The Night Bird

7

Frost heard Lucy Hagen’s footsteps inside as she hurried to answer the door at the apartment she shared with Brynn Lansing.

“Oh, hi, Frost,” she said, her face flushing happily when she saw him. Then she corrected herself: “Sorry — Inspector.”

He returned the greeting with his own friendly, crooked smile. “Frost is fine.”

“Come on in.”

He crossed the threshold past Lucy and eyed the apartment. There wasn’t much to see. It was a studio in an old building on Haight near Octavia. A bay window overlooked the street. Three steps led up to the bathroom, where he could see a toilet and claw-foot tub. The kitchen could have been slipped into the back of his Suburban. He noticed two twin beds, one made, one unmade. Fashion posters were thumbtacked to the walls. The apartment was overstuffed with furniture and clothes.

“It’s not exactly Seacliff, is it?” Lucy said. “Although it feels that way when I pay the rent.”

“It’s an expensive city.”

“Yeah, no kidding. I don’t know where people get the money. We get some of the super-rich types shopping in the jewelry department at Macy’s sometimes. That must be the life, huh?”

“They can have it,” Frost said. “I’ve seen what money does to people. It’s not pretty.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind giving it a try. Cops do okay, though, huh?”

“The union takes care of us.”

“That must be nice. Nobody’s signing up to take care of me. Not that you guys don’t earn it. You do.” Lucy shook her head. “Sorry, I’m babbling like an idiot. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“Don’t worry about it. How long have you lived here?”

“Two years. I need a new roommate now, or I’ll have to move. I called my parents to tell them what happened, and they think I should get out of the city. They don’t think it’s safe here. I don’t know, maybe they’re right, but I’d miss the funk if I left San Fran. Know what I mean?”

“I do.”

“How about you? Have you been here long?”

“All my life.”

“Where do you live?”

Frost hesitated. Normally, he didn’t talk about personal things. He didn’t share secrets easily. Even so, Lucy was easy to talk to, in her sweet, awkward way. She was an ordinary girl with an ordinary life, which was something that Frost liked. The city’s beating heart was all the people who got up and went to work and ate lunch and grabbed takeout for dinner and watched the Giants on TV and went to bed. People like Lucy.

People like Katie.

He also knew that she’d made an effort for him. She was made-up, her hair neat, her lipstick bright. She wore going-out clothes, not stay-at-home clothes. That was no accident. She wanted to make an impression.

“My situation is a little odd,” he told her. “I live in a house on Russian Hill.”

“Wow,” Lucy remarked. “Nice.”

“It’s not mine. The house belongs to Shack.”

Her head cocked. “Wait, isn’t Shack—?”

“My cat.”

“You rent from your cat?” she asked.

“Yeah. He’s a pretty good landlord.”

Lucy folded her arms across her chest. She wore a white sweater. Her brown curls brushed the collar. Her capris showed off the thin taper of her legs. “You’re teasing me.”

“Nope.”

“Are you going to tell me the story? Because now I’m intrigued.”

Frost grinned and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, okay. About a year ago, I was called in on a home invasion case. Rich old widow, beautiful house on Russian Hill. She’d been shot dead in her bedroom. The uniforms who responded had a problem because the woman’s cat was sitting on her chest, and he wouldn’t let anyone near the body. Hissed and batted at them with his claws if they came close. He was protecting her. I grew up with cats, so I figured I’d give it a try. So I just talked to him.”

“You talked to the cat?”

“Yeah. I told him I was sorry that the woman was gone, that it was brave of him to want to protect her, but there was nothing he could do anymore. Eventually, he got off her body and walked over to me. He climbed up my leg, curled up on my shoulder, and wouldn’t leave. Right then and there, he adopted me.”

Lucy blinked back tears. Cat stories did that to women.

“The other cops wanted to take him to animal control, but I said I’d look after him while we did the investigation. Eventually, I talked to the trustee of the woman’s estate and asked if there was some family member who wanted to take Shack. He said there was no family. I said, well, would it be okay if I kept the cat? The trustee got very suspicious and asked if I knew anything about the woman’s estate, which was weird. I said no, all I wanted was to adopt the cat. After an hour in which I felt like he was the cop doing an interrogation, I found out that the estate instructions left the house in a bank trust as long as Shack was alive, and whoever took care of him could live there for a dollar a month. The old woman wanted to make sure that somebody had a hell of an incentive to look after her cat. The funny thing is, I was willing to take him for free.”

“That’s quite the story.”

“Yeah. So here I am, the cop who rents a house from his cat.”

“Is all of that true? Or have you figured out that a man with a cat is sort of a chick magnet for girls?”

“Honestly, I have found that out, but the story’s true. I did have to change his name, though.”

“Why?”

“Well, the old woman called him Señor Bubbles. That didn’t seem manly enough for either one of us.”

Lucy smothered a laugh. “No.”

She bit her lip and played with her hair in a flirty way, but she wasn’t really good at flirting. He knew she was attracted to him. He liked her, too, but for different reasons. There was something real about her, and he met a lot of people in San Francisco who weren’t real at all. It didn’t matter what she said; he just liked listening to her talk.

“What about you?” he asked. “What’s the Lucy Hagen story?”

She blushed and looked away. “Oh, that’s a boring story.”

“I doubt it. Everybody’s got a story. Did you grow up in the city?”

“No. Out in Modesto. I went to SF State and wanted to stick around after college. Nobody was hiring business majors, so I applied at Macy’s. I had dreams of being Jennifer Aniston on Friends, you know? Work my way up into the fashion business? But that’s not going to happen. So I don’t know. I’ve thought about going back to get a nursing degree, but I’m already hip-deep in debt. This economy sucks if you don’t have a cat who comes with a nice house.”

