Midnight Baby

by Wendy Hornsby

“Sorts.” He bounced up next to me and peered over my shoulder. With his thumbnail, he outlined the face. “See this furriness along the jaw, around the eye sockets, and around the hairline? The computer couldn’t read it. My nerd and I speculate that your man — or your woman — was wearing a mask.”

  Mike put on his glasses to look closer. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Surely someone would have noticed,” I said.

  “I didn’t. You didn’t.” Guido shrugged. “Anyway, this is L.A. If you saw some guy wearing a mask, you wouldn’t think a lot about it. Especially a guy trolling for poontang in a car like that ‘vette. Looking for a little anonymity.”

  “What do I owe your nerd?” I asked.

  Guido shook his head. “Nada. He assigned this as a class project. They got a big yuk out of it. Helped his image a lot. If he gets a date with a student, I think he should owe you.”

  “Good, because I have something else you might pass along to him.” I handed him the two rolls of exposed film I had in my bag. “I shot one of these rolls of the slasher this afternoon. The other one is Mike. I didn’t mark them, so I don’t know which is which. Would you develop them all for me?”

  He frowned. “Okay. But there’s a one-hour processor down on Cahuenga. Wouldn’t that be faster?”

  “Here’s the problem,” I said. “I never got the subject’s full face.”

  “Mike’s or the slasher’s?” Guido grinned.

  “I got all of Mike, Guido. Buck naked, in the moment of ecstasy.”

  “Maggie!” Mike blushed. “You did not.”

  I turned to him. “I was simply offering Guido some incentive. Next time, though, I am taking the camera to bed with us.”

  He laughed. “When was the last time we made it all the way to the bed?”

  Guido was comically round-eyed.

  “So, Guido,” I said, “the program is this: I want you to go through every shot and isolate the face parts. Then I want you to reassemble them and make a whole face for me.”

  “Like a jigsaw puzzle?”

  “Something like that. Can you do it?”

  “We can do something, my computer nerd and I. Something beyond cut-and-paste.” He looked down at the film in his hand, and I knew the film was talking back to him. Guido sometimes seems really hyper. He isn’t, exactly. It’s just that when his mind is working on overdrive, the excess electricity he generates makes him bounce. All the springs in his taut body cannot be stilled. He could never play poker.

  I grabbed his hard forearm, anchoring him like the string on a helium balloon.

  “It’s interesting, isn’t it, Guido?” I said.

  “Interesting? God, there’s an understatement.”

  Mike frowned. “I don’t get it. I mean, it’s pretty damned amazing Maggie might have this guy’s face on film. But that isn’t what you mean, is it?”

  “What do you see, Guido?” I asked.

  “Same as you. A collage. Fragments cut and pasted together. In the end, when you sort it all out, what will you have? The truth? Or another mask?”

  “Or another sort of mask?” I said. “I believe the only naked truth lies under those blurry edges your computer nerd couldn’t read. When you stitch me together a new face from this film, are you going to show me what’s under the blur, or just more obfuscation? What’ll it be, truth or a new lie?”

  “Just don’t mess up the negatives,” Mike said. “They’re evidence.”

  “Trust me,” Guido said. “How much time do I have?”

  “None,” I said. “We need it now.”

  “Let me call my friend and see if I can lure him back to campus.” Still bouncing on his springs, Guido went to the next room to use the telephone.

  Mike was giving me a dark look. “You two were talking in some sort of code. What’s up?”

  “Basically, the structure of this film project. More than that, though, it’s the whole question of what happened to Hillary.” I let out a breath and studied the grotesque parody of a face lying on its manila folder on the table. Then I turned to Mike.

  “When I moved into my house,” I said, “there were ten layers of wallpaper on the kitchen walls. I was interested in seeing the old patterns, to get some idea what the kitchen used to look like, what I might try. I started stripping it. But every time I had cleared away a goodly patch and could almost get some effect, I would break through to the next layer, and the next. Each layer obscuring the others. So you know what I did?”

  “Tell me.”

