tomeubanks.com

                                        CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

                                               Connections

8:10 a.m.

Joe awoke to the golfer's warning: Fore! It'd been so hot last night, he'd left his bedroom window open, forgetting that Saturday mornings meant the hackers would come, and they'd play below his second story apartment window overlooking the tenth tee of the Van Nuys Golf Course.

As he closed the window, the doorbell chimed. He wrapped himself in a dirty towel and answered the door.

"Stylish," Leah said, exercising her eyebrows. She walked by him and looked around the living and dining rooms, which were furnished with a black vinyl couch, two folding chairs, a marble coffee table with brown cigarette burns along the edge, a white stand-up lamp covered by a dented shade, and, hanging on the wall, two cheap, pastoral lithographs that could have come from almost any Holiday Inn in America.

Another golfer yelled. She went to the window and looked down on the golf course. "Any balls come flying through your windows?"

"Been here a month and a half. No balls yet."

"What about coffee?"

"Coffee?"

"That hot, black, bitter starter fluid from Colombia?"

"Aren't we snappy in the morning," Joe commented, heading to his bedroom. "There's some in the kitchen."

He heard her going through the cupboards.

"So what's the plan?" she called.

"First," he said, "did you copy the Weldon file?"

"Why would I copy the Weldon file?"

He hadn't had an answer to that question last night either.

"Who helped you move my...the furniture down to the empty suite yesterday?"

"Who told you it was there?"

"You first."

"Two big strong friends who work out at the same club I do. Your turn."

"Do they know Weldon?"

"Why would they know Weldon?"

Joe felt dead-ended. Maybe he'd done it himself. But the spindles in the file were backwards. Someone else had taken it apart.

Leah poked her head into the bedroom. "Who told you about the furniture?"

Startled by her sudden intrusion, he said: "How'd you know I had my pants on?"

"I didn't. Is there something I shouldn't see?"

He went on buttoning his shirt. Leah leaned against the doorjamb. Her eyes stealthily stole glances that came from standing far enough away from him that she could see his whole body without noticeably moving her eyes. What bothered him was that he kind of liked her looking at him getting dressed.

"I want you to go talk to The Kennys, see if they've heard from their son T.J. Get everything you can about his habits, where he frequents. Ask to search his bedroom. There might be a clue to where he went camping. Stay in contact with me. Once you know where T.J. is, I'll probably send you there to check it out."

"Why don't I just–"

"Why don't you just this time do it my way?" Joe said prudently.

"And if I see him?"

"Call me."

"What if I can't get hold of you?"

"Wait." Her lips pinched together. She wanted to say something. Joe waited, but she kept quiet. "I'll call you later and tell you what I find in Robby's room," Joe said, sitting on the edge of his bed, slipping on socks.

"What do you mean?"

Joe explained that runaways' bedrooms often hold clues to the runaway's friends, hangouts and sometimes even their destination.

"I know that," she said. "I mean, why don't I do it? I'm doing the Kenny boy, why shouldn't I call Melissa and–"

"I've already called her, Leah, thanks. She's expecting me."

Leah grinned like a psychic with a solid premonition. She didn't buy it, Joe told himself, and pretended to be intently tying his shoelaces.

"Whatever," she said and scanned his bedroom. A single bed, a bookcase filled with books, mostly fiction, a puny Rubbermaid clothes basket overflowing with dirty laundry, a super-8 movie camera mounted on a tripod, a rowing machine, and an armoire from hell. Joe wondered if she read something in the furniture he shared his life with, or if there was something else on her mind.

Then they both smelled the coffee. Joe followed her into the kitchen. They sat across from each other at the small table next to the window, which also had a view of the tenth tee. For a moment they silently drank coffee. Then Leah asked Joe what he was going to do in Paley.

"Don't know yet. Talk to people, mostly. If she's still there, I'll find her with Reggie Thomas." An unruly twirl of hair came down off his forehead into his eyes. He brushed it back. Leah seemed to notice. Her eyes did a little dance, as if she was surprised by something.

Leah took her coffee cup to the sink, dumped the last few drops, rinsed it out and set it into the dishwasher. She caught Joe watching her and immediately warned him:

"Don't get any ideas."

"If I did," Joe said, grinning, "I wouldn't be stupid enough to admit it."

"Goes without saying, Joe."

"Thank you."

"I should go before we turn this into another episode of The Honeymooners."

