Follow Her Home (9 page)

Not that she looked old enough to worry. Five foot five, 110 pounds of lean muscle, she went to the gym as often as most people brushed their teeth. Short, dark hair fell jaunty and jagged about her ears, framing a milk-white, unmade face that didn't tan, didn't wrinkle. Her quiet eyes stayed squinted most of the time, but when they didn't, their cool auburn agate was captivating.

“Hey, Jackie.” I tried to dissipate the solemn, intimate air that hung over the sofa. “I was in the area and thought I'd drop by.”

“You're always in the area.”

Jackie pretended to like me with the thespian flair of a nervous house cat. I didn't blame her for being wary of me, but I always thought it was silly. Diego and I hadn't shared so much as one strand of saliva since before we could drink legally. I suspected that the fact of my perpetual singledom since our breakup let her imagine I still carried a torch for him.

In her defense, she wasn't the only person who found my seven years of solitude a little bit curious. When Luke needled me about my lack of male companionship, I knew his jokes came bound with concern. It was a constant theme with my mother, who wanted to see her twenty-six-year-old daughter married before all the good men vanished from the dating field. Co-workers and acquaintances knew me as a staunch bachelorette and occasionally expressed interest in ending my misery. I went on dates now and then, attached men for brief romantic experiments, but I fell in love for the last time when I was eighteen. Diego was the only one who was judicious enough to withhold comment.

Jackie was an enthusiastic meddler in my love life, and I usually obliged her when she set me up with various men she guaranteed were perfect fits. I was often tempted to tell her that I did not have plans to seduce her husband, and that she should know he would kill himself before cheating on his wife. Diego couldn't be more loyal if he were in a coma. He was devoted and single-minded, and dating him was not unlike a full-time job with unpaid double overtime.

But now was not the time to make a point for Jackie. I stood up and motioned vaguely toward the door. “I was just about to head out. I'm going to track down Luke. I think I'll be hanging out with him today, so if you guys are free, let me know. Though I guess I don't have a phone right now.”

Diego looked up at me, distress still evident in every inch of his face. “I'll walk out with you.” He started to get up.

I still had no answer for what was probably a rhetorical question anyway. “No, it's cool. I parked pretty close.” I twisted the doorknob with a pinch too much haste and opened the door halfway. “Later, guys.”

I heard them say goodbye and closed the door soft and slow, the better to make my getaway.

 

Six

I had just turned on my engine when I saw Diego bound down the stairs leading out of his apartment. I kept the car idling as I watched him run up and knock on the passenger-side door.

I unlocked the car and Diego climbed in.

“You're coming with me, then?”

He nodded, looking at the windshield. “I guess so.”

“What'd you tell Jackie?”

“I just said I'd be back.”

I would have bet my car that Jackie was fuming behind the front door and Diego didn't know it. I decided against awakening his conscience—despite his questions, I was grateful that he came and I wanted his guidance. Marlowe may have worked alone, but I had something he didn't—I had friends I could trust.

“You're going to help me, then?”

“Something like that. I'm going to make sure you don't get yourself killed.”

I tightened my fist around the shifter. “Thanks. And sorry I blew up at you.”

“It's okay.” He looked at his lap.

“You know, I did come to you for advice. Can you answer a legal question?”

“I'll do my best.”

“Does finding the body and staying away from the police make me a criminal?”

He shook his head with some vigor. “No. You didn't do the killing, and California's pretty lax on Good Samaritan laws. Do you remember the Sherrice Iverson case a while back?”

I shook my head.

“Awful murder. Grown man molested and killed a seven-year-old girl in a casino bathroom. His friend walked in and saw him fondling her, and after he did the killing, the murderer confessed to the friend, who shrugged and walked away. There was a lot of outcry that nothing happened to the friend, but nothing ever did. You didn't try to hide the body or anything, so I think you're good.”

“Good. I have enough on my plate.”

“Yeah, as to that other stuff on your plate—legal or not, I still don't love that you're not en route to a police station right now.”

