The Promise: An Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Novel (5 page)

Elvis Cole

T
HE SKIES WERE CLEARING
the next morning when I faced Meryl Lawrence across the front seat of her Lexus. The parking lot was on the southwest corner of Sunset and Fairfax, hidden behind a chain pharmacy and a diner known for its breakfast. Meryl Lawrence was pleased with the privacy when she arrived, but angry and shaken when I told her what happened.

“Are you crazy? Why did you get involved?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“It wasn’t. It was a
terrible
idea!”

She dug her phone from her purse. Deep lines creased her face, cutting her skin into armored plates.

“Is it on the news? It’ll be on the news.”

“Check the
Times
website. You’ll see it.”

She typed with both thumbs, frantic and fast, staring at her phone.

“Did you tell them I hired you? What did you say about Amy?”

“Nothing. I didn’t mention you or Amy or your company, okay? Relax.”

She typed faster. Her eyes wide. Her chest rose and fell.

I touched her arm.

“We have a lot to talk about.”

Meryl Lawrence was in her mid-forties, with sandy hair and the trim, sturdy build of a woman who took care of herself. She wet her lips as she stared at the phone, thinking, and finally glanced up.

“What did you tell them?”

“You’re out of it, but I told them about Lerner.”

She stared at me curiously, as if the words arrived in slow motion, then looked back at the phone.

“Here it is. Jesus.”

“I had to tell them, Meryl. The police will question everyone in the neighborhood. They’ll find out I asked about Thomas Lerner. Better they heard it from me.”

She read a few seconds before glancing up.

“They’ll want him to confirm your story.”

“Yes. They’re suspicious. They don’t like it I was at the house. They’ll come down on me to pick apart my story.”

She went back to reading, touching her lower lip as if making a prayer.

“Unbelievable. A murder. Someone had to murder this guy
last night
?”

“Lerner moved out at least three years ago, so I might be able to find him first. They’ll look, but Lerner won’t be their top priority. They have plenty to do.”

Meryl Lawrence suddenly lowered her phone and held out a plain white envelope.

“Forget Lerner. Don’t waste more time with him. Here’s the key
and alarm code. Her house is probably filled with clues about her boyfriend.”

I didn’t take the envelope.

“What does Amy Breslyn do for your company?”

“I told you, she’s our vice president in charge of production. What does this have to do with anything?”

“I read her file last night. Your company makes fuels, accelerants, and chemical energy systems. Is a chemical energy system another way of saying ‘explosives’?”

She frowned as if she were getting angry and the armor plates returned.

“Everything we make is explosive. What does it matter?”

I reached across to scroll her phone. The
Times
posted the original story at 3:20 that morning. I read it at 4:15. The photo illustrating the story showed a Bomb Squad vehicle parked in front of Lerner’s house. An update posted at 3:34 described the munitions removed from the house.

“This is Lerner’s house. This is the Bomb Squad. When the police went in, they found four rocket-propelled grenades, a dozen forty-millimeter grenade cartridges, and plastic explosives.”

I watched Meryl Lawrence stare at the picture.

“Kind of a crazy coincidence, you making explosives and all these munitions and explosives in the house.”

Meryl shook her head and lowered the phone.

“I wouldn’t know a rocket-propelled grenade if I sat on it and neither would Amy.”

“I read the file, Meryl. Her corporate biography makes a big deal out of her experience. Double- and triple-based composite fuels. Slurries, gels, and castable propellants. Plasticized accelerants. I had to Google those things to see what they were.”

“We don’t make weapons.”

“You make what’s inside. You make the bang.”

“You can’t honestly believe Amy has something to do with this nonsense.”

“You believe she stole from your company.”

She started to say something, but stopped. People often do that when they hire a private investigator. They try to say what they want me to hear, which isn’t always the truth.

She waved the phone as if everything I needed to know was in the story.

