The winter of Frankie Machine

78

He finds Karen Wilkenson on the polo grounds.

They sit in the valley where Rancho Santa Fe meets Del Mar, the grass unusually green and lush in this wet winter, beautiful now as the early morning mist rises off the flats.

She’s in the stables, inspecting her horses.

They’re actually ponies, Frank thinks, not horses.

The last time he saw her was in a Price Club parking lot, twenty-one years ago, when a bank vice president was handing her an envelope of cash to provide girls for the party. Karen eventually served two years in some Camp Fed, but she landed on her feet when she married a Rancho Santa Fe Realtor with old San Diego money.

Whores land on their backs when they fall, madams on their feet.

She’s still attractive in her late fifties. The face-lift was skillful-her skin looks young and taut, and her eyes still have a shine.

“Ms. Wilkenson?” Frank asks.

She’s standing outside a stall, stroking the pony’s nose, softly talking to the animal. She doesn’t turn around. “It’s Mrs. Foster now,” she says, “and I no longer do interviews. Good-bye.”

“I’m not looking for an interview,” Frank says.

“Then what are you looking for?” she asks. “Whatever it is, I’m sure I can’t provide it. Good-bye.”

“I’m looking for a woman I knew as ‘Alison’ twenty years ago,” Frank says.

“Nostalgia or obsession?” Karen Foster asks, and now she turns around to get a look at Frank.

“Neither,” Frank says. “I want to ask her about Summer Lorensen.”

Karen says, “You don’tlook like a police officer.”

“I’m not.”

“Then I don’t have to talk to you,” she says. “Good-bye.”

“Then you don’t care who murdered her?”

“I loved that girl like a daughter,” Karen says. “I wept for days. As I did for Alison.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you are looking for Alison Demers,” Karen says, “you will have to go to a cemetery in Virginia. Alison moved back east after Summer’s murder. She died in a horseback-riding accident.”

“When?”

“A month ago,” Karen says. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“I want to find who killed Summer Lorensen.”

“The police said that they found that man,” she says.

“But we both know better, don’t we, Mrs. Foster?” Frank asks.

She glares at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No?”

“No,” she says. “And if you persist in harassing me, I’ll call some men and have you tossed out of here.”

“Don’t bother,” Frank says. “I’m leaving. And Mrs. Foster?”

“What?”

“When you call Donnie,” Frank says, “tell him Frankie Machine says hello.”