"Oh! What a pity."
"So she actually said Boise was her home?"
"She said Idaho, which I remembered, because you don't meet people from Idaho every day. I don't know that she said exactly Boise. How valuable are those records, Lillian? I mean, one time I drove all the way up to Sanilac to hunt down a guy who owed me fifty bucks, but jeez."
I asked if he knew Vic Toretti, by any chance. He didn't, nor did he know anything more except that Audrey had mentioned that she'd dealt cocaine in the past.
I returned to her apartment. After using the toilet and washing up, I reclined on the couch and thought. Audrey didn't seem like all that much of a nature girl—no fleece jacket, no hiking shoes. Her style was urban. Yet the triangulation of James's and my information told me at the very least she had connections out West.
The apartment's walls and ceilings were painted white, and there was a motel-style picture of a millpond and a boy in a canoe on the wall. Audrey had left a few magazines on the floor next to the couch—People, Cosmopolitan (which disappointed me perhaps more), and a Victoria's Secret catalog, which is essentially a soft-core porn magazine.
Why had she spoken of her fondness for Idaho? Why would she tell me anything truthful? Well, she didn't know Lillian Byrd, that was for sure. Even the most calculating crooks get honest once in a while. They get careless. By this time in my life, I'd learned that a little bit of carelessness can go a long way.
I tried to sort out what I ought to do, what was realistic for me to do, and what I couldn't do.
I didn't want to upset Porrocks. Therefore I didn't want to report the damage to her house to the police just yet. I needed to find out how she was doing.
If I could find Vic Toretti, I might more easily locate Audrey Knox. Or, vice versa, if I took the Greyhound to Boise, how the hell would I find Audrey Knox if she was there? Idaho is a large potato-shaped state with hundreds of thousands of people living in it. You don't just show up in a place and start walking around hoping to bump into your fugitive.
The receipt for the sunscreen bothered me. Was Idaho sunnier than I'd thought?
I rolled onto my stomach and poked desultorily at the magazines with my finger. I noticed a letter-sized piece of paper tucked into the Cosmo, perhaps as a marker. I pulled it out. It was an Alamo rental-car receipt. I sat up.
Paydirt: Audrey Knox had rented a black Chevrolet Blazer for one day. And the date was the date Porrocks was run over. The receipt documented a Michigan driver's license number and a Visa card number.
Chapter 20
Lt. Det. Eric Stonehauser stepped over a pile of crushed plaster in Porrocks's living room, pushed his hat back on his head, and said, "This almost beats my wife's housekeeping."
The junior cop who'd driven him to the house snickered in a toadying way. As the three of us surveyed the damage, I thought it all looked uglier than ever.
"Well," I said, "I was hoping to avoid telling Porrocks about this just yet."
"Nobody has to tell her anything," Stonehauser said. He was the walrusy one I'd met briefly when I'd stopped in to ask about Drooly Rick's identity. Stonehauser wore a plain gray fedora, which looked just right on him. Guys these days look ridiculous in hats like that, except for a few, and Stonehauser was one of the few. I like a guy who can wear a fedora. He removed it and stepped over to hang it on Porrocks's foyer hook.
He continued, "You're the house sitter. You called it in. We'll do an MDOP on this, but Ms Porrocks doesn't have to know yet." MDOP is cop-ese for "malicious destruction of property."
"You understand my embarrassment," I said.
"Sure, if I were you I'd want to at least clean this up for her. Be a challenge to fix it so you couldn't even tell it happened, wouldn't it?"
"Like in classic Mission: Impossible shows with Peter Graves in them," the toadying cop said. He was young and clearly ambitious but in the wrong way; he looked at the older cop with calculated adoration. "Like where they do all this construction to look like it was there all along, and then when—"
"I heard she's gonna be OK," Stonehauser said, ignoring him.
"Yes, I got word just after I called you that her surgery went great. They expect her to make a full recovery."
Stonehauser nodded. "Now, what about that rental-car receipt?"
I handed it to him. "As I said on the phone, the person who rented this car lived in that building across the street—and now she's gone."
