“Perfect. Let me give you the e-mail address here.”
“My grandma has it.” Here William laughed. It sounded like And a lot of good it does her. “Then there are some things in the Notes section, but they’re written by hand and I can’t make out most of it.” William made handwriting sound like a prehistoric pastime, and in his world, it was probably rare. I pictured a laptop at every desk in his homeroom and USB ports where there used to be inkwells.
“Can you e-mail the notes, too?”
“Done. I’ll keep at it, okay, and I’ll call if I find anything else. I might have to charge it, but it’s okay because me and my friend figured out where to get the right cradle.”
“You’re terrific, William.” My friend and I, I said to myself. “Anything I can bring you from California?”
“A Forty-Niners cap.”
“What?”
“Just kidding, Aunt Glo. How about a T-shirt from the physics department at Cal?”
“Now you’re talking.”
I sat at Elaine’s computer, which was becoming as familiar to me as my own. I scrolled through subject lines that were clearly junk mail. Shouldn’t it be common knowledge in the world of e-marketing that Elaine Cody had lived in this house more than thirty years and no longer had a mortgage? And that she had no interest in discount clothing or hot teen ch*&^ks?
There was nothing yet from William Galigani.
I got up to stretch and paced the small office. Elaine’s wedding dress hung on the outside, on a hook attached to the closet. If an outfit could look forlorn, this was it. The lovely cream-colored fabric hung loosely on the hanger, as if its owner had shrunk to a skeleton. The dress was what we used to call tea length, the skirt straight, the bodice sparkling with delicate crystals and pearls stitched into a design that reminded me of graph paper.
I wondered if Elaine had done anything about alerting her wedding staff that the groom was missing. She hadn’t mentioned doing so, but I imagined that caterers, photographers, and other wedding vendors needed some notice of change or cancellation. Was there an emergency backup plan, such as all Californians were expected to have for earthquake readiness? I decided not to ask.
I walked to the windows for a glimpse of what was left of the glorious sunset. One window looked down on Elaine’s driveway. Garages and driveways were a novelty in the crowded residential areas of Berkeley; Elaine always claimed she had one of only six decent driveways in the whole city, long enough for two cars and wide enough to allow flower beds on both sides. Her garage, on the other hand, was built for a Volkswagen bug and housed only her gardening tools, old files, and items destined for charitable donation.
Something seemed off this evening. Elaine’s Saab was as far to the front as possible. I’d driven way in to make room for Matt to pull Dana’s Jeep in behind me and clear the sidewalk comfortably. But where was Dana’s Jeep? Maybe I’d been distracted and didn’t notice that he parked on the street instead.
I called down the stairs. “Matt, where did you park the Jeep?”
“It’s in the driveway, right behind the Saab.”
Not anymore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Dana sat in the hot, crappy interview room in one of the Berkeley PD’s substations. She took in the peeling paint, the rust spots on the ceiling, and furniture that was a lot worse than in most of the homeless shelters she’d seen.
Did they purposely not have air-conditioning in police stations? Is this what they meant by sweating a confession out of a suspect? At this point she was almost ready to confess to something, as long as the jail cell was cool.
Nobody had told her exactly why she was sitting here, waiting. She assumed they were searching her house. Great. Another household was being upset. She wondered if Jen or Robin would be home. She imagined Jen, who didn’t do well under stress, curled up on the overstuffed floral chair Elaine had given them. Jen would be whimpering about how she had homework to do and was going to flunk her summer class in the Age of Enlightenment if the cops upset her papers and lost her place in her textbooks. Robin, on the other hand, would probably scare the shit out of the cops.
Dana needed a shower. She needed to change her clothes. Mostly, she needed a smoke. The thought of her stash at home unnerved her. Scenes from all her favorite cop shows came to mind. In nearly every episode, suspects waited in shabby rooms while TV detectives Sipowicz and Clark, or Briscoe and Green, or Benson and Stabler, went out and searched their houses. If the Berkeley cops were searching her house now, how thorough would they be?
Neither Jen nor Robin knew where Dana kept her little Baggie, but the police might think they did and grill them, too. She didn’t have much left of her latest bag. Would they find it, tucked under the top tray of her jewelry box? It wasn’t enough to send her to jail, but a citation and a fine would not look good on her med school apps. And what if whoever changed her incident report got into her room and planted drugs, the way they’d planted the stolen supplies in Tanisha’s house?