by Lois Greiman
She looked up as I fiddled with some papers in the file cabinet.
“So . . .” I kept my tone casual, because that’s what I do when guilt is gnawing at my guts like a piranha, or when I need a favor I can never repay in this lifetime. “How was your date the other night?”
She leaned back in her chair. “What’s up?” she asked.
“Nothing.” I have no idea why I felt the need to lie, but I think it has something to do with being raised Catholic; everything’s a sin, therefore it’s best to lie about it. “I was just wondering about your date.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you have fun?”
There was a pause, then, “Have you seen any more of the dark lieutenant?”
“This has nothing to do with Rivera,” I said, but my face felt as if it might be melting.
“Did you sleep with him?”
“Laney!” I gasped, and she laughed.
“All right. I’ll play along. My date’s name was Brad. He drives a ’96 Corvette, has an on-again, off-again spot on Days of Our Lives, and can do twenty-five one-handed push-ups in as many seconds.”
“Wow. You know all that?”
“I knew all that in the first fifty seconds.” She crossed her arms over her chest. It was a nearly impossible feat. In elementary school, she’d been hopelessly skinny, wore glasses as thick as my wrist, and sported braces reminiscent of the Union Pacific. I missed that ugly little girl. “What do you need?” she asked.
“Can’t I just take an interest in your—”
“Mac . . .”
“Okay!” I snapped. “I need a favor. All right?”
She stared at me, brows raised. Mine tend to shadow my eyes like hungry vultures. When she raises hers, she looks like a startled Garbo. “You all right?” she asked.
“Oh, crap,” I said, and collapsed into a chair. “I’m sorry.”
“What do you need?” she asked, and scooted her chair around the corner of the desk and up to mine. “Come on, spill it. It can’t be that bad.”
I knew for a fact she was wrong, but I told her anyway. “I’ve got this . . . friend. His name is J.D. He’s—”
“Sure.”
“What?”
“I’ll go out with him.”
“He’s five foot seven.”
She shrugged.
“And obnoxious.”
She smiled.
“Brays like a jackass,” I said and she laughed out loud.
I don’t care if Laney’s got boobs that would make Pamela Anderson bitch-slap her surgeon; I love her madly.
S olberg?” I said, speaking into the mouthpiece. “I—”
“No.” His tone was petulant and not very pleasant, but I hadn’t expected him to be ecstatic when I called. I could hear him bombing a space station in the background.
“I haven’t even asked you anything yet.”
“And you might as well save the oxygen.” Another target exploded. It was often said that men who didn’t get laid were fabulous at electronic games. He could probably join the international circuit. “’Cuz I ain’t gotten a call from E—” He stumbled over the name. I rolled my eyes.
“Elaine?” I supplied.
“Yeah. She ain’t called me yet. So there’s no way in hell I’m going to do another favor for you. Not after you kidnapped my Porsche and—”
“She said yes.”
“’Bout got me—What?” he rasped.
“Laney said she’d go out with you.”
“God’s truth?” I heard something plastic clatter to the floor. “You ain’t lyin’?”
“She agreed,” I repeated. “On two conditions.”
“Yeah?” His tone suggested there wasn’t a lot he’d refuse to do, short of self-mutilation.
“First you have to check out another person for me.”
“Done.”
“Don’t you want to know who it is?”
“Is it the mob or something?”
“No! Why would it be—”
“All right then, what’s the second condition?”
I scowled and switched gears. “You don’t lay a finger on Laney.”
He was silent.
“You hear me, Solberg?” I asked. “If she gets home with a hair out of place, I swear, I’ll staple your balls to your joystick.”
H e brought me an entire file the very next evening. I looked through it as he shuffled from foot to foot on my tilted stoop. His findings consisted of a half dozen Internet pics and nine pages of information. I skimmed them, then glanced up. He’d left his Armani at home. His blue jeans hung askew on his skinny hips, and his button-up shirt looked like it’d seen better days.
