Hush (31 page)

―What about that friend of Rick‘s, the one who talked like she wanted to screw on the top of the bar? The cold super-bitch?‖

―Sheila? She left, thank God. I hated her. I think she stole from Rick, though he doesn‘t want to believe it.‖

―Where can I find her?‖ Danner asked, his interest quickening.

―Hell if I know. Check
America’s Most Wanted.
That woman was looking for a big score.

Thought she had it with Rick, but he‘s got more sense than that.‖ She sniffed and pushed back a tress of super-held brunette hair, which scarcely moved at her touch. ―She mighta hooked up with this guy,‖ she said, glancing toward the photo. ―He looks like a patsy.‖

―Is Sheila her real name?‖ Danner asked.

―Honey, nobody goes by their real name.‖ She gave him a pitying glance. ―So, what do you make a year, Detective? Fifty? Sheila was looking for the five hundred thousand and up crowd.

Such a shame.‖

She sauntered off, and Danner wasn‘t sure whether she meant him or something else.

―Can I hook you up with our police artist?‖ Danner asked Len as they walked back into the bar. ―I‘d like a drawing of this Sheila.‖

―Tomorrow?‖ Len asked.

―Call me.‖ He handed him a card and left Rick‘s and headed to the hospital where Jarvis Lloyd had recovered consciousness but had not yet been released, being held on a seventy-two-hour watch after his suicide attempt.

But Danner got nothing more out of Lloyd. The man had gone from crying to staring sightlessly at the ceiling, and he was deaf to Danner‘s request for more information about Sheila.

By the time he was on his way home it was after ten. He wanted to stop by Coby‘s but knew he needed some sleep or he would just pass out on her couch. Wishing the Lloyd case would magically resolve itself and go away so he could spend some time on the Deneuve homicide, he drove to his apartment, dropped into bed, and fell into a coma-like sleep until morning.

Friday night at Dooley‘s was crowded with young people surging into the city for the start of the weekend. They took the seats from the usual cops who frequented the place and when Coby walked through the door, she had to squeeze between two hard male bodies who barely noticed her as they were checking out their look in the mirror above the bar while exiting.

Inside, the place was semidark with lines of glowing green shamrock-shaped lights surrounding the mirrored bar. She saw Danner seated at a bar stool at the far end, holding on to another seat while several young women tried to edge their way in. One had a small section of butt cheek on the saved stool‘s leather top, but the woman obligingly moved on with a sniff and hair flounce when she recognized Coby as the seat‘s rightful owner.

―Hi,‖ Coby said, sliding onto the stool. ―Crowded.‖

―Wanna go someplace quieter?‖

She shook her head, then told him about her plan to take in McKenna‘s comedy act later on.

―You‘re welcome to join me, if you‘d like. I thought we could catch some food here.‖

―Bar food,‖ he said.

―I love bar food. Fried goodness.‖

He smiled. His dark hair was wet from a quick spate of rain that had pounded Coby‘s umbrella, and she had to force herself not to brush a couple of sparkling drops from his suede jacket before they melted into the fabric. She was leery of intimacy of any kind. She wanted him to take the lead.

As if the Fates were against them, Danner‘s cell phone started buzzing, a low sound meant to keep from drawing too much attention. ―Lockwood,‖ he answered, then listened for several moments, his face giving nothing away.

―What?‖ Coby asked when he hung up.

For an answer he shook his head. ―Damn,‖ he said softly. ―Gonna have to take a rain check.‖

―Work?‖

―We‘ve been putting the pressure on this guy whose wife and daughter were killed.‖ He quickly filled her in on Jarvis Lloyd‘s suicide attempt. ―Looks like he‘s finally cracking, and I need to be there.‖

―A rain check,‖ Coby said.

―If Metzger was around I could rely on her, but it‘s Celek.‖ He was talking to himself and not liking what he was saying. His blue eyes suddenly captured hers. ―Tomorrow night?

Tentatively, depending how this goes? My brother‘s band‘s playing at a nightclub in Laurelton.‖

―The Cellar. Right.‖

The bartender reached them at that moment. ―What can I get for you?‖ he asked over the noise.

