Authors: Lynda La Plante
He slapped her face, and she picked up the brush and swiped him across the cheek. He stepped back.
“My, that was a nice left hook, but then you’re a tough lady, aren’t you? And you have the scars to prove it. A whore, a drunkard … I should have asked for a blood test before I fucked you, shouldn’t I?”
“You bastard!”
she snapped.
“Am I? And what are you? At least I know with someone as young as Tilda she’s unlikely to be diseased.”
She kicked him hard in the groin. He gasped and clutched at himself, leaning forward.
“I can also take care of myself, Mr. Caley. You want to say shit to me, you’ll get it back, which is something else maybe a young innocent kid couldn’t do. Now look at the doll.”
368 He was wincing with pain, still bent forward, as she flipped open the towel to show the voodoo doll.
“tDo you know if Ruby Corbello made this for your daughter?”
“Of course I fucking don’t, it’s disgusting!”
“So are you. I found this in Tilda’s bedroom, hidden in a tennis racket
case.”
He turned back to sit on the bed.
“Anna Louise wouldn’t do something as sick as that. Her mother, maybe. In fact, if you know who made it I’ll order one for Elizabeth.”
“You think it’s funny?”
“]So, I don’t, I don’t know what the hell to think, and with this burning fucking pain in my testicles it’s tough thinking about anything right now. What the hell did you kick me in the nuts for?”
Lorraine rewrapped the doll.
“You’ve gotten away with stealing from her trust fund. You’re a thief, Robert Caley.”
He laughed.
“Bullshit, I’ll be able to pay every cent back. I’ve even offe red to, but Lloyd Dulay wouldn’t hear of it, and it’s his cash, Lorraine. So who’s stealing from whom?”
“You stole Tilda Brown’s innocence.”
He threw his head back, laughing.
“Did I? So what was that you told me about her and Anna Louise getting gang-banged at some club? Lorraine, you are thrashing around trying to find something, anything, to prove that I am … what? What are you trying to prove I arn?”
“A thief.”
He laughed.
“I admit it. Right, what next? Oh, of course, a child molestef, right, that’s the second thing, anything else?”
“A murderer, maybe.”
He straightened up, still nursing himself between the legs.
“Who did I murder, Lorraine? Anna Louise, is that what you are trying to prove?”
She folded her arms.
“I didn’t kill my daughter, I know no reason why she disappeared off the fece of the earth unless it was to get away from her fucking mother, like I arn doing. I admit I used Anna Louise’s trust fund, but I had every right, I had given the best years of my life to Elizabeth, and to her daughter. I looked out for that child from the day she was born, and I had to be satisfLed with that bitch doling out money as if I was a hired hand. It was me vwho built up her properties, worth almost nothing when I found them, ruow valued at millions. It was me who covered for her drinking, her drugs, me who saved her life, not once but Christ knows how many times, and I vwas never shown an ounce of respect. I have been cross-examined, interv iewed, interrogated by cops and people like you, who in the end are all
pursuing the investigation for money. But you, you win the prize. You’re so desperate for that one million bucks my crazy wife offered, you will try anything, and I know why. You have only six more days to crack this case. You even fucked me to get more information. You, sweetheart, are the lowest of them all. Now get your stinking piece of evidence and get out of here before I throw you out on your ass, you whore!”
He was so angry he was panting, but she didn’t back down. Instead she smiled at him.
“Takes one to know one, Robert.”
She threw a right upper cut, and he stepped back and let go with a body punch that made her gasp and totter backward, but she pushed herself off the wall, ready to go at him again. She walked into his fist, catching her right eye. He froze, not wanting to brawl with her, arid that was his mistake. Lorraine brought her knee up, crunching him yet again, and then she punched him in the face so hard she felt her knuckles split open on his teeth. He sank to his knees, unable to make a sound.
She picked up her briefcase, shoved the doll inside and snapped it closed. She tossed twenty bucks onto his moaning, huddled figure.
“That’s for the tea.”
She was shaking her fistit hurt her more than his punch to her eye. As she opened the door the telephone rang. She hesitated and picked up the extension nearest to the door.
Rosie was so excited she was gasping.
“We got lucky. Nicky Gordon picked up a girl outside the staff exit of the hokd. He had just dropped off a regular.”
