Thicker Than Blood (23 page)

For the ninth time, he straightened his maroon paisley tie, then drew Jackie to the seat reserved for her. Her eyes held his for a moment before he made his way to the chair next to Charlotte’s. Tugging on the back of his grey suit jacket to keep it from buckling around his shoulders, he sat down. Yes, he had done all right, he had. He just hoped it wouldn’t destroy his marriage.

At least they could afford to move into the city now and send the kids to private schools. Had he really made it to the top of the whitest old-boy system in the state? The sea of faces, many of the eyes seeking his, assured him that he had.

Awful, what had happened to Jason. And Harry Hunsinger. Odd. More than odd. They said things happen in threes. But perhaps he was only number two-and-a-half.

Alexandra raised her hand to be sure her hat was still in place. It was black and broad-brimmed and she was oblivious to the fact that it blocked the view of those behind her. Her hair was drawn back, making her neck, above the peacock blue dress, seem longer.

She was smiling to herself. Today, she loved the water industry. She was one of only fifteen or twenty women in the meeting hall, which held a couple hundred people. Not a frilly business, water. That was one thing she liked about it. These men were so ignorant, so used to disregarding anything in a skirt outside the bedroom or kitchen, they thought opening doors and talking over her head was all there was to it.

Bruno was another matter. But she could handle him.

Charlotte, of course, was an old warhorse, but Alexandra had amassed weapons that Charlotte had never dreamed of.

Jason had been a loose cannon. Andrew, she would have to study. Alexandra’s eyebrows knitted slightly. She’d made the mistake of overlooking him, but what a stroke of luck he might turn out to be. When he sank in over his head in the raging sea of politics, he’d be needing a friend.

On the dais, Charlotte picked up the gavel. The noise of the crowd dulled to a buzz, then a hum, then silence punctuated by a few coughs.

Chapter Thirty-seven

By the end of the week Rachel’s bruises were fading and Marty’s condition was improving. After visiting him on Friday, she was back in her glass booth before noon.

She picked up the phone to postpone the meeting with Charlotte. Harry was dead. The car that killed Jason, or who checked it out when, didn’t seem to matter much anymore.

Rachel’s hand poised over the buttons to dial, then she put the receiver down. Charlotte seemed like a decent sort. She probably had questions she wanted to ask Rachel. Why not keep the appointment?

Until the panel truck had circled the parking garage for the third time, she didn’t bother to look up from her paperwork. It was the sort of van used by plumbers, but sloppily painted a flat white like a billboard between advertisements. It seemed almost eerily amorphous.

Her eyes followed the truck as it again rounded the curve to the next level. A rash of car thefts had recently hit downtown LA. Was this a reconnaissance? When it passed her booth yet again, she stared after it uneasily, trying to read the license number, but the plate was covered with mud.

A few minutes later, she heard it again and turned. The driver was staring boldly straight at her. She glimpsed mirror-like sunglasses on a narrow face, dark hair, a pointed chin above a black jacket before he turned his face away. She waited, but he didn’t return.

Rachel rubbed her eyes and rested her forehead in her hands. Would her life never be calm? The Harry business was certainly over, but her father was still in the hospital after his own mishap, and there was the totally preposterous news that selenium, the same ordinary mineral that had killed Lonnie, was ruining Bruno. Now a thief was probably casing her garage.

A few hours later, she turned the garage over to Irene and drove to Riverside. Her own car had been dead-on-arrival in the towing yard, but her insurance covered an economy rental.

After two wrong turns, she found the right road and drove slowly along it until she saw the mailbox marked Emerson.

At the end of a long, winding driveway, she turned off the ignition. In the rearview mirror, she could see that her face still bore the shadows of bruises. A mournful smile played about her mouth as she got out of the car. Thank God it was over and done with.

The evening air was warm. Santa Ana winds had been sweeping the hot desert air toward the coast. A big globe willow fanned out over a brick patio. A shiny brass plate with the numbers 4979 in black hung from chains on a post next to the tree. Rachel checked the address against the one on the card in her pocket.

The only window she could see was a long strip of glass about six feet up. Flowers cascaded from two big baskets that hung from hooks under the eaves next to the front door.

