Dead to Me (6 page)

I wish I’d let him know how much it meant to me, what he’d done.

Instead, I cleared my throat and said,” I have to go out for a couple of hours.”

It came out more brusquely than I’d meant it to, and Eugene looked surprised.

“You’ll be back, though, won’t you?” he asked.

I hated leaving Annie again, but there was something I needed to know, and it was something I needed to do without Jerry. If I wanted to find out who tried to kill my sister, I’d have to
be smart. I’d have to imagine what Annie would have done. That was why I’d told Jerry about the matchbook I found in my father’s desk, but kept the postcard and the photographs to
myself. It was why I’d borrowed a phone book from the nurse on duty in the main lobby. And it was why I was going to leave my sister alone while I went out to investigate the two-word message
she’d sent me. If it had been me in that hospital bed, Annie wouldn’t have sat around mooning. She would have gone out and gotten some answers.

“Of course I’ll be back,” I told Eugene.

I took the Red Car from the hospital to Hollywood, got off at Western, and walked south down a side street peppered with courtyard apartments and residential hotels. They were the kind that
advertised themselves as respectable rooms for nice young girls. However, with each block, the buildings grew less attractive, less respectable-looking—tree roots pushing the sidewalks up at
dangerous angles, fountains half filled with brown murky water, graying whitewash on the stucco.

The battered sign for the Stratford Arms dangled from a pair of chains, though the apartments themselves were hidden from view by a canopy of neglected shrubs and ragged-looking palm trees. I
walked through the gate and followed the flagstone path up to a screen door with a sign that read
OFFICE
. The latch on the door was broken, and the door swung open with a gust of wind before I even
touched it. A woman was sitting at the desk, poring over a book of newspaper clippings. At first, I couldn’t see her face, just the top of her head, gray roots fighting their way out of a dye
job that looked like it had been accomplished with shoe polish.

As the screen door banged against the side of the building, she sat up, her face twisted into a snarl before she’d even had a chance to register the sight of me standing in the
doorway.

“Watch the door,” she snapped. “You break it, and I’ll tack it on to your rent.”

Clearly, this was a woman who yelled first and asked questions later. If she thought I was one of her tenants, I didn’t have high hopes that she’d remember Annie. But I went into her
office anyway, closing the screen door behind me as tightly and gently as I could manage.

“Sorry,” I said. “Must have been the wind.”

She snorted, then looked at me for the first time. A strange expression crossed her face before it went stony.

“What do you want? I’m not buying any candy bars.”

I reached into my purse and took out an old picture of Annie that I had, one where she didn’t look like she’d been bleached, painted, and tweezed within an inch of her life. I set it
down on the woman’s desk.

“I’m looking for my sister, Annie Gates. She lived here a few years ago, I don’t know for how long, and I’m looking for a forwarding address.”

As she picked up the picture and scanned it with a poker face, I kicked myself for saying Annie was my sister. I should have stuck to the story I’d used at the hospital, that Annie was my
friend.

“Yeah, she lived here a few years ago. Doesn’t anymore.” She gave me a self-satisfied smirk. “I don’t forget a face.”

“Did she leave an address?”

“I’m not the post office, kid. She was here a few months, then moved on. Why’d you come looking for her now?”

There was something about the way she asked that I didn’t like, something a little too much like genuine curiosity. I made my chin wobble and stuck a fingernail into the palm of my hand
until my eyes started to water.

“She’s my sister,” I said, forcing a tremor into my voice. “I haven’t seen her in years, and I heard she might have been here. Isn’t there anything you can
tell me?”

I hoped my performance was convincing enough to make her a little uncomfortable, make her tell me a little something, if only to get me out of her office. But whether she could tell my tears
were false or not, she seemed to be enjoying them.

She scrunched up her mouth and looked at the ceiling, tapping her fingers together. At least my act was better than hers.

“You know, I think she left with some handsome young fellow.” She nodded, as if that settled it. “I don’t know who he was or where they went. That’s just what I
heard from the other girls.”

The other girls, I thought. Now, that was an idea. Maybe one of them would tell me something worth knowing.

