Dear Irene

23

FRANK AND CODY WERE WAITING up for me when I came in at midnight that night. I had called and left a message on our machine saying I would be late, but the look of relief Frank gave me served as a reminder that he was still easily worried about me.

“I was just getting ready to call the paper,” he said.

“I’m safe and sound. Any messages?”

“You got a call from a woman named Louisa Parker. She said you talked to her son today – Howard Parker?”

“Yes. It seems he’s the only one whose mother is still living and mentally competent.”

“She said she wanted to talk to you, asked me to have you call her tomorrow. Mind if I go along with you?”

“I’ll have to clear it with John, but I don’t mind.”

“I talked to Carlos Hernandez today. He’s fairly certain Rosie Thayer died of a coronary, and that the coronary was induced by a lethal injection of some type. Toxicology reports will take a while yet.”

“He found an injection mark on her?”

“Yes. That took some time because of the ant bites, but they found it.”

“So then everything else was just staged? The death by starvation or dehydration never happened?”

“No, she died quickly.”

“Strange, isn’t it? As if he felt he had to kill her, but that he couldn’t bring himself to go through with the cruelty of starving her.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But I suspect that’s wishful thinking on your part. From his point of view, it’s much more practical to kill the victim quickly. He’s careful, and a careful man wouldn’t want to risk a victim’s escape. If she’s dead, she doesn’t make noise. Less risk of interference or discovery by others.”

Given Thanatos’ desire for control, I decided Frank’s interpretation of the lethal injection was probably right.

I went out to pet the dogs, who looked up at me quizzically when I told them they would not be named after film comedians.

AS IT TURNED OUT, I almost changed my mind about having Frank go with me to talk to Louisa Parker. We started the morning off with an argument, another round in our ongoing fight about what he calls my carelessness and I call his overprotectiveness. I had awakened before he did, and gone for a run on the beach with the dogs. He was furious with me for going out alone.

“I had the dogs with me,” I protested.

This did not appease him in the least. We argued while he drove me to work. We argued in the parking lot. The argument wasn’t really settled before I got out of his car. Throughout the morning, I wondered if it would ever be settled.

JOHN WAS PLEASED with the stories Mark and I had turned in the night before, though as usual, we didn’t learn that directly from him. He works very hard at keeping his staff from thinking too highly of themselves.

Mark got a break on another story he had been working on, and wasn’t free to see Mrs. Parker. John asked me if I wanted to take Frank with me. He could see that I was surprised at the suggestion. “Just consider this a little belated Christmas gift from me to you, Kelly.”

“A gift from you?”

“Look, no use having you take any chances.” He smiled at my scowl and added, “If Thanatos kills you, Wrigley will probably freeze your position, and I’ll be out a reporter.”

“Now, that’s more like the old Ebenezer Walters we’ve all come to know and love.”

I figured this was a sign from on high and called Frank.

“Harriman,” he answered. He sounded unhappy. I hadn’t thought our argument affected him that much.

“Hi, Harriman. Still want to talk to Louisa Parker?”

“Irene? Yeah, I do. More than ever.”

“What do you mean, ‘more than ever’?”

“I guess Hobson Devoe hasn’t called you yet.”

“No, why?”

“Hope we don’t need to look up anything else in those personnel records we went through.”

“Mercury had a change of heart?”

“I wish it was something that simple. The records have been wiped out.”

“Wiped out? How?”

“Apparently it’s the work of a hacker. Wiped out all kinds of records, not just the war years.”

“A hacker? At an aircraft company? Don’t they have security systems on their computers?”

“I asked the same thing. They have very sophisticated protection on the computers that store accounting design, production, and other records. A small percentage of employee records, mainly those of people with very high-level government security clearances or people connected with sensitive projects, are well-protected records. But most of the personnel records, especially the older ones, aren’t as difficult to gain access to – the ones we looked at were just used for J.D. Anderson’s studies. And Devoe said the hacker really knew what he or she was doing.”

“When did this happen?”

“About three o’clock this morning, but they’re not exactly sure that’s significant. Could have been a destructive program someone planted before then. It may not be connected to Thanatos; Devoe said the other records included a group of pending workers’ compensation cases. In some ways, that’s more likely, because the cases include those of two people who worked on computers in Human Resources. They’re out with carpal tunnel syndrome complaints.”

“Do you believe that’s who did this? Workers’ compensation complainants?”

There was a long pause before he answered, “I don’t know. To be honest, I’m just too close to this. Carlson has someone else checking that out, which is fine with me.”

Neither of us said anything for a minute.

“Irene? You want to have lunch with me?”

