Blues in the Night (18 page)

Zena Lopost inserted the key, her hand steadier than mine would have been. She turned the knob, and the door groaned open as we stepped into a small living room, the way it does in a horror movie. Maybe it would’ve been funny under other circumstances, but it wasn’t funny now.

The house was frigid with air-conditioning. Zena called Betty’s name, then called her again, louder and shriller, I thought, the sounds echoing in the high-ceilinged room. We looked at each other then, communicating our unspoken fear, nodding. She followed me down a narrow hall through an empty bedroom into an adjoining bath, where Betty Rowan lay in the tub, the blood from one slashed wrist pinking the water while the other dangled over the side of the tub, fingers pointing to the spattered dark magenta drops and pink-handled razor on the black-and-white-tiled floor.

twenty-eight

Tuesday, July 22. 1:01
A.M.
4200 block of Fountain Avenue. An assailant told the victim, “You better go with us on a drive-by. You don’t have to do anything but you have to be in the car with us. If you don’t I’ll kill you or your mother.” (Hollywood)

I don’t think I’ve ever been as tired as when I got home from the station. I’d phoned Connors, even though Betty Rowan’s house was in Wilshire Division’s jurisdiction. Zena and I sat like statues on the living room sofa while we waited for him to show up, which was five minutes after two uniformed police and about ten minutes after the paramedics, although from the smell in the room and the quick look I stole at Betty’s grayed face before I gagged and backed away, almost knocking Zena down, I could tell she’d been dead some time. The coroner’s van arrived half an hour later.

“Like mother, like daughter,” Zena had said.

Connors didn’t say anything sassy when he saw me. In fact, he didn’t say much at all, which isn’t like him. Maybe he was too tired, or maybe the look on my face made him think better of it. I introduced him to Zena, who explained how she had a key to Betty’s house. He had me tell him why I’d come here tonight, something I’d already told the two cops from Wilshire and repeated to the Wilshire detective when he showed up a while later. Connors had phoned them.

“When was the last time you spoke to Mrs. Rowan?” the detective asked me. His name was Dobbins and he was in his thirties, with crew-cut brown hair and brown eyes, not as tall as Connors but wider.

“Thursday morning, at the hospital,” I said. “We exchanged voice messages after that. She phoned me sometime on Saturday. I returned her call Sunday morning, but she wasn’t in. She phoned me again Sunday afternoon or early evening. When I tried reaching her, her line was busy. I phoned again that night, then several times today.”

“What made you think something was wrong?”

“Sunday morning Mrs. Rowan said she wanted to talk to me as soon as possible, in person. Sunday afternoon her message said it had to do with the call her daughter Lenore made to me before she died, and something I should know. But she never called again, and her line was constantly busy Sunday night, and several times when I tried her today.” I didn’t mention that during the marathon phone call with Zack I’d ignored several call-waiting beeps.

“But you didn’t worry until tonight?”

I felt a flush crawling up my face like a spider’s legs. “I thought she was busy making funeral plans, or telling people what had happened.”

“You tried to reach her,” Connors said. “You couldn’t have known.”

I looked at him with gratitude. He knew what I was thinking—that history had repeated itself, that once again someone had reached out to me and I hadn’t been there.

Dobbins took Connors into the dining room, where they talked for a few minutes. When they returned, Dobbins questioned Zena. Had Betty said anything about wanting to kill herself?

“To tell the truth,” Zena said, “I don’t think they were all that close, especially since the baby died. The daughter visited only a few times after she moved back from Santa Barbara, and Betty didn’t talk much about her. She took it hard—what happened to her grandson, and all.” The woman sighed. “I saw the daughter about a month before she had the baby. She looked fine, but I guess she was depressed, even then. It just shows how you can’t tell about people.”

“So would you say that Mrs. Rowan wasn’t depressed about her daughter’s death?” Dobbins asked.

“When your child dies, it hurts.” Zena stared at him with disapproval. “She wasn’t carrying on, but that’s not her style. She was quiet. I took her to supper Thursday night, and she didn’t even seem to know I was there. She had a lot on her mind. She was worse when she heard them saying maybe Lenore was killed.” Zena repeated what she’d told me.

“Did Mrs. Rowan mention having an argument with anyone?” Dobbins asked.

