Self-Defense (44 page)

“Oh, they will,” I said, turning to go
again.

“I don’t
understand,
” she said.
“You work with the police, but you’re not working with them now?”

“Right now I’m here because Karen’s
important to me.”

“You
knew
her?”

“I’m not going to say more, Mrs. Shea. But
I will give you some advice. Some people think you and Tom were involved in her
murder. If you were, we have nothing to talk about and I really need to get out
of here. If you’ve done nothing but obstruct, I might be able to run
interference for you. Lying about it won’t help, because the evidence is piling
up; it’s just a matter of time. And if you do make it to Mexico, the police
will impound your house and this place.”

A group of teenagers went into the
sandwich shop. Happy, shouting. Travis’s age.

She said, “I don’t know about
any
murder, and that’s the God’s truth.”

“Why did you try to leave town tonight?”

“Vacation.”

“No luggage? Or was Tom supposed to handle
that, too, along with the tickets?”

She remained wooden. I shrugged and walked
toward my car.

“What if I don’t know anything?” she
called after me. “What if I can’t help
anyone
with what I know?”

“Then you won’t be able to help yourself.”

“But I
don’t
! That’s the truth!
Karen—she—”

She broke down and hid her eyes with her
fingers. Travis looked at her, then at me.

I smiled at him. His return grin was
quick—more of a grimace, his eyes clouded and dull. Most people with cerebral
palsy are intellectually normal. The eyes told me he wasn’t. Despite the
contortions he was almost handsome, and I could see traces of the young man he
might have been. A faint, almost holographic image of a golden Malibu kid.

His mother kept her face concealed.

I walked up to the chair. “Hey, pal.”

He started to laugh, gulping and whooping.
Did it louder and tried to clap his hands.

“Shut up!”
Gwen screamed.

A crestfallen look wormed its way among
the boy’s involuntary facial movements. He began stabbing with his arms and
kicking his feet. His lips twisted like an out-of-hand garden hose, and a deep,
foggy noise issued from his mouth.

“Aa-nglm!”

Gwen embraced him. “Oh, I’m so sorry,
honey! Oh, honey, honey!”

I felt like surrendering my license.

Gwen said, “He needs
me.
No one
knows how to take care of him properly. Have you seen the kind of places they
put kids like him?”

“Lots of them,” I said.

“But you’ll put him in one without
thinking twice.”

“
I
won’t put him anywhere. I have
no official power, other than the fact that the police sometimes ask my advice.
Sometimes they even listen. I got involved in Karen’s case, and I’m going to
see it through.”

“But I don’t
know
about any murder.
That’s the truth.”

“What
do
you know?”

She turned away, facing PCH.

“You know something valuable enough to get
paid off for your silence,” I said.

“Why do you keep saying I’ve been paid
off?”

I looked at her.

Travis rolled his head out from under her
embrace.

She said, “That was twenty years ago.”

“Twenty-one this August.”

She looked ill. “All I know is she went
off with some guys at that party and I never saw her again, okay? Why’s that
worth anything?”

“You tell me.”

She looked at the asphalt.

I said, “Other people were paid off, too.
Some of them were murdered. Now that the net’s tightening, what makes you think
you’re safe? Or Tom, for that matter, wherever he is in Mexico?”

A new fear pierced her eyes. She’d been
beautiful a long time ago, one of those lithe, laughing beach girls for whom
bikinis were invented. Life had glazed her like pottery, and I’d added a few
new cracks.

“Oh, God.”

A car pulled into the shopping center. As
its headlights washed over us, she jumped. The car was going to the sandwich
place. An old Chrysler four-door. Two pony-tailed, tank-topped men in their
thirties got out. Surfboard clamps were attached to the roof, but no boards.

One of the men cupped his hands and lit a
cigarette. Gwen turned her back on them. Not afraid, embarrassed.

“Old customers?” I said.

She stared at me, then at her keys in the
lock.

“Inside,” she said.

Keeping the lights off, she pushed Travis
to the back of the store and unlocked a door. Inside was a small neat
storeroom: metal shelves filled with merchandise, a desk, and three folding
chairs. Positioning Travis in a corner, she pulled a box down and gave it to
him. A diving mask. He began turning the package over and over, working hard at
holding on to it, studying a photograph of a girl snorkeling as if it were a
puzzle.

She started to go behind the desk. I got
there first and checked all the drawers. Just papers and pens and staples and
clips.

She gave a weak smile. “Yeah, tough old
me’s gonna shoot you.”

“I’m sure you can be plenty tough.” I
looked at Travis.

She sat down heavily. I took a chair.

“Tell me what happened,” I said.

“Promise me they won’t put him away.”

“I can’t promise, but I’ll do my best.
If
you had nothing to do with Karen’s murder.”

“I keep telling you, I don’t
know
about any murder. Just that she disappeared.”

“From the Sanctum party.”

Nod.

“You hired her to work at the party.”

“So what does that make me, a criminal? I
hired her as a favor. She needed the money. Her tips weren’t that good because
she wasn’t the greatest waitress, kept getting orders wrong. And that hypocrite
father of hers didn’t approve of her being an actress, so he never sent her a
dime. I helped her, so now people are getting murdered and I’m being treated
like a criminal?”

