Nine
The Cypress Point estate belonging to Robin and Jason Lomax was located on Inspiration Way, and I decided to make that my next stop. I took my car down to Ocean Boulevard and along to where it swung sharply to the east and became San Lucas Avenue. From there I could see Cypress Point-thickly wooded, rolling, moneyed acreage-extending into the aquamarine Pacific to form the southern boundary of the bay. Inspiration Way, according to my map, was a short street like the cross bar of an A, running north to south between two large drives that intersected out on the tip of the point. I turned off San Lucas and found it all right, and the Lomax estate came up on the left midway along.
One of those old-fashioned black-iron fences that look like connected rows of upright spears stretched away on both sides of a meandering entrance lane; the iron gates which normally would bar admittance to the grounds were standing open. I turned in and followed the lane through half an acre of moss-laced pine and carefully arranged ferns and rock terracing and miniature stone waterfalls that fed into glistening water-lilied pools. You half expected to see naiads and wood sprites cavorting in the ribbons of sunlight filtering through the tree branches. A Disney-world, created for fanciful children-or for nostalgic adults.
The drive leveled out finally on the floor of a tiny valley, with a solid wall of pine gently inclined to the rear and around on the left. The house was situated in the middle of the glen-a sprawling, modern, country-style home constructed of redwood and fieldstone, adorned by long eaves and high chimneys and old-bronze fittings. There was a flagstone terrace enclosed by moss-covered stone walls at the right, and beyond that more of the storybook landscaping; on the other side I could see a mesh-screened tennis court, floored in a thin layer of reddish-brown loam. A man and a woman were working a new tennis ball back and forth across a chain-link net, with the kind of fluid ease that comes from long practice and a genuine enthusiasm for the game. They were both dressed in solid white-the man in shorts and an Italian knit pullover; the woman in a short pleated tennis skirt and a sleeveless blouse-and they made a sharp contrast against the burnt-sienna color of the court, the dark greens and browns of the pines of the glade slopes.
I parked my car in front of the terrace wall, next to a new forest-green Mercedes. As I got out, a dark-haired little boy of five or six, wearing dungarees and a striped T-shirt, came running across the terrace and jumped up onto the moss-topped wall. He said "Hi!" exuberantly.
"Hi, guy."
"I've got a pet rabbit. Want to see him?"
"Well, maybe a little later."
"My name's Tommy Lomax. What's yours?"
I told him.
"My rabbit's name is Bugs," he said. He jumped down off the wall. "I'm feeding him carrots."
"Good for you."
He gave me a gap-toothed grin and ran back across the terrace again. I watched him out of sight, and then I turned, smiling a little, and followed a flagstone path through a facing rock-and-lady-fern garden, toward the tennis court.
The couple had stopped playing now and had come over to stand by the entrance to the enclosure. The guy had his racket turned horizontally, and he was bouncing the fuzzy white ball up and down on it like one of those rubber-band-and-rubber-ball paddle sets you used to see the kids playing with. He was about thirty-five, I saw as I approached, lean and trim and athletic and tanned; he wore a neatly barbered mustache, of the same rust-brown color as his razor-cut hair, and he had a Kirk Douglas cleft in the middle of his chin and an expression of mild curiosity on the good-natured mouth above it. The woman stood relaxed, arms down at her sides. Pale-gold hair-lighter than Judith Paige's, pulled into a horsetail and tied with a white ribbon-accentuated features as tanned as the guy's: button nose, quiet blue eyes, the kind of soft, small mouth that would smile often. She was very slim, with narrow hips, long coltish legs, apple-shaped breasts. They made a nice couple, standing there like that: health and perpetual youth, clean bodies and clean minds.
The woman said, "Hello," and smiled questioningly at me as I stepped up to the gate entrance.
"Mr. and Mrs. Lomax?"
"Yes," the guy said. "I don't believe we've had the pleasure?"
"No, we haven't." I introduced myself, and waited-but neither of them seemed to recognize my name; it was possible that they had not heard about Paige's death or about the small part I had played in it. I went on, "I have your name from Russell Dancer."
"Oh-really?" she said. There was no warmth, no feeling of any kind in her tone; apparently she had no fond memories about Russ Dancer or her days as a member of the laughter-and-liquor group. Maybe she thought guys like Dancer were beneath her now-or maybe I was just overreacting. "Are you a friend of Mr. Dancer's?"
"In a way," I said. "The reason I'm here has to do with a mutual acquaintance of yours and his, several years ago. A man named Walter Paige."
She jerked as if I had slapped her, and her color dissolved suddenly and completely under the tan. Lomax lost his polite smile and his eyes turned brittle and angry and his mouth pinched white at the corners. They stood staring at me, and it was abruptly very quiet in the small Disney valley; even the birds that had been singing soft medleys in the surrounding woods seemed breathlessly still. You could feel the sudden tension like a dark, chill wind.
Lomax said in a thin, tight voice, "Who the hell are you? What do you want here?"
"I'm a private detective. I'd like to-"
"Oh God!" Robin Lomax said.
She sounded stricken, and her husband put his arm around her and hated me too passionately with his eyes. "So that's the way it is," he said.
"The way what is, Mr. Lomax?"
"Get off my property."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
"Why?"
"Damn you, if you don't leave, I’ll call the police."
"Maybe you'd better do that, Mr. Lomax," I said quietly. "I was at City Hall not long ago, but Chief Quartermain was out. He might have come back by now. You can tell him I'm here, if so, and you can tell him why I'm here. I think he'll be interested."
Some of the volatile anger went out of his eyes. He looked at his wife for a long moment, and then the two of them looked at me again. "Why should Chief Quartermain be interested?" Lomax asked.
"You don't know?"
"No. Look, just why are you here?"
"I want to ask you some questions about Walter Paige."
"What's your involvement with Paige?"
"I found his body, for one thing."
"His… body?"
"That's right."
"He's dead?"
"He was murdered last night."
Deepening silence. They looked at each other again, but I could not read what passed between them-if anything passed between them. A muscle jumped on Lomax's left cheek, but there was nothing on his face or in his eyes that told me much. There was nothing in Robin Lomax's expression either as she stepped out of the half-circle of his arm, and the sighing breath she took might have meant anything at all.
"Who… killed him?" she asked softly.
"No one knows yet."
"Where did it happen?"
"In Cypress Bay. The Beachwood motel."
Lomax said, "Why was he back in Cypress Bay?"
"To meet a woman-and possibly for some other reason as well. He'd been coming here for the past five weekends."
"What woman? Someone from this area?"
"It would seem that way. She was with him shortly before he died."
Lomax wet his lips. "And what time was that?"
"Between five-thirty and quarter of six."
"You think we know something about it, is that it?"
"I didn't say that, Mr. Lomax."
"Well, we don't know anything about it. Robin and I were right here all of yesterday. We played tennis from midafternoon until dusk."