I invited the cops to sit at the kitchen table where I went over everything—Drooly Rick, the boathouse wall, Audrey Knox, Idaho, Jimmy Donovan, and Vic Toretti. The cops wrote down notes. The name Vic Toretti rang a bell for the junior cop. He said, "I think Sherman or Leedy or somebody busted him for possession, and as soon as he got out, something happened to him. I think he's dead."
"Yeah?" I said.
"We'll check it out," he told me dismissively.
"OK, and, well, Audrey Knox could be an alias, of course—"
"We'll check it out," the junior cop said again. Stonehauser gave him a look that said, Don't interrupt the witness.
I said, "I was just trying to say that she went by the name of Bev or Beverly before she was known as Audrey."
"Beverly what?"
"I don't know."
The junior cop, writing a note, let out a subtly sarcastic sound. Stonehauser said, "Bill, shut up."
Bill gave him a What'd I do? look, but he got the point.
"I know it's not much help," I acknowledged, "but I wanted to tell you guys everything." A twinge seized my midsection, because I hadn't told them everything. I'd omitted the gold bracelet. I'd confessed to finding the cash and said I'd bring it to the station, but I kept my mouth shut about the bracelet. Why? Because I had a vague idea I might need it.
They asked for a description of Audrey Knox, then Stonehauser wished me luck and told me it'd be OK for me to call him.
----
After they left I toted Todd, my gym bag, and jumper cables to the bus stop.
Back at my apartment in Eagle, it felt good to be consolidated again. Todd seemed to appreciate being home. He used his litter box, ate, and drank a little, and generally bumped around.
"Just keep being my friend, all right?" I said. He looked up at me and thought his private rabbit thoughts.
Mrs. McVittie's tentative tap sounded at the door.
I greeted her warmly, as always. "Please come in."
"I can't, dear. I've got some soup on the stove, but"—she stood on the landing twisting her almost transparently thin hands in her apron—"I'm so glad you're all right!"
"What's the matter, Mrs. McVittie?"
"Well," she hesitated, then blurted, "are you furious with us?"
"No. What are you talking about?"
"She said you'd be furious when you got home because we wouldn't let her in." Mrs. McVittie's head and hands moved as if buffeted by a tiny but insistent current. Still, she and her husband managed to live independently and more or less safely. Their grown children looked in on them frequently, and I was usually around for backup.
I said, "Wouldn't let who in? When?"
"The young woman who said she was your cousin. It was yesterday afternoon, around three o'clock, I guess. She told us you'd gotten hurt and she had to come in and get your medical card for you."
"My medical card?" I wished I had one.
"Yes."
"Was she about five foot three, a little plump, curly hair?"
"Yes!"
"She's not my cousin. You didn't let her in?"
"No, Emmett has a policy. We don't let anybody into the rental unless the renter arranges it with us in advance."
"A good policy."
Mrs. McVittie sucked her teeth. "We were worried about you, naturally, but something about her didn't seem quite right. She wouldn't tell us whether you were in the hospital or what. Oh, she wanted something from this apartment in the worst way! Emmett finally threatened to call the police on her."
"Yes. Intere
sting. Well, I don't think she'll be around anymore. I'm sorry you were bothered."
"She's not a friend of yours, then?"
With a firm voice and a sad heart, I replied, "No."
----
It was about four o'clock when I returned to Wyandotte on the bus. I got off at the hardware store and put three pairs of work gloves, two boxes of contractor-weight trash bags, and a handful of household fuses on my credit card. Next I stopped at the party store on the corner and picked up a six-pack of Coke, one of Stroh's, and a giant bag of Doritos. I schlepped all of it over to Porrocks's and got busy.
I threw away the broken fuses and put new ones in the box downstairs, turned on all the lights, put some of Porrocks's Patsy Cline CDs on the player, and found the vacuum cleaner (with, fortunately, a stash of fresh bags), and started picking up debris.
It was from Lou that I'd learned Porrocks had come through her surgery well, though she was running a fever and would have to stay in the hospital at least until that cleared up. Porrocks's sister told her she'd come as soon as Erma was out of the hospital, Lou added with an edge of resentment. Well, that was a relief to me. When I broke the news to Lou about what I'd found at the house, she immediately said, "I'll be there as soon as I get off work. We can use my city truck to haul stuff."
