Killer Commute (7 page)

She looked around her now and made a point to enjoy it. Most days she left for work before daylight and got home at dusk or after dark, and was too tired to notice Leroy's work.

The seagull who thought he was a pigeon posed on top of Jeremy's roof again. Okay, it probably wasn't the same one, but he did appear to be doing his statue thing in the same place.

Mrs. Beesom's sentry palm clattered merrily even though it was only three-fourths of its former self. Charlie must ask Leroy if he could help dispose of the dead fourth. Jeremy would have taken care of that once.

How could Jeremy have been so indispensable and still such an unknown quantity, and why hadn't she or Betty or Maggie raised this question while he still lived? Such mysteries can be fun—but not when they happen to you and your neighborhood.

Officer Mason slid out the back door and slumped into the deck chair across from Charlie. “She's taking a shower.”

“Good plan.”

“We're going to talk afterwards. I'm sticking with dogs.”

“Another good plan.”

“How can some young snit with three huge zits make a cop feel like a leper? Even if she is a blond?”

“Zits? Oh, there is a God.” Charlie's buzz hove to and she stood. “Want some breakfast?”

“Already had my bagel.” But Mary Maggie followed her into the kitchen and watched her poach an egg and heat milk, pour it all over a piece of toast. “I've heard of hang-over medicine, but—you're not going to eat that?”

Charlie grabbed some leftover orange slices and took her breakfast to her sunken patio to enjoy the birds flitting around Mrs. Beesom's feeders, the wonderful scents and colors of her own private patio garden, and what promised to be a beautiful day. She was on vacation, and would not obsess over the poor cop who'd stayed in the house to interrogate Libby, or even a murdered friend and neighbor. Not right now. Every minute counts in this crazy world. If you can enjoy one, grab it.

Even her commute—often two hours each way, if not held up by an accident or construction or whim of the freeway god—offered chances to grab some time to do something or enjoy something, like eat a bagel or dry her hair while sitting in gridlock and talking on the cellular to New York which was three hours ago on the wrong time and maybe already out to lunch.

The options were endless with her notebook computer and e-mail, her electronic scheduler. Gridlock used to be an ulcerating, unscheduled hassle in an already frantic day. But Charlie had adjusted, and now she was woefully behind in her day and makeup et cetera if there was no grid to use to get ready for the office. She'd been known to arrive without her pantyhose on. No way could you drive a freeway and put on pantyhose.

It was the return journey at night that was the problem. As she'd increasingly lost any pretense of control over her only child, she'd sort of given in to the exhaustion besieging her on the return trip and risked drowsiness and death from inattention.

But in Charlie's crazy world, this day had become special suddenly, and she spooned up the rest of the warmed eggy milk with a satisfied sigh. Three whole zits that weren't there yesterday. What more could the mother of a teenaged girl ask? Libby Abigail Greene was about to have her period.

CHAPTER 9

CHARLIE
UNLOCKED HER
mailbox, one of four silver doors in a black metal casing on a pole carefully lettered with a number of crude suggestions. It stood outside the compound, and she had to step aside when the gate swung open and Officer Mason strode out to the street and her car.

Before the gate could close, Libby and her Wrangler roared out, too. Thankfully, the cars headed in opposite directions. Neither female saw Charlie, or pretended they didn't. Both looked royally pissed. Charlie figured Doug Esterhazie had lost his anonymity with the Long Beach PD.

Maggie slipped out her front door as if she'd been watching for them to leave. She opened her box and Mrs. Beesom's. Whoever got to the mailboxes first usually brought in everybody else's mail and left it on their doormats. It had been Jeremy's idea, so anyone coming home after dark wouldn't be exposed to mugging. The same key worked for all four boxes. Charlie and her best friend stood looking at Jeremy's box.

“I don't remember ever bringing in his mail,” Charlie said.

“You're usually the last one home. I took his in when he went on trips.” Which wasn't very often.

“He must not have picked his up Friday, either, if he didn't pick up ours. Maggie, when you took in his mail, was it addressed to Jeremy Fiedler?”

“I'd think I'd have noticed if it wasn't, don't you?”

