“I feel terrible even thinking that way.” Again, shouting over the wind. “It’s her money, not mine. She was incredibly generous to give me anything at all. And now, when you suggest she might not be dead, I …”
“Resent me for it?”
“Don’t support you as much as I could.”
I caught a red light at Hilgard, and her voice quieted to a whisper.
“Do you really think she’s alive?”
“I think it’s possible she was alive the day after the fire, less possible she’s alive now.”
“But why would they want her alive at all?”
“For the same reason they might want to kill her.”
“For the diamonds?”
“We know she collected them, we know Ray Belgard was at her house the day of the fire, and we know he’s wanted in the disappearance of another woman whose jewels went missing when she did. We don’t know where your aunt kept the diamonds, and if Belgard and his brother don’t yet know where they are either, then there’s a chance she’s still alive.”
“They’d torture her, wouldn’t they?”
“We don’t know what they’d do.”
The light changed and the Caddy accelerated with the flow of traffic past the 405 Freeway and down the long slope of Sunset to the sea. Arlanda brooded in the passenger seat, the Rott staring up at her, sad eyed, knowing in the way of animals that something troubled her. He probably thought she was like him, hungry and needing to run. The wide blue Pacific opened above the road, and we coasted down to the Pacific Coast Highway.
“We have to find her,” Arlanda shouted, not above the wind this time, but from intensity of feeling. “I’ll put full page advertisements in the newspapers if I have to.”
“Talk to the police first. They may not want you to do that.”
“They might not want to do anything, and I swear to God, I’ll kick their butts in the press if they don’t cooperate. I’ll offer a reward, a hundred thousand dollars. And I’ll make sure you get part of it, no matter what. I wouldn’t even know about the diamonds without you.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I’m not doing this for money.”
“And I am? Doesn’t that make you superior.”
“Doesn’t make me any better. Just makes me who I am.”
“And what does that make me? A money-grubbing opportunist?”
It wasn’t up to me to accuse or console her, not when she was blaming me for her current troubles, and so I remained silent until she said, again, “I’m horrible, I know.”
“Like I said, you’re confused. Tell the police what you know. If your aunt’s dentist talks to the coroner like she promised and the coroner sees that the file has been forged, they’ll want to cooperate with you, unless you start out to make them look like fools.”
“You’ll come with me when I talk to them?”
“Can’t. I’m going away for a couple of days, up the coast.”
“Strange time to take a holiday, isn’t it?”
“I’ve got health problems.”
“You look fine to me.”
I shrugged, not wanting to spell it out.
“Can’t you stay? I need you.”
“Somebody has tried twice to kill me. Ever heard of the expression ‘third time’s a charm’?”
A poster on a telephone pole flitted past to spark a memory of someone else gone missing. My foot kicked the brake. The Cadillac swerved to the shoulder and I leapt from behind the wheel before the dust from the wheels settled. The missing woman whose photograph had been stapled to the telephone pole had been caught in the act of turning toward the camera as she held a cake, perhaps in celebration of a child’s birthday. Her smile was generous, as though genuinely delighted to be there, but couldn’t conceal the pain in her eyes. I’d captured the same pain in photographs of my mother. It was the expression of a woman who coped and pretended it was happiness. The woman had gone missing a few days before the fire. I’d met her husband further up the coast, across from a gas station, while posting found-dog notices. She’d been on medication at the time of her disappearance. Prozac, he’d said. I carefully tore the poster free of the staples and ran back to the car.
“This is the woman whose remains might be in your aunt’s crypt.” I tossed the poster onto the dash in front of her. “I’m not sure, and I don’t know whether anybody can ever be sure because the remains are cremated, but look at the dates. They line up perfectly.”
The Rott raised his head at my obvious excitement, his rump of a tail wagging. Arlanda blinked, twice, and each blink fell like a door slamming behind her as she retreated deep inside herself, to a place where she couldn’t be touched. Then she leaned forward, her jaw trembling, and cried, in grief or disappointment, I didn’t know.
I found an envelope taped to my front door when the Rott and I climbed the steps to my apartment. One floor below, the door of my downstairs neighbor slammed shut with vindictive force. The envelope was addressed to me in my landlord’s distinctive, blunt-lettered hand. I peeled away the tape and slit the lip with the nail on my right thumb, the only nail I haven’t bitten down to the nub, and keyed open the door. The form I shook from the envelope was an eviction notice, dated the day after I’d left for Arizona. I set the camera case and duffel bag on the floor just inside the doorway. The Rott trotted into the bathroom to drink from the toilet. The apartment smelled stuffy and ripe, as though something small had curled up and died. I followed my nose to the sink, where a half week of unwashed dishes rotted. I’d neglected to take out the trash, too. Home sweet home.
