She shook her head. “But he never mentioned any of his clients, Mr. Archer. He was a real stickler on—”
“—confidentiality, yes, thanks. Last question: Did your husband keep a calendar?”
“Oh, yes, it should be on his desk.”
So someone did take the calendar. He wondered what else they had taken besides all the files on Mallory Green.
He went back to the office and looked around some more. The safe only had a few inches of separation between its back and the wall. He tried to lift it. The thing was bolted to the floor.
He noted scratches on the wall and something occurred to Archer. He quickly felt behind the safe, and his hand brushed against something hard. It was the back of the safe. As he touched it again, it fell against the wall. Someone had managed to shear off the metal backing. He slid his hand into the narrow opening and felt around. Nothing. He did more probing and all he touched was the felt liner inside the safe. They probably had cleaned the damn thing out from the breached rear opening.
He found a flashlight in a desk drawer and used it to take a closer look behind the gap. He saw an edge of something white wedged between the sheared off back plate and the safe at the very bottom edge.
He went and got a coat hanger, bent it into a precise angle, and used it to snag what turned out to be a piece of paper. He pulled it free and read through the document. It was a copy of an invoice for aviation fuel at an outfit operating at LA International. And the bill was addressed to Green and Ransome at the office in Beverly Hills. He scanned the invoice for any other useful information. The plane in question was a Beechcraft Model 18, and the aircraft was owned by BMG, Inc. Archer figured the initials might stand for Bart and Mallory Green.
Our plane, our pilot.
He folded the invoice and put it in his pocket. It would make sense that Bender would be interested in Green’s plane, since he could be using it to fly mistresses out of the city and to safer climes for a little party and sack time. In the files that had been taken Bender might have had itineraries for the plane, lists of passengers and the like. And the calendar would show meetings Bender would have had and with whom. Someone had obviously not wanted that information to remain in his hands. But there was a key question: Was infidelity a motivation for murder? Green had cheated before. His wife didn’t want a divorce because that would give her ex a clear field to run amok while doing her professional damage. So why would Bart Green care if the truth about his affairs came out?
A knock on the door preceded Anne Bender’s poking her head in. “We should go. Did you find anything helpful?”
“Yes, Mrs. Bender,” said Archer. “I think I did.”
She moved into the room. “Will you do one thing for me, Mr. Archer?”
“Certainly, anything.”
The mask of grief and solemnity vanished for an instant and the woman’s features flashed with the anger and fierceness of the prematurely bereaved.
“Will you find the son of a bitch that did this to my husband?”
Chapter 39
The funeral service was sparsely attended, and Archer kept watch out for anyone whom Bender didn’t recognize. He knew that sometimes people responsible for the deaths of others came to the funeral looking for things helpful to their cause. But Mrs. Bender reported no strangers.
After seeing the body in the coffin, Archer noted that the mortician had done a good job covering up the wound that had killed the man. However, Cedric Bender looked deflated, as though his life’s ending had sent much of himself elsewhere.
Later, at the gravesite, a minister said all the religious words required during such an occasion and then the coffin was dropped into the hole and everyone left, as everyone always did after a funeral, except for the deceased.
Archer drove Mrs. Bender back home and left her there with a hundred extra dollars of his own money in her pocket, funds he said had been collected through a group of PIs who had known and respected her husband.
He backed out of the driveway as she stood at the screen door contemplating the rest of her years living alone amid the stench of the fruit and nut groves. A gun fired and a life totally transformed.
Find the son of a bitch that did this to my husband.
Yes, ma’am.
He drove back to LA, and, using a fake name, checked into a cheap motel in Silver Lake, north of downtown Los Angeles. Just like many things in this area, its name was a fantasy. There was no lake. There was a reservoir named for the politician who helped in its creation. Archer left his bag there and drove straight to the airport.
He asked enough people to finally find where he needed to go. And from what he was told, he might just be in luck.
He walked over to a small, low-slung building with fuel pumps out front. There he found a man in his forties dressed in overalls and a greasy snap brim hat, who looked over the invoice Archer showed him.
“Oh, yeah, sure. The Greens’ Beechcraft. Real nice machine. Seats six, plus two pilots, but they only got the one. You know Mr. Green?”
“I know his wife.”
“Do you now, feller? Well, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I take it you don’t care for Mallory Green?”
He rubbed his bristly mustache. “Let’s just say I like the quiet lady types who do what they’re told and who respect the rule of order in a household with the man at the head. That sure as hell ain’t her.”
“She said I could fly to Las Vegas in the plane, but maybe it’s already there or coming back this way with Mr. Green?”
“No, it’s here.” He pointed to a distant building and said, “That’s where they keep it. Pilot’s name is Steve Everett. Good man. Loves that plane. Dotes on it, you could say.”
Archer thanked him and headed on to the distant building. He found Everett under the Beechcraft’s fuselage with a wrench tugging on a bolt. He was a small, lean man in his midthirties, with pomaded jet-black hair and an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. He wiped his palms off on a rag and shook Archer’s hand.
“Nice plane,” said Archer, looking over the twin engine Beechcraft with the dual tails.
Everett smiled and patted the plane’s skin. “Flew one as a trainer during the war. Army Air Force called it the C45.”
“I was infantry but we flew some. Can’t say I loved it.”
Everett grinned and lit his smoke. “Best place for me is up there in the clouds. No problems, no nothing except you, your ride, and God.”
“So, Bart Green is a nice guy to work for?”
“Sure, sure. And it’s a sweetheart job. He flies mostly to Vegas. Easy-peasy.”
“He’s in Vegas now?”
Now Everett’s expression became more guarded. “Who wants to know?”
“Mrs. Green wanted me to fly up there to talk to him about one of his writers who’s gone missing.”
“What writer?”
“Eleanor Lamb.”
“Black hair, little, skinny number with glasses?”
“Yep. You know her?”
“She’s flown to Vegas with us before.”
“Really? Is she a gambler?”
“Don’t know. I just fly ’em there. I don’t party with them. I go to a bar, have a few beers, pull a few slot machine levers, check out the show gals.”
“So is Green still in Vegas? ”
“He is. Was going to come back today, but I got a call pushing it back.”
“So what about flying me up there? Can you do that?”
“I’d have to get permission. This baby costs money to fly.”
“Why don’t you call Mrs. Green? Her husband doesn’t know me from Adam.”