“I—”

“But I get it. I do get it. That's why I'm here and not calling it in myself.”

“Thank you.”

After a while, he said, “So we're sitting in your car with a dead body in the backseat.”

“Yep.”

He blinked hard and scratched his ear. “Do you know who it is?”

“No one I know.”

“Did you check for ID?”

“I—no.” I started to wonder how I had failed to do so, and then I remembered the feeling of death against the back of my hand. Further handling had been far from my mind. “Should I? He's fully dressed.”

“And we're not assuming that the murderer was careful, are we?”

I turned off my engine and sat, limp.

“Will you come with me?”

“Of course.”

We got out of the car and stood behind the trunk. The street was clear for the time being. Wheat-colored insects, silent and faceless, made patterns in the warm summer air.

“We have to be quick,” I said. I breathed in and out. “Just warning you again, there is a dead body in there.”

“I know.”

“You're not freaking out?”

“I am, but it's okay.”

I stood with my keys in hand, staring at the trunk.

“Are you okay, Song?”

“I'm okay.”

“Do you want to wait in the car? I can check for the wallet.”

I dug my heels into the ground. “Thanks, Diego, but it's okay. I can do it.”

I checked the street once more for people, then popped the trunk, keeping one hand on the door in case someone came by. I made a quick wish that the body wouldn't be there.

And it wasn't. My trunk was as it had been before last night, free of rotting flesh and fiery red hair. Marlowe had seen a corpse or two disappear in his day—in
The Big Sleep
he left a dead smut dealer on the floor for a few hours, and came back to a clean scene. Of course, he'd broken into someone else's house to find the body, so it hadn't been his floor.

“There was a body in here. A tall, skinny one, with bright red hair.” I looked up at Diego, willing him to give me credit. “I wouldn't make this up. You know that.”

He nodded slowly. “I don't need you to produce the body. But it was there when you came here?”

I reasoned through the events of the morning. It was an unpleasant process. “The only thing I can think of is that this Humphrey Bogart must have broken into my trunk and moved the body while I was in my apartment.” I smirked. “I can't even be sure that I locked it when I left.”

“But why would he do that?”

“Well.” I sighed. “He put it there to scare me, and he accomplished that. Maybe he didn't want me to have the body on hand.”

“Okay, but—” His jaw dropped and his dark eyes widened.

“But what?” I asked. I felt the ghostly approach of rejection, the idea that one of the people who knew me best could entertain the thought that I was now deranged, or a pathological liar. The possibility was scary and irritating.

“Tall and skinny with red hair, and he died outside of Lori Lim's house.” His tone was breathy, like he was vocalizing while he did sums in his head. I realized with a thrill that he believed me, and that he might know something I didn't. “I think I know who he is. Was.”

My mouth felt dry, and I swallowed. “Who?”

Diego took his phone from his pocket, and in a minute I was looking at the Facebook page of the murdered man. His name was Greg Miller.

We clambered back into the car and sat in stunned silence. I put a hand on Diego's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. There was a bulbous tear forming in one of his eyes. “Are you okay?”

He leaned back against the headrest and exhaled. “I don't know.”

“Who's Greg Miller?”

His voice hit the air brittle and coarse as old wire. “He's a Stokel associate. I work with him. He's in my class.”

“Were you guys friends?”

He shook his head. “No. I didn't know him that well. He was kind of moody and quiet around the office, and you know how I am, so we never reached out to each other.” He brought the heel of his hand up to his forehead, pushing some stray curls above his hairline. “He's the associate who told Lori I was married at that happy hour.”

“And he was murdered on her block.”

“He had a pretty big crush on her. It's one of those things everyone in the office knew about. Do you think that has something to do with—with this?”

“My inclination is to say yes, but it's hard to unravel the logic behind something so unreal.”

“Is that what we're trying to do now?”

“Greg Miller was no one to me, and I would have no problem letting the police figure out what happened to him. But I do need to know more about who killed him and what their agenda is. If the whole mystery is embedded in those questions, then I guess we'll figure that out, too.”

