She opens her arms.
The kid falls into them and starts to sob.
Gloria sees me at the bottom of the stairs. She straightens up and gently pushes the kid away. She’s whispering something to him, right at his ear, something my vampiric hearing can’t pick up. He turns and looks at me. Then as quickly as he bounded up the stairs, he’s running back down. Like a jackrabbit avoiding a fox, he makes a wide arc around me. Before I can put out a hand to stop him, he darts away.
It only takes me a nanosecond to decide not to go after him. I’ve filed his image in my head. I’ve seen him before.
I join Gloria at the top of the stairs staring in the direction of the now departed young man.
“Who was that?”
When she fails to respond, I turn to look at her.
“Gloria? Who was that? Not a reporter. He’s too young to be a reporter. He was upset. You hugged him. He’s not another boyfriend, is he? Somebody else you’ve been cheating on David with?”
A thundercloud of anger sweeps across her face. “He’s a kid, Anna. Barely fourteen. No, he’s not a boyfriend.”
“Then who is he?”
“He’s a friend. That’s all I’m going to say. Can you please get me the hell out of here? I want to go home. Take a long, hot shower. Then we can talk about what you’re going to do to find Rory’s killer.”
She’s already three steps ahead of me, running down the stairs in her haste to get to my car. Or to avoid answering any more questions about the mysterious young man. I’m not sure which. Not that it matters. I have a clear image of the kid’s face in my memory. I know I’ve seen him before. It’s the only reason I didn’t stop him or press her for answers. I’ll get those on my own.
The kid can run, Gloria, but he can’t hide.
Not for long. Not from me.
CHAPTER 18
WHEN WE’RE IN THE CAR, IT SUDDENLY OCCURS to me that there were no paparazzi at the courthouse. A bloody carcass doesn’t attract vultures faster than a celebrity in trouble attracts the media. I half turn in the seat to look at Gloria.
“How’d you pull it off?”
I don’t have to explain what I mean. She waves a hand. “My lawyer let it leak that I’d be arraigned at one this afternoon. Oops.”
I have to admire his ingenuity though I pity the guy who walks out of the courthouse on a pandering charge and has a hundred flashbulbs go off in his face. I crank over the engine.
David’s place has always been home to Gloria in San Diego. Since she knows better than to think I’d take her there, I ask, “Where are you staying?”
“I thought I’d stay with you.”
The ten thousand reasons why that is not going to happen bubble to my lips like a geyser ready to spew. Luckily, I stifle the eruption when I realize she’s kidding. I know she’s kidding because she’s staring at me with a “gotcha” smirk on her face.
“I have a suite at the Four Seasons,” she says.
“I should have guessed. Where else would you stay but the most expensive hotel in San Diego?”
She ignores the sarcasm, rests her head against the seat and closes her eyes. I accelerate away from the curb. At least she’s riding in front with me. If she’d gotten into the backseat, I might have been tempted to kick her skinny ass right out of the car.
She’s quiet on the ride to the hotel. I use the time to concentrate on that kid and where I’ve seen him before. It won’t come. I’m not worried, though. I know I’ll remember. Something will trip the memory and his identity will float to the surface of my subconscious like pond scum.
The Four Seasons is San Diego’s newest and finest. We pull up to the front entrance and a valet is there to open my door before we’ve come to a complete stop. Another valet is at Gloria’s door, gushing like an excited schoolboy when he recognizes her. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that she’s coming from a night in jail. He rushes past us to open the door to the lobby. Gloria sweeps past him like the queen with her livery.
I follow after getting the valet ticket. No one rushes to open the door for me. I’m only her driver.
Gloria is at the front desk, collecting messages and her key. At least she waits for me to catch up before starting for the elevator. She goes straight to the elevator cordoned off with a red rope. A uniformed bellboy opens it for her and we pass into a car with only two stop buttons. PH1 and PH2. She inserts a key card and hits PH2.
The elevator whisks us up in perfumed silence and whispers to a stop. The door opens into the suite’s marble foyer. It’s a setup I’ve only seen in movies. There is a fountain, lots of greenery, and a carved, twelve-foot-high double door. She opens it with the same key card she used in the elevator and steps aside so I can go in first.
I’ve been in a lot of beautiful homes and hotel rooms, but nothing like this. The penthouse faces west with a view over the city, over Pacific Coast Highway, over a vast expanse of ocean. It’s an unobstructed view, inside and out, both because we’re twenty stories up and because the entire wall is made of glass. No structural beams or window frames. How they did it, I couldn’t begin to guess. There is furniture on both sides of the glass, classical leather pieces on the inside, wicker chairs and lounges on a terrace outside. It’s breathtaking.
It becomes more so when Gloria presses a button and the “wall” retracts. The salt-air smell of ocean wafts in.
Gloria takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.
“God. I was afraid I’d never smell fresh air again.” She tosses her key and the stack of messages on a small mahogany table near the couch. Not all of the messages, though. Before starting for a door to the right of the living room, she extracts three from the pile and palms them. She calls back to me, “I’m going to shower and change. There’s coffee in the kitchen. Order room service if you’re hungry. I can’t stay in these clothes another minute.”
She doesn’t wait for a reply but disappears into what I assume is the bedroom, closing the door behind her. I wonder whose messages she so subtly removed. She obviously didn’t want me to see who left them. Takes all the fun out of being nosy if the object of your snooping is on to you. I go through the ones she left behind anyway. Nothing but calls from print reporters representing everything from the Enquirer to the Wall Street Journal.
She took the interesting ones with her.
I wander in the opposite direction, finding the kitchen behind another of those carved doors. There’s a coffeemaker already set up on the counter. I push the button and beans grind, water filters and coffee drips into a cut-glass decanter.
A coffeemaker with a crystal decanter. Why am I surprised?
There’s something else on the counter. A copy of a search warrant. The objects of the search include a gun and a key card. Since there are no accompanying receipts, the police left with nothing.
All the same, I open cupboards and look on my own. What I find is everything the type of person who can afford to stay here would need for spur of the moment entertaining . . . tins of foie gras and caviar, sleeves of toast points and wafer-thin crackers, expensive chocolates. More exploring finds the wine cooler hidden behind cherry cabinet doors, six bottles of wine and six bottles of champagne. China, crystal, a silver service, gold-leaf flatware.
I sniff, letting vampire senses kick in. No residual smell of blood means there were no bloody clothes stuffed in any of these corners. No smell of cordite or oil. No gun, either.
A low, muted chime announces that the coffee is ready. I grab a coffee cup and close the cupboards. I didn’t really expect that there would be anything to find. Gloria is vain and selfish, arrogant and narcissistic. But she isn’t stupid.