Honeymoon for Three (3 page)

The coins chimed as they dropped, and the
operator, satisfied, put through the call. After three rings, a
female voice said hello.

“Hello, Mrs. Singleton?” Alfred used his
most persuasive voice. “This is Alfred. Alfred Ward. I went to high
school with Penny. I just arrived in California, and I thought I’d
look her up. I was wondering if you could tell me her address.”

“Alfred? Your name sounds familiar. Were you
on the basketball team?”

“No ma’am. Listen, I’m on a pay phone—”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to run on. Penny lives
in Lomita. I’ve got the address right here somewhere.”

“If you’re talking about the apartment on
Narbonne, she just moved out of there.”

“She did? I can’t keep up with that girl.
Well, she’s going on a trip. And in a couple of weeks she’s moving
into a brand new place. In a city with a funny name. Terrence or
something like that.”

“You mean Torrance?”

“Torrance. Yes, that’s it.”

“Do you know what her address will be
there?”

“No. She’s hasn’t told me.”

“You said she’s going on a trip?”

“Yes. I think she’s going to visit some of
the national parks, like Yellowstone. She’s always loved the
outdoors.”

“Do you think she’s already left?”

“Maybe. School starts pretty soon.”

Alfred thanked her and hung up. He heard the
click indicating that the phone had eaten his money. Mrs. Singleton
hadn’t mentioned Penny’s boyfriend. Penny wasn’t telling her
everything. Of course, Penny was going on the trip with him. Her
roommate was no longer in the picture.

He had to find her boyfriend’s apartment.
Fast. But how? What did he know about this guy Gary, other than
that he was tall, thin, and probably had an innie bellybutton. All
the girls liked guys with innie bellybuttons. He drove a green
Volkswagen Beetle. Not much of a car. Alfred thought back to the
Sunday morning breakfasts he had eavesdropped on. Penny had been
excited about this Gary person from day one. She had told her
roommate all about him.

She had confided that he lived in Monterey
Park and worked for IBM. Alfred walked to his car, which was parked
near the phone booth. He kept a lot of maps in his glove
compartment. He sorted through them until he found one of the
greater Los Angeles area. Monterey Park was east of downtown L.A.
He went back to the phone booth and dialed Information. When an
operator answered, he asked her whether IBM had an office somewhere
in the East Los Angeles area.

After a twenty-second silence, the operator
reported in the affirmative. Alfred wrote down the number. He hung
up, his heart beating faster. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so
hard, after all. Los Angeles only had one area code. He should be
able to call the IBM office for a dime. He dialed the number.

“Good morning, IBM.”

“May I speak to Gary…? His last name has
slipped my mind.”

“Do you mean Gary Blanchard?”

“Is he a tall, thin guy with short
hair?”

“Yes.”

“That must be him. Is he there?”

“He’s at a customer’s office. May I take a
message for him?”

“So he’s working today.”

“Yes, he’s working. May I take a message for
Gary?” She sounded impatient.

“Uh, do you know when he’ll be back in the
office?”

“He didn’t say. May I take a message and
have him call you?”

Persistent bitch. “No thanks. I’ll call
back.” He hung up.

CHAPTER 3

Gary was still walking on a cloud. He had
finished his last day of work at IBM for two weeks—two weeks of fun
and adventure with Penny. And oh yes—he was getting married. Well,
most people got married sooner or later. Why not now? Living
together in their own place would certainly save on rent.

He parked his car in his reserved spot in
the apartment lot. It was a big apartment building, but
fortunately, it had plenty of parking. They would be able to leave
Penny’s car here until they returned. Gary retrieved the mail from
his box and walked to the apartment on the second level.

As he entered, Penny ran to him and gave him
a big hug and kiss. Now that was the way to be greeted when
returning from the job wars.

“How was your day?” Penny asked.

“Outstanding, because I knew it was the last
one I had to work for a while. How was yours?”

“Good. I got all the maps we need from the
Auto Club, and I have a pile of information about the parks.”

“I hope it will all fit in the car.”

“If it doesn’t, we’ll strap it to the
roof.”

