Living with the Dead Part 12

Finn took out his notebook. "Could I get a description of Ms. Kane's cousin?"

The super looked alarmed. "She asked the officers. They said it was okay. And she was a very nice girl "

"I'm sure she was and I'm sure she did speak to them. But I need to make a record of it, and you probably got a better look at her than they did."

He jotted down the information. Why would anyone lie to get into Peltier's apartment? If Peltier was holed up with a friend, Finn could imagine that friend sneaking in to get her some clothing. But a single s.h.i.+rt? Or was it something about the s.h.i.+rt? He tried to recall what witnesses said Peltier had been wearing that night. A dress, the one found at Judd Archer's.

He told the super he'd check with the officers and get their details, and ask them not to let anyone else in without an escort. The super got the message: don't open this apartment door again.

Finn's "Persons Of Interest" list for the Portia Kane case was starting to look like a roster of ghosts. Phantoms, at least.

As he suspected, no young woman had asked the stakeout officers for access, so he had one more nameless description to add to his list, along with Peltier's Indo American friend, her boyfriend and the red-haired teenage boy. Not to mention the most elusive ghost of all Peltier herself.

Next the team met for another update so Finn could report to bra.s.s. When the meeting finished, Finn gathered his papers and headed for the coffee room. It was more of a closet than a room, barely big enough for the tiny table with the coffeemaker. Someone had made good use of the s.p.a.ce, though, covering the walls in the safety posters the department was required to post.

He laid the pages on the table, facedown, and reached for a Styrofoam cup. Beside the stack, the ancient drip machine hissed. The quarter-filled pot was so stained it looked as if they'd misread the "auto-stop" feature as "auto-clean," and hadn't so much as rinsed it since buying it.

Finn lifted the pot and swirled the contents.

"Please tell me you aren't going to drink that," Damon said.

Finn sniffed the opening, judging the degree of burning by both the smell and the quant.i.ty of floating flakes. He filled his cup halfway.

"Oh, man. Please. There's got to be a coffee shop around."

"Block away. Two bucks a cup." He added creamer. Sniffed. Added more. "Got two hits for Peltier's friend."

Damon stopped eyeing the coffee cup and went very still.

"The one she was at Bane with Thursday night," Finn continued. "I called a buddy at the Times Times. He came up with two journalists matching the description." Finn picked up his pages and showed the top one to Damon. "One's a photojournalist with the Times Times. The other's a copyeditor at La Opinion La Opinion."

Finn waited. It took almost a minute.

"Neither of those is the woman you're looking for," Damon said finally. "Her name is Hope Adams. She's a reporter with True News True News."

ROBYN.

Like any couple, Damon and Robyn each had interests the other hadn't shared. Damon loved detective shows; Robyn couldn't see the attraction, but had watched them with him anyway. If someone had asked her whether she'd learned anything from them, she would have laughed and said she barely paid any attention, usually using the time to mentally plan her week's schedule. In the last couple of days, though, she discovered that even if she hadn't been actively watching, obviously she'd learned something.

Today's lesson? Stalking 101.

For three blocks she'd been following the man who'd stopped at her motel door and she'd come to a matching number of conclusions.

One, he wasn't red haired. What she'd seen through the distorted image in the peephole had been a dark red baseball cap.

Two, he wasn't from around here. The fact that he'd walked four blocks in car-obsessed L.A. suggested it. His constant stopping and looking around, as if getting his bearings, confirmed it.

Three, if he was a private investigator, he wasn't very good at his job. Despite all his looking around, he never once glanced backward to see whether anyone was following him. He just strolled along, confident and unhurried.

Robyn did did look over her shoulder. Repeatedly. She could be following the guy who'd killed Judd and planned to do the same to her. Shut her up permanently. look over her shoulder. Repeatedly. She could be following the guy who'd killed Judd and planned to do the same to her. Shut her up permanently.

She bit back a giggle. There was a cla.s.sic bad movie line. As silly as it sounded, though, to dismiss the idea would be sillier still. She'd seen two people die and even if common sense told her this was more likely a private investigator than an a.s.sa.s.sin, she wasn't taking any chances.

