Blues in the Night (19 page)

thirty

“I haven’t talked to Lenore in years,” Cathy Johnson told me. “I was shocked to hear she killed herself. And now her mother’s gone, too. It’s all too much to take in.”

Virginia Yawley had phoned Cathy, Lenore’s best friend in high school, and the woman had agreed to talk with me. I’d driven to her white house, one of a cluster of white houses on large lots landscaped with sand and scrub and cacti. Between this cluster and the next was empty land. Blue skies above, the mountains around you. People in Twentynine Palms, Virginia had told me, liked their space, and their nature untouched. A city ordinance regulated what kind of lights could be used, and what wattage, and how that light should be directed to protect the brilliance of the night sky, and no one minded.

People who live in the desert also buy mostly white cars, I’d noticed, and I understood why each time I got into my black Acura. The first time, leaving the high school, I’d made the mistake of sitting down before allowing the air-conditioning to cool off the interior, and the leather seat had practically broiled the undersides of my bare thighs.

We were sitting in Cathy’s kitchen, the air cooler than outside but not cold. They used an evaporative cooler, not air-conditioning, she explained as she handed me a glass of refrigerated water. It worked like a swamp cooler, running air over water.

She was the girl in Lenore’s photos, now a housewife and the mother of two—a three-year-old girl in nursery, and a newborn asleep in his crib. She had bags under her blue eyes, her brown hair needed a trim, and she’d apparently forgotten about the burp cloth that lay like an epaulet on her shoulder over a yellow blouse ballooned by her breasts.

“I have more milk than a cow,” she told me happily.

Her husband was an engineer and worked on the marine base. Her father, a retired marine, did data processing for a firm in town. Her mother was a dental receptionist. After a year of community college Cathy had moved to San Diego, but returned six months later and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

“I should’ve written to Lenore when her baby died,” she said. “I didn’t know what to say. We were best friends in high school, but once she got engaged, we drifted apart. I tried to keep up, but she stopped returning my calls. To tell you the truth, I was a little hurt.”

“What was she like?”

“High energy, didn’t need much sleep. Disgustingly bright. She’d get all A’s without even studying. It wasn’t fair.” Cathy smiled. “She was real talented, too. She liked writing poetry. And she usually got the leads in the play productions. Some kids bitched that the drama teacher favored her, but I was happy for Lenore. Her life was tough, what with having no dad and being in foster homes when she was a kid, and her mom never having money for extras. I think acting was a way for her to forget all that.”

I recalled the books on acting I’d seen in Lenore’s apartment. Maybe she’d been trying to escape the pain of her reality again—Max’s death and everything that had followed.

“And she worked hard at it,” Cathy said. “I remember one time she played Helen Keller in
The Miracle Worker
. She read books and books about her and watched the movie a hundred times. She wanted to get it just right. When you watched her perform, you would’ve sworn she was blind. Another time she played Elizabeth Proctor in
The Crucible
. She read up on the Puritans—what they ate, how they dressed, how they talked. That was her favorite play. She probably would’ve gone into acting if she hadn’t married.”

“Mrs. Yawley said some of the girls were jealous of Lenore.”

Cathy nodded. “Well, she was beautiful and brilliant and all the guys were mooning over her. Your first instinct was to hate her, and if you didn’t know her, you’d think she was aloof. I did, at first.”

I took a sip of water. “Was she depressed, Cathy?”

She grimaced. “Who wouldn’t be with a mother like that?”

“They didn’t get along?”

“It was more one-sided. Mrs. Rowan was rough on her, and she’d always be throwing it in Lenore’s face that she had to support her on her own. ‘If your daddy hadn’t left, I coulda this, I coulda that.’ ‘I don’t know why I came back to get you, you’re nothing but trouble.’ Stuff like that. I’d hear her yelling in the background when Lenore and I were on the phone. One time Lenore stayed out past curfew, and her mom came to find her. She called her a slut in front of everyone. ‘If I’d known what trouble you were going to be, I would’ve given you up for adoption, and your daddy’d still be around.’ Probably wasn’t the first time she said that.”

Basically, what Virginia Yawley had suspected. “Lenore told you this?”

“We all heard it. There was a group of us at Denny’s—four couples, including Lenore and Pete Riggs. It wasn’t even late. Lenore’s mom dragged her home, and Lenore didn’t come to school the next day, she was so mortified. And of course, that ended it with Pete.”

I had come home late one time after a date—a date with Zack, as a matter of fact. My parents had been waiting up for me, and the worried look on their faces had been enough to stop me from being late again without calling. “Her mother didn’t trust her?”