“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know anything about rocket-propelled grenades or this dead man or why you had to get involved. I gave you the boy’s address because she was close to him. If he moved, her connection moved with him and he doesn’t matter anyway if you figure out who she’s been seeing. Take the key. Find her damned boyfriend.”

She held out the envelope again.

“I want you to find her. You said you would find her.”

We were back to the boyfriend, only now she was more desperate than angry. I wondered why she was desperate. I still didn’t take the envelope.

“There’s something you aren’t telling me.”

“I told you everything.”

“No. Not yet.”

“Take the damned key. Find her. I need to make this right.”

The envelope trembled.

“How did you make it wrong?”

She took a long deep breath and sighed as she folded the envelope in her lap. She stared at the diner, where normal people with normal
lives were going inside to enjoy waffles and omelets. She mumbled so softly I barely heard her.

“I made her do it.”

“Do what?”

“I hired her, you know? She was so quiet and shy it took a while, but she was so sweet you couldn’t help but like her. Here she was, a single mother raising this boy. Her entire life revolved around Jacob.”

“The boy’s father around?”

Meryl Lawrence made a derisive snort.

“Abandoned her before Jacob was born. Destroyed her self-esteem. An emotionally abusive piece of shit.”

“Is that what she says or what you say?”

She glanced at me hard, frowned, and turned back to the diner.

“Me.”

“Okay.”

“Well, whatever. She had no one, okay? In all these past fourteen years, I don’t think she saw anyone. She didn’t have a life outside her job and that boy, and honestly, she seemed fine with it. Loved her job. Loved her son. Then she lost Jacob—”

She fell silent for a time, then slowly looked at me.

“She was just so lonely, you know? It was painful. I told her to try one of those online matchmaking services. I pushed. Women like Amy can be—”

She searched for the right word, but wasn’t pleased with the result.

“—persuaded. I talked her into it.”

“You think this is your fault.”

“Isn’t it? I badgered. I nagged. She started swapping emails with someone. This is how I know there’s a man. I was thrilled and I wanted to know all about him, but she wouldn’t say anything. Don’t
you find that weird? I think it’s weird. She told me he was interesting. She told me she liked him. And now here we are.”

“Maybe he’s just some guy. Maybe he doesn’t have anything to do with why she left or why she took the money.”

Meryl Lawrence made a tiny self-loathing snort.

“I’ll ask her if you can find her.”

I took the envelope.

She watched me put it away but didn’t look any less unhappy with herself or relieved.

“Thank you.”

“I promised.”

She gave me a rueful smile.

“If there’s anything else you want to know, now’s the time. I’m thinking about killing myself.”

“Let me get out of the car first, okay?”

“Ha. Ha.”

“All this Top Secret stuff is slowing us down. Last night you told me her office was off-limits. If she swapped emails with someone, her emails might be on her office computer.”

“They aren’t. I read her account.”

“I might find something you didn’t. I might find something else in her office.”

“You won’t. This isn’t just me being obstinate. Our email, phones, and computers are open to the security division. Our Internet usage and phone calls are recorded and reviewed. This is why I gave you my personal cell number and not my office. We have no internal privacy, so none of us use our office computers for personal mail.”

“If they monitor everything, how were you able to read her mail?”

“I oversee the security division.”

“Oh.”

She glanced at her watch.

“Her home is a different matter. You can tear out the walls for all I care. I want to make this right, but I don’t know how much longer I can cover for her.”

I felt bad for her.

“Meryl.”

“What?”

“This isn’t your fault.”

She frowned as if she hated me for saying it and started her car.

“You have her key and alarm code and you have her address. Please get out and do something to earn the money.”

I got out of her car. It was twelve minutes before eight. I had been looking for Amy Breslyn for less than twelve hours. Meryl Lawrence drove away. I drove away, too.

The clock was ticking for both of us.

A
MY
B
RESLYN
lived in a yellow two-story Mediterranean with a red tile roof near the southern edge of Hancock Park. Hers wasn’t the wealthiest part of Hancock Park, but the homes were built in the twenties for well-to-do people and still suggested affluence. Bird-of-paradise plants framed her windows and a narrow drive sloped up the lawn to a garage in her backyard. A blue-and-yellow security sign stood beside the drive. Armed response.

