Relatively Dead (28 page)

I read it a second time. “It’s very moving. I wonder who wrote it.”

“Some guy named Cook, I think.

***

Rigo had accused me of blowing around on the wind. Now the wind had blown me back to him. His parents, Tina and Ernie, wanted to see me, so I was invited to their house for dinner. They also invited Frances, which would give me a chance to update her. Because we gained eight hours on the flight from London, Jason and I arrived in L.A. in mid-afternoon.

Jason took the shuttle bus to Parking Lot C where he’d left his car, determined to immediately drive home to Idyllwild, which would take at least three hours, probably more with the commuter traffic. I was worried about him falling asleep at the wheel, even though he’d napped some on the plane. He told me he would stop for dinner at a Hooters Restaurant he knew of. That should wake him up. He apparently wasn’t completely over the hill.

I picked up a rental car and drove to Redondo Beach where I had a room waiting for me at my favorite motel. I needed a nap if I were going to survive the evening. It was close to five o’clock. I set the alarm clock for six and collapsed onto the bed. Five minutes later an angry buzz awakened me—or at least it seemed like five minutes. I wanted to throw the clock through the wall, but somehow I rolled out of bed and took a shower as cold as I could stand it to get me going.

***

“Tom Kelly’s mother, whose name is Mary, lives in Lancaster, in the desert north of Los Angeles. His father is dead. He has no brothers and sisters. His mother held a memorial service for Tom yesterday.”

Frances handed me a piece of paper with Mary’s name, address, and telephone number. Ernie, who’d been listening to my tale of what happened in the UK, along with Tina and Rigo, took a swig from his bottle of Corona beer with a slice of lime in it and shook his head in disbelief.

“How do you find out information like that?”

Frances gave a deprecating smile. “This one was simple. I called the store where Tom worked. Carol told me the name before she went to Edinburgh. I said I represented someone who had information for Tom’s mother about him. The manager gave me Mary’s number. I called her and found out the rest. I told her Carol would call her.”

“I will. I want to talk to her.” I was feeling guilty about Tom’s death, although I couldn’t have said exactly why.

Tina said, “It’s great to have a friend who can find anybody.”

“As long as none of us wants to disappear.” Rigo squeezed my hand. We were sitting hip-to-hip on the sofa. “Wherever you go, Frances will track you down. She knows all three of your names.”

“At least I
have
names now. And perhaps a few you don’t know about.”

I couldn’t help teasing Rigo. Ever since he’d found me without a name or identity, he’d worried about me disappearing.

***

I passed fields of poppies on my drive out to Lancaster, and recalled the lovely day Rigo and I spent together among the flowers. The view wasn’t quite so lovely when I pulled into the trailer park where Mary Kelly lived. Some of the trailers had seen better days, and a few junky cars sat under the trees, but other lots had plants growing in tiny front yards and showed the care of the owner.

Mary’s trailer was one of these. At my knock she came to the door wearing shorts, a T-shirt that said, “Kiss me, I’m Irish,” and red hair that was either dyed or a wig. Her body was a bit lumpy and her legs were lined with varicose veins. She shook my hand vigorously and invited me in for a cup of tea.

When we were seated at the tiny table with full cups in front of us she looked at me, perhaps searching for a family resemblance.

“So you’re a cousin of Tom on his father’s side. At least, that’s what you said on the phone. I’ve never heard of you before.”

I launched into an explanation of how I met Tom, and DNA tests, and how I’d found out we were cousins. She verified that her husband’s father hadn’t known who his father was. I went on to tell about what happened in Edinburgh, altering the details to cause the least amount of pain to Mary. I was talking about our trip to Oxford when Mary interrupted me.

“So you saw Tom fall off the platform?”

“I didn’t actually see him fall, but I was there, yes.” I gave a short description of the layout of the platform and what I’d seen.

