“Oh yeah, I’m sure she is. Just upset.” Lee herself sounded calmer, and Kate’s grip on the phone relaxed.
“In a dither, huh?”
“Completely ditherized. What does that word mean, anyway? How’s your day going?”
“I’m playing tag with some evidence the FBI might think I should have turned over to them, hoping it gives me some meaning. Doesn’t look like it, though.”
“Another productive day.”
“That’s how it goes. But I met a woman who could be a poster girl for the black and beautiful campaign, whose goal in life is to manage a Safeway store.”
Lee, after a silent moment, asked, “Have you been drinking?”
“Iced tea, I swear.”
“Is Hawkin with you?”
“Yes, Mother.”
At that Lee finally laughed. “Yeah, right—why I should trust him to keep you in line I can’t imagine.”
“You’re sure a cab is okay, hon?”
“Cost a fortune, but I’ll let Maj pay half.”
“How long do you think you’ll be with her?”
“Couple of hours. Less if Roz shows up—I won’t stick around for that stage of the conversation, thank you.”
“Okay. Well, if I’m back in town before—what does that make it, eleven?—I’ll call there, give you a ride home.”
“If it’s convenient, that’d be great. Don’t work too hard.”
“Never.”
“Sure. Why don’t I tell Roz to just chill out, while I’m at it?” But she chuckled as she said it, and they talked about nothing in particular for another minute or two before they hung up and went their separate ways.
Back at the table Kate finished her tepid espresso in one quick swallow, then reached out and pulled the puzzling sheet from its neighbors. She turned it around and laid it in front of Hawkin, tapping the name that had caught her eye.
“Don’t you think that’s odd?” she asked him.
He looked down at the name and his eyebrows went up. He nodded his head slowly.
A white car had been rented the previous morning to a woman named Jane Larsen.
Chapter 22
“DID JAMES LARSEN HAVE a sister?” Kate asked her partner.
“We’ve never come across one.”
“I don’t know which I like less, the idea of coincidence or the thought of some seventy-five-year-old avenging mother on the scene. Talk about Disgruntled Ladies.”
“Do you have Emily Larsen’s phone number with you?”
Kate didn’t, but she got it from information, and Emily answered, the noise of canned television laughter in the background. Kate identified herself, asked how she was doing, and then asked her question.
“No,” Emily said, sounding confused. “Jimmy never had a sister. He has a brother who lives back East, Philadelphia I think, but we haven’t heard from him in years.”
“Is the brother married?”
“Not that I knew of. Jimmy always said Danny was too mean to get married.”
“Do you have his last address, Ms. Larsen?”
“I have an address, sure, but like I said it’s really old. We haven’t even gotten a Christmas card from him in maybe five years.”
“It’ll have to do.” The telephone went down and Kate was treated to several minutes of laugh track and manic gabbling before it was picked up again. Emily gave her an address and phone number, and Daniel Larsen’s full name, and then asked Kate the inevitable question.
“What do you want to know this for?”
“Oh, a woman with the same last name has popped up in a related matter. Probably nothing. Thanks for your help, Ms. Larsen.”
“Any time. Say, while I have you on the line, can I ask you something?”
“What’s that?”
“Do you need to report when a credit card’s missing?”
The question dropped into Kate’s mind with the slow electric tingle of discovered evidence. “Is this one of your credit cards we’re talking about?”
“It was Jimmy’s. I mean, I could sign on it, but he didn’t want me to have my own in case I used it. I forgot all about it until the other day when the monthly bill came and I realized the card wasn’t with his other stuff that I got back, and when I went looking for it I couldn’t find it.”
“Did he usually carry it with him?”
“I guess.”
“Is anything else missing?”
“Oh heavens,” she said with a little laugh, “I’m losing all kinds of things. The therapist I’m seeing says it’s a common sign of stress, to lose things.”
“What have you lost?” Kate’s voice remained light, but it was an effort.
“All kinds of things,” Emily repeated, beginning to sound embarrassed. “I brushed my hair in the guest bathroom and forgot, so I couldn’t find my brush for two days. I left my housekeys in the market, talk about stupid, I had to go back for them. Now it’s my whole wallet. I can’t think where I could have left that. Isn’t that silly? Hello? Inspector, are you there?”
“Yes. Sorry, Ms. Larsen, I was thinking. I’m sure it’ll turn up. You probably just left it somewhere, maybe last night?”
“I wonder… You know, I was at the shelter on Friday night, they invited me up for dinner. I wonder if…I’ll call and ask them.”
“Actually, Emily, I’m going over to the shelter first thing in the morning. Rather than bother them tonight, considering how busy they always are in the evenings, why don’t I just ask for you when I’m there, maybe take a look around to see if your wallet fell into the back of the sofa or something?” If the missing wallet was of any importance, the last thing Kate wanted was for its thief to be forewarned that she was coming.
“Would you? That’svery nice of you.It’s green, looks just like leather, with a gold clasp along the top. Jimmy gave it to me for my birthday three years ago.”
“I’m glad you’re keeping in touch with the shelter,” Kate said with elaborate casualness. “I saw Roz the other day myself, she was saying that she wished she could spend more time there.”
“Roz was there Friday, but she had to run. She asked Phoebe—you know, Carla’s secretary?—to give me a ride home, though, and she did, which was nice of her, it’s really out of her way. The insurance company is still dragging their feet over replacing Jimmy’s car.”
Kate made sympathetic noises, and then nudged Emily a little further down the evidence trail. “That explains why I couldn’t reach you—I didn’t want to call too late.”
“Yes, it was after eleven when we got home. I hated to have Phoebe come all the way down here, considering how busy she is, but the buses don’t run as much that late.”
“I see,” Kate said, afraid that she was beginning to.
“What did you want?” Emily interrupted Kate’s thoughts to ask.
“Sorry? Oh, you mean the other night. It was nothing, just clarification of a detail. We worked it out.” She wished the woman luck with getting the insurance company to replace the trashed car, and hung up before Emily could ask again about canceling the credit card.
Hawkin had paid and was standing near the door, so she waited until they were in the car to tell him what Emily Larsen had said.
“His credit card and her ID, both gone missing,” Hawkin mused. “What you might call thought- provoking.”
“Not much we can do about it tonight, though,” Kate said hopefully.