Cathy turned her head toward the kitchen doorway. “He’s up,” she said, rising from her chair. “I thought I heard something. It gets so’s you hear the tiniest cry, and your breasts start filling up. Isn’t that amazing?”

She left the room and returned a few minutes later cradling a baby wearing a blue bottom-snapping T-shirt with a Donald Duck print. A moment later she was seated, the baby sucking noisily at her breast, his dark fuzz-covered head all but hidden inside her blouse. She made it look so easy, so natural. I couldn’t help thinking about Lenore.

“I don’t know if it was a trust thing,” Cathy said. “I think Mrs. Rowan was afraid Lenore would waste herself on someone who wasn’t
worthy
.” She stroked her baby’s head.

“Like Pete?”

“Like any of the guys Lenore dated. And there were plenty. She was with a new guy every time you blinked. They were nice enough but . . .” She looked at me and shrugged.

“They weren’t rich?”

Cathy nodded. “Or not rich
enough
. I guess it’s because Mrs. Rowan had a hard life. After a while, that’s what Lenore was looking for, too. Money, and a way to get out of Twentynine Palms. In college Lenore went on dates with guys she had no intention of marrying. They were wild about her, bought her expensive presents, more than they could afford. But it was never enough. She had higher goals.”

The baby made a large snorting sound.

Cathy removed him from her breast. “He drinks too fast and takes in too much air. Silly goose,” she cooed. She held him up in a sitting position facing me, his lips ringed with white like in one of those “Got Milk?” ads, his eyes sealed in a contented half sleep, his tiny chest rising and falling. She patted his rounded back until he rewarded her with a large burp.

“Do you think Lenore loved her husband?” I asked after Cathy had returned the baby to her breast.

“Totally. She was obsessed with him. He was what she’d been looking for her whole life.” Cathy hesitated. “But the money was definitely a part of it. I hate saying that, because she was my friend.” She looked uncomfortable. “She visited once soon after she started working for him. She was staying with her mom for Easter. She kept talking about how wonderful and smart he was, and how he had this home and the other, and how much money his family had, how her mom was so thrilled.”

“So Mrs. Rowan had met him?”

“No. She didn’t have to. Mrs. Rowan wouldn’t have minded if Lenore had married a three-armed convict as long as he had money. Lenore told me her mom was always thinking of ways to get rich. It’s sad, isn’t it?”

“Very sad,” I agreed, thinking about the journal and blackmail. I wondered again why Betty Rowan had phoned me repeatedly, why on the last call she’d sounded anxious.

“The next time she came was after they were engaged,” Cathy said. “She told me about the fancy engagement party they’d had at some country club, and where Robbie was taking her for their honeymoon, and the jewelry he’d bought her. She was like a kid who’d never been in a candy store.”

I thought about Jillian’s claim that Lenore had manipulated Robbie. “Did she mention during the first visit that he was engaged?”

Cathy looked startled. “No. Was he?”

I nodded. “Did she tell you she was pregnant?”

“Yeah. She kind of laughed about it, said something like, ‘Well, I guess I’m not so different from my mom after all.’ The funny thing is, I didn’t think Lenore wanted kids. She wasn’t comfortable around them, never wanted to earn extra money babysitting. I guess she changed her mind, or she got stuck.”

Mrs. O’Day had said that Lenore always asked about her grandchildren. Maybe losing a child had changed her. “So you don’t think she would have tried to trap Robbie by getting pregnant?”

Jillian’s other claim, and I’d asked fully expecting Cathy to refute it, but she didn’t answer right away.

“Lenore was very determined, very focused,” Cathy finally said, uncomfortable again. “If that was the only way she could get him. . . . She’d waited a long time for him to come into her life, and from the way she talked, I think she would’ve done anything to hold on to him.”

I’d enjoyed painting Jillian completely in the black and wasn’t happy having to acknowledge that she might have been right about Lenore.

“I called her once after she had the baby,” Cathy said. “I got the number from Mrs. Rowan. Lenore sounded like she was going to cry. She told me she didn’t feel like getting up in the morning, and how did I do it? I’m sorry now I didn’t call again.”

“Do you think Lenore would kill herself?”

“She tried twice before, didn’t she? That’s what the newspapers said.” Cathy sighed. “But now they’re saying maybe she was murdered. I’ve never known anyone before who was murdered. Well, there was this woman in Twentynine Palms who was killed by a marine. Some lady wrote about it in a book that made us all sound like a bunch of hoodlums and lowlifes.”

