I called Vivian Regan. The phone rang a long time before the horsefaced maid answered. She was sorry but Mrs. Regan had taken a sleeping pill and gone to bed. Was there a message? No message. I hung up the phone and went back to staring at the misting rain which drifted down as silently as snow.
19
Ohls called while I was drinking my second cup of coffee and trying to decide about breakfast. My head felt like the inside of a snare drum.
“Buick’s registered to an outfit called Neville Realty Trust, got an address in the Neville Valley, up north.”
I got a pencil. Ohls gave me the address.
“Any names attached?” I said.
“Not on the registration. I haven’t looked any further. Figure that’s your job.”
“Sure,” I said. “No one sapped you.”
“My heart bleeds,” Ohls said and hung up.
In my office with coffee and a roll I’d picked up in the drugstore downstairs, I got out my map book. The Neville Valley was maybe 200 miles northeast of Los Angeles on the other side of the San Gabriel Mountains.
I called my client.
When Norris came on the phone, I said, “Marlowe. With a report.”
“How very kind of you, Mr. Marlowe,” Norris said.
“Looking for Carmen so far has got me threatened by a tough Mexican, involved in a mutilation murder, slugged with brass knuckles and sapped by person or persons unknown.”
“Good heavens, sir, I never wanted you to get hurt.”
“Nor did I, Norris,” I said, “but the point is this thing is a much larger thing than it looked like it was going to be.”
“As I have said, sir, the General left me well provided for. I could pay you a rather handsome fee.”
“No need for that, Norris. There’s so much money floating around the fringes of this case that it’s hard not to twist an ankle stepping over it. I’ll find a fee okay. But it seems like more dangerous going than either of us thought when I started.”
“I anticipated only whatever danger Miss Carmen presented, sir.”
“Which is not inconsiderable. But it’s beginning to look attractive to me now.”
“Do you wish to withdraw, sir?”
“You bet I do,” I said. “But I won’t. I just wanted you to know what was happening.”
“I rather expected that you would not withdraw, sir. Might you give me some of the details?” I did.
When I was through there was a quiet pause. Then Norris said, “I’m sure you will be adequate to the task, Mr. Marlowe.”
“I’m sure I will too, Norris,” I said. “I would be even more adequate if I knew exactly what the task was.”
“From my perspective, sir, if I may, it is to find Miss Carmen, sir.”
“Yes, Norris, I guess it is.”
We hung up. I put my map book under my arm, made sure I had my gun and some extra cartridges. It hadn’t done me any good yet, but it made me feel like a detective. Then I locked the office and went out to my car.
It took about five hours to drive up to Neville Valley. I got there a little after two in the afternoon, with a high hard sky glaring down and the temperature in the nineties.
Neville Valley was the name of a region, and a town in the center of the region. The region was a drab lowland in the foothills with the Neville River running through the center of it. Right beside the river the valley was lush, but a mile from the river was near desert land, parched, infertile, and hardscrabble. The town of Neville Valley was at the point where the river cascaded over a small decline strewn with boulders and provided the only white water probably in a thousand square miles. It was the only place where the river ran fast, before it slowed into a series of huge looping meanders that made a convoluted green stripe down the center of the broad ugly valley.
I pulled my car, nose in, on the parking apron in front of a low white building with a broad front porch that ran the length of it. A sign on the roof of the porch said the river run inn. There was a double screen door leading into a dark lobby with a dark oak desk along the left wall and a broad staircase directly opposite the entrance. To the right was a combination dining room and bar, which seemed empty. Behind the desk was a pretty, red-haired girl in a white peasant blouse. The red hair was held in check by a white scarf tied behind her neck. She had white skin and a scatter of freckles across the cheekbones and when she smiled dimples appeared in each cheek.
“You look like a man who’s driven a long way,” she said when I came to register.
“Bar open?” I said.
“Will be as soon as you get registered and the bartender gets in there.”
“Where is he now?” I said.
Her cheeks dimpled. “Registering you,” she said.
I grinned at her.
“Okay then,” I said. “I’ll hurry.”
When I got through signing in and she’d given me a room key and asked about luggage and been informed that I was wearing it, we retired to the bar. I sat on a stool, she opened the hinged bar section that allowed her in behind it and came down the bar top where I sat.
“What’ll it be, buddy?” she said, lowering her voice and sounding as gruff as a twenty-three-year-old redhead with blue-green eyes could sound.
I ordered a gimlet. She mixed it up expertly and poured it perfectly into the glass in exactly the right amount, leaving nothing but ice in the shaker. It was cool and dark in the bar. And quiet, as only a good bar in the middle of the afternoon can be. I sipped the gimlet and let the cool bite of it run down my throat.
“Can you tell me where the Neville Realty Trust is located?” I said.
“Sure. Got a little office on Otis Street, out the hotel, turn left one block, turn right. You’ll see it. Got the name right in the window.”
She smiled at me again, her cheeks dimpling. Her red hair was the dark thick kind, she probably called it auburn, and it fell in soft curls to her shoulders, where the white scarf held it back from her face.
“What do they do their business in?” I asked. “Farmland? Doesn’t seem much salable real estate around here.”
“Not now.” The redhead smiled as widely as it seemed possible to smile. “But pretty soon there will be. There’s a big government project coming to the valley. Going to do a big land-reclamation with the Neville River and irrigate the whole valley. Everyone says it will mean a whole new boom for the area: farmland, tourism, growth. Everybody’s excited about it. We got somebody from Washington in here every week, and a bunch of people from Sacramento. You involved in that?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t own much property. So the Neville Realty people are buying up farmland in anticipation of the boom?”
“Farmland?” The redhead looked startled. “No. They’re buying water rights. People are getting good money for the water rights around here. Government has to acquire them to do the project, you know?”
“Sure,” I said. “And Neville Realty is buying them up for the government?”
“Well, yes. I mean sure, I guess so. Everybody’s real excited about it. You aren’t with the government, are you?”
I shook my head.
“I didn’t think so,” she said. “You don’t look like somebody with the government, that’s for sure. I bet you’re one of those Los Angeles people interested in this. Lots of them stay here.”
“That so?” I said. “What’s Los Angeles got to do with this?”
“Oh, you know, money people. They’re always around when anything big is happening, don’t you know?”
“I do know, in fact,” I said. “You make a hell of a gimlet.”
“My dad used to drink them,” she said. “He built this place.”
“Did a good job too,” I said. “Know any of the people work at Neville Realty?”