building a covered porch. We brought the wood and the tools inside this morning, and stacked them in the laundry room.”
“Thank you. That is most helpful.”
He excused himself with a small bow, and checked the laundry room. He remembered it we
ll, and yes, now there were piles of scrap and tools tossed into the mix of machines, sinks, and lines. He rifled through the building materials and, finding promising pieces and a heavy hammer, he went to the lobby to begin with the main doors.
They were solid as stone, except for those small decorative windows—and through the colored bits of glass he saw terrible motion outside, drawn in hasty strokes that suggested violence and mayhem without any details. He shuddered and held up a scrap of wood, then drove nails through either end, on each side of the glass. Four more such scraps were enough to cover both panes, though he lingered over the last few inches, hesitating before covering the last small gap.
It was only a sliver, and not even a sliver of light; between the hour and the clouds it might as well have been midnight beyond the little windows…but it felt very final, and very futile.
It felt like he was walling up a tomb, with himself and everyone else inside.
He pounded the last two nails in deep, and he told himself to have faith—because there was no one else to remind him.
The nun might’ve reminded him, but she was absent. She hadn’t joined them for supper, and she wasn’t in Sarah’s room when the padre went to check on the pair of them. He heard nothing inside, even when he listened for all he was worth, and the door had been locked firmly enough that he didn’t care to try it. Sister Eileen was somewhere else, then, and no one would stumble upon Sarah’s body. It seemed like insufficient preparation, but it would have to be enough.
He stood still and listened hard.
All around him, the cavernous hotel rattled and pattered with the rushing thuds of feet, running from room to room, door to door. Windows were tested, and curtains were drawn; mattresses were lifted and pressed against them, in case the weight would preserve the room somehow.
