At nine o’clock the next morning, fresh from three hours of intermittent sleep, I called the number Rosamund gave me. Likely it went to a burner phone that could be discarded once she’d finished playing her cagey game.
‘Did you tell anyone I hired you?’ she shouted, right off, hoarse and out of breath.
‘What’s happened—?’ A plane came in low.
‘No matter—!’
‘I’ve learned nothing, and perhaps a good deal more!’ I yelled quickly. Another plane was approaching.
‘Call me from a quieter—’
I showered, packed my duffel and stepped outside. Only three other cars were in the lot and they were parked down by the office. No one lingered, mornings, at the Valu-Lodge.
I dropped my duffel in the Prius and headed down to the office in search of alertness.
The coffee was on a small table next to a blue bowl containing four bruised yellow apples. I pumped a cup and silently conveyed sympathies to the wounded fruit; no doubt they’d been wounded being bounced about by the decibels thundering above. A middle-aged man stood behind the counter, chewing on his lip.
I told him I was leaving and that relaxed his face a little. I might have been the only guest that stayed the whole night, making him suspect I was Immigration or IRS.
He didn’t offer a receipt, nor did I ask for one. His was a cash operation, employing illegals to tend to trysting lovers. It was a way to get along in hard times. I understood hard times.
I called Rosamund back once I’d driven far enough north to escape the flight paths. ‘Gary Halvorson might have disappeared. He’s never been seen by his newest neighbor. He left behind his car and enough dust to make me wonder whether he ever used his closets. And he might have left behind blood that needed lots of bleach to get rid of.’ I paused and added, ‘He was living under the radar. I should poke around, see if I can find out the last name he used from utility bills and such. Or, if you like, I can see what the cops know about him.’
‘No idea where he might be?’
‘Halvorson’s landlord was evasive. I should question him again. Why did you ask if I’d told anyone you’d hired me?’
‘Go next to Laguna Beach, and quickly.’
She hung up before I could ask why speed mattered, since the man there was dead.
I would have also liked to press her about why she didn’t want me to try to learn more about Halvorson, but she was the client and she’d forked out over two thousand dollars. That was a good enough reason to take a drive.
I took I-10 north toward Phoenix, then west into a desert of beige rocks and brown rocks, some of which were big and some of which were small. It went that way, rock after rock, for almost four hundred miles, except for when a green glass-and-cement-block truck stop rose up like a shimmering mirage, a fantastical oasis offering gasoline, gristly hot dogs and hardened pastries set amid the never-ending landscape of rocks.
Oddly, close by on the other side of the interstate was a gathering of at least fifty mobile homes – more than would be needed to house workers at the truck stop. It was a ragged cluster, loose and asymmetrical, and I had the thought that the trailers had been dragged there by people pushing back against the stuff and clutter of their previous lives. Things were seductively simple out in the desert, there being only rocks to look at. When folks tired of a particular view they could simply tug their homes a few yards up the gulch and have entirely new rocks to enjoy until it was time to move another few yards again.
I got to the lush of Laguna Beach late in the afternoon. There were plenty of rocks there, too, but those glittered on the tanned hands steering the expensive Benzs, Bimmers and Bentleys cruising the South Coast Highway. All those rocks were big – several carats at least – and none were small.
Sparkling, too, were the enormous houses high on the hills to the east, their bronzed windows reflecting bright pinpoints of the waning sun. Everything seemed to glitter in Laguna Beach.
I thought of Amanda. The murder of her father, an immensely wealthy Chicago businessman, had drawn her into his world, a world of power and privilege and glitter very much the equal of Laguna Beach. She seemed to be faring well, this former writer of art history books, but the challenges she faced running his enormous conglomerate all seemed as big and unmovable as the largest of the rocks I’d just seen in the desert.
I came upon the Sun Coast Hotel, a genuine pink stucco throwback to California’s golden days of the mid-nineteen forties and fifties. More essential at that moment, the sky above it was blue and clear and free of planes. I parked next to a long black Audi and went in.
The office had two types of saltwater taffies in glass jars on the counter and two types of blondes behind them. One was tall and tanned. The other was short and tanned. The short one smiled first with teeth that naturally sparkled, it being Laguna Beach.
She said they offered three types of accommodations. ‘One faces the beach, the other the courtyard. Three hundred and two hundred, respectively.’
‘And the third type?’ I asked, taking a taffy from one of the jars. It was a perfect caramel color, as though it had spent time on the beach with the blondes.
She tried not to be obvious as she studied my wardrobe. Though I was wearing my best blue button-collared shirt and my best khakis, she’d probably seen better on the local homeless. She nodded, very slightly, and said, ‘One hundred and twenty per night, but it’s real close to the road.’
‘No planes, though?’ I asked, remembering my previous night at the Valu-Lodge.
‘Just the occasional private jet.’
‘Then it will be fine with me,’ I said, mindful of the dour Ms Reynolds’ wallet.
‘Here visiting friends?’ she asked, keying up her computer screen with my credit card number. Unlike the Valu-Lodge, there would be no cash changing palms, not in this joint.
‘David Arlin’s place?’
Her face softened with as much empathy as her guileless young life experience could summon up. ‘Be careful driving up,’ she said, giving me directions. ‘The explosion blew sand and dirt everywhere and it still washes onto the road after it rains.’
‘Have they found the cause of the explosion?’
She took the lid off the jar of the darkest, most mournful of the taffies and slid it closer to me. ‘It’s been less than a week. No one’s saying much of anything,’ she said.