the Golden Orange (1990)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "It was built in the heyday of California architecture," Tess explained. "Nineteen twenty-eight."

  The house had small single windows covered with iron grilles, and a green awning, held by wrought-iron pikes, sheltering the front door. Winnie smelled real jasmine like Tess's perfume, and saw a pergola with trellises covered with bougain-villea. There were stables to the right, just past the motor court, in keeping with the architecture of the house but obviously built in recent years. Winnie could see a white horse poking its face through the window of its stall.

  "Who owns this place? Zorro?"

  "It was my father's weekend home," Tess said. "Which he called El Refugio. His refuge."

  "Who owns it now?"

  "My father's friend, Warner Still well."

  "He buy it?"

  "My father left it to him."

  "To a friend? Why didn't you get it?"

  "I got some money," she said. "Enough to survive on, Daddy thought. Come on, let's look at the stables. I want you to meet my pals."

  As Winnie and Tess crossed the motor court, the shaggy barrels of dried fronds beneath the green of three gigantic Mexican fan palms rustled in the wind. Winnie and Tess had to turn away from a gust that suddenly burst through the canyon, capriciously exploding into whirling dust devils in the open desert beyond. When the wind became still, lavender petals from the bougainvillea littered the grass beneath the pergola.

  "Desert breezes," she said. "Unpredictable. And these mountains? I never feel safe here. Flash floods, burning heat, sudden gusts of parched wind. The desert gives me a sense of... foreboding."

  The stable was cool and shaded. A horse whinnied, then another. They walked past several empty stalls before Winnie saw the white Arabian horse. She poked her dish-face at him and batted her brown eyes. He patted her nose gingerly. When she tried to nibble his fingers, Winnie jerked his hands away and Tess laughed.

  "She won't bite," Tess said. "Sally's a love. She doesn't see many people anymore. Just needs to be ridden."

  They passed two more stalls and a loud snort startled him. Tess walked to the stall door and said, "Hello, handsome."

  He was a huge horse, seventeen hands high. Silver with a black mane and a white star on his forehead.

  Tess reached for his head and whispered to him, "How's my big boy? How're they treating you?"

  "You wouldn't have any silly thoughts going round in that busy brain a yours, would you, Tess?" Winnie said. "About me riding that brute?"

  "You'll be riding Sally. I'm riding Dollar." Then she turned to the silver horse and said, "You still love me, don't you, handsome?"

  "Last horse I rode was on the merry-go-round at the Balboa Fun Zone. I was drunk and fell off. Didn't know horses got this big 'less they were pulling beer wagons on TV. He's some stallion."

  "Gelding," she said. "Used to be a stallion, but he was unmanageable. Once he kicked the door off his stall and ran all the way down to the fire station. Took my father five hours to get him home. And still Daddy refused to geld him."

  "What changed his mind?"

  "Dollar kicked Warner and broke his femur. Then he bit me on the hand. Had to have sutures."

  "That did it?"

  Tess took Winnie's arm and began walking back to the motor court. "No, that didn't do it. My father was a great romantic. He'd never have gelded that animal. I did it when Daddy was on a winter cruise with Warner. I tamed Dollar. Daddy was furious of course, but then, I never could please him."

  When they got to the cactus garden in front of the house, an old Mexican in a cowboy hat turned the corner, pushing a load of manure in a wheelbarrow.

  "Miss Tess!" he said.

  "Jaime, this is Mister Farlowe," she said.

  Winnie smiled, put out his hand and said, "Winnie's my name."

  The old man wiped his hand on his jeans, pumped Winnie's hand and said, "Hello, sir. Happy to meet you."

  Tess continued walking Winnie toward the house, saying, "Jaime, we're going to have lunch and a swim, and late this afternoon I'd like you to put the tack on Sally and Dollar."

  "Yes, Miss Tess," the old man said. "Will you need me on the ride?"

  "No, we won't need a vaquero behind Mister Farlowe," Tess grinned. "He'll show Sally who's boss."

  "Oh, my!" Winnie said, following Tess into the house. "Does Sally need a boss? Oh, my!"

