“How was Liora’s date?” Edie asked fifteen minutes later. We’d finished the first game, which she’d won, and were starting the second, exchanging tiles. “Does anybody know?”
“She’ll go out again,” Gitty said, “but she doesn’t feel any chemistry.” Gitty’s only four years older than Liora, and the two have much in common.
“At least she’s giving him a second chance.” Edie discarded a tile. “Molly won’t do that much for Zachary Abrams.”
“We’re going out tomorrow night.”
“You didn’t tell me.” Edie looked up from her tiles.
“So how is he?” Mindy smiled.
“He’s nice.” I felt myself blushing.
“I thought you weren’t going out with him again,” Edie said.
“I changed my mind. When’s your next appointment, Mindy?” See how smoothly I segue?
“Thursday. I’m hoping I won’t be late this time, although I’m not rushing to go to the hospital. A woman was killed there last week.”
“Imagine not being safe in a hospital.” Gitty shuddered.
“They’re not sure it’s murder,” Edie said. “It may be suicide. She was pregnant.”
“Why would she kill herself?” Gitty asked.
“According to the Times article, she had postpartum psychosis after her last child.” Edie passed me three tiles. “She killed him. He was two months old.”
“Oh, my God!” Gitty exclaimed. “How awful!”
“I guess she got what she deserved,” Edie said.
“How can you say that?” Mindy demanded. “She was ill. She didn’t know what she was doing.”
Edie snorted. “Most women have postpartum depression. I did. You did. You get over it.”
“We had the baby blues, not depression, certainly not psychosis. We were lucky, Edie. I have a friend who had postpartum depression. It took her a year to get over it, and that was with therapy and medication.”
“Who?” Edie asked.
“What’s the difference?” Mindy said, annoyed. Like Liora, she’s careful about not gossiping. “She was miserable. She never slept, and she had these fears that she was going to put the baby in the microwave, which made her feel horribly guilty. That’s when she knew she needed help.”
I winced at the image.
“Exactly,” Edie said. “You get help. You don’t kill your child. That’s just another excuse the lawyers are using.”
“She was depressed, not psychotic. And what if you don’t know you need help?” Mindy demanded. “It’s easy for you to say—you’ve never been there.”
“Well, you certainly don’t get pregnant again if you can’t handle being a mother.” Edie, as you may have guessed, would easily pull the lever on Andrea Yates.
“Actually, I talked to Lenore Saunders’s ex-husband,” I said. “He says Lenore was ill, that she really didn’t mean to kill their child.”
That stopped the game. I told them the whole story, from the time I’d read about Lenore in the police report through my afternoon talk with Connors.
“So what do the police think?” Gitty asked.
“They think she committed suicide, but I’m not sure. I also don’t know what to make of Lenore. Her best friend thinks she walks on water. Jillian says she’s a scheming, manipulative witch.”
“Well, of course Jillian hates her.” Edie made a face. “She was about to be dumped a second time. She sounds like a snob.”
“She reminds me of Karen Beymer,” Mindy said. “She was in charge of seating for the school banquet this year and offered to put me at a great table. I said, please put me with Sally and Helene, and she said, well, if you want to sit with your pauper friends.” She wrinkled her nose.
We all groaned, then resumed play.
“What about the ex–mother-in-law?” Edie asked, discarding a tile. “Six Crak. She might not have wanted Lenore back in the family.”
I remembered the look of intense hatred I’d seen on Maureen Saunders’s face. “She’s on my shortlist. I want to talk to Lenore’s mom about her, and about Lenore, but we’ve been playing phone tag the past few days.” I’d dialed her number several times before coming to Mindy’s, but her line had been busy. She was probably making funeral arrangements. “I want to stop by her house on my way home.”
“Five Dot.” Mindy tossed a tile onto the table. “That late?”
“I want the five Dot.” Edie placed the tile on the ledge of her rack and added two five Dots from her hand, then discarded a tile. “Eight Crak.”
