Dream Town, page 14
And I’m going to have to make my own decision on that at some point. If I ever find the lady.
Chapter 29
ARCHER SAT IN THE DELAHAYE out in front of the Green mansion and read through the few pages of Bender’s typewritten reports. The dead PI had not articulated a clear theory of the case yet, nor had he identified, conclusively, the woman Bart Green was allegedly consorting with, to use Mallory Green’s term.
But to Archer’s thinking, it had to be Bernadette Bonham. Who else was there? But Bonham was supposed to be in France.
Then Archer thought about something Sylvia Danforth had told him.
He put the car in gear and headed back out to Malibu.
The cops had gone from Las Flores Canyon. He parked across the street, squinting against the sun, and walked over to Lamb’s house and into her backyard. He made his way up the same set of outside steps to the second-floor deck and entered through the same door, which, obviously, the coppers had not bothered to secure, even if they had noticed it was unlocked.
The body, he knew, was gone. However, the chalk line was still there, a poor facsimile for a departed life, he thought. But that was all you ever got from the homicide boys. The coroner would have already hacked up Bender. He wondered if the bullet in the man’s brain had held together enough to be identified, and then matched against the gun that had done the deed, if they ever found it. And he wondered if the autopsy had shown anything else. And he could keep right on wondering, because Phil Oldham would probably blow out his own brains before sharing any case notes with the likes of Archer.
Happy 1953 to you too, asshole.
He looked in Lamb’s desk drawer and pulled out her checkbook. He sat down at the desk and examined the woman’s handwriting and signature on the carbons. He took out a piece of paper from a drawer, grabbed a pen off the desktop, and slipped one carbon under the thin paper where he could make out the lines of her handwriting and signature through it. He traced these over and over until he felt comfortable enough to try it for real.
He made out a check to the Willie Dash Detective Agency for $200 and signed it “Eleanor Lamb” in the lady’s small, precise hand. He worked the check free and slipped it into his pocket.
He left the way he had come and walked over to the Bonhams’. He jiggered the garage door the way he had before and walked in, securing the door behind him. Danforth had told him that the Bonhams had driven their car to the airport before heading to France. He slipped out his notebook and checked what she had specifically said.
They left about a month ago.
Archer knelt down and again looked at the oil slick on the garage floor. As Archer had thought before, that might be because Bender’s blue Ford could have been driven in here to hide it. But really what would have been the point in that? Would you take the chance that the cops might look in your garage and see a dead man’s car? Lot of uncomfortable questions would follow. Yet that meant these marks could have come from the Bonhams’ car, and, as he had thought before, they sure as hell weren’t a month old.
He left and got back into the Delahaye. Archer looked over at Lamb’s house as the rising sun started to wield its full heat and light on the canyon. Bender had met his end somewhere around here, unless he had been transported by car. But Archer didn’t see it that way. The man’s car had been parked on the street. Sometime before three in the afternoon or so on New Year’s Eve, somebody grabbed him, beat him up, and when they were done, they put a bullet in his brain just to be sure he wouldn’t be telling anyone what had happened. Then, at some point, they dumped the body at Lamb’s place.
The problem with that was: How could they be sure Lamb wouldn’t be at home then? Had they been watching the place, or known for a fact she’d be out on New Year’s Eve? But if she had been home, they would have had another person to silence and thus another body to deal with. Why make trouble for yourself? Unless Lamb were in on it. But what would be the angle? Was Bender simply investigating an adulterous husband and got caught in the crossfire of something far more serious?
Wrong place, wrong time, just like I was on that sand. Only I got lucky and Bender didn’t.
As he was driving away he saw Mrs. Danforth in her front yard plucking, presumably, at some weeds. She had on a mauve house coat and a pair of white slippers. Her real hair, mottled gray, was down around her shoulders. From this distance she didn’t look a day over seventy-five. Two cats were watching her every move like a pair of prison guards in the exercise yard.
Archer didn’t wait for her to spot him. He had other things to do today. The first being a trip to the Second National Bank of Malibu.
Chapter 30
ARCHER DIDN’T KNOW WHAT THE First National Bank of Malibu looked like, but the second resembled an In-N-Out Burger restaurant, including the red-and-white-striped awnings on three sides. But the bank was far bigger than the In-N-Out Archer had visited in Baldwin Park, California, while he was there on a case. The food wasn’t bad and it was cheap, and Archer thought the place might make a go of it.
He parked in front and could see through the plate glass four women at desks working away like dutiful bees. There was a drive-through teller on the left side and two more tellers inside. There were three cars in the drive-through, four cars in the parking lot, and five people standing in line at the inside tellers, waiting to do their banking business.
Commerce was just flowing in this place like a high tide coming in.
Behind a glass wall in one corner sat a big desk with a walrus of a man in a burgundy rayon suit that managed to somehow look faded. He was in his forties and certainly well-fed. He was well-groomed, too, although Archer wasn’t sure whether the man’s hair was actually his or was simply on loan from the bank at a competitive interest rate. Next to the desk was a brass spittoon that did not look ornamental. Here it was 1953 and people were still spitting their tobacco instead of driving it into their lungs.