  Three steps led down into the large living room, which looked even larger because of the adzed open-beamed ceiling. The boards between the beams were stenciled with decorative Moorish patterns. There was a huge fireplace, and Navajo rugs covered the large red Mexican tiles on the floor. The house was full of Southwestern art, Indian artifacts and potted palm and cactus.

  There was a partner's desk by a window with leather executive chairs on each side of it. Beside the fireplace were two well-worn comfortable leather easy chairs, side by side: matching chairs with ottomans.

  They walked back to the foyer, where the ceiling was low enough for Winnie to see the hand-adzing on the beams.

  "I'm speechless," he said.

  "Daddy had taste," Tess said. "The architect who built this was famous for many houses in Beverly Hills and Pasadena. He'built this one for my grandfather actually, but Daddy redecorated it, oh, about thirty-five years ago. Very little's been changed since then."

  "I'd never leave here," Winnie said, "if it was mine."

  "Oh yes you would," she said. "You haven't experienced a desert summer. Come on, I'll show you the rest."

  Tess's shoes clicked on the red tiles that covered the entire ground floor of the rambling great house, which was mostly in shadows now that the afternoon sun was passing the Santa Rosas. There was a long heavy wooden table in the center of the dining room, with padded leather side chairs. There was a small table off in the corner of the dining room with barrel chairs and cushions covered by a woven Indian design. This corner could be lit by the wrought-iron floor lamp and used as an intimate nook for dining away from the main table.

  Tess noticed Winnie looking at the little table for two, and she said, "That little table wasn't here when I was a girl. When my mother was alive."

  The kitchen was surprisingly small, given the scale of the house. But Tess explained that the architects of California's Golden Age didn't worry about kitchens, in that the lady of the house wouldn't be doing much work in there anyway. Meal preparation was for servants.

  "We're all alone in the house," Tess said. "Lauro and Alicia won't be back till Sunday. They've taken care of this place since nineteen forty-nine. They're even older than Jaime. The whole place is old. Sometimes it makes me feel old."

  "It makes me feel like I'm in an old black-and-white movie!" Winnie said. "I'm crazy about it! So where's the guy that owns the place?"

  "Warner's not in good health. He goes to the hospital from time to time. I phoned and got his permission to use the ranch for a few days. He's good about that. Any time I want the place, I just have to phone. He has a cottage in Laguna Beach where he goes, and leaves this place to me."

  "How often do you come?"

  "Last time was two years ago," she said. "Or was it three? I had a sudden urge to ride with my father. But Daddy said he was getting too old to ride. That trip wasn't a pleasant one."

  "Think they might have a beer in the fridge?" Winnie looked at his watch, making sure it was late enough to drink. Late enough had come to mean after 11:30 a. M., which was close enough to lunch-time, the hour that Golden Orange high-rollers guzzled booze at power lunches. Or so Winnie supposed.

  "Now for the most dangerous part of this holiday," Tess said, opening the double doors of the refrigerator. "And I don't mean horseback riding. I mean eating my cooking. Grab a beer. No, grab two, and get yourself out to the pool for twenty minutes while I create."

  The 2,500-square-foot patio was guarded on three sides by the walls of the house, with lemon and grapefruit trees partially enclosing the fourth side. A swimming pool was in the center, a classic oval design, bordered wit
h multicolored ceramic tiles. The pool was spotlessly clean and had an ancient diving board set into the deck with polished brass fittings. Winnie was sure of one thing. Someone had loved this house and still did.

  He couldn't decide between a chaise or a hammock. Finally he decided on the hammock by an overhanging balcony with a dark wooden balustrade. The terrace on that balcony appeared to belong to an upstairs bedroom and was overgrown with jasmine. The smell was more intoxicating than booze.

  The last time Winnie had tried a hammock was in Nam, and he'd been a lot thinner then. He tested the lines that secured the thing to a pair of Indian laurels seventy feet tall, their tangle of limbs entwined as one. It was a custom hammock made of white braided cotton with a blue-striped head pillow, Winnie got into it gingerly, and put one bottle of beer on his chest and the other beside him on the red tile. Potted pink and white hibiscus was flourishing at the base of the Indian laurel trees. The beer was Mexican, appropriate to a house like this.

