Since Lucy did not come upstairs that night, the cat slept well.

CHAPTER 24

The next day Lucy and Ben planned to spend the morning in Beverly Hills, then make the drive to Long Beach for what Lucy hoped would be the final meeting of her negotiation. They were leaving the day after tomorrow.

We made banana pancakes and eggs and coffee, and ate together, but Lucy still seemed pained and distracted as she readied to leave. I found that I was thinking more about her and less about me, but neither of us seemed to be making much progress toward a resolution. Of course, maybe this was because we had so far successfully avoided talking, and maybe the time for talk-avoidance had passed. The ducking of communication rarely leads to a resolution. I said, 'What time do you guys expect to be home?'

'Sixish.' Lucy was replacing her files in her briefcase. 'I don't expect that anything will hang us up in Long Beach.'

'Good. I'm going to take us someplace special for dinner.'

She smiled at me. The soft smile. 'Where?'

'Surprise.'

We held each other's gaze for the first time that morning, and then Lucy put out her hand. Her skin was warm and soft, and touching her made me tingle. 'A surprise would be nice.'

'Leave everything to me.' Elvis Cole, Master of the Universe, turns on the ol' charm.

They left the house at ten minutes before nine, and then I phoned my friend at the coroner's office. The autopsy of James Lester had been completed, and when I asked after the cause of death, he said, 'The guy took a header through the glass, and he was still alive when he made the fall. You want to know just what was severed and how?'

'Not necessary. Was there an indication that he might've had help going through the glass?'

'You mean, like, did someone beat the hell out of him first, then push him through?'

'That's one way to put it.' I could hear papers rustling in the background, and laughter. Someone sharing a big joke to start the day at the morgue.

'Nah. No sign of blunt-force trauma. No bruising, cuts, or scrapes that would indicate a physical altercation.'

'Hm.' So maybe it wasn't murder. Maybe James Lester was just clumsy.

'But we did find one thing that was odd.' Maybe James Lester wasn't just clumsy after all. 'There's a pattern of subcutaneous capillary rupture over the carotid area on his neck.'

'That sounds like bruising.'

'It's not the kind of bruising you'd ever see, and it wasn't caused by impact trauma.'

'So no one hit him.'

'You see stuff like this when someone vomits or has a coughing fit. Coughing can do stuff like that. You'd be surprised what coughing can do.' These medical examiners.

I was thinking about the carotid artery, and I was trying to imagine a type of force that might rupture microcapil-laries without creating an impact bruise. 'Are you saying that he was strangled?'

'Nah. Bruising would be severe.'

'Could he have been strangled in a way to avoid the bruising?'

He thought about it. 'I guess he could've been strangled with something soft, like a towel, or maybe choked out, like with a police choke hold. That might show a rupture pattern like this.'

'So he could've been choked out, then tossed through the glass.'

'Hey, you're saying it, I'm not. We're just speculating.'

'But it's possible.'

'It's possible the guy swallowed wrong, started coughing, then lost his balance and went through the glass.'

I didn't say anything.

'But, yeah, he could've been choked out, too.'

I hung up, then called Mrs Louise Earle. Her answering machine answered, and I said, 'Mrs Earle, this is Elvis Cole. If you're there, would you pick up, please? We need to talk.' I was hoping to catch her before she started her day. I was hoping to convince her to see me.

No one picked up.

'Mrs Earle, if Angela Rossi or any other police officer threatened you, I wish you would've told me. I'd sure like to hear about it, now.'

Still no answer.

I hung up, then once more made the drive to Olympic Park. If I couldn't get her on the phone, I would try to see her in person. If she wasn't home, I would wait. What better way for an unemployed detective to fill his day?

The streets were still heavy with morning traffic, and the day was bright and hot, but a marine cloud cover had rolled across the basin that made the light seem source-less and somehow disorienting and had charged the air with a kind of vague dampness. It was as if the sun had vanished and the landscape was lit by a weird kind of indirect lighting that made Los Angeles take on a 19505 tract-home fluorescent reality.

I parked two houses down from Louise Earle's, walked back, and rang her bell exactly as I had done yesterday.

Still no answer. I stepped through the dozens of plants and peeked through the gap between the curtains of the same front window. What I could see of the room appeared unchanged from yesterday. Hmm. It was twenty-five minutes after nine, and I stood at the edge of Louise Earle's porch and wondered what I should do. The neighborhood looked calm and ordinary; maybe Louise Earle had simply run to the market and would soon be back. Of course, even it she wasn't back soon, it didn't matter a whole hell of a lot. Such are the joys of unemployment.

I went out to my car, put up the roof to cut the sun, and waited. It was hot, and, as the sun rose, it grew hotter. Sweat leaked out of my hairline, and my shirt stuck to my chest and back. A couple of Hispanic kids pedaled by on mountain bikes, both kids sucking on Big Gulps. A thin brown dog trotted behind them, the dog's tongue hanging from its mouth. The dog looked hot, too, and was probably wishing one of the kids would drop his drink. A Carrier Air Conditioning van pulled into a drive on the next block. Probably making an emergency call. An elderly man came down the sidewalk a few minutes later, covering his head with a Daily News the way you would if it was raining and you were trying to stay dry.

Two of the three girls showed up in their Volkswagen Beetle, pulled into their friend's drive, and honked. Guess it was too hot to go to the door. The third girl came out with her bag and an orange beach towel and jumped into the Beetle. As they drove away, they waved, and I waved back. Guess the third girl had noticed me when she was watching for her friends. People came and went, and when they did they raced between air-conditioned cars and air-conditioned homes at a dead run. No one stayed in the heat any longer than they had to, except, of course, for displaced private eyes working on a slow case of dehydration.

Louise Earle still had not returned two hours and twenty-one minutes later, when a very thin white woman wearing an enormous sun hat emerged from the house next door and crossed her yard to Louise Earle's porch. I made her for her late seventies, but she might've been older. She rang the bell, then peered through Louise Earle's window just as I had done. She tromped around to the side of the house, came back with a watering can, and began watering the plants. I got out of the car and went up to her. 'Pardon me, ma'am, but Mrs Earle doesn't wish to be disturbed.' The detective resorts to subterfuge.

She stopped the watering and squinted at me. 'And who are you?'

I showed her my license. You show them a license and everything looks official. "The news people were bothering her, so I've been hired to keep them away.'

She made a little sniff and continued with the watering. Guess she didn't give too much of a damn whether I was official or not. 'Well, my name is Mrs Eleanor Harris and I can assure you that Louise Earle does not consider me a bother. We've been friends for forty years.'

I nodded, trying to seem understanding. 'Then you must've seen how awful the news people were.'