“Sure. How about meeting me at the Galley?”

“Great. I could go for a pastrami sandwich. And I may have something for you on Pauline Grant by then.”

He told me his afternoon plans were all things that could be shuffled around or handled by Pete, so I was free to set up the appointment with Louisa Parker for whatever time worked out best.

When I called her, she was quite excited about talking to me, and had no objections to having Detective Harriman join us. She was taking an art class and wouldn’t be free until the late afternoon. We made an appointment for three o’clock.

FRANK WAS A little late for lunch, but he made up for it by handing over some startling news.

“I tried to look up Pauline Grant’s probation records,” he said. “I figured she would have been paroled a long time ago, but that maybe I could track her down.”

“And?”

“And she’s dead.”

“Well, I guess that’s not too much of a shock. She probably would have been about seventy-something by now, right?”

He shook his head. “No, I mean, she never made it out of prison.”

“What? I thought she was only up for manslaughter.”

“She was. And to be honest, I’m surprised they made that stick.”

“So what happened to her?”

“She was killed in prison. Not long after she was sentenced, in fact. I don’t have all the details yet, but from what I could learn, she was stabbed to death by a group of inmates.”

“Good Lord.” I thought about the interviews Mark and I had conducted the night before, how Justin Davis and Howard Parker had talked of Jimmy Grant. Bad enough to have been separated from his mother for a few years; worse yet, he had been orphaned. “Any idea what became of her son?”

“Not yet. The usual procedure would be to place him with family members. If no family members could be located, he would have been placed in foster care, maybe adopted, although he would have been hard to place at that age. The records are in L.A. County and too old to be readily accessible. Besides, for this kind of information, I’d need a warrant. That will take some time.”

“If the Department of Social Services is reluctant to open his records, what else can you do?”

“Oh, we’ll still have some options. Track down his mother’s Social Security records, see if anybody is collecting her payments. Look for school records, things like that.”

“A lot of work.”

“Yes, and a lot of time. No telling if he’s the one we want. He could be dead by now, or living in some other part of the country, maybe not even aware all of this is going on. But the victims sure as hell point back to somebody connected with what happened that day.”

“I can’t think of anyone who would have a stronger motive for revenge than Jimmy Grant. Alex Havens and Edna Blaylock testified against his mother. He was separated from her, and later she was killed.”

“But why did he wait so long? He has to be about fifty-four years old himself. Why didn’t he do this when he was in his teens or his twenties? And why involve you – choose you as his Cassandra?”

“I don’t know.” I doodled on my napkin as I thought about it, then noticed I was drawing figures shaped like fawns. I was the only person on earth who could discern them as such, of course. Film animators have nothing to fear from me.

“The people we’ve talked to so far were all children at the time,” I said. “Maybe Louisa Parker will be able to tell us more.”

He smiled. “I’m kind of surprised you asked me to come along with you to talk to her.”

“It wasn’t my idea.”

There went the smile. “Still pissed off at me?”

“No, but I’m thinking of seeing a doctor. Something’s really wrong with me – I can’t hold a grudge like I used to.”

At least the smile was back, and he did have the good sense to withhold any arrogant remarks on his ability to charm me out of a bad mood. He skated dangerously close to the edge, though, when he started whistling as we walked out to the car.

LOUISA PARKER LIVED in an area called Kelso Park, an older part of town. It was an oddball neighborhood; little wood-frame houses built in the 1930s were sandwiched between large buildings of fifty or more condos each.

Developers would buy a couple of the old houses, which were on large lots, tear them down, and replace them with four-story buildings. At most, the builders provided one parking space per condo in underground, gated lots. Street parking was a bitch.

If, like Louisa Parker, you were one of the people who owned a house, you were suddenly living in a canyon. And with three walls of condo balconies surrounding you, you didn’t have much privacy. Not exactly conducive to things like nude sunbathing in your own yard. Not that I imagined Louisa Parker was into baring all.

“I wonder what the air quality is like when all those condo folks get out on their balconies and barbecue,” I said to Frank as we walked down the sidewalk toward her house. He just gave me one of those looks that said he would never understand how my mind works.

I like it that way.

He knocked on the front door, and it fairly flew open before his knuckles left the wood. He had his ID in hand, but she didn’t so much as glance at it. “Irene Kelly!” she said. “I can’t believe I’m going to have Irene Kelly right in my own home! Come in, come in!”

My photo will run next to one of my occasional commentary columns, so once in a while I’m recognized on the street. Although I’ll get mail or phone calls from readers, I rarely encounter people who are what you might call fans. Louisa Parker was a true fan. I would be a first-class liar if I said this wasn’t pleasing, but I’m never quite ready for it when it happens.

