Blues in the Night (5 page)

eight

Lenore’s mother was where connors had said she’d be, in the visitors’ lounge that bridges the north and south towers. She was standing in front of the large picture windows that look out on the courtyard below, next to a short, brown-haired, bearded man in a well-cut navy suit that worked hard to camouflage his portliness. He was talking to her in quiet, soothing tones, and she was bobbing her head like one of those cute toy dogs people used to keep on their dashboards. From what I could tell, like those dogs, she didn’t seem to be taking much in.

I heard snippets of what he said—“Call me,” “help you,” “need anything.” Her dull “Thank you, doctor” in reply. A moment later he squeezed her shoulder, and then he was duck-walking past me toward the south tower. Probably the shrink, I decided. Lomeli would be wearing a white hospital coat.

She watched him go, eyes red-rimmed, face mascara-streaked, those penciled eyebrows clownlike now. Her entire body exuded weariness and despair. I had just decided to leave her alone with her grief when she looked up and saw me. Her face tightened as I walked over, so I knew she’d recognized me.

“My baby’s gone,” she said tonelessly. “Dead.”

“I heard. I’m so sorry, Mrs. Rowan.” I’ve talked to mothers who have lost their children, but never when the loss is so raw. “Is there anything I can do to help? Maybe make some phone calls for you?”

She shook her head. “There’s not many people to call. She’s an only child, and her daddy’s been gone twenty-five years.”

I wondered about Lenore’s ex-husband but didn’t ask. “Can I get you some coffee? Something to eat?”

“What is it that you want?” she demanded, her eyes cold brown marbles. “A lead story?”

I hesitated, not wanting to intensify her pain, then decided she had a right to know. “Your daughter left a message for me last night. She needed to talk to me.”

The mother snorted. “Do I look like a fool?”

“I can play the tape for you,” I offered for the second time today, minus the sarcasm. “It ran out before she finished talking so I can’t be sure, but I think she started to say she was afraid.”

Betty Rowan chewed on her lip and thought that over for a minute. I didn’t rush her.

“She was depressed bad yesterday,” the mother finally said. “Maybe she was afraid she was going to do something . . . like what she did.” Tears filled her tired, reddened eyes.

That’s what Connors had said. It certainly made sense.

“Did you see her?” Mrs. Rowan asked.

I shook my head.

“They wouldn’t let me see her. I’m her momma, and they wouldn’t let me see her, and then they took her away.”

“Sometimes it’s for the best,” I said, mouthing one of those platitudes that had made me clench my teeth when my great-aunt Estelle died at seventy-eight, six months after she suffered a stroke that left her partially paralyzed with limited speech.

“How did she do it?” Betty Rowan asked. “Last time she took a razor blade to her wrists. But I guess she couldn’t do that here, in the hospital.”

“I don’t know,” I lied.

Betty nodded. “Her psychiatrist swore she wasn’t at risk. That was him talking to me a minute ago. Did you meet him?”

“No.”

“He’s sweating bullets, worrying am I going to sue. So is Lomeli.” Her smile was bitter. “I have half a mind to, but suing’s not going to bring my baby back.” Her mouth worked as she fought back tears.

“I’m so sorry,” I said again, inadequacy and guilt sitting like heavy bricks on my shoulders. “She wanted to talk to me last night. I wish I’d come to the hospital.”

“Well,” the mother said. If I was asking for absolution, I’d come to the wrong place. “You talked to her the other day. What did she say?”

Two days ago Betty Rowan had ordered me out of her daughter’s room, but most family members of the deceased, I’ve found, are eager to feed on crumbs of conversation, and so I would have to do.

“She didn’t say much that made sense, probably because of the sedation,” I told her. “She thought I was Nina—?” I ended with a question mark in my voice.

“Weldon,” the mother finished automatically, as I’d hoped she would. “Mousy thing. I don’t know what Lenore saw in her.”

“I guess they were close.”

“
Too
close.” She was frowning, and I wondered if she was jealous of their relationship. “I suppose I’ll have to call her. I have her number somewhere in my purse.”

“Do you want me to call her for you?” I’ll admit I’m not sure how much of my offer was prompted by curiosity, how much by my sincere desire to help.

The woman stiffened, almost imperceptibly. “No, that’s all right. She’ll take the news worse, coming from a stranger. She was here yesterday, and Lenore was doin’ so much better.” Betty ran a hand through her hair. “What else did Lenore tell you?”

“She said Robbie was very angry with her, that he wasn’t going to visit her. Because of Max. She said that twice. I assume Robbie is her ex-husband.” A guess, but Betty didn’t deny it.

The woman tightened her lips. “Did she say why he was angry?”