“You don't remember.” They stood talking to each other but looking at Jeremy's mailbox, like they were talking to it. Neither wanted to admit what both knew they were about to do. “If he got mail, he had to have an identity recorded with the post office. I mean, they won't just deliver to an address. Will they?”

“We better hurry before someone sees us.”

Charlie emptied the last mailbox and both of them rushed to her front door. She'd blocked open the security grate that guarded it from a surprise visit from the big bad wolf.

“What happened to your key? You're going to lock yourself out again.”

“It's just easier to block it open. You know, there'd be one way for sure to prove Jeremy had no identity—if he didn't get any offers from credit-card companies to lend him buckets of cash at twenty-two percent after six months.” Charlie rummaged through her mail, all junk, not even a doxy magazine for her teen, and threw it at the pile already overloading her dining room table. They settled at the breakfast nook with the rest.

“We should be wearing gloves,” Maggie said.

“Too late now.” Charlie helped her best friend sort through their dead neighbor's mail and then looked up, astonished. “God, they actually send credit-card stuff to Occupant?”

“Do you suppose they have those phony checks made out that way? There's no bank statement or bills.”

“Mine and Libby's was all junk the last two days, too. Even Edwina e-mails now or calls. What did you get?”

“Hardly anything of importance comes through the U.S. Post Office anymore, when you think about it.” But Maggie fanned out her mail on the table, too. Two mail-order catalogs and her ten-million-dollar winnings from Publishers Clearing House came to Maggie—the rest came to Occupant or to Resident.

“You didn't get a bank statement, either.”

“My bank's gone electronic.”

“So has mine. Do you think if you are totally electronic you can escape your identity?”

“Charlie, there's always the IRS, and the city and county and state governments have to keep track of you for tax purposes.”

“The IRS has gone electronic for filing and billing simple tax statements. If you could get access to their computers, which are rumored to be medieval anyway, you might disappear yourself.”

“But what about your Social Security number? Have you noticed how we keep changing sides in this argument? You scare me.”

They looked at Betty's mail. Three mail-order catalogs for sensible shoes,
Stylish, but with big toe boxes and slender heels, for the mature, stylish woman.
One birdwatcher's newsletter. A glossy quarterly report from Sara Lee. Three glossy brochures spouting the advantages of Celerium, the antiaging pill.
How to live longer and enjoy it. The miracle cure for cataracts and senility. Orgasm for those over eighty!

“Maggie, these are all addressed to her, at least. We all worry about our personal business, buying habits, finances, and health problems becoming public knowledge to whoever buys the right mailing list.”

“Vibrators? Porno videos?”

“Look—here's a come-on from two brokerage firms. They know she's got Sara Lee, and she probably has other investrnents. They know her age, probably that she's widowed, may even know what she has in her checking account. Here's something from her bank, looks like. It's all addressed here, and to her. She's targeted. Ah, here's AARP. See what I'm saying?”

“I don't want to.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They make dress shoes with big toe boxes and narrow heels? How come I can never find any? And if I order a catalog like this, they'll give the AARP my name and address and the people who want me to have orgasms after I'm eighty.”

“Maggie, the important thing is, almost everything is known about Betty Beesom. Almost nothing about Jeremy Fiedler. He didn't seem like the hacker type, but if the Long Beach PD can hire some hackers, he sure could.”

“To get himself erased from all electronic records. But there are still paper records on him somewhere—backup copies of computer disks and CDs.”

“Could be hard to find. Software changes, and companies don't back up the dated versions long anymore.”

“Yeah. Look, they've even got pumps like mine—but with a wide toe box and a narrow heel.”

Outside, the gate grated open and Betty's Olds 88 roared in. They looked across the table at each other, sharing a familiar thought. The old lady drove only to church, the supermarket, doctor, dentist, and beauty shop. To the homes of a few close friends, and even fewer restaurants. She did much of her shopping by mail. But it was only a matter of time before she and that juggernaut hit something. Charlie and Maggie dreaded the day Mrs. Beesom could no longer drive. Particularly now that Jeremy was gone.

Maggie took Betty's mail over to her and Charlie forgot and answered her phone. It was Ed Esterhazie. Officer Mason of the LBPD had been for a visit. Ed was on his way over.

