“Damn him,” Diana hissed to the empty room. “Goddamn him! I’ll ruin him.”
Chapter 21
Claudia waited ten minutes after Diana Sorensen pulled herself together and left Annabelle’s room at the Sorensen Academy before dashing downstairs and back to her car. She didn’t know what the overheard conversation meant, but after her encounter with Neil, then witnessing Giordano’s brutal treatment of Diana, all she wanted to do was get as far away from them all as possible.
The story of Paige’s and Annabelle’s disappearance soon faded from the media. Reporters went on to cover New Year’s Eve celebrations and the latest heinous news where a different kind of disappearance grabbed the headlines: the trafficking of small children for the sex trade—a juicier topic for the networks to report on than a missing adult and teen.
Nearly a week had passed since Annabelle’s last phone call to Monica. A week during which Claudia analyzed handwritings for clients, lectured at a Rotary Club luncheon, prepared her testimony for an upcoming court case. And all the while, running through everything she did, a current of hope, fear, dread.
Jovanic was still in the Bay Area, which made the first New Year’s Eve of their relationship a cheerless occasion. They wished each other Happy New Year, clinking champagne glasses against the phone while on television in the background, the ball dropped in Times Square.
Later, as Claudia waited for sleep, Annabelle’s face floated through her mind, then her restless dreams, as vividly as if the girl’s spirit had left her body and come to remind Claudia not to forget her.
As if I could.
New Year’s morning brought brilliant blue skies and a return of warm weather. Claudia sorted clothes to launder with one eye on reruns of the morning’s Rose Parade. Kelly dropped in around noon, making a blatant attempt to divert her attention from her missing friends.
“Come with me to Victoria’s Secret,” she cajoled. “They’re having their year-end sale. I got a gift card for Christmas that’s burning a hole in my pocket.”
“No thanks. I’ll pass.” Claudia slung a sage-colored towel at the pile of darks. Missed. After one more too-short night fraught with nightmares, Kelly’s invitation held all the appeal of a bowl of cold oatmeal.
“Come
on,
Claud, you need to get out, take your mind off it.”
“You don’t need me to help you buy slutty lingerie for your flavor-of-the-month guy.” Claudia snapped, her tone sharper than she had intended.
Kelly grabbed a pair of jeans out of her hands. “It wouldn’t hurt you to buy something slutty yourself.”
“We just
went
to Victoria’s Secret. I just
bought
something slutty. I don’t need any more sluttiness.”
“Well, I do. So how long are you going sit around moping? What if they
never
come back?”
Kelly’s blunt words were like poison darts that hit the bull’s-eye. Claudia sucked in a deep breath and blew it out on a long sigh. She rubbed her hands over her face. “It’s on my mind all the time.”
Kelly put her arms around her and gave her a hug, then a little shove. “Go take a shower and get dressed. We’re going to the mall.”
Most Sunday mornings, the streets in West Los Angeles are virtually deserted, abandoned by weekday workers sleeping in, or perusing the Sunday comics over their eggs and bacon. Only after the sun hits midheaven and burns off the marine layer do they venture out.
But this was New Year’s Day and residents of the West Side conspired to flood Olympic Boulevard with traffic. The Westside Pavilion parking lot was crawling with bargain hunters and packs of teens hanging out.
As they drove through the parking lot Claudia scanned the crowds. She couldn’t help herself. More than once, her heart clenched at the sight of a small-framed girl with long dark hair, wearing Tommy Hilfiger tie-dye or “distressed” Mudd jeans, walking arm in arm with a girlfriend. But in her gut, she knew better. Annabelle didn’t have girlfriends to hang out with on New Year’s Day, except Monica, and Monica was definitely not walking with her at the Westside Pavilion.
“What the hell is the matter with these people?” Kelly griped, turning the Mustang into an aisle they had cruised five minutes earlier, where bus-size SUVs had forced themselves into spaces marked
Compact
. “It’s like trying to squeeze a four-hundred-pound chick into a size eight.”
“Use the valet parking,” Claudia pleaded. “Hot young guys, right up your alley.”
