Mañana. Problemas personales.
Was Jack ever going to come out of there? Was I going to have to go in? At twelve thirty, he appeared with a young man, handsome, tanned, in a blue shirt and white linen pants, carrying a slim portfolio. Jack laughed at something and squeezed his shoulder. That gesture. I almost spewed. He did that exact thing with Gil. The approving father he’d never had. Jack smelled it on us, our need.
They headed into the Historic Tennis Club, valet parked at Spencer’s — that other Palm Springs of immaculate tennis courts, the members-only cabanas. The young man knew people, shook hands, introduced Jack. Suckers.
Spencer’s is casual but tony, with a kind of Polynesian air, a laid-back patio. I couldn’t go inside in my dirty khakis, but with my leather gardening gloves and big hat, a small rake, I could spy from the garden, where I had an excellent view.
An older woman joined them. Pale linen pantsuit, her hair a soft platinum. The opposite in every way from the redhead Jack had stashed on Coyote Hill. I watched him orchestrate. He let the young man talk, stepping in when the woman asked questions, soothing objections, making her laugh. The young one opened his portfolio, setting their wineglasses aside, their bread plates. The woman took out her reading glasses, leaned over. Diamond ring, platinum tank watch. I wanted to shout, Call your lawyer! but it was none of my business. I had some planning to do.
I threaded the Audi through the network of lanes comprising the Palm Canyon Mobil Club. Meticulous double-wides, even some new microhouses. The New Palm Springs. I liked it better when it was cheap and shitty and full of old people who hated children. Those crusty old broads. Some of them were still around, like Shirley Bliss, my grandmother Lottie’s best friend, two doors down and across the street. The difference in ages hadn’t been apparent to me back then — I had thought her ancient, but she must have only been in her fifties.
At home, I showered and let Mr. Frenchy out of his cage, put him on my shoulder, and grabbed my computer. My lanai wasn’t nearly as nice as Spencer’s, just a cover of funky green corrugated fiberglass protecting my cactus and succulents, an old aluminum glider. I turned on the fountain so Mr. Frenchy could splash. A little cockatiel, he didn’t take much upkeep. Birdseed and fresh water and he was good to go.
I turned on my laptop, typed in Thompson + Price.
Photos appeared. Futuristic condos, walls of glass, oval or circular swimming pools set into cement or wooden decks like the water tank in Petticoat Junction. Good landscaping. I was wondering who did it before I realized that these weren’t actual photographs. It was a projected development at the hem of the San Jacintos off South Palm Canyon, past where Jack had his house.
Sunrise. Not Sunrise Palms or Sunrise Dunes, just Sunrise. I hated that shit. The newest New Palm Springs, bland and generic as a suburban Gap. I preferred the hipster fakery of midcentury modern, built around fantasies of the Rat Pack and tuck-and-roll upholstery, tropical plantings with blue uplighting.
Thompson + Price. Principals Alan Thompson, Licensed Contractor, and Ben Price, Architect. So Jack was now Alan, but the same man grinned out at me, lanky and loose like Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff.
I typed in: statute of limitation, fraud. Added California.
Four years. Only murder could still be prosecuted at this late date. But wasn’t it murder? Hadn’t he killed us?
At last, the sun drooped over the ridge of the mountain, the temperature dropped five degrees, and it was cocktail time. I crossed the hot asphalt to Shirley Bliss’s battered single wide, rapped on her sliding glass door. “Yoo-hoo.”
She unlatched the slider. “Just in time.” She wore a little shift of white and gold Lurex. She’d once been a semifamous mobster’s girlfriend. The wig of the day was a long bloodred number — Brandy. She’d been breaking out ice for a margarita, pounding the tray on the sparkly Formica. Her ancient fingers neatly punched the handle out and back, the ice falling, such a nostalgic sound. She’d bartended at El Ranchero, still had a stiff pour.
“Salt the glasses, baby.”
I poured kosher salt onto a flat plate, water in another, wetted the rims, and dipped them while she shook the tequila, triple sec, and fresh lime in a cocktail shaker, overhand.
Out on the lanai with its green AstroTurf and the bird-bath I’d once made in a mosaic class, we sipped our drinks. She eyed me from behind her ombré frameless glasses. “You don’t look so good.”
“I didn’t realize it was a looking-good occasion.”
She was the only person I knew who was armed. When the nation learned that Nancy Reagan had a gun, Lottie and Shirley just shrugged. Of course she did. Who didn’t? Child me was appalled, like when I found Poppy’s revolver in his desk drawer. But that was his generation. Don’t tell your mother, he’d said.
“Still have Nancy’s little bedside gun?”
“Man problems?”
“A guy I used to know. Someone who once took something from me.”
She tasted the salt on her lips. Her drawn-on eyebrows lifted. She already knew the one. “Take my advice, honey. Just walk away. Walk away and keep walking.”
The smell of lighter fluid wafted over from a neighbor’s lot.
I couldn’t get him out of my head. The girl’s laughter, his arm on her shoulder. The car, the house, lunch at Spencer’s. He’d done well for himself. Out enjoying life while my husband was dead, and I was hanging out with old ladies and Mr. Frenchy. I’d waited eight years for this. “I can’t. He’s out there, breathing.”
She gazed up at the overhang, the hummingbird feeders.
“What would Moe say? Poppy?”
She sighed, her shoulders sagging. But she rose and click-clacked back inside, emerging a minute later with the gun — squarish, chrome, no bigger than a sandwich. “So,” she said in a half whisper, “I guess my gun got stolen.”
I stopped in to visit Pamela at Coldwell Banker. She had a couple of tips for me, one up in Old Las Palmas, the other in the Historic Tennis Club. She especially liked the one in the Tennis Club. “A young couple from LA.” Showed me the sales postcard. Where did people get money like that? Crime. Somewhere, there was crime.
I perched on the corner of her desk. “So what do you know about Sunrise?”
“A hundred town houses, high-end. Coyote Hill Drive. They’re still in permitting.”
“And Thompson + Price?” I indicated the ceiling.
“Yum-yum.” She crossed her tanned legs in her pencil-slim skirt, tapped her pen against her white teeth. “The architect’s your age. Rich kid. Cute. But I’ll take the developer. Mr. Personality. I think he’s from Phoenix.”
“Legit?”
She shrugged. “If it gets built, it’s legit. Rule of the veldt.”
Nobody was home at the Historic Tennis Club address. I left a card. Old Las Palmas was two gay guys with a schnauzer. They didn’t want cactus in case the dog hurt himself, but might be open to natives. I made some sketches. Drove out to el profesor in Cathedral City, thinking all the while about Jack West, and Sunrise. What was a deal like that worth? He had that architect, but I doubt he’d split the profits 50/50. How much would be in the kitty as they got ready to break ground? Millions. That was when he’d strike, and vanish. I had to get him before that.
I dialed Thompson + Price. Made an appointment with Ben Price. Could he come up to the house? Yes, it would make things so much simpler. Ilona Sonnenschein.