Once his sandwich was gone, Gil dumped out the dregs of his coffee in the kitchen sink and headed for his cubicle, where he turned on his computer. While he waited through the interminable boot-up function, Gil picked up a well-thumbed hard copy of the Nevada County Employee’s directory, where he located Phyllis Williams’s home phone number.
When Gil dialed, a male answered the phone. “Hey, Phyl,” he called. “It’s for you.”
“Who is it?” Her voice came from somewhere in the noisy distance, as if the house was full of noisy kids and probably grandkids.
“Work,” Gil told him. “Tell her I’m calling from work.”
Phyllis came on the line soon after that. She was glad to give Gil the details she could remember from the 911 calls. He’d be listening to the tapes himself in a matter of minutes, but he knew that Phyllis was a longtime emergency operator. He wanted to hear her impressions in case she had picked up vibes from either of the women that someone less experienced might have missed.
“They both sounded like nice women,” Phyllis told him. “Worried. Upset. Concerned. Too bad they were both hooked up with a lying, two-timing bastard.”
Phyllis Williams also had no strong opinions.
While Gil was talking to her, the department’s ponderous computer system finally managed to finish the prolonged boot-up cycle. He typed in the name Richard Stephen Lowensdale and the birth date he had jotted down after looking at the victim’s driver’s license. There were no citations on his record-not even so much as a parking enforcement listing.
Typing in the address on Jan Road came back with the same information he had heard from Dale Masters concerning the B amp; E case from early October. Once the investigation had zeroed in on a named suspect, Richard Lowensdale had declined to press charges against the woman he referred to as his troubled former fiancee. He had been advised to swear out a restraining order, but he had declined to do that.
The next name Gil typed into the computer was Brenda Arlene Riley, and he hit a gold mine. In addition to the arrest on suspicion of breaking and entering, there were multiple moving violations, including DUIs and driving on a suspended license. Court documents listed her address as an apartment in one of the scuzzier neighborhoods in Sacramento.
“Bingo. Not two fiancees,” he muttered to himself. “The count just went up to three.”
Gil spent the next hour or so doing a detailed study of Brenda Riley and her arrest record. He spent a long time studying the cavalcade of mug shots. For some reason Gil couldn’t quite fathom, the woman looked familiar, as though she were someone he should know. It was only when he made it back to the very first DUI arrest that he made the connection and put the name and features together. That Brenda Riley! The news babe Brenda Riley. How could someone like her be hooked up with someone like Richard Lowensdale?
Scrolling back through the mug shots in reverse order was like looking at time-lapse photographs of meth users. Each photo showed her a little more bedraggled, a little more ill-used. She had put on weight. When she had been queen of the news desk in Sacramento, Brenda Riley had been known for her perfectly blunt-cut blond hair. Now, though, the chic haircuts were clearly a thing of the past as were the blonde dye job touchups and the careful application of flaw-concealing makeup. The last piece of information Gil gleaned in his cursory overview of Brenda Riley’s unhappy and swift decline was an eviction order from that scuzzy apartment.
As far as Brenda Riley was concerned, this was all very bad news, but from Gil Morris’s point of view, it was terrific. He had a suspect-a real suspect, a suspect with a name. A few hours into his third homicide investigation in three days, Detective Morris felt he was on the way to solving it. All he had to do to clear his case was to track down Brenda Riley and talk to her.
Gil had a feeling that, once the guys in the lab made their way into Richard Lowensdale’s computer, he’d have a way to find her. In the meantime, her old driver’s license information listed her mother’s address on P Street in Sacramento. That was the place to start.
Before leaving, though, he did one more pass through the computer. This time he was looking for information on Richard Lydecker, Janet Silvie’s missing fiance, and the man in Dawn Carras’s life, Richard Loomis. As far as Gil could find, there was no record of either one of them, not in Grass Valley and not anywhere in California either. Both men seemed to be figments of their respective fiancees’ vivid imaginings.
Finally, shutting off his computer, Gil picked up his car keys and hurried out to the parking lot. When the motor of his Crown Vic turned over, Gil checked the gas gauge. It wasn’t quite on empty, but the needle showed there wasn’t enough gas for him to go to Sacramento and back. Rather than leaving right away, he stopped by the motor pool long enough to fill up. He’d be better off doing that than trying to be reimbursed for a credit card charge later on.
In Randy Jackman’s nickel-diming department, credit card charges-even justifiable credit card charges-had a way of being disallowed.
By the time this long weekend was over, he was sure to have a coming-to-God session with Chief Jackman. With any kind of luck, he’d be able to mark Richard Lowensdale’s murder closed before that happened.
San Diego, California
A distant rumble awakened Brenda from a restless, dream-ridden slumber. She had been caught in a nightmare, buried alive in horrible darkness, trapped under the rubble of some catastrophic earthquake. The waking darkness was even more complete than that in her dream. The rumble, she realized, wasn’t the arrival of another aftershock but the distant roar of an airplane.
Once she was fully awake, she realized that she needed to relieve herself. Desperately. Even though she’d had nothing to drink-even though she was thirsty beyond any hope of quenching-her kidneys were still trying to function. But there was no way to stand up. Her feet were still bound together. If she once left the rolling desk chair, she might never get back into it. Sitting in the chair was preferable to lying on the cold, hard floor.
Shameful as it was, she had no choice but to relieve herself. Right there. In the chair. As the pungent odor of urine filled the air, Brenda let out a strangled sob. But she didn’t let herself cry for long. She couldn’t afford to squander the tears.
31
Laguna Beach, California
The doorman from the lobby let Ali into a unit on the second floor. It was neat and clean, modestly furnished, and about a quarter of the size of Velma’s penthouse suite. The kitchen contained a coffeepot, toaster, and microwave. There were dishes, glassware, and silverware in the kitchen cupboards as well as clean linens on the bed and in the linen closet. Ali was standing by the westward-looking windows enjoying the view when a doorbell rang, startling her.
It was the doorman again, bearing a paper grocery bag. “Mrs. Trimble’s friend asked me to bring this down to you.”
Taking possession of the bag, Ali looked inside it, where she found a bag of English muffins, a stick of butter, a collection of nondairy coffee creamers, and some ground coffee.
“And if you want to go for a walk on the beach,” the doorman added, “Mrs. Watkins says that she and the dogs will be heading out about an hour from now. You can meet up with her down in the lobby.”
“Thanks,” Ali said. “I will.”
Once she had stowed her groceries, Ali went out onto the deck. The setting sun warmed it enough that it was pleasant to sit there to listen to messages and answer phone calls. The first message was from her mother. Everything at home was fine. No need to call back. No news in the baby department.
Ali erased that one. Second was a contrite call from B. saying he hoped he had been forgiven. Things were better on that score. She called him back. They were evidently doomed to playing phone tag for the duration, because B. didn’t answer. She left him a message telling him about Velma’s situation and the amazing donation the dying woman had made to the Askins Scholarship Fund.
The third message was from Stuart Ramey. “Call me,” he said.
