by Albert Simon
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.
“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 allover 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 t
hought 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 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, and 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.”