“Actually, I was thinking of leaving at a quarter to ten,” I said, discarding a Flower. “She lives five minutes from here.” Nina had given me the address, on Stearns between Olympic and Pico.
“And ruin the game?” Edie frowned.
“Sorry.” We usually play until eleven. “I thought Sally would be here. I’m really anxious to talk to Lenore’s mom about Saunders.”
“Is he the Saunders who wants to build a large complex in the Santa Monica Mountains?” Mindy asked.
I nodded. “Why?”
“One of my clients invested with him, but was thinking of pulling out. He heard that Saunders is having trouble with the EPA.”
“The environmental guys? I thought it was the zoning commission.”
“Can we talk later, please?” Edie said.
“Maybe it’s both,” Mindy said. “Saunders told him not to worry. Apparently, he has a magic touch.”
“Or he knows what palms to grease.” I thought about what Nina had said. “Would your client be willing to talk to me?”
“I’ll ask him.”
Gitty picked a tile. “Mah jongg.”
“I was one away,” Edie groused.
The lights in Betty Rowan’s house were on, a blue Honda Civic was in the driveway, but she didn’t answer the door.
Her line had been busy when I’d phoned before leaving Mindy’s. I tried her number again now on my cell phone. Still busy. A little late to be making funeral calls.
Twenty-four hours had passed since she’d phoned, anxious to talk to me. Maybe I’d read anxiety into her voice. Maybe her phone was out of order, or off the hook. Maybe she’d changed her mind about talking to me, or someone had changed it for her.
It was ten after ten. I walked to the house of the neighbor on the right and rang the bell. A minute later the privacy window opened, and a man asked me what I wanted.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I said. “I’ve been trying to reach Mrs. Rowan since last night, and her line’s been busy. I’m wondering if you’ve seen her today.”
“Let me ask my wife.”
I waited another minute for the wife, who told me through the privacy window that she hadn’t seen Betty since yesterday afternoon.
“She lost her daughter,” the woman said. “I expect she’s feeling poorly. Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”
A feeling of unease was creeping up my spine. “Do you by any chance have a key to her house?”
“I don’t. You can try the neighbor on the other side, Zena Lopost. She and Betty are friendly. I hope she’s okay,” the woman added before shutting the little window.
I hoped so, too. The unease was spreading like an oil slick.
Zena Lopost had a key. “We thought it’d be a good idea, swapping keys, in case one of us got locked out or something. Why, is something wrong?”
From her voice I guessed she was somewhere around Betty Rowan’s age. “I don’t know.” I repeated what I’d told the other neighbor. “Mrs. Rowan left several messages saying she needed to talk to me about her daughter, Lenore. So I’m worried.”
Zena opened her door. She was older than her voice, probably in her mid-fifties. She was wearing a short zip-up, yellow cotton robe with white daisies and Dr. Scholl sandals. Her faded graying brown hair was in a braid that hung down her back, and her plain face was scrubbed free of makeup, if in fact she’d worn any. She told me she’d been in bed when I’d rung the bell.
&
nbsp; “She was jittery yesterday,” Zena said. “More than Friday. I was watching the TV with her when they said on the news that maybe Lenore was killed. She looked white as a sheet and started shaking. I don’t know what’s worse, knowing that your child killed herself, or that someone did it to her.”
I had no answer for that.
“You’re thinking that . . .” Zena didn’t finish the sentence. “Let me get the key.”
She was a tall, sturdy woman, and I was glad to have her at my side. We tramped over to Betty Rowan’s house, two figures silhouetted by the moonlight. We hadn’t exchanged a word since she’d stepped out of her house, and I imagine we looked the same, eyes staring grimly straight ahead, lips clamped together, hearts beating a little too fast.
Zena Lopost inserted the key, her hand steadier than mine would have been. She turned the knob, and the door groaned open as we stepped into a small living room, the way it does in a horror movie. Maybe it would’ve been funny under other circumstances, but it wasn’t funny now.