“No. She said that the accident was her fault, that she’d hoped for a second chance, but didn’t deserve it.”

“She was too hard on herself.” Betty shook her head. “I told her over and over, but she didn’t believe me. I seen this coming. Dr. Korwin says no, but a mother knows.” She pressed her hand against her heart.

“You think she tried to kill herself the other night?”

“I guess so. I guess she did, poor baby.” The mother sighed. “She wanted out of her pain.”

“Why was she so depressed?”

A spark of anger kindled in her eyes, but she smothered it. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“Mrs. Rowan, something’s been puzzling me. Why would Lenore be in a nightgown trying to cross Laurel Canyon in the middle of the night?”

She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“There’s a lot that bothers me, and not much I can do about it,” she said, the anger sparking again. “Did you ask Lenore?”

“She didn’t remember being there.”

Betty nodded. “It was the medication. She didn’t know what she was doing.”

“But why would she go to Laurel Canyon? Does she know anyone who lives around there?”

“It doesn’t make a difference, does it? Why she went there, what happened, whose fault it was. She’s at peace now, in God’s hands.” She glanced down the hall toward the south tower. “I’m going to talk to the detective, find out when I can see my baby.”

Without another word she walked away. I stood there for a moment, thinking about our conversation. It occurred to me that Betty Rowan had talked to me not because she was seeking comfort from Lenore’s final words, but because she was nervous about what her daughter had revealed.

nine

North of Sunset, Crescent Heights Boulevard changes its name and its densely populated residential/commercial character and morphs into Laurel Canyon, a tree-and-mountain-bordered two-lane road that quickly merges into one as it snakes its way up to Mulholland, then widens again on its descent into the San Fernando Valley.

On your right as you’re driving up, you’ll see a few apartment buildings and homes ranging from modest to grand, as well as convenience stores and an espresso bar and, for a short stretch, a side road that allows you to escape part of the rush-hour traffic I found myself in now—too many cars packed into the coils of a sluggish intestine. Also on your right, just north of Hollywood Boulevard, is the dark yellow marquee with black Grecian-style letters that marks the entrance to an area called Mount Olympus, where the streets are named for Greek and Roman gods.

On your left is mountain wall. In some spots the wall is a bare, unadorned reddish-brown; in others it’s dressed for company, wearing a petticoat of oleander, eucalyptus, fir, the occasional palm, and other trees that stretch to the sky. There are houses, too, some street-level and rather shabby, some wedged into the mountain, most of them higher up and grander, their foundations supported by sturdy wooden beams that seem to be doing the job. Signs placed at intervals along the canyon road warn against smoking and flooding, and while I’d love to live in one of those aeries, breathing in the scent of wildflowers, taking in the spectacular views of city and valley, I worry about the heat and dry air that, every now and then, bakes the trees and brush into tinder for the fires that lick at those sturdy beams and snap them as if they were Pick-Up Sticks, leaving the parched earth and the houses sitting on them defenseless against the rush of swollen rains.

Every so often I
am
tempted. The area is beautiful and enticing, and the houses I saw last year and the year before and the year before that are still standing. Like I said, though, I’m an expert worrier.

Lookout Mountain is one of the few streets on Laurel Canyon with a traffic light. Nearing the signal, I wondered exactly where Lenore had been standing when the car had struck her, and I darted nervous looks around, as if the road still bore bloody evidence of Sunday morning’s events. There were a few stores on my right, but I doubted that they’d been open at that time.

The light turned green. According to Connors, Lenore had been found north of Lookout, so I continued a few hundred feet, passing the famed wide stone steps and bridge of the three-and-a-half-acre former Houdini estate, all that remains of the original mansion that fire destroyed in 1959.

At Willow Glen I turned right. I’d never been here before, and I felt hemmed in by the densely packed, two-story homes and unnerved by the cars coming toward me on the narrow, serpentine one-lane road that climbed higher and higher. I guess if you live here you get used to it, but I felt as though I’d done 180 curls on an Ab Roller. The good news, I told myself, was that there were plenty of potential witnesses. Connors or another cop had no doubt questioned the residents days ago, but experience has taught me that a great deal depends on the questions asked, and the questioner—people are often leery of becoming involved in a police investigation. And maybe Connors hadn’t talked to everyone. Maybe I’d be lucky.

Luck had eluded me so far. After returning from the hospital, I’d spent the rest of my morning and most of the afternoon accomplishing little. I blamed it on the mild headache from fasting, a headache that lingered for a while after I dry-swallowed two Advil tablets, but I knew it was Lenore, and that I’d failed her.

