Not One Clue_ A Mystery - Lois Greiman [93]
My mind was racing. Laney didn’t have a cat. Never had. “What’s going on? Are you drugged?”
“She’s so old.”
My mind clicked into gear. I scrambled for a pencil. Drugged or not, Laney wouldn’t waste this time. “How old?”
“The same age as Jeen.”
No pen. No pencil. Not even a chunk of charcoal. Desperate, I stuck my finger in the French dressing and wrote Solberg’s age on a nearby piece of junk mail.
“You know Muffy,” she added.
I scribbled down the name, barely legible.
“Who is he?” I was all but whispering.
“Take care of Trivette, too.”
I wrote it down, though it made no sense at all. My hand was shaking. “Laney …” My voice trembled. “I don’t understand.”
“He had that hairless sphinx. Weird. We should have given it a sweater. But he wouldn’t have used it. People don’t change.”
“What do you mean? Who’s—” I began, but the phone was taken away and her kidnapper was back on the line.
“So Hollywood,” he said, “worrying about a cat when the world is on fire.”
“Don’t hurt her,” I said.
“I’ve no desire to. But regrettably I may be unable to prevent it if my demands are not followed to the letter,” he said, then, “Tell Mr. Solberg to collect the necessary funds. I’ll call him soon to let him know where to wire the money.”
“Wait!” I felt frantic, terrified, but the phone had already gone dead.
33
If it wasn’t for vinyl I’d be naked all the time.
—Teddy Bactrin, one of
Chrissy’s too honest beaus
Solberg and I stared at each other, lost and horrified. He turned like an automaton, and I blinked, coming back to myself.
“Where are you going?”
“To get the money ready.”
I nodded, broken, crushed, but when my gaze swept across my scribbled notes I spoke again. “How old are you?”
“What difference—”
“Your age!” I was trying to rally. “How old?”
“Thirty-seven. Why?”
“Because Laney doesn’t waste time.” My brain was beginning to click a little. “Did you ever have a cat?”
“A cat? No. Wh—”
“Who’s Muffy?”
“Are you crazy? I don’t have time—”
But I grabbed his shoulders, shaking him. “Who’s Muffy?”
“I don’t know. I—Wait.” He blinked. “I used to date a girl called Muffy.”
For a moment all sensible thoughts fled. Muffy? Really? I shook my head. “Get on your computer.”
“What?”
“Your computer. You have it with you, don’t you?”
“It’s in my—”
“Get it!”
He paused a moment, but finally he scrambled away. I grabbed a pen from the drawer and wrote down the twenty-one-second conversation as closely as I could remember. I had asked where she was. She’d begged me to take care of her cat, who was thirty-seven years …
“What do you want?” Solberg was panting when he ran back in. He was carrying something that looked like a beefed-up coffee can. But there was no time to dwell.
“Find Thirty-seventh Avenue,” I said.
“In L.A.?”
“For now,” I muttered, then closed my eyes, trying to think, to wish away the panic. What was the cross street? Not Muffy. That would have been too obvious, too dangerous. “What was Muffy’s last name?”
“Muffy?” He glanced up. A little color had returned to his lips. “Newton.”
“Find Thirty-seventh and Newton.”
He typed madly. The keyboard was in the shape of a cylinder. “There is none.”
I wanted to ask if he was positive, but there was no point, so I paced, then spun toward him. “What was her real name?”
“Muffy is her real name.”
“Seriously?”
“But her cousins called her Marigold.” Our eyes met.
“Thirty-seventh and Marigold!” He was already typing.
I’d asked who had abducted her. “Do you know anyone named Trivette?”
He shook his head, distracted, then yanked his attention toward me. “East L.A. Looks like residential slums.” He was already on his feet.
“Where are you going?”
He paused, cheeks bright, fists clenched. “To kill him,” he said.
For a moment I was too shocked to take him seriously, but when he turned away I grabbed his arm. “How? Solberg, think. We don’t know who he is. We don’t know where he is. Not specifically.”
“I’ll find him.” His voice was gruff, unrecognizable. “I’ll find her.”
“He’s probably armed.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, and tried to pull away, but I tightened