the bad news on the radio from Raymond Gram Swing. The Japanese Army was digging into the Pacific Islands, burrowing tunnels, making the troops pay with ten lives an acre for places called Rabaul, Mindanao, Leyte, and Guam, places we didn't want in the first place. We were winning land and the war and losing lives.
I found a gas station, Jimmy Kelly's Gas and Sundries, specializing in Sinclair products and customer disdain. I used up my ration stamps for the week and bought a Pepsi and a small bottle of Bayer aspirin. I threw a handful of aspirin in my mouth and washed it down with Pepsi while the kid attendant shook his head and avoided my eyes.
When I left the station, I wasn't sure if I was on my way to losing the headache or was so full of aspirin that the question wasn't relevant.
Gable's directions to the ranch were fine and I pulled up in front of the modest white-brick two-story house just before noon. I got out of the Crosley and rang the front door bell. No answer. Something hummed far away behind the house. I rang again and then knocked. Nothing.
I looked through the curtained downstairs windows but the sun didn't help the view. So, I walked behind the house and found myself on a stone patio, looking down a slope toward a copse of grapefruit trees on the left and a white wooden stable on the right. The stable looked empty and the trees looked heavy with overripe fruit.
There didn't seem to be a swimming pool.
I knocked at the back door. No answer.
The metallic rumble beyond the stable grew louder. I turned and watched as a motorcycle burst through the trees along a dirt path and shot toward me.
I stood motionless as it buzz-sawed forward at about sixty miles an hour, shot over a small ridge and took off into the air, hit the grass, and screeched to a halt about ten feet in front of me. Gable, dressed in dark slacks and a short-sleeved yellow pullover shirt, his hair wild, turned off the engine, kicked down the stand, got off the bike, and pulled a small rifle from the tooled-leather holster tied to the bike.
'Don't move,' said Gable, cocking the rifle and aiming it at me.
'Look,' I began, and took a step forward.
Gable raised his rifle and fired. The bullet whined past my left leg and I hopped away from it.
'Hey,' I shouted. 'It's me, Peters. I work for you, remember?'
Gable dropped the barrel of the rifle and smiled.
'That's one reason I want you alive,' he said. 'Look.'
I looked where he was pointing, just behind me. On the stone patio, about three feet away, a headless rattlesnake was writhing.
'Hot weather brings 'em out,' said Gable, rubbing his unruly hair back. 'Sun themselves on the stone. You almost stepped on him.'
'Thanks,' I said.
'Let's go inside,' he said, walking past me. 'I'll get rid of our friend later.'
He went to the back door, opened it with a key on a small ring, and went inside. I followed into a huge kitchen.
'Sandwiches hi the refrigerator. Made them this morn-big. Beer, whatever. Help yourself.'
He pointed toward a steel door in the corner.
'Be right back,' he said. 'Set up whatever you find in the dining room, through that door.'
I crossed the kitchen and opened the door to a walk-in refrigerator. I found a plate of sandwiches, cucumber, onion, ham with butter. White bread. There was plenty of beer. I went for a row of Pepsis at the rear of a shelf about eye level. I juggled the food past a kitchen table covered with a white oilcloth decorated with little red flowers, pushed through a double door, and placed the food on the dining-room table. I opened the Pepsi with an opener on my pocket knife and looked around.
The room was dark and big, with an open bar on one wall and a whitewashed brick fireplace on another. The walls were dark wood, as was the polished floor. There was an oval rug under the wooden table and another smaller rug under a round game table in the corner. The chairs were wood, no cushions. This was a man's room except for the built-in cabinets on the walls filled with pink plates. A chandelier over the large table was made of old oil lamps.
'Find what you need?' asked Gable, coming in with the rifle under one arm and a dark wooden box under the other.
I pointed at the food and he sat down across from me, laid down the rifle, and opened the box.
Over the sandwiches I told him what had happened the night before, after he had left the Mozambique. I also told him about Gunther and Mame.
'I know her,' he said. 'Skinny. Tough. Holds her own.'
'That's Mame,' I said. 'We just wait here and…'
'I want you to tell the police that I hired you,' he said, chewing on a mouthful of ham sandwich.
'If I have to,' I said.
'You won't do me a hell of a lot of good in jail,' Gable said.
'Thanks.'
'So,' he said, 'we just sit here and wait till your friend and Mame find Cay-gee and Varney, if they do, and hope your poet pal figures out what the lunatic notes from a murderer might mean?'
'We can take a quick tour of the house,' I said.
He cocked his head to one side and gave me a lopsided grin.
'You curious, or…'
'This is an easy house to get into,' I said. 'Maybe I'm a little curious.'
'Suit yourself,' Gable said, standing and picking up his rifle.
We moved to the south wall and he opened sliding doors and led me into the living room.
In contrast to the Irish-tavern feel of the dining room, the living room was warm and sunny, with wall-to-wall yellow-wool carpeting. Two big yellow sofas faced each other, with two green chairs flanking them, and a pair of identical upholstered red armchairs looking on. There were tables along the wall-wood, dark. The drapes were white and green with red flowers. Four large windows let in the light and looked out onto the front lawn. Across from the windows was an old cabinet, filled with a collection of china pitchers.
'This way,' Gable said, moving past a high-mantled fireplace to a door he pushed open.
We stepped into Gable's gun room; one wall, maybe thirty feet long, was lined with rifles.
'Expecting an attack on Encino?' I asked.
'Not if I can help it,' he said soberly, putting the rifle he had been holding into a rack.
There were lounge chairs and built-in couches in the room but no signs of unwelcome guests.
We marched through a powder room, a maid's room, and an office with yellow walls before making our way upstairs. Two bedrooms, no guest room.
'My suite,' he said, pointing through an open door.
The carpet was clean and white.
The first room was brown and beige; the centerpiece was a double bed with a brown-leather headboard. The second room was a kind of study with a small bar and built-in bookcases.
'Desks against the wall,' he said, pointing. 'Antique, pine, a gift from Selznick, prop from Gone With the Wind.'
The beige-marble bathroom was pretty fancy but it had no tub, just a shower in one corner.
We left the suite and when we stepped into the corridor, he pointed to a door and said with a sigh 'Ma's suite.'
He opened the door for me but didn't follow me inside Carole Lombard's bedroom. The room looked as if it had just been cleaned. It had the same carpeting as that in Gable's suite, but that's where the similarity ended. Her bed was a four-poster with a billowy cover. There were white throw rugs on the floor, and near the window stood a full-sized harp. The bathroom and mirrored dressing room were white marble with white fur on the floor and a crystal chandelier on the ceiling.
'House looks clean,' I said, coming back into the corridor. Gable nodded and started down the stairs.
He led me back to the gun room, where he picked up the rifle he had recently fired, found some oil and rags and a cleaning box, and sat.
'Used to be rilled with life,' he said. 'Stray cats, dogs. People. You're sitting in Fred MacMurray's favorite