"I'll have the mobile phone," Joe said, following her to the door. "Call me if you find Robby. Call me if you have any trouble, or if you–"

"I know," she assured him.

"Remember the budget," he added. She opened the door. "If you need more than a thousand, call Melissa first."

"Give me a break, Joe."

A shattering noise came from Joe's bedroom. When they got there, glass was scattered over the floor and a perfectly round hole was in the window, squiggly cracks flaring out from the hole–a hole the size of the bright orange golf ball nestled in the covers of Joe's unmade bed.

This is her fault! No one ever asked before if golf balls came through the windows! Until she asked.

"Bummer," Leah said. "Are you sure you want me to search Robby’s bedroom?"

"I'm sure," Joe said, looking out the window to see if he could spot the guilty hacker.

Without offering to help clean up, Leah headed for the door.

"Okay, I'll keep in touch."

At the door, she held out her hand to him. He shook it, wondering why, feeling her relaxed but firm grip, feeling the bones under her soft, yogurt-smooth flesh.  She looked so different today.

"Let's make this a new beginning," she said. "We can make money together. We can do worthwhile things for people who need our services."

She sounded like a mortician, but she was probably sincere. Maybe she thought this was the way men made up. With a handshake and an encouraging word. Joe let her have the last word. She would've taken it anyway.

* * *

Straight up White Oak Street into the Santa Monica Mountains, with a view of the Encino Reservoir, Melissa Catlin's house was slung low between two hills. It was an architectural gem. There were rocks and waterfalls, a variety of trees–sycamores, pines, pepper, orange and lemon– a small green lawn and a short black driveway. In comparison, the houses around it were merely decoration of the hills.

Joe checked the address on the curb just to make sure. 4301 Twilight Lane. Right place. From what she said about her ex-husband, it couldn't be spousal support. Jingles pay handsomely.

A redwood mailbox, ugly and out of place, served him his first clue: Dr. J. D. Robertson.

Before he rang the bell, Joe brushed aside his straight brown hair from his eyes–good sign he needed a haircut–tucked his white sport shirt into his crisp, tan slacks, buffed each brown Florsheim on the back of his pant leg and took a deep breath of Valley air. Melissa, wearing a white skirt and a sour-grape top, answered the door before he could stop coughing.

"You all right?" she asked. There were bags under her eyes. She hadn't gotten any sleep.

"Fine, fine."

"It's bad out there already." She opened the door wider. "Come in. Coffee?"

"No, thanks. How're you doing?"

"I'm...I'm having a hard time. Not having him here last night made it really sink in what's happened."

She led him through the lavishly furnished living room, decorated in fiery colors but a sterile style reminiscent of a doctor's waiting room, including the colorful fish tank bubbling in a corner, to a den as large as Joe's entire apartment. Here the decor was masculine, with deep browns, furniture made of stained oak, cherry and pinewood. Western paintings hung on the dark paneled walls, and artifacts and bronze statues sat on pedestals of marble. In the center of the room, facing the rock fireplace, was a monster C-shaped couch covered in some kind of stripped animal fur. This room smelled like a forest. Joe liked it.

Melissa stood beside a scooped leather chair. Joe folded his hands and found himself in the middle of a Lionel train set on the floor behind the couch. He felt like Paul Bunyan.

"Excuse my father's tastes," she said, a knowing glint creasing the corners of her brown eyes. Joe looked away and said:

"I like it."

"Then you would've liked my father."

"Doctor Robertson, I presume?"

"No. That's my mother. Jane Dickenson Robertson."

"My apologies."

Her expression indicated to Joe that her attention went somewhere else momentarily then returned. "He was a wildlife biologist." She pointed to the ceiling-to-floor bookcase that took up a third of the north wall. It was filled with books. "He wrote some of those. His books are read in colleges all over America." She lowered her voice. "He and my mother died in a car crash in eighty-five. My brother got the bank accounts, but I got the house." She looked down into her lap. When she looked back at Joe, she was smiling–just slightly. "My parents were wonderful people." She looked around the room. "But they couldn't stop buying things they didn't need. I grew up in this house. I need the money, but I can't sell it."

"It's a great house."

Her attention slipped away, her eyes narrowed. She was thinking about Robby again. Joe knew she was trying to hide how upset she was. There was a moment where their eyes met. Joe decided to look away first. He'd slay that macho image she had of him once and for all with a shot of well-aimed shyness.

"I should see Robby's room," Joe suggested.

