September 10, 1967

Dear Lynette,

Roger gave me the place in Newport full-time. Practically made me move in. For now I guess it’s okay. I don’t like owing him even though he says I don’t. His wife is sweet. Troy of the cops says I have some more money coming, but he’s usually slow with it. Says his department might have an apartment in Laguna they could let me have awhile. I want MY place.

You can see the sailboats from the bedroom window. Roger thinks this is a healthier place for me to be than Laguna. He doesn’t like all the drug things going on there. The long hair scares him. You know how old guys are.

I’m sitting on the bed upstairs while I write this letter. Hard to believe I’m eighteen already. Guess I should be happy but I’m not. I imagine me with a different face. And different hair. And a different name. And a different story behind me. I still love music. Went up to Laguna last night and met that LSD guy at a party. They offered me some and I said no, maybe some other time. Kinda scared of it. Lots of weird people around.

Upstairs Andy stepped into a big bedroom blasted with morning sunlight. Newport Harbor glittered beyond the picture window. Small sailboats rocked in the bright sunshine. The water was polished indigo with a V of white wake widening toward Andy.

White carpet. White walls. White curtains. Prints of flowers and cottages in white frames. Looked like something furnished for an older woman, thought Andy.

The single bed was neatly made. Pink quilt and matching pillowcases and a Raggedy Ann doll upright against one pillow. A low dresser with a mirror. A cane-back rocker. A few pairs of pants and some blouses in the closet. Price tags still on them. One pair of white sneakers with yellow psychedelic daisies on them. Andy turned one over. Never worn. Some T-shirts and tie-dyed stuff in the dresser. Brand new.

Andy opened the bathroom medicine cabinet: deodorant, a can of the same hairspray Meredith’s mother had used. Brand-new bottle of aspirin.

And it hit him that someone had furnished the place the way they thought Janelle would like. But she didn’t want a Raggedy Ann doll or old ladies’ hairspray. Didn’t want this place at all. Her letter to Lynette had said as much.

He found Marci downstairs and asked her how long she’d been cleaning the place.

“Since September, one year ago. Every week.”

“This was Janelle’s apartment, right?”

“Yes. She was nice and spoke Spanish very well. I saw her only two times. Once when I first started. Then a few days before she died. I work here on Fridays.”

Andy nodded. Noted the dishless kitchen counters. The shining sink. The unblemished floor.

“You are not what you say you are,” said Marci. She shook her head but looked down.

Andy admitted he was a reporter. And a friend of Janelle’s. This felt odd. He’d never considered himself a friend when she was living.

“Have you done the kitchen for today?”

“No.”

“Are there ever any dishes to do?”

“No.”

“What about the bed? Is it ever used?”

“Once,” she said. “Friday after she died.”

“The landlord is Mr. Stoltz?”

“I don’t know his name. Slender with a mustache. Thirty-five years. Maybe more. He said nothing to me but hello and goodbye.”

“When?”

Marci looked up at the ceiling while she thought. “Two Fridays ago.”

Two days after they found her in the packinghouse, thought Andy. “And the bed had been used?”

Marci blushed. “Yes,” she said. “It was not made. The sheets and pillowcases were gone. The bedspread and blanket were still here.”

He asked her what the landlord had done when he came here that day.

“He looked out the window upstairs. I was cleaning the bathroom and pretended I didn’t see him. He wiped his eyes.”

Andy thought of the secret man Janelle kept from Jesse Black. Stoltz? Almost certainly. Thought of Janelle’s letter to her sister. Roger doesn’t want anything in return except for me to be cool about it.

Really.

His heart sped up a beat when he remembered the scratches and the scab on Roger Stoltz’s hand that night at his parents’ house. After the funeral.

Janelle, pregnant by Stoltz?

Threatening to keep the child and demanding money?

Offering an abortion for a price?

An argument? A fight?

Jesse Black had said that Janelle was scheduled for an abortion.

Had childless Stoltz wanted her to keep their baby, and she refused?

Andy asked Marci how she knew that Janelle had been murdered.

“Her picture was in the Spanish paper. They called her the Queen with No Head.”

ANDY WENT through a door in the kitchen and into the garage. Small, for one car only. Dank and cool and he could smell the bay stronger. Noted that nobody could see him here if the big overhead garage door was shut. Tried to push it open with his foot but the outside latch was fastened. Found a light switch and turned it on.

Two red Schwinn ten-speeds hung end to end on brackets on one wall. Andy ran his finger along a crossbar. New paint shiny where the dust was gone. Below them a two-person Sears Whirlwind sailboat, tilted lengthwise. A sail-rigged mast hung above the bikes. Two orange life jackets hung from the pedals.

Toys, he thought. Toys for lovers. Never used and left behind.

He heard Lynette’s words: Even in the letters I can tell he wanted her for the same things any man would want her for. But she never did it with him. At least that’s what she wrote, and I believe her.

The concrete floor was clean. Old oil stains, faint and cut by bleach. Andy thought of Janelle’s powder blue Volkswagen. Also provided, along with the apartment and other gifts, by humanitarian Roger Stoltz.

Who was an honored friend of his father.

Who could make his mother smile.

Who fixed David with a job out of seminary and Nick with a letter from Dick Nixon and Clay with a CIA scholarship to a language school the Beckers probably couldn’t even afford and got Clay killed anyway.

Trouble was, Stoltz was in Washington, D.C., the night Janelle died. At least that’s what Stoltz’s congratulatory telegram on breaking the story had implied.

Back in the apartment Andy was surprised to find the telephone working. But why not, he wondered. Everything else was in running order. Even if the girl this was all for lived somewhere else entirely.

Representative Roger Stoltz’s office in Tustin picked up on the second ring. Pleasant female voice.

“This is Andy Becker of the Orange County Journal. We’re doing a story on Congressman Stoltz and need to confirm that he was here in Southern California on Tuesday, October the first, and attended a Republican Party fund-raiser hosted by John Wayne.”

“Oh. Let me see, Mr. Becker. Just a moment.”

Andy stood there twirling the coiled phone cord. Heard paper rustling. Heard Marci running a vacuum upstairs. Then the woman came back on the line.

“No, Mr. Becker. Roger was in Washington that day. The Un-American Activities House Committee had hearings and Roger is a member.”

“Right,” said Andy. “The Commies.”

“Yes, Roger understands that the Communist threat is real. He has proof that there are still some American citizens working against their own government. Some are involved in espionage, others spew propaganda and dissent. By the way, I enjoy your articles very much.”

Andy went upstairs again. Looked out the picture window and heard Marci banging around in the bathroom.

He asked her if she’d ever seen Janelle and the landlord together here.

“No,” she said. “I only saw her two times. Once was a year ago and once was three Fridays ago.”

“What was Janelle doing?

“The first, she was putting some clothes in the dresser. Second time, she was sitting at the kitchen table downstairs with a man. He was very large and had long blond hair and a broken smile. He wore a bright shirt with palm trees on it and short pants and huaraches with car tires for a bottom. Like they make in Mexico.”