For Sale in Palm Springs: The Henry Wright Mystery Series (12 page)

“
Rosie, eh? Charles raised
an eyebrow. “I don’t think you’ve had lunch with a woman since I’ve
known you.” “Oh sure I have, what about last year when I was
investigating the Anza-Borrego murder I had lunch with that woman
that owned the nursery on Sunset?” Henry defended himself.
“Clarissa, the large woman with the huge sun hat that wore the
flannel shirt and sensible shoes, you mean her?” Charles laughed,
“She doesn’t count, she has more male hormones in her than half of
the men in Palm Springs.” “Well, all right, maybe my social life
hasn’t been the greatest for a while.” Henry admitted.

“
A while? Henry, after I met
you, I didn’t know if you were attracted to men, women or trees for
the longest time.” Charles said. “I’m glad that you are finally
coming out of the shell that you crawled into when your Irma passed
away.” “Well, I don’t know that I was in a shell, but I will admit
that I haven’t been very interested in women - until yesterday that
is.” Henry got up to take his coffee cup to the sink. “I’ve got an
appointment with one of Thornbird’s clients, I’ve got to run – but
let’s talk more later.” “Ok, I’ll be here.” Charles shook his head
as he watched Henry walk to the garage with his folder of stuff.
Henry was the nicest guy in the world and would do anything for his
friends, but sometimes Henry could be so naïve.

It took Henry barely five
minutes to drive the two miles to the Solé Hotel from his home. He
parked out front, the parking lot was indeed fairly empty as Tim
had predicted and rang the bell at the front gate. The gate was
opened by a man of medium build and an excellent tan whose dark
hair was wet and he had a large towel wrapped around his
waist.

“
You must be Henry Wright,
welcome to the Solé Hotel, I’m Tim Miller.” Tim held out his hand,
“Please come on in.” Henry shook Tim’s offered hand, “Good to meet
you, did I get you out of your shower?” “Shower, no not at all.”
Tim answered with a quizzical look on his face as they walked in
through the gate as Tim closed it carefully behind him. “You’re
careful with the gate; do you have a security problem?” Tim
laughed, “Not really, but we don’t want everyone just walking in
here, I guess you don’t know what kind of hotel we are do you?”
“No, I guess I never really thought about what kind of hotel you
run; I didn’t realize there were different kinds.” Henry answered.
“Please have a seat,” Tim motioned to a set of chairs set around an
outdoor table next to a large pool in the hotel’s courtyard, while
he remained standing. “Can I get you something to
drink?”

“
No thanks, but I appreciate
the offer.” Henry sat down in one of the chairs at the table as a
large man carrying a coffee cup and wearing sunglasses, slippers
and nothing else walked past the table towards the hotel’s office.
“Good morning Tim.” The man said as he walked past. Henry raised an
eyebrow and looked quizzically at Tim. “Good morning Ramon.” Tim
replied as he turned to Henry, “I owe you and explanation. We are a
clothing optional resort. In fact, we are the most popular resort
of its kind in Palm Springs. People come here to relax au natural
and get an all over tan.” Tim took the towel from his waist; he was
dressed as though he stepped right out of the shower, and spread it
on the chair before sitting down.

“
Ok, that explains a lot.”
Henry said. “I usually swim my laps at home without a swimsuit,
it’s very private, but I never really thought of going someplace
special to do that with a bunch of other people I don’t know.”
“Well there are a lot of people that can’t do what you do at home,
so they come to a place like ours.” Tim explained. “We actually
have the highest occupancy rate of any hotel this size in the
entire Coachella Valley.” “I didn’t realize this lifestyle was that
popular. Although I’m sure our climate has something to do with
that.” Henry said looking up at the bright blue sky overhead.
“Certainly the climate draws a lot of people but the clothing
optional lifestyle is very popular with a lot of people from all
walks of life, in fact...” Tim started to explain before Henry cut
him off. “I’m sure it is popular, can we talk about your
interaction with Rex Thornbird?” Henry smiled as he said it, he
wanted to know about Thornbird, it seemed as though Tim was
prepared to talk for hours about his decision to live his life
without clothes. “Sorry, I tend to get on my soapbox about this.”
Tim said, “Let me ask my wife MarieAnne to join us, her memory
about our dealings with Mr. Rex Thornbird is probably a lot better
than mine.” “That would be great.” Henry watched Tim get up as he
left his towel behind and walked to the hotel office. After a
minute or two he came out followed by a short, attractive woman
with long black hair also wearing only a pair of slippers and
carrying a towel, she was as dark as Tim and had no tan lines
either. Henry stood up as the couple stopped at the table where he
had been seated.

