For Sale in Palm Springs: The Henry Wright Mystery Series (3 page)

Henry was in Vegas two
decades ago for a law enforcement equipment convention and stayed
at the Flamingo Hotel on the Strip. The Eagle River city council
sent him to the gathering to look for winter equipment for the
police department. Henry recalled that at the time it seemed a
little odd that he headed for the Nevada desert in order to look
for snow suits with weapon access amidst the palm trees of the
country’s largest warm weather destination. During that visit, he
didn’t have much time to see any of the sights within the city, but
he and a colleague did drive out to Hoover Dam for a look at one of
the greatest man made wonders of the modern world.

When they made their travel
arrangements, Joanne, the lone travel agent in Eagle River, asked
him if they had ever been to Las Vegas. Henry mentioned the
business trip twenty years before, and Joanne said he would be
surprised at the changes the desert city had undergone. Joanne told
them to make sure and go out and see some of the big new hotels and
not spend all their time inside the casino gambling. Henry and Irma
agreed to do as she suggested, they didn’t want to let the folks in
Eagle River know their retiring police chief was there looking for
a new home, not a quick buck at the slot machines.

Henry was looking out their
hotel room window waiting for Irma to put the last of her
necessities away in the bathroom, he was hungry and wanted to get
to the restaurant and then on to the Strip. On the drive to the
hotel he saw that Las Vegas had indeed changed in the twenty years
since he was here and he was looking forward to exploring it with
Irma. Even though they had been married for thirty-six years, they
held hands like a newly married couple, as they waited for the
elevator from their room to the casino. They walked quickly through
the noisy slot machine area and ordered their lunch at the hotel
restaurant, and intended to go right out.

Having filled their stomachs
on the tasty food, Henry had an Oriental chicken salad, and Irma
had a tri-tip sandwich. They were ready to explore the Strip and
walked towards the exit through the noisy casino with its clanging
machines and flashing lights. When they were almost at the door,
Irma stopped, said the lunch didn’t agree with her and she said she
wanted to go back to the room to lie down. Henry offered to go
upstairs with her, but Irma insisted that he enjoy himself looking
around the Casino, maybe he could drop a few quarters into one of
those poker machines.

When he returned to the room
after an hour to check to see how she was feeling, Irma was dead on
the floor of their bathroom. The coroner told Henry later that Irma
had suffered a massive heart attack and that she had been dead
before she hit the floor.

The six months after Irma’s
death were a blur. Henry could barely remember them, as he dug for
socks that matched in his dresser drawer. First, there was Irma’s
funeral; the suddenness of her death was a shock to everyone, not
just Henry, but especially to their daughter Claire. Within three
months of the funeral was his retirement from the Eagle River
police department and what should have been a happy occasion was
very depressing for Henry. He woke up in their house in Eagle River
alone every morning and had no place to go.

He decided to continue with
the long planned sale of his and Irma’s house. Henry couldn’t stand
to be in that house since everything in it reminded him of Irma.
Henry also realized that he could never live in Las Vegas without
thinking of poor Irma in that hotel bathroom. He would probably
never visit Las Vegas again; he hadn’t even been able to go into
the Indian casinos since moving to Palm Springs.

At the invitation of his
friend Wayne Johnson, Henry had moved here, over his daughter
Claire’s objections. Claire preferred that he stay in Wisconsin now
that he was alone, she and her husband lived in Chicago, and she
thought it would be better if he remained closer by.

Yes, those six months were a
blur all right; he remembered how they went by in the blink of an
eye. Irma’s death and funeral, his retirement, the sale of their
house and his move west happened one on top of the other. At this
point, he was very happy to be here in Palm Springs with its desert
climate. There was no snow here, no snowmobile riders getting lost
in the woods, no police department to manage, and no bad guys to
lock up. He glanced at the wedding ring he still wore, even though
there was no Irma in Palm Springs, it was a lot better to be
retired here than shoveling snow at their old house in Eagle River,
Wisconsin.