Penny had prepared dinner for them in the
small kitchen. She didn’t claim to be an expert chef, but she had
cooked for Gary several times while they were dating, and he had
survived. He appreciated her efforts.

“Have you seen Steve?” Gary asked.

“No. He hasn’t shown his head.”

“Well, don’t worry about him. He’s probably
shacked up somewhere.” Steve sometimes didn’t show up for a couple
of days at a time during the summer when he wasn’t teaching school.
He would also supplement his teaching income by selling sets of
pots and pans to suggestive teenage girls for their
“trousseaus.”

Gary told this to Penny, and she said,
“Speaking of trousseaus, I don’t have one. I haven’t had time to
get one together. I noticed that you purchased a dozen T-shirts and
pairs of underpants.”

Caught, Gary could only laugh. “I’ve been
meaning to buy some things and this seemed like a good
opportunity.”

They sat down to dinner at the table beside
the kitchen. The menu consisted of hotdogs with all the toppings,
baked potatoes, and corn on the cob, along with a celebratory
bottle of cheap champagne. Gary couldn’t have been happier with it.
He opened the champagne bottle with a pop and bounced the cork off
the refrigerator. It reminded him of shooting woodchucks with a .22
on the farm back home.

He filled two water glasses—he didn’t have
champagne glasses. “To us.”

“To eloping.”

They clinked glasses and drank.

Halfway through the meal, Gary noticed that
Penny had become very quiet, which was unlike her. She was usually
as bubbly as the newly opened champagne. He was about to make a
quip about it, to attempt to lighten the suddenly oppressive
atmosphere, when she spoke.

“Gary, there’s something I need to talk to
you about.”

“Uh-oh, here it comes.” Gary was trying to
keep it light.

“I received a couple of notes at the Lomita
apartment.”

“Notes from old boyfriends?”

“I don’t know.”

The way she said it sobered Gary up. He gave
her his full attention as she described the circumstances of
receiving the notes. She went and retrieved them from the
envelope.

“I also had several phone calls from
somebody who didn’t say anything.” She placed the notes in front of
Gary. “He just breathed into the phone.”

Gary studied the pieces of paper and the
scribbled words. He didn’t know whether to be concerned or not.
They looked like the work of a prankster, but one could never
tell.

“Did you show these to the police?”

Penny shook her head. “I showed them to the
apartment manager and a few tenants. That’s all.”

“You didn’t show them to me.”

“I was afraid you’d wonder what kind of a
crazy girl you’d gotten mixed up with.”

“And you have no idea who wrote them?”

“None.”

“Did you tell anybody where you were going
when you left your apartment?”

“Nothing specific. I said I was going on a
trip. I told the owner I had rented a new place, but I didn’t tell
him where it was. I’m sure he’s completely harmless, but he often
looked at me a little funny. As if he could see through my clothes.
He was always asking whether there was anything he could do for me.
And I’ve been thinking about what happened to Emily.”

“Emily. Your girlfriend who was….” Gary
stopped, unable to say the word. He said slowly, “Well, it seems to
me that you’ve successfully covered your tracks. I don’t think
whoever did this will be able to find you. Unless—it’s somebody
connected with your school. If something else happens after school
starts, I’d be concerned, but until then—”

“Gary, I don’t want to go into this marriage
thing under false pretences. This may mean nothing, or it may mean
a potful of trouble. If you want out, I’ll release you from
whatever promises we’ve made.”

Gary stared at Penny. Want out? That was the
last thing he wanted. She was so serious about it. He stood up and
took her in his arms. “I don’t want out. I want you. I love
you.”

He noticed that she was crying. “I hope
you’re not crying because you want out.”

“No,” she managed to say between sobs. “No.
I never want out.” She buried her face in his shoulder.

***

Alfred looked at his watch. It was almost
six o’clock. Whatever hope he had nurtured that Gary would be
coming back to the office had evaporated like water on a hot
sidewalk. Not only was he not coming back, Alfred would bet
anything that he and Penny were leaving on their trip tomorrow,
even though tomorrow was Friday.

