So, okay. The phone on South Webster had been listed in Abigail Sweeney’s name, not an unusual situation when girls were sharing an apartment. Nor was it unusual in a resort town like Calusa for people to pick up and go when they’d had enough of the sun. Hence no new listings for either of Tracy’s former roommates, who were now only God knew where. The Heron Lagoon phone was listed in the absentee owner’s name; again, not an unusual situation where rental property was concerned. But Tracy Kilbourne had left that house on the fifth of July, so why was there no further telephone listing for her? She had been found dead in Calusa. Presumably she had stayed in Calusa. But no telephone?
The next calls the detectives made were to all the real-estate agents on Whisper Key. What they wanted to know was whether a girl named Tracy Kilbourne had bought or rented a house or condominium on the key in July of last year. Virtually all of the real-estate agents said they would have to check their files and get back. While the detectives waited for the return calls, they started telephoning all the banks on Whisper Key. An assistant manager at the Whisper Key branch of First Calusa City reluctantly told Bloom that a woman named Tracy Kilbourne had a checking account there. The assistant manager’s name was Mrs. O’Hare, and she spoke with a faint Irish brogue. This was the first good lead they’d had since they learned the dead girl’s name, so Bloom naturally started asking questions about the account. Mrs. O’Hare told Bloom she could not reveal anything more about the account without a court order. Bloom told her he was investigating a homicide. Mrs. O’Hare told him the bank had rules and regulations. Bloom told her it would be an enormous inconvenience for him to have to go before a magistrate to apply for a court order. Mrs. O’Hare told him he should get another job if he didn’t like being a policeman. Bloom told her he would go get the court order, but that he would be in a foul temper when he finally came to see her at the bank. Mrs. O’Hare said, “Have a nice day,” and hung up.
It took Bloom three hours to get a court order that would allow him to open the records on Tracy Kilbourne’s checking account. By the time he got to the bank, he was ready to tell Mrs. O’Hare just what he thought of all this bureaucratic bullshit, but she turned out to be a little gray-haired old lady who reminded him of his Aunt Sarah in Mineola, Long Island, so instead he found himself apologizing for having been rude on the telephone. A little plastic sign on Mrs. O’Hare’s desk told him that her first name was Betsy. She was wearing the kind of dress Lizzie Borden must have been wearing when she chopped up first her stepmother and then her father. She was also wearing rimless eyeglasses. She smelled of mimosa. Bloom felt for a moment that he had stepped back into the nineteenth century. Mrs. O’Hare studied the court order as though she suspected it were counterfeit.
Satisfied at last, she asked, “What is it you wish to know, then, Detective Bloom?”
“When was this account opened?” Bloom said.
Mrs. O’Hare consulted her records. Like a third-grader trying to shield a test paper from a potentially cheating neighbor across the aisle, she kept her hand cupped over the top of the sheet, hiding it from Bloom’s view. Bloom — Aunt Sarah notwithstanding — was beginning to dislike her intensely.
“The sixth day of July,” Mrs. O’Hare said.
“A Friday,” Bloom said, consulting his pocket calendar.
Mrs. O’Hare said nothing.
“What was the opening deposit?” Bloom asked.
Mrs. O’Hare consulted her papers again.
“Ten thousand dollars,” she said.
“And the current balance?”
“Seven hundred seventy-nine dollars and fourteen cents.”
“When was the last check drawn?” Bloom asked.
“I’m afraid I do not have that information here,” Mrs. O’Hare said.
“Where would this information be?” Bloom asked.
“In our Statements Department. All I have here are the details regarding—”
“Well, I’ll need a list of all transactions in the account from the day of the opening deposit to the last check written,” Bloom said.
“I’m afraid the bank cannot supply such information on one of its depositors,” Mrs. O’Hare said. “Not without her permission.”
“Mrs. O’Hare,” Bloom said slowly and carefully, “we are not about to get any permission from Miss Kilbourne because she is dead. She was murdered, Mrs. O’Hare. That’s why I’m here, Mrs. O’Hare. I’m trying to find out who killed her, Mrs. O’Hare.”
“Yes, well, you have your job,” Mrs. O’Hare said, “and I have mine.”
“And what we both have is this court order here,” Bloom said, “which I suggest you take another look at.”
“I have already read your court order,” Mrs. O’Hare said.
“Then you know it calls for complete disclosure. Those are the words there, Mrs. O’Hare, ‘complete disclosure,’ that is what the magistrate signed, a court order calling for complete disclosure. Now, Mrs. O’Hare, there is somebody out there someplace who shot a young girl and cut out her tongue—”
“Oh!” Mrs. O’Hare said.
“—and we’re wasting time here while he’s maybe planning to do the same thing to some other young girl. So, if you’ll pardon me, Mrs. O’Hare, I would like to quit waltzing around the mulberry bush, and I would like the information I came for. Now you go get what I want, and you go get it fast.”
“This is not Nazi Germany,” Mrs. O’Hare said.
“No, this is Calusa, Florida,” Bloom said.
Mrs. O’Hare went at once to get the complete file on Tracy Kilbourne.
When Bloom got back to the Public Safety Building, Rawles was on the telephone with the sixteenth real-estate agent he’d talked to since Bloom left for his court order. He hung up at last, and said, “No luck yet. Three more to go, but so far none of them ever heard of Tracy Kilbourne.”
“So where was she taking all her stuff?” Bloom asked.
“Good question. How’d you make out?”
“I got the court order, and also got what we need from the bank,” Bloom said, and put a thick manila envelope on the desk. “We got our work cut out for us. She opened the account last July, must’ve written three hundred checks between then and September.”
“What’s the date on the last one?” Rawles asked.
“September twenty-fifth.”
“How long did the ME say she’d been in the water?”
“Six to nine months.”
“That would put it—”
“If it was nine months ago, July. If it was six, October.”
“That’s pretty close, Morrie. September twenty-fifth.”
“Did you call Motor Vehicles?” Bloom asked.
“Yep. She had a Florida driver’s license, last known address 3610 South Webster. No automobile registered to her.”
“Well, let’s take a look at this bank shit,” Bloom said, and sighed heavily.
The court order had called for complete disclosure, and before Bloom left the bank that afternoon he insisted that they photocopy for him the microfilm of all the checks Tracy Kilbourne had written since the account was opened. The photocopied checks were the same thing as having Tracy’s canceled checks in front of them. And canceled checks could often be more helpful than either an appointment calendar or a diary.
The first thing they looked for was a check written to General Telephone of Calusa. They found none. Was it possible that Tracy lived in an apartment or a house without a telephone? Everybody had a telephone! They began looking for monthly checks made out to a real-estate agent, a condominium association, a bank, or a private individual, hoping to discover where Tracy had either rented or bought an apartment or a house. There was nothing. How the hell could that be? Had the Cadillac dropped her and her luggage on a beach somewhere? Everybody got to be someplace, man, and Tracy Kilbourne seemed to have been noplace. Or at least noplace in Calusa. Bloom asked a detective named Pete Kenyon to start calling real-estate offices, banks, telephone companies — the same routine he and Rawles had just gone through locally — for any community within an arbitrary forty-mile radius of Calusa, and then he and Rawles went back to the checks.