I parked at the curb across the street and studied the house. A family once hired me to find a retired surgeon named Harold Jessler. Dr. Jessler had been missing for nine days, during which his brother, two sisters, his daughter, his son, and his ex-wife repeatedly phoned and visited his house. Their calls were not returned and Jessler was never home. They feared he had grown ill and wandered away, but Dr. Jessler answered the door when I knocked. I asked why he opened
the door for me but hid from his family. His answer was simple. He didn’t want to see them.

Amy’s house was beautifully maintained and the lawn was neatly trimmed. Newspapers weren’t piled on the drive. She could have been inside counting money or watching TV, but probably not. Most people who embezzle four hundred sixty thousand dollars have a plan and the plan usually includes leaving the country.

I was getting out of my car when Meryl Lawrence called.

“Did you go to her house?”

“Yes. I just got here.”

“Did you find anything?”

“I just got here.”

I hung up. If Amy was hiding from Meryl Lawrence, I couldn’t blame her.

I waited for two women to pass on the sidewalk, then went to the door. No one answered, so I let myself in. The alarm went off but stopped when I entered the code.

“Ms. Breslyn? Is anyone home?”

Nada.

The entry was spacious and warm, with white plaster walls, a Spanish tile floor, and heavy oak trim stained dark as dried blood. A living room opened to the right and a formal dining room opened to the left. A stair facing the door climbed to the second floor. A large framed photograph of a boy faced me from the wall. It was the first thing anyone would see when they entered. The boy looked to be eight or nine years old, with pale skin, chubby cheeks, and a crown of curly dark hair. This would be Jacob.

“Anyone here? Hello?”

I locked the front door, reset the alarm, and took a fast tour to
make sure I was alone. Amy’s house was neat, clean, and as orderly as an empty hotel. No overturned furniture, splashes of blood, or ransom notes suggested foul play. Dr. Jessler had been hiding under his bed, but Amy Breslyn wasn’t. When I was satisfied no one was home, I checked the garage. Her car was gone, but this didn’t mean she was on the run or even out of town. For all I knew, she was at Starbucks.

I searched the second floor first and began in her bedroom. The bed was crisply made. Clothes weren’t strewn about or dangling from open drawers. The ebony nightstands bracing the bed and their matching dresser were uncluttered and showroom clean, and the dresser was filled with orderly stacks of neatly folded clothes. There were also no travel brochures, love notes, or pictures of men taped to the mirror. So much for easy clues.

The same obsessive neatness and order were evidenced in her closet and bath. Her clothes were organized by type and color, and neatly hung or shelved. Two black Tumi suitcases stood at the rear of the closet. The bathroom contained ample supplies of toothbrushes and toiletries, and no evidence she had packed for a romantic getaway, made a fast getaway, or otherwise abandoned her home. I also found nothing to suggest she or anyone else still lived there. The wastebaskets were empty.

There were three bedrooms on the second floor and the next was used as an office. A long, sleek desk crossed one end of the room, with wall-to-wall filing drawers behind it. Low bookcases lined the remaining walls, jammed with eye-catching titles like
Handbook For Chemical Engineers, Reactive Mass Inhibitors, Fluid Compressive Dynamics,
and
Advanced Polymer Thermodynamics
. Framed photographs of Jacob or Amy and Jacob together lined the tops of the bookcases. The boy in the entry had grown into a tall, gangly young man who towered over his mother. One picture showed Amy holding a tray of oversized
brownies. She was surrounded by Jacob and his friends in what appeared to be their high school newspaper office. Another showed a teenage Jacob and a pretty young girl posed with Amy in front of the house. Jacob and the girl were decked out in tuxedo and gown, and were probably heading off to their senior prom. Jacob was beaming. Amy was smiling, too, but something about her was sad. Maybe she was one of those people who always looked sad even when they were not.

