Follow Her Home (12 page)

Luke gave his shoulder a light shove. “Why so enigmatic?”

“Just context. This is not a good day for it.” He sighed. “I really miss hanging out with you guys. I wish it didn't take something like this to get us in the same room.”

Before this weekend, the three of us had not been together for weeks. “That's what you get when you're a married lawyer with two bums for best friends,” I said.

“I wish you were around all the time,” Luke said. “You would never call me a bum.” We all laughed, tired, anemic chuckles.

Five minutes later, Jackie called back and Diego got up to leave.

“I'll call you as soon as I can get away.”

“Don't worry about me,” I said with half a smile. “I told you I know what I'm doing.”

He shook his head. “I know you sort of believe that.”

“It's okay, I'll follow her around from here,” Luke said. “Appease the wife and we'll catch up later.”

Diego answered Luke's fist pound, then gave me a hug so tight it made me gasp. “Don't be stupid, Song.”

“Never.”

“Okay,” he said, letting go. “Later.”

We listened to his running footsteps fade. “You know,” said Luke, “he seems to find his way into the doghouse when he hangs out with us.”

“Yeah, that kind of sucks.”

“And by that I mean, he seems to find his way into the doghouse when he hangs out with you.”

“I know that's what you meant.” I said. “But we have other things to worry about. I need to put on my detective hat again.”

*   *   *

With the help of that hat, I'd come up with a theory to explain Iris's behavior, but no likely suspects. That, as it turned out, was not hard to fix.

Iris chose not to tell me a lot of things in the months I was away. She omitted details and schedules and whole people from our conversations. She was able to do that because I was no longer living with her. I didn't know when she left the house or when she came home. I didn't know who she was seeing or who she even claimed to be seeing. I meant to keep tabs on her, but I'd failed. Her words stung. I had allowed myself to become so self-absorbed that I'd skimmed over her silence and missed the small sounds of her tracks rerouting.

One day in mid-June, I followed my mom to the Galleria Market, the Korean shopping center in Northridge. After shopping for groceries, we stopped for lunch at the food court.

My mom and I communicated in a mix of Korean and English that I found natural. Our conversations dipped in and out of each language sometimes two or three times in one sentence. Of course, my sentences were weighted toward English and hers toward Korean, but we jumbled and blabbered without much awareness of who was speaking what—it was a two-way street that we'd long forgotten to notice.

She was slurping down soup when I brought up Iris.

“Umma,” I said.

“Yoon-Kyung,” she said. My mom was the only person in the world to address me by my Korean name. The sound of it was always soothing.

“What was Iris doing every day while I was gone?”

She lowered her spoon and gave me a blank stare. “What do you mean?”

“Just…” I hesitated. “I wasn't here, and I don't know how she got so depressed. Do you?”

She shook her head. “I don't know what to do.”

“But you know what her life has been like, right? I don't know anything. Who was she seeing? Where was she going? Was she away from home a lot?”

Our mom never let us leave the house without knowing where we were going and when we'd be back. She was fastidious about schedules and quick to anger if we walked in any later than we promised to be home. Iris had gotten her license not long before I left for college, and I knew I could count on our mom to have a catalog of her excursions.

I questioned her gently and found that Iris went to church on Sundays and two or three nights per week she went over to Paul's. My mom still didn't know that Iris and Paul had broken up in October. This meant that for months, Iris had been lying to her two or three nights per week. I wondered if Iris really went to church, either.

I asked how Iris had been doing in school. It was a generic question, but it was the one that unlocked the door to my sister's dark room.

“Her semester grades were bad. Worse than usual. Straight Bs. B-minus in precalculus. Only As were in art and history.”

“Really, history?” Facts and dates had never come easily to Iris, and history had been her most detested subject in years past.

But I didn't find a sudden improvement in school relevant or suspicious, so I heard my heart thump as the next words rolled off my mother's tongue: “She was doing so poorly that her teacher suggested she get tutoring.”

“So she started seeing a tutor?”

“Her teacher offered to tutor her himself, actually.”