“I’m not paying a valet to park my car so I can go shopping. Even if they
are
hotties.”
“
I’ll
pay the valet. We’re just driving in circles.”
“Look, someone’s leaving.” Kelly hit the accelerator and raced to the end of the aisle, but a Suburban cut them off and beat her to the empty space. She laid on the horn with her fist. “Dickhead!”
“Road rage,” Claudia said mildly. “Lunatics carry guns around here.” Then she remembered how Dane Sorensen had beat her out of a parking space at the courthouse. Her mind started to drift—were the Sorensens involved in Paige’s and Annabelle’s disappearance?
She had told the police about Diana Sorensen’s letter to Paige. The detective in charge assured her they would check it out, but she had the feeling that was the last she would hear of it.
Kelly’s angry voice brought her back. “I fucking
hate
rude people!” She revved the engine and left a patch of tire behind on the asphalt as they ploughed out of the Pico Boulevard exit. “I’m parking on one of the side streets.”
Claudia grabbed the panic handle. “Forget it, Kel. All the streets around here have restricted parking.”
Kelly shot her a look of determination. “We’re
going
to find a place.” She swung right at Overland and began cruising the residential blocks surrounding the mall, hanging a right at Manning, then again at Blythe.
Permit Parking Only
signs were posted at close intervals on every block in the area—the city’s attempt to appease residents who resented the shoppers clogging the streets in front of their homes.
They crossed Pico and traveled north, then east, and back south, passing a mishmash of architecture: miniature adobes next to three-story apartment buildings and picturesque chateaus that could have illustrated a book of children’s nursery rhymes. Every dwelling was at least fifty years old, many older. Some showed it more than others.
“We’re a mile from the damn mall,” Claudia grumbled, although she knew in reality the Westside Pavilion was only a couple blocks away. Leaning back against the headrest, she closed her eyes. “Let’s call it off. I’m really not in the mood.”
“There has to be a place we can park,” Kelly insisted, turning a corner. She pulled over to the curb to allow a larger vehicle to pass on the other side. The streets were so narrow they were probably designed to accommodate a horse and buggy. “Think positive. Ask the universe to provide.”
Claudia stared out at the neighborhood. The houses on this block looked older, smaller, shabbier than the ones closer to the mall, squatting close to one another in a claustrophobic fashion that felt somehow sinister.
“I don’t think the universe wants us to park here,” she said.
Kelly snickered. “You aren’t afraid, are you? Don’t worry, I’ve been taking kickboxing lessons.”
“
Kick
boxing? Jesus, Kel, I thought I knew you.”
“I’m always fascinated by people who draw their conclusions based upon the limitations of their knowledge,” Kelly said primly. “You can’t expect me to be Miss Manners all the time.”
“Miss
Manners?
” Claudia couldn’t imagine any description less fitting of Kelly Brennan. She started to make a retort when she saw something that made her stomach lurch. “Kelly, wait, stop! Back up. Back up!”
Kelly hit the brakes, testing their shoulder straps. “What’s wrong?”
“Paige’s car.” Claudia jerked a thumb behind them. She turned and craned her neck.
“
In that driveway back there. The blue Mercedes—I swear to God, that’s her car.”
Kelly moved the gear shifter into reverse and backed up until they were even with the driveway of the house Claudia indicated. She leaned down to stare past her friend and through the window. “What makes you think that’s Paige’s? There’s probably a million Mercedes around here.”
“How many cars have you seen that color?” Claudia asked slowly, asking herself whether she might be wrong. Certain that she was not.
The house where the car was parked was a one-story dingy white clapboard; the 1920s bungalow probably hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint since Ronald Reagan left the governor’s office. Cracked gray trim flanked the curtainless front windows.
A hand-lettered sign in the overgrown front yard announced that the house was for sale by owner. In this area, even in its present condition the house would command close to a million. Claudia recognized the telephone prefix as a South Orange County number seventy-five miles from their present location. The house had a distinctly unoccupied air. At that distance, the owner probably didn’t visit very often.
Close to the garage was the Mercedes 500SL that matched Paige’s eyes, its front end parked carelessly. The front passenger tire was partly on the concrete drive and partly on the grass median between the house and its neighbor.
