The Same Mistake Twice (2 page)

“Yeah. It belongs to Diana Andrews. Used to, anyway.”

“The prostitute,” said Haldorsen. “The one that our esteemed colleague in Driscoll won’t tangle with.”

“She’s a good source,” said Tillotson.

“We need to bring her in,” Haldorsen said.

“I’ll talk to her,” said Tillotson. “If that’s okay, Chief.”

The Chief gave him a long look.

“You know where she lives.”

A little too well, his tone had implied.

“What does she say?” Jadlowsky asked now.

“She says she doesn’t remember everybody from ten years ago.”

“I have my doubts about that,” said Jadlowsky. “I hope this isn’t going to show a side of her that we haven’t seen before.”

“You want to talk to her, Chief? You know, emphasize our point?”

“No, I keep my distance from her. Never even met her.”

Again Tillotson understood. Someday Jadlowsky might have to explain why he let her live in his town and conduct her business under his apparent protection. That would get more difficult if he knew her personally.

“You take it,” said Jadlowsky. “Anything you need, let me know. Including a call to Chief Haldorsen.”

“Let’s hold that back,” said Tillotson. “We might really need it later.”

Chapter Three

Diana waited for the sound of the front door closing and then picked the coffee cups up. For a moment she stood at the sink and looked through the window at her backyard and the rear of the Gustavson house in the next street. It was time for most people to get out to work or school, but as usual the Gustavsons were getting a late start.

After a while Diana’s hands started moving automatically. Washing up gave her something to do while she thought.

She wasn’t proud of herself. She had let Tillotson believe that she didn’t remember the name of the client who had turned into a stalker. It was John Grogan, and he had seen her ad in the classifieds of a skin magazine. He sent a letter to her rented mailbox and included his phone number, with a request to call only between eight and nine in the morning. It usually reassured her when a man was so obviously married, because he would want what she wanted—a simple business transaction.

Their single phone conversation had supported her theory, but things hadn’t gone well after that. She remembered standing under a blistering summer sun and knocking on a motel room door that never opened. It struck her that Grogan had been her first no-show. There had been many since, but at the time she hadn’t known how many men chickened out, or got what they needed from talking to her on the phone and then making an appointment that they didn’t intend to keep.

Then the pages started. Each time, she read Grogan’s number. The first two times she called back, but someone lifted the receiver and said nothing. Diana matched the caller’s silence. Even then she had known to avoid anger or panic. That would only feed the stalker’s tenacity.

Without a representative of the law sitting across from her, she found it easier to think. Other than her basic reluctance to talk about clients, she couldn’t think of a reason to protect John Grogan. Giving him up now might limit the damage to her business.

Tillotson should be back in his office. She dialed his direct number, which he had given her years earlier.

“I’ve been doing some remembering.”

She told him about Grogan and the calls.

“Here’s the thing. He told me to call only between eight and nine. But those pages came from his number at all hours. What does that say to you?”

“He stopped caring if his wife found out.”

“Or it was somebody else making the calls. Like maybe his wife.”

“I guess.”

“At least find out if he’s still breathing.”

“Okay. It’s something to check out.”

He sounded less than enthusiastic, but she might have bought more time.

How should she use it? The one thing she did not want to do was compile Tillotson’s list. Instead, she took the phone book from its place in a kitchen drawer and flipped pages to the G’s. One Grogan, J., was listed at a Driscoll address. Among other things, he had taught her to pass up clients who lived too close to her. She could already see that she wasn’t going to enjoy revisiting her early mistakes.

The next morning Diana dressed in a gray T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers and tied her dark blond hair in a ponytail. For her an outfit like that counted as a disguise. If she encountered a client, he would need a few moments to connect her with the woman he always saw in heels and full makeup. By then she would have made her escape.

She took her bag from the counter and walked to her car. Parking a few blocks from home was another security measure, in case a client recognized her Taurus. She drove to the north side of town, where large Victorian houses predominated. On the way she considered plan after plan, but nothing seemed promising. She almost gave up and went home.

But the trip was too short to destroy her nerve completely. She parked three doors away from Grogan’s home. For want of a better idea, she decided to sit in the car and watch the house.

The front door of the neighboring home opened, and two men in suits and two women in Sunday dresses filed down the front steps. Diana would have recognized them even without their
Watchtower
magazines. One of the men and the two women were black, while the remaining man was white. That level of racial integration stood out in Driscoll.

The black man rang the bell at the Grogan house. A blond woman of about fifty opened the door.

Oh boy, Diana thought.

Even a vacuum cleaner salesman would have wilted under the woman’s glare. The conversation was brief. The four missionaries retraced their steps to the sidewalk. Diana didn’t know what she hoped to learn, but she decided to watch a little longer.

Ten minutes later the woman came out and unlocked a new silver Camry in the driveway. She climbed in and drove off. Diana kept watching. Just a few minutes later a balding middle-aged man left the house. He got into the other car, a self-effacing dark blue Chevy Malibu. When he left, Diana gave him a small head start and followed.

As she drove, she wondered why she still cared. The man was obviously John Grogan. He was alive, and the woman was his wife. Diana should have peeled off and gone home, but instead she stayed behind the Malibu.

John Grogan drove several miles south on Route 15 and signaled a right turn into the parking lot of the no-name diner. She approved. It might work better to brace him here rather than at his job. She parked and followed him inside.

He took a two-seater booth without waiting for the hostess. He was probably a regular customer. When Diana slid in across from him, he looked up at her with panic in his eyes.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

She knew his voice immediately. She remembered what he had put her through ten years earlier and decided to make him squirm a little. She studied him without speaking.

“Well?”

“I guess your wife doesn’t cook.”

“What on earth is that to you?”

