it’ll about kill her mother. I guess I can keep looking for her, can’t I? I mean, unless they tell me not to?”
Sharon only nodded.
“Then maybe I will. Maybe I ought to take a look at that bedroom wall of hers again. Maybe…” I realized I was babbling, so I shut up.
Sharon finished her wine, took the empty glass to the sink, and started for the door. Hank asked, “Where’re you going?”
“Upstairs to collect my stuff, and then home. It’s been a long day.”
Both men frowned and exchanged looks that said they thought she was being callous. I watched her leave. Then I finished my grog and stood up, too.
“Going to bed?” Ted asked.
“Yes.”
“If you need anything, just holler.”
“I’m upset, not feeble,” I snapped.
Ted nodded understandingly. Sometimes he’s so goddamn serene I could hit him.
Sharon was still in her office, not collecting anything, just sitting behind her desk, where I knew she’d be. I went in there and sat on the end of the chaise lounge. After a few seconds, I got up again, and began to pace, following the pattern of the Oriental rug.
She said, “I can’t tell you anything that’ll help.”
“I know.”
“I’d hoped you’d never have to face this,” she added. “Unrealistic of me, I suppose.”
“Maybe.”
“But maybe not. Most investigators don’t you know. Some of them never leave their computer terminals long enough to get out into the field.”
“So what are we-unlucky?”
“I guess.” She stood and started putting things into her briefcase. “You’re going to keep looking for Adrian?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I stopped by the fireplace and pickup up the gorilla mask she keeps on the mantel. It had a patch of hair missing right in the middle of its chin; I’d accidentally pulled it out one day during a fit over something that I couldn’t even remember now. “Shar,” I said, “it never gets any easier, does it?”
“No.”
“But somehow you deal with it?”
“And go on,” she put on her jacket, hefted the briefcase.
“Until the next time,” I said bitterly.
“If there is one.”
“Yeah.” I suspected there would be. Look at what Sharon’s life has been like. And yet, seeing her standing there-healthy and reasonably sane and looking forward to a good night’s sleep-made me feel hopeful.
She came over to me and gave me a one-armed hug. Then she pointed at the gorilla mask and said, “You want to take him to bed with you tonight?”
“No. if I want to sleep with a gorilla, I’ll just call Willie.”
She grinned and went out, leaving me all alone.
After a while I put the gorilla back on the mantel and lay down on the chaise lounge. I dragged the blanket over me and curled up on my side, cradling my head on my arm. The light from the Tiffany lap was mellow and comforting. It became toasty under the blanket. In a few minutes, I actually felt sleepy.
I’d stay there tonight, I decided. In some weird way, it felt safer than my nest upstairs.
Donna Conway called me at eight-ten the next morning. I’d already gone to my office-a closet under the stairs that some joker had passed off as a den when All Souls moved into the house years before-and was clutching a cup of the battery acid that Ted calls coffee and trying to get my life back together. When my intercom buzzed, I jerked and grabbed the phone receiver without first asking who it was.
Donna said dully, “The backpack I told you Adrian always took to school with her? They found it where poor Kirby was murdered.”
I went to put my cup down, tipped it, and watched coffee soak into my copy of the morning paper. Bad day already. “They-you mean the police?”
“Yes. They just brought it over for me to identify.”
“Where was it? In the yard?”
“Inside the house. It’d been there a long time because the yogurt-she always took a cup of yogurt to work to eat on her break-was spoiled.”
Not good at all.
“Rae, you don’t think it means she did that to Kirby, do you?”
“I doubt it.” What I thought it meant was that Adrian was dead, maybe had been dead since shortly after she disappeared-but I wasn’t going to raise
A pause. “The usual stuff, I guess. I didn’t ask. I was too upset.”
I’d get Sharon to check that out with her friend Adah Joslyn.
Donna added, “The police said that Kirby was the one who rented the house, and that there was a girl with him when he first looked at it who matched Adrian’s description.”
“When?”
“Late last July. I guess…well, with teenagers today, you just assume they’re sexually active. Adrian and I had a talk about safe sex two years ago. But I don’t understand why they thought they needed to rent a place to be together. I’m not home all that much, and neither are Kirby’s parents. Besides, they couldn’t have spent much time at that house; Adrian worked six days a week, after school and on Saturdays, and she was usually home by her curfew.”
I thought about Kirby’s “job” at the nonexistent garage. Maybe Adrian’s had been a front, too. But, no, that didn’t wash-the store’s manager, Sue Hanford, and the plaza security man, Ben Waterson, had confirmed her employment both to me and the police.
“Rae?” Donna said. “Will you keep looking for her?”
“Of course.”
“Will you call me if you find out anything? I’ll be here all day today. I can’t face going to work.”
I said I would, but I was afraid that what I’d have to tell her wouldn’t be anything she’d want to hear.
“Yeah, the little weasel wanted to pick up her pay, in cash.” Ben Waterson plopped back in the metal chair behind the front desk in the Ocean Park Plaza security office. Its legs groaned threateningly under his massive weight. On the walls around us were mounted about two dozen TV screens that monitored what was going on in various stores in the center, switching from one to another for spot checking. Waterson glanced at one, looked closer, then shook his head. “In cash, no less, the little weasel said, since he couldn’t cash her check. Said she owed him money. Can you imagine?”
I leaned against the counter. There wasn’t another chair in the room, and Waterson hadn’t offered to find me one. “Why’d he ask you for it, rather than Ms. Hanford? Adrian was paid by Left Coast Casuals, not the plaza, wasn’t she?”
“Sue was out and had left me in charge of the store.” Waterson scratched at the beer belly that bulged over the waist of his khaki uniform pants. “Can you imagine?” he said again. “Kids today.” He snorted.
Waterson was your basic low-level security guy, although he’d risen higher than most of them ever go. I know, because I worked among them until my then-boss took pity on me and recommended me to Sharon for the job at All Souls. It’s a familiar type: not real bright, not too great to look at, and lacking in most of the social graces. About all you need to get in on the ground floor of the business is never to have been arrested or caught molesting the neighbors’ dog on the front lawn at high noon. Ben Waterson-well, I doubted he’d been arrested because he didn’t
