Lost Light

And four years after the crime the chances of there being anything left to recover were small. Still, the reward was good to know about. It might be useful as a tool of leverage or coercion. I might not be eligible but I might encounter someone useful who would be. I was glad I found out about it.
    Next on the notepad was the name Sandor Szatmari. He or she-I didn’t know which-was listed as the case investigator for Global Underwriters. He or she was someone I needed to talk to. I opened the murder book to the first page, where investigators usually kept a page of most often called phone numbers. There was no listing for Szatmari but there was for Global. I went into the kitchen to get the phone, turned down Louis Armstrong on the CD player and made the call. I was transferred twice before I finally got a woman who answered with “Investigations.”
    I had trouble with Szatmari’s name and she corrected me and then told me to hold. In less than a minute Szatmari picked up. The name belonged to a he. I explained my situation and asked if we could meet. He seemed skeptical, but that might have just been because he had an accent from Eastern Europe that made him hard to read. He declined to discuss the case over the phone with a stranger but ultimately agreed to meet me in person at ten o’clock the next morning at his office in Santa Monica. I told him I’d be there and hung up.
    I looked at the last line I had written on the notepad. It was just a reminder of an old adage good for almost any investigation. Follow the money, stupid. It always leads to the truth. In this case the money was gone and the trail-other than blips on the radar in Phoenix and involving Mousouwa Aziz and Martha Gessler-had gone cold. I knew that left me one alternative. To go backwards. Trace the money backwards and see what came up.
    To do that I needed to start at the bank. I checked the phone number page in the murder book again and called Gordon Scaggs, the vice president at BankLA who had arranged the one-day loan of $2 million to Alexander Taylor’s film company.
    Scaggs was a busy man, he told me. He wanted to put off meeting with me until the following week. But I was persistent and got him to squeeze me in for fifteen minutes the next afternoon at three. He asked me for a callback number so his secretary could confirm in the morning. I made up a number and gave it to him. I wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to have the secretary call me back and tell me the meeting had been canceled.
    I hung up and weighed my options. It was late afternoon and at the moment I was clear until ten the following morning. I wanted to take another run at the murder book but knew I didn’t need to be sitting in the house to do that. I could just as easily be sitting on a plane.
    I called Southwest Airlines and reserved a flight from Burbank to Las Vegas, arriving at 7:15, and a return flight leaving early the next morning and arriving at 8:30 back at Burbank.
    Eleanor answered her cell phone on the second ring and seemed to be whispering.
    “It’s Harry. Is something wrong?”
    “No.”
    “Why are you whispering?”
    She spoke up.
    “Sorry, I didn’t realize I was. What’s going on?”
    “I’m thinking about coming over there tonight to get my bag and my credit cards.”
    When she did not respond right away, I asked, “Are you going to be around?”
    “Well, I was going to play tonight. Later.”
    “My plane gets in at seven-fifteen. I could come by around eight. Maybe we could have dinner before you go to play.”
    I waited and again it seemed like she was taking too long to respond.
    “Dinner would be nice. Are you staying overnight?”
    “Yeah, I’ve got an early flight out. I have some things to do over here in the morning.”
    “Where are you going to stay?”
    There was as clear a signal as any.
    “I don’t know. I didn’t reserve anything yet.”
    “Harry, I don’t think it would be good for you to stay here.”
    “Right.”
    The line was as silent as the three hundred miles of desert between us.
    “I know, I can get you comped at the Bellagio. They’ll do it for me.”
    “You sure?”
    “Yes.”
    “Thanks, Eleanor. You want me to come to your place after I get in?”
    “No, I’ll come pick you up. Are you checking luggage?”
    “No. You already have my bag.”
    “Then I’ll be parked out in front of the terminal at seven-fifteen. I’ll see you then.”
    I noticed she was whispering again but I