“I got a call at four o’clock in the morning from this man with what I call a cockney accent—not your lilting Irish, mind you—and he says, ‘Ma’am, I regret to inform you that I have bad news for you.’ What a way to find out that your son’s been killed.”

I was prepared to comfort her, but she didn’t cry. She took a sip of tea and continued.

“The man said it was an accident. He didn’t think it was a good idea to try to send Tom’s body home. I guess he was trying to be nice. My God, he was hit by a train. What’s left of him? He said he’d arrange for Tom to be cremated and he’d send me his ashes in an urn. I thanked him and got ready for work. I didn’t cry until the service Saturday.”

I asked her about the service. She said it was beautiful and the people in her church were very supportive. She said she was going to have Tom’s name engraved on the stone where her husband was buried and where she would be buried. She would spread some of his ashes there and keep the urn in her trailer.

I asked her where she worked.

“Bob’s Big Burgers. I’m a cook. It’s hot work but it brings in some money.”

“Do you mean Bob’s Big Boy?”

“No, ma’am, Bob’s Big Burgers. We aren’t affiliated with any chain. But we do serve a great burger. It’s my day off, but I’ll take you there for lunch.”

She got to talking about Tom. She said what a wonderful son he was and how proud she was of him. She said she could scrape by on Social Security and her job, but Tom also sent her some money every two weeks when he got paid. Then her eyes lit up.

“Recently, he drove out here to see me on his day off. He said he had some extra cash and that we should go to the bank and put it in my account. Do you know how much it was?”

“How much?”

“Five thousand dollars. I don’t think I ever saw that much cash in one place since the time my husband took me to Las Vegas and one of the casinos had a display case with a million dollars inside. He said he won it in the Lottery. That money will keep me going for a while. I said he shouldn’t give me so much, but he said he had more. ”

“Uh, one of the reasons I came out here is because I owe Tom some money. Coincidentally, the amount I owe him is five thousand dollars. I can call and have the money wired directly to your bank account.”

Mary looked suspicious. “Why do you owe Tom all that money?”

“He, uh, helped me out when I had a problem. It’s too late to pay
him
back so I’ll give the money to you. If you’ll show me one of your checks, I can relay the information to my bank so they can make the transfer.”

Mary still didn’t trust me, and I didn’t blame her. I’d appeared to her out of the blue and asked to see her bank account number. I suggested we go to her bank and I’d make the call from there and let my banker talk to an employee at her bank to effect the transfer. Then we’d go to lunch at Bob’s Big Burgers.

CHAPTER 30

It was a tough slog from Lancaster to West Los Angeles on a Monday afternoon. What I needed was a jet pack so I could fly over all the traffic. I took the 14 to the 405, which has got to be the world’s busiest freeway. Heading south over the pass through the Santa Monica Mountains, at least I was traveling against the going-home traffic heading out to the San Fernando Valley.

I’d successfully transferred five thousand dollars to Mary’s account. We’d eaten lunch at Bob’s Big Burgers, which had better hamburgers than a lot of fast-food places I’d tried. She wanted to show me around Lancaster. Having some time on my hands, I acquiesced to that. She talked about Tom in loving terms, but said he was hopeless with girls. I hoped she’d survive now that she was essentially alone in the world, and gave her my address and phone number, intending to stay in touch. She thanked me profusely for the money and for being a friend of Tom. I felt guilty, especially when she gave me a bear hug as I left.

I went west toward the beach on I-10 from the 405, exited and headed south and west to Venice, and parked in a Venice beach parking lot because I didn’t have any change for parking meters. I needed to stretch my legs after being cooped up in a car, so I walked along the beach walk past some of the exotic peddlers offering tourists T-shirts and costume jewelry, to the apartment building where Jason III lived before he was murdered and where his ex-roommate, Evan Hunter, still lived.

When I’d called Evan in the morning before I set out for Lancaster, I didn’t know how to announce myself. I’d been Aiko Murakawa the one time I talked to him, but he never would have found my phone number in North Carolina using the name Aiko, so he must have somehow discovered I was really Cynthia. In fact, he must have asked for Cynthia when he talked to Audrey, or she would have said something to me. Although she was vaguely aware I’d used the name Aiko, that was ancient history to her.