There were several pages of Weldons in the Pacific Bell directories (I have the whole set, covering the city and Valley), half a dozen with the initial
N
, but not one Nina. I began with the six, heard six answering machine messages—two delivered by male adults, three by females, and one by a squeaky-voiced, singsongy child whose parents obviously thought he was the cutest thing since Macaulay Culkin.

I had fared no better trying to track down Darren Porter: There were numerous Porters, many of them with the initial
D
, but none of them were home except for a Doreen, to whom I apologized for calling the wrong number. People, of course, aren’t always home when you want them to be, which was why I’d braved the traffic and come here now, close to dinnertime.

I fared no better now. None of the residents had seen Lenore in her nightgown. None had witnessed or heard the accident, even those within yoo-hoo-ing distance of Laurel Canyon. Back in my car, feeling embarrassingly winded by the climb and determined to exercise more, I continued along Willow Glen and took one hairpin turn after another until I arrived at Apollo and what seemed like the crest of Mount Olympus. In any case, it was crest enough for me.

The street was graceful and wide, lined with Italian cypress trees standing proud as sentinels in front of predominantly white houses that reflected the muted brilliance of the setting afternoon sun. After inhaling a lungful of what I hoped was smog-free air, I crunched along the walk to the topmost house, a brand-new white stucco two-story with a white-tiled roof, mullioned windows, and multiple balconies. No landscaping yet, and no car in the driveway. No sign of occupancy, for that matter, but I rang the bell and waited a few minutes before giving up.

The occupants of the next few houses were home, but they hadn’t seen or heard Lenore or anything related to the hit-and-run. I was disappointed but undaunted, charmed by the vista and the ever-present cypress trees and the winding streets that suddenly changed identities (Jupiter becomes Oceanus, Apollo becomes Electra), much like the mercurial and capricious gods for whom they’d been named and whose escapades had kept me company during the summer months of my adolescence.

Several stops later on Hermes was a house I could easily covet: clean lines, weathered redwood planks, a peaked shingled roof, huge windows uncluttered with drapes or shutters. Two cars—a black Jeep Wrangler and a red Mercedes—sat in the driveway, and a tall, dark-haired, ponytailed woman in tight jeans and a crisp white cotton sleeveless blouse opened the door after I introduced myself, the cell phone at her ear a jarring note to the rustic splendor.

Her name was Jillian, and she was trying hard not to show her impatience. “A police detective was here a few days ago,” she told me. “I was out of town that night.”

“What about your husband?”

“Fiancé. He didn’t see or hear the accident.”

“I’m wondering if he saw the woman wandering around this area,” I said, wishing I had a photo of Lenore. “She was wearing a nightgown.”

Jillian shook her head. “He would have told me.”

“Maybe I could ask your fiancé.”

“Ask me what?” A man appeared in the doorway behind Jillian, then moved to her side and slipped his arm around her thin waist. He was a few inches taller than the woman and good-looking, with well-cut dark blond hair framing a broad face and friendly hazel eyes. They both looked to be in their mid-thirties.

“She’s a reporter,” Jillian told him, handing him the card I’d given her. “She’s looking into that hit-and-run the police asked us about.”

The fiancé tightened his lips and nodded. “Horrible thing. I hope they get the creep.” He glanced at my card, then up at me. “Molly Blume, huh? I’ll bet you get kidded about that. So you’re writing a story about her?”

“Something like that. I was wondering if you saw the woman wandering around. She was wearing a nightgown.”

“Wish I could help you out, but I went to sleep a little after midnight. Fell asleep during Leno—not his fault, mine.” He smiled, chagrined. “Sorry.”

So, I learned, were most of the residents, aside from those on vacation—sorry and asleep the night in question. Where were insomniacs when you needed them?

I had gone up and down Apollo and Hercules and had backtracked up Venus, then come down again on Achilles, which leads into Vulcan. The street names and their fickleness were losing their charm, and I was losing my sense of direction and optimism. I was sick of Italian cypress trees. I dreaded the climb back up to my car. My headache was back, my clothes were sticking to me. I was tired and thirsty and hungry. I needed a bathroom. I thought of Cyrano—“I press on, I press on”—and did the same, wondering whether I’d find my white plume.

I trudged onward and found myself back on Hercules, then detoured onto Zeus, a short, isolated thunderbolt of a street that comes out of nowhere apparently only to intersect Hercules. I braked my Nikes to a stop in front of a silver Toyota. A girl wearing below-the-navel, low-cut white short shorts and a yellow crop top was sitting on the side of the hood, her caramel-tanned legs and arms scissored around the lean, cut-off jeans-clad torso of the porcupine-black-haired boy whose lips were locked on hers.