He walked out of the kitchen
door into the garage, got into his Mercury Grand Marquis, backed
out, and headed towards Sherman’s Deli on Tahquitz Canyon Drive. He
liked the big car; it was similar to the Crown Victoria police
cruisers he spent many years driving. This car was a little more
upscale, with nice leather upholstery and a stereo system with a CD
player and who knows how many speakers. What he really liked was
that the controls were very the same as the police specials and
Henry hated looking for the light switch or the cruise control in
an unfamiliar car.

He pulled into the parking
lot at Sherman’s Deli and Bakery and headed inside. Wayne was
already at their usual table near the back as Henry walked into the
restaurant, his coffee half gone, and what used to be a donut was
now just crumbs and frosting that Wayne was carefully licking off
his fingers.

“
G’morning Duke, doesn’t
look real proper for the Chief to be licking his fingers like
that.” Henry said using Wayne’s nickname. It seemed like cops
always gave each other nicknames, what better moniker for a cop
named Wayne Johnson than Duke? “Captain, not Chief.” Wayne said
licking the last of the frosting off his thumb as he motioned for
his friend to sit down. “I couldn’t wait for you so I had a donut
while I was sitting here and I put in our regular order.” Wayne
said as Henry slid into the booth. “Your usual, if you don’t mind.”
“No, I don’t mind at all.” Henry said. “Though one day I may
surprise you and have something else, what will you do with all
that smoked salmon once I order the chicken fried steak?” Henry
always ordered the bagel with cream cheese and lox with extra
capers. He had thought of getting something else, but Sherman’s had
great lox and he enjoyed eating something that he would never have
thought of ordering in Eagle River.

“
Good morning, I’m happy to
see the two of you; do you guys know it isn’t Thursday?” Millie
said carrying their breakfast orders to the table. “Hello, Millie,
how’s George?” Henry answered after Millie put his bagel in front
of him. “Ornery as ever, I sent him down to the senior center early
this morning, couldn’t deal with him.” Millie and George had been
married for over fifty years; Millie worked at Sherman’s to get
away from George while George played pool at the senior center to
get away from Millie. They were very happily married and Henry was
envious.

“
Ever hear of Rex
Thornbird?” Wayne asked after Millie left them alone. Henry put
down his coffee cup, “The name sounds familiar, but I don’t think I
know who that is.” “Oh, you know of him all right, the top real
estate agent in Coachella Valley, the mid-century specialist, the
guy who sells all the old Alexander homes in your neighborhood.”
Wayne continued while cutting his short stack into small pieces
with his fork. “Oh, yeah, I know who you mean.” Henry said, “I see
his name and picture on For Sale signs around my neighborhood, it
seems like he likes our area.”

“
Liked, -past tense - not
likes.” Wayne said. “That is one guy who is not going to like
anything anymore.” “What happened?” Henry asked, carefully spearing
a caper with his fork. “Not sure, he’s dead as dead can get; I
wanted to bounce some ideas off you so that’s why I’m buying
breakfast.” Wayne replied, reaching for more syrup. “He was found
very dead in an empty house yesterday afternoon after his car was
tagged for being parked on the street too long.”

“
What do you mean by parked
on the street too long?” That had certainly not been a crime in his
old jurisdiction in Eagle River. “Apparently, one of the parking
enforcement guys tagged it after a neighbor complained that it was
parked on the street for three days.” Wayne continued. “The
dispatcher ran a trace, found out it was registered to Thornbird,
called his office and the receptionist told them that he had not
been in for several days.”

Wayne took another sip of
coffee and continued. “The officer checked the front door of the
house which was locked, but when he went around the back, he found
the patio door open. At that point, he smelled that there was
something wrong, went in and found Thornbird on the kitchen floor
in a large pool of dried blood. From the smell and the way the body
looked it seemed as though he had been there for almost a week.”
Wayne put the last of the pancake in his mouth. “No sign of a
struggle, the front door was locked, the key was in a lockbox that
the real estate agents use, but the patio door was open and all the
lights in the house were on.” He wiped a bit of syrup from his
moustache and pushed the now empty plate away from him.

