Page 54 of The Happy Month
“Oh, that’s easy. I’d put them in an envelope and mail them to myself with insufficient postage. I’d get a notice from the Post Office that I owed postage due. I wouldn’t pick them up until the coast was clear.”
Her answer seemed to make Roland very cross. Patrick was blushing deeply.
“What did you say your last name was?” Roland asked.
“Korenko.”
“And what kind of name is that?”
“Czechoslovakian.”
“Are you a communist?”
Vera laughed. “Why would I be a communist? I love money too much. Ladies, don’t you love money?”
That seemed to embarrass the other women at the table, and Patrick knew why. If you were rich, you tried not to talk about money. It was bad form. Vera seemed to be good at bad form.
Roland gave him a look, one that said they’d be discussing this later. His pact with Vera was meant to solve problems, not create them. But here it was again. He knew that he’d have to extradite himself from this situation. But how?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
July 29, 1996
Early morning
By Monday morning, there were a lot of loose ends. I poked my head into Lydia’s office as soon as I got to The Freedom Agenda, and said, “Did you notice that one of the witness statements mentions a small yellow car stopping in front of the Michaels’ house at eleven-thirty that morning and a young girl going inside?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I interviewed a woman named Kelly Wallpole. She was in Sammy’s same grade. She said that even though Sammy wasn’t popular, kids used her to get to her parents’ well-stocked bar and for rides in her yellow Chevy Vega.”
“Circumstantial. I’ll use it at trial if we get a new one. But it’s not going help our petition.”
She grew silent and thoughtful. After a moment, I asked, “What?”
“Nothing. I’m plotting. I’ll let you know if I come up with an actual plan.”
“Any idea when we’ll have Harris in again?”
She rolled her eyes at me. I took that to mean the conversation was over. I went back to my makeshift desk. Waiting for me was the list of names I’d asked Karen to research. They were all people mentioned inCanyon Girl. There were phone numbers and addresses for most of the names. Three of the names were crossed out with the notation “DEAD” written next to them: Carmichael Crampton, Detective Schmidt and Betty Brooks.
Crampton was the kid who’d found Vera’s body. To be honest, I couldn’t think of anything he’d tell me that might have been useful. Betty Brooks was a friend of Vera’s. She might have been useful. But I couldn’t know how much. I folded up the note and put it in my pocket. I’d deal with it later.
Then, I called Edwin at exactly nine o’clock and arranged to have lunch with him and his brother. We had to haggle a bit before finally settling on Musso & Frank at one o’clock. The main thing I liked about the place was that it was a few blocks away from the Hollywood Freeway, meaning that popping in and out for lunch meant I’d miss most of the really bad traffic.
I decided it was a good time to go to the county clerk’s office and get the skinny on the house in Holmby Hills. They were located in Norwalk, so I drove there first. Believe it or not, they have records going back to before the Civil War. It took about an hour and a half, but I was able to establish that Ivan Melchor bought the Holmby Hills house in 1943. In 1965, Patrick Gill’s name was added to the deed. Then in 1972, Ivan’s name was removed due to his death. Patrick’s was the only name associated with the property until last year when the house was sold.
When I got done it was only eleven. I had roughly twohours to get to Musso & Frank, so I decided to try and squeeze in another errand. I drove downtown to the big library. I parked in a garage, paying through the nose for the privilege. Walking in the door, it was noon already. I was cutting it close since I’d need at least twenty minutes to drive to Hollywood. I walked around until I found the reference desk and I told the librarian I wanted to look at the white pages starting in 1945.
“We have all that on fiche,” he said. “1945 until…”
“How about we do five years at a time. So, 1950.” Then I changed my mind. “Wait. Give me every other year from 1945 until 1955.”
A few minutes later, he brought out five boxes of rolled fiche. “It’s two years per roll, so what you have is 1946 until 1955. If you want to go back another year?—”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll start with these.”
“The fiche room is over there,” he said, pointing behind me. I walked in that direction and into a long room with four fiche machines, two on each side of the room. They were all empty. I walked to the furthest one and set to work.