“
This is my wife, MarieAnne
Miller.” Tim said as MarieAnne shook Henry’s hand. “Good to meet
you, Mrs. Miller.” Henry said as they all sat down. “Oh please,
call me MarieAnne.” She said waving her hand down to point out her
state of undress. “As you can see, we don’t stand on formalities
here.” “Um… yes, I’ve realized that.” Henry said, blushing
slightly. “Would it make you more comfortable if I got a cover-up?”
MarieAnne asked. “No, no, please.” Henry protested. “This is your
place, you should dress – or not – as you please. I really
appreciate you taking the time to answer some of my questions.”
MarieAnne smiled, “We just want all our guests to be comfortable
here.” “I’m fine, really.” Henry said, “Can you tell me about your
interactions with Rex Thornbird? When did you meet him?”

“
We came out here from
Chicago about four years ago looking for just the right property to
start a clothing optional hotel.” MarieAnne recalled. “We looked
for quite a while, and finally drove past this place and saw the
For Sale sign out front from Coachella Real Estate. We called the
office and found that Rex Thornbird was the listing agent for this
property” “Did you meet him here, or at his office?” Henry asked.
“You know, if your offer of something to drink is still good, I
would like a water.” “Be right back.” Tim jumped up and headed to
the hotel office. “MarieAnne, please continue while I’m gone.”
“Ok,” MarieAnne smiled as she watched Tim walk off. “We met Rex
Thornbird at his office; he drove us here in that big car of his
and walked us through the place. He told us that it was designed by
Albert Frey, a well known Palm Springs architect who was a leader
in the post-modernism architecture world that became popular
here.”

“
Was that important to you?”
Henry asked. “Heck, we had no idea who Albert Frey was at that
time, of course we’ve learned quite a bit more about him since
buying this place, he was born in Switzerland you know – we’d like
to think that as a European he would have approved of the current
use of this property.” MarieAnne explained. “So you weren’t willing
to pay extra for the famous architect connection?” Henry
asked.

“
No, we didn’t care; we were
looking for the right features in a place. We wanted a hotel with
fewer than twenty rooms, and we wanted to make it enclosed and
private without spending a lot of money on construction, and as you
can see this place is perfect.” MarieAnne turned to watch Tim walk
back to the table with Henry’s bottle of water.

As MarieAnne turned, Henry
noticed that she had a mole or birthmark just below her right eye.
It twitched every time she blinked her eyes. He wondered if she
could see it. Henry thought that if he had something sitting on his
cheek, his eye would constantly focus on it, just as the time when
he had some stitches just below his eye when he had a hard time
subduing a suspect as a young officer. The emergency room doctor
that had sewn him up had done a nice job, he had a real small
little scar and unless you knew it was there, you didn’t notice it.
Compared to his scar, MarieAnne’s birthmark looked like a boulder
sitting on her cheek.

“
Ice cold, straight from the
refrigerator, sorry it took so long, I answered the phone and took
another booking.” Tim sat down, straightening the towel on his
chair before he did so. “The Mooreheads are coming down next month
from Toronto. Did you get a chance to tell Henry about Marilyn
Monroe staying here?” “No, I was just about to get to that, it’ll
be nice to see the Mooreheads again.” MarieAnne smiled. “Yes,
please tell me about Marilyn Monroe staying here.” Henry twisted
the cap off the bottle and took a long drink of the water. It
tasted good.

“
One of our rooms has a back
door that exits into the alley that runs next to the hotel.”
MarieAnne explained. “It is the only room, including our owner’s
suite, that doesn’t require that you come in or out via the
courtyard. Supposedly, Marilyn Monroe used to request that room
when this was the Legend Hotel.” “Did Thornbird tell you the Monroe
story?” Henry asked. “Yes, in fact he did.” MarieAnne recalled. “In
fact, now that I think about it, he mentioned it about a day or so
after he showed us the place and we failed to be impressed with
Albert Frey being the architect of the property. Rex told us that
Marilyn stayed here several times. The last was in 1962 and she met
a famous politician here.”

