Cold Blood (2 page)

“What does it mean?”

The housekeeper was replacing the cutlery in its drawer now, buffing each knife and fork quickly with a clean cloth before she put it away.

“Well, it depends on which way the cross is placed on the Bible.”

“Ah, so you do know what it means?”

“All I know is, if you and Miss Tilda are playing around, then you stop and don’t be foolish. That’s voodoo, and nobody ought to play games with things they don’t understand because evil has a way of getting inside you, like a big black snake. It sits in your belly and you never know when it’s gonna uncoil and spit… and if you touch another person’s grisgris, then you got bad trouble.”

Anna Louise broke off a large piece of muffin and stuffed it into her mouth.

“You don’t believe in all that mumbo jumbo, do you?”

She took a gulp of milk, swallowing it the wrong way, and started coughing and spluttering as the muffin lodged in the back of her throat. She gasped, her eyes watering and her cheeks turning bright red. She couldn’t breathe it felt as if she was being choked, and Berenice had to hit her hard in the middle of her back as she retched and clung to the edge of the table before at last she coughed up the mouthful of food, heaving for breath.

The housekeeper fetched some paper kitchen towel to wipe up the mess.

“You see, what did I say about that snake? It just come and hissed an’ spat right now, almost chokin’ you, so you hear me right and don’t go meddlin’.”

But when she turned back Anna Louise was gone, so she went out into the hall, catching sight of the girl as she ran helter-skelter up the stairs. “Are you all right, Miss Anna Louise?”

Anna Louise looked down and then leaned over the banister, whispering,

“It was”in my mama’s room. It wasn’t Tilda that saw it but me!”

She laughed suddenly and continued running up the stairs, not seeing the fear on Berenice’s face as the housekeeper slipped her hand inside her uniform dress to feel for her own grisgris. It was safely tucked into her slip, on her lefthand side, beneath her heart.

Berenice returned to the kitchen: that silly spoiled child had no notion of what went on in the house, and she hoped to God she never would. She cleaned up the mess from the table, and finished putting the dishes away, then tipped all the freshly made blueberry muffins into the trash. She would make a fresh batch, just in case a drop of the snake’s venom that had hissed from Anna Louise Caley had touched them: there were some chances that just weren’t worth taking.

The following afternoon, accompanied by her parents, Anna Louise flew from Los Angeles to New Orleans. It was February 15 and the next day, Anna Louise was officially reported as missing. Police in both Los Angeles and New Orleans attempted to trace her, and when they failed to do so, her parents brought in private investigators.

The weeks became monthsno body and no random note were discovered, and even with top investigation agencies on the case, no clue as to the whereabouts of the missing girl, or her body, ever came to light. After nine months the disappearance of AnnBLouise Caley was no longer news, and she had to all intents and purposes become just another statistic, another photograph on the missing persons files.

Eleven months passed, and with no new information, Anna Louise’s distraught parents faced the possibility that she might have been murdered. By this time, more than fifteen investigation agencies had been involved with the case; the Mississippi had been dragged and helicopters had searched the swamplands of Louisiana. Agnew Investigations, along with three other less well-known agencies, were still retained on the inquiry: the Caleys had paid out millions of dollars, but the expenditure had yielded no motive, no suspect, no results. All the grieving parents were left with was an aching period of waiting, while they longed for a sign that their beautiful Anna Louise was still alive.

All the PI agencies involved had made a lot of money, and some had even traded information with one another, but finally the Anna Louise Caley bonanza was coming to an end. Pickings were getting slim for private investigators it was a tough business in which contacts and recommendations by word of mouth were a necessity, as Page Investigations, a small PI company, had found out the hard way. Even getting a foothold on the lowest rung of such a competitive ladder had proved impossible, and the attempt had been financially crippling for Lorraine Page: now, her agency was virtually bankrupt.

Even though she was a former police lieutenant, her own case history as an alcoholic and an officer who had shot dead an unarmed boy while drunk on duty meant that instead of being welcomed into the PI fraternity, she was being frozen out, just as she had been kicked out of the LAPD. The hardest part was explaining to Rosie, the assistant whom Lorraine jokingly called her partner, and who was also a recovering alcoholic, that they were going under. Dear Rosie, who still hoped, Rosie who still maintained that business would pick upbut there had never been any business. There was nothing to pick up from; it had all been a gamble, a dream even, but now it was over.

