“Mitch said that to her at her birthday party?”
“No. Mitch wasn’t at the party. You should call Lillian. She may be able to tell you more about it.”
“I will,” I said.
She seemed to be doing better by the end of the call, but I felt so bad, I almost forgot to be angry with O’Connor for not telling me important facts.
Almost.
I asked him to go to lunch with me. We told Geoff where we could be found and went to a little cafe that was about half a block from the paper. We talked over the weird and basically useless calls we had received from people trying to collect the reward. We ate our sandwiches. I waited until we were done with all of that before I confronted him.
He wasn’t bothered in the least. “Mitch lied to her. Why am I obliged to repeat his lies?”
“Gee, because maybe it’s important information all the same?”
He shrugged. “How could it be?”
“For God’s sake, O’Connor-”
“I talked to Wrigley again. He said if your friend really wants to lose an editorial position to work news side, it’s up to her. But he wants thirty days to find a new food editor. And he wants to be the one to tell her.”
I stared at him a moment. “You are trying to change the subject.”
“I am trying to make amends.”
Before he could say more, a man walked up to us and said, “I’ve been looking all over for you.” The remark was directed to O’Connor.
This guy was a little older than me, tanned, muscular-and handsome, I suppose, but there was something about him that I disliked immediately. He was wearing a tight-fitting T-shirt, blue jeans, and work boots. He knew exactly how good he looked in them. Maybe he overestimated on that score. Spoiled brat, I thought.
“Irene,” O’Connor was saying, “this is my son, Kenny.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said, holding out a hand he glanced at, but didn’t shake.
He returned his attention to his dad. “Look, about that car loan-”
“Let’s not discuss that here,” O’Connor said, folding his arms across his chest.
Kenny opened his mouth to protest, then seemed distracted. He was looking toward the entrance of the cafe. I was seated facing the other way, but at the radical change in his expression, I turned around-just in time to see disaster approaching.
Kenny was staring in adoration at a tall, good-looking redhead with big green eyes. I was looking at my sister, thinking that she always did have shitty timing.
I introduced her to everyone. Kenny suddenly found his manners and shook her hand-holding on to it a little longer than civility required. As for Barbara, I strongly suspect she hadn’t planned to be as polite to me as she was. O’Connor and I exchanged a glance.
“Barbara,” I said, “we have to get back to the paper, but I’d like to talk to you. Want to walk with us?”
“I haven’t had lunch yet,” she said, in a voice you might hear from a starving kitten, if starving kittens could talk.
Kenny had the charm turned on full blast by then. “Hey-I need to talk to my dad, you need to talk to your sister. Let me buy you lunch, then I’ll walk with you over to the paper and we can talk to them there.”
“How sweet of you!”
O’Connor and I exchanged another glance, silently agreeing to pay up and leave before it got any worse.
As we gained the sidewalk, O’Connor said, “I don’t mean to be disloyal to Kenny, but if you care about your sister, you’ll do anything you can to keep them apart. Let’s just say he doesn’t have a great track record.”
“If I thought for one minute that anything I said to that mule-headed sister of mine would make an impression on her, I wouldn’t have left them alone together.” I sighed. “Her own track record isn’t so great, but then, neither is mine. I guess the only consolation is that if her history keeps repeating itself, it will all be over soon.”
“Whatever happens to them, let’s promise each other we won’t let this get in the way of our own working relationship.”
“Oh hell,” I said, “I was hoping one of us believed they’d just have lunch.”
But it was good to know he thought we had a working relationship.
During those days, I tried hard to manage the balancing act required with Lefebvre-to do my best to get information, but not to become such a pest that he shut down on me forever.
On Monday afternoon, he gave me a little more information about what had been found in the lab’s search of the car. He let me know that he wasn’t giving me the complete list, that this was just what I could mention in the paper if I wanted to. These items included a gun believed to be the murder weapon; a large metal flashlight that had apparently been used as a club, because there were bloodstains and hair matted on it; other hairs and fibers; cigarettes and cigarette butts. Some of the hair on the flashlight seemed to be dog fur.
“You said you found cigarettes. What brand?”
“Chesterfields and filtered Pall Malls. From what you told me, the Chesterfields might be Katy’s-none were smoked in the car, though. We found stubbed-out Pall Malls in the ashtray of the car, and on the floor of the backseat, so those might be the killer’s. No lighter.”
He also told me-not for publication-that among the bloodstains in the car were ones the lab had been able to type, from blood that had soaked into the foam of the seats before it dried. A section of the backseat cushions had type O embedded in them, and spatter patterns on the headliner were consistent with someone striking several blows with a blunt instrument, most likely the flashlight. Stains in the area of the driver’s seat were type O. There were also stains of type B in the backseat.
“Type B? So another person was wounded or perhaps killed there?”
“It’s a possibility, although there is much less of the type B. We can’t say that all the stains are of the same age.”
“But no third body? Human body, I should say?”
“You think Woolsey might claim the dog was type B?”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny,” I said. “Where’s that other person?”
“He could be living next door to you, for all I know.”
“Lefebvre, there’s something else you should know about that farm.” I told him about the bootlegging story.
He was silent.
“Sorry, I should have mentioned that earlier.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
I waited. Eventually he said, “I may have to tell your friend the construction supervisor that more excavations are needed because you mentioned this bootlegging theory.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “You were already planning to dig when you realized missing diamonds and other evidence might still be buried out there.”
He laughed and told me it served me right for not continuing our spirit of openness, but I could tell it was okay between us.
“Am I invited to be there when you dig?” I asked.
“I’ll let you know. It will be sometime tomorrow, I think.”
I told him I was going to think about things and would call him back. He told me he was always interested in my theories. I tried hard to detect any possible amusement in his voice when he said that, but either he was serious or I was fooled.
“Are you dating Max Ducane?” he asked.
I was surprised by the question. “No, I’m not.”
That was met with silence.
“I don’t have anything against Max,” I said. “It’s just that I’m still hung up on someone I was interested in back in Bakersfield. Which is so stupid, because we never really dated, just spent time around each other on the job. And besides, someone called me a few weeks ago to tell me he’s seeing someone else.”
“He’s a cop.”
“How on earth-did you check up on my life in Bakersfield, for God’s sake?”