Frost smiled. “You don’t want to follow Brynn’s example? Hook up with a rich lawyer?”

Lucy rolled her eyes. He guessed that there had been a certain amount of jealousy between Lucy and Brynn.

“Yeah, she always had her eyes on the prize when it came to men. The richer the better. I don’t blame her for it. She and Gabe looked good together. I’m sure they would have gotten married and had kids and had a nice house in the hills. Me, I want to figure out who I am before I get involved with somebody.”

“That’s not a bad plan.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not making much progress on either one.”

Frost walked over to Brynn’s bed. There was an elegant perfume in the sheets. Everything was neatly folded and creased. The nightstand was dusted; the books on the table — all romance novels — were arranged in a perfect stack. Brynn was a precise person, and he thought Lucy was right that Brynn would have fit in well as a Sausalito wife.

He asked Lucy, “When did Brynn last sleep here?”

“Three nights ago, I guess. I told you, she was spending a lot of time at Gabe’s. It was nice having the place to myself, actually.”

Frost frowned. Something didn’t add up. “Gabe said he hadn’t seen Brynn in several days.”

“What?”

“He said she stayed with him four nights ago, then she was off the grid for a couple days. She didn’t respond to his calls or texts until yesterday. Did you see her during that time?”

Lucy looked unnerved. “No, she wasn’t here.”

“Was she at work?”

“I don’t know. She’s on a different floor. We usually don’t see each other. We spend enough time together stuffed into this place, so we don’t go out of our way to hang out during the days.”

“Is there anyone else she might stay with?”

“Not that I can think of,” Lucy said. “Her parents, maybe.”

Frost shook his head. “They said they hadn’t seen Brynn in a month.”

“Well, I don’t know. I’m used to her not coming home, but I just assumed she was at Gabe’s.”

“When did you meet up with her yesterday?” Frost asked.

“After work. She was already home when I got back.”

“Did she say anything about where she’d been?”

“No.”

“How was her mood?”

“Fine. Happy. Whistling. I told you, Brynn was always up. We dressed for the party, and then we headed out. She was completely normal, except for—”

“Except for what?” Frost asked. He thought about Brynn whistling, and he started to whistle, too, until he consciously made himself stop.

Lucy sat down in one of the chairs next to the matchbox kitchen table. “Well, I made some comment about thank God tomorrow’s Friday. She gave me the blankest look I’ve ever seen. She took out her phone like she was checking the date, and then she just shrugged it off.”

“Did she say what was wrong?”

“No, she just said, ‘Brain fart.’ That was it. We left for the party.”

Frost studied Brynn’s half of the studio again. “Did Brynn own a laptop?”

“Sure, she kept it under the bed.”

Frost got down on hands and knees and peered under Brynn’s twin bed. He slid out a Toshiba laptop and booted it up. When the screen turned on, it asked him for a password.

“It’s secured. Do you happen to know her password?”

Lucy nodded. “It’s BL-a-go-go.”

Frost keyed it in as Lucy spelled it out for him. When the home screen loaded, he opened up the calendar application. The only appointment listed for the week, other than last night’s party, was a dentist appointment for the previous day at nine in the morning. The calendar listed the dentist’s name and number, and he slid out his cell phone and dialed the office.

He explained who he was to the receptionist and asked his question. Then he hung up.

“Brynn was scheduled for tooth whitening on Thursday morning,” Frost said. “She never showed up.”

“Weird. Brynn was fussy about her teeth.”

“I’d like to know where she was that day,” Frost said.

“I’m sorry, but I have no idea. She didn’t say anything.”

Frost didn’t know if Brynn’s missing time was connected to what happened to her, but he didn’t like the fact that she was off the grid so soon before her unexplained breakdown. And that she was acting as if she didn’t even know what day it was.

“Was Brynn seeing a shrink?” he asked Lucy. “Gabe said she went to see someone about her fear of cats.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Brynn was really high on her. She said I should see her for my bridge thing.”

“When was this?”

“A few weeks ago. The shrink was pretty expensive. Her parents gave her a couple grand for the treatment. That’s how much Gabe meant to her. She didn’t want the cat thing to get in the way of their relationship.”

“Gabe thought the treatment had a strange effect on her memory.”

Lucy nodded. “That’s right. Brynn said the goal was to make you forget whatever was causing your problem. Take away the memory, take away the fear. I guess it worked. Suddenly, Brynn loved cats.”

“What was the shrink’s name?” he asked. “Do you remember?”

“Sure, because it was a little creepy. Francesca Stein. You know — Frankie Stein? Frankenstein? We joked about it. I have one of her cards. Do you want it?”

“I do.”

Lucy went over to her side of the apartment and rummaged through her nightstand drawers. She came back and handed him a business card. “Her office is right near Macy’s, so it was pretty convenient for Brynn.”

“Thank you, Lucy.”

Frost headed for the door, and Lucy hesitated, as if there was more she wanted to say. He thought she wanted to ask him out, but he knew she wouldn’t. It was too easy to follow the path you were on, rather than looking for cross-trails that might take you somewhere scary. He was like that, too.

“Well, say hi to Shack for me,” Lucy said lamely.

“I will.”

“Hey, did you ever catch the guy that killed the old woman? You know, Shack’s original owner?”

“Yeah, that was easy,” Frost told her with a grin. “He showed up at a hospital about two hours after the murder. Bleeding profusely. He had cat scratches all over his body.”