Cold Shoulder

Chapter 9

Rosie was so immersed in the horror of the statements and pictures she didn’t hear Lorraine walking into the bedroom.

‘That was private, Rosie, you shouldn’t be reading it.’

Rosie looked up and hunched her shoulders apologetically. ‘It’s those mortuary shots that get me — really close up, aren’t they? I didn’t know you looked like that when you were dead, how they can clean them up...’ She held up Helen Murphy’s photograph. ‘This is her when they found her, and this is her at the morgue and this is her — I mean, she looks like she’s sleeping.’

Lorraine walked into the bathroom. ‘They had her face fixed up with plaster for an ID. Made-up, that’s all. The only suspect they got is her husband, a trucker, but they’re way off, he’s not the killer.’

Rosie shut the file. ‘I doubt if anyone’ll grieve over these women, they look like they’re all pretty shot up — in fact some of them look happier dead, know what I mean? Well, not the little blonde girl, she’s sort of cute.’

Lorraine leaned on the bathroom door. ‘Yeah. She doesn’t fit in, does she? All the others are older, worn out, hard...’

‘You know what I think?’ Rosie licked her lips. ‘I think he picked you up. You were hit on the back of the head but somehow you got away from him. The taxi brought you back here and... I remembered it was the seventeenth of last month.’ Then she shrugged her heavy shoulders. ‘It couldn’t have been you, though, could it?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because that was the day Norman Whatcha-call-it was done — they found him in his own car, right? So he wouldn’t have been whacking you over the head and killing somebody else, would he?’

‘I fell on the pavement, Rosie.’

‘Yeah — and I’m Sharon Stone’s lookalike.’

Lorraine walked into the shower and pulled the curtain round her. Rosie surprised her — not that she had said anything intelligent, or especially intuitive even: Lorraine had been cracked over the back of the head in exactly the same manner as described not once but eight times in the files. But it was the simple dismissal of the possibility that the man could have killed Hastings and then an hour later attempted to kill again. Lorraine made a mental note to check through the exact times and dates of each murder.

Lorraine felt tired, but a good sort of tired. She’d worked hard last night just assimilating all the evidence and, although she didn’t like to admit it, she had liked chatting over it with Rosie. That’s what had surprised her: that she had, for a few brief minutes, felt like a player again. ‘Marking out the jigsaw’ was the way she used to describe it to Mike.

The water jets sprayed into her uptilted face. Mike and she had talked over her cases to begin with, but gradually he’d become uninterested, telling her that he didn’t want to hear about the whores or the details of the murders, he had to study. She had no one to talk it out of her system with: she had just bottled it all up inside.

She gasped, turned the taps to cold. She didn’t want him to come back into her life, not now, please not Lubrinski, she couldn’t deal with him. It had been Lubrinski who realized she was bottling up all the horror, anger, disgust. It had been Lubrinski after a particular heavy night when they had found two teenagers in a boarding house, stiff from death, stiff from drugs, stiff and stinking, but they were so beautiful, like frozen angels the pair of them, who had insisted they go to a bar, insisted they get smashed. And drunk she had suddenly broken down and Lubrinski had gripped her tightly, had even cried with her as he said it was okay to let go, to let the poison out, rather than have it seething inside her. Lubrinski.

Rosie was eating muffins with a jam smear across her cheek and also over the file, which Lorraine promptly snatched away from her. ‘You don’t get it sticky with jam!’

Rosie washed her hands in a great display, and then returned to reading the files and statements. ‘This Andrew Fellows is something else, isn’t he? You read what he came up with about Helen thingy? The killer really likes them in bad shape, doesn’t he?’

Lorraine couldn’t help but be drawn in. ‘Apart from Holly.’

‘Oh, yeah. Well, maybe he just got lucky that night.’

Lorraine dressed and made up her face. When she came back into the room Rosie was still engrossed in the files.

‘Could you borrow that car from Jake’s friend?’

‘What do you need a car for?’

‘I need to go to Santa Monica. A bit of investigation work. Maybe you could help me.’

Rosie’s face lit up. ‘Do I get paid?’

‘Yeah, you’ll get paid, Rosie.’

They eventually found ‘W-rent W-rent Wreckers’ where Lorraine had to pay a hundred bucks down in case there were any further dents to the Mustang. The man was not overly interested in the licence Rosie waved at him, but the car cost fifty bucks for a week, plus gas, with the hundred-buck deposit. Rosie drew a diagram of all the dents to avoid them being conned on their return, and in a cloud of exhaust fumes, bangs, and the engine clacking at an alarming rate, they bombed out of the yard.

The roof was down — it could not go up — and as it was a bright clear day, Lorraine rested back on the torn seat and considered how they — she, she corrected herself — would go about interviewing the men working at the vintage car garage in Santa Monica. All she wanted to know was if they sold cufflinks; if so, how many, and how many men they employed. And she needed to know if they had someone fitting the description of the killer. With Rosie at the wheel, Lorraine relaxed for the journey, as much as Rosie’s driving style would allow: she was an incurable horn tooter, thrusting an abusive finger up to anyone who cut her up. Yet, and again Lorraine found herself surprised, she was a competent driver, even if she did cut across lanes. But she did it so positively that it didn’t make Lorraine nervous.

Rosie sighed as they turned into yet another road, Lorraine shaking her head. She simply could not remember where the place was, or which route the cab driver had taken. She knew they were close, but she didn’t want to ask directions. Instead she told Rosie to drive to Mike’s address: maybe she would recognize landmarks, and as Mike’s house was along the shore, she was confident she’d be able to direct Rosie from there.

