Эд Макбейн - Snow White and Rose Red

“She was a hooker, all right,” Lizzie said from inside the trailer.

“Did you see which way the car went? When it left?” Bloom asked.

“Made a left turn at the end of the driveway,” Wallenbach said.

“Heading farther out on the key then, is that right?” Rawles said.

“Looked that way to me.”

“you’re sure the car was a Cadillac?”

“Positive. Cars , I know.”

“Ain’t nothing you know but your twinkie,” Lizzie said from inside the trailer.

“This was a big black Cadillac limo,” Wallenbach yelled to the open trailer door.

“Anything else you may have noticed about it?” Bloom asked. “Any bumper stickers? Any—”

“Bumper stickers?” Wallenbach said, appalled. “On a stretch limo?”

“Anything on the windshield? Any monogrammed initials on the doors?”

“Didn’t see anything like that,” Wallenbach said.

“And this was in July sometime, is that right?” Bloom said.

“Around the Fourth,” Wallenbach said.

“What day?” Rawles asked, looking at the calendar in his notebook. “The Fourth last year fell on a Wednesday.”

“The day after, I think it was. I remember we was sittin’ lookin’ at the fireworks the night before. So this hadda be the next day.”

“The fifth of July.”

“Right.”

“What time?” Bloom asked.

“In the morning.”

“Early morning?”

“Around ten o’clock or so.”

“What was the girl wearing, do you remember?”

“Cut-off blue jeans and a white T-shirt. No bra.”

“She never wore a bra,” Lizzie said from inside the trailer.

“Anything else you can remember about that morning?” Rawles asked.

“She looked happy,” Wallenbach said.

The detectives weren’t too very happy.

They had learned from Wallenbach substantially what they had learned from Sylvia Kazenski: that an expensive automobile driven by a black chauffeur had picked up Tracy Kilbourne and her luggage one morning in July last year, presumably to take her somewhere on Whisper Key. Well, yes, they now had an exact date: July 5. And an approximate time: 10:00 a.m. And the car was a black Cadillac.

But that was all.

So they hit the telephone book for Whisper Key.

There were six Kilbournes listed for the key. None of the first names was Tracy. They phoned each of the Kilbournes nonetheless, and asked if any of the answering parties knew a girl named Tracy Kilbourne.

One of the ladies they called was a little hard of hearing. She said, “Yes, my granddaughter’s name is Casey Kilbourne.”

“No,” Rawles said. “ Tracy Kilbourne.”

“That’s right,” the woman said.

“Your granddaughter’s name is Tracy Kilbourne?”

“Casey Kilbourne, right,” the woman said.

“Well, thank you very much,” Rawles said.

“Did you want to speak to her?” the woman asked.

“No, thank you,” Rawles said.

“Just a second, then, I’ll get her.”

Rawles hung up.

None of the Kilbournes knew a Tracy Kilbourne.

Rawles immediately put in a call to General Telephone of Calusa, identified himself to one of the supervisors there, and told her what he was looking for: a telephone number and an address for a girl named Tracy Kilbourne, for whom service may have begun in July of last year. The supervisor checked her computerized records and reported that they had no listing whatever for a Tracy Kilbourne anywhere in the city of Calusa. Rawles asked her to check back through January of last year, when — according to Corrinne Haley at Pizza Pleasure — Tracy first came to Calusa. The supervisor reported that the records she was consulting went back three years, and she had nothing for a Tracy Kilbourne. Rawles looked at Corrinne Haley’s WIF form, zeroed in on the names of the girls Tracy had shared a room with, and asked the supervisor if she had anything for either Abigail Sweeney or Geraldine Lorner. The supervisor had an old listing for Abigail Sweeney at 3610 South Webster, which Corrinne Haley had given as Tracy’s old address. Service there had been discontinued in February of this year. There were no new listings for either Abigail Sweeney or Geraldine Lorner. Rawles gave the supervisor the address at Heron Lagoon, where Tracy had rented the house on stilts, and was told that telephone service there was listed to a Mr. Harold Weinberger and that billing for that number was made to him at his address in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Rawles thanked the woman and hung up, and immediately dialed Mr. Weinberger in Pittsburgh. Weinberger told him he kept the Heron Lagoon property as an investment and that a real-estate agent down there handled the rentals for him. He had no idea who came in or out of the apartment or where they went when they left the apartment. They passed through like trains in the night, and the only thing he insisted on was that they make any long-distance calls collect.

So, okay. The phone on South Webster had been listed in Abigail Sweeney’s name, not an unusual situation when girls were sharing an apartment. Nor was it unusual in a resort town like Calusa for people to pick up and go when they’d had enough of the sun. Hence no new listings for either of Tracy’s former roommates, who were now only God knew where. The Heron Lagoon phone was listed in the absentee owner’s name; again, not an unusual situation where rental property was concerned. But Tracy Kilbourne had left that house on the fifth of July, so why was there no further telephone listing for her? She had been found dead in Calusa. Presumably she had stayed in Calusa. But no telephone?

The next calls the detectives made were to all the real-estate agents on Whisper Key. What they wanted to know was whether a girl named Tracy Kilbourne had bought or rented a house or condominium on the key in July of last year. Virtually all of the real-estate agents said they would have to check their files and get back. While the detectives waited for the return calls, they started telephoning all the banks on Whisper Key. An assistant manager at the Whisper Key branch of First Calusa City reluctantly told Bloom that a woman named Tracy Kilbourne had a checking account there. The assistant manager’s name was Mrs. O’Hare, and she spoke with a faint Irish brogue. This was the first good lead they’d had since they learned the dead girl’s name, so Bloom naturally started asking questions about the account. Mrs. O’Hare told Bloom she could not reveal anything more about the account without a court order. Bloom told her he was investigating a homicide. Mrs. O’Hare told him the bank had rules and regulations. Bloom told her it would be an enormous inconvenience for him to have to go before a magistrate to apply for a court order. Mrs. O’Hare told him he should get another job if he didn’t like being a policeman. Bloom told her he would go get the court order, but that he would be in a foul temper when he finally came to see her at the bank. Mrs. O’Hare said, “Have a nice day,” and hung up.

It took Bloom three hours to get a court order that would allow him to open the records on Tracy Kilbourne’s checking account. By the time he got to the bank, he was ready to tell Mrs. O’Hare just what he thought of all this bureaucratic bullshit, but she turned out to be a little gray-haired old lady who reminded him of his Aunt Sarah in Mineola, Long Island, so instead he found himself apologizing for having been rude on the telephone. A little plastic sign on Mrs. O’Hare’s desk told him that her first name was Betsy. She was wearing the kind of dress Lizzie Borden must have been wearing when she chopped up first her stepmother and then her father. She was also wearing rimless eyeglasses. She smelled of mimosa. Bloom felt for a moment that he had stepped back into the nineteenth century. Mrs. O’Hare studied the court order as though she suspected it were counterfeit.