Cold Blood (32 page)

As she unlocked her room at the St. Marie, Lorraine wished she hadn’t been so dismissive because Nick, like Jack, didn’t come out with those kinds of words easily. In many ways she was attracted to Nick, it was hard not to be, but it wasn’t anything she would allow to happen because what she had said about him was the truthNick would never settle down, even with his

“backyard”

routine. He was and always would be a loner, like Jack.

She sat on the colored synthetic bedspread and looked up at the bubbled wallpaper and air vent clogged thick with dust; after last night it all seemed ugly and depressing, and although it was still only eleven o’clock, she felt tired out. That awful feeling in the pit of her stomach that Caley was involved in his daughter’s disappearance wouldn’t go away, and even after a night with him, a wonderful, special night, she couldn’t help being logical. She was able to subjugate her emotions toward Caley, and allow the professional judgment to take over.

There was a sudden tap on the door and Rosie peeked in, carrying a sheet of paper.

“I’ve listed those I could get hold of and those you’ll have to maybe see tomorrow. I got a car booked for you with a driver at a real low cost because some of these are quite a ways apart, and Tilda Browrť’s place is twentyodd miles out of town.”

Lorraine glanced over the handwritten notes.

“So it’s Tilda Brown first, then Lloyd Dulay? Okay, I’ll get cracki Jf”

The phone rang. It was Robert Caley.

“

“Hi, you free for lunch?”

“Ah, ten minutes ago I was, but I’m just on my way out.”

He sounded disappointed.

“How about dinner?”

“Can I take a rain check on it?”

“Sure. I’ll be back at the hotel early eveningmaybe go out to the house, so just give me a call.”

“Will do.”

There was a moment of silence, both wanting to say some kind of endearment, but neither did. Rosie hovered nearby, listening as she pretended to check her notes. She wondered who the call was from, because Lorraine was suddenly acting coy and she was blushing.

“Talk to you later.”

“Yes, about six-ish,”

she said, and the phone went dead. She replaced the receiver and looked at Rosie.

“Who was that?” “Robert Caley,”

Lorraine said dismissively.

“Oh, you seem to be getting along very well.”

“That’s the idea, Rosieyou get along with somebody, you get more information from them, they talk more freely.”

“Mmmm, I’m sure they do. So, you going out with him this evening or are we having a case update? Only I got to let Nick and Bill know.”

Lorraine brushed her hair.

“I just said I would call him, Rosie.”

“Okay, I’ll make a note of that, shall I? We’ll meet down in the lobby.”

“Fine, see you later.”

“Okeydokey.”

Rosie started for the door.

“You and Bill seem to be getting along pretty well too,”

Lorraine said nonchalantly.

Rosie had her hand on the door handle, her back to Lorraine, and her whole posture suddenly became defensive.

“Yes, well, I make it my business to get along with him. We’re partners after all, and like you said, you get a lot more out of people if you get along with them.”

“But Bill’s not a suspect,”

Lorraine said, amused.

“Maybe he’s not, but as someone learning the business, I need some guidance to keep up with someone as experienced as you.”

“Ohh, that was a bit near the knuckle, Rosie.”

Lorraine laughed.

“It wasn’t intended that way, but you can get real nasty if I make the smallest mistake, so all I am doing is making sure I don’t make any more.”

Lorraine was suddenly concerned.

“Hell, Rosie, you know me well enough that if I snap at you, you know you can come right back at me.”

Rosie smiled.

“Yeah, well, sometimes I just get the feeling you don’t think much of me, but I won’t forget what you just said.”

Lorraine crossed the room and put her arms around her friend.

“You just always be honest with me, Rosie. Jesus, we all make mistakes.”

“No!”

Rosie smiled again, assuming a look of mock surprise, which made Lorraine laugh again as she crossed back over to the dressing table.

“I’m glad you and old Rooney get along, he’s a good man. He was a good cop toobit rusty now, or maybe it’s just that he’s not as hungry as he used to be.”

Rosie’s cheeks went pink.

“You undermine his confidence, Lorraine, like you do mine. He and Nick are working hard, we all are. We’re all after the same thing, and there’s nobody not pulling their weight.”

Lorraine accepted the put-down gracefully, to some degree impressed by her friendRosie was more centered than she had ever known her.

