For Sale in Palm Springs: The Henry Wright Mystery Series (7 page)

Henry pulled the plates out
of the kitchen cabinet and set them on the dining room table. He
walked back into the kitchen to grab some silverware for the two of
them, and set them down next to the plates. “What would you like to
drink?” Henry asked Charles, reaching for the refrigerator. “I’ll
just have a glass of milk.” Charles replied, “Make sure it is my
lactose free kind.” “Of course, Henry said, “I wouldn’t try to
poison you!” “Speaking of poison, since you went out to have
breakfast with Wayne, and it is not Thursday, he must need your
help again, has someone been offed?” Charles asked deftly flipping
over the omelet in the pan on the stove. “Offed?” Henry asked,
“Well, someone has been killed and Wayne requested my help.” Henry
continued, pouring Charles’ milk into a glass on the counter. “I
know that cops say “offed”, I saw it in a movie! So is it anyone
famous or that I should know?” Charles asked, watching the omelet
carefully to make sure the cheese didn’t run out into the skillet.
“Yes, you’ve seen him around.” Henry said carrying Charles’ milk to
the table and reaching for a bottle of water for himself. “Ok, ok,
stop making me guess, who is it?” Charles asked now sliding the
omelet onto a platter.

“
Rex Thornbird.” Henry said,
“Do you know who that is?” “Rex Thornbird? Sure, he’s the
mid-century specialist; his face is on every block here in this
part of town – that’s terrible, he’s a nice man – what happened?”
Charles asked turning the stove off. “Well, I can’t tell you too
much of course, but he was found dead inside the kitchen of one of
the houses he was trying to sell not too far from here
actually.”

“
Hmmmm, so Rex Thornbird is
dead, eh? - bacon?” Charles asked.“Sounds good.” Henry said, “I
smell it, is it in the microwave?”“Yes,” Charles replied, “Do you
mind getting it out?”“I got it,” Henry replied reaching for the
oven mitt to take the hot tray with the bacon slices out of the
microwave and he put it on the table. “How do you know Thornbird?”
Henry asked Charles who was grabbing some napkins from the cabinet
and making his way to the table with the platter with the omelet.
“First of all, his picture is everywhere; it seems as though he has
the For Sale market cornered in Palm Springs, you’ve seen the signs
around here haven’t you?” Charles set the platter with the omelet
down on the table and cut the omelet deftly in half with his knife.
He slid half on Henry’s plate and the other half on his
own.

“
Secondly he was here at the
house about a month or so ago, wanting to know if we wanted to sell
the house. I told him I wasn’t the owner, but that you probably
weren’t interested in selling anyway. Then from the car he was
driving and the way he was dressed, I thought he was interested in
me, and I asked him if he wanted to meet for coffee later, but he
turned me down.” Charles related, taking a sip of his special milk.
“Oh for goodness sake Charles, Thornbird was married up until a few
years ago, how could you be hitting on him?” Henry asked putting
his fork down and looking with wonderment at his
roommate.

“
Heeeey, my gaydar isn’t
that far off.” Charles said defensively, “He’s one of the family.”
“Well, I don’t think so, it doesn’t matter though does it, he’s
dead, and we don’t know who did it, nor do we have a motive.” Henry
said picking up a slice of bacon. “Well I think you should look
into his customers.” Charles said. “When he was here, he told me
about all these movie star owned homes that he sold in this area,
and there’s no way that there are that many places in this
neighborhood that were owned by celebrities – if you ask me.”
Charles said in between bites.

“
Hmm, maybe.” Henry said,
“Or maybe you’re just jealous of him since he didn’t want to join
you for coffee.” Henry said with a smile as he put the last of his
omelet in his mouth. “You’ve outdone yourself on this omelet as
usual. How do you know that there are a lot of celebrity owned
homes in Palm Springs?”