“I really wanted to see if you’re still alive.”

“Is that some kind of sick joke?”

“No.”

“Are you the one who put the cops on me?”

“Cops? What cops?”

But she knew. Tillotson had worked fast, and now she was back on his hook.

“Two detectives came yesterday. They gave my wife some ridiculous story about burglaries in the neighborhood, which she didn’t buy for a second. Then they got me alone and asked me…oh.”

“Right. That was me they were talking about. I’m going to ask you the same thing. Who kept paging me ten years ago? I called back, and nobody said a word.”

“Maybe my wife. She was obsessed.”

“I guess it wore off.”

“Or she filed it away until she needed it again. So I don’t need you stirring that whole business up.”

“Looks like I won’t have to bother you again,” she said. “Just one last thing. Did you ever give that number to anybody else—a friend, maybe?”

He made a face. “Talk about tacky. No, I never did that. That cop asked the same thing.”

That was interesting. Who had written the number down? Had Grogan’s wife given it to someone? But why would she have done that?

Or maybe someone entirely different had done it. This detective work was difficult stuff.

“Does she have male friends?” she asked him.

“Rebecca doesn’t do friends.”

“Could she have been stepping out with somebody?”

He stared at her.

“You’re good. I was asking that myself. I couldn’t believe it, but it would have explained some things back then.”

“Like what?”

“She would go out at odd times. And a couple of times guys called the house and apologized for getting the wrong number.”

“Guys, plural, or guy?”

“I’m not sure. I took one call, and my son took at least one more.”

“So it was okay for her to cheat, but not you?”

“Now you’re catching on.”

“You have any idea who the guy could be?”

“No clue. I would say somebody at work, but you’d think he would know what she’s like.”

“How did you end up married to her in the first place?”

“She knows how to be charming. It lasts as long as she needs it to last, and then you never see it again. I sometimes wonder if I ever did. See it, I mean.”

“Why don’t you get out?”

“Not an option.”

“Why?”

“Let’s not go into it.”

Diana glanced at her watch. She couldn’t think of anything else to ask, and she wanted to work out before her afternoon dates. She slid out of the booth.

“Let’s not do this again,” he said.

“I hope we won’t have to.”

She took three steps toward the exit, but then something stopped her. Her hooker’s radar was pinging, and she always paid attention to it. It usually meant that someone connected with her professional life had come into range.

She turned in a circle, trying to look casual about it.

There. In the last booth sat a young woman. Diana must have seen her as she disengaged from John Grogan, but recognition had come with a time lag. She couldn’t blame herself for that. Diana hadn’t seen this young woman in ten years, and the changes were startling even for that length of time.

Diana retraced her steps, ignoring John Grogan as she passed him. She didn’t ask herself where she was going or why. Her feet said go, and she trusted them the way she trusted her radar. She slid into the seat across from the young woman. Apparently, this was a day for butting in.

“Anne-Marie,” Diana said.

The young woman wore a light gray jumpsuit of the kind that would have the name of some contractor lettered on its back. Voluminous pockets up and down each side of the suit sagged with the weight of tools, paperwork, and personal effects. Diana remembered this young woman with mousy brown hair to the small of her back, but Anne-Marie now favored a short cut that would stay out of her way and need little maintenance.

Her face had been unreadable ten years earlier, and it still was, but with a difference. Ten years ago she came across as emotionally dead. Today her guarded expression looked like a choice. Her brown eyes didn’t flinch, and Diana caught herself nodding as if paying a compliment. She had played the stare-down game with some scary people, and she could tell that Anne-Marie did it as well as any of them.

“You’re out,” said Diana. “How did that happen?”

“I guess you really weren’t paying attention.”

“Not everything is about you. You never did understand that.”

“One thing I do understand,” said Anne-Marie. “The victim makes a big difference. If you have to kill somebody, pick a grown man who exploited a vulnerable young girl.”

“Ten years still strikes me as a little light.”

“I pleaded to manslaughter. That comes with a chance for parole. Which I got, with a little help.”

“Who would help you?”

“You mean, because I’m a little deficient in the friends department? Yeah, well, Deborah Leavitt and Pamela Krol spoke up for me at the hearing.”

“That’s two names I haven’t thought about in years. Three, counting you. Why would they want you to get parole?”

“Not out of the goodness of their own hearts. They’ve been egging me on to pay you another visit.”

“Oh? Do we have a problem?”

“I told them to do their own dirty work. I like parole, compared to the alternative.”

Diana studied the other woman, but there was just no way to read her.

“Okay, then.”

Diana got up again, and this time she made it outside without getting dragged back into her past. She didn’t plan to come back to this diner. Who knew that such a mundane place could be so fraught?

She noticed a van parked in the corner of the lot. The lettering on the side panel read “ABC Plumbing.” That was interesting. It suggested that Anne-Marie had put her prison time to better use than many convicts.

In the car Diana told herself to file Anne-Marie and the other two names away for later and get back to business, which was considering what she had learned from John Grogan. Rebecca Grogan didn’t look like anyone’s idea of something on the side. What if Rebecca’s meetings with the other man had been for a different purpose?

She wished she could just confront Rebecca Grogan, but she had the feeling that she needed some heavy-duty ammunition before she tried that tactic.

Where to find it, she had no idea.

Chapter Four

Diana decided to make a quick stop at home for her gym bag. She still had enough time for a workout before her next date. If her brain could do nothing but race in tight circles, she might as well turn it off for a while and grunt under the weights.

But she found a message from Tillotson waiting on her answering machine.

“Call me.”

His tone left no room for negotiation. It was time for her emergency plan. She went to the phone on the kitchen wall and lifted the handset. There was no point to going out and using a pay phone for this call. Gary Rennert knew everything about her.