Danner placed two twenties on the bar. ―Some bar food. Whatever she wants.‖ Then he turned to Coby and gave her a quick but warm kiss right on the lips in front of the whole room. No one paid the least bit of attention, but Coby was slightly breathless as she plopped back down on the stool. ―Fries,‖ she told the waiting bartender, who didn‘t bat an eyelash. ―And do you have some of those sliders? And a glass of red wine?‖

Forty-five minutes later Coby stepped out of Dooley‘s into a rain-washed street, streetlights glimmering in zigzagged streaks in the standing water. But the precipitation itself had stopped and she stepped cautiously through a shimmer of liquid on the way to her car. Traffic was heavy and she had to wait at a light, headlights white circles that half blinded her as she crossed hurriedly in front of a pile of cars to where her own vehicle waited.

She eased into traffic and felt that clunk again under the right front tire.
Gotta get that
looked at,
she told herself again. She hadn‘t noticed it since the trip to the beach. One of those problems that didn‘t completely immobilize her, which made it easy to put off fixing it.

She had time to kill, so she drove slowly toward the comedy club, which was on the east side of the Willamette River while she was on the west. Crossing the Steel Bridge, she meandered through areas of Portland she normally never saw. The downtown area stood on the west bank of the river, the Pearl District/Nob Hill/Alphabet District stretching west; her condo was located on Eighteenth, eighteen blocks west of the Willamette.

The Joker was located in a converted warehouse about five blocks off Burnside Street. It had a parking lot that wrapped around the building on all three sides, which kept the street, dotted with parking meters, void of cars other than those passing on the roadway. There were a couple of scraggly-looking pines in a narrow bed near the front door; the club‘s answer to landscaping. A marquis read: WANNA LAUGH? GET YOUR A** IN HERE! Coby wondered if the neighbors had forced the PG version. Judging by the renovated older homes and maple-lined streets stretching eastward, she would give that a yes.

She paid a cover fee and walked inside. Like many of the cabaret-type clubs she‘d been to, it smelled faintly of beer, popcorn, and cooking oil. The patterned carpet was beaten down by a deluge of tromping feet and when she got to her assigned seat, a theater chair that was meant for singles or those who didn‘t want the café tables and wooden chairs on the main floor, she noticed the stitching was ripping and soon the cushioned seat would be detached from the sides. She sat down carefully, wondering when she‘d become so . . . old. The place felt like a college hangout, even though the patrons were all ages, and she couldn‘t help feeling like an uninvited guest.

The first act was a guy who could juggle anything . . . badly. His schtick was making his ineptitude funny, which it almost was, but not quite. But McKenna came on next, wearing a backward baseball cap and a smirk. She told stories from her own life that were downright funny; Coby found herself grinning and laughing. If McKenna had been unclear about her sexual orientation in high school, she‘d gotten over that now. A lot of her humor came from being gay and dealing with straights. Someone had once told Coby that comedy was derived from truth and pain: a true story that was painful was the source of some of the best material. McKenna made Coby a believer with her uncomfortable tales that were filled with humor.

There was another act after McKenna, but Coby had no interest in anyone else. As soon as McKenna said good night and the crowd broke into enthusiastic applause, Coby hurried back to the lobby and told the guy behind the counter that she was a personal friend of McKenna‘s and gave her name.

The guy regarded her skeptically. He had sleeve tattoos and several painful-looking plugs in his ears, a Rod Stewart haircut, and a severe case of black eyeliner. She had a mental image of herself: tan slacks, tan linen blouse, tan jacket, light makeup, straight light brown hair cut by a professional, and decided she couldn‘t look more suburban/bland.

―You‘re a friend of McKenna‘s?‖ he repeated with just the right amount of disbelief.

―We were high school classmates. Tell her my name and she‘ll know me. I have her cell number plugged into my call list.‖ She pulled out her phone, called up McKenna‘s number, showed him.

That finally convinced him and he directed her outside the building to a side door with several concrete steps and a red awning. She nodded. She‘d seen it on the way in, and now she walked out the front door and around the building to the steps where another couple was already waiting, shivering a little, the man holding the woman close.

Coby blinked in shock, seeing the woman‘s profile.

―Ellen?‖ she asked in disbelief. ―Ellen Marshall?‖

She turned and eyed Coby critically, and said, with the same amount of amazement,

―Coby?‖

―What are you doing here?‖ they asked each other in unison.

The guy she was with suddenly grinned, a white slash of straight teeth, and Coby dragged her eyes from Ellen to finally look at him . . . and got her second shock. ―Theo? Good God. You‘re
together?”

Jarvis Lloyd was like a fountain, overflowing with thoughts and feelings and guilt and remorse and sheer misery, but in the way of real information, he was a bust. Danner listened for about twenty minutes before pulling Celek away from the guy and asking, ―Aren‘t you on robbery?‖

―I was helping you,‖ he protested.