“This is all about the last twenty-eight months of her life,” I said.
“Listen . . .” He bobbed to his opposite foot, pushed his glasses firmly back up the oversized bow of his nose, and gazed up at me like a nearsighted flamingo. “That’s everything I could find.”
“How hard did you look?”
“Didn’t sleep last night,” he said.
I glanced up, ready to scoff, but then I noticed the dark circles etched beneath his horn-rims. “Something wrong?” I asked.
He grimaced and shuffled again. “She’s hot.”
I knew he meant Elaine, but I wasn’t sure what that had to do with his insomnia. Then, “Oh,” I said. “You spent the whole night searching?”
He shrugged, shuffled again. It made him look kind of young, and almost, almost likable. “I wasn’t tired anyway,” he said.
“You spent what . . . nine hours on this search and . . .”
“Fourteen,” he corrected. “Started soon as I got home from work.”
I stared at him. I’d seen desperation before, but it was usually in my bathroom mirror. “You spent fourteen hours on this and didn’t find anything about LaMere’s early years?”
He shook his head.
“Childhood . . . adolescence?”
“It wasn’t there,” he said. He sounded panicky. I hoped he wasn’t going to cry. “I swear. If it had been I’d have found it.”
“No Social Security number or—”
“No,” he said. “Nothing. It’s like she didn’t exist before 2003.” He scowled, shuffled, scowled. “Do I still get to go out with . . .”
I heaved a sigh. “Elaine, Solberg. Her name is Elaine. Why can’t you remember that?”
I sifted through the papers again, and when I looked up, he was blushing, red as a radish.
“Solberg?”
“I call her Angel,” he said and scuffed his sneaker against my crumbling concrete. “You know. To myself.”
25
Just when you think you got life by the tail, it’s likely to whip around and take a hunk outta your balls.
—Glen McMullen,
upon learning about Chrissy’s impending birth
ELAINE WENT OUT with Solberg that Saturday.
I spent the majority of the evening staring at Kathryn LaMere’s photos. They didn’t give me much more than a roaring headache and an aching sense of inadequacy. There was one of her at a charity function with David and one of her at the beach in the summer of 2002. She was wearing a netting cover-up over her two-piece, but her lack of cellulite was still obvious, even when I pulled out a magnifying glass.
But sometime during my quest for imperfection I noticed an ultrafaint circle above her left breast. Or at least, it looked like a circle, though upon closer inspection, I was pretty sure the circle was a tattoo. And that was baffling, because the Kathryn LaMere I had met just didn’t seem to be the tattoo type. Besides, I had seen her in a bone-colored silk blouse and hadn’t noticed even a trace through the sheer fabric.
I looked at the photo again. It was a grainy newspaper shot, and though the story hadn’t actually been about her, she was listed as one of many who had enjoyed a hot day seaside.
I sat back, ate another carrot stick, and refused to fantasize about German chocolate cake. Why would a woman like Kathryn La
Mere get a tattoo? And why would she have it removed?
I looked again. Okay, maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t a tattoo at all, but what if it was? What if she was a raging lunatic who had met David, realized he was loaded, good-looking, and sophisticated, and decided she wanted some of that action? What would she do? She’d adopt a classy persona and get rid of the competition, i.e., Stephanie Meyers. But wait a moment, what about David’s first wife?
How had she died and when?
It was then that the phone rang.
“Mac?”
“Laney!” Guilt swamped me immediately; my best friend had taken a bullet for me, and I had been so wrapped up in my own problems I’d forgotten to even light a candle or something in her defense. Granted, I’d been accused of murder. But still . . . “What happened? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Mac. Relax.”
She sounded funny. Almost . . . happy. I glanced out the window into the black abyss of my yard. By the looks of things, hell hadn’t frozen over. “Where’s Solberg?”
“He just dropped me off a little bit ago.”