“When’s the last time you saw her?”

“How can I remember? It was twenty-one
years.”

“Try.”

Silence.

“In the middle of the party,” she said. “I
don’t know what time it was. We were all working; I wasn’t paying attention to
her.”

“You never told anyone she was there, did
you?”

More silence.

“Did the sheriffs ask?”

“They came around the Dollar, a few days
after she was gone. They thought she was lost up in the mountains. They had
helicopters looking for her.”

“And you didn’t tell them any different.”

“Who says it
was
any different? She
could have left the party with someone and gone to the mountains.”

“In the middle of work?”

“She wasn’t the most reliable person—used
to call in sick at the Dollar so she could go to Disneyland. Coming out here
was a big vacation for her.”

She bit her lip. “Look, I’m not putting
her down. She was a nice kid. But not too bright.” Tears filled her eyes. “I
never wanted to see anything happen to her. I never did anything to hurt her.”

She put her hands over her face again.
Travis had managed to turn himself around and was looking at her, fascinated.
The box slid down his lap and landed on the floor. He reached for it but the
leather belt restrained him, and he started to shout.

Gwen uncovered her face and started to get
out of her chair.

I retrieved the box and gave it to him,
tousling his hair.

“Aa-gaah,” he said, grinning.
“Aa-gaamnuhuh.”

Gwen said, “It wasn’t any big intense
investigation or anything. A deputy just dropped in and asked if anyone’d seen
her; then he sat around and had coffee.”

“What about the private eye Karen’s family
hired? Felix Barnard. What did
he
ask you?”

“He was weird. An oily old guy.”

“What did he ask you?”

“Same stuff the police did: When did we
last see her?”

“And you told him Friday night, after her
shift at the Dollar.”

“He was a sleazeball. I didn’t want
anything to do with him.”

“He found out Karen had been at the party.
How?”

“I don’t know, but it wasn’t from me,” she
said. The way she looked away quickly let me know she was hiding something. I
decided not to push, right now. Thinking of the unaccounted-for time between
Karen’s leaving the Dollar and the party the next day, I said, “Why did Karen
go up to Sanctum early?”

“The caterer needed someone to set up
chairs and tables before the food got there.”

“And you picked Karen even though she
wasn’t reliable?”

“I felt sorry for her. Like I said, she
needed the money.” She blinked several times.

“Is that the only reason?”

She took a deep breath and turned to
Travis. “You okay, honey?”

Ignoring her, he continued to study the
box.

“What’s the real reason you chose Karen to
go up early, Gwen?”

“Someone called. Wanted us to send the
best-looking waitress up early.”

“Who?”

Long silence. “Lowell.”

“And Karen was the best-looking waitress.”

“She was cute.”

“Why would looks be important if all he
wanted was for her to set up?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t like he mentioned
that first. More like, As long as you’re sending someone, send a good-looking
one, and some other stuff—crazy words I don’t remember—something about eternal
beauty. I don’t know why, maybe he had big shots over and wanted to make an
impression—it was none of my business. What difference did it make to me who
set up? Karen was happy to do it.”

“Happy to be with big shots.”

“Definitely. She was still a tourist—going
over to Hollywood Boulevard, looking for movie stars.”

“How’d she get up to Sanctum?”

“Someone picked her up.”

“At the Dollar?”

“No, on PCH.”

“Where on PCH?”

“PCH and Paradise Cove.”

“Right at the turnoff to the Dollar?”

Nod.

“Who picked her up?”

“I don’t know.” Another look away.

“This isn’t very helpful, Gwen.” Travis
was staring at me. I winked at him. He laughed, and the box slipped from his
fingers again. I returned it to him, then stared at Gwen. Making it a hard
stare was no effort.

“I saw a car,” she said. “We did—Tom and
me. Pulling away just as we got there. But that’s all. I couldn’t see who was
in it. I don’t even know if that’s the one that picked her up. She left twenty
minutes before we did. Someone else could have picked her up.”

“What kind of car?”

“Tom said a Ferrari.”

“Tom said?”

“He’s into cars. To me it was just a car
and taillights. Tom was all excited.”

“What color?”

“It was nighttime—Tom thought it was red.
He said most of them are red, it’s Ferrari’s racing color.”

“Convertible or hardtop?”

“Convertible, I think, but the top was up.
We couldn’t see who was inside.”

“Did you ever see the car again?”

She played with her earrings and twisted
her fingers, as if wringing them out. “There was one up there.”

“Up where?”

“The party. There were all kinds of fancy
cars there. Porsches, Rollses. Valets parking them up and down the road, total
chaos.”

“Who did the Ferrari belong to?”

“I don’t know.”

I stared at her.

“I don’t
know,”
she said. “What do
you want me to do, make something up?”

“Did it have customized plates?”

“No... not that I noticed. I couldn’t have
cared less, cars don’t interest me. My head was into the party, making sure
everything went okay.”

“Did it?”

“What?”

“Did the party go okay?”

“People seemed to be having fun.”

“What about Karen?”

“What
about
her?”

“Was she having fun?”

“She was there to work,” she said sharply.
“Yeah, she seemed happy.”

“All those big shots.”

She shrugged.

“Did she sleep at Sanctum on Friday
night?”

“I don’t know.”