Page 84 of The Happy Month
People came and went. There was a light over the gate that would slide back and forth so the cars could get into the garage. It was like a spotlight highlighting the drivers for me. None of them were Sammy.
About nine o’clock, a recent model Mercedes station wagon came up the hill, then did a three-point-turn and parked across the street from me about four car lengths away. A woman got out and I thought,Holy shit!It was Kelly Wallpole. Not only were she and Sammy friendlier than she’d originally let on; they werestillfriends.
She stopped at the intercom and buzzed Sammy. A moment later, the buzzer went off and she entered the condo. I glanced at my cellular phone and checked the time. 9:40. Late for a friendly visit. The station wagon suggested she had kids. Did she go home and put the kids to bed before she came out? Why didn’t she come earlier? Couldn’t her husband have put the kids to bed? Or a babysitter?
Maybe it wasn’t such a friendly visit. Maybe herhusband thought she was somewhere else. This visit could have been tacked on to a visit to another friend or even her sister. Her husband wouldn’t even know she was here. Lots of possibilities, very few answers.
I waited. And then waited some more. Kelly came out of the condo at 10:22. She wasn’t even in there an hour. Yeah, it might not have been a friendly visit. She got into her Mercedes and then started down the hill. As soon as she was a block behind me, I turned my lights on and made a U-Turn. My Wrangler has a short wheelbase, so it turns on a dime.
It can be challenging to tail someone in Los Angeles. A couple things I had going for me though: It wasn’t rush hour, and when she left, Kelly drove directly up Cherry Avenue to the 405. I followed her for about ten minutes and then we turned north onto the 605. Fifteen minutes later she was going east on the 91. We got off at Bloomfield and then zig-zagged over to La Mirada.
I lost track of where we were exactly, but I didn’t lose her. We were in a suburban neighborhood where the houses all looked to have been built in the seventies. They were wide, single-story ranch houses on small plots. Anywhere else they would have been very boring pieces of property. In Southern California they were very expensive, and the wealth showed. They were nicely landscaped and well-kept.
The Mercedes pulled into a driveway and stopped. I pulled up to the curb across the street. There were no other cars on the street. I hopped out of the Jeep as quickly as I could. Kelly hadn’t noticed me. She got out the Mercedes and started up the driveway. I was about ten feet behind her when I said, “Kelly. Do you have a moment?”
She jumped, and said, “Oh my God, you scared me.”Then she focused and saw that it was me. Fear returned to her face. “I don’t have time to talk right now.”
“I think you do. You were just at Sammy Blanchard’s place. I’m guessing you told her I found out about the two of you making that crank call twenty years ago.”
“I thought she had a right to know. I really need?—”
“Yesterday you agreed to give us a deposition. I’m guessing Sammy talked you out of it?”
“It’s not a good idea.”
“Does she have something on you? Was it blackmail or just simple coercion?”
“I can’t talk to you.”
“This is how this works… We are going to get a new trial for Larry Wilkes. When we do, you’ll be subpoenaed. If you lie on the stand that’s perjury. Perjury means prison. Maybe you’ll be prosecuted, maybe you won’t. You can take that chance if you want to. What will definitely happen is that when we put Andrea Grubber on the stand, she’ll say you’re the one who gave the tip about Pete Michaels. You know what that will make you? A suspect. Do you want to be a murder suspect?”
“My husband and kids are in the house.”
“I’m not doing anything to you. I’m just telling you how your life might go and what you can do to avoid making things worse.”
I took out my wallet and picked out a business card. I held it out for her. “Call Monday morning. Schedule a deposition. Tell the truth. All of this will go away.”
The door to the house opened and a man’s voice said, “Kel? What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” she called out.
“Monday,” I said, still holding out the card.
She took it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
August 3, 1996
Saturday morning
The next morning, I was sitting in front of Sammy’s condo by seven. I had two large coffees from Hot Times and two lemon poppy seed muffins. I left the radio on for the first few minutes since it was in the middle of the news. Starbucks had opened its first store in Japan, that was important. The national minimum wage was raised to four dollars and seventy cents, which meant the members of Congress really believed people could live on less than two hundred dollars a week. And Congress wanted to declare English the national language. That probably made the go-back-where-you-came-from types really happy, though I doubt they had any idea where they themselves had come from.
I watched as Sammy’s neighbors came down in their workout clothes and drove to their gyms. It was a cloudy morning and cool, below seventy. I had on a thick corduroy shirt over a white tee. It was damp too. My shoulder hurt,which is the only reason I knew that. My personal barometer. I wondered if it might rain.
A few minutes after eight I got a call on my cellular. Ronnie.
“Where are you?”
