“Who’s Miss Dolan?”
“Miss Speers’ secretary — Bernice Dolan. She’s writing a book, you know. Miss Speers, I mean.”
“No, I didn’t know. What kind of book?”
“All about her life. Ought to be pretty spicy.”
“From what I know about her, I guess it will be.”
“But I’ll never read it,” Horace said. “Bible, now, that’s much more interesting. If you know what I mean.”
I said I knew what he meant. And thanked him for his help. I did not offer him any money; if I had he would have been offended. He would take gratuities from the guests because that was part of his job, but it had already been established that he and I were social equals. And that made an exchange of money unseemly.
I climbed the stairs — I wouldn’t have driven one of those cute little carts even if it was allowed, which it wasn’t or Horace would have offered me one — and found my way to the swimming pool. You couldn’t have missed it; it was laid out between the two largest buildings, surrounded by a lot of bright green lawn and flagstone terracing, with a stone-faced outdoor bar at the near end. Twenty or thirty people in various stages of undress occupied the area. A few of them were in the pool, but most were sitting at wrought-iron tables, being served tall drinks by three white-jacketed waiters. None of the waiters, I noticed, was black.
Nobody paid any attention to me as I passed by, except for a hard-looking thirtyish blonde who undressed me with her eyes — women do it too, sometimes — and then put my clothes back on again and threw me out of her mental bedroom. Fiftyish gentlemen with shaggy looks and a beer belly were evidently not her type.
Past the pool area, where the trees began, were a pair of paths marked with redwood-burl signs. The one on the left, according to the sign, would take me to number 41, so I wandered off in that direction. And ten minutes later I was still wandering, uphill now, with 41 still nowhere in sight. I was beginning to realize that the fancy little carts were not such an affectation as I had first taken them to be.
I had passed three cottages so far — or the walks that led to three cottages. The buildings themselves were set back some distance from the main path, half-hidden by trees, and were all lavish chalet types with wide porches and pastel-colored wrought-iron trim. Unlike the stairs from the parking area, the wrought iron was just as functional as it was ornamentaclass="underline" the curved bars and scrollwork served as a kind of burglar proofing over the windows. Xanadu may have been a whimsical pleasure resort, but its rulers nonetheless had their defenses up.
Here in the woods it was much cooler, almost cold, because of the ocean breeze and because the afternoon sunlight penetrated only in dappled patches. I was wishing that I’d worn a coat over my suit when I came around a bend and glimpsed a fourth cottage through the redwoods. Another burl sign stood adjacent to the access path, and I could just make out the numerals 41 emblazoned on it.
I took a few more steps toward the sign. And from behind me, then, I heard a sound like that of a lawnmower magnified: one of the carts approaching. I moved off the path as the sound grew louder. A couple of seconds later the thing came around the curve at my back, going at an erratic clip, and shot past me. Inside was a red-haired woman wearing white. The cart veered over to number 41’s walk, skidded to a stop, and the redhead got out and hurried toward the cottage. The white garment she wore was a thin coat, buttoned up against the wind, and she had a big straw bag in her right hand; the long red hair streamed out behind her like a sheet of flame. The way she’d handled the cart indicated Ms. Lauren Speers was every bit as sloshed as Horace had led me to believe, but she carried herself on her feet pretty well. The serious drinker, male or female, learns how to walk if not drive in a straight line.
I called out to her but she either didn’t hear me or chose to ignore me: she kept on going without breaking stride or glancing in my direction. I ran the rest of the way to the cottage path, turned in along it. She was already on the porch by then, digging in her bag with her free hand; I could see her through a gap in the fronting screen of trees. She found a key and had it in the lock before I could open my mouth to call to her again. In the next second she was inside, with the door shut behind her.
Well, hell, I thought.
I stopped and spent thirty seconds or so catching my breath. Running uphill had never been one of my favorite activities, even when I was in good physical shape. Then I checked the papers Adam Brister had given me to serve. And then I started along the path again.
I was twenty yards from the porch, with most of the cottage visible ahead of me, when the gun went off.
It made a flat cracking sound in the stillness, muffled by the cottage walls but distinct enough to be unmistakable. I pulled up, stiffening, the hair turning bristly on my neck. There was no second shot, not in the three or four seconds I stood motionless and not when I finally went charging ahead onto the porch.
I swatted on the door a couple of times with the edge of my hand. Nothing happened inside. But after a space there was a low cry and a woman’s voice said querulously, “Bernice? Oh my God — Bernice!” I caught hold of the knob, turned it; it was locked. The hell with propriety, I thought, and stepped back a pace and slammed the bottom of my shoe against the latch just below the knob.
Metal screeched and wood splinters flew; the door burst open. And I was in a dark room with redwood walls, a beamed ceiling, a fireplace along one wall, rustic furniture scattered here and there. Off to the left was a dining area and a kitchen; off to the right was a short hallway that would lead to the bedrooms and the bath. There were two women in the room, one of them lying crumpled on a circular hooked rug near the fireplace, the other one standing near the entrance to the hallway. Equidistant between them, on the polished-wood floor at the rug’s perimeter, was a .25 caliber automatic.
The standing woman was Lauren Speers. She had shed the white coat — it was on a long couch with her straw bag — and she was wearing shorts and a halter, both of them white and brief, showing off a good deal of buttery tan skin. She stood without moving, staring down at the woman on the rug, the knuckles of one hand pressing her lips flat against her teeth. Her expression was one of bleary shock, as if she had too much liquor inside her to grasp the full meaning of what had happened here. Or to have registered my violent entrance. Even when I moved deeper into the room, over in front of her, she did not seem to know I was there.
I went for the gun first. You don’t leave a weapon lying around on the floor after somebody has just used it. I picked it up by the tip of the barrel — still warm — and dropped it into my coat pocket. Lauren Speers still didn’t move, still didn’t acknowledge my presence; her eyes were half-rolled up in their sockets. And I realized that she had fainted standing up, that it was only a matter of seconds before her legs gave out and she fell.
Before that could happen I put an arm around her waist and half-carried her to the nearest chair, put her into it. She was out, all right; her head lolled to one side. I could smell the sour odor of gin on her breath. The whole room smelled of gin, in fact, as if somebody had been using the stuff for disinfectant.
The woman on the rug was dead. I knew that even without checking for a pulse; had known it the instant I saw her wide-open eyes and the blood on her blouse beneath one twisted arm. She was in her late thirties, attractive in a regular-featured way, with short brown hair and a thin mouth. Wearing blouse, skirt, open-toed sandals.
Looking at her made my stomach feel queasy, filled me with a sense of revulsion and awe. It was the same reaction I always had to violent death, because it was such ugliness, such a waste. I swallowed against the taste of bile and turned away.