A Flower in the Desert by Walter Satterthwait Page A

way for a poor little rich girl to travel.”
    Another shrug. “Maybe she thought the alternative was rougher.”

    The house I wanted was on a side road at the top of the mountain. Hidden from the street by a small forest of maples and elms, lying at the apex of a semicircular asphalt driveway, it was a long, low, Spanish-style structure that, if it hadn’t looked as though the peons had finished erecting it just yesterday, might have been built back in the seventeenth century. I parked the rented Chevy and followed the flagstones to the front door, which was about eight feet tall and four feet wide, built of solid oak and braced with strips of antiqued black wrought iron. There was no doorbell. In the center of the door, at chest level, was a wrought iron clapper. I raised it and banged it down once. I half expected the door to be opened by Zorro.
    It was opened by a maid. A real maid, in a real maid’s cute little frilly black outfit that displayed quite a lot of very good leg. She was young and attractive, her features even, her hair in tight black curls, and she was, like maids were supposed to be, extremely pert. But probably, with the kind of salary she made, she could afford to be pert. She cocked her head, smiled, and she said, “Yes? May I help you?” She spoke without a French accent. This was, for me, a major disappointment.
    â€œI’m Joshua Croft,” I told her. “I have an appointment with Mrs. Carpenter.”
    â€œYes,” she said. No accent at all. The neutral, nonregional inflection of a television anchor. She smiled pertly. “Please come in.”

Six
    I FOLLOWED HER DOWN THE HALLWAY, across a living room with a floor big enough and a ceiling high enough for a soccer match, past plush cream-colored furniture and across plush cream-colored carpeting. I didn’t look around for a fax machine, and I was conscious that I wasn’t looking around for a fax machine.
    She stopped before an open pair of French doors and turned to me. “Mrs. Carpenter is waiting for you by the pool.” She gave me another smile and then flounced pertly away. Anxious, no doubt, to get back to her screenplay. Or put in a margin call.
    I stepped through the doors and out onto a redwood deck. Up here, two glass tables, both surrounded by redwood chairs, sat beneath bright yellow parasols. To the left, across a swath of lawn so green it looked as though it had been spray painted this morning, the view of the city was spectacular. Or it would’ve been, if the city—and the sea, which was presumably out there, too, somewhere below the four o’clock sun—hadn’t been buried beneath a blanket of smog. The stuff stretched out to the blur of horizon, sooty and yellow and somehow threatening, like a vast alien creature slumbering while it waited for feeding time.
    Straight ahead, however, the view actually was spectacular. Lying on a white towel atop a redwood chaise, in front of a brilliant aquamarine swimming pool, was a slender woman. Her hair was thick and red. She wore a bikini bottom that was almost as large as a slingshot, and she wore a dark, even tan, and she wore nothing else. Her left hand was draped across her eyes, her hand hanging free, fingers limp. I admired the curve of her wrist very much. I admired all her curves, and she had quite a lot of them.
    I crossed the deck, went down two steps to the lawn, and crossed that. “Mrs. Carpenter?” I said.
    She moved her arm, turned her head, and slowly looked me up and down as though she were trying to guess my weight, or assess my stamina. Feline cheekbones, dark green feline eyes, a wide red mouth. “Croft?” she said.
    I admitted that I was.
    She nodded toward a redwood chair. “Grab a seat.”
    I sat.
    She was somewhere in her thirties, maybe even in her forties, but she was fighting it, and she was winning. She was in remarkable shape, so far as I could see, and just then I could