She nodded and he followed her every move down the long hall where the walls were spiky from heavy texturing. The bedroom itself was large, with its own bathroom and a high, double-mattress bed. Everything else in the room matched: a dresser, a desk and chair and a bookshelf that nearly reached the ceiling. It was crammed with boy-junk. Except on the bottom shelf. There were several books–mysteries. There was Dashiell Hammett, Joe's personal favorite –all five novels. Raymond Chandler, P.D. James and Robert B. Parker were represented, as well as other authors Joe didn't recognize.

"It's been mysteries for a year or so now," she said sadly.

"Kids get on kicks," he said. "When I was about nine it was Indians for me. I used to paint my face with mom's lipstick and eyeliner, tie a belt around my waist, tuck a hand towel in the front and another in the back and go outside and raid my neighbors' yards, playing Indian. Of course the fathers of the little squaws in the neighborhood didn't appreciate that I wasn't wearing anything under the hand towels, but I didn't care–just as long as I did it right."

Melissa smiled openly. "You didn't really do that." Joe raised his hand in oath. She laughed, shaking her head. "You must've been a weird little boy." Her smile faded. She was thinking of Robby again. She put her hand over her mouth. Tears filled her eyes. Joe laid his hand on her shoulder. He didn't say anything. Instead, he turned to business, lifting the corner of Robby's mattress and folding it back. Melissa looked confused.

"Looking for things he might have hid," Joe informed her, flipping over the other end of the mattress. He ran his hand across and around the lower box springs. He pulled each drawer from the dresser, laid it on the floor and quickly sifted through underwear and sweat socks, t-shirts and sport shirts. The drawers were nearly empty.

"Are clothes missing?" he asked her.

She looked over his shoulder as he knelt over the drawers. "Definitely. I put a stack of boxers in the corner of that drawer yesterday before going to work. They're gone. His sock drawer is half-empty. Damn that boy."

In the closet, Joe noticed gaps in the clothing where he'd grabbed trousers and shirts and possibly a coat or two. Hats were lined up along an overhead shelf. There was a conspicuous interruption to the row. From behind him, Melissa said:

"He took his cowboy hat."

"Anything else?"

She studied the closet. "His video camera sat right there on the floor in the corner. It's gone."

Joe closed the closet doors. "If I could be a little nosey," he said, replacing the dresser drawers with a grunt, "tell me what you meant last night when you said Robby accuses you of making his father leave."

"How will that find Robby?"

"Help me get into his head." Mentally, Joe uncrossed his fingers.

A grim reluctance surfaced in her voice, but she told him.

"My ex is a drummer. Picked lousy bands and wouldn't do studio work to pay the bills. I insisted he get a job. For four years. He putzed around with Jagged Devil and Unruly Truly and Triage and a half-dozen other wanna-be bands around L.A., playing Madam Wong's, Filthy McNasty's and a couple other local clubs. There was always some big deal with Warner Brothers brewing, or Arista was having them play for the big boys–I heard it all. Nothing ever happened, of course. I kept at him to get a real job. We were broke, Robby was twelve and needed things. What did Jack do? He went and found himself a coke habit. Before I met Jack, I sang in a band up in San Francisco where I went to school, so I went back to doing back-up studio work. Got a good agent and put a decent career together in about a year. Jack couldn't take it. Boogied on me. Turned out he met some heavy metal barfly at a dive in Reseda. She thought he was the next Ringo Starr or something and followed him up to the bay area. He couldn't get anything together up there either. Two years ago, he and his new appendage moved to Trinity County and became professional do-nothings. Basically, he left the planet. And his son."

"How does Robby see things?"

"He doesn't. He thinks I nagged his dad until his dad couldn't take it anymore. Which was true, I guess. But Robby didn't have the whole picture. And I'm not about to tell him that his dad's a doper and a drone."

She definitely has a way with words, Joe thought, searching the bookcase. On the shelf, pressed against the side at the end of a row of books, Joe found a thin, colorfully psychedelic yearbook for 1987 from Robert Jones Junior High School. He found Robby's picture. No one had written anything there. He read the silly, cliché-ridden messages from his fellow students in the back and front of the book. Most were signed by girls. Many were pretty descriptive. He was well-liked.

"This was his last year at this school?" Joe asked.

She nodded. "He starts Taft in three weeks."

"Taft High School." A beep went off somewhere in his brain. It happened sometimes. Beep. It was intuition, but he preferred the euphemism. Women had intuition; men had beeps.