  Winnie Farlowe decided that no matter what happened, no matter how soon all this with Tess Binder might end, this romantic day in this romantic place was going to be the happiest day of his life. He'd finished the second beer and was dozing, the sway of the hammock putting him to sleep, when he heard Tess open the French doors in the dining room.

  "Come on in!" she yelled. "Let's see how brave you are!"

  When he got inside he found that she'd set two places, one on each end of the dining room table. There was patterned silverware and linen napkins and a chafing dish in the center.

  "I cheated," she said. "When I phoned, I told Alicia to prepare something I could finish up when we got here. So if this is any good, Alicia gets at least half the credit."

  It was. Tess served him chorizo and eggs, and a dish of guacamole on the side with corn tortillas and homemade salsa that he knew a gringa couldn't have made.

  "Love it!" Winnie murmured three times during the lunch. He glanced at the intimate dining area in the corner, perfect for two, and wondered why they'd eaten at the big table. Tess hardly touched a bite.

  "I'll do the dishes," Winnie said when he'd finished.

  "Of course you'll do the dishes, you lazy lout," she said, "while I put our things away in the guest bedroom, the one directly overlooking the pool. After your chores you can go up there and get out of your clothes and I'll meet you on the diving board."

  "Shoulda brought my Speedos," he said. "The swimsuit I brought is the kind that comes off if you dive."

  "Swimsuit? You kidding?" She finished her glass of Chardonnay and headed toward the staircase that had risers decorated with more patterned Mexican tiles.

  By the time Winnie got the dishes into the dishwasher and found his way upstairs to the guest room, he heard a splash. He looked out the French doors and saw Tess Binder, naked, swimming strong laps from one end to the other.

  Much as he wanted to run out there, he couldn't. He'd been a detective too long. Too much was troubling him. He couldn't put it together, and she wasn't telling him everything. He was getting a little at a time-very little. Like many former police detectives, Winnie Farlowe hated mysteries.

  The guest bedroom was spacious and comfortable, undercloseted by modern standards, but the room was large enough for an eight-foot armoire on either side of the twin beds. Twins. Winnie didn't much care for that. He was sure that this was a seldom-used bedroom.

  When he was dressed in his swim trunks and Top-Siders, Winnie wandered down the hall and, on impulse, entered three other rooms. One was a servant's room beside an inside staircase that probably went down to a service porch behind the kitchen. The other two were being used primarily to store things long abandoned: tennis racquets, golf clubs, riding trophies for dressage and show jumping. Winnie examined a few of them and they all bore the name of Tess Binder. As a kid she may have hated riding, but she could do it. He found boxes of books and photo albums, probably stored here after the death of Conrad Binder, and oak filing cabinets, six of them.

  Continuing down the shadowy hallway past a ceramic tile of the Madonna set into the wall, he found a room with the door closed. He opened it a few inches, then nudged the door wide. It was another bedroom, larger than the guest room, and this one had been lived in. For a long time. This was Winnie's kind of room. There was a fireplace in the windowless wall bordered with patterned tile. It was a real fireplace, not a Gold Coast fireplace, blackened and smelling of eucalyptus and oak and ashes. Like the rest of the house, this room was done in Southwestern decor, but it seemed even more masculine than the others. The chairs beside the fireplace sagged with the contoured imprint of a man. Or two men, since there were two chairs side by side. The entire house suggested partnership.

  On the carved walnut mantelpiece were photos in an array of frames, of Tess mostly. But there were lots of pictures of a broad-shouldered handsome man: fishing, playing golf, jumping a black horse, chasing a lob in tennis whites. The man had dark curly hair and a friendly smile. He was various ages in the photos.

  Winnie walked to the four-poster and examined the photograph on the lamp table by the window.

  It was the same man, but he was nearly sixty in this one. He wore an ascot and a white long-sleeved cotton shirt with epaulets. He wore breeches and boots. He had aged very well indeed. He had his arm around Tess, who was about thirty years old. He looked at her like a loving father would.

  Winnie entered the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. Empty. He opened the drawers under the tiled countertops and it was the same. No one had lived in this bedroom for some time.

