THEY AGREED THAT BARBARA would contact RTS Taxis, which according to their telephone listing had a depot down in his old stamping ground of what had once been the MGM studios, whilst he went to try to find out what had really happened to Doctor Penny Losovic. This time, he took the gun.
He drove north. The queues were already lengthening outside the feelie houses for the matinee showings. Not just the stargazy types who never did anything else, but mothers with babies, and kids who should have been at school, and old ladies so withered and sour-faced they looked to be beyond such fantasies, and businessmen in button-downs, and secretaries in shiny black heels, and negro maids in starched caps, and pot-bellied shopkeepers still in their aprons.
Edendale was an area which had once been at the heart of the moving picture industry. Max Sennette and the Keystone Kops had tumbled down these hilly streets. Harold Lloyd could have hung from that post office clock. But that was back in the ancient times of the silents. The studios had moved west, and Edendale had been forgotten, just like MGM. Nothing in this city ever stayed still. Now, where the gods of a different era had once walked, there were only gas stations, parking lots and drive-in churches.
The roads off the main drag went steeply up into a slew of smart new whites-only housing developments. Clark followed one, and parked the Delahaye just before a turn.
Aurora Avenue was a wide crescent of well-spaced split-levels with white-painted wooden sidings. Birds sang. The air still smelled rainy up here from the lawn sprinklers. Everything was in its place, from the second car on the driveway to the wrought iron hummingbird feeders. It was like a front cover for American Home. But actual people seemed as rare here as they were in the more extravagant houses of Woodsville. There was nothing much to distinguish number 16 Aurora Avenue from any of the other properties, although there was no car, and the front lawn, which would have passed for pristine anywhere else, looked a touch ragged in comparison with the others. He paused and stooped down as if to tie up his shoelace, noticing as he glanced across that the windows were shut, the drapes were open, and that there had either been no mail or newspaper delivered this morning, or they had been taken in.
He walked on to the end of the crescent, then took an immediate right. They were still putting up new houses here, and the area was a cleared wasteland filled with foundation trenches, separated from the rear of Aurora Avenue’s gardens by nothing more than a chainlink fence. Trying to look as if he had a reason to be here—maybe he was a realtor or prospective purchaser—he strode across the mud and dust, then studied the back of the houses until he was sure he’d got the right one. He quickly climbed the fence and dropped down into number 16’s yard.
No yapping dogs or playing children. Just more birdsong. He could also hear the hiss of a sprinkler, but that came from a fair few houses up. All the drapes were open and all the windows were shut here, as at the front. Once again, there were neat borders, impressive blooms of fuchsia and bougainvillea and many other kinds of plant he didn’t recognize, although the turf was a little wilder and thicker than he’d expected.
He peered in the windows. Everything inside looked orderly, but there was no sign of occupancy. He checked the garbage bin, which was empty, and smelled clean. He nudged open the screen door, tried the inside handle, then looked through the keyhole to see if a key was still in the mortise lock; it wasn’t. Neither did this Doctor Losovic strike him as the sort who’d leave a key under the mat. Still, he felt in all the obvious places and found nothing. Then he searched the borders for a medium-sized stone, and gave the nearest of the windows a sharp rap. Using the tip of the Delahaye’s key, he worked out the putty from around the crack he’d made—with a house as new as this one, it was an easy job—until he could loosen and pry out the triangle of glass. Then he reached through to twist the handle, pulled the window open, and dropped inside.
Dining room furniture regarded him with the same cold surprise which the furniture in people’s houses always did when he broke in—no, if anything, it was far colder; everything here was so clean. There was an odd, moaning, flapping sound. It was followed by a loud hissing. Then the moaning and flapping started again. His skin chilled. Lifting the Colt from his pocket, he moved around the gleaming table and across the hall toward the sound’s source. He laughed out loud when he shoved the door open with the Colt’s barrel. A new Bendix washing machine squatted in the kitchen, suds and flaying arms of clothing sliding past its porthole. So someone had been here recently. Although what that told him, he wasn’t sure.
Doctor Losovic had a liking for expensive new gadgets, and not much taste when it came to decoration. The gleam of a Presto pressure cooker and a streamline Electrolux fridge competed oddly with the gingham lamp shades and the pink rose wallpaper, at least as far as he was concerned. It was the same throughout the house. Wrought iron light sconces. Cellophane curtains. Chrome and jadeite electrical equipment and modern housewear set amid strews of cushions and floral rugs. The phonograph in the front lounge was especially ugly. A big “cathedral style” thing—more like a tombstone—of bakelite knobs, gleaming valves and zigzag marquetry. He checked the records stacked beside it. Churchy stuff, mostly. Masses and requiems. Those big German composers whose names generally began with B whom Peg had once told him were old hat. But at least some of the pictures on the walls—sepia reproductions of medieval religious paintings—made a kind of fit.
He moved upstairs as the Bendix began to rumble through another wash cycle, wondering as he did so what he’d been expecting to find. The links with Thrasis had seemed plain when he’d been talking to Barbara, but here…
Doctor Losovic favored straight, simple skirts and tops, and even simpler underwear. She used two different types of sanitary product, nothing fancier than Palmolive soap to wash herself, and her shoe size was on the large side at 8. The second bedroom was set out as a study, with pen and paper laid beneath the glass petals of a lily-shaped desklamp, and everything looking as if it had never been used. Facing the desk were a few framed newspaper cuttings. Yellowed photos of smiling kids, grinning pensioners. Even a bunch of dogs outside a new kennels. Headlines about how grateful everyone was. In each of the pictures, with her hands on the shoulders of the happy staff or holding the fluffiest puppy or kneeling with the kids, was the same tall woman with broad shoulders and shortish dark hair. The lace-topped bookcase behind the desk chair contained titles about the understanding of the mind, titles about the understanding of pain, titles about the understanding of dreams, and every one of them was pristine in its dustjacket. He eased one out, and flicked through pages filled with dizzying diagrams and Latin terms and cutaways of skulls. They should have seemed wildly out of place in this temple to modern America, but somehow they didn’t.
No holiday seashells. No love letters. No cellar stuffed with boxes in need of sorting. No human stains on those oh-so-clean sheets. Everything fitted, but somehow Doctor Penny Losovic didn’t seem to have much of a personal life, and it was hard not to feel sorry for the woman. Even her toothbrush looked barely used.
He found another picture of her on the telephone stand back down in the hall. She was looking up at the photographer from behind what he took to be her office desk. She had clear, Nordic eyes, a big jaw. They were features which might have been pretty on someone else, but she looked purposeful and severe. He set the picture back down beside the Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses which she’d left there with what by now seemed like uncharacteristic abandon, then slid open the small drawer beneath. Nothing but a slew of the usual business cards and we-called-when-you-were-out notes from meter readers for the utilities. He slid it shut, and stared once more at that photo—that almost smiling mouth—and then again at those Ray-Bans.
He worked the drawer open again. His fingers skidded through cards for telephone repairmen, cards for electricians, cards for plumbers, a card for RTS Taxis, and a card which said Clark Gable, Private and Personal Research a Specialty with a corner folded over and the phone number changed and crossed out. That infernal machine in the kitchen was still swooshing and groaning. He ran through to it and struggled with the porthole handle until it gave in a wet rush around his feet. Amid a spill of navy fabric, a badge proclaiming GLADMONT SECURITIES glittered through the suds.