So she wasn't doing anything as stupid as following this guy down an alley. But there weren't any alleys here. The motel was in some part of L.A.'s endless suburban sprawl. Which part, she didn't know, and blasted herself for not paying better attention yesterday when Karl had driven her in. Around here, though, it was difficult to be on the edge of anything for long and, as Karl had said, it had taken only a short walk before she found herself in a warren of strip malls, three-story walkups and offices. A neighborhood in serious need of a planner.

As a place to follow someone, though, it was perfect. She could dart from hiding place to hiding place, keeping her target in sight while never leaving populated areas. It got even easier when the young man bought himself a snack at an ice cream stand and settled in at one of the umbrella tables out front.

He didn't seem to be in any rush to report that he'd found her. She hadn't even seen him pull out a cell phone. Did that mean he wasn't working for anyone else? Or that he wasn't looking for her at all? Maybe he'd been meeting someone at the motel, arrived early and headed out to pa.s.s the time.

That was one problem with having watched all those mysteries: she saw too many possibilities. One thing was for certain. The guy looked like he'd be here awhile, having bought a ma.s.sive banana split and soda. That meant, as much fun as she was having playing detective, it was time to notify Hope and Karl.

As she headed for a pay phone across the lot, she pa.s.sed a convenience store advertising prepaid cells. Robyn fingered the emergency money Hope had brought from her apartment. Over two hundred. Should she pick up one of those for later? A cheap, untraceable phone?

Untraceable phone? For what? Her new career as a PI?

But as she continued on, watching her target through dark sungla.s.ses, safely disguised in her oversized sweats and baseball cap, she couldn't deny her pulse was pounding, and that her quickening breath didn't come from walking faster.

Maybe it was exhilaration. Maybe it was plain old fear. But she felt something, and that was more than she'd done in months. She imagined what Damon would say.

See, Bobby, that's all you needed to become a fugitive, a murder suspect and a possible a.s.sa.s.sination target.

A snorted laugh made an elderly woman warily glance her way.

Robyn reached the phone, put in her money, dialed the number and pulled the cord as far as it would reach, so she could keep an eye on her target without looking too suspicious.

Robyn Peltier, supersleuth. All she needed was the decoder ring.

Hope's phone rang twice before she answered with a tentative h.e.l.lo.

"It's Robyn."

A relieved laugh. "Thank G.o.d. I saw a pay phone number and thought the local cranks with alien abduction stories had tracked me down already. It usually takes them " She stopped. "Why are you calling from a pay phone? What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Well, nothing I can't handle." Oh yeah, one hour on the job and she was bragging already. "There was a guy hanging around our motel room "

"What?" The alarm in Hope's voice rose. "Did he knock? Try to break in?"

"No, no, he just skulked around." Skulked? She was picking up a new vocabulary, too. "At first I thought it might be the kid you saw last night." Smooth. She thought it was a harmless kid, no need to mention Judd's killer... "So I wanted to see where he went."

"You followed him?"

"Carefully."

Ooh, you sound ticked off, Bobby. How dare she question your skulking competence.

She shushed Damon's voice and hurried on a.s.suring Hope that she'd been very careful, staying in public, populated areas.

"Don't worry," she said. "I remember my stranger danger cla.s.ses." There was a lightness in her voice she hadn't felt in a long time.

As if surprised by Robyn's tone, Hope gave a soft laugh. "Okay, then. Remember, though, just because he hasn't given any sign that he knows you're following him doesn't mean he doesn't."

"I doubt this guy is that good. He keeps looking around, but hasn't so much as glanced over his shoulder."

A pause. "Not once?"

"Never. I bet it hasn't even occurred to him that I could be following. A total amateur. But I promise if he decides to stroll into any abandoned warehouses, I won't follow."

Another small laugh, but this one tight. "This guy, can you describe him?"

"Well, let me tell you, he looks like one dangerous dude." Had she really said dude? "He's maybe five nine, early twenties, skinny, though he's not going to stay that way if he keeps scarfing down mega banana splits."

"What?"

"Banana split. That's what he's eating right now. A totally dangerous guy. He broke off pacing outside my door to go grab some ice cream."

A moment of silence. "Did you notice whether he drove to the motel?"