“Yes, I’m sorry, you’re right. See you later.”

Rosie opened the door.

“Take care, and check in with us, because we’re all backing ^ou to the hilt.”

The door closed, and Lorraine frowned. Rosie was different these days; maybe it was working alongside Bill, maybe it was her diet boosting her confidence. Lorraine stared at her own reflection.

“Maybe,”

she murmured to herself,

“you should start straightening out as well.”

She touched the bruise of the love bite on her neck, and could not prevent the warm feeling that began in her groin flooding right through her body until she hugged herself. She was happier than she had been for a long, long time.

Tilda Brown’s family home had been built on the lake in the 1970s, a low white ensemble of rectangles and cubes with a nod to tradition in the form of modern reworkings of traditional architectural features, square columns and vestigial balconies barely six feet off the ground, which reminded Lorraine of the wing stumps of some flightless bird. Still, it clearly hadn’t been lack of money that was responsible for its boxy blandness, and money was still much in evidence: a European convertible and a shiny new Range Rover were parked outside, and a gardener was working outside. The large, well-tended yard adjoined the levee, and Lorraine told her driver, a sullen black boy of twenty, to pull up a couple of hundred yards away so she could walk around the back. ^

“Wait for me, okay?”

p

“Yes, ma’am, you got me booked for the day.”

From the levee she could see a tennis court and pool, each with floodlighting and a flanking cubist pavilion: by the pool a blond teenager lay stretched on a chaise longue, and Lorraine went around to the front of the house before the girlMiss Tilda, she presumed looked up and saw her. She rang the doorbell, and a maid in a pink housedress opened the door.

“Come along in, Mrs. Page. Miss Brown is poolside and she says to ask if you’d like a cool drink.”

“Thank you.”

Tilda Brown had a perfect, all-over golden tan, her waist-length blond hair

silky and well cut, and she wore only the smallest of bikini briefs and top.

Feeling the heat, Lorraine was relieved when Tilda got up from her

chaise longue and suggested they go to the small air-conditioned pool

2O4 house, further shaded by large palms. She sat in a chair made of stainlesssteel

“wicker,”

its cushions covered in what seemed to be hot pink Spandex, and motioned Lorraine to its twin.

“It’s real hot already,”

Tilda said, smiling,

“but I got all goose pimples, coming in from the sun. You mind if I just fetch a wrap?”

Lorraine returned the smile. The maid appeared to serve homemade lemonade, and Lorraine had drunk half her glass before Tilda returned, draped in a long silk kimono, wearing large dark sunglasses with thick white frames and smelling of fresh flowers. She was very nervous, her little hands shaking as she poured herself a lemonade.

“Can you tell me about your relationship with Anna Louise?”

“Sure, she’s my best friend. We both come from hereI mean, not that she lives here full-time like my family, but we first met when we were real young, you know, six or seven years old. Then we didn’t see each other for quite a while, maybe five years, but I got to go to UCLA and we met up again, and it was like no time had passed at all. It was nice to be made so welcome at her home because I sometimes got so lonely.”

“So you knew each other really well?”

“We did, and I miss her.”

Lorraine asked if she could smoke, and Tilda shrugged, fetching a small chrome ashtray.

“You had an argument the day before she left LA,”

Lorraine said as she lit her cigarette.

“We used to argue a lot, Mrs. Page, we didn’t always agree on everything even though we were best friends.”

The girl flicked her silky hair over her shoulder with an immaculately manicured hand, the nails lacquered oysterpink to match those on her toes. Lorraine envied the Tilda Browns of this world, their ability never to perspire. This was money in front of her, and young as Tilda was, one could tell she had never wanted for anything in her life.

“Can you tell me what the argument was about? It’d be the morning of February fourteenth last year.”

Tilda’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Well, you know Anna Louise was a good tennis player and she used to get impatient with me because I was not in her league. Even when we were just warming up she’d do these smashes and I just used to get so angry because it wasn’t a competition. But with Anna Louise …”

She hesitated.

“Yes, go on, Tilda.”

