All or Nothing (19 page)

“So by any chance do you know where Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt moved?”

“Nope. The house had been empty for a long time when we bought it. Not a lot of folks want to move to the old neighborhoods like this, but it was all we could afford, planning for kids and all. And it’s nice, y’know. The neighbors are all older folk, they’re good baby–sitters and they don’t charge much and you can bet they’re more reliable than some high school kid.” She laughed again. “I can remember when I was in high school, no sense of responsibility at all.”

“Is that right?” Al said companionably. She was a chatterer and in his experience good information could come out of chatter.

“Like the Kramers next door, for instance. They’ve lived here forever, since these houses were first built. I remember they said they paid around two thousand for it way back then. Can you imagine?”

“So the Kramers would have known the Hoyts pretty well, then.”

She looked surprised. “Yeah, I guess so. Maybe you should ask them where they’ve gone. They’re real sweet, they’ll tell you anything.”

Giraud thanked her and walked ten paces down the narrow, cracked cement sidewalk and another five to the Kramers’ front door. No baby strollers this time. Just a well–polished brass door knocker, shiny clean windows and pristine white venetian blinds. Mrs. Kramer kept a nice house. There was just room for him and the large tub of red geraniums on the front step as he rang the bell. He was beginning to feel like a door–to–door salesman––he wondered how many of those there were left in these days when people were afraid to open their doors to strangers. But not old Mr. Kramer. He heard him struggling with locks and bolts and guessed they normally used the kitchen door.

“Sorry to put you to so much trouble,” he said to the little old man looking surprised at him. “I was looking for Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt . . . Bernard and Barbara Hoyt. I know they used to live next door. . . .”

“That’s right, sure they did.” Mr. Kramer adjusted his large spectacles and smoothed back his sparse hair, which was standing on end in the breeze, looking like white cotton candy. “You knew Bernie, then?”

“Actually, no. I only know of him. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Kramer, it’s their daughter I’m interested in.” Al took out Laurie’s picture and showed it to him. “She’s gone missing and I’ve been employed to help find her.”

“Missing, you said? Huh, I can’t say I’m surprised.” He examined the picture, holding it so close to his face Giraud figured his breath must be condensing on it and making it sticky.

“Sure, that’s Bonnie. Been a long time since I saw her looking like that, though.” He glanced sharply at Giraud, assessing whether it was safe to ask him in. He must have approved because he said, “Come on in, sir, why don’t ya, it’s kinda hot out here on the step. My wife was friends with Barbie Hoyt, though Barbie’s daughter was younger than ours. Thank God,” he added as he turned and led the way into the shiny little house.

Mrs. Kramer was surely a good duster, Giraud thought, casting a glance around the immaculate little room with its dark oak furniture and middling–size TV set––turned off, for once. There was not a speck of dust anywhere and Mrs. Kramer was sitting in a chair near the empty fireplace, where a large bunch of plastic daffodils hid the empty grate. She was as tiny as her husband and despite the fact that it must have been close to ninety degrees in the house, a multicolored crochet blanket covered her knees. She was reading, but she put the book aside when she saw they had a visitor.

“This gentleman is asking after the Hoyts, Mimi,” Kramer said. “Seems Bonnie’s gone missing and he’s been sent to look for her.”

If ever a woman was not meant to have the name Mimi, it was Mrs. Kramer, Al thought. She was so plain as to be what his mother would have kindly called “homely,” with long teeth and a long face and gray hair. She bore more than a passing resemblance to a horse––a nice horse, though––and none at all to the glamorous stripper–types called Mimi who worked the clubs in places like downtown Vegas. Mimi’s mother had obviously been an optimist.

“The name’s Giraud, Mrs. Kramer. Al Giraud, and I’m a private detective.”

Her rheumy eyes lit up. “Oh, my, a real private eye. And here I was just reading the latest Elmore Leonard. Harry gets me them from the public library, y’know. I’m such a fan, I write to Mr. Leonard all the time, tell him where I think the plot fell down. I feel sure he must appreciate a little helpful criticism.” She smiled, showing those long white teeth––false, no doubt––and a considerable amount of gum, but strangely the smile lit up her whole face and she suddenly looked a decade younger.