P
Lorraine interrupted Rosie, partly because Robert Caley was slowly getting to his feet, and partly because she was eager to know where the luck came in.
“Where did he take her?”
“Tilda Brown’s.”
B
Rooney laid the steak over Lorraine’s eye, which was now really swollen.
“Hey, if you think I look bad, you should see the other guy.”
Rosie was bandaging her knuckles, which were swollen, the skin split open.
“You might have a cracked knuckle, Lorraine,”
she said.
“Bullshit, it’s okay, I’m okay.”
Lorraine struggled up and staggered to the mirror. She took one look and felt as if she was going to faint; her right eye was closed and already dark bruising was showing above and below.
“Well, I look really good, didn’t think it was this bad. Anyway, let’s not waste any more time.”
370
COLD BLODD
Rosie flipped open her book.
“Reason he never reported it, or has never been questioned, is because he thought the girl was staff and she wore a head scarf and dark glasses. She came out of the staff entrance as he dropped Mimi Lavette, a fifty-year-old chambermaid, off for the late shift. He was doing a U-turn when we think Anna Louise waved him down, gave him the address, and got impatient with him when he had to double-check it. He got all nervous, even talking to me, just for the socalled reward. You were right, he hasn’t got a taxi license, and judging from the look of the vehicle I’d say that it’s not taxed or insured either.”
Lorraine pressed the steak to her eye as the telephone rang. Rosie answered, told the caller to hang on, and for a moment Lorraine thought it might be Robert Caley, but it was the cop, Harris Harper. He couldn’t see Rooney until the morning.
Lorraine suggested they leave visiting Fryer’s bar until the following day. Returning to Tilda Brown’s home had to be their first priority. She wouldn’t let Rosie go with them to the Browns’ house. Two people questioning them was one thing, but three looked like the heavy mob was in town.
Rooney and Lorraine went up the steps and rang the bell, which echoed through the dark hallway. Lorraine peered in through the glass as Rooney rang again. A maid turned on the hall lights and opened the door.
“I urgently need to speak to Mr. or Mrs. Brown.”
“
‘Fraid they are not at home.”
“When will they be back?”
“They is dining with friends.”
Lorraine, Rooney and her driver Frangois sat in the car for over an hour. At last they saw the headlights of a car heading toward them.
“Here they come, I hope.”
They watched the car slow down and swerve past them to take a lefthand turn into the driveway. Lorraine dug Francois in the back.
“Go after them, we don’t want them to refuse to let us in.”
Mr. and Mrs. Brown turned, startled, as Lorraine got out of the car.
“Mr. Brown, I’m so sorry, but I need to speak to you.”
Half an hour later, Mr. and Mrs. Brown were still adamant that Tilda, on the night of February 15, had remained in her room watching her own TV. She had not eaten with them but had had a tray sent up at seventhirty. They had both gone up to say good night at ten-thirty. She had not
left her room, no one had stopped by and no one had telephoned. All this had been stated over and over many times and Mr. and Mrs. Brown were tired and becoming irritated.
“Could I just go to her room, please?”
Rooney and Lorraine stood in the center of the dead girl’s bedroom as Mr. Brown opened the doors onto the low, metal-railed balcony. Mrs. Brown had started weeping again, and her husband was angry at the intrusion, but Lorraine refused to leave. Rooney was embarrassed at the couple’s obvious distress, and he was very uneasy. Lorraine looked bad, her bruised eye had swollen and was still closed.
“Maybe we leave it until the morning,”
he had said quietly.
“No. If that cabdriver was telling the truth, then Anna Louise Caley came here that night.”
Lorraine stepped out on the balcony and pointed to a narrow metal stairway leading down to the garden.
“You don’t have a dog, do you?”
“No, we don’t.”
She looked across the garden.
“So if someone did come here at night and crossed the lawns, they could easily walk up to this balcony?”
“Yes, I suppose so, but why would they want to?”
“If they didn’t want to be seen, Mr. Brown, and if they also knew the layout of the house, knew by looking up at this window that Tilda was here, someone could have come and gone?”
Mr. Brown pursed his lips and then suddenly turned to Lorraine.