The house was frigid with air-conditioning. Zena called Betty’s name, then called her again, louder and shriller, I thought, the sounds echoing in the high-ceilinged room. We looked at each other then, communicating our unspoken fear, nodding. She followed me down a narrow hall through an empty bedroom into an adjoining bath, where Betty Rowan lay in the tub, the blood from one slashed wrist pinking the water while the other dangled over the side of the tub, fingers pointing to the spattered dark magenta drops and pink-handled razor on the black-and-white-tiled floor.
twenty-eight
Tuesday, July 22. 1:01 A.M. 4200 block of Fountain Avenue. An assailant told the victim, “You better go with us on a drive-by. You don’t have to do anything but you have to be in the car with us. If you don’t I’ll kill you or your mother.” (Hollywood)
I don’t think I’ve ever been as tired as when I got home from the station. I’d phoned Connors, even though Betty Rowan’s house was in Wilshire Division’s jurisdiction. Zena and I sat like statues on the living room sofa while we waited for him to show up, which was five minutes after two uniformed police and about ten minutes after the paramedics, although from the smell in the room and the quick look I stole at Betty’s grayed face before I gagged and backed away, almost knocking Zena down, I could tell she’d been dead some time. The coroner’s van arrived half an hour later.
“Like mother, like daughter,” Zena had said.
Connors didn’t say anything sassy when he saw me. In fact, he didn’t say much at all, which isn’t like him. Maybe he was too tired, or maybe the look on my face made him think better of it. I introduced him to Zena, who explained how she had a key to Betty’s house. He had me tell him why I’d come here tonight, something I’d already told the two cops from Wilshire and repeated to the Wilshire detective when he showed up a while later. Connors had phoned them.
“When was the last time you spoke to Mrs. Rowan?” the detective asked me. His name was Dobbins and he was in his thirties, with crew-cut brown hair and brown eyes, not as tall as Connors but wider.
“Thursday morning, at the hospital,” I said. “We exchanged voice messages after that. She phoned me sometime on Saturday. I returned her call Sunday morning, but she wasn’t in. She phoned me again Sunday afternoon or early evening. When I tried reaching her, her line was busy. I phoned again that night, then several times today.”
“What made you think something was wrong?”
“Sunday morning Mrs. Rowan said she wanted to talk to me as soon as possible, in person. Sunday afternoon her message said it had to do with the call her daughter Lenore made to me before she died, and something I should know. But she never called again, and her line was constantly busy Sunday night, and several times when I tried her today.” I didn’t mention that during the marathon phone call with Zack I’d ignored several call-waiting beeps.
“But you didn’t worry until tonight?”
I felt a flush crawling up my face like a spider’s legs. “I thought she was busy making funeral plans, or telling people what had happened.”
“You tried to reach her,” Connors said. “You couldn’t have known.”
I looked at him with gratitude. He knew what I was thinking—that history had repeated itself, that once again someone had reached out to me and I hadn’t been there.
Dobbins took Connors into the dining room, where they talked for a few minutes. When they returned, Dobbins questioned Zena. Had Betty said anything about wanting to kill herself?
“To tell the truth,” Zena said, “I don’t think they were all that close, especially since the baby died. The daughter visited only a few times after she moved back from Santa Barbara, and Betty didn’t talk much about her. She took it hard—what happened to her grandson, and all.” The woman sighed. “I saw the daughter about a month before she had the baby. She looked fine, but I guess she was depressed, even then. It just shows how you can’t tell about people.”
“So would you say that Mrs. Rowan wasn’t depressed about her daughter’s death?” Dobbins asked.
“When your child dies, it hurts.” Zena stared at him with disapproval. “She wasn’t carrying on, but that’s not her style. She was quiet. I took her to supper Thursday night, and she didn’t even seem to know I was there. She had a lot on her mind. She was worse when she heard them saying maybe Lenore was killed.” Zena repeated what she’d told me.
“Did Mrs. Rowan mention having an argument with anyone?” Dobbins asked.