She was a bundle of energy. She was grinning from ear to ear as she shook my hand with a firm grip and ushered us inside. As she led us into the living room, I could see why Howard Parker thought she might outlive him. She was tall, like her son, but not as thin. She wore her gray hair like a crown of glory, and had a few wrinkles, but you wouldn’t find it easy to guess her age without missing by a couple of decades. She looked great.

The house wouldn’t tell her age, either. The furnishings were sleek and contemporary. Her son had far more old-fashioned furniture in his home.

“This whole Thanatos business stinks to high heaven,” she said with conviction. She had seated us on her black leather sofa and given us each a cup of coffee in about three minutes flat. “I don’t like it at all. Not at all.” She turned to Frank, giving him the look mothers reserve for children caught sticking their fingers in the frosting. “When do you suppose you police fellows are going to catch the bastard?”

“We’re doing our best, Mrs. Parker,” Frank said, managing somehow to maintain a serious expression.

“Well, you damn well better catch him soon.” She turned to me and smiled. “What can I tell you?”

“Do you remember much about the Olympus Child Care Center case?”

“Of course I do. I don’t mean to be a shameless braggart, but I have an excellent memory. At my age, that’s something to crow about. If you’re as gray headed as I am and you so much as misplace your keys, people think you’ve got Alzheimer’s.”

As she continued on, I noticed that she hardly spared Frank a glance. “Yes, I most certainly do remember it. And I think it was one of the saddest things ever to happen to someone I knew personally. Pauline Grant was a lovely young woman, and she truly did love children. I took the time to get to know her a little, since I wanted to know the person who would be caring for my child while I was at work.”

“That’s always wise,” Frank said, but she ignored him, and I could tell he was a little irked about it.

“The children who were Howie’s age went over to the Olympus Center right after school, at about two o’clock,” she said. “They stayed there until about five thirty, when we picked them up after work. I guess they call it extended day care.

“Well, Pauline was a woman trying to raise a child all by herself, just as I was. She doted on her son. I suppose that was her downfall. Try to understand. We were patriotic, but that side of the war, losing a loved one, was as painful for us as it ever has been for anybody. For those of us who had lost our husbands – well, that protectiveness of our children was hard to avoid. We were all our children had left, and quite often, the reverse was true as well. Pauline had no other family to turn to. She was all alone. So it was easy for her to become overprotective of her little boy.”

“So you knew both Pauline and Jimmy?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. Jimmy, her son, was a sensitive child to begin with, and Pauline’s attitude just made him something of a whiner. Clung to her apron strings. I’m afraid the other children didn’t give him a very easy time of it. Maggie Robinson’s boy was a nasty little booger, if I may speak so ill of the dead. He had a temper on him. A born hell-raiser. And if you want my opinion, in another ten years he would have been one of the people Detective Harriman goes hunting for.”

“Maybe so,” I said, “but he was only a child, just eight years old. He wasn’t much of a physical match for a grown woman, was he?”

“No,” she said quietly, “I suppose you’re right. But I tell you, that child was the kind of kid that could tempt Mother Theresa to knock the crap out of him.”

“Do you know what became of Jimmy Grant?” Frank asked.

She looked between us with wide eyes. “You mean you don’t know?”

“We’ve only known of his existence since yesterday, Mrs. Parker.” He caught himself, and quickly added, “We would appreciate any information you could give us.” He glanced over at me, then back at her.

She smiled, knowing she had nettled him. Suddenly she looked between us slyly. “Is something going on between you two?”

“Engagement,” I answered, noting Frank was slightly taken aback by my directness.

She brightened. “Well, congratulations! I’ve been married twice myself, and recommend it highly.” Now she was eyeing him from head to toe. “Well, well, well. Well, well, well!”

With each “well,” Frank apparently received a higher approval rating. He was embarrassed by the appraisal process, which in turn forced me into a hopeless struggle to keep a straight face.

“Jimmy Grant?” he asked, as if in pain.

“Oh, yes,” she sobered. “We were talking about poor little Jimmy. Well, I suppose that is exactly what makes the whole thing so sad. Sad and bizarre, if you ask me.”

“Bizarre?”

“Yes, Detective Harriman. Bizarre. A sign of the kind of corruption we had around here in those days. Pauline, as you know, was jailed almost immediately after the Robinson boy died. The mothers of the children at the Olympus Center were divided into two camps, you might say. Those that lined up behind Maggie Robinson were crying for blood. The rest of us felt that the whole thing had been an accident. Her lack of self-control meant Pauline should lose her job, but not her child. And certainly not her freedom.”

