Chapter 4
While waiting for the police, I searched the mansion's upper levels. Three huge bedrooms occupied the top floor. Two shared a common bath, across the back of the house. They were adorned with matching twin beds, a desk, a bureau and an armoire, all in Spanish style. The common bath contained new towels and neatly wrapped bars of soap; the kind found in expensive hotels. The white porcelain sinks and tub were clean and dry. Moreover, the air had a closed, musty smell that meant the bath had not been used in some time. I moved on.
An expansive master bedroom suite ambled across the front of the mansion. It was expensively furnished in French provincial with a highboy, a dressing table and chair, a fainting chaise, several wingbacks as well as a finely chiseled four-poster bed. The latter's sheets were blue silk, stained and rumpled from recent use.
I went over to the bed and examined the pillowcases. These were streaked with red lipstick and makeup in at least two distinct shades. Each was dappled with several blond hairs of equally dissimilar hues. I leaned over and sniffed one pillow. It held the faint scents of Shalimar and lavender. I raised my eyes as something shiny overhead caught my attention. Attached to the ceiling, was a mattress-sized mirror. Whatever else Eli may have been, he was a man who knew how to enjoy himself on his back.
Louvered white doors to my left concealed a walk-in closet. Within, tailored suits hung in a long row on one side to form a rainbow display in wool's, silks and tweeds. Opposite were built-in cabinets loaded with stacks of laundered shirts, crisply starched and neatly folded, awaiting their owner's selection. And on the closet's marble floor, steel racks supported dozens of custom-made boots, and shoes. Enviously I eyed a pair of black and white brogues. Eli's premature death would come as a terrible shock to his clothiers.
Across the room, sliding glass opened onto a tree-shaded balcony. I headed over and went out, again facing the sun's intense heat. Four white, wicker, chairs and an umbrella table cuddled a black wrought-iron railing. On the tabletop, a sterling coffee service for two glinted back at sun. Coffee dregs curdled in the bottoms of each cup. The lip of one was smeared with red lipstick. Between the full ashtray and dirty glasses on the main floor, the pillowcases on the bed, and the coffee service before me, I was getting a clearer picture of that cleaning woman. Perhaps not to the level Eli had enjoyed in the mirror above his bed, but close.
I went over to the railing and stared toward the front of the mansion. From that vantage point, I could see the hedge by which Eli's body lay, as well as the entire length of the asphalt approach-road. I could not see the body itself. If the cleaning woman had been out here when Eli's killer arrived, she would have seen the car. She also may have left in it—whether the choice had been hers was up for grabs.
White scuffmarks on the lower rung of the railing caught my attention: possibly from shoe polish. Within arms-reach of the railing was a tall eucalyptus tree. Several branches were freshly broken, as if someone had taken a desperate escape route to the ground. My mind's eye gave me a picture of a naked woman scrambling down the trunk, her unused vacuum strapped defiantly to her bare back. I made a mental note to check on cleaning services when I returned home.
On the second floor, loud snoring lured me past a ballroom and a music room to a rich man's rendition of a snooker parlor; replete with half a dozen maroon Harvard chairs. The boxer occupying one was now a man with few worries. One of his arms cuddled an empty fifth of scotch like it was a newborn baby, the other draped over his eyes. Near his feet was a well-supplied liquor cart. With his brother's death, Leon had become a man of quiet leisure.
Dead On Page 4