Mimi Kramer was okay, Giraud was thinking, as he shook her hand and said it was a pleasure to meet her. Harry Kramer offered him a seat on the flowered sofa and Mimi asked if he would care for a cold drink, she believed they had some lemonade in the refrigerator. He said no thank you and got down to business. At least it only smelled of lemon Pledge in here.

He explained about Bonnie living in California and the fact that she had disappeared, but he didn’t worry the Kramers with the gruesome fact that she had probably been murdered.

“I needed to find out where Bonnie came from, kind of who she was, y’know, like that,” he added, knowing from Mimi’s eager look she was anxious to tell all.

“Well, you’ve come to the right person. There’s no one knows more about the Hoyts than us. We were their neighbors for goin’ on forty years. And that Bonnie was always a wild child, her folks just couldn’t keep up with her. She was daring, kind of a show–off even when she was little. She was caught shoplifting a couple of times, the police warned her and her father surely gave her hell for it. Took the strap to her, so I heard. But Bonnie didn’t give a hoot. She just drove those poor folks crazy. Skippin’ school, smokin’, drinkin’, doing drugs.”

“How old was she when she started drinking and doing drugs, Mrs. Kramer?” Giraud was all ears. Finally, he was getting to know the real Bonnie/Laurie Martin.

“Why, since before she even started high school, I believe. Barbie Hoyt was sick about it, couldn’t understand how a child of hers could behave that way. They were God–fearing folks, Mr. Giraud. Never missed a Sunday at the Ebenezer Baptist Chapel, always collecting for church charities, always ready to help a neighbor, or folks poorer than themselves. And let me tell you, the Hoyts had a lot less than most of their neighbors. Bernie told us he’d paid off his home on a ten–year mortgage by scrimping and saving and doing without. There was nothing more important to them than to own their own home. Nothing. That way he said nobody could take it away from them and nobody could turn them out, the way they did rentals in those days if you had little kids, or animals.” She shook her head, bewildered by the iniquity of her fellowmen.

“Then, when she was seventeen, Bonnie told them she was leavin’, going off to Pensacola to live with a marine she’d met. She just packed her bags, took what money her mom had in her purse and skipped on out of there. Of course they tried to stop her. They set off after her but they didn’t get far. They were killed in an auto crash out on the highway.”

Tears sprang to her eyes and instinctively Giraud reached out and patted her frail hand. “It’s hard to lose good friends––especially so violently,” he said quietly.

“Now, Mimi, no need to get upset all over again,” Harry Kramer told his wife. He looked at Giraud, frowning. “The police said it was the brakes and that surprised me. Bernie Hoyt was fanatical about his automobile, looked after it like a baby. It wasn’t new, but from the paintwork and the gleaming engine under the hood, you surely would have thought it was.”

Mimi sighed deeply, patting her eyes with a Kleenex taken from a seashell–studded box. “Bonnie inherited what bit of money they had, plus the house, which she sold right off. Next thing we heard her husband died in that trailer fire. Seems like tragedy stalked that girl.” She breathed another soft sigh as her sad eyes met Giraud’s. “After that she took off. Who knows where.”

Al thanked them for their trouble, apologized for upsetting Mimi and waved good–bye to them as they stood in the front door. There was no doubt Bonnie Hoyt the teenage hell–raiser was both Bonnie Victor and Bonnie Harmon––as well as Laurie Martin. But he wasn’t ready to share that information with Detective Bulworth just yet.

When Al got back, there was a message on his E–mail.

Help! Have been kidnapped from the hospital. Am being held prisoner in my old home. Have been forbidden to see you again. Mother says, Marla why don’t you get a nice boyfriend, a doctor, an orthodontist? I said, Mom I’m not sixteen anymore. Mother says, No, you are thirty–two and almost dead, forget the jerk. Meet me at the Ivory Tower at midnight . . . 
signed,
Marla Cwitowitz, Asst. P.I.

Al laughed. He assumed the Ivory Tower was Marla’s marble apartment building in the Palisades. He checked his watch. Eleven–fifteen, still time to hit Greenblatt’s on Sunset for the best takeout roast chicken with perhaps a little fresh asparagus on the side. Marla liked asparagus. He picked up a bottle of chilled champagne while he was at it, then headed for the Palisades.

Marla flung herself dramatically into his arms. “I knew you would come and rescue me,” she murmured, kissing every available part of him, totally into the role of the ravished maiden.

