Dream Town

Chapter 14

Outside, Archer lit a lucky and walked over to the coroner, who was standing next to the meat wagon, while Oldham’s boys loaded the corpse in, loudly cursing its corpulence. To them he wasn’t a dead man, just dead weight.

“Damn shame,” said Archer.

“What is?” said the coroner.

“The guy getting murdered,” said Archer, snatching a look at the man.

“Hell, if they didn’t there goes my job. Homicide is a thriving business in these parts.”

This guy reminded Archer why he didn’t like hanging out with coroners. “Understand it was maybe a .38 or larger caliber.”

The man lighted a stubby cigar pulled from his side jacket pocket and took a few puffs before hacking up maybe some leftover tobacco from his lungs and spitting it into the graveled driveway. “Looks to be. I’ll dig it out. Hey, you working the case with Phil?”

“My client owns this place. Me and Phil are trying to find her.”

“Private dick, then?”

“Who works with the cops pretty regularly, yeah,” said Archer vaguely because he needed to be vague but he also needed information. “Think we’re looking at least twenty-four hours on the time of death?”

“Sounds about right, little more, little less. Always tricky. Usually the stomach tells me a lot. We are what we eat, in life and in death.”

“Did you guys impound a car on this one?” Archer asked this because, despite what Oldham had said about there not being a car, he didn’t believe anyone without corroboration.

“Car? Nah, nothing like that. Just the body.” He flicked his ash into the grass. His fingers were so thick Archer wondered how he could hold a scalpel, much less use it to slice precisely through human tissue. But maybe he wasn’t that precise.

“They got coyote and even bears up here, you know.” The coroner cleared his throat and waggled his wide head, taking his two chins along with the gesture. “Would not have been pretty if the body had been outside, no siree.”

“It wasn’t pretty inside,” replied Archer curtly.

A minute later the meat wagon pulled away with one of Oldham’s men driving while the other one went back inside. The coroner’s somber car trailed the wagon, with him idly flicking cigar ash out the window.

Archer ground out his smoke, glanced back at the house, and then walked across the street. He stretched and took out his pack of Luckys, but then dropped it. This was intentional because he knew Oldham’s junior-grade man might be watching. He knelt down to pick the pack up and got a good look at the oil slick on the asphalt. It was relatively fresh, which made sense being there from at least the night before. On either side of Lamb’s house, but separated by about a couple hundred feet both ways, were her neighbors, Danforth and Bonham. He didn’t know which was which, so he took the one on the right first.

The place was large and done in what Archer had come to learn was the Colonial Revival style because there was a lot of that around here. It had a main block and two wings with a brick chimney stack sprouting from one of them; another chimney stack soared into the sky from the rear. The porch was covered and had a wooden railing atop it, and there was a line of dormer windows fronting the roof. The yard was mostly rock and desert ground cover with a few gnarled scrub trees taking up space. He knocked and then knocked again. He heard nothing from inside.

He walked over to the single-car garage. It was detached from the house with a short, roofed breezeway connecting the two structures. It had a copper roof that was being patinaed by the elements. Flowery vines wove through the lattice that covered the breezeway’s sides. The overhead garage door was solid wood with no windows, and it was locked. He went over to the side door of the garage that was under the breezeway. It was also locked. He peered through the upper glass partition. He couldn’t make out much, but there didn’t seem to be a car in there.

He gazed around, took out his pocketknife, inserted it between the lock and doorjamb, and drew the locking bolt back. He pushed against the door and went inside. Archer flipped on the wall light switch and the illumination of one bare lightbulb cast the small space into murky shadows. The place smelled of oil, grease, gas, mothballs, and mildew, but held no car. Yet there was something of interest.

He bent down and looked at the oil slick on the floor. He couldn’t tell if it had come from the blue Ford, but it might have. He also supposed most garage floors had oil slicks on them. However, this one looked quite fresh. And if the Bonhams had been in France for a while, their car couldn’t have made it.

Had the Ford been driven in here after Archer had been attacked? Then it could have been driven away later. Or, again, maybe this slick had nothing to do with the one back on the road. Cedric Bender might be safely in Anaheim, unless he was headed for a slab at the LA County morgue.

There were tools and long-spouted oil cans and the things one normally finds in a garage. He rifled through some old Life and Look magazines in a box. He checked the address labels. They were in the names of Peter and Bernadette Bonham of this address, Malibu.

Archer returned the magazines to the box and went back outside. He passed through a waist-high wooden gate and entered the backyard. It was flatter and larger than Lamb’s was, with a patch of lawn and perimeter flower and shrubbery beds that looked well tended and watered, though with the canyon walls, it probably got only limited sunlight. There was no pool, like Lamb had. But maybe the Bonhams weren’t that sort.

However, there was a span of lawn that was lumpy and uneven. Moles, thought Archer. They could do a number on the surface, all without seeing the light of day. Just like the bad guys.

He went to the back door and knocked. He decided against picking the lock. A garage was one thing, a home was something else. And if Oldham caught him, Archer could see a charge of breaking and entering in his future and maybe sticking.

Archer made an executive decision and moved on to something else that he hoped might hold promise but probably wouldn’t.

And such was the life of a pavement-pounding PI on a slow dance to maybe nowhere.