"Isn't that against the rules?"
"Lillian, do you really care at this point?"
"No, but I thought I should make a show of it. Anyway, I think I can get Billie to come too, and I'll get pizza for us."
That was a long night. Both of my friends showed up, and the three of us set to scooping and chipping and dumping. Lou's knowledge of electricity came in most handy; she inspected the exposed wiring and tucked it away to ensure we didn't fry ourselves.
Initially, we kept up our energy with the Cokes and Doritos; it was fun to carelessly munch with no thought of crumb mess, since the final vacuuming would take care of all that.
Lou worked with ox-like determination, the stolidity of a simple honest soul in love. As she worked, she rumbled incessantly of the wonders and charms of Erma Porrocks in her gravel-pit voice until Billie and I found reasons to work in other rooms. I turned up the volume on Patsy Cline. As we worked hour after hour, Billie's copper-bright hair abandoned any idea of obedience. She kept tucking it behind her ears, then gave up and mashed down the fluffy mass with a faded SAY NICE THINGS ABOUT DETROIT cap. Billie couldn't believe the destruction, and she could barely fathom the whole goddamn story.
"Lillian, I mean, a man is dead, and you're talking about going to Idaho to help the police find some psychopathic pixie you still had the hots for as of this morning? How do you get yourself into these things?"
"When," I asked, "will you ever learn that my true talent is for getting myself out of these things?"
"That's a glib answer, sweetheart. Don't glib me."
"Well, I haven't made up my mind to travel anywhere yet. I don't—I don't have enough to go on."
Waitresses, like ballerinas, have thighs like concrete. Billie pumped along tirelessly as the night wore on—this on top of a full shift at the diner. Although most of Billie's and my dynamic had been her taking care of me, I'd actually managed to do her a couple of serious favors lately, so I didn't feel like a total shit asking for her help tonight. I'd helped her paint her garage and rototill her garden, neither a demure task, especially given the dimensions of her garden. I told her she should rent a combine when her sweet corn came in. Plus, I'd volunteered to spend three weeks bottle-feeding a baby pig she'd rescued somewhere; Todd's patience had been strained by the tiny pink interloper but he forgave me. He liked Billie too. She was a sincere animal person.
----
At about two a.m., we ate pizza and drank beer before gathering our strength for mopping and damp-dusting. And by four we'd done it. The place was clean, all the debris packed into the back of Lou's truck.
"Where are you going to dump this stuff?" I asked.
She winked. "Us city professionals have connections. Not to worry."
I was too tired to wonder which casino's or factory's dump bins would wind up quietly swallowing our trash.
I threw Porrocks's rags in the washing machine, and the three of us took one last look at all the cleanliness we'd wrought. We were all silently wishing we could get the walls repaired just as fast too. I offered up a prayer of thanks to Spic-n-Span.
"Well," Lou said, reading everybody's mind, "I can get some drywall and come back tomorrow night and fix it."
"Have you ever done drywall?" I asked.
"No, but how hard could it be?" The three of us were so slap-happy with fatigue, we laughed uproariously at that.
"Seriously," said Lou, catching her breath.
Billie suggested, "Maybe one of Porrocks's other friends knows how to do drywall. Like one of the guys on the force?"
I said, "Drywall is not something cops do in their spare time."
"She's right," Lou said. "It'd take us as much time finding somebody to do it for cheap as just learning to do it myself. I mean, look at the place: It doesn't look like such a big job now, does it?" Billie and I acknowledged that, in fact, it didn't. "Leave it to me," Lou said.
Billie turned to me. "What are you going to do next?" I traced a half circle on Porrocks's rug with the toe of my shoe. "Sometimes," I said, "I do my best thinking while cleaning. An idea came to me about an hour ago. Lou, would you give me a lift home? And, Billie, if I do go out of town, can you take Todd for a while?"