I was starting to feel queasy, and I knew I was done with my lunch. I strained to keep my voice nonchalant. “Who's her teacher?”

“Mr. Quinn,” she said. “He's a nice man.”

Something emerged from the murk of memory—Iris had mentioned Mr. Quinn back in September. It was in passing, and I had never even spoken to Quinn, so the fact that he was her teacher didn't stick. I now remembered, curse words running through my brain, that Iris had commented that he was “cute.”

Quinn was a new teacher when I was a junior, and he had a small following among the girls in my class. He wasn't the most popular choice—most preferred Mr. Lacey, in the English department, who doubled as our school's swim coach, and the two were rarely compared. But there was something about his face that was hard to forget, and though I had not thought of the man in over a year, his features floated into place. He was in his early to midthirties, with dark brown hair and a light complexion. His small, serious eyes seemed to be his main physical asset, though most considered them beady.

I saw him walking around campus from time to time, but I knew little about him. He was well liked by his students, but I had no idea how he ran a classroom, or why a sixteen-year-old would find him attractive.

I kept my face calm, but my forehead grew damp from the effort. “How long did he tutor her for?”

“Just the first semester.”

“He came to our house?”

“No. He tutored her after school.”

My hunch grew inside me until it was something hard and certain. I would corroborate it on my own, without giving Iris an opportunity to deny and warn her seducer.

*   *   *

Luke sat across from me, eating Chinese delivery in silence. He never had food in his apartment. It didn't matter if he was moved in for a week or eight months. His pantries were always bare, and he never used a stove.

There was plenty to talk about, and none of it was easy. I was staring out the window when Luke swallowed audibly and started to speak.

“Do you think—” He lowered his voice and prefaced his query anew with a breathless pause. “Do you think my dad did it?”

“It?”

He wiped his mouth on a thin napkin. “You know. Do you think he knocked you out and killed Greg?”

“I honestly can't say. I hope not. He is in the pool of shady happenings, but I wouldn't go confronting him and losing your allowance just yet.”

He lowered his head in a tentative nod and finished his lunch.

“I'm sorry I got you into this, Song. If I had known there was more to it than asking a few questions, I would never have considered it.”

“I know. And at this point, God knows I'm not playing the gumshoe for you.”

There was a brief pause as we both stared into air. “Not turning back?”

“I can't just yet. I need to find out a few things, then it's to the LAPD and back to my boring life.”

“What if you get yourself killed?”

“Well, that'll just about serve me right for being a goddamn curious cat, don't you think?”

“Don't joke, Song.”

“I won't get myself killed. I've lived twenty-six years now and haven't even done that once.” I flicked his forearm.

“So no cops just yet?”

“Not yet.”

“I guess I should be grateful, really. I don't love how my dad looks here.” He shook his head. “I want to find out with you. What are you planning to do? Are you sure you don't want to follow up with this PI?”

“I have his number, but I don't think he can help us. Let's start with Miller. He's the most time-sensitive piece of this puzzle.”

“Right.” His voice was tight. “What do you propose?”

“Let's hit up Stokel and search his office.”

He hesitated. “Are you going to be okay doing that? You did just find the man's body.”

I managed a weak smile. “I think I'll be fine. It was a shock, but I didn't know the guy. Can I just steal some more Advil before we go? My head still feels like tiny people are playing freeze tag in my brain.”

He pushed himself up and dashed into the bathroom, coming back with at least a dozen of the brick-hued pills in his outstretched palm.

“Am I an elephant?”

“You don't have to take them all now.” He went to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of water. “Keep the rest in case.”

“Thanks.” I swallowed two smooth pills and dropped the rest into my purse. “Hey, what time is it?”

He looked at his phone. “Three thirty. Why?”

I sifted through my bag and groaned. “We have to stop by my place on the way.”

“Sure. I just have to change first.” He bent his chin to his chest. “I don't think the building people will recognize you, but if they see me strolling in in my pajamas, they might just mention it to my dad.”

