Cold Blood (22 page)

Banished to the kitchen, the door firmly closed, Raoul put the kettle on. He was already wishing he hadn’t come to LA, but he couldn’t go back home, not for a while, and he had no other place to go. Living with his aunt was hideous; only if he sat in the boxlike kitchen could he escape her bulk, but it was dark and claustrophobic, and Raoul didn’t like the dark, didn’t like what happened in the darkness.

Juda lit an incense stick and wafted it for a moment. Lorraine sat in the same chair she had before.

“I didn’t mean to be so pushy, Mrs. Salina, but I really needed to ask you some questions.”

“I’m sick, I got a migraine.”

She was wearing big dark glasses, another tentlike creation folded around her massive body and a green turban. The long red talons wafted the heady incense perfume across the room, making Lorraine’s eyes water.

“You never told me that Anna Louise Caley came to see you.”

“I don’t recall you askin’.”

“Did she come to you the day before she left for New Orleans?”

Juda sighed.

“I’ll check my book, but you know, I already told you I have to respect my clients’ confidence.”

She eased herself up and swayed slowly to the door, opening it. The apartment was so small she didn’t need to shout but she did.

“Raoul, get me mah appointment book.”

Raoul appeared at the door and passed a red leather book to his aunt.

“Go get the car, Raoul, I need to be someplace in fifteen minutes. Park outside, go on now, get your butt moving.”

She shut the door and flipped open the book.

“Mrs. Salina, I don’t want to see your appointment book, I want you to tell me if Anna Louise

“

Juda shoved the book under Lorraine’s nose.

“You see, Miss Page, you threaten me and tell me you’re gonna report me. Now, there it is in black and white, whole weeks before February fifteenth, and there is no Anna Louise listed, okay?”

Lorraine stood up, flicking through the book, and saw that Juda did actually have an appointment that afternoon with a client called Eunice

Bourdreaux. She closed the book.

“Thank you. Why did Mrs. Caley bring Anna Louisewere you reading her cards too?”

“Sometime^she needed assistance, she used not to feel so good.”

“I know why she didn’t feel so good, she was out of her head on drugs, so Anna Louise used to … what? Help her down the corridor?”

Juda shrugged. Like her nephew, she seemed to enjoy slipping in and out of her Southern accent, sometimes accentuating it, other times not. Now she drawled, elongating her vowels.

“Ah do not know about any drugs, Ah don’t know what you are trying to imply or why you are so interested. The little girl came, sat awhile and when Ah finished the session with her mother they left.”

“Did you talk to Anna Louise, I mean, read her palm or tarot cards, for example?”

“I may have, I don’t recall … mah client was Mrs. Elizabeth Caley.”

Lorraine sucked in her breath; with her singsong voice and her huge dark glasses, the woman really annoyed her. She crossed her legs, one foot swinging with irritation.

“You read tarot cards, you read palms, you feel people’s auras, and according to all those credentials you got pinned up on your walls, you also call yourself a medium … and you’re saying you cannot remember? Now, I personally don’t believe in all this, but that is just my opinion.”

“You are entitled to your opinion, honey.”

“I also know that you hand out a leaflet, where you state you assist with police inquiries. But the police told me you never helped solve any case. You just got a lot of publicity from it, and jftging from the red appointment book, I’d say you need a whole lot morRlt’s not exactly bulging with clients now, is it?”

Juda smiled, her hands resting over her belly.

“Right now I’m not doing’ so much business in fact, I might just well retire.”

“Unless you don’t always note down your clients. So let me ask you again, did Anna Louise Caley ever come to see you alone?”

Juda remained smiling, then shrugged her fat shoulders.

“No, she did not. Like I said, she just came a few times with Mrs. Caley.”

“Who is the young man that let me in?”

“Raoul? He’s my nephew, I am taking care of him, Miss Page, that’s all. Nothing illegal about that now, is there?”

Lorraine leaned forward.

“What did Anna Louise ask you about? Was she worried about something? Was she scared of something?”

Juda sighed but did not answer. Lorraine was becoming angry at her inability to get Juda to talk. She tried a different tactic, almost pleading.

“I am trying to find her, Mrs. Salina, so if there is anything she said to you

136 that would give me an insight into a problem she may have had, even a relationship … ?”