The Esterhazie mansion wasn't that far away, but Charlie was still surprised at how soon the doorbell rang. She opened the front door and then the security grate to the president of Esterhazie Concrete just in time to surprise two young things laying wrapped flowers up against the front gate of the compound. When she called to them, they turned and ran.

“Wait.” Charlie ran after them, leaving poor Ed to hold the grate open. When she returned moments later, one of the floral offerings exploded, and just the percussion knocked Charlie to the sidewalk. Seconds later another explosion sent pieces of the iron driveway gate flying. One twisted bar embedded itself in the front of Maggie's house. And if Charlie had thought the world a strangely quiet place when the compound filled with emergency and official officials to investigate the murder of Jeremy Fiedler, it was totally without sound now. She couldn't hear herself swallow, or the sound of her shoes as she staggered to her feet and wove her way toward Ed, who lay sprawled across her front step.

He'd let go of the security grate and it had slammed shut, but it didn't matter because the front gate was open to all now. Permanently. Charlie giggled and couldn't hear it either, her ears should be ringing. Panic at the thought of a permanent disability seeped into her consciousness with an odd and horrid tingling.

“Ed,” she felt her mouth and tongue and vocal cords say.

His eyes were open and blinking. Blood on his forehead trickled off into the inverted V of his hairline to one side of his widow's peak. Charlie collapsed to a sitting position next to him and blinked back.

Just around the corner, the girls had jumped into a waiting car which had no discernable license plate and whose driver laid rubber for a block getting them out of the neighborhood. Now she knew why.

Ed was talking to her, struggling to pull a cell phone the size of a thin billfold out of his shirt pocket. Pretty soon you'd be able to make a phone call on a pinky ring.

“I can't hear you,” she told him, and couldn't hear herself. Was she making sound?

Maggie and Mrs. Beesom appeared as one out of the void and Ed handed Maggie the cellular billfold. Ed was a good-looking fiftyish, in a prosperous way—

That doesn't make sense, Charlie.

I know. At least I can hear myself think.

Ed sat up with Betty's help and gave Charlie a pitying look. What, her nose had been blown off, too? She was almost blind without her contact lenses, couldn't hear, no nose—what else? Well, she could smell. She could smell blood.

And Charlie could feel. She could feel herself tipping over where she sat.

*   *   *

Jeremy Fiedler sprawled on the lounge on Charlie's patio stroking Tuxedo and Jennifer. One of them purred. Jennifer sat alongside him and Tuxedo on his lap. He stroked the nubile on the head just like the cat. Jennifer hadn't grown into her nose, her hair was untidy, and her eyes red, but her legs were well shaped.

“What do you see in girls young enough to be your granddaughter?” Charlie asked him.

“Their acute intelligence,” Jeremy said and Tuxedo grinned and Jennifer smiled with her reddened eyes and her whole face. She looked triumphant and transformed. And suddenly lovely.

Charlie sat in a morning grid on the 405 talking to Joe Putnam at Pitman's in New York about Keegan Monroe's novel. “So, what do you think?”

“Keegan Monroe can't write novels, Charlie, you know that. But I love the films he pens.”

“You
have
read the manuscript—”

“I don't have to. The buzz is screenwriters can't write novels. You know that. He could always do a novelization, but he's too famous. Call me back when—”

Charlie was halfway into her pantyhose when traffic started up again. She almost spilled her coffee. And people used to obsess over being taken to the hospital in dirty underpants. Her shoes on the seat beside her, the foot on the gas wearing one side of the pantyhose to the knee, the one on the brake side bare, coffee cup in one hand and steering wheel in the other, and the cell phone in her pinky ring rang and she spilled coffee down her front to answer it but it was the wrong hand and how the hell was she supposed to show up at the Universal meeting in a ruined suit and she switched to the hand that held the wheel to answer her other pinky and Jeremy said, “Jesus, Charlie, watch out—” and there was this semi headed for her windshield and the driver lopping a wrapped floral arrangement at her and Jeremy saying out of the car radio which she was pretty sure she hadn't turned on, “Charlie, don't keep all your money in the stock market. Keep some in cash.”