Archer wasn’t certain where they kept the safe, but every bank had one, which was why they kept getting robbed.
Archer opened the door, causing a little bell to tinkle.
The women all looked up and smiled uniformly, apparently in accordance with strict bank protocols, while the walrus glanced his way once and then returned to scrutinizing the pages of the Wall Street Journal, as though his personal fortune was all wrapped up in there.
Archer approached one of the women and took out the check. “I had a question about something having to do with this.”
He showed it to the woman. She was in her late twenties, brown-haired, doe eyes the same color, and with a serious, attentive look, as though one day she wanted to be seated where the walrus was. The woman next to her was a cool, clear-eyed blond gal with ambitions of her own, though her glimpse of cleavage where her sweater zipper had slipped down showed she was coming at the path to a better life from another angle than her coworker.
Doe-eye looked at it and said, “What seems to be the problem? Were there insufficient funds to cover it?”
“No, I actually haven’t tried to cash it. You see, Miss Lamb already paid me, but then this check came in my mail and I wanted to return it to her.”
The woman looked at the address on the check, and her confused look deepened. “Well, she just lives right up in Las Flores Canyon.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve been there. But she’s not there and the police won’t let me in.”
“The police!”
“Yes, apparently they found a dead body in her house.”
Having obviously overheard this, the walrus put down his paper, rose from his desk, adjusted his cuffs, massaged the knot on his tie, and headed ponderously over.
“Can I help you?” he said in a smooth voice that Archer took an instant dislike to. As a teenager he’d bought a car from a guy who sounded just like that. And the car’s transmission had failed as soon as the thicker oil the guy had poured into the gearbox to mask the failing gears clogged everything. When Archer had gone back to get his money, the gent disavowed all knowledge of the vehicle, Archer, or the existence of any known connection between them.
“I hope so,” said Archer, smiling because he felt he had to at the moment. He explained things again.
“A body?” said the man, who had introduced himself as Horace Mincer, the bank branch manager. “I’ve seen nothing in the papers.”
“It just happened recently, and they’re probably putting the kibosh on the reporters doing their snooping. Do you know Miss Lamb?”
“Well, yes, I mean, as a customer of the bank, I do.” He looked at the check. “What did Miss Lamb need with a detective agency anyway?”
“I’m afraid that’s confidential.”
Mincer shot him a glance. “Well, what do you want us to do about it, fella?”
“I was wondering if you had another address for her where I could drop it off or mail it?”
“She has an office somewhere in LA, I believe. She’s a secretary or something for a big film schmuck.”
“I tried there. They haven’t heard from her and they’re getting quite worried. And she’s not a secretary. She’s a very talented writer for the movies.”
The man looked at Archer like he was trying to feed him a line that could not possibly be true. “Is that right?”
“Goodness,” said Doe-eye. “She’s gone missing?”
Mincer glanced sharply at her, as though trying to determine from which planet the woman might have fallen into his bank. “Right, this way, Mr.…?”
“Archer.”
“Right. Better to discuss this in private.”
“It always is.”
The man gave him another stupid look that made Archer wonder if he could even add numbers much less provide cogent information.
They settled behind the glass wall and the man took out a cigar from his desk drawer, sheared off the end with a pinky knife, lit up, and puffed on it, his cheeks performing like fireplace bellows to get the ignited end going.
Archer watched him do this and looked him over once more. In the fellow’s forty-plus years of living, Archer came away with the conclusion that the gent had possibly stopped maturing around the age of twelve.
Mincer put his wingtips up on the desk, blew out smoke, and then tacked on a stupid grin. “Now that we’re away from the little girls, give me the straight dope on this, buddy.”
“Come again?”
He held up the check and then dropped it on his desk. “Who in their right mind turns down free money? You say the lady paid you twice? Okay, you keep both payments and she can ask for the overpayment back. What kind of nut volunteers to do it?”
Archer pretended to be offended as he picked up the check and put it away in his pocket. “This kind of nut. Plus, I get the rep of cheating my clients, how long do you think I’d be in business?”
“Okay, okay, don’t get all sore. It’s no skin off me.”
“What can you tell me about Lamb?”
“Why?” Mincer asked.
“She’s missing, as I said. I’d like to find her.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Is she a good customer?” asked Archer.
“No problems that I know of.”
“She bought a nice house up in the canyon, then did a big remodel. Put in a pool and everything. You people hold the mortgage on all that?”
Mincer put his feet on the floor and swiveled to face Archer with the expression of a man about to do some business of his own. “Technically, we’re not supposed to talk about this stuff with third parties.” He hiked his eyebrows in a crude show of silent communication.
“Well, speaking for interested third parties, how much does it take to get around technicalities in this place?” asked Archer, reaching into his jacket pocket for his wallet.
Mincer glanced at the quartet of ladies, several of whom kept shooting darting glances their way. “Not here. Let’s go for a walk.”
“I’m all for fresh air.”