Zena shook her head. “Like I said, she was a quiet woman. Kept to herself.”

“Had anyone threatened her?”

“Not that I know.” She frowned. “Are you saying someone killed her?”

“We have to investigate all possibilities,” Dobbins said. He disappeared down the hall and into the bathroom, where someone from the coroner’s office was examining Betty Rowan’s body.

Connors walked me to my car. “You’re awfully quiet,” he said. “You okay? Considering.”

“Just thinking.”

The lamplight cast half his face in shadow. “Don’t beat yourself up about this, Molly. I meant what I said. You couldn’t have known.”

“I keep telling myself that. It’s not helping.”

“She phoned the station, Molly. Sunday evening. She asked to talk to me, said it was important.”

I stared at him. “Did she say why?”

Connors shook his head. “I got her message and phoned her. She told me she’d just heard that maybe Lenore had been murdered, and she was afraid. I asked her why. She wouldn’t say. I asked her was there someone specific she was afraid of. She said no. She asked could I send some cops to protect her. I said I was sorry, but we didn’t have the manpower for that. I said maybe she should sleep at a friend’s for a few nights, and she said maybe she would. I called her back an hour later, and her machine was on, so I figured that’s what she did. When I called again in the morning, her line was busy, so I thought she was okay.”

I didn’t say anything for a while, and Connors didn’t either.

“Did Nina Weldon call you?” I asked. “I gave her your number.”

“Lenore’s best friend?” Connors nodded. “She told me Lenore’s journal was missing on Wednesday. So?”

I hesitated. “I think Betty Rowan had the journal. I think someone knew it and killed her for it and made it look like suicide.” I looked at him, defiant.

“Me, too. Surprised you, didn’t I?” He had a hint of a smile under eyes that were bloodshot. He needed a shave.

“Did you find evidence that someone looked through her things?”

“Not yet, but that just means whoever did it was careful. Keep that to yourself, okay?” he said with a mild attempt at his usual scowl. I guess he was too tired, too sad. “What else is on your mind?”

“Betty and Lenore, the fact that they weren’t close. Mrs. O’Day said so. So did Zena. Nina said Lenore was upset because Betty and Saunders were thick.”

He leaned against my car door. “Lenore killed Betty’s grandson, Molly. Whether she was mentally ill or not, it’s hard to forgive something like that.”

“Exactly my point. They were practically estranged. But Betty Rowan was at the hospital almost all day.”

“What that Lopost woman said. When it came down to it, she was still a mother. I can buy that.”

“I’m not so sure. When I talked to her after Lenore died, I had the feeling she was mostly worried about what Lenore might have told me when she was sedated.”

“Like what?”

“Stuff about Saunders, about Max. The whole mess.” I waved my hand. “I think Saunders asked Betty to keep an eye on Lenore. Which explains why he gave her the key.”

Connors shook his head. “You’ve lost me.”

“Lenore’s key?” I said patiently. “The one she must have left at Saunders’s house? He gave it to Betty.”

“Maybe Lenore gave Betty a key.”

“Not if they were barely speaking. And if she had a key, why would Lenore ask Nina to pick up stuff from her apartment? Nina had to ask the O’Days to let her in. Why not ask her mother?”

Connors sighed. “And we know Betty had a key because . . . ?”

“Mrs. O’Day told me Betty was about to go into Lenore’s apartment on Thursday.”

“The day
after
the journal was missing, according to this Nina,” Connors pointed out.

“She was there Wednesday, too. I called Mrs. O’Day.”

“Well, why go back Thursday if she already had the damn journal?”

I was so tired. “Maybe Betty wanted to make sure Lenore hadn’t written anything else incriminating.”

“Possible.” Connors didn’t sound convinced.

“Or with Lenore dead, maybe Saunders asked her to make it look as though someone had burglarized the apartment.”

He shook his head. “You saw the place. I can’t buy the mom doing it.”

I couldn’t either. I was stumped.

“If Saunders had the key, why didn’t he just go to Lenore’s apartment himself?” Connors asked.

“And risk being seen? The O’Days saw Betty and didn’t think twice about it. And Saunders
trusted
Betty. She’d been loyal to him, not Lenore. Betty was living in one of his houses rent free, and he was helping her out financially. That’s what Nina told me.”

