You Think You Know Me Pretty Well aka Mercy (16 page)

“Alex Sedaka’s office,” Nat’s voice answered.

Alex was surprised.

“Oh hi, Nat. Where’s Juanita?”

“She’s out for lunch.”

“Out?”

Now that really was a surprise.

“I think the pressure’s getting to her.”

“Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“Any minute I’d guess. Shall I get her to call you?”

“No, it’s actually you I wanted to talk to. I was wondering how it went with Burrow’s mother.”

“Well I didn’t get much. I think I kind of offended her by some of my questions.”

“That’s hardly surprising. What was it, like: ‘How dare you accuse my poor boy of doing anything bad? That bitch had it coming.’?”

“Oh, no, if anything it was quite the opposite. She’s written him off
-
disowned him completely. It was more like, ‘I’m not to blame for the way my son turned out. He’s just a bad apple.’”

“Yes, but did the apple fall far from the tree?”

“It’s hard to say. She’s a bitch. But I wouldn’t say she was evil.”

“In what way a bitch?”

“The sin of indifference. She didn’t bring up her son. She got on with her life and let him grow up all by himself.”

“Maybe if she’d given him a bit more attention, he would’ve turned out different.”

“That’s exactly what I said.”

“Not to her face, I hope?” The moment of hesitation lasted too long. “Oh you
didn’t
?”

“‘Fraid so,” said Nat, sheepishly.

Alex was forced to smile at Nat’s shoot-from-the-hip approach.

“And how did she take it?”

“She chased me out of the trailer park with a 12 gauge pump action – figuratively speaking.”

“Well thank the Lord she didn’t have a real one.”

“Ay-men!”

“Okay, is anything else going on? Any more crap with those reporters outside?”

“No, they left after you brushed them off.”

“Well when Juanita gets back, get her to call me.”

“Will do.”

Alex pressed the red button and returned his attention to the road, wondering how Nat knew about him brushing off the reporters.

14:46 PDT

“I tried to put up a fight, but he just beat the crap out of me.”

“I guess that makes it kind of hard for you to accept what we’re doing.”

“Not really. I mean you’re just doing your jobs. The law says a man’s entitled to a lawyer when he’s accused of a crime. And you’re just giving him his legal rights.”

They were walking back to the office now. Juanita felt that she had made as much progress with Jonathan at the deli as she could. And it was quite obvious that he wanted to go back to the office with her. Whatever it was he was interested in, it was something at the office.

Maybe he thinks we leave files lying round, Juanita thought. If so, he was liable to be very disappointed.

In the meantime, Juanita was determined to turn the tables and get some information out of Jonathan.

“So how old were you at the time?”

“Well Clayton and Dorothy were seventeen and I was five years younger than Dorothy, so I guess I would have been twelve.”

“You must have hated Clayton Burrow a lot.”

“Not half as much as he must have hated me.”

“Why? I mean, if Burrow beat you up, wouldn’t he have been satisfied after that? Why would he bear a grudge?”

“Because he got kicked out of school on account of it.”

“How did that happen?”

“He beat me up in front of a dozen other kids. I wasn’t one to snitch, but it got back to the principal and he got canned.”

“So you think that Burrow blamed your sister for telling the principal about him beating you up and killed her to get revenge?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“But why wait so long? I mean, why wait until the senior prom?”

“I guess he’d seen
Carrie
. He probably did it for dramatic effect.”

“But it’s not like he humiliated her in public like in
Carrie
. Your sister just
vanished
on the night of the prom. No one saw her again.”

“Clayton Burrow wasn’t the brightest button. He’d’ve probably done something more dramatic if he could. He wouldn’t have had the brains to pull it off. He probably just bundled her into a car, drove her off to a quiet location and killed her.”

“So what did he do with the body?”

“I guess he buried her.”

“Buried her well enough that the body was never found?”

“I guess so.”

“Can you think of any reason why he’d refuse to reveal where the body was buried now?”

“Why should he? He’s still claiming he’s innocent.”

“But if his life depended on it. He could save himself by – ”

“So it’s true?”

Could this have been all he was after?

“Let’s say it is true. Does it make sense that he’d keep quiet even when he could save his life by spilling his guts?”

“I guess not.”

They had arrived back at the office building. Jonathan held the door open for Juanita. She smiled a polite thank you and walked through.

“There was something else that had us puzzled.”

“What?” he asked as she pressed the elevator button.

“Well we have evidence that Dorothy bought an airline ticket a week before she disappeared.”

He seemed startled by this. She was watching him carefully and although he had tried to hide it, she had noticed.

“Where to? The ticket, I mean.”

She debated telling him that they didn’t know. But this would give him the advantage. If he thought they already knew, he might be less inclined to hold out with whatever
he
knew.

“We were hoping you could tell us.”

This was good cross-examination technique
, she realized. Now he couldn’t be sure whether they knew where the ticket was to or not. Alex would have been impressed, just as she had been impressed by him. The important thing was that now Jonathan would be wondering if she was just trying to test him. The elevator arrived and the doors opened. Jonathan waited politely for Juanita to enter first.