"T.J.–Robby's friend? Does he go to Taft?"

"He'll be a Junior, yeah."

"Have you ever heard the name Weldon–Jackie Weldon?"

Her expression told him that the name meant something, but she couldn't think of the connection. "She goes to Taft?"

Joe nodded.

"How does that connect with Robby? He doesn't go there yet. And he and T.J. haven't been friends that long. They met in karate class, not school."

"Where's your phone?" Joe asked, looking around the room.

"Kitchen."

He got the Kenny's number from Melissa and called it.

"Hello."

"Mrs. Kenny? This is Joe Cox. Leah Levin's partner?"

"Oh, yes."

"Has she come by to speak with you?"

"She's here now, do you wish to speak with her?"

"Yes, please." His heart picked up tempo as he waited.

"What."  Leah sounded like he'd interrupted something.

"How's it going?"

"Checking up on me?"

"No. I'm at Melissa's and–"

"Oh, now it's Melissa–"

"Leah," Joe said, lowering his voice and turning his back to Melissa so she wouldn't hear his anger. "Shut up for a second, will you? T.J. goes to–"

"Taft High School," she finished.

"Ask Mrs. Kenny if he has last year's yearbook."

Leah chuckled devilishly into the phone. "Way ahead of you, Joe." She'd found something. That's why she was upset. She wanted to spring it on him, show what she could do, and he'd ruined the surprise. "Let me read something to you," Leah said. "Here it is: 'You're one of my favorite guys and I wanna say thanks for being there. Don't ever change the way you kiss.'" She paused for punishment. "It's signed by Jackie Weldon."

"Yes!" Joe exclaimed, knocking over a canister of pens and pencils. Excitement streaked through him as he shook his fist in the air. Those beeps were never wrong. Melissa mouthed What? What?

"So what does it mean?" Leah said, trying to sound off-handed. She hadn't put it all together yet.

"Means T.J. knows Jackie."

"I got that far. What else?"

"Means Robby was probably after information. He didn't want a job. He wanted access. Somehow T.J. found out Teddi hired me–us. Robby's with T.J."

"Yeah. So?"

She still didn't get it. Joe loved it. He was still master. "They're looking for Jackie Weldon."

Joe enjoyed the long pause on the other end of the line. Leah aaaahhhhed as the picture pieced together. "But...you're saying T.J. got Robby to apply for a job with us?"

"Or he did it on his own to help his friend."

"And how did he know that Teddi hired us?"

"I don't know." He thought to himself, Maybe Jayne, Jackie's sister, the one with the evil sense of humor. A red flash of memory hit him. "What kind of car does T.J. have?"

"VW. One of those new Jettas."

"Is it red?"

"How'd you know?"

The red car that almost side-swiped him on the road up to the Weldon's. It was T.J.

"Any idea where he went camping?"

"No."

"How could they let a seventeen-year-old go off on his own without knowing where?"

Leah whispered, "You'd have to meet them. Father's a chemist, mother's a homemaker, he's an only child–spoiled rotten–gets good grades, gives the appearance of being responsible, so they pretty much let him do what he damn well pleases. And think it's perfectly normal."

"You, uh, you did a, you know, a good job," Joe complimented awkwardly.

"I know. Over there, what did you get–other than excited?"

"Cut it out. Just that he's taken enough stuff with him for us to know he intends to be away for awhile."

"What now?"

"Finished searching his room?"

"Almost."

"When you finish, head back to the office. I'll call you. Somebody I want to talk to first."

"Looks like we'll be working together on this," she said, "partner." She quickly hung up.

"Are you certain of this?" Melissa asked.

"No."

"You think Robby was just trying to find this Weldon girl when he talked you into hiring him?"

Joe nodded. The copy machine. Robby had keys. When I was at the play, he came in and copied the file. My notes about my conversation with Otto were in there. Robby knows Jackie went to Paley.

"Joe? What're you thinking about?"

"If I'm right about Robby's intentions and about him being with T.J., I think I know where he went."

"Where?"

"Mojave desert."

Her face beamed with optimism. But Joe was thinking about the complexity of looking for Jackie and Robby in Paley.

Melissa said: "What's wrong?"

"Leah's coming with me." He tried not to show any distaste in that prospect.

"Not happy about that?"

"I don't work well with others. I'm better alone."

"Oh," she said. "That why you're single?"

Beep.