My initial reaction to bad news is to ignore it. The red light of the answering machine steadily blinked in the corner of the room. I tapped the play-messages button and prepared to repack. Envelope? What envelope? There wasn’t any envelope taped to my door. I haven’t been home the last four nights. Somebody must have ripped it off, thinking there was money inside. Ostriches might not rule the world, but they haven’t gone extinct yet, so there must be something to the head-in-the-sand strategy. I opened the closet door and rummaged around the bottom shelf for a change of socks and underwear. Frank’s digitized voice played through the answering machine, reminding me that his Pulitzer Prize-worthy article on the Belgards would hit the newsstands the next day; I should take a vacation because he didn’t have the time to write my obituary. Sweet guy. I kept the boots on my feet, tossed my sandals into the closet, and repacked the sneakers, looking forward to running the beach in Morro Bay. I packed two bottles of water and a copy of Dickens’ Bleak House and took my overnight kit into the bathroom for restocking. Three calls were from a Detective Alvarez. He wanted to talk to me about Lupe Potrero. The third time he called he said he found it interesting that I was on parole for manslaughter and didn’t return his phone calls. Just what I needed—another cop on my tail. The Rott stuck his nose into everything I opened, probably thinking he’d find food in there. When I finished packing I sat on the toilet and unfolded the notice.
In the judgment of the landlord, I had violated the terms of the lease by changing the locks without his permission and by keeping a dog on the premises, the keeping of any pets strictly forbidden by clause such and such of the lease agreement without prior permission of the landlord. As a result of these violations, he was terminating our lease agreement and serving notice that I had until the end of the month to quit the premises or face legal action to evict. I tore the notice into strips, tore the strips into wedges, and flushed the lot down the toilet.
Problem solved.
The doorbell rang as the last scrap glugged down the hole. The bell startled the Rott, who went into a barking fit deep and loud enough to rattle the fixtures. I glanced into the peephole and came eye to parabolic eye with my landlord, the fish-eye lens sharpening his nose and bending his face like a cartoon character. My downstairs neighbor had probably called him the moment his front door slammed. I grabbed the Rott by the collar and pulled him into the bathroom. He whined in protest. I shushed and
locked him in. The bell rang a third time just as I opened the front door, chain attached. The effort of pressing the bell had flushed my landlord’s skin red and beaded his forehead with perspiration. His gaze traveled the short length of chain, offended that I wasn’t opening the door wide to let him in.
“Did you receive the envelope I left for you?”
I said nothing.
“Did you read the notice?”
Again, I said nothing.
“I heard the dog as I was ringing the bell. I know you’ve got one in there.”
“You might have talked to me before acting,” I said.
“You changed the locks without permission, without notifying me. That alone is grounds for eviction.” His lips pursed as he fingered the front-door knob, a gesture of deep moral indignity.
“Someone picked the last lock, broke into the apartment. I filed a report with the police. Now that I think about it, maybe the lock wasn’t picked. Maybe it was you. You let yourself in while I was gone, snoop around my underwear drawer?”
“I own this apartment. I have the legal right to a key and to let myself in to check on the condition of the premises.”
“This isn’t about keys or dogs. It’s about money.”
“You violated the terms of your lease.”
“You moved to evict without even talking to me.”
“I’m talking to you right now.”
“You already find somebody to rent the apartment at double what I’m, paying, maybe a friend of the geek downstairs?”
“What I do with this apartment is none of your business.”
The phone in my apartment rang.
I said, “If you intend to grub after money like a pig, at least have the guts to admit it.”
“Conversation over. You’re out of here!”
He shouted at me like it was a game of baseball we were playing.
“You refund my deposit, with three months’ rent as a penalty for the inconvenience, then I’ll willingly leave. I know a lawyer who’d love to work pro bono on a case involving illegal eviction. Even if he loses, it’s six months of court costs for you, minimum, before I’m out. Your choice. Excuse me, I have to take this call.”
I shut the door gently, proud of my self-restraint. I could have slammed it in his face. I could have snaked a left through the gap and tagged him in the jaw, too. I was maturing as a human being. The answering machine picked up before I made it to the phone. I should have guessed the caller: Detective Alvarez, clearly identifying himself as a homicide investigator with LASD. He needed to talk to me about Lupe Potrero, he said. It was important. My hand was reaching for the phone when he said I was not a suspect at this time. I pulled back, angered. That he didn’t consider me a suspect at this time meant he already suspected me but didn’t have the evidence, and if I refused to cooperate promptly that would be evidence enough. He recited his phone number twice, told me again to call him, and hung up. The last thing I wanted to do just then was to talk to another bullying cop. I let the Rott out of the bathroom, snatched the duffel bag from the floor, and sped down the stairs, flipping off my astonished landlord and downstairs neighbor on my way to the open road.
My parole officer let me run sixty miles, the Cadillac’s headlights flashing through the tunnel of night north of Ventura, before my mobile phone lit with an incoming call and I felt the jerk of her chain at my neck. I let it ring, arguing the consequences, of waiting for voice mail to pick up. I wanted to be free for a few days, free of the person trying to hurt me, free of the cops, free of her. The argument was a short one. Trying to withhold information from my parole officer was like getting an arm stuck in a tree shredder; the longer I waited the more I lost. I opened the connection, said, “You shouldn’t be working this late, Ms. Graves.”