“Well, Anna Louise was competitive in everything and I just got tired of it. I said to her that I wasn’t going to play with her anymore and she threw a tantrum, and believe you me, Mrs. Page, she could get so angry sometimes, say such horrible things. I had just had enough, so I said to her that unless she apologized to me I was not going to travel home with her,

I fBi no way. I would prefer to travel alone than with somebody as bad-

, tempered and mean as she was being towards me. Well, she just refused

w to apologize arrtfso I went in to tell Phyllis that I wanted to leave right

m away.”

m

“Just like that?”

Si

“Yes. Phyllis arranged for Mario to take me to the airport and she also

yjfy? got me my ticket. I called my mama and papa and they collected me here.

A I said I didn’t want to discuss it, but that I was not going to stay with Anna

Jps Louise ever again.”

y’fit Lorraine drained her glass and Tilda immediately refilled it. At last she

I’^i, removed her big white-framed sunglasses. Lorraine wanted to see her

I’(- eyes, to try to ascertain just how good a liar Tilda Brown was going to be.

i

“I never saw her again. And I have felt so guilty. The last time we were

,^ together we were fightin’, had those cross words with each other, and if… if she won’t ever be coming back, then … It just gets worse, and some—

l times I cry about it because we would have made up no doubt about it,

i we always did.”

$

“So she didn’t call you when she arrived here with her parents?”

‘i

“No, she didn’t, but I wish very dearly that she had.”

,,t Lorraine sipped the ice-cool lemonade, wondering how to play it.

\ Tilda seemed to be the genuine forlorn best friend and at one point even

< had tears in her gray-blue eyes, but she never looked directly at Lorraine and she was exceedingly nervous.

“On the night Anna Louise arrived in NewOrleans, where were you?”

1

“At home. I had a dress fitting, and I ate sBper with Mama and Papa before going to bed, ‘bout ten o’clock.”

“And she never came around to see you, to make up to you?”

m

“No, but like I said, I wish that she had. All I do now is pray that she is

9 still alive, because I will make up to her for that silly tiff we had … and it

BL was so silly.”

X

“Do you know somebody called Polar?”

‘ Tilda frowned.

“You mean like polar bears? No, I never heard of any—

S one with that name.”

M

“How about torn Heller?”

JE.

“Oh, I know him, he was at college with me.”

j^B. Lorraine was becoming irritated by her singsong voice. She decided

|H| she had waited long enough.

“You ever go to the Viper Room with torn?”

^B Bingo, the cheeks flushed bright pink.

“I beg your pardon?”

^B:

“The Viper Room …”

^R The baby eyes blinked and the blush deepened as Lorraine drew out

^H the picture of Anna Louise being fucked by the guys at the Viper Room.

^H

“Oh, my goodness …” “Mmm, oh, my goodness me. That was taken the night before your little tiff, wasn’t it? You were upstairs, weren’t you, in the private section of the Viper Room?”

Tilda crumbled fast. She bent her head and started sobbing, begging Lorraine not to tell her parents. If her family were ever to know she would be in such trouble.

Lorraine passed Tilda a tissue from a box, covered in the same pink synthetic fabric as the cushions, and the weeping girl blew her nose.

“I am so ashamed.”

She continued to sob for a while, then quieted down.

“Anna Louise used to take pills from her mother. The first time we took them we just acted silly, but then she started to take them real regular, you know, and she’d make me drink vodka, she liked vodka. Then we’d go clubbing and … I can’t tell you how ashamed I am… .”

“No need to be in front of me,”

Lorraine said, encouraging her to talk.

“I don’t remember what we used to do or what I didI just used to blank out.”

“But you both used to get screwed, right?”

She nodded, and down came the tears again.

“I guess so.”

“The morning you had the little tiff was after you had been out clubbing with Anna Louise, so you were probably a bit hungover, weren’t you? So was the ‘tiff really about tennis or was it something more important?”

Tilda sighed.

“Oh, it was just awful, she could be such a bitch about things. She wanted to make sure we had our stories straight so her parents wouldn’t find out. We were down by the tennis courts and you’re right, we weren’t playing. I had such a headache, I was feeling sick, and Mr. Caley came by on his way to work. When he stopped and asked if I was feeling unwell, I just started to cry. I know what we did was bad, but she could be very insistent, you know? She’d make threats that if I didn’t do what she wanted, then she’d tell my parents.”