“You really think that’s her car?” Kelly said.
“Look—it has a Sorensen Academy bumper sticker.”
“Holy shit. What could she be doing here?” Kelly backed the Mustang up another few feet. She nosed into the driveway and braked to a stop behind the Mercedes and killed the engine. They sat there looking at each other.
“I wonder if they’re inside,” said Claudia into the silence.
“You don’t think Annabelle’s holding her hostage in there, do you?”
It sounded ridiculous when Kelly said it that way.
“At this point, I don’t know
what
to think.”
“Let’s call the cops.”
“Yeah, okay—no, wait a minute, not yet.”
Telling Kelly to wait in the car, she got out of the Mustang and approached the driver door of the Mercedes.
A film of rain-streaked grime and cat’s paw prints covered the trunk, roof, and hood of the vehicle. Claudia thought back to the last day it had rained. Wednesday, four days ago. She guessed that the car probably had not been moved in at least as many days.
Leaning close to the windshield, she shaded her eyes with her hand and looked in at the empty front seat, then moved to the rear door. The tint impeded her view, but she could see enough to determine that the backseat was also empty.
To her right, a screen door banged, startling her out of her wits.
An elderly man shambled into the front yard of the house next door. He wore a torn undershirt that stretched over a distended belly and his trousers were rolled up, revealing knobly knees and ghostly white legs.
With arthritic effort, he bent to pick up a garden hose, managing to keep his eyes on Claudia. “Hey, whaddya want over there?” he yelled as he began watering the lawn.
Claudia walked around the older model white Saturn parked in his driveway. Its crumpled front fender was beginning to show signs of rust.
“Hi, good morning, sir,” Claudia said. “Can I speak with you for a moment?”
As she approached, she could see the white stubble peppering his jaw, the red spider veins radiating across the broad nose and cheeks. He squinted at her through cloudy eyes. “We don’t need no
Watchtower
s,” he said. “Happy New Year.”
The gnarled old hands squeezed the hose trigger harder, directing the flow of water just inches from her feet.
Claudia jumped back as the backsplash hit her jeans. “Oh, no, no, I’m not selling anything.”
“Well, what is it? No one lives over there.” His eyes were narrowed against the sunshine.
“The sign says the house is for sale . . .”
“I got no key. Call the number on the sign, you wanna see it.”
“I was wondering about the car in the driveway,” Claudia said. “Do you know how long it’s been parked there?”
“Why’s that yer business?”
“My friend’s car was stolen. It think that might be it.”
“Now, why would a stolen car be settin’ over there?” the old man snapped, and Claudia could see that he was determined not to give an inch in the courtesy department.
“Maybe the thieves were joyriding and left it there?” she suggested with a sudden painfully clear recollection of Paige telling her of Annabelle’s history of joyriding with her gangbanger companions.
The old man’s eyes drifted to the house and he yelled as loud as a yodeler, “Lainie! C’mon out here.”
The screen door opened and a rail-thin woman in flowered stretch pants came onto the porch, a cigarette between nicotine-stained fingers. She had thick red hair pulled into a ponytail, stray tendrils curling around her face. Younger than the old man by a good thirty years, she would have been prettier without the thousand tiny smoker’s lines that puckered her mouth.
“What is it, Pop? The reverend’s on.”
“She won’t go to church,” the old man said, looking skyward and speaking to no one in particular. “But ever Sunday, she’s got the Reverend Schuler on the damn television.
Reeeligiously.
” He finished a phlegmy cackle at his own joke, then jerked his head at Claudia. “This gal wants t’ know about the car that’s parked over at Lambert’s. How long’s it been settin’ there?”
Leaning against the wooden porch railing, the woman he called Lainie appraised Claudia, suspicion in every sinewy muscle. Before answering, she tapped a shower of ashes into the bushes below, while her father squawked a futile protest.
Behind her, the screen door opened a few inches and two white-blond heads appeared around it, about three feet above the ground. A boy and a girl, around five years old. They crept onto the porch, holding hands. The boy said something that sounded like,
“Ya chotzu damoy.”