“Suppose you’re right,” Connors said. “Saunders gave her the key, asked her to get the journal and maybe some other papers. Why would he kill her for it? That doesn’t fit.”

“It does if she read it and decided to keep it for insurance. With Lenore dead, maybe Saunders wouldn’t be so generous.”

Connors raised a brow. “So she was going to blackmail him?”

“Or someone else. Lenore wrote stuff in the journal about other people. Names and dates and the dollars involved.”

“So who trashed the apartment?”

“You’re the detective. Figure it out.” I yawned and covered my mouth. “I’m going home.”

He moved away from the car. “I’ll follow you and check out your place.”

I inhaled sharply. “You think I’m in danger?”

“Your name and phone number are on a pad on her nightstand, Molly, next to her phone. We spotted it, so the killer probably did, too. Suppose he worries that Betty Rowan told you what’s in the journal.”

Fear formed a lump in my chest. “But we never connected.”

“He doesn’t know that.”

Connors made me wait in his unmarked vehicle while he searched my apartment. He made me promise to double-lock my door, which I always do, and keep my windows locked, something I rarely do on nights like this when the outside temperature is cool but the room hasn’t shaken off the day’s heat. He also gave me his cell and home numbers.

“Call any time, even if it’s something small,” he said, which made me even more nervous.

After he left and the doors and windows were locked, I looked around the apartment. Nothing seemed disturbed, but could I be sure?

twenty-nine

The road to Twentynine Palms is paved with miles of freeway. I left the house at nine, hoping to avoid rush-hour traffic, and took the 10 east. Once past downtown L.A., where the overpasses and underpasses of several freeways contort like an octopus’s arms gone mad, I was making eighty to ninety, checking frequently for Chippies who might want to impede my progress.

It’s a little less than a four-hour drive to Twentynine Palms, which is northeast of Palm Springs in the Mojave Desert’s Morongo Basin. At least that’s what the Mapquest directions showed, but I knew I’d make better time. I passed the Cal State L.A. campus, its initials carved into the steep green lawn; Covina and West Covina, Pomona. When you’re driving eighty-plus miles an hour, this stretch of highway is a blur of car dealerships, shopping malls, office buildings, and movie theaters. Not a postcard picture of America the beautiful, though I was pleased to see they’d taken down the billboard advertising a recently closed Swedish massage parlor, fronting for a brothel, that had bordered a Pomona public elementary school. But my thoughts weren’t on the scenery, and I was barely aware of the music from the radio.

They say if you want to find out who killed someone, you have to begin with the someone. Last night I’d suggested to Connors that Betty Rowan had been killed because she’d been planning to blackmail one or more people. In the light of day I’d pondered the presumption of my statement. The truth was, after seven days of talking to numerous people, I knew little about Lenore, about whom I’d heard conflicting opinions, and less about her mother, who I’d hoped could enlighten me. And now Betty was dead, too.

“Like mother, like daughter.” Zena Lopost had said it when she’d seen Betty’s body. Jillian had said the same thing, making a mean-spirited aspersion I couldn’t accept at face value. Still, the phrase echoed in my mind and I wondered if it was true.

I was also trying to work out why, if Betty Rowan had the journal in her possession on Wednesday, she’d wanted to get into her daughter’s apartment on Thursday. And why she’d phoned me again and again. Every time I thought I had it figured out, it fell apart in my head like a meringue. But thinking about it did make the drive seem shorter. When I looked at the clock again I was surprised to see that almost two hours had passed and I was nearing Palm Springs.

I’d been aware some time ago that the terrain had changed. Aside from the Cabazon shopping outlet that beckoned temptingly on my left, there was mostly flat desert decorated with tall billboards every hundred feet or so advertising gambling on Indian reservations, spas, and hotels. In the background were wide-hipped, reddish-brown mountains, and hundreds of small windmills exuberantly twirling with the grace and precision of Bob Fosse dancers. I had to grip the steering wheel as the wind buffeted the Acura, which is no lightweight, spraying the car with dust and gravel that was probably giving the exterior serious acne.

I turned off the 10 onto the 62. The scenery was stark here, miles and miles of sand dunes broken up mainly by highway signs that reassured me I was heading toward Twentynine Palms. I hummed along to some oldies (“Dream Lover,” “Pretty Woman,” “House of the Rising Sun”), and forty-five minutes later I parked in the lot of the high school Lenore had attended, a collection of eight or nine one-story, green-trimmed white buildings with palm trees on lawns of sand.