  “I said fuck it. I rented a steamer and stripped the walls down to the plaster.”

  “Seems consistent with the woman I know and love.” He smiled. “What is the point of this story?”

  “This Hillary thing is like that, layers. Peel one away, find another.”

  “Most police work is like that.” He waved a dismissive hand. “You never get the whole picture. You just hope for enough pieces so you can put the bad guys away.”

  “We were set up, Mike.”

  “How?”

  “You said it last night when Randy was found. We were meant to find him. There are two overlapping layers here, two chronologies of events. The first is the chronology of discovery: Hillary is found first, then Randy. Then there is the chronology of death: first Randy, then Hillary.”

  “Right. So?”

  “So, it’s time to rent a steamer, Mike. Find the bare walls.”

  “Where do you think you’ll find this steamer?”

  “Hanna Ramsdale’s mother.”

  He nodded with a sort of weary resignation. “I have to talk to her. She probably hasn’t been told her granddaughter is dead.”

  “She should know. What were you waiting for?”

  “Daylight, I guess. I hate bringing bad news to old ladies.” Guido came back just then.

  “All set,” he said. “I’m meeting nerdo at the computer lab in fifteen minutes. It’s a twenty-minute drive, so I’m out of here. Maggie, how do I reach you?”

  “Mike’s machine.”

  “Mi casa es su casa. Stay here if you like. Bye.” He ran, or rather he sprang, out the front door and banged it behind him. “Shall we raid the refrigerator?” Mike said.

  “Let’s get something on the way.”

  “On the way to?”

  “Pasadena. Isn’t that where Hanna’s mother is?”

  CHAPTER 16

  Somewhere between Highland Park and South Pasadena, Mike’s pager went off. He unclipped it from his belt and handed it to me.

  “Can you read it?” he asked. If he put his reading glasses on, he wouldn’t be able to see beyond the hood of the car.

  I had to wipe double-cheese Bingo Burger slime from my hands before I could take it. I punched the read-out button. “Your office,” I said.

  He pulled off the freeway at the next exit and found a public telephone. I waited in the car.

  Clouds had moved in off the ocean until the moon was only a glow above the dense canopy. The air was appreciably colder and damper than the bright day promised. I pulled my blazer close and snuggled down into the corner of my seat. “The Ride of the Valkyries” blasted from the radio.

  I watched Mike’s straight back under the blue light from the telephone booth. He shifted from one leg to the other, agitated as he spoke. I felt uneasy. The dark, I guess, and Mike so exposed in the one well-lighted spot on the block of industrial warehouses surrounded by razor wire. He made a good target for anyone so inclined. For no reason perhaps other than habit, his free hand covered the semiautomatic pistol at his belt, fiddled with the release snaps on the holster. Maybe it was just something to hold on to.

  I worry about Casey all the time. A sort of free-floating maternal anxiety based on nothing more concrete than a wild imagination and too much experience with the range of possibilities the big world offers.

  I don’t know when it happened, but I realized I had started worrying about Mike, too. He’s bigger than I am, and a whole lot tougher. That had nothing to do with how
I felt. I wanted him to duck out of the light, make himself less vulnerable. Standing there with his silver hair shining, he reminded me of Pisces under the moonlight. The night before she died.

  Mike made a second call, argued with whoever answered at the other end. I unwound my arms and had just stepped out into the chill night air to be with him when he turned and motioned for me to come.

  “What is it?” I asked, shivering.

  “Some card calling himself John Smith says he needs to talk to you. Says you gave him my number. You want me to shine him on?”

  “No.” I jogged over. “Honest to God, that’s his name. He’s the PI I told you Hillary hired.”

  Dubious, Mike handed me the receiver.

  “Mr. Smith?” I said.

  “Is that the cop who’ll use me for target practice?” he asked.

  “If you get out of line,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “I earned a little of my retainer this evening, did some checking on the fortunes of George Metrano.”

  “And?”

  “And there is no fortune. He’s one step away from filing Chapter Eleven, bankruptcy.”