"I didn't see him until he got to the door. But I doubt it. He just walked four blocks for this ice cream. Maybe we have a PI who lost his driver's license."

Hope didn't answer. Karl said something in the background, too low for Robyn to hear.

"I know," Hope said, voice distant, as if she'd pulled the phone from her mouth. She came back to Robyn. "Stay there, okay?"

"That's what I planned. Like I said, no long walks into abandoned buildings."

"No, seriously. Stay right where you are. If he leaves, abandoned building or not, don't follow him. Don't go back to the motel. Stay put. Do you have an address?"

She gave Hope the name of the nearest store and the street number.

"We'll find it. Now, stay right there."

"In this phone booth?" Robyn tried to sound light, but could hear the edge in her voice.

"No, find..."

A murmur from Karl.

"Are you sure?" Hope's voice was m.u.f.fled, as if covering the receiver. Karl said something else. Then Hope returned. "Karl says if you're comfortable watching him, keep doing that. Just don't "

"Follow him anywhere. Got it."

"We'll be there in fifteen minutes."

ROBYN.

Maybe it was the ice-water splash of Hope's concern, making Robyn feel foolish for her PI fantasies, but the stakeout quickly lost its appeal. She watched the young man eat and drink and eat and drink...

Every now and then he'd break the routine to lift his head, not looking around, just tilting his face up, as if checking the weather. Then, while he was sc.r.a.ping the bottom of the banana boat, he stopped, spoon raised. He scanned one way, then the other, chin lifted. It looked like he was... sniffing. As if he'd picked up a strange smell and was trying to locate the source.

Robyn took a deep breath and caught the faint whiff of garbage. If he was downwind of that, she didn't blame him for perking up. Probably glad he'd finished eating first.

The young man's lips curved, not in a moue of distaste, but what looked like a smile.

He started to rise, stopped midway and glanced in her direction. For a moment, she swore he was looking straight at her as she pretended to read a real estate flyer. Her heart thudded. Hope had been right. He had had known known His gaze swung away and he pushed up from the umbrella table. One last look in her direction, then he set out at a quick stride, heading around the ice cream stand.

He'd known she'd been following him. But how?

The answer was there, a few feet away, her dim reflection in a store window. At some point on the way there, he'd glanced at a window or s.h.i.+ny surface and seen her behind him.

See, Bobby, a true detective doesn't need to look over his shoulder.

That's what Hope had meant, that if he was a professional, he wouldn't be gawking back to check for a tail. At least Robyn could save some face now by not doing something truly stupid, like following to see what had caught his attention.

Ah, you're catching on.

It had been a clever move, pretending he'd seen or heard something, piquing her interest, then hurrying away from the populated area.

Since she was sure he'd made her, there was no reason to hide in the shadows. She folded the flyer under her arm, walked to the ice cream stand, ordered a small vanilla shake, then found a table near where he'd been sitting.

She imagined his surprise when he came back and found his target sitting right out in the open. Then what would he do?

Well, for starters, he could call the police and report seeing a wanted fugitive enjoying a milkshake.

The first sip blasted her stomach and she s.h.i.+vered. In the excitement of playing PI, she'd forgotten her own predicament.

Maybe that's where he was right now making that call. She was scrambling up when she heard, "There you are."

Hope was weaving through the tables, curls escaping her ponytail, breathing hard, as if she'd run from wherever they'd parked. Robyn glanced past her.

"Where's Karl?"

"He took off after the guy. That was him, right? Red ball cap? Leather jacket?"

"Karl's going after him? I I don't think it's the kid you guys saw yesterday. After he left, I started wondering if it could have been Judd's killer. That was a young man about his size. You should call Karl. Warn him."

"Karl's careful. He used to do security, remember?"

Robyn had a hard time picturing Karl in a rent-a-cop uniform. No, not a hard hard time an impossible one. Either he'd done it a very long time ago, or Hope meant a different kind of security, like designing or managing systems. Neither was going to help him in a face-off with a killer. time an impossible one. Either he'd done it a very long time ago, or Hope meant a different kind of security, like designing or managing systems. Neither was going to help him in a face-off with a killer.

Maybe Robyn wasn't the only one enjoying this too much, getting overconfident, taking risks...