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As soon as he left, I got up and began pulling myself together. I was pretty sure John had worked all night, which meant he’d be sleeping most of the day. That basically left me alone in the house with Junior. I decided it would be a good idea to take myself out for breakfast.
When I got downstairs, I found Junior in the living room doing a workout routine with Jane Fonda. Their outfits were disturbingly similar. Before I could get out of the house, he paused the tape and asked, “You and Ronnie seem just frantic. Is there anything I can do? Anything at all.”
Now I felt bad about my mental critique of his workout wear. Well, a little bad. I tried not to look at it. I said, “We could always use some toilet paper.”
“Wonderful, I’ll pick some up. Paper towels?”
“Knock yourself out,” I said, slipping out the front door. I drove around the corner to the Park Pantry and had Cindy bring me biscuits and gravy with scrambled eggs and a double side of bacon.
I’d broughtMidnight in the Garden of Good and Evilwith me and read a few pages. I can’t say I was enjoying the book, it seemed to wander all over the place. It was a true story and, of course, true stories were like that. Then Cindy was back with my breakfast. “You’re a bartender, right?”
“Yeah. It’s a little early though, don’t you think?”
She brushed me away with a raspberry. “I don’t want a drink. No, there was this guy come in. He was asking all sorts of questions about bartenders in this neighborhood. He kind of described you. I didn’t say nothing. It’s not my business.”
Now that I’d completely lost my appetite, I sat back in the booth and asked, “Did he tell you who he was?”
“He said his name was MacBeth. No wait, Hamlet. Hamlet Gilbody. He said he was a private eye from Chicago. It was kind of like TV. Except creepier.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know anyone in Chicago.”
“I do. You’re not missing much.”
“Did he leave his card?”
“I wouldn’t take it. I said I didn’t know anybody like that so what did I need his card for?”
I nodded. I wouldn’t have minded seeing the card, but her way was probably better.
“I should leave you alone so you can eat your breakfast.”
“Thanks, Cindy. A lot.”
An hour later, I was in Downey. I crawled slowly past 7815 Amorita then pulled a U-turn and parked a few houses down in a way that let me get a good look at the house.
The first thing I noticed was that the mailbox said MICHAELS. The family still owned the house. They owned the house where their nineteen-year-old son had been murdered. They probably crossed the spot where he died a dozen times a day. It seemed every bit as odd to me as Joanne Yardley still living in her house.
But hey, maybe I was the one who was odd. Maybe the way to deal with tragedy was to hunker down and live with it. Maybe they were right not to budge. I was a runner. I thought I’d done it for people I cared about, but I could be wrong. I could have done it for me. I could just be a coward.
I shook those thoughts off and went back to staring at the house. In the driveway sat a Mercury station wagon from the eighties. It was beat up, with a lot of dents and peeling paint on the roof. There were two recent bumper stickers on the back. One said PAT BUCHANAN FOR PRESIDENT and the other HARVEST 95. The first I understood well enough; the second was some kind of Christian revival meeting. I’d never been to one. Just the idea was scary enough.
The house itself looked small and, like the car, was badly in need of new paint. The paint that was on there was so faded I couldn’t quite tell what color it had started out as. There was a brightly colored, plastic Big Wheel sitting near the cement stoop that suggested grandchildren. Pete Michaels was nineteen when he was killed. His parents would be in their sixties or even seventies now. I didn’t remember anything about siblings, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any.
I tried to imagine what the house had been like at the time of the murder. The paint job was probably fresh. There would have been a different station wagon. It would have had a FORD/DOLE sticker on the back. I glanced around the neighborhood. All the houses seemed to be about the same age. There were a lot of potential witnesses. I wondered if the police did a canvas.
Larry’s letter said the murder happened September 28, 1976. What day of the week was that? Who might have been home? The letter said Pete’s parents came home and found Larry there. They weren’t working, so maybe it was a Saturday or a Sunday. I would need to figure that out.
Pete’s real killer would have had to come and go before Larry showed up. It was possible one of the neighbors saw something. They could have seen someone and not thought anything of it—of course, if they didn’t think about it then, they were unlikely to remember it twenty years later.
What about the gun shot? Someone could have heard that. And it would have happened before Larry arrived. I’d have to go over the witness statements carefully—if there were witness statements. If we took the case, we’d get them in discovery. I just had to convince Lydia to take the case.
Unexpectedly, the front door opened and out came a hard looking woman nearing forty with light brown hair tied back and a big floral top. She was at least nine months pregnant. Trailing behind her was a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl wearing pajamas. The girl looked flushed and unhappy. They were heading toward the station wagon when I decided it was probably best if I moved along.
Driving away, I kept an eye on them through the rearview mirror. They didn’t notice me. I wondered who they were. They didn’t fit the story I’d made up about Pete’s parents keeping the house. Maybe they had, though. Maybe the pregnant woman was Pete’s sister living there for some reason and the girl his niece. And somewhere there was a smaller child attached to the Big Wheel. This was all information I’d need to find out. It might mean nothing, but it might also mean something.
I drove back to Long Beach and made a quick stop at Ghetto Vons. Then I popped by The Freedom Agenda office. Karen was at her post in the reception area.
“It’s Friday, what are you doing here?”