Zena shook her head. “Like I said, she was a quiet woman. Kept to herself.”
“Had anyone threatened her?”
“Not that I know.” She frowned. “Are you saying someone killed her?”
“We have to investigate all possibilities,” Dobbins said. He disappeared down the hall and into the bathroom, where someone from the coroner’s office was examining Betty Rowan’s body.
Connors walked me to my car. “You’re awfully quiet,” he said. “You okay? Considering.”
“Just thinking.”
The lamplight cast half his face in shadow. “Don’t beat yourself up about this, Molly. I meant what I said. You couldn’t have known.”
“I keep telling myself that. It’s not helping.”
“She phoned the station, Molly. Sunday evening. She asked to talk to me, said it was important.”
I stared at him. “Did she say why?”
Connors shook his head. “I got her message and phoned her. She told me she’d just heard that maybe Lenore had been murdered, and she was afraid. I asked her why. She wouldn’t say. I asked her was there someone specific she was afraid of. She said no. She asked could I send some cops to protect her. I said I was sorry, but we didn’t have the manpower for that. I said maybe she should sleep at a friend’s for a few nights, and she said maybe she would. I called her back an hour later, and her machine was on, so I figured that’s what she did. When I called again in the morning, her line was busy, so I thought she was okay.”
I didn’t say anything for a while, and Connors didn’t either.
“Did Nina Weldon call you?” I asked. “I gave her your number.”
“Lenore’s best friend?” Connors nodded. “She told me Lenore’s journal was missing on Wednesday. So?”
I hesitated. “I think Betty Rowan had the journal. I think someone knew it and killed her for it and made it look like suicide.” I looked at him, defiant.
“Me, too. Surprised you, didn’t I?” He had a hint of a smile under eyes that were bloodshot. He needed a shave.
“Did you find evidence that someone looked through her things?”
“Not yet, but that just means whoever did it was careful. Keep that to yourself, okay?” he said with a mild attempt at his usual scowl. I guess he was too tired, too sad. “What else is on your mind?”
“Betty and Lenore, the fact that they weren’t close. Mrs. O’Day said so. So did Zena. Nina said Lenore was upset because Betty and Saunders were thick.”
He leaned
against my car door. “Lenore killed Betty’s grandson, Molly. Whether she was mentally ill or not, it’s hard to forgive something like that.”
“Exactly my point. They were practically estranged. But Betty Rowan was at the hospital almost all day.”
“What that Lopost woman said. When it came down to it, she was still a mother. I can buy that.”
“I’m not so sure. When I talked to her after Lenore died, I had the feeling she was mostly worried about what Lenore might have told me when she was sedated.”
“Like what?”
“Stuff about Saunders, about Max. The whole mess.” I waved my hand. “I think Saunders asked Betty to keep an eye on Lenore. Which explains why he gave her the key.”
Connors shook his head. “You’ve lost me.”
“Lenore’s key?” I said patiently. “The one she must have left at Saunders’s house? He gave it to Betty.”
“Maybe Lenore gave Betty a key.”
“Not if they were barely speaking. And if she had a key, why would Lenore ask Nina to pick up stuff from her apartment? Nina had to ask the O’Days to let her in. Why not ask her mother?”
Connors sighed. “And we know Betty had a key because . . . ?”
“Mrs. O’Day told me Betty was about to go into Lenore’s apartment on Thursday.”
“The day after the journal was missing, according to this Nina,” Connors pointed out.
“She was there Wednesday, too. I called Mrs. O’Day.”
“Well, why go back Thursday if she already had the damn journal?”
I was so tired. “Maybe Betty wanted to make sure Lenore hadn’t written anything else incriminating.”
“Possible.” Connors didn’t sound convinced.
“Or with Lenore dead, maybe Saunders asked her to make it look as though someone had burglarized the apartment.”
He shook his head. “You saw the place. I can’t buy the mom doing it.”
I couldn’t either. I was stumped.
Blues in the Night Page 18