“I don’t know anything about it,” said Jonathan, stepping in behind her. “Did she
get
the flight?”

The doors closed behind them.

“Can you think of any reason why she wouldn’t?”

They heard the familiar hum and felt that heavy sensation of being inside a rising elevator.

“Apart from the obvious one,” said Jonathan, “no.”

“It’s just that if she
did
fly,” said Juanita, “then that would explain her disappearance. Maybe she left and never came back.”

Jonathan shrugged.

“Or maybe she came back and was killed
after
that,” he said.

Juanita wondered if this statement was just a theory or a reflection of personal knowledge. But she didn’t want to show how desperately she needed to know the answer. That would put Jonathan squarely in the driver’s seat. She was saved by the whirring halt of the elevator and the opening of the doors.

“Is that what you think?” asked Juanita. Without waiting for an answer, she started walking down the corridor, forcing Jonathan to hasten to keep up with her. When they had reached the door to the law firm’s office, Jonathan still seemed to be considering Juanita’s question.

“I don’t think anything,” he replied cautiously. “I’m just speculating – like you.”

He opened the door for her. Nat was sitting at the reception desk, manning the phones. He looked up.

“Oh, Nat, this is Jonathan, Dorothy Olsen’s brother.”

They nodded politely and mouthed “hallo.” Then Nat turned away to the computer screen that had been the object of his attention when they entered. Jonathan, for his part, appeared to be in a dream.

“Well, thank you, Jonathan. It was a pleasure talking to you.”

Juanita’s words seemed to snap Jonathan out of his reverie.

“Oh yes, thank you.”

He turned abruptly and left.

Juanita was puzzled by his sudden urgency.

14:54 PDT

“So how d’you hook up with Jonathan Olsen then?”

Juanita was back at the front desk and Nat was sitting there with a cup of coffee.

“He came here while you were out.”

“Yes, but he wasn’t here when I got back?”

“Yes, but he saw me at the deli and invited himself to join me.”

“Kind of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“He was probably hanging round outside aimlessly and decided to go for something to eat and just got lucky.”

“Or maybe he followed you.”

Juanita smiled.

“You’re getting paranoid.”

“You sure?”

Juanita shrugged.

“Maybe you’re right. So what? His sister’s dead and we’re trying to save the neck of the man who he thinks did it. He wants to talk. He wants to understand.”

“And that’s it?”

She looked up and met his eyes.

“You’re very suspicious today, Nat.”

“It just seems kind of strange that he comes round, talks to Alex, and then just happens to bump into you outside.”

“Okay, maybe he
did
follow me. He wants to talk. He
needs
to talk.”

“To us?”

“To someone –
anyone
.”

“Just talk?”

Juanita thought about this for a moment.

“Okay, maybe more than just talk.”

“Like what?”

“I think he was trying to pump me for information. That’s why I stretched the break for so long.”

“I’d’ve thought it would’ve been the opposite way round.”

“You have to understand that I wasn’t just sitting on my tush spilling my guts. I was pumping
him
for information too.”

“What did he want to know?”

“Well at first he was asking about how many people we have working here – shit like that.”

“That’s it?”

“Then he starts asking about why we took the case and did we really think that Burrow was innocent.”

“It seems funny to wait till today and then come round in person asking dumb-ass questions like that.”

“I think he was using that as a stalking horse for what he was really after.”

“And what was that?”

“He wanted to know about the deal Dusenbury offered.”

“I hope you didn’t tell him anything.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“Oh Juanita!”

“I told you! I had to, I was pumping
him
for information too.”

“Like what?”

“Like the airline ticket Dorothy bought just before she disappeared.”

“You know about it?”

“Yes, David Sedaka told me.”

“So how did Jonathan react?”

“He was jumpy.”

“Did he admit to knowing about it?”

“No. He said he didn’t know where the ticket was to… acted all innocent and asked
me
where it was to.”

“Did you tell him?”

“How could I? I don’t know.”

“But I thought you said David Sedaka told you.”

“Yes, but
he
doesn’t know. He was only able to recover partial information.”

“Oh, but he told me—”

“What?”

Nat looked embarrassed.

“Sorry, I forgot. He called again. He managed to hack into Dorothy’s old Compuserve account and he found the EasySabre receipt. It was for a flight from Mexico to London.”

Juanita’s heart skipped a beat.

“
London
? We’d better tell Alex! We need to check if she made that flight!”

15:06 PDT

While Nat was telling Juanita about David Sedaka’s last success, David’s tenacity was beginning to pay off in yet bigger dividends as he made yet another discovery on the hard drive. Again, he had to leave the lab to go to the phone. The office they had let him use, had a computer on the desk. He switched it on as he called his father’s office.

“Alex Sedaka’s office,” Juanita answered.

“Oh hi, Juanita. I’ve found something else that could be of interest.”

“What?”

“Well after I found the receipt, I decided to check the hard disk on the computer doing a word search for London and one of the things I found was a deleted PDF of a brochure from something called the Finchley Road Medical Centre.”