Cold Blood (11 page)

“You keep to the left walkway and it will lead you around to the front of the house. Good afternoon, Mrs. Page.”

Lorraine walked from the courtyard along the immaculate paved path. She passed the tennis courts and stopped. Robert Caley was sitting on a white painted bench, the bottle of wine held loosely in his hand, seemingly staring at the empty tennis court. She continued on past the vast swimming pool with its carefully laid out lounge chairs, and could see a maid folding up the unused towels.

Lorraine would have gone on, but Robert Caley called her and she turned to face him. He still wore the dark glasses but removed them slowly as he looked at her.

“I’ll be going to New Orleans. If you need to go there within the week, please call me. You can …”

He gave a boyish smile.

“I’m offering you a ride.”

She returned his smile.

“Thank you, I’ll call you.”

He nodded and stood watching her as she walked around to the front of the house.

Lorraine had found Robert Caley very attractive she’d known it when he had leaned toward her across the table in the gazebobut any sexual desires had to be dismissed because if she discovered that he could benefit from his daughter’s disappearance or death, he would be under suspicion. And by now Lorraine intuitively felt that Anna Louise Caley was dead.

I

CHAPTER

4.

j Rooney said he reminded him of someone called Lubrinski.”

I Lorraine reacted, giving Rosie that funny half-squint look, her hair covering part of the scar on her cheek,

“wd he now?”

“Yeah, said he was injured in some shoor-out. He’s got a nickname, Nick the Limp.”

“Really?”

Lorraine said noncommittally.

“So who was this Lubrinski guy? And what was that about you using a pair of panty hose as a tourniquet, is that true?”

“You should know Rooney by now, Rosie, he’s full of crap. He should have been doing what I told him to do, like contact the psychic. We got two weeks, Rosie, just two weeks.”

“But you told Bill to check out all the agencies, and I’m not exactly sittin’ on my butt doin’ nothing all day, thank you very much!”

“Oh, shut up. And if you don’t wanna use the shower I will. Maybe see if I can see her tonight.”

Under the shower, face uptilted, eyes closed, the memories came back. The way Jack Lubrinski had looked up at her in such agony and gripped her hand.

“You’re gonna be okay,”

she had lied.

“Ambulance’s gonna be here any second, you old bastard, but in the meantime …” “Hell, if it takes being shot to see you whip off your panties I’d have done it before.”

“Shut up, you perverted shit.”

He’d died in her arms fifteen minutes later as the ambulance, siren screaming, cut its way through the traffic to the hospital. He was still holding on to her hand like a child when she saw the light go out of his eyes. They’d had to prize his hand away from hers. She hadn’t wanted to let go, sure that maybe there was hope, but there had been none. The blackhaired, dark-eyed Lubrinski had left a deep empty place inside her. Was that why she wanted Robert Caley? Was that going to be the game plan for the rest of her life, the look-alike Lubrinskis? Was that why she was attracted to Robert Caley, because he was dark-haired, with fierce, scared eyes? That was what she had seen when he’d taken the shades off, fear and pain. Lubrinski had always hidden behind the smart remarks, the tough exterior, until he was dying; then she had seen something in his eyes that had squeezed her heart. What was it? Why did it attract her? What she felt was in no way a mothering feeling. She didn’t want to mother Robert Caley: she wanted him to screw her, just as she had wanted Lubrinski. But at that time she had been married with two kids. She wished she had just once told him before he died that she loved him. She shut her eyes tightly, clenched her teeth together; she wasn’t going to cry now, it was all too long ago. But she couldn’t stop the tears, because for the first time she was admitting to herself that she had been in love with Jack Lubrinski. She had fought and denied it, even after his death, but now all these years later she wept for him and whispered to herself,

“I loved you, Jack, and I still miss you.”

Rosie opened the shower curtain.

“I called the psychic. She says she won’t see nobody.”

Lorraine reached for a towel.

“Wanna bet?”

“You going there now?”

“Yep. We’ve got two weeks, Rosie, just two weeks.”

“Oh, can I come with you?”

Lorraine was about to refuse, but Rosie’s childlike eagerness changed her mind.

“Sure, why not?”