“What exactly are you trying to suggest? Th^wmy daughter had someone up here, someone she didn’t want us to see?p
“No, Mr. Brown, maybe that someone did not want to be seen. Could you leave us alone for ten minutes? I’d appreciate it.”
The Browns left Rooney and Lorraine alone, but it was quite obvious they did not approve, and said they would wait in the drawing room for ten minutes and no more. As the door closed, Lorraine turned to Rooney.
“What you thinking?”
He sat down on the dead girl’s bed.
“Not a lot. So Anna Louise came here and left. We got almost four missing hours before Robert Caley and his wife contacted the police, so she could have met with Tilda Brown, but after that God only knows what happened to her.”
Lorraine picked up the white polar bear, and tossed it back on the bed.
“If she left, she didn’t take a cab, no record of her doing so, and the taxi she came in had already left. Bill, what if she never left here?”
“What?”
Lorraine walked out on the balcony and stared across the gardens. Just to her right was the playhouse, the place where the two girls had played as children, now locked up, and suddenly Lorraine knew. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled.
“I don’t think she did.”
“What?”
It was Rooney’s turn now.
“Come on downstairs, Bill.”
Mr. and Mrs. Brown sat in their drawing room in subdued but angry silence as Lorraine walked in, but before they could ask her to leave she pointed to the window with its expensive slatted blinds.
“The playhouse in the gardenI noticed it was padlocked, can you tell me why?”
Mrs. Brown looked at her husband in confusion, but he only frowned in response.
“Did you padlock it, Mr. Brown?”
“Not that I can recall. Did you, honey?”
“No, I thought perhaps you had done it. Maybe Tilda did.”
He stood up.
“I didn’t. In fact I avoid looking at the thing, it brings back such memories. Are you sure? Padlocked?”
Lorraine shrugged.
“Well, I saw the chain when I was here in daylight, maybe I’m wrong. Do you have a flashlight?”
Rooney plodded after Lorraine, Mr. Brown walked ahead with the light.
“Can you tell me what the fuck we’re doing, Lorraine?”
Rooney whispered.
“You tell me. Everybody else on this street has security cameras, they don’t. They leave their gates open and put a padlock on a kids’ playhouse? Doesn’t make sense.”
The faint beam of the flashlight showed there was a padlock, and quite a heavy one.
“Perhaps the gardener is storing equipment in there?”
Mr. Brown suggested.
“Do you have bolt cutters or something we can get the lock open with?”
“Why?”
asked .Mr. Brown.
Lorraine hesitated.
“I want to see what’s inside.”
It was another ten minutes before they had prized open one of the links in the thick chain. Lorraine eased back the child-size door and stooped low to enter.
373
“Can you shine the light inside, please?”
Two chairs and a small matching table set with plastic teacups and saucers, and a tiny cotlike bed with two dolls tucked under a blanket were all that could fit inside.
“There’s nothing here,”
Rooney said.
Lorraine took the flashlight from Mr. Brown and shone it around the house, then down to the plastic sheeting that covered the floor.
“Can you smell anything, Bill?”
Rooney sniffed, leaning in from the tiny door.
“Just mildew.”
“I’m rather cold,”
Mr. Brown said, standing outside, behind Rooney. Lorraine suggested he return to the house, and after hesitating a moment he walked away. She shone the yellow beam slowly over the interior, sniffing, until she got down on her knees and sniffed closer to the ground.
“Mildew, you sure?”
Rooney sighed, and bent low to get inside. He sniffed.
“Yeah, mildew, like moss or mold or something, but that’s natural. It must be hot as hell when the sun shines inside here, it’s all plastic and it’ll sweat with the heat. What you doing?”
“Hold the goddamned light, Bill, I’m gonna pull back the groundsheet.”
“For God’s sake, Lorraine, why don’t we come back in the morning?”
“Because we’re here now, so do as I say.”
Rooney was on his hands and knees, shining the flashlight as Lorraine began to pull back the plastic groundsheet. She pushed the little chairs and table aside and, crawling on all fours, dr^Ped back the sheet. She sat back on her heels, reached over to the table anfl took one of the small plastic plates.
“What you doing?”
“Digging, what do you think it looks like? Keep the light up, for Chrissakes, I can’t see.”