“Could I talk to some of them? Maybe one of them can remember his name.”

She pursed her lips, and I knew I shouldn’t have asked. Now she not only wanted me out of her office, she’d make sure I was off her property in five minutes and not snooping around
bothering her tenants.

“Hon, people here tend to stay a few months and move on. I don’t have anyone who’s been here longer than a year.” Then, more firmly and finally, she added,
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can be of any more help to you.”

She turned back to her news clippings, which I could see now were from the kind of papers that ran pictures of mangled tricycles and covered bodies on stretchers:
FIEND ATTACKS
SECRETARY IN LOS FELIZ, CHILD DIES IN FIRE ESCAPE COLLAPSE
, that sort of thing. I could tell I was being dismissed.

“Could I have my picture back?” I asked.

She looked up, then gave me the once-over again before handing it back.

“Sure, sorry about that.”

I was pretty sure she wasn’t sorry at all. I put the picture back in my purse and closed the screen door gently behind me as I left. As I walked down the sidewalk, I peered over the tops
of the hedges, trying to get a look at the courtyard bungalows, wondering which one Annie had lived in. Although it was morning, no one seemed to be home, or at least they weren’t awake yet.
The place was eerily quiet.

Something didn’t sit right about the conversation I’d just had, the way the woman had looked at Annie’s picture, the way she’d asked
why
I was looking for my
sister. Who asks a question like that?
She’s my sister. Of course I’d look for her.
As soon as I turned the corner, I doubled back, slipping behind the shrubs and following them
up the length of the sidewalk. When I reached the office, I nestled under a leafy cover and listened. She was on the phone.

“Hey, Rex, it’s Wanda at the Stratford Arms. Sorry to bother you.” Then, after a short pause, “That little blond cupcake who lived over here a few years back, the one
with the rich daddy, you still keeping tabs on her?”

There was a twig brushing up against my face that itched like crazy, but I didn’t dare move.

“Yeah, I figured. Anyhow, someone came by looking for her. Some kid claimed to be her sister.”

Wanda’s voice grew more agitated.

“Simmer down, Rex. I didn’t tell her anything. I have no idea how she knew to come here. But like I said, she was just a kid. Didn’t ask too many questions, nearly broke down
crying when I said I’d never seen the girl.”

That was interesting. Little as Wanda had told me, she didn’t even want this Rex to know about that. The sarcastic bluster disappeared from her voice. Now she sounded meek and eager to
please.

“Yeah, I’ll call if she comes back. Sorry to bother you, but I thought you’d want to know.”

Wanda hung up and her office fell silent. I guessed she’d gone back to her gruesome book of news clippings.

I was about to get up when I heard a small knocking sound behind me. I turned around to see a young woman standing at the front window of the bungalow nearest to Wanda’s office, rapping
her knuckles on the glass. We made eye contact, and she motioned me to come closer, then disappeared.

The door to her apartment was hidden behind a clothesline hung with sheets and towels drying in the tiny yard. I hesitated until I noticed a fluttery yellow chiffon dress tucked among the
linens. A woman with a dress that dainty, I reasoned, was probably not going to knife me in her living room.

I darted from the hedges toward the front door. It opened before I could knock, and the woman pulled me inside, shut the door behind us, and drew the curtains.

She gestured toward a brown horsehair sofa, which was the only place to sit in the entire room. I took a seat. She stood.

My mother was always saying that I could be pretty if I made an effort. Looking at this woman, I finally understood what she meant. She wore a gray shirtwaist dress, and her only makeup, a
little dab of plum lipstick, was applied like an afterthought. Her hair was pulled back in a frumpy-looking headband, and she wore black shoes that looked like they belonged on a man or a polio
patient. She wasn’t trying to be pretty, that was for sure. And yet, she was. She was in her early twenties with a head of auburn waves that shone like freshly polished woodwork, and
world-weary eyes that made her look like Lauren Bacall in
The Big Sleep
. If I made an effort, maybe I’d be halfway pretty. If this woman made an effort, she’d be a movie
star.