He took a few minutes in his bedroom and came out wearing clean, dark blue jeans and a gray button-down shirt. He shoved his bare feet into silk socks and black leather shoes as I slipped back into my flip-flops. We made our way to his car and left the Marlowe once again.

*   *   *

The July sunshine beat down on the windshield with the ruthlessness of a storm. Luke put on a pair of black sunglasses as we drove into the eye of the summer day.

“What's at your apartment?”

I sighed. “My pill. It's not in my bag.”

“Wait. We're making a detour from investigating a matter of life and death for your birth control?”

“Like a ten-minute detour. And look, as I don't plan on dying today, I'd really rather take care of it.”

“Who's even trying to knock you up these days?”

“Oh, everyone.” I rooted through my purse again. It wasn't hiding anywhere I could see. “It's not just about pregnancy, anyway.”

“Yeah, what then?”

“Do you really want to talk about my period? I mean we can talk about my period if that is what you want.”

“Okay, okay, forget it. We're almost there anyway.”

A few minutes later we were back at my apartment, and I invited Luke to take the spot I had deserted a few hours earlier. We stayed seated in the car well after he turned off the engine and I felt the pressure of silence wad up my ears as I looked around the parking lot. I opened my mouth and let out the hot, dry breath that had built up inside.

“Are you okay?” Luke asked.

I nodded and opened the door. “Yeah, he's not here.”

“Hey, I'll go with you.”

The door to 4J looked wrong. Luke noticed first, and I followed him with my eyes as he darted down the hall to my apartment. The alignment was off—the door stuck out from the wall like a puzzle piece nudged out of place.

I made my way to Luke. He stood between me and the door, holding the knob, and I felt his eyes on my head. I kept mine fixed on the doorknob and the crack of plaster doorjamb beside it.

“I'm going in first,” Luke said, and before I could stop him he stepped into my apartment ahead of me.

I followed him in and he rushed forward, covering the space of the room, putting his body between me and whatever I might find. He opened my closets and I heard him draw back the shower curtain in my bathroom with a clatter of rings.

I nodded to myself and surveyed my apartment, head bobbing, until I fixed on my bed. It sat in the corner of the room, stone still, like a picture in a home catalog, the blue spread draped neatly over its edges. My bed had been made since I had last seen it.

Luke came out of the bathroom. “There's nothing here.”

I threw the covers to the floor and tore the sheets apart, savagely.

*   *   *

I leaned against Luke's car and smoked two without talking. Luke watched me with his hands in his pockets.

“Did you take your pill?”

I nodded.

He fell silent again and I lit up a third. “What're you going to do?”

I blew smoke out of a corner of my mouth. “I don't know. Nothing, I guess.”

“Nothing?”

“What, I'm going to call 911 and say, ‘Hey, someone broke into my apartment and made my bed, and by the way his name is Humphrey Bogart'?”

“You have more than that.”

“Sure, I know. But this doesn't change anything. He knew that.”

“Well, prove him wrong, then.”

“Luke—I wasn't ready to go to the cops when he left a body in my car. I just can't do it yet.”

He nodded. “Then what do we do?”

“We keep going, I guess.” I pushed myself off the car and snuffed the cigarette on the cold asphalt. “I believe we were headed for the office.”

*   *   *

I squinted and turned my head away from the sun as we approached downtown. Marlowe never talked about the unpredictable stalls on Beverly, the inexplicable Saturday-afternoon traffic. His L.A. never felt quite so crowded and anonymous. Phone numbers were shorter in his day, easy to remember.

The buildings were shorter, too. Marlowe didn't live in a city of skyscrapers. The City Hall was the lone exception, the tallest building he knew by at least a hundred feet. It was still around, a designated landmark from another era, but its tower was quietly outgrown by a number of nameless office buildings. As downtown came into view, I took in the cold, industrial beauty of our skyline. There were a few more stray survivors of Marlowe's downtown—the Barclay Hotel, the Los Angeles Athletic Club—but they blended into a landscape dominated by younger giants of glass and steel.