Amy’s desk was as neat and uncluttered as her dresser and nightstands. A digital phone, two oversized monitors, and a state-of-the-art wireless keyboard and mouse sat perfectly aligned on a pristine surface. The monitors were off. A dark blue binder titled DEPARTMENT OF NAVY BIDDING REQUIREMENTS sat squared beside the keyboard. My desk was a dump site of paper clips, bills, receipts, Post-it pads, notes, more bills, magazines I kept meaning to toss, invoices, used napkins, take-out menus, and stains. Her desk contained none of those things. It was as if someone had gotten rid of the day-to-day evidence of her life and activities.

Something about the desk bothered me.

I sat and touched the keyboard. The monitors didn’t respond. They powered up when I turned them on, but the screens showed only a bright blue field. I looked under and around her desk. I found all the necessary system components except for the brain that tied them together. Amy’s computer was missing.

I said, “Hmm.”

Detectives said things like this when they were suspicious.

I checked her phone next. The phone had a dial tone, so I tried to bring up the incoming and outgoing call logs. The logs were empty. So was the handset’s phone book. Either the phone was brand-new and had never been used or someone had erased the logs.

I took out my phone and called Meryl Lawrence.

“I’m in her home. Can you talk?”

“I can talk. Did you find something?”

Her voice was quiet and guarded. As if she thought the walls were listening. From what she told me about her security division, they probably were.

“Maybe. You were in her house last week, right?”

“Yes. I’ve been there three times since we got her email. Why?”

“Was her computer here?”

“I was looking for Amy. I didn’t look at her computer.”

“Her computer is missing. Did you take it?”

Her voice was cool and surprised.

“Excuse me?”

“Did you take her computer?”

“What’s wrong with you? I wouldn’t take her computer.”

“You might if you wanted your security division to get into her email.”

“No, I did not take her computer.”

“I had to ask. She probably uses a laptop and takes it everywhere.”

“So find where she is and you’ll find the computer. She’s with that damned man.”

I didn’t want her to get started on the boyfriend.

“One more thing. When you were here, did you use her phone?”

“Why are you asking about phones?”

“Maybe make a call on her phone or hit redial to see who she called or anything like that?”

“No. I’m not that smart. If I’d thought of it, I would have. Did you find the bastard’s number?”

“I didn’t find numbers. The phone logs were erased.”

“Can you get them from the phone company?”

“Depends on which service she uses.”

“That damned man probably erased them. He probably told her—”

I hung up and turned to the file drawers. They were low and wide with files hanging left to right instead of front to back. I was hoping for banking and credit card statements, but the drawers were filled with news stories about her son’s death and the investigations that followed. She had filed hundreds of articles, news items, and reports she’d found on the Internet, and dozens of letters she’d written to the State Department, asking questions they were unable to answer. The files contained nothing about Amy, her work, or her life. The drawers were filled with Jacob.

I photographed her office for my records and moved to the last bedroom.

The last bedroom was Jacob’s. His clothes still hung in the closet and his desk and walls were crowded with the things boys accumulate. His high school graduation portrait hung above his bed. It showed a gawky teenager in cap and gown with a garden of angry zits exploding on his chin. Jacob had probably hated the picture and would not have put it up in his room. His mother hung it.

I found three high school yearbooks on a shelf and an old At-A-Glance address book in Jacob’s desk. The address book contained only a few names and numbers, but I checked L for Lerner and T for Thomas. Lerner wasn’t listed, but the yearbooks gave me an idea. I went back to Amy’s office, took the prom night picture from its frame, and tucked it into the yearbooks. I brought the yearbooks and address book downstairs, left them in the entry, and quickly searched the ground floor.

The living room, dining room, and kitchen proved to be a waste of
time. Another phone sat in the kitchen with another empty memory. I was having what we in the trade called an unproductive morning.

