I kept flipping through the calendar, looking at appointments Deveer had made and never kept. There were plenty, but that didn’t mean anything; he could have put them down to make his disappearance seem unintentional. But there, on September 18th, was a notation that did mean something to me: the familiar phone number of the Casa del Rey. Above it was the word “arrangements.” And below it was another number with a familiar look.
Reaching in my bag for Elaine’s address book, I said, “Mrs. Deveer, is the date September eighteenth significant to your husband in any way?”
“Yes, it’s his birthday.”
His birthday. What better place to note something down where he could easily find it but where others would not be likely to look?
I took out the address book, looked up Lloyd Beddoes’s home phone number, and compared it with the second one on the calendar. They matched.
24: “Wolf”
I spent better than two hours in and around Lauterbach’s office while the S.D.P.D. homicide boys went about their grim business. The cop in charge was named Gunderson. I told him everything I knew, but I didn’t get into any of the suspicions about Elaine Picard’s death, the disappearance of Nancy and Timmy Clark, or illegal activities on the part of Lloyd Beddoes and Victor Ibarcena. For one thing, despite Lauterbach’s connection to Elaine and to the Clarks, none of those matters might relate to his murder. And for another thing, the sheriff’s department was handling the Picard case and the hotel was their jurisdiction; Tom Knowles was the man to talk to on those fronts.
By keeping my ears open during the time I was on the scene, I found out that Lauterbach had been dead close to twenty-four hours — since Sunday noon at the latest. The first person to try to use the lavatory this morning was the screaming woman who’d found him, K. M. Ardry’s flat-chested secretary. He had been shot with a small-caliber weapon at close range; two of the entry holes bore the scorching, cruciate tears, and powder tattooing that mark contact and near-contact wounds. The murder weapon hadn’t been in the lavatory and apparently wasn’t anywhere else in the building. A search of Lauterbach’s office revealed nothing directly linked to the shooting. Nor did the people from Dutton Design & Manufacturing and the divorce specialist’s office know anything useful; none of them had been in the building the day before. They also didn’t know if Lauterbach was in the habit of coming in to his office on Sundays — but he could have done it easily enough, in any case, because each tenant had a key to the front entrance.
Not much in any of that, except that it provided a rough fix as to the time of death. The coroner would probably be able to pare it down closer at the postmortem.
When Gunderson finally said I could leave I had every intention of talking to Knowles first thing. The problem was, he wasn’t in when I got to the sheriff’s department on West C Street and nobody could tell me just when he’d be back. The best estimation was “sometime this afternoon” from another plainclothes officer.
On my way to where I’d parked the rental car, I did some brooding about Lauterbach’s death. Why had he been killed? Because he was investigating Elaine Picard? Well, maybe. But if he’d found out anything that made him a candidate for homicide, I hadn’t been able to see it in his notes. It was also possible that there was a connection between his murder and whatever was going on at the Casa del Rey, and with Elaine Picard’s death. But if that was it, I couldn’t even guess what it might be. And where did Rich Woodall and a place called Borrego Springs and a house somewhere in the desert fit in?
I gave it up for the time being and considered stopping somewhere for coffee and a sandwich. Only I had no appetite; Lauterbach’s blood-caked face, the bullet hole where his left eye had once been, had seen to that. I wondered if I should look up Henry Nyland, to ask him why he’d hired Lauterbach to investigate Elaine, but I decided against it. That was Tom Knowles’s prerogative, and Gunderson’s. And if there was anything else to be found out, anything Nyland might not tell the authorities, McCone could probably get at it better than I could. She had more of a vested interest in all of this than I did.
A few blocks from the sheriffs department I stopped for a traffic light. There was a secondhand bookshop across the street, with a big sign that caught my eye — and it reminded me of what Charley Valdene had told me about Beddoes’s interest in pornography. Not much of an angle in that, maybe, but I could check out the shop where Valdene had run into Beddoes: Charley had given me the name and address. It was something to do, at least, until I could connect with Knowles.
When I reached the address, out past Balboa Park near University Avenue, I found myself at a newish, boxy, four-story office building, with a realtor’s sign out front that said OFFICE SPACE FOR RENT. The occupied space seemed to belong mostly to lawyers, architects, and other professional people: all very upper middle class and proper. I wondered as I scanned the lobby directory if Valdene might have made a mistake with the address. But he hadn’t; I found the listing near the bottom — PRIAPUS BOOKS AND CURIOS, 5E.
The elevator deposited me on the fifth floor. I went down a carpeted hallway until I came to 5E. Except for a tiny magnifying-glass peephole, the numeral and the letter were all that was on the door; but on the jamb, above an inlaid bell button, was a fancy scrolled business card tucked into a metal frame. It read:
I pushed the inlaid button. Nothing happened for a time, but I got the feeling I was being studied through the peephole. I tried to look like a guy with an interest in erotica instead of what I was, and I must have managed all right; there was the sound of a lock snicking free and the door popped open and the guy standing there said pleasantly, “Yes? May I help you?”
He looked like somebody’s kindly grandfather. He was about sixty-five, he had wispy white hair and a wispy white mustache and polished-apple cheeks, and he was decked out in a conservative three-piece gray suit and a bow tie. He didn’t surprise me much. Purveyors of pornographic art, like everybody else, come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and dispositions.
I said, “Mr. Littlejohn?”
“At your service. I don’t believe I know you, sir.”
“Ah, no, you don’t. I’ve never been here before.”
“May I ask how you learned of Priapus?”
“You were recommended by a friend — Lloyd Beddoes.”
He beamed at me. “Yes, of course, Mr. Beddoes is one of my most valued customers. And your name, sir?”
“Wade. Ivan Wade.”
“Come in, Mr. Wade. Please come in.”
He stepped back and I went into an area carpeted in plush wine-red, softly lighted, and outfitted as a showroom. There were glass cases along three of the four walls, another in the middle of the room. The cases were full of books and carvings and things, none of which appeared to be particularly erotic when I got close enough to see what they were. The same was true of the paintings, pen-and-ink sketches, and woodcuts illuminated on the walls. It all might have been pretty hot stuff thirty years ago, but in this permissive age it wouldn’t stimulate anyone — except maybe a sheltered old maid or a member of the Moral Majority.
Littlejohn watched me browse for a couple of minutes. Then he asked, “Did you have anything particular in mind, Mr. Wade?”
“Well, something a little more — you know, graphic.”
“Books? Art?”