“So what now, then?”

“We need to talk to Luke.”

*   *   *

The drive from Diego's to Luke's took less than ten minutes. The three of us lived in a tight triangle in our sprawling city.

If I had to guess, Luke would not like that his father's suspected paramour was now linked to a murder victim who worked at his father's firm. I didn't like it either.

“Can you try calling Luke again so we don't have to knock down his door?”

Diego took out his cell phone. I heard the dribble of a ringtone followed by a voice mail message. “Still sleeping, I guess.”

“Then we'll knock.”

We were turning onto Lillian to park when Diego grabbed my shoulder. “Wait,” he said. A short block away I recognized Lori Lim, standing at the window of a pewter Lexus SUV parked directly across from her Jetta, which I saw in the daylight was marvelously filthy.

She was extra doll-like today in a sweet, white cap-sleeve sundress and a round gold pendant I could see catching the sun from where I watched forty feet away. She was talking to the driver of the Lexus. We watched, idling, as she fumbled around in a butterscotch shoulder bag for her keys and crossed the street to her car.

The Lexus took off in our direction and I caught a glimpse of the driver as she passed us to turn on Rossmore. She was an Asian woman with short black hair, middle-aged but attractive. She had on dark sunglasses and her lips were pursed and stern. I guessed I was right about 432 South Citrus being a parent's house. She didn't notice us watching.

“Change of plans, Diego.”

“Are you going to follow Lori?”

I nodded slowly as we crept up the block and watched the Jetta come to life. “It's called a tail. It's what Marlowe would do.”

“Song, you're not Marlowe.”

“I know I'm not. But I can follow his tactics. They probably work better than what I can spin out of air, right?”

Diego sighed. “What about Luke?”

“His lazy ass can wait. She's moving.”

She pulled far away from the curb and made a sudden U-turn and started to drive right toward us.

“Look back,” I said, and Diego and I turned our heads to look out my rear window. “I don't think she'd recognize my car, but she should know both our faces.”

When the Jetta came into view, I let it ride for a few seconds, rolling down Lillian under low-hanging trees and the velvet gray of their leafy shadows. Then I made a similar U-turn farther down the block. If she didn't see us, it was only because she wasn't looking. Marlowe would never have been so sloppy. She turned left onto Rossmore and I followed, leaving a few car lengths between us.

“Look at her go,” said Diego.

She drove like a drunk missing one eye and a thumb, and I patted myself on the back for saving the streets from a boozed-up version of this maniac the night before. I hoped she was concentrating on not getting herself killed rather than on the stealthy Volvo trying to stay small in her rearview mirror. There were no cars between us as we drove north on Rossmore. I maintained a safe distance, and let a nice bulky 4Runner cut behind her at the light on Melrose, where Lori shuffled over to the right-turn lane. No turn signal flickered from the Jetta's rear, but its front nosed halfway onto Melrose, so I prepared for a turn. I was right, and I followed her from the other side of the Toyota, and when that turned off a few blocks later, I stayed a few car lengths behind her. We were almost at Western when she made an illegal, midblock three-point U-turn to head back west. I let her pull off the maneuver and followed suit at the next intersection. We coasted down Melrose, around three cars between us at any given time. Steady traffic kept her recklessness in check. We passed the flurry of glittery boutiques and kept driving west, the traffic thinner and the shopping more precious with every block. At Kings Road she yanked her Jetta ready for a U-turn in the middle of the intersection, let one car pass on the other side, and gunned it to the curb, wheels kissing sidewalk. I passed her, cutting just under the speed limit, and saw her park at a meter in my rearview. Diego and I watched her, forgetting to breathe.

I took my time and rolled up behind her after the brief delay caused by following the law. Her destination was Buttercream, a little bakery-café with wide windows ivied and latticed for easy spying. I kept the car running with a foot glued to the brake as I peered through the white-gridded window.