For Sale in Palm Springs: The Henry Wright Mystery Series (11 page)

Obviously Thornbird had used
a lot of this information as background in his business. There was
no mention in the article of any of these homes being popular with
movie stars; it looked as though Thornbird had come up with that on
his own. This was interesting, but it merely confirmed that Rex
came up with the celebrity tie-in in order to boost the prices and
desirability of what appeared to be small homes that didn’t meet
the standards of today.

Henry leaned back in
Thornbird’s chair and looked at the computer screen. He was missing
something and didn’t know what it was. He looked around the room as
he thought about it. His own office certainly didn’t look like
this. There was beautiful real wood paneling on the walls, there
was a watercolor painting above the desk that was real, not a
knockoff print. There was a vase on a shelf in the corner of the
room from a recognizable glass artist with an unpronounceable last
name. Real estate had definitely been good to Rex Thornbird, but it
had also killed him, and Henry was trying to find out
whom.

Henry looked back at the
screen. Suddenly it struck him - with all these beautiful things in
this house and in this room, what was Thornbird doing surfing on
eBay? Wasn’t it a little odd that he had a bargain auction site
bookmarked? Henry clicked the mouse on the browser and clicked
again on eBay in the Favorites list. The site came up with
Thornbird’s eBay name already filled in and requested his
password.

Henry looked around the
computer; usually there was a little sticky note with passwords on
every monitor. Not in this case. The cursor was blinking at Henry
in the password space; Henry sat back in the chair, thinking of
what Rex Thornbird would have used for a password. The cursor
continued blinking at him as though egging him on, even teasing
him. Henry leaned forward in the chair, put his hands on the
keyboard and slowly typed in the word J-A-G-U-A-R. The screen went
blank and came back up and said “Welcome back, Rex.”

Henry was quite satisfied
with himself and clicked on the My eBay icon. There it was, on the
list of “Items I Have Won”, was an 8 by 10 autographed picture of
Rudy Vallee. Thornbird had paid eight dollars for it. Not a bad
return, Henry thought, an eight dollar photograph, a five dollar
picture frame and the price of a house is bumped up by fifty
thousand dollars. Thornbird’s commission on just the fifty K was at
least four grand. There were other photographs that Thornbird had
bid on and won an 8 by 10 of Bette Davis, a “personally
autographed” picture of Robert Goulet, a “colorized” photo of
Veronica Lake, and a 5 by 7 picture of Lawrence Welk.

Under the “Items You Didn’t
Win” category was an autographed picture of Peter Lawford.
Thornbird had bid five dollars and it was sold for seven. The date
it was sold was the day after Thornbird died. Henry could not
remember seeing a Peter Lawford reference in any homes that were
listed on Realtor.com, maybe this was Thornbird’s next house
listing with a celebrity tie-in. If so it didn’t matter that he
didn’t win it, Thornbird wasn’t going to pull that scam again. That
was one home that would be sold solely on its own
merits.

Interesting, Thornbird could
have bought practically anything on eBay, he certainly could afford
it. But he allowed himself to be outbid for a photograph of Peter
Lawford by a couple of bucks. People are curious at times, Henry
thought, here was a guy making thousands in commissions as a result
of inflated home prices and he was going on the cheap on a
photograph.

Henry got up from the chair
and walked out of the room. Back in the hallway, there was another
bathroom next to the office. This one was on the small side and
while it was appointed with the same quality fixtures as the other
rooms, its small size struck Henry. Why didn’t Thornbird borrow
some space from the office during his remodel and make this room a
little larger like he had done in the master bedroom? Wait a
minute, he thought, there was no room to borrow, the office was
already small.

