“I didn’t have an address for him, just a phone number. So he stayed in the same town all these years?” I said.
“Looks like it. You’ve talked to him?”
“Very briefly. Says he never met Travis, and didn’t seem to hold doing so as one of his life’s ambitions. You talked to him, too?”
“No, just found out where he lived.”
“Do I want to know how you managed to do this?”
She laughed. “Probably not.”
Curiosity got the better of me. “How?”
“From a voter registration list.”
“Voter registration? That information isn’t available to just anybody. Don’t tell me you-”
“No, I didn’t have to call in any favors,” she said.
“For some reason, I have a suspicion I’m not going to like the answer anyway.”
This apparently did not cause her much concern. “Well, I’ll tell you how someone might get them, then you can stop imagining that I’m bribing people who work in the County Registrar of Voters office.” Making a wholly unconvincing attempt to look as if she were working from imagination rather than memory, she said, “Let’s say a person files as a candidate for an office.”
“Okay…”
“That person, who is not obliged to put on much of a campaign, may obtain voter registration information, such as the names and addresses and-sometimes-the phone numbers of voters. The information is printed out by a computer.”
“Yes. Precinct lists. Are you a candidate?”
“Oh, no, I haven’t lived here long enough to be a candidate. And I’m speaking hypothetically, remember?”
“Certainly.”
She laughed again. “And those who don’t want to go to the trouble of filing for candidacy just volunteer to work on a campaign, then make copies of the lists.”
“I know you haven’t worked on any campaigns,” I said, “because there hasn’t been an election since you’ve moved here.”
“No, but I do know certain enterprising individuals-”
I groaned.
“And I know you are going to find this hard to believe,” she went on, “but there are actually people who have worked on campaigns who will sell copies of those lists!”
“No!” I said in mock horror.
“So,” she went on, “Arthur’s uncle is registered without party affiliation. Lives in Los Alamitos. I’ll give you the address.”
“Does your husband know that you’re going around-”
“Don’t be an imbecile!” she said. “Of course not.”
“Of course not.”
“You and Frank, your jobs don’t always put you on the same side of the fence, right?”
“No, but-”
“But nothing. Same with me and Pete.”
It wasn’t really the same, but I decided not to press the matter.
“No luck trying to find the housekeeper, Ann Coughlin,” she said. “But like I told you last night, I did find the DeMonts.”
“Gwendolyn’s family?”
“Yes, the ones who tried to keep Travis’s father from getting a penny of his dead wife’s estate.”
“There was an uncle, right? But he must be-”
“No, he’s alive. He’s still collecting his Social Security.”
“I’m almost positive I don’t want to know how you found that out,” I said.
She laughed. “It wasn’t that hard. I looked him up in an old phone directory-he has an unlisted number now, but he wasn’t as private about it ten years ago. The old phone book didn’t list the address, but the name and number were there.”
“So you called and asked for him?”
“No, Horace DeMont’s an unusual name. Not likely that I would have mistakenly found some other Horace DeMont living in Huntington Beach. So first I did a reverse check on this number and found out it’s currently the number for a Leda Rose. That’s his daughter. ”Rose‘ turns out to be her married name. I think she’s a widow-I’m checking on that. Anyway, I called and asked for Horace, since he wasn’t listed in the current directory.“
“But you figured he might be living with his daughter?”
“A guess. Leda answered the phone. She said he was asleep. I told her I was with a unit investigating Social Security fraud-”
“Oh, my God-”
“-and that some checks had recently been stolen through a mail diversion scam. Told her I needed to know that Horace was receiving his checks. She said yes, and of course I had to make sure the checks were going to the correct address, which she happily gave me.”
“Rachel-”
“Yeah, yeah, not your style. Your journalistic ethics and all that. That’s why it’s good you hired me.”
“Not hired, exactly-”
“So you owe me a buck. Anyway, Horace may not be of much use to you; he’s in his nineties.” She paused, frowning as if trying to calculate something, then said, “Ninety-three.”
“You’ve learned a lot about them.”
“Just getting started. I also looked at county records and did a little snooping around at the family cemetery. Douglas, Horace’s oldest son, died in the 1980s. But Robert is still alive. He also lives in Huntington Beach, on the same street. Judging by the addresses, I’d say they can look out their kitchen windows and wave to one another.”
She stopped talking long enough to negotiate the ramp to the northbound Golden State Freeway. As if the change of freeway signaled a change of subject, she said, “So, your society columnist ever show up again?
“No, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything to be alarmed over.” Even as I said it, I thought of the man in the baseball cap. The green sedan. Was it the same man? Or did the cap just register with my memory of Geoff’s security tapes? I glanced behind us, but all I could see were two big trucks. I couldn’t see the Olds.
“Who’s alarmed?” Rachel was saying. “I just wondered if you ever talked to her to find out what that guy wanted.”
“Margot doesn’t work full-time for the paper,” I said. “She writes a weekly column, sends it in by modem. She stops by to make sure photo captions are correct and to pick up her mail. When she’s in the building, she’s over in features, I’m over in news. I rarely see her in person.”
“Why don’t you call her, find out who was asking for you?”
“I could do that, I suppose.”
She laughed. “You don’t like her or her column, do you?”
I didn’t commit myself by more than a shrug. I went back to studying cars and passengers. Traffic was still moving, but it had slowed to about forty miles an hour. For an LA freeway, that’s about half-speed. In the side mirror, I saw the green Olds again.
It was farther behind us now. I told myself that all of the cars in at least two lanes of the San Gabriel River Freeway had also made that same transition to the northbound Golden State Freeway, but I was still uneasy.
“What’s wrong?” Rachel asked.
“I’m being paranoid.”
“Oh yeah? That’s much more fun as a group activity. Tell me what’s making you nervous.”
“There’s a green Olds, two cars back in the lane to our right-see it?”
“Yes. You think we’re being followed?”
“I don’t know. He was behind us on the other freeway, too.”
“An American-made sedan,” she said. “An unmarked cop car?”