“I’m Ruth,” she said. “And you must be Alice.”

How was it that everybody seemed to know who I was?

“Are you a friend of my sister’s?”

“Friend. That’s an interesting way of putting it.”

I didn’t like the smirk on her face when she said it, and it occurred to me that I should have applied more stringent criteria than “pretty yellow dress” when deciding to sit
down in a stranger’s living room. Criteria like “lives in the Stratford Arms” and “spies on people out her window.” I calculated the distance between Ruth and me and
the door, and wondered whether I could get there before she did.

Ruth rolled her eyes. “Oh, relax. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Another door lacquered in coat after coat of white paint separated the front parlor from the rest of the apartment. Without another word, Ruth disappeared behind it and left me alone on the
couch, watching the door swing back and forth on its hinges.

There wasn’t much to keep me entertained in her absence. Aside from the horsehair couch and a scarred-looking coffee table, the room was completely empty. The curtains weren’t proper
ones. Ruth had just thrown swaths of thick, unhemmed serge over a rod. Even on a sunny Los Angeles day, any scrap of light that found its way through was washed out and gray.

Ruth came back through the door holding two open bottles of Coca-Cola and took a seat next to me on the couch.

“Here,” she said, handing me one of the bottles.

“Thanks.”

We sat in silence, sizing each other up and drinking our sodas, until we both spoke at the same time.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“How do you know my sister?”

Ruth cocked her head to the side. “You answer first. I insist.”

I was afraid to open my mouth, worried that I’d say the wrong thing, or say too much to this woman who’d practically come right out and said that she was no friend to my sister. The
heavy curtains made it seem stuffy and airless inside the apartment, and the prickly fabric of the couch chafed against the backs of my legs. Ruth regarded me coolly and nursed her soda.

“Annie sent me a message, and all it said was the name of this place. But I don’t know why.”

“You do know this was the first place Annie stayed when she left home, right?”

I shook my head.

“Before my time, but it was,” she said. “Rex put her up.”

Rex. There was that name again.

And then I remembered that today wasn’t the first time I’d heard it. The night Randall Pensler gave me a ride home, he’d said a talent scout named Rex was always chatting Annie
up. It had to have been the same person.

“At least he did until Annie figured out that Rex was tight with your father. That was why she split.” She took a delicate sip from her bottle. “That and other
reasons.”

“Wanda said something about a boyfriend.”

Ruth waved me off. “Wanda always says something about a boyfriend when someone comes around looking for one of the girls. It makes them go away.”

“Oh,” I said. “So, how do you know her, then?”

“Be patient, Alice. It’s still my turn,” Ruth said, wagging her finger at me. My mouth clapped shut. “So, your sister sends you a message, and you come just like
that.”

“She’s my sister.”

“And you came because you thought she’d be here?”

I wondered if this was a trick question, if Ruth already knew good and well where Annie was but was trying to catch me in a lie. Still, better that, I thought, than to tell her too much. I
nodded.

“Did you show Annie’s message to anyone?”

“No.”

“Did you tell anyone you were coming here?”

I didn’t answer.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no.’”

Ruth chuckled to herself. I could feel sweat start to bead and drip on my brow, on the tip of my nose, on the backs of my knees. It had been a mistake to come here. For some reason, I began to
think about how angry Jerry Shaffer would be if he knew I was here.

“So what you’re telling me,” she said, “is you don’t know where Annie is right now.”

“Yes,” I lied.

“And you’re sure that’s all she said in her message? Stratford Arms?”

“I’m sure of it. I swear.”

“Don’t ever say ‘I swear,’” Ruth said. “It makes you sound like a liar every time.”

“I’m not lying.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

We stared at each other, radiating dislike and not bothering to hide the fact.

“Did you have something you wanted to ask me?”

I did, but the problem was, now I didn’t know where to begin. Who was this woman? How did she know my sister if she didn’t move to Stratford Arms until after Annie left? How did
Annie wind up in a seedy place like this? I wanted to know all of it, but at that moment, there was another question that seemed more important.