I took out my wallet snapshot of Kay and showed it to her. Martha said, “Yes. That’s the woman.”
I stood up, alone for the first time since the triad was formed. Martha said, “Don’t hurt my family anymore. Please.”
I said, “Get out, Martha. Don’t let them ruin you.”
o o o
I drove to West Hollywood Elementary School, sat in the car and kept an eyeball fix on Kay’s Plymouth in the faculty parking lot. Lee’s ghost buzzed in my head as I waited–bad company for close to two hours. The 3:00 bell rang right on time; Kay exited the building in a swarm of children and teachers a few minutes later. When she was alone by her car, I walked over.
She was arranging a load of books and papers in the trunk, her back to me. I said, “How much of the hundred grand did Lee let you keep?”
Kay froze, her hands on a stack of fingerpaintings. “Did Lee tell you about Madeleine Sprague and me back then? Is that why you’ve hated Betty Short all this time?”
Kay ran her fingers over the kiddie artwork, then turned and faced me. “You are so, so good at some things.”
It was another compliment I didn’t want to hear. “Answer my questions.”
Kay slammed the trunk, her eyes dead on mine. “I did not accept a cent of that money, and I didn’t know about you and Madeleine Sprague until those detectives I hired gave me her name. Lee was going to run away no matter what. I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again, and I wanted him to be comfortable, if such a thing was possible. He didn’t trust himself to deal with Emmett Sprague again, so I picked up the money. Dwight, he knew I was in love with you, and he wanted us to be together. That was one of the reasons he left.”
I felt like I was sinking in a quicksand of all our old lies. “He didn’t leave, he _ran_ from the Boulevard-Citizens job, from the frame on De Witt, from the trouble he was in with the Depart–”
“He loved us! Don’t take that away from him!”
I looked around the parking lot. Teachers were standing by their cars, eyeing the husband and wife spat. They were too far away to hear; I imagined them chalking up the fight to kids or mortgages or cheating. I said, “Kay, Lee knew who killed Elizabeth Short. Did you know that?”
Kay stared at the ground. “Yes.”
“He just let it go.”
“Things got crazy then. Lee went down to Mexico after Bobby, and he said he’d go after the killer when he got back. But he didn’t come back, and I didn’t want you going down there too.”
I grabbed my wife’s shoulders and squeezed them until she looked at me.
“And you didn’t tell me later? You didn’t tell _anyone_?”
Kay lowered her head again; I jerked it back up with both my hands. “And you didn’t tell anyone?”
In her calmest schoolteacher voice, Kay Lake Bleichert said, “I almost told you. But you started whoring again, collecting her pictures. I just wanted revenge on the woman who ruined the two men I loved.”
I raised a hand to hit her–but a flash of Georgie Tilden stopped me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I called in the last of my accumulated sick leave and spent a week killing time at the El Nido. I read and played the jazz stations, trying not to think about my future. I pored over the master file repeatedly, even though I knew the case was closed. Child versions of Martha Sprague and Lee racked my dreams; sometimes Jane Chambers’ slash-mouth clown joined them, hurling taunts, speaking through gaping holes in his face.
I bought all four LA papers every day, and read them cover to cover. The Hollywood sign hubbub had passed, there was no mention of Emmett Sprague, Grand Jury probes into faulty buildings or the torched house and stiff. I began to get a feeling that something was wrong.
It took a while–long hours spent staring at the four walls thinking of nothing–but finally I nailed it.