Charles took a deep breath
and started his story. “Well, Jonathan – rest his soul – and I have
been coming to Palm Springs on vacation for many years. We started
in the late seventies when we heard then President Ford was coming
here to relax. We figured if presidents came here, why shouldn’t
we” Charles recounted. “It’s not a bad drive from San Francisco, we
would spend weekends at the Ballantines Hotel, that was before the
gay resorts were all over the place like they are today. Anyway,
Palm Springs became popular with the Hollywood crowd during the
Great Depression.” Charles continued. “This place was the perfect
hideaway, far enough away from the gossip columnists like Louella
Parsons and Hedda Hopper in Hollywood, and they came here to play
tennis just down the street at the Palm Springs Racquet Club, or
attend a party or two, and unless things got too wild, they were
pretty safe here.”

“
You know, I knew there was
a celebrity connection,” Henry said, “But I had no idea that it was
this extensive.”“Oh yeah,” Charles continued, “The El Mirador Hotel
used to be the place where they all hung out, Gable, Lombard – a
lot of them stayed there, but some of them had homes here as well.
Anyway, the Army came in at the start of World War II and took over
the El Mirador and turned it into Torney General
Hospital.”

Charles finished the last of
his omelet and put his fork down on the plate while he grabbed the
last piece of bacon with a questioning look at Henry who nodded his
approval. “Torney General Hospital?” Henry said, “That must be long
gone, I don’t recognize that name.” “No, this is the desert,
nothing ever disappears, it just gets reinvented.” Charles said.
“We now call it Desert Regional Medical Center, it’s the hospital
right behind us here on Indian Canyon.”

“
Wow!” Henry said, “I didn’t
know that, our very own hospital? You’re right; this place has
really undergone some transformations. So I know about Liberace,
Dinah Shore, Elvis and Lawrence Welk, who else used to visit here?”
Charles picked up his and Henry’s now empty plates and carried them
to the sink. He started rinsing them off and said. “Well, I
mentioned Gerald Ford, who still lives here and you probably
already know about Bob Hope who was actually appointed Honorary
Mayor.”

Charles walked back over to
the table to get the microwave plate that held the bacon. “And
everyone tends to forget Sonny Bono, who was the mayor here before
he was elected to the U.S. Congress where he represented the
district before his unfortunate skiing accident. But I’ll bet you
didn’t know the Gabor sisters had homes here and Frank Sinatra had
a house built close by on Alejo Road, Kirk Douglas had a place in
Las Palmas. Oh yeah, Harpo Marx lived over next to the Tamarisk
Country Club near what is now Rancho Mirage. And somebody mentioned
to me that Marilyn Monroe had a rendezvous in a small hotel on
Racquet Club Road while Kennedy was in town in 1962.”

“
Yeah, I’ve already heard
the story about Monroe’s affairs at a hotel, but I didn’t know
about the Kennedy part.” Henry answered. “So all these celebrity
homes that Thornbird was selling, it could be that they are all
genuine.” Henry said as Charles put the last of the dishes into the
dishwasher.

“
Well, as I said, I just
don’t think so.” Charles said as he poured the dishwashing liquid
into the machine. “You know, Palm Springs had already lost its
luster while Jonathan and I were vacationing here in the late
seventies, and a lot of celebrities had moved to more upscale
places like Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage and Indian Wells. Plus, it
seems like a lot of the houses that Thornbird was selling in this
area were small and probably originally intended for winter homes
for the Los Angeles middle class. You probably ought to read up on
Alexander homes on the Internet.”

“
I remember hearing about
Alexander homes when I was looking for this place.” Henry said,
“I’ll do a search to see what I can find. But thanks, you’ve been a
big help in getting me into the right direction on my research.”
“Heeeey, no problem, always glad to help. Now I’m going to take
Pierre out to the park for a walk” Charles said, grabbing Pierre’s
leash and going into the backyard to get the dog from under one of
the large bougainvillea bushes where it usually took an afternoon
nap. “Ok, see you in a bit.” Henry said heading for his office,
“I’m going to log onto the Internet to see what I can find out
about Mr. Thornbird and Alexander homes.”

Henry walked into his office
and pulled the chair out as he sat down at his desk. He moved the
mouse on its pad and the flat panel screen flickered to life. Henry
was proud of his computer station, there were a lot of people his
age that either didn’t know, or refused to use the machines. When
he was still working, Henry had insisted that the Eagle River
police department take advantage of the new technology and his
force was one of the first in Wisconsin to have terminals in their
police cruisers.