He retraced his steps and
looked inside the office again. The wall adjoining the bathroom was
the one with the aerial photograph he admired earlier. He walked
over to the picture and lifted it up to see where the wiring for
the backlight was coming from. As he did, the picture quietly rose
up by an electric motor and a track in the paneling that wasn’t
noticeable if you didn’t know it was there, to reveal a flat plasma
television screen. On a ledge under the plasma screen was a large
remote control with a touch screen. Henry picked it up and looked
at the choices. Television, DVD, VCR1, VCR2 and Vault. Henry pushed
the button on the screen that corresponded to Vault. The sides of
the paneled wall swung in to reveal racks with two VCR’s a carousel
DVD player and hundreds of videos. DVD’s on one side, VCR tapes on
the other. Some were labeled professionally; most had typed or
handwritten labels on them. Henry pushed the power button on the
plasma screen and on the DVD player and hit the “Play” button. The
screen flickered to life and the images that Henry saw made him
bolt from the room, he barely made it to the small bathroom where
he threw up in the toilet.

After emptying the contents
of his stomach, he realized he was still holding the remote
control. He walked back into the office where the images were still
playing on the fancy screen. He pushed the stop button and
thankfully the screen darkened. Examining some of the titles of the
tapes and DVD’s he realized that Rex Thornbird, mid-century
specialist, top producing real estate agent in the Coachella Valley
had a dirty little secret. Thornbird was a pedophile who liked high
school aged boys.

Several hours later Henry
walked back into his kitchen carrying the manila folder that Rosie
had given him and the Chinese food that he picked up at Lam’s
Garden on the way home. There was another note from Charles on the
refrigerator that he was going to be late at the Palm Springs AIDS
hospice where he volunteered once a week.

He put the folder on the
dining room table while he grabbed a plate from the cupboard. He
emptied the Chinese take out from the little white containers onto
the plate and sat down at the dining room table and pulled the
folder towards him. Rosie had arranged Thornbird’s past deals in
reverse chronological order with the Albert Frey architected hotel
on Racquet Club Drive on top. The list included the original
description that the listing service had on the property, the sales
price as well as the names of the buyers and sellers. He looked
through the list while he ate his dinner.

When he finished his plate,
Henry went to his office and called Wayne Johnson on his cell
phone. “Duke, it’s Henry, can you talk?” “Yeah Hank, I’m on my way
home. What’s up?” “Did you know about Thornbird’s little fetish, is
that why none of your guys wanted to work on this case?”

“
Hank, I heard a rumor, and
yeah, nobody on the staff wanted this assignment, there are a lot
of cops who are secretly glad that he is dead.” “I found his
collection of videos.” Henry said. There was silence on the other
end of the phone. “Wayne, I said I found his perverted collection,
the man was disgusting, we need to have that crap
destroyed.”

“
I… I… I’m really sorry
Henry. I didn’t know about that we searched the house but didn’t
find anything. Like I said, I heard rumors, but I had no idea that
he had a collection of stuff.” Wayne sounded very apologetic. “I
believe you Duke.” “Hank, I’d have never asked you to get involved
if I had known to what extent Thornbird was into this shit. Do you
want to quit?”

This time Henry was quiet.
“Henry?” Wayne used Henry’s proper name to get his attention.
“Yeah, I’m here, no, I’ll continue looking into it. I’d like to
nail whoever he got this stuff from as well.”

“
You’ll have plenty of help
from my department doing that. Let me know what you find out. Are
you mad at me?” “No, Duke, no, I’m not mad at you. You didn’t know,
right?” “I didn’t know, honestly. I’ll get a crew up to his house
to impound everything. Where is it?” “It’s in his office; I left
the picture it was hidden behind raised up so that you can impound
it.” “Allright Hank, I’ll get a crew over there in the morning. I’m
really sorry you had to find it, but I’m glad you did.”

“
Ok Duke. I’ll talk with you
later.” Henry hung up the phone. He had to get back to
investigating who might have killed Thornbird, he wondered if the
discovery of Thornbird’s illegal activities might have motivated
the murder. It didn’t seem that way. Thornbird had kept his desires
well concealed. He decided to continue following the real estate
trail, at least for now.

Henry picked up a yellow
legal pad and pencil and went back to the kitchen table, opened his
fortune cookie while he made his own list of all the properties
with celebrity connections, and the names of the new owners, he
could look up their phone numbers later. First on his list were Tim
and MarieAnne Miller, the owners of the former Laguna hotel, which
they had renamed the Solé Hotel.

His fortune read:
News
from a stranger will soon enlighten your life.

