Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

did what was very nearly a classic double take. “Adrienne. I haven’t seen her in months. Adrienne! What was I thinking of? I wasn’t— it was all her idea.” Most of this speech was delivered more or less staring off into space. He came back into focus. “Sorry. I talk to myself. It’s one of the things she didn’t like about me.”
    “Well, there’s some bad news and some good news. I might as well say it fast. The good news is that she’s up and around. The bad news is she took sleeping pills a few days ago. She was in a coma for a while. And then she disappeared from the hospital. You didn’t know any of this?”
    “God, no.” He certainly looked stunned, whether he was or not. “No. I didn’t know any of it. Did she say why?”
    “She’s gone missing, Danno. We thought she might have gone to stay with you.”
    He looked sheepish. “She left messages. I guess I just kind of ignored them.”
    “I take it you parted acrimoniously.”
    “I don’t know what the deal is with Adrienne. She grew up in a family where one kid was desperately, desperately ill. I’m not sure what was wrong with him, but something; the whole family revolved around the kid’s illness. Adrienne would say things like, ‘We weren’t in denial or anything; it was just a part of life.’ Like every family lived with that. Like nobody ever told her how awful it was; especially the way no one paid any attention to her. I mean, I guess that’s what happened; I don’t know.” He got the spacey look again, and then his eyes came in for a landing. “The upshot is, that’s the coldest bitch I ever met in my life. The day I let her stay with me I’d have to be the one in a coma.”
    “Wow. Strong stuff.”
    “It was like she’d think of ways to get me pissed off. To make an enemy out of me, really. And she couldn’t have been more amazed when I told her to leave. She said, ‘But we’re such a great fit. We like all the same bands and movies and everything.’ Like she never noticed a damn thing was wrong.” He spread his hands. “I guess she was friends with McKendrick; I don’t know. Maybe he was just nice to her for old times’ sake.”
    “Wait a minute. Are you saying they were an item before she came to the Chronicle ?”
    “Oh, God no. I mean, I guess not, I never even thought about it. He was pushing forty, I guess—” He stopped, mused, and shook his head. “Uh-uh. No way. But their families had been friends for centuries or something.”
    This was more interesting still.
    “They, you know, grew up together, sort of. Or I guess they would have if he hadn’t been a whole generation older.”
    I’d like to think it was that conversation that most influenced my decision to fly to Atlanta. As Rob said when we had left Danno, he made Adrienne sound like a classic psychopath— definitely not someone you wanted gunning for you. Maybe, I thought, I could uncover the hidden motive, the ancient reason she’d finally had enough and run Jason down, and Martinez and Curry would pull out all the stops. I already had a theory to fit the keys— one so natural and obvious it had to be right. Adrienne was after all Jason’s assistant— he’d probably given her Chris’s keys and asked her to return them. Adrienne had copied down Chris’s address— maybe Jason had even read it off to her, on the telephone, perhaps— and he’d absentmindedly returned his own scrap to his pocket.
    I did what Maurizio said, talked to my partner about going to Atlanta. She responded by closing her eyes and checking it out.
    And so I cling to Danno; otherwise I’d be a person who had once more agreed— even after two dates with a flying saucer enthusiast— to meet someone because a gang of roving psychics thought it was a fine idea.

Chapter Eighteen
    It was good for me to go to Atlanta. I hadn’t been before, and I found it humbling. There is just the tiniest tendency on the part of someone from San Francisco to imagine that she is sophisticated, cosmopolitan, a woman of the world, and that a person from Atlanta may be just a trifle less worldly wise. Five minutes in the Atlanta airport should dispel such fantasies.
    In case there is anyone who hasn’t yet been— which I doubt, as I was told by the natives I was the last— you have to take a train to get from one concourse to another and said train, like those en route to the Interplanetary Council, travels at the speed of thought. Already it’s like science fiction,