He had continued this
professional philosophy to his personal use and started using a
computer at home to pay his bills, write letters and surf the
Internet quite a few years ago. Shortly after moving into this
house, he bought the machine and had the high speed Internet
connection installed so that he could be as well informed as
possible. When he started working for the FBI as a profiler, he
realized that he couldn’t do it without the machine and the fast
connection.

Now, he brought up his
browser and surfed over to realtor.com. He used the website when
shopping for his own house and knew that he could use it to see all
the homes that Rex Thornbird had been trying to sell before his
unfortunate demise in the house on Granvia Valmonte.

By typing in the zip code
for Palm Springs and doing a search of the properties for sale,
Henry quickly had a full list of every home that was offered by
numerous realtors and agencies in the neighborhood. Sure enough, of
all the listings within this zip code, it looked as though
Thornbird and Coachella Real Estate had over eighty percent of
them. He looked up the house on Granvia Valmonte where he had been
that morning with Wayne and found in the description that it was
owned by Rudy Vallee as Rosie had mentioned.

Many of the homes that were
listed by Thornbird contained references to ownership or occupancy
by celebrities. Some of them seemed a little far fetched, like a
home on Tacheva that had been owned my Patsy Cline. Henry wasn’t
sure that Patsy Cline had ever been to California, much less Palm
Springs, but the décor in the house was described in the listing as
very western, so he supposed it could be possible.

After looking through the
various descriptions, he thought he heard Charles and Pierre return
from their walk, but he wasn’t through reading everything about the
various homes. By the time he got up, he realized that it was
getting dark outside and Charles had left a note on the
refrigerator that he had gone out and wouldn’t be back until
later.

It had cooled off
considerably outdoors, where the temperature was a very comfortable
74 degrees and Henry opened up the doors from the dining room to
the pool. While he had already swam his laps in the morning, he
decided to relax in the pool before dinner and headed to his
bedroom to get his towel. He turned the stereo on and flipped the
switch so that he could listen to the speakers outside. He loved
the pool, it was one of the nicest things about the desert climate,
he certainly would not have bothered with one in
Wisconsin.

It was about eight o’clock
that evening when Henry finally ate dinner. He had been to Jensen’s
supermarket on Sunrise Way the day before and bought salad makings
at their extensive salad bar. He had quite a bit left over and it
was in a container at the bottom of the refrigerator. He took it
out, arranged it on a plate, poured on some dressing and grabbed a
bottle of California white wine from the refrigerator. He sat at
the dining room table, ate his salad and drank his glass of wine
thinking that Charles was right about looking into Thornbird’s past
customers. Even Rosie had said that not all of them were
satisfied.

He finished his salad, drank
the last of his wine and brought his plate and glass to the sink.
He rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher with the dishes from
the omelet lunch that he and Charles shared earlier in the day. He
dried off his hands and remembered that he left the flyer that he
picked up on the way home from Coachella Real Estate in the car. He
went out to the garage and picked the paper up from the big
Mercury’s passenger seat. He headed for his bedroom and closed the
door and switched on his television. He sat down on the bed and
looked at the flyer. He’d picked it up from in front of a home on
Via Miraleste, just around the corner. It was from Coachella Real
Estate and had a small copy of Rex Thornbird’s picture on it. It
featured a three bedroom, two bathroom house and had a description
on the flyer:

Rex Thornbird, the
mid-century specialist and Coachella Real Estate are proud to
feature this newly renovated home in the desirable Ruth Hardy Park
neighborhood. Enjoy this exquisite home with practical layout and
charm from a bygone era when gas was cheap and homes were
constructed with quality. The kitchen is renovated and features
modern appliances and new countertops. The backyard is
professionally landscaped; the pool was recently re-plastered and
is ready for your use. This home is in move in condition and will
not last long at this amazing price. Call Rex Thornbird today to
arrange a personal tour of this beautiful executive
home.