“No, Laney. You didn’t give him your home address.”
“Sure. Why not?”
“’Cuz he’s Solberg.”
She chuckled. “Actually, he was kind of sweet.”
Holy crap. Things were worse than I realized. “He’s still there, isn’t he?” I asked and lowered my voice a little. “Does he have a gun?”
“All right,” she said. “He’s a little nerdy, maybe . . .”
“Maybe!”
“But he’s smart.”
“Should I call the cops or come over myself? Yes, for the cops. No for me alone.”
“I’m serious. He was nice.”
I let that sink in for a while. “Did you leave your drink unattended for any length of time?”
“I’m not drugged.”
“Okay. Let’s assume that’s true. How many times did he call himself the Geekster of Love?”
“You’re kidding,” she said, and laughed as if it was the most hilarious thing she’d ever heard, which was pretty clear evidence that she was either drunk off her ass or hadn’t heard it before.
I scowled, thinking back. “How bout babe? How many derivatives did he think of for babe?”
“He called me Elaine and nothing else.”
“Well, that solves the mystery, then,” I said. “It wasn’t Solberg at all. It was an imposter.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. I could hear the refrigerator open as she waited for me to go on. She was probably searching for her imitation soy nuts.
“’Cuz Solberg can’t remember names,” I said.
I could hear her gasp and sat up straight, wired for trouble.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“You don’t suppose that’s why he had ‘Lane’ written on his arm, do you? So he could remember my name?”
I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. The thought made me tired. “Why yes, Dr. Holmes,” I said. “I do believe that might be the case.”
“Ohh, that’s sweet.”
I opened my eyes and scowled at the receiver. “Seriously, Laney, are you feeling okay?”
“Everything’s fine. I just thought I’d check in with you. You doing all right?”
“Sure,” I said, discounting my latest flights of fancy about LaMere being a murderer. I could hear Elaine munching. Apparently imitation soy nuts are crunchy.
“You need to get out more,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe we could double-date.” I checked my own fridge. There were no soy nuts. Imitation or otherwise. But I had a tidy leftover box from Chin Yung’s, the best Chinese restaurant in the universe. My stomach rumbled hopefully, but I have a strict rule: no lo mein between one and six in the morning. “I think Charles Manson is available—for about another ten to life.”
She laughed. “If you dated more you’d remember what’s out there.”
“You think I’ve forgotten?”
“Yeah,” she said, “I do.”
But when I hung up the phone, memories of Bomstad’s breath against my neck bobbed to the surface. I checked my locks, pulled the drapes, and went to bed.
No, I hadn’t forgotten.
O fficer Crane?” I asked. I was standing on the sidelines of a soccer field where a bevy of gangly girls were chasing a ball around a dehydrated court. It reminded me of the time Cousin Kevin’s chickens had spied a grasshopper, but I set aside that odd analogy.
I’d driven halfway across the city to talk to Crane, though I’d tried to sound casual on the phone. After all, my theory of LaMere murdering Mrs. Hawkins seemed a little far-fetched even to my far-fetched way of thinking. Still, he was the officer on scene when her car had been found at the bottom of a canyon off Mulholland Highway.
“Yeah.” He had a big smile and a big voice. Unfortunately he had a gut to match. That’s the problem with family men, I thought, as his eyes strayed to the soccer field again. They tend to let themselves go. Oh, yeah—and they’re married.
“That-a-way, Chelsea!” he yelled and beamed.
I almost sighed. Because regardless of the size of their guts, big-hearted men who yelled encouragement to their spindly-legged daughters always looked good.
He’d been reluctant to meet with me, saying he was busy, and probably thinking I was a whack job. But I’d promised to keep it short and meet him anywhere he liked. And that was where we were.
“Sorry,” he said and offered me a hand and a smile. “That’s my Chelsea. Best forward in Maplewood Middle School.”