“
How did he die?” Henry
asked. “It looks like a crime of opportunity,” Wayne answered, “He
was hit once on the back of the head with one of those old
fashioned dial telephones. The murderer pulled it off the wall and
beaned him with it; must have hit an artery or something, he went
down on the spot. The coroner is doing the autopsy now, he may have
hit his head on the kitchen counter on the way down, but it looks
to me like he went down from the phone, then he bled to death as he
laid unconscious on the kitchen floor.” Wayne finished.

“
Hmmm, so we’re looking for
someone strong – able to rip a phone out of the wall – and you said
there was no indication of a struggle?” “Nope, none whatsoever,”
Wayne replied, “Although it would have been hard to tell, the house
was one of Thorbird’s listings for sale, there was no furniture in
the place, nothing at all – it would have been hard to see signs of
struggle since there was nothing to upset and no lamps to knock
over.”

“
Jealous wife, jilted
girlfriend, upset lover?” Henry asked as he pushed his plate off to
the side, and motioned Millie over for more coffee. “Not sure,”
Wayne said, “He was divorced two years ago, according to his office
manager, it wasn’t very amicable, and the ex took him to the
cleaners, to the point of asking for and getting half of his
American Express card points.”

“
Hmmm, so was he broke as a
result, did he have money troubles? Credit cards maxed
out?”

“
Everything ok fellas?”
Millie refilled Henry’s cup.“Everything is just as good as on
Thursdays.” Henry answered.

Wayne held his coffee cup up
for a refill as well and said, “No, in fact, after the divorce, he
put in a lot more hours sold even more houses and earned even more
money than before, and paid for most of his toys and things in
cash.” Henry carefully sipped the now hot coffee and said
pensively, “Hmmm, so did the ex want even more than she already
got, have you talked to her yet?” Wayne put his cup down and said,
“No, I don’t think it was her, she is dating a chiropractor who was
in Las Vegas for a convention at the time, she says she was with
him – we haven’t yet had the time to verify her alibi.” “But you
will, right?” asked Henry. “Yeah, of course, we’ll check it out –
but I doubt that she’s lying – she took Thornbird for everything
she could, besides, her new guy seems to have a lot more money than
Thornbird ever did – he’s working with the Nabisco Golf
Championship here in town – seems all those golfers pay top dollar
for their back adjustments.” Wayne finished as he wiped his mouth
on his paper napkin.

“
Hank, I’m afraid that we’re
at a dead end.” Wayne said disgustedly as he put his cup down and
leaned back in the booth. “No prints, no one with an apparent
motive, no DNA evidence, nothing suspicious on his cell phone
calls, if you could look into this in your spare time – it would
certainly help me out. I eh… I need your profiling skills, if I
call in the FBI right now; they’re just as likely to contact you. I
figure I’m saving myself a lot of time and trouble by buying you
breakfast instead.”

Henry smiled; it was true
that he’d been doing a bit of freelance profiling for the Feds. He
didn’t set out to do that after he retired, but years earlier he’d
scored a perfect score in the FBI profiling class he took at the
Quantico Academy. About a year after his retirement, one of the
instructors at the academy emailed him and asked for his assistance
in a difficult case in Florida. Henry had done all the work from
his home on his computer, and since then he had helped the Feds on
several more cases.

Henry approached the problem
differently than the other profilers that the FBI had on staff, he
put himself into the victim’s shoes to try to figure who would want
to kill him. That didn’t always work, so he would revert to
profiling the killer, just like the others, which wasn’t as
interesting as far as he was concerned. This case sounded
interesting, he wasn’t working on anything else at the moment,
besides it was Wayne that was asking.

“
The FBI doesn’t call me in
on every case you know, I think they throw the easy ones my way.
The ones that can be solved from behind a computer terminal anyway,
I’ve told them I don’t want to travel all over the country. Sure,
I’ll help you out, I like these kinds of challenges, besides you’re
a local, I won’t have to go anywhere.” Henry grinned as he settled
back in his seat. “Since I’ll be out in the field, I suppose we’ll
operate under the same rules as last year with the body of the
biologist they found at Anza-Borrego that turned out to be a
murder?”