I called Monterey County information and got the listed number for Xanadu. Then I called Xanadu and asked to speak to Ms. Lauren Speers. The woman who answered said she would ring up Ms. Speers’s cottage, and while she was doing that I hung up. She had already told me what I needed to know; I had found Bernice Dolan and I had found Lauren Speers.
All that remained now was to contact Adam Brister and to drive down the coast to Xanadu with the papers he had given me to serve. I decided I would make the drive first thing tomorrow. A day away from the city, and away from nut cases like Edna Hornback, could only be a blessing.
Blister sounded pleased when I reached him at his office. He told me to contact him again after I had served Speers and that he would issue a check for the balance of my fee, plus expenses, as soon as I presented him with a report and an itemized list. He also said I was a good detective. At least somebody thought so, even if it was only a greedy-eyed member of the bar.
By then it was almost five o’clock, and I was tired of telephones and business matters. I went home to drink beer, read a pulp magazine, and brood in solitude.
Charles Kayabalian called at eight o’clock. “I just returned from dinner,” he said. “I tried you at your office at five, but you’d already left.”
“Did you talk to Hornback and her attorney?”
“Both of them, yes.”
“And?”
“I believe you’re right about the woman’s mental state,” he said. “My conversation with her was a little strange, to say the least.”
“Is she serious about a lawsuit?”
“Very serious. Assuming you don’t go along with her wishes and find out who killed her husband and what happened to the money she alleges he stole. In her view, that’s the only way for you to exonerate yourself.”
“What did her attorney have to say?”
“He’s backing her one hundred percent. I don’t like the man-his name is Jordan and he’s an opportunist. He seems to see the matter as a cause celebre, a way to make a name for himself.”
“So what do we do if they go ahead with the suit?”
“File a countersuit for harassment,” Kayabalian said. “I see no other alternative.”
“Wonderful.”
“If the police find out who murdered Lewis Hornback and what happened to the money,” he said, “it would probably get you off the hook. We’ll just have to hope that happens.” He paused. “You don’t intend to conduct your own investigation, do you?”
“Christ, no.”
“Good. It wouldn’t be a wise idea. Unless you managed to solve the mystery, Mrs. Hornback’s case against you would be strengthened.”
“I’ll stand clear, don’t worry.”
He told me again to keep in touch, after which I went back to my beer and my brooding. This was shaping up to be one of the most complicated weeks of my life. I was beginning to think that I had been better off without a lady friend and without a booming business. Love and money were terrific, but peace of mind was a hell of a lot better for you in the long run.
EIGHT
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I passed out of the real world, through the portals into Xanadu, at two-fifteen on Wednesday afternoon.
The resort had been built on craggy terrain, among tall redwoods, at the southern end of Monterey County. It was not all that far from the Hearst Castle at San Simeon, which tied off one of the historical references for its name; my steak-eating pal on the Examiner had told me that William Randolph Hearst was the model for the newspaper tycoon in Citizen Kane. Xanadu’s grounds extended out to sheer cliffs that fell away to the Pacific. I had the window rolled down-it was a warm day down here, if a little windy-and as I followed an access road that wound upward past part of the golf course, I could smell the clean salt tang of the sea and hear the faint crash of surf in the distance.
The ride down from San Francisco had been more or less soothing. I had got up early, after not much sleep, and I had been in a foul humor. A call to the Hall of Justice had not helped it any; Eberhardt hadn’t come in yet, but Klein was there and I found out from him that there was nothing new on the Hornback murder. If Lewis Hornback had had a girl friend, he said, they hadn’t been able to dig up any trace of her.
After that I had called Kerry at her apartment and finally made my apologies for the way I’d acted on the phone yesterday. She had accepted them all right and seemed cheerful enough, but I sensed the distance again. She had agreed to have dinner with me tomorrow night, which was something of a relief; I would be able to get a better handle on the situation face to face with her. Still, that vague sense of distance continued to bother me.
So the foul humor had persisted as I left the city and headed south. It lasted until I came over the Santa Cruz Mountains and picked up Highway One. The drive down One, past Monterey and Cypress Bay and along the rim of the ocean, was one of the most scenic in the state: rugged cliffs and promontories, deep canyons, Monterey cypress trees wind-twisted into myriad shapes, the wooded slopes of the Santa Lucia Range and the Los Padres National Forest, the sunlit Pacific stretching away to the horizon. You would have had to be mired in depression not to respond to all that nature-in-the-raw, and I was not that bad off-not yet, anyway. Now, entering Xanadu, I felt a little more optimistic about things, my relationship with Kerry included.
The access road curled among lush redwoods and giant ferns, emerged into a parking area shaped like a bowl. Three-quarters of it was reserved for guest parking; the other quarter was taken up with rows of three-wheeled machines that looked like golf carts, with awnings over them done in pastel ice-cream colors. From what I had been told about Xanadu, the carts were probably used by guests to get from one of the complex’s pleasure domes to another. Exercise was all well and good in its proper place-tennis court, swimming pool, disco-but the rich folk no doubt considered walking up and down hilly terrain a vulgarity.
Beyond where the carts were was a long slope, with a wide path cut into it and a set of stairs alongside that seemed more ornamental than functional. At the top of the slope, partially visible from below, were some of the resort buildings, all painted in pastel colors like the cart awnings. The muted sounds of people at play drifted down on the cool breeze from the ocean.
I put my car into a slot marked Visitors’ Parking. A black guy in a starched white uniform came over to me as I got out. He was about my age, with a lot of gray in his hair, and his name was Horace. Or so it said on the pocket of his uniform, in pink script like the sugar writing on a birthday cake.
He looked at me and I looked at him. I was wearing my best suit, but my best suit was the kind the inhabitants of Xanadu would wear to costume parties or give away to the Salvation Army. But that was okay by Horace. Some people who work at fancy places like this get to be snobs in their own right; not him. His eyes said that I would never make it up that hill over yonder, not for more than a few minutes at a time, but then neither would he, and the hell with it.
I let him see that I felt the same way, which earned me a faint smile in return. “Here on business? “he asked.
“Yes. I’m looking for Lauren Speers.”
“She’s out right now. Took her car a little past one.”
“Do you have any idea when she’ll be back?”
“Depends on how thirsty she gets, I expect.”
“Pardon?”
“The lady drinks,” Horace said and shrugged.
“So I’ve heard.”
“As much as anybody I ever saw,” he said. “She’s a world-champion drinker, that lady.”
“Had she been drinking before she left?”
He nodded. “Martinis. Starts in at eleven every morning, quits at one, sleeps until four. Then it’s Happy Hour. But not today. Today she decided to go out. If I’d seen her in time, I’d have tried to talk her out of driving, but she was in that sports job of hers and gone before I even noticed her.”