―I know. Thank you. But . . . nothing‘s happening here,‖ he pointed out, irritated that Celek had dragged him away from Coby and from McKenna Forrester‘s comedy act for one more sloppy round with Lloyd, for whom Danner was fast losing any kind of sympathy.

―Tell me where to find Sheila,‖ Danner said to the shattered man in the hospital bed. He felt like he‘d asked him the same question a thousand times.

―I don‘t know. . . . She took me over.‖

Jesus H. Christ. If he heard that one more time, he thought he might pick up the man‘s bedpan and hit him over the head with it.

―We have an artist‘s rendition of her,‖ Danner said. ―The bartender at Rick‘s gave it to us this morning. Someone will recognize her.‖ He‘d tried to take a copy of the artist‘s sketch to Rick, the man, himself earlier in the day and see what else he could learn, but Rick was nowhere to be found and hadn‘t called the station, though Danner had left his card and been very specific about what he wanted. No doubt about it, Rick, of Rick‘s, was avoiding him.

Jarvis Lloyd scarcely heard him. ―She found me,‖ he said again. ―I couldn‘t help myself. I thought . . . with Bethy so ill . . .‖

―You thought she might be a replacement?‖ Danner guessed, trying hard to keep the censure from his voice.

―I didn‘t know. I didn‘t know she would . . . hurt Angie. . . .‖

―Kill Angie,‖ Danner reminded him. Maybe he was being brutal, but he didn‘t much care.

The bastard had set up his family to be murdered, whether he meant to or not.

―I had a number for her, but it was a prepaid cell phone and it‘s gone.‖ He looked woeful.

―Tell me everything you remember about her,‖ Danner said, taking out his notebook. ―We need to find her.‖

―I met her at a different bar first—not Rick‘s. She was so fascinating. . . .‖ A sad smile touched Lloyd‘s lips as he thought back.

Danner set his jaw and wrote ―predatory‖ in lieu of ―fascinating‖ into his book.

Ellen and Coby could scarcely stop talking long enough to absorb what the other was saying. They hadn‘t seen each other since Ellen had left Rutherford High.

―You‘re with Theo?‖ Coby said again, scarcely able to credit it. She flashed on them as their younger selves, humping and gasping and thrusting away in the sand. Wow. They‘d stayed together? Hadn‘t she heard that Theo got back with his Gresham girlfriend, the one rumored to be pregnant?

―I‘m sorry about Annette,‖ Ellen said. ―So shocking. McKenna told us. How‘s your dad?‖

―Coping,‖ Coby said.

―Do the police have any clues?‖ Theo asked.

―It‘s an ongoing investigation.‖

Ellen looked much the same as she had when they were seventeen except her blond hair was shorter now and streaked by design. Her eyes seemed larger, but that might have been because she was wearing more makeup. She‘d gained a little bit of weight, but she‘d been so small and thin in high school that it looked good on her.

Theo looked like he had in high school, too: a lean, muscular hard body–type who must work out regularly. His hair was shorter but still thick and dark, not a shade of gray. He flashed Coby that white smile again; he‘d always been a bit of a charmer.

Which reminded her of Lucas.

―I‘ve been kind of following up on our group,‖ Coby said. ―Annette‘s death brought back Lucas‘s like it happened yesterday.‖

―Hasn‘t it?‖ Ellen drew in her shoulders. ―I thought we were all over that, but when McKenna told me what happened to Annette, and then I told Theo, we just . . . well, we couldn‘t believe it.‖

―You‘ve kept in close touch with McKenna.‖

Ellen looked at Theo, then at Coby. He shrugged, answering some unspoken question, and as if a decision had been made, Ellen turned to Coby. ―I left high school because I was in love with Theo. After the campout, we didn‘t really talk about what happened. Because of Lucas‘s accident, and then Theo was . . . we weren‘t clear . . . about things.‖

Theo put in, ―Ellen was afraid she was pregnant. She wasn‘t,‖ he added quickly. ―But, well, you know what she went through before, and she wasn‘t going to go through that again, and I was stupid and freaked out and we broke up.‖

―I was heartbroken,‖ Ellen took up the story. ―I could barely make myself go to school, and my dad had an opportunity for a job in California and we up and moved to Sacramento. It didn‘t work out for my dad and he and my mom moved back, but I stayed. I just had some stuff to work through.‖