Virginia Yawley had mentioned the book. “I hope you’re not going to paint the wrong picture of our town,” she’d said, and I’d assured her that wasn’t my intention.

“My mom used to play this song all the time,” Cathy said. “ ‘The Lady from 29 Palms.’ Did you ever hear it?”

I shook my head.

“It’s real popular here, as you can imagine. It’s on the town’s Web site.” She smiled. “I don’t know who wrote it, but a few people recorded it. My mom has the one with the Andrews Sisters. Anyway, it’s about this lady from Twentynine Palms who’s real seductive and has twenty-nine Cadillacs and twenty-nine fur coats and diamond rings from twenty-nine guys whose hearts she’s broken and who can’t get to first base with her. Well, you get the picture.” She smiled again. “But the point is, even though this lady gets gifts from all these guys and doesn’t give anything in return, she doesn’t sound happy.” She bent down and nuzzled her baby’s head with her lips.

“Whenever I hear that song, I think of Lenore.”

thirty-one

“Your mail was open again,” Isaac said. “I told Ernie, and he said it was probably kids. And your boyfriend was here.”

“Oh, shit!” Shit, shit, shit.

“It’s no biggie, Molly,” Isaac soothed. “Just one envelope. I’ll try to be on the lookout tomorrow when Ernie comes. Go put your packages away, and I’ll get your mail.”

I looked at my watch. 6:05. Zack had said he’d pick me up at five-fifteen. My packages—three large bags filled with finds from the Anne Klein, Banana Republic, and BCBG Cabazon outlet stores—were only part of the reason I was late. After leaving Cathy Johnson’s house, I’d detoured through town to take in some of the murals Virginia Yawley had recommended. The ones I saw were huge—larger than I’d imagined and impressive—but I was too pensive to do them justice. Back on the 10 a while later, the Cabazon shops, on my right this time, so accessible, had promised mindless comfort and possible bargains.

And I’d forgotten all about the date.

Dropping the bags on my living room floor, I unbuttoned my blouse as I ran into the bedroom and searched my desk for the slip of paper on which I’d written down Zack’s cell phone number. By the time I found it, I was in my underwear and he was at my front door.

“I’m
so
sorry I’m late,” I told him through the privacy window.

“I heard about Mrs. Rowan this morning, and you weren’t answering your phone all day, and you weren’t home when I showed up. I didn’t know what to think.”

I do believe honesty is generally the best policy, but there are exceptions. I could explain that so much had happened since Sunday, that my head had been filled all day with thoughts of Lenore and Betty Rowan. All true, but egos are delicate things, and I didn’t want to risk having him think I didn’t care about him, because I really did.

So I blamed it on traffic.

“I was in Twentynine Palms, interviewing people,” I explained. “I didn’t have your phone number with me.” That much was true.

“As long as you’re okay,” he said, which made me feel worse. “Are you going to let me in?”

“I’m in my underwear.”

“I guess that’s a no.”

“Give me fifteen minutes.”

I was ready in thirteen—shower, makeup, hair, a spritz of Jean Paul Gaultier at my throat and behind my ears and knees. And clothes, of course. A baby blue short-sleeved silk sweater with a square neckline, a short black silk skirt, and black high-heeled one-strap sandals that give me sexy calves and blisters and a better workout than my treadmill at a twelve-degree incline. I figure it’s a draw.

“Definitely worth the wait,” he said when I opened the door. Then his eyes went from me to the packages I’d dropped on the floor, the ones that said
CABAZON
.

On the drive to the restaurant, he asked about my interviews, but I could tell he was making conversation and not really listening. I gave him credit for trying. With our reservation long gone, we had to stand twenty-five minutes in a waiting area the size of a telephone booth crammed with other hopefuls, one of whom stepped on the unprotected toes of my right foot and brought tears to my eyes.

By the time we were seated, it was ten after seven. Another twenty-five minutes elapsed before the apologetic waiter brought the tuna Niçoise salads we’d ordered hoping we’d be served quickly because Zack had to be in shul by 8:05. Which left us ten minutes to eat, before a couple came over to our table and greeted Zack. I recognized their faces—they’d been at my wedding—but didn’t remember their names. My right foot was throbbing with pain.

“Great sermon, Rabbi,” the husband said. While he and Zack chatted, his wife looked at me quizzically, trying to place me. A second later she did.

“It’s Milly, right?” she said. “Nice to see you.”

“Molly. Nice to see you, too.”

She tapped her husband’s arm. “They want to eat, George. You can talk with Rabbi Abrams in shul.” She smiled at me knowingly and led him away.