I stepped out of the car and was slapped by the desert air—118 degrees, according to the Acura’s gauge (two degrees higher than the
Times
’s prediction). People who live here and in other desert climates like Phoenix or Tucson will tell you the heat is dry and more tolerable, but hot is hot. I was wearing a scoop-necked, cap-sleeved white cotton blouse and a short tan skirt, but I felt as though I’d stepped into an oven. I hurried inside the first building, which housed the administration. I don’t think Hansel or Gretel moved faster.

I’d phoned the school before leaving this morning and confirmed that a skeleton custodial staff was still around in the summer, along with the principal, Dr. Virginia Yawley, with whom I’d made an appointment, and her secretary. I was ten minutes early, but Virginia was available.

She was dressed in an elbow-length navy print blouse and navy skirt, and reminded me of a bird with her thin arms and legs and sharp, pointed nose and beaklike chin. Her short hair was gray, her skin heavily lined either from age—I put her in her sixties—or the brutal sun.

“You made good time,” she remarked when I was seated in front of her desk. Her voice was birdlike, too. Thin and chirpy. “You wanted to talk to me about Lenore Rowan?”

I gave her my basic c.v. and told her I was writing about Lenore. “I need background information, and since she attended this school, I thought I’d start here.”

Virginia sighed. “We heard that Lenore died under tragic circumstances. Her mother stays in touch with a few people here. I understand that the police are investigating Lenore’s death as a possible homicide?”

“They’re not certain. It may be a suicide.” I hesitated. “I’m sorry to tell you Mrs. Rowan died last night. The police are investigating her death, too.”

“Well,” the principal said after a long moment. She sighed again. “Do they think the deaths are related?”

“I don’t know.”

She peered at me. “So you’re here investigating, correct? That’s why you’re interested in Lenore’s background information.” Her tone was stern.

“Yes.” I felt as though I were back in high school myself, about to be suspended. Which had happened a few times.

“They called me when she killed her son. The media, I mean.” Her sharp look indicated that she included me with “them.” “What was she like? Was she violent in school? Was she depressed? Did I sense she’d be involved in a tragedy like this?”

I waited, my open notepad idle on my lap.

“This is a small school, just under nine hundred students. I’d like to think I knew Lenore well. If you want me to say I thought she’d amount to trouble, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. She was an extremely bright, ambitious, charming, talented young woman. I liked her very much and I’m saddened by her death,” she said quietly.

“Was she popular?”

Virginia took a moment before she answered. “I wouldn’t call her
popular
. She was beautiful—quite striking, actually. Some of the girls were jealous, but that’s inevitable, don’t you think? She was close with one or two,” she added.

“What about boyfriends?”

“The boys chased after her. She dated quite a few, usually those several grades ahead of her, but my guess is she found most of them immature. And she was focused on what she wanted.”

“What was that?”

“To leave Twentynine Palms. A lot of the kids leave, but most of them come back. Lenore didn’t.” Virginia gazed out the window at the open vista, probably trying to figure out what Lenore had found missing. “I came this way thirty years ago to visit Joshua Tree National Park and I stayed, because of my asthma, and because I wanted a simpler, less crowded life. It took me a while to adjust to the fact that there’s no grass, just sand and brush and creosote. I thought the houses were all ugly.” She shook her head. “But now I love it here. The stark beauty of nature all around you, the sense of community, the clean air, warm though it is.” She smiled at me mischievously. “There’s nothing like sunrise here, or the night sky. It’s spectacular, stars so brilliant and so close you can practically touch them. I’ve sat on my deck and watched that sky thousands of times, and every time it catches my breath. It would be worth your while to stay overnight just to see it. Have you been to the park?”

I shook my head. It’s on my list, which is pretty long.

“You should make the time and go. It’s in our backyard, but we don’t take it for granted. The boulders, the mountains, the cacti and wildflowers, the Joshua trees. They’re short, stubby things with their arms reaching up to the sky. That’s how the Mormons named them, you know. Because the Israelites were victorious when Joshua’s arms were raised.” She glanced out the window again. “There’s something spiritual about desert life, seeing God’s grandeur. It’s like witnessing the Creation. Most of us who live here feel that way. But I guess it’s not for everyone.”

