I said, “I think the soup’s ready.”
I ladled out the soup into two blue mugs while she got two spoons and two napkins. Out in the dining room you couldn’t hear Cindy anymore. We sat down and ate, Carrie with the book beside her on the table. Her last meal believing her daddy was alive, could walk in the door and make it better. I got up and found the dark stuff Janet Simon had been drinking and brought it back to the table. Carries nose wrinkled. “Yuck.”
Yeah, kid. After a while Janet came out of the back of the house and asked to see me in the kitchen.
When we were in there she stood well away from me. “It’s after six, Elvis. Ellen wouldn’t stay out like this.” Her face was white.
“Okay,” I said, feeling cold. I picked up the phone and called Lou Poitras.
12
I told Poitras that I had been at Ellen Lang’s since I’d left him earlier that day and that she hadn’t come home. I told him that Ellen had failed to pick up her children from school and that there had been no messages. I told him I was worried. There was a long pause on his end, then some noise I couldn’t make out, and then he asked questions. I gave him Ellen Lang’s description and the make and model of her car. Janet Simon knew the license number, KLX774. He told me to stay put and hung up. I think I caught him going home to dinner.
Janet said, “What do we do?”
“Cops are on the way. Is there someplace we can put the kids so they don’t have to hear it?”
There was. Mrs. Martinson’s, across the street. While Janet walked the girls over-Carrie scared and Cindy sullen-I found directions for a Toshiba automatic coffee maker and fresh Vienna cinnamon beans in the freezer and put on a pot. Then I went out to the Corvette, took the Dan Wesson out of the glove box, put it on, and got out a pale blue cotton jacket I keep in the trunk to wear over it. Made me feel like I was doing something. Maybe I should go across to Mrs. Martinson’s and show the Dan Wesson to Carrie. Maybe it would make her feel like I was doing something, too.
I stood out on the drive until Janet came back across and the western sky began to pinken and the first chill of the night settled through Encino.
“Are you just going to stand here?” Janet said.
“For a while. I made coffee.”
She looked like she wanted to say something, then turned and went into the house.
Poitras pulled up at twenty minutes to eight. It was dark enough for the first wave of jasmine to be filtering into the air and for drivers to begin using their headlamps. Poitras had brought an older dick with him, gray-haired and crew cut with a face he’d left out of doors a couple centuries too long, named Griggs. When he saw me, Griggs feigned surprise and said, “You still got a license?”
Griggs is a scream.
We managed to get Poitras through the door and into the living room without tearing out a wall. After we were settled with coffee and some little biscuits Janet found, I went through it all again, from when I left Poitras earlier in the afternoon until now. There wasn’t much to tell. Poitras took out a little pad and a gold Cross pen and gave them to Janet and asked her to list all the places Ellen frequented: where she got her hair done, where she did the marketing, where she bought clothes, that kind of thing. Janet took the pad and pen into the dining room. After she was gone Lou said, “This guy, Lang, he was into something.”
I nodded. “Unh-huh.”
Poitras gave me empty cop eyes. “And you got no idea what.”
“Mere unfounded speculations.” Griggs grunted. “Our favorite kind.”
“What?” Poitras said.
“Lang was going broke. He needed five grand a month to keep this place going but in the last eleven months he’s only made fifty-two hundred. His savings were depleted. He might’ve tried going to a bank, but a bank wouldn’t let him refinance the house because he was effectively unemployed. He could’ve gone to someone less reputable for some carryover cash and been unable to pay the vig.”
Poitras thought about it. “You welch on ten, fifteen grand, they maybe only break you up. They don’t put four in you.”
I shrugged. “I told you. Speculation.”
Poitras was still thinking. “Not anyone sane, at any rate.” He looked at Griggs and Griggs got up and went into the kitchen to use the phone.
I said, “Did you guys follow up on Kimberly Marsh?”
“We rolled by and had the manager let us in. Looks like she took off. But it looks like she’s coming back, too. Talked to some fat guy there with a little dog. He said you told him you were Johnny Staccato. Shit.”
Griggs came back in and sat down.
“How about Rice?”
“Couldn’t reach him. Left word at his studio and a card on his front stoop.”
Griggs spread his mouth in a strictured smile. “Yeah. We’re hell with those calling cards.”
Lou shrugged. “You do what you can.”
Griggs said, “Hey, you happen to find out where Lang bought his gas?”
“Missed that, somehow.”
“Yeah, be a hot shot. That’s how the feds busted Carlo “The Hammer” Peritini, mouthing off to the guy at the Exxon station pumped his gas. Peritini, shit, all his millions, head of a whole goddamned family, he had to be a big shot to the guy who pumped his gas, told him everything.”
Poitras and I were staring at him. Griggs spread his hands. “That’s how they got The Hammer.”
“You’ll do well with Baishe,” I said.
“Up yours.”
Janet Simon came back and handed Poitras the note pad. “This is all I can think of.”
There were nine places listed, some under headings. Hair: Lolly’s on Ventura at Balboa. Food: Gelson’s at Ventura amp; Hayvenhurst, Ralph’s on Ventura (Encino). Fashion Square, Sherman Oaks. Saks, Woodland Hills. Books: Scene of the Crime in Sherman Oaks. Like that.
I would’ve thought her writing would be strong and measured and connected, only it wasn’t. She wrote in a small, uneven hand in lines that curved up. She wrote the way I thought Ellen Lang would write, only Ellen Lang didn’t write that way. Ellen wrote the way I had thought Janet Simon would write.
Griggs took the pad into the kitchen to make another phone call. When he came out again he had a fresh cup of coffee and another plate of the biscuits.
Poitras asked Janet to run through it from her point of view, from the last time she’d seen Ellen Lang. He watched her as she did, with that flat, impassive face of his that says maybe the sun comes up tomorrow, maybe not, maybe he’ll hit the Pick Six at Santa Anita for two mil, maybe not. Janet’s hand was resting on the arm of the sofa by me. I patted it. She pulled away. Ah, romance.
Poitras said, “You and Mrs. Lang seem to be pretty close.”
Janet nodded. “She’s my best friend.”
“So if she’s gonna tell anybody anything, it’s going to be you.”
“I guess. Yes. It would be me.”
“A guy doesn’t get it in the chest for no reason.”
I sat forward. “Hey.”
Poitras’ eyes shifted to me. There was a little bit of a smile there, but maybe not. “I’m just asking her to think back and think hard.”
“I know what you’re asking her and I don’t like the way you were asking it.”
Janet Simon snapped, “I don’t need you to defend me,” then went eye-to-eye with Poitras. “What is it you mean, Sergeant?”
Poitras said, “It doesn’t have to be right now, but I’d just like you to see if you can remember anything Mrs. Lang or Mr. Lang might’ve said, that’s all. Okay?”
Janet said, “Of course,” but she was a little stiff when she said it.
The phone rang. Janet got up and went into the kitchen to answer it. Griggs grinned at me. “She’s a fine looking woman,” he said.
“There’s something between your teeth.”
He tried to laugh it off but when he looked away I could tell he was sucking at his teeth.
Janet came out a moment later and looked at Poitras. “It’s for you.”
He went into the kitchen, stayed about a minute, then came out. Same frying-pan blank face. “They found her car,” he said to me. “You wanna come?”