“I’m really, really sorry,” I said to Zack.

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I ruined our evening.”

“Forget about it. We have five minutes. Let’s eat.” He speared a potato.

“I lost track of the time.”

“Well, I hope at least you bought some great stuff.”

“So you
are
angry.”

He put down his fork. “If you didn’t have my cell number, you could have phoned the shul, Molly. I was worried.”

“I didn’t
ask
you to worry,” I said, knowing I was in the wrong. “You weren’t upset until you saw the packages.”

“You wouldn’t have been late if you hadn’t stopped off.”

“I forgot about the date,” I said.

He cocked his head. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I should have told you right away. I had a lot on my mind. I found Betty Rowan dead last night. I was busy talking to people all day. It’s not because tonight wasn’t important to me.”

“Okay.”

“I just forgot. Haven’t you ever forgotten anything important?”

“I can’t remember.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Are you being sarcastic?”

“No. I just can’t remember. A dental appointment.”

“What?”

“I forgot a dental appointment once.”

“Are you implying that subconsciously I
wanted
to forget?”

“I’m saying I forgot to show up at the dentist’s. Can we drop this?”

One time I’d found a barely noticeable dot of ink on a blouse. Instead of leaving it alone, I’d tried to get it out and ended up spreading it and ruining the blouse. I was doing the same thing now, but couldn’t seem to stop.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Sometimes forgetting is just that, Zack. It doesn’t mean anything.”

The waiter approached wielding a totem pole–size pepper mill like a club. “Fresh pepper?”

“We’d like these boxed, please,” Zack said. “And the check.” He turned to me. “If that’s okay?”

“It’s fine.”

Romance is like a soufflé—delicate, light, magical. I’d poked a hole in it, and once collapsed, no amount of air would revive it.

With a bag of frozen peas on my elevated right foot, I sat at my kitchen table and finished the Niçoise, then hobbled to the laundry room and put in a load of clothes that had kept my hamper from closing. While the machine did its thing, I wrote up my notes from my talks with Virginia Yawley and Cathy Johnson and brooded about the mess I’d made of what could have been a wonderful evening.

Mindy phoned. She’d talked to her client, and he was willing to talk to me.

“When?” I asked.

“He’s leaving first thing in the morning for New York, so it would have to be tonight. If it’s okay with you, I’ll tell him it’s a go, and he’ll phone you now.”

“Now” was good. I felt a flutter of excitement. “What’s his name?”

“He’d rather not have you know. You have Caller ID that shows the caller’s name, right? You’ll have to deactivate.”

“Come on, Mindy. How will I be able to verify something if I don’t have a name?”

“He doesn’t want to be involved. Take it or leave it, Molly.”

I took it.

“By the way, what did you learn from Lenore’s mother?” she asked.

“I didn’t learn anything.” I told her about finding Betty Rowan, saw in my mind the lifeless body floating in the pink-watered tub.

“Maybe you shouldn’t get any more involved,” she said, as I’d known she would.

“I’m careful. Don’t tell the family, okay?” I didn’t need half a dozen phone calls.

After hanging up, I pressed star eighty-seven on my phone keypad. Five minutes later he called.

“You want to know about Saunders,” he said without preamble. He had a scratchy voice, probably a smoker. “He was flush with investors for the Santa Monica project. When the market went bad, investors dropped out. I was going to, but Saunders showed me he’d put in more of his own capital, and so did another major investor, Donald Horton.”

Horton sounded familiar. And then I remembered: It was Jillian’s last name. So the families had been more than socially involved. . . .

“Then I heard the EPA was going to be a problem. Saunders told me not to worry, that he had a contact in the EPA, and they were in the bag.”

“I heard there was a zoning problem.”

“There was some talk about that, too, but Saunders said he’d worked it all out.”

“Did he tell you who his EPA contact was?”

“He wouldn’t say, but I’m pretty sure it’s Brad Messer. I think Messer helped him out before.”

I wrote down the name. “Why are you sure?”

“One time I was waiting in reception. His secretary went to the rest room, so I was there alone. Saunders was yelling at someone on the phone. First he called him Brad. Then, when he got pissed, it was Messer.”

“Maybe he was angry because Messer was giving him a hard time about the environmental concerns.”

“Saunders was yelling at him, called him a greedy son of a bitch. He said he’d agreed to a hundred grand and not a penny more, that it was twenty-five grand more than last time, and the time before that. That if not for him—meaning Saunders—Messer would still be driving a Volvo instead of a Town Car.”