I followed her gaze. Blue skies, endless open spaces ringed by mountains. I suppose that for some people, like Lenore, all that open space can box you in.

“Of course, we’re tiny compared to L.A.,” Virginia said. “Around twenty-six thousand, including the annexed housing of the marine base. And except for summer, we’re swarming with tourists and Hollywood folk who come here to film pictures and commercials. But we’re growing. Most of the marine families stay here after they’re out of the service. We have a two-year college, fully accredited. That’s where Lenore went. And we do have
some
culture. An artists’ colony, galleries, a theater, restaurants, espresso bars. Even a drive-in movie.” She smiled again, having her fun. “Maybe on your way home you can drive around and look at the murals painted on the buildings. They depict the history of Twentynine Palms and the people who settled it.”

“How did the city get its name?” I asked, curious and wanting to please.

“A Colonel Henry Washington surveyed the area in 1855 and counted twenty-nine palm trees. A good thing he didn’t see two hundred twenty-nine or some such.” The principal chuckled. “But you didn’t come for a history lesson. You’re here about Lenore.” She was all seriousness now. “She was happy enough growing up here, but she craved city life. Or I should say, her mother did.”

“Mrs. Rowan pushed Lenore to leave?”

Virginia hesitated. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with Lenore’s family history.” She sounded wary.

“I know that her father left when she was an infant. I think that’s why she married someone nine years older.”

She nodded. “Betty was in my first graduating class. Her father was stationed at the marine base here. The mother worked in town in a doctor’s office. Betty hated living here. She was counting the days till she could get out and all she talked about was moving to L.A. She’d skip school to watch the Hollywood people. I think she was hoping to be discovered. She was pretty enough, though not as striking as Lenore. After high school she took a job in one of the ritzy Palm Springs hotels as a desk clerk. That’s where she met her husband. He was from Denver and vacationed in Palm Springs with his family every winter. Six months later she was married, and they moved to L.A.”

“I understand that she was pregnant when they married,” I said.

The principal gave me another one of those ruler-rapping looks. “For someone looking for background, you seem to know the important parts,” she said dryly. “Supposedly Lenore was premature. There was gossip, but I can’t say. In any case, the marriage didn’t last long, as you know. I heard her husband didn’t take to marriage or babies, and his family pressured him to divorce Betty. Lenore never said, but I think Betty made her feel it was her fault her father left. I’m always amazed by the burdens parents will place on their children.” Virginia sighed.

“Why did Betty come back here if she hated it?”

“The husband went back to Denver and wouldn’t send money. There was some talk he didn’t believe Lenore was his, but I don’t know that was so. Betty couldn’t make it on her own, not with a baby to feed, so she moved back in with her parents for a few months, and then she was off again somewhere with some other man.”

“And Lenore stayed with the grandparents?”

“They had Betty late in life, so they were older. They didn’t want the responsibility.” The principal’s pursed lips showed what she thought. “Lenore was put in foster care. Betty came home a few months later and took Lenore back. She rented an apartment. Less than half a year later she left again, and Lenore was placed with another family. That went on for about five or six years. Betty would come back and take Lenore, then she’d get restless and disappear. Eventually she stayed, but she was always itching to get out. She finally did, for good, when Lenore married. She told her friends all about the house Lenore’s husband bought her.”

I tried to imagine what Lenore had felt like, being shunted from foster home to foster home, having her mother in her life one minute, gone the next. “Was Lenore depressed when you knew her?”

Virginia puckered her already wrinkled forehead. “I wouldn’t say
depressed
. Pensive, maybe, like she had the world on her shoulders, although sometimes she was just a bundle of energy. It’s amazing, with all that she went through, that she ended up normal, and she was determined not to let her past hold her down. But she wasn’t carefree like the other girls.” She hesitated. “There was talk that something had happened at one of the foster homes. Something with the father.”

I felt a wave of revulsion. “Lenore was molested?”

She nodded. “And Betty was strict with her when she was in high school, maybe because she didn’t want Lenore making the same mistake she’d made. I guess it didn’t help, though. Lenore ended up chasing the wrong dreams and drinking from a cup full of sorrow, just like her mother. Now they’re both dead.”