Poodle Springs

10

I'd been watching Muffy Valentine's house for a week, sitting in my car with the air conditioning on and the motor idling, building up carbon deposits in my cylinders. Every morning Muffy came out wearing a light raincoat over lavender tights and headed off to her exercise class. Two minutes later the Japanese houseboy came out of the house with two toy poodles straining on the leash and yapping, turned down the drive and walked off around the bend. Each day he returned with them about five minutes after his employer returned from exercising.

After- three days of this I followed him around the bend and watched him go in the front door of another house, poodles and all. He stayed in there for 45 minutes and when he came out I got a quick glimpse of a Japanese housemaid closing the door behind him. About twenty minutes later a woman with platinum hair and pink tights pulled up in a silver Mercedes and strolled into the house. Even from a distance I could see the light glinting on her diamonds.

I thought carefully on these matters and the following Monday, while Muffy and her neighbor were at exercise class and the houseboy was playing Japanese Sandman with his countrywoman, I set out to BE Muffy's house.

I had a clipboard I'd picked up downtown in the Springs, and a yellow pad on it, and a pencil behind my ear. That normally is enough to get you into the President's bedroom, unquestioned, but to make doubly sure I carried a tape measure on my belt. A tape measure combined with a clipboard will get you in while the President and First Lady are locked in carnal embrace. I parked out front of the Valentine house, walked up the front walk like a man with money in his pocket and measured the front door while I checked what kind of lock there was. It was a Bulger. I put the tape measure back on my belt, took out a collection of master keys I'd collected over the years and, on the second try, opened the front door. I put the keys back, checked along the hinges and the lock, took one more measurement, which was mostly showing off, and went in. There was no sound. If there was an alarm it was silent. If the cops showed up I'd deal with that when it happened. I was a hot shot from L.A., what had I to fear from the law in Poodle Springs? I checked my watch. I had about fifty minutes.

The front parlor yielded nothing I hadn't seen already, the dining room was just a dining room, neither had anyplace where clues might be stored. Neither did the kitchen. I went down the long hallway that ran across the back wing of the house and found their bedroom. I knew it was theirs because there were some men's suits in the closet, but the rest was hers. A huge pink canopied bed with a thick pink down comforter, maybe twenty-five pillows in white and pink. A long dressing table stood along the wall parallel to the bed. It was made out of some kind of pale wood, unpainted, but sealed with something that made it shine. There were bottles of perfume, containers of lipstick and rouge, mascara, eye shadow, wrinkle cream, hand cream and maybe thirty other items that I didn't recognize, though I'd seen some like them in Linda's bathroom. The drapes were pink and billowed out over the floor as if the decorator had made them five feet too long. The walls were white and there were two closets, one on either side of a very large dresser. The closet doors were pink, glazed with a whitewash which gave them a streaky antique look. There was a night table on either side of the bed with very large lamps of hammered copper on them. The shades were pink. Neither night table had a drawer in it.

The only drawers in the room were in the bureau. The top drawer contained women's lingerie in a tangle of pastel silk. In the far back corner under the tangle was an electric vibrator and a tube of KY jelly. I almost blushed, except that I was a hardened big-city gumshoe. In the second drawer were blouses, in the third were stockings and gloves. In the fourth were sweaters. In the bottom drawer were some men's shirts, socks, underwear. Nothing fancy. On the top of the bureau was a pink and white striped box about the size of a cigar box, and another, matching, nearly the size of a case of beer. The small one contained a pair of gold and turquoise cuff links, a tie clasp that matched, a gold collar pin. There was also a checkbook, a nail clipper, and a small bottle of eye drops. I pocketed the checkbook. The bigger box was full of jewelry. The two coat closets were full of women's dresses, plus about six men's suits, or suit coats and slacks, neatly hung together in coordination. There was a tie rack inside the closet door holding a dozen or so silk ties in most of the primary colors. Way in the back of the left-hand closet, behind the dresses, were several frothy and slightly comic see-through kinds of nightwear, black lace, white gossamer, like a young girl's idea of sexy.

Down the hall farther were two guest rooms, and two baths. The guest rooms and one of the bathrooms looked sterilely unused. I looked at my watch. Time was up. I went down the stairs, closed the front door behind me, made sure it had locked, strolled down the walk, got into my Olds and was driving away well within the speed limit when I passed Muffy barely peeping over the dashboard of her enormous black Chrysler coming around the curve in the opposite direction. She paid me no attention, having all she could do to pilot the Chrysler.

My office over the gas station wasn't air conditioned. When I opened the door it was like walking into a pizza oven. But it didn't smell as good. I left the door open and went over and turned on the oscillating fan I'd brought from L.A. when I closed my office in the Cahuenga building. The hot air moved the sweat around on my face, as I sat at my desk and looked at the checkbook. Not much for committing a felony punishable by one to five in Soledad.

The checkbook was Valentine's, not joint, just Lester A. Valentine and the address imprinted on the checks. He showed a current balance of $7,754.66. I went through the ledger part of the book. It dated back to the previous November 8. There were entries for photographic equipment, for some men's clothing, quite a number for cash, dues at the Racquet Club, a monthly bill from Melvin's at the Poodle Springs Hotel and Resort Center, and a parking ticket made out to Parking Clerk, City of Los Angeles, and the ticket number. It was the only thing in the checkbook that didn't connect him to Poodle Springs. I decided it was a clue. I copied down the check number and the ticket number and put the checkbook in my desk and locked the drawer and got out the bottle of Scotch that I kept in my desk in case I was bitten by a Gila monster. I poured myself a small snort and sipped it and thought about why a guy would go off and leave behind him a checkbook carrying a balance of more than $7,500.

I finished my drink and poured another one. There were no Gila monsters in sight, but you never knew.