He looked into the en suite bathroom. Blue and white tiles, blue tub, and towels monogrammed with an L were neatly arranged on a built-in shelf; no dead bodies were behind the shower curtain or stuffed in the linen closet. He grabbed a washcloth and used it to open the medicine cabinet, where he found the typical items like face powders, a box of Tampax, creamy moisturizers, tonics, and other patent medicines. He also found a bottle of black hair dye, and a hair straightener. So the lady was not a natural brunette with straight locks. Why had she lied about that?
He next searched the other rooms up here. One was no doubt a guest bedroom outfitted in Spartan fashion, with a bathroom that was half the size of hers. But maybe Lamb didn’t want to encourage guests, so she made the accommodations uninviting on purpose. He could easily see her being that sort of introvert.
Another room was obviously Lamb’s office or writer’s den, or literary sweat shop, whatever one wanted to deem it. There was a portable Smith-Corona typewriter in its open carrying case on a desk with a chair in the kneehole. Next to it were stacks of yellow legal pads and loose white pages with notes and doodles littered over them. They all seemed to pertain to various scripts she was working on.
On the other side of the typewriter was a script marked “Bette Davis film.” He didn’t bother to open it. If he ended up seeing the movie, he wanted to be surprised.
There were other scripts marked “DRAFT” stacked next to it from a number of other projects, with several other studios. Lamb was one busy scribe. Next to the telephone was a Wheeldex. He fingered through the cards there and saw some famous names and others that were obscure. His first inclination was to take the whole thing; his second inclination won out, and the Wheeldex stayed where it was.
He looked through the drawers and found a check register. There was no bank balance listed, but her checks seemed to be made out to the sort of folks you made checks out to. He made a note that she banked with the Second National Bank of Malibu. He wondered if the First National Bank of Malibu was still in business and, if so, why a town this small needed a spare.
Against one wall was a small leather couch with fluffy pillows embroidered with cats and puppies, and a coffee table with stacks of books. There were bookshelves filled with more books and scripts. The sole window held a view of the canyon. Archer noted that Lamb’s back would be to it. Focus, focus, apparently.
A large world globe sat next to the couch. When he hinged it open, revealed was a bar with bottles and glasses arrayed in round cut holes.
He glided down the stairs, reached the ground level, and turned to his right.
He stumbled hard and hit the floor with a grunt; his light fell from his left hand and his gun was knocked out of his right with the sudden impact. The next moment he was smacked on the back of the head with something hard enough to qualify as a blunt instrument. He briefly saw fireworks and then the flames went out and the coal-black around him became complete.
When he slowly came to, he rubbed his neck and stretched out his jaw, which had seized up with the blow to his skull. Vague stars knitted against a black background floated through his mind. He slowly checked his watch. It was now after four in the morning. He reached up and massaged the back of his head where a lump had risen like a volcano from the ocean of his scalp. His fingers came away sticky with his blood. He groped around for his light and his gun. He found both and turned the light on to see what he had stumbled over.
The person was dead, that was certain. The pupils were fixed, and neither one bit even a little on Archer’s light. Only it wasn’t Eleanor Lamb. It was a man.
Someone had ushered him into 1953 with one right between the eyes.
Chapter 10
The first thing Archer did was find a bathroom on the main floor off the foyer, where he threw up everything he’d eaten and drunk on New Year’s Eve. The White Russian felt particularly egregious coming back up his throat, like his own painfully private Cold War. After that he snagged a washcloth, filled it with some cubes from the refrigerator, and laid it over the bloody bump on his head. He’d had concussions before, and he knew he was suffering from one now.
He sat on the bottom step and stared dully at the dead man. The guy was in his fifties, with thinning, gray hair and a florid face that was turning paler by the minute. He was around five-ten and about two hundred pounds. The bullet wound on his face was blackened, with the skin crusted up like furrows of dirt in a tilled field.
That told Archer that whoever had shot him had been close to the guy. He was dressed in a gray two-piece that looked off the rack and was baggy and off-kilter in all the places a cheap suit always was. His tie was red and too short. It barely reached the top of his now-slack belly.
Archer looked at his face more closely. There were bruises on his cheeks and jaw and one on his neck. His nose looked puffy and swollen. He checked the dead man’s pockets. The suit was courtesy of Sears, Roebuck and Company, the label said. If this was the Ford man, Archer could match the name from the car. Only the fellow had no ID and no wallet. And no car keys. And there was no business card or other clue that would solve the whole thing in short order. So someone had rolled him and taken everything that could tell who he was.
Except the damn car. So is this Cedric Bender?
That would make sense. The car was outside and the dead guy was inside. But Archer needed to be sure. He glanced down at the corpse again. Archer had no idea how the man had lived his life, but that life was now over. It was a callous and sad send-off, however you looked at it.
Archer put the ice back on his head and took another minute to think what to do. He decided to search the rest of the house to make sure that Lamb wasn’t lying somewhere with a hole added to her head as well.
He didn’t find Lamb’s or any other body. He saw walls and beamed ceilings that were all painted white. The fireplace surround in the front room was etched with musical notes, and film awards were aligned on the mantel. Hanging on one wall was a cuckoo clock. There was a white china cabinet and a built-in buffet.
The kitchen had all the latest appliances and gadgets, marble countertops, an island with bar stools around it, a large refrigerator with practically nothing in it, and an electric stovetop. There was a library filled with books that actually looked read, and a door that led to an outdoor shower enclosed by a wooden wall. A small dining room had a rectangular Craftsman-style table with six chairs. This was no doubt where the Marses and Greens had eaten during their visit. Aside from that there were comfortable couches, chairs, rugs, a portable bar outfitted in chrome, some paintings, interesting light fixtures, and lots of windows both large and small.
Other than that, the only things in the house were a dead body, and a very much alive PI nursing a cracked head and a bruised ego for letting someone so easily sandbag him.
He went back up to Lamb’s office and looked through the Wheeldex again. His fingers plucked out two cards that seemed promising because, unlike all the others, they each had a large X written in under the name.
When in doubt, X marks the spot. That must be in some PI mail order course somewhere.
He wrote the information down and put the cards back. He liked to play fair with the cops, even if they didn’t always play fair with him.
He went out the way he had come, wiping his prints off along the way. His sense of fair play had its limits, thus Archer wasn’t about to leave behind any evidence that might earn him a trip to San Quentin to sniff a bunch of cyanide gas as the concluding frame of his personal horror flick.