The two grocery lists were short, and only included a few everyday items-they didn’t reveal anything the tour of her kitchen hadn’t already told me. I put them back in the envelope.
Next I looked through her bills. There weren’t many of these either- her lifestyle didn’t include flashing a lot of gold cards all over town. In fact, there were no bills from any kind of plastic. No yuppie necessities such as cellular phones, dry cleaning or cable television. Like her grocery lists, her bills were for the basics: electricity, gas, water and the telephone. Among the older bills, there was a large amount due to an orthopedic surgeon, but as I studied it, it was clear that her medical insurance company was being billed for the full amount.
But there would be other expenses, of course. Her food, rent, taxes and probably some bus or cab fares. Donations to the church. Postage, laundry-all the other little things that might cause her to feel anxious about the ways she must divide a dollar. Living on disability checks, it would have been difficult to make ends meet.
“Where was your strong young son?” I wondered aloud. Where the hell was your niece? an inner voice quickly answered.
I forced myself to focus my attention on the phone bills. Most were for little more than the basic service rate, but the most recent telephone bill was extravagant by comparison-it included over sixty dollars’ worth of long-distance calls, all to numbers in California cities.
The calls were made within a three-day period-and when I saw which three days, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I pulled out the holy card just to make sure I had correctly remembered the date of Arthur Spanning’s death. Yes-and the calls were made in the three days following his demise.
Geoff, the Express’s security guard, called to tell me my sandwich was waiting for me at the front desk. I went downstairs to get it, thinking about the phone bill all the while. When Briana had learned of Arthur’s death, she would have called Travis. Even if he had been the one to inform her of his father’s death, it was likely that they had spoken. His number must have been one of the first ones she called. But who were all the other people she had phoned?
Back at my desk, I ate the sandwich without really tasting it as I studied the bill more closely. The cities called ranged across the state-from Crescent City in the far north to El Cajon in the south, from Eureka on the coast to Blythe at the Arizona border. Most were very brief calls, but three lasted longer-the ones to El Cajon, Mission Viejo and Lake Arrowhead. I wrote these numbers down.
Did Arthur have friends all over California? And why would Briana be the one to contact them?
The more I studied the bill, the more I became aware of a pattern to the calls. They began to follow a kind of geographical order: the call after Crescent City was to Eureka, then Leggett, Santa Rosa and San Francisco. A straight line down the Northern California coast. Following San Francisco, she called Vallejo, then Sacramento, Stockton, Fresno and Visalia.
I pulled an atlas off a reference shelf in the newsroom and opened it to a map of California. As I had thought, this group of calls followed a line inland from San Francisco to Sacramento, and then down the San Joaquin Valley along Highway 99. The other calls were the same, as if the caller-Briana-had also looked at a map, using the course of major highways to decide where to call next. There were some leaps (as I began to think of them) here and there-places where the pattern jumped to another area, a separate highway. But after each leap, the pattern continued.
With this pattern in mind, I logged back on to the computer and accessed the same database. The program can also search by phone number-enter the phone number, and it produces the name and address of the listed party. I decided to try the numbers for the three longer calls and entered the Mission Viejo phone number.
When the listing appeared on the screen, I double-checked the number on the phone bill, thinking I must have made a mistake. I hadn’t.
The number was that of the Mission Viejo Public Library. I tried Lake Arrowhead and El Cajon. Both were public libraries. Puzzled, I tried a few of the others. More libraries. I looked up every phone number; almost all were public libraries. The only exceptions were four elementary schools and two children’s bookstores.
I tried running the name “Travis Maguire” through the program and came up with zilch, but found thirty-eight listings for T. Maguire and about a thousand other Maguires. There were forty-two T. Sperry listings and nothing for T. Spanning. There were very few Spannings; Arthur Spanning wasn’t listed. I printed out the T. Sperry and T. Maguire listings.
I was about to try running the name DeMont when the phone rang. “Kelly,” I answered, somewhat distracted.
It was Rachel. “You hear the news?”
“What news?”
“Our boys are going to Idaho.”
“What?”
“Yeah, they’re trying to find a witness for one of their cases-guess it’s about to come to trial.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Don’t worry about Frank,” she said, guessing the direction of my thoughts. “He’ll be fine, except that Pete will probably make him crazy. Might do him some good to get out of town for a few days.”
“Yes,” I said, “you’re probably right.”
“You don’t sound convinced. I guess I should have let Frank tell you.”
“No, it’s all right. Glad to have some warning. It will help me to not overreact when Frank tells me. I mean, it really isn’t a big deal, is it?”
“Unless maybe you were recently forcibly separated from someone, and spent time worrying about whether he was alive or dead. Then you might be forgiven for being a little worried the next time he says he’s going out of town to find a witness.”
“Thanks,” I said, vowing to keep silent on the issue of her connection with McCain. Which was not an issue, I reminded myself.
“Look, I’m between cases here. I know you and your aunt were just yanking McCain’s chain when you told him I was working with you, but I’d be happy to help you out. You want some help locating this cousin of yours?”
“Sure. But don’t call in any favors at the DMV or the voter registrar’s offices just yet. I think her phone bills may lead us to him.”
“Found a number for him?”
“Not exactly,” I said, and told her what I had learned so far.
“Libraries, bookstores and elementary schools?”
“Maybe he sells children’s books,” I said. “All of this is assuming it was Travis she was trying to reach.”
“Were the calls made during the day?”
I looked at the bill again. “Most were. Some of the library calls were made in the early evening. But more interesting are the dates; I think she was trying to tell him that his father had died. Maybe she wanted him to go to Arthur Spanning’s funeral.”
“It must have been Travis. You want to fax me that list of Maguires and Sperrys? I could start checking them out for you.”
“You sure you have time for this?”
“One day I’m going to convince you that I don’t make offers just to hear the sound of my own voice.”
“Okay, okay. Thanks. Give me your fax number.”
I wrote it down, then said, “I’ll call these last three numbers-the ones for the longest calls. If I get a little time, I’m going to try to look up the story of the DeMont murder. If I learn anything, I’ll let you know.”
“Same here.”
I went back to work on my story, getting interrupted only when Frank called to break the news of the Idaho trip to me. When I reacted calmly, he said, “Rachel already told you, didn’t she?” I confessed. He laughed, then told me he’d be home late.
If he was going to be home late, I wasn’t going to have the luxury of staying late at the paper; two dogs and a big cat can only be kept waiting for so long. Jack, the best of neighbors, was always more than willing to help out with pet care, but I didn’t like to abuse his generosity.