“Gretchen set up Michelle and Lance and she walks.”
“Maybe she’ll get hers one day. … I also found out that Irving’s rag biz went under because of ‘financial irregularities’—he left behind an army of creditors, and that beach construction project is leveraged to the hilt. Plenty of claws being sharpened— He ain’t gonna find too many character witnesses.”
“What about Anita?”
“So far, she doesn’t appear to be dirty,” he said. “When I saw her she looked worse than Dugger—some kind of intestinal problems; she actually threw up four times during a one-hour interview. She seems genuinely shocked by what her husband and Cheryl were up to—we’re talking emotionally shattered. Even my jaded detective ears ain’t ringing. As I was leaving the mafioso doc was putting her on tranqs. . . . What else— Oh, yeah, Charming Lyle the Model Father finally showed up. Looks like he really was hunting. Rangers picked him up for shooting a doe out of season, caught him skinning it by the side of his truck. Big-time fine, and they sent him back home, bitching all the way. Asshole actually called me up again yesterday, wanting to know if I’d learned anything about Lauren’s will.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“Well,” he said. “I controlled myself, didn’t allow myself free expression of pent-up emotions.”
He ambled to the fridge, stuck his head in, emerged empty-handed, walked over to the window and played with a houseplant.
“What I told him is Lauren died poor. Which is the truth, right?”
38
BY THE THIRD day Robin still hadn’t called, and I tried to drag myself out of inertial sludge into a walking depression.
Finding Agnes Yeager was easy.
Olivia Brickerman, LCSW, a friend and former mentor at Western Pediatrics, now a professor of social work at the gracious old school crosstown, had full command of the Medi-Cal and private insurance data banks, and it took thirty seconds for her to pull up the name.
“The age of privacy,” she said. “Always wear clean underwear. Yeager, Agnes Mavis, DOB fifty-one years ago. . . . Looks like she did some time at County Gen. . . . From the billing codes, endocrinology, cardiology, some lung workups … a psych consult—short-term consult, four sessions. After that she was transferred to the rehab unit at Casa de los Amigos for a month, then discharged to an aftercare facility in San Bernardino—SweetHaven. Sounds like something from a kiddie book. That’s the last thing I’ve got. Last billing was thirteen months ago.” She read off the convalescent home’s phone number. “So how’s Gorgeous Robin?”
“Terrific.”
“And you?”
“The same.”
“Yeah?”
“What, I don’t sound terrific?”
“The doctor gets defensive,” she said, cheerfully. “You’re forgetting, boychik, that before I became a big-shot academic I did what you do. And right now my third ear is telling me you’re not smiling.”
“Okay, now I am,” I said. Actually forcing my lips into position. “How’s that?”
“Meat but no motion, boychik—you’re sure you’re okay?”
“I’m terrific. How about you?”
“Changing the subject. Don’t you think I deserve a more subtle form of resistance— I’m fantastic, Alex. Menopause is everything they claim and more. But my fine spirits should be obvious. Unlike other people I don’t have that schleppy tone permeating my voice.”
“Lack of sleep, that’s all.”
“Lack of sleep and Agnes Mavis Yeager?”
“No,” I said. “It’s complicated.”
“With you it tends to be. We should have lunch, it’s been a long time. You can tell me stories and I’ll pretend to be your mother.”
“It’s a deal, Liv.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Meanwhile, I won’t eat on the chance that if you do call my mouth won’t be full.”
A phone call to SweetHaven Convalescent Home leavened by a few lies got me the information that Agnes Yeager had moved out three months ago. Forwarding address: the Four Seasons Hotel, on Doheny. The personnel office there confirmed that Ms. Yeager was cleaning rooms on the eight A.M. to three P.M. shift.
Working again, so she’d mended, physically.
Returning to L.A., so maybe she hadn’t given up.
At 2:15 P.M. I drove to the Four Seasons, handed the doorman a ten, and asked him to keep the Seville up front. I’d just had the car washed and waxed, and he smiled as he nosed it between a Bentley Arnage and a Ferrari Testarossa.