Lorraine had the phone cupped in her hand, half listening to the call, half wondering whether tonight would be the night she would tell Rosie she knew she would have to do it soon. She listened, interjecting twice how sorry she was as the man’s deep rumbling voice made incoherent references to his wife’s passing.

Rosie Hurst, a plump forty-five-year-old woman with a kind, open face, was reading her horoscope, a cup of coffee and two orange-chocolate cupcakes beside her. She had flicked a glance at Lorraine when the phone had jangled through the silent office and sighed when she had heard Lorraine’s overcheerful

“Hi, Bill, how ya doing?”

Rosie had been trying a new diet: proteins one meal, carbohydrates the next, with fruit forty minutes either before or after each meal, and no fats or fried food. She had stuck to it for a month and felt better for having lost a few pounds, but today she was indulging in a binge of chocolate cupcakes, hating herself with each bite. Still, it was just one of those daysshe couldn’t face another chicken breast without crisp golden skin or French fries or another salad without dressing, and a whole month with no fresh crusty bread spread thickly with peanut butter had been excruciating.

At last Lorraine was able to replace the receiver.

“That was Bill Rooney,”

she murmured, lighting a cigarette.

“His wife died.”

“I didn’t know he had a wife,”

Rosie said, lowering her magazine.

“I don’t think he did,”

Lorraine said as she counted the butt ends in her ashtray. She sighed and leaned back in her chair. By turning her head a fraction she could just make out the cheap sign printed in fake gold leaf on the outer office doorPAGE INVESTIGATIONS AGENCY. There was a stack of business cards on her desk with the same inscription. It was a farce.

“Well, th^*end of yet another overactive sleuthing day.”

Rosie chomped on her cupcake, staring at the free digital alarm clock she got from ordering some nonstick pans. It was almost six. Unaware of the smear of chocolate over her right cheek, she looked over at Lorraine, watching her as she inhaled deeply on her thirtieth or so cigarette of the day. Her eyes were staring vacantly across the small white painted office. Rosie hated it when she did those vacant stares. Sometimes her silences could last over an hour, and Rosie could never tell what her partner was thinking. She hoped this was not going to turn into one of Lorraine’s moods.

“You should cut down,”

she said with her mouth full.

“So should you,”

Lorraine retorted, looking at the trash can filled with empty silver-foil cupcake molds.

“I don’t smoke, so it’s expected I should crave sugar. That’s half of what alcoholism is about too, you knowsugar craving.”

Lorraine pushed her secondhand typist chair back from her empty desk.

“Is it? Well, well, isn’t that interesting. And just what are hamburgers and fries, are they a craving too?”

“For Chrissakes, don’t start hassling me! You and your brown rice and your vitamins make me wanna throw up.”

“Might do you some good!”

Rosie now pushed her ample rear back in her catalog-sale-of-themonth office chair.

“Right, that is it.”

A.

“Yep, I guess it is, Rosie.”

P

It was hard for Lorraine to explain how each day she felt more isolated, because in physical terms she wasn’t: Rosie and big Bill Rooney were always there. It wasn’t that she didn’t have anyone to talk to, interact withit just felt that way. Her mind seemed to be atrophying and she felt drained, lethargic; sometimes she wanted to weep, out of a deepening feeling of utter loneliness, or was it lovelessness? Whatever it was, it was having a more and more destructive effect on her, and she felt its undertow sucking her down.

Lorraine flicked the old Venetian blind that didn’t quite fit the windows. She gave a sly look at her plump roommate as she stubbed out her cigarette. She didn’t even live in a place of her own, but was sharing Rosie’s small apartment in a run-down district off Orange Grove. She was thirty-seven years old; almost six of those years had been lost in a sea of drugs and alcohol addiction, and sometimes, especially at times like this afternoon, she felt it was all a waste of time; the reality was that she was never going to get back into the only business she knew or had known when she had been a cop.