With a screech of tyres Rosie did a U-turn and headed for the beach.

‘Keep going, we’re almost at Mike’s house now.’ They drove on until she spotted the house. She hadn’t meant Rosie to stop, especially not so close, but she jammed on the brakes hard. Lorraine felt the confidence draining from her. ‘That’s it, just across the street.’

Rosie peered over the road. ‘Very nice. Worth a few dollars.’

‘Just drive on, Rosie.’

‘But you don’t know where we’re going!’

‘Just drive, will you? I don’t want him to see me.’ As they set off, Lorraine tried to concentrate on the road ahead. But all she could think of was Mike and the girls. She closed her eyes, and then jerked forward as Rosie hit the brakes again.

‘You’re not even looking, for chrissakes! We carry on at this rate and we’ll run out of gas.’

Lorraine yanked open the door and got out of the car.

Rosie sighed heavily. ‘We lost again?’

Lorraine didn’t answer, but walked over to the railing and stood looking out to the ocean. Rosie sat in the car for a few moments, then joined Lorraine. ‘You okay?’

‘Not too good, Rosie.’

They stood side by side, like something out of a comedy duo: one so tall and slim, the other so round. A female Laurel and Hardy, but nothing was funny.

‘I’ve lost my girls, Rosie, I know that. It wouldn’t be right for me to see them. They’re happy, settled, they call her Mom. They’ve forgotten me — but, then, I wasn’t really worth remembering.’

‘Don’t say that. Everything’s worth remembering, the good and the bad, and things are gonna get good for you. You never know, maybe next time you see them it won’t be so bad.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know so.’

Lorraine looked down into the plump, concerned face. ‘You’re the eternal optimist, aren’t you?’

‘Yep. That’s why I got myself so together.’

Lorraine slipped her arms round her, gave her a squeeze. ‘I’m glad I found you, Rosie.’

‘Me too,’ Rosie said.

Lorraine released her and turned to face the road. She remembered the cab took a right at the next junction. ‘Okay, let’s go. I think I know the way.’

‘You sure you want to do this?’

Lorraine threw up her hands in frustration. ‘Why do you think we came here? Now get in the car, I’ve been working out exactly what I want to say. I’ll draw a picture of a cufflink and you show it to the salesman. You say your husband has lost one, and you want to replace it — are you listening? Left, take a left here!’

Five miles later they pulled up in the forecourt of the building next to the vintage car showroom. Rosie got out carrying the sketch, and armed with the questions she had repeated four times to Lorraine.

Lorraine watched her disappear as she passed between the cars on display on the forecourt. When she slid up to sit on the back of her seat, she could see Rosie inside the big glass-fronted showroom, waiting at the long mahogany counter. Then she lost her as Rosie accompanied a man to the far end of the showroom. Lorraine dropped back into her seat, and lit a cigarette, never taking her eyes off the showroom entrance. Had she asked too much of Rosie? She was about to go in after her when she appeared.

‘Christ, what have you been doing? Do you know how long you were in there?’

‘Sorry, but the guy never stopped talkin’. You want the good news?’

‘Yeah, yeah. Come on, tell me.’

‘Okay. They sell the cufflinks, or they used to. They were originally part of a promotional thing, started in 1990. You know, spend hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars on a vintage car and they’ll throw in a set of cufflinks.’

‘Shit!’ Lorraine hit the dashboard with her fist. But Rosie wasn’t through. She had the number of workers, fifty-eight in all’ each of whom had been given cufflinks with their Christmas bonus. Around two hundred and fifty sets had been made up — that was the bad news. Further good news was that the first batch had been made in cheap silver, which had proved so popular that they had had a second batch made. These had been handed out last Christmas — and only to their executives, the difference being that these were made in nine carat gold. Rosie beamed. ‘There’s a board showing the top salesmen and the directors, listing their offices, so I presumed they’d be the executives, right? Eight in all.’ She fished around in her purse and dragged out a dog-eared Mickey Mouse notepad and a felt tip pen. She sucked the end and then scribbled down as many as she could remember. Lorraine watched in astonishment. Rosie chuckled as she underlined the last name: she’d remembered all eight, even their tides.

‘I always win every time! Those game shows where they show you a sort of runner thing with articles and you gotta remember each one! Now, were the links you saw gold or silver?’

Lorraine couldn’t remember. ‘You see anyone with blondish hair, rimless glasses, wide wet mouth?’

‘Nope. The guy was short and fat and looked like he got a sack of potatoes in the back of his pants...’

Lorraine grinned, and then looked over the list of names, wondering about her next move. Fifty-eight workers, all with cufflinks, eight executives all with gold ones — and a few hundred vintage car owners with God knew how many more.

‘He also said that the silver ones were crap and most of them broke after a few outings. He gave me a set for free.’

Rosie revealed the box and Lorraine snatched it from her. She opened it and knew at a glance that the man who attacked her had worn gold cufflinks. She snapped it closed. ‘Rosie, you are a fuckin’ marvel!’

Eight names, eight men with gold cufflinks. Now she would work on eliminating each one. She knew she had to be careful: if she confronted her attacker she could be in danger. At the same time she had to be sure; if she gave Rooney bum information he could arrest her, charge her, and have her locked up. She wouldn’t put it past him because he had brought up the shooting incident. It must still sit heavy on him, maybe he felt the guilt he wanted her to feel. Lorraine knew she couldn’t make any mistakes — there was too much at stake.