“Take it easy, hon,” he said mildly, rescuing the bag with the chicken from between them where it was in danger of becoming crushed. He looked at her. Instead of blue–black, the skin around her eyes was now a sickly greenish–yellow and so were the finger marks on her throat. The staples had been removed from her head and so had the stitches in her arm where the long scar loomed a vivid purplish–red.

“
Take it easy?
Is that all you can say when I was
kidnapped
from the hospital? Huh, some lover you turned out to be, Mr. Tough Guy Private Eye. And here I was expecting you to rescue me.” She stalked into the living room and hurled herself onto the taupe chenille sofa, pouting prettily.

“Honey, there’s no way I would ever rescue you from your parents. They’re all yours, baby. Anyhow, it seems like you took care of them all by yourself. Besides, your dad is tougher than I am.”

He put the packages in the kitchen then took another look at her. She was wearing a glamorous white satin nightdress he had never seen before––Marla usually slept naked or in a T–shirt, sometimes with sweat socks––she always had cold feet at night. Her blond hair was brushed carefully over the scar on her head and she had on red lipstick and a lot of eye stuff. “So who are we tonight? Jean Harlow?” he asked with a grin. “By the way, I like the comb–over.”

“Beast!” She threw a cushion at him and he caught it neatly.

“And red lipstick is particularly fetching with yellow eyes,” he added, dodging as another cushion followed the first.

“I was meant to look like the poor wounded woman in a thirties movie, like in those Ginger Rogers things,” she added vaguely.

“Honey, to my knowledge Ginger never played the poor wounded woman, she just danced her toes off with Fred Astaire.”

“So dance with me.”

She was in his arms in a fragrant cloud of something spicy and floral and he knew that, unlike Loretta Harmon, there was a real woman under that perfume, full of delicious scents of her own. The mere thought of it made him hot and he picked her up and carried her to the bed.

“Champagne before I ravish you?” he asked. “Chicken and asparagus pre . . . or post?”

She was laughing as she snuggled into him, fitting her body to his, wrapping her legs around him, hands already tugging the T–shirt from his pants.

“Oh,
post,
you fool,” she said.

And then his cell phone rang.

She lifted her head and their eyes met. “I’ll kill you if you answer that,” she said evenly and he believed her.

“You win,” he said, giving up without a fight. And he was glad he did. Her skin was satin under his hands, her pointed breasts cushions of delight that made his loins zing, and he could swear her nipples tasted of roses and sweet wine. He stretched out on her huge downy bed, letting her have her way with him . . . she was doing things to him, reaching parts of him he hadn’t known he had . . . God, the woman was a genius. . . . He grabbed hold of her before it was too late, lifted her onto him, felt her swoop down on him, over and over until his heart was bursting and his head was swimming and he groaned out loud, feeling her shudder with him.

And then his cell phone rang again.

Their eyes met. “Don’t you dare,” she said softly over the rings.

He stuffed the phone under the pillows, eased her off him and laid her beside him on the bed. “You didn’t really think I would, did you?” he said. And then his head was buried in the soft golden mound and he was tasting her, teasing the very essence that was Marla from her, giving her as much pleasure as she had just given him, loving her. And from her final little yelps of delight, he knew he had succeeded.

He kissed her all the way up to her wounded mouth, where he lingered lovingly, dropping tiny butterfly–wing kisses on her still–swollen lips. “Wonderful, beautiful. You’re my dream girl, Marla. . . .”

His hand was already under the pillow reaching for the phone and she jammed her elbow on it. Hard.

“Can’t you at least have the decency to wait a few minutes before you find out who called? I’ll bet you were thinking about who it was all the time we were doing it.” She was furious.

“No, I was not.” He was indignant. “It’s just that I’m on a job––and I might remind you, so are you. At your
own request,
Miss Cwitowitz,
Assistant P.I.,
as you sign yourself these days.”

“Ohhh . . . shoot.” She stamped her foot, crossly.

He was laughing at the aptness of her turn of phrase as he dialed his office number, hoping that whoever it was had left a message there.

There was no message––at least none of any recent vintage––and he sighed, exasperated, as he pushed the End button. It was one–thirty
A.M.
Fuck, it had to have been important.