Double

Arthur Darrow was listed in the local telephone directory — a number on Pointing Rock Road. Darrow was the only lead I had out here; if McCone had come to Borrego Springs yesterday, she’d probably have looked him up. The station attendant told me how to get to Pointing Rock Road. He also told me that as far as he knew, there was no House of Slenderizing and Massage or any other health club in town. No clubs of any kind, he said, except for the De Anza Country Club and the new Ram’s Hill Country Club.

The Darrow house turned out to be nestled up against the De Anza Country Club’s golf course, with its backside abutting one of the greens. It wasn’t quite what I’d expected, somehow: a smallish hacienda-style place, with a low brick wall in front that sported a couple of old wagon wheels for decoration. The yard behind the wall had a patch of lawn, some dwarf palms and yucca trees, a lot of prickly-pear cactus, and two orange trees heavy with fruit. Still, the place had the look of money. Whoever Arthur Darrow was, he didn’t have to worry about where his next meal was coming from.

I parked the rental car in front. In the adjacent driveway was a newish Chevy pickup with the words MILNE GARDENING SERVICE painted on its door; a big man wearing a blue shirt with the same words on its back was kneeling in front of one of the orange trees, trimming the grass around it with a pair of hand clippers. I went up the path past him to the narrow front porch and rang the bell. Nobody answered. I rang it again, waited a while longer, and then turned and went down the path and over to the gardener. He hadn’t paid any attention to me up to then, and he didn’t pay much to me now.

“Afternoon,” I said. “I’m looking for Arthur Darrow. Or his wife. Would you know where I could find either of them?”

He stood up, dragged a handkerchief out of his back pocket, and mopped his sweaty face. He was in his sixties, sun-creased and in better physical condition than I was. A pair of mild gray eyes gave me a brief appraising look. “You don’t look like one of their friends,” he said. He didn’t seem to mean it as an insult.

“I’m not. It’s a business matter.”

“They’re not here,” he said.

“So I gathered. Can you tell—”

“Hawaii,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“They’re in Hawaii. Another vacation.”

“When did they leave?”

“Last week. They go to places like that three or four times a year — stay a month. Must be nice to have money.”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said.

“Neither would I.”

There was something in his tone that indicated he didn’t like his employers much. Maybe because Darrow was rich; maybe for some other reason. Which was probably why he was so willing to tell a stranger — who might be Raffles, the international jewel thief, for all he knew — that the Darrows were away in Hawaii on an extended visit.

I asked him, “Did you happen to be working here yesterday? I’m also trying to find a young woman who might have stopped by...”

“Nope,” he said. “Wednesdays and Saturdays are my days.”

“I see.”

“Ask Mrs. Flowers.”

“Who would she be?”

“Housekeeper. Lives in. She knows everything.” He didn’t like Mrs. Flowers much either.

“She’s not here now,” I said.

“No. Went shopping or something.”

“Any idea when she’ll be back?”

“Nope. Maybe she took the day off.”

“When the cats are away,” I said.

“Huh?” he said.

I left him and went back to the rental car and sat there for a time. So the Darrows were in Hawaii and had been for a week; if McCone had come here yesterday, she’d probably have discovered the same thing. So then what would she have done? Hung around to check out that club angle, probably. But what club? Not the country club over there, or the other one in town; she’d seemed to think the club Beddoes and the Darrows belonged to was some kind of health spa. Only there wasn’t a health club in Borrego Springs, according to the gas station attendant...

I kept sitting there, looking at the house. And pretty soon I realized why it wasn’t what I’d expected: those photographs I’d found in Jim Lauterbach’s office, in his file on Elaine Picard. An odd-looking house in the desert, at least semi-isolated, with an old spur track and the remains of a water tower and a loading dock not far away. When Darrow’s name came up, along with the fact that he lived in Borrego Springs, I had made the same kind of false assumption I’d made about Nancy Pollard being Timmy’s mother — that the house in the photos must be Darrow’s house.

All right, it wasn’t. Then whose was it?

I got out of the car again and went back through the front gate to where the gardener was. He wasn’t happy to see me back; but then he wasn’t unhappy either. He looked blank when I asked him about the place in the photos — until I mentioned the spur track and the ruins nearby. Then he rubbed at his creased face and began to nod.

“You must mean the old Matthews place,” he said. “Funny-looking house, looks like a big toadstool grew up out of the ground after a rain?”

“Something like that. You say somebody named Matthews owns it?”