Chapter 31
THEY CROSSED THE ROAD AND WALKED along the beach where the sand was hard packed. The sun was high overhead, making it warm for January, and the tide was hovering in roughly neutral right now. However, even the distant breakers would cover any conversation they would have, Archer knew, which was probably why Mincer had headed over here, which meant the man wasn’t all stupid.
“The mortgage?” asked Archer.
“There isn’t one.”
Archer’s jaw went slack. “I know she makes good money with her job, but that house must have cost ten times what she pulls in during the course of a year.”
“Maybe more than that with all the improvements she made.”
“You sound like you know more about it than you let on back there.”
“Let me see your cash.”
“Okay, but keep in mind, pal, I’m a gumshoe, not a Rockefeller.”
“Would you go a grand?”
Archer’s jaw went even slacker. “Oh, sure, if Lamb walks safely out of the ocean over there the second the green hits your palm.”
“How about a C-note then? I’m taking a big risk here, buddy.”
“There’s risk in getting out of bed every day. I tell you what, let me hear it first. Then I’ll judge if it’s worth the C or not.”
Mincer stopped walking and puffed feverishly on his cigar. “Do I look like a monkey’s uncle, pal? I’m a branch manager, for crying out loud.” He held up a foot. “I’m wearing goddamn Florsheims.”
“Okay, let’s say fifty. I pay you half on your promise of having the goods, and the other half when you’re done. That work for you?”
“I guess.”
“That is not what I wanted to hear.”
“Okay, okay, yeah, it works.”
Archer passed him the money.
They started walking again.
“Lamb moved out here, oh, about two years ago. That’s when she opened her account with us. She said she was buying the old Henderson place. We did have a mortgage on that. So I asked her if she wanted us to loan her the necessary funds to buy the property and fix it up, because she told me what she wanted to do with it. We had the survey and title on file and all, we’d just have to update it. All she needed was a male cosigner.”
“Come again?” said Archer sharply.
“An unmarried woman can’t get a mortgage without a suitable man signing with her,” said Mincer. “Didn’t you know that, pal?”
“No I didn’t. Why won’t banks make loans to single women?”
“Don’t be stupid. Banks need a guy on board to feel secure. And it’s for the ladies’ protection, too. Dames are clueless about money and such. They won’t get taken for a ride with a sharp guy around. Turns out it didn’t matter with Lamb. She told me she was paying cash for the property, and the renovations she planned. So she didn’t need a mortgage. And I guess there’s no law against a dame buying a house with her own cash, though there probably should be. Like I said, women have no head when it comes to money and business. My dumb wife doesn’t know the difference between a passbook account and Passover.”
“How much cash are we actually talking about here?”
Mincer gave him a meaningful look. “A total of seventy-two thousand, five hundred clams.”
Archer whistled because how could a man not when hearing that sum. “And how do you know that exactly?”
“I know the Realtor who did the sale. He sold me my house. And the contractor who did all the work is my brother-in-law. They told me.”
“It’s nice to be talking to a guy so in the know. And she had that all in cash. Did she say where it came from?”
“No, and I had no legitimate right to ask. But I was damn curious.”
“Is there any way you can tell me what her balance is at your bank?”
Archer had seen from the woman’s check register that her checking account had about fifteen hundred dollars in it.
“She has savings and checking accounts. Without getting specific, I can tell you that it was nothing close to what she put into that house.”
“So maybe she keeps it under her mattress?”
Mincer took a puff of his cigar. “Hell, I figured maybe she was an heiress or something, or had a rich guy on the side, but she didn’t seem the type. I mean, she was no looker, for Chrissake. For a guy to pony up that kind of dough, you’d have to look like that Swede, Anita Ekberg. I mean, sweet Jesus. You seen the rack on that gal?”
“Not today I haven’t. Did Lamb ever mention moving out here because she had a friend who already lived here?”
Mincer tapped ash into the sand, while Archer studied the ocean as it began to creep closer to them, like a predator in the high grass.
“I remember during our first meeting I asked her how come she was moving to Malibu. I mean, sure, a lot of people are buying out this way, but they’re either famous or rich or both. Anyway, she said someone had recommended the place to her and then she’d found out that someone she knew from way back had a place out here. She wanted to rekindle the relationship.”
“Did she mention a name?”
Mincer dropped the cigar onto the beach, using his shoe to cover it with sand. “No.”
“Man, woman?”
“Don’t know. I mean, I could have asked, but I didn’t really care. She was just opening an account. And I wouldn’t be selling her a mortgage, so there goes that commission. And it wasn’t like I was going to date her or anything.”
“And you are married,” said Archer, eyeing his wedding band.
Mincer grinned and gave Archer a wink. “When did that ever stop a guy in heat? And my missus is actually old enough to be my wife. So, a body up there, you said. Know who it is?”
“Not yet,” Archer lied. “It’s a guy.”
“And you said Lamb is missing?”
Archer nodded. “Whether by her choice or not, I don’t know.”
“Damn. So anyway, where’s the rest of my money?”
Archer reluctantly placed the bills in the man’s palm along with his card. “Anything else occurs to you, ring that number and you can leave a message.”