I didn’t know what to say about that because I didn’t know what a forward was, and “Yeah, she’s gonna be a heartbreaker” didn’t seem appropriate for the situation. Even from halfway across the field I could tell Chelsea had teeth like an overzealous beaver. But then, so had Laney, and look what happened there.
“You wanted to know something about a car accident?”
“Yes. Victoria Hawkins. She died a couple years ago.”
“Fall back. Fall back!” he yelled. I was startled, but then realized with my usual stellar genius that he wasn’t talking to me. “Sorry about that. Two years is a long time.”
“I know, and I regret springing this on you, but it’s extremely important.”
“Can you refresh my memory a little?”
What did that mean? Was I supposed to pay him or something? My mind was pumping madly, remembering the mortgage and my cantankerous septic system. How much info would a fiver get me?
“The circumstances,” he said, frowning a little, as though I might have lost my mind. “Where it happened. That sort of thing.”
“Oh, yes. Of course.” It looked like my lonely five bucks were safe. “She was heading north on Mulholland Highway. The date was July seventeen, 2003.”
He shook his head and hugged his clipboard to his belly. “Summer 2003,” he said. “Christ, there are so many car wrecks.”
“This was a Mercedes.”
“Yeah.” He chuckled a little. “And this is Hollywood.”
“She was the wife of a rather prominent therapist.”
He opened his mouth as if to yell again, then closed it and turned toward me. “That psychiatrist fellow? The one who wrote the book?”
My heart beat a little faster. “Yes. That’s the one.”
“Oh, sure—”
Hang in there, Chels! Hang in there!
“It was late when I seen it,” he said, switching gears like an old Corvette. “Near two in the morning. I remember that. I saw skid marks on the road and went to take a look. Sure enough, there was a car at the bottom. Looked like she’d almost made the curve then wham . . . lost control.”
“Was there . . .” I felt silly saying it, like a wannabe Matlock, but I had driven a long way to meet with him. “Was there any evidence of . . .” I wanted to say “foul play” but I’d forgotten my Sherlock Holmes hat in my armoire. “Do you have any idea why it happened?”
He shook his head
. “Road curves like a son of a bitch in the hills down there. And I think . . . I might be wrong,” he added, squinting slightly. “But I think I heard she’d been drinking.”
I have to admit I felt a little disappointed when I started up my Saturn. I’m not sure what I’d expected. Maybe I’d hoped for some fresh-faced officer of the law to tell me that yes, indeed, there had been a car bomb planted in Victoria Hawkins’s glove compartment, and uh-huh, they’d been able to lift Kathryn LaMere’s prints from it, but the press had neglected to report it.
It was getting dark when I pulled onto Mulholland Highway. As long as I was there, I might as well take a look at where Victoria had died, I thought. But by the time I passed Yerba Buena Road it was all but impossible to see into the craggy wasteland beside the winding road. Besides, I realized, as I cruised up a long grade, it was all craziness anyway. I was crazy. Rivera was for sure crazy. And Bomstad had been crazy. He’d taken an overdose of Viagra, knowing he had a heart condition, and Rivera, looking for a culprit, had accused me. But he didn’t really believe I was guilty. If he did, I’d ’a’ been pleading my case to a jury of my peers a long time ago.
Feeling somewhat relieved by my thoughts, I checked my rearview mirror, did a U-turn, and headed back from whence I’d come.
It was then that my brakes failed.
I pumped them twice, or possibly a hundred times, but things were happening faster and faster. The Saturn was picking up speed. The scenery was spinning by my window. I heard my tires squeal on the road, felt a bump beneath me. I’m sure I was terrified, but that memory is vague, swallowed by a million blurring thoughts. Maybe I had an impression of trees skimming past my left ear. Maybe I thought I was going to die. But suddenly there was nothing. Just blackness and the distant sound of a honking horn.
26
Maybe life does suck, Pork Chop, but it beats the hell out of the alternative.