Chapter 8

Wednesday, April
19

The next morning, Henry
finished getting dressed early; he’d made a ten o’clock appointment
with Tim Miller at the Solé Hotel on the phone last night. Tim was
gregarious on the phone; he read about Thornbird’s death and was
very accommodating to Henry’s request for an interview. Tim asked
Henry if he needed directions to the hotel, Henry said he could
find it. Tim warned Henry that the hotel was located in a
residential area, and it was hard to spot, Henry told him it was
ok, he had seen a picture of the place on the listing from Rosie.
He told Henry that they didn’t have a lot of guests that morning
and there would be no problem parking in the lot right in front of
the hotel’s office.

A lot of the listings on the
paper that Rosie gave him had phone numbers of the new owners,
others simply had their names. Henry looked through the list and
had also called the Wadowicz family who purchased a Veronica Lake
owned house from Thornbird, they agreed to talk to Henry to help
him solve the murder of that “awfully nice man” as they put it.
He’d stop by there after finishing up at the Solé Hotel.

Henry walked into the
kitchen with his folder and several yellow pieces of paper from his
legal pad where Charles was having breakfast. “Hey, good morning
stranger, I didn’t see you yesterday.” Henry grabbed a cup form the
cupboard and poured himself a cup from the maker. “Yeah, I had a
busy day. I was at the pistol range with Wayne; I had lunch with
the Coachella Real Estate office manager and spent the afternoon at
Thornbird’s house. Man, what a gorgeous place that guy had.” “Yeah,
by the time I got back here last night, I saw the Chinese takeout
containers in the trash, but all the lights were already out.”
Charles said, “I wanted to talk to you about this whole Thornbird
thing.”

“
Did you think of something
that would help” Henry asked sitting down at the kitchen table
across from Charles. ‘Well, perhaps. I think you ought to take a
look to see if Thornbird provided some kind of evidence to the
property buyers that these homes were actually owned by
celebrities.” Charles put down his fork and reached for a paper
napkin to wipe his mouth. “You mean like an autographed photo in a
cheap frame that Thornbird could put somewhere in the house?” Henry
smiled. “Exactly, heeey, it sounds like you’re already onto
something along those lines.” Charles frowned. “Yeah, I was on
Thornbird’s computer yesterday and found that he’s been buying
pictures on eBay.” Henry admitted. “Was there a picture in the
house on Granvia Valmonte?” Charles crumpled up his napkin and
threw it towards the trash can, barely missing it. “No, there
wasn’t, but there should have been.” Henry said. “Find the picture,
and you’ll have your killer.” Charles got up and picked up the
napkin and put it in the can. “Yeah, that’s what I told Wayne
yesterday. The problem is locating the picture.”

“
Did you find out anything
else yesterday?” Charles came back to the table to get his dishes.
Henry wasn’t sure if he should tell Charles about Thornbird’s
pedophile activities just yet. He decided not to. “I learned a lot.
And something interesting happened at lunch that involves you.”
Henry smiled at the memory of lunch with Rosie. “Me, what happened
that involves me?” Charles rinsed his dishes at the sink. “I had
lunch with the Coachella Real Estate office manager, Rosie,
yesterday and she thought you and I were more than housemates, she
thought we were lovers.” Henry grinned. “And that surprises you?”
Charles looked over at him. “Well, yes. Doesn’t that seem sort of
absurd?” Henry was now no longer grinning.

“
For goodness sake Henry,
think about it. This is Palm Springs, you know that there are a lot
of gay couples here, I’ve made no secret of my preferences and we
live together. What do you think people are going to think?”
Charles said in his History teacher tone. “But I’m still wearing my
and Irma’s wedding ring.” Henry looked at the finger on his left
hand.

“
That doesn’t mean much you
know, a lot of gay men wear wedding rings, especially silver ones
like yours. You wouldn’t be the first older man that has been
married a long time that finally figured out that life is better on
this side of the street.” Charles finished with his educator tone
and put his dishes into the dishwasher. “It’s platinum, not silver.
Well I really don’t care what people think, but I did clear up
Rosie’s misimpression right away.” Henry got up to get more coffee
for himself.