“Did Pauline have many supporters?” I asked.

“Oh no. By supporting Pauline, I was in the minority camp. None of us had the kind of money it would take to get her a good lawyer or to help her get out on bail. So she was in custody from the day of the incident on.”

“And Jimmy?”

“As I said, there were no relatives available, so Jimmy was placed into foster care. He was – oh, I hate to say it, but he was a difficult child. He didn’t accept what had happened at all. Blamed himself, in the way children will. When Pauline was sent to prison, he became totally uncontrollable, and there was doubt as to whether he could ever be placed anywhere for long. That’s when Maggie Robinson stepped in.”

“Maggie Robinson?”

“Yes. She somehow finagled it so that she became Jimmy’s foster mother.”

“What?” We asked it in chorus.

“Yes. She had some twisted notion that this was a just solution. I thought it stank. When Pauline was killed, Maggie adopted Jimmy.”

We sat in stunned silence for a moment.

“How was that possible?” I asked.

“J. D. Anderson,” she said.

“The president of Mercury Aircraft?” Frank asked. “What did he have to do with it?”

“Rumors were, Maggie was J.D.’s mistress. For all her other faults – and believe me, you don’t want to sit here while I name them – Maggie was stunningly beautiful.”

I shook my head. “I still don’t understand how that could allow her-”

“To adopt Jimmy? Irene Kelly, you surprise me. At that time, J.D. was one of the most powerful individuals in the Los Angeles area. And while you may believe there is corruption now, back then, things were absolutely rotten. Didn’t Mr. O’Connor ever tell you about what it was like then?”

“Well, yes, but a child-”

“Especially a child. Surely you can see that even now, children have little say over what becomes of them. They’re at the mercy of adults. Adoption has changed now, not so much because of the law, but because of supply and demand, if you will. Abortion rights changed the supply. Back then – remember the recent revelations about the judge who made a small fortune from adoption? She ordered babies removed from their parents’ custody and then accepted payment to place the children with wealthy clients.”

“Wasn’t there anyone who spoke up for him?”

She wrung her hands together. “I’m ashamed to admit it, but no, I didn’t. Maggie wasn’t working at Mercury by then, but we all knew she was J.D.’s kept woman. The rumor I heard was that he had pulled all the strings himself, had even fixed it so that if anybody went looking for Jimmy’s records, they wouldn’t find a thing. As if the kid didn’t exist before he was adopted.”

She paused, then continued in a much lower voice. “The war was over, and lots of women had lost their jobs. At the time, I was the sole source of support for my son. I had never worked before the war. Not as a teacher or a nurse, not even as a waitress. If I lost my job at Mercury, I didn’t have a thing to fall back on. If it had just been me, well, maybe I would have spoken up. But I had Howie to think of, and I stayed silent.”

“I appreciate your telling us now,” Frank said. “You’ve saved me a lot of effort. I’ll have a better idea of how to look for him now. Did you ever see Maggie Robinson after the war?”

“Yes, once I saw her here in town, at a store during a Christmas sale. Must have been two or three years after the war. She seemed quite nervous about the encounter. She tried to avoid me, truth be told. I sort of pushed my way over to her and asked about Jimmy. She looked furious, but she said she didn’t know any Jimmy, and I must have mistaken her for someone else. Then she managed to disappear into the crowd. I never did like that woman.”

“Do you know Hobson Devoe?” I asked.

“Yes, the former head of personnel. I understand he runs the museum out there now.”

“Would he have known about Maggie?”

She frowned. “I’m not certain, of course, but I’d tend to doubt it. Mr. Devoe has always been very active in his church. The other men used to call him ‘The Boy Scout.’ Treated him as something of an innocent – or perhaps I should say, they treated him as if he were prudish. They didn’t tell dirty jokes around him, or use foul language, so I’m sure they didn’t discuss J.D.’s mistresses – according to rumor, J.D. had several. Maggie was certainly not the only one who let J.D. sample her wares, although she was apparently a favorite over many years. I just don’t know. Hobson was a straight arrow, but he wasn’t naive or unable to get what he wanted in the corporation.”

We talked for a few more minutes, then thanked her and said our good-byes. As we went down the sidewalk, she shouted out to Frank from her front porch. “You be good to her, Detective Harriman, or you’ll answer to me.”

We waved and drove off.

On the way home, I told Detective Harriman that he had indeed been good to me, and started to list off some possible rewards. He was looking forward to them, but it wasn’t to be. When we pulled up in his driveway, we noticed a car parked out in front of the house. A woman was sitting in it.

Frank’s mother had decided to surprise us with a visit.