She wiped her feet on the doormat and rang the bell. A set of chimes responded. She rang again and waited. Had she got the date wrong? The time? She rang a third time.

The minutes stretched to five. Perhaps Charlotte was in the backyard?

Abutting the house to her right was a high wooden wall. At Rachel’s touch, the gate of thick weathered redwood planks creaked a little on its big hinges and swung open on a lush garden. A huge mound of mums bloomed in the center.

In a white Adirondack chair sat Charlotte, her feet on a wooden stool, papers on her lap. The wind caught one of the papers and blew it toward Rachel. She fielded it.

Charlotte didn’t look up. Must have fallen asleep. After all, she’s seventy-something.

Rachel called softly. Still Charlotte slept. Another paper blew from her lap. Rachel put her toe on it, picked it up, brushed off the mark her shoe had made and called Charlotte’s name again. No response.

A foot or two from the Adirondack, Rachel stopped, thinking maybe she should just let the woman sleep. She could write a note on the paper.

Something was dripping steadily. She glanced toward the sound. A tube descended the wall near the chair. Drip irrigation. Charlotte was not squandering water to provide herself with the abundant greenery.

Rachel changed her mind yet again. She was here. Charlotte would probably be embarrassed, but she would be embarrassed if she found a note. By waking her, at least they could have their talk and be done with it.

Rachel reached out and touched the woman’s shoulder. No response. She shook her gently. Nothing. Then Charlotte’s head lolled to the side, the face pale as the chair, mouth slightly open. The eyes were closed.

And directly over the bridge of the nose was a small crater.

Inanely, Rachel’s mind bounced to photos she had seen of the moon. But this crater was red.

And behind the head.…

“Oh, God.” The words tore from her in a harsh whisper. She grabbed Charlotte’s wrist. It was thin, the skin like tissue. Her own hand was shaking so badly she couldn’t tell if there was a pulse. Steeling herself, she pressed her middle finger under Charlotte’s jaw and held her breath. She could feel no throb. Eyes wild, she whirled and raced to the house.

The screen door rattled as it swung closed behind her. The kitchen was like a Sears display of gleaming, tiled cabinet tops. On the wall near the sink hung a white cordless phone. Rachel grabbed the receiver, then dropped it back in its cradle.

Three bodies in a few weeks? My own mother wouldn’t believe I had nothing to do with these deaths. And this one so clearly a violent death. Goldie was right. I’m the common thread!

But what if Charlotte were still alive, the pulse too slight to feel?

She reached for the phone again and more steadily than she would have imagined possible, dialed 9-1-1. “I need to report that I heard a gunshot at…at.…” She fumbled in her purse for the card Charlotte had given her the night before. “At 4979 Daimler Road.” The voice on the other end had just begun its questions when she hung up.

333

Rachel parked in the garage space she reserved for herself. She had only dimmest recollection of getting back to the car. Getting home had been like driving on some other planet. Harry is dead, how can this be?

Even her footsteps on the ramp as she made her way to her apartment sounded odd. She turned the key in the lock, flipped on the light, and the air in her lungs turned to lead, immobilizing her in time and space.

Everything she owned seemed to have leapt from its normal place and crashed itself on the floor.

Stupidly, her brain unable to process this information, she stood, gaping, trying to take in the scene. But Harry is dead.…

Chapter Thirty-eight

It wasn’t the sheets from the bed she had carefully made that morning, now bunched in a tangle on the floor, that horrified her so much as the mattress, slashed and spewing its stuffing. The image of Charlotte’s dead face flooded her mind again.

Run. The thought hammered at her. Get out of here. Now.

She couldn’t find Clancy. No orange ball of fur emerged from some hiding place in the rubble to answer her calls. She opened the door and called again, her voice coming back to her in eerie echoes.

Remembering that the possibility of a burglary had crossed her mind, and why, she found a chair to stand on and pried at the light fixture on the ceiling. Jason’s cuff links and the packets of grainy powders from Lonnie’s apartment and Jason’s office tumbled out.

She pawed through the mess near the bed where she had stashed her father’s old revolver, but couldn’t find it. She could not stay here much longer.