At ten o’clock I was standing on the steps leading to the shul’s glass door entrance, which was locked. I’d parked in the small lot behind the building near Zack’s black Honda and a Camry I assumed belonged to the bar mitzvah boy’s parent. I was waiting for parent and son to leave so I could enter. In my hand was a box from Maison Gourmet with two large slices of their sinfully delicious chocolate cheesecake, which Zack had mentioned was his favorite. If the course of true love never did run smooth, I was determined to pave the bumps.

About five minutes later I saw a mother and a glum teenager approaching the entrance. When they exited, I grabbed the edge of the door with my free hand, smiled at the startled mother and wished her a good night, and stepped inside.

The rabbi’s study, I remembered, was to the right. I walked down the hall and raised my free hand to the slightly open door—cheesecake in my hand, a song in my heart—prepared to knock before entering, when I heard Zack’s voice.

“. . . are you, Lisa? It’s Zack Abrams. Definitely a long time.” He laughed. “I know. Most people are. What?” Another laugh. “Well, how about tomorrow night? Nine o’clock is good for me, too.”

I limped down the hall and back to my car.

Isaac had left my mail at my front door, and I flipped through the envelopes and magazines while I ate both slices of the cheesecake, which was pretty damn good. There was a hand-addressed invitation from B’nai Yeshurun for an evening with the new rabbi.

As if.

One of the envelopes, as Isaac had warned, was open. A large manila one with the same return address as yesterday’s but with thinner contents. Inside was a revised chapter from the author.

I wondered whether it was kids, as Ernie the mail carrier had suggested, or whether someone was snooping in my mail. To see if Betty Rowan had sent me the journal?

Bubbie G says that for some people the world stands on three things—
gelt, gelt, und gelt.
Money, money, and money. After talking to Virginia Yawley and Cathy Johnson, I was convinced that, sadly, Betty was one of those people, and that she was capable of blackmail. During the two hours it had taken me to drive back from the Cabazon outlets, I’d also arrived at a hunch as to why she’d phoned me.

Here’s what I knew: On her first call, Saturday night, Betty had been eager to discuss something that would interest me. Ditto Sunday morning. Sunday evening she was anxious, and more specific (she’d mentioned Lenore’s phone call to me and “something you should know”). And that was
after
the news broke that police were conducting an investigation into Lenore’s death—news that, according to Zena, had shaken Betty up so much that she’d phoned Connors and told him she was afraid. I also knew that Betty had access and opportunity to enter Lenore’s apartment.

Here’s what I assumed: Betty had gotten hold of Lenore’s journal sometime before Lenore died, probably at Saunders’s behest. She read the journal, and when Lenore died, apparently a suicide, Betty decided to cash in on the journal’s contents. She phoned people about whom Lenore had written incriminating information, and hinted or stated that she’d like to be paid for her silence. My assumption was based on the fact that she was dead, and that she had chased money most of her life.

Here’s the hunch, and I’ll admit it was just that: Betty strengthened her hand by mentioning that she could get big bucks for Lenore’s story. A book deal, a movie. In fact, a published writer was already interested in Lenore, and Betty was considering working with her unless she received a better offer.

That writer was me, of course. Even if Betty hadn’t named me, I was out there asking too many questions, interviewing everyone who had known Lenore. And when Betty had no takers, she decided to offer the journal to me—not for free, of course. You might argue that she phoned me those first two times because she suspected that Lenore had been killed. I’d considered that, but number one, she would’ve called the police, not me, and number two, she hadn’t sounded worried.

Until the police decided Lenore might have been killed. Betty must have panicked, because she realized that one of the people she’d tried to blackmail was a very bad guy. That would explain why in her last message to me she’d been anxious, and why she’d referred to Lenore’s call.
I’m afraid.
And why she’d phoned Connors.

That’s as far as my hunch went. I still hadn’t figured out why she’d called me that last time. Maybe she’d wanted to warn me that she’d mentioned my name, although I didn’t see her as the caring type, and she certainly hadn’t been fond of me. And why hadn’t she just phoned the police?

And I still didn’t know whom she’d tried to blackmail and whom she suspected of killing Lenore.

Someone who had killed Betty and tried to make it look like suicide. Someone who didn’t know how much I knew, or what I had.

I told myself that Betty Rowan hadn’t known where I lived. I’m not listed in the White Pages. But I can tell you that it isn’t all that hard to learn a person’s address, and how was it that Saunders had shown up at the bakery just when I was there? If he’d found me, so could anyone.