  Before he left the room he opened the armoire and found suits and blazers, cleaned and pressed and hung neatly. This had obviously been Conrad Binder's room. Winnie was beginning to admire that handsome, stylish, athletic man in the photographs. But the man didn't look anything like Tess. Winnie expected to find a painting or photo of Tess's mother, but there was none. No pictures of a woman except for Tess herself.

  There was one last bedroom at the end of the hall. The door was closed, but what the hell, he'd gone this far. Winnie turned the heavy brass knob and pushed the door open. Another bedroom, also masculine, but this one without a fireplace. This one had the drapes thrown wide, which offered a dramatic mountain view with the desert in the foreground. He could hear Tess still splashing in the pool, for the French doors were open onto that jasmine-covered balcony overlooking the patio.

  More photos. Photos everywhere. Covering the bureau, on the dressers, blanketing the walls. And above the king-sized bed there was an oil painting, a portrait of a middle-aged man in a dark blue three-piece business suit. He sat on the edge of an enormous desk in the standard mogul pose. Behind him in the portrait was a wall of windows through which whitecaps crested on the ocean. The painting suggested a tall office building in The Golden Orange, overlooking the Pacific.

  There were some shots of Tess, but most were of this man at various times in his life. In the earliest ones he looked to be about thirty-five, a more sedentary man than the dark, curly-haired athlete in the other bedroom. In most he poised quietly, often with a book in his hands or one resting beside him on the pool deck,, or, in one photo, in his lap as he sat sunning himself on the deck of a cruise ship. This man was also handsome, but fairer. His hair had turned silver in the later photographs. Tess Binder looked a lot like this man, except that in the close-ups, you could see that his eyes were pale blue. In one, presumably the latest, the man was perhaps seventy years old.

  Winnie went to the door, listened, but heard nothing except Tess swimming relentlessly. He entered the bathroom and found that it was like the one in the adjoining bedroom. There was a tub, a shower stall, a tile counter with drawers and a medicine cabinet. Winnie opened the cabinet. It contained toiletries and medication of various sorts, mostly over-the-counter stuff. He examined a prescription and saw that it was a blood pressure drug issued by a Doctor G. Lutz in Palm Desert for Mr. Warner D. Stillwell.

  Before he left the bedroom Winnie found a p
hoto he'd almost overlooked. It was on a small reading table on the window side of the king-sized bed. There was a reading glass and two financial journals on the table. Winnie picked up the photograph and examined it in the light.

  They were young then, probably in their late thirties. Warner Stilwell and Conrad Binder-the man whose photos and portraits filled this room-were clowning on the diving board just below this master bedroom. They wore swimsuits, and Conrad Binder had on tennis shoes. He was pretending to be losing his balance while Warner Stillwell pretended to be pushing him into the pool. They were both fit and tan, having a very good time.

  Winnie put the photo down, left Warner Stillwell's bedroom and closed the door. He was feeling depressed and anxious and suddenly sad. Now this didn't seem like a place for a fantasy weekend. Now this seemed like a real house where two men had grown old together. And now there was only one.

  When Winnie got downstairs he found Tess standing naked on the diving board, panting from the mini-marathon she'd just swum. She was looking down on him with those impenetrable gray eyes, so unlike the transparent blue eyes of her father. Licking water drops off her lips, she stood there as if to say, Well?

  She was so smooth and tan, so firm and strong from the waist down that Winnie unconsciously hid behind the bath towel he was carrying.

  "Win, what're you doing in swim trunks?" she demanded with a little grin.

  "Helps me hold my gut in," he said. "I got the drawstrings so tight, my eyeballs ache."

  "Take those things off and let it all hang out!" Tess commanded. Then she laughed, took two steps, leaped straight up on the spring board, and did a one and a half, cutting the water with hardly a ripple.

  "Kee-rist!" Winnie said, shuffling to the hammock and plopping himself into it. Suddenly his lower back was hurting.

  Tess erupted from the pool in one lithe movement, pulled herself up to the pool deck and crossed the grass toward him, sweeping her butterscotch hair back behind her flat tiny ears.