Dream Town

Chapter 29

Archer sat in the Delahaye out in front of the Green mansion and read through the few pages of Bender’s typewritten reports. The dead PI had not articulated a clear theory of the case yet, nor had he identified, conclusively, the woman Bart Green was allegedly consorting with, to use Mallory Green’s term.

But to Archer’s thinking, it had to be Bernadette Bonham. Who else was there? But Bonham was supposed to be in France.

Then Archer thought about something Sylvia Danforth had told him.

He put the car in gear and headed back out to Malibu.

The cops had gone from Las Flores Canyon. He parked across the street, squinting against the sun, and walked over to Lamb’s house and into her backyard. He made his way up the same set of outside steps to the second-floor deck and entered through the same door, which, obviously, the coppers had not bothered to secure, even if they had noticed it was unlocked.

The body, he knew, was gone. However, the chalk line was still there, a poor facsimile for a departed life, he thought. But that was all you ever got from the homicide boys. The coroner would have already hacked up Bender. He wondered if the bullet in the man’s brain had held together enough to be identified, and then matched against the gun that had done the deed, if they ever found it. And he wondered if the autopsy had shown anything else. And he could keep right on wondering, because Phil Oldham would probably blow out his own brains before sharing any case notes with the likes of Archer.

Happy 1953 to you too, asshole.

He looked in Lamb’s desk drawer and pulled out her checkbook. He sat down at the desk and examined the woman’s handwriting and signature on the carbons. He took out a piece of paper from a drawer, grabbed a pen off the desktop, and slipped one carbon under the thin paper where he could make out the lines of her handwriting and signature through it. He traced these over and over until he felt comfortable enough to try it for real.

He made out a check to the Willie Dash Detective Agency for $200 and signed it “Eleanor Lamb” in the lady’s small, precise hand. He worked the check free and slipped it into his pocket.

He left the way he had come and walked over to the Bonhams’. He jiggered the garage door the way he had before and walked in, securing the door behind him. Danforth had told him that the Bonhams had driven their car to the airport before heading to France. He slipped out his notebook and checked what she had specifically said.

They left about a month ago.

Archer knelt down and again looked at the oil slick on the garage floor. As Archer had thought before, that might be because Bender’s blue Ford could have been driven in here to hide it. But really what would have been the point in that? Would you take the chance that the cops might look in your garage and see a dead man’s car? Lot of uncomfortable questions would follow. Yet that meant these marks could have come from the Bonhams’ car, and, as he had thought before, they sure as hell weren’t a month old.

He left and got back into the Delahaye. Archer looked over at Lamb’s house as the rising sun started to wield its full heat and light on the canyon. Bender had met his end somewhere around here, unless he had been transported by car. But Archer didn’t see it that way. The man’s car had been parked on the street. Sometime before three in the afternoon or so on New Year’s Eve, somebody grabbed him, beat him up, and when they were done, they put a bullet in his brain just to be sure he wouldn’t be telling anyone what had happened. Then, at some point, they dumped the body at Lamb’s place.

The problem with that was: How could they be sure Lamb wouldn’t be at home then? Had they been watching the place, or known for a fact she’d be out on New Year’s Eve? But if she had been home, they would have had another person to silence and thus another body to deal with. Why make trouble for yourself? Unless Lamb were in on it. But what would be the angle? Was Bender simply investigating an adulterous husband and got caught in the crossfire of something far more serious?

Wrong place, wrong time, just like I was on that sand. Only I got lucky and Bender didn’t.

As he was driving away he saw Mrs. Danforth in her front yard plucking, presumably, at some weeds. She had on a mauve house coat and a pair of white slippers. Her real hair, mottled gray, was down around her shoulders. From this distance she didn’t look a day over seventy-five. Two cats were watching her every move like a pair of prison guards in the exercise yard.

Archer didn’t wait for her to spot him. He had other things to do today. The first being a trip to the Second National Bank of Malibu.