The two women had met when Lorraine was recuperating from a nearfatal hit-and-run accident. It wasn’t the vehicle that had almost killed her but her drinking and self-abuse. Now she had been sober and attempting to get her life organized for nearly two years. As an ex-lieutenant attached to the Pasadena Homicide Squad, she had experience not only in the field but as a detective, and she had been a very good one.

“Had”

being the operative word: after drinking took over her life it had cost her the husband she had loved and the two daughters she had adored.

“What you thinking about?”

Rosie asked, pretending to be immersed in her magazine.

“Nothing,”

Lorraine answered, but this quite obviously wasn’t true. She wondered if she should attempt another reconciliation with her kids. Yet as always whenever she thought about them, she decided they were better off without her intruding on their new life, a life she had not been a part of for too many years. Added to that, her ex-husband had remarried and her daughters called his new wife Mother. They didn’t even want to see her.

Rosie pored over her magazine again. Lorraine’s long sighs made her aware that something was coming, but she said nothing, flicking over the pages to a new diet that guaranteed you could lose weight with ease if you sent off for their specially priced

“slimming drinks.”

But since she’d attempted most diets, including slimming drinks, and none had worked, she flicked over to a knitting pattern.

“This is a farceyou know it and I know it. I mean, I dunno what else we can do. How many more ads can we afford to run, if we don’t drum up any customer by the end of the week?”

Here it comes, thought Rosie, scowling.

“You’ve said that every week.”

She hated it when Lorraine started on this tactic, partly because she knew everything she said was true but also because it made her afraid. Afraid Lorraine would leave, afraid that without Lorraine she would go back on the booze, afraid Lorraine would too.

“Got to face reality.”

Lorraine prodded her empty cigarette pack, hoping she’d overlooked a stray one. But it wasn’t to be, so she looked over the stubs in her ashtray again.

“Yes, I know, I know, and I hear what you are sayin’, but at the same time we got to stick to it. Everyone knows any new business takes time to take offeven Bill Rooney told us that.” Lorraine appeared not to be listening as she rummaged in her purse and started to check her loose change.

“I mean, w^tould get a case in tomorrow that’d make everything you just said obsolete,”

Rosie said a little too cheerfully.

“What?”

Lorraine asked challengingly.

“Obsolete,”

Rosie repeated flatly.

“Really? Well, you’ve been saying that for the past month and we haven’t had so much as a telephone call. And if you want to check the logbook out, we are hardly likely to get some case off the street that’d pay for your cupcakes and my cigarettes, never mind the rent on this place and your apartment. So get it straight, Rosie. Shit, I need a cigarette.”

Lorraine crossed to the hooks by the toilet closet. She yanked down her raincoat.

“Maybe the rain’ll stop soon.”

Lorraine pulled on her raincoat.

“Oh yeah, so it’s all gonna be okay if the sun shines?”

“Maybe.”

“You’re a dumb optimist.”

“What?”

“Optimist, Rosie. Even if the sun cracked the pavement, that’s not gonna help us. Two stray dogs, a missing senile grandfather, a two-week stint in a department store to cover for their in-house detective’s vacation, five car traces, four warrants and a woman suspecting her husband of having an affair with his secretary, and since the wife was your size and his secretary looked like Julia Roberts, it didn’t t A us long to investigate, and that… that is it, Rosie, that’s all there’s beerltor the past nine months.”

“You always gotta get personal. If you look on the good side, you’ve been sober nine months more, and so have I, come to think of it, so my guess is we’ll make it. This is just a bad patch.”

Lorraine clenched her teeth.

“No, it isn’t, Rosie, it’s just a fact. We are flat broke and searching my ashtray for butts is not exactly what I had planned for the future. We might as well admit it, face it, before we get any deeper in debt.”

“But we are facing it,”

Rosie said stubbornly.

Lorraine closed her eyes as if talking to a child, her voice sounding annoyingly overpatient.

“No, we are not. Fact is this whole idea was shit, and to be honest I don’t feel like patting myself on the back ‘cause I remained sober. Truth is, right now I feel like tying one hell of a load on and the only thing stoppin’ me is that I have no money.”