Juda turned away.

“Was she seeing someone? Mrs. Salina, don’t give me any more clients’ confidentiality, et cetera. Please, Anna Louise has been missing without a trace for eleven months.”

“I have been interviewed over and over again and if there was anything, don’t you think I would have already told the police, told the other private dicks? But there is nothing, and what I saw for Mrs. Caley has nothing to do with anything.”

“Okay. What did you see for Mrs. Caley? Please.”

Juda licked her lips.

“I saw nothing good, I saw she needed to go to a rehab clinic, I saw she would have marriage problems, I saw that she might have a resurrection of her career, a lot of publicity, but not good …”

Lorraine wanted to snatch the dark shades off her fat face, but instead she gave up.

“You know, people like you make me sick.”

“I think you made that clear the last time, honey, but to be honest I am not struck by you all that much. You think you can push your way into my home, make threats, only because you’re being paid a lot of cash to do so. You ain’t offerin’ any to me, and even if you did I’d throw it back in your smug face. I suggest you start taking lessons in politeness because you are a rude bitch. Like I said before, I got nothing to say or add to what I already told the police and what I told you the last time you came burstin’ into my home.”

Lorraine walked to the door, opened it.

“You still see a big bright aura around Anna Louise Caley? You still telling that poor woman to keep up hope? Well, I may be pushy, I may be getting paid for my job, but it’s sure as hell a lot better than being paid for spouting bullshit to poor desperate people who could probably do with a good shrink. Thanks for nothing.”

Lorraine didn’t wait for Juda to show her out and slammed the front door hard to let the whale of a woman know she had left.

Juda remained sitting in her chair, her hands clasping the arms. She sure as hell could feel Lorraine Page’s presence; one part was obvious, the bitch was a pushy ex-cop. But the other part confused Juda. To begin with, she had been positive she’d felt something bad, really bad; was it because she was different from all the other Pis? After all, she was digging that much deeper. Or was it because she knew that someone with the initial L was going to be in bad trouble, like a clock whose tick-tick-ticking was about to stop, for good?

Juda had felt it the moment she had met Lorraine, that something inside that lady was about to escape from control. What it was she couldri’t

put her finger on, but it unsettled her and she began to be afraid, as she knew she would have to go deeper and she feared that the consequences would suck her intS the darkness herself.

Lorraine stepped out onto the pavement, which was shimmering in the blistering sun. As she headed for her rented Buick parked at a meter, a limo drove out of the parking lot. She could not see the driver because of the dark tinted windows, but she recognized the car. When she had seen Phyllis get out of it earlier that morning, she’d assumed it was Elizabeth Caley’s. Now as the driver’s window glided down, she knew she had been wrong: Raoul, in his mirrored shades, looked toward her, smiling.

“You were on Rodeo Drive yesterday afternoon with Phyllis Collins.”

He looked nonplussed.

“Mrs. Caley’s companion,”

Lorraine said, as she walked toward him.

Raoul gave an even wider smile.

“Maybe I was, but to tell you the honest truth, ma’am, I am new around town, so I don’t know where I am or who’s in the back.”

Lorraine moved closer until she could see her own face in his mirrored shades.

“How long have you been staying with your aunt?”

“Oh, a while, maybe a few weeks.”

“You came here from New Orleans?”

“Yes, ma’am, I did, no work back home.”

ť

“Did you know Anna Louise Caley?”

He turned off the engine and removed the keys.

“Who?”

“Anna Louise Caley, you know who I’m talBhg about.”

He sucked at the small monkey-like mascot rongling on the end of his key ring.

“I know, well, I read about her but I never met her. I seen her photographs, ma aunty show them to me, and I know she was real pretty.”

“Didn’t you meet her in New Orleans?”

“No, ma’am.”

Lorraine stepped back, sure he was lying.

“Thanks for letting me into the apartment.”

“That’s okay, you have a nice day now.”

As she walked off he shouted out to her,

“Hey! Miss! Hey!”

She turned back to him; he was leaning out of the window, his elbows resting along the rim, still sucking the key ring.

“You shouldn’t be so mean to my aunt.”

“What?”

“She is not the kind of person you want to get on the bad side of. Trust me, you be nice to her.”

“Why?”

