The desert air is hot with sex and betrayal, death and madness and only Detective Lew Archer can make sense of a killer who makes murder a work of art. Finding a purloined portrait of a leggy blonde was supposed to be an easy paycheck for Archer, but that was before the bodies began piling up. Suddenly, Archer find himself smack in the middle of a decades-long mystery of a brilliant artist who walked into the desert and simply disappeared. He left behind a bevy of muses, molls, dolls, and dames-each one scrambling for what they thought was rightfully theirs. The desert air is hot with sex and betrayal, death and madness and only Archer can make sense of a killer who makes murder a work of art. Finding a purloined portrait of a leggy blonde was supposed to be an easy paycheck for Detective Lew Archer, but that was before the bodies began piling up. Suddenly, Archer find himself smack in the middle of a decades-long mystery of a brilliant artist who walked into the desert and simply disappeared. He left behind a bevy of muses, molls, dolls, and dames—each one scrambling for what they thought was rightfully theirs. Ross Macdonald's real name was Kenneth Millar. Born near San Francisco in 1915 and raised in Ontario, Millar returned to the U.S. as a young man and published his first novel in 1944. He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and was awarded their Grand Master Award as well as the Mystery Writers of Great Britain's Gold Dagger Award. He died in 1983. Chapter 1I drove up to the house on a private road that widened at the summit into a parking apron. When I got out of my car I could look back over the city and see the towers of the mission and the courthouse half submerged in smog. The channel lay on the other side of the ridge, partly enclosed by its broken girdle of islands.The only sound I could hear, apart from the hum of the freeway that I had just left, was the noise of a tennis ball being hit back and forth. The court was at the side of the house, enclosed by high wire mesh. A thick-bodied man in shorts and a linen hat was playing against an agile blond woman. Something about the trapped intensity of their game reminded me of prisoners in an exercise yard.The man lost several points in a row and decided to notice my presence. Turning his back on the woman and the game, he came toward the fence."Are you Lew Archer?"I said I was."You're late for our appointment.""I had some trouble finding your road.""You could have asked anybody in town. Everybody knows where Jack Biemeyer lives. Even the planes coming in use my home as a landmark."I could see why. The house was a sprawling pile of white stucco and red tile, set on the highest point in Santa Teresa. The only things higher were the mountains standing behind the city and a red-tailed hawk circling in the bright October sky.The woman came up behind Biemeyer. She looked much younger than he did. Both her narrow blond head and her pared-down middle-aged body seemed to be hyperconscious of my eyes. Biemeyer didn't introduce us. I told her who I was."I'm Ruth Biemeyer. You must be thirsty, Mr. Archer. I know I am.""We won't go into the hospitality routine," Biemeyer said. "This man is here on business.""I know that. It was my picture that was stolen.""I'll do the talking, Ruth, if you don't mind."He took me into the house, his wife following us at a little distance. The air was pleasantly cool inside, though I could feel the weight of the structure surrounding and hanging over me. It was more like a public building than a house--the kind of place where you go to pay your taxes or get a divorce.We trekked to the far side of a big central room. Biemeyer pointed at a white wall, empty except for a pair of hooks on which he said the picture had been hung.I got out my notebook and ball-point pen. "When was it taken?""Yesterday.""That was when I first noticed that it was missing," the woman said. "But I don't come into this room every day.""Is the picture insured?""Not specifically," Biemeyer said. "Of course everything in the house is covered by some insurance.""Just how valuable is the picture?""It's worth a couple of thousand, maybe.""It's worth a lot more than that," the woman said. "Five or six times that, anyway. Chantry's prices have been appreciating.""I didn't know you'd been keeping track of them," Biemeyer said in a suspicious tone. "Ten or twelve thousand? Is that what you paid for that picture?""I'm not telling you what I paid for it. I bought it with my own money.""Did you have to do it without consulting me? I thought you'd gotten over being hipped on the subject of Chantry." She became very still. "That's an uncalled-for remark. I haven't seen Richard Chantry in thirty years. He had nothing to do with my purchase of the picture.""I hear you saying so, anyway."Ruth Biemeyer gave her husband a quick bright look, as if she had taken a point from him in a harder game than tennis. "You're jealous of a dead man."He let out a mirt