Would she be followed? Maybe.

Why? For God’s sake, why?

Never mind why, just figure out how to prevent it.

Hurriedly, Rachel changed clothes: a dark blue pants suit of raw silk, and over that a baggy, bright green jogging suit.

Into her scarred leather suitcase she flung as much clothing as would fit. At the door, she set the suitcase down. What if the people who had done this were lurking somewhere in the garage, knowing she would bolt, knowing she would take the powders and cuff links with her?

Opening the door, she listened intently for some telltale sound, then wrestled the suitcase down the ramp and into the trunk of the rental car.

Hyper-alert to every movement on every cross street, and watching her rearview mirror as closely as the road ahead, she drove toward the Glendale Mall and parked among the largest horde of cars she could find.

Inside the mall, she located a rest room on the brightly colored directory, then took one escalator up and the next down. She darted into the Lenscrafters’ shop, selected a pair of demo glasses and took them to the counter.

“But you need a prescription,” the clerk said. “Now if you’ll just step over there for an eye test—”

“I need them for a costume. For a play.”

He stared at her a moment, then took her money.

A woman in a flowered dress looked up from the sink as Rachel entered the ladies room. Startled eyes in a round face caught Rachel’s in the mirror. Wisps of drab hair straggled along the woman’s pale neck. A small green gemstone was snuggled on the right side of her nose. She glanced at Rachel’s feet and gave a knowing smile. “In a hurry?” Four shopping bags were lined up under the sinks.

“A little.” Rachel slipped into a stall, shed the sweatshirt and pants, stuffed them into a shopping bag, and smoothed the pants suit they had covered.

“Ah.” The woman at the sink gave a short, low laugh and began rattling through her packages. Rachel ran a comb through her hair and sat down on the edge of the toilet. She needed a mirror. Would the woman never leave?

More parcels rattled. “You needn’t wait, you know,” the woman called sweetly. She seemed to be lacking a few wits, might not even notice the change of clothes.

Rachel left the stall, and with as much calmness as she could muster, washed her hands, then swept her hair back and pinned it high.

The other woman, rearranging her own hair, stared into the mirror at Rachel. Slowly one eye closed in an unmistakable wink.

Was she mad? A maniac?

As the woman bent over to pull one of the bags from under the sink, the edges of two more skirts peeked from beneath the hem of the woman’s flowered dress.

Heart thudding, Rachel escaped toward the door. “Be careful of the shoes,” the woman called after her. “They can be a dead giveaway. No one would ever jog in those black pumps.”

Rachel was in the mall walkway before understanding hit her: the woman was a skilled shoplifter. And she was right about the shoes.

The crowd was thinning. No one seemed particularly interested in Rachel. She found a cash machine and tried to look bored while the man ahead of her conducted a lengthy transaction.

At the drug store she debated over hair color. She’d never tried to dye her hair, but there were directions. She made her purchase and left the mall by the street exit. A few couples wandered by on the sidewalk. Rachel stopped beside the door, waited five minutes, then slipped back inside the mall and, moving quickly, took the stairs instead of the escalator and exited two levels above where she had parked. A quarter-hour and many steps later she retrieved the car.

Freeway traffic was light. She took a sharp breath when, as she changed lanes, a dark BMW followed suit. Had someone been watching the car? She studied the rearview mirror intently. In the dark, all the headlights looked alike. When hers was the only car to take the exit for Burbank airport, she sighed with relief.

She parked in the long-term lot and, suitcase in hand, boarded the shuttle to the airport terminal, where she stopped at another cash machine, then found the row of car-rental desks.

In the offhand voice of a frequent flyer, she told the Avis clerk she’d forgotten to reserve a car. Did they have something available?

“Yes,” he said, tapping a few keys on his computer keyboard. “What would you like?”

“Something big.”

“A van? How many passengers?”

“Not a van.” Too unstable, Rachel thought, if someone tried to run her off the road. “A big sedan. Something heavy. Any color but white.” Her present car was white.

Apparently perfectly programmed to react neutrally to anything other than shouts of fire, he calmly tapped again on the keyboard. “How about blue? There’s a nice blue Mercury.”