“Excuse me?” I called.

They pulled apart and stared at me, unembarrassed. I stared back. She had curly strawberry blond hair, a constellation of freckles splashed across the bridge of her short nose, and a ring in the navel of a midriff as flat as a sheet of wood. He had a row of studs in his left eyebrow and nostril, more on his upper lip. I wondered how it felt to kiss all that metal and remembered that braces had never stopped anyone, including me.

“A woman was injured in a hit-and-run around two o’clock Sunday morning,” I said, beginning my script.

“Are you a cop?” Studs asked.

“Freelance reporter,” I told him.

“Cool,” he said, looking unimpressed. I didn’t take it personally.

“A detective was here, but my parents were out of town that night,” the girl offered. “I was babysitting my sister, but I didn’t hear anything.”

“Were you here that night, too?” I asked Studs.

“He wasn’t,” the girl said, too quickly.

I looked at her, then at him. “Is that right?”

“Yeah.” He concentrated on digging a hole in the ground with the toe of his athletic shoe.

“You’re lying,” I said, as if I were commenting on the weather, which was pretty damn hot.

“I don’t have to talk to you,” he said. “You’re just a writer.” Back to his toe.

How quickly they turn. “No, but Detective Connors—he’s handling this case—is going to ask you the same thing after I talk to him, and he’ll know you’re lying. Why, I can’t figure, unless you were driving the car that hit her.”

His head jerked up. “No
way
!”

I waited.

He looked at her, eyes flashing panic like a neon sign. She sighed. Birds chirped.

“I was here with Abby, okay?” he said, sullen. “I came around ten, after her sister was asleep. I left around three. But we didn’t see or hear anything. You can believe it or not, I don’t give a shit.”

“My parents’ll kill me if they find out,” Abby said.

“I won’t rat you out to your parents,” I promised. “I’m trying to find out if anyone saw a woman around here that night. She was wearing a cream-colored nightgown.”

They exchanged startled looks. My white plume, I thought with a prickling of excitement.

“Is she the same woman that got hit by the car?” he asked.

I nodded.

“So is she, like, dead?” Studs asked.

Like, “Yes.”

“Jeez.” He blew out a deep breath.

The girl licked her lips.

“Where did you see her?” I asked him.

“Who said I saw her?” Narrowing his eyes, trying to tough it out.

I examined my nails.

“Suppose we
did
see her,” he said a moment later. “Do we have to, like, talk to the cops?”

“Probably.”

“Shit,” Studs muttered.

I wondered if the metal on his face was stunting his vocabulary.

“Then my parents will know.” The girl was grazing on her upper lip with her teeth as if it were a snow cone.

“So where did you see her?” I repeated.

“She came running out of a house,” Studs said, his tone resigned.

“Which one?” I started to look around me, but he shook his head.

“Not here. Up there.” He pointed in the direction I’d come from. “On Hermes,” he said, rhyming the name with
germs
. “The wood one with the big windows?”

My dream house, occupied by Jillian and fiancé. Interesting, I thought. Then I frowned. “You can’t see that house from here.”

“We weren’t in my house,” Abby said, her face a becoming shade of pink that hid her freckles. “We went to this new house way up on Apollo. Once my sister’s asleep, she never wakes up,” she added before I could call her on it.

“What were you doing there?” I asked, although I had a pretty good idea.

“Fooling around.” The pink in her face had deepened. “The owners haven’t moved in yet. It’s locked, but there’s a way to get in from the back.”

The single-minded determination of thieves and horny adolescents. “You could’ve fooled around in your own house, with your parents away and your sister asleep.”

“We were getting high,” she admitted. “I was nervous that my sister would smell the stuff and tell my parents. Anyway, it’s way cool being in an empty house.”

I could see that. “So what happened when the woman came out of the house?”

“The guy came out, too,” Studs said. “He grabbed her arm and she yelled at him to get his effing hands off her. She was screaming at him, cussing him out. Eff you, eff you. She said she was going to kill herself, that he’d be sorry.”

“What did the man say?”

“ ‘Make sure you do it right this time.’ Something like that.”

Nice guy, I thought. I turned to Abby. “Does that sound right?”

She nodded.

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“Then she ran off, I guess all the way down to Laurel Canyon,” Studs said. “We didn’t see her again.”

“Did he follow her?”

“Not right away. A few minutes later we heard a car, so it must’ve been his.”

“Which car?”

“No idea.”

“What time was this?”

He shrugged. “I dunno.” Neither did Abby.

“Where were the two of you when this was happening?”

“In the backyard. You could hear every word.”

“We were looking at the stars,” Abby said. “It was totally awesome.”