In any case, I was shunted to voicemail. Perhaps Evan was in a drug-induced coma. I compromised by leaving both names on the message. He called while I was driving to Lancaster, but being in a law-abiding mode I didn’t take the call and only called him back after I parked on a street in Lancaster. This time I got him.

“Hi, Evan. It’s uh, Aiko, I mean Cynthia.”

“Hi. I’m glad we connected. Can we get together this evening?”

His voice sounded clear, not spaced-out. We arranged to meet at his apartment at six. As I approached the building I glanced at my watch. It was ten of six. Oh well, better to be early than late. I called his cell phone and he answered immediately and said he’d meet me at the entrance.

I didn’t recognize him when he came out the door. True, I’d seen him in a dim light before. But now his longish brown hair was neatly combed, he was clean shaven, and he was wearing sharp-looking clothes, including a sport shirt and pressed pants. He wasn’t tall, which accentuated a starter pot-belly, and he had a rather two-dimensional face, with a small nose, but his smile was sunny.

Fortunately, he recognized me. He gave me a smile and stuck out his hand. “What should I call you, Aiko or Cynthia?”

“Cynthia’s fine. You’re looking good.” That burst out before I could stop it.

He laughed. “So are you. I think you caught me when I was on my last binge. When Jason died, that shook me. I had two ways to go—down or up. Fortunately, the upside won. I’ve got a real job and everything now. Are you hungry? I could eat a blue whale. The downside of stopping all the bad stuff is that you develop an insatiable appetite.”

I admitted I was hungry. He suggested we walk to a local restaurant featuring good seafood. That was fine with me. While we were walking I asked him how he’d found my phone number.

He gave me a sly smile. “First I Googled Aiko Murakawa. Once I got the spelling right, I found your video. I must say you look good in it.”

I gave my standard response. “I was a lot younger then.”

“You haven’t changed. Anyway, as much as I liked the video, that was a dead end as far as finding you was concerned. So I called Marcia.”

“Jason’s girlfriend.”

“She told me she’d called your bluff, but you showed her some kind of fake British driver’s license with the name Aiko.”

I laughed. I almost told Evan the license was legit, but decided he didn’t need to know that.

“The only other person I could think of to ask was Nelly McIvor. She said your real name was Cynthia something or other. If you Google Cynthia you get two hundred eighty-four million hits.”

I’d told Nelly my real name when I was trying to convince her to get out of the syndicate. “How long did it take you to go through all those?”

“The old me would have given up at that point. The new me cornered Nelly and told her she had to remember your last name. I plied her with wine and tried to hypnotize her, but that only made her giggle. Using trial and error we finally came up with S-a-k as the start of your last name, which narrowed the search all the way down to triple digits. When I found the amnesia story there were recognizable pictures of you. Once I knew your name and where you lived, it wasn’t hard to find your phone number.”

“You sound like a budding Frances, the woman who helped me recover my identity. She can find anybody. Has Nelly gotten out of the syndicate?”

“She talked to Marcia about that. Marcia promised she’d get her money back, but I don’t think she’s seen any yet. She’s a cute chick, by the way, but, unfortunately, she’s engaged to someone a lot richer than I am. Or so she says. She doesn’t wear a ring. He’s supposedly on a top secret mission somewhere. I told her I’m going to be rich. Meanwhile, she’ll go out with me as long as she doesn’t have a better offer for the evening. The only good thing about not being rich is that I wasn’t able to invest in the syndicate.”

Evan asked me about my amnesia and I gave him the two-minute version of the story. By that time we’d reached the restaurant. We sat at a small table and ordered wine and swordfish. I asked him why he wanted to see me.

“Once I sobered up I realized I knew more about Jason’s murder than I thought I did.”