Chapter 21
I slept for a few hours, then got up and ate a quick breakfast of toast and coffee. I retrieved my prized Canon, a journalistic tool I'd vowed never to hock, from its corner of my closet, unloaded the film, laced up my Chuck Taylors, and walked the thirty minutes to Blue Streak Photo on Eight Mile. It was another bracing, fine October Saturday in Michigan. Frighteningly, many of Eight Mile's shopkeepers had thrown themselves into harvest decoration mode, so I had to keep sidestepping pyramids of pumpkins and bundles of corn shucks. Blue Streak's stack of European art magazines kept my mind occupied as I waited for express processing on my roll of Tri-X.
And then, standing at the counter, I scanned the contact sheet until I found it. "Ha!" I said. I ordered two express prints and waited for them.
I was right. Until that moment all I had to go on with Audrey Knox was Boise, Idaho. No, I didn't have a photograph of her. What I had was the picture of Todd and me I'd asked her to snap the night we stayed up late playing Calico Jones and Sexy Scientist.
So there I was, sitting on my living room floor with this stupid infatuated look on my face and holding Todd, who always looked dignified. There was my ninety-dollar couch from St. Vincent de Paul, my throw pillow with the face of Jesus needlepointed on it by my great-aunt Alberta. There was the McVitties' mottled wall-to-wall landlord carpeting. And there sitting next to me, just as neat as whiskey, were Audrey Knox's shoes: the two-tone, shamrock-embroidered, custom-made, cute little shoes. Made for her by a cobbler back home.
The idea to develop that film had come to me as I damp-dusted Porrocks's oak mantel last night.
I hiked home with the negatives and the prints and called Lieutenant Stonehauser, thinking to leave a message, it being the weekend, but he surprised me by picking up.
"Oh, a few of us masochistic types like to come in on Saturdays and Sundays," he said. "We've got some more information," he went on before I even asked. "You know that Vic Toretti?" I heard his fingers drumming on a plastic keyboard in the relative quiet of the detective division. "He is dead, just like Bill thought."
"What happened to him?"
"Heroin overdose on September 2nd, less than a week after he got paroled."
"Oh. Where did it happen?"
"Good question. Tom Ciesla told me you were sharp."
"He did?"
"Yeah, he called to see how we're doing on the hit-and-run, and my interview with you yesterday came up. He said if I want a peaceful life I should go ahead and answer you
r questions."
"Because otherwise I'll make more work for you by sticking my nose in places I shouldn't?" I asked.
"Exactly."
"Uh, well, I'm glad we understand each other, Lieutenant."
Stonehauser laughed. He liked me. Thank God he liked me—at least I amused him. You never know with cops. For instance, if his sidekick, young Bill, had been in charge of the investigation, he wouldn't've even taken my call. That guy was a pissant from the word go. Stonehauser said, "204 Adderly Street, number 2-B."
"That's where Toretti died?"
"Yes."
"That's the apartment! That's Audrey Knox's apartment!"
"Yes, I know. Actually our suspect's name is not Audrey Knox, because Audrey Knox is a student at Mercy College who had her identity stolen sometime in August. She didn't know it until this morning when we called."
"Really, now? So we're talking a credit card gotten under false pretenses, but what about the driver's license? Forged?"
"Maybe, or she simply signed up for a new one."
"Huh," I commented. "Well, what about Idaho?"
"What about Idaho?"
"You could give a description of—of the fugitive formerly known as Audrey Knox to the state police, and remember I told you about the purple Avalon and the sunscreen, right?"
"You did, but without a plate number, Lillian, it's nothing. And what'm I supposed to do with the fact that she bought a tube of sunscreen? Look, Bill's going over now to inspect that Chevy Blazer on the rental receipt. Until we have more evidence, I can't justify alerting the whole state of Idaho to look for somebody who at this point doesn't even qualify as a suspect in that hit-and-run."
"Well, she did it."
"Fine. Prove it."
"You realize, Lieutenant, I take that as a direct challenge."
He laughed again. I caught a tone from him that made me feel good. He appreciated my drive for revenge—he didn't try to shut me down. Well, I'd liked him from the first minute we met.
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