  “The Bingo Burgers I saw looked like a booming concern,” I said.

  “It is. Problem is, he blows it away faster than he rakes it in.”

  “Blows as in blows it up his nose?”

  “No, worse. His addiction is the craps tables in Vegas. He lost a bundle about four years ago and went into court-ordered reorganization that time, too. There were a couple of check-kiting charges in the mess. The judge gave him probation if he’d hitch his star to Gamblers Anonymous. Seems he’s been AWOL from meetings, though. He’s signed notes on everything he owns again to pay off the casinos. The family home is being foreclosed on.”

  “Did you talk to him?” I asked.

  “No. The little woman says he’s out. I don’t know if that means he’s out to creditors or he’s gone away.”

  “Interesting. Very interesting. Anything else?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Smith,” I said. “You’re a gem.”

  I closed the connection and pulled out my notebook.

  “What did he say?” Mike asked as I punched in my credit card numbers and dialed the Metranos.

  “George gambles big-time. He’s losing everything he owns,” I said.

  “Ah,” he breathed. Mike is a quick study.

  Leslie Metrano’s soft voice came on the line, quavering. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Leslie. It’s Maggie MacGowen. Did you have a chance to show my pictures to George? I’ve been anxious to get his reaction.”

  “He isn’t home, Maggie. He’s away on a fishing trip.”

  “He’s fishing now? With all that’s going on?”

  “He had to get away.”

  Away from what? I wanted to know. But she seemed rather fragile. I settled for: “When do you expect him?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice broke.

  “Are you all right?” I felt like a heel, as if I were lying to her. She was a sweet woman. I was thinking she deserved a break.

  “It’s just…” She seemed to haul herself together sufficiently to speak. “I expected him back by now. Maybe he had trouble with the boat. I wish he would call me.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Off Baja, he said.”

  “Alone?”

  “I don’t know.” She started to cry.

  “When?”

  “Saturday night.”

  “Is anyone there with you?”

  “My daughter and her baby,” she sobbed, so forlorn she sounded like a lost child herself.

  “I’m sorry, Leslie,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

  “I have to go now. I have to go collect the night receipts.”

  “No.” I reacted hard, nearly shouted. “Don’t go. Get someone else to do it. Or call the police and get an escort.”

  “You’re scaring me.”

  “I hope so. Is it a lot of money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does George need money?”

  “George always needs money. What are you saying, that he would steal from me?”

  “He’s already stolen your house out from under you. What’s left?”

  “He wouldn’t hurt me. I have to go, or I start paying my night manager overtime.”

  Mike had been listening to my end of the conversation. I handed him the receiver. “Make her understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “George took his boat and went fishing off Baja. She hasn’t heard from him since Saturday. Now she’s on her way to pick up the night receipts from her burger places. It’s a lot of money.”

  Mike was persuasive. I hoped Leslie was as bright as she seemed. I heard him do his tough-cop windup to get her attention, then he gentled his pitch. By the time he hung up, he sounded like someone’s dear old dad. Then he immediately dialed the Long Beach police. He should go on the stage. Without more than a breath between roles, he switched from Dad to one of the big guys, using police boy-talk to get a promise of an escort dispatched to the Metrano house, pronto.

  When he hung up the second time, he turned and grabbed me by the arm. “John Smith, huh? Met a guy by that name in a motel once.”

  “Should we go down to Long Beach?”

  “And do what?” He walked me to the car and opened the door for me. “The locals will take good care of her.”

  “Elizabeth is in Cabo San Lucas. Cabo is at the southern tip of Baja.”

  “Yeah. And that’s a long way from Long Beach.”

  “It begins to come together,” I said.

  “Let’s go talk to Grandma.”

  The address Mike had for Hanna Ramsdale’s mother was almost San Marino, in the rocky foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. We found the house on a narrow, winding street of gracious old mansions set in vast grounds. Mike turned into the drive with Sinclair on the mailbox in shiny brass letters.