“I wouldn’t be working this late if you weren’t such a pain in the ass. You want to tell me what’s going on?” My parole officer liked to make open accusations and wait for the confession.
“Not much. Just a beautiful night and the open road.”
“You sound too cheerful.”
“Is that a crime?”
“Are you running from something?”
“A lot of things. I’m running from a lot of things. But I’m not fast enough. Things are catching up. You want to save the state a big phone bill, tell me what I’m being accused of now?”
“You’d help your own cause if you tried to be in the least bit helpful. I just got off the phone with a homicide detective from LASD.”
“Alvarez?”
“So you know he’s been trying to reach you.”
I glanced at the dashboard clock.
“I’ve known for a little over an hour.”
“He’s been trying to reach you since yesterday afternoon. When you didn’t return his calls, he called me, wondering why you were avoiding him.”
“I didn’t get home last night.”
“Where were you?”
“You sound like my mother.”
“Your mother doesn’t have the power to recommend the court revoke your parole. Answer the question.”
I answered the question. I spent the night at the apartment of a colleague, working on a story that was going to break the next morning, a story that the reporter thought might make me even more of a target than I already was. I considered telling her about the attack on Ben’s trailer, decided she sounded angry enough. I’d mention it later.
“That remark about the open road—you’re leaving town?”
“Just for a couple of days.”
“You’re involved in two murder investigations, Ms. Zero. I have no reason to believe you’re guilty of anything more than wrong place, wrong time, but you are definitely walking the edge of the precipice. You’re putting yourself into situations where you’re bound to violate the terms of your parole, sooner or later, you understand me?”
I said, “Yes, ma am”
“Normally, I’d demand some serious face time, but under the circumstances, I think you’re doing the right thing—for once—in getting out of town. Two things you have to do to square things with me. You ready to hear them?”
I said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Call Detective Alvarez. Now. Cooperate fully.”
I said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Where you going?”
“I thought Morro Bay.”
“You call and leave a message, the phone number and motel where you’re staying, then you check in with me every twenty-four hours. Is that clear?”
I said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“One other thing. Detective Claymore was placed on administrative leave. He’s supposed to check into a detox program.”
“Good for him,” I said.
“Maybe not so good for you, though. Right now, he can’t touch you. But just because he crossed the line doesn’t mean he doesn’t have friends. I can think of a half dozen officers who consider it their personal duty to put you behind bars again.”
“So I should get me to a nunnery?”
“I’m not sure even a nunnery would be safe,” she said.
Morro Bay is too far north for even the most fanatical of Los Angeles commuters, and the once pristine sweep of bay, anchored on the north by a bullet-nosed rock 575 feet high, is raked to the south by three toweringly obscene power-station smokestacks, sticking like fingers into the eye of any south-facing view. The ugliness of the electrical station was a brilliant stroke, saving the town from the kind of tourist gentrification that results in hundred-dollar-a-night-minimum hotel rooms and downtown streets that look like they were constructed from a dollhouse kit. People fish in Morro Bay, elbow to fin with plentiful seals and otters, the kids surf the other side of the rock, birds flock to the local wetlands and wildlife sanctuaries, and the tourists mostly stay away.
I searched the streets for a pets-welcome sign and checked into the Log Cabin Inn, one of those 1960s California structures designed to look like its name. The rooms weren’t deluxe but neither were
the prices. My rapidly thinning sheaf of twenties would cover three or four nights; after that, I’d need to find paying work or start kiting checks. I used the phone in the room to call Detective Alvarez. It was past 10:00 P.M. Funny enough, he wasn’t in. I left a message saying sorry I’d missed his call, I’d try again later. My parole officer didn’t answer the phone either. I told her where I was staying and took the Rott for a walk.
Morro Bay is a safe town at any hour, and I pride myself at being tough and savvy enough to walk alone down most streets without fear, but still I felt, if not exactly afraid, oddly alert while I followed the streets down to the fishing harbor. I didn’t see or hear anyone but imagined that someone followed me, and that alone was enough to spook the walk short. When we got back to the room, I chained the door, wedged a chair beneath the knob, and let the Rott sleep next to me on the bed.
The feeling had dissipated by the time the Rott woke me the next morning, anxious to start his morning patrol. I took him for a long run on the beach, past Morro Rock, moated by high tide, and back to the motel on a trail that passed along the estuary. We didn’t encounter any trouble on the run, aside from a silky terrier who took exception to the Rott, barking and charging on the end of his leash as though, if the owner had been foolish enough to let him go, he’d launch all seven and one-quarter pounds of his ferocious self straight for the Rott’s throat. I’d never seen the Rott afraid of anything like he was afraid of that little dog. When I keyed the door to the room we’d been gone a little more than an hour.
“Mary Alice Baker?”
Conditioned by experience, I crossed my wrists behind my back at the mention of my birth name.
Burning Garbo Page 21
