Lilly, I am worried sick about you. If you get this, please just call me to let me know you are okay. Please, honey? Since you have stopped calling me I haven't been able to think right. I am very worried about you and that job of yours. Things around here were never really the best and I know I didn't do everything right. But I don't think that you shouldn't tell me if you are all right. Please call me if and when you get this.
Love, Mom He read it twice and then refolded the page and returned it to the envelope. More than anything else in the apartment, including the rotten fruit, the letter stabbed Pierce with a sense of doom. He didn't think the letter from V. Quinlan would ever be answered by a phone call or otherwise.
He closed the envelope as best as he could and quickly buried it in the pile of mail on the floor. The intrusion of the mail carrier had served to instill in him a sense of the risk he was running by being in the house. He'd had enough. He quickly turned and headed back down the hallway to the kitchen.
He went through the back door and closed it but left it unlocked. As nonchalantly as an amateur criminal can be, he walked around the corner of the house and down the driveway toward the street.
Halfway down the side of the house he heard a loud bang from up on the roof and then a large pinecone rolled off the eave and landed in front of him. As Pierce stepped over it he realized what had made the startling noise while he had been in the house. He nodded as he put it together. At least he had solved one mystery.
9
Lights.'
Pierce swung around behind his desk and sat down. From his backpack he pulled out the things he had taken from Lilly Quinlan's house. He had a Visa bill and a bank statement and the phone book.
He started paging through the phone book first. There were several listings for men by first name or first name with a following initial only. These numbers ran the gamut of area codes. Many local but still more from area codes outside of Los Angeles. There were also several listings for local hotels and restaurants, as well as a Lexus dealer in Hollywood. He saw a listing for Robin and another listing for ECU, which he knew was Entrepreneurial Concepts Unlimited.
Under the heading ' Dallas ' there were several numbers for hotels, restaurants and male first names listed. The same was true of a heading for Las Vegas.
He found a listing for Vivian Quinlan with an 813 area code phone number and an address in Tampa, Florida. That solved the mystery of the smeared postmark on the letter.
Near the end of the book he found an entry for someone listed as Wainwright that included a phone number and an address in Venice that Pierce knew was not far from the home on Altair.
He flipped back to the Q listings and used his desk phone to call the number for Vivian Quinlan. A woman answered the phone in two rings. Her voice sounded like a broom sweeping a sidewalk.
'Hello?'
'Mrs. Quinlan?'
'Yes?'
'Uh, hi, I'm calling from Los Angeles. My name's Henry Pierce and -'
'Is this about Lilly?'
Her voice had an immediate, desperate tone to it.
'Yes. I'm trying to locate her and I was wondering if you could help me.'
'Oh, thank God! Are you police?'
'Uh, no, ma'am, I'm not.'
'I don't care. Someone finally cares.'
'Well, I'm just trying to find her, Mrs. Quinlan. Have you heard from her lately?'
'Not in more than seven weeks and that just isn't like her. She always checked in. I'm very worried.'
'Have you contacted the police?'
'Yes, I called and talked to the Missing Persons people. They weren't interested because she's an adult and because of what she does for a living.'
'What does she do for a living, Mrs. Quinlan?'
There was a hesitation.
'I thought you said you knew her.'
'I'm just an acquaintance.'
'She works as a gentleman's escort.'
'I see.'
'No sex or anything. She told me she goes to dinner with men in tuxedos mostly.'
Pierce let that go by as a mother's denial of the obvious. It was something he had seen before in his own family.
'What did the police say to you about her?'
'Just that she probably went off with one of these fellows and that I'd probably hear from her soon.'
'When was that?'
'A month ago. You see, Lilly calls me every Saturday afternoon. When two weeks went by with no phone calls I called the police. They didn't call me back. After the third week I called again and talked to Missing Persons. They didn't even take a report or anything, just told me to keep waiting. They don't care.'
For some reason a vision bled into his mind and distracted him. It was the night he had come home from Stanford. His mother was waiting for him in the kitchen, the lights off.
Just waiting there in the dark to tell him the news about his sister, Isabelle.
When Lilly Quinlan's mother spoke, it was his own mother.
'I called in a private detective but he's been no help. He can't find her neither.'
The content of what she was saying finally brought him out of it.
'Mrs. Quinlan, is Lilly's father there? Can I talk to him?'
'No, he's long gone. She never knew him. He hasn't been here in about twelve years – ever since the day I caught him with her.'
'Is he in prison?'
'No, he's just gone.'
Pierce didn't know what to say.
'When did Lilly come out to L.A.?'
'About three years ago. She first went to a flight attendant school out in Dallas but never did that job. Then she moved to L.A. I wish she'd become a flight attendant. I told her that in the escort business even if you don't have sex with those men, people will still think that you did.'
Pierce nodded. He supposed that it was sound motherly advice. He pictured a heavyset woman with big hair and a cigarette in the corner of her mouth. Between that and her father, no wonder Lilly went about as far as she could get from Tampa. He was surprised it was only three years ago that she left.
'Where did you hire a private detective, there in Tampa or out here in L.A.?'
'Out there. Not much use to hire one here.'
'How did you hire one out here?'
'The policeman in Missing Persons sent me a list. I picked from there.'
'Did you come out here to look for her, Mrs. Quinlan?'
'I'm not in good health. Doctor says I've got emphysema and I've got my oxygen that I'm hooked up to. There wasn't much I could do comin' out there.'
Pierce reconstructed his vision of her. The cigarette was gone and the oxygen tube replaced it. The big hair remained. He thought about what else he could ask or what information he might be able to get from the woman.
'Lilly told me she was sending you money.'
It was a guess. It seemed to go with the whole mother-daughter relationship.