  The house was old enough to be classic, 1920s I guessed. It had been built to conform to the rugged slope behind it, a spill of white Mission Revival cubes and turrets topped with red tile that rose out of a broad hollow, like a Moorish castle in a pop-up book. Up the bank behind the house, cacti and spidery sage were artfully planted among huge granite boulders, picked out by spotlights; gray-green sentinels in the night.

  Mike pulled into the circular drive and stopped beside a massive saguaro.

  Mrs. Sinclair — Virginia Sinclair, Mike told me — answered the door herself. I don’t guess ages very well, but I figured she was at least as old as the house. Her body had outlived its hide: the thin, patchy skin was stretched so tight across the strong bones that a big smile would surely break it. But we seemed to be in no danger of that occurring. She reminded me of some of my mother’s friends, stiff academic wives who shudder at slang and dance an even-sided box step at faculty teas without swaying their hips. I know from experience they make good targets for spit wads shot from under refreshment tables. They never react when they get hit.

  Mrs. Sinclair did not know we were coming. It was ten o’clock and she wore a high-buttoned white blouse, a pleated skirt, and a cardigan with brass buttons. Her shoes were good leather, low heels. Not new but well-kept. Everything about her seemed old but well-kept. She was tall and imperious, leaning lightly on a dog-headed cane.

  Mike showed her his ID. “We want to talk to you about your granddaughter,” he said.

  “My granddaughter?” Her voice was deep, almost masculine. She stood as if guarding the door against us. “You mean Hanna, my daughter. Hanna is deceased.”

  “Not Hanna,” Mike said. “Hanna’s daughter.”

  Virginia Sinclair seemed confused. “Hanna had no children,” she said.

  “Hillary Ramsdale,” I said.

  “Hillary,” she said, a light coming on. “Of course. But Hillary wasn’t Hanna’s daughter. She was my son-in-law’s cousin, I believe.”

  I looked over at Mik
e, feeling prickly all over.

  “May we come in?” Mike said.

  “Of course.”

  Mrs. Sinclair moved aside for us to enter. She led us through the turreted foyer and into a high-ceilinged sitting room furnished with dark Mediterranean antiques. The room was beautiful the way a museum room is beautiful. And, like a museum, it was oppressive, a monument to long-dead craftsmen. And perhaps occupants as well.

  Over the mantel hung an almost life-size oil portrait of a younger Mrs. Sinclair, seated in the same ornately carved chair she now sat down on, sitting with the same straight posture, her hands resting on the head of the same cane, re-creating the pose. It was eerie, because Hanna was in the portrait with her, standing beside the chair with her hand on her mother’s shoulder. Looking at Mrs. Sinclair, an older echo of the woman in oils, I had the sense that her daughter stood there beside her. Mike saw it, too, and squeezed my hand.

  Hanna was beautiful. She resembled her mother, though the features in the second generation had been refined, the bones cast more delicately, the contours rounded. Perhaps the genes had been overrefined, and the softness about her was symptomatic of her precarious health.

  I sat down opposite Mrs. Sinclair, on a high bench with a carved back and an unforgiving cushion. My feet did not quite reach the floor.

  Mike stood beside me with his hand on my shoulder, mocking the scene she had set, perhaps to wrest control from her. “Tell us about Hillary,” he said.

  “Where is the child?” she asked.

  I felt sour acid rise in my throat. “Hillary is deceased.”

  “I see.” Her high, smooth brow drew into a frown. “She seemed a healthy girl. A bit strong-willed, perhaps. But then that is a Ramsdale family trait.”

  “Hillary lived with Hanna and Randy,” I said, drawing her back to the topic.

  “Yes. I don’t recall the exact circumstance of how that arrangement came to pass. Something about a boating accident involving her parents. The Ramsdales were boat builders, you know. Clipper ships originally, I believe. More recently, yachts.”

  “We didn’t know,” I said. “We had no idea what Randy did for a living.”

  She smiled behind her veined hand. “Randy played for a living. The family paid him handsomely to stay away from the business. Very wisely, in my opinion.”