Henry noticed MarieAnne’s
mole twitching. Why had she never had that removed? Then he
wondered why he was so fascinated by her twitching mole. It wasn’t
every day that he sat across the table from a totally nude woman;
did he focus on her mole so that he wouldn’t look at anything else?
Was he focusing on it because he didn’t want to look at her, she
was attractive enough, he wondered what she looked like with
clothes on. There, her mole twitched again, he had to stop staring
at it, she probably knew that he was, he should look at all of her.
He didn’t have a problem with her being undressed, in fact he had
hardly noticed it, perhaps because she was so matter of fact about
it – he did keep staring at that thing on her cheek
though.

“
We call it the Monroe Suite
– it’s very much in demand with a lot of our guests. MarieAnne
bought a Marilyn Monroe poster and I hung it in the bathroom, we’ve
even thought of buying an autographed picture of Marilyn to add to
the room.” Tim added. “Did the fact that Marilyn Monroe stayed here
make you want to buy this place?” Henry set his water bottle on the
table. “We’d already decided to buy the place by that time.”
MarieAnne answered. “Look around, the place is perfect for our
needs, we managed to make it very private without a lot of changes,
and we didn’t want to mess up the architecture at all after we
learned about Frey. We found the story interesting though, and
we’ve certainly retold it a number of times and our guests really
love the mystery that surrounds a famous movie star staying
here.”

“
Did you look at any other
places with Thornbird?” Henry took another drink of the water.
“Yes, we looked at a hotel over on the strip, on Palm Canyon I
mean.” MarieAnne waved her arm in the general direction of Palm
Canyon Drive. “It needed too much renovation work, and with eight
rooms was just a little too small for what we wanted.”“Did it have
a celebrity tie-in?”

“
No, Mr. Thornbird never
mentioned anything; he sold it a little later to a gay couple who
turned it into a small resort, it has a large rainbow flag out
front.” “I think I’ve seen it when I drove by there.” Henry put the
cap back on the water bottle and set it down on the table. “Are you
talking with all of the people who bought properties from Mr.
Thornbird?” Tim asked. “Well, not all of them, he sold a lot of
places here in town; it looks as though he was pretty successful.”
Henry leaned back in his chair.

“
You know he was quite the
salesman, he told us a lot of stuff, but we had a very definite
idea of what we wanted.” MarieAnne’s mole was nearly jumping off
her cheek as the sun reflected directly into her eyes and she
squinted to look at Henry. She picked up her chair and moved it
several feet to get out of the light. “I suppose there might be
other buyers who were taken in by his pitch, but I cannot see how
anyone could have killed him. He was a nice guy, and maybe he
wasn’t totally above board with the descriptions of what he was
selling, but as you can see, this is a great place.” MarieAnne
waved her arm around as though she was a television hostess showing
a prize to a game show contestant.

Henry looked around the
hotel’s courtyard; the large man, he thought Tim had called him
Ramon, with the coffee cup, was sitting on a chaise lounge next to
the pool enjoying his morning newspaper while a woman – probably
his wife – was putting a large amount of suntan lotion all over
herself. Someone else was swimming laps in the pool while birds
were singing in the palm trees and a large fat cat was sitting on
the lawn watching them with lazy eyes. MarieAnne was right, this
was quite an idyllic spot, and it was hard to imagine that there
was a busy city right outside the hotel gate.

“
You’re right, this is a
great place, and it looks as though you are taking really good care
of it. Thank you for your candidness and thank you for the water.”
Henry said, getting up to leave. “I really appreciate the time you
took, and wish you well with the business.”

Tim and MarieAnne stood up
as well and they shook hands with Henry and Tim said, “Henry, we
have day guests here as well, if you ever want to bring your wife
here and spend the day, you’d be our guests, totally complimentary
of course.” “Well, I appreciate, the offer, but my wife…” Henry
looked down at the wedding ring on his left hand. “…my wife
wouldn’t be as comfortable here as I am.” “Most people are
uncomfortable for the first few minutes, and then it passes.” Tim
opened the gate, “We hope to see you again soon, once you figure
out who did this to Rex Thornbird, he was a nice man.” “Well, ok.”
Henry said, “I’ll be in touch, thanks again for your
help.”