“Maybe she’s seen bad things for you, she’s got the …”

He tapped the center of his forehead.

“You cause any trouble for her and she’ll make bad things happen, she’s got the sight, know what I mean? ‘Bye now, ma’am, and lemme tell you, you got real nice legs.”

He eased back inside the car and she heard loud music begin to thud out, some kind of screaming reggae, then the window slowly closed. She felt uneasy, because, although it was the middle of the day and hot, she suddenly felt icy cold.

She unlocked her car and got inside. She could still see the limo parked up ahead of her; Mrs. Juda Salina was obviously not that short of money. She started the engine, pulling her safety belt on. She stayed there for another five minutes and jumped when the phone rang.

“Hi, it’s me, just checking in.”

It was Rosie. Lorraine kept her eyes on Juda’s limo up ahead.

“Rooney’s here and wants a word,”

Rosie said, sounding loud and perky.

Rooney came on the line.

“We got to get over to New Orleans real soon, I don’t wanna talk to my contacts there over the phone, better faceto-face. You got anything?”

“I want anything you can get, from anyone you can get it from, on this Juda Salina bitch, the socalled psychic.”

“I think we got as much as we could. She’s a joke, isn’t she?”

Lorraine saw Juda exit from the apartments and get into the waiting car.

“She’s got a young nephew staying, Raoul, from New Orleans, comes on like a young Lothario, a la Robert de Niro. Get him checked out, try the same surname for starters. If you get nowhere, use the license number; fat woman can’t drive and the car’s got Louisiana plates.”

Rooney jotted down the registration.

“Okay, but you know we got to get over there. Time’s moving fast, we only got two weeksthree days down already.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Ask Rosie if she’s gonna go to a meeting this evening and if it’s one Phyllis attends … shit, hold on.”

Lorraine saw Raoul drive off, honking his car horn as he inched into the traffic. She swerved out, narrowly missing an oncoming car that hooted at her. She waved her hand in apology, the phone tucked under her chin.

“Hi, it’s me. It’s Rosie,”

came her bellow.

“You meeting tonight?”

asked Lorraine, heading up Dohney about four cars behind Raoul.

“Yep, you want to come?”

“I will if Phyllis will be there.”

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“She will beshe usually is.”

“Okay, see you later, ‘bye now.”

Rosie replaced the phone.

“She’s got a thing about this Juda Salina. Dunno why, waste of time, I think. I mean, I was there, I met her, and Nick checked her out.”

“You think she’s a flake too?”

Rooney asked.

“Well, f have to be honestI couldn’t tell you. She was sort of strange, gave me a weird feeling like when she looked at me she was seeing through me. She’s got strange eyes, very deep and dark, or maybe it was just the false eyelashes.”

She chuckled.

“I’ve lost four pounds,”

Rooney said.

Rosie clapped her hands.

“That’s wonderful. I have lostwell, not as much as I’d like. Do you think I’m looking thinner?”

Rooney gave her a long, studied appraisal, and then nodded.

“There is just one thing, Rosiewhen we get to New Orleans, can we forget the diet? I mean, they have the best food in the world, and I’m not going there to eat raw fish. It might mean a few extra pounds going on, but…”

She held out her hand.

“It’s a deal we diet now, but we come off it when we get to New Orleans.”

They shook hands, and Rooney felt suddenly embarrassed. He’d never had this kind of intimate conversation with a woman before, even with his poor wife, who had been stick-thin when he married her and stick-thin the day she died.

“Can I tell you something?”

he asked hesitantly, and she looked over at him.

“Sure, tell me what?”

^

“Don’t tell Lorraine,”

he said, like a kid. RŤe waited while Rooney rubbed his head and pulled at his big nose.

“Maybe it’s age.”

“What is?”

He coughed, now pulling at his tie.

“Well, don’t take this the wrong way, I mean, hell, I’m not backing out of anything, no way, but…”

He sighed, unsure of what he was saying and how to say it.

“I just can’t get the energy up the way I used to, you know, that adrenaline that pumps through you on a case. I used to feel it down to the soles of my feet, itching all the time to get to the bottom of something. I wouldn’t sleep, couldn’t even eat sometimes, and I know I was hell to live with. I must have put.poor Ellen through it, and I keep thinking about her, thinking what a bad husband I was. She never had much of a life.”