Alfred had spent all afternoon sitting in
his car in the crowded IBM parking lot. Other cars had come and
gone constantly, driven by well-groomed young men in blue suits and
rep ties and young women in blue skirts and jackets. This must be
some sort of sales office.

With his beard, hair that hadn’t been cut
for too long, khakis, and old sweatshirt, he felt as out of place
here as a mongrel at a dog show. He kept himself scrunched down in
the front seat, hoping nobody would notice him. Even though he had
seen a couple of other Volkswagens, if Gary’s car had pulled into
the lot, he would have spotted it instantly, because he had
recorded the license plate information the first time he had seen
Penny get into the car at her apartment.

He opened his glove compartment and pulled
out a picture of Penny. He had cut it out of their high school
yearbook and pasted it on a piece of cardboard. She was wearing a
cheerleader uniform consisting of a sweater and skirt, with a large
F on the front of the sweater. One of her hands was raised high in
the air, and she was smiling at him.

As he gazed at the black-and-white picture,
Alfred saw it in color. Penny’s skirt was light blue, and her
sweater was yellow. The F on the sweater was the same blue as the
skirt. The green grass of the football field filled the background.
Penny’s cheeks were pink, and her smile enticed Alfred and told him
she belonged to him. His hand went under his shirt and played with
his bellybutton. This went on for several minutes until reality
interfered, in the form of bodily needs.

He desperately had to pee, and he was
thirsty and starving. Leaving his car in the lot, now almost empty,
he walked across the street to a restaurant. It wasn’t busy, so he
was able to get a booth all to himself after he went to the
restroom. He ordered a hamburger and iced tea and contemplated his
next move. How many apartment buildings were there in Monterey
Park—one hundred? Two hundred? Or more? How could he narrow it
down?

What had Penny told her roommate about
Gary’s apartment at their Sunday morning breakfasts, other than the
location? Think, Alfred. He sipped his tea and tried to think. The
rays of the late August sun had heated the interior of his car,
making him sleepy, and numbing his brain. He had been sitting in a
solar oven.

He concentrated on the Sunday morning
restaurant setting and conjured up Penny’s voice. Hadn’t she said
one time that Gary lived in a new building? Alfred had brought a
map of the East Los Angeles area into the restaurant. He laid it
flat on the table of his booth and focused on Monterey Park. How
many streets would he have to cover looking for a new apartment
building?

***

Alfred drove south on Atlantic Avenue,
feeling the agony of defeat. He couldn’t remember how many
new-looking apartment buildings he had stopped at, how many parking
lots he had walked through, how many streets in front of apartments
he had paced, looking for either Penny’s car or Gary’s car. A few
buildings had underground parking with locked gates in front of
them. There was nothing he could do about them. However, he
seriously doubted that Penny’s car would be parked underground
since she was a visitor.

What else could he do? Hope was gone. Story
of his life. He would return to Lomita and beg Keith for his job
back. Keith would give it to him because he was a good worker.
Maybe he could even get something going with Stephanie. Maybe
Stephanie was just shy and that was the reason she didn’t talk to
him. If he couldn’t win her with his looks, he would impress her
with his personality.

He passed a building on his right that he
hadn’t noticed before. It was on a hill above street level. It
looked new, and it looked like an apartment building. Alfred swung
a U-turn on the almost-deserted avenue and drove back to the
intersection he had just gone through. The entrance to the
building—or perhaps several buildings—was on the side street.

Alfred parked on the street and walked up
the driveway into the complex. The gray stucco buildings had
apartments on several levels, reached by outside stairways. He
walked through the big parking area, dimly lit by a few spotlights.
Most of the cars were parked under several long roofs. After ten
minutes he spotted Gary’s car. He became excited. Then he calmed
down. It was a small victory, but now he had to find Penny’s car.
To make sure she was here with Gary. That took another ten minutes,
but he found it, parked in the unreserved section.

His elation was short-lived. Now what should
he do? There was no connection between parking slots and the
apartments. He wasn’t even sure which building Gary’s apartment was
in. There was only one thing he could do. Wait until they came out
in the morning. If they were leaving on their trip, that might be
early.