Michael Connelly - Chasing the Dime

He looked specifically for letters -bills -from the phone company and found none. He thought this was odd but quickly assumed her phone bills might have been sent to the box at All American Mail. He put one of the bank statements and a Visa bill into the back pocket of his jeans without a second thought -the first being that he was compounding the crime of breaking and entering with a federal mail theft rap. He decided not to pursue thoughts on this and got up.

In the dining room he found a rolltop desk against the rear wall. He turned a chair from the table to the desk, opened it and sat down. He quickly went through the drawers and determined that this was her bill paying station. There were checkbooks, stamps and pens in the center drawer. The drawers going down either side of the desk were filled with envelopes from credit card companies and utilities and other bills. He found a stack of envelopes from Entrepreneurial Concepts Unlimited, though these had been addressed to the mail drop. On each envelope Lilly had written the date the bill was paid. Again noticeably missing was a stack of old phone bills. Even if she did not receive the bills by mail at this address, it did appear she paid her bills at this desk. But there were no receipts, no envelopes with the date of payment written on them.

Pierce didn't have time to dwell on it or to go through all the bills. He wasn't sure what he would find in them that might help him determine what had happened to Lilly Quinlan anyway. He went back to the center drawer and quickly went through the registers of the checkbooks. There had been no activity in either account since the end of July. Going back quickly through one of the books, he found record of payment to the telephone company ending in June. So she did pay the phone bill with the account he held in his hand and very likely at the desk where he sat. But he could find no other record of the billing in the drawers. He couldn't even find a phone.

Feeling hurried by the situation, he gave up on the contradiction and closed the drawer.

He reached to the handle to pull the rolltop down when he saw a small book pushed far into one of the storage slots at the top of the desk. He reached in for it and found it to be a small personal phone book. He used his thumb to buzz through the pages and saw that it was filled with hand-written entries. Without another thought, he shoved the book into his back pocket along with the mail he had decided to take.

He rolled the top down, stood up and took a last survey of the two front rooms, looking for a phone and not finding one. Almost immediately he saw a shadow move behind the closed blinds of the living room window. Someone was going to the front door.

A blade of sheer panic sliced through Pierce. He didn't know whether to hide or run down the hallway and out the back door. Instead, he couldn't do anything. He stood there, unable to move his feet as he heard a footstep on the tiled stoop outside the front door.

A metallic clack made him jump. Then a small stack of mail was pushed through the slot in the door and fell to the floor on top of the other mail. Pierce closed his eyes.

"Jesus!" he whispered as he let out his breath and tried to relax.

The shadow crossed the living room blinds again, going the other way. And then it was gone.

Pierce stepped over and looked at the latest influx of mail. A few more bills but mostly junk mail. He used his foot to push the envelopes around to make sure and then he saw a small envelope addressed by hand. He bent down to pick it up. In the upper left corner of the envelope it said V. Quinlan but there was no return address to go with it. The postmark was partially smeared and he could only make out the letters pa, Fla. He turned the envelope over and checked the seal. He would have to tear the envelope to open it.

Something about opening this obviously personal piece of mail seemed more intrusive and criminal to him than anything else he had done so far. But his hesitation didn't last long. He used a fingernail to pry open the envelope and pulled out a small piece of folded paper. It was a letter dated four days earlier.

Lilly, I am worried sick about you. If you get this, please just call me to let me know you are okay. Please, honey? Since you have stopped calling me I haven't been able to think right. I am very worried about you and that job of yours. Things around here were never really the best and I know I didn't do everything right. But I don't think that you shouldn't tell me if you are all right. Please call me if and when you get this.

Love, Mom He read it twice and then refolded the page and returned it to the envelope. More than anything else in the apartment, including the rotten fruit, the letter stabbed Pierce with a sense of doom. He didn't think the letter from V. Quinlan would ever be answered by a phone call or otherwise.

He closed the envelope as best as he could and quickly buried it in the pile of mail on the floor. The intrusion of the mail carrier had served to instill in him a sense of the risk he was running by being in the house. He'd had enough. He quickly turned and headed back down the hallway to the kitchen.

He went through the back door and closed it but left it unlocked. As nonchalantly as an amateur criminal can be, he walked around the corner of the house and down the driveway toward the street.

Halfway down the side of the house he heard a loud bang from up on the roof and then a large pinecone rolled off the eave and landed in front of him. As Pierce stepped over it he realized what had made the startling noise while he had been in the house. He nodded as he put it together. At least he had solved one mystery.

Lights."

Pierce swung around behind his desk and sat down. From his backpack he pulled out the things he had taken from Lilly Quinlan's house. He had a Visa bill and a bank statement and the phone book.

He started paging through the phone book first. There were several listings for men by first name or first name with a following initial only. These numbers ran the gamut of area codes. Many local but still more from area codes outside of Los Angeles. There were also several listings for local hotels and restaurants, as well as a Lexus dealer in Hollywood. He saw a listing for Robin and another listing for ECU, which he knew was Entrepreneurial Concepts Unlimited.

Under the heading " Dallas " there were several numbers for hotels, restaurants and male first names listed. The same was true of a heading for Las Vegas.

He found a listing for Vivian Quinlan with an 813 area code phone number and an address in Tampa, Florida. That solved the mystery of the smeared postmark on the letter.

Near the end of the book he found an entry for someone listed as Wainwright that included a phone number and an address in Venice that Pierce knew was not far from the home on Altair.

He flipped back to the Q listings and used his desk phone to call the number for Vivian Quinlan. A woman answered the phone in two rings. Her voice sounded like a broom sweeping a sidewalk.

"Hello?"

"Mrs. Quinlan?"

"Yes?"

"Uh, hi, I'm calling from Los Angeles. My name's Henry Pierce and -"

"Is this about Lilly?"

Her voice had an immediate, desperate tone to it.

"Yes. I'm trying to locate her and I was wondering if you could help me."

"Oh, thank God! Are you police?"

"Uh, no, ma'am, I'm not."

"I don't care. Someone finally cares."

"Well, I'm just trying to find her, Mrs. Quinlan. Have you heard from her lately?"

"Not in more than seven weeks and that just isn't like her. She always checked in. I'm very worried."

"Have you contacted the police?"

"Yes, I called and talked to the Missing Persons people. They weren't interested because she's an adult and because of what she does for a living."