The address was good, but the apartment was in the lower ground floor and at the end of a corridor. The apartment block was an expensive one with intercom buzzers, top-level security and an underground garage for residents. Lorraine had been lucky; she had simply followed a car into the parking area, waving at the woman in front, who had smiled back, unaware that Lorraine had no right to be there.

“Bingo, we’re in. We can surprise Mrs. Salina unless she saw us corning in her crystal ball,”

said Lorraine as she followed the woman into the garage. .3

“Learn something every day,”

Rosie said, impressed, but Lorraine was already hurrying out of the car.

“Good evening.”

Lorraine smiled as the woman parked her Saab convertible.

“Good evening,”

she replied, switching on her blinking alarm and heading toward a private entrance door.

Lorraine moved quickly to join the woman as she punched in the security code to access the elevator into the building.

“Weather’s strange, nearly eighty already today.”

She glanced behind her, irritated to see that Rosie was still getting out of the car. The woman nodded, more intent on getting her house keys out from her purse than concentrating on Lorraine. The elevator door was still open, and Lorraine rammed her foot against it in case it began to close.

“Are you having problems with your air-conditioning?”

Lorraine asked, keeping up the conversation and giving Rosie a glare.

“No, but I noticed it was a lot warmer today.”

“Yep, could be heading up in the eighties according to the weather report.”

Rosie stepped in and the elevator door shut.

The elevator from the garage opened onto the main corridor by the apartment elevators. The woman turned toward them as Lorraine hurried down the corridor with Rosie tagging behift neither of them realizing that they were in fact heading in the right dirK;tion for Mrs. Salina’s place.

“Yes, who is it?”

Lorraine leaned close to the door.

“My name is Lorraine Page.”

“What do you want?”

“Mrs. Salina, I really need to talk to you. I am a private investigator looking into the

“

“I don’t know how you got into the building, but you’d better leave immediately or I’ll call security.”

“You go right ahead and do that, Mrs. Salina, but I’m sure Mrs. Caley v/on’t like it.”

There were a few moments of silence. Rosie stood to one side, still more impressed by Lorraine. Then came the sound of a chain being removed, a bolt pulled back, and a higher lock opened before the door inched open.

“I’m goin’ out in five minutes.”

“Fine, this won’t take long. Can I come in?” “You with the police?”

“No, this is my card, my name is Lorraine Page of Page Investigations, and this is my assistant, Rosie.”

Mrs. Salina snatched the card, and then the door inched further open.

“Five minutes.”

Rosie pursed her lipsshe didn’t like the assistant line, since she was a partner in the agency, but she said nothing as they were led along a dark, narrow hall. The main room of the apartment was at the end of a narrow corridor, the walls lined with framed photographs of well-known and not so well-known stars, alongside certificates for psychic readings, palm readings, crystals, tarot cards and more. It seemed Mrs. Salina dabbled in every form of psychic phenomenon and had a certificate to prove it. Rosie glanced at everything, wishing she had brought a note pad. This was really interesting, she thoughtno wonder Lorraine liked her job, you got

to meet all kinds.

It was not until they followed }uda into the small sitting room that they got a good look at her. She was exotic-looking, olive-skinned, with thick, black crinkly hair tied in a knot at the nape of her neck. She weighed at least 280 pounds, yet, like a lot of very heavy women, she moved lightly and had tiny, delicate hands. Lorraine estimated her age to be about fifty, and her shawls, bangles and thick beaded necklaces were reminiscent of the Flower Power days. In contrast, her perfectly made-up face was very much a nineties work of art, with well-placed false eyelashes, lipstick similar in color to the one Mrs. Caley had worn, and even the lips outlined

in the same way.

“Sit down,”

she said as she eased her bulk into a hard-backed armchair.

“Like I said, I got five minutes. Why do you want to see me?”

She had a New Orleans accent, not heavy but easy to detect by the way her voice drawled and lifted in a musical manner.

She stared hard at Rosie, who tried to blend into the wallpaper, uncomfortably balanced on a stool. She had let Lorraine take the better chair, or rather, Lorraine had taken it automatically: she behaved as though Rosie weren’t there.

“Tell me about Elizabeth Caley.”

“I’m sorry, but unless I have Mrs. Caley’s permission I cannot discuss her. My business is just like a priest’s or a doctor’s; my clients’ private consultations with me are exactly that, private.”

“But, like me, you have been hired to help trace their daughter.”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“How much contact have you therefore had with Mrs. Caley?”

“I am afraid I cannot divulge that.”

“Did you travel to New Orleans?”

“I did.”

She levered herself up from the chair and crossed to the dresser. She opgped a drawer and took out a photograph.

“She is a very strong presence.”

“Anna Louise?”

“Why, yes. This was given to me by Mrs. Caley.”

She thrust it in front of Lorraine, and there was the sweet face, the long blond tresses.

“She is very beautiful.”

Juda nodded, then passed the photograph to Rosie, who leaned forward to look at it.

“Yes, she is very pretty.”

Rosie nodded. Juda returned the photograph to the drawer.

“She most surely is, and I would say she is still in New Orleans.”

“Alive?”

Lorraine asked sharply.

Juda shut the drawer and remained with her back to Lorraine. Then she turned slowly and, with her eyes closed, pressed herself against the dresser. Rosie studied the big woman: if she had been worried about her own weight, Juda had even more of a problem.

“I sincerely believe Anna Louise is alive.”

“Why?”

The false eyelashes fluttered.

“Why? Like I said, she has a presence. The little girl is alive, I am sure of it.”

%

“Why?”

Lorraine persisted.

The eyes opened.

“I have just told you, I feel her presence.”

“Well, that may be so, but I am not quitAs fortunate as you, Mrs. Salina. My job is to find her. I can’t feel any pRsence, I am not in touch with the … forces, so to speak.”

“They are forces, Mrs. Page, strong ones, and I am telling you that little girl is alive. I take my work very seriously, and when I feel her, become her, she is not saying to me she is cold.”

She turned her dark eyes to Rosie again, and Rosie felt a frisson of fear. She looked away, biting her lip: there was something unpleasant about the woman, about the whole apartment.

“So, what is she saying to you?”

Juda pointedly looked at her watch, and then at Lorraine.

“Mrs. Page, you ain’t paying, Mrs. Caley is, and I have told her all that I have been able to receivethat is, Anna Louise is alive.”

“Well, I’ll pay you, is that what you want?”

Juda stared hard at Lorraine.

“I have to go out now. If Mrs. Caley personally tells me that I can give you what I have received, then you may call again. But right now all I can tell you is that I feel her presence, an aura of light, every time I look at her sweet angel face.” “Well, if this presence should indicate where Anna Louise is, then I’ll talk to Mrs. Caley and I’ll come back and make you tell me where she is. You see, I deal in facts, not fantasy, and she has been missing nearly a year. Now, that is a very long time to have no word, no letter, no contact. I’m hired to find her.”

“But I presume you are being paid.”

“Yeah, but then so are you.”

“No. The husband has refused to allow me to see my poor dear Elizabeth.”

“Did you tell him his daughter was alive?”

}uda crossed to the door and stood there.

“I have had no dealings with Mr. Caley, but I have known Elizabeth for many years.”

“She’s a drug addict, isn’t she?”

Juda gave Lorraine a surly look.

“I said five minutes, now I ask you to leave. I only agreed to see you because you implied Elizabeth had asked you to see me, but I think you are lying, just like all the others who have tried to talk to me. My clients have my total loyalty.”

“What other people have talked to you?”

Juda again gave that direct, rather eerie stare.

“Private investigators, and the police. They treat me with no respect, Mrs. Page, I can feel it, see it in their faces. They don’t have to say a word, I know what they think of people like me.”

She moved back to the dresser and opened a drawer.

“Here, take this, but now you gotta go.”

She handed Lorraine a cheap computer-printed document, clipped together. Juda didn’t wait for her even to glance at it before moving impatiently into the hallway. Lorraine handed it to Rosie and indicated by a nod that Rosie should follow her to where Juda stood by the open front door, waiting.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Page. Er; just one thing, will you come real close to me for a moment?”

Lorraine stepped closer and Juda stared up into her face. She lifted her delicate hand and touched the scar running down Lorraine’s cheek.