And both of them wondered if their eyes held that same knowledge. No, not yet. Delion had twenty years on them.
Once they were seated, a young Latino set a basket of warm tortilla chips in front of them. All hands reached out at the same time, and everyone laughed, including the young guy, Carlos, who was pouring water into their glasses.
Delion said, “These are the best tortilla chips in town. Eat up, kids, the proud city of San Francisco is picking up the tab. When I told our lieutenant, Linda Bridges, you guys had info on the serial killer, and who you believed she was, she said to take you to my favorite place, on us. Then she told everyone to keep their fricking mouths shut, under pain of dismemberment, which never works but scares the rookies for maybe five minutes.”
While they stuffed themselves on chips, salsa, and a bowl of guacamole, Delion talked about the case he’d worked with Dane Carver, and moved on to the continuing sorry saga of the 49ers. As he spoke, Lucy found herself thinking about her grandmother’s attic, a massive open room that ran the full length of the house. She’d be busy for a week going through everything up there. Maybe she would start with the attic when she got back home. It beat searching through any more books.
When she heard Delion and Coop discussing the fate of football since Brett Favre had left the game, Lucy said, “Like Coop, I bow my head and weep when the Redskins lose, Inspector, but I can’t stand it—tell us you’ve found Kirsten Bolger’s mom.”
Delion toasted her with a tortilla chip. “Yes, I found her. It’s a good news, bad news sort of deal, though.”
“What do you mean?”
Delion didn’t answer her until their waitress, Cindy Lou, the archetypical California girl—blond, tanned, and gorgeous—had served their enchiladas and burritos.
“Well,” Delion said, forking down a huge bite of beef enchilada, “her name isn’t Bolger any longer, hasn’t been for twelve years now. It’s Lansford, as in Elizabeth Mary Lansford, wife of George Bentley Lansford, a big mover and shaker in Silicon Valley. He owns a big interfacing communications company that’s international now, and he’s using some of his millions to finance his run for Congress. He’s got lots of juice, as you can imagine, lots of people who owe him favors. His rep is that you do not screw around with George Bentley Lansford around here. That’s the bad news—we gotta be real careful when dealing with his family.”
Lucy looked at the last dollop of guacamole, saw Coop had a chip at the ready, and struck first, saying as she chewed, “You gotta work on your speed, Coop. Inspector, that doesn’t sound like bad news because we’re not from around here and it’ll be a treat to mix it up with him.”
Delion laughed, scooped up some black beans on a tortilla chip. “When I met you, Lucy, I thought,
“Well, I don’t know about all that,” Lucy said, “but this poor boy over here would whimper if he had to face me in the gym.”
Coop grinned at her. “I saw Sherlock clean up the floor with you, Lucy. As I recall, she had your legs tied behind your elbows.”
“Sherlock’s tough, I’ll give you that, but Dillon holds back even though I tell him it really pisses me off.”
“Good thing,” Delion said. “Savich could break your neck while sipping his tea.” Delion frowned. “Savich isn’t a wild man, though. Only thing that would shake him is Sherlock getting herself hurt. I hear she got shot a couple of months ago.”
Lucy said, “Jack, that’s Agent Jackson Crowne, said when Savich saw her lying on the floor, he nearly lost it. She’s fine now.”
Delion polished off his enchilada, fastidiously patted his mustache with his napkin, and sat back, hands over his belly. He looked from one to the other. “You kids ready for the good news now? Like I told you, our girl’s mother isn’t Elizabeth Bolger any longer, she’s Elizabeth Mary Lansford. She’s an artist, does a kind of whimsical, fantasy sort of thing—elongated creatures with strange shapes and tentacles, and big eyes, like cartoon characters mixed with science fiction. She runs a local art gallery called Fantasia, over on Post Street. Here’s your dessert—I called the gallery, and she’s there this evening, some sort of showing for a local artist. If you children aren’t too jet- lagged, we can go meet her after dinner.”
Coop said, “Good news indeed; let’s do it. Anything you can tell us about her?”
“Not much yet.”
Lucy said, “Your mustache twitched, Inspector. Come on, what do you know about her?”
“All I’ll tell you is that she’s a local and she’s never been in jail. As for anything else, I think it’d be good if you guys go in with no preconceptions. Then we’ll compare notes.”
Lucy said, “What about those unsolved missing persons you’ve been looking into?”
Delion pulled out his notebook, flipped a couple of pages. “The first two teenage girls simply went missing, both from Mount Elysium High School. We found out today both of them were in some of Kirsten’s classes. The first girl was a junior, sixteen years old. She had biology with Kirsten. One day she’s gone, no sign of her, nothing at all. Good family, reports that she was well adjusted, so probably not a runaway. It drove the police nuts, but there simply weren’t any leads of any kind.
“Same with the second girl. She went missing a year and a half later, a senior. Here one day, and the next day, simply gone. Same good background, involved parents, no leads at all.” He looked up at them. “She shared an English lit class with Kirsten.
“We found three other missing young women who knew Kirsten Bolger in some capacity, and they all simply disappeared, one every three years on average. There is another woman we haven’t been able to connect to Kirsten yet, but I’ll get to her in a minute.
“The last woman disappeared two years ago, a thirty-year-old woman named Elsa Cross who lived in Kirsten’s apartment building on Dolores, south of Market. I started with her since she’s the most recent. After her disappearance every eye was on her ex, but he was alibied up to his tonsils. I called her parents and asked them about a neighbor of their daughter’s—namely, Kirsten Bolger. The mother remembered her daughter saying Kirsten wasn’t very social, and she was always playing strange music in the middle of the night, but as far as she knew, there were no shouting matches, no angry words between the two women, just mutual dislike. At the time, the police spoke to the manager and all the neighbors, and that had to include Kirsten Bolger, but there weren’t any obvious red flags, so all I could find were a few notes about what Kirsten had to say when interviewed.”
“And she said what?”
“She said she barely knew Elsa Cross, only said hi to her when their paths crossed, said she seemed nice enough. Nothing else. The case eventually went cold when no new information surfaced.
“I called the manager this afternoon, asked him what he remembered about Kirsten Bolger. He said she was a loner, always paid her rent on time, and always wore white, never a color for contrast, only white, head to foot. He said he never saw any visitors, guys or gals.”
Coop said, “Bundy was a charmer, a real favorite at a party, evidently nonthreatening, given the number of women he got to leave willingly with him, yet his daughter is quiet, a loner, acts and dresses weird. But she doesn’t wear white anymore; now it’s black.
“There’s another thing. From what the bartenders in Cleveland and Philadelphia tell us, she can be outgoing, charming, a mirror of her daddy.”
Delion signaled to Cindy Lou for their check. After he set down his credit card, he said, “I wondered about that. I guess our girl’s adaptable, has some talent.”
Lucy said, “Sounds to me like she got into it with Elsa Cross, that or something around that time was the trigger that made her change her ways, and eventually set her out on her road trip. I wonder why she killed that first girl; she was only sixteen, you said?”
Delion nodded.
Coop said, “Maybe, like Elsa Cross, the girl made the mistake of criticizing her about something, and she found out about it.”
Delion said, “Yeah, could be, but again, no one remembers any confrontation between the two of them. It was a long time ago, after all.
“Okay, now there’s another woman—Arnette Carpenter—I went through her book but couldn’t find she knew
