Lila had her back to me, bending over to remove a stack of folded clothes from one of the dressing-table drawers. The polyester pantsuit she wore was not very flattering. From the rear, her ass looked like two hanging foam-rubber hams. She caught sight of me as she turned. “Oh! You scared me. I thought it was Moza. What can I do for you?”
“I heard you were leaving. I thought maybe I could help.”
Uncertainty flickered in her eyes. Her abrupt departure was probably at the urging of her cohorts in Las Cruces, alerted by my phone call of the night before. She might have suspected it was me, but she couldn’t be sure. For my part, I was just hoping to stall until the cops showed up. I had no intention of confronting her. For all I knew, she might whip out a little two-shot Derringer or fly at me with some kind of old-lady karate-type move that would take me right out.
She checked her watch. It was now almost 4:00. It took twenty minutes to get to the airport and she’d have to be there by 4:30 or risk losing her seat. That gave her ten minutes. “Oh dear. Well, I don’t know why my taxi isn’t here. I might need a ride to the airport, if you could do that,” she said.
“No problem,” I said. “My car’s right down the street. Henry said you’d be stopping by his place anyway to say good-bye.”
“Of course I am, if I have time. He’s such a sweetie.” She finished laying in the armload of clothes and I could see her look around the room to see if she’d missed anything.
“Did you leave anything in the bathroom? Shampoo? Hand laundry?”
“Oh, I believe I did. I’ll be right back.” She moved past me, heading for the bathroom.
I waited until she rounded the corner and then reached over and opened her purse. Inside was a fat manila envelope with Henry’s name penciled on the front. I took off the rubber band and checked the contents. Cash. I closed her purse again and tucked the envelope into the waistband of my jeans at the small of my back. I figured Henry was never going to press charges and I hated to see his savings confiscated and itemized as police property. No telling when he’d get it back. I was just adjusting my T-shirt over the bulge when she returned, toting shampoo, shower cap, hand lotion. She tucked them in around the sides of her folded clothes and closed up the suitcase, snapping the locks shut.
“Here, I’ll get it,” I said. I hauled that suitcase off the bed and picked up the other one, moving out into the hall like a pack mule. Moza was standing there, wringing out an imaginary dish towel in her anxiety.
“I can take one of those,” she said.
“I got it.”
I headed for the door, with Moza and Lila bringing up the rear. I certainly hoped the cops would show. Lila and Moza were saying those last-minute things to one another, Lila faking it out the whole time. She was taking off. She was gone. She had no intention of coming back.
As we reached the front, Moza moved ahead so she could hold the screen door open for me. A black-and-white patrol car had just pulled up in front. I was afraid if Lila spotted them too soon, she’d bolt for the rear.
“Did you get that pair of shoes under the bed?” I asked over my shoulder. I paused in the doorway, blocking her view.
“I don’t know. I just looked and I didn’t see any.”
“You probably got them, then,” I said.
“No, no. I better check.” She hurried toward the bedroom while I set the two suitcases on the porch.
Moza, meanwhile, was staring at the street with puzzlement. Two uniformed officers were coming up the walk, one male, one female, both bareheaded, in short-sleeved shirts. In Santa Teresa, there’s been a move afoot to divest the police of their authoritarian images, but these two managed to seem ominous anyway. Moza probably thought she’d violated some civil code-grass too long, TV too loud.
I left her to have a little conversation with them while I herded Lila up this way, so she wouldn’t spot the cops and try slipping out the back. “Lila, your ride’s here,” I called.
“Well thank heaven for that,” she said, as she came through the living room. “I didn’t find anything under the bed, but I’d left my ticket right up on the chest, so it’s lucky I went back.”
As she reached the front door, I eased behind her. She glanced up, catching sight of the officers.
The guy, according to his name tag, was G. Pettigrew. He was black, maybe in his thirties, with big arms and a barrel chest. His partner, M. Gutierrez, looked almost as hefty as he.
Pettigrew’s eyes settled on Lila. “Are you Lila Sams?”
“Yes.” She loaded that one syllable with puzzlement, blinking at him. Her body seemed to change so that she looked older and more squat.
“Could you step out onto the porch, please?”
“Of course, but I can’t think what this is about.” Lila made a move toward her purse, but Gutierrez intercepted, checking the contents quickly for weapons.
Pettigrew told Lila she was under arrest, reciting her rights to her from a card he held. I could tell he’d done it all a hundred times and didn’t really need the cue, but he read it anyway so there wouldn’t be any question later.
“Could you turn around and face the wall, please?”
Lila did as she was told and Gutierrez did a pat-down, then snapped on a pair of handcuffs. Lila was starting to wail pitifully. “But what have I done? I haven’t done anything. This is all a terrible mistake.” Her desperation seemed to set Moza off.
“What’s going on, officer?” Moza said. “This woman is my tenant. She hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“Ma’am, we’d appreciate it if you’d step back, please. Mrs. Sams is entitled to contact an attorney when we get downtown.” Pettigrew touched at Lila’s elbow, but she pulled away, her voice rising to a shrill pitch.
“Help! Oh no! Let go of me. Help!”
The two officers took control of her, one on either side, moving her off the porch at a businesslike pace, but Lila’s shrieks were beginning to bring curious neighbors out onto their porches. She went limp, sagging heavily between them, craning her face toward Moza with a piteous cry. They hustled her into the squad car, picking her feet up to deposit her in the rear. Lila somehow conveyed the impression that this was a Gestapo arrest, that she was being hauled off by the Nazis and might never be heard from again. Shaking his head, Officer Pettigrew gathered up her belongings, which were now strewn along the walk. He tucked her suitcases in the trunk.
The man next door apparently felt called upon to intercede and I saw him in conversation with Pettigrew while Gutierrez called in to the station and Lila thrashed about, flinging herself at the mesh that separated her from Gutierrez in the front seat. Finally Pettigrew got in the car on the driver’s side, slamming the door shut, and they pulled away.
Moza was dead white and she turned a stricken face to me. “This was your doing! What in heaven’s name were you thinking of? The poor woman.”
But I’d caught sight of Henry half a block away. Even at that distance, his face seemed blank with disbelief, his body tense. “I’ll talk to you later, Moza,” I said and headed toward him.
Chapter 25
By the time I reached my place, Henry was nowhere in sight. I pulled the envelope out of my waistband and knocked on his back door. He opened it. I held the envelope up and he took it, glancing at the contents. He gave me a searching look, but I didn’t explain how I’d come by it and he didn’t ask.
“Thank you.”
“We’ll talk later,” I said, and he closed the door again, but not before I caught a glimpse of his kitchen counter. He had gotten out the sugar canister and a new blue-and-white sack of flour, turning to the activity he knew best while he worked through his pain. I felt awful for him but I had to let him sort it out for himself. God, it was all so unpleasant. In the meantime, I had to get back to work.
I let myself into my apartment and got out the telephone book, looking for Kelly Borden. If Bobby’d been searching for the gun out at the old county building, I wanted to have a crack at it too and I thought maybe Kelly could tell me where to start. No sign of him in the telephone book. I tried to find the number for the former medical facility, but there wasn’t a listing for it and the information operator was being obtuse, pretending she had no idea what I was talking about. If he worked a seven-to-three shift, he’d be gone anyway. Shit. I looked up the number of Santa Teresa Hospital and put a call in to Dr. Fraker. His secretary, Marcy, told me he was “away from his desk” (meaning in the men’s room), but would be back shortly. I told her I needed to talk to Kelly Borden and asked for his address and telephone number.