After an awkward conversational lull, Maizie offered to show Lauren Annika’s room.
The attic bedroom was now a quilting room. Intricate quilts hung on the walls, and some sort of oversize frame was set up on the bed, holding a quilt in progress. They were gorgeous, but Lauren ignored them. She stood, breathing hard, as if she could inhale a clue. What was it she hoped to find? An emotional connection, a psychic one?
Maizie said, “There’s not much here. I sent most of her things back to Germany.”
“Already?” I said, wondering if anyone would be there to receive them. I hadn’t told Maizie that Annika’s mother was missing. Now probably wasn’t the moment.
“Gene thought it was time.” Maizie’s lips pressed together, as though the next thought had to be held back. Then she said, “He felt a week was long enough.”
Lauren’s face went rigid. It was another story at her house, I guessed. Rico’s bedroom would be as he’d left it to go to Pepperdine: athletic trophies, his train set, plaid blankets on bunk beds. Nothing would’ve changed in the last few years, and now, unless he showed up alive, nothing in that room would ever change. Lauren stared out the window, and I stared at her. Her arms were folded, her right hand gripping her left bicep. Her nails were painted a shade of pale coral, but the polish was chipped and the nails themselves ragged and uneven. This shocked me. Like spotting a cold sore on the Mona Lisa.
“The police,” she said, as if someone had just asked a question, “think he had a date Saturday night with a girl. But they can’t find the girl. So when Kevin told me about Annika disappearing…” Her shoulders slumped, and her head dropped to her chest.
We left the room, and then the house. Maizie walked us to the porch, and Lauren and I continued down the drive, to our cars. The film shoot that had been down the block last week was now across the street. A woman was setting up director’s chairs on the front lawn. I wanted to say something personal to Lauren, but everything I thought of sounded platitudinous to my ears. Like a bad greeting card.
“Did Rico talk about Annika?” I asked.
“Not by name.” A smile touched her face, making wrinkles around her eyes. This was someone who smiled a lot, in normal life. “The last time he was home-he comes home every few weekends-I said, ‘Is there anyone special?’ He said, ‘They’re all special, Mom.’ ”
I waited. She stayed with her memory until we reached her car, a Jaguar convertible, dark green. “He said a funny thing. He said ‘Even Dad would like this one. He just wouldn’t like her for me.’ You see?”
“Um, no,” I said.
“It’s the way you described her. My husband respects a good work ethic. But whoever Richie ends up with will have to have more, and I think that’s what he was acknowledging.”
“What will she have to have?”
“Social prominence. Style, education. Things I assume this girl doesn’t have.”
I looked down at my orange bicycle shorts. “A lot of people don’t.”
“Something else. He said, ‘Mom, she’s just like you. She’s beautiful and blond and she speaks three languages.’ ”
I stared at her, but she didn’t notice.
So I just came right out and told her. Annika wasn’t remotely blond.
32
Blondes. Bleach blonde, honey blonde, ash blonde, dishwater blonde. Bad blonde. Rico’s last date was a bad blonde, because if she had nothing to hide, she’d go to the cops and say, “I was with him the night he disappeared. I was the last to see him.” Or nearly the last. If she was truly the last, then she had reason to keep it to herself.
I was no longer thinking of Annika. Or Simon. I wasn’t even hung over. Driving east to San Marino, I had a prickly feeling, like my whole body had gone to sleep and was now waking up. I hadn’t called first, because I wanted to try out Joey’s theory of lying, which required surprise. I had to see Britta’s face.
I heard her first. Or, rather, I heard the children she took care of. Why weren’t they in school, I wondered, and then realized the Friday after Thanksgiving was a holiday. I followed the sounds to the back of the house and let myself in through a gate connected to a high fence. Two skinny boys jumped off a low diving board into a black-bottomed pool in a manner calculated to create the largest possible splash. Slumped on a beach chair in a sweatshirt and tight jeans was Britta, clearly bored. Very blond.
Because of the splashing I was able to get next to her without being heard. “Hi, Britta.”
She jumped to her feet. Recognition dawned, then hope. “Rico? He is found?”
“No.” I hesitated, then plowed onward. “Britta, you dated him, didn’t you?”
The switch to sullen was instantaneous. “It was you who have told this to police.” She took in my outfit, the bicycle shorts and nonmatching shirt, and seemed to find it an affront.
“I-no, I didn’t,” I said. “Have they talked to you?”
“Yesterday. Joshua!” Her head snapped around. “Do not hit your brother!”
I turned to look. One skinny kid was hitting the other while the other screamed.
“Joshua! Stop this any minute!”
One day, some civilizing force might set in, but now the boys were monkeys. Not cute baby ones, but the hostile kind you see at the zoo, screeching when they catch you looking. Joshua paused in midattack and pointed an accusing finger. “Who’s she?”
“She is-nobody.”
“You’re not supposed to have friends over when you’re on duty.”
“Anyway, she is not a friend.”
Joshua’s brother used this distraction to push Joshua into the pool, then took off running. Britta yelled at him not to run. He paid no attention.
“I’ll leave in a minute,” I said. “So the cops know you were sleeping with Rico?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t have to talk to you. You are not police.”
“No, but-do you know what a private detective is?”
“You are a detective?”
Joey and I had already played this out with Kevin and Lyle, but it was still hard for me to lie. I sat on the chaise longue. “What’s nice about private detectives,” I said, “is that people tell them things, things they never have to report to the police-”
“So? This is not a crime, I think, to have sex with people.” She flipped her straight blond hair with both hands.
“Of course not. And by the way, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you and Rico were in love, or I would’ve been more sensitive when I told you the news the other day.”
Britta nodded.
“What I care about,” I said, leaning in, “is finding Rico. This is why I ask personal questions. Forgive me. It must be painful to talk about. I won’t tell the police anything.”
“This is your job? To find Rico?”
“I just met with his mother, only an hour ago.”
Her sullenness dissipated. “Anyway,” she said, “we didn’t do this since one week ago. The police, they are concerned with Saturday night only. Saturday I am here.”
There was no hesitation, no interest in whether I believed her or not. She was, I believed, telling the truth. She was not the blonde Rico had dated the night he’d disappeared.
Oh.
I thought of the names on Rico’s wall, the girls he knew, the possibilities. It was exhausting to think about. And then I remembered something else on the wall. The. “Britta,” I said, “I guess you didn’t tell them about the-other thing.”
Her head snapped around. “What?”
“The drugs Rico was involved in. It’s common knowledge.”
She didn’t bat an eye at the mention of drugs. “What means that, common knowledge?”
“That means a lot of people know about it.”
She looked young now, like the monkey boys. “Really? I-I didn’t-”