The remaining room was an alcove between the living room and the kitchen. A glass breakfast table faced the kitchen with an empty cut-glass vase centered in its middle. An antique secretary’s desk with a single drawer sat against the wall. The little secretary was the last place I searched in Amy Breslyn’s home, but that’s where I found what I needed.

Fifteen or twenty thin files hung in the drawer, labeled with handwritten tabs like
Household
,
Medical
,
Car
,
VISA
, and
AMEX
. I was proud of myself for finding the files, but Meryl Lawrence would be disappointed. None were labeled
Boyfriend
.

I pulled the credit card files first and quickly skimmed her statements. I found no airline tickets to Dubai, no spending sprees at Tiffany’s, and no around-the-world cruises. Nothing in Amy’s past three statements suggested where she was, what she was doing, or that she had ripped off four hundred sixty thousand dollars.

I put the credit card files aside, skipped files with labels like
Gardener
and
Insurance
, and was fingering through
Cash Receipts
when I sat up and spoke her name.

“Amy.”

Three months earlier, Amy Breslyn purchased a nine-millimeter Ruger semi-automatic pistol, a one-year membership at the X-Spot Indoor Pistol Range, handgun instruction, a cleaning kit, two boxes of nine-millimeter ammunition, a nylon pistol case, and ear protection. The receipt was marked ‘paid in cash.’

I had seen none of these things, so I searched her bedroom again.

I opened shoe boxes, checked the high shelves, and opened her suitcases and purses. I looked between the mattresses, beneath the
clothes in her dresser, and in her nightstands. I searched her office, the garage, the kitchen cabinets, and even her fridge and freezer. I found nothing. No gun, no gun safe, no cleaning supplies or ammunition or accessories.

I wondered why Amy had wanted a gun and if she had taken the gun with her.

I took the files from the secretary, brought them to the entry, and stacked them on the yearbooks.

Eight-year-old Jacob watched from the wall.

“Why did she buy a gun, buddy?”

Jacob didn’t answer.

I wondered what kind of man Jacob grew into. I wondered what he was doing when the bomb went off half a world away and if he was laughing when he died.

The house was filled with him. His pictures were everywhere. His room was a shrine.

“You’re still here so she’s still here. She wouldn’t leave you behind.”

Eight-year-old Jacob smiled. His teeth were pretty bad.

I smiled back.

“I’ll bring back your things. Promise.”

I reset the alarm, let myself out, and went to my car. I dumped the yearbooks and files onto the passenger seat, but didn’t drive away. I thought about the gun. Amy might have had second thoughts. She might have decided it was too loud or too smelly or just wasn’t fun. Maybe having a gun around the house made her feel less safe, so she got rid of it. There were plenty of innocent reasons her gun was missing, but guesses weren’t facts.

I thought about asking Meryl Lawrence. She would probably tell
me the boyfriend took it and I would have to tell her I found no evidence of a boyfriend, no proof he existed, and nothing to suggest Amy Breslyn had gone away with him or anyone else.

I was still thinking about the boyfriend who might or might not exist when a green Toyota sedan eased to a stop across the street and parked at Amy’s curb.

A stocky Latina got out with a large woven bag. She wore loose cotton pants, a USC sweatshirt, and her hair was held back with a headband. She slung the bag over her shoulder, trudged up the drive, and opened Amy’s front door with a key. I saw her reach toward the alarm panel with an easy familiarity before the door closed.

I settled back and stared at the house.

The woman was likely Amy’s housekeeper. Amy was supposedly on the lam, yet here was her housekeeper, come to clean an already immaculate house. I wondered if she knew about Amy’s leave of absence and expected to find Amy at home. Amy might not have told her anything, but the woman had her own key and the alarm code, which meant Amy trusted her. Anyone who had been around long enough to earn her own key might know if a new man was in Amy’s life and would certainly know more than me.

Six minutes earlier, she would have walked in on me. Six minutes later, I would’ve driven away and missed her. Sometimes the Private Detection Gods smiled.

I clocked off five minutes to let her get settled, and walked back to Amy’s door.