Undercurrent (The Nameless Detective) by Bill Pronzini Page B

large drives that intersected out on the tip of the point. I turned off San Lucas and found it all right, and the Lomax estate came up on the left midway along.
    One of those old-fashioned black-iron fences that look like connected rows of upright spears stretched away on both sides of a meandering entrance lane; the iron gates which normally would bar admittance to the grounds were standing open. I turned in and followed the lane through half an acre of moss-laced pine and carefully arranged ferns and rock terracing and miniature stone waterfalls that fed into glistening water-lilied pools. You half expected to see naiads and wood sprites cavorting in the ribbons of sunlight filtering through the tree branches. A Disney-world, created for fanciful children—or for nostalgic adults.
    The drive leveled out finally on the floor of a tiny valley, with a solid wall of pine gently inclined to the rear and around on the left. The house was situated in the middle of the glen—a sprawling, modern, country-style home constructed of redwood and fieldstone, adorned by long eaves and high chimneys and old-bronze fittings. There was a flagstone terrace enclosed by moss-covered stone walls at the right, and beyond that more of the storybook landscaping; on the other side I could see a mesh-screened tennis court, floored in a thin layer of reddish-brown loam. A man and a woman were working a new tennis ball back and forth across a chain-link net, with the kind of fluid ease that comes from long practice and a genuine enthusiasm for the game. They were both dressed in solid white—the man in shorts and an Italian knit pullover; the woman in a short pleated tennis skirt and a sleeveless blouse—and they made a sharp contrast against the burnt-sienna color of the court, the dark greens and browns of the pines of the glade slopes.
    I parked my car in front of the terrace wall, next to a new forest-green Mercedes. As I got out, a dark-haired little boy of five or six, wearing dungarees and a striped T-shirt, came running across the terrace and jumped up onto the moss-topped wall. He said "Hi!" exuberantly.
    "Hi, guy."
    "I've got a pet rabbit. Want to see him?"
    "Well, maybe a little later."
    "My name's Tommy Lomax. What's yours?"
    I told him.
    "My rabbit's name is Bugs," he said. He jumped down off the wall. "I'm feeding him carrots."
    "Good for you."
    He gave me a gap-toothed grin and ran back across the terrace again. I watched him out of sight, and then I turned, smiling a little, and followed a flagstone path through a facing rock-and-lady-fern garden, toward the tennis court.
    The couple had stopped playing now and had come over to stand by the entrance to the enclosure. The guy had his racket turned horizontally, and he was bouncing the fuzzy white ball up and down on it like one of those rubber-band-and-rubber-ball paddle sets you used to see the kids playing with. He was about thirty-five, I saw as I approached, lean and trim and athletic and tanned; he wore a neatly barbered mustache, of the same rust-brown color as his razor-cut hair, and he had a Kirk Douglas cleft in the middle of his chin and an expression of mild curiosity on the good-natured mouth above it. The woman stood relaxed, arms down at her sides. Pale-gold hair—lighter than Judith Paige's, pulled into a horsetail and tied with a white ribbon—accentuated features as tanned as the guy's: button nose, quiet blue eyes, the kind of soft, small mouth that would smile often. She was very slim, with narrow hips, long coltish legs, apple-shaped breasts. They made a nice couple, standing there like that: health and perpetual youth, clean bodies and clean minds.
    The woman said, "Hello," and smiled questioningly at me as I stepped up to the gate entrance.
    "Mr. and Mrs. Lomax?"
    "Yes," the guy said. "I don't believe we've had the pleasure?"
